Johannes Scott S. T. P. PRACTICAL DISCOURSES Concerning OBEDIENCE AND THE Love of God Vol. II. By IOHN SCOTT D. D. late Rector of St. Giles's in the Fields LONDON Printed for W. Kettilby at the Bishop's Head in St. Paul's Church-yard and S. Manship at the Ship near the Royal-Exchange in Cornhill MDCXCVIII To the Right Honorable DANIEL Earl of Nottingham MY LORD I Am very sensible that you are the known Favourer of Men of eminent Worth and Learning I only take this Opportunity of acquainting the World that You were so of the Author of these following Discourses that so you may receive in larger Measures those Tributes which are due to Publick Benefactors the Prayers and Praises of Mankind For they who have or shall be bettered by This great Author's Works are oblig'd in a peculiar Manner to remember that Right Honourable Person who by his Countenance did not only encourage him to be serviceable but did really endeavour to render him more useful to us by procuring for him a little Recess from the Toil and Labours of his weighty Employment Had this succeeded in all Humane Probability he had lived longer and then we should have seen that truly Pious and most sublime Design he intended to pursue and should have been well acquainted with that uncultivated part of Religion The Duties of Piety towards God And perhaps by Them we should have given a guess at the Praises and Hallelujahs of those blest Beings above when they had been managed with that Strength of Eloquence that Fervour of Spirit pois'd and temper'd with such a Judgment as his But he is gone to bear a part in the Heavenly Choir where if he knows what is done here below it will be a pleasing Prospect to my dear departed Friend to see Your Lordship and your Noble Family the Possessors and design'd Heirs of the Honours of both Worlds I am My Lord Your Lordships most Humble and most devoted Servant HUMPHREY ZOUCH 1 JOHN V. 3 For this is the love of God that we keep his Commandments and his Commandments are not grievous IN the first Verse the Apostle asserts that whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ that is so believes as to act suitable to his Belief is born of God he is become a Child of God by partaking of his Nature and stamped with his Likeness and every one that loveth him that begat i. e. God his Heavenly Father loveth him also that is begotten of him hath a true hearty Kindness for all that are God's Children And then in the second Verse by this saith he we know that we love the Children of God and consequently that we are born of God if we love God and keep his Commandments that is if we so love him as to keep his Commandments And indeed if we do not so love him we do not love him at all and consequently we do not love his Children nor are we his Children our selves of which he gives a full Proof in the Text for this is the love of God that we keep his Commandments and his Commandments are not grievous In which Words you have First an Account of the Love of God what it is This is the love of God that we keep his Commandments and Secondly a Motive to engage us to the Practice of it and his Commandments are not grievous I begin with the first of these the Account of this Love of God what it is This is the Love of God that we keep his Commandments By the Love of God here we are not to understand God's Love to us but our Love to God as is plain by this because 't is placed in our keeping his Commandments This is the Love of God that is this is the natural Effect and proper Exercise of the Love of God for it is certain that keeping God's Commandments is not the Affection of Love to him but the Effect of it So that the Meaning of the Words is this this is the most genuine Expression and inseparable Effect of our Love of God that we obey his Laws And hence our Saviour makes this the proper Tryal and Proof of our Love to him If ye love me keep my Commandments John xiv 15 for this he tells us ver 23. is the necessary Consequence of our Love to him If any man love me he will keep my words i. e. this will most certainly be the Effect of his Love to me that he will be obedient to my Will And by this he plainly tells us he will judge of the Sincerity of our Friendship to him John xv 14 Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you From all which it is evident that the most proper and characteristical Expression of our Love to God is our keeping his Commandments And indeed considering that God is our Soveraign Lawgiver there are no Actions by which we can so naturally express our Affection to him as by those of Obedience and Submission to his Laws and therefore we find in Scripture that to love God and obey his Laws and to hate God and disobey them are generally used promiscuously for one another and that for very good reason for here our Love and Hatred of God are not considered as conversant about God as God in which sense perhaps there is no Creature in the World can be said to hate him but as conversant about him as Lord and Governour of the World as he gives Laws to Mankind whereby he commands them what to do and forbids them what to avoid And in this Sense to love God is to love him as Governing and Commanding and as such we can no otherwise express our Love to him but by keeping his Commandments But for the farther clearing of this I shall in Prosecution of the Argument do these two Things I. Shew you that wheresoever the Love of God is it will most certainly prove a Principle of Obedience to him II. That the Love of God is in it self the most perfect and effectual Principle of Obedience 1. That wheresoever the Love of God is it will most certainly prove a Principle of Obedience to him And this I doubt not will evidently appear if we consider that all the natural Expressions of our Love as it is terminated upon God do of their own accord finally resolve themselves into Obedience to his Will For Love wheresoever it is hearty and sincere always expresses it self in such Symptoms as these 1. In industriously endeavouring to resemble the Beloved 2. In conforming the Will Designs and Intentions to the Will and Designs and Intentions of the Beloved 3. In a solicitous Care of avoiding those Things which may any ways displease or distaste the Beloved 4. In a chearful Readiness to undergo any thing be it never so hard or difficult for the sake of the Beloved All which Expressions of our Love when it is terminated upon God do most naturally run into Obedience to his Will 1. If we love God our Love will
much in discovering his Loveliness as in affecting our Hearts with the Sense of it and in raising our gross and carnal Affections to a Love proportionate to those Discoveries and 't is this that creates us so much Toil and Labour in the Progress of our Obedience to the Law of Perfection but when once we are arrived into the blessed Regions of Immortality our Affection being perfectly subdued to the Reason of our Minds and dreined and clarified from all its gross and carnal Love will as naturally flame out more and more towards God upon every new Discovery of his Beauty as Fire doth when more combustible Fuel is layd upon it and so without any Toil or Difficulty the more we know the more we shall Love and so more and more for ever If therefore we would know what Measures of Love to God we are obliged to by this Law of Perfection the Answer is easy viz. that to all Eternity we are bound to love him as much as we are able and always to love him more and more as our Ability increases And this I take to be the Sense of that comprehensive Law of our Saviour Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength Mar. 12.30 that is thou shalt imploy thy Faculties thy Mind thy Will and thy Affections to the utmost of thy Strength and Power in loving delighting and taking Complacency in the Goodness Beauty and Perfections of God But 2 ly What Degree of Love to God is required by the Law of Sincerity which is the Law by which we must stand or fall for ever So that the Sense of the Enquiry is this what Degree of Love to God is necessary to put us into a State of Salvation the indispensable Condition of our Salvation being nothing else but our Obedience to this Law of Sincerity Now as to this particular of our Love of God there are two Things which this Law exacts of us First it requires the Being and Existence of this heavenly Virtue in us that is it requires not only that we should not hate God or be indifferent between Love and Hatred in our Affection to him but that we should really cordially and sincerely love him And hence those eternal Glories and Beatitudes in which our Salvation doth consist are said to be prepared by God for them that love him 1 Cor. 2.9 which is a plain Evidence that it is one of the Conditions or Qualifications upon which our Salvation doth depend and consequently an indispensable Duty of the Law of Sincerity and St. James expresly tells us that the Lord hath promised the Crown of Life to them that love him Ja. 1.12 And therefore since that Law of Sincerity contains the Condition of that Promise it hence necessarily follows that our Love to God is a Part of it since that Promise is made to those that love him Nay so necessary a Part of that Law is this excellent Virtue that the Apostle tells us without this the most vertuous Actions whatsoever are insignificant Cyphers in the Account of God for though saith he I bestow all my Goods to feed the Poor and though I give my Body to be Burned and have not Charity it profiteth me nothing 1 Cor. 13.3 where it is plain he takes Charity in the largest Sense for our Love to God and one another He therefore that doth not really love God who is not heartily touched and affected with the Sense of his Goodness and Perfections stands condemned by the Law of Sincerity and without Repentance and Amendment shall have no Part or Portion in the Kingdom of God But then Secondly This Law of Sincerity requires such a Degree of Love to God as doth together with the other Motives of Christianity effectually render us obedient to his Will For as I have shewed you the Scripture every where makes our keeping his Commandments the most essential Property of our Love of him for if a man love me saith our Saviour he will keep my Words Joh. 14.23 And whoso keepeth his Word saith St. John that is his Commandments in him is the love of God perfected that is in him it is real and cordial and sincere 1 Joh. 2.5 When therefore our Love to God hath that Power over us as together with the other Motives of Christianity to restrain us from the wilful Omission of any known Duty or Commission of any known Sin it is then perfected to that Degree which the Law of Sincerity exacts But before we dismiss this Argument it will be necessary to give a more particular Account of it 1. Therefore this Law of Sincerity requires that some Degree of true Love to God should be intermingled with the other Parts of our Obedience to him because this as I have shewn you is one great and essential Part of that Obedience which it requires and therefore if out of mere Fear of God we should obey him in all other Instances yet so long as we are defective in this our Obedience will be lame and partial and want a great Part of that Intireness which the Law of Sincerity exacts For since it requires us to love God under the same Penalty of eternal Death that it requires all its other Duties we can no more be saved by it without this Virtue than without Justice Temperance and Chastity yea considering how necessary this is both to quicken our Obedience here and qualify us for Happiness hereafter we may much better spare any Virtue of Religion than this of the Love of God This therefore is indispensably necessary according to the Tenor of the Law of Sincerity that there should be some Degree of true Love to God intermingled with the other Parts of our Obedience 2 ly This Law of Sincerity exacts of us only such a Degree of Love to God as in Conjunction with the other Motives of Christianity is actually sufficient to enforce our Obedience It doth not require us to love God in that heroic Degree as not to need any other Motive to engage us to obey his Will for if it did no Man could be in a good State till he were able to obey God purely for his own Sake without any Respect either to those glorious Advantages he promises or those endless Torments he denounces which requires such an ardent Degree of Love to him as I doubt few good Men arrive to in this Life I know 't is usually said by those that handle this Argument that to love God above all Things is the Degree of Love to which the Law of Sincerity obliges us but either this must be a Mistake or no Man can be good till he is so perfect a Lover of God as not to need any other Motive but that of his own Love to oblige him to Obedience For Men need no Motives to persuade them to chuse what they love best and therefore if Men loved God above all they
could have no other Motive to incline him to love us but only the immense Benevolence of his own Nature Since therefore he hath loved me without any Desert of mine can I forbear to love him who hath deserved so well of me If he had never expressed any Kindness towards me yet I have infinite Reason to love him because of the infinite Loveliness of his Nature but when I add to this the unspeakable Love he bore me when I had neither Beauty to endear nor Desert to oblige him what a tender Care he took of my Welfare and how big his Thoughts were with Designs of Kindness to me I am not able to reflect upon my Coldness and Indifference towards him without the greatest Shame and Confusion especially considering 3 ly That he began to love us when we deserved his Hatred And indeed if we consider the wretched Condition in which his Love found us when it first addressed to us and cast its gracious Eyes upon us we shall find sufficient Reason to wonder that it did not immediately convert into implacable Fury For when it first looked down on us from the Battlements of Heaven it beheld us wallowing in our Blood all polluted and distained with the foulest Treasons and Rebellions It saw us unanimously engaged in an unnatural Conspiracy against the blessed Author of our Beings converting those very Faculties he bestowed upon us into Weapons of Rebellion against him and arming the Effects of his Bounty against his Sovereign Authority It beheld our Natures all depraved and vitiated our Faculties all disordered and confused our Minds surrounded with Egyptian Darkness our Wills byassed with wild and irregular Inclinations our Affections overgrown with monstrous and preternatural Lusts and all the beautiful Structure of our Natures most miserably disfigured and deformed and certainly one would have thought that such a loathsome Spectacle as this might have been sufficient to extinguish his Love for ever and stifle all his tender Resentments towards us But so invincible was his Kindness to us that all the Deformities we had superinduced upon our Natures all our Unworthiness to be beloved by him all the rude Affronts and Indignities we had offered were not able so much as for one Moment to stop or divert the impetuous Current of his Goodness But in the midst of so many Reasons that he had to hate us he fixed his Love upon us and notwithstanding the Continuance of those Reasons doth still persist to love us and while we are abusing of his Kindness dishonouring his Name and trampling on his Laws and Authority he is continually mindful and active to do us good and doth incessantly imploy his restless Thoughts extend his watchful Eye and exert his powerful Arm to contrive promote and procure our Happiness as if he were resolved to be as obstinate in Love as we are in Unkindness to contend with us for Victory and if it be possible to vanquish us with the Charms of an invincible Kindness And now methinks it should be impossible for any one that hath but the Reason of a Man to be so base and disingenuous as not to be endeared by such a victorious Love O blessed God! dost thou love me who have so many ways deserved thy Hatred and can I hate thee who hast so infinitely merited my Love Have I not been long enough thine Enemy already and hast thou not been long enough my Friend at last to thaw my obdurate Enmity and melt me into a reciprocal Kindness Barbarous Heart Canst thou still withstand these puissant Endearments of Almighty Love that hath so long repay'd thee Smiles for Affronts and returned thee Favours for Provocations For shame if thou hast any Sense of Gratitude or Modesty in thee be at last persuaded to hearken to the Love of thy Maker and to return him Love for Love 4 thly He began to love us when he could never reap the least Advantage to himself by it Had we been capable either of benefiting or injuring him of adding to or substracting from his Happiness his own Interest might have obliged him to love us or at least to have pretended Kindness to us that so he might the better obtain his Ends upon us and engage us to contribute more freely to his Happiness But such a poor Design as this is inconsistent with the Notion of a Divinity which implies infinite Perfection and consequently infinite Happiness and for him who is infinitely happy to design a Contribution of Happiness from his Creatures implies a Contradiction because the very designing of a farther Happiness implies a present Want and Insufficiency which can have no Place in a Being that is infinitely happy already The Happiness of God therefore being so immense and secure that nothing can be added to or substracted from it it is impossible he should love us for any Self-interest or Advantage it being out of the Reach of any Power whatsoever either to benefit or injure him and his Love to us can have no other Design but only our Happiness and Welfare He his infinitely perfect and happy in himself and consequently cannot be supposed to love us for his own Advantage it being impossible that he who is infinitely happy in himself should be capable of receiving any Advantage from any Thing without him so that there can be no other End of his Love but only to render us like himself compleatly perfect and happy For when he first set his Heart upon us and chose us for his Favourites he knew his own Happiness to be so immense and stable as that he could never need our Love or Services either to add more to it or to continue and perpetuate it which from Eternity to Eternity was and is and always will be commensurate to the boundless Capacity of his Nature But such was his innate Goodness and Beneficence as would not permit him to be happy alone to content himself in a solitary Fruition of his own essential Beatitudes but to gratify the benign Inclinations of his Nature he must have Companions in Happiness upon whom he may diffuse his Goodness and imprint his own Bliss and Perfection And 't was only this frank and generous Motive that first obliged him to cast an Eye of Love towards us When we had neither Worth to deserve nor Power to requite his Kindness then did his own Benignity incline his Heart to love us and to invite and receive us into a Participation of his Happiness He knew well enough that the most we were capable to do for him was only to love and obey to praise and honour and adore him and that when we had done all this it would be impossible for him to reap the least Advantage by it that if we did love and obey him the Profit would all redound to our selves and that if we did not our selves only would fare the worse for it so that whether we did or no it would be all one to him his Happiness would be still
see those fare well whom we have seen deserve well and when any unjust Violence is offered them our Nature shrinks at and abhors it We pity and compassionate the Miserable when we know not why and are ready to offer at their Relief when we can give no Reason for it which is a plain Evidence that these Things proceed not merely either from our Education or deliberate Choices but from some natural Instinct antecedent to both and that in the very Frame of our Nature there is implanted by the Author of it a Sympathy with Virtue and an Antipathy to Vice And hence it is that in the Beginnings of Sin our Nature is so shy of an evil Action and doth so startle and boggle at it that it approaches it with such a modest Coyness and goes blushing to it like a Virgin to an Adulterers Bed that it passes into Sin with such Regret and Reluctancy and looks back upon it with such Shame and Confusion which in our tender Years when we are not as yet arrived to the Exercise of our Understandings cannot be supposed to proceed from Reason or Conscience but from some secret Instinct of Nature which by these and such like Indications declares it self violated and offended And this plainly shews the mighty Respect that God hath to Righteousness that he hath woven into our Beings such a grateful Sense of it and such a Horror of its Contraries For this natural Sense was doubtless intended by God to be the first Guide of humane Nature that so when as yet 't is not capable of following Reason and Conscience it might be led on to Righteousness by its own necessary Instincts that these might dispose us to our Duty and keep us out of all wicked Prejudices till we come under the Conduct of our Reason that so this may then lead us forward with more Ease and Facility in the Paths of Righteousness What a plain Indication therefore is this of God's Love of Righteousness that he hath taken so much Care to incline our Natures to it that he hath not only given us reasonable Faculties that do naturally direct us to Righteousness but hath also taken so much Care to lead us to it by Instinct till we are grown up to the Exercise of those Faculties and are capable of being guided by them 3 ly Another Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his coupling good Effects to righteous Actions and bad ones to their Contraries For if we consult the Consequents of humane Actions we shall generally find that all moral Good resolves into natural in the Health and the Pleasure the Credit and Tranquility of those that practise it For so the first Great Mover in that Course and Series of Things which he hath established in the World hath ordered and disposed it that every Action which is morally Good should ordinarily tend to and determine in some natural Benefit and Advantage that the good Government of every Passion should tend to the Tranquility of our Minds and the due Regulation of every Appetite center in the Health and Pleasure of our Bodies that Abstinence and Humility Honesty and Charity should have happy Effects chained to them that they should contribute to our Good both private and publick and that their contrary Vices should be always pregnant with some mischievous Inconvenience that they should either untune the Organs of our Reason or impair the Vigour and Activity of our Tempers or imbroil the Peace and Tranquility of our Minds or invade the Common-weal of Societies which includes the Interest of each particular Member Such contrary Effects as these are as necessary to vertuous and vicious Actions in that Course of Things which God hath established as Light is to the Sun or Heat to the Fire by which he hath plainly demonstrated how contrarily he is affected to those contrary Causes For by those natural Goods and Evils which are appendent to humane Actions he hath plainly distinguished them into moral Goods and Evils and those good and bad Effects which he hath annexed to them are most sensible Marks of his Love of the one and his Hatred of the other For to be sure he would never have made Righteousness the Cause of so much good to us if he had not loved it nor Wickedness the Spring of so many Mischiefs and Inconveniences if he had not hated and abhorred it The Effects of Righteousness are ordinarily a Reward and the Consequents of Sin a Punishment to it self and this by God's own Order and Disposal and pray by what Significations can a Law-giver more effectually declare his Love and Hatred of Actions than by rewarding and punishing them 4 thly And lastly Another Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is the natural Presages and Abodings which he hath implanted in our Natures of the future Reward of righteous Actions and the future Punishment of their Contraries That there are such Abodings as these in humane Nature is apparent by this that antecedently to all divine Revelation Men of all Ages Nations and Religions have felt and experienced them yea and that it hath been experienced not only among the politer and more learned Nations who may be supposed to be persuaded of a future State by the probable Arguments of Philosophy but also among the most barbarous and uncultivated who cannot be supposed to have believed it upon Principles of Reason For though some of them have been so rude as to disband Society and live like Beasts without Laws and Government yet have they not been able to extinguish these their natural Hopes and Fears of future Rewards and Puishments which is an unanswerable Evidence how deeply the Sense of another World is imprinted upon humane Nature And as we have such a natural Sense of a future State as we cannot easily stifle so our Minds do naturally abode that we shall fare well or ill in it according as we behave our selves righteously or unrighteously in this Life When we do well and reflect upon it it leaves a delicious Farwel on our Minds our Conscience smiles and promises glorious Things that we shall reap from it most happy and blessed Fruits in the other World And as the Sense of doing well doth naturally suggest to us the most ravishing Hopes and blisful Expectations so the sense of doing ill fills our Minds with sad and dire Presages our Conscience abodes us a black and woful Eternity wherein we shall dearly pay for our sinful Delights and Gratifications And though for the present we can divert and stifle this troublesome sense of our Natures yet Naturam expellas is true in this also though we thrust off Nature with a Fork yet 't will return again upon us and a Fit of Sickness a sudden Calamity or a serious Thought will soon awake and revive in it these black Prognosticks of our future Torment And hence we generally find that bad Men are most afraid of Eternity when they are nearest to it their Fear like
Rebel to God whether he will or no because the Will is the commanding Principle and hath such an absolute Empire over all our Actions that 't is impossible for us to do what we will not So that if we will and design what God wills and designs our Practice must necessarily be conformable to his Will so far as we know and understand it for as God's Will gives Law to ours so our Will gives Law to our Actions and so by consequence the Will of God must be the Soveraign Law whereby both are regulated and determined From hence therefore it is evident that if we sincerely love God we shall will as he wills and that if we will as he wills we shall act as he would have us and therefore for any Man to say that he loves God while he wills contrary to his Will or that his Will is reconciled to God's while he acts contrary to his Commands is gross Hypocrisy and deep Dissimulation For as the Love of God resolves necessarily into an Union of Wills with him so that Union of Wills resolves necessarily into Obedience to his Laws 3. If we love God that Love will express it self in a solicitous Care of avoiding every Thing that may displease or distaste him For the greatest Ambition of Love is to appear lovely and amiable in the Eyes of its Beloved and that it may do so it doth most studiously avoid whatsoever may be displeasing or distastful to it and most industriously endeavours to adorn it self with all those obliging Graces that are apt to endear and recommend it And so if we love God we cannot but desire to be lovely in his Eyes and that Desire if it be sincere and hearty must necessarily engage us to an endeavour of acquiring whatsoever is amiable and pleasing and of avoiding whatsoever is hateful and grievous to him But now Vertue and true Goodness are the only Beauties that do endear us to God and render us lovely in his Eyes and Sin and Wickedness the only Deformities for which he hates and abhors us For his Love and Hatred are not regulated like ours by the unaccountable Impulses of a mutable Fancy but by steady and eternal Rules so that he can never love what he once hated nor hate what he once loved For the Immutability of God's Love and Hatred consists not in this that he always loves and hates the same Persons but that he always loves and hates Persons for the same Reason and Motive And indeed that Love is but a foolish Fondness that Hatred but an unreasonable Antipathy that without any reasonable Motive always determines on the same Person And if God loves and hates our Persons upon reasonable Motives his Love and Hatred would be fickle and mutable if when those Motives cease his Love and Hatred should continue If he should continue to love us when the Reason is wholly ceased that first moved him thereunto he must either love us for no Reason which would be a foolish Fondness or he must love us for contrary Reasons which would be Fickleness and Inconstancy And therefore when God ceases to love and hate the same Persons when the Reason of his loving and hating them ceases it proceeds not from the Inconstancy but the Immutability of his Love and Hatred for though they may change their Objects yet they can never change their Reasons For the Reasons of God's Love and Hatred are in the Objects whom he loves and hates and therefore if he changes the Objects of his Love and Hatred and when they themselves are changed if he love a Person whom he hated when that Person is changed from hateful to lovely or hate a Person whom he loved when that Person is changed from lovely to hateful it is not he that changes but the Persons who are the Objects of his Love or his Hatred For amidst all Changes of Objects his Love and Hatred are eternally the same because they are eternally fixed and determined to the same Reasons But now his Love being naturally founded in Likeness what can we suppose should be the Reason of God's Love or Hatred to us but only our Likeness or Vnlikeness to himself For if we resemble him in that Goodness and Truth and Purity and Justice which are essential to his Nature he must needs love us for his own sake because we partake of his Nature and are allied to him by a Similitude of Temper and Perfections But then when we are not only unlike but contrary to him when we are impure spightful and malicious when we are false unrighteous and unreasonable he hath an Antipathy against us founded in his very Nature and he can no more love us whilst we are so contrarily disposed to him than he can hate himself Wherefore since there is nothing can render us lovely in God's Eyes but only our resembling him in Purity and Goodness nothing can render us hateful offensive and distastful to him but our being impure and wicked and unlike him it hence necessarily follows that we can no otherwise render our selves amiable to him no otherwise avoid offending and grieving him but only by keeping his Commandments for therein all those Graces are enjoined wherein our Resemblance of him consists and all those Vices are forbid that are contrary to him and do deform us in his Eyes So that by doing his Will we imitate his Nature and shall acquire such a god-like Temper of Mind as will render us more glorious and lovely in his Esteem than if we were decked with Stars or cloathed in a Robe of Sun-beams whereas on the contrary by disobeying his Will we contract such an Vnlikeness and Contrariety to him as renders us more offensive to him than the most loathsome Deformities in Nature For in God's eyes there is nothing ugly but Sin nothing amiable but Virtue and true Goodness Wherefore since our Love of God necessarily includes an earnest Desire of rendring our selves lovely and amiable in his Esteem and since we have no other way to accomplish this Desire but only by keeping his Commandments it hence necessarily follows that we cannot sincerely love him whilst we disobey him For with what Confidence can we pretend to love him when it is indifferent to us whether we render our selves lovely or loathsome to him when by disobeying his Will we wilfully contract those Deformities which we know he abhors and which are more odious in his Eyes than any of the most loathsome Spectacles in Nature Is it possible that true Love should consist with taking Pleasure in the only Things that can grieve and offend its Object Or were there ever such Lovers heard of that affected the Deformities that were most hateful to the Beloved No no he that heartily loves must desire to be beloved and he that desires to be beloved must desire to be lovely Wherefore since nothing is lovely in God's Eyes but what is like God and we cannot be like him unless we keep his
