God Loves… Himself

“God made the universe and all creatures contained therein, as so many glasses wherein He might reflect His own glory: He hath copied forth Himself in the creation; and, in this outward world, we may read the lovely characters of the Divine goodness, power, and wisdom.

“A good man, that finds himself made partaker of the Divine nature, and transformed into the image of God, infinitely takes pleasure in God, as being altogether lovely.

“We rather glorify God by entertaining the impressions of His glory upon us, than by communicating any kind of glory to Him. Then does a good man become the tabernacle of God, wherein the divine Shechinah does rest, and which the Divine glory fills, when the fame of his mind and life is wholly according to that idea and pattern which he receives from the mount.

“God hath stamped a copy of His own archetypal loveliness upon the soul, that man, by reflecting into himself, might behold the glory of God.

“Thus Moses-like, conversing with God in the mount, and there beholding His glory shining thus out upon us in the face of Christ, we should be deriving a copy of that eternal beauty upon our own souls, and our thirsty and hungry spirits would be perpetually sucking in a true participation and image of His glory. A true Divine love would wing our souls, and make them take their flight swiftly towards heaven and immortality.

“His honor is His love and goodness in paraphrase, spreading itself over all those that can or do receive it; and this He loves and cherishes wheresoever He finds it, as something of Himself therein.

“God does most glorify and exalt Himself in the most triumphant way that may be…when He most of all communicates Himself, and when He erects such monuments of His own majesty, wherein His own love and goodness may live and reign. And we then most of all glorify Him, when we partake most of Him…The first, and chiefest, is concurrent with his own internal vision of all things in that simple, expidite, and simultaneous comprehension of all things intelligible, piercing through all their essences, and viewing them all in himself, he is delighted therein, as seeing how his own glory can display and imitate itself in outward matter.

“When He is said to seek His own glory, it is, indeed, nothing else but to ray and beam forth, as it were, His own lustre.”

This entry was posted on July 31, 2014 at 10:29 pm and is filed under Great Quotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.