A44666:371
The blessedness of the righteous discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 /The blessednesse of the righteous discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 /
The blessedness of the righteous discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 / by John Howe ...The blessednesse of the righteous discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 / by John Howe ...
printed by Sarah Griffin for Samuel Thomson, 1668
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
'Tis yet a rich pleasure that springs up to glorified Saints from that love-union (now perfected) between the blessed God and them. 'Tis mentioned and shadowed in Scripture, under the name and notion of marriage-union; in which the greatest mutual complacency is always supposed a necessary ingredient.1 To be thus joined to the Lord, and made, as it were, one Spirit with him; For the eternal God to cleave in love to a nothing creature, as his likeness upon it engages him to do, is this no pleasure, or a mean one?
'Tis yet a rich pleasure that springs up to glorified Saints from that love-union (now perfected) between the blessed God and them. 'Tis mentioned and shadowed in Scripture, under the name and notion of marriage-union; in which the greatest mutual complacency is always supposed a necessary ingredient.1 To be thus joyned to the Lord, and made, as it were, one Spirit with him; For the eternal God to cleave in love to a nothing creature, as his likeness upon it ingages him to do, is this no pleasure, or a mean one?
2. Communion, unto which that union is fundamental, and introductive; and which follows it upon the same ground, from a natural propensity of like to like: There is nothing now to hinder God, and the holy soul of the most inward fruitions and enjoyments; no animosity, no strangeness, no unsuitableness on either part. Here the glorified Spirits of the just have liberty to so••ce themselves, amidst the rivers of pleasure at Gods own right hand, without check or restraint. They are pure, and these pure. They touch nothing that can defile, they defile nothing they can touch. They are not now forbidden the nearest approaches to the (once) inaccessible Majesty, there's no Holy of Holies into which they may not enter, no door locked up against them: They may have free admission into the innermost secret of the divine presence, and pour forth themselves in the most liberal effusions of love