thly 'T is an affecting Delight and Complacency in God by which I distinguish it from a mere Liking and naked Approbation For God is a Being so infinitely amiable and benevolent that 't is impossible almost for any reasonable Creature to know him and not like and approve of him But though in all Approbation there is some Degree of Complacency yet there is no Doubt but a Man may approve of what he doth not Love and there is no Doubt but there are many Men that do approve of God as the most glorious and excellent of Beings and the most worthy of Love and Veneration who yet have not one Spark of real Love towards him For thus St. Paul we find when he was a Jew in Religion approved of the Law as holy and just and good Rom. vii 12 and that in this Approbation of his there was some Degree of Complacency and Delight for saith he I delight in the Law of God according to the inward Man Vers. 22. but all this while he was very far from having any real Love and Affection for it for in the next Verse he tells us that he had a Law in his Members warring against the Law of his Mind that is he had an inward Repugnancy and Aversation against this excellent Law which his Reason did approve of as holy and just and good and no Degree of true Love could consist with such an Aversation And there is no doubt but most Men who have right Conceptions of God do in their Mind and Reason as much approve of and delight in the Perfection of his Nature as St. Paul did in the Perfection of his Law and yet their Wills are as repugnant and averse to the Holiness and Purity of the one as St. Pauls then was to the Justice and Goodness of the other Wherefore to constitute us true Lovers of God it is necessary that our Approbation of and Delight and Complacency in him should be such as doth powerfully affect our Wills and reconcile them to the Nature of God For whilst our Wills are averse to that immaculate Purity and Goodness which is so inseparable to his Nature it is impossible we should heartily love him and though in our Minds we may approve of him as a most glorious and excellent Being yet in our Hearts we shall still retain a secret Antipathy against him And I doubt not but the Devils themselves do so far approve of God as to acknowledge him altogether amiable and lovely for if they do not I am sure they are very shallow Spectators but yet we see this Approbation of theirs accompanied with an inveterate Rancour and Enmity against him And till our Wills are so affected by our Reason as to consent and eccho to its Approbations to take Complacency in that divine Purity which our Reason acknowledges to be the Crown and Ornament of God whilst we reverence him in our Minds we hate and despise him in our Affections So that he only is a Lover of God whose Will is reconciled to true Goodness 5 thly And lastly This Love must be terminated on the proper Goodness and Perfections of God and hereby I distinguish it from that Love which we too commonly terminate upon a God of our own making For it is very ordinary with Men to set up Idols and false Representations of God in their Minds and then fall down and worship them And it is no great Wonder if they are extreamly fond of these Idol-Divinities of their own making since commonly they are nothing else but the Pictures and Images of themselves Thou thoughtst saith God to those profligate Persons that I was such a one as thy self Psal. l. 21 Men have always been prone to cast all their Ideas of God in the Mould of their own Tempers and to fashion the Divinity whom they Worship according to the Model of their own Inclinations Thus Men of ungovernable and imperious Tempers are apt to represent God in their own Likeness a Being that governs himself and others by a meer blind omnipotent Self-will that wills Things merely because he wills them and is no way concerned to regulate his own Motions by any antecedent Rules of Justice Wisdom or Goodness So also Men of wrathful and revengeful Tempers are apt to look upon God as a froward furious and implacable Being that is to be pleased or displeased with Trifles that frowns or smiles as the Humour takes him that when the froward Fit is upon him Breaths nothing but Revenge and Fury and whose Love and Hatred is fickle and mutable and never constant to the same Reasons And to name no more thus Men of fond and indulgent Natures are apt to represent God to themselves as one that dotes invincibly on those who have once the Luck to be his Favourites and in Christ at least will hug their very Deformities and connive at their greatest Treasons and Rebellions And since these false Representations that Men make of God are nothing but the Reflections of their own Images in loving him they only love themselves and 't is no wonder that they are more devoutly affected towards such an imaginary Divinity than towards the true God himself clothed with his own Attributes and circled about with his own Rays of unstained and immaculate Glory since the former is nothing but their own Shadow which Narcissus-like they gaze upon and fall in love with But whatsoever Love we may bestow upon these false Representations it is not terminated upon God but on the Spectres and Images of our Fancies which have nothing of God about them but the Name Wherefore to constitute our Love truly divine it is necessary that it should respect God as he is in himself and not as he seems to be in these disfigured Idols of our own Fancies We must blot out of our Minds all these false Conceptions which like the Aethiopian Idols are nothing but our own Resemblance and portrait him in all those fair Ideas wherein he hath represented himself unto us and when we have righted him in our own Opinions and formed such Notions of him as are agreeable to his native Perfections then we must love him for what we see in him even for the Mercy and Goodness the Righteousness and Purity of his Nature For unless we love these his moral Perfections which are indeed the only Objects of Love in him all our kind Pretences are base Flatteries and in stead of him we only Love a Mock-God of our own making And thus I have shewed you at large wherein the Essence of this heavenly Virtue our Love of God consists But because Things are better understood by their essential Characters and Properties than by their naked Essences and we may much more easily discern whether we truly love God or no by the former than by the latter 2. I proceed in the next Place to shew you what are the essential Properties and Characters of our Love of God And these are to be fetched from
a plain Token that we do not heartily desire to be more beloved of God and consequently that we do not love him So that in fine the Sum of all is this The Law of Perfection requires us to love God with all our Might and with all our Strength that is as much as we are able in every Period of our Growth and Progress in Religion and by how much we love him less than we are able by so much less shall be the future Reward of our Love But then for the Law of Sincerity that only requires of us such a Degree of Love to him as doth together with the other Motives of Religion effectually incline us to obey him sincerely and to endeavour to improve our Obedience into farther Degrees of Perfection and so long as we fall short of this we are bad Men and the Wrath of God abides upon us And so I have done with the First Part of the Text We should or ought to love God 2. I proceed now to the second Part viz. the Reason why we ought to love him and that is because he first loved us which though it be but short in Words yet is extreamly comprehensive in Sense containing in it such puissant Motives and endearing Obligations as cannot but affect us if we have any Spark of Tenderness or Ingenuity remaining in us For in this Argument or Reason these six Things are implyed 1. That he began in Love to us 2. That he began before we could any Way deserve it 3. That he began to love us when we deserved his Hatred 4. That he began when he foresaw he could never make any Advantage by it 5. He began to love us to such a Degree as to think nothing too dear or too good for us 6. That he so began to love us as to condescend by all the Arts of Importunity to court us to accept his Love All which are very powerful Considerations to engage us to return him Love for Love 1. He began in Love to us Had he only engaged himself to re-love us whensoever we began to love him and in the mean Time remained indifferent in his Affection towards us this would have been a mighty endearing Obligation For the great Majesty of Heaven to take Notice of the Loves of such poor Worms as we and much more to engage himself to repay them with a correspondent Affection is in it self a noble Expression of his great and generous Goodness but that he should not only take Notice of and return our Love but forestal and anticipate it that he should condescend to make the first Address and Tender of Love to us is such an Expression of Goodness as is sufficient to inflame the most stupid and insensible Soul For he that loves another lays an Obligation upon him and renders him extreamly beholding he lends him his Heart and Soul which are much more valuable than Money and he becomes his Creditor and acquires a just Claim to be repaid with mutual Affection For not to repay Love for Love is equally unjust and ungrateful He therefore that begins to love doth thereby render the Person beloved his Debtor and acquires a just Right to be Beloved by him again though he should have no other Pretence to or Interest in his Affections especially if he be one who is much our Superiour in all endearing Perfections and Accomplishments because this must needs render his Love more valuable and consequently augment our Obligation to re-love him When therefore the great God himself shall begin to love us who doth so infinitely excel us in all Manner of amiable Perfections how deeply are we obliged and beholding to him What infinite Sums of Love must we owe him If he had laid no other Obligation upon us had neither made nor fed nor clothed nor provided for us if he had no other Claim to our Love but only this that he first loved us yet this is such as we cannot frustrate without being extreamly unjust and ungrateful For he is so much afore-hand in Kindness with us hath so much gotten the start of us in Love that we shall never be able to overtake him He loved us long before we had a Being when we existed only in his own Decree to make us Men and to provide for our Happiness so that now we are so far behind-hand in Arrears of Love to him that we shall need as well as have an Eternity to discharge them and should we from henceforth every Moment love him more and more to the longest imaginary Period of Duration yet we shall still owe him all that Eternity of Love that was due before we began to love him And shall we grudg to pay him a Mite to whom we are indebted Millions And is it not high Time for us to begin to love him now who hath loved us so long already for nothing without the least Shadow of Requital 2 ly He began to love us before we could any ways deserve it For it is impossible for a Creature that ows all to God the Fountain of its Being to deserve any Thing at his Hands because he hath every Thing from him and so can render him nothing but what is his own already by an unalienable Propriety But the noblest and most acceptable Sacrifice that we are able to render unto God is our hearty and unfeigned Love and if it were possible for us any way to deserve his Love who is so much above us and hath such an absolute Dominion over us it would doubtless be Offering up our Souls to him inflamed with Love and Affection for t is this alone that consecrates all our Services and renders them valuable in the Eyes of God If Love like an universal Soul be not diffused throughout all our Religion and doth not act and animate every Part of it in God's Account all our demure Pretences are nothing but the lifeless Puppits and Images of true Religion which though they may speak and move and act like that which they represent and imitate yet want that inward Form and Principle that gives it Life and Motion and to have nothing of Religion but merely the Shape and Outside is as bad at least in God's Account as to have none at all Since therefore 't is Love that gives Worth and Value to all our other Services and renders them acceptable to God it hence necessarily follows that it self is the most grateful Thing we can render to him and that when this is wanting we are so far from being capable of deserving his Love that nothing we do can be pleasing or acceptable in his Eyes Wherefore since he loved us before we loved him it is plain that it was not our Desert but his own Goodness that first endeared him to us for when we did not love him we could have neither Form nor Comliness to attract his Love our Love to him being the only Beauty that can render us amiable in his Eyes So that he
the same without the least Addition or Substraction And yet when Things were in this Posture when he had no Self-interest to serve upon us no Motive but his own Benignity to endear him to us then did he begin to love us and to express the Earnings of his Heart and Bowels towards us And now how can we think of this and not be affected with it How can we any longer avoid being captivated with the Thoughts of such a generous Kindness Consider O my Soul thy God gains nothing by all his Love to thee but thou gainest infinitely by thy Love to him by loving him thou glorifiest thy self and crownest thy own Desires with Happiness But he is not one jot the better for loving nor would he have been one jot the worse if he had never loved thee at all and yet out of pure generous Goodness he loves thee a thousand times more than thou lovest thy self or art ever able to love him and canst thou be such a wretched Thing so lost to all that is ingenuous and modest as not to return him Love for Love 5 thly He began to love us to such a Degree as to think nothing too dear or too good for us Considering how little we deserve his Love how much we have deserved his Hatred and how uncapable we are to make him any valuable Requital it is sufficient Matter of Wonder that ever he could prevail with himself to love us in the least Degree but that in the midst of so many Reasons to the contrary he should not only begin to love but to be so liberal of his Kindness to us is Matter of just Astonishment It was a mighty Kindness in him to create us what we are and make such a plentiful Provision for our comfortable Subsistence here for wheresoever we direct our Eyes whether we reflect them inwards upon our selves we behold his Goodness to occupy and penetrate the Root and Center of our Beings and discern the lively Characters of his Love in the incomparable Frame and Structure of our Natures or whether we extend them abroad towards the things about us we may perceive our selves like Fortunate Islands surrounded with an Ocean of Blessings containing whatsoever is necessary for our Sustenance convenient for our Use and pleasant for our Enjoyment And is it not wondrous Love in him to make such liberal Provisions for such undeserving Guests But this is the smallest Part of his Kindness for he hath inspired us with immortal Minds and Stamp'd them with the most fair Impresses of his own Divinity viz. a Knowledge of Truth and a Love of Goodness and a forward Capacity of the highest Perfection and purest Happiness and to fill and gratify these our noble Faculties and Capacities he hath prepared for us a Heaven of immortal Joys and furnished it with all the Delights that this our Heaven-born Mind is capable of and lest we should fall short of it he hath sent his blessed Son from Heaven to reveal it to us and shew us the Way thither to die for our Sins and obtain and ratify the Promise of our Pardon thereby to encourage us to return to our Duty and Allegiance without which we are incapable of ever enjoying that beatifical State And lest all this should not be sufficient he is always present with us to promote our Happiness present by his Providence to reclaim by his Angels to sollicit us and by his Holy Spirit to excite and co-operate with our Endeavours So extreamly careful is he not to be defeated of his kind Intentions to make us everlastingly happy O Blessed God! To what a Degree must thou love us who thinkest none of these Things too dear and good for us That dost not think thy Son too good to redeem us thy Spirit to Sanctify thy everlasting Heaven to Crown and Reward us And now can our Hearts hold when we think of this Can we be cold and indifferent in the midst of such a vigorous Flame Good God! What are we made of What senseless stony stupid Souls do we carry about us that can be Love-proof against so many Charms and Endearments that can listen to so many Wonders of Love with such unconcerned such unaffected Minds Methinks if we had but the common Sense and Ingenuity of Men in us it would be impossible for us in the midst of so much Love not to be melted into a reciprocal Kindness 6 thly And lastly He so began to love us as to condescend by all the Arts of Importunity to court us to accept of his Love That notwithstanding all our Unworthiness he should begin to love us and that to so strange a Degree is a most amazing Instance of the infinite Benevolence of his Nature but that he should condescend to address himself to us to court and woo us as he doth to accept of his Love and to be as happy as he would have us is enough to astonish the most insensible Soul and even to dissolve a Heart of Rock into Love For thus the Scripture in the most pathetick Strains describes the Addresses of this great Lover of Souls borrowing Metaphors to express his Love to us from all that is kind and loving in the Creation even from the most melting Passions in Mankind from the Relentings of Fathers and Yearnings of Mothers Bowels towards their dearest Off-spring It paints him in all the charming Postures of an imploring beseeching and importunate Lover wooing and intreating us to be happy even with Tears of Pity in his Eyes with Charms of Love in his Mouth and Tenders of Mercy in his Hands And when with all the Rhetorick of his Love he can't prevail with us to live it represents him weeping at our Funerals and like a tender-hearted Judge pronouncing our Sentence with the Tears in his Eyes By which Metaphorical Descriptions he represents to us his infinite Concern for our Happiness how much his Heart is set upon it and how hardly he can bear a Defeat in his kind and merciful Intentions towards us For what but an infinite Love could ever have made the King of Heaven and Earth to stoop so low to his rebellious Subjects as to beseech them to lay down their Weapons of Hostility with which they can injure none but themselves and to listen to his Terms of Mercy and accept of his Crowns and everlasting Preferments One would have thought it had been enough for him barely to have told us how he loved us how willing he was to Pardon and Advance us and that this had been enough for ever to recommend him to the dearest Affections of his Creatures but that he should moreover condescend to supplicate our Acceptance to beseech us not to spurn his Love and frustrate its Designs of Mercy to us Lord how can we think of this without being all inflamed with Love to thee 'T is true he doth not come in Person to us because we are not able to bear the immediate Approaches of his Glory
Truth as there have in attesting Lies and Falshoods Why should so many have been struck dumb or dead in the Act of Perjury and not one that we ever heard of suffer the like Calamity in witnessing the Truth In a word why should so many bad Men have suffered such Calamities as were plain Retaliations in Kind of their cruel and unjust Actions as Adonibezeck for instance did in the cutting off his Thumbs and great Toes whilst so few if any for doing Justice upon others have by any such casual and irregular Providence been exposed to the Evils they inflicted Since therefore in every Age of the World there have happened such Goods to righteous Men as have the plainest Characters of divine Rewards upon them and such Evils to the Wicked as do evidently bespeak themselves intended for divine Punishments God hath hereby sufficiently declared his Love of the one and his Hatred of the other For by their Rewards and Punishments all Lawgivers do declare their Love and Hatred of the Facts they are annexed to and therefore to be sure if the Supreme Law giver had not loved Righteousness and hated the contrary he would never have so eminently rewarded the one and punished the other as he hath apparently done 2 dly Another Supernatural Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his making so many Revelations to the World for the promoting of Righteousness and discountenancing of Sin That God hath made sundry Revelations to the World is evident in Fact because there are sundry Revelations which have been sufficiently demonstrated by those miraculous Effects of the divine Power which have accompanied the Ministration of them such are those contained in the five Books of Moses and the Prophets which have been almost amply confirmed both by the Miracles which were wrought by the inspired Authors of them and by the exact Accomplishments of the several Predictions contained in them and such is also that last and best Revelation contained in the New Testament which both by the Types and Predictions contained in the Law and the Prophets and by the infinite Miracles wrought by Jesus and his Followers who were the immediate Ministers of it together with its own inherent Goodness is so effectually demonstrated divine that no Man who weighs the Proof of it can suspect it unless he be infinitely prejudiced against it Now if you consult these several divine Revelations you will plainly perceive that the main Drift and Design of them is to promote Righteousness and suppress whatsoever is contrary to it that the several Revelations made to Abraham and his Children were all but one repeated Covenant of Righteousness that the Law of Moses consisted partly of ceremonious Rights which were either intended for divine Hieroglyphicks to instruct the dull and stupid Jews in the Principles of inward Purity and Goodness or else for Types and sacred Figures of the holy Mysteries of the Gospel partly of Precepts of moral Righteousness together with some few prudential ones that were suitable to the Genius and Polity of that People and partly of such Promises and Threats as were most apt to oblige them to the Practice of those righteous Precepts As for the Prophets the Substance of their Revelations was either Reprehensions of Sin together with severe Denunciations against it or Invitations to Righteousness together with gracious Promises of Rewards to follow it or Predictions of the Messias and that everlasting Righteousness which should be introduced by him And then as for the Gospel all the Duties of it consist either in Instances or Means of Righteousness and all the Doctrines of it are nothing else but powerful Arguments and Motives to persuade us to the Practice of those Duties Thus Righteousness you see is the main Center to which all true Revelation tends the Mark at which the righteous Lord hath continually levelled and directed it What a plain Demonstration therefore is this of the unfeigned Love and Respect he bears it that he did not think it sufficient to imprint a Law of Righteousness upon our Natures and stamp upon our Beings so many Indications of his Love to it but seeing us swerve and deviate from it hath from time to time by so many loud and reiterated Voices from Heaven invited and called us back again so that if he be cordial and sincere in what he says as it would be absurd and impious to suspect the contrary we cannot doubt but he heartily loves that which by so many immediate Revelations he hath so earnestly importuned us to embrace 3 dly Another supernatural Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his sending his own Son into the World to transact such mighty Things for the Encouragement of it and persuading Men to it For to advance Righteousness was the main Design of all those mighty Things which the Son of God did and suffered in this World the Design of all that holy and innocent Life which he led was to propose to our Imitation a perfect Example of Righteousness that so treading our Way before us we might have not only the Line of his Precepts but also the Print of his Foot-steps to direct us and that by beholding so fair a Draught of Righteousness drawn so exquisitely to the Life and in every Part so exactly answering to the sweetest and most amiable Ideas of it we might be both invited and instructed to copy and imitate it in our Actions For what he saith of that illustrious Act of Charity and Humility his washing his Disciples Feet is truly applicable to the whole Course of his Actions For I have given you an Example that you should do as I have done unto you Joh. xiii 15 And as his Life was an Example of Righteousness so his Death was a most urgent Motive to it for hereby he made Expiation for our Sins and obtained an Act of Pardon and Indemnity for every Rebel that would lay down his Arms and return to his Duty and Allegiance and by obtaining this he hath given us infinite Encouragement to return since if we do so we have most ample Assurance that we shall be received into Grace and Favour And though I cannot deny but if God had pleased he might have granted such an Act of Pardon to us without the Consideration of Christ's Death and Sacrifice yet I am sure if he had it could never have been such an effectual Motive as it was to oblige us to Righteousness for the future For should he have granted us Pardon merely upon our Repentance without any other Motive or Consideration he would have discovered so much seeming Easiness and Indulgence in such a Procedure as would have very much imboldened such disingenuous Creatures as we to presume upon his Lenity and turn his Grace into Wantonness And if to prevent our presuming upon his Lenity it was necessary that he should have some other Motive to pardon us besides that of our Repentance then it was no less necessary that this other Motive
Commandments what an Immodesty is it in us to pretend to love him while we chuse to disobey him 4. And lastly If we love God sincerely we shall be ready chearfully to undergo any Thing for his sake be it never so hard and difficult For Love is a bold and vigorous Passion it makes weak Things strong and turns Cowards into Heroes and warms and animates the Heart with such a generous Fire as disdains all Opposition and courageously out-braves the greatest Dangers and Difficulties For he that loves heartily would do any Thing for the sake of his Beloved and then measuring his Strength by the Greatness of his Desires he thinks himself able to do whatsoever he will So strongly doth this Passion transport Nature beyond the Bounds of its Abilities inspiring it with such Force and Vigour as that scarce any thing is able to withstand it If therefore we love God sincerely and heartily our Love must necessarily resolve into Obedience to his Will be it never so hard and difficult For our Love will so enliven and animate our Endeavours of serving him and carry us with such Spirit and Alacrity through all the weary Stages of our Duty that it will be our Meat and Drink to do his Will and there is no Instance of Obedience be it never so hard and difficult but our Love will smother and render it not only easy but delightful For what I do for him whom I love I do for my self his Pleasures being mine and our Wills and Ends and Interests being involved in one another So that if my Love be in any Measure intense and cordial I shall do his Pleasure and perform his Will with the same Complacency and Delight as if I were doing my own and whatsoever Difficulties I meet with in serving him I shall encounter them with Joy that I am furnished with Opportunities of expressing the Zeal and Sincerity of my Love to him So that to pretend to love God and yet to boggle at the Difficulties of obeying him is the most shameful Hypocrisy in nature for if we did as highly love him as we pretend our Wills would be so swallowed up in his that it would be our Joy and Recreation to serve him and the very Thought that we are doing what is pleasing and grateful to him would level all the Mountains of Difficulties in our way and render them not only accessible but easy He therefore that stumbles at every Straw and startles at every Difficulty in Religion must be a notorious Hypocrite if he pretend to the Love of God for where true Love is Difficulty is so far from daunting it that that animates and encourages it and instead of blunting its Activity whets and renders it more keen and vigorous because the greater the Difficulty is the greater is its Opportunity of manifesting its own Sincerity and thereby of recommending it self to it s Beloved the Joy of which not only ballances but endears all its Pains and Trouble Hence the Apostle tells us that there is no fear in love and that perfect love casteth out fear 1 John iv 18 It inspires us with such Bravery and Courage that there is no Difficulty in our Obedience to him whom we love that can daunt or terrify us Wherefore since this is a necessary Property of the Love of God to make us ready to undergo any Thing for his sake this also must necessarily resolve into the keeping his Commandments for if we are willing to do any thing for God we shall surely be willing to obey him and though our Obedience in some Instances may be difficult yet our Love if it be real will conquer its way through them all And thus you see how all the essential Properties of the Love of God do finally resolve into Obedience from whence it is evident that wheresoever the Love of God is it will most certainly prove a Principle of Obedience II. I proceed now to the second Head of Discourse which was to shew that the Love of God is it self the most perfect Principle of Obedience Not that I think all other Principles in their own nature bad for God himself hath proposed other Principles of Action to us besides this of Love he hath denounced his fearful Threatnings against us to alarm our Fear that by that we may be moved to obey him and propounded his glorious Promises to us to excite our Hope that that may be a Spring and Principle of Obedience in us And certainly that can be no bad Principle which is excited in us by divine Motives but yet it is most certain that there is no Principle whatsoever can be acceptable to God that is quite separated from Love to him for that which makes it acceptable is this that it is a Principle of Vniversal Obedience But now the Love of God being the greatest Instance of our Obedience that can be no Principle of universal Obedience that is wholly separated from it 'T is true the Religion of most Men begins upon a Principle either of Hope or Fear and it cannot be denied but they are very good Beginners but yet till by these we are induced to love God as well as to practise all other Duties we are by no means pleasing and acceptable to him So that though the Fear of Punishment and the Hope of Reward are good Ingredients in the Principle of our Obedience yet till they have some Intermixtures of Love with them they can make no Claim to the divine Acceptation There may be indeed and at first there generally is much less of Love in this Principle of Obedience than of Hope and Fear whilst yet the whole Composition is very acceptable to God for the lowest Degree of cordial Love intermixed with our Hope and Fear will leaven and consecrate them into an acceptable Principle of Obedience but still the less Love there is in it the more weak and languid and imperfect it is and in all its Progresses towards Perfection its Maturity is to be measured by the Degrees of Love that are in it and till our Love is arrived unto that Degree of Ardency as to become the predominant Motive and Master-Ingredient in it our State in Goodness is very slow and imperfect So that in short the Principle of our Obedience is more and more perfect the more of Love there is in it and the less of Hope and Fear and when Hope and Fear are all swallowed up in Love and that is the sole Spring of Action within us then it is the Principle of Heaven and the Soul that acts and animates the Religion of the Spirits of just men made perfect But to convince you how much our Obedience is perfected by Love I shall briefly give you these following Instances of it 1. It rendereth our Obedience universal and unconfined 2. Spritely and chearful 3. Natural and easy 4. Constant and steady 1. Love renders our Obedience universal and unconfined When Men are acted only by a Principle of Fear
