Chapter XXVIII.

Showing How The Highest Good Is Perceived And Tasted In The Soul.

O taste and see that the Lord is good.—Ps. 34:8.

God is an eternal, perfect, infinite, substantial, communicative Good, full of love and joy; and therefore he desires to be known in living faith, in spirit, and in truth. This cannot however be, except a man really taste and feel in his heart the goodness, sweetness, loving-kindness, and comfort of God.

2. If this were to be performed there must needs be in man something conformable to God, and capable of knowing him, that so we might be made partakers of the highest good. Now this is the soul of man: into the soul God was willing to pour forth his goodness, yea, to dwell there, and to manifest and make known himself more and more.

3. But since man has lost this sovereign good by sin, and the devil has obtained a habitation in, and possession 257 of, him; working in man all his own works, as pride, covetousness, lust, anger, envy; man, therefore, “through the faith of the operation of God” (Col. 2:12), must be turned again from the world unto God, from Satan unto Jesus Christ (Acts 26:18), and Satan with his works must be driven out and be utterly dispossessed. As long as Satan works in man, God works not in him; His works are hindered, so that the soul cannot taste that God is good. Indeed, the reason why there are so few that know God aright is, that in the greatest number of men the works of darkness and of Satan have the ascendency. The most part adhere to the world, to the creatures, and to themselves.

4. But they who will rightly know and taste the Lord's goodness, must be joined unto him, and be one spirit with him. 1 Cor. 6:17. And the more this is done the more does God manifest himself in the believing, loving soul; the more the heart is turned from the world unto God, the more God is united to the soul. All love to the world and to the creature must be turned out, if the love of God ever enter in. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” 1 John 2:15. Where God finds a soul empty of the world, he fills it with heaven, with himself, and with all his goodness. The more the heart is emptied of love to the world, the more God fills it with his light and comfort. “Therefore,” as an ancient father says, “in an empty, still, and quiet soul, it can be better felt than expressed what God is.”

5. If then a man would really know that God is good, even the highest Good, he must taste his goodness in his heart. The Scripture testifies thereof outwardly, but the heart must feel it inwardly, and must taste the living word. It must “taste the good word of God and the powers of the world to come.” Heb. 6:5. Thou canst never better understand that God is kind and loving, than when thou feelest his comfort. None can better teach thee that God is a Being full of joy than God himself, when he rejoices in thee. And so it is also with all other things of God. If he do not perform, and himself work all in thee, thou wilt never come to a living knowledge of him. “To know God without God, is impossible,” says St. Augustine. Therefore, that man will never be able to know rightly what God is, unto whom God does not make known and manifest himself. But when a heart feels the living word of God, then it knows and understands that God is all, all-good, and the true, perfect, eternal Good, and better than all for which any heart can wish or desire.

6. When this is known and tasted in the soul, according to the words of Psalm 63:3, “Lord, thy loving-kindness is better than life;” then the soul begins to scorn the world with its joys and pleasures. She has in God satisfaction, even full satisfaction, and, in short, all. For the world, with all that is in it, is made up only of individual things, which are imperfect and inconstant; but God is the true, perfect, universal, and eternal unchangeable Good.

7. For this reason David says, “Whom have I in heaven but thee, O Lord? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” Ps. 73:25. This is the language of a soul which has tasted the perfect good, from which all love to the world and creatures is removed, and which has no pleasure nor delight in the world and in earthly things, but in God alone, the highest 258 Good. And this is the true, sensible, and experimental knowledge of God, nay, the true love of God above all things, which is felt and tasted in the heart; for when God is rightly known, he is loved, praised, and honored above all things.

8. Now, if we have the eternal, perfect good, wherein there is all good, and which alone is all, why should we love that which is imperfect? For where the true, perfect good is known, there it is also beloved above all imperfect things, that is, above all creatures whatsoever.

9. Thus the living knowledge of God expels the love of the world; and thus man begins to despise the world, with all the vanities thereof, saying, with King Solomon, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity;” nay, all under the sun “is vexation of spirit.” Eccles. 1:2, 14. Thus love to the world is abolished in the heart, and there remains only love to God, and to the eternal good which abideth for ever.