Psal. lxxxiv 11 Who would not then be tempted to Righteousness upon the Prospect of being a Favourite of God and of the infinite Glory and Advantage which redounds from thence 4 thly And lastly From hence I infer how inexcusable we are if we persist in Sin after the many Discoveries which God hath made to us of his Love of Righteousness Had we any Reason to suppose that God is indifferently affected towards Righteousness and Sin it would be a fair Excuse for unrighteous Persons for what great Matter would it be which of the two Contraries we chose if both were indifferent to God who best understands the Worth and Value of Things But now when God hath discovered such a zealous Concern for Righteousness and such an Abhorrence of its contrary by so many clear Indications both natural and supernatural there is no Ground or Colour for any such Excuse For now no Man can be excusably ignorant which way God's Heart is inclined and we must wilfully shut our Eyes if we do not discern which of the two Contraries he would have us pursue and therefore if notwithstanding this we still persist in unrighteousness we do in Effect declare that we regard not God and that we will do what we list let him will what he pleases that in the Conduct of our Actions we will have the sole Disposal of our selves and are resolved that God shall have nothing to do with us and that we will not concern our selves in any of our Choices or Actions whether he be pleased or displeased with them this is the plain Sense of our Perseverance in Unrighteousness under all those clear Discoveries which God hath made of his Aversion to it Now how incusable is this for a Creature to behave it self so insolently towards the Author and Owner of its Being to make him stand for a Cypher in his own Creation and to take no more Notice of him than if he were the most impertinent and insignificant Being in the World For now it 's plain that our unrighteous Doings proceed from our rude Contempt and Regardlesness of his heavenly Will we know well enough what he would have us do but either we do not think him worth the minding or if we do we are resolv'd to behave our selves as if we did not 'T is true he hath not made as full a Discovery of his Will to some as he hath to others but yet it is plain he hath so sufficiently discovered it to all that none can pretend to the Excuse of Ignorance For as for the Heathens though they have no revealed Discoveries of it without them yet they have a Bible within them the large and legible Bible of Nature which lies continually open before them and proposes to their View in fair and distinct Characters the Notion of God the Distinctions of Good and Evil and the eternal Laws of Righteousness and therefore if notwithstanding this they will be so regardless of its great and blessed Author as either not to attend to or not comply with these natural Discoveries of his Will what Excuse can they make why they should not perish in their own Obstinacy For as the Apostle tells us though they have not the Law i. e. the revealed Law yet they did or at least might have done by nature the things contained in the Law and therefore as many of them as have sinned without this revealed Law shall also perish without it that is by the Sentence of the Law of Nature Rom. 2.12 14. And then as for the Jews besides those natural Indications of God's Love of Righteousness which they had in common with the Heathen they had sundry supernatural ones they had sundry great and notorious Examples of God's rewarding righteous and punishing wicked Men and the outward Revelation of the Law of Moses the moral Part of which was a new Edition of the Law of Nature and did contain within the Rine and Letter of it the most sublime and spiritual Precepts of Righteousness and the Ceremonial Part of which was though an obscure yet intelligible Representation of all those spiritual Motives to Righteousness which Christianity contains So that would they but have attended either to the spiritual Sense of their Law or to the Sermons of their Prophets which very much cleared and explained it they could not have been ignorant either of any Part of their Duty or of any considerable Motive that was needful to press and ingage them to it If therefore notwithstanding this they were so regardless of God as to take no Notice of those many sensible Distinctions which his Providence had made between righteous and unrighteous Men in blessing the one and punishing the other of which he gave them so many signal Examples if they had so little Reverence for his Authority as neither to mind his Law within nor his Law without them or if they minding the later were so extreamly heedless as to rest in a mere Conformity to the Letter of it without ever attending to its spiritual Sense and Meaning upon what reasonable Pretence can their Stupidity be excused But then lastly as for us Christians we have not only all those natural Indications of God's Love of Righteousness which the Heathens had and all those supernatural ones which the Jews had but we have all these later with much greater Advantage