Exultation of Mind Thus Love you see as soon as it is taken with the Beauty of an Object immediately kindles its Desires excites its Hope and Fear and carries the Fire into all the Passions which hold of its Empire so that having the united Force of all the other Passions at its Beck and Command its self must needs be extremely potent and vigorous and consequently when it is terminated upon God and become the reigning Principle of our Obedience to him there is no Passion in our Natures can have that Influence upon us to make us active and vigorous in the doing of his Will as this may reasonably be supposed to have because when we are under the Command of Love that having in it the Force of all our other Passions must necessarily move and act us with all their united Influence And when the separate Force of all our Passions like so many single Threads are twisted into one Cord with what a potent I had almost said omnipotent Vigour must they draw and attract us When our Love of God shall all at once awaken in us the Desire and Hope of enjoying him the Fear and Displeasure of losing him the Resolution and Courage to charge through every Difficulty that opposes our Fruition of him and our Obedience shall be all at once informed and animated with the united Force of all those mighty Passions how active and vigorous must it needs be For the Wise Man tells us that Love is as strong as Death Cant. viii 6 that 't is an equal Match for the all-conquering King of Terrors to whose Power the mightiest Things do stoop And indeed it must needs be strong when it hath all the Force of Humane Nature in it and is winged with the united Vigour of so many strong and active Affections Hence the Apostle attributes a constraining Vertue to it 2 Cor. v. 14 For the Love of God constraineth us it sweetly tyrannizes over all our Faculties and by a willing Violence forces and captivates us into Obedience But when a Man is acted only by a Principle of Fear he must needs drive on heavily in the Course of his Obedience because what a Man doth out of Fear he would not do so that he acts with Aversation and moves all along counter to his own Inclinations and hath not the joint Concurrence of his other Affections as he hath when he acts out of Love and consequently his Passions thwarting and crossing one another do retard and hinder each others Motions So that though the Motion of Fear doth finally prevail yet it is so broken and weakned by the counter-motions of Inclination that it cannot act us with that Spriteliness and Vigour as otherwise it would do for whilst our Fear gives Wings to us our Inclination hangs a Clog at our Heels which wearies those Wings and slackens and retards their Flight Whereas on the contrary when we are acted by Love there is no Counter-motion within to let and hinder us but all our Passions unite and conspire and like the inferior Orbs of Heaven move harmoniously with Love the first Great-mover because there is nothing within to check or allay it and so we move on freely secundo flumine with the full and uninterrupted Current of our Natures So that Love you see is a most active and vigorous Soul it makes us all Life and Spirit and Wing and animates our Religion with such a spritely Flame as nothing is able to controul or suppress If therefore we were but once throughly informed with the Love of God this would so enliven us that there is nothing in Religion would be too hard for us this would turn Toils into Recreations and Difficulties into Pleasures and make us so nimble and agile in our Obedience that we should run the ways of Gods Commandments as David said he would do when God should enlarge his heart with the love of him Psal. cxix 32 And whereas languid Souls enfeebled with the want of this generous Passion find Impossibilities and complain of Impotencies and make a stop we should go on and conquer with an invincible Power Thus Love you see is the most spritely and vigorous Principle of Obedience 3. Love renders our Obedience free and chearful and voluntary He who obeys God only from a Principle of Fear obeys him against his Will he takes down his Duty as sick Men do Physick with Loathing and Reluctancy and only submits to it as a more tolerable Penance than the present Horror that he feels and the after-Damnation that he fears he only chuses it as the least of two Evils that is as a Thing that he hates though not in so great a Degree as he doth those greater Evils which he knows are inseparable to his not chusing it And while it is thus with him it is impossible he should obey with any Freedom or Alacrity For how can a Man chearfully comply with what he hates or become a Volunteer to that which is his Torment He may labour indeed at his Duty and tug hard like a Gally-slave at the Oar but alas 't is sore against his Will he would fain be at his Lust again but that he is chained to his Duty and kept in Awe by that flaming Scourge that is held over him so that he is perfectly pressed to serve God and like an unwilling Victim is dragged to his Altars Now though this may be a good Beginning of Religion which through the Passion of Fear doth usually make its first Entrance into the Soul yet if it stop here and doth not pass forwards into Love it is but half way and will never be able to obtain an entire Possession For whilst we obey God meerly out of Fear we want one half of our Religion and that is Love which is that Half too wherein the Subjection of our Souls to God consisteth for while we only fear him that may constrain us to an eternal Homage and Obedience but 't is Love alone that can inthrone him in our Wills and make us Volunteers in his Service But when once this divine Fire is inkindled within our Breasts it will by Degrees melt away all our secret Repugnancies and Aversations to our Duty and so mould and temper our Wills to the Will of God that at last our Obedience will be no longer a Burthen to us but we shall run to our Duty with the same Complacency and Delight as we do now to our Pleasures and Recreations and do the Will of our Father upon Earth as it is done by our Brethren in Heaven who being all inflamed with Love to him do find a Heaven of Joys in serving and adoring him For if we did heartily love God 't is impossible but we should feel a Pleasure in pleasing him our Wills would so sympathize with his that we should feel his Joys and taste his Pleasures and those Things only would be irksom and ungrateful to us which we know do grieve and distaste him For Love turns
Service into Wages and pays her self with the Pleasures of pleasing she counts all Commands Favours and is highly satisfied with the Honour of obeying and if she can but accomplish the Pleasure of her Beloved she thinks her self wholly recompensed for all her tedious Toils and Labours And certainly if our Souls were but inspired with any considerable Degrees of this Heavenly Passion we should find such Pleasure in pleasing God as would for ever engage us to serve him for then every Service that we rendred him would be a free Sally of an enamoured Will and so our Hearts would be wrapp'd up in every Duty and our Souls would still be ascending Heavenwards like the Angel that appeared to Manoah in the Flames of all our Sacrifices So that this Excellency also Love hath above all other Principles of Obedience that it renders our Obedience most free most chearful and voluntary 4. And lastly Love renders our Obedience constant and steady When a Man's Religion is only animated with Fear as it is weak and languid while it lives so it generally hastens to an untimely Period For Fear is a Passion so burthensom to humane Nature that we cannot but desire to quit and discharge our selves of it as soon as possible may be and accordingly the Apostle tells us that there is torment in Fear 1 Joh. 4.18 for it separates the Soul from the Enjoyment of her self and gives such an ungrateful Tang to all her Pleasures that she can find no Rest or Satisfaction in any Thing so long as she is haunted with it Now when that which is the Principle of our Religion is a Burthen to us we cannot but endeavour if possible to ease our selves of it which we cannot otherwise do but either by going forwards to Love or by returning back again to sinful Presumption For as for Fear it is like the Wilderness through which Israel passed a Place where there is no abiding with Content and Satisfaction so that we must go back again into Egypt or forwards to Canaan or be content to sit down in Misery and Disquiet For we can never be at Rest till our Fear is either sweetned with an Intermixture of Love or stifled with vain Hopes and ungrounded Presumptions And there being so many Arts of Self-deceiving in the World and skinning over the Wounds of Conscience if Men do not speedily cure their Fear by Love they will soon find some other Way to extinguish it either they will promise their Consciences a future Amendment or else they will presently amend by Halves or else they will take Sanctuary in some false Notions in Religion that tend to secure them in their Sins and render them quietly wicked These or some other Ways they will find to quit themselves of this troublesome Passion and then when the Weights of their Fear are down the Wheels of their Religion will stand still immediately So that you plainly see that bare Fear can never be a lasting and steady Principle of Religion and that because it is so troublesome that Men will not long have the Patience to endure it But as for Love that is naturally a most sweet and grateful Passion it sooths and ravishes the Heart and puts the Spirits into a brisk and generous Motion and so long as it continues pure Love is always attended with Joy and Pleasure And being so in it self it is much more so when it is terminated upon God For all the Disquietudes of Love arise from the Imperfections of its Object either the Person beloved is coy and cruel which imbitters the Love with Sorrow and Regret or else he is fickle and inconstant which inflames it with Rage and Jealousy But when our Love fixes upon God it hath neither of these Causes of Disturbance for he is infinitely loving unto all that love him and he never changes the Objects of his Love unless they change and prove fickle and unconstant in their Affection to him For whilst he hath the same Reason to love his Love is always the same and is as constant and immutable as his Being So that in the Love of God there is no Reason for any of those Griefs and Jealousies that are so commonly intermingled with carnal Loves and Affections for it being fixed upon an Object that doth so well deserve and will so amply requite it it can find nothing there but infinite Causes of Pleasure and Complacency For the Object of our Love being infinitely lovely and infinitely loving the Affection must needs be unspeakably pleasing and grateful So that the Love of God you see must needs be sweet and serene and productive of the most delightful and ravishing Emotions there being nothing in him but what tends to its greatest Content and Satisfaction and being so it must necessarily prove a most lasting Principle of Obedience to him because wheresoever it is it is always attended with such substantial Pleasures and Delights that there can be no Temptation to extinguish it for so long as we feel nothing in it but what is highly grateful to our Natures we shall be so far from using Arts to quit our selves of it that we shall think it our greatest Interest to promote and increase it For still the more we love him the better we shall be pleased and the better we are pleased the more we shall endeavour to love him And so our Pleasure and our Love will mutually provoke and augment one another till both are arrived to the utmost Height of their Perfection Thus the Love of God you see is a lasting Principle 't is a Fire that can live upon the Fuel which it self creates and maintain it self for ever in Strength and Vigour by feeding upon the Joys and Pleasures which it produces So that if this be the Principle upon which we do obey our Religion must needs be lasting and steady because it is acted and animated by a Principle that is so Having thus demonstrated the Proposition in the Text That wheresoever the Love of God is it will express it self in Obedience to his Will I shall now conclude the whole with some practical Inferences 1. From hence I infer how necessary it is to the very Being of Religion to keep up good Thoughts of God in the World because without such Men will never be able to love him and without Love they will never be reduced to a through Submission to his heavenly Will For it is by Love alone that God reigns in our Hearts and doth both acquire and preserve the Empire of our Souls We may be awed into a forced and fawning Submission meerly by the Dread and Terror of his Power and be obliged to serve him as the Indians do the Devil for fear he should do us a Mischief and tear us in pieces but this is meerly the Religion of Slaves who are forced to undergo one Evil for fear of another and to do what they hate for fear of suffering what they cannot endure And as Slaves do
generally hate those whom they fear and even whilst they are fawning and cringing to their imperious Masters had much rather cut their Throats if they could do it with safety so when Men are acted in their Obedience to God meerly by a slavish Dread of his Vengeance they generally hate him whilst they obey him and if it were in their power would rather ungod him and pull him down from his Throne than render him those Homages which they dare not with-hold Now is it possible that he who knows the Hearts of Men and sees the inmost Workings of their Minds should ever be pleased with such a base and sordid Religion a Religion that is conjoyned with such an inveterate Hatred to his Person and Government and restrains Men only by the Fear of Punishment from flying in his Face a Religion that is wholly founded in Passion that causes us to hate him as well as to fawn upon him that carries in it a secret Antipathy to his Nature and his Laws and would much rather vent it self in an open Rebellion than in a forced Submission had it but Power enough to defend it self from his Fury And yet this is the best Religion that Mankind is capable of without the Love of God So that if ever we intend to keep up a generous Religion in our Souls such as becomes free-born Minds to offer to the great Sovereign of the World we must be sure to purge out all those sower and rigid Notions of God that represent him any ways unlovely to us 2 ly Hence I infer how miserably those Men are mistaken that make any Thing a Sign of their Love to God but what tends to their keeping his Commandments There are too many Persons that are apt to measure their Affection to God and Christ by the meer Impressions of sensitive Passion because upon some moving and affecting Representations of those amiable Objects they feel in themselves the same sensitive Emotions as they are wont to do when they fall in Love with other Things that is if they feel their Spirits soothing and ravishing their Hearts and their Hearts diffusing and opening themselves to let in those soft and amorous Spirits they conclude themselves presently infinitely in love with God and with their Saviour Whereas many times all this is meerly the Effect of an amorous Complection tinctured and inflamed with Religious Ideas and is commonly as remote from the Virtue of Love as Light is from Darkness or Heaven from Hell For as there are many Men who are sincerely good that yet cannot raise their sensitive Passions in their Religious Exercises that are heartily sorry for their Sins and yet cannot weep for them and do entirely love God and delight in his Service and yet cannot move their Blood and Spirits into the ravishing Passions of sensitive Love and Joy So on the other hand there are many gross Hypocrites that have not one Dram of true Piety in them who yet in their Religious Exercises can put themselves into wonderous Transports of bodily Passion who can pour out their Confessions in Floods of Tears and cause their Hearts to dilate into Raptures of sensitive Love and their Spirits to tickle them into Extasies of Joy Which is purely to be resolved into the different Tempers of Mens Bodies some Tempers being naturally so calm and sedate as that they are scarce capable of being disturbed into a Passion others again so soft and tender and impressible that the most frivolous Fancy is able to raise a Commotion in them And hence we see that some People can weep most heartily at the Misfortunes of Lovers in Plays and Romances and as heartily rejoyce at their good Successes though they know that both are but Fictions and mere Ideas of Fancy whereas others can scarce shed a Tear or raise a sensitive Joy at the real Calamities or Prosperities of a Friend whom yet they love a great deal better than others can be supposed to do their feigned and Romantick Hero's And yet because of these sensitive Transports which Men do sometimes feel in themselves when their Fancies have been chafed a while with a pathetical Description of God they presently vote themselves his Friends and Lovers whereas in Truth that which commonly moves their Affection is not any thing real either in God or in Christ but some sensual Beauty attributed to them in fanciful Descriptions that smites their carnalized Fancies For generally we find that it is a Metaphorical God and Christ that such Men fall in love with they set up an Idol of God and Christ in their Fancies and dress it in such carnal Metaphors and Allusions as their sensual Minds are most apt to be taken with and then imagin that it smiles on them and kisses and caresses them with all the pretty endearments of a doating Lover whereupon they grow so extreamly fond of it that they are not able to forbear hugging and dandling it But alas poor Men they hug the Cloud instead of the Godess and while they think they have God and Christ in their Arms embrace nothing but a Specter of their own Fancies For let but any other Person though it were only the Hero of a Romance or the Lover of a Play be but described to them in the same Language and the same glistering Allusions and they shall experience in themselves the same Passion for them as they have for their God and their Saviour Thus in the Roman Nunneries and Monasteries we generally find the Monks fall in Love with the Virgin Mary whilst the Nuns are all enamoured with Jesus Christ that is they chuse the Objects of their Love according to the different Inclinations of their Sexes and the Reason why they chuse so differently is no other than this that they both frame to themselves such different carnal Ideas of the different Objects of their Love as are most suitable and agreeable to their carnal Inclinations but very commonly neither the Monk loves the Virgin Mary nor the Nun Jesus Christ but they both meerly doat upon the different Images of their own Fancies which do not at all represent those divine Beauties for which those sacred Persons do so well deserve to be beloved And thus it is too commonly among our selves when yet we pretend to be zealous Lovers of God Wherefore unless we have a mind to deceive our selves let us no longer depend on such fallacious Evidences as these but let us try our Love of God by his own Touch-stone and that is our Obedience to his heavenly Will If any man love me saith our Saviour he will keep my Words Jo. xiv 23 and ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you for this saith St. John is Love that ye walk after his Commandments Eph. ii 6 For the Love of God and of Christ being a rational Love is only to be valued by those rational Effects it produces in us if it transform us into the Image of God and makes us
love what he loves and hate what he hates these are much more certain Indications of our Love to him than the most ravishing Effects of sensitive Passion For though our Hearts were melted into a Transport and Fondness to him yet so long as our Hearts and our Practices are incomplyant to his Will and Laws he will look upon us and deal with us as Hypocrites and Enemies and esteem all our sensitive Fondnesses towards him but as the base Flatteries of Judas who kissed him and then betrayed him 3 ly Hence I infer what the great Reason is why God doth so strictly enjoyn us to love him For there is no Command whatsoever so often repeated in Scripture as this of loving God Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul What doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to love him O love the Lord all ye his Saints Take heed therefore to your selves that ye love the Lord your God These and a world of other reiterated Injunctions of Love do we meet with in the Sacred Pages But how comes this to pass Doth God need our Love that he so importunately calls for it Or doth it contribute any thing to his Happiness to see himself beloved by all this great World of Beings which he hath made and which he hath endued with the Capacity of loving him No no though doubtless the best Thing we can give him is our Love yet he is too happy in himself to need any thing of ours For he is a bottomless Fountain of Happiness circumscribing all those Blisses that he can need or desire within the boundless Circle of his own Being Or doth he court our Love meerly that he may glory in the Number of his Lovers and pride himself in those infinite Flames that concenter in him No nor this neither for he is so infinitely glorious in himself that no Act of ours can either add to or substract from his Glory which amidst all the Hallelujahs of Angels and Saints and all the Blasphemies of Men and Devils shines with the same unvaried Splendour and Brightness and is neither diminished by our Hatred nor improved by our Love Well then if neither of these be the Reason what is it 'T is true the Thing is infinitely reasonable in it self That he who is so lovely in himself should be beloved and that all our Affections should be united in him who is the Fountain of all our Beings and Well-Beings And God who is the Author of our reasonable Faculties cannot but desire that we should act reasonably and love that best which best deserves to be beloved But is there not some particular End for which God doth so earnestly crave and exact our Love Yes doubtless there is and such as is every way worthy of him that hath proposed it For it cannot be supposed that a Being infinitely wise should ever act without End or Aim but God being infinitely happy cannot be supposed to propose any End for his own Advantage because that would imply that he wants or desires some Good that he hath not and consequently that he is not happy But then he being infinitely good as well as happy we cannot imagin what other End he should have of his Actions but only to do good to his Creatures and promote their Happiness and consequently the End and Reason for which he doth so importunately demand our Love is not to add any Thing to himself but to do good to us for our goodness extendeth not to God as the Psalmist tells us xvi 2 And though the Love of God be a very great Perfection to our Natures yet Job tells us that it is no gain at all to God that we make our ways perfect Job xxii 3 But though it is none to God yet it is an infinite Gain to our selves and that is the End and Reason for which he requires it For as I have already shew'd you of all the Principles of our Obedience to God Love is the most pregnant and fruitful Now God requires us to obey him for our own Good he having enjoyned us nothing but what tends to the Perfection and Happiness of our Natures and he requires us to love him that so we may the more intirely and perfectly obey him and thereby more speedily arrive to that Happiness for which his infinite Goodness hath designed us So that all the profit both of our Love and Obedience accrues to our selves 't is we only that reap the Fruit of our own Virtues we only that are exalted by those Homages that we render to our Maker for he is as happy without our Love as he is with it and all those united Flames of Angels and Saints that meet and concenter in him add not one spark to the infinite Element of his Happiness which were not infinite could it admit of Increase But the Lovers themselves are glorified by their Love and because they are so God requires and exacts it For our Love being the great Soul of our Obedience and our Obedience the necessary Means of our Happiness the Profit of both must necessarily redound to our selves and 't is we only that must be inriched and glorified by them For this Reason therefore God requires our Love that it may be a living Principle to Obedience and that being so it might accelerate our Happiness for he whose Love of God is but arrived to the Degree of a reigning Principle of Obedience so as that his Obedience proceeds more from his Love than from any other Passion doth already border on the heavenly State and is within the Confines of Perfection For as for the Inhabitants of Heaven they are all acted by pure Love which makes their Obedience pure and perfect They see God face to face and by their Sight are all inflamed with Love to him and by their Love are winged with everlasting Vigour and Readiness to serve him and all their Aversations to his Heavenly Will being swallowed up in perfect Love they not only obey without Murmuring but with infinite Ravishment and Pleasure and never feel themselves more in Heaven than while they are serving praising and adoring him This is the happy State of those heavenly Lovers and to this we are approaching with full Speed while we obey from a Principle of Love For Love will carry us on with Wind and Tide from one Degree of Perfection to another and whilst poor slavish Souls that are acted mainly by their Fears are faign to tug at the Oar and yet creep on but slowly and by insensible Degrees we shall run forwards with Ease and Speed and get more ground at one stroak than they can in twenty For in one good Action performed out of Love there is more Virtue and Goodness than in a hundred of those whereunto we are dragged by our own Fears and Terrors because as the Degrees of Evil so the Degrees of Good in all Actions are to be measured by the Degrees
