Moses his choice with his eye fixed upon Heaven, discovering the happy condition of…

Seventhly, ways of godliness are the ways of pleasure, because the principles of them all is love: whatsoever ¹comes from love, hath much delight and pleasure, and the principle of every way of God is love: God would have nothing from us but out of love, and that may carry us unto love of God himself, and that love by which the heart is carried unto God, is the chariot of love: There is a sweet expression for this that we have in Cant. 3. 9, 10. the estate of the Church is set out by Solomons making himself a Chariot of the wood of Lebanon: He made the Pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love. A strange expression, that the midst of Chariot should be paved with love: the chariot whereby Christ does carry his people up and down in the world, and bring them to himself, is such a Chariot, as the ⟨p. 178⟩midst thereof is paved with love. At the 7. ver. he speaks of the bed of Solomon, and here of his Chariot; Divines interpret these two places, his bed to set out the rest and glory that the Saints shall have with Christ eternally; and the Chariot of Solomon, that is, those ways wherein Christ carries his people up and down in the world to himself, and the midst thereof is love; there must needs then be delight in those ways.

1. 17.

Eighthly, the ways of God are full of pleasantness, ¹because they are such as are delightful to God: Now they must be pleasant, when they are such as God takes delight in, they are such as the Church knows Christ takes much delight in. What admirable expressions hath that Book of the Canticles, of Gods delight in the graces of his people, and in the ways of godliness? Now there is no man loves a friend, but accounts every good thing that his friend loves, to be a double good: Now that which God himself accounts pleasantness, and is his delight, must needs be the delight and pleasure of a gracious heart, because there is so much nearness between God and a gracious heart.