than the Jews for they are all set before us in a clearer Light and presented much more naked to our View For as they are proposed to us they are neither wrapt up in mystical Senses nor clouded over with typical Representations but laid before us in the most plain and easie Propositions The literal Sense of our Precepts of Righteousness and of all our Promises and Threats is the mystical Sense of theirs and all those Christian Motives to Righteousness which were delivered to them in dark Riddles and obscure and typical Adumbrations are brought forth to us from behind the Curtain and proposed in plain and popular Articles of Faith So that if we still continue in Unrighteousness we are of all Men in the World the most inexcusable The Heathens may plead against the Jews that their Law of Nature was not so clear in its Precepts nor yet so cogent in its Motives as the Law of Moses was The Jews may plead against us Christians that their Law of Moses was neither so express in its Precepts nor yet so intelligible in its best and most powerful Motives but as for us Christians we have nothing at all to plead but by our own Obstinacy against the clearest Discoveries both of our Dury and the Motives which oblige us to it are condemned to everlasting Silence So that when at the last Tribunal it shall appear that we have persisted in Unrighteousness we must expect the Reproaches of all the reasonable World to be exploded and hissed at not only by the universal Choir of Saints and Angels but by Jews and Gentiles and by the Devils themselves who will all conspire with our own Consciences to second that dreadful Sentence which shall then pass upon us with the general Acclamation of just and righteous art thou O Lord in all thy Ways Wherefore as we would not perish for ever without Pity or Excuse let us be persuaded to abandon all Vnrighteousness and worldly Lusts and to live soberly and righteously and godly in this present World and then we may assure our selves that the righteous Lord who loves Righteousness will love us also for the sake of it and express his Love to us in blessing and preserving us here and crowning us with Glory and Happiness hereafter And this we beseech thee to grant O thou immutable Lover of Righteousness even for Jesus Christ his sake To whom with thy self and thy eternal Spirit be ascribed by us and all the World all Honour and Glory and Power from this time forth and for evermore Amen FINIS Abstin l. 4
to when we know so little of the future State to which all its Transactions do chiefly relate Wherefore let us forbear a while till we come into the other World and understand the whole Design and Contrivance and then we shall see that all will be right and well yea and infinitely better than ever we could imagin But for us to censure now when we know so little of our future State which is the main and ultimate Scope of Providence is just as if a Man should pass his Judgment on a Picture when he sees nothing of it but some few rude Lines and very imperfect Strokes Let us have but the Patience to suspend our Judgment a while till God hath finished the whole Draught and given it all its natural Colours and Proportions and then I am sure we shall see Cause enough forever to admire his Skill and adore his Wisdom and Goodness And thus you see by apparent Instances how good God is in his Providence towards us and how unreasonable it is for us to censure his Goodness notwithstanding all those seeming Evils that happen in the World And now what remains but that with all Humility and Chearfulness we resign up our selves into the Hands of our most merciful Father concluding as most certainly we may that whatsoever he doth with us or howsoever he disposes of us it will be all for our good in the later End if it be not through our own Default For where can we be safer than in the Hands of an Omnipotent and Omniscient Goodness a Goodness that knows what is best for us and wills what it knows to be so and doth whatsoever it wills Surely in such Hands our Condition is a thousand times better and safer than if we had full Power to effect our own Wishes and all the Events that concern us were in our own Disposal And if God should shake us off from all Dependence on him and resign up the whole Conduct of our Affairs into our own Hands if he should say to us since you mislike of my Conduct I will no more intermedle with you or any thing that concerns you take your selves into your own Disposal and manage all your Concernments as you please If I say he should do thus with us we should be left in a most forlorn and deplorable Condition and unless we were wholly abandoned of our own Reason as well as Gods Providence we should on our bended Knees resign up all into his Hands again and beseech him for his Pity and his Mercy sake to do any Thing with us that will consist with his Goodness to scourge and chasten us for our Frowardness as much and as long as his own fatherly Bowels will endure it rather then give us up to our own Conduct or leave our Affairs in the Disposal of our own blind and precipitant Wills For so long