Let us sum up all in this,—whatsoever grace or gift is in Christ Jesus, whatsoever pre-eminence he hath above angels and men, whatsoever he purchased, he purchased by his obedient life and patience in death. There is nothing of all that but the soul may be admitted to fellowship in it, by its union with him by faith. Have him, and have all that he hath. Faith makes him yours, and all that he hath is a consequential appendix to himself. The word of the gospel offers him freely to you, with all his benefits, interests, and advantages. O that our hearts may be induced to open to him!
Now being thus united to Jesus Christ, that which I would persuade next to is a personal communion, that is, a suitable entertainment of him, a conjunction of [pg 292] your soul to him by love, and a conspiracy of all your endeavours henceforth to please him. It is certain, that true friendship is founded on a conjunction and harmony of souls by affection, by which they cease to be two, and become in a manner one; for love makes a kind of transport of the soul into another, and then all particular and proper interests are drowned in oblivion,—no more mine and thine, but he makes an interchange, mine thine, and thine mine, my heart thine, and thy honour mine. Now, certain it is, that in this God hath given us a rare pattern, and leads the way; for he declares his love to the world in the rarest effects of it, which give the clearest demonstrations possible,—“God so loved the world that he sent his Son.” And you have the most infallible argument of the Son's love,—“Greater love hath no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends,”—but he for his enemies. Now, then, you see how the heart of God and his Son Jesus Christ is fixed from everlasting on the sons of men, so unalterably, and so fully set towards them, that it hath transported the Son out of his own glory, and brought him down in the state of a servant. But it is not yet known what particular persons are thus fixed upon, until that everlasting love break out from underground, in the engagement of thy soul's love to him, and till he have fastened this chain, and set this seal on thy heart, which makes thee impatient to want him. Thou knowest not the seal that was on his heart from eternity. But now the love of a believer being the result of his love,—this is it that is the source and spring of constant communion, and it vents itself in converse with God, and daily entertainment of him in our spirits and ways. There is a keeping of company with him in prayer and meditation, and all the ordinances. There is a communication and familiar conference of the heart with him, either in thinking on him or pouring out our requests to him. There is a mutual and daily intercourse and correspondence of that soul with God, in answering his word by obedience, in praying to him, and receiving answers from him, and then returning answer again with a letter of thanks and praise, as it were. These are the ways to increase that love of God, and kindle it up to a higher flame, and it being thus increased, it gathers in all the endeavours and abilities of the soul, and sets all on fire, as a sweet smelling sacrifice to please him. It is henceforth the great study of the soul to remove all things that are offensive to him, for the entertaining of sin, his enemy, is most inconsistent with this true fellowship and friendship. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me,” Psal. lxvi. 18. This will mar that sweet correspondence in prayer and praise, for it is a breach of peace and covenant to regard and maintain his enemies. Therefore the soul that loves God will study to compose itself in all things to his good pleasure, as well as his love, that is strong as death, puts him upon a careful watching, to do all things for our profit, and so this takes in our whole carriage and walking, in religious approaches, or in common businesses, to have this as our great design—conversing with God and walking to all well pleasing.
Now, if we were once enrolled in this blessed fellowship with the Father and the Son then it follows, as a fruit and result of this, that we should have fellowship one with another. And truly the more unity with God, the more unity among ourselves: for he is the uniting, cementing principle, he is the centre of all Christians, and as lines, the farther they are from the centre, the farther distant they are from one another, so the distance and elongation of souls from God sets them at further distance amongst themselves. The nearer we come every one to Jesus Christ, the nearer we join in affection one to another, and this is imported in that of Christ's prayer, “That they may be one in us,” John xvii. 21, 22. No unity but in that one Lord, and no perfect unity but in a perfect union with him. I would exhort to study this more,—to have fellowship one with another, as members of the same body, by sympathy, by mutual helping one another in spiritual and temporal things. Even amongst Christians that live obscurely in a city, or in a village, there is not that harmonious agreement and consent of hearts, that contention and plea of love, of gentleness and forbearance, who shall exercise most of that, but there are many jealousies, heart burnings, grudgings, strifes, evil speakings, &c., to the stumbling of others, and the weakening of yourselves, which certainly argue that ye are much carnal, and walk as men, and that the love of God and fellowship with him is waxed cold, and is languished and dead, &c.
Sermon VIII.
1 John i. 4.—“And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.”
All motions tend to rest and quietness. We see it daily in the motions below, and we believe it also of the circular revolutions of the heavens above, that there is a day coming in which they shall cease, as having performed all they were appointed for. And as it is in things natural, so it is in things rational in a more eminent way. Their desires, affections, and actions, which are the motions and stretches of the soul towards that it desires and apprehends as good, tend of their own nature, and are directed by the very intention of the soul to some rest and tranquillity, some joy and contentation of spirit. If other things that have no knowledge have their centre of rest, how much more must man, who is an understanding creature, have it by the ordination and appointment of God! But there is this wide difference in the point of capacity of happiness between man and other creatures, that they, whatsoever excellent virtues or properties they have, yet know them not themselves, and so can neither enjoy what excellency themselves have, nor have use of what is in others. For to what purpose is it to shine forth, if there be no eye to see? What advantage hath the rose in its fragrancy, if it cannot smell itself? That which is not perceived, is as if it were not. And therefore it is an evident testimony, that all these visible things were created, not for themselves, but for man's sake, who knows them, can use them, and enjoy them. Here is, then, the peculiar capacity that God hath given to man,—to discern and know what he seeks, what he hath, and possesses, that so he may be able to enjoy it, or use it, according to the nature of it. This is a great point of God's image and conformity with him, whose infinite blessedness and joy riseth from that perfect comprehension and intuitive beholding of himself, and his own incomprehensible riches. So then, man's happiness or misery must depend upon this,—both what the soul fixeth upon, and what it apprehendeth to be in it. For if that eternal and universal good, the all-fulness of God, be the centre of the soul's desires and endeavours, and there be apprehended and discovered in God that infinite excellency and variety of delights which nothing else can afford so much as a shadow of, then there cannot but result from such a conjunction of the soul's apprehension, suitable to the fulness of God, and of the excellency and goodness of God, suitable to the desires of the soul, such a rest and tranquillity, such joy and satisfaction, as cannot choose but make the soul infinitely happier than the enjoyment of any other thing could do.
