A96093:1354
The beatitudes
The beatitudes: or A discourse upon part of Christs famous Sermon on the Mount. Whereunto is added Christs various fullness. The preciousness of the soul. The souls malady and cure. The beauty of grace. The spiritual watch. The heavenly race. The sacred anchor. The trees of righteousness. The perfume of love. The good practitioner. By Thomas Watson, minister of the word at Stephens Walbrook in the city of London.The beatitudes: or A discourse upon part of Christs famous Sermon on the Mount. Wherunto is added Christs various fulnesse. The preciousnesse of the soul. The souls malady and cure. The beauty of grace. The spiritual watch. The heavenly race. The sacred anchor. The trees of righteousnesse. The perfume of love. The good practitioner. By Thomas Watson, minister of the word at Stephens Walbrook in the city of London.
London: printed for Ralph Smith, 1660
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.
2. Love is passive, it enables to suffer; a man that loves his friend, will suffer any thing for him rather than he shall be wronged. The Curtii laid down their lives for the Romans, because they loved them; love made our dear Lord suffer for us; per vulnera viscera; as the Pelican out of her love to her young ones, when they are bitten with Serpents, feeds them with her own blood to recover them again; so when we had been bitten by the old Serpent, that Christ might recover us, he did feed us with his own blood. Jacobs love to Rachel, made him almost hazard his life for her. Many waters cannot quench love, Cant. 8.7. No not the waters of persecution; love is strong as death, Cant. 8.6. Death makes it way through the greatest oppositions; so love will make its way to Christ through the Prison and the Furnace. But all pretend love to Christ; how shall we know that we have such a love to him as will make us suffer?
1. True love is amor amicitiae, a love of friendship, which is genuine and ingenuous, when we love Christ for himself; there is a mercenary and meretricious love, when we love divine objects propter aliud, for something else: ⟨p. 386⟩a man may love the Queen of truth for the jewel at her ear, because she brings preferment; a man may love Christ for his head of gold*, because he enricheth with glory; but true love is when we love Christ for his loveliness, namely, that infinite and superlative beauty which shines in him†* as a man loves sweet wine for its self.