Christ keepeth the keys of Christ [to speak so] & of his own love, and he is a wiser distributer then I can take up: I know there is more in him then would make me run over like a coast-full-sea. I were happy for evermore to get leave to stand but beside Christ and his love, and to look in, suppose I were interdicted of God to come near hand, touch or embrace, kiss or set too my sinful head and drink my self drunken with that lovely thing. God send me that I would have, for I now verily ⟨p. 267⟩see, more clearly then before, our folly in drinking dead waters & in playing the whore with our soul's love upon running out wells, & broken shards of creatures of yesterday, whom Time will unlaw with the penalty of losing their being & natural ornaments. O when a soul's love is itching [to speak so] for God, and when Christ in his boundless and bottomless love, beauty and excellency cometh & rubbeth up & exciteth that love, what can be heaven if this be not heaven? I am sure this bit feckless, narrow & short love of regenerated sinners was born for no other end, but to breath & live and love & dwell in the bosom and betwixt the breasts of Christ: Where is there a bed or a lodging for the saints love but Christ? O that he would take our selves off our hand, for neither we nor the creatures can be either due conquest or lawful heritage to love! Christ & none but Christ is Lord & proprietor of it. Oh alas, how pitiful is it that so much of our love goeth by him! O but we be wretched wasters of our soul's love! I know it is the deep of bottomless, and unsearchable providence, that the saints are suffered to play the whore from God, and that their love goeth a hunting, when God knoweth it shall roast nothing of that at supper-time: The renewed would have it otherwise; & why is it so, seeing our Lord can keep us without nodding, tottering or reeling, or any fall at all? Our desires I hope shall meet with perfection; but God will have our sins an office-house for God's grace, & hath made sin a matter of an unlaw & penalty for the Son of God's blood; & howbeit sin should be our sorrow, yet there is a sort of acquiescing & resting upon God's dispensation required of us, that there is such a thing in us as Sin, whereupon mercy, forgiveness, healing, curing, in our sweet Physician, may find a field to work upon. O what a deep is here, that created wit cannot take up!
Christ keepeth the keys of Christ [to speak so] & of his own love, and he is a wiser distributer then I can take up: I know there is more in him then would make me run over like a coast-full-sea. I were happy for evermore to get leave to stand but beside Christ and his love, and to look in, suppose I were interdicted of God to come near hand, touch or embrace, kiss or set too my sinfull head and drink my self drunken with that lovely thing. God send me that I would have, for I now verily ⟨p. 267⟩see, more clearly then before, our folly in drinking dead waters & in playing the whore with our soul's love upon runningout wells, & broken sheards of creatures of yesterday, whom Time will unlaw with the penalty of losing their being & natural ornaments. O when a soul's love is itching [to speak so] for God, and when Christ in his boundless and bottomless love, beauty and excellency cometh & rubbeth up & exciteth that love, what can be heaven if this be not heaven? I am sure this bit feckless, narrow & short love of regenerated sinners was born for no other end, but to breath & live and love & dwell in the bosom and betwixt the breasts of Christ: Where is there a bed or a lodging for the saints love but Christ? O that he would take our selves off our hand, for neither we nor the creatures can be either due conquest or lawfull heritage to love! Christ & none but Christ is Lord & proprietour of it. Oh alas, how pitifull is it that so much of our love goeth by him! O but we be wretched wasters of our soul's love! I know it is the deep of bottomless, and unsearchable providence, that the saints are suffered to play the whore from God, and that their love goeth a hunting, when God knoweth it shall rost nothing of that at supper-time: The renewed would have it otherwise; & why is it so, seeing our Lord can keep us without nodding, tottering or reeling, or any fall at all? Our desires I hope shall meet with perfection; but God will have our sins an office-house for God's grace, & hath made sin a matter of an unlaw & penalty for the Son of God's blood; & howbeit sin should be our sorrow, yet there is a sort of acquiescing & resting upon God's dispensation required of us, that there is such a thing in us as Sin, whereupon mercy, forgiveness, healing, curing, in our sweet Physician, may finde a field to work upon. O what a deep is here, that created wit cannot take up!