as God is so powerfully and so wisely good as he is it is the Interest of every Creature in Heaven and Earth to be at his Disposal and to take up that self-resigning Prayer of our Saviour Father not our Wills but thy Will be done For since God wills our good as much or more than our selves it must doubtless be our Interest that his Will should take place whensoever it stands in Competition with ours because he doth not only wish well to us as much as we do to our selves but he knows what is best for us a great deal better than we Wherefore let us learn in all Conditions to repose our Minds in the good Providence of God and to satisfy our selves in its Managment and Disposal of us for whatsoever Condition it may bring us into whilst we are wandring through this Vale of Tears this is most certainly and eternally true that God is good and doth good JOHN III. 16 God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting Life THE Three first Topicks from whence I undertook to prove the Goodness of God I have already handled on another Text and shewed 1 st from his Nature 2 ly from his Creation and 3 dly from his Providence That he is infinitely good I proceed now to the 4 th and last viz. from Principles of Revelation the main of which is comprehended in the Text God so loved the World c. It is indeed a most glorious Instance of the Goodness of God that when he had imprinted his Laws upon our Nature in such legible Characters and given them such apparent Sanctions in the Nature of Things having made such a sensible Distinction between Moral Good and Evil by those natural good and evil Consequents which he hath inseparably intailed on them And when Mankind by their wilful Wickedness and Inadvertency had almost obliterated the Law of their Nature and extinguished their natural Sense of Good and Evil and immersed themselves in the most barbarous Impieties and Immoralities Notwithstanding all this that he had done for us and we against our selves he should still be so kind and compassionate as to put forth a new Edition of his Laws and reveal his Will anew to us in such an extraordinary manner that when he had implanted a Light in our Natures that was sufficient to have directed us into the several Paths of our Duty and we by our own Neglect and Abuse of it had almost extinguished this Candle of the Lord in us and consequently involved our selves in Midnight Darkness and Ignorance he should then be so compassionate as to hang out a Light from Heaven to us to rectify our Wanderings and guid our Feet in the Paths we should walk in was such a glorious Expression of his Goodness as for ever deserves our most thankful Acknowledgments But then that he should not only reveal to us what he had before imprinted on our Nature and we had most unworthily rased out and obliterated but also discover so much more to us than ever we did or could have known by the Light of our Nature that he should not only repeat his former Kindness to us which we had so shamefully abused but make such stupendous Additions to it as he hath done in the Revelation of his Gospel that manger all those Impieties and Provocations by which for so many Ages we had excited his Patience he should not only so love us as to restore to us the Light which we had almost extinguished but to give his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish c. is such an amazing Instance of Goodness as can hardly be reflected on without an Extasy of Admiration In which Words you have God's revealed Love and Goodness to the World measured by a two-fold Standard 1. By the Greatness of the Gift which he hath bestowed upon the World God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son 2. The blessed End for which he did bestow him that whosoever believeth in him
express it self in endeavouring to resemble him For every Man esteems what he loves to be lovely and we naturally wish that that were in our selves which we esteem to be lovely in another that so being like him we may appear as lovely in his Eyes as he doth in ours And so if we love God we must necessarily esteem him exceeding lovely and amiable and that which we esteem and love as lovely in him we cannot but wish for and desire in our selves out of a natural Affectation of Loveliness And that he may have the same Reason to love us as we have to love him we must needs desire to resemble him in all those amiable Things that do endear him to us But now those Beauties in God being all of them only moral which are the immediate Objects of our Love to him are capable of being transcribed by Imitation and made ours by copying and writing after them in our Actions so that if we heartily desire to partake of them our Desire will necessarily engage us to imitate them for how can we be said heartily to desire that Good which we may have but will take no Care to acquire I confess did we love him for his Eternity or his Power or his Immensity we might wish to be like him but all in vain because in these Perfections we are not capable of imitating him But the Beauties for which we love him are his Goodness and Wisdom