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A42806 Catholick charity recommended in a sermon before the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London : in order to the abating the animosities among Christians, that have been occasion'd by differences in religion / by Jos. Glanvill ... Glanvill, Joseph, 1636-1680. 1669 (1669) Wing G801; ESTC R13297 24,826 40

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all persection Our unhappy First Parents lost Paradise by aspiring to be like God in Knowledge and if we endeavour to be like him in Love we shall be in the way of gaining a better Paradise than they lost II. LOVE is the Spirit of Angels Glorified Souls and the best of Men. There is nothing by which the Angelical nature is so Much distinguish'd from the Diabolical as Love and Goodness for the Devils have Spiritual and Immortal natures and great degrees of Power and Knowledge and those perhaps not much inferiour to what is to be found in some of the better Spirits so that the great difference is not in the excess of natural perfections which the Angels of Light have above those of Darkness but in this that the former abound in Love Sweetness and Benignity and the latter in Malice Cruelty and Revenge these are the very Image of Sathan and Spirit of Hell Whereas all the Celestial Inhabitants live in the joyful exercise of uninterrupted Love and endearments Nor is that Love confined to the blessed and glorified Company but it sheds it self abroad upon the neather world and they are Ministring Spirits for our good Heb. 1.14 They so far Love us that they can stoop from Heaven to serve us There is Joy there at the Conversion of a Sinner and no doubt there is Love to converted Saints and care and pitty for all the rest of Men. For the spirits of the Iust made perfect are freed from their froward humours and pettish natures their mistaken Zeal and sondness of Opinions which straightned their Affections while they were on Earth and now they are inlarged by the vast improvements of their Knowledge and accomplishment of their Vertue by a fuller sense of Divine Love and of their Duty by the genius of their company and the imployment of the happy Place So that in Heaven all are Chatholicks in their Affections And the better any man is the more he is so upon Earth The good man makes not himself his center not are his thoughts wholly engrost about his own concernments but he is carefully solicitous for the general benefit and never so much pleased as when he is made an instrument of Divine Goodness to promote the interests of his Christian brethren 'T was an high strain of Love in Moses exprest towards the Transgressing Israelites when he was content to be blotted out of Gods Book rather than that their Sin should not be blotted out Exod. 32.32 and St. Paul was no less Zealously affectionate towards the Iewes when he said he could wish himself accursed from Christ viz. separated from Christian communion as a most vile and abject person for their sakes Rom. 9.3 These were spirits whom Religion and Divine Love had enlarged and the more any man advanceth in Christianity the nearer he approacheth to this generous heroick temper III. LOVE is an eminent branch of the Divine Life and Nature Love is of God and every one that Loveth is born of God saith the Apostle 1 Iohn 4.7 8. The Divine Nature in us is the Image of God Pourtraid and lively drawn upon the regenerated Soul and we have remark't above that Love is the vital Image of our Maker 't is His spirit infused into us and growing in us and upon that account to be preferred before all Gifts and natural Perfections as St. Paul hath done it in the mentioned 1 Cor. 13. And the common Gifts of the Spirit differ from this special Grace as the Painters Picture doth from his Son His Counterfeit may indeed in a superficial appearance to the Eye resemble him more than his Child but yet it is but an empty shadow destitute and incapable of his Life and Nature So there are a sort of Gifts that have a spiritual appearance and may to those that see things at distance or have not their senses exercised seem more like the divine nature than this modest vertue But those that come near them and are better able to discern perceive that in themselves they are without the Divine Life and Motion and are meer Liveless Pictures And here I dare say that the happiest faculty to Preach Plausibly and Pray with Fluency and Eloquence to Discourse Devoutly and readily to Interpret Sripture if it be not joyned with a benigne and charitable spirit is no participation of the God-like life and nature nor indeed any more Divine than those common gifts and natural parts which those that think highly of themselves upon these accounts despise For very Evil men have been eminent in these accomplishments and Wicked Spirits are without question endowed with them and they are of themselves arguments of nothing but a faculty of Imitation a devotional Complexion and warm Imagination Whereas on the other hand Charity and Christian Love are good Evidence of a Renewed state and nature Our Saviour made it a Character Ioh. 13. and the Catholick Apostle concludes from it 1 Iohn 3.14 By this we know that we are passed from death to life because we love the Brethren And if this be a Mark and St. Iohn be not mistaken I doubt that some who are very gracious by many Signes of their own will want one of Christs to prove their comfortable presumption IV. LOVE is the bond and tye of Christian Communion How can two walk together except they are agreed The Church is a Body consisting of many Members which unless they Vnite and send their mutual supplies one to another the Whole is distempered and in the ready way to Death and Dissolution Now Charity is that vital Cement whereby they are Vnited and the Soul by which the common body lives that whereby the League between the members is preserved and health with it When this decays sad symptoms and mortal evils follow We see in Nature the great Fabrick of the World is maintained by the mutual Friendship and conspiracy of its parts which should they universally fall out and break the bond of Amity that is between them should they act their Antipathies upon each other yea should they but cease to serve one another for the general good the whole frame would quickly be dissolved and all things shuffled into their old Chaos and Abyss And the greatest evils that have or can happen to the Church have been the effects of the Decay of Charity and those intestine Divisions that have grown up in it From these she hath always suffered more than from external persecutions The flames within have consumed her when those from without have only sing'd her garments V. LOVE is the most Catholick grace and upon that account the most excellent since that which promotes the good of the whole is better than any private perfection for which reason things in nature will quit their particular interests when the common good so requireth as heavy bodies will ascend and light bodies descend to prevent a chasm and breach in Nature Now of all the divine vertues there is none of so large an influence