Page:Lamb's marriage proclaimed.pdf/6

 come again at the last day, and compleat the marriage. I suspect a hasty marriage to be a sudden vengeance. men and women fly to Christ, and flock to ordinances, to eat and drink with him, or ever he woo them: many come to take Christ, and have another husband at home the world, your lusts; that is foul play: you must be single or else you cannot marry him.

I will ask at all of you that are come here this day, if your husband, the world be dead? Try if your lusts be dead, and sin mortified; otherwise look for no match with Christ. If the world and ye are as great as ever you were, I shall not believe that Christ and you are in the way of marriage. They that are married to Christ have been cast down, wintered and summered, burnt and scalded and can tell you what God's anger is, and what a strange put the love of Christ has to make; lothe at sin, and all other things.

His Wise hath made herself ready. How makes the Kirk the Lamb's wife, herself ready? Gol. i. 12. it is said by the giving of thanks to the Father who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Doth not God here readily answer both as true? God draws, and we run, for God and we meet not against our will, as Simeon carried Christ's cross; nor a Balaam's ass spake that knew not what he spake; nor as the lillies grow, and labour not, and yet are better clothed than Solomon was. Our Lord has our hearts in his hand, as a man's way is before the fire to wring and work it as he pleaseth, and to let the stamp on the man's heart; he puts on the stamp as the wax receiveith it, a stone would not receive it.