Clavis cantici, or, An exposition of the Song of Solomon

Next, In this verse we have her carriage set down, when she hath found him; She doth not then lay-by diligence, as if all were done, but is of new taken up, with as great care to retain and improve this mercy, as before she was solicitous to attain it: Whether a believer want or have; whether he be seeking or enjoying, there is still matter of exercise for him in his condition. This her care to retain Christ (which is the fourth thing in the first part of this Chapter) is laid down in three steps. 1. She endeavours to hold him, that she again lose not the ground she had gained. 2. She seeks to have other members of that same Church getting good of Christ also: and these two are in this verse. 3. When his presence is brought back to the Church and Ordinances, her care is to admonish; yea, charge that he be entertained well with them, lest they should provoke him to be gone, vers. 5.

Next, In this verse we have her carriage set down, when she hath found him; She doth not then lay-by diligence, as if all were done, but is of new taken up, with as great care to retain and improve this mercy, as before she was solicitous to attain it: Whether a believer want or have; whether he be seeking or injoying, there is still matter of exercise for him in his condition. This her care to retain Christ (which is the fourth thing in the first part of this Chapter) is laid down in three steps. 1. She endeavours to hold him, that she again lose not the ground she had gained. 2. She seeks to have other members of that same Church getting good of Christ also: and these two are in this verse. 3. When his presence is brought back to the Church and Ordinances, her care is to admonish; yea, charge that he be entertained well with them, lest they should provock him to be gone, vers. 5.

The first step then of her care is, I held him and would not let him go, as a wife having found her husband, whom she much longed-for, hangs on him lest he depart again, so doth she; which is an expression both of her fear, love, care and faith. This holding of Christ, and not letting him go, imports, 1. A holy kind of violence, more than ordinary, wherewith the Bride strives and wrestles to retain him. 2. That Christ (as it were) waits for the believers consent in this wrestling, as he saith to Jacob,