and to thy glorious Father so that I poore worme dust dung even I might be one even as thou art in the Father and the Father in thee that I might be one in both Ob height depth bredth and length of thy love how incomprehensible is thy grace how heavenly my consolation And how hast thou wrought all this for me O my God my Lord my gracious Redeemer where shall I seek words or thoughts to set out this mercy wonderfull is thy love in all the rest and that my soule knoweth right well but in this how farre beyond all possibility of apprehension all expressions of wonder That my miserable mortality might be clothed upon and I be borne anew in the divine nature thou didst strip thy selfe of those robes of divine Majesty in which thou knewest it to be no robberie to be equall to God and wast borne in my weake nature and found in the servileforme of my fleshly infirmities Thou gavest thy body thou gavest thy soule for my sinne thou wast bound thou wast mockt thou wast scourged condemned nailed and dead on the crosse Thou oh mirrhor oh infinite miracle of mercy thou the love of the Father didst taste not onely gall and vineger but even wrath hel for me the child of wrath and brand of hell Oh my dead soule canst thou see all this and want coÌ„fort Can one cup of wine cheere thy heart and shall not such fruit of such a Vine fill thee with joyes unspeakeable and glorious Oh what is thy portion wheÌ„ such is the price what thine inheritance when such the purchase Rejoyce then oh my soule rejoyce evermore in such a Lord and such a love for whatsoever thou hast lost thou hast gained Christ lost but dung with him thou receivest whatsoever is truly good and partest for him with nothing but what in some respect is evill Have I lost Parents Children friends lands livings yet I have not lost Christ nor my Lord will not lose mee If I lose my life with the rest yet shall I not lose the life of Christ he is my life hee in life and death is my advantage Let Father Mother Brother Sister Wife Children forsake and hate me yet the Lord Jesus will never leave me never cease to love me and hee is better than a world of friends and kindred Oh my Lord to be in heaven without thee were exile but a sicke bed a loathsome prison with thee is an heavenly Paradise Why then should I be troubled seeing thou hast made mee to dwell in thee by faith and thou vouchsafest to dwel in me by thy blessed Spirit Onely thou my Saviour who hast loved mee to death make me ever to live in thee and in thy love thou who hast dyed for mee plant thy death in mee and burie my corruptions in thy grave Tho who wast crucified for me crucifie the world to me the flesh in mee and graft in mee the life of thy resurrection make oh make me to reâ—oyce in the fellowship of thy sufferings and in thy good time change this crowne of thornes into that of glory CHAP. XXI Comforts which flow from the holy Ghost AGaine with those former drawn from the two first persons of the blessed Trinity annexe the consolations of Gods holy Spirit who dwelleth in the faithfull Sweete and excellent are these comforts Neither is it in vaine that in specialty the holy Ghost is called the Comforter as being that person who is sent by the Father and the Sonne by himselfe to worke this effect in us Let us then remember that this blessed Spirit doth not onely dwell in us by his gifts faith love c. but personally which is evidently expressed Ephes. 1.13,14 You are sealed with the holy Spirit of promise which or rather who 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Greeke cannot in ordinarie construction of Grammar agree with that of Spirit the one being of the neuter the other of the masculine but the gender purposely changed against use to shew that the person of the blessed Spirit is with us in us and so continues and stayes as an earnest of our inheritance and our full redemption in which respect wee are called his Temples 1 Corinth 6. 19. Thus also when the holy Ghost is promised us Ioh. 16. 13 14. our Saviour alters the gender and useth the masculine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hee the Spirit of Truth and againe he not it shall glorifie me to shew that the very third person of Trinitie is given us yet hee dwels not in us as sometime in the Temple made with hands but as the soule rather dwels in the body so doth the holy Ghost dwel in the faithfull quickening sustaining leading them on to the rest of their soules and Lieging with us Look as in the body the hart and Head produce life sense and motion by the vitall and animall spirits which being sent by them and diffused into every particular member quicken and move it So the Spirit of Christ flowing from him into his mysticall bodie fils every part with life sense and motion It is the Spirit saith our Saviour so his Apostle that quickens Therefore is he called our life and they that live in the Spirit walk also or move in the Spirit There is also spirituall sense a taste whereby wee perceive the sweetnesse of God of the grace of God and the word of his grace whereby the spirituall man savours the things of the Spirit a spirituall touch and tendernesse when the Lord takes away the heart of stone and gives an heart of flesh a spirituall eye whereby the spirituall man discernes all things a spirituall hearing delighting in the Word and promise of God more than any musicall harmony a spirituall sent whereby the verie name of Christ is as an Oyntmeâ—t powred forth Now the holy Ghost doth not onely worke this comfort in us by faith giviâ—g us power to apprehend things absent or to come but applieth them more immediately by this verie sense so that the soule shall even feele with joy unspeakeable the consolations of God flow into it Thus the blessed Spirit doth first speake peace unto us from God and then gives oâ—r spirits an open eare to heare his voyce and know our peace that so we may come to finde our selves children of God and heires with Christ. Thus he doth not only spread a Table for us and there sets forth that Bread of heaven in the holy Ordinances of God but gives us power to eate making them more sweete to us than the hony-combe and thus brings us on to more fulnesse of growth and eternall life thorough Christ. Hence commeth it that a Christian can rejoyce in tribulation because this holy spirit sheds abroad in our harts that love of God which is better than life and gives us so palpable a sense of it that it beareth downe all other feelings before it See
