The divine life in three treatises

3. The presence of God, affordeth the most powerful motives unto Good, to those that walk with him. There is no grace in man, but what is from God, and may find in God its proper object or incentive. As God is God, above the creature transcendently and infinitely in all perfections, so all the motives to goodness which are fetched from him, are transcendently above all that may be fetched from any creature. He that liveth always by the fire or in the Sun-shine, is likest to be warm. He that is most with God, will be most like to God in Holiness. Frequent and serious converse with him, doth most deeply imprint his communicable attributes on the heart, and make there the clearest impression of his image. Believers have learned by their own experience, that one hours serious prayer, or meditation, in which they can get nigh to God in the Spirit, doth more advance their grace, then any help that the creature can afford them.

3. The presence of God, affordeth the most powerful motives unto Good, to those that walk with him. There is no grace in man, but what is from God, and may find in God its proper object or incentive. As God is God, above the creature transcendently and infinitely in all perfections, so all the motives to goodness which are fetcht from him, are transcendently above all that may be fetcht from any creature. He that liveth alwaies by the fire or in the Sun-shine, is likest to be warm. He that is most with God, will be most like to God in Holiness. Frequent and serious converse with him, doth most deeply imprint his communicable attributes on the heart, and make there the clearest impression of his image. Believers have learned by their own experience, that one hours serious prayer, or meditation, in which they can get nigh to God in the Spirit, doth more advance their grace, then any help that the creature can afford them.

4. Moreover those that walk with God, have not only a Powerful, but an universal incentive for the actuating and increasing of every grace. Knowledge, and faith, and fear, and love, and trust, and hope, and obedience, and zeal, and all ⟨p. 269⟩have in God their proper objects and incentives: One Creature may be useful to us in one thing, and another in another thing; but God is the most effectual mover of all his graces: and that in a holy harmony and order. Indeed he hath no greater Motive to draw us to Love him, and Fear him, and Trust him, and Obey him, than himself. It is life eternal to know him in his Son,