[♦] Number ‘XIX’ skipped
For take but away earthly goods and evils, and you take away all hatred and malice. For they are the only causes of those base tempers.
He therefore that hath overcome the world, hath overcome all the occasions of envy and ill nature, and can pity, pray for and forgive all his enemies, who want less forgiveness from him than he hath received from his heavenly Father.
Let us here awhile contemplate the height and depth of Christian holiness, and that godlike spirit which it implies! And this alone might convince us, that to be Christians, we must be born again: we must so change our very natures, as to have no desire in our souls, but that of being like God.
And till we rejoice and delight only in God, we cannot have this love to our fellow-creatures.
We may therefore learn from this, as well as from what was observed before, that Christianity does not consist in doing no harm, nor in doing good, (as it is called) nor yet in any particular moral virtues, as some idly suppose; but in an entire change of our hearts, of all our natural tempers, and a life wholly devoted to God.
XXI. The same doctrine is farther taught by our blessed Saviour, when speaking of little children, he saith, Suffer them to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of God. Luke xviii. 16.
Now the peculiar condition of infants is such, that they have every thing to learn; they are to be taught by others what they are to hope and fear, and wherein their proper happiness consists.
And in this sense first we are to become as little children, to be as tho’ we had every thing to learn, and suffer ourselves to be taught, what we are to chuse, and what we are to avoid; to pretend to no wisdom of our own, but be ready to be taught of God, the only way of pursuing that happiness, which God in Christ proposes to us; and to accept it with such simplicity of mind as little children, who have nothing of their own to oppose to it.
XXII. But is this infant temper essential to Christianity? Does the kingdom of God consist only of those that have it? This is another undeniable proof that Christianity implies a new nature; such as having renounced the prejudices of life, the maxims of human wisdom, gives itself with a child-like submission and simplicity, to be entirely governed by the doctrines and Spirit of Christ.