e loathsome than any thing beside. He seeth not that deformity
in poverty, nakedness, sickness, slavery. Let a man be as miserable as Job
on his dunghill, it is not so much that, as the unseen and undiscerned
posture and habit of their souls, that he abominateth. Now what a match is
this, for the highest and holiest prince, the Son of the greatest King,
and heir of all things! But if you add to this slavery, that captivity
under the curse and wrath of God,--that all men are shut up, and enclosed
in the prison of God's faithful and irrevocable sentence of condemnation,
and given over by the righteous judgment of God, to be kept by Satan in
everlasting chains of darkness,--he keepeth men now, by the invisible cords
of their own sins, but these chains of darkness are reserved for both him
and men,--now indeed, this superaddeth a great difficulty to the business.
The other may be a difficulty to his mind and affection, because there is
nothing to procure love, but all that may enforce hatred and loathing. But
suppose his infinite love could come over this stay, could leap over this
mountain by the freedom of it, yet there is a greater impediment in the
way, that may seem difficult to his power, and it is the justice and power
of God, enclosing sinners and shutting them up for eternal wrath, till a
due satisfaction be had from or for them. You see then, how infinite the
distance is betwixt him and us, and how great the difficulty is to bring
about this intended union. Angels were sent with flaming swords to
encompass the tree of life and keep it from man, but man is environed by
the curse of the Almighty God. The justice, the faithfulness, and the
power of God do guard or set a watch about him, that there is no access to
him to save him, but by undergoing the greatest danger, and undertaking
the greatest party that ever was dealt withal, and the strictest and
severest too.

This being the case then, the distance being so vast, and the difficulty
so great, the distance being twofold, between his nature and ours, and
between our quality and his: an infinite distance between his divine
nature and our flesh, and besides an extreme contrariety between the
holiness of his nature, and the sinfulness of ours,--[there is here] such a
repugnancy, as there is no reconciliation of them. You know what Paul
speaketh of the marriage of Christians with idolaters: how much more will
it hold here? What communion can be between light and darknes