And to make us the more careful this way, consider that when we place our affections upon anything else, consider the vanity of it. We lose our love and the thing and ourselves. For whatsoever else we love, if we love not God in it, and love it for God, it will perish and come to nothing ere long. The aflection perisheth with the thing. We lose our affections and the thing ; and lose ourselves too, misplacing of it. These are forcible con- siderations with understanding persons. And if we would use our under- standing and consideration and meditation, and our souls, as we should, to
200 A GLANCE OF HEAVEN.
consulcr of the grounds and encouragements wc have to love God, and tlicbest things whereby wc may be dignified above ourselves, it would not be as it is ; wo Hhould not bo so devoid of grace and comfort. It was a miracle that the three young men should bo in the midst of the furnace, and be there as if they were in another place, no hotter, Dan. iii. 12, 13, scq. And it is a miracle that men should bo in the midst of all encouragements that wc have to love God (as there is not the like reasons for anything in the world to keep our souls in a perpetual heat of a ll'cetion to love God — no motives, or arguments, or incentives ; all arc nothing to the multitude of arguments wc have to inllamc our afl'ections), and yet to be cold in the midst of the fire. It is a kind of miracle to have dark understandings and dead affec- tions ; that notwithstanding all the heavenly means we have to keep a perpetual llamc of love to God, yet to bo cold and dark in our souls ; let us bewail it and be ashamed of it.
What do we profess ourselves ? Christians, heirs of heaven; so beloved of God as that he gave his own Son to deliver us, being rebels and enemies, in so cursed a state as we are all in by nature. Poor creature ! inferior to the angels that fell, that he should love man, sinful dust and ashes, so much as to give his own Son to free us from so great misery, and to advance us to so great happiness, to set us in ' heavenly places with Christ,' Eph. i. 3, and to have perpetual communion with him in heaven; to have such encouragements, and to be cold and dead-hearted ; nay, wilfully opposite in our atiections, to be enemies to the goodness of God and grace, having such arguments to love God. And yet how many spirits edged by the devil oppose all that is good, and will not give way to God's Spirit ? God would have them temples, they will be sties. God would marry them ; nay, they will be harlots. God would have them happy here, and here- after. No ; they will not ; they will have their own lusts and afli'ections.
Let us be afraid of these things, as we love our own souls and ourselves ; and consider what encouragements we have to love God for which such great things are reserved as ' neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man to conceive.'
Imprimatur; Tho. Wykes. Aug. 1638.
NOTES.
(a) P. 157. — ' The pTiilosopher saith. there is nothing in the understanding "but it came into the senses before.' T/ie philosopher is of course Arisfotle, wliose sugges- tive fragments of philosophical thinking on mental and moral science have been systematized by Locke and Bishop Berkeley. The latter observes of him, 'That philosopher held that the mind of man was a tabula rasa, and that there were no innate ideas.' — Siris, § 308.
(b) P. 188. — ' Take all from me,' saith holy Austin, ' so thou leave me thyself.' One of the memorabilia of the ' Confessions,' and frequent in this Father. G.
THE EXCELLENCY OF THE GOSPEL ABOVE THE LAW.
THE EXCELLENCY OF THE GOSPEL ABOVE THE LAW.
NOTE.
' The Excellency of the Gospel above the Law' fills a considerable volume, which was originally published in 1G39, under the supervision of Goodwin and Nye. See title-page below.* G.
* The EXCELLENCIE
OF
THE GO SPELL above the LA W. Wherein the Liberty of the Sonnes of God is shewed. With the Image of their Graces here, and Glory hereafter. Which affords much Comfort and great Incouragement, to all such as Be- gin Timely, and Continue Constant- ly in the wayes of God. By R. Sibbs, D.D. M"^. of Katherin Hall, Cambridge, and Preacher Grayes-Inne, London. Begun in his life time, and published by T[homas] G[oodwin] and P[hilip] N[ye].t LONDOX Printed by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by lohn Bartlet, at his shop, at the Signe of the guilt Cup, neere S. Austins gate. 1G39.
t Cf. Vol. ii. p. 3.— G.
EXCELLENCY OF THE GOSPEL ABOVE THE LAW.
Now the Lord is that Spirit : and where the Sjnrit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But ice all, xvith open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same imaqe from glory to gloi^y, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.— 2, Cor. ni. 17, 18.