of Will that are in them and doubtless in those good Actions that have Love for their Principle there is much more of Will than in those that proceed from Fear and Terror and consequently our Nature being perfected by good Actions and more or less perfected by them the more or less of Goodness they have in them must needs be much more perfected by the good Actions of Love than by those of Fear Whilst therefore we are acted in Religion by the Love of God our Souls are upon the Wing to Perfection and in a swift Tendency to the heavenly State we are already in the Neighbourhood of glorified Saints and Angels and if we continue our Course shall soon be fit for their Society and Converse This therefore is the great End and Reason why God doth so importunately claim our Love because this of all others is the most perfective Principle of our Natures and consequently the most conducive to our Happiness 4 ly And lastly from hence I infer of what vast Importance it is to us in Religion to love God For you plainly see that Love is not only a Principle of Obedience but that of all others it is the most efficacious and operative that it doth not only engage us to keep God's Commandments but that it enables us to keep them most universally and vigorously and chearfully and constantly So that what the Apostle saith of brotherly Love is more universally true of the Love of God that it is the keeping of the whole Law Rom. xiii 10 that is causally and virtually it is For so Love is that universal Cause which within its fruitful Womb contains all the Particulars of our Obedience and is naturally productive of them all So that virtually it is all Religion it is Godliness and Temperance and Charity and Humility and Righteousness and Patience being the common Cause and Parent of them all For Love hath an universal Respect to the Will of the Beloved it doth not chuse what is easie and refuse what is hard but likes what God likes and disapproves of what he hates his Will being the great Reason of all its Choices and Refusals And whatsoever things in particular are distastful and difficult to us by its powerful Oratory it renders pleasant and easie For he that serves God out of Love serves him with Delight and he that serves him with Delight hath no Clog to incumber him none of those Aversations and Antipathies to his Service that do so load and depress unwilling Minds he doth not row against the Current of Nature but acts with the full Inclination of his Mind and so feels little or nothing of Drudgery in his Religion and being carried on with a full Tide of Delight he goes easily and chearfully down with the Stream Of such vast Importance is the Love of God to our Religion that it not only produces it but renders it easie and pleasant so that without some Degree of this our Religion can have neither Being nor Well-being and it is as possible for us to live without a Soul and to be nourished without Food as it is for our Religion to be and to thrive without the Love of God Wherefore if ever we would be Religious indeed if ever we would connaturalize Religion to our Souls so as to render it easie and delightsome to us let us endeavour to kindle this heavenly Fire within us and certainly if we heartily endeavour it we cannot faâ—â— of success For there are so many mighty Reasons to engage us to the Love of God so many invincible Attractions in his Nature and in his Love towards us as cannot but affect us if we seriously ponder and consider them For how can I reflect upon that amiable Nature of his in which there is an harmonious Concurrence of all Beauties and Perfections where Wisdom and Goodness Justice and Mercy and every lovely Thing that can claim or deserve a rational Affection are contempered together in their utmost Degrees of Perfection How I say can I steadily reflect upon such a Nature as this without being charmed and captivated with the Love of it How can I think of that stupendous Love which he hath expressed towards me in giving me my Being and all the Blessings I enjoy in preparing a Heaven of immortal Joys for me and sending his Son from thence to conduct me thither without being all inflamed with Love to him Wherefore let us seriously set our selves to the Contemplation of God of the Loveliness of his Nature and of his infinite Kindness to us and all his Creation Let us repeat the Thoughts of these Things upon our Minds and never give over pressing our selves with those infinite Reasons we have to love him till we feel the heavenly Fire begin to kindle within our Breasts and then let us never give over feeding and blowing it with these divine Considerations till it rise up into a triumphant Flame And then we shall feel our selves animated with a new Soul and inspired with so much Life and Activity in Religion as that from our Experience we shall be able to subscribe to the Truth of the Text This is the Love of God this the most natural Expression and inseparable Effect of it That we keep his Commandments 1 JOHN V. 3 And his Commandments are not grievous I Proceed now to the next Part of the Text viz. the Motive by which this obedient Love of God is enforced and his Commandments are not grievous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are not heavy or burthensome they have no such Weight or Difficulty in them as ought in reason to discourage us from keeping them For in these Words the Apostle seems to anticipate an Objection alas if this be the Love of God to keep his Commandments what Man is able to love him for if his Commandments are not absolutely impossible yet are they at least so extremely difficult that scarce any Man can have the Courage to undertake the Performance of them This saith our Apostle is a mighty Mistake or a wretched Pretence for Mens Sloth and Idleness for verily and truly the Commands of God have no such Difficulty in them but are in themselves very gentle and easie to be born And with this Assertion our blessed Saviour doth most perfectly accord Mat. xi 30 My yoke is easie and my burthen is light And the Prophet David makes it not only easie but delightful Psal. xix 8 The Statutes of the Lord are right rejoycing the heart the Commandments of the Lord are pure enlightning the eyes And then in the 10 th Verse he tells us that they are more to be desired than gold yea than much fine gold and sweeter than honey or the honey-comb So far they are from being Toils and Burthens that in Reality they are Pleasures and Recreations But farther to demonstrate this Truth to you That God's Commands are not burthensome and difficult I shall do these two things I. Shew you that they are facile
and easie in themselves II. That Christ by what he hath done hath rendred them much more facile than they are in themselves I. That the Commands of God are facile and easie in themselves And this will evidently appear if we consider 1. That whatsoever they enjoyn hath some natural Good appendent to it 2. That every Thing which they enjoyn is highly agreeable to our reasonable Natures 3. That They are all perfective of our Natures and conducive to our Happiness 4. That in themselves they are plain and simple and direct and have no Intricacies or Labyrinths in them 5. That they are all so inseparably connected to one another that they mutually promote and help forwards each other 1. That whatsoever they enjoyn hath some natural Good inseparably appendent to it to sweeten and endear it The great and wise First-Mover hath so ordered Things in the Course of Motion which he hath established that such and such Actions should be ordinarily attended with such and such Effects and Consequents and this is one great Way by which he hath signified to the World his Dislike or Approbation of humane Actions by the Effects and Consequents which he hath chained and annexed to them If in the Course of Things which he hath established such an Action be ordinarily attended with a good Effect he thereby signifies his Approbation of it and declares that it is his Will and Pleasure that we should do and persevere in doing it But if the Consequents which in the Course of Nature are ordinarily linked to such an Action are evil and hurtful he thereby declares his Dislike and Abhorrence of it and that it is his Will and Pleasure that we should carefully and constantly avoid it For the great Author of our Beings hath so framed our Natures and placed us in such Circumstances and Relations that there is nothing vicious but is also injurious to us nothing virtuous but is advantagious and in this the Good and Evil of all humane Virtues and Vices do consist and 't is purely for this Reason why he forbids the one and commands the other because he is our Friend and would not have us neglect any Thing that tends to our Good nor do any Thing that is hurtful and injurious to us and because he knows that while we are thus framed and do continue in these Circumstances and Relations it is impossible but Virtue should be an Advantage and Vice a Mischief to our Natures And indeed the great Sanction of the Law of Nature is nothing else but that natural Good and Evil which is ordinarily consequent to the Actions which it commands and forbids For when God had no otherwise revealed himself to the World than only by the established Course and Nature of Things that was the only Bible whereby Mankind could be instructed in his Will and Pleasure and there being no Threats or Promises antecedently annexed unto bad and good Actions his Will and Pleasure concerning our doing or avoiding them was only visible in those good or bad Effects and Consequences which in the Course of Nature he had made necessary to them And indeed the Moral Good and Evil of all Actions is finally to be resolved into the natural Good and Evil that is appendent to them for therefore our Actions are morally good because they are naturally beneficial to us and therefore are they morally evil because they are naturally prejudicial and hurtful and those that are neither of these are indifferent Actions and stand in the middle between Good and Evil. And indeed this Distinction of Actions by their Effects and Consequents is in most Particulars so plain and sensible that all the World hath taken Notice of it For whereas all good Actions have an apparent Tendency either to the Publick Good wherein our own Private is involved or to our own animal and sensitive Good our Quiet and Health and Reputation and Prosperity or to the Perfection of our rational Natures and the sovereign Pleasure and Happiness of our Minds all bad Actions tend directly contrary either to the Damage and Ruine of the Publick-Weal or to the Hurt and Prejudice of our animal and sensitive Felicity to the diseasing of our Bodies the staining our Names or the impoverishing our Estates or to the defacing and blemishing the Beauty of our rational Natures and the Interruption and Disturbance of all the Pleasures and Felicities of our Minds And this Distinction of good and evil Actions is so immutably fixed in the Nature of Things that it can never be obliterated until God wholly alters the Course of his Creation and impresses quite contrary Laws of Motion on it For so long as we continue what we are in the same Nature and Circumstances and Relations to God and one another Righteousness and Godliness Humility and universal Love must necessarily be good for us and their Contraries bad and destructive to our Happiness Now this wise and excellent Constitution of Things doth very much tend to the facilitating of Virtue and Goodness to us For when Things are so constituted that it is become our Interest as well as our Duty to pursue Virtue and eschew Vice when that which distinguishes our Duty from our Sin is the good that it doth us and the apparent Tendency it hath to our Happiness this if we love our selves must needs very much endear and recommend it to us For now we serve our selves in serving our Maker the substance of all whose Injunctions is no more than this that we should pursue our own Happiness by doing all those Things which are necessary thereunto I confess had he made those Actions which are our Sins to be our Duty we had then some Reason to complain for then we should have been bound in pure Obedience to God to damnify our selves and like the wretched Priests of Baal to cut and slash our own Bodies and Souls meerly to humour and gratify the Divinity whom we adore then in obeying him we must have acted our own Tragedy and made our selves miserable in pure Loyalty to our Maker For there is such an inseparable Bane clings to all vicious Actions as necessarily renders them destructive and venomous and we may as soon clip off the Sun-beams with a Pair of Scissers as separate Vice from its mischievous Consequences But now when the Sum of all that God requires of us is to be good to our selves and Friends to our own Happiness to do what is beneficial and avoid what is hurtful to us when every Command of his is an Instance of his Love to us and exacts nothing of us but what we would have done of our own Accord had we but known what is good for us as well as he and loved our selves as well as he loves us In a word when at the End of every good Action there stands some natural Good beckning and inviting us to it and at the End of every bad One some natural Evil to warn and affright us from coming
at it so that we cannot run from any Duty into any Sin without leaving a Benefit for a Mischief and leaping out of some Degree of Happiness into some Degree of Misery When things I say are thus as it is apparent they are with what Conscience can we complain that our Duty is burthensome and uneasie This therefore is one great Reason why God's Commands cannot be grievous because they require nothing but what is beneficial and forbid nothing but what is hurtful and injurious to us And sure no Man can have Reason to complain that is forbid Poyson and commanded to eat nothing but what is wholsome and nourishing 2 ly Another Thing that facilitates the Commands of God is this That they are highly agreeable to our reasonable Natures And hence the Apostle calls the whole of our Religion a reasonable Service Rom. xii 1 And for the Truth of this I dare appeal to any considering Man in the World whether those Virtues which God hath enjoyned be not in their own Nature far more reasonable than any of the Contrary Vices whether supposing there be a God that made and governs the World and from whom we derive our Beings and all the Blessings we enjoy or expect it be not much more reasonable in the Nature of the Thing that we should worship and revere and love and honour and obey him than that we should neglect and despise blaspheme and rebel against him or whether we can behave our selves so unworthily to One that hath deserved so well at our hands without doing the greatest Violence to our own Reason whether since we are all of us reasonable Beings and our Reason is the noblest Ingredient of our Natures it doth not much better become us to subject our blind Passions and Appetites to those eternal Rules of Temperance which Right Reason prescribes than to let loose the Reins to them and suffer them to run headlong into all Excesses and Riots whether since we are incorporated into the great Society of Mankind it be not much more conducive to the Good of the Whole to behave our selves justly and honestly charitably and obliging one towards another than to defraud and oppress malign and persecute one another I dare appeal to any Man that hath ever thought twice of these Matters whether in point of Reasonableness the Advantage is not wholly on the side of Virtue yea and whether the opposite Vices compared with these Virtues seem not as extravagant as the wildest Freaks of a Mad-man compared with the wise Managements of a Minister of State But I need not appeal to particular Men in this Matter since all the reasonable World is agreed in the point and the Men of all Ages and Nations and Religions how much soever in other points they have dissented from one another yet in this have still been unanimous That Virtue is the wisest and most reasonable Thing in the World and Vice the most absurd and irrational and this not only in the general but in all those particular Instances of Virtue and Vice which Christianity commands and forbids For excepting the two Sacraments and believing in Jesus Christ and the Observation of the Lord's Day which are the instituted Means of our Religion there is nothing made Matter of Duty to us but what all the wise World had long before pronounced most highly fit and reasonable This therefore must needs render the Commands of God very easie to us that they do so perfectly agree with our reasonable Natures and require nothing of us either to be done or avoided but what the Reason of every wise Man would have obliged him to whether God had commanded it or no. So that now to facilitate our Duty we have the full Concurrence of our Reason which upon due and impartial Consideration cannot but approve and recommend it to us as the most reasonable Thing in the World and if it be so how is it possible that it should be in its own Nature grievous Is it so hard a Matter for Men to act like Men and not to live their own Reverse and Antipodes Is it such a mighty Burthen to comply with the most genuine Inclinations of our Nature and to swim with the full Tide and Current of our Reason in obeying those Commands which are so far from offering any Violence to our Faculties that they have their full Consent and Approbation Let Men say and teach what they please 't is as apparent as the Sun that the Difficulties of Religion commence not so much upon the Stock of Nature as of Education and evil Habits and Customs for in all other Instances that which is natural is always facile and easie and if Reason be the Nature of a Man Religion must be either natural or unreasonable So that Religion disagrees with us upon no other Account but only because we disagree with our selves and it just so far crosses us as we do the Current of our own rational Natures We have sophisticated our Natures with the Intermixtures of sensual and devilish Habits and they are these that the Commands of God do agrieve and so 't is not the Man that is so burthened with Religion but 't is either the Beast or the Devil that is in him 3 ly Another Thing that facilitates God's Commands is this That they are mightily furthered and promoted by all the natural Instincts and Passions of human Nature There are certain Propensions in human Nature antecedent to all Reason and Discourse that seem to be implanted in us by the wise Author of our Beings for no other End but only to minister to Virtue and Religion such in particular are Self-Love the Love of Truth and of Pleasure Commiseration and Gratitude and Affectation of Praise all which do discover themselves in us in our early Infancy before we are capable of discoursing our selves into them For even in young Infants you may observe a great Inclination to defend themselves and to repel Injuries which proceeds from the Principle of Self-love that is in them a vehement Desire of what seems good to them and a great Displeasure when they perceive themselves deceived the later of which must proceed from their Love of Truth as the former from their Love of Goodness Again when they see a miserable Object or one whom they think so they presently bemoan it and express by their Actions a very earnest Desire to defend and relieve it which proceeds from that natural Commiseration that is in them Again as soon as they are able to distinguish Faces and Persons we see they express the greatest Love and Fondness to those that tend and feed them and do them most good which is a plain Expression of their natural Gratitude And as soon as they understand the Meaning of Words or Actions they shew themselves highly pleased when they are commended and applauded and much grieved and ashamed when they are derided and exposed which plainly discovers their natural Affectation of Praise These
and such like Instincts and Propensions there are found in human Nature which being well managed and improved by our Reason prove excellent Instruments of Virtue and Religion and do very much facilitate and further our Practice of them For this our natural Self-love being guided by our Reason doth strongly incline us to serve and obey God who being the most powerful Agent in the World can do us the greatest Good if we please him and the greatest Hurt if we affront and provoke him so that as we love our selves it concerns us to use all reasonable Ways to endear and reconcile our selves to him Thus our natural Desire of Good if conducted by our Reason will incline us to do the best Actions since from these the greatest Good will necessarily redound to us and our Love of Truth by good Management may be easily improved into Honesty and Sincerity and an universal Abhorrence of Vice upon the Account of those notorious Cheats and Impostures that are in it Thus also by the Bias of our natural Commiseration we are strongly inclined to Charity and Beneficence and universal Love and by its own innate Gratitude our Nature is propense to the Love of God who is our Sovereign Benefactor to honour and obey our Parents and do all the Acts and Offices of a noble and generous Friendship And to name no more thus by our natural Affectation of Praise we are strongly inclined to do praise-worthy Things and consequently to exercise our selves in all those amiable Virtues which by common Consent are lookt upon as the Graces and Ornaments of human Nature Thus by all those Instincts that God hath implanted in our Natures we are inclined to Virtue and Obedience to his Will And for this Reason chiefly hath he implanted them in us because they are excellent Instruments of Religion having in them such a natural Aptitude and Proneness to facilitate our Duty by inclining us to it and to farther us in Holiness and Virtue I confess there are none of these Instincts but may be improved into Vices nor is there any Thing so good but what may be perverted to very bad Purposes And if Men will abuse themselves and willfully deboach the Instincts of their Nature there is no Remedy for their Folly and they must thank themselves when they feel the dismal Effects of it But this I think is plain that there are no Propensions in human Nature but what are much more improvable into Virtue than into Vice and if Men would but use themselves well and as it becomes reasonable Creatures to do they would doubtless find themselves very much farthered in their Duty by the natural Instincts which God hath implanted within them And this is a mighty Advantage on Virtues side that it is thus aided and assisted with all the Instincts of our Natures which like obedient Handmaids are most readily inclined to execute its Commands and minister to its Pleasure and Interest How then is it possible that Religion in it self should be burthensome and grievous to us when the Propensions of our Nature do so fairly comply with it and it is helped forwards and promoted by all their united Force and Influence 'T is difficult indeed for a Man to go against the Grain but to act according to Nature to follow our own Propensions and to do what we are inclined to by natural Instinct is doubtless the easiest Thing in the World 4 ly Another Thing that makes those Virtues which God Commands to be easie is this that they are all so inseparably connected to one another that they mutually promote and help forward each other For all the Virtues are so mutually concatenated that the stirring of any one Link moves the whole Chain Thus for Instance the true Knowledge of God naturally inflames the Soul with the Love of him and then the Love of him insensibly transforms her into the Image of his beloved Goodness for he that loves God must needs be inamoured with that divine Goodness which is the Root of his Love And while he is ravished with the Sweetness of his Good Will the Undeservedness of his Grace and the Clemency of his Pardon an heavenly Spirit steals into his Soul and he loves and becomes like God so both at once that like a Wedg of Steel he is transformed into the Likeness of the Fire that heats him and is all inflamed and inlightened at the same Moment And as he burns with Love so he resembles the Goodness that set him on Fire and becomes pure as that is pure and holy as that is holy and just and merciful as that heavenly Original is which he copies and transcribes Thus wheresoever the Love of God is it hath all the god-like Virtues attending it and that being the first Link in the heavenly Chain whensoever it moves it communicates Motion to all the rest For he that heartily loves God will love those whom God loves and so the Love of God will draw Brotherly-Charity after it and he who loves those whom God loves will be just and righteous in his Dealings and Deportment towards them and so Brotherly-charity will draw Righteousness after it And he that demeans himself justly and righteously towards others will neither undervalue them nor overvalue himself and so Righteousness will draw Humility after it And he that doth not over-value himself is fairly disposed to be sober in all his Passions and so Humility draws Temperance and Sobriety and Meekness after it Thus one Virtue smoothens the Way to another and makes it not only possible but easie for there is such a near Neighbourhood between these heavenly Sisters that when we are arrived at one we pass insensibly to the next and so on by Degrees till we are gone round with them all For though there be not an immediate Dependence of every Virtue upon every one Virtue so as to make it necessary for a Man to have all Virtues in every Moment that he hath one for a Man may be charitable and yet not presently humble as he may be just and yet not immediately temperate Yet there is so near a Dependence between them that one always disposes the Mind for another this Virtue always makes way for its next Neighbour and that for its next and so on all around the whole Circle of Virtues Thus Humility naturally disposes the Mind to Meekness Meekness to Charity Charity to Justice Justice to Devotion which is giving God his Due and Devotion to Heavenly-mindedness and Contempt of the World and so all along there is a gentle and easie Transition from one to t' other Now this must needs mightily facilitate the Virtues of Religion that they are so nearly confederated to each other and so do naturally contribute to each others Assistance For whereas if it were not for this there would still be the same Difficulty in practising the second Virtue as there is in practising the first and in practising the third as there is in practising
that are not able to resist him without imploying infinite Wisdom in the Management and Contrivance of it Or Which will as well serve my Argument could there have needed as much Wisdom to design and effect this as there did to contrive and manage the great Methods of our Salvation Sure no man can be so senseless as to imagine it Well then if God be infinitely Wise and Doing the greatest Good to others be a much higher Exercise of Wisdom than doing the greatest Evil it will hence necessarily follow that even his infinite Wisdom must needs incline him to do Good For as the End of Power is to act so the End of Wisdom is to act wisely and every Thing as I told you inclines to its End and consequently the more Wisdom it hath the more wisely it is inclined to act Wherefore since doing Good is the greatest Act of Wisdom God who is infinitely wise must needs be infinitely inclined there unto 3 ly God is infinitely happy and therefore he is good for God's infinite Happiness doth necessarily exclude all Want all Desire and all Prospect of any Degree of Happiness beyond what he enjoys and where all these are excluded there can be no Self-end For a Self-end is some Good desired and aimed at which yet we are not possessed of and if God hath no Self-end he can have no End at all but only to do Good to others But perhaps you will object how can you say that God hath no Self-end when the Scripture so plainly tells us that his own Glory is his End and this End he doth as well obtain by doing Hurt as by doing Good to others by damning of some as well as by saving of others To which I answer that if by the Glory of God you mean any Thing else but the free Communication of his Goodness to others it is false to say that his Glory is his End and if this be his Glory then what I said is infallibly true that the only End of God is to do Good But if you think that his Glory consists in being praised and commended admired and applauded by his poor impotent Creatures you have very mean Conceptions of him if you think that this is his last End For what Advantage is it to God that we applaud and commend him Can the Praises and Panegyricks of a small Handful of Breath either make him more glorious than he is or more glorious in his own Esteem Alas No He is an infinite Stage and Theater to himself his Prospect being every way adequate to his Glory and his Glory as unbounded as Eternity it self So that if all his Creation should joyn Hearts and Voices to extol and laud him yet they could not add either one Spark to his Glory or one Degree to that infinite Satisfaction he takes in it So that when we have praised him as much as we are able he is still but as glorious as he was before and he still knows that he deserves infinitely more Praises than we are able to render him And how can it be imagined that he who is so infinitely satisfied with himself and hath such infinite Reason for it should find any need of our poor Praises and Commendations And if he finds no Need of it how can he propose it to himself as the End of his Actions since the End of Action is always some Good which yet we have not but do desire to enjoy 'T is true he doth command us to praise and laud and acknowledge him but he commands us this as he doth all other Things not for his own Good but for ours He bids us extol and admire his Perfections that by that he might engage us to transcribe and imitate them and so by glorifying him to glorify our selves So that still the Glory that he designs and aims at consists not in receiving any Good from us but in doing and communicating of Good to us And therefore though it is true that God doth obtain this great End of his Glory as well in damning of some as in saving of others it is not because he reaps any Good from it but because he doth Good by it For if he should damn and punish any Being without any good Reason he could not expect so much as to be praised and commended for it but if he doth it for good Reason it is because it is good either for himself or others For himself it cannot be for how can an infitely happy Being reap any Degree of Good from anothers Misery and Punishment And therefore it must be for the Good of others that they by the Example of those whom he punishes may be warned from incurring those Sins for which he punishes them and from running away from their own Duty and Happiness So that even the End of Punishment is to do Good and this is the great Glory that God aims at in doing it And indeed considering that God is infinitely happy there is no other Glory but this that he can propose as the great and ultimate End of his Actions For all the Inclination that is in any Being either not to do Good or to do Hurt to others arises from Indigence and Insufficiency either we envy or we covet the Good which another enjoys the former of which restrains us from adding any more Good to him as the latter excites us to deprive him of that which he is already possessed of both which do apparently arise from the Want and Indigence of Good in our selves But now in God there being no Want of Good it is impossible there should be either Envy or Avarice in him and both these being excluded there can be no Temptation at all in his Nature either not to do Good or to do Hurt to others For we see among Men the more perfect and happy they are the less good still they desire for themselves and the more for others Since therefore the great God is infinitely perfect and infinitely happy it is impossible he should desire any Good for himself and therefore if he act for any Good at all as he cannot but do it must be for ours For 4 thly And lastly God loves himself infinitely and therefore cannot but be good For whatsoever Being loves it self must necessarily love its own Resemblance and Likeness for that which is lovely in us is lovely in another and if there be any Reason why we should love our selves there is the same Reason why we should love another that resembles us in those Things for which we love our selves 'T is true we poor imperfect Creatures do many times love our selves without Reason out of a meer blind Impetus and necessary Instinct of Nature But God being infinitely wise governs all his Motions by the wisest Rules and doth every Thing for the best and most excellent Reasons and consequently doth not love himself he cannot tell why out of any blind unaccountable Instinct in his Nature but he loves himself so
