Section 7

Use 2. The second Use concerns such of you as have some love to Christ, but are without these manifestations; and there are two sorts of such: 1. Some of you never had these manifestations. 2. Some of you have had these manifestations, but have lost them.

1. Some of you never had these manifestations of Christ's love. It may be you are young and raw Christians, a little while ago you were forward scholars in the school of the Devil, and served divers lusts with all your might and strength; the Lord has lately hedged up your way with thorns, has opened your eyes to see your sins, and made you sensible of your danger, but as yet your eyes are not open as to any comfortable sight of your Saviour; Indeed Christ has been revealed to you as able and willing to save you, and you have been drawn by the Word and Spirit to take hold on him, and to give up yourselves to him; but as yet you are in the dark as to your spiritual estate; you are under doubts and fears of unsoundness and rottenness at heart, that you are hypocrites, and shall fall away, as other professors like yourselves have done; you fear you shall one day perish by the hand of Saul, that the Devil and your own lusts will be too hard for you, and prevail so far with you, as to pull you back into ways of sin, and thereby to pull you down into the bottomless pit of Hell: This causes a dread upon your spirits, and fearful apprehensions of God's wrath and future vengeance; this fetches many a sad and heavy sigh from your breasts, many a briny tear from your eyes, you are troubled, bowed down greatly, and go mourning all the day: Yet you are resolved to give your attendance still to ordinances, and there to wait upon the Lord, and for the Lord; you are resolved, notwithstanding all discouragements, that you will be the Lord's, though you know not whether he be yours; you are resolved that Christ shall have your hearts, and you will venture your souls upon him, though you know not whether you are accepted by him. This may be a Use of encouragement to you; certainly you are such as love Christ, and are beloved by Christ, and Christ will manifest himself to such as have such love; let me tell you, that Christ is not far from you, whatever you may apprehend, though he be out of your sight, yet you are not out of his, his eye is upon you, and his heart is towards you; he hears all your sighs, he sees all your tears, he pities you, and sympathizes with you in all your griefs; he loves you, and before long will let you know it; he is now preparing you for sweet discoveries of himself, and before long he will give you those discoveries. If you follow on to seek him, he will certainly and may suddenly be found of you: And who knows but this may be the time of Christ's manifesting his love? It may be while you are reading this discourse, you may have a glimpse of his face, and hear his voice saying to you, Be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you. Lift up the hands that hang down, lift up the heart that is cast down; Look up then, dejected soul, your Saviour is before you, open your eyes and look, look with the eye of faith, can you not see a marvellous beauty in his countenance? Do you not perceive some smiles in his face, some smiles upon your soul? Do you not feel his Spirit sweetly breathing upon your heart, persuading you, and giving you a sweet sense of Christ's peculiar love to you? Do you not perceive some inward knockings at the door of your heart, and hear some inward callings? Open to me, and I will come in and sup with you: This is the voice of your Beloved; make haste and open to him, open all the faculties of your soul, lift up the everlasting gates to this King of Glory; send forth the handmaids of your desires to invite the Lord in, let your faith take hold on him and usher him into your soul, and then embrace him in the arms of your dearest love, and give him such entertainment that he may abide with you for ever.

2. There are others of you who have had some manifestations of Christ to you formerly, but you have lost them: your beloved has withdrawn himself and is gone, you call and he gives no answer, you seek him, but you cannot find him. Time has been when your Lord was present, and gave you gracious visits frequently, many a secret smile you have seen in his face, many a comfortable word you have had from his mouth, many a love-token you have received at his hand: time has been when you had your evidences written out fair and clean, with the seal of the Spirit set to them, and how exceedingly did you then rejoice in the sense of Christ's love? How did you feast yourselves upon his rich entertainment of gospel privileges which through him you were invested withal? And O the admirings which then you had of free grace! O the sweet meltings of heart in the kindly sense of sin! O the enlargements of desire which you had in your prayers! O the burnings of love to Christ which you have often felt in your bosoms! O the lively hopes which you had, and ineffable delight in hope of the glory of God! But now there is a strange decay within you of grace, and alteration as if you were not the same men and women as you were before. You have withdrawn yourselves from Christ, and he has withdrawn himself from your souls: you have let down your watch, and the Devil has got advantage against you by his devices, he has watched his opportunity and entangled you in the snares of some sins; while you have heedlessly gone to the utmost confines of duty, and been upon the borders of sin, the Devil has sent forth a [reconstructed: squadron] of temptations not with fiery darts, but with silken cords, which have treated and parleyed with you to entice and persuade to go a little further, they have told you what pleasant [reconstructed: fruit] does grow within those borders most sweet and delicious to the [reconstructed: taste]; that there are silver and golden mines which you might quickly dig up, and find precious substance; that there you might have honor and esteem, and what would you turn your back upon all these? Would you be so nice and strict as not to dispense with a little duty, as not to step over the hedge a little way, where the delights and advantage would