And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to me
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to me. Verse 32.
Article II
The next thing we consider, is the person that draws. I (says Christ) will draw all men to me.
There is a peculiar aptitude in Jesus Christ to draw sinners to himself.
1. As concerning his person, he is fit; for neither is the Father, nor the Holy Ghost, in person, Lord Redeemer, but Christ; as, in the deep of God's wisdom, the Son was thought fittest to make sons, Gal. 4:4 the heir to communicate the right of heirship to the nearest of the blood, to his brethren, to make them joint-heirs with him; so is Christ a fit person, as Lord Saviour, to rescue captives and to draw them to the state of sonship: which I speak not to exclude the other two persons; for, John 6:44. The Father draws to the Son; and the Spirit of grace, in the work of conversion, must be a special agent; but Christ is made, in a personal consideration, a drawer of sinners; God works and carries on all his state-designs of heaven by Christ, Heb. 2:10. He brings, or drives many sons to glory.
2. Christ by office is a congregating and uniting Mediator, Col. 1:20. He makes heaven and earth one; He is our peace, and made of twain one, Eph. 2:14. The Shepherd that gathers the sons of God in one. John 11:52. And, he by the merit of his blood, maketh sinners legally one with God; he is Immanuel, God with us, fit to draw us in a law-union to God. We were banished out of paradise; the Son by office, was sent out to bring in the out-law sons.
3. God hath laid down, (in a manner) his compassion, mercy, gentleness, to sinners in Christ; and Christ hath taken off infinite wrath, and satisfied justice in his nature and office. God is nowhere (to speak so) so much mercy, graciousness, kindness, tender compassion to sinners, such a sea of love, as in the Lord Jesus. O but he is a most lovely, desirable, compassionate God in Christ? The sinner findeth all that God can have in him, or do for saving, in the Mediator Christ; there can nothing come out of God to the sinner, but through Christ. There is no golden pipe, no channel, but this; all God, and whole God, is in Christ, and all God as communicable to the creature; and were God seen in his loveliness, his beauty would be strong cords and chains to draw hell up to heaven. Love, grace, mercy, are sodering and uniting attributes in God: now, tho' these same essential attributes that are in one, be in all the three Persons; yet the mediatory manifestation of love, grace, and free mercy, is only in the Son; so as Christ is the treasure, store-house, and magazine of the free goodness and mercy of the Godhead. As the sea is a congregation of waters, so is Christ a confluence of these lovely and drawing attributes that are in the Godhead. Christ is the face of God, 2 Cor. 4:6. The beauty and loveliness of the person, much of the majesty and glory of the man is in the face; now the beauty, and majesty and glory of God is manifested in Christ; so, Heb. 1:3. He is the brightness of his glory. The Father is as it were all sun, and all pearl; the Son Christ is the substantial rays, light-shining, the eternal, and essential irradiation of this Sun of glory; the sun's glory is manifested to the world, in the light and beams that it sends out to the world; and if the sun should keep its beams and light within its body, we should see nothing of the sun's beauty and glory. No man, no angel, could see any thing of God, if God had not a consubstantial Son begotten of himself by an eternal generation; but Christ is the beams, and splendor, and the shining, but the consubstantial shining of the infinite pearl, and outs God, as the seal doth the stamp; and, as God incarnate, he reveals the excellency, glory, and beauty of God. The pearl is a drawing and an alluring creature, from its shining beauty; so Christ is the drawing loveliness of God. Ye cannot see the creature's beauty, or the man's face, but ye see the creature and the man; so says Christ to Philip, John. 14:9. He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father. I am as like the Father, as God is like himself: there is a perfect, indivisible, essential unity between the Father and me; I and the Father are one, one very God; he the begetter, I the begotten. So God hath laid down and empawned all his beauty, his loveliness, and his drawing virtue, in Christ the load-stone of heaven; he is the substantial rose that grew out of the Father from eternity. A man's wisdom makes his face to shine. Wisdom is a fair, lovely, and alluring beauty. Now, Christ is the essential wisdom of God; were your eyes once fastned upon that dainty lovely thing Christ, that uncreated golden ark, the eternal, that infinite flower and lily, that sprang out of the essence and beautiful nature of God, with eternal infinite greenness, fairness, smell, vigour, life, never to fade, that essential wisdom, and substantial word, the intellectual birth of the Lord's infinite understanding; if your eyes were once on him in a vision of glory, it should be impossible to get your eyes off him again; there would come such drawing rays, and visual lines of lovely beauty and glory from his face to your eyes, and should dart in through these created windows, to the understanding, heart, and affection, such arrows and darts of love, as ye shall be a captive of glory for ever and ever. Psal. 16:11. In thy presence is fulness of joy. Rev. 22:4. They shall see his face,—'tis a King's face, and a kingly glory, to see it. —— v. 5. And they shall reign for ever and ever.
4. Then there is so much warmness of heart, and such a fire of love, such a stock of free-grace, so wide, so tender, so large bowels of mercy and compassion towards sinners, as he would put himself into a posture of mercy, and in such a station of clay, as he might conveniently get a strong pull of sinners to draw them, a large and wide handful, or his arms full of sinners, as he would be a man for us, to get all the organs of lovely drawing of sinners to him: a man's heart to love man, a man's bowels to compassionate man, a man's hand to touch the soul leper's skin, a man's mouth and tongue to pray for man, to preach to men, and in our nature to publish the everlasting gospel; a man's legs to be the good shepherd, to go over mountain and wilderness, to seek or to save lost sheep; a man's soul to sigh and groan for man; a man's eyes to weep for sinners; his nature, to lay down his life for his poor friends: he would be a created clay-tent of free-grace, a shop, and an office-house of compassion towards us; he would borrow the womb of a sinner to be born, suck the breasts of a woman that needed a Saviour, eat and drink with sinners and publicans, came to seek and to save lost sinners, was numbred with sinners, died between two sinners, made his grave with sinners, (saith Isaiah, Isa. 53:9) borrowed a sinner's tomb to be buried in: and now he keeps the old relation with sinners, when he is in heaven; honour hath not changed him, nor hath he forgotten his old friends. Heb. 4:15. For we have not an High Priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Christ cannot now sigh, but he can feel sighing he cannot weep, he hath a man's heart to compassionate our weeping, in such a way as is suitable to his glorified condition. The head is in heaven, but he hath left his heart in earth with sinners: there can be nothing dearer to Christ, than the Holy Spirit; he hath sent us down that Comforter, the Spirit, to abide with us.
Use 1. O that men would come and look into this ark, and that Christ would draw the curtain! Do but hear himself crying to the cities of Judah, Isa. 40:9. Behold your God. Isa. 65:1. I said to a nation that was not called by my name, Behold me, Behold me: the doubling of the word saith, Christ desires to out his beauty. Shall your farm and your five yoke of oxen keep you from him? Men will not be drawn to him to satisfy their love.
