Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
Walk in the ways of God, in his fear and love—keep communion with him and he will direct you: Ps. 25:13, ‘The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; he will show them his covenant.’ God discovereth himself particularly to his own people. They are his friends, and you know friends reveal themselves mutually to one another in the greatest secrets; as Christ giveth the reason: John 15:15, ‘I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have revealed to you.’ Those that keep up a continual acquaintance with God, by manifesting their love and fear of him, shall have divine mysteries manifested to them: Col. 1:26, ‘The mystery that was hid from ages is made manifest to the saints.’
Truths that have long lain hid through many successions and revolutions of ages, are at length made known to holy persons. Where there is purity, there is revelation: ‘The pure in heart shall see God,’ Mat. 5:8. They shall see more of his truth and mind in those things which if they should judge if by their own reason, they would contemn. So also it is said, Prov. 3:32, ‘His secret is with the righteous.’ They have not only other kinds of knowledge, but knowledge of the secret of such a way as is veiled with contempt, reproach, and unlikelihood to the world. Blind and carnal men sometimes stumble upon the despised ways of Christ; but they do but plough with the saints’ heifer, and light their torch at the altar. Their selfends and by-interests make them borrow from truth; but it is with them as it is with parrots, they speak the words of men not of reason but custom; they learn a truth when it is delivered, they have been used to such notions. ...
For the reference, see Thomas Manton on walking in friendship with Christ.
Truths that have long lain hid through many successions and revolutions of ages, are at length made known to holy persons. Where there is purity, there is revelation: ‘The pure in heart shall see God,’ Mat. 5:8. They shall see more of his truth and mind in those things which if they should judge if by their own reason, they would contemn. So also it is said, Prov. 3:32, ‘His secret is with the righteous.’ They have not only other kinds of knowledge, but knowledge of the secret of such a way as is veiled with contempt, reproach, and unlikelihood to the world. Blind and carnal men sometimes stumble upon the despised ways of Christ; but they do but plough with the saints’ heifer, and light their torch at the altar. Their selfends and by-interests make them borrow from truth; but it is with them as it is with parrots, they speak the words of men not of reason but custom; they learn a truth when it is delivered, they have been used to such notions. ...
For the reference, see Thomas Manton on walking in friendship with Christ.
