Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

3. They value him above all spiritual Excellencies and all other righteousness whatever Phil. 3. 7, 8. Those things which were advantage to me, I esteemed loss for Christ. Yea also I account all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whose sake I have lost all things, and do esteem them common that I may gain Christ, and be found in him. having recounted the Excellency's which he had, and the privileges which he enjoyed in his Judaism, which were all of a spiritual nature, and a participation wherein, made the rest of his country men despise all the world, and look upon themselves as the only acceptable persons with God, resting on them for righteousness, the Apostle tells us what is his esteem of them in Comparison of the ⟨p. 156⟩Lord Jesus, they are loss and dung, things that for his sake, he had really suffered the loss of; that is, whereas he had for many years been a Zealot of the Law, seeking after a righteousness as it were by the works of it, Rom. 9. 31. instantly serving God day and night to obtain the promise Act. 26. 7. living in all good conscience from his youth, Act. 22. all the while very zealous for God and his institutions, now willingly casts away all these things, looks upon them as loss and dung, and could not only be contented to be without them, but as for that end for which he sought after them, he abhorred them all. When men have been strongly convinced of their duty, and have laboured many years to keep a ^*good Conscience, have prayed, and heard, and done good, and denied themselves, and been ^xzealous for God, and laboured with all their might to ^yplease him, and so at length to come to enjoy him: they had rather ^z