Baxter - BV4253 B39 C78 1658

By theCros cf Chrifi. 21 yea, or as not ftudying God in that creature,they are but playing the children and fools : they are like a Printer that cannot read, ( if there were fuch a man) that fludyeth how to fhape his letters, when he knowethnot what a letter meaneth. When they are difpuring in the Schools about Godsworks, in this feparated fort, as without God,they arebully playing the ideots,and taking the name of Cod in vain, and making a learned flir about no- thing. And here I pray youmark the different fucceffes of a fenfual, and of a fandified ftudy and knowledge. The firfl firmer by feekingto know and enjoy thecreature in a feparated fort, did lofe God who was his All , and made the creature his All, and thereby as to its lignification and principal ufe, did to himfelf annihilate it. And in this path do all his poflerity walk, till faith recover them; and this, is their vai4Jhew and their living with- out God in the world. But when faith bath opened a mans eyes, and i1 ewed himGod in every creature , who was hid from him before then is thecreature who wasbefore his A11, annihilated to him in that feparated fenfe; and God becomes his All again r and this annihilation ofthecreature, is indeed itsreftactration, ob- je&ively to its primitive nature and ufe and it was not indeed known or refpeeted as a creature till now. So that fenfualmen, by making the creature an imaginaryGod, orchiefeft Good , or c,ll1, do make it indeed objedtively to become Nothing : and fo their All, their God, their felicity is Nothing; and fo all their life is a Nothing. When as the faithful) by Crucifying or Annihi- lating the creature, as it would appear a felicity to us, orany Good,as feparated fromGod, do rebore it to its true objet`five being and ufe , by returning to God who is truly All; and in whom the creature is a Derived lmperfeâ Jmething, and out of whom it is indeed a Nothi .Q. I will further illuflrate it by one other fimilitude. God gave the Ceremonial Law by Alores to the Ifraelites, to be an obfcure' GofpeU, and to lead them untoChrifl. The facrifices, and other typical) Ceremonieswere the Letters of the Law, and Chrift was the fenfe. The true Believers thus underítood_ and ,ufed them; but the Carnal Jews iookt only on the letter and loft the .fenfe and thus feparating the hare Letter from the fenfe , that is the. Legali works from Çhrifl, they thought to be, jttftifcdbr thole D 3 zrc-rh pD

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