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
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
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
love one another and so there would be no Need of the Apostles Counsel and then the Words will be wholly impertinent to the Argument which as I have shewed is to excite us to the Love of God and thereby to engage us to love one another but what need he excite us to do that which he himself confesses we did already If therefore we render the Word subjunctively as it seems most reasonable we should this will be the Sense of the Text We are bound in duty to love God because he first loved us according to which Sense here is First a Duty We ought to love God Secondly a Reason of it because he first loved us I. I begin with the Duty We ought to love him In handling of which I shall do these two Things 1. Shew you what it is to love God 2. In what Degrees and Measures we are bound to love him And in explaining what this Love of God is I shall shew you First Wherein the Being and Essence of it consists Secondly What are its essential Chararacters and Properties 1. Wherein the Being and Essence of our Love of God consists To which I answer in general that this Love of God consists in a rational fixed affecting Delight and Complacency in the divine Goodness and Perfections But that we may the better understand the Nature of this heavenly Virtue and more exactly distinguish it from those wretched Counterfeits that commonly usurp its Name and are too to often mistaken for it it will be necessary to explain the several Terms whereof its Definition is composed 1. Therefore I say 't is a Delight and Complacency 2. It is a rational one 3. A fixed 4. An affecting one 5. 'T is terminated on the divine Goodness and Perfections 1. The Love of God consists in Delight and Complacency And indeed this is the proper Act of Love as it is distinguished from all other Passions For we find by experience that the first Act of our Minds upon the Apprehension of a lovely Object is Delight and Complacency in the View or Contemplation of it and when any amiable Object presents it self to our Sense or to our Minds or Fancies it causes our Thoughts to pause and stay themselves a while upon it till we have viewed it round about and drawn its Picture in our Minds and when we have done the very first Expression of our Love to it is to be well pleased with the Contemplation of it and while we review it over and over to be sweetly ravished and delighted with the charming Prospect of its Beauty And from this prime and essential Act of Love arises all those consequent Affections of Hope Benevolence and Desire of Fruition For the reason why we wish well to hope for or desire to enjoy any Object is because we are well-pleased with it and do find a sweet Content and Satisfaction in that Picture or Idea of it which we have drawn upon our own Minds So that the very Essence of Love you see consists in a Well-pleasedness arising from the apprehended Goodness and Congruity of the Thing beloved and 't is meerly by Accident that there is any other Emotion intermingled with this grateful Affection For if it were not for the Want of what we love if there were no Distance between us and the Objects of our Affection our Love would be all but one pure continued Act of Complacency and Delight for if all our Needs were fully satisfied we should love without either Desire or Hope both which imply Want and Absence from the Objects of our Love which is a plain Evidence that Complacency is the very Essence of Love since there may be Love without Hope or Desire or any other Passion mingled with it but without Complacency there can be none 'T is true the Degrees of Love's Complacencies are much greater in the Fruition of its Objects than they are in the Pursuit of them but still 't is of the same Kind for 't is the Delight we take in an Object that makes us desire to enjoy it but in the Enjoyment our Desire expires into an higher Degree of Delight and Satisfaction For Desire and Delight are only the Wings and Arms of Love those for Pursuits and these for Embraces but 't is the Arms that give the Wings both Motion and Rest the Delight we take in the Objects of our Love that both inflames and quenches our Desire So that though in this indigent State Hope and Desire are inseparable to our Love yet that is by Accident but as for its Essence and Definition it wholly consists of Delight and Complacency And therefore if our Love of God hath the common Notion of Love in it as questionless it hath it must necessarily consist in our being well-pleased and delighted in the Beauty and Goodness and Perfection of his Nature And accordingly we find in Scripture that our Love to God and God's Love to us is expressed by delighting in one another so Prov. iii. 12 For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth even as a Father the Son in whom he delighteth i. e. whom he loves So also our Love to God is expressed by delighting in him Psal. xxxvii 4 Delight thy self also in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine Heart 2 ly The Love of God is a rational Delight and Complacency in him by which it is distinguished from those sensible Emotions of bodily Passion which many times