ng compared with him, but as the drop of a bucket, or
nothing; yea, less than nothing, vanity (which is nothing blown up, by
the force or forgery of a vainly working imagination, to the consistence
of an appearance), so for a soul to know indeed and believe in the
heart, that there is nothing deserves the name of good besides God, to
have the same superlative and transcendent thoughts of that great and
glorious self-being God, and the same diminishing and debasing thoughts
of all things and beings besides him. And that as the Lord seeth no evil
in the creation but sin, and hates that with a perfect hatred, as
contrary to his holy will; so for a soul to aggravate sin in its own
sight to an infiniteness of evil, at least till it see it only short of
infiniteness in this respect, that it can be swallowed up of infinite
mercy. But whence hath the soul all this light? It owes all this, and
owns itself as debtor for it to him, who opens the eyes of the blind. It
is he who commands the light to shine out of darkness, who hath made
these blessed discoveries, and hath given the poor benighted soul, the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.
These irradiations are from the Spirit's illumination; 'tis the Spirit
of wisdom and revelation that hath made day-light in the darkened soul.
The man who had the heart of a beast, as to any saving or solid
knowledge of God or himself, hath now got an understanding to know him
that is true. Now is Christ become the poor man's wisdom, he is now
renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him; he might
well babble of spiritual things, but till now he understood nothing of
the beauty and excellency of God and his ways; nay, he knew not what he
knew, he was ignorant as a beast of the life and lustre of those things
which he knew in the letter; nothing seemed more despicable to him in
the world, than true godliness; but now he judgeth otherwise, because he
hath the mind of Christ. The things which in his darkness he did
undervalue as trifles to be mocked at, he now can only mind and admire,
since he became a child of light; now being delivered from that
blindness and brutishness of spirit, which possesseth the world, (and
possessed himself till he was transformed by the renewing of his mind)
who esteem basely of spiritual things, and set them at nought, he
prizeth as alone precious. The world wonders what pleasure or content
can be in the service of God