Christ: The Way, the Truth, and the Life. John Brown
thing than men take it to be. Few habituate themselves to a thinking upon it, in its high nature, and soul enriching advantages, till their hearts receive suitable impressions of it, and their lives be the very transumpt of the law of God written in their heart; the thing, alas! is lost in a noise of words, and heap of notions about it; neither is it a wonder that men fall into mistakes about it, since it is only the heart possessed of it that is capable to understand and perceive its true excellency. But if it be asked what it is; we say, it may be shortly taken up, as the elevation and raising up of a poor mortal unto a conformity with God. As a participation of the divine nature, or as the very image of God stamped on the soul, impressed on the thoughts and affections, and expressed in the life and conversation; so that the man in whom Christ is formed, and in whom he dwells, lives, and walks, hath while upon the earth, a conversation in heaven; not only in opposition to those many, whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things; but also to those pretenders unto and personaters of religion, who have confidence in the flesh, and worship God with their own spirit, which in the matters of God is flesh and not spirit, and have somewhat else to rejoice in than in Christ Jesus, and a being found in him, not having their own righteousness.
True gospel holiness, then, consists in some similitude and likeness to God, and fellowship with him founded upon that likeness. There is such an impression of God, his glorious attributes, his infinite power, majesty, mercy, justice, wisdom, holiness, and grace, &c., as sets him up all alone in the soul without any competition, and produceth those real apprehensions of him, that he is alone excellent and matchless. O how preferable doth be appear, when indeed seen, to all things! And how doth this light of his infinite gloriousness, shining into the soul, darken and obscure to an invisibleness all other excellencies, even as the rising of the sun makes all the lesser lights to disappear. Alas! how is God unknown in his glorious being and attributes! When once the Lord enters the soul, and shines into the heart, it is like the rising of the sun at midnight: all these things which formerly pretended to some loveliness, and did dazzle with their lustre, are eternally darkened. Now, all natural perfections, and moral virtues, in their flower and perfections, are at best looked upon as aliquid nihil. What things were formerly accounted gain and godliness, are now counted loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord, and the soul cannot only suffer the loss of them all without a sob, but be satisfied to throw them away as dung, that it may win him, and be found in him. Now, the wonder of a Deity, in his greatness, power, and grace, swallows up the soul in sweet admiration. O how doth it love to lose itself in finding here what it cannot fathom? And then it begins truly to see the greatness and evil of sin; then it is looked upon without the covering of pleasure or profit, and loathed as the leprosy of hell. Now the man is truly like God in the knowledge of good and evil, in the knowledge of that one infinite good, God; and in the knowledge of that one almost infinite evil, sin. This is the first point of likeness to him, to be conformed to him in our understanding, that as he knows himself to be the only self-being and fountain-good, and all created things in their flower and perfection, with all their real or fancied conveniences being compared with him, but as the drop of a bucket, or nothing; yea, less than nothing, vanity (which is nothing blown up, by the force or forgery of a vainly working imagination, to the consistence of an appearance), so for a soul to know indeed and believe in the heart, that there is nothing deserves the name of good besides God, to have the same superlative and transcendent thoughts of that great and glorious self-being God, and the same diminishing and debasing thoughts of all things and beings besides him. And that as the Lord seeth no evil in the creation but sin, and hates that with a perfect hatred, as contrary to his holy will; so for a soul to aggravate sin in its own sight to an infiniteness of evil, at least till it see it only short of infiniteness in this respect, that it can be swallowed up of infinite mercy. But whence hath the soul all this light? It owes all this, and owns itself as debtor for it to him, who opens the eyes of the blind. It is he who commands the light to shine out of darkness, who hath made these blessed discoveries, and hath given the poor benighted soul, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. These irradiations are from the Spirit's illumination; 'tis the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that hath made day-light in the darkened soul. The man who had the heart of a beast, as to any saving or solid knowledge of God or himself, hath now got an understanding to know him that is true. Now is Christ become the poor man's wisdom, he is now renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him; he might well babble of spiritual things, but till now he understood nothing of the beauty and excellency of God and his ways; nay, he knew not what he knew, he was ignorant as a beast of the life and lustre of those things which he knew in the letter; nothing seemed more despicable to him in the world, than true godliness; but now he judgeth otherwise, because he hath the mind of Christ. The things which in his darkness he did undervalue as trifles to be mocked at, he now can only mind and admire, since he became a child of light; now being delivered from that blindness and brutishness of spirit, which possesseth the world, (and possessed himself till he was transformed by the renewing of his mind) who esteem basely of spiritual things, and set them at nought, he prizeth as alone precious. The world wonders what pleasure or content can be in the service of God, because they see not by tasting how good he is; to be prying into and poring upon invisible things, is to them visible madness, but to the enlightened mind, the things that are not seen are only worth seeing, and while they appear not to be, they only are; whereas the things that are seen appear but to be, and are not. Though the surpassing sweetness of spiritual things should be spoke of to them, who cannot favour the things of God, in such a manner as the glorious light of them did surround men; yet they can perceive no such thing; all is to them cunningly devised fables; let be spoke what will, they see no form, no comeliness, no beauty in this glorious object—God in Christ reconciling sinners to himself. Alas! the mind is blinded; the dungeon is within; and till Christ open the eyes, as well as reveal his light, the soul abides in its blindness, and is buried in midnight darkness; but when the Spirit of God opens the man's eyes, and he is translated by an act of omnipotency out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son, which is a kingdom of marvellous light, O what matchless beauty doth he now see in these things, which appeared despicable and dark nothings to him, till he got the unction, the eye-salve, which teacheth all things. Now he sees (what none without the Spirit can see) the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, and are freely given them of God; and these, though seen at a distance, reflect such rays of beauty into his soul, that he beholds and is ravished, he sees and is swallowed up in wonder.
But then, in the next place, this is not a spiritless inefficacious speculation about these things, to know no evil but sin and separation from God, and no blessedness but in the fruition of him; it is not such a knowledge of them as doth not principle motion to pursue after them. This I grant is part of the image of God, when the Sun of Righteousness, by arising upon the man, hath made day-light in his soul, and by these divine discoveries hath taught him to make the true parallel betwixt things that differ, and to put a just value upon them according to their intrinsic worth. But this divine illumination doth not consist in a mere notion of such things in the head, nor doth it subsist in enlightening the mind; but in such an impression of God upon the soul, as transforms and changes the heart into his likeness by love.' Knowledge is but one line, one draught or lineament of the soul's likeness to him; that alone doth not make up the image, but knowledge rooted in the heart, and engraven on the soul, hining and shewing itself forth in a gospel-adorning conversation, that makes a comely proportion; when the same hand that touched the eye, and turned the man from darkness to light, and gave an heart to know him, that he is the Lord, that doth also circumcise the man's heart to love the Lord his God, with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind; and this love manifesting its liveliness, in its constraining power to live to him and for him. Light without, heat is but wild fire; but light in the mind, begetting heat in the heart, making it burn Godward, Christward, and heavenward; light in the understanding, setting on fire and inflaming the affections, and these shining out in a heavenly conversation, makes up the lively image of God, both in feature and stature, both in proportion and colour. Faith begins this image, and draws the lineaments; and love bringing forth obedience finishes, and gives it the lively lustre. The burnings of love in obedience to God is that which illuminates the whole, and makes a man look indeed like him, to whose image he is predestinate to be conform, and then makes him, who is ravished with the charms of that beauty, say, as in a manner overcome