2. Let us inquire whether we have found, or do find, this joy in our own hearts. Is the remembrance of the closing of our hearts with Christ a song of loves unto us ? Truly, if our loves be earnest and intent upon other things, we find joy and refreshment in them; but are we not dead and cold to the thoughts of this great and ex- cellent advantage, of being espoused to Christ, as all believers are ? If so, it is but a sad evidence we are truly so espoused. Alas ! if a poor beggar, a deformed creature, should be taken into the espousals of a great prince, would she not be sensible of it ? We are poor, deformed, woful, sinful, polluted creatures; and for us to be taken into this relation with Jesus Christ ! — where are our hearts ? Why do not we rejoice in the Lord with joy unspeakable, and full of glory? Is it not because Christ hath not our whole hearts? because we are not so entirely with him and for him in our affections as becomes this rela- tion? because the world hath too much hold upon us ? Shall God rejoice, and Christ rejoice, — shall it be a song of loves to God and Christ that we are brought into this relation, and these dull hearts of ours be no farther affected with it ? We ought to be ashamed to think how little we are concerned in this so great a privilege, — how little lifted up above the world, and alienated from the world ; if, in- deed, we are partakers of this mercy.
II. The second observation from its being a song of loves, is this, — that there is no love like to the love between Christ and the souls of believers. There are flaming loves in some to their lusts, — in others to the world, that even devour them ; but yet I will say again, upon
468 THE EXCELLENCY OF CHRIST.
ten thousand accounts, there is no love like to the love between Christ and the souls of believers.
Should we go to speak now of the love of Christ, on the one side, it is an ocean, — we cannot fathom it. The best act of our souls towards Christ's love is admiration, astonishing admiration, till the heart is quite overwhelmed with it,— till our thoughts and understandings are, as it were, lost; the soul is taken out of itself, and laid in the dust as nothing, to be swallowed up in a holy contemplation of the unspeak- able, inconceivable love of Jesus Christ.
I will name three heads of it, that may help us, in this admira- tion, to see that it is a love that is inimitable : the fiery loves of men, after this world and their lusts, are not to be named the same day with it: —
1. Consider it in its condescension. Now, I think we shall all confess that this love is inimitable, because nothing but infinite, divine power and wisdom could work such an effect as was the condescen- sion of the Son of God, — out of his love to take our nature upon him, to become flesh as we are; and God never wrought it, nor will, but in that instance, to all eternity: and therefore, this love hath the pre- eminence above all other loves whatsoever. In Phil. ii. 6-8, it is there set forth, where he unites those things that are set at an infinite distance of being. He stoops so low, that he saith, Ps. xxii. 6, " I am a worm, and no man;" he comes to the lowest condition mankind can be reduced unto in this condescension : and surely this hath a pre-eminence above all other loves whatsoever.
2. The love of Christ was manifested in his suffering in that con- dition. You know what he suffered, and what he suffered for. He suffered to bear the guilt of our sins, so to take away the wrath of God ; he suffered to wash away the filth of our sins, so to take away shame and confusion from our souls; he suffered to redeem us from the world, poor captive creatures as we were, that we might be his own : and therefore, God gives us the type of it in the prophet Hosea, chap, iii, by a harlot; and Christ bought us when we were harlots with the world (our hearts going after sin and Satan), that we might be his property. He suffered for us, so as to bear the guilt of our ini- quities, that there may be no wrath from God upon us. "I will pay," saith Christ, " what I never took away." " For a good man," it is pos- sible, " some would even dare to die," Rom. v. 7; but saith he, " Here is love, Christ died for us when we were sinners, when we were ene- mies." " He loved us, and washed us in his own blood," that we may be purified from the filth of our sins ; he loved us, and redeemed us out of every kindred and nation in the world. Here lay all miser}^; — the guilt of sin, that rendered us obnoxious to the curse of God ; and the filth of sin, that made us odious to God, and kept us under the