CHAPTER VI: How we may discern, value, and love spiritual things, purely as spiritual, and yet vi
2. If grace sanctifies us throughout, and every faculty and principle in us, 1 Thes. 5:23, then it sanctifies self-love in us; for of all things in us it is most a part in ourselves. And if there be a sanctified self-love, then part even of our holiness must lie in loving ourselves. But then withal observe, that this sanctification of self-love is eminently seen in this, that the heart being made spiritual, and suitable to spiritual things, it is enabled and made so truly happy, as to find its own greatest good in those things, and is carried forth towards them with the greatest contentment to itself. And so it comes to pass that when a man's soul is perfectly sanctified, he loves these spiritual things with a stronger love to himself, than any carnal man can do, or ever did, carnal things. And hence these two make but one stream: I at once love myself, and spiritual things themselves, and all comes to he reconciled by this, that the heart is made suitable to them. Yea, upon this ground I will go yet higher. The more I judge God, Christ, and all other spiritual things, to be the best and chiefest good for my soul
(and this when considered in the highest spiritualness that can be supposed to be revealed by the Spirit, and discerned and apprehended by me), when they rise up in the most spiritual spirituality, the Holy Ghost himself can or doth represent them, then for my soul to be most able to say, 'These are the best for me,' and to have spiritual affections rise up as these other apprehensions of the spirituality of the things do rise, this argues still that my heart hath the greater degree of grace. And the reason of it is clear from this principle, that grace suits the soul to spiritual things; and therefore those actings of my heart argue it still to be the more spiritual, as being so suited that still I find my highest good to lie in the highest and utmost spiritualness of them; even as the more a man's stomach affecteth and relisheth meat, the stronger meats, yea, and the more sweetness it finds therein, the better stomach it is. David's heart hath in a great degree decided this in few words: Ps. 73:28, 'It is good for me to draw near to God.' He found communion with him, out of suitableness, to be his greatest good.
CHAPTER VI
How we may discern, value, and love spiritual things, purely as spiritual, and yet view them as blessings to us; and regard and affect our own interest and benefit in them.
If any do yet understand me so as to have this objection still in their thoughts (putting it by way of supposition), that if any man should love spiritual things as spiritual, chiefly for his own good, would not this be hypocrisy, and he be a carnal man?
I answer, Yes. And even this will also follow from that principle I have insisted upon. For if a man's heart be carried out suitably to the things, that is to God and Christ, &c., as they are in themselves, then he cannot but prize, adore, value, and love them above himself. For if his heart be not suited to the things, as they are proportionably in their own worth, his knowledge and love of them is not such as the things require, and so are not suited to them. And (as I said) it is a false and a counterfeit knowledge of, and affection to them, as was afore observed, so that it is a contradiction to say a man's heart is suited to the things, and to say that he affects them as such chiefly for himself. For if he knows God as God or Christ, as the truth is in Jesus, then (as John says in another case) he finds these to be infinitely greater than himself, and himself to be but as a mote flying in the beams of the sun. And if he did not accordingly prize and affect them and their glory, his affections would not be suitable to these things; therefore self falls down, and gives up itself most to exalt the things above itself, when it finds them most suitable to it. Yet still notwithstanding, this on the other side falls on with the highest consistency, that a man never loves himself more, yea, and never finds he doth it more, than when he finds he loves them above himself, and not for himself chiefly.
If you ask me how far these two may stand together? I answer, they are consistent in a due subordination of self unto God, and the things of God. All men must acknowledge this, that true grace is the image of God's holiness, Col. 3:10. And it so long continues to be his image, as it keeps a due and answerable proportion unto that holiness that is in himself, the great and only architype and master-pattern of all true holiness. Therefore it is consistent with so loving God and ourselves, in such a subordination as God loveth himself and us. Now if we consider God, he as God loves himself above all, and works all things for his own glory, and therein lies his holiness in choosing his elect unto salvation, for he did it for his own glory: Eph. 1:5, 6,
'Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise and glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.' And yet everywhere the Scripture also doth ascribe
God's electing us and redeeming us to his infinite love borne unto our persons ('God so loved the world,' &c.); and that not comparatively only as to others ('Esau have I hated'), but simply as he bore an affection to our persons: Deut. 10:15, 'Only the Lord thy
God had a delight in thy fathers to love them.' You see then, that in God's heart our salvation and his own glory, love to himself above all, and infinitely above any respect to us, had a great place, and yet a true, real, and special love and affection borne unto us, did sweetly meet together and run in one channel subordinately to the other.
