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 proportionally 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 know
ledge of, and affection to them, as was afore observed, so that it is a con
tradiction 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
CHAP. VI. j IN OUR SALVATION. 175
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 notwith
standing, 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. iii. 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
* Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children
: Eph. i. 5, 6,
glory
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 elect
ing us and redeeming us to his infinite love borne unto our persons ( God so
"as to others ( Esau have I hated ), but simply as he bore an affection to our persons
loved the world, &c.) ; and that not comparatively only
: Deut. x.
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
* 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
there. And the
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 prin-
176 THE WOBK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK IV.
ciple 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 arid 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 iii. 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 spiri tually 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 spiri tual 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 pro nounced, Eph. i. 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 bless
ings themselves are termed spiritual, as well as God and Christ elsewhere
are. And adoption (ver. 5), and redemption through his blood, and forgive ness 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 imme
* 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 deri
diately with the person of Christ. Paul desires, Philip, iii. 9,
vatively, 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
CHAP. VI.] IN OUK SALVATION. 177
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 emi
nently to discern that high suitableness to God and Christ in its true spiri
tuality, 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 spiri tual, but as to carnal, 1 Cor. iii. 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 actings of their spirit have been low, and not risen up eminently above carnal self (as to their sense) ; for true grace or spirit may be in them carried out with the mixture of the other, and that genuinely (as to the thing itself) unto what
is spiritual.
(2.) In the main and whole ordinary course of a Christian, these two streams run together in one channel, and have no occasion of parting ; but
they find that loving their own selves, and their affecting spiritual things for
themselves, do concur, insomuch as whether they affect themselves most, out of love to themselves, or most affect the things themselves, they cannot discern : as when all the bells strike at once, it is hard to discern distinctly the sound of the loudest above the rest. So as although a man s heart
truly affects the things most, yet so much of self, carnal self, is mingled with it, that which is most eminent is not perceived. Only this they find, that their affections are still carried on one way or other to things that are
spiritual ; and in this case the constancy of the stream (though at some
passage of a man s life more shallow than at another) is that which doth best evidence the Holy Ghost to be the spring of all, and that a fountain of spiritualness is sprung up in that heart, which feeds it thus to eternal
life. The truest issue therefore which, in examining ourselves, we are to
bring our souls unto, is ultimately to search, taking the help of those cau tions given along with us, and not to rest satisfied till we have found some
dispositions in our souls naturally matching with, and suited unto, what is
spiritually good in things that are spiritual. And although in the mean
while, till this is some way discerned, the soul may support itself with the
thoughts that those affections that have been drawn forth to things spiritual
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178 THE WOKK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK IV
revealed in the word, perhaps in present sense, only out of self-love, may
yet in the issue prove to have true strains of spiritualness running along with them. But yet still thou canst not have an undoubted or infallible
evidence of thy regeneration, till thou findest thy heart carried forth to and
closing with what is truly spiritual in those blessings.