The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb.…

Our distance is the lamentable fruit of our Apostasy; which inferreth, our fears, and estrangedness, and backwardness to draw near to God: It causeth our ignorance of him, and our false conceits of his will and works: it greatly hindereth both love and confidence: whereas the apprehension of our nearness to God will do much to cure all these evils. As it is the misery of the proud, that God looketh on them as afar off, that is, with strangeness, and abhorrence, and disdain, Psal. 138.6. And accordingly they shall be far off from the blessed ones hereafter, Luke 16.23. So it is the happiness of Believers to be nigh to God, in Jesus Christ, who condescended to be nigh to us; which is our preparation to be yet nearer to him for ever, Psal. 148.14. & 34.18. & 145.18. Ephes. 2.13. It giveth the soul more familiar thoughts of God, who seemed before to be at an inaccessible distance; which is part of the boldness of access and confidence mentioned, Ephes. 3.12. & 2.18. Rom. 5.2. Heb. 10.19. We may come boldly to the Throne of grace, Heb. 4.16. And it greatly helpeth us in the work of Love, to think how near God is come to us in Christ, and how near he hath taken the humane nature unto ⟨p. 194⟩him. When a sinner looketh at God only as in himself, and as he is estranged from the guilty, he is amazed and confounded, as if God were quite out of the reach of our love; but when he thinketh how he hath voluntarily come down into our flesh, that he might be man, and be familiar with man, and what a wonderful marriage the Divine Nature hath made with the humane, this wonderfully reconcileth the heart to God, and maketh the thoughts of him more sweet and acceptable. If the life of faith be a dwelling in God, and God in us, and a walking with God,