This being the thing, then, which all men's desires naturally tend unto, this tranquillity and perfect satisfaction of the heart being that which carries all men's hearts after it, and that which men seek for itself, and which they seek in all other things, the great misery of man is, that he mistakes the way to it, and seeks it where it is not to be found. The generality of men are so far degenerated, both from the impression of a divine majesty, and the sense of an immortal being within themselves, that they imagine to content and ease their own hearts in these outward, inconstant, perishing things, and so their life is spent in catching at shadows, in feeding on the wind, in labouring in the fire. There is nothing so plentifully satisfies our expectations as can quit the cost, and recompense the expense of our labour, toil, grief, and travail about it. There is nothing therefore but a continual, restless agitation of the heart from one thing to another, and that in a round, circling about, from one thing that now displeases or disappoints to things that were formerly loathed, as a sick man turns him from one side to another, or changes beds often, and at length returns, expecting to find some ease where he lay at first. And it may be judged that all circular motions are eternal, and so they can never be supposed to attain their end,—that is, rest and tranquillity. Therefore a soul thus carried in a round, by the vain imaginations of his heart, is likely never to settle and find solid rest and peace. Nay, how is it possible that they can give that tranquillity and contentation to the heart and soul of man, that are so utterly in their natures disproportioned to it, both because they are only suited to the senses, and [pg 294] likewise for that they are changeable? Now the soul is framed with a higher capacity, and can no more be satiated with visible things, than a man that is hungry can be satisfied with gold; and besides, it is immortal, and must have something to survive all the changes of time, and therefore is likely to rest nowhere but in that which hath eternal stability. Now, though these things cannot truly fill the heart, yet they swell the belly, like the east wind, or like the prodigal's husks, fill it with wind, which causeth many torments and distempers in the soul; and though they cannot give ease, yet they may be as thorns to prick and pierce a man through with many sorrows, as our Saviour speaks. So that there is no more wisdom or gain in this, than in gathering an armful of thorns, and enclosing and pressing hard unto them,—the more hardly and strongly we grip them, the more grievously they pierce us; or as if a man would flee into a hedge of thorns in a tempest,—the further he thrusts into it, he is the worse pricked: and that which he is fallen into is worse than that he fleeth from. I am sure all your experiences give a harmonious testimony to this, that there is no solid, permanent, constant, and equable heart-joy and contentation in all the fancied and imaginary felicities that this world adores. There is nothing of these things, that is not lesser, and lower in actual possession, nor in the first apprehension of them afar off. Nothing in them answers either our desires or expectations; and therefore, instead of peace and tranquillity, they breed more inward torment and disquiet, because of that necessary and inevitable disappointment that attends them. Therefore the apostle passeth all these things in silence, when he is to write of purpose, to give a fulness of joy; for he knows that in them there is neither that joy, nor that fulness of joy he would wish for from them; but it is other things he writes for this end.
Now, indeed, there hath been some wiser than others, that have their apprehension far above the rest of mankind, and have laboured to frame some rules and precepts to lead man into this true rest and tranquillity. And truly, in this they have done much to discover the vanity and madness of the common practice of men, and to draw man from sensible and outward things, to things invisible and spiritual. Yet there is a defectiveness in all the rules that natural reason can reach unto. There is some crookedness withal adheres to them, which shows our departure from our original. There are many excellent discourses of morality in heathen writings, which may be very subservient to a Christian, and useful to the composing and settling of his mind, amidst all the fluctuations and uncertainties of this world. They may come well in as subsidies and guards to a Christian's heart, to preserve that peace and joy it hath from God, and keep out the ordinary tumultuous passions that disturb the most part of men. But here is the lamentable failing, that while they call a man off things without, as adventitious, they lead him but into his own spirit within, as if he could there find that rest in the very enjoyment of his poor, miserable, wretched self. But Christ Jesus calls us into our own spirits, not to dwell there. For O what a loathsome and irksome habitation is a defiled heart and a guilty conscience! But rather, that finding nothing of that joy and refreshment within, we may then freely and fully forsake ourselves, as well as the world without, and transport into God in Christ, the only habitation of joy and delight, that being filled with anguish from the world, and from ourselves, we may more willingly divorce from both, and agree to join unto Jesus Christ, and to embrace him in our hearts, who is the only Fountain of life and joy, who had no other errand and business from heaven, but to repair man's joy,—as grievous a breach as any in the creation,—a thing as much missed and sought after as any thing, yea, sought after in all things that are sought. John xv. 11. “These things I have spoken to you, that your joy may be full.” Therefore the apostle propounds this as the end of his writing on this subject,—the word of life; these things write I “that your joy may be full;” and the way to attain this fulness of joy, he expressed in the former verse,—by fellowship with the Father and the Son.