and Righteousness and Mercy and the like all which being imitable by us we may if we please derive into our selves and transcribe into our own Natures So that if we love God we must necessarily desire to resemble him in those Things for which we love him and those things being all of an imitable nature our Desire of resembling him will oblige and excite us to a careful and constant Imitation of him But now to obey God and to imitate him in those Moral Perfections for which we love him are one and the same thing Thus when I obey God in being universally just and righteous towards himself and all his Creation I imitate him in that essential Justice and Equity of his Nature which is the eternal Rule of all his Actions When I obey him in doing good to all that are within the Reach of my Charity I imitate him in the overflowing Bounty and unlimited Goodness of his Nature In a word when I obey him in forgiving those that injure me I imitate him in his boundless Mercy and Readiness to forgive Offenders And in fine all our Obedience is comprehended in being pure as he is pure and holy as he is holy in being good as he is good just as he is just merciful as he is merciful For though the Acts and Expressions of these Moral Perfections in us are in many Instances different from what they are in God by reason of that Difference of Natures Relations and Circumstances that there is between him and us yet the Perfections in general are of the same kind in him and us though the particular Expressions of them are various by reason of those accidental Differences For though he doth not do all those particular Actions which he requires of us and consequently we in doing those Actions cannot be said to imitate the same Actions in God yet we imitate God in the general in doing those Actions which he himself would have done had he had our Natures and been in our Relations and Circumstances Thus God doth not pray because he hath none superior to him nor humble himself because he is infinitely great and perfect nor practise Chastity and Temperance because he is a pure Spirit and hath no Commerce with bodily Affections and consequently we in doing of these Actions cannot be said to imitate the same Actions in God because he doth not the same But he constantly doth whatsoever is reasonable for him to do as God and as Governour of the World and never varies in the least Punctilio from the eternal Rules of Equity and Goodness by which he gives a glorious Example unto all his Reasonable Creatures to excite both Angels and Men to do what is fit and reasonable for them in their several States and Relations And what is reasonable for us Men to do he hath declared to us in his Laws so that by obeying his Laws we imitate God in the general by doing what is reasonable for us though what is reasonable for God and us whose Natures and Relations are so different be not the same in all particular Instances So that in general you see to obey and imitate God is but the same Thing in other Words Wherefore since the Love of God doth necessarily include a Desire of resembling him and that Desire necessarily produces a constant and vigorous Imitation of him and that Imitation is all one with obeying him it hence necessarily follows that if our Love of him be sincere it must finally resolve into Obedience For how can I love God and not think him lovely How can I think him lovely and not desire to be like him How can I desire to be like him and not take Care to imitate him And how else can I imitate him but by obeying him 2. If we love God our Love will conform our Wills Designs and Intentions to the Will Designs and Intentions of God For Love always unites the Will of the Lover to the Will of the Beloved and if it be mutual it twists them together into one Will and confounds all their Discords into a perfect Harmony because Love doth necessarily conclude in it Benevolence which consists in an unfeigned Will that all may go well with him whom we love that he may enjoy every Good that he wills and accomplish every Desire Design and Intention so far as it is good and reasonable for him So that supposing that the Beloved be but his own Friend that he wills and designs and pursues nothing but what is really good and grateful to him the Lover as such ought necessarily to conspire with him in the same Will and Designs and Pursuits If therefore we heartily love God we cannot but will what he wills and design and intend what he intends and designs every Motion of that first great Mover will be an effectual Law to govern all our Motions and our Wills and Desires and Designs and Intentions like the lesser Wheels of an Automaton will presently run at the first Impulse of that great Master-Wheel without the least Rub or Hesitation and in despite of all the Contentions of a rebellious Flesh and all the Counter-strivings of a perverse ungovernable Heart our Love will so captivate our Wills to God's that between him and us there will be but one Will and End and Interest And our Wills being thus subjected to him by the invincible Necessity of Love all our inferior Powers like smaller Garrisons when the Master-Fort is taken will presently surrender of their own accord For no Man can be a
