But as yet we have spoken but of the casket wherein the jewel lieth. The soul, that divine spark and blast, how quick, nimble, various, and indefatigable in its motions ! how comprehensive in its capacities ! how it animateth the body, and is like God himself, all in every part ! Who can trace the flights of reason ? What a value hath God set upon the soul ! He made it after his image, he re- deemed it with Christ's blood, &c. Well, then, God, that made such a body, such a soul, deserveth love. He that made the soul hath most right to dwell in it ; it is a curious house of his own framing. But he will not enter by force and violence, but by consent ; he ex- pecteth when love will give up the keys : Kev. iii. 20, ' Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any man open to me, I will come in and sup with him.' Why should Christ stand at the door and knock, and ask leave to enter into his own house ? He hath right enough to enter, only he expecteth till we open to him.
2. Preservation. We are not apprehensive enough of daily mercies. The preservation of the world is a constant miracle. The world is ' hanged upon nothing' (as it is in the book of Job), A feather will not stay in the air ; and yet what hath the world to support it but the thin fluid air that is round about it ? It is easy to prove that the waters are higher than the land ; so that we are always in the case the Israelites were in when they passed through the Bed Sea. Nos sumus etiam tanquam in medio ruhri maris, saith Luther — the waters are round about us and above us, bound up in a heap as it were by God, and yet we are not swallowed up. It is true the danger is not so sensible and immediate as that of the Bed Sea, because of the con- stant rampire of providence. More particularly, from the womb to the grave we have hourly maintenance from God. Look, as the beams in the air are no longer continued than the sun shineth ; so we do no longer continue than God ' uplioldeth our beings by the word of his power,' Heb. i. 3. Or as it is with a seal in the water, take away the seal and the impress vanisheth ; so do we disappear as soon as God doth but loosen his hand and almighty grasp, by which all things are upheld and preserved. But let us speak of those acts of providence that are more sensible. Into how many diseases and dangers might
80 AN EXPOSITION, WITH NOTES, [VeR. 2.
we fall, if God did not look after us as the nurse after her child ! How many have gone to the grave, nay, it may be to hell, since the last night ! How many actual dangers have we escaped ! God hath looked after us, as if he had forgotten all the world besides ; as if his whole employment were to do us good. He saith that he 'will no more forget us than a woman doth her sucking child ; ' and that we are ' written before him, and graven in the palms of his hands,' Isa. xlix. 15, &c., as men tie a string about their finger for a remembrance, or record in a book such things as they would regard. All these are expressions to describe the particular and express care of God's pro- vidence over his children. Now what shall be rendered to the Lord for all this ? If we could do and suffer never so much for God, it will not answer the mercy of one day. Certainly at least God ex- pecteth love for love. Love him as he is the ' strength of thy life and length of thy days,' Deut. xxx. 20. Every day's experience is new fuel to keep in the fire. The very beasts will respect their preservers ; they are loving to those that are kind to them : ' The ass knoweth his owner, and the ox his master's crib.' There is a kind of gratitude in the beasts by which they acknowledge their benefactors that feed them and cherish them ; but we do not acknowledge God who feedeth us and upholdeth us every moment. There is no creature made worse by kindness but man. He, that was made to be master of the crea- tures, may become their scholar ; there is many a good lesson to be learned in their school.
3. Kedemption. As a man, when he weigheth a thing, casteth in weight after weight till the scales be counterpoised, so doth God mercy after mercy to poise down man's heart. Here is a mercy that is overweight in itself : 1 John iv. 10, ' Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins.' If we had had the wisdom to pitch upon such a remedy, as certainly it could not have entered into hearts of men or angels, Eph. iii. 10, yet we could not have the heart to ask it. It would have seemed a rude blasphemy in our prayers to desire that the Son of God should come out from his Father's bosom and die for us. There- fore, 'herein is love ;' that is, this is the highest expression of God's love to the creature, not only that ever was, but can be ; for in love only God acteth to the uttermost : he never showed so much of his power and wisdom, but he can show more ; of his wrath, but he can show more ; but he hath no greater thing to give than himself, than his Christ. At what a dear rate hath the Lord bought our hearts ! He needed not ; he might have made nobler creatures than the present race of men, and dealt with us as he did with the sinning angels ; he would not enter into treaty with them, but the execution was as quick as the sin ; so the Lord might utterly have cast us off, and made a new race of men to glorify his grace, leaving Adam to propagate the world to glorify his justice ; or, at least, he might have redeemed us in another way, for I suppose it is a free dispensation, oj)us liberi consilii. But, John iii. 16, ' God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son.' He took this way, that we might love Christ as well as believe in him. God might have redeemed us so much in another way, but he could not oblige us so much in another way ; he