are nothing else put the natural Effects of an over-heated Fancy For I make no doubt but a Man may be wrapt even into an Extasy of sensible Delight and Complacency in God that is upon an amiable Representation of God his Spirits may be made to flow in a sweet and placid Torrent to his Heart and by their nimble Motions about it to sooth and tickle it into a most sensible Pleasure till it opens and dilates its Orifices and the grateful Flood breaks in and drowns it in Delight and Ravishment And yet in all this mighty Storm and Commotion of Passion there may not be the least Spark of sincere Love to God For all this not only may be but many times is nothing else but the mere Mechanism and Natural Effect of a warm and vigorous Fancy which being flushed with such brisk and active Spirits as are most apt to be figured into amorous Phantasms and Ideas can with these without any Assistance from Reason raise great Commotions of Joy in the Heart especially where the Temper is soft and the Passions easie to be wrought upon And of the Truth of this the Histories of the Devotos of all Religions will furnish us with sufficient Experiments For even among the Turkish and Heathen Saints there are as notorious Instances of these sweet Incomes and Manifestations as among our own and the same sensitive Complacencies which ours too often mistake for the Sealings and Witness of the Spirit they frequently experience in their Communion with Mahomet Bacchus and
prevalent Repugnancy and Antipathy to the divine Nature Wherefore if ever we would be sincere and hearty Lovers of God we must resolve to betake our selves to the constant Practice of all those eternal Laws of Goodness that are founded in his blessed Nature which if we do and persist in our Resolution we shall find the Practice of them will by Degrees render them first tollerable then easie then delightful then natural to us And when once the Laws of God's Nature are thus transcribed and copyed into ours when our Hearts and his stand bent the same Way and are for the main alike inclined and disposed then we are prepared for divine Love made proper and convenient Fuel to receive that heavenly Flame For as when God sees himself in us his Goodness Purity and Holiness stampt and impressed upon our Natures he is inclined by his own self-Self-love to be pleased with and take Complacency in us so when we come to see our selves in God to see all that in him for which we value our selves and to see it all in the utmost Perfection in him which is yet so imperfect in our selves our own Self-love will endear him to us and wing our Souls with an active vigorous Love to him Wherefore if we would love God let us live in the Practice of all god-like Virtues till by accustoming our selves thereunto we have conquered our own Repugnancies and Antipathies to his blessed Nature and then our Hearts will stand open to his Love and we shall feel it enter into us and insinuate it self into our Wills and Affections like a sprightful and active Flame till it hath all inflamed them with Love and converted them into its own Substance 5 thly And lastly If we would acquire this heavenly Virtue to all the foregoing Directions we must add constant and earnest Prayer to God For when we have done all it is most certain that without the Assistance of this Grace we cannot love him but if we do all and then implore and Supplicate his Assistance we have as much Assurance of it as the Promise of Truth it self can give us If therefore we have a hearty Mind to love him we shall both do our own Part towards it and earnestly implore him to do his For so when we petition for our daily Bread we do not say our Prayers and then sit down with our Hands in our Bosoms expecting that Bread should drop from Heaven into our Mouths but we presently betake our selves to some honest Imployment and therein diligently endeavour to obtain what we pray for And the same Course we shall take if we desire to love God with the same Sincerity as we desire Food We shall pray and endeavour and endeavour and pray we should be diligent in doing what is in our Power and be importunate with God to do what is only in his And certainly did we but know the Worth of this heavenly Virtue this Soul and Queen of all other Graces we should count no Prayers no Tears no Endeavours too much to purchase and obtain it Did we but consider how useful and delightful it is how at once it entices and inlivens Men what a powerful Byass it claps upon their Hearts to incline them to their Duty and with what Joy and Chearfulness it carries them through the greatest Difficulties and turns their Toils into Recreations how it clears and smooths their Countenance revives and elevates their Hearts Did Men I say but consider this they would give neither themselves nor Heaven Rest till they felt their cold and slugish Souls inspired and animated with it Wherefore to all our Endeavours after it let us joyn our earnest Prayers to God that he would kindle our stupid Hearts and touch our cold Affections with an outstretched Ray from himself that he would conquer our Repugnance to him and represent his Love and Beauty to our Souls in such affecting and attractive Forms as may not fail to captivate our Hearts and subdue our obstinate Wills that have so