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

Object. This is to love Christ for his goods: we should love Christ for himself, not for his goods; thus we have heard Ministers preach, and Hypocrites may love the goods of Christ.

Answ. Must we love Christ for himself, not for his goods? I pray what wise man was it taught you this? Who taught you to divide the object of your love, when as God hath joined Christ and his goods together? I mean by his goods, all the benefits of communion, all the good things that believers united to Christ are to partake of: Did God offer you a Christ without goods? Is not the whole Covenant of Grace, are not all the Promises, of which Christ is the Yea and Amen, 2 Cor. 1.20. the things in which the Lord offers to jointure the Soul, upon the Marriage of his Son? Whence then came this Divinity? Not from Heaven. Yet sometimes I have heard such passages like to this, when men will seem to let people know they have more skill than others in the mysteries of Conversion, they must strain themselves to speak something new, though it be non-sense. I know full well Christ is to be loved for himself, and believers are taken with the Person of Christ, he is and shall be very glorious in their eyes; but to say, and not for his goods: this is just as if a woman were taken with the person of a man, but this person hath no goods, nor the woman any, and so when they are married, they must either work hard, beg, or starve: Christ is no such person, if he were, whatever these men say, I suppose he would have but few to believe in him; you may preach long enough before you will draw Souls to him. It is not the Person of Christ which doth immediately answer the Soul, and help it under the misery it now lieth. If a woman be ready to starve, or pinched with cold, ragged, &c. it is not the comeliness of the mans person that will feed her, or clothe her, but his goods. When Christ called the Angel of Laodicea, Revel. 3.18. to come to him, he tells him of gold and white raiment, these are goods: It is righteousness, peace, pardon, justification, holiness, &c. which are fit to answer the condition ⟨p. 213⟩