here
shows that to lose our souls, and to lose ourselves, is one and the same
thing. But what is it to love our souls? Certainly it is not to be
enamoured with their deformed shape, as if it were perfect beauty? Neither
can it be interpreted, any true love to our souls, to seek satisfaction
and rest unto them, where it is not at all to be found, for this is to put
them in perpetual pain and disquiet. But here it is that true self-love,
and soul love centereth, in that which our Saviour propounds, namely, to
desire and seek the everlasting welfare of our souls, and that perpetual
rest unto them, after which there is no labour nor motion any more.
Therefore, to draw unto himself the souls of men the more sweetly, and the
more strongly too, he fasteneth about them a cord of their own interest,
and that the greatest, real rest; and by this he is likely to prevail with
men in a way suited to their reasonable natures. "Come unto me, all ye
that labour and are wearied, and I will give you rest." Self interest is
ordinarily exploded, at least disowned and disclaimed in men's discourses,
as a base, wretched, sordid thing, which, though all men act by it, yet
they are all ashamed to profess. But yet, if the interest be so high as
indeed to concern self, and that which is truly our self, then both
nations and persons count it the most justifiable ground of many of their
actions, self preservation. But yet there is a higher interest than that,
that relates to the eternal interest of our souls. And truly to own and
profess, and prosecute that interest of soul preservation, of eternal rest
to our souls, is neither ignoble, nor unbeseeming a Christian; neither is
it any way inconsistent with the pursuance of that more public and
catholic interest of God's glory, in respect of which all interests, even
the most general and public, are particular and private. For this is the
goodness of our God, that he hath bound up his own honour and our
happiness in one bundle together; that he hath knit the rest of our
precious souls, and the glory of his own name inseparably together, not
only to condescend to our weakness, but to deal with us suitably to our
natures. He proposes our own interests chiefly, to draw us to himself, and
allows this happy self seeking in which a man loses himself, that he may
be found again in Christ. Seeing then it is thus, that elsewhere,
wheresoever you turn yourselves, within or without, there is no rest, but
endless