long held out against all the Storms and Batteries of his endearing Goodness And if we thus pray and thus endeavour and persevere in both we shall at length most certainly feel this heavenly Grace springing up within us and growing on to Maturity by insensible Degrees till at last it hath gotten an entire Possession of our Souls and subdued all our Powers and Affections to it's sweet and blessed Empire And then we shall feel our selves acted in Religion by a new Soul and carried on through all its weary Stages with an unspeakable Life and Vigour then all our Duty will be naturalized to us and we shall do God's Will upon Earth with almost the same Chearfulness and Alacrity as it is done by our blessed Brethren in Heaven Which God of his infinite Mercy grant To whom be Honour c. PSALM xi 7 For the Righteous Lord loveth Righteousness BY Righteousness here some Expositors understand the Righteousness of Punishment because in the foregoing Verse it is said upon the wicked he shall rain snares Fire and Brimstone c. and then it follows why he shall do it for the Righteous Lord loveth Righteousness But considering the whole I rather believe that by Righteousness here is meant Righteousness of Life and Manners For it seems more probable that the Text is a Reason of the two former Verses than of that immediately foregoing but the whole that is asserted is this the Lord tryeth the Righteous but the wicked and him that loveth Violence his Soul hateth Vpon the wicked he shall rain snares c. As if he should have said there is a vast Difference between Gods dealing with the Righteous and the Wicked for though sometimes he afflicts the Righteous yet 't is only to prove and try them and to render their Virtue more exemplary and illustrious but as for the Wicked when he rains down Punishments on them it is out of a just Hatred and Indignation against them And the Reason why he is thus differently affected towards these different Persons is because of the different Affection he bears towards their contrary Qualifications he loves the Righteousness of the Righteous and that makes him chasten them in love and for kind and merciful Ends and Purposes but he hates the Wickedness of the Wicked and that makes him proceed against them with so much Wrath and Severity So that by Righteousness here he means that Goodness and Virtue which is inherent in righteous Persons is evident from what follows the righteous Lord loveth righteousness his countenance doth behold the upright that is he looks upon them with a most gracious and benevolent Aspect which latter Words being only a fuller Exemplification of the former plainly shew that by the Righteousness mentioned in them is meant the Righteousness of righteous Persons and consequently that it doth not signify the Righteousness of Punishment but the Righteousness of Manners By which we are not to understand that single Virtue
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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-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
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
may be sure that his own which is the great Standard and Pattern of all reasonable Natures is infinitely loving and prone to do good And thus you see what mighty unanswerable Instances there are of the Goodness of God in the Works of his Creation Wherefore to conclude this Argument From hence we see what mighty Obligations we are under to serve and obey so far as we are able the great and good Author of our Beings who hath not only created us but created us in a vast Capacity of Happiness and furnished us with sufficient Means and Abilities to attain it Wherefore since all our Powers and Abilities are from him we are bound in Justice to imploy them in his Service and since by giving us those Abilities he hath done us so much good and rendred us capable of such immense degrees of Happiness we are obliged in Gratitude not to imploy them in doing any Thing that is any ways displeasing or dishonourable to him For what can be more just or reasonable than that God should have the Use of those Powers which he gave us and in which he still retains an unalienable Right and Property That the Temples which he hath built should be forever dedicated to his Service and not turned into Dens of Thievs or made Stables of Filth and Vncleanness So that for us to withdraw our selves from his Service or to imploy our Powers to any wicked Purposes is to commit a Robbery upon the Author of our Beings and most unjustly to desseise him of his own Goods wherein he hath a far more absolute Propriety than we pretend to have in the Cloths on our Backs And in every bad Action we do steal Gods own Powers and Faculties from him and with extreme Injustice imploy them against himself Now what a monstrous Thing is it that we who think our selves so highly affronted when any one charges us with Robbery and Injustice should make no more Conscience of robbing God and alienating from him those Faculties and Powers of Action in which he hath a far more undoubted Propriety than any Creature can have in any Good it enjoys but when he hath been so good a Creator to us as to create in us such an ample Capacity of being happy and furnished us with such abundant Means and