The divine life in three treatises

II. To walk with God includeth our Dependence on him for our Receivings, and taking our Mercies as from his hand. To live as upon his Love and Bounty; as Children with their Father, that can look for nothing but from him. As the eye of a Servant, yea of a craving Dog, is upon his Masters face and hand, so must our eye be on the Lord, for the gracious supply of all our wants. If men give us any thing, we take them but as the Messengers of God, by whom he sendeth it us: We will not be unthankful unto men; but we thank them but for bringing us our Fathers gifts. Indeed man is so much more than a mere Messenger, as that his own Charity also is exercised in the gift. A mere Messenger is to do no more but obediently to deliver what is sent us, and he need not exercise any Charity of his own; and we owe him thanks only for his fidelity and labour, but only to his Master for the gift: But God will so far honour man, as that he shall be called also to use his Charity, and distribute his Masters gifts with some self-denial; and we owe him thanks, as under God; he partaketh in the Charity of the Gift; and as one child oweth thanks to another, who both in obedience to the Father, and Love to his Brother, doth give some part of that which his Father had given him before. But still it is from our Fathers Bounty, as the principal cause that all proceeds. Thus Jacob speaketh of God, Gen. 48. 15. [God, before whom my Fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the Lads, &c.] When he had mentioned his Father Abraham and Isaac's walking with God, he describeth his own by his dependence upon God, and receiving from him, acknowledging ⟨p. 180⟩him the God that had fed him, and delivered him all his life. Carnal men that live by sense, do depend upon inferior sensible causes; and though they are taught to pray to God, and thank him with their tongues, it is indeed their own contrivances and industry, or their visible benefactors, which their hearts depend upon and thank. It were a shame to them to be so plain as Pharaoh, and to say, Who is the Lord? or to speak as openly as Nebuchadnezzar, and say, Is not this great Babylon that I have built, by the might of my power▪ &c. D•n. 4 30. Yet the same Atheism and Self-idolizing is in their hearts, though it be more modestly and cunningly expressed.