Use 2. Christ is a drawing and an uniting Spirit; then all that are in Christ should be united. Certainly the divisions now in Britain cannot be of God. The wolf and the good Shepherd are contrary in this; the good Shepherd loves to have the flock gathered in one, and to save them, that they may find pasture, and the flock may be saved: the wolf scatters the flock; or if the wolf would have the flock gathered together, it is that they may be destroyed. Then it would be considered, if a bloody intention of war between two protestant kingdoms, for carnal ends, and upon forced and groundless jealousies, be from an uniting Spirit, and not rather from him, who was a murderer from the beginning.
Use 3. Jews and Turks, and civil men, that are but moral Pagans, are not in Christ, nor can they have any communion with God, nor be drawn to Christ; because no man can be in love with God, except he see God as opened and made lovely to the soul in Christ: moral civility and pharisaical holiness is one of the most heaven-like, and whitest ways to hell that Satan can devise; many moral men go, by theft, to hell: Satan by open violence pulleth the prophane and openly wicked men to perdition; but he stealeth millions of civil saints, honest moral men, that have whereon to live in the world plentifully, to hell in their whites, as if they were saints, because civil and clean in the morals of the second table, yet not being born again, they cannot see the kingdom of God. And most men deceive themselves with country religion and moralities; but such be but civil honest antichrists, and deny there is any need that Christ should come in the flesh to die for sinners; for they can live honestly, and save themselves, and not be beholden to Christ for heaven, or mortification, or faith.
Verse 32. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men.
This drawing of sinners to Christ, is bottomed on Christ's dying on the cross; and his dying on the cross is an act of extreme and highest love, John 3:16; John 15:13; 1 John 4:9, 10. Hence let us consider a little further what drawing and alluring power is in the love of God, and what way we may come to the sweet fruit of the strongest pull of Christ; which may be considered in.
1. The revelation of the dying loveliness of Christ's dying.
2. The fulness of this loveliness.
For the former, Christ openeth himself to us, we cannot discover him first; and there be two acts of this,
1. Christ opens the understanding, Luke. 24:25 and the heart, Acts 16:14. He taketh away the thick vail, that is over the heart, 2 Cor. 3:15, 16 and rendreth the medium, the air (as it were) thin, clear, visible; as when the sun expelleth night-shadows, and thick clouds: so David's key, that openeth, and no man shutteth, Rev. 3:7 removeth the door, and the seal that the first Adam's sin putteth on the heart, John. 14:21. He that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. And Christ can show the Father, the Lord Jesus cometh out of his depth and ocean of glory, and ivory chamber, as it were; and the Son of God revealeth the Son of God, as Gal. 1 v. 12 compared with v. 15, 16 sheweth. He would not say, Behold me, behold me, Isa. 65:1 and then get into a thick cloud, and hide himself, if he had not a mind to reveal his glory, and to show himself, The King in his beauty, Isa. 33:17 all his loveliness, the mysteries of his love, the rosiness, whiteness, redness, comeliness of his face, Cant. 5:10. Nor would the spouse pray for a noon-day sight of Christ, Cant. 1:7 if he could not offer himself to be seen in his loveliness of beauty. Thus Christ doth make manifest the savour of his knowledge, in the ministry of the gospel, 2 Cor. 2:14 when he letteth out to the soul the smell of myrrh, aloes, of all the sweet ointments of his death, and wounds; that the soul seeth, smelleth, tasteth the apples of love, in the believed mercy, free grace, satisfied justice, peace reconciled with righteousness, purchased redemption in his blood; and he standeth behind the wall of our flesh, and so is called, our wall, Cant. 2:9. Behold he standeth behind our wall, Or, Behold that is he standing behind our wall; he looketh forth at the window, showing himself, [Heb. mezijz] bewraying himself through the lattess; yet this is not a perfect vision of God attainable in this life, as the author of the Bright Star* dreameth. I see a man more distinctly in the field and before the sun, than when he looks out at the grates or lattess of a window, and a window behind a wall; for so we but see Christ in this life.
The compleatness of the loveliness is, 1. In that there is no spot in Christ crucified, when he is seen spiritually, no blemish, no lameness, no defect. For an eternal and infinite redemption, and an absolute righteousness, more cannot be required, nay, not by God. 2. Nothing that the desiring faculty and appetite can stumble at; Paul's determination, the last resolved judgment of his mind, and his ripest resolution and purpose, was to know nothing save Jesus Christ and him crucified, 1 Cor. 2:2. Christ's beauty can fill all the corners and emptiness of the wide desires of the soul. 3. There is an actual fulness of God spoken of, Eph. 3. Paul praying that the Ephesians may comprehend the great love of God, verse 19 saith, That ye may know the love of God that passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God. This is a satisfying fulness, and is an admirable expression. To be filled with God, must be a soul-delighting fill. But, 2. To be filled with the fulness of God, is more; for there is unspeakable fulness in God. 3. The expression is yet higher, That ye may be filled with all the fulness of God.
Of this fulness, 1. A word of the measure of it. 2. Of the means of it. 3. Of the sufficiency of it in the kind and nature. Randall, in his epistle before the treatise called,† The Bright Star, "I have therefore observed the ever to be bewailed non-proficiency of many ingenious spirits, who through the policy of others, and the too too much modesty and temerity of themselves, have precluded the way of progress to the top and pitch of rest and perfection against themselves, as being altogether unattainable, and have shortned the cut with a non datur ultra, and are become such who are ever learning and never come to the knowledge of the truth." But for the measure, sure it is not, as Antinomians and Famulists dream, compleat and full in this life;
1. Because, according to the manner and measure of the manifestation of Christ and knowledge; so is love and the perfection of believers. This is a truth in itself undeniable, and granted by the author of the Bright Star, c. 5. p. 52. For Christ's excellency and drawing beauty in love goeth into the soul by the port and eye of knowledge. But, 1 Cor. 13:9. We know in part, and we prophesy in part.
2. Paul disclaimeth perfection, as being but in the way and journeying toward it, Phil. 3:12. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Jesus Christ. Now this perfection, which Paul professeth he wanteth, is opposed, v. 13, 14 to his pressing toward the garland, for the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ, Heb. 11:40.
3. Perfection, such as we expect in heaven, is in no capacity to receive any farther addition, or accession of grace or glory; nor is there a growing in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, enjoined us there, as is expresly here in the way to our country, 2 Pet. 3:14 and to run our race to the end, Heb. 12:1 and be carried on to perfection, Heb. 6:1. 'Tis true, our good works are washed in the fountain opened for David's house, in which our persons are washed; but that washing removeth the sinful guilt and law-obligation from them, but not the inherent blot and sinful imperfection of our works, to make them perfect; for then might we be justified by our good works, if Christ's blood make them to leave off to be sins; but that blood hindereth them to be imputed to us only, but removeth not their sinful imperfections, as Antinomians say, that so they make us perfect in this life; nor doth that blood (as Papists say) add a meriting dignity and virtue to them, by which we are justified by works made white and meritorious in Christ's blood and merits. God hath so pourtrayed and chalked the way to heaven, that all the most supernatural acts, even those that have immediate bordering with the vision of glory, should need a pass of pardoning grace; and to believe that Christ's grace shall work in us acts void of sin, is not faith: therefore we are to believe the pardon of such ere they have being, and not sanctifying grace to eschew them. It seemeth to me unbelieving murmuring, to be cast down at these sins, in such a way as to imagine we can eschew them, or that grace sanctifying is wanting to us in these; for grace is not due to sinless acts. Nor doth the growing in grace, which lieth on us by an obligation of a command, stop the way to the journeying toward perfection and heaven, nor shorten the cut to heaven, because heaven is not attainable in this life; but by the contrary, if perfection were attainable in this life, the man that attaineth it might sit down, rest there, and go not one step further; for except be should go beyond the crown, and to the other side of heaven, and over-journey Christ at the right-hand of God, whither should he go? And those that are ever learning, and never come to the knowledge of the truth, are, 2 Tim. 3:5. Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; such as we are to turn away from; as have a form of godliness, and have denied the power thereof, and are led away with divers lusts; and are never entred into one only degree or step of the way of the saving knowledge of the truth, (of which Paul speaketh) and not the truly regenerate, who believe, with Paul and the scriptures, that our greatest perfection is to sweat and contend for the highest pitch of perfection, even that which is beyond time.
