has a father joy? Is it not from the love of his children? Whence has a bridegroom joy? Is it not from the love of the bride? Isaiah 61:10; 62:5. But infinitely sweeter must that joy be, which is derived from the love of our Creator! He not only embraces us as a father does his children, but he rejoices over us as over his bride; nay, most tenderly kisses us “with the kisses of his mouth” (Cant. 1:2.), (that is, in Christ, who is his mouth and word), and coming to us, through Christ with the Holy Ghost, makes his _abode_ with us. John 14:23. Take heed, however, concerning this image of God, which consists in a conformity with God, that you do not therefore think, as if man were made _equal_ with God in holiness. Not by any means. For God is infinite as to his essence, virtues, and properties; he is incomprehensible, and without bounds; so that nothing in the world can be compared with him. Man therefore, even in his first state, could not properly be said to bear God in him; being designed only to bear his _image_, as it has been already explained in Chapter I. of this Book. 9. That which has now been stated concerning the image of God, is plain, true, and beyond all doubt. It cannot be denied, that God created man, to be a bright mirror of himself: so that if man had been desirous to know the nature of God, he might, by looking into himself, have beheld God there, as in a glass, and clearly perceived the image of the Deity within his own breast. 10. This image was the life and blessedness of man; but the devil, looking with envious eyes upon this image of God in man, exerted all his art and cunning to efface it, by raising in man a spirit of disobedience and enmity against God. Gen. 3:1, etc. This he accordingly effected with a subtility and haste, that never were since seen. He was not ignorant, that if man had continued in that state, _he_ would have been the master: but that if he could be induced to fall from it, that the devil would thereby become the lord (or rather the tyrant) of fallen man. When, therefore, with all the powers of his cunning and malice, he could devise nothing more likely to accomplish his design than that by which he himself lost his first state or principality, he began, in a seductive manner, to insinuate into the imagination of the woman, no less than an affectation of the Divine Majesty. What can appear more divine, or what is there more noble to be wished for, than to “be as God”? Gen. 3:5. By this cunningly contrived method, man being therefore circumvented, he lost the divine image at once; and the image of Satan, consisting in an affectation of the Divine Majesty, was impressed upon him.