be so great? And if you have hesitated, they have told you that it was very disputable, whether the confines of duty did not reach beyond the place which they would bring you to, propounding the example of others of the same religious profession, that have frequently gone so far, and why should you scruple: or if it were a transgression it was but a little transgression, they would not desire you to go far, and who is there that lives and does not transgress those bounds? And you might easily repent and find mercy if God were offended; you might quickly retire and return into your former limits; then while you have been parleying with temptations, the silken cords have been fastened about you, and before you have been aware you have been drawn along, partly willing and partly unwilling, and enticed to some kind of sins, and complied with some kind of lusts, indulging yourselves to give them satisfaction, whereby you have been beguiled, and befooled, whereby you have been secretly wounded and inwardly defiled; and thus your evidences for Heaven have been miserably blotted, so that now you are not able to read them. Time has been when worldly affections seemed to be mortified within you, to be dead and buried, many a sore thrust and wound you had given to them, and how did they bleed and faint, and grew so weak that they seemed to be giving up the ghost, and you have thought surely they would never [reconstructed: stir] much in you any more; and then your love to Christ was strong and active, it did burn and flame within you — and O the zeal which you then had for your Master's honor, and you seemed to have no interest to carry on in the world but the interest of Christ, and you minded not your own things upon your own account, but all your interests were swallowed up in the interest of Jesus Christ, which you chiefly minded and cared for, and made every thing else to truckle under it, and to be subservient to it; but now your affections to Christ are strangely cooled; if there be the fire of love to Christ still within you, it is not fire in burning coals, or in a vehement flame, but it is a fire in a few scattered sparks, and those raked over that they give neither light nor heat, and are hardly, if at all, discernible by you; and your worldly affections which seemed to be dead, they have gotten spirit and life and vigor, and strength: O the eager desire which you have after the world, and the things in the world, and these accompanied with eager prosecution of the world, now the world has your thoughts in contrivements about it, and the world has your tongues in your most frequent discourse of it, now the world has your hand and your time, but that which is worst of all, the world has your heart too, the world has jostled Christ off of his throne and for the present does usurp his seat. And is it then a wonder if your beloved be offended that you should thus decline in your love, that your hearts should go a-whoring from him to the creature, in your giving those affections to anything in the world which are his due? Hence it is that Christ has shut up his [reconstructed: countenance] from you, or if he looks, it is with frowns upon you; you have lost your first love, and you have lost your first sights, and your first tastes of the love of Christ; now your spiritual joys and comforts are fled out of sight, they are lost and gone, and the bare remembrance of them only does remain, and whatever delights you have they are only such as come in at the door of sense, you have none at all that come in at the door of faith, and your sensual delights have expelled and banished your spiritual; now the rich gospel privileges have not that savor and sweet relish with you as heretofore; your minding and savoring so much the earth and earthly things, has disrelished your spiritual appetite. O the mischief which indulged sin has done to you! O the unfelt wounds, but so much the more deep and dangerous, which sin has given you! O the defilements of sin in your consciences, and the stains and blots which sin has cast upon your profession! O the havoc which sin has made among your graces, and among your comforts! Leaves you have still of an outward profession, but where is your fruit to be found? If you have some fruit, is it not withered fruit, [reconstructed: sour] and ill-relished, not such ripe and mellow and sweet fruit as heretofore in your flourishing estate? Surely the Lord is at a [reconstructed: great] distance from such of you, and are there not too many such among you? And what need have you to remember from where you have fallen, to ransack your hearts to find out your sins, to humble yourselves deeply, to repent and grieve and mourn, to turn your laughter into weeping, and your joy into heaviness, and to return to the Lord speedily and do your first works — otherwise some fearful judgments are likely to befall you, and the Lord may be even forced to awaken you with a vengeance, and make you a terror to yourselves and to all about you: don't provoke the Lord, by your thus running away from him, to follow you with a storm as he did Jonah, and to devour you in the floods and waves of dreadful afflictions, that hereby he may reduce and restore you, and keep you from being drowned in utter perdition and eternal destruction. It may be the Lord has scourged some of you for your faults with the rods of some crosses and disappointments, some outward losses and troubles; it may be he has put bitterness upon those breasts which you have been sucking, and mingling gall in the cup of your pleasures which you have been drinking; and you have begun to think of your evil ways, and seen what an evil thing and bitter it is to backslide from the Lord; and you have thought it was best with you when you were nearest to Christ. It may be God has dealt with you as he tells his backsliding people he would do with them (Hosea 2:6-7): Behold I will hedge up your way with thorns, and make a wall that she shall not find her paths: and she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them, and she shall seek them, but she shall not find them; then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now. And now you are seeking after your beloved, but he