4. Those that are perfected, as we hope we shall be in heaven, feed not with the beloved among the lilies, till the day break, and the shadows fly away; but the perfectest, the spouse of Christ, so feedeth on church-ordinances, Cant. 2:17. The perfect ones have the fullest pitch of the noon-day sun of glory; it shall never be afternoon, nor the evening of twilight-sky with them; nor shall any night-shadow nor cloud go over their sun.
5. In the kingdom of perfection there shall be no indwelling of a body of sin, no sin, no uncleanness of heart, no turning of the love and liking of the soul off God; but the perfectest in this life sin, and carry an indwelling body of sin with them, Prov. 20:9; Eccl. 7:20. Job saith, chap. 14:4. The perfectest that beget children are unclean. Rom. 6:17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23; 1 John 1:8, 9, 10; 1 John 2:1. All that have need of an high priest at the right-hand of God to intercede for them, have sin, and in so far are imperfect, as all the saints are, Heb. 7:25 and 4:15 and 2:17, 18, and 8:1, 2, 3 and 9:23–26 and 1 Cor. 13:8. Love never faileth: there the soul drinketh abundantly, and is filled to satisfaction, that the vessel can contain no more of God; and is transformed into the sea of transeendant light, and highest love, as it were lost in the deep fountain of universal and immensurable love, and light; and the creature's soul and love liveth and breatheth, resteth in the bosom, in the heart, in the bowels of him who is an infinite mass of love: is wrapped in the sugared floods, in the honey-brooks, and overflowing waves and rivers of pure and unmixed joy; sleepeth and solaceth itself in the innocent embracings of the glory that shineth, rayeth, and darteth, world without end, out of Christ, exalted far above all heavens, all principalities, and powers: the souls there are sweetned, more than sweetned, over-solaced with the noon-day-light of the Bridegroom's glory, having in it the sweetest perfections of the morning-sun; they flee with doves' wings of beauty after the Lamb, they never want the actual breathings of the Spirit of glory, they can never have enough of the chaste fruition of the glorious Prince Emmanuel, and they never want his inmost presence to the full; they suck the honey, the floods of milk of eternal consolations, and fill all empty desires; and, as if the soul were without bottom, afresh they suck again, in acts for eternity continued. There be no such thing here in this life; yet hath Christ crucified, in his bosom, the promise and full purchase of this life on the cross, and holds it out to sinners to draw them.
5. We have not yet attained to the resurrection of our bodies, but carry about such clods of death, as the worms must sweetly feed on, and have a seed and subject of distempers in our clay tabernacles; all which we are uncapable of in the state of perfection, when the body shall be more naturally clothed with immortality, then the greenest and most delicious rose, or flower, which we could suppose were growing fresh, green, and beautiful for ever, in such a happy soil, as the fields that ly on the banks, and within the drawings of sap from the river of life.
6. We are not masters of the invasion, at least, of temptations of devils, of men here.
7. Perfection maketh the general assembly of all the sons of Zion: the heavenly family is never convened, but in place, country, condition separated, some born, some not born, some walking, some sleeping in the dust, some in their country, some in the way to their country.
8. There is no temple, no ordinances in our country of perfection, Rev. 21:2; 1 Cor. 13:8.
9. There is no angel-life here, without marriage, eating, drinking, begetting of children, Luke. 22:26, 30; Mark. 12:25. Clay cannot live, remaining earthly, up above the clouds, and visible heavens, till this corruptible shall put on incorruption, 1 Cor. 15.
Now, for the means of attaining this fulness, we have no other known and revealed to us in this life, but the scriptures, and faith; the one without, and external, and the other within. Under these, I comprehend all the ordinances of God. Famulists rejecting scripture, terming it an human device of ink and letters, as antichrist did before them; they call their perfect ones, from all acting, praying, hearing the word; yea, from knowing, apprehending, willing; to a resting on God, as meer patients; God as their form and Spirit immediately acting on them. "The active annihilation (saith the Bright-Star, chap. 11. pag. 106.) is a ceasing from all acts, vanishing of images, a doing of nothing, and a resting of all motion, or from doing the exterior will of God, expressed in the law and gospel in their letter. Pag. 107. Passive annihilation is, when the man himself, and all other things (meditation, knowing, desiring of God, praying, and the practice of a holy life) are cast asleep, and are made nothing. The active annihilation is, when the man himself, and all other things, are annihilated, not only sufferingly, as in the passive; but doingly, I mean by light in the understanding, as well natural, as supernatural; wherein he sees, and most infallibly knows, that all those things are nothing, and rests upon this knowledge in despite of feeling. Pag. 140. It is not best to forsake the passive annihilation, and the fruitive love, (the loving of God, as our last enjoyed end) depending thereupon, to take in hand by acts to practise the active annihilation; provided that by simple remembrance, she stand to her part. For there it is, (pag. 141.) that the soul is so transported, inlarged, inlightned and united to God. There she tastes the chaste embraces, sweet intercourses, and divine kisses; there she seeth herself sublimed, ennobled, and glorified with angels the celestial table; there she relisheth the fruits of her mortification, the treasures of her repentance, and the comforts of all her self-denials. Pag. 144, 145. To forsake such an experimental union with God, and that men should leap back to themselves, and re-betake themselves to their own acts, refuse to endure this emptiness, poverty of spirit, this will of God, and all spiritly intercourse, super-celestial, or essential illumination, though indeed the true and divine wisdom and naked seeing of God. —— So that by their flying back and returning to themselves, (that is, leaving the contemplative life of monks, and return to a practical walking with God) they do no other but far estrange themselves from all pure and imperial knowledge, and from all union and transformation into God, and so bide always straitned within themselves, and their own bowels, and in the fetters of the old-man. Now, if you ask what it is to put off the old-man, the Theologia Germanica saith, chap 5. pag. 9, 10. It is to ascribe neither being, action, knowledge, nor goodness to yourself, but to God the eternal wisdom; —— and thus man, and the creature evanisheth. —— Thus ought man to become void of all things; that is, not to arrogate them to himself; and the less knowledge the creature doth arrogate to itself, it becometh the more perfect: the like we must conceive of love, will, desire, and all such things; for the less that men doth arrogate these things to himself, the nobler, the excellenter, and the diviner he becometh: and the more he doth assume these things to himself, so much is he made the more blockish, base and imperfect. Theologia Germanica, chap. 14. pag. 32. That a man die to himself, it is as much as if you would say as himself, or egoity should die. St. Paul saith, Put off the old-man with his works, pag. 34. If it could come to pass, that any man might wholly and absolutely cast off himself, so as that he lived without all things in true obedience, as the humanity of Christ was, then he should be void of himself, and one with Christ, and should be the same by grace, that Christ was by nature. —— Pag. 35. This also is written, the more self-ends and egoity, the more there is of sin and unrighteousness; and the lesser there is of the one, the greater want there is of the other. This is also written, the more that myself doth decrease (that is, egoity or selfiness) the more doth God in me increase. —— Hence God is a Spirit acting, and all in all men; and for men to ascribe the good to God, and the ill to themselves, is obedience; and to arrogate being, or good to themselves, is sin. So, Theologia Germanica taketh away the incarnation of Christ thus, chap. 22. pag. 52, 53. Yet are there ways to the life of Christ, as we have already said: when, and wherein God and man are joined together; so that it may be truly said, and truth itself may acknowledge it, that the true and perfect God, and the true and perfect man are one; and man doth so yield, and give place to God, that where God himself is, there is man, and that God also be there present, and work alone, and do, and leave any thing undone, without any I, to me, mine, or the like; where these things are, and exist, there is true Christ, and nowhere else. —— It is the property of God to consist, and be without this, or that, without selfness, egoity, or the like; but it is the property of the creature to seek and will (in all things which it doth, or leaveth undone) itself; and those things which are its own, and this, or that, here or there. Theologia Germanica, chap. 39. pag. 109, 110. He who is illuminated with the eternal and divine love, is a divine and deified man. Theologia Germanica, chap. 28. pag. 71. Those who are led by the Spirit of God, are the sons of God, and not subject to the law: the sense of which words is, they are not to be taught what they should do, or leave undone, seeing the Spirit of God, which is their instructor, will teach them sufficiently; neither is any thing to be commanded, or enjoined them.—For he that teacheth them, commandeth them. They need no law, by means thereof to get profit to themselves, for they have obtained all already: and thus, page 70. Christ needed no law, but was above law, and removes ordinances, &c. Theologia Germanica, chap. xi. page 23. The soul of Christ was to descend to hell, before it could ascend to heaven: and the same must befall the soul of man; and this cometh to pass, when he knoweth; and beholdeth, and findeth himself so evil, that he supposeth it to be just, he should suffer all, even be damned for ever; and when he neither will, nor can desire deliverance and comfort, but doth bear damnation neither waywardly, nor unwillingly, but loveth damnation and pain, because it is just and agreeable to God's will. And (page 25.) When man desireth, in this hell, nothing but the eternal good, and understandeth the eternal good, to be above measure good, and this is his peace, joy, rest, satisfaction to him; —— this good becometh man's, and so man is in the kingdom of heaven, —— this hell hath an end, this heaven shall never end; —— man in this hell cannot think that ever he shall be comforted again, or delivered; and when he is in this heaven, nothing can hurt him; —— neither can he believe, that he can be hurt or discomforted; and yet, after this hell, he is comforted, and delivered; and after this heaven, he is troubled and deprived of comfort. —— Man can do or omit nothing, by his own means, whereby this heaven should come to him, or this hell depart from him: —— For the wind bloweth where it listeth, &c. and when man is in either of these, he is in good case, and he may be as safe in hell as in heaven; and so long as man is in this life, he may often pass from the one to the other."
In opposition to these wicked foolries, and for further clearing of the truths formerly proposed, let these positions for the unfolding of the drawing loveliness of Christ be considered.
Pos. 1. The scriptures are given by divine inspiration, able to make the man of God perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works, 2 Tim. 3:16, 17. The only mean to find Christ, for they bear witness of him, John 5:39. And are written that we might believe, and in believing have life eternal, John 20:31. And all that Christ Jesus heard of his Father, he made known to his apostles, John 15:15. And of these, one apostle Paul, who also received the gospel, not from flesh and blood, but by revelation from Jesus Christ, Gal. 1:12; 2 Pet. 3:15, 16; Acts 9:1, 2 &c. did declare to the Ephesians, the whole counsel of God, Acts 20:27 and yet believed and preached no other things than these that are written in the law, or in Moses and the Prophets, Acts 24:14; Acts 26:22. And the majesty, divinity, power, harmony, doctrine, above the reach of flesh and blood; the end, which is not in this side of time and death, but beyond both, (as the places in the margin witness) do demonstrate that the one book of the Old and New Testament can be fathered upon none, but on God only.
Pos. 2. The scripture and all the ordinances are but created things, and not the ultimate object of our faith, and highest and compleatest love; that is reserved to God in Jesus Christ: yea, the most perfect we read of, Paul, a chosen vessel, stood in need of comfort from Titus, 2 Cor. 7:5, 6 and the saints at Rome, Rom. 1:11, 12 and Peter of a rebuke, Gal. 2 and the beloved disciple John, of the joy and comfort of the walking of the children of Gaius in the truth. Eph. 3:4, 5. And of a commandment of the law, which forbiddeth idolatry, and angel-worship, Rev. 19:10; Rev. 22:8, 9 and of an evangelic precept to believe, and not to fear, Rev. 1:17. And the excellentest and perfectest member of the body hath need of counsel, exhortations from the lowest member. Rom. 12:3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; Gal. 6:2; 1 Cor. 12:14, &c. and all the saints, to whom Paul, Peter, James, John wrote, amongst whom there were that had the anointing, that teacheth them all things, must hear and obey many exhortations, precepts and commandments out of the law, as evangelized: then the most perfect are not above the law, the gospel and ordinances, as Famulists say; else all the New Testament and canonical epistles were written to the saints for no purpose. But that we may understand this the better, we are to remember, that, 1. There is a twofold happiness of the saints, one formal, and another objective. 2. That there is a mediate seeing of God, one by ordinances and means, another immediate. 3. That there is a twofold will of God; one that is revealed in scripture, or the law of nature, and that is the moral good that God approveth and injoineth to us, rather than the will of God; this the Famulists call, The exterior or accidental will of God, because God's will, as his essence, should have been entire and self-sufficient, though God had never revealed any such will to men or angels; yea, though he had never made the world, or men, or angels. There is another will essential in God, which is not the thing willed, but the essential faculty of desiring or willing in God. Now to come nearer the point, the formal blessedness of the saints is in the act of seeing, knowing, loving, enjoying God, which on our part are created things, and so empty nothings, and are not essentially the happiness of man, but means by the which we enjoy God our happiness; so the using of all the means and ordinances are not our happiness. 