Sect. 1. — No rest for the soul till it comes to God.
CHAPTER IV. OF THE HEART’S HAPPINESS, OR SOUL’S REST.
Sect. 1. — No rest for the soul till it comes to God.
Neo. Sir, please let me tell you some part of my mind, and then I will cease to trouble you anymore at this time.
The truth is, ever since I can remember, I felt a kind of restless discontentedness in my spirit. For many years, I fed myself with hopes of finding rest and contentment in persons and things here below, scarcely thinking of the state and condition of my soul, or of any condition beyond this life — until, as I told you before, the Lord was pleased to visit me with a fit of sickness. And then I began to think of death, judgment, hell, and heaven, and to take care and seek rest for my soul, as well as for my body. But, alas! I could never find rest for it before this day, because, indeed, I did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law — or, in plain terms, because I did not seek it in Christ, but in myself. But now, bless God, I see that Christ is all in all; and therefore, by the grace of God, I am resolved no longer to seek rest and contentment either in any earthly thing — or in my own righteousness — but only in the free love and favour of God, as he is in his Son Jesus Christ. And God willing, there shall be my soul’s rest. I beseech you, sir, pray for me that it may be so. And now I am done.
Evan. This point concerning the heart’s happiness, or the soul’s rest, is a point very necessary for us to know. Indeed, it is a point that I have formerly thought about. And therefore, though circumstances begin to call me away from you, yet since you spoke of it, I will nevertheless proceed on — if you, or any of you, would give me the opportunity, as the Lord enables me.
Ant. With a very good will, sir; for indeed it is a point that I much desire to hear about.
Evan. First then, I would entreat you to consider with me, that when God at first gave man an elementish body, he also infused an immortal soul into him of a spiritual substance. Though he gave man’s soul a local being in his body, he gave it a spiritual well-being in himself — so that the soul was in the body by location, and it was at rest in God by union and communication. The soul being in God at the beginning, it was man’s true being and his true happiness. Now having fallen from God, in his justice God left man, so that the actual union and communion that the soul of man had with God at the beginning, was broken off. God and man’s soul are parted, and the soul is in a restless condition.
However, the Lord having seated in man’s soul a certain character of himself, the soul is thereby made to re-aspire towards that summum bonum, that chief good, which is God himself; and it can find rest nowhere till it comes to God.
Nom. But wait, sir, I beg you. How can it be said that man’s soul re-aspires towards God the Creator, when it is evident that every man’s soul is naturally bent towards the creature, to seek its rest there?
Evan. In an answer to this, I ask you to consider that man’s understanding is naturally dark and blind. Therefore he is ignorant of what his own soul desires and strongly aspires to. It knows indeed that the soul wants something, but till it is enlightened, it does not know what the soul wants. For indeed, the state of the soul is the same as a new born child. That child, by natural instinct, gapes and cries for nutriment — indeed, for nutriment suitable to its tender condition. And if the nurse, through negligence or ignorance, either gives it no food at all, or food that it is not capable of receiving, the child refuses it, and still cries in strong desire for the breast. Yet in this state, the child does not know by any intellectual power and understanding, what it desires for itself. Even so, man’s poor soul cries out to God for its proper nourishment; but man’s understanding, like a blind, ignorant nurse not knowing what it cries for, offers the heart a creature instead of its Creator. Thus, because of the blindness of the understanding, together with the corruption of the will, and the disorder of the affections, man’s soul is kept by violence from its proper centre, which is God himself.