How great is our offence and loss that we live not in such more constant views of God? Herein we sin and suffer both at once (things both very unsuitable to heaven.) Mindfulness of God is the living Spring of all holy and pleasant affections and deportments towards him; sets all the wheels agoing, makes the soul as the Chariots of Aminadab. These wheels have their eyes also, are guided by a mind, by an intellectual principle. Knowing intelligent beings (as we also are by participation, and according to our measure) so act mutually towards one another. We cannot move towards God but with an open eye seeing him, and our way towards him. If we close our eyes, we stand still, or blindly run another course, we know not whither. All sin is darkness, whether it be neglect of good, or doing of evil. Its way is a way of darkness; as a course of holy motion is walking in the light. Our shutting our eyes towards God creates that darkness; surrounds us with a darkness comprehensive of all sin. Now is every thing of enjoined duty waved, and any evil done, that sinful nature prompts us to. Well might it be said,1 He that sinneth hath not seen God. When we have made our selves this darkness, we fall of course under Satan's Empire, and are presently within his Dominions. He is the Prince of darkness; and can rule us now at his will. Perishing lost souls are such as in them the God ⟨p. 308⟩of this world hath blinded their minds.—To open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, is to turn them also from the power of Satan unto God. What an hell of wickedness are we brought into in the twinkling of an eye! We are without God▪ in the world, as if a man wink, though at noon-day, he hath as it were put out the Sun, 'tis with him as if there were no such thing. When we have banished God out of our sight, and forgotten him, 'tis with us as if there were no God. If such a state grow habitual to us, (as we know every sinful aversion of our eye from God tends thereto) what wickedness is there that will not lurk in this darkness? How often in Scripture is forgetting God used as a character, yea as paraphrase, a full (though summary) expression of sin in general? As if the wickedness, the malignity, the very hell it self of sin, were wholly included (and not connated only) here. Now consider this (after so dreadful an enumeration, so black a Catalogue) all that forget God.
How great is our offence and loss that we live not in such more constant views of God? Herein we sin and suffer both at once (things both very unsuitable to heaven.) Mindfulness of God is the living Spring of all holy and pleasant affections and deportments towards him; sets all the wheels agoing, makes the soul as the Chariots of Aminadab. These wheels have their eyes also, are guided by a mind, by an intellectual principle. Knowing intelligent beings (as we also are by participation, and according to our measure) so act mutually towards one another. We cannot move towards God but with an open eye seeing him, and our way towards him. If we close our eyes, we stand still, or blindly run another course, we know not whither. All sin is darkness, whether it be neglect of good, or doing of evil. Its way is a way of darkness; as a course of holy motion is walking in the light. Our shutting our eyes towards God creates that darkness; surrounds us with a darkness comprehensive of all sin. Now is every thing of enjoyned duty waved, and any evil done, that sinful nature prompts us to. Well might it be said,1 He that sinneth hath not seen God. When we have made our selves this darkness, we fall of course under Sathans Empire, and are presently within his Dominions. He is the Prince of darkness; and can rule us now at his will. Perishing lost souls are such as in them the God ⟨p. 308⟩of this world hath blinded their minds.—To open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, is to turn them also from the power of Sathan unto God. What an hell of wickedness are we brought into in the twinkling of an eye! We are without God▪ in the world, as if a man wink, though at noon-day, he hath as it were put out the Sun, 'tis with him as if there were no such thing. When we have banished God out of our sight, and forgotten him, 'tis with us as if there were no God. If such a state grow habitual to us, (as we know every sinful aversion of our eye from God tends thereto) what wickedness is there that will not lurk in this darkness? How often in Scripture is forgetting God used as a character, yea as paraphrase, a full (though summary) expression of sin in general? As if the wickedness, the malignity, the very hell it self of sin, were wholly included (and not connated only) here. Now consider this (after so dreadful an ennumeration, so black a Catalogue) all that forget God.
- 1John 3. 11.