'Tis true, our Saviour saith, 'Tis life eternal to know God, and his Son Christ, John 17. But he meaneth, it is the way and necessary means to happiness, and life eternal. God in Christ, and in the in-comings and out-flowings of the Spirit of glory, or the blessed one God, in three persons, is the object and happiness of the saints; and therefore we are to prefer Christ himself, to all the kisses, visions, out-flowings of glory, and all our acts of seeing, loving, and enjoying of God: we may love ordinances, and prize highly the vision of God; but God himself, and Jesus Christ, we must not only prize, but be ravished, overcharged with himself; as the bridegroom is far more excellent than his bracelets, chains, rings. In this sense, I would in my heart, and esteem, make away all ordinances, yea, all the honey-combs, all the apples, all the created roses that grow on Christ, all the sweet results, and out-flowings of glory; yea, whole created heaven, for Christ: Christ God himself, the bulk, the body, the stalk of the tree of life, is infinitely to be valued above an apple, yea, all the created apples and sweet blossoms, and soul delighting flowers that grow on the tree. Now here on earth we are happy as heirs, not as lords and possessors, and in an union with the exterior and revealed will of God, in believing, fearing, serving God, in Christ, in a practical union with God: but all this is but the way to the well, not to the well itself; and the union with, or vision of God, is mediate, far off, in a mirror, in the image, form, characters, elements, or looking-glass, of word, sacraments, ministry, ordinances, of hearing, praying, praising; but in heaven, we see God face to face, that is, without means, or the intervention of messengers, or ordinances. I cannot determine whether, when we shall know, and see the Lord, in an immediate vision of glory, our understanding shall receive created forms, intellectual species, images, characters of the lovely essence, the white, ruddy, pleasant, lovely countenance, of that desirable Prince, the Lord Jesus; 'tis a nicety not for our edification: sure, Christ shall infuse and pour in into every vessel of glory, so much of himself, his presence, loveliness, image, beauty, as from bottom to brim, the soul shall be full. And who knoweth what the eternal milkings, the everlasting intellectual suckings of the glorified ones are, by which they draw in, and drink from the honey-comb of uncreated glory, and the deep, deep fountain and river of endless life; the streams of joy, consolation, love, fruition of Jehovah, the soul being the channel, whose banks are eternally green with glory? What are the emanations, the out-flowings of blessedness, from the pure essence, and bright face of him that sitteth on the throne? And what can these incomings, and the eternal flowings of the tide of that sea of matchless felicity be? Who knoweth? Come up and see, can best resolve; come up and drink, be drunk and giddy, and satiated with glory, and move no curious question of that fruition of God. Christ will solve all these doubts, to the quieting of your mind, when ye come up thither. Nor is it needful to say, that there is a vision of God in this life, which is heaven, and all the heaven we shall ever have; and this vision is without receiving any images, forms, characters of God, because it is purely spiritual, and abstracted from all acts of imagination; and in it we are mere patients, not agents, God pouring the immediate brightness of his own essence in us; truly, this is to be wise above what is written, and I crave leave to doubt, if Famulists have the images and species of this opinion from the Spirit of God; for that Spirit is a Spirit of sobriety; and the most spiritual and extatical visions, that the prophets, the men of God were taken up with: in them all, to me, there seems to be visions of forms, images, characters, a throne, angels with six wings, smoke, a woman clothed with the sun, &c. a pot toward the north, a cloud and a fire infolding itself, —— a colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire; but a vision of God immediate in this life, and that ordinary, without forms, images, without word, sacraments, ordinances, I know not, I understand it not.
Pos. 3. The monkish conceit of the excellency of a contemplative life separated from all obligation to duties of the second table, above the practical life, hath been the first seed of wicked Famulism; the authors of both these books called, Theologia Germanica, and The Bright Star, being professed papists, though Mr. Randal extol both as pieces of rare price, and doctrines suiting only for the perfect (as if the scripture were not such a piece) yet professed gross idolatry, and the adoring of the wood of the cross, is in the Bright Star, chap. 19 and divers other popish principles are in both.
Pos. 4. There is a twofold fulness of loveliness in Christ; one attainable in this life, the other reserved for the life to come. The full and highest pitch of the drawing loveliness of Christ, I think, excludeth all ordinances, scripture, sacraments, and means we now use. Because old monks and late Famulists make no heaven, but in this life only (as if a monk's coul were the very crown of eternal glory) and say, the resurrection is past; as their fathers Hymeneus and Phyletus said, and doubt of the immortality of the soul; therefore they, that they may be true to their own principles, must say, that there be a number of perfect men, that are above and higher than law, duties, ordinances, teaching of men, ministry, because these are for unperfect and unregenerate, (and the monks and Famulists are not such, but do already enjoy God, in a fruition of glory) but the scripture saith, that means, ordinances, are ever in use in this life, and only excluded from the life to come, 1 Cor. 13:8. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail: whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. Verse 9. For we know in part, and prophesy in part. Ver. 10. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. Ver. 12. For now (in this life) we see through a glass darkly; but then (in the life to come) face to face: now I know in part, but then I shall know, even as also I am known. And that this is a parallel between this life and the life to come, is clear from 1 John 3:2. Behold now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 2. The life to come is holden forth, Rev. 21:22 to want all ordinances. And I saw no temple therein (saith John, when he saw the New Jerusalem) for the Lord God Almighty, and the Lamb are the temple of it. Nor is there any ignorance there, Rev. 22:5. And there shall be no night there, and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign for ever and ever. Whatever any say of a personal reign of Christ on earth, the words prove, that while that life come, all the regenerate here have need of a temple, and ordinances, so long as there is night and darkness, and use for sun and moon; so the date of church-ordinances is holden forth, Cant. 2:16. My well-beloved is mine, and I am his; he feedeth among the lilies, v. 17. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away. Then there is a night on the church, and need of the moon-light of ordinances, so long as Christ by his ministry remains in the Shepherd's tents, feeding his flock in the strength of the Lord, and holding forth his presence to his justified ones, spotless and fair through the imputed righteousness of Christ; as lilies, while the fairest and most desirable day of that illustrious and glorious appearance of Christ dawn. And Paul clearly expoundeth these words, Eph. 4 shewing the term day of Christ's reign, in his saints, by the ministry of the gospel; and that the saints and body of Christ are but in the way to be perfected and edified by pastors and teachers, verse 13. Till we all come to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Hence saints are not perfected till that day. 2. The body of Christ is low of stature, capable of growing; the bride's hair groweth, she is not a perfect tall stature, but like a young girl, not yet fit for marriage to the Lamb, till we meet all in the unity of faith; so I know no active annihilation, no evanishing of, and ceasing from, all acts of the will of God revealed in the law and gospel; that is, from praying, hearing, meditating, loving, desiring, longing after Christ, till the day that the shadows flee away; then, I confess, I shall have no leisure to read on the book of the Old and New Testament, or to attend preaching, sacraments, or other ordinances, because I need no mirror, no portrait of Christ, no message of ministers, when I see and enjoy himself. 3. All who have God for their Father, and need daily bread, and are clothed with a body of clay, are to pray for remission of sins, not to be led into temptation, or sinful omitting of duties; all for whom the blood of Jesus is shed, are to declare the Lord's death, till he come again. What ceasing then from duties of law, love, the Spirit, and Christ, is this? Where is this fancied annihilation to be dreamed of? Scripture knoweth it not.