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
as to obey it So that wheresoever Faith is mentioned singly as the Condition of the Gospel-Covenant it is apparent it must be understood in the largest Sense as comprehending that Obedience which is the Effect and Consequence of it So 1 Joh. v. 1 Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God that is whosevever so believes the Truth of this Proposition as to practise upon it and govern his Life and Actions according to the Tenour and Direction of it is truly a Child of God For he who believes Christ to be the Messias but continues obstinately disobedient to his Laws is so far from being truly and really a Child of God that he thereby becomes ten Times more a Child of the Devil for saith the Apostle If I have all Faith and have not Charity I am nothing and Gal. v. 6 For in Jesus Christ neither Circumcision availeth any thing nor Vncircumcision but Faith which worketh by Love and if so then Faith it self is nothing abstracted from this blessed Effect of it i. e. working by love For in Gal. vi 15 he tells us that Circumcision is nothing but the new Creature by which new Creature he means an obedient Temper and Disposition of Mind as he plainly tells us 1 Cor. vii 19 Circumcision is nothing and Vncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the Commandments of God So that by these different Variations of expression it is apparent that by Faith as significant in the Account of Christ he always means a working Faith the Effect of which is the new Creature or keeping the Commandments of God And so I have done with the first Thing proposed which was to shew you what is included in this Condition whosoever believeth in him which you see is not to be confined to a bare and naked Belief of him but must be extended further even to that whole Course of Obedience which is the natural Effect of such a Belief So that whosoever believes in him is as much as if he had said Whosoever so believes in him as sincerely and universally to obey him 2. I proceed now to the next Thing which was to shew you how good God hath been to us in making the Condition which he hath imposed upon us so gentle and merciful and this will appear if we consider these five Things 1. That he hath put nothing into this Condition but what is in its own Nature exceeding good for us 2. That he hath most mercifully proportioned the Whole to the present State and Circumstances of our Nature 3. That he hath rendred the Whole almost necessarily consequent to our believing in Jesus Christ. 4. That to beget that Belief in us he hath given us the most plain and convincing Evidence 5. That to render this Belief operative he hath engaged himself to assist actuate and inliven it by his ow immediate Concurrence 1. That God hath put nothing into this Condition but what is in its own Nature exceeding good for us For there is no Precept in all the Gospel but what contains either some effectual Means or apparent Instance of what is morally and eternally Good and whatsoever is morally good is naturally so For the moral Goodness of Things consists in the Fitness and Reasonableness of them and that which is the moral Good or Duty of Men consists in doing that which is eternally fit and reasonable for them considering the Frame and Circumstances of their Natures and the different Relations wherein they are placed in the World But now for Men to do what is eternally fit and reasonable is naturally good for and beneficial to themselves because by so doing they perfect and advance their Natures and accomplish their own Satisfaction and Happiness For our Reason being that proper Character of our Natures that distinguishes us from all sublunary Beings and sets us in a Form of Being above them the Perfection of our Nature must necessarily consist in being perfectly reasonable in having our Vnderstandings informed with the Principles of right Reason and our Wills and Affections regulated by them and when once we are released from the Slaveries of Sense and Passion and all our Powers are so perfectly subdued to this superior Principle of Reason as to do every Thing that it commands and nothing that it forbids and we chuse and refuse and love and hate and hope and fear and delight according as right Reason directs and dictates then and not till then we are come to the full Stature of perfect Men in Christ Jesus Now all the Duty of the Gospel being a reasonable Service as the Apostle calls it Rom. xii 1 the End and Tendency of it must be to habituate us to live according to the Laws of right Reason which is all one as to advance us to the Perfection of reasonable Beings and being once arrived at this we shall find unspeakable Satisfaction from within our selves and feel a Heaven of Joys springing up within our own Bosoms For when once our disjointed Powers are set in Order and all our Faculties reduced to their natural Subordination our Nature will be in perfect Rest and Ease being freed from that