far only as he hath Reason to do it and 't is because he hath infinite Reason for it that he loves himself infinitely And the Reason why he loves himself to that infinite Degree that he doth is because he is infinitely perfect and so hath infinite Reason to be delighted and satisfied with himself and this being the Reason he cannot but love others that resemble him in that for which he loves himself For though others cannot be infinitely happy as he is yet they are happy in such a Degree as there Capacities will bear and when they are so he hath the same Reason though not so much to love them as he hath to love himself And he that loves Happiness in another as well as in himself will not only love it where it is already but be very much inclined to propagate it where it is not So that this I think is a most plain Case that if Perfection and Happiness be the Reason of God's love he cannot but love it in another as well as in himself and if he love it in another he cannot but be inclined to contribute to the producing it And therefore unless we suppose God contrary to the Genius of all other Beings not to love his own Resemblance nor to be at all concerned to propagate it we must necessarily suppose him to be Good or which is all one inclined to make others happy And to say that God loves Happiness in himself but yet that he affects to make others miserable without any Prospect of Advantage to himself is to say that he loves Contraries in different Objects that is Happiness in himself and Misery in others which is to make his Love to be guided by the extravagant Impulses of a mutable Fancy and not by the steady Rules of Wisdom But since it is impossible for any Being to love that which is contrary to himself we may be sure that God cannot love Misery whose Nature is so infinitely happy and since I am sure that every Being must love its own Resemblance if it love it self I am as sure that God loves that others should be happy as I can be that he is so himself And thus I have endeavoured from the very Nature of God to demonstrate this great Truth to you That he is good and plainly proved to you that by all those infinite Perfections which are the necessary Results of his Self-existence he is most strongly and vehemently inclined to do good to others And now to conclude all we will briefly consider what Use may be made of this Discourse for the Guidance and Conduct of our Lives and Actions 1. Then if God be good this may serve to support us under all the sad Events that befall us in this World For what greater Satisfaction than this can any reasonable Man desire to be under the Government of and to have all his Affairs disposed by a God that cannot but be good For now all Events and Accidents that befall us must be what God intends and designs them because he hath the Management and Disposal of them all and to be sure a good God can never have an ill Design upon his Creatures 'T is true when his Creatures prove Malefactors he may and doth chastise and punish them but even in doing thus he hath a most gracious and merciful Design namely to reform the Offender himself or to make him a publick Example to all the rational World that they may take warning by his Ruin and not run upon the Rock that dashed him in pieces And to punish Offenders is as great an act of Mercy to the Publick as it is to reward the Loyal and Obedient for if out of a fond Indulgence to insolent Rebels he should let them go on in a State of Impunity the Publick would suffer a great deal more by it than those Rebels can do by a just and deserved Punishment for their Impunity would embolden others to take the same Courses and so the Contagion would run on without any stop from one to another till the Whole were infected and the Plague of Wickedness became Epidemical to all the reasonable Creation and so by sparing a few he would destroy a great many and his Mercy to Particulars would be Cruelty to the Whole But so long as we are honest and sincere in our Obedience to God we may be sure that whatsoever befalls us in particular is intended for our good for he cannot intend Hurt to an honest Soul without doing open Violence to his own Goodness because the Hurt of such an one is a pure Mischief it can serve no good End but is likely to prove a greater Prejudice to the Publick than it can be to the Person that endures it For as the Impunity of great Offenders will imbolden others to offend so the ruining of obedient Subjects will discourage others from obeying So that to design Hurt or Damage to a sincerely good Man is to do Mischief for its own sake and this can proceed from nothing but pure abstracted Malice which is the very Quintessence of a Devil but I am sure can have no Room in the Breast of our good God and merciful Father I confess in this Life all Things do fall out so alike to all that 't is impossible for us to judge of God's particular Design and Intention towards us by the Nature of the Things that we suffer and therefore in this Case the only infallible Course we can take is throughly and impartially to examine our selves and if upon a serious Review of our own Hearts and Ways we can truly say that we have been honest and sincere to God and our Duty we may be as sure that he designs good to us in all those Afflictions that he lays upon us as we can be that there is such a Being as God in the World And if for the Time past we should find that we have been bad and false and hypocritical yet since God still continues us in this Life of Tryal and permits us the Priviledge of being Candidates and Probationers for the Heavenly Preferments we may safely conclude from the Goodness of his Nature that whatsoever he doth to us he designs as no Harm for how can it be imagined that the good God should design our Misery at that very time while he continues us in a Probation for Happiness Wherefore let us chearfully undergo whatsoever he lays upon us concluding that there is nothing but Good can come from a good God that even his Punishments are cordial and all his Rods dip'd in Love and though they may smart severely and fetch Blood from our very Hearts yet let us determine with our selves that they must be good or bad according as God intends them and that the good God must needs intend them for good 2 ly Is God thus naturally and essentially good Then this may serve for an excellent Standard whereby to judge of our Opinions in Religion For most Opinions
Nature about which these Faculties can be perfectly exercised but only God who is the Fountain of all Truth and Goodness and consequently our Happiness as Men must consist in the Enjoyment of God that is in knowing and loving and resembling him for ever And in order to our obtaining of this God hath furnished us with Vnderstanding by the good Improvement of which we may easily arrive to the Knowledge of him for he hath placed us so advantagiously in Being that as from a convenient Station in a noble Theater we are able to contemplate the admirable Schemes of those magnificent Works which God hath set round about us and from the Vastness of the whole Structure the Variety of its Parts and the beautiful Order which appears in their admirable Connection we can easily infer that such a noble Production must needs be owing to an Almighty Skill and Goodness And then such is the Frame of our Natures that we easily love that which we know to be lovely and consequently if we are not prejudiced by preternatural Lusts that which we behold of God in his Works will imprint such an amiable Notion of him in our Minds as will almost necessarily engage us to love him and then our Love will provoke us to imitate those Beauties for which we love him we being naturally ambitious of transcribing those Perfections into our selves which we love and admire in another and then by imitating him we shall by Degrees be moulded into his Likeness and Resemblance for Acts will beget Inclinations Inclinations will grow into Habits and Habits will become our Nature So that you see God hath implanted an Ability of knowing and loving and resembling himself in the very Frame and Structure of our Natures these Things we are as capable of as of any Thing whatsoever that is rational and manly we are as capable of knowing God as of knowing any Thing that is knowable as capable of loving him as of loving any Thing that is amiable as capable of resembling him as of imitating any Thing that is imitable and these are the noblest and most essential Parts of the Happiness of a rational Nature Now what an undeniable Instance is this of the Goodness of God that he hath not only made so many Kinds of Beings capable of so many different Degrees of Happiness but that he hath furnished them all with such abundant Means and Abilities to obtain it O blessed God what Heart can be so stupid and insensible as not to admire and adore thy exuberant Goodness which hath thus extended it self to the utmost Borders of Entity and blessed with its overflowing Streams such an infinite Number of Beings What Tongue is able sufficiently to praise and extol thy Benignity that out of thine own immense Fulness hast supplied such a vast Creation with such Capacities and such Means and such Abilities of being happy 4 thly And Lastly Another Instance of his doing good in this great Work of Creation is his implanting a natural Inclination of doing good to others in all those Beings that are capable of Happiness For it being his Design to propagate this Sort of Beings by way of Generation to the End of the World he hath implanted in all Parents as well sensitive as rational a natural Love and Good-will to their Off-spring and that to such a Degree as we see the most timorous and helpless Creatures are not only very industrious to nurse and cherish them but very couragious in their Defence and Preservation which is a great Instance of the indulgent Care which the great Father of Beings hath of all his Children that he hath commited them in their Infancy to such tender Nurses that will be sure to take Care to make Provision for them when they are not able to provide for themselves that he hath not trusted them to the Compassion and good Nature of other Beings to be maintained by the Alms and free Benevolence of their fellow Creatures but hath taken Security for their liberal Nurture and Education from the very Nature and inmost Bowels of their Parents who were so framed that they cannot choose but make Provision for them if they are able without doing the greatest Outrage to themselves and stifling one of the strongest Inclinations of their Natures which inclination of natural Parents doth therefore loudly proclaim the infinite Goodness of the great Parent of all Things to his Children because there can be no other Reason assigned why he should implant this Inclination in our Natures but because he loved us and was therefore resolved to take the most effectual Course that Care might be taken of us when we were not capable to take Care for our selves And can we think that the supreme Father who hath implanted in all natural Parents such a necessary Inclination to do good to their Children should be forgetful and regardless of his own Off-spring He that planted the Eye shall not he see And he that gave the Ear shall not he hear And by the same Reason he that hath so strongly inclined our Natures to the Love of our Off-spring shall not he love his own Shall not his Nature be as strongly inclined to do good to them For the whole Creation being nothing else but the Expansion or Spreading forth of the divine Simplicity and Perfection all Creatures do more properly belong to God than Families or Actions do to the Principles from whence they flow so that we are as it were Flesh of his Flesh and Bone of his Bone and no Man saith the Apostle hateth his own Flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it And if Man doth not can we imagin that God doth For as for Man we see the more perfect he is and the more suitable to his Nature he acts the more he is inclined to do good and that not only to his own but to all others that are within the Sphere of his Beneficence He finds in himself such a diffusive and all-spreading Principle of Love as renders him an universal Friend and Benefactor to the World and makes him sympathize in the Happiness and Misery of all Beings and this brave Temper of Mind is doubtless one of the highest Perfections that the Soul of Man is capable of Since therefore originally we came no otherwise to the Knowledge of God's Perfections than as we found them copyed out and transcribed into our own Natures how can we imagin that God should not be inclined to universal Love and Beneficence when we acknowledge it a Perfection in our selves to be so Can there be any Perfection in us that is not in God in the utmost Degree of Possibility And therefore if the Inclination to do good be a Perfection in us it must needs be in God in all the possible Degrees that an infinite Nature is capable of and since he hath so framed all reasonable Natures that universal Love and Proneness to do good is one of their greatest Perfections and Accomplishments we
other Men are and then have delivered him for our sake there would have been no such great Expression of his Love in this Way of redeeming us more than what must have appeared should he have chosen to redeem us any other Way To have redeemed us indeed by what Means soever would have been a most glorious Expression of his Love and good Will to us but since the Scripture hath raised the Consideration of God's Love higher from the Dignity of the Person whom he sent to redeem us by how much higher the Dignity of this Person is by so much greater is the Estimation of his Love But if the Dignity of Christ's Person as the only begotten Son of God consisted meerly in being a Man born into the World in such an extraordinary Manner this would have made such an inconsiderable Addition to his Love in redeeming us that he would have much more agrandized his Kindness to us to have offered up an Angel of Heaven for us though of the most inferior Order than to have thus delivered up his only begotten Son But to offer up his natural Son to whom he had communicated his Nature his Son who was God co-eternal and co-essential with himself was a more transcendent Expression of his Love to us than if he had unpeopled Heaven for our sakes and delivered up to us the whole Quire of Angels Archangels and Seraphims 2 ly The Greatness of God's Love and Goodness towards us appears in this also that he gave up his only begotten Son for us when we were Sinners And this is implied in that Expression God so loved the World that is the World as it then was a base depraved and degenerate World for of this very World whom God thus loved the Apostle gives this extream bad Character the whole World lieth in Wickedness 1 Joh. v. 19 And St. Paul distributing the whole World into Jews and Gentiles pronounces universally concerning them that they were all under Sin Rom. iii. 9 So that in giving up his Son for such a World as this he must necessarily give him for Sinners And certainly should we measure God's Goodness by our own this Consideration is enough to render his giving his only begotten Son for us a most incredible Expression of it that when by our Sins we had provoked him beyond the Sufferance of any Patience but his own when in Despight of all those innumerable Mercies wherewith from Time to Time he had sought to oblige us and mauger all those Stupendous Judgments with which from one Generation to another he had endeavoured to curb and restrain us when he had used so many effectual Arts to reclaim and amend us and we by our own Obstinacy had bafled and defeated them all and in stead of mending grew worse and worse under all his powerful Applications one would have thought that now at last in stead of trying any further Experiments on us he might have been sufficiently provoked to give us up as Physitians do their Patients when they are past all Hope of Recovery and so let us alone to perish in our own Obstinacy And doubtless if after all these Provocations we had known that he had intended to send his Son into the World our own Guilt and Consciousness would have made us conclude that the Design of his sending him was only to ruin and destroy us to extirpate the whole Race of us from the Face of the Earth that so his Creation might be no longer scandalized with the Remembrance of such a Generation of Monsters But now that after so many repeated Affronts and Rebellions and in the midst of so many loud-crying Guilts that perpetually rang in his Ears he should still persevere to love us in such a transcendent Degree as to part with what is nearest and dearest to him for our sakes even his only begotten Son out of his Bosom is such an astonishing Expression of his Goodness to us as we can never sufficiently magnify and admire Had Mankind been as innocent as they are guilty before God had their Virtues been as great and as numerous as their Crimes were yet to send his great Son down from Heaven to visit them had been such an Instance of condescending Goodness in him as would have justly merited our everlasting Praise and Remembrance but to send him down to Sinners to such a Race of obstinate and incorrigible Sinners and that not to destroy but to save them to obtain for and tender to them a Kingdom of immortal Pleasures and use all possible Means safely to conduct them thither Lord what a Miracle of Love is this And hence the Apostle estimates this prodigious Instance of the Love of God by the Vndeservingness of those upon whom it was exercised but God says he commendeth his love towards us in that while we were yet Sinners Christ died for us Rom. v. 8 3 dly The Greatness of God's Love and Goodness towards us appears in this also that he gave up his only begotten Son for the whole World of Sinners he did not confine and limit this great Design of his Goodness by granting a monopoly of it to a few particular Favourites but settled it as a publick Charter upon the whole Corporation of Mankind for he so loved the World says the Text that he gave his only begotten Son that is for the benefit of the World For how could his giving of his Son have been an Expression of his Love to the World if he had not given him for the publick Benefit of the World Had his Design been to restrain his Gift to a few particular Persons whom he had designed to rescue from the general Shipwrack the Text must have run thus God so loved some particular Persons in the World that he gave up his only begotten Son For to make that an Instance of his Love to all which he designed only for the Benefit of a few is to pretend a Love to the greatest Part of Men which he never intended them for that by the World here he means the whole World he himself assures us 1 Joh. ii 2 And he is the Propitiation for our Sins And not for ours only but also for the Sins of the whole World And what he means by the whole World he tells us in the same Epistle 1 Joh. v. The whole World lieth in Wickedness So that this whole World that lies in Wickedness is that whole World for whose Sins Christ is a Propitiation and that whole World for whose Sins Christ is a Propitiation is the World whom God so loved as to give his only begotten Son for But the Apostle yet more expresly tells us that the head of every Man is Christ 1 Cor. xi 3 And if so then every Man is a Part of Christ's Body and if so then every Man hath a Communion in the Benefits of his Blood for Ephes. v. 23 he is said to be the Saviour of the Body and more expresly yet Heb. ii 9 it is said
that by the grace of God he tasted death for every Man So that the Scripture hath as emphatically declared the universal Extent of this great Gift of God's Love as it was possible for it to do in any human Words and methinks 't is strange that any Men should presume to restrain it when they have no other Defence for so doing but only an odd Distinction that makes the whole World to signify the smallest Part of it the Body of Christ to import a few particular Atoms of it and every Man to denote one Man of Ten Thousand Behold then the immense Goodness of God that hath not only given up his Son for Sinners but for a whole World of Sinners and excluded none but those who exclude themselves from the Benefits of this mighty Donation That hath planted this heavenly Tree of Life in the midst of a sick and sinful World and hath not confined or inclosed it for the Use of a few selected Patients but laid it open for all Comers that whosoever would might take of its Fruit and eat and live for ever O good God! How vast is thy Love that hath thus impartially diffused it self over such a wide World of Sinners that in this stupendous Gift of thy Son had so kind a Respect to every Individual and made no Exception of any how sinful and unworthy soever that will but comply with the merciful Terms and Conditions of it 4 thly The Greatness of God's Love and Goodness towards us appears also in this that he hath given up his only begotten Son to become a Man for Sinners For whatsoever he was upon God's giving him up he was what God gave him up to be and therefore since upon God's giving him up he became a Man it necessarily follows that he gave him up to become so And indeed since God had such a merciful Design as to send his Son into the World to reform and save it it was highly convenient for us though not for him that he should come to us in our own Natures not only that he might consecrate human Nature that had been so miserably desecrated and prophaned but also that he might endear himself to us by the great Honour he did us in assuming our Natures and that having our Passions and being in our Circumstances he might by his own Practice give us an Example how to govern the one and how to behave our selves in the other Had he come down from the Heavens inrobed with Splendor and Light and preached his Gospel to us in the midst of a Choir of Angels from some bright Throne in the Clouds this indeed would have been more convenient for him as being more suitable to the natural Dignity and Majesty of his Person But the All-merciful Father in the Disposal of his Son consulted not so much his Convenience as ours he knew well enough that should he have sent his Son to us in such an illustrious Equipage his Appearance amongst us would have been more apt to astonish than to instruct us and to have fixed our Thoughts in a profound Admiration of his Glory than to have directed our Steps in the Paths of Virtue and true Happiness and that it would be much more for our Interest that he should conduct us by his Example than amaze us by his Appearance and therefore that he might do so he sent him to us in our own Natures that so going before us as a Man he might shew us by his Example what became Men to do and direct us by the Print of his own Footsteps Since therefore he assumed our Nature purely for our sakes what a stupendous Instance of God's Goodness was this that for the sake of a World of miserable Sinners he should be content that his own most dear and most glorious Son should condescend to become a Man and to empty himself into our Nature that he who by the Divinity of his Nature was exalted more above that of the highest Angel than that is above the lowest Animal should personally unite himself to a Handful of Dust and marry his Divinity to the Infirmities of our Nature that he whose Throne was in the Heavens and before whose sacred Feet the whole Choir of heavenly Angels lie prostrate should abase himself so low as to come down among Mortals and associate himself with Companions so unworthy of him O good God! When thou hast condescended so low what is there thou wilt not condescend to to do good to thy Creatures But this is not all you shall see him stoop lower yet For 5 thly The Greatness of God's Love and Goodness towards us appears also in this that he gave up his only begotten Son to become a miserable Man for Sinners It would have been some Abatement to his mighty Condescention if when he sent him down among us in our Nature he had made him supream visible Monarch of the World if he had crowned him with all the Splendors of an earthly Condition if he had ushered him into the World in a triumphal Chariot with all the Kings of the Earth either prostrate before him or chained at his Chariot-Wheels This though a vast Condescention in the eternal Son yet would not have been so low as it was to be born of a poor Mother to be educated as a Carpenters Son to be exposed to Want and Penury to the Contempt of every sordid Wretch and the perpetual Persecutions of a borish and ill-natured Rable and yet this was the wretched State to which God humbled his own dear Son for our sakes For the Design of his Humiliation being to raise us the most merciful Father consulted not so much what was for his Ease as what was for our Benefit for he knew well enough that should he have introduced him into the World in earthly Pomp and Magnificence it would not have been so well for us that we were too Ambitious already of the Vanities of this World and that that had been the great Snare that had intangled and ruined us and that therefore it was necessary when his Son came among us he should take us off from our over-eager Pursuit of them disgrace and expose them to us by his own voluntary Refusal of them that by seeing him trample on them when they lay all at his Feet we might learn to despise them and be at length convinced what foolish Bargains we make when we sell our Innocence and our Happiness for such insignificant Trifles He thought it much more necessary for us that his Son should exercise his Virtue than display his Greatness among us and therefore he placed him in such Circumstances of human Life wherein by his own Example he might copy out to us the noblest Pattern of holy living For of all States that of Affliction affords the largest Sphere to exercise human Virtue in and therefore in this State out of his good Will to us he placed his own Son that herein he might set us a Patten of
Obedience to Superiors and Contempt of the World of Patience and Courage and Meekness and Resignation to the Will of God that so by his Example we might be excited to the Exercise of all those passive Virtues which are not only most glorious but most difficult to human Nature and that by beholding how mean and yet how good he was we might all become more ambitious of being good than great in the World Now what an amazing Instance of God's Goodness is this that meerly for our sakes and to promote our Happiness he should depress his own Son into such a miserable Condition that he who was in the Form of God who thought it no Robbery to be equal with God should by the Appointment of his own Father to whom he was so infinitely dear make himself of no Reputation take on him the Form of a Servant become a Man of sorrows and acquaint himself with Griefs and all this to put himself into a better Capacity of doing good to the World Good God! When I consider with my self that once there was a Time when thou didst send thy blessed Son from Heaven to assume my Nature that therein he dwelt upon this Earth and conversed with such poor Mortals as my self that he suffered himself to be despised and persecuted and by thy own Appointment wandred about like a poor Wretch naked and destitute of all those Comforts which I abundantly enjoy and all this that he might the more effectually do good to a World of ill-natured Sinners methinks this wonderous Prodigy of Love not only puzles my Conceit but outreaches my Wonder and Admiration And though it be a Love that exceeds my largest Thoughts such as I have infinite Cause to rejoyce in but could never have had the Impudence to expect yet while I stand gazing on it methinks I am like one that is looking down from a stupendous Precipice whose Height fills me with a trembling Horror and even oversets my Reason 6 thly And lastly The Greatness of God's Love and Goodness towards us appears also in this that he gave his only begotten Son to be a Sacrifice for the Sins of miserable Sinners and this is plainly implied in that Expression he gave his only begotten Son For in the two Verses foregoing the Text our Saviour foretells his own Death for as Moses saith he lifted up the Serpent in the Wilderness even so must the Son of Man be lifted up That whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal Life and then it immediately follows for God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son that is he gave him to be lifted up upon the Cross even as the Serpent was lifted up by Moses in the Wilderness that so by his precious Death and Sacrifice he might make an Atonement for the Sins of the World And accordingly he is said to be delivered up for our offences Rom. iv 25 even as the Sacrifice was delivered up at the Door of the Tabernacle to propitiate God for the Sins of the Offerer For to compleat the propitiatory Sacrifices under the Law three Things were requisite first the offering of it at the Door of the Tabernacle the slaying of it and the presenting of its Blood either within the Holy of Holies or elsewhere all which were found in the Sacrifice of our blessed Saviour First he offered himself to God as a willing Victim for the Sins of the World Hence Joh. xvii 19 for this cause saith he do I sanctify my self that is offer up my self as a Sacrifice to thee for so in Levit. xxii 2 3. and sundry other places to hallow or sanctify any Thing to the Lord denotes the offering it to him in Sacrifice And accordingly we find that that Prayer by which Christ consecrated himself to the Lord Joh. xvii was much like that by which the High Priest did consecrate his Victims before the Altar on the great day of Expiation for as he before he slew the Sacrifice did first commend himself and his own Family then the Family of Aaron and the whole Congregation to the Lord so our Saviour in this excellent Prayer whereby he sanctified himself to his Father a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World first commended himself to him then his Apostles then all those who should afterwards believe in his Name which having done he went forth presently to the Place where he was apprehended and carried to Judgment and condemned to Death Then as a propitiatory Sacrifice he was slain for our sins for so St. Peter tells us Ephes. ii 24 he bore our Sins in his own Body on the Tree that is that natural Evil of a most shameful and painful Death was inflicted on him for our Sins that so he might make an Expiation for them and free us from the Guilt and Punishment that was due to them Hence in that Prophecy of him Isa. liii we often meet with such Expressions as these surely he hath born our Griefs and carried our Sorrows he was Wounded for our Transgressions he was Bruised for our Iniquities The chastisement of our Peace was upon him and with his Stripes we are Healed The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all For the transgression of my people was he stricken Thou shalt make his Soul an offering for Sin and he shall bear their Iniquities He was numbered with the Transgressors and he bare the sin of Many and made intercession for the Transgressors All which Expressions do plainly imply that what he suffered he suffered for our Sins as a Sacrifice substituted in the Room of us who were the Offenders that so he might make Expiation for us and obtain our Pardon from his Father And accordingly in the New Testament he is said to be made a Curse for us to be our Ransom and Propitiation to redeem and reconcile us and obtain the Remission of our Sins by his Blood to die for us and for our Sins and to be our Propitiation all which Expressions being applyed to the Sacrifices of Atonement under the Law and from them derived upon our Saviour do plainly denote him to be a Sacrifice of Atonement for the Sins of the World And then lastly there is the presenting of his Blood for us in Heaven and in the Virtue thereof his interceeding for us with his Father And hence the Blood of Christ as it is now presented in Heaven is called the blood of Sprinkling which speaketh better things than that of Abel Heb. xii 24 In which he plainly alludes to the High Priest's sprinkling of the Blood of the Sacrifice in the Holy of Holies which was a Type of Christs presenting his Blood for us in Heaven as you may see Heb. ix 7 compared with the 11th and 12th Verses Verse 7th he tells us that the High Priest entered not into the Holy of Holies without blood But then Verse 12th it is said that Christ with his own blood entred in once into the holy