Pos. 5. There is a fulness of loveliness in Christ, that is begun in us by possession and title in this life, but never perfect till the life to come; in which there be these, 1. Union. 2. Fruition. 3. Rest. 4. Satisfaction. 5. Sense. 6. Living and acting in Christ. 7. Loving and solacing of the soul. Of which, to hold forth more of the drawing of Christ, we say,
Pos. 6. Christ's inviting us to come to him, and that before we can invite him, speaketh union. 1. Such an union as faith can make, which ariseth not to the pitch of sight, and immediate fruition; for it is the union of those, that are absent one from another, in regard of fulness of presence. 2 Cor. 5:6. Knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. John. 16:7. Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is expedient that I go away. Luke 19:12. He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. Yet it is the union of those that are so near as the house and the guest, or as two friends that table together, Ephes. 3:17; John. 19:23; Rev. 3:21. 2. 'Tis an union of fruition, for Christ in some measure is enjoyed in this life, yet so as the fruition is in part, not compleat and full in degrees, as it shall be in the life to come; it is here for both a fruition of rest and of motion; of rest, in regard of the present fruition; of motion, in regard of advancing in the way to a compleat fruition, so as is in a journey, in regard of practical love, and at its home, in regard of love and union of fruition; so the soul is both satisfied with bread, and hungers no more, Isa. 55:2 but delighteth itself in fatness, and thirsteth no more, having a present sense of complacency and content in the water of life, John 4:14 and also, the soul is so far forth not satisfied, and its thirst not quenched, but that it hungereth and thirsteth for a fuller union and an immediate fruition; in which regard, the soul is both abroad in its way and motion to have more of Christ, and at home, and at rest, in regard it is fully satisfied exclusively, not inclusively; because this satisfaction excludeth and annihilateth all choice of another lover than Christ, and denies all deliberate comparing of Christ with any other lover, as holding and prizing him the chief of ten thousand, and resolving never to fix the desire on another husband or lover but Christ, as Cant. 3:4. It was but a little, that I passed from the watchmen, but I found him whom my soul loveth; I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him to my mother's house, and the chamber of her that conceived me. Finding and holding of Christ, is as much as there is satisfaction and rest in the fruition of him; and yet the spouse's aim to go hand in hand on a journey to the house of the high Jerusalem the mother of us all; which, with submission I conceive, the spouse calleth her mother's house, doth clearly prove, that she is not perfect, but in a motion; not yet at her journey's end, till she come with Christ to the palace of the prince's daughter, the bride the Lamb's wife, Rev. 21:10, 11, 12. Hence we see how true that is, that the desires are swallowed up into the bosom of infinite Jesus Christ, as a little brook is swallowed up when it comes into the ocean, and yet the desires remain: they are swallowed up in Christ, in that the soul is at home, being quieted and perfected in Christ, and are no more restless and pained in the journey toward Christ; but as heaven is begun on earth, so hath David quietness of mind, and breaketh forth in praises, that the Lord gave him counsel to chuse God himself for his portion, Psal. 16:5, 6, 7. So goodly and pleasant is the heritage; and now there is no more desire for Christ as a thing absent, and the thirst is swallowed up in Christ, the soul thirsteth no more, John 4:14. And yet the desire remaineth both in the sweet complacency and liking of the saints, delighting in present fruition, and also in an act of longing for the highest pitch of degrees of union; just as in the act of drinking, thirst is half swallowed up in begun satisfaction, and thirst remaineth in a liking, and a farther desire of a perfect cooling and refreshing overcoming of a full quenching of the appetite.
Pos. 7. Yet can it not be said, but here is a begun satisfaction; for, John 4:14. Christ enjoyed, is a draught of the water of life freely given. Rev. 22:17. That whosoever will, may drink of the water of life freely. John 7:37. In the last, and great day of the feast Jesus stood, and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. 2. Not a drink only is offered, but a well, a fountain. Psal. 36:9. For with thee is the fountain of life; a fountain is more than a drink, because the whole is more than the part. But, 3. Every thirsty man cannot have a fountain within him, but yet it is so here, John 4:14. But the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up to life eternal. And, 4. The scripture riseth higher, even to a river, and abundance of fatness. Psal. 36:8. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, [Heb. jirvin] they shall be drunk with the fatness of thy house. 'Tis a river of sweet oil and fatness that overjoyeth the soul; Thou wilt give them to drink of the river of thy pleasures: a river of which every drop is joy, and a whole well of pleasures must be sea of delights. But grace must make the soul a capacious vessel, when not a fountain, but a whole river, yea rivers of life, are within the soul: so Christ, John 7:38. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters. Yea, 5. That no expression might be wanting, The peace and righteousness of believers, is as the waves of the sea; the sea is more than a river, it is the lodging that receives all fountains and rivers in it, Isa. 48:18.
Pos. 8. There must be much sense of God, in the fruition of Christ; because believing, tho' we see him not, (as we hope to see him) causeth joy unspeakable and full of glory, 1 Pet. 1:8. Thus, a high tide, a flood of joy and glory, a rich portion of an antedated heaven, cometh down on the heirs of heaven before-hand. Psal. 63:5. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; a rich feast of only marrow and fatness, and a satisfying table, holdeth forth a great banquet, abundant and glorious; such as is made at the marriage of a great king's son.
