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But God must be supreme. Others must be loved and feared, &c., in him and for him, but he chiefly, when we depend upon him for all deliverance out of ill and for all good, and shew our dependence on him by our subjec- tion to him in all his ways, by our yielding to him obedience answerable to all this ; and especially when we shall shew it by performing inward worship to him, when we walk before him perfectly and sincerely, as it is in the beginning of this chapter, ' I am God all-sufficient : walk before me and be perfect.' By this we may know that God is our God. I need not enlarge it. The practice of the first commandment will teach us what is our God. Whatsoever we give the supremacy of the inward man to, whatsoever we love most, whatsoever we trust most, whatsoever we fear most, whatsoever we joy and delight most, whatsoever we obey most— that is our god. * I am the Lord thy God,' in the first commandment. There is the ground. What follows ? ' Thou shalt have no other gods but me ;' that is, thou shalt love nothing in the world, nor fear nothing, nor trust in nothing, nor joy in nothing more than me, no, nor with me ; but all things else thou shalt trust them and fear them, &c., in me and for me. Otherwise what is our love is our god, what is our trust is our god, what is our greatest fear is our god. If we fear man, fear him to do ill, man is our god ; if we love the creature, or sin, that is our god ; if we crack our consciences for wealth, the covetous man's wealth is his god ; if we crack our consciences for pleasures, or for our bellies, our pleasures and our bellies and our lusts are our god. We make not God our God except we give him the supremacy of the inward man.
But to proceed, and to come to some few familiar signs more that will try us, though these may try us, in the intercourse that is between God and us.
Whosoever hath God for their God, they have the Sinrit of supplication and prayer, to cry unto God, to run unto him, especially in extremity. All God's children have the Spirit of adoption to cry, ' Abba, Father !' They have the Spirit to give them boldness to God, when otherwise their nature, and likewise trouble joining with nature and tentations, would make them run from God ; yet the Spirit of God in them makes them bold to go to God in Jesus Christ. God's children, that are in covenant with him, can at all times pray to God. If they cannot pray, they can ' chatter ' and sigh to God. There is somewhat they can do. There is a Spirit in them that groaneth and sigheth, as Rom. viii. 26, and God heareth the voice of his own Spirit. They are cries in his ears. ' My groans and sighs are not hid from thee,' saith the Psalmist, Ps. xxxviii. 9. The Spirit of sup- plication will shew God to be our God, because if he were not ours, we could not be bold to go to him, in the time of extremity especially. This sign you have in Zech. xiii. ver. 9, ' They shall call upon my name, and I will hear them ; they shall be my people,, and I will be their God.' Invocation and prayer is a sign that God is our God, when we go to God presently in all our wants and necessities by prayer. Pharaoh and repro- bate spirits say to Moses, ' Pray you for me,' Numb. xxi. 7 ; but as for a spirit of supplication in themselves, they have not. They may speak of prayer, but they cannot pray. Whosoever is God's, he can cry to God. A child, we know the first voice is uttered as soon as it is born, it cries ; so God's new-born children they can cry unto God. Paul in Acts ix. ver. 11, you shall find him praying as soon as ever he was converted ; and certainly those that use not to pray morning and evening, and upon all occasions, that acquaint not themselves with God, God is not their God. If he were their
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God, they would sock to liim, and be acquainted with him. The Spirit will teach them to go unto God as to a Father,
Again, We may know that God is our God by this, hij onr srparatuifi from all others, in ourseh-en and out of ourselves. There is a separation in our- selves, for there is the first separation. God, whose God he is, he giveth them his Spirit, and that like fire severeth the dross, and gathereth the fold together. And as heat in the body, that severeth good nourishment and separateth that which doth not nourish the body, so where the Spirit of God is, he works a separation between the flesh and the spirit. The Spirit will know what is spiritual, and will discern what is in us that is fleshly, and will join to spiritual things, and the Spirit will be one as it were. There will be a sweet agreement in the word, in the sacraments, in good company, in holy meditation and the like, and a separation from the flesh. A Christian knows that he is redeemed from himself, as far as he is naught.- We are redeemed from ourselves and our own base nature, as well as from hell and damnation. Therefore there is first a separation in ourselves from our- selves. It begins there. We have nothing to do with our corruptions. We will not own them.