by spiritual sense, the sweet and relish of this captivating,
and transcendently excellent knowledge raise the soul
unto? O must not this be the very suburbs of
heaven to the soul! When the soul thus seeth and
apprehendeth God in Christ, and that as its own God
through Christ, (for as all saving knowledge draweth
out the soul unto an embracing and closing with the
object, so it bringeth in the object to the making
up of the reciprocal union and in-being) it cannot
but admire with exultation, and exult with admiration,
at that condescendence of free grace that hath made
it, in any measure, capable of this begun glory, and
will further make it meet, by this begun glory, to
be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in
light. And what will a soul that hath tasted
of the pure delights of this river of gospel manifestations,
and hath seen, with soul-ravishing delights, in some
measure, the manifold wisdom of God wrapped up therein;
and the complete and perfect symmetry of all the parts
of that noble contexture, and also the pure design
of that contrivance to abase man, and to extol the
riches of the free grace of God, that the sinner,
when possessed of all designed for him and effectuated
in him thereby, may know who alone should wear the
crown and have all the glory; what, I say, will such
a soul see in another gospel (calculated to the meridian
of the natural, crooked, and corrupt temper of proud
men, who is soon made vain of nothing, which, instead
of bringing a sinner, fallen from God through pride,
back again to the enjoyment of him, through a Mediator,
doth but foster that innate plague and rebellion,
which and procured his first excommunication from the
favour, and banishment out of the paradise of God,)
that shall attract its heart to it, and move it to
a compliance with it? When the poor sinner that
hath been made to pant after a Saviour, and hath been
pursued to the very ports of the city of refuge by
the avenger of blood, the justice of God, hath tasted
and seen how good God is, and felt the sweetness of
free love in a crucified Christ, and seen the beauty
and glory of the mystery of his free grace, suitably
answering and overcoming the mystery of its sin and
misery; O what a complacency hath he therein, and
in the way of gospel salvation, wherein free grace
is seen to overflow all banks, to the eternal praise
of the God of all grace. How saltless and unsavoury
will the most cunningly-devised and patched-together
mode of salvation be, that men, studying the perversion
of the gospel, and seeking the ruin of souls with all
their skill, industry, and learning, are setting off
with forced rhetoric, and the artifice of words of
man’s wisdom, and with the plausible advantages
of a pretended sanctity, and of strong grounds and
motives unto diligence and painfulness, to a very
denying and renouncing Christian liberty, when once
it is observed, how it entrencheth upon, and darkeneth
lustre, or diminisheth the glory of free grace, and
hath the least tendency to the setting of the crown