Abilities of attaining thereunto then to eloigne our selves from his Service and to pervert those Powers of Action to sinful Purposes by which he hath enabled us to be happy is not only unjust but barbarously ungrateful For now in sinning against God we fight against him with his own Mercies and arm the Effects of his Bounty against his Sovereignty and as if we were resolved to revenge our selves upon him for making us so good and raising us up into such an excellent State of Nature we shamefully dishonour him with his own Blessings and take all Advantages we can to grieve and offend him from the very Means and Abilities which he hath given us to be happy He gave us Reason and Vnderstanding to discern what is good for our selves and Liberty of Will to choose and imbrace it and we like ungrateful Wretches imploy that Reason and Liberty in contriving and choosing the highest Treason against him He gave us Powers and Abilities of Action that so we might not only discern and choose what is best for us but might also pursue and obtain it but we like base Caitiffs exert those Abilities in grieving and offending our most gracious Benefactor Wherefore be astonished O ye Heavens and be horribly affraid O all ye Works of God! For whilst you are all obedient to the Laws of your Maker and never swerve from those Lines of Motion he hath prescribed you we whom he hath advanced into the highest Class of Beings and endowed with the largest Capacities and Abilities of being happy are become so base and so shameless as to injure him with his own Gifts and to convert his very Blessings into Weapons of Rebellion against him Wherefore unless we are ambitious of rendring our selves the most absolute Monsters both of Injustice and Ingratitude unless we have a Fancy to aspire to a Perfection in Baseness and to rival the Devils themselves in the most infamous and ignominious Degrees of Wickedness let us imploy all our Faculties and Abilities for Action in the Service of him from whom we received them and exercise his Gifts in a perpetual Acknowledgment of his Goodness PSALM CXIX 68 Thou art good and thou dost good I Have already handled two of those four Topicks from whence I intended to demonstrate the Goodness of God viz. his Nature and the Works of his Creation of the First of which I discoursed upon the former Part of the Words Thou art good Of the Second upon the later Thou dost good But now because the Doings or Operations of God include his Providence as well as his Creation and God doth good in that as well as in this no doubt but the Psalmist in these Words had a respect to the one as well as the other I proceed therefore to the Third Topick from whence it doth most evidently appear and that is his Providence Thou dost good i. e. thou dost good in the great Works of thy Providence and thereby thou dost manifest the Goodness of thy Nature in that as thou didst create a World to great and good Purposes so thou dost still continue to do good to it in upholding and governing it by a most gracious Providence Now in the Managment of this Argument I shall do these two things 1. Give you some general and comprehensive Instances of Gods doing good in the Works of his Providence 2. That though there may be some Things in the World that to us seem to be very ill and hurtful yet it is infinitely unreasonable for us to suspect the Goodness and Beneficence of the divine Providence First I shall give you some general and comprehensive Instances of Gods doing good in the Works of his Providence and they are these Four 1. His upholding Things in that good Course and Order wherein he first created them excepting only when the publick Good of his Creatures requires him to interpose 2. His continuing Mankind under an awful sense of Religion notwithstanding the great Degeneracies of human Nature 3. His supporting of Government in the World notwithstanding the violent Tendency of our corrupt Nature to Anarchy and Confusion 4. His contributing to the Invention and Improvement of all those useful Arts and Sciences that are in the World 1. His upholding Things in that good Course and Order wherein he first created them excepting only when the publick Good of his Creatures requires him to interpose That that Order and Course of Things which God first established in his Creation was exceeding good and beneficial to it I have proved at large in my former Discourse and that God still continues the same good Will to us is apparent since he still continues things in the same
