CHAPTER LII
"We have now matter of mourning: for our sin is cause of Christ's pains; and we have, lastingly, matter of joy: for endless love made Him to suffer"
AND thus I saw that God rejoiceth that He is our Father, and God rejoiceth that He is our Mother, and God rejoiceth that He is our Very Spouse and our soul is His loved Wife. And Christ rejoiceth that He is our Brother, and Jesus rejoiceth that He is our Saviour. These are five high joys, as I understand, in which He willeth that we enjoy; Him praising, Him thanking. Him loving, Him endlessly blessing.
All that shall be saved, we have in us, for the time of this life, a marvellous mingling[1] both of weal and woe: we have in us our Lord Jesus uprisen, we have in us the wretchedness and the mischief of Adam's falling, dying. By Christ we are steadfastly kept, and by His grace touching us we are raised into sure trust of salvation. And by Adam's falling we are so broken, in our feeling, in diverse manners by sins and by sundry pains, in which we are made dark, that scarsely we can take any comfort.
- ↑ "medlour," "medle."
other, the Inward, the high Beholding or Regard is not said to "fill" Heaven, but to be "full of" endless Heavens. So elsewhere it is said that in our Sense-soul the lower part of human nature, God dwells, but that our Substance, the higher part, dwells in God. (The regard of Mercy and Pity is with the Sense-soul; the high Regard of Joy and Bliss is with the Substance.) P. 133, chap. iv.: "I saw that our Substance is in God, and also I saw that in our Sense-soul God is." lvi. p. 136: "The worshipful City that our Lord Jesus sitteth in, it is our Sense-part, in which He is enclosed; and our Nature-Substance is beclosed in Jesus, with the blessed Soul of Christ sitting in rest in the Godhead."
