SECT. IV. Ʋse of Exhortation.
IS inward, experimental Looking unto Jesus a choice, and high Gospel-ordinance? [Ʋse 2] One Use of Exhortation, I beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I be∣seech you by the mercies of God, I beseech you brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christs sake, and for the love of the Spirit, to look unto Jesus: or if my beseeching will not prevail, why yet look on me as an Embassador of Christ, consider as though God did beseech you by me, I beseech, I pray you in Christs stead; it is a message that I have from God to your souls, to look unto Jesus; and therefore set your hearts, to all the words that I testifie to you this day, for it is not a vain thing, but it is for your lives.
O that I should need thus to perswade your hearts to look unto Jesus! What, is not your Jesus worthy of this? why then are your thoughts no more upon him? why are not your hearts continually with him? why are not your strongest desires, and daily delights in, and after the Lord Jesus? what's the matter? will not God give you leave to approach this light? will he not suffer your souls to tast and see? why then are these words in the Text? why then doth he cry, and double his cry, behold me, behold me? Ah vile hearts! How delightfully, and unweariedly can we think of vanity? how freely, and how frequently can we think of our pleasures; friends, labours, lusts? yea, of our miseries, wrongs, sufferings, fears? and what, is not Christ in all our thoughts? It was said of the Jews, that they used to cast to the ground the book of Esther before they read it, because the name of God is not in it; and Augustine cast by Cicero's writings, because they contained not the name of Jesus; Christians! thus should you humble, and cast down your sensual hearts, that have in them no more of Christ: O chide them for their wilfull or weak strangeness to Jesus Christ! O turn your thoughts from off all earthly vanities, and bend your souls to study Christ, habi∣tuate your selves to such contemplations as in the next Use I shall present; and let not those thoughts be seldom or cursory, but settle upon them; dwell there, bath your souls in those delights, drench your affections in those rivers of pleasures, or rather in the sea of consolation; O tye your souls in heavenly galleries, have your eyes continu∣ally