Eternity For so immense will our Happiness be that we shall need as well as desire an Eternity to enjoy it fully and after millions of Ages are spent in the Enjoyment of it we shall still renew our Fruition with the same fresh enravishing Pleasures as when we first possessed and enjoyed it for as new Pleasures will still present themselves unto us so when we have enjoyed them never so long we shall still be at an infinite Distance from any End of our Enjoyment So that our Happiness consisting of an infinite Variety of Pleasures extended to an infinite Duration we shall neither be cloyed with the Repetition of it nor tormented with the Fear of losing it And now you see how vast and immense the Reward of our obediential Belief of our Saviour is I need not tell you that 't is a plain and apparent Instance of God's great Love and good Will to the World For 't is indeed such a transcendent Instance as may justly astonish the whole Creation and put both Heaven and Earth into an Extasy to see the benevolent Father of the World project such mighty Entertainments for such undeserving Children and prepare such a Heaven of boundless and endless Pleasure to treat such a Company of wretched sinful Worms O thou infinite Love and Goodness How can we sufficiently admire and praise thee that from such a Depth of Sin and Misery hast projected to raise us to such an Height of Glory and Felicity But this will yet more evidently appear if from the absolute Consideration of this Reward we descend to the comparative which was 2. The second thing we proposed to discourse of viz. to shew how vast this Reward is in Respect of the Condition or Consideration upon which it is promised and proposed And this I shall endeavour to make appear to you in these seven Particulars 1. The Condition is due but the Reward is free and arbitrary 2. The Condition is no ways advantageous to God but the Reward is infinitely advantageous to us 3. The Condition is small and easie to be performed but the Reward is immense and boundless 4. In performing the Condition God operates more than we but in receiving the Reward we only are concerned 5. The Condition is momentary and temporal but the Reward is eternal 6. In the performance of the Condition there are great Intermixtures of Pleasure with our Labour but in the Reward there is not the least Intermixture of Misery with Happiness 7. The Condition admits of Intermissions of Labour but in the Reward there are no Intermissions of Happiness 1. The Condition is due but the Reward is free and arbitrary For God being our Creator we ow all our Powers of Action to him and from this absolute Propriety that he hath in our Powers he derives an immutable Right to all the possible Service we can render him so that whilst he enjoyns us nothing but what is possible he only requires what is his Due and what we cannot withold without a most injust Invasion of his Right and Property For he being the Supreme Proprietor of all our Powers and Faculties must needs have an eternal Right to imploy and exercise them as he pleases because by so doing he only uses his own Goods to his own Ends and Purposes which every Proprietor hath an unquestionable Right to do so that to substract our Powers from his Use and Service is to embezzle our Masters Goods and commit dow right Theft and Robbery Wherefore since in the Condition of our Salvation he hath required nothing of us but what is possible for us to do this he might have demanded as a just Debt without offering us any Reward for the Payment of it but that he should give us a Heaven only for giving him his Due and bestow upon us for paying what we owed him infinitely more than the whole Debt amounts to is an Expression of Love beyond all Comparison When he might have justly sent us into this Theater to act what Part soever he pleased have endeared our Duty to us by nothing but its appendent Delights and when we had done remanded us back into our Primitive Non-entity yet that he should recompense the bare Discharge of that Duty we own him with the Reward of such an immortal Bliss is such a stupendous Height of Goodness as not only puzzles our Conceit but out-reaches our Wonder and Admiration 2 dly The Condition is no ways advantageous to God but the Reward is infinitely advantageous to us for he is so infinitely happy in the Enjoyment of himself and his own Perfections that all the Services of Men and Angels can make no Addition to his Felicity which depends wholly upon the infinite Goodness and Perfection of his own Nature and is not derived either in whole or in Part from the Tributes or Free-will Offerings of his Creatures For can a Man be profitable unto God as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that we are righteous Or is it gain to him that we make our ways perfect Job xxii 2 3 No certainly when he had nothing but himself to contemplate and love his Happiness was the same as it is now among all the Praises and Services which he receives from the World of Angels and of Men and if they should revolt from him or relapse into Non-Entity again he would still remain the same most happy Being that now he is and ever was For all true Happiness being founded in Perfection it it is impossible that any Being that is infinitely perfect in himself should become either more or less happy by any Thing that happens from without him So that as to the Happiness of God it is the same Thing whether we obey or disobey him so that whatsoever Condition he imposes on us our Performance of it is but just like bringing Wax to a dying Father which he requires not to inrich himself but only to seal away Fortunes to his Children And that he imposes this Condition on us rather than another is not because it is most advantageous to him but because it is most conducive to our Welfare and Happiness So free and uninterested is his Love and Goodness to us that upon Considerations no ways advantageous to himself he promises infinite Advantages to us for 't is we reap all the Profit as well of the Condition as of the Reward appendent to it and he promises us Heaven upon Terms that carry Heaven in the Performance of them For first the Condition perfects our Natures and then the Reward beatifies them for there is nothing in the Condition of the Christian Covenant but what our own Self-love rightly directed would oblige us to nothing but what tends to our good and is highly conducive to our Perfection and Happiness So that whatsoever Advantages accrue either from the Condition or the Reward annexed to it they all redound to our selves So infinitely bountiful is our
