Two sermons: preached by that faithful and reverend divine, Richard Sibbes, D.D. and sometimes…Two sermons: preached by that faithfull and reverend divine, Richard Sibbes, D.D. and sometimes…

THE SPOUSE, Her earnest desire after Christ.

THE SPOVSE, Her earnest desire after Christ.

CANT. 1. •. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better then wine.

CANT. 1. •. Let him kisse mee with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better then wine.

THE HOLY Ghost is pleased here to condescend to ¹our infirmities, and that we might help our selves, in our spiritual ⟨p. 2⟩estate, by our bodily; he speaketh here of heavenly things after an earthly manner, and in a comfortable mystery. As in other places the Holy Ghost sets out the joys of Heaven by a sweet Ban quet: so here he sets out the union that we have with Christ, by the union of the Husband with the wife. And that we might the better understand what this union is, he condescends to our weak capacities, that we might see that in a glass of resemblance which we (through our corruptions) cannot discern in the own nature. This book therefore is nothing else but a shadowed demonstration and setting ⟨p. 3⟩forth of the love of Christ to his Church, and of the love of the Church to Christ under certain earthly similitudes so familiarly and naturally, that the Jews took, and do take great scandal at it, and therefore would not have any to read it, till they should come (at least) to the age of thirty years; and this, least they thereby should be tempted to wantonness and foul incontinency; where in they should seem wiser then God himself, and teach the holy Ghost to speak. But the Holy Ghost is pleased thus by corporal, to set out spiritual things, which are of a higher strain, that by some deeper thoughts, and