Looking unto Jesus a view of the everlasting gospel, or, the souls eying of…

SECT. VI. Of loving Jesus in that respect.

6 WE must love Jesus, as carrying on this great work of our Salvation in a way of Covenant. I know Love is reckoned as the first and fundamental Passion of all the rest; some call it the first springing and out-going affection of the Soul; and therefore I might have put it in the first place, before Hope or Desire; but I choose rather to place it in this Method, as (me thinks) most agreeing (if not to the order of Nature, yet) to the Spiritual workings, as they appear in my Soul. When a Good is propounded' first I desire, and then I hope, and then I believe, and then I love. And some describing this spiritual love, they tell me, it is an holy disposition of the heart, ¹arising from Faith. But to let these niceties pass for a Spiders web (curious, but thin) certain it is that I cannot believe all these transactions of God, by Christ in a Covenant-way for me, but I must needs love that God, & love that Christ who hath thus firstly & freely loved my soul; ⟨p. 106⟩go on then O my Soul, put fire to the hearth, blow on thy little spark, set before thee God's Love, and thou canst not but love; and therein Consider, 1. The Time. 2. The Properties. 3. The Effects of Gods love. 1. For The Time; He Loved thee before the World was made: hast thou not heard? and wilt thou ever forget it? were not those ancient Loves from all eternity admirable, astonishing, ravishing Loves? 2, He Loved thee in the very beginning of the world: was not the promise expressed to Adam intended for thee? as thou sinnedst in his loins, so didst thou in his loins receive the Promise, It shall bruise thy head: And not long after, when God established his Covenant with Abraham and his Seed, wast not thou one of that Seed of Abraham? If ye are Christs, ²then are ye Abraham's Seed, and heirs according to the Promise. 3. He loves thee now more especially, not only with a Love of benevolence, as before; but with a love of complacency: not only hath he struck Covenant with Christ, with Adam, with Abraham in thy behalf, but particularly and personally with thy self; and O what Love is this? If a woman lately conceiving, love her future fruit; how much more doth she love it when it is born and embraced in her Arms? So if God loved thee before thou hadst a being, yea before the world or any Creature in it had a being, how much more now? O the height, and depth, and length and breadth of this immeasurable Love!