Pain or insensible of Pleasure and Happiness For as our Happiness will always abound with fresh Pleasures so our Faculties will never be cloyed with the Enjoyment of them for those Pleasures being pure rational and spiritual will be so far from spending and weakning our Powers that they will every Moment strengthen and improve them So that whereas our Pleasures here consisting in a vehement Motion are very transient and quickly slip away and we must rest a while before we can renew them and begin the Motion again those heavenly Pleasures are such as will indeed most vehemently affect and move but never weary the Faculties of the Enjoyer For still the more we know the more we shall love and the more we love the more we shall rejoice and the more we rejoice the more we shall know and love And so in this sweet but endless Circle we shall move round for ever without Weariness and be so far from spending our Vigour that every Moment of Eternity we shall improve it by Exercise and Motion So that as our Happiness will always abound with new Pleasures without any Discontinuance or Intermission so our Faculties will always renew their Strength and Vigour by Enjoyment And as there will be no Pause between one Joy and another but they will come so thick upon us for ever that the Follower will always tread on the Foregoers Heels so one will still make Room for another and those that are present will inlarge our Capacity to receive all those that are immediately to follow And thus shall we spend an Eternity without the least Intermission of Joy and Pleasure for we shall always know and always love and always praise the Author of our Happiness and always have a fresh Sense of his Goodness soothing and ravishing our Hearts and filling them with ineffable Joys without any Ceasing or Interruption O blessed God! what an amazing Demonstration is this of thy Love and Goodness to thy Creatures that for a Work in which there are so many Pauses and daily Intermissions of Labour thou shouldst crown us with a Reward that to all Eternity is one continued Scene of Happiness without the least Gap or Interruption So that whether you consider this Reward absolutely and in its self or comparatively with the Condition whereunto it is annexed you see it is a most glorious Instance of God's unspeakable Goodness towards us And now I shall conclude this Argument with a few practical Inferences from the whole I. I infer how much Reason we have to be contented and satisfied under all the present Afflictions of this Life For shall we receive so much good at the Hands of God as Everlasting Life implies and not be contented to receive some Evil when our good Father hath provided for us a Crown of endless Bliss and Glory hereafter With what Conscience or Modesty can we complain of those little paternal Castigations he inflicts on us here especially considering that the great Design of all his present Severities is to prepare and discipline us for that heavenly State that by all these dismal Providences he is only training us up for a Crown fitting instructing and disposing us to reign with him in Glory for ever Can any Thing be unwelcom to us that is in Order to so blessed an End Can any Physick be nauseous or distastful that is prescribed to recover us into such an happy Immortality No doubtless every Thing that leads Heaven-wards though never so grievous is a Blessing and all those kind Severities that tend to our eternal Welfare are Favours for which we are bound to praise and adore the Goodness of Heaven for ever When therefore we find our selves inclined to complain under our present Pressures and Afflictions let us lift up our Eyes to yonder blessed Regions and consider the Joys and Pleasures the Crowns and Triumphs that do there await us and how necessary these bitter Trials are to prepare us for and wast us to them And if this doth not stop our Mouths and silence our Complaints for ever nay if it doth not cause us to rejoice in our Tribulations and to thank God for them on our bendid Knees if it doth not make us chearfully submit and say Vre Seca Vulnera Lord cut or wound or burn me if thou seest fit strip me of all my dearest Comforts handle me as severely as thou pleasest so I have my Fruit unto Holiness and my end everlasting Life we are infinitely foolish and ungrateful For 't is but a little while e're all these Storms will clear up into an everlasting Calm e're all these dismal Clouds will vanish and an everlasting Day break forth upon us whose Brightness shall never be obscured with the least Spot or Relique of Darkness And when that blessed Time comes Lord how trifling and inconsiderable will all our present Griefs appear With what Contempt shall we reflect