A44697:681
A treatise of delighting in God from Psal. xxxvij. 4. Delight thy self also…
A treatise of delighting in God from Psal. xxxvij. 4. Delight thy self also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. In two parts. By John Howe, M.A. sometime fellow of Magdalen College, Oxon.
London: printed by A. Maxwell for Sa. Gellibrand, 1674
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.
Mark—That ye may tell the generation following—For this God is our God. See their ostentation of him, This God! q. d. Behold what a God have we! View him well, and take notice how glorious a God he is. And as they glory in the greatness of the God to whom they were related, so they do in the eternity of the relation. This God is our God for ever and ever! &c. And how unexpressible was the inward pleasure wherewith we may suppose those words to have been uttered,1 God even our own God shall bless us! How delightful an appropriation! as if it were intended to be said, The blessing it self were less significant, it could not have that savour with it if it were not from our own God. Not only therefore allow but urge your spirits thus to look towards God, that you may both delight in him, as being in himself the most excellent one, & also as being yours; for know, you are not permitted only, but obliged to eye, accept and rejoice in him as such. It is his first and great Law, and the form of his Covenant which he requires you to enter into with him, To take him for your God. Herein to be shy and decline, is to rebel. And when he offers himself in all his rich fullness to be your Portion and your God, How vile ingratitude were it to neglect and overlook the ⟨p. 347⟩kindness of the overture. It is his glory to have indigent souls satiating themselves in him, drawing from him their vital breath, living upon him as their All: Confessing they cannot live, but by his vouchsafed communications. And if you should say you love him, but so he be ever glorious in himself, you care not to be happy; It would sound like an hollow complement. You are not to deal with a God upon such terms. It becomes you not, nor is suitable to him. It is fit for you to own it to him, that he is your Life, that you are a mere nothing in your self, and must seek your All in him.2 Your Song and your Prayer must be directed to him as the God of your life. You do not own him as God, except you own and adore him as your all-sufficient Good, and that fullness which filleth all in all. You detract from the glory of his Godhead, if you attribute not this to him; And if accordingly, as one that cannot live without him, you do not seek union with him, and join your self to him, and then rejoice and solace your self in that blessed conjunction.