6. Likewise there is implied a mutual complacency in these words. By a complacency I mean a resting, contenting love. Christ hath a com- placency and resting in the church ; and the church hath a sweet resting contentment in Christ. Christ in us and we in him. A true Christian soul that hath yielded up its consent to Christ, when it is beaten in the world, vexed and turmoiled, it can rely on this, ' I have yet a loving husband ; ' yet I have Christ.
Let this put us upon a search into ourselves, what we retire to, when we meet with afflictions. Those that have brutish and beastly souls retire to carnal contentments, to good fellowship ; forget, besot, and fly away from themselves ; their own consciences and thought of their ov/n trouble. "Whereas a soul that hath any acquaintance with God in Christ, or any in- terest into Christ, so that it may say, that Christ is mine, and I am Christ's, there will be contentment and rest in such a soul, whatsoever it meets with in the world.
7. The last thing implied is courage, a branch of the former. Say all against it what they can, saith the resolved soul, I will be Christ's. Here is courage with resolution. Agreeable hereto is that, ' One shall say I am the Lord's, and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob ; an- other shall subscribe and surname himself by the name of Israel,' Isa. xliv. 5. Where there is not this resolution in good causes, there is not the Spirit of Christ ; there is no interest into Christ. It is biat a delusion and self- flattery to say I am Christ's, when there is not resolution to stand to Christ. These words are the expression of a resolved heart, I am, and I wiU be Christ's ; I am not ashamed of my bargain ; of the consent I have given him; I am and I will be his. You have the like in Micah iv. 5, ' AH people will walk every one in the name of his god, they will resolve on that, and we will walk in the name of the Lord om* God for ever and for ever.' So that where these words are spoken in truth, that ' I am Christ's,' there is necessarily implied, I will own him and his cause for ever and ever.
He hath married me for ever and ever ; therefore, if I hope to have interest in him for comfort for ever and ever, I must be sure to yield my- self to him for ever and ever ; and stand for his cause, in all oppositions, against all enemies whatsoever. These and such like places in Scripture run parallel with this hi the text, ' I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine,' not only holding in the person, but in the cause of Chiist. Every man hopes his god will stand for him against the devil, who accuseth us daily. If we will have Christ to stand for us, and to be an advocate to plead our cause as he doth in heaven, we must resolve to stand for him against all enemies, heretics, schismatics, persecutors whatsoever ; that we will walk in the name of our God for ever and ever.
Quest. But when the case is not thus with us, and that neither we can feel comfort from Christ, nor have this assurance of his love to us, what should we judge of such ?
Solution. We should not wonder to see poor souls distempered wheij they are in spiritual desertions, considering how the spouse cannot endure the absence of Christ. It is out of love therefore in the deepest plunge she hath this in her mouth, * iny beloved.' Therefore let us not judge amiss of ourselves or others, when we are impatient in this kind.
Cant. VI. 3.] * i am my beloved's.* 177'
But for a more full answer, in want of feeling of the love of Christ in regard of that measure we would (for there is never altogether a want of feeling, there is so much as keeps from despair alway, yet), if we carry a constant love towards him, mourn to him and seek after him as the church here ; if the desire of our souls be after him, that we make after him in the use of means, and are willing to speak of him as the church here, feel or feel not, we are his, and he will at length discover himself to us.
Let such di'ooping spirits consider, that as he will not be long from us, nor wholly, so it shall not be for our disadvantage that he retires at all. His absence at length wiU end in a sweet discovery of himself more abun- dantly than before. He absents himself for our good, to make us more humble and watchful for the time to come ; more pitiful to others ; more to prize our former condition ; to justify the ways of God more strictly ; to walk with him ; to regain that sweet communion which by our negligence and security we lost. When we are thus prepared by his absence, there ensues a more satisfying discoveiy of himself than ever before.