place having obtained eternal Redemption for us And in Virtue of this Blood which he poured out as a Sacrifice of our Sins upon the Cross he now pleads our Cause at the right Hand of his Father and ever lives to make Intercession for us So that you see the Death of Christ had in it all the necessary Ingredients of a propitiatory Sacrifice for the Sins of the World and having so what a prodigious Instance is it of the Love of God to us that rather than destroy us he would give up his own Son to be a Sacrifice for us I do not deny but if he had pleased he might have pardoned and saved us without any Sacrifice at all but he knew very well that if he should do so it would be much worse for us He knew that if he should pardon our Sins without giving us some great Instance of his implacable Hatred of them we should be too prone to presume upon his Lenity and thereupon to return again to our old Vomit and Uncleanness and therefore though it would have been more for the Ease and Interest of his blessed Son to have pardoned us without any Sacrifice at all yet such was his Love to us that because he foresaw that this Way of pardoning would prove fatal and dangerous to us he was resolved that he would not do it without being moved thereunto by the greatest Sacrifice the World could afford him and that no less a Propitiation should appease his Wrath against Offenders than the Blood of his own Son that so by beholding his Severity against our Sins in this unvaluable Sacrifice of the Blood of his Son we might be sufficiently terrified from returning again to them by the very same Reason that moved him to pardon them that we might not think light of that which God would not forgive without such a vast Consideration but might tremble to think of repeating those Sins the Price of whose Pardon was the dearest Blood of the Son of God Hence is that of the Apostle Rom. iii. 25 26. whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his Blood to declare his Righteousness that is his righteous Severity against Sin for the remission of Sins that are past through the forbearance of God to declare I say at this time his Righteousness that he might be just that is sufficiently severe against the Sins of Men so as to warn them from returning and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus So that now he hath reduced Things to an excellent Temper having so provided that neither himself nor we might be damnified that we might not suffer by our doing again what we have done and that he might not suffer by our doing still the same that he might be what he is a pure and a holy Saviour and that we might be what we ought dutiful and obedient Subjects Now what an amazing Instance of God's Love is this that he should so far consult the good of his Creatures as to Sacrifice his own Son to their Benefit and Safety How inexpressibly must he needs love us that for our sakes could behold his most dearly beloved Son hanging on the Cross covered with Wounds and Blood forsaken by his Friends despised and spit on by his Barbarous Enemies that could hear him complain in the Bitterness of his Soul My God my God why hast thou forsaken me And yet suffer him to continue under that unsufferable Agony till he had given up his white and innocent Soul an unspotted Sacrifice for the Sins of the World Yea that notwithstanding the infinite Love that he bore him and the piteous Moans that his Torments forced from him was so far from relieving him that for our sakes he inflicted upon him the utmost Misery that human Nature could bear that so having an experimental Sense of the most grievous Suffering that Mankind is liable to and being touched with the utmost Feeling of our Infirmities and in all Points tempted like unto us he might carry a more tender Commiseration for us to Heaven and know the better how to pity us in all our Griefs and Extremities For in all things it behoved him saith the Apostle to be made like unto his Brethren that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest Heb. ii 17 Hear O Heavens and give Ear O Earth and let all the Creation attend with Astonishment to this stupendous Story of Love which so far exceeds all the heroick Kindnesses that ever any Romance of Friendship thought of that no less Evidence than that of Miracles could have ever rendred it credible Well then might the Apostle say herein is love not that we loved God for after such vast Obligations this is no great Wonder but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our Sins 1 Joh. iv 10 And thus you see what an unspeakable Instance of the Love of God his giving his only begotten Son is I shall now conclude this Argument with a few practical Inferences from the whole 1. From hence I infer what monstrous Ingratitude it would be in us to deny any Thing to God that he demands at our Hands who hath been so liberal to us as to give up his only begotten Son for our sakes O blessed God! If it were possible for us to do or suffer for thee a thousand Times more than at present we are able what a poor Return were this for the Gift of thy Son that unspeakable Expression of thy Goodness And can we deny thee any Thing after such an Instance of Love especially when thy Demands are so gentle and reasonable When he requires nothing of us but what is for our good and the Requital he demands for all his Love to us is only that we should love our selves and express this Love in doing those Duties which he therefore enjoyns because they tend to our Happiness and avoiding those Sins which he therefore forbids because he knows they will be our Bane and Poyson Can any of my Lusts be as dear to me as the only begotten Son was to the Father of all things And yet he parted with him out of Love to me and shall not I part with these for the Love of him How can we pretend to any Thing that is modest or ingenuous tender or apprehensive in humane Nature when nothing will oblige us no not this astonishing Love of God in sending his Son from Heaven to live and die Miserably for our sakes Lord What do thy holy Angels think of us How do thy blessed Saints resent our Unkindness towards thee Yea how justly do the Devils themselves reproach and upbraid our Baseness who bad as they are were never so much Devils yet as to make an ungrateful Return of such a vast Obligation 2 ly From hence I infer how desperate our Condition will be if we defeat the End of this Gift of the Son of God and render it ineffectual to us For God hath no
their Testimony by laying down their Lives for it which was as high a Confirmation as could possibly have been given of the Truth of it But lest after all the World should suspect them God also furnished them with the Gift of Miracles and continued that Gift as an Heirlome to their Successors for Three Hundred Years together that so as the Testimony of the first Eye-witnesses was confirmed not only by their Martyrdoms but by their Miracles also so it might still be handed down from them through the successive Generations in the same infallible manner till it was spread over all the World and needed no farther Martyrdoms or Miracles to confirm it O blessed God! What care hast thou taken first to provide and then to secure the Evidences of our holy Religion that all Generations might have sufficient Motives of Credibility and that Mankind might still have abundant Reason to believe in thy Son to the End of the World when they shall see him come down from Heaven to Judgment How easie therefore hath God rendred the Condition of our Salvation to us when he hath not only rendred the Performance of it so necessarily consequent to our believing in Jesus but also to beget this Belief in us hath given us such abundant Evidence How can we sufficiently admire and adore his Goodness that hath been so infinitely solicitous to secure our Happiness and hath so contrived Things that we cannot heartily believe his Gospel and not be persuaded by it to comply with the Terms of our Salvation nor yet impartially consider the Evidence of his Gospel and not heartily believe it And yet as if all this were not enough 5 thly And lastly to render this Belief operative and effectual he hath engaged himself to assist actuate and enliven it by his own immediate Concurrence Provided we use our own honest Endeavour he hath assured us again and again that he will give his Holy Spirit to every one that asks that he will work in us to will and to do if we will but take care to work out our own Salvation with fear and trembling and that to him that hath i. e. makes an honest Improvement of that Strength that he hath it shall be given and he shall have more abundantly So that though one would have thought he had done sufficiently for us before in giving us such abundant Evidence to beget in us an hearty Belief of his Gospel and such prevalent Motives to persuade us to submit to it and comply with his gracious Proposals yet such was his Goodness to us such his importunate Care of our Welfare that he could not stop here nor think that yet he had done enough for us till by an irrepealable Promise he had obliged himself to us to co-operate with us and by the immediate Influences of his Grace to bless and succeed our honest Endeavours So that we can no sooner attempt our own Restauration no sooner set our selves in the way to our Happiness but the good God is immediately present with us exciting our Fath fixing our Consideration animating and encouraging our poor Endeavours and supplying us with all manner of Grace and Assistance that our State and Necessities require Nay and many and many a Time while we are Sleeping on in our wretched sinful Security he comes in Pity to visit us and ever and anon suggests good Thoughts to our Minds to rouse and awake us out of those fatal Slumbers to enliven our Faith and call up our Consideration nay and oftentimes he doth so urge and second and repeat those Thoughts to us that by being so haunted with their Importunities we are forced to fix our Minds on them whether we will or no. And though we like ungrateful Wretches do many times stifle his good Motions and turn a deaf Ear to his Calls and gracious Invitations to Happiness yet doth he not presently give over but whilst we are running away from him we hear a Voice behind us calling after us to return and though we still run on yet still he follows us with his Importunities through the whole Course of our sinful Life till either he hath brought us back or we have run our selves past all Hope of Recovery These are Things I dare say that every Man in the World one Time or other hath had sensible Experience of And is not this a strange Condescention of Goodness to see the God of Heaven and Earth thus courting and wooing a Company of impotent Rebels to lay down their Arms and accept his Grace and his everlasting Preferments And though they reject his Motions and stop their Ears to those still Whispers of his that secretly invade their Souls yet to consider how he still solicits and importunes them as if he would take no Denyal and were resolved not to let them alone till he had persuaded them to be happy O good God! what prodigious Stories of Love are these What strange amazing Condescentions to thy wretched undeserving Creatures And now after all this what can the Lord our God do more for us that is consistent either with his own Wisdom or with the Freedom of our Natures He hath done all that can be done to draw us to Heaven and if that will not do it is by no Means fit that he should drag us thither since it would be a most mean unreasonable Condescention in him to force us to be happy when we are unwilling to accept it and to prostitute the Reward of Piety and Virtue to those that scorn and reject it And now to conclude this Argument from hence I infer how monstrously ungrateful those Persons are who complain of the Difficulty and Burthensomeness of this gentle and merciful Condition of our Salvation When in so many Instances it is apparent how merciful God hath been in imposing such a Condition upon us In the Name of God what would you have Sirs would you have Heaven drop into your Mouths while you lie still and do nothing Or can you think it is fit that so vast a Reward should be prostituted to the lazy Wishes of such Drones and Sluggards as do not think it worth the labouring for That those golden Fruits should hang down from Heaven to us on an overladen Bow to be cropt by every idle Wanton Hand that will stretch forth it self to take and eat it Surely no reasonable Creature can be so senseless as to entertain such a wild and fond Conceit Well then would you have God admit of such a Condition of Salvation as includes in it a Licence to enjoy your Lusts and gives you Liberty to be as wicked as you please But alas if God should be so fond of your Salvation as to offer Violence to his own Nature and Government by yielding to your Sins and granting you a free Dispensation to enjoy them yet it is impossible in the Nature of the Thing because your Salvation will not consist with it For to be saved from Misery whilst we
so as to receive you into Grace and Favour But when by sending his own Son to die for us he had given us so plain a Proof of the Sincerity of his Affection towards us with what face can we suspect his Kindness For is it likely that he who was so good as to give his Son for us whilst we were in Impenitence should be so implacable as to deny his Love to us upon our Repentance and Amendment Was it not a much higher Act of Love to give his Son for Sinners than to receive poor prostrate Penitents into Favour He then who was so free to do the former we might well imagin would be much more free to do the latter Or lastly Dare we plead for our selves that considering the Anxiousness and Jealousy of guilty Minds God had not given us such Security of his Readiness to pardon and be reconciled to us as was requisite to dispel all those Fears and Doubts by which we were discouraged from Repentance and Amendment But how weak and groundless this Plea is will soon appear to all the World when it shall be considered what an effectual Course God took to obviate all our Doubts and Fears by pardoning us in our own Method namely upon the Motive of a Sacrifice and Intercession of a Mediator especially of such a Sacrifice and Mediator as his own Son For let him be never so severe and stern yet 't is impossible he should be inexorable to the vocal Blood and importunate Intercessions of that dear Person whom he loves above all the World And now when God had so contrived the Method of his pardoning us as to take from us all Occasion either of presuming upon his Mercy whilst we continue impenitent when he hath taken such an effectual Course to raise both our Hopes and Fears which are the Springs of our Action to their highest Pitch and Capacity and given us the greatest Certainty that the Nature of the Thing will bear that he will punish us for ever if we Sin on and pardon and receive us into Favour if now at last we will repent and return what can we say for our selves if in Despite of all this we will run from Mercy whilst its Arms are open to embrace us and leap into Hell with our Eyes open and we see it gaping ready to devour us JOHN III. 16 But have everlasting Life I Am now upon the last Branch of the Text which is to shew you the great Goodness of God to us in promising to us such a vast Reward upon our performing such an easie Condition as our believing in Jesus Christ in which Reward there is first the privative Part of it or the Misery it rescues us from that whosoever believeth in him should not perish Secondly the positive or the Happiness it instates us in but have everlasting Life In the management of which I shall do these two Things 1. Shew you why this Reward is termed Everlasting Life 2. How unspeakably good God hath been to us in proposing to us such a vast Reward 1. Why this Reward is stiled by the Name of Everlasting Life For it is very usual with Scripture to express all the Blessings it promises to Men by the Name of Life for thus by Life the Old Testament very frequently expresses those temporal Blessings which are therein promised and proposed So Deut. xxx 15 See I have set before thee this day Life and Good and Death and Evil in which he plainly refers to those temporal Blessings and Curses which he had proposed to and denounced against them Chap. xxviii for so v. 19 of this Chapter he explains himself I call Heaven and Earth to record this day against you that I have set before you Life and Death Blessing and Cursing Therefore chuse Life that both Thou and thy Seed may live So Levit. xviii 5 Ye shall keep my Statutes and my Judgments Which if a Man do he shall live in them that is he shall enjoy all those temporal Blessings which I have therein promised For so Ezek. xx 21 their living in them is opposed to his pouring out temporal Judgments upon them And hence the Statutes of the Mosaic Law are called the statutes of Life in which whosoever walks shall surely Live and not Die Ezek. xxxiii 15 And as these temporal Blessings promised in the Old Testament are commonly expressed by Life so those eternal Blessings promised in the New Testament are very frequently expressed by Life also So Mat. xviii 8 It is better for thee to enter into Life halt or maimed rather than having two Hands or two Feet to be cast into everlasting Fire So also Mat. xix 17 If thou wilt enter into Life keep the Commandments And Joh. iii. 36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting Life And he that believeth not the Son shall not see Life but the wrath of God abideth on him And because the Blessings which the Gospel proposes are not temporal but eternal therefore that Life by which they are expressed is stiled eternal everlasting and immortal For so 2 Tim. i. 10 We find Life and Immortality joyned together and Rom. vi 22 Ye have your fruit unto Holiness and the end everlasting Life and Vers. 23. The gift of God is eternal Life Now that it is not called eternal Life merely as it is a State of endless Being and Existence is evident because Being and Existence are indifferent Things abstracted from all sense of Happiness and Misery but eternal Life is proposed to us as a Thing that is infinitely desirable in self as being the Crown and Reward of all our Obedience for which Reason it is called the crown of Life Jam. i. 12 And therefore the Reason why the everlasting Blessings of the Gospel are expressed by Life are First Because of the inestimable Worth and Value of Life Secondly Because Life is the Root of all our Sense of Pleasure and Happiness Thirdly Because it is the Principle of all our Activity 1. The everlasting Blessings of the Gospel are called Life because Life is the most inestimably precious of all the Blessings we enjoy For without Life there is nothing can be a real Blessing to us nothing that we can tast relish or enjoy And this the Devil knew well enough when he pronounced so confidently Skin for Skin yea all that a Man hath will he give for his Life Job ii 4 Now it is usual with Scripture to describe the Blessings of the future State by Things that are of the greatest Value among Men by Riches and Treasure by a Crown and a Kingdom by a Paradise or a Garden of Pleasure but as if all these were too faint and dim to represent the true Value of that blessed State it is stiled Life also which is much more valuable than either yea than all those Things together And hence the Apostle calls it a more exceeding and eternal weight of Glory 2 Cor. iv 17 2. It is called Life
are now liable by Reason of their Vnion with the Body and having in a great Measure conquered their Wills while they were in the Body and subdued them to the Will of God they shall immediately commense into an high Degree of Perfection For being freed from the Incumbrances of Flesh and Blood from the Importunities of their bodily Passions and Appetites and the Temptations of Sensuality that do now continually sollicit them they shall no longer be liable to those Irregularities of Affection that do here disturb the Tranquility of their Minds and their Actions and Affections being always regulated by their Reason their Consciences shall be no longer bestormed with those Terrors and Affrightments which nothing but the Sense of Guilt can suggest to them but enjoy a perpetual Calm and Serenity And being thus freed from all Evils and Disquietudes both from within and without they shall be at perfect Ease and for ever enjoy a most undisturbed Repose O blessed Day when I shall take my Leave of Sin and Misery for ever and go to those calm and blisful Regions whence Sighs and Tears and Sorrows and Pains are banished for ever more 2. Everlasting Life includes a most intimate Enjoyment of God For God being a rational Good is capable of being enjoyed by rational Beings no otherwise than by Knowledge and by Love and by Resemblance all which Ways he hath promised that we shall enjoy him when once we are arrived into that blisful State For as for the Knowledge of him St. Paul tells us that whereas now we see through a Glass darkly we shall then see him Face to Face And whereas now we know in part then we shall know even as also we are known 1 Cor. xiii 12 and St. John tells us that we shall see him as he is 1 John iii. 2 Which expressions must needs import such a Knowledge of him as is unspeakably more distinct and clear than any we enjoy in this present State For then the Eyes of our Minds shall be so invigorated that we shall be able to gaze on the Sun without dazling to contemplate the pure and immaculate Glory of the Divinity without being confounded with its Brightness and our Understandings shall be so exalted that shall we see more at every single View than we do now in Volumes of Discourse and the most tedious Trains of Inference and Deduction And enjoying a most perfect Repose both from within and without we shall have nothing to disturb or divert our greedy Contemplations which having such an immense Horizon of Truth and Glory round about them shall still discover farther and farther and so entertain themselves with everlasting Wonder and Delight For what an infinite Pleasure will that all-glorious Object afford to our raised Minds which then shall no longer labour under the tedious Difficulties of Discourse but like transparent Windows shall have nothing to do but only to receive the Light which freely offers it self unto them and shines for ever round about them when every new Discovery of God and of those bottomless Secrets and Mysteries of his Nature shall enlarge our Capacities to discover more and still new Discoveries shall freely offer themselves as fast as our Minds are enlarged to receive them This doubtless will be a Recreation to our Minds infinitely transcending all that we can conceive or imagin of it especially considering that all our Knowledge shall terminate in Love that sweet and grateful Passion that sooths and ravishes the Hearts and dissolves it into Joy and Pleasure For God being infinitely good and amicable the more we know him the more Cause and Reason we have to love him When therefore we are arrived to that Degree of Knowledge which the beatifical Vision implies we shall find our Hearts inflamed with such a vehement Love to him as will issue into an unspeakable Delight and Satisfaction and even overwhelm us with Extasies of Joy and Complacency for if those divine Illapses those more immediate Touches and Sensations of God which Good Men do sometimes experience in this Life do so affect and ravish them that they are even forced into Triumphs and Exultations how will they be wrapt and transported in that State of Vision when they shall see him so immediately and love him so vehemently and their Souls shall be nothing else but entire Globes of Light and Love all irradiated and inflamed with the immediate Effluvia's of the Fountain of Truth and Goodness But alas As these Joys are too big for mortal Language to express so are they too strong for frail Mortality to bear and if we but for one Day or Hour should see God and love him as those glorified Spirits do we should questionless die with an Extasy of Pleasure and our glad Hearts being tickled with such insupportable Joys by endeavouring to enlarge themselves to make Room for them all would quickly stretch into a Rupture But then as our Knowledge of God shall terminate in the Love of him so both together shall terminate in our Resemblance of his Perfections for having so immediate a Prospect of his Beauties and being so infinitely enamoured with them with what inexpressible Vigour must we imitate and transcribe them And our Imitation being invigorated with such a clear Knowledge and such a vehement Love cannot fail of producing the described Resemblance so that the more we know God the more we shall love him and the more we know and love the more we shall imitate and resemble him So that then both our inward Motions and outward Actions will be all most pure and perfect Imitations of God which will produce such an exact Agreement between his Original and our Copy that whilst we interchangably turn our Eyes to God and our selves and compare Beauty with Beauty it will fill our Minds with unspeakable Content to see how the Image answers to the Prototype what a sweet Harmony and Agreement there is between his Nature and our own For if from our Love of God there must necessarily result to us such ineffable Joy and Complacency what a ravishing Delight will it afford us to see the Signatures of those adorable Beauties for which we love him stampt and impressed upon our own Natures when the Glory that shines about and inflames us shall shine into us and become our own and those amiable Ideas of him which are impressed upon our Understanding shall stamp our Wills and Affections with their own Resemblance For so the Apostle tells us it shall be 1 John iii. 2 For when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is Lord how must our Souls be enlarged and widened to be able to contain all those mighty Joys that must necessarily spring from our Fruition of thee And to what a Degree of Happiness shall we be advanced when we shall be entertained with all the delights that the Enjoyment of an infinite Good can afford us and have Hearts great enough to contain them all
without being overcharged with their Weight and Number 3 dly Everlasting Life includes a most endearing Fruition of our glorified Saviour And certainly this is none of the smallest Ingredients of that blisful State that we shall ever be with our blessed Lord as the Apostle expresses it 1 Thes. iv 17 For herein it is evident the same Apostle placed one great Advantage of his future State for so he tells us he had a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Phil. i. 23 And indeed 't is impossible but it must be a vast Addition to the Happiness of all vertuous and grateful Souls to see this blessed Friend and Benefactor who came down from the Bosom of his Father and for their Sake exposed himself to a miserable Life and shameful Death to see him sitting at his Father's right Hand crowned with Majesty and Honour surrounded with the whole Choir of Angels and Saints like a Sun in the midst of a Circle of Stars How must it needs rejoyce the Hearts of all the Lovers and Followers of this blessed Lamb to see such a happy Change of his Circumstances To see him that was formerly despised and spit on and so unworthily treated by an ill-natured World adored and worshiped praised and admired by all the Court of Heaven and celebrated with the Songs of Cherubins and Seraphims of Arch-angels and Angels and the Spirits of just Men made perfect to behold him that hung upon the Cross and poured out his Blood there in Groans and Agonies meerly to make miserable Sinners happy advanced to the highest Pitch of Splendor and Dignity and made Head and Prince of all the Hierarchy of Heaven Verily methinks though I were excluded from that happy Place and had only the Priviledge to look in and see my blessed Lord and Saviour it would be a most heavenly Consolation to me to behold the Glory and Honour and Happiness with which he is surrounded though I were sure never to partake of it and the Communion I should have in the Joys of my Master the sweet Sympathy in all his Pleasures would be a Heaven at second Hand to me and I should feel my self unspeakably happy in being a Spectator of his Felicity and Advancement But Oh! When that dear and blessed Person shall not only permit me to see his Glory but introduce me into it when his blessed Mouth shall bid me Welcome and pronounce my Euge bone Serve well done Good and Profitable Servant enter into thy Masters Joy when I shall not only see his beloved Face but be admitted into his sweet Conversation and dwell in his Arms and Embraces for ever when I shall hear him record the wondrous Adventures of his Love through how many woful Stages he past to rescue me from endless Misery how will my Heart spring with Joy and burn with Love and my Mouth overflow with Praises and Thanksgivings O blessed Jesu How happy will the Day be when I who am loaded with so many vast Obligations to love thee shall be introduced into thy Presence to see thy Glories and Sympathize in thy Joys as thou didst in my Miseries to thank and praise thee Face to Face for all those Wonders of Love with which thou hast obliged me and to bear a Part in that heavenly Song Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing who hast redeemed us to God by thy blood our of every Kindred and Tongue and People and Nation Rev. v. 9 12. 4 thly Everlasting Life includes a most delightful Conversation and Society with Angels and glorified Spirits For when we come to the City of the Living God the heavenly Jerusalem the Apostle tells us what our Society will be viz. an innumerable company of Angels the general Assembly and Church of the first-born God the judge of all the Spirits of just Men made perfect and Jesus the Mediatour of the new Covenant Heb. xii 22 23 24. Lord what glorious Society is here Society in which there is nothing intermingled but what is Heavenly and Divine it being altogether composed of the best and wisest and noblest Beings in the World For as for the blessed Saints and Angels they are all most perfectly refined from all that Folly and Peevishness Disguize and Dissimulation which is the Bane of humane Conversation their Understandings are exceeding large and comprehensive and their Charity and Goodness is full as extensive as their Knowledge And in such a Conjunction of Wisdom with Goodness what an excellent Society must there needs be produced For as their great Goodness must needs render their Conversation most free and amiable so must their great Knowledge and Wisdom render it no less profitable and delightful and as the latter must needs instruct them in all the wise Arts of Endearment so the former must needs oblige them to use and improve them to the utmost O how heavenly therefore must their Conversation needs be whilst 't is thus managed by pure Wisdom and most perfect Love whilst the most glorious Knowledge is the Scope and the most ardent Friendship the Law of all their Converse Who would not be willing to leave a foolish froward and ill-natured World for the blessed Society of those wise Friends and perfect Lovers And what greater Happiness can we desire than to spend an Eternity in such sweet Conversation Where we shall hear the deep Philosophy of Heaven freely communicated in the wise and amicable Discourses of Angels and glorified Spirits who mutually impart the Treasures of each others Knowledge without any Reserve or Affectation of Mystery and freely philosophize without wrangling Disputes or peevish Contentions for Victory where Wisdom is the Entertainment and Love and mutual Endearments the Welcome where there is Harmony without Discord Communication without Disputes and everlasting Discourse without Wrangling O happy Day When I shall depart from this impertinent and unsociable World and all my good old Friends that are gone to Heaven before me shall meet me on the Shores of Eternity and congratulate my Arrival to that blessed Society Where I shall freely converse with the Patriarchs and Prophets the Apostles and Martyrs and be most intimately acquainted with all those brave and generous Souls who have recommended themselves to the World by their glorious Examples where Angels and Arch-angels shall be my familiar Friends and all those illustrious Courtiers of the great King of Heaven shall own me for their Brother and bid me welcome to their Masters Joy and none will disdain my Company though never so much above me in Glory and Perfection but from the highest to the lowest will all receive and entertain me with the tenderest Indearments of heavenly Lovers 5 thly Everlasting Life includes also the infinite Glory and Delightfulness of the Place wherein all these Felicities are to be enjoyed For though the very State of the Blessed be sufficiently glorious to transform