unnatural Violence and Oppression under which it now groans and cured of all those Spasms and Convulsions of Mind which are the inseparable Effects of its Lapse and Degeneracy And all the Motions of our Wills and Affections being regulated by the eternal Reason of our Minds with what delightful Relishes and sweet Gusts of Pleasure shall we taste and review our own Actions they being always such as our best and purest Reason doth approve of with a full and ungainsaying Judgment So that God's Commands you see being all of them most reasonable must necessarily tend to the Perfection and Happiness of our Nature besides that they generally promote even our sensitive Happiness our Pleasure and Profit and Reputation in this World Now what a most endearing Instance is this of God's Goodness towards us that he should make our Benefit the Measure of our Duty and oblige us to nothing but what is for our good that he should so far concern himself in our Happiness as to impose it upon us under the Penalty of his severest displeasure and to inforce his Laws with such inviting and such dreadful Sanctions only to secure us from running away from our own Mercies So that to be a Christian is in Effect nothing else but only to be obliged to be kind to our selves and bound in Conscience to be happy Good God that thou shouldst be so infinitely Zealous of our Welfare as to make the Means of it the only Matter of thy Laws and to promise such vast Rewards and denounce such dreadful Punishments against us for no other Reason but only to affright and allure us out of Misery into Happiness That thou shouldst hate our Sins so implacably only because they are our irreconcilable Enemies and be so infinitely pleased with our Obedience only because it leads to our
endless Bliss and Perfection And that it is thus is so plain and apparent that we cannot but acknowledge it a most convincing Instance of God's infinite Goodness towards us 2 ly That God hath most mercifully proportioned this Condition to the present State and Circumstances of our Naure He saw very well into what a deplorable Condition humane Nature was reduced how its Strength was broken and its Health and Vigor impair'd and decayed how its Reason was clouded and all its Faculties depraved how apt it was to be surprized and to act unadvisedly sometimes for Want of Time sometimes for Want of Order and Distinction in its Thoughts how much it was hindred from acting regularly by intervening Accidents and how it was weakend and determined by the bad Habits and Necessities it had generally contracted and seeing it reduced to this sad State he hath most graciously accommodated its Burthen to its Strength and taken Measure of its Duty by its Ability to discharge it For though in his Gospel he requires that we should perfect holiness in the fear of God and be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect that is that we should advance to the utmost Degrees and Improvements in Virtue that our Natures are capable of yet he requires this of us under such moderate Penalties as are no ways destructive to our eternal Happiness such as the hiding his Face from us and other such like paternal Severities and Castigations his correcting us with the Rod of temporal Judgments and abating us in the Degrees of our future Happiness proportionably to our moral Defects and Non-improvements which Penalties though they are sufficient to quicken our Endeavours and excite us still to a farther Progress from one Degree of Virtue to another yet are they not such as do excommunicate us from Heaven or disseize us of the Reward of our honest and sincere Obedience And indeed should God have been severe in marking what we do amiss and exacted of us under the Penalty of Damnation the utmost Degrees and Improvements that are possible for us to attain no Flesh would be saved it being morally impossible for us in this degenerate State to do always the utmost Good or avoid the utmost Evil that we are able and therefore out of a tender Regard to the Weakness and Infirmity of our Nature he hath only forbid those Neglects and Miscarriages under this Declaration that they are inconsistent with the Sincerity of our Submission and Obedience to him But as for our moral Defects and Infirmities and Surprises though so far as it is in our Power to avoid them they are truly Sins against the Law of Perfection and as such we ought to lament and beg Pardon for them yet Thanks be to a merciful God we shall only be chastned for them here that we may not be condemned with the World as the Apostle expresses it 1 Cor. xi 32 and reap less Happiness in the other World for having sowed less Degrees of good than we might and ought to have done in this as the same Apostle in 2 Cor. ix 6 'T is true indeed as for wilful Sinners he hath concluded them as it is very reasonable he should under the Sentence of eternal Death for should he let such go unpunished he must e'en resign up his Government and leave the wretched World in a State of Anarchy and Confusion but yet to these he hath extended as much Kindness as was possible for a wise and