312 THE ABSOLUTE accounted too strict and precise for us to live by? O let the heavens blush, and the earth be ashamed, at this barbarous ingrat- itude ! How can such a people show their faces at his coming, or look him in the face when he shall judge them for this! Would you use a friend thus ? No, nor an enemy. Methinks you should rather wonder with yourselves that ever Christ should give you leave to love him, and say, Will the Lord endure such a wretch to kiss him? Will he suffer himself to be embraced by those arms which have been defiled so oft by the embracements of sin ? Will he so highlyhonor meas to be his subject andhis servant, and to be guided by such a blessed and perfect law? And doth he require no harder conditions than these for my salvation? Take, then, my heart, Lord, it is thine ; and O that it were better worth thy hav- ing; or take it and make it better: the spear hath opened me a passage to thy heart ; let the Spirit open thee a passage into mine ; deservedly may those gates be fuel for hell, that would not open to let in the King of Glory. 3. To deny thy affection and subjection to the Son is the great- est folly and madness in the world. Why doth he require this so earnestly at thyhands ? Is it forthy hurt, or for thy good ? Would he make a prey of thee for his own advantage ? Is it not any need that he bath of thee or of thy service, or because thou hast need of him for thy direction and salvation? Would he steal away thy heart, as the world doth, to delude it? Would he draw thee, as Satan doth, to serve him that he may torment thee ? If so, it were no wonder that thou art so hardly drawn to him ; but thou know- est, sure, that Christ bathnone of these ends. The truth is this : His dyingon the cross is but part ofthe work that is necessary to the salvation : this was but the payingof the debt: he must give thee, moreover, a peculiar interest, and make that to be absolutely thine, which was thine but conditionally : he must take off thy rags, and wash thy sores, and qualify thy soul for thy prepared glory, and bring thee out of the prison of sin and death, and.present thee to his Father blameless and undefiled, and estate thee in greater dignity than thou fell from : and all this must he do by drawing thee to himself, and laying himself upon thee as the prophet upon the child, and closing thy heart with his heart, and thywill with his will, and thy thoughts and ways with the rule of his word ; and is this against thee or for thee ? Is there any hurt to thee in all this.? I dare challenge earth and hell, and all the enemies of Christ in both, to show the least hurt that ever he caused to the soul of a believer, or the least wrong to the soul of any. And must he then have such a stir to do thee good? Must he so beseech thee to be happy, and follow thee with entreaties ? And
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