Sourcing 'The Valley of Vision' 18: "Union with Christ"

"May I prize the gain…"

This week¹ was a bit of a puzzle! For “Union with Christ,” we’re back in Thomas Shepard’s Meditations and Spiritual Experiences, for the most part—but with an unexpected twist in the middle…

After an opening few lines that I assume to be original, Bennett begins at “No sin is greater” by adapting Shepard’s entry for April 30, which takes him through to “cleave to Christ”:

Then it’s over to the entry for Oct. 29, which covers “When thou takest” to “all my losses”:

But here’s where things get interesting. For the next section (a set of three parallel “the more [x], the more [y]” statements), Bennett appears to pivot not to another section in Shepard but, from what I can gather, this quotation² from Jonathan Edwards found in chapter 5 of Alexander Whyte’s Thomas Shepard: Pilgrim Father and Founder of Harvard; His Spiritual Experience and Experimental Preaching:

That’s a lot of Puritan/quasi-Puritan cross-pollination right there! (It’s probably safe to assume that Bennett picked this up from Whyte, not directly from Edwards, given the Shepard link—but there may be no way of knowing for sure.)

Anywho, the prayer then ends with a single line based on Shepard’s entry for April 5, followed by a final line that (I’m guessing) is original to Bennett:

And that’s it! A twisty little journey this time around. We’ll see whither else the road wends next week…

1. Approximately. I’m a little off the “publish weekly” rhythm as of late.

2. I say “quotation” because Whyte presents it as such, but I have not been able to locate an original source.