ing, \vc fihnll need neitlier raiment for the back, nor food for the hodJ^ O, happy death that will case lis of all the aches of onr bodies, and conflicts in onrsonls! Thon art the only physician to cure all the saints' distempers. When that blessed hour comes, then lift up your heads with joy, for it will lead you into that blissful place where you shall see Christ, not a great way off, not with the eye of faith, in the optic glass of an ordinance or promise, but with a gloritied eye behold his very person, never more to lose the sight of him : thou shalt not taste his love in a little morsel of sacramental bread, and sip of wine, but lay thy mouth to the fountain, and from his bosom drink thy full draught. Thou shalt no more hear what a gloi-ious place heaven is, as thou wert wont to have it set forth by the poor rhetoric of mortal man, preaching to thee of that with which himself was but little acquainted ; but shalt walk thyself in the streets of that glorious city, and bless thyself, to think what poor, low thoughts thou and thy minister also had thereof, when on earth thou didst meditate, and he preached, on this subject : one moment's sight of that glory will inform thee more than all the books written of it were ever able to do. And dost thou not yet cry out. How long will it be, O Lord, most holy and true, before thou bringest me thither? Is not evei'y hour a day, day a month, month a j'ear, yea, age, till that time comes? As Bernard, upon those words, John xvi. 16 : ' A little while, and ye shall not see me ; and again, A little while, and ye shall see me,' passionately breaks forth : — Holy Lord, dost thou call that a little while ill which I shall not see thee ? O, this little is a long little while !
CHAPTER VIL
AN EXUORTATION TO STUDY THIS MYSTERY OF THE GOSPEL.
Be you provoked, who are yet strangers to this mystery, to seek the know- ledge of it ; yea, endeavoin- to gain an intimate acquaintance with it : to move you thereunto, I shall make use of two arguments.
Section L — First, Consider the Author of it. That book must needs be worth reading, which hath God for the author : that mvstery deserves our knowledge, which is the product of his infinite wisdom and love. There is a {divine gloiy sitting upon the face of all Clod's works ; it is impossible so excel- lent an artist should put his hand to an ignoble work : ' O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! in wisdom hast thou made them all,' Psa. civ. 24. But there is not the same glory to be seen in all his works. Our apostle tells us, ' there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon; one star differs from another in glory.' Now, among all the works of God, that of man's redemption may well pass for the master-piece ; the world itself was set up to be a stage for the acting of this piece of providence, wherein the manifold wisdom of God is so curiously wrought, that angels themselves pry into it, and are wrapped in admiration of it, Eph. iii. 10 ; 1 Pet. i. 12. God's works deserve our study, and those most wherein he hath drawn the clearest portraiture of himself. The gospel mystery, therefore, above all other, should be searched into by us, being the only glass in which the glory of Ciod is with open face to be seen. Se- condly, Consider the subject-matter of the gospel,- — Christ, and the way of salvation through him. What poor and low ends have all worldly mysteries ! one to make us rich, another to make us great and honourable in the world, but none to make us holy here, or happy hereafter; this is learned only from the knowledge of Christ, who is revealed in the gospel, and nowhere else. No doubt Solomon's natural history, in which he treated of all trees, from the cedar to the hyssop ; of all beasts, fowls, and creeping things, was a rare piece in its kind ; yet one leaf of the gospel is of infinitely more worth to us than all that large volume would have been ; so much more precious, by how much the knowledge of God in Christ is better than the knowledge of beasts and birds. And we have reason to think it a mercy that that book is lost and laid out of onr sight, wliich we should have been prone to have studied more than the Bible ; not that it was better, but more suitable to the mould of our carnal minds. But to a gracious soul, enlightened with saving knowledge, no book is equal to the Bible. Paul was an excellent scholar, he wanted not that learning which commends men to the world; yet he counts all things but loss in com- parison of the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ his Lord, Phil. iii. 8.
THE MYSTERY OF THE (iOSl'EL. SQ5