Having given up myself wholly to God, and loving Him far better than
myself, how can I find any opposition to his good pleasure? How can I
do otherwise than yield to one I love better than myself? How can a
soul withdraw from the dominion of a Sovereign, that it loves with the
whole heart? "What can separate us from the love of God, in Christ
Jesus?" Although, while we remain in this life, there is a possibility
of sinning, and of separation from God, and it is true, that the soul
remains in oneness with Him, only by the continuance of his mercy, and
that if he should leave it, it would immediately fall into sin, yet I
cannot have the least fear, that my God will leave me, or that I shall
ever separate myself in any degree from his love.
The creature can take no glory to itself, to whatever state it may
arrive. O that you might comprehend what I cannot express--the sense I
have of the goodness of God, to keep what is his own! How jealous, how
watchful he is over the soul! God seems so truly all things to me,
that I seem to see nothing, to love nothing, relish nothing, only what
he causes me to see, love and relish in himself. I am only capable of
loving and submitting to him, so much is he my life. I believe God
blindfold, without questioning or reasoning. _God is_; this is
sufficient. How immense is the freedom of the soul in him! O may you
not doubt, that when all of self is taken away from the creature, there
remains only God. O God, can I have any self-interest, or appropriate
aught as mine? In what can I take it? How strange the thought! how far
removed from the possession of God! I am lost. God is.