The real Christian, or, A treatise of effectual calling wherein the work of God…

Sin and the creature are never known as they are, till God be known in some measure as he is: And proportionable to the knowledge of God, the high and honourable conceptions of God, so is our knowledge, and the conceptions we have of the vanity of the creature, the evil of sin, and that misery into which we have brought our selves; the Text is plain and full for this purpose, 3 Epist. John ver 11. He that doth evil hath not seen God. See God? Can a man see God? Yes that he must, or else will never be drawn off from sin: Moses endured, as seeing him who is invisible, Heb. 11.27. What cares Moses for all the pleasures and honours in Pharaoh's Court, he slights them; what cares he for the wrath of the King, though it be as the roaring of a Lyon, Prov. 19.12. Haman knew the truth of it, Esther 7.7. Moses makes nothing of him; He (as one said of Mr. Thomas Hooker, a man so awed with the Majesty and dread of God) would put a King in his pocket. But how comes Moses to this frame? He saw him who is invisible: This is Contradictio in adjecto, in one sense, but a great truth in a spiritual sense: Moses saw by the eye of faith, or by the spiritual eye of his understanding, ⟨p. 39⟩to which God drew near and discovered himself (as no doubt the Lord can do to our understandings) such Majesty and Excellency, such Glory and Beauty, Job 40.10. in him, that he slights both the favours and frowns of King Pharaoh: 1 Thes. 4.5. Not in the lust of concupiscence, as the Gentiles which know not God: The Apostle plainly tells us, it is the knowledge of God that keeps men from uncleanness: as for the Gentiles, it is no wonder though they be unclean, they know not God, they see not him: but what knowledge this is we may know, for Ely's sons (whom I mentioned before) who were Priests must needs know God notionally, but yet they were unclean, 1 Sam. 2.22. Whence came this? ver. 12. these sons of Belial-knew not the Lord. There is no act of sin that a godly man commits but we may truly say, that man doth not see God, at that time.