has withdrawn himself from you, and seems to take no notice of you; you call and cry, and sigh, and weep, and lament, and complain, and seek, and wait, and yet he withholds from you all special discoveries of his love: possibly doubts may hence arise, and fears grow upon your spirits, and you are ready to sink, and sometimes are almost overwhelmed with inward trouble. Let this doctrine be an encouragement to you still to seek diligently and wait patiently, for the Lord will manifest himself again to you in his own time, which is the best time: he may try you for a while whether you will follow him in the dark, he may suffer you to wait some time for him, who have made him to wait so long time for you; but if you persevere to seek him diligently in his ways, you shall find that it will not be in vain. And what would you say, you backsliding souls, if the Lord should manifest himself to you at this time? Would you not abuse his kindness? If he should discover his love to you again, would you not grow wanton and carnally secure? If he should now renew your evidences and give them fair written, and easy to be read by you, would you not blot them again by your sins? If he should now speak peace to your consciences, would you not again return to folly? If he should now restore to you the joys of his salvation, and send down the Holy Ghost from Heaven to come to you, to be your comforter and to dwell with you, would you not grieve and quench the Spirit and provoke him to another retirement, and more dreadful withdrawings than before? It may be the Lord will try you; it may be the Lord may draw near and make some discovery of himself, and discovery of his love to you: it may be the Lord may look kindly now upon you, and secretly by his Spirit speak kindly to you: you are now looking and longing, and hoping, and waiting, possibly this may be the time of your seeing his face, and the smiles that are there, of your feeling the sweet sheddings abroad of his love into your hearts by his Spirit, at least he may give you a glimpse, a glance, a little taste, such as shall ravish your hearts. However wait for him, and with earnest desires and importunate requests, plead with him for his returns, and these manifestations, and that in such kind of language as this: Come Lord Jesus, come quickly, make haste O my beloved, make haste to my soul that thirsts for you, as the parched land after the sweet showers that fall from heaven, as the [reconstructed: hunted] hart after the cooling and refreshing streams of the water-brooks. O when shall I drink of those waters of life which you have to give, who are the fountain and spring from where they flow? When shall I taste again how good you are? When shall I see you again, and feed, and feast my soul again with your love? When Lord, O when will you come to me? Will you cast off for ever? Will you be favorable no more? Have you in anger shut up your bowels? Shall this cloud always sit upon your brow? Shall this curtain always be drawn before your face? Truth Lord, I have grievously sinned, and greatly offended you; but have I not, do I not truly repent? Is there anything in the world so grievous to me as the remembrance of my miscarriages? I acknowledge my offence, my folly and horrid ingratitude; but shall my sins always be a wall of separation between me and my beloved? Are not your bowels tender? Are not your mercies plentiful? Is there not [reconstructed: forgiveness] with you that you may be feared and the more dearly beloved? Do you not forgive freely without upbraiding? Have you not promised to be found of all them that diligently seek you? And did you ever fail in your word to any? And shall I be the first? Are not the desires of my soul after you, and that chiefly, and that earnestly? Is there not dearth and drought in all things beneath yourself, nothing that can give me satisfaction? Have I not renounced the world for my portion? You might send me to the world for help and comfort, to the world which I have over-earnestly desired and loved, and over-eagerly [reconstructed: sought] for contentment and happiness in; but is this your custom, and your way, and the manner of your dealing with them that are grieved for their sin, and ashamed of their folly? Have you not promised to manifest yourself to them that love you? And do not I love you? Do not you who know all things, know that I love you? Though my love be imperfect, yet is it not true? Though it be weak, yet is it not sincere? Else from where are these desires after you above all persons and things in the world? Are not these the product of true love? And will you not make good your promise then, to manifest yourself to me? And if I had the manifestations of your love, would not my love grow and increase hereby? Should I not love you more dearly and strongly, if I had clear discoveries, and were persuaded assuredly of your love to me? Truth Lord, I am altogether unworthy of such a favor; but did you ever bestow this favor upon any for their deserts? Are not all your gifts free? And am not I as capable as any of free grace? The more unworthy, the more I shall admire you; the more is forgiven, I shall love the more; and may I not now have a taste of your loving kindness? Hasten my beloved, O hasten to me, and be as a roe upon the mountains of spices! Do not veil your face from me any longer, do not conceal your love, but now, O now draw near, and make me exceeding glad in the light of your countenance, and in the beauty of your face, and smiles thereof. Such desires and pleadings as these might prevail with the Lord forthwith to return again to you, and to say, Well soul, I have heard your prayer, your breathing, and your cry; your pleadings have [reconstructed: prevailed] with me, and I am now come to you, and be it to you according to your desires; come soul, and look up, lift up your eyes, and see, here I am, behold me, behold me; this day I am come to bring glad tidings of great joy to you. I assure you, that I am yours, and all mine is yours, and you are mine, and shall be mine forever. And what words can sound so sweet and yield such comfort, as these or such like, spoken by the Spirit to the hearts of those from whom Christ is withdrawn?