Apollo So that to conclude that we love God from those corporeal Passions is very unsafe and dangerous and we may almost as certainly judge of the Hunger of our Souls after Righteousness by the Hunger of our Bodies after Bread as of the Love of our Souls to God by our bodily Ravishments and Passions For bodily Passion differs according to the Temper of the Body some Tempers are so soft and impressive that the most frivolous Fancy will affect them others so hard and sturdy that the greatest Reason will hardly move them and consequently Persons of this Temper though they should love God much more than the other and have a much higher Esteem of and more rational Complacency in his divine Perfections yet will have much less of corporeal Passion intermingled with it I do not deny but even this sensitive Passion when prudently managed may be of great Advantage to a rational Love for the Passions being soft and easie and apt to follow the Motions of the Soul do naturally intend and quicken them and render them more vigorous and active and we have very much Cause to bless God even for that sensitive Joy and Complacency which accompanies our Love to him since this I doubt not is many times excited by his own blessed Spirit to quicken and invigorate our rational Affection and render it more active and vivacious But that which I aim at is only this if possible to beat Men off from measuring the Strength or Weakness the Truth or Falshood of their Love to God by any corporeal Passion whatsoever since Men may we see and many times have a vehement Passion without any Reason and all those Ticklings and Ravishments of Heart which too many Men mistake for the Love of God are very often nothing else but the necessary Effects of a chafed and overheated Fancy But that which is really the Love of God is always founded in a rational Conviction of the Beauty and Goodness of his Nature and proceeds from an high Esteem and profound Veneration of his Perfections For no Man loves God but can give very good Reason why he loves him he is not moved to it by a Musical Tone or a gaudy Metaphor or an unaccountable Impulse of Fancy but by the real Charms and Attractions of the divine Goodness and Perfections which darting through his Mind like the Sun-beams through a Burning-glass have kindled his Affections and made him love with infinite Reason so that 't is his Vnderstanding that inamours his Will and that which makes him a Lover of God is the deep Sense of his Reason how much he deserves to be beloved He hath seriously considered how lovely God is in himself how kind and loving unto all his Creation and what particular Obligation God hath laid upon him to return him Love for Love and this gives Fire to his Love and affects his Will with Delight and Complacency and though perhaps he may not feel those passionate Soothings and Expansions of Heart which sensitive Joy is wont to produce yet he finds himself highly pleased with God and his Will acquiesces in the Thought of his Goodness and Perfections with a Calm and even Complacency And thus his Will is inflamed with the purest Light of his Understanding and his Love is nothing else but the warm Reflection of his Reason Thus Psal. cxvi 1 I love the Lord saith David and then he goes on to enumerate the vast and important Reasons why he loved him because he hath inclined his Ear c. And in the 1 Cor. viii 3 If any Man love God the same i. e. God is known of him intimating that all true Love of God is founded in the Knowledge of him 3 dly The Love of God is a fixed as well as rational Complacency in him by which I distinguish this heavenly Affection from those short and transitory Fits of Love that like Flashes of Lightning come and go appear and vanish in a Moment For thus upon some affecting Providence or passionate Representation of the Divine Goodness it is very ordinary for Men to be chafed into an amorous Fit and touched with very tender Resentments of the Loveliness and Love of God so that at present they seem to be in Raptures of Affection and with the Spouse in the Canticles to be wondrous sick of Love but alas It commonly proves but a sudden Qualm that after a Pang or two goes over and so they are well again immediately for upon their next Encounter with Temptation or Intermixture with secular Affairs their hot Love begins to languish and quickly dies into a cold Indifferency and notwithstanding all the Reasons and Obligations that they have to the contrary their fickle Hearts unwind again and by Degrees decline and sink into their old habitual Aversation to God and Goodness which is a plain Evidence that that which at first lookt like the Love of God in them was only a sudden Blush of Passion and not the true Complexion of their Souls For when once a Man is brought to love God upon Principles of Reason and Consideration 't is much more difficult to extinguish this than any Virtue whatsoever because of all the Virtues of Religion this is founded in the greatest Reason and accompanied with the strongest Pleasure For Love it self consisting in Delight and Complacency where the Object of it is an infinite Good there is not only infinite Reason to Love but infinite Occasion of Pleasure and Complacency When therefore our Love of God is back'd with so much Reason and sweetned with so much Pleasure how is it possible we should extinguish it without doing the greatest Violence to our selves For I am verily persuaded that one of the hardest moral Changes that can be made upon a rational Creature is from a Lover to become an Enemy to God for wheresoever this heavenly Affection is it sweetens and endears it self by its own appendent Pleasures which are in themselves a sufficient Counter-charm against all Temptations to the contrary So that when once it is kindled in the Soul like a subtil Flame 't will by Degrees insinuate farther and farther till it hath eaten into the Center of the Soul and turned it all into its own Substance Wherefore this we may certainly conclude upon that he who can suddenly or easily entertain an Aversation to God and Goodness did never truly Love for Love saith the Wise Man is strong as Death and many Waters cannot quench it Cant. viii 6 7. Wheresoever it lights it clings and can never be torn away again without violent Spasms and Convulsions So that whatsoever Passion we may have for God we can never conclude it to be hearty Love till it fixes and settles in our Souls till our Wills are habitually pleased with God and do entertain the Thoughts of his Love and Loveliness with a constant Complacency and Delight and then we may venture to call it Love and to rejoyce in the Nativity of this heavenly Flame within us 4
the Nature of Love in general the Properties whereof when it is determined on a Person are chiefly these four 1. Benevolence to the Person beloved 2. Desire of enjoying him 3. Imitation of his Perfections 4. Conformity to his Will 1. Benevolence is an essential Property of our Love of God by which I do not mean wishing of any additional Good or Happiness to God which yet he wants for that is Extravagance to wish that a Being who is infinitely happy should be more happy than he is since his Happiness would not be infinite if it could admit of Addition or Increase By our Benevolence to God therefore I only mean our hearty Desire that he may be pleased by our selves and others that all his Creation may conspire to serve and glorify him in that Method which he hath prescribed and that his Will may be done upon Earth as it is in Heaven And this must necessarily be the hearty Wish of every sincere Lover of God and when he sees himself defeated of his Wish by the wicked Lives and Manners of Men when he considers how God is offended every Day how his Authority is affronted his Laws trampled on his Name vilified and blasphemed by bold and insolent Sinners he cannot forbear grieving at it to see him his Soul loves loaded with so many Indignities and Dishonours For thus did David that great Lover of God Rivers of tears run down mine Eyes because Men keep not thy Law Psal. cxix 136 So that what the brave Portia said to her dear Brutus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that can every Lover of God say Lord Thou knowest that I sympathize in all thy Pleasures and Displeasures when thou art pleased I rejoyce and when thou art offended I am grieved 2 ly Another Property of divine Love is an earnest Desire of enjoying God For so when we love a Friend we desire to enjoy as much of him as we are able that is we would fain be more intimately acquainted with him we would love him more and be more beloved by him and resemble him in all those amiable Qualities for which we love and admire him And thus if we have chosen God for our Friend we shall still be breathing after a more intimate Fruition of him our Thoughts will be often imployed in the Contemplation of his Beauty and Glory and our Minds will be perpetually longing after a clearer Knowledge of and more intimate Acquaintance with him We shall never think we love him sufficiently and never think we can do enough to endear our selves to his Favour but shall always feel in our selves both Want of Love to him and Want of Desert to be beloved by him We shall incessantly covet more and more to resemble him in those adorable Perfections for which we love him that so if it were possible he might have the same Reason to love us as we have to love him We shall earnestly hunger and thirst after Righteousness and vehemently wish that all those amiable Characters of Purity and Justice Mercy and Goodness for which we do admire and love him were more fairly imprinted on our own Natures that so by partaking of these Perfections we may grow more and more god-like till we are arrived to a most perfect Resemblance and Conformity of Natures with him Thus to enjoy God must needs be the Desire of every true and hearty Lover of him And indeed this is the only Enjoyment we are capable of for we cannot enjoy God's Essence because we cannot possess it it being neither communicated nor communicable and therefore all that our Enjoyment of him can include is to know and love and be beloved by him and to resemble him in those charming Beauties of Purity and Goodness which render him so infinitely lovely and it is essential to every faithful Lover of him thus to desire to enjoy him 3 ly Imitation of his Perfections is another essential Property of Love to him and this is necessarily consequent to the former for if we love God it is either for the good he doth us or for the Beauty and Loveliness of his Nature If we love him for the good he doth us we must needs be sensible that it is a lovely Thing to do good and this must strangely incline us to imitate him in doing all the good we are able If we love him for the Beauty and Excellency of his Nature we cannot but desire to be like him because whatsoever we esteem lovely in another we desire to partake of out of love to our selves and if we desire to partake of what is lovely in another that must needs engage us to imitate him since we have no other Way to partake of anothers Excellencies but only by a constant Imitation of them So that 't is impossible we should love God for the Beauty and Perfection of his Nature and not hearily desire to partake of it and 't is impossible we should heartily desire to partake of it and not endeavour to transcribe it by a constant and vigorous Imitation So that whatsoever good Reason we love God for it must necessarily terminate in our Imitation of those amiable Actions or Perfections for which we love him and therefor any Man to pretend to love God while he acts contrary to the Reasons for which he loves him is plainly to contradict himself and baffle his own Pretensions For to say that I love God for doing good or for being just holy and benevolent while I take no Care to do good my self but take Pleasure in Impurity Injustice or Vncharitableness is to say that I love him for those Things which I plainly declare I do not love If therefore we heartily love God as we pretend to do it will be visible in our Imitation of him for unless we endeavour to be pure as he is pure and holy as he is holy and just and merciful as he is just and merciful all our Pretensions of Love to him are Cheats and fulsom Hypocrisy 4 thly and lastly Complyance with the Will of God is another essential Character and Property of our Love to him For if we sincerely love a Person we must needs desire to please him that so thereby we may endear our selves to him and if we really desire to please him to be sure we shall readily comply with his Will in whatsoever is just and reasonable And hence the Scripture makes our Obedience to the Will of God essential to our Love of him For this saith St. John is the love of God that we keep his Commandments 1 Joh. v. 3 and this is love that we walk after his Commandments 2 Epist. vi If ye love me saith our Saviour keep my Commandments Joh. xiv 15 that is give me this Token that ye love me for without this I can never believe that you have any real Kindness for me whatsoever Pretensions you may make for so Vers. 23. he adds If any Man love me he will keep my Commandments intimating that
Exercises of them according as we have Opportunity and doth no farther forbid the Deficiency and Non-improvement of them than as it is gross and continued and inconsistent with Sincerity Now the Reality of these Christian Virtues in us consists in the universal and prevalent Consent of our Wills to them to practise them as often as Occasion requires and not wilfully to commit any contrary Sin upon any Occasion whatsoever and so long as this Consent continues and prevails in our Practice we are just in the Eye and Judgment of the Law whatsoever Weakness and Defects Surprizes and Inadvertencies we may otherwise be guilty of For he who hath so submitted his Will to God as to consent effectually without any Reserve to obey him is evidently cordial and sincere though perhaps he may be weak and imperfect For as he is sincerely chast whose Will doth prevalently Consent to the Law of Chastity so he is universally a vertuous Man whose Will doth prevalently Consent to the universal Law of Virtue because that very Consent of his includes the Being and Reality of all Virtues though not the utmost Degrees and Improvements of them This therefore is the utmost that the Law of Sincerity requires that we should universally and prevalently Consent to the Will of God so as not wilfully to neglect any Duty which he hath enjoyned and practise any Sin which he hath forbid but though this be all it requires yet this it exacts under the severest Penalty in the World even that of eternal Death and Condemnation only this Proviso it admits of that if we do repent and amend this dreadful Obligation shall be null and void So that the great Difference between the Law of Perfection and the Law of Sincerity is only this that the Penalty of the later is much more Severe than that of the former but the Duty of the former is much more large and comprehensive than that of the later Having thus briefly explained to you these two Different Laws by which the Love of God as well as all other Virtues are made our Duty this I conceive will be of very great Use in stating the due Bounds and Measures either of Love or any other Virtue God requires of us We must understand by what Laws it is that he requires it and what Measures of it those Laws do require First therefore we will consider what Degree of Love to God is required by the Law of Perfection Secondly what Degree of it is required by the Law of Sincerity 1 st What Degree of Love to God is required by the Law of Perfection To which I answer that it requires all that Love which in the several Periods of our Growth and Progress in Religion we are able to render him For it is to be considered that in this corrupt Estate both our Vnderstandings and Wills are so darkened and depraved that we do not apprehend the thousandth Part of those Degrees of Loveliness that are in him and if we did yet our Affections are so inveigled by these sensual Goods among which we are placed that we are not able to render him the thousandth Part of that Love which those Degrees of Loveliness we do apprehend in him do deserve But there is no just Law can exact of us beyond what we are able to perform and therefore this Law of Perfection being just and righteous cannot be supposed to exact more Love to God from us than we have Strength and Power all our Circumstances considered to render unto him So that he who doth his utmost to understand and affect himself with the Beauty and Loveliness of God and to substract his Love from sensual Good and terminate it on God is a just and innocent Man in the Judgment of the Law of Perfection From whence it is evident first that no Man can be bound by any Law to Love God as much as he deserves to be beloved because he being infinitely lovely in himself is the adequate Object of an infinite Love which no finite Being is capable of 2 ly That no Man is bound to understand how much he deserves to be beloved because this is beyond the Comprehension of any finite Understanding especially of ours which are so dim-sighted in their Apprehensions of spiritual and invisible Beings 3 ly That in this State no Man is bound actually to love God so far as he apprehends Reason to love him this indeed we ought to endeavour after but while we continue in these Bodies it is impossible for us so absolutely to abstract our Love from sense and sensual Things as not to be in the least diverted by it from loving him to that Degree in which we know he deserves to be beloved It is I confess our Imperfection that our Love to him is not proportionate to our Apprehensions of his Loveliness but besides this we have many other Imperfections that are our Misery indeed but not our Sin For no Imperfection is any farther our Sin than 't is in our Power to correct it and there is no true Lover of God did ever attain to that Degree of Love as not to see great Reason to wish that it were in his Power still to love him more which is a plain Evidence in every Period of this imperfect State that our Affections are so intangled by these sensible Goods about us that we are not able to raise them to such a Degree of Love as is proportionate to our Apprehensions of his Loveliness 4 ly and lastly That no Man is bound to love God in the several Periods of his Growth and Progress in Religion with the same Degree of Affection for by the Law of Perfection a Man is always bound to love him as much as he can but in the Progress of our Religion we can love him much more than in the Beginning For the more we know of God and the more our Affections are disingaged from these sensual Goods the more Power and Ability we have to love him and we are equally bound to love him as much as we can when we have ten Degrees of Power as we are when we have but one and consequently 't is as great an Offence against the Law of Perfection not to love him as much as we can when we have more Power to love him as it was when we had less So that by this Law we are always bound to love him as much as we are able and to be always augmenting our Ability of loving him and always to love him more and more as our Power and Ability increases and under this sweet Obligation perhaps we shall lie to all Eternity For there being infinite Degrees of Loveliness and Amability in God our finite Understandings will need an Infinity of Duration to discover them all and it would be unreasonable for us not to love him more according as we discover more of the Beauty and Loveliness of his Nature 'T is true in this Life the Difficulty lies not so
would need no farther Motives to persuade them to chuse what he Wills and Commands against all Persuasions to the contrary If I love God above my self I shall certainly chuse his Will before my own If I love him above all my Pleasures I shall chuse his Pleasures before my own and it will be a needless Thing to propose Motives to persuade me to do that which I like best and chuse that which I love above all the World So that whilst a Man hath Need of Motives to persuade him to chuse God and prefer his Will above all Temptations it is apparent he loves him not above all and consequently according to this Doctrine cannot be a good Man in the Judgment of the Law of Sincerity which if it were true I doubt the List of good Men would be reduced to a very small Number Wherefore since loving God above all is a high strain of Piety much above the low Estate of sincere and true Goodness to make it necessary to a good State must needs be very dangerous since it cannot but dishearten beginners in Religion and perplex their Consciences with needless and inextricable Scruples I confess not to love God above all who doth so infinitely exceed all in Degrees of Loveliness and Amability is an Argument of great Imperfection though not of Insincerity but if my Love to him be such as that together with my Hope and Fear excited by the other Motives of Religion it effectually operates on my Will so as to win it to an universal prevalent Consent to the Will of God I know no Reason I have to judge severely of my main State though I should be conscious to my self that my Love singly and apart from those other Motives had not Force enough in it to produce this happy Effect This therefore I conceive is the utmost Degree of Love to God that the Law of Sincerity exacts that we should so love him as by our Love in Concurrence with the other Arguments of Religion to be effectually prevailed on to obey him 3 ly The Law of Sincerity exacts such a Degree of Love of us as together with those other Motives of Christianity is prevalent to sincere Obedience and in this it differs from the Law of Perfection which requires such a Degree of Love of us as together with those other Motives is productive of perfect unsinning Obedience For as I have shewed you the Law of Perfection requires the utmost of our Possibility and consequently that we should love God as much as we can and consider and apply to our selves the other Motives of Religion as well and as closely as we are able and then proceed upon the whole to serve and obey God to the utmost of our Power and Ability which if we do we are perfectly innocent and inculpable unless you suppose that a Man may be blame-worthy for not doing more than he can But should the Law of Sincerity exact thus much of us I doubt it would exclude the best of Men out of the State of Goodness and Salvation for what Man is there that doth always love and obey God to the utmost of his present Possibility Wherefore all that this Law can be supposed to require of us is only such a Degree of Love as is requisite to render it a concurrent Cause of true sincere Obedience that is to say such a Love as in Concurrence with those great Motives of Reward and Punishment produces such an hearty Consent in us to the Will of God as will not suffer us any longer to persist either in carelss or affected Ignorance of it or in known and wilful Disobedience to it and there are no Infirmities or Miscarriages whatsoever inconsistent with such a Degree of Love to God but what are also inconsistent with such a Consent to his heavenly Will If therefore we thus love God to the Purposes of a sincere Obedience the Law of Sincerity acquits us and as for our Sins of Infirmity Surprize or Inadvertency we are accountable for them only to the Law of Perfection 4 thly And lastly The Law of Sincerity requires such a Degree of Love to God as together with those other Motives makes us not only sincere in our Obedience but also careful to improve it to further Degrees of Perfection And indeed this is necessarily included in the former for if our Love of God joyned with the other Arguments of Religion hath so far prevailed upon us as to win us to a sincere Consent to his heavenly Will we shall not only industriously avoid the known and wilful Violations of it but be very careful to correct those Flaws and Imperfections that are intermixed with our Obedience to it 'T is true when there is nothing but slavish Fear at the Bottom of a Mans Obedience that must necessarily contract and shrink up the Sinews of his Care and Endeavours and render him exceeding narrow and stingy in the Discharge of his Duty for having no farther Aim than his own Security he will do no more than what is necessary to avoid the Danger that he stands in Fear of and if he can but escape those known and wilful Sins that layd waste his Conscience and expos'd him to the Wrath of God that is the utmost he desires or aims at but as for those Miscarriages and sinful Imperfections which do only fall under the Cognizance of the Law of Perfection he is not at all concerned about them But when our Fear is intermingled with such a Degree of Love to God as the Law of Sincerity exacts that will make us careful not only to avoid those known and willful Sins that divorse us from the Favour of God but also to indear our selves more and more to him by correcting even those smaller Defects and Imperfections that do still adhere to our Duties and Natures For this is plain that no Man can heartily love God that doth not more and more desire to be beloved by him and that no Man can sincerely desire to be more and more beloved by God that doth not honestly endeavour to render himself more and more lovely in his Eyes that is to reform all those sinful Defects and Imperfections which stain and blemish the Beauty of his Soul Whosoever therefore contents himself with this not to be hated by God did never sincerely love him and whosoever desires more than this will as well be careful to correct those smaller Imperfections which render him less beloved of God as to avoid those known and wilful Sins which do expose him to God's Hatred If therefore our Religion doth not in some Measure improve our Natures if it doth not render us more patient and humble more charitable and heavenly minded it is a certain Sign that it is not acted by Love For if after having a long while continued in a Round of religious Duties we still return to the same Point and are in no Degree better than we were when we first began it is
