As the gospel is a mystery of faith, it enables the godly to believe strange mysteries; to believe that which they understand not, and hope for that which they do not see. It teacheth them to believe that Christ was born in time, and that He was from everlasting; that He was comprehended in the virgin's womb, and yet the heaven of heavens not able to contain Him; to be the Son of Mary, and yet her Maker; to be born without sin, and yet justly to have died for sin. They believe that God was just in punishing Christ, though innocent; and in justifying penitent believers, who are sinners; they believe themselves to be great sinners, and yet that God sees them in Christ without spot or wrinkle.
Again, as the gospel is a mystery of godliness, it enables the godly to do as strange things as they believe; to live by Another's spirit, to act from Another's strength, to live to Another's will, and aim at Another's glory; it makes them so gentle that a child may lead them to anything that is good; yet so stout that fire shall not frighten them into sin; they can love their enemies and yet, for Christ's sake, can hate father and mother; they are taught by it that all things are theirs, yet they dare not take a pin from the wicked by force or fraud; it makes them so humble as to prefer every one above themselves, yet so to value their own condition that the poorest among them would not change his estate with the greatest monarch of the world; it makes them thank God for health, and for sickness also; to rejoice when exalted, and not to repine when made low; they can pray for life, and at the same time desire to die!...
The gospel opens a mine of unsearchable riches, but in a mystery; it shows men a way to be rich in faith, rich in God, rich for another world, while poor in this....
Again the real professors of the gospel are hated because they partake of its mysterious nature. They are highborn, but in a mystery; you cannot see their birth by their outward breeding; arms they bear, and revenues they have to live on, but not such as the world judges the greatness of persons and families by: no, their outside is mean, while their inside is glorious; and the world values them by what they know and see of their external part, and not by their inward graces; they pass as princes in the disguise of some poor man's clothes through the world, and their entertainment is accordingly. Had Christ put on His robes of glory and majesty when He came into the world, surely He had not gone out of it with so shameful and cruel a death. The world would have trembled at His footstool, which some of them did when but a beam of His deity looked forth upon them. Did saints walk on earth in those robes which they shall wear in heaven, then they would be feared and admired by those who now scorn and despise them. But as God's design in Christ's first coming would not have been fulfilled had He so appeared, neither would His design in His saints, did the world know them as one day they shall; therefore He is pleased to let them lie hidden under the mean coverings of poverty and infirmities, that so He may exercise their suffering graces, and also accomplish His wrath upon the wicked for theirs against them.
Here we learn our knowledge of heaven little by little like one that reads a book as it comes from the press, sheet by sheet; there we shall see it altogether: here we learn with much pain and difficulty, there without travail and trouble; glorified saints, though they cease not from work, yet rest from labor; here passion blinds our minds, that we mistake error for truth, and truth for error.
When that blessed hour comes, thou shalt no more hear what a blessed place heaven is, as thou were wont to have it set forth by the poor rhetoric of mortal man, preaching to thee of that with which he himself was little acquainted, but shalt walk thyself in the street of that glorious city, and bless thyself to think what poor low thoughts thou hadst thereof when on earth thou didst meditate on this subject. One moment's sight of that glory will inform thee more than all the books written of it were ever able to do.