Sect. 3. — God in Christ the only true rest for the soul.
Sect. 3. — God in Christ the only true rest for the soul.
Nom. Then, sir, it seems to me that God in Christ, apprehended by faith, is the only true rest for a man’s soul.
Evan. There is the true rest indeed; there is the rest which David invites his soul to when he says, “Return to your rest, my soul! For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you,” Psalm 116.7. — ‘‘For we who have believed,” says the author to the Hebrews, “have entered into his rest,” Heb. 4.3. — And “Come to me,” says Christ, “all you that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” Mat. 11.28.
Truly, my neighbours and friends, believe it: we will never find happiness for our heart, and true rest for our soul, until we find it here. Though a man may think that if he had this man’s wit and that man’s wealth, this man’s honour and that man’s pleasure, this wife or that husband, these children and those servants, his heart would be satisfied, and his soul would be contented — yet which of us has not, by our own experience, found the contrary? For not long after we obtained the thing we so much desired, and in which we promised ourselves so much happiness, rest, and contentment, we have found nothing but vanity and emptiness in it. Let a man but deal plainly with his own heart, and he will find that notwithstanding having many things, there is always one thing lacking: for indeed a man’s soul cannot be satisfied with any creaturely thing, not even with a world of creatures. And the reason is because the desires of a man’s soul are infinite, according to that infinite goodness which it once lost in losing God. Yes, and man’s soul is a spirit; and therefore it cannot communicate with any corporal thing. So that all creatures, not being that infinite and spiritual fulness which our hearts have lost, and towards which they still aspire; they cannot give it full contentment.
Not only this, but let me say more. However a man may, in the midst of his sensual fulness, be convinced in his conscience that he is at enmity with God, and therefore in danger of God’s wrath and eternal damnation — and thereupon be moved to reform his life and amend his ways, and endeavour to seek peace and rest to his soul — yet because this is in the way of works, it is impossible for him to find it. For his conscience will always be accusing him that this good duty which he should have done, has not been done; and this evil that he should have forborne, has been done; and he was remiss in the performance of this duty, and very defective in that duty; and in many such ways, his soul will be disquieted.
But once a man comes to believe that all his sins both past, present, and to come, are freely and fully pardoned and that God in Christ is graciously reconciled to him, the Lord thereupon so reveals his fatherly face to him in Christ, and he so makes known that incredible union between him and the believing soul, that the man’s heart becomes quietly contented in God, who is the proper element of its being. For upon this, such peace comes into the soul, flowing from the God of peace, that it fills the emptiness of his soul with true fulness, in the fulness of God — so that now the heart ceases to molest the understanding and the reason, in seeking either a variety of objects, or an augmentation of degrees, in any comprehensible thing. The restless longing of the mind ceases, which before caused disquietude and disorder, both in the variety of mental projects, and in the sensual and beastly exercises of the corporal and external members; it is satisfied and truly quieted. For when a man’s heart is at peace in God, and has become truly full in that peace and joy surpassing understanding, then the devil does not have that same hope to prevail against his soul as he had before. He knows right well that it is in vain to bait his hook with profits, pleasures, honour, or any other like good, to catch a soul that is thus at quiet in God; for he has all fulness in God; and what can be added to fulness unless it runs over? Indeed, empty hearts, like empty hogsheads, are fit to receive any matter which is put into them. But the heart of the believer, being filled with joy and peace in believing, abhors all such base allurements; for it has no room in itself to receive any such seeming contentments. So that, to speak truthfully, there is nothing that truly and unfeignedly roots wickedness out of the heart of man, except the true tranquillity of the mind, or the rest of the soul in God. And to say it as it is, this is such a peace and such a rest to the creature in the Creator, that according to the measure of its establishment by faith, no created comprehensible thing can either add to it, or detract from it — the increase of a kingdom cannot augment it, the great losses and crosses in worldly things cannot diminish it; a believer’s good works all flow from it, and should not return to it; nor should human frailties molest it.
However, this is most certain: neither sin nor Satan, law nor conscience, hell nor grave, can completely extinguish it; for it is the Lord alone that gives and maintains it. “Whom have I in heaven but you?” says David, “and there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.” Psalm 73.25. It is the pleasant face of God in Christ that puts gladness into his heart. Psalm 4.7. And when that face is hidden, then he is troubled. Psalm 30.7. But, to speak more plainly, though the peace and joy of true believers may be extenuated or diminished, the testimony of their being in nature remains so strong, that they would be able to say, even when they feel God withdrawn from them, — “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22.1 —and in the night of God’s absence, to remain confident that, though the sorrow is overnight, yet joy will come in the morning, Psalm 30.5; Even more, though the Lord should seem to kill them with unkindness, “yet they will put their trust in him,” Job 13.15; knowing that for all this “their Redeemer lives,” Job 19.25; so strong is “the joy of their Lord,” Nehem. 8.10. These are the people that are kept in perfect peace, because their minds are stayed in the Lord, Isa. 26.3.
