inwardly towards
itself, and so since the fall man hath turned his heart from the true God,
and set it upon vanity,--upon lying vanities,--upon base dead idols which
can neither help him nor hurt him. "Your hearts are gone a whoring from
God. O that ye would believe it." None of you will deny but ye have broken
all the commands. Yet such is the brutish ignorance and stupidity of the
most part, that you will not confess that when it comes to particulars,
and especially, if you should be challenged for loving other things more
than God, or having other gods besides the true God, you will instantly
deny it, and that with an asseveration and aversation--"God forbid that I
have another God." Alas! this shows, that what you confess in the general
is not believed in the heart, but only is like the prating of children,
whom you may learn to say any thing. I beseech you consider, that what you
give your time, pains, thoughts, and affections to, that is your God. You
must give God all your heart, and so retain nothing of your own will if
God be your God. But do ye not know that your care and grief and desire
and love vents another way, towards base things? You know that you have a
will of your own which goeth quite contrary to his holy will in all
things, therefore Satan hath bewitched you, and your hearts deceive you,
when they persuade you that you have had no other God but the true God.
Christianity raises the soul again, and advances it by degrees to this
love of God, from which it had fallen. The soul returns to its first
husband, from whom it went a whoring, and now the stamp of God is so upon
it that it is changed into his image and glory. Having tasted how good
this one self sufficient good is, it gladly and easily divorces from all
other lovers. It renounces former lusts of ignorance, and now begins to
live in another. Love transplants the soul into God, and in him it lives,
and with him it walks. It is true, this is done gradually, there is much
of the heart yet unbroken to this sweet and easy yoke of love, much of the
corrupt nature untamed, unreclaimed, yet so much is gained by the first
conversion of the soul to God, that all is given up to him in affection
and desire. He hath the chief place in the soul. The disposition of the
spirit hath some stamp and impression of his oneness and singularity. My
beloved is one. Though a Christian is not wholly rid of strange lords, yet
the tie of subjection to them is broken. They m