Love to Christ, necessary to escape the curse at his coming

Secondly, This Love includes and implies the illumination of the Understanding, to see and discern this matchless goodness in Christ. Tho Knowledge be not (formaliter) Love, yet it is necessarily pre-requisite to it, for this Love is not blind: Ignoti nulla cupido; What we do not know, we cannot love, nor desire. John 4.10. — If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith unto thee, give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. You might love an UNSEEN Christ, but you cannot love an UNKNOWN Christ. 1 Pet. 1.8. whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, tho now ye see him not, yet believing, (and Faith includeth Knowledge) ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.

SEcondly, This Love includes and implies the illumination of the Ʋnderstanding, to see and discern this matchless goodness in Christ. Tho Knowledge be not (formaliter) Love, yet it is necessarily pre-requisite to it, for this Love is not blind: Ignoti nulla cupido; What we do not know, we cannot love, nor desire. John 4.10. — If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith unto thee, give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. You might love an UNSEEN Christ, but you cannot love an UNKNOWN Christ. 1 Pet. 1.8. whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, tho now ye see him not, yet believing, (and Faith includeth Knowledge) ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.

Therefore the Prophet speaking of graceless men, as disliking, not desiring, nor loving Christ, brings them in as saying, Isa. 53.2. — He hath no form, nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. How! no comeliness in him that is the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person! yes, there was, there is, but they had not eyes to see it; as if a blind man should say, the Sun is dark, because he hath no eyes to behold the light thereof. How! when we shall see him, there is no beauty in him that we should desire him! It was, because in seeing, they did not see: How should they look upon him with an eye of Love, when they did not discern him with an eye of Faith?