Section 496
III. He sets forth her excellency and preferableness to all the daughters
By whom we are to understand the nations and men of the world; for it is usual in the Hebrew tongue to call the inhabitants of countries the daughters thereof; thus we read of the daughters of Tyre, Edom, Babylon, etc. none of which are to be compared with the church; these are like thorns to Christ's lily: or else carnal, hypocritical, and formal professors may be intended, whom she calls in chapter 1:6 mother's children; who made an external profession of religions but wanted that real and internal beauty which she was possessed of, and differed only in name from the rest of the sons and daughters of fallen Adam; but she, being distinguished by divine grace from them all, was preferable to them, 1. In beauty; these looked like thorns, she like a lily; they were black and uncomely, she the perfection of beauty, and the fairest among women. 2. In harmlessness; though there are thorns about, yet none upon the lily: ungodly persons are not only uncomely in themselves, but like thorns, pricking and hurtful to others; but as for the saints, they are "blameless and harmless, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation," like lilies among thorns. 3. In fruitfulness: no fruit grows on thorns, but on Christ's lilies grow all sorts of precious fruit; they are laden with them. 4. In their last end Christ's lilies will be gathered by himself and his angels, and be put in his garden above; but the wicked, which are Satan's tares and thorns, shall be bundled together, and cast into everlasting burnings; the one being highly valued and prized by Christ. the other hated and rejected by him; for as much as the lily exceeds the thorns which grow about it, so much does the church of Christ excel the men of the world among; whom it is here on earth; and as there is a difference now between them, though growing up together, so there will be one, and that far greater and more visible when separated; the one will be everlastingly glorified, the other everlastingly punished.