3. Love to God is the only self-emptying, and satisfying Grace (o)Love, 'tis self's egress, 'tis a kind of Pilgrimage from self: he that loves is absent from himself, thinks not of himself, provides not for himself. But oh how great is the gain of renouncing our selves, and thereby receiving God and our selves! we are as it were dead to our selves, and live to God; nay more, by love we live in God(p); God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him. By Faith we live upon God; by Obedience we live to God; but by Love we live in God. It is herein alone that we can give something like a carnal (though 'tis indeed an highly spiritual) answer to Nicodemus his question(q), How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mothers Womb, and be born? We have our Soul• immediately from the Father of Spirits; by Regeneration we return to God again, from whom by Sin we are estranged; and by love we live in him in some little resemblance to the Child's living in the Mother's womb: what the mother loves, the child loves; what the mother longs for, the child longs for; in the mothers health, the child is well; the child lives there in a far different manner, from how it lives in the world; though it can't stir out of its enclosure, yet it never cries nor complains of it's Imprisonment: So the Soul that entirely loves God, hates what God hates, and loves what God loves; its life is far above the life of others, and it desires no greater liberty than ⟨p. 34⟩to be (as it were) imprisoned in God; to have no will of its own, no one motion but what God graciously concurs in; yet 'tis so far from esteeming this a restraint, that it counts it the highest happiness of its imperfect state; he feels a sweetness in that, beyond what the Heathen that spake it, ever thought of, in God we live, move, and have our being.
3. Love to God is the onely self-emptying, and satisfying Grace (o)Love, 'tis self's egress, 'tis a kind of Pilgrimage from self: he that loves is absent from himself, thinks not of himself, provides not for himself. But oh how great is the gain of renouncing our selves, and thereby receiving God and our selves! we are as it were dead to our selves, and live to God; nay more, by love we live in God(p); God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him. By Faith we live upon God; by Obedience we live to God; but by Love we live in God. It is herein alone that we can give something like a carnal (though 'tis indeed an highly spiritual) answer to Nicodemus his question(q), How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mothers Womb, and be born? We have our Soul• immediately from the Father of Spirits; by Regeneration we return to God again, from whom by Sin we are estranged; and by love we live in him in some little resemblance to the Child's living in the Mother's womb: what the mother loves, the child loves; what the mother longs for, the child longs for; in the mothers health, the child is well; the child lives there in a far different manner, from how it lives in the world; though it can't stir out of its enclosure, yet it never cries nor complains of it's Imprisonment: So the Soul that entirely loves God, hates what God hates, and loves what God loves; its life is far above the life of others, and it desires no greater liberty than ⟨p. 34⟩to be (as it were) imprison'd in God; to have no will of its own, no one motion but what God graciously concurs in; yet 'tis so far from esteeming this a restraint, that it counts it the highest happiness of its imperfect state; he feels a sweetness in that, beyond what the Heathen that spake it, ever thought of, in God we live, move, and have our being.
- (o)Nieremb. p. 322, &c. spa•si•.
- (p)1 John 4.16.
- (q)Joh. 3.4.