Pos. 9. And this is not a ceasing from all actings of the soul, because there is an acting and living in Christ, 2 Cor. 3:18. But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as it were by the Spirit of the Lord. 1. The vail, that by the law's ministry, which can darken, but not enlighten, in the gospel is removed; and we with uncovered face see God revealed in Christ, in the brightness of the gospel-day. 2. We see, behold and enjoy glory: heaven darteth in the rays, and beams of God in Christ at our soul. 3. This is a changing glory: precious stones in the night-darkness cast out light, but bring them before the sun, and the beams and light of the sun changeth them into a greater measure of resplendency, and shining irradiation; we seeing the unspeakable resplendency, and heavenly glancing of divine majesty, in the Mediator Christ, are transformed and changed into the Lord Jesus his beauty of holiness; the gospel-light maketh us holy, as he is holy: as there is beauty in the feathers of a dove; but when the sun illuminateth, and shineth on them, they carry the glancing of silver and golden feathers, yet it is but a show: and so red and white roses, of themselves have excellent beauty; but set them between you and the sun, and they are far more beautiful: and the eastern sky, of itself, is but a dark, thin, formless air, that ye can scarcely behold and see; but when the sun riseth, and shineth upon that sky, it doth create and beget the fairest and most beautiful colour of red and azure, that is possible; for no bodily creature casteth a fairer and sweeter resplendency and colour, than the morning-red and purple-sky: so when the glorious Sun of righteousness, Christ, shineth on saints in the morning day-light of the gospel, he createth the image of the glory of God in the soul, and changeth them into a lustre and beauty fairer to Christ's eye, than the sun, or the red morning-sky. Now, the sun, by beholding any creature, cannot change that creature into another sun; but Christ beholding his bride, and the bride beholding with the eye of knowledge, and faith, in the rays and beams of the gospel-light, is changed into the glorious image of Christ. Cant. 6:10. Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, as Aurora, the first birth of the young day, when the sun casteth golden beams, fair as the moon, clear as the sun? 4. We live and act in Christ, and are changed from glory to glory; it is but a growing change by degrees. Then the kingdom of heaven and glory is not in this life, nor hell in this life, as these dreamers say; the conditions of happiness and misery, that follow Lazarus, and the rich glutton, after they die, and are buried, Luke 16:22, 23, 24, 25 say the contrary. 2. There is such a gulf between heaven and hell, that there is no passage, no sailing, nor posting between the one and the other, Luke 16:26 as Famulists imagine. 3. That saints should believe they can never be delivered, nor comforted, in the hell they are pained withall in this life, when yet God hath promised to them in their saddest nights, deliverance and comfort; is against the saith and lively hope of the saints, and a sinful unbelief; and the man in sin cannot be as safe in a hell of sin, as if he were in heaven. 4. Hell is a condition of sinning and blaspheming of God; but to desire nothing but the eternal good, and to understand the eternal good to be above measure good, is not a condition of sinning, but of happiness and holiness, and so cannot be hell. 5. These two conditions, sort not with the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels; and life eternal prepared for the blessed of the Father, Mat. 25. But to return, if life be the greatest perfection of being, the believer in Christ must enjoy an intellectual life in Christ, and live, see, know, enjoy God; and though the enjoying of Christ, be the highest degree of self-denial, and the man lose himself in Christ, that is, his sinful and fleshly, I, egoity, and selfiness in Christ, yet he loseth not, but findeth in Christ his sinless created self, his self perfected, with that high and supernatural ornament of Christ living in him. It is also most true, Self, as all created beings, are but mere dependencies on God: as the beams of the sun are but fluxes, results and issues, that have no being but in the sun; sure creatures depend more on their being and working on God, than accidents depend on their subject: but it is nothing less than blasphemy, against all reason and common sense, and subverteth all the scriptures of God, to say, that 'God is formally all things, that God is man, that God is the Spirit and form that acteth in all, that a holy man is God incarnate, and Christ God-man, and that Christ the Mediator is nothing, but God humanized, and man godded and deified;' and that Christ dwelling in a believer by faith, and the inhabitation of the Holy Ghost, is but God manifested in the flesh of every man. This destroyeth many articles of faith (as Famulists care not boldly to subvert all scriptures) for Christ then is not true man, born of the seed of David, and he is not God blessed for ever, in one person. 2. All creatures and created beings, compared with God, the first being of himself subsisting, and the infinite God, may be denied to be beings comparatively; and so our created self is nothing, to wit, nothing in dignity or excellency beside God, or nothing in the kind of a being that essentially is of itself; as God is in genere intis par essentiam, yet man is a being in the kind of being, by participation, in genere entis per participationem. Man, compared with God, is a poor, worthless, sorry, little nothing, a weeping, melting, evanishing cypher. Yea, sweetest ordinances, because it is but created sweetness that is in them are near of blood to nothing, and, in comparison of God, mere shadows, that cannot bottom the immortal soul; and nothing, and partake of vanity common to all creatures. So the scripture saith, man at his best state is altogether vanity. Psal. 39:5. Behold, thou hast made my days as a hand-breadth, and mine age is nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Isa. 40:17. All nations before him are nothings, and less than nothing, and vanity. Yet a heathen may say and think and demonstrate by reason, that self, and man, and all the world, are less, in comparison of the infinite God, than nothing to all things, a drop of water of the sea, the shadow to the body, a penny-torch to the light of ten thousand millions of suns in one; and yet be as far from self-denial, from putting off the old man, and mortifying the lusts of the flesh, as light is from darkness. 'Tis most vain to say, as it is the property of the creature to seek and will itself, and its own, and this or that, here or there; so it is the property of God to be without this or that, without selfiness, egoity or the like. Because every thing created, even worms, frogs, trees, elements, such creatures as beget creatures like themselves; they have such a sweet and natural interest in being, that without sin or deviation from law or rule, or any leading or directing principle of nature, they desire themselves, their own being; and when they cannot keep being in themselves, they desire to keep it in the kind, by propagation, and will fight it out against all contraries and enemies, to preserve their own being, though but borrowed from God; and I know no sin they are guilty of, in so doing: nor was Christ's conditional desire of life, and deprecating death, any whit contrary to innocent self-denial. 2. The Lord seeketh himself and his own glory, and made all things for himself, even the wicked for the evil day, Pro. 16:4. And that is a most holy and pure act, which God ascribeth to himself, Isa. 43:21. This people have I formed for myself, they shall shew forth my praise.
Now, in all dwelling in Christ, there is a continual acting of life, by believing, joying, resting in God; as Philip saith, John 14:8. Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Here life seeks a soul-satisfying union with life, for life is only a satisfactory object to life. Living things seek no dead things as such to be their happiness, if reason do rightly act them; and God as revealed in Jesus Christ, is that in which the saints find a soul-sufficiency for themselves: and the act of seeing God in Christ, whether in this life, or in the life to come, is an act of life; for the soul liveth in the ocean, sea, and bosom of a fair eternal truth. But doth it act there? Yea, it doth, and the scripture expresseth its acting, by seeing God, drinking the fountain of life. Then the soul thus in Christ drinketh in love, and milketh and sucketh in the soul-rejoicing irradiations of Christ, and Christ letteth out the breathings of the sweetness of his excellency on the face of the soul, draweth and sucketh in reciprocally acts of admiration and wondring, Cant. 2:8. The voice of my beloved! behold he cometh leaping upon the mountains, and skipping on the hills; behold is a word of wonder, John 3:1. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us! not love, only, but the manner and the kind of the Father's love in Christ, is a world's wonder; and, Thess. 1:10. Christ, when he cometh, shall be wondred in them that believe. 2. Then again, when we see and enjoy the drawing loveliness of Christ, he, as the fountain and well of life, poureth in, in our intellectual love, and in the glancings and rays of our understanding, acts of divine light; lumps of fresh love from the spring of heaven's love, and the soul openeth its mouth wide, and taketh in the streams of Christ's nectar, honey, and milk, his consolations, and love-breathings; and in his light we seeing light, and in his love feeling love, he maketh our light and love (as it were) co-eternal with borrowed eternity; and we go along with the out-shinings of Christ's bright countenance, to shine in borrowed light, to flame in borrowed coals of love. And as Christ is said, to feed his flock among the lilies, the garden of Christ his church being the common pasture for the lambs of the flock; so he feeds the souls of the saints that enjoy him, with the marrow, fatness, and dainties of his light, and love that shine in his face, even as the oil feeds the lamp; but with this difference, Christ's dainties are not lessened, because we feed upon them, as the oil is consumed with the burning.
Pos 10. There is a living and solacing of the soul in Christ, even to satiety, in this enjoying of Christ.