but many a Message of Love he hath sent us transcribed from his very Heart He sent his Son from Heaven to us and clothed him in our Natures that therein we might be capable of conversing freely with him and all his Errand was to deliver a Message of Love to the World and to court and importune them to listen to and comply with it And when he returned again to his Father he instituted an Order of Men to supply his Room and in his Stead to woo the World to be happy For we are Ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us We pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God 2 Cor. 5.20 So that you are set upon the Throne and not only Men but God himself lies prostrate before your Foot-stool beseeching you to lay down your Arms and to be reconciled to your best Friend that never did you the least Injury unless that be one that he hath loved you better by a Thousand Degrees than ever you loved your selves And can we be such barbarous Wretches as not to listen to him when he thus humbles himself before us and even comes upon his Knees to us for Reconciliation How justly may the whole Creation be astonished to see the great Majesty of Heaven condescend so low as to beseech and entreat a Company of rude disdainful Rebels whom he could every Moment frown into Nothing to accept of his Love and at last comply with Terms of Friendship Who would ever imagine but that sad Experience evinces the contrary that among reasonable Beings there should be found such Monsters of Ingratitude as to persist in Enmity to God after he hath thus humbled himself and made so many lowly Addresses only to court and woo us to be happy And thus you see how many puissant Motives to Love are comprehended in these few Words because he first loved us which are such as nothing can ever be able to resist but a Heart that is steeled with Impudence and Ingratitude So that if after all these Obligations which God hath laid upon us we do not at last surrender up our Hearts unto him our Baseness and Ingratitude is such as nothing but our eternal Ruine will be able to expiate For when with all the Endearments of his Loving kindness he finds he cannnot prevail on us to love him the very Consideration how much he hath obliged us and what unworthy Requitals we have made him will but incense him the more against us till it hath converted his Kindness into implacable Fury and when once the Heats of wronged Love take Fire and kindle into Wrath it will be a quenchless Flame and everlasting Burning Wherefore in the Name of God Sirs let us endeavour to affect our Souls with the Sense of this dear Love to warm our Affections at this heavenly Fire till it hath insinuated it self into them and converted them into its own Substance And that we may be succesful herein let us take with us these following Directions 1. Let us season our Minds with good Opinions of God For since 't is his Goodness that is the most immediate Object of our Love to him whatsoever Opinions do reflect upon that or any way tend to cloud and disgrace it must necessarily Damp our Affection towards him Whilst therefore we look upon God as a mere arbitrary Being as one that conducts all his Actions by a blind Omnipotent Self-will and governs the World and dispenses Rewards and Punishments to his Creatures according to a certain fatal Decree which he made without Foresight or Consideration as one that exacts Impossibilities of his Subjects commands the Lame to run the Blind to see and without ever enabling them thereunto is resolved to damn them forever for Non-performance Whilst I say we look upon God through such false Opticks as these they must needs represent him exceeding unlovely in our Eyes For though I doubt not but there are many Men that love God heartily notwithstanding they have entertained these sower and gastly Notions of him yet I must seriously profess had I such black Opinions of him I should never be able heartily to love him though I were sure to be damned for ever for neglecting it Wherefore if we would kindle in our Souls the Love of God let us take Care as much as in us lies to purge our Thoughts of all ill Opinions of him and to represent him fairly to our Minds what he truly is and what the Scripture represents him to be viz. a most bountiful Benefactor unto all his Creation and an universal Lover of the Souls of Men one that heartily desires our Welfare and is always ready to contribute to us whatsoever is necessary thereunto Let us firmly persuade our selves that he desires not our Ruine but would have all Men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth that when he finally destroys any particular Offender it is in great Mercy to the Publick that he loves not Punishment for its own Sake and never inflicts it but for some gracious and merciful End These are such Thoughts of God as are truly worthy of him and infinitely apt to endear him to all considering Minds 2 ly Let us frequently consider and revolve in our Minds the numerous Reasons and Engagements that we have to love him For all Virtue whatsoever begins in Consideration and it being a rational Accomplishment cannot be otherwise acquired but only by Reason and Discourse that is by considering the Reasons and pressing our selves with the Arguments upon which it is founded And thus we must do in the Case before us if ever we would attain to a hearty Love of God we must be often entertaining our Thoughts with the Consideration of those great Obligations he hath laid upon us to love him how deeply we are engaged by all the Ties of Gratitude and Ingenuity to repay him in his own Coin and to return him Love for Love Nor will it be sufficient to affect our Hearts with the Sense of those Obligations now and then to reflect a few slight and transient Thoughts on them but with holy David we must muse on till the Fire Kindles we must fix and stay our Thoughts upon the Consideration of God's endearing Love to us urge and press them again and again till we have wrought and chafed them into our Souls and a heavenly Warmth diffuses from them and enflames our Hearts with a divine Affection Wherefore let us frequently revolve such Thoughts as these in our Minds O my Soul How infinitely art thou obliged to love thy God who hath been such a tender Friend and liberal Benefactor to thee who loved thee before ever thou wast capable of thinking a Thought of Love towards him yea and when thou didst most justly deserve to be excommunicated from his Favour for ever and who had no other Aim in loving thee but to do thee good and make thee happy and thought nothing too good for thee
that could either promote or compleat thy Happiness but is so importunately concerned for thee as to beseech and intreat thee not to reject his Favours And canst thou be cold and insensible in the midst of so many prevailing Endearments Suppose that thy Fellow-creature had done for thee but a thousandth Part of what thy God hath done and thou hadst repayed his Kindness with nothing but Affronts and Indignities wouldst thou not call thy self a thousand ungrateful Wretches and acknowledge thy self infinitely unworthy of his Favours And is it less criminal to be ungrateful to God than to thy Fellow-creature Suppose thou hadst a Friend that began to love thee as soon as thou wast born and had persisted to love thee notwithstanding thou hadst offered him a thousand Provocations to the contrary that had done thee all the good he was able and constantly repaid thy Injuries with Favours Would not thy Conscience fly in thy Face and all that is humane in thee upbraid thy monstrous Baseness And hath not thy God obliged thee infinitely more than the best Friend in the World How then canst thou excuse thy Coldness and Indifference to him Consider O my Soul the Eyes of all the spiritual World are upon thee Angels and Saints are looking down from their Thrones of Glory to see how thou wilt acquit thy self under all these mighty Obligations which if any mortal Friend had laid them upon thee and thou shouldst have so ill requited him all the World would have hissed at thee for a Monster of Ingratitude And is it less infamous to be an ungrateful Wretch towards God than towards a mortal Friend With what Confidence then wilt thou lift up thy head among those blessed Spirits who have been Spectators of thy Actions who have seen thy foul Ingratitude towards thy best Friend and must therefore brand thee for an inglorious Wretch abandoned of the common Sense and Modesty of humane Nature And if after you have pressed you Souls with all this mighty Weight of Love you should be still to learn to re-love the blessed Author of it I know no other Expedient but to send you to the Brutes to be their Scholars to call for your Spaniels and bid them teach you and by their kind Returns of your Favours instruct your cold ungrateful Hearts to make proportionate Returns of Love to your dearest Lord and Master Thus let us frequently argue with our selves and repeat these Considerations upon our Minds and certainly if we have any Sense of Obligations they cannot fail of warming and affecting our Hearts 3 dly Let us endeavour so much as in us lies to moderate our Affections to the World Love not the World saith St. John neither the things that are in the World If any Man love the World the love of the Father is not in him 1 Epist. ii 15 that is if we inordinately love and dote upon the World if we suffer its Pleasures Profits and Honours to creep into to hamper and inveagle our Affections into an excessive Delight and Complacency in them that will so forestal and prepossess us that we shall find no Room for the Love of God in our Souls Our Hearts will be so soaked and moistened with sensual Desires and Complacencies that the pure Flame of divine Love will never be able to take hold of or kindle upon them For whilst we immoderately dote upon the World that will so ingross our Thoughts so perpetually importune our Desires that no Friend from Heaven will ever be able to come at us no good Thought or Consideration that comes to court and woo our Souls for God will ever find Admittance to them or if now and then they obtrude upon us and force themselves into our Minds the World will be so buisy about us that we shall not be long at Leasure to attend to them but whilst they are addressing to us and importuning our Affections we shall feel a thousand Rival Thoughts swarming and buzzing about us and this will be holding that pulling the other clasping it self about us and wooing us not to leave and forsake them And though between these Competitors for our Love our Hearts may now and then be a little wavering and irresolute yet our fond Partiality to the World will so vehemently incline and biass us that we shall soon reject those divine Thoughts that would so fain court us to a contrary Affection Wherefore if ever we would acquire this noble and heavenly Virtue of divine Love we must endeavour as much as in us lies to wean and withdraw our selves from the World to rescue our selves from under it's Tyranny and Dominion into our own Power that so we may be able to dispose of our Time our Thoughts and Hearts as shall seem to us most fit and reasonable For till we have recovered our Hearts from the World into our own Disposal how can we resign them to God Before we can give him our selves we must be in our own Power which no Man can be so long as he is inthralled to the World Wherefore if we would become hearty Lovers of God we must labour so much as in us lies to get such a Sovereignty over our earthly Desires and Affections as that whensoever we are minded to retire from the World and converse with God we may be able to keep them off at such a Distance as that they may not be able to intrude upon us to mingle themselves with our Contemplations and divert our Eyes from the endearing Prospect of his infinite Love and Loveliness And then our Thoughts will stay and dwell upon this ravishing Theme like Bees upon a sweet Flower and never rise till they have extracted thence the Honey of Canaan the delicious Sweets of heavenly Love and Complacency then we shall muse on till the Fire burns and never take off our Eyes from God till we have gazed our selves into Captivity to his Love and Beauty 4 thly If we would attain to the Love of God we must endeavour by the constant Practice of what is agreeable to his Nature to reconcile our Minds and Tempers to it For whilst our Minds are averse to the Perfections of his Nature to the Justice Purity and Goodness of it the most powerful Motives of his Love and Benevolence will never be able to beget in us an hearty Complacencey in him We may admire his Love to us and be sometimes moved by the consideration of it into mighty Transports of sensitive Passion but 't is impossible we should ever attain to a fix'd and permanent Delight in him till we are reconciled to his Nature For all true and constant Love is founded in a Likeness of Natures and therefore till we are in some Measure god-like till we are pure as he is pure just as he is just good and merciful as he is good and merciful we have not as yet so much as laid the Foundation of divine Love nay we are so far from that that we are under a
Righteousness that rectifies all their Disorders and reduces them to their native and most genuine Temper No reasonable Nature is well and in Health so long as it acts unreasonably and unrighteously it 's Pulse beats disorderly while it beats either faster or slower than Right Reason prescribes while it acts either on this side or beyond the Medium in the Defect or Excess of Virtue and whilst 't is thus sick and distempered 't is impossible it should be happy But now by acting righteously it revives and grows well again it throws off those unreasonable and consequently unnatural Inclinations that clogg'd and obstructed all its regular Motions and by Degrees recovers to the native Temper and Complection of a rational Nature and when once it hath perfectly discharged it self of all those unreasonable and unrighteous Humours that disordered it it will then live in perfect Health and Ease and all its languishing Faculties be restored to their natural Vigour and Activity And then secondly as Righteousness recovers us from all the Distempers of our Nature so it imploys and exercises our Faculties about such Objects as are most grateful and suitable to them For Truth and true Goodness are the only Objects that can gratify a reasonable Nature acting reasonably and about these doth Righteousness naturally dispose our Faculties to imploy and exercise themselves it disposes our Vnderstandings to contemplate upon and our Wills to embrace and chuse that God who is the Fountain of all Truth and Goodness For every Thing loves its own like and what it loves it is inclined to think on So that when we are righteous as God is we shall naturally love him because he is like us and then our Love to him will still incline our Thoughts to the Contemplation of his Beauty and Glories and so the more righteous we grow the more we shall love him and the more we love him the more our Understandings will be enclined to meditate upon him and so more and more till we arrive at that City of Vision where we shall see him Face to Face and be eternally ravished with the Love and Contemplation of him Thus Righteousness you see is the Spring and Cause of our Happiness and being so he must needs love it who above all things desires and sollicits our Welfare For he being perfectly happy from himself cannot need our Misery to augment his Happiness and therefore cannot desire it but on the contrary he must desire our Happiness out of that infinite Complacency and Delight which he takes in his own it being impossible that he whose Delight and Love is always founded on the same Motives should delight in contrary Objects in different Subjects in Happiness in himself and Misery in his Creatures And if he desire our Happiness as most certainly he doth how can he forbear to love and take Complacency in that which contributes so much to it Thus you see upon what Reasons and Principles it is that God is so firm a Lover of Righteousness 2. I now proceed in the Second Place to shew you what Indications he hath given the World of his steady Affection and Good-will to Righteousness Now these though they are many and almost infinite may be reduced to Two general Heads 1 st The natural Indications 2 dly The Supernatural ones Of both which I shall endeavour to give you some brief Account 1. God hath given us Sundry natural Indications of his Love of Righteousness all which I shall reduce to these Four Heads 1. He hath imprinted a Law upon our Natures which approves of righteous Actions and condemns their contraries 2. He hath endued our Minds with a grateful Sense of righteous Actions and a natural Horror of their contraries 3. He hath coupled good Effects to all righteous Actions and bad ones to their contraries 4. He hath implanted in us natural Abodings of the future Reward of righteous Actions and the future Punishment of their contraries 1 st One Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his imprinting a Law upon our Natures which approves all righteous Actions and disapproves their contraries and this Law is that natural Reason which is either connate with our Understanding or doth immediately result from the righteous Use and Exercise of it For such is the Frame of our Understandings that whensoever we impartially reason about Things we are forced to distinguish between Good and Evil and without offering infinite Violence to our Faculties we can never persuade our selves that to blaspheme God or to reverence him to lie or speak Truth to honour our Parents or to scorn or despitefully use them are indifferent Things for as soon as we open the Eye of our Reason we immediately discern such an essential Difference between them as forces us to condemn the One and approve the Other And hence we see that as for the great Strokes of Unrighteousness they have as much the universal Judgment of our Reason against them as any false Conclusion in the Mathematicks whereas the Goodness of their contrary Virtues is as universally Acknowledged by us as the Truth of any first Principle of Philosophy God therefore having created us with such a Faculty as doth so necessarily pass such a contrary Judgment upon righteous and unrighteous Actions we must either say that he hath made us judge falsely or else acknowledge this Judgment to be his as well as the Faculty that made it and if it be then 't is a sufficient Indication of his Love of Righteousness that he hath so framed our Faculties that without apparent Violence they cannot but approve of it For whatsoever our Faculties do naturally Speak they are made to speak from the Author of Nature they only speak what he hath Dictated to them and so what they say he says who hath put his Word into their Mouths and hath made them speak it Our Faculties therefore being God's Oracles whatsoever they freely and naturally pronounce is as much his Words as any outward Revelation Since therefore they so unanimously pronounce their Approbation of Righteousness it is as plain a Signification of God's Love and Approbation of it as if he himself should immediately pronounce it by a Voice from Heaven 2 ly Another Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his enduing our Minds with a grateful Sense of righteous Actions and a natural Horror of their Contraries We find that antecedently to all our Reasoning and Discourse there is something in our Natures to which Virtue is a grateful Thing and its Contraries very nauseous and loathsome for thus before we are capable of Reasoning our selves into any Pleasure or Displeasure our Nature is rejoyced at a kind or a just Action either in our selves or others before we can speak or are capable of being allured by Hope or awed by Correction We are sensibly pleased when we see we have pleasured those that have obliged us and as sensibly grieved when we are conscious of having Grieved and Offended them We love to
all other natural Motions being swiftest when 't is nearest it's Center For so Plato hath observ'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When Men are near Death or suppose themselves near it there arises in them great Fear and Thoughtfulness of a future State which before they never thought of And that this springs not from Superstition but from Nature is evident by this that Atheists themselves who are most remote from Superstition when they come to die are rarely able to suppress this ominous Dread and Fear of another World but in despight of themselves are forced into those dismal Expectations which before they laughed at A clear Demonstration that these ill Abodings spring from something within them that they cannot conquer and that what their Minds now speak is not so much the Sense of their Opinion as their Nature And this Language of Nature is a clear Expression of God's Love of Righteousness for the Voice of Nature is only the Voice of the God of Nature ecchoed and rebounded and to be sure whatever he imprints upon our Natures is the Sense and Meaning of his own Heart since his Veracity will not permit him to print any Falshood there And since by these our natural Abodings the God of Nature proposes to us a future Reward if we are righteous and a future Punishment if we are wicked he hath hereby as certainly declared to us how much he loves Righteousness and hates the Contrary as he can possibly do by the most express Promise which he hath made to reward the one or Threatning to punish the other And thus you see what natural Indications and Discoveries God hath made of his unfeigned Love of Righteousness which are such as without any additional Revelation are sufficient to convince considering Men that God is a most sincere and affectionate Lover of Righteousness and righteous Men and that if we will but unfeignedly submit our selves to the eternal Laws of Goodness we shall thereby make our selves the best Friend who is a never-failing Fountain of Goodness and who will do us more good than all the Beings in the World should they conspire to be our Benefactors and that on the Contrary if we persist in Sin and Unrighteousness we shall most certainly provoke him to be our mortal Enemy and render our selves eternally odious and hateful in his Eyes that his incensed Wrath will sooner or later break forth upon us and prosecute us with eternal Vengeance and that we can expect nothing but black and dismal Issues while we are hated by him who is the Fountain of all Love and Goodness All this we may be sufficiently convinced of by seriously attending to those natural Discoveries which God hath made of his Love of Righteousness But yet because he saw Mankind so unattentive to the Voice of their Natures so unobservant of it's Language and Meaning as to run headlong on notwithstanding all it's Countermands into the greatest Impiety and Wickedness he hath been graciously pleased to add to these natural Discoveries of his Love of Righteousness sundry great and eminent supernatural ones such as one would think were sufficient to rouze and awake the most stupid and insensible Creatures into a serious Attention to them all which are reducible to these following Heads 1. His conferring such great and miraculous Favours upon righteous Persons and inflicting such severe Judgments on the Wicked 2. His making so many Revelations to the World for the promoting of Righteousness and discountenancing of Sin 3. His sending his own Son into the World to transact such mighty Things for the Incouragement of Righteousness and discouragement of Sin 4. His promising such vast Rewards to us upon Condition of our being righteous and denouncing such fearful Punishments against us in Case we do neglect it 5. His grantaing his blessed Spirit to us to excite us to and assist us in our Endeavours after Righteousness 1. One supernatural Expression of God's Love of Righteousness is his conferring great and miraculous Favours upon righteous Persons and inflicting severe Judgments upon the Wicked And of this we have infinite Instances in the several Ages of the World there being scarce any History either sacred or prophane which abounds not with them several of which both Blessings and Judgments do as plainly evince themselves to be intended for Rewards and Punishments as if they had been attended with a Voice from Heaven declaring the Reasons for which they were bestowed and inflicted For how many famous Instances have we of the miraculous Deliverances of Righteous Persons who by an invisible Hand have been rescued from the greatest Dangers when in all outward Appearance their Condition was hopeless and desperate and of wonderful Blessings that have happened to them not only without but contrary to all secondary Causes Of some that have been so eminently rewarded in Kind as that the Good which they received was a most visible token of the Good which they did of others that have received the Blessings they ask'd whilst they were praying for them and obtained the Grant of them with such distinguishing Circumstances as did plainly signify them to be the Answers and Returns of their devout Desires And so on the contrary how many notable Examples are there of such miraculous Judgments inflicted upon unrighteous Persons as have either exceeded the Power of all secondary Causes or else have been caused by them contrary to their natural Tendency of Men that have been punished in the very Act of their Sin and sometimes in the very Part by which they have offended that have had the Evil of their Sin retaliated upon them in a correspondent Evil of Suffering and been punished with those very Judgments which they have imprecated on themselves in Justification of a Falshood Now though in the ordinary Course of Things that of the Wise Man is most true that we know neither love nor hatred by any thing that is before us because ordinarily all things come alike to all and there is one Event to the Righteous and the Wicked Eccles. ix 1 2. yet when the Providence of God so visibly steps out of it's ordinary Course to bless the Righteous and punish the Wicked it is a plain Indication of his Love to the one and his Hatred to the other For these irregular Providences have plain and visible Tokens of God's Love and Anger imprinted on their Foreheads and it would be Stupidity to attribute them either to a blind Chance or the necessary Revolutions of secondary Causes when they are stamp'd with such legible Characters of their being designed and intended for Rewards and Punishments For if these were either casual or necessary why should they not happen alike to all as well as ordinary Providences Why should not there be as many Examples of the miraculous Blessings and Deliverances of the Vnrighteous as there are of the Righteous Why should not as many Men have suffered as remarkably the Evils which they have imprinted on themselves in attesting the
you are not blind because you hear well or that you are not deaf because you taste well or that you have all your Senses because you have one as that you are righteous in the general because you are so in this or that particular and you may as reasonably conclude your self in a State of Health because you have a fresh Colour as that you are in a State of Grace because you have this or that particular Sign of it Well but then how shall we resolve our selves in this most material Enquiry Why do but consider what it is to be righteous and then reflect upon your own Motions and you will quickly feel whether you are righteous or no. Now to be righteous is in the general to intend righteously and to act accordingly If you ask again how you shall know whether you so intend and act I shall only answer that 't is an unreasonable Question and that you might as well ask me whether you are hungry or thirsty for you do as naturally feel the Motions of your Souls as you do the Motions of your Bodies and for you to ask another Man what your own Intentions are is to make him a Conjurer instead of a Casuist Would it not look extreamly ridiculous for a Man to ask his Creditor or Customer good Sir how shall I know whether I intend to pay my Debts or am sincerely resolved not to over-reach you Should any Man ask me such a Question I should only bid him consult himself and if then he suspected his own Honesty I should shrewdly suspect he had too much Reason for it If you intend righteously you intend it knowingly and if you knowingly intend it you cannot but know that you intend it If you cannot know whether you intend and act righteously you cannot know how to do it and if you cannot know how to do it you are not Subjects capable of Morality but must of Necessity live and act at Random and blunder on like Travellers in the dark without being able to determin whether you go backward or forward If therefore you would know whether you are righteous Men or no do not go about to perplex and intangle your selves in the Wilderness of Signs and Tokens for if you had a thousand Signs of Grace you can never safely conclude you are righteous till upon an impartial Review of your selves you do feel that you intend and act righteously and then and not till then you may build upon it that God loves you For God's Love is a constant and immutable Thing and in this the Constancy of it consists not that it is always fixt upon the same Person but that 't is unchangeably determined to the same Motive and this Motive is Righteousness So that if he find this Motive in us he will be sure to love us so long as it continues but if from Righteous we become Vnrighteous he must either change in his Affection or else cease to love us For should he still love on when the Reason is ceased for which he loved us he must either love us for no Reason or for a Reason that is directly contrary to that for which he loved us first and consequently his Love must either be a blind Fondness or else a fickle and inconstant Passion If therefore Righteousness be the Reason that moves the righteous Lord to love we grossly flatter and abuse our selves if we presume that he loves us while we are unrighteous Wherefore as we would not ruin our selves with relying upon vain Hopes Hopes that will sink underneath us and leave us eternally desperate and miserable let us never conclude that we are beloved of God till upon an impartial Tryal of our selves we can conclude that we are sincerely righteous 3 dly From hence I infer what grand Encouragement we have to be righteous for that God loves Righteousness is a plain Demonstration that 't is the most amiable thing in the World and that it best deserves the Affections of all rational Beings since it hath won his who never loves but upon the best Reason And what a most glorious thing is it to be adorned with the best of Beauties which by such an invincible Charm endears the Heart of the most glorious Being in the World If there be so much Honour paid to a Beauty that can smite and inslave an earthly Potentate what is there due to that that can constrain the God of Heaven and Earth to fall in love with us For what higher Mark can our Ambition aim at than that of being beloved by the greatest and most lovely Being Doubtless to be God's Favourite and Image is the highest Advancement that any Creature can aspire to and were I born King of all the Kings of the Earth and had all their Crowns and Scepters at my Feet I am sure my Reason would tell me that to be beloved of God would be a greater Glory to me than to be obeyed from Pole to Pole and should I entertain a Thought of exchanging the Honour of being a God-like Creature and the Favourite of Heaven for the Crown and Empire of the World my Conscience would tell me that I degraded my self and prostituted my own Glory for next to that of being a God my self the highest Glory I can think of is to be a Friend to God and this I am sure to be as soon as ever I commence a righteous Man And shall I stand so much in my own Light O foolish Creature that I am as to refuse his Friendship when I may have it on such reasonable Terms and shall need no other Endearment to introduce me into his Favour but only that of Righteousness O thou most excellent Beauty with whose Charms the God of Heaven is inflamed What shall I do to make thee mine How shall I obtain to be adorned with thy heavenly Luster I will go to the blessed Fountain from whence thou art derived and with a Heart hungring and thirsting after thee beseech him to infuse thy Streams into my Soul I 'll shun whatsoever is contrary to thee and do whatsoever thou commandest me and never cease Writing after thy fair Copies till I have transcribed thee into my Nature And who would not that sets any Value upon the Glory of being dear to God For besides the Honour of being his Favourites what an infinite Advantage may we expect to reap from it For what may we not promise our selves from the Grace and Favour of the great Sovereign of Beings who doth whatsoever pleases him in both Worlds and hath the absolute Disposal of all the Blessings that either Heaven or Earth affords Doubtless we may safely promise our selves every Thing both from below and above that can either do us good here or contribute to our Happiness hereafter For so the Psalmist tells us that such is his Love of Righteousness that he will give both Grace and Glory and that no good Thing will he with-hold from them that walk uprightly