oved him,--the love of others'
salvation. "These things I declare, that ye may have fellowship with us."
Finding in his own experience how happy he was, what a pearl he had found,
how rare a jewel,--eternal life,--he cannot hide it, but proclaims it. His
next wish is now since I am thus blessed, O that all the world knew, and
would come and share with me! I see that unexhausted fountain of
life,--that unemptiable sea of goodness,--that infinite fulness of grace in
Jesus Christ, that I, and you, and all that will, may come and be
satisfied, and nothing diminished. There is that immense fulness in
spiritual things, that superabundance and infinite excess over our
necessities, that they may be enjoyed by many, by all, without envy or
discontent, without prejudice to one another's fulness which the
scantiness and meanness of created things cannot admit. I believe, if
ministers or Christians did taste of this, and had access into it to see
it, and bless themselves in it,--if they might enter into this treasury, or
converse into this company, they would henceforth carry themselves as
those who pity the world, and compassionate mankind. A man that were
acquainted with this that is in Christ, would not find his heart easily
stirred up to envy or provoked upon others' prosperity or exaltation, but
rather he would be constrained to commiserate all others, that they will
not know nor consider wherein their own true tranquillity and absolute
satisfaction consists. He that is lifted up to this blessed society to
converge with God, were it not for the compassion and mercy he owes to
miserable mankind, he might laugh at the follies and vanities of the
world, as we do at children. But as the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, the affectionate,
kind love our Saviour carried to human nature, made him often groan and
sigh for his adversaries, and weep over Jerusalem, albeit his own joy was
full, without ebb, so in some measure a Christian learns of Christ to be a
lover and pitier of mankind, and then to be moved with compassion towards
others, when we have fullest joy and satisfaction ourselves. O that we
might be persuaded to seek after these things which may be gotten and kept
without