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

4. God in the Covenant gives thee Holiness and Sanctification. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your Idols will I cleanse you: this Holiness is our excellency in the eyes of Men and Angels: this is the Crown and Diadem upon the heads of Saints: whence David calls them by the name of excellent ones. Holiness is a Spirit of Glory, 1 Pet. 4.14. it is the delight of God:¹ as a Father delights himself in seeing his own Image in his Children, so God delights himself in the Holiness of his Saints: God loved them before with a love of benevolence and good-will, but now he loves them with a love of complacency:² The Lord takes pleasure in those that fear him; the Lord takes pleasure in his People. Holiness is the very Essence of God, the Divine Nature of God: O what is this, that God should put his own nature into thee? You are partakers of the Divine Nature. O what a love is this that God should put his own Life into thee? that he should enable thee to live the very same life that he himself lives? remember that piece of the Covenant, I will put my Law into their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.

1. 1Psal. 16.3. 1 Pet. 4.14.
2. 2Psal. 47.11. Psal. 149.4.

5. God in the Covenant gives thee the knowledge of himself: it may be thou knewest him before: but 'tis another kind of knowledge that God now gives thee than thou hadst before. When God teaches the Soul to know him, it looks on God with another eye: it sees now another beauty in God than ever it saw before: for all that knowledge that it had before, bred not love: only Covenant-knowledge of God works in the Soul a true Love of God. But how doth this Covenant-knowledge work this Love? I shall tell you my own experiences: I go through all the Virtues, Graces and Excellencies that are most amiable: and I look in the Scriptures, and there I find them in God alone: if ever I saw any excellency in any man, or in any Creature, I think with my self, there is more in God that made that Creature: He that made the Eye, shall not he see? And so he that made that Loveliness, is not he Lovely? Now when by these Mediums I have presented God thus lovely to my Soul, then I begin to feel my heart to warm. As when I conceive such an Idea of a man, that he is of such a carriage, behaviour, disposition, that he hath a mind thus, and thus framed, qualified and beautified, why then I love him; so when I apprehend the Lord aright, when I observe him as he is described in his Word; when I observe his doings, and consider his workings, and learn from all these together a right Idea, opinion or apprehension of him, then my will follows my understanding, and my affections follow them both; and I come to love God, and to delight in God. O here's a sweet knowledge! surely it was God's Love in Christ to put this blessed Article into the Covenant of grace; They shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.