Therefore, my dear friends and loving neighbours, I beseech you to take heed of deeming any estate happy, until you find this true peace and rest for your souls in God. Oh, beware, lest any of you content yourselves with a peace of speculation rather than of power! Oh, do not be satisfied with a peace that consists either in the act of oblivion or the neglect of examination! Nor yet in any brain-sick supposition of knowledge, whether theological or divine; and so frame mere rational conclusions to protract time and still the cries of an accusing conscience. Rather, let your hearts bid their last farewell to false felicities with which all of them, more or less, have been detained and kept from their true rest. Oh, be strong in resolution! And bid them all farewell; for what have your souls to do any longer among these gross, thick, and bodily things here below, that you should set your love upon them, or see happiness in them? Your souls are of a higher and purer nature; and therefore their well-being must be sought in something that is higher and purer than they are — they must be sought even in God himself.
It is true that all of us, indeed, are too unclean to touch God in immediate unity. Yet there is a pure counterpart to our natures, and that pure humanity is immediately knit to the purest Deity; and by that immediate union, you may come to a mediate union — for the Deity and humanity being united [in Christ], make one Saviour, head, and husband of souls. And so you, being married to him, that is, to God in him, you also come to be one with God: he is one by a personal union, and you are one by a mystical union. Clear up your eye then, and fix it on him, as on the fairest of men, the perfection of a spiritual beauty, the treasure of heavenly joy, the true object of most fervent love. Let your spirits look, and long, and seek after this Lord. Let your souls cling to him; let them hang about him, and never leave him, till he is brought into the chambers of your souls. Indeed, tell him resolutely that you will not leave him till you hear his voice in your soul, saying, “My well-beloved is mine, and I am his;”Song 2.16 yes, and tell him, you are “lovesick.”Song 2.5 Let your souls go, as it were, out of your bodies and out of the world, by heavenly contemplations. Treading upon the earth with the bottom of your feet, stretch your souls up to look beyond the world, into that upper world where her treasure is, and where her beloved dwells.
And when any of your souls thus forgets her own people, and her father’s house, Christ her King shall so desire her beauty, Psalm 45.10, 11, and be so much in love with her, that like a loadstone, this love of his shall draw the soul in pure desire to him again; and then, “as the hart pants after the rivers of waters, so will your soul pant after God,” Psalm 42.1.
And then, according to the measure of your faith, your souls shall come to have a real rest in God, and be filled with joy unspeakable and glorious.
Therefore, I beseech you, set your mouths to this fountain Christ, and so your souls will be filled with the water of life, with the oil of gladness, and with the new wine of the kingdom of God.
From him you shall have weighty joys, sweet embracements, and ravishing consolations. And how can it be otherwise, when your souls really communicate with God, and by faith have a true taste, and by the spirit have a sure earnest, of all heavenly preferments — having, as it were, one foot in heaven while you live on earth? Oh then, what a eucharistic love will arise from your thankful hearts, extending itself first towards God, and then towards man for God’s sake! And then your willing obedience to God, and also to man for God’s sake, will be according to the measure of your faith. For obedience being the kindly fruit of love, a loving soul brings forth this fruit as kindly as a good tree brings forth her fruit. For the soul — having tasted Christ in a heavenly communion — so loves him, that to please him is a pleasure and delight to herself. And the more Christ Jesus comes into the soul by his Spirit, the more spiritual he makes her, and turns her will into his will, making her of one heart, mind, and will, with him.
So that I say this in conclusion: that if the everlasting love of God in Jesus Christ is truly made known to your souls, according to the measure of it, you will have no need to frame and force yourselves to love and do good works, for your souls will ever stand bound to love God, and to keep his commandments, and it will be your food and drink to do his will. And truly this love of God will cut down self-love and love of the world — for the sweetness of Christ’s Spirit will turn the sweetness of the flesh into bitterness, and the sweetness of the world into contempt. And if you can behold Christ with open face, you will see and feel unutterable things,2Cor 12.4 and be changed from beauty to beauty, from glory to glory,2Cor 3.18 by the Spirit of this Lord, and so be happy in this life, in your union with happiness, and happy hereafter in the full fruition of happiness: where the Lord Jesus Christ brings us all in his due time. Amen.