Christus in corde, or, The mystical union between Christ and believers considered in its…

The other is this; The Believers consent is purely supernatural. Wives consent to their Husbands out of principles of nature; but Believers consent to Christ out of principles of grace. They are born, not of blood, of humane seed; not of the will of the flesh, of carnal concupiscence; not of the will of man, of the heroical acts of moral virtue; but of God, Joh. 1.13. His Holy Word is the Seed, his Divine Love the Mover, he himself the Generator of them; their faith, which is their consent, is not of themselves, but the gift of God, Eph. 2.8. No ordinary wooing can produce their consent, Christ doth not, as common Suitors do, woo outwardly only, but ⟨p. 54⟩he speaks to the heart; and that, not merely, as Shechem did to Dinah, in kind words; but, as God did to Lydia, in the inward operation of his spirit, which opens the heart, and from thence draws out a consent. In the fall of man all the faculties fell, and among the rest the believing faculty fell also; and, as it lies in the ruins, it cannot without the elevations of supernatural grace lift up it self and give a consent to Christ: he is a supernatural object, and a consent to him must be from a supernatural principle, no less than an heavenly suada can draw it out towards him.

The other is this; The Believers consent is purely supernatural. Wives consent to their Husbands out of principles of nature; but Believers consent to Christ out of principles of grace. They are born, not of blood, of humane seed; not of the will of the flesh, of carnal concupiscence; not of the will of man, of the heroical acts of moral virtue; but of God, Joh. 1.13. His Holy Word is the Seed, his Divine Love the Mover, he himself the Generator of them; their faith, which is their consent, is not of themselves, but the gift of God, Eph. 2.8. No ordinary wooing can produce their consent, Christ doth not, as common Suitors do, woo outwardly only, but ⟨p. 54⟩he speaks to the heart; and that, not meerly, as Shechem did to Dinah, in kind words; but, as God did to Lydia, in the inward operation of his spirit, which opens the heart, and from thence draws out a consent. In the fall of man all the faculties fell, and among the rest the believing faculty fell also; and, as it lies in the ruines, it cannot without the elevations of supernatural grace lift up it self and give a consent to Christ: he is a supernatural object, and a consent to him must be from a supernatural principle, no less than an heavenly suada can draw it out towards him.