Hence, 1. Love giveth strong legs and swift wings to the soul, to pursue an union with Christ. Love putteth the hand to the bottom of the desire, and draweth with strong cords, the lover to it. We have heard of Christ's invitation, come to me: but, suppose Christ had never outed his love in such a love-expression, come to me, Christ himself is such a drawing object, that beauty, the smell of his garments, his mountain of myrrh, and hill of frankincense, the sea and rivers of salvation, that capacious and wide heaven of redemption, are intrinsically, and of themselves, crying, drawing and ravishing objects; as gold is dumb and cannot speak, yet the beauty and gain of it crieth, come hither, poor, and be made rich.
2. Love's wings move swiftly, Open, my sister, &c. My head is full of dew, and my locks, with the drops of the night; there is no dumb and silent violence so strong, so piercing as Christ's love.
3. When the soul in any measure comprehendeth this love, the soul filled with all the fulness of God, Eph. 3:19. Hence must follow a stretching out of the soul to its widest capacity and circumference, being filled with God, and the fulness of Christ, that all created objects, because of their littleness and lowness, and the soul's stretched out and wide capacity, loses proportion with the soul: as if a man were in the top of a castle higher than the third region of the air, or near the sphere of the moon, should he look down to the fairest and sweetest meadows, and to a garden rich with roses and flowers, or all sweet colours, delicious smells, he should not see any sweetness in them all; yea, the pleasantness, colour, and smell of all these, could never reach his senses, because he is so far above them: so the soul filled with the love of Christ is high above all created lovers, and they so far below the soul's eye, that their loveliness cannot reach or ascend to the high and large capacity of a spiritualized soul; as the light of a penny-candle put in a house of some miles in length, in breadth, and height, in a dark night, should not be able to illuminate all the house, and render the air of a mile in quantity, lightsome and transparent, as the day-light sun would do.
4. Because the glory of Christ's beauty, seen and loved, changeth the soul into a globe or mass of divine love and glory, as it were by the Spirit of the Lord, 2 Cor. 3:18. Therefore the soul seeth Christ so near in his love-embracements, and close inchaining of Christ's left arm under the soul's head, and the right hand embracing it, that it cannot see itself, it cannot see another lover; it can see nothing but Christ's fairness, hear nothing but the beloved's voice, taste nothing but his apples of love, his flagons of wine, can smell nothing but his spikenard and precious ointments; so that the soul is clothed with Christ, and his love, and can but breathe out love to him again; and Christ infuseth himself in his sweetness and excellency, so as the believer is apprehended by Jesus Christ, Phil. 3:12 violently, but sweetly and strongly drawn in, and holden in the king's house of wine, Cant. 2:4 sickned and overcome with love, Cant. 2:5; Cant. 5:8 chained and compelled, 2 Cor. 5:14 wounded with the arrows of love; so as death, the grave, hell, angels, things present, or to come, cannot lick these wounds, nor embalm, or bind them up, or cure them, Psal. 45:5; Rev. 6:1, 2, Cant. 8:6, 7; Rom. 8:38, 39. Yea, the soul must yield over its self, as a spouse under the power of her husband, and lose herself, and her father's house, in such a deep ocean of delights of loves stronger than wine, Psal. 45:10; Cant. 5:1; Cant. 1:2 as melted, dissolved, and fallen aswoon in Christ, Cant. 5:6 and therefore needeth, in that swoon, to be recovered with the flagons of the wine and apples of his consolations, Cant. 2:4.
5. Nor can Jesus Christ but tenderly, lovingly, and compassionately deal with his beloved; for Christ must draw them, John 6:44 sweetly allure them, Hos. 2:14; Isa. 40:1. Take them by the two arms, and teach them to walk, as the mother doth the young child, who hath not yet legs to walk alone, Hos. 11:3. Beareth them in his arms, and dandleth them on his knee, Isa. 46:3, 4; Exod. 19:4. They are carried on Christ's warm wings, as the young eagles by the mother, Deut. 32:11 they are laid in Christ's bosom, and nourished with the warmness and the heat of life that cometh from Christ's heart, Isa. 40:11 carried on the shoulders of Christ, the good Shepherd, Luke 15:5 and yet nearer Christ, as a bracelet about Christ's arms; so he wears his church as a favour and a love-token, Jer. 22:24; Cant. 8:6 and engraven in letters of blood upon Christ's flesh, stamped and printed on the palms of his hands, Isa. 49:16 and yet nearer him, set as a seal upon the heart of Christ, so precious to him, as to lodge in his bowels and heart, Cant. 8:6 and they dwell in Christ, 1 John 4:13 and dwell in God, and God is love, and so they dwell in the love of Christ, 1 John 4:16 are kissed with the kisses of Christ's mouth, Cant. 1:2 and lie between the right and left arm of Christ, Cant. 2:6. Yet all these taketh not the soul off, but inflameth it to duties, for Christ's sake, who is so highly loved; nor are these raptures inconsistent with sinful infirmities.
6. As love moveth swiftly to the soul, as a roe, or a young hart, (for that is Christ's pace to his church, Cant. 2) so it acts upon the soul co-naturally, as being a price to itself, apprehending the dignity and excellency of Christ the beloved. Love is not irrational, as a fury, and a fit of madness, that hath no reason, but its own fire. Therefore the secrets of Christ, the deep and hidden things of his treasures of love and wisdom, must be opened up to the soul. The soul seeth now gold mines, new found-out jewels, never known to be in the world before, opened and unfolded in Christ. Here are the in-comings of the beams of light inaccessible, the veins of the unsearchable riches of Christ, as if ye saw every moment a new heaven, a new treasure of love, the deep bottomless bottoms of an ocean of delights, and rivers of pleasures; the bosom of Christ is opened, new breathings and spirations of love that passeth knowledge, Eph. 3:19 are manifested; nor hath the eye seen, nor the ear heard, nor hath it entred into the heart of man to conceive the things that God hath prepared for them that love him, 1 Cor. 2:9 yet are they revealed, in some measure, in this life.
7. And it is most considerable, how the soul in loving Christ is not her own; and in regard of loving, Christ is not his own, but every one makes over itself to another, and propriety or interest to itself in both sides (as it were) ceaseth, Hos. 3:3. And I said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days, thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man, so will I also be for thee; so the marriage-covenant of grace saith, I will be your God, and ye shall be my people. And the spouse, Cant. 2:16. My well-beloved is mine, and I am his. It is true, Christ leaveth not off to be his own, or to be a free God, when he becomes ours; but he demeaneth himself, as if he were not his own, and putteth on relations, and assumeth offices of engagement; a Saviour, an Anointed, a Redeemer, a King, a Priest, a Prophet, a Shepherd, a Husband, a Ransomer, a Friend, a Head, a Guide, and Leader of the People, all which are for us: and the soul enjoying Christ, posseseth Christ, and not itself; loveth Christ, not itself; liveth in Christ, not in itself; enjoyeth Christ, not itself; solaceth itself in Christ, not in itself; beholdeth Christ and his beauty, not itself, nor his own beauty; so that mind, will, love, desire, hope, joy, sight, wondring, delighting, are all over in Christ, not in itself. And all this further confirmeth the point in hand, that Christ crucified, and laid hold on by faith, is a desirable and a drawing lover.