Attributes of God - Charnock - XXXIX - Chapter 11 (God's holiness) concluded

Required reading
Attributes of God by Charnock (Available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Conclude Chapter 11 (A discourse upon the holiness of God).

My summary
Now we continue Charnock's 'uses' of the doctrine of God's holiness.

The second use is comfort.  Because of God's holiness:
(i) we have an interest in this attribute as well as any other;
(ii)  God is a fit object for trust and dependence;
(iii) he will certainly value every holy soul;
(iv) God will perfect holiness in every upright soul.

Charnock's third use is exhortation.  Because of God's holiness:
(i) let us get and preserve right and strong apprehensions of this divine perfection;
(ii) let us glorify this holiness of God;
(iii) let us labour after a conformity to God in this perfection of holiness;
(iv) let us labour to grow up in holiness and breathe after fuller measures of it;
(v) let us carry ourselves holily in a spiritual manner in all our religious approaches to God;
(vi) let us address for holiness to God the fountain of it.

What grabbed me
I enjoyed the remarks about beauty being related to holiness: 'It was the jewel of the reasonable nature in paradise: conformity to God was man's original happiness in his created state; and what was naturally so, cannot but be immutably so in its own nature.  The beauty of every copied thing consists in its likeness to the original; every thing hath more of loveliness, as it hath greater impressions of its first pattern: in this regard holiness hath more of beauty on it than the whole creation, because it partakes of a greater excellency of God than the sun, moon, and stars. No greater glory can be, than to be a conspicuous and visible image of the invisible, and holy, and blessed God. As this is the splendour of all the Divine attributes, so it is the flower of all a Christian's graces, the crown of all religion: it is the glory of the Spirit In this regard the king's daughter is said to be 'all glorious within' (Ps. xlv. 13). It is more excellent than the soul itself, since the greatest soul is but a deformed piece without it: a 'diamond without lustre.' What are the noble faculties of the soul without it, but as a curious rusty watch, a delicate heap of disorder and confusion! It is impossible there can be beauty where there are a multitude of 'spots and wrinkles' that blemish a countenance (Eph. v. 27). It can never be in its true brightness but when it is perfect in purity; when it regains what it was possessed of by creation, and dispossessed of by the fall, and recovers its primitive temper. We are not so beautiful by being the work of God, as by having a stamp of God upon us. Worldly greatness may make men honourable in the sight of creeping worms. Soft lives, ambitious reaches, luxurious pleasures, and a pompous religion, render no man excellent and noble in the sight of God: this is not the excellency and nobility of the Deity which we are bound to resemble; other lines of a Divine image must be drawn in us to render us truly excellent.'

Want to be beautiful?  Be holy like your creator.

Next week's reading
Commence Chapter 12 (A discourse upon the goodness of God) by reading up to the paragraph commencing 'III. The third thing, that God is good.'

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.