superfice, and not
suffer it to be transmitted into our hearts to change them. But when it
pleaseth him, who at the first, by a word of power, commanded light to
shine out of darkness, he can scatter that cloud of ignorance, and draw
away the vail of unbelief, and can by his power and art, so transform the
soul, as to remove its earthly quality, and make it transparent and pure,
and then the light will shine into the heart, and get free access into the
soul. But though this darkness were wholly removed, there is another
darkness, that ariseth not from the want of light, but from the excessive
superabundance of light,--_caligo lucis nimiae_, that is, a divine darkness,
a darkness of glory, such an infinite excess and superplus of light and
glory above all created capacities, that it dazzles and confounds all
mortal or created understandings. We see some shadows of this, if we look
up to the clear sun. We are able to see nothing for too much light. There
is such an infinite disproportion here between the eye of our mind, and
this divine light of glory, that if we curiously pry into it, it is rather
confounding and astonishing, and therefore it fills the souls of saints
with continual silent admiration and adoration."(76)

The comparisons, employed by Binning, have sometimes a degree of
quaintness in them which is far from being displeasing, if it does not
heighten their effect, as when he observes of that Great Being, whose
thoughts are not as our thoughts, that he "speaks in our terms, and _like
nurses with their children_, uses our own dialect."(77) He employs an
equally vivid, though somewhat quaint comparison, when he observes, that
"the best way to behold the sun, is to look at it _in a pail of water_,
and the surest way to know God by, is to take him up in a state of
humiliation and condescension, as the sun in the rainbow, in his words and
works, which are mirrors of the divine power and goodness, and do reflect
upon the hearts and eyes of all men the beams of that uncreated
light."(78) We are offended, however, with the homeliness of such
expressions as these, "sin's ugly face,"(79) "our legs are cut off by
sin,"(80) "the legs of the soul,"(81) men opposing God are "like dogs
barking at the moon,"(82) "the pull of the Father's arm,"(83) the
Christian is "on speaking terms with God,"(84) "he drives a trade with
heaven,"(85) Christ "took up a shop, as it were, in our flesh, that he
might work in us."(86) Nevertheles