is eternal Light hath shined, and you love your own darkness
better. But be persuaded that one day ye will think one offer of this Word
of life better than life--better, infinitely better than the most absolute
life that the attendance and concurrence of all the creatures could yield
you. O then that ye would incline your ears and hearts to this that is
declared unto you to receive this Word of life that was from the
beginning, and ye may be persuaded ye shall enjoy a blessedness without
end!

But here is withal a newness in this subject, which both increases
admiration and may the more engage our affection. For "the life was
manifested" saith he, ver. 2, and he is such a Word of life as though he
was invisible and untouchable from the beginning, yet he was lately
clothed with flesh that made him both visible and capable of being
handled. Now truly these are the two poles about which the mystery, glory
and wonder of Christianity turns,--the antiquity of his real existence as
God, and the lateness or novelty of his appearance in the flesh as
man,--nothing so old, for he hath the infinite forestart of the oldest and
most ancient creatures. Take those angels, the sons of God, who sung
together in the first morning of the creation yet their generation can
soon be told, and their years numbered. It is easy to calculate all
antiquity, and we should not reach six thousand years, when it is taken at
the largest measure. And what are six thousand years in his sight, but as
six days when they are past? And if we would run backward, as far before
that point of beginning, and calculate other six thousand, yet we are
never a jot nearer the age of the Son of God. Suppose a mountain of sand
as big as the earth, and an angel to take from it one grain in every year,
your imagination would weary itself, ere ye reckoned in what space this
mountain should be diminished, or removed. It would certainly trouble the
arithmetic of the wisest mathematician. Now imagine as many years or ages
of years to have run out before the world took its beginning, as the years
in which the angel would exhaust this mountain, yet we have not come a
whit nearer the endurance of our Lord and Saviour, whose Being is like a
circle, without beginning or end. "Behold he is great and we know him not,
and the number of his years cannot be searched out,"? Job xxxvi. 26. And
who can tell his generation? The age of this Word is such a labyrinth,
with innumerable turnings