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| He Wishes to Have No Intercourse with Those Who Deny Divine Truth.
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Chapter XVI.—He Wishes to Have No
Intercourse with Those Who Deny Divine Truth.
23. With such as grant that all these things
which Thy truth indicates to my mind are true, I desire to confer a
little before Thee, O my God. For let those who deny these things
bark and drown their own voices with their clamour as much as they
please; I will endeavour to persuade them to be quiet, and to
suffer Thy word to reach them. But should they be unwilling, and
should they repel me, I beseech, O my God, that Thou “be not
silent to me.”1123
Do Thou speak truly in my heart,
for Thou only so speakest, and I will send them away blowing upon
the dust from without, and raising it up into their own eyes; and
will myself enter into my chamber,1124
and sing there unto Thee songs of
love,—groaning with groaning unutterable1125
in my pilgrimage, and remembering
Jerusalem, with heart raised up towards it,1126
| 1126 Baxter has a noteworthy passage on our heavenly
citizenship in his Saints’ Rest: “As Moses, before he
died, went up into Mount Nebo, to take a survey of the land of
Canaan, so the Christian ascends the Mount of Contemplation, and by
faith surveys his rest.…As Daniel in his captivity daily opened
his window towards Jerusalem, though far out of sight, when he went
to God in his devotions, so may the believing soul, in this
captivity of the flesh, look towards ‘Jerusalem which is above’
(Gal.
iv. 26). And as Paul was
to the Colossians (ii. 5) so
may the believer be with the glorified spirits, ‘though absent in
the flesh,’ yet with them ‘in the spirit,’ joying and
beholding their heavenly ‘order.’ And as the lark sweetly sings
while she soars on high, but is suddenly silenced when she falls to
the earth, so is the frame of the soul most delightful and divine
while it keeps in the views of God by contemplation. Alas, we make
there too short a stay, fall down again, and lay by our music!”
(Fawcett’s Ed. p. 327). | Jerusalem my country, Jerusalem my mother,
and Thyself, the Ruler over it, the Enlightener, the Father, the
Guardian, the Husband, the chaste and strong delight, the solid
joy, and all good things ineffable, even all at the same time,
because the one supreme and true Good. And I will not be turned
away until Thou collect all that I am, from this dispersion1127
| 1127 See ii. sec. 1; ix. sec. 10; x. sec. 40, note;
ibid. sec. 65; and xi. sec. 39, above. | and
deformity, into the peace of that very dear mother, where are the
first-fruits of my spirit,1128
| 1128 See ix. sec. 24, above; and xiii. sec. 13,
below. | whence these things are assured to
me, and Thou conform and confirm it for ever, my God, my Mercy. But
with reference to those who say not that all these things which are
true and false, who honour Thy Holy Scripture set forth by holy
Moses, placing it, as with us, on the summit of an authority1129
| 1129 See p. 118, note 12, above. | to be
followed, and yet who contradict us in some particulars, I thus
speak: Be Thou, O our God, judge between my confessions and their
contradictions.
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