gracious Governour to do for he hath not so irrecoverably concluded them under this direful Sentence but that still he doth indulge to them the saving Remedy of Repentance having for the sake of Jesus and his all-sufficient Propitiation bound himself by Promise to pardon and receive into his Favour every wilful Sinner in the World if he will but repent of what is past and amend for the future Thus to save the miserable World he hath gone to the utmost Borders of what is fit and reasonable and done as much for us as it was possible for the Justice and Rectitude of his Nature to admit of for should he have proceeded any further he must have pardoned impenitent Sinners which he could not have done without allowing and incouraging their Rebellion And to pardon an Offendor that persists in his Fault that is neither sorry for it nor willing to amend it is utterly incongruous to all wise Rules of Government and cannot be practised by any Government either divine or humane without endangering its own Foundations What then is there beyond this that we can modestly ask or God wisely grant If God had summoned us to his Privy Council in Heaven and there promised to grant us any Terms of Salvation that we our selves could think fit to propose to him surely the utmost that any modest Man could have asked would have been only this Lord Be but so merciful as to consider the Weakness and Infirmity of our Natures so as not to cast us off for every Neglect or Miscarriage that was only possible for us to avoid And if at any time we should be such Wretches as knowingly and wilfully to Offend thee be but so gracious as to receive us again into thy Favour whensoever we heartily repent and amend This is the utmost that we can request at thy Hands and for this we will praise thee on the bended Knees of our Souls and adore thy Goodness for ever and ever Why now all this he hath freely granted us of his own Accord and is not this a most amazing Instance of his Goodness that of his own free Motion he should thus indulge to us the utmost Mitigations that we could have modestly desired and condescended so far to our Weakness that without an unpardonable Impudence we cannot desire him to condescend yet further 3 dly That he hath rendred the Performance of the whole Condition of our Salvation almost necessarily consequent to our believing in Jesus Christ For in that Revelation of his Will which he hath made by Jesus Christ he hath pressed the Performance of this Condition upon us with such irresistible Arguments as must needs prevail wheresoever they are heartily believed and duly considered What Man can be so stupid as to trample upon Christ's Law that firmly believes and considers those glorious Rewards it proposes to all that sincerely obey it What pleasures of Sin can seduce that Man from his Duty who is firmly persuaded that after a few Moments Obedience he shall swim in Rivers of Pleasures that flow from God's right Hand for evermore How can any Man have the Courage to violate the Laws of our Saviour who heartily believes and considers those direful Punishments which he hath denounced against the Transgressors of them And what Evils or Miseries can scare that Man from his Duty that is chained so fast to it by the Consideration of that Wrath of God which is revealed from Heaven against all Unrighteousness and Ungodliness of Men How can any
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
should be such as did clearly argue and evince his righteous Severity for otherwise it would have no Force in it to prevent our Presumption And what Motive of Pardon could better evince his Severity than the Suffering of some other in our Room especially the Suffering of his own Son the greatest and dearest Person in the whole Creation For not to be moved to grant a publick Pardon to us upon our hearty Repentance unless this blessed Person would engage to die for us whose infinite Greatness gave such an inestimable Value to his Sufferings as rendred them adequate to what we had deserved to suffer was as great an Argument of his inflexible Severity against Sin as if he should have destroyed at one Blow the whole World of Sinners So that as he hath expressed an infinite Mercy to us in admitting his own Son to die for us so in refusing to pardon us upon any less Motive than his precious Death he hath expressed an infinite Hatred to our Sins and so that very Death which moved God to pardon us moves us to stand in Awe of his Severity the Death of the Son of God upon which we are pardoned being the most terrible Instance that ever was of the Desert of our Sin and God's Displeasure against it Thus our blessed Lord hath not only given us the greatest Encouragement by procuring our Pardon to return from our Iniquities but by procuring it in such a formidable way he hath given us the most dreadful Warning of God's Severity against them So that now we cannot think upon the Reason for which our past Offences are forgiven without being vehemently moved to future Obedience And thus the main Design you see both of Christs Life and Death was to recal us from Sin