3. Again, he beseecheth. We are cold and backward, therefore he useth entreaty upon entreaty, as if he were impatient of a denial. Out of what rock was man hewn ? God himself cometh a-wooing, and we have the face to give him a repulse ; and what doth he woo for but our hearts, which are his already by every kind of right and title ? Prov. xxiii. 26, ' My son, give me thy heart.' God is pleased to call that a gift which is indeed a debt. Though the heart be due, yet God will put this honour upon the creatures, to receive it from them in the way of a gift. It is but equity to ' give to God the things that are God's.' Look upon the heart ; see if any could make it but God him- self. ' Whose image and superscription doth it bear ?' Wilt thou refuse to surrender up to God his right ? God hath made it, bought it, and yet he beggeth it. When thou hast been as earnest with God, and asked anything regularly of him, did he deny thee ? It is no benefit to him ; he desireth the heart of the creature, not that he may be happy, but that he may be liberal ; he would have thy heart that he may make it better. How easily do we give up our affections to anything but God, who hath the best title to them ! If the world or Satan knocketh, we open presently. We are as wax to Satan, and as stone to God ; exorable and easy to be entreated by any carnal motion. As some hard stones cannot be wrought upon but by their own dust, so men are facile only to their own corruptions, to their own lusts, not to the motions of God's Spirit.
Fourthly, The nature of love showeth that it is fit for nothing but God. He hath given us this faculty and disposition, that we may close
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with himself. He that loolceth upon an axe will say it was made to cut ; and he that looketh on love will say it was made for God. What is the genius and disposition of love ? Love is nothing but an earnest bent and strong motion of the soul to what is good for us.i Every man hath an inclination in his nature to what he conceiveth to be good, Ps. iv. 6, and grace doth only direct and set it right. All the difference between nature and grace is in fixing the chiefest good and the utmost end. One great blessing of tiie covenant is ' a new heart ; ' that is, a new and right placing of our affections. Well, then, God is summum honum, the chiefest good ; even nature cannot be satisfied without him, but grace findeth all contentment in him. If there be any good in the creatures, it is originally in him ; he is the fountain of living waters, where comforts are sweetest and freest. The heart hunteth after good among the creatures, which is but an image and ray of that perfection which is in God ; and who would leave the substance to follow the shadow, and prize the picture to the disdain of the person whom it represents ? It were easy to prove that God is the only proper, eternal, all-sufficient good of the soul ; and if the heart were not perverted and biassed with carnal desires to other objects, it would directly move to God, as all things do to their centre. I say, were it not for sin, we should no more need be pressed to love God, than to love ourselves. There need no great motives to press us to love ourselves, nature is prone enough of its own accord ; and if nature had remained in that purity wherein it was created, it would move to God of its own accord ; as all things move to their centre, and there they rest. Now God is the centre of the soul. The soul's good is not honours, pleasures, pro- fits ; the soul is a spirit, and must have a spiritual good ; it is immor- tal, and it must have an eternal good. By experience we find that our affections are never in their due posture, but are like members out of joint (or the arms when they hang backward) when they are not fixed upon God ; therefore there is a restlessness and dissatisfaction in the soul.2 We grope and feel about for happiness, and cannot find it. Acts xvii. 26, 27 ; like Noah's dove, we hover up and down, and find no place whereon the sole of our foot should rest. Well, then, if God be the only all-sufficient good of the soul, why do not we love him more? If he be the centre of the soul, why do not we move directly thither ? It is a shame that a stone should be carried with greater force to its centre than we to God. By its natural course it falleth downward, and breaketh all things in the way, yea, though itself be broken in pieces. But alas 1 how little do we break through impedi- ments to go to God ! It were a miracle to see a stone stopped in the air by a feather. But now every vain thing keepeth us off, and inter- cepts our affections ; sin hath given us another centre, and after grace received, we hang too much that way. Again, as love is for good, so it is for one object ; like a pyramid, it ends in a point , affection is weakened by dispersion, as a river by being turned into many channels. In conjugal love, where friendship is to the height, there is but one that can share in it ; that is the law of nature : Mai. ii. 15, ' Did he not