And this hath been to many a great help and inducement to their believing God's real intention and heartiness to save sinners and themselves, that it is a design which falls in with the utmost manifestation of his own glory. Yea, and God in effecting it, or bringing it about, hath contrived all the means of salvation, so as to represent at once to us an intermixture of transcendent love to us, and a prerogative respect of his own glory. Look one way, and you think he loved us as if he regarded nothing else; look on the other side, and the glory of his grace doth so appear that we seem to be forgotten, and God's glory alone shines in it. Are these two then so reconciled in God's heart, love to us and himself? Come we now then to the heart of a man saved and regenerated spiritually, and certainly
they may consist also there. And the 'saving faith' of both these respects and affections had by God to his own glory, to us, and our salvation, may also work both ways in our hearts. And, indeed, God in commanding us to love him above all things, yea ourselves, hath withal given leave to us to love ourselves, in so doing, in an answerableness to his own loving us, whilst yet he aimed so eminently at his own glory as if nothing concerning us had moved him. For grace in us is the image of what is in himself. And all this
(say I still) may justly be enforced by this assertion, that grace in the heart is a principle that elevates and suits the soul unto the spiritualness of things spiritual. Now the glory of God above our salvation, being the most spiritual of spiritual things (it is spiritual in summo gradu), then if the heart be suited to the thing, it must in the end exalt and set this up, as it is in this its spiritualness, and so set it in this its high throne above itself; it were not grace else, nor suited to this object. And because it is a principle that suits the heart thereto, therefore it withal must have the greatest delight when it finds it can do so, therefore the greater happiness consists therein, and therefore the believer enjoys his own good most in being so affected. Grace is the strongest creature and principle that ever God did, or shall make. It comes upon the heart when it is an utter stranger unto God, and when it is full of self-love, and is as contrary to God as any one thing can be to another; and yet it comes and begets an instinct in that soul to make its own highest good to lie in the good and happiness of that God aimed at and delighted in above its own. I will end this. This love to God ariseth not out of self-love
(though it is so in a carnal man) but it may more properly be said to be joined with it, self-love to take it into itself.
3. When we say that spirit here, in John 3:6, is a suiting the heart to spiritual things themselves, the meaning is not that the closing with God himself, and with the person of Christ abstractly considered, is all and the whole of true spiritualness, or which are the only objects of a spiritual heart; but there are many benefits by Christ, and that come within the soul's cleaving to God, which are spiritual also, and
so are truly and spiritually the objects of the affections of a regenerate man as spiritual. This I add, to prevent a mistake also.
Many, when they hear of such a doctrine as this, that spiritual things are to be affected as spiritual, take it in thus, that therefore all affections to anything but to God, and to the person of Christ, simply for themselves, and not at all for any benefit or blessing with them, are affections of a heart that is carnal.
It is true indeed that those before-mentioned dispositions are in a spiritual heart raised up unto an intense degree (for these only are spirituals in summo gradu, as we use to speak of other things, as of heat in fire, &c.), yet withal the benefits that flow from adhesion to the persons of God and Christ, are in their degree spiritual also. Thus you have it expressly pronounced, Eph. 1:3, 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.' Here you have mentioned the persons of God the author, and of Christ the conveyer, distinguished from the blessings; and yet the blessings themselves are termed spiritual, as well as God and Christ elsewhere are. And adoption (ver. 5), and redemption through his blood, and forgiveness of sins through the riches of his grace (ver. 7) are ranged among the number of them. So that even in these blessings themselves there is a spiritualness to be found, and spiritual considerations about them, for which a regenerate heart spiritually affects them, and seeks them.
The eye that loves to behold the sun's light, and to behold the beams of the sun, doth certainly love the sun itself, the fountain; for those beams are high and heavenly, as well as the sun itself is a heavenly body. And thus it is with respect to all spiritual blessings. Justifying faith, which is as spiritual a grace as any, hath not immediately the person of Christ in its eye, abstracted from his righteousness or forgiveness, but as arrayed with them. There is therefore a spiritualness in Christ's righteousness to be found, for which we must value it, and to close with it as truly spiritualness, as to close immediately with the person of Christ. Paul desires, Philip. 3:9, 'to be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness,' &c. So is it in all
graces, they are spiritual things. Only I add this, that all these are spiritual, but derivatively, and as they relate to God and Christ, and unto their glory. If you cut them off from that relation, and value not their worth, as in that relation they lose their spiritualness. As the sun's beams have a glory in them, why? Because they are beams of the sun, as rooted in it, flowing from it; which if you would cut off, they would lose. Now carnal hearts, in valuing and affecting these benefits, cut them off from God and Christ. A dark cloud of self interposes, and they do not most value them on the account of their relation to the persons of God and Christ.
This also is farther to be considered, that many believers, especially when young in grace, may not have those principles and gracious dispositions, so far stirred and acted (although the things are in them) as to be able eminently to discern that high suitableness to God and Christ in its true spirituality, with difference from what is from carnal self. That is, they may not presently find that love to the things themselves for themselves, budding and shooting up so as to overtop that other remaining principle of regard unto their own selves.
(1.) It is therefore to be considered, that believers at first, having carnal self stirred towards spiritual things (even as temporary believers have), as well as spiritual self, they are in respect of this mixture termed carnal rather than spiritual, because that principle is, if not predominant in acting, yet so vigorously, and perhaps more sensibly, acting in them than the spiritual part, purely as such, is found to be. When Paul wrote to that church at Corinth, he wrote to saints', yet professeth he wrote not to them as to spiritual, but as to carnal, 1 Cor. 3:1; that is, as to babes in Christ, whose workings are to sense more carnal than spiritual, though they afterward do grow up to be more spiritual. Thus in the first birth a child, first lives the life of a plant, then of a beast or sensitive creature, and last of all springs up reason; and yet the reasonable soul was the root of all these, and so was the principle of them there from the first. So it is in the new birth often. Therefore let none be discouraged though the present