4. These things being premised, we may consider the especial nature of this divine love, although I acknowledge that the least part of what believers have an experience of in their own souls can be expressed at least by me. Some few things I shall mention, which may give us a shadow of it, but not the express image of the thing itself
(1.) Desire of union and enjoyment is the first vital act of this
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love. The soul, upon the discovery of the excellencies of God, ear- nestly desires to be united unto them — to be brought near unto tiat enjoyment of them whereof it is capable, and wherein alone it can find rest and satisfaction. This is essential unto all love; it unites the mind unto its object, and rests not but in enjoyment. God's love unto us ariseth out of the oveiilowing of his own immense goodness, whereof he will communicate the fruits and effects unto us. God is love; and herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his only-begotten Son. Yet also doth this love of God tend to the bringing of us unto him, not that he may enjoy us, but that he may be enjoyed by us. This answers the desire of enjoyment in us, Job xiv. 15: " Thou shalt call me;" (that is, out of the dust at the last day ;) " thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands." God's love will not rest, until it hath brought us unto himself But our love unto God ariseth from a sense of our own wants — our insuf- ficiency to come unto rest in ourselves, or to attain unto blessedness by our own endeavours. In this state, seeing all in God, and expect- ing all from the suitableness of his excellencies unto our rest and satisfaction, our souls cleave unto him, with a desire of the nearest union whereof our natures are capable. We are made for him, and cannot rest until we come unto him.
Our goodness extends not unto God ; we cannot profit him by any thing that we are, or can do. Wherefore, his love unto us hath not respect originally unto any good in ourselves, but is a gracious, free act of his own. He doeth good for no other reason but because he is good. Nor can his infinite perfections take any cause for their original actings without himself He wants nothing that he would supply by the enjoyment of us. But we have indigency in ourselves to cause our love to seek an object without ourselves. And so his goodness — with the mercy, grace, and bounty included therein — is the cause, reason, and object of our love. We love them for them- selves ; and because we are wanting and indigent, we love them with a desire of union and enjoyment — wherein we find that our satisfaction and blessedness doth consist. Love in general unites the mind unto the object — the person loving unto the thing or person beloved. So is it expressed in an instance of human, temporary, changeable love, — namely, that of Jonathan to David. His soul " was knit with the soul of David, and he loved him as his own soul," 1 Sam. xviii. 1. Love had so effectually united them, as that the soul of David was as his own. Hence are those expressions of this divine love, by " cleaving unto God, following hard after him, thirsting, panting after him," with the like intimations of the most earnest endeavours of our nature after union and enjoyment.
When the soul hath a view by faith (which nothing else can give
154 THE PERSON OF CHRIST.
it) of the goodness of God as manifested in Christ — that is, of the essential excellencies of his nature as exerting themselves in him — it reacheth after him with its most earnest embraces, and is restless until it comes unto perfect fruition. It sees in God the fountain of life, and would drink of the "river of his pleasures," Ps. xxxvi. 8, 9 — that in his " presence is fulness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures for evermore," Ps. xvi. 11. It longs and pants to drink of that fountain — to bathe itself in that river of pleasures ; and wherein it comes short of present enjoyment, it lives in hopes that when we " awake, it shall be satisfied with his likeness," Ps. xvii. 1 5. There is nothing grievous unto a soul filled with this love, but what keeps it from the full enjoyment of these excellencies of God. What doth so naturally and necessarily, it groans under. Such is our present state in the body, wherein, in some sense, we are " absent from the Lord," 2 Cor. v. 4, 8, 9. And what doth so morally, in the deviations of its will and affections, as sin — it hates and abhors and loathes itself for. Under the conduct of this love, the whole tendency of the soul is unto the enjoyment of God; — it would be lost in itself, and found in him, — nothing in itself, and all in him. Absolute compla- cency herein — that God is what he is, that he should be what he is, and nothing else, and that as such we may be united unto him, and enjoy him according to the capacity of our natures— is the life of divine love.