to the Practice of Righteousness And hence he is said to have given himself for us to redeem us from all Iniquity and to purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of good Works Tit. ii 14 And then he arose again from the Dead to confirm that righteous Doctrine which he had revealed to the World and visibly ascended into Heaven to give us an ocular Demonstration of the heavenly Rewards of Righteousness and there he now sits at the right Hand of God to assure us that if we persevere in Righteousness we shall be continually befriended in the Court of Heaven through his all-powerful Intercession and hath assured us that at the End of the World he will come to Judgment and faithfully distribute those Rewards and Punishments which here he promised and threatned to righteous and unrighteous Persons Thus the main Drift you see of all these great Transactions of our Saviour was to advance the Interest of Righteousness and true Goodness What a mighty Evidence therefore is this of God's great Love of Righteousness that he should send his own most blessed Son upon its Errand to transact such mighty Things on its Behalf For by sending Christ into the World and exposing him to Misery for Righteousness Sake he did in Effect declare that he valued the Interest of Righteousness more than the present Happiness and Enjoyment of his most dearly beloved and only begotten Son and we may most certainly conclude that had not Righteousness been infinitely dear to him he would never have authorized his dearest Son to take such infinite Pains to promote it 4 thly Another supernatural Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his promising such vast Rewards to us upon it and denouncing such fearful Punishments against us if we despise and neglect it For besides all those temporal Rewards he hath proposed to us if we seek the Kingdom of Heaven and the Righteousness thereof he hath erected a Heaven of immortal Joys and Felicities to crown and entertan it a Heaven that contains in it all the Beatitudes that humane Nature is capable of all that Truth that the most capacious Mind can comprehend and all that Good that the vastest Affections can either crave or contain In a word a Heaven whose Blisses are all as large as our immense Desires and all as lasting as our immortal Beings For 't is a Heaven which consists in an eternal Fruition of the Fountain of infinite Truth and Goodness whose everflowing Streams are abundantly sufficient to quench the Thirst and make glad the Heart of every Being that understands and loves How much therefore God loves Righteousness you may easily guess by these vast Preparations he hath made to entertain it For he built Heaven on purpose to lodge righteous Souls and that they may see he thinks nothing too dear for them he is himself their Feast there as well as their Entertainer He feeds them with his own Perfections and they live for ever as happily as their Hearts can wish upon the Sight and Love and Imitation of his Beauties So vehemently is his Heart set upon Righteousness that he will have every righteous Soul dwell with him and live upon him and partake of all those heavenly Joys in which his own Beatitude consists But as for Vnrighteousness how much his Soul abhors it is evident by those dire Punishments he hath denounced against it by those dark and dismal Abodes which he hath condemned unrighteous Souls to to languish out a woful Eternity to burn in Flames there that never consume and be gnawn with Worms which never devour them to be scared and haunted with Devils without and Furies within and perpetually worried Day and Night without any Ease or Intermission with all the Horrors Griefs and Vexations that an everlasting Hell imports O thou merciful Father of Beings How couldst thou have found in thy Heart to condemn thy Creatures to so wretched a State had not their unrighteous Practices been infinitely odious in thine Eyes No certainly the good God would never have made Hell for a Trifle for the sake of any Thing that his Nature could have endured or dispensed with nor would he ever have cast any unrighteous Creature into it were it not for the implacable Abhorrence he hath to all Unrighteousness And therefore since he hath not only made Hell but warns us of and threatens us with it we may be sure he infinitely abominates that for which he made and threatens it and consequently that he is infinitely concerned for the Cause and Interest of Righteousness 5 thly And lastly Another supernatural Indicaton of God's Love of Righteousness is his granting his blessed Spirit to us to excite us to and assist us in our Endeavours after Righteousness First he sent his Son to propagate Righteousness by his Ministry his Life and Death and upon his Return to Heaven he sent his Spirit to supply his Room and carry on that dear Design of which his Son had already laid the Foundation For in Christ's personal Absence his Spirit acts in his Stead and was sent down from the Father by Virtue of his Intercession to be his Vicegerent in the World to promote and inlarge his heavenly Kingdom to conquer our