God is abundantly willing that we should receive that strong consolation that comes from gospel faith; the root of such faith is plucked away by denying the satisfacatino that was made by Christ. It makes the poor soul to be like Noah's dove in its distress, not knowing where to rest teh soles of her feet.
When a soul is turned out of its self-righteousness, and begins to look abroad, and view the heaven and earth for a resting place, and perceives an ocean, a flood, an inundation of wrath, to cover all the world, the wrath of God revealing itself from heaven against all ungodliness, so that it can obtain no rest nor abiding, -- heaven it cannot reach by its own flight, and to hell it is unwilling to fall; -- if now the Lord Jesus Christ do not appear as an ark in the midst of the waters, upon whom the floods have fallen, and yet has got above them all for a refuge, alas! what shall it do?
When the flood fell there were many mountains glorious in the eye, far higher than the ark; but yet those mountains were all drowned, whilst the ark still kept on the top of the waters. Many appearing hills and mountains of self-righteousness and general mercy, at the first view, seem to the soul much higher than Jesus Christ, but when the flood of wrath once comes and spreads itself, all those mountains are quickly covered; only the ark, the Lord Jesus Christ, though the flood fall on him also, yet he gets above it quite, and gives safety to them that rest upon him.
From The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, Book 3, Ch. 9, section V.
BHT
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