If God have kindled love in us, there is no such sweet estate. If it come from God, it will make us digest anything. Love it will put such life in us, that we shall want or suffer anything quietly. When we feel the love of God in us, that he loves us to immortality, that he loves us to life everlasting, to an inheritance immortal and undefiled, that he loves us in things that accompany salvation, peculiar blessings, this will swallow up all discouragements whatsoever, it will make us be in heaven before our time. The sense of the love of God, when it is shed into our hearts, as it is Rom. V. 5, what will it do ? It will make all tribulations, afflictions, crosses, and wants sweet unto us. ' The love of God,' saith he, * is shed into our hearts by the Spirit.' AVhen the Spirit of Christ Jesus is shed into our hearts, and witnesseth to us the love of God and of Christ, it makes us rejoice under hope, triumph in all tribulation, in all estates w^hatsoever, as he saith excellently, Rom. v. 3-5. But now to add one thing.
Quest. When doth Christ manifest his Father's love most to us by the Spii-it ?
Ans. I answer. This is not at all times alike. For it is with a Christian's soul as it is with the days of the year, or the seasons of the day. There is foul and fair, there is darkness and light, there is an intercourse, not always an even apprehension to us of God's love in Christ at all times. God sees reasons why it should not be bo. Among many there are these,
1. To sharpen our desires of heaven, which is a constant, immutable, unchangeable estate.
2. And likewise to make iis ivatchful, that when we have tasted of God's love we do not lose it.
3. To make its observe how we lose it at first, that so we may recover it again.
4. To be a correction to us liken-ise for our boldness to sin, and keeping carnal company, dc. Many ends God hath to withhold the taste and sense of his love to us, that we may fear him at one time as well as at another.
Quest. But when is it most of all ?
Ans. God's love is in us most u-hen ire stand most in need of it, in extremities. When no creature can help us, when we stand most in need of the manifestation of God's love, we have it. When do parents shew their love most of all ? Is it not in the extremities of their children ? Then they [bejmoan them, and pity them, whom before in the time of health they corrected sharply. But now they see the child is sick and distempered, now they shew all love to it. So when all comforts are taken away, then God's comforts come in place, and then especially ; for then they are known to be God's, who doth all things as shall be most for his glory. Then it is most for his glory to help when none else can, and then it is most for the
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comfort of a poor distressed Christian ; for then God comes, as it were, immediately, and doth help even to the ravishing of the soul. If a prince or a king, not sending any messenger, should come to a man immediately, in his own person, and should say to him, Fear not, you shall want nothing, you shall have the best encouragement I can, &c.. Oh what a comfort would it be to any man ! Yet what are all these to the sweet report of God's love in Jesus Christ ? When nothing else can help us, then God's Spirit comes immediately to us, and tells us. Be of good comfort, heaven is yours, God is yours, Christ is yours : all is yours to work for your good. And he doth not only feed them with promises, but enlargeth the soul with present comfort.
Who would therefore be discouraged from enduring anything for God's name, being cast into extremity, when that is the time specially to feel God's love more than at other times ? the sense and feeling whereof in Christ is the best estate in the world. There is no estate comparable to the sense of God's love. What makes heaven heaven, as it were, but the sense of his love ? of his sweet fatherly face in Christ shining upon us in his Son, and persuading of us that we are his sons ? Why, this divine comfort that comes from the favour of God, it is that that makes all nothing, commands all the creatures, rebukes all, Satan and all. The beams of such a rich and gracious God is above all discouragements ; for they are human or diabolical ; they go no higher ; and if they be discouragements from the sense of the wrath of God, from divine desertion, when God shews himself an enemy, yet when he discovers himself a friend and a father in Christ, they all vanish, even as a cloud, as a mist, before the sun. What are all earthly discouragements to the sense of God's" love in Christ ? Thus we see how God's love is manifested to us by manifesting of God's name by Christ, and when especially, and to what end : ' That thy love may be in them,' saith Christ.