is truly good especially when longing after thee thy righteousnes in this barren and thirstie land my soule panteth and fainteth for thy presence and for that holy Spirit wâ—ereby I call upon thee Abba Father Oh how shouldst thou not according to thy Covenant delight in me to doe me good and as thou hast promised rejoyce over me to give me my hearts desire Now then thou my gracious Father who art more ready to give thy Spirit than wee to aske him even that Spirit of Prayer and supplication Thou who hast commanded Call upon mee in the time of trouble and hast promised I will heare thee Heare now rhe supplication of thy servant and when thou hearest be mercifull Thou who commandest Seeke my face and hast given thy servant an heart to answer Lord thy face will I seeke oh hide not thy face from me nor cast thy creature away in displeasure Yea oh my God quickeÌ„ thy servant in the sense of my want and miserie and in the knowledge of thy powerfull grace and mercy alwaies to pray and never to faint So though I walke in the midst of troubles thou wilt revive me and perfect that which concerneth me CHAP. XVI Comforts arising immediatelie from God himselfe And first in generall LOoke as a vessell which is coutinually driven downe by the current of any River will at length fall into the maine Sea which being the common store-house of waters both supplieth the want and receiveth the over-plus of lesser streames So when our soules have beene carryed along within these narrower bankes of comforts they will easily bee wafted into that wide Ocean whence every consolation floweth and into it ebbeth againe and emptyeth it selfe Certainly the final comfort of a Christian soule into which all the rest are resolved is God himselfe infinit in all goodnes unchangeable in his love and therefore an unexhausted Well a standing overflowing fountaine of infinite consolations Hence as hee challengeth this title and calleth himselfe The God of patience and consolation nay The God of all comfort so his faithfull servants from their experience confesse him every where their strength joy portion inhâ—ritance their Rocke Towre Shield Fortresse c. Well might David rejoyce and glory in the Lord My flesh saith hee faileth and my heart also but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever How strong and invincible was that faith and by it that comfort of Iob Although he kill me yet will I trust in him and hee shall beé my salvation And how answerable was their practice to this their profession Doe but consider what wee read of these holy men David being driven from his native Countrey and from his Fathers house in disgrace with the Court and in displeasure nay deadly hatred of his Prince deprived of all his deserved honours the just recompence of his noble service by the malice and tyrannie of Saul and which he accounted farre above the rest the greatest miserie banished from the holy Assemblies and the house of God affamished and even starved for want of that Word which hee preferred above all the earth not onely thrust out from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord but by the rage of his Adversaries inforced to seeke Sanctuary in idolatous Countries where hee might have beene seduced to serve other gods had yet at length hid his head under the protection of an Heathenish King and found that favour from an enemy a Heathen which he had lost among his friends and Gods people There he placed himselfe in a forraigne City with his wives and some few loose men who for their owne advantage had followâ—d him But when hee retireth thither he findeth the City burned his wives and all his substance the wives children and all the goods of all his followers carried away Nothing now was left him but his souldiers and they grieved and vexed at the heart for their losse take all against him conspire intend and speake to stone him Look out now into all the world and see where you can finde upon earth one spark of comfort for this Saint of God yet even then when he was utterly desolate and forlorne he could send up his dejected soule to heaven and there did finde and feele infinite comfort in the Lord his God See the 1 Sam chap. 30. from the 1. to the 7. vers Doe we not find the like nay more in Iob His estate was lost and for outward blessings goods and children hee was stript as naked as he was borne His wife left him but as a snare His friends come to comfort him but through the craft of Satan shake him more thau all the rest of his afflictions His life was yet whole in his body but his body broken and wounded with sore plagues from the crowne of the head to the sole of the foot But yet the Spirit of a man will sustaine his infirmitie True but a wounded spirit who can beare The inner-man embroyled by Satan and terrors of the spirit joyned to griefes and troubles of the body without plagues continually renued changes and armies of sorrowes set against him within and without the arrowes of the Almightie shot at him sticking in him and their venime drinkâ—ng up his spirit the terrours of God fighting against him made him the most afflicted and if it were possible for the faithfull to be miserable the most wretched man on earth But even then his poore soule over-wrastled with temptations cast downe within him and almost smothered with this load and heape of afflictions could lift up the head to search out the Redeemer and find unspeakable comfort in him I am sure my Redeemer liveth and I shall see God in my flesh c. What was left to those three royal young men Dan. 3. in that burning anger of the Tyrant and that seven-fold heated furnace What to the Apostle persecuted by Jewes disgraced by Heathens stoned by the consent of both and as a dead carrion dragged and cast out of the City yea too little esteemed nay judged by his owne children in the Spirit yet were they then even full of comfort in God Oh consider with what noble courage those three noble Captives defie the roaring of that Lyon even the fiercenesse of that proud King and tell him to his Beard Our God can and will deliver us out of thine hand With what Christian valour could that great Champion of the Lord Jesus compassed in and pressed downe with all the most bitter persecutions of this world cry out Victory and sing his Triumph not onely saying with the Heathen How light are all these things how slightlie doe I weigh them nay These light momentarie afflictions cause to us an excelling excellent eternall weight of glory 2 Cor. 4.17 but In all these things wee are more than Conquerors through him that loveth us So right is it oh