upon our present Cowardise and meanness of Spirit that would not bear without Murmuring with a few Inconveniences on the Road to such an immortal Heaven of Pleasure Wherefore if our Voyage be not so pleasant as we would have it yet let us remember 't is not long we have but a short Days Sail to an Eternity of Happiness and when once we are landed on that blessed Shore with what ravishing Content and Satisfaction shall we look back on the rough and boisterous Seas we have past and for ever bless the Storms and Winds that drave us to that happy Port Then will the Remembrance of these light Afflictions serve only as a Toil and Anti-mask to our Happiness to set off its Joys and render them more sweet and ravishing Let us therefore comfort our selves with these Things and when at any Time our Spirits are sinking under any worldly Trouble or Affliction consider that while we have a Heaven to hope for we can never be miserable for so long as we are guarded with this mighty Hope our Mind will be impregnable against all foreign Events and maugre all Afflictions from without its Serenity will shine as undisturbedly as the Lights of Pharos in the midst of Storms and Tempests II. Hence I infer what a vast deal of Reason we have to slight and contemn this World For it is plain that we are born to infinitely greater Hopes than any this World can propose to us even to the Hopes of everlasting Life And being so methinks our Ambition should soar as high as our Hopes and disdain such low and ignoble Quarries as the Pleasures and Profits and Honours of this Life Certainly Sirs we mistake the Scene of our Eternity or imagine that it is removed from Heaven to Earth and so we are to enjoy our everlasting Life below or else we are most strangely besotted who when we are born to live for ever above in the most ravishing Glory and Happiness can suffer our selves to doat upon this World and to be so strangely bewitched as we are by its deluding Vanities O!
between our Love of and Obedience to him there is a necessary and inseparable Connection So that we may as soon be Men without Risibility as Lovers of God without sincere Submission to his Will For Lovers have one Will and one Soul they conspire in the same Designs and drive at the same Interests their Affections are perfect Vnizons and do in the same Likes and Dislikes resound and eccho to one another and so far as they love there is such a perfect Agreement between them that they seem mutually to lend and borrow Wills and Souls with one another And so if we love God there will be a sweet Harmony between our Wills and his at least so far as we love him for if we love him we shall love to please him by complying in all Things with his heavenly Will and rejoyce that we are able to do any thing that we are sure will be acceptable in his Eyes and certainly endear us to his most tender Affection Whilst therefore we live in wilful Disobedience and Opposition to his heavenly Will all our Pretences of Love to him are rank Dissimulations and like the Kisses of Judas are only Prefaces to our succeeding Treasons and Rebellions And thus you see wherein the Essence of our Love to God consists and what are its essential Properties by a serious Review of which you may easily conclude whether in reality you are Lovers of God or no. 2. I now proceed to the next Enquiry namely what Measures and Degrees of this Love are Matter of indispensable Duty to us For answer to which we must consider that this as well as all the other Virtues of Christianity are required of us by a twofold Law the first is the Law of Perfection the second is the Law of Sincerity both of which it will be necessary for us to explain before we can exactly determine what Degrees and Measures of Love to God are Matter of indispensable Duty 1. First therefore there is the Law of Perfection which requires the utmost Degrees of every Christian Virtue that in the several States and Periods of our Lives we are capable of attaining For thus we are enjoyned not only to do but to abound in the work of the Lord not only to have Grace but to grow in it to perfect holiness in the fear of God and be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect And indeed the Nature of God is the only Standard of that Perfection whereunto we must aspire and we are still bound to be growing on till we are infinitely holy which because our finite Natures can never arrive to in any Period of Duration therefore I doubt not but it will be our Duty to be growing on eternally So that this Law having prescribed no Limits to the Degrees of our Growth in Virtue hath thereby cut out work enough to imploy our Faculties for ever Not that we are Sinners against this Law so long as we are short or defective of the utmost Degree of Perfection for it requires of us no more than what is within our present Possibility and our Possibility encreases together with our Improvements When we have but one Degree of Virtue it is no Sin against the Law of Perfection that we do not immediately leap to six or seven because it is not in our Power and no Law can oblige a Man to that which is impossible but when we have acquired one Degree we have Power to acquire a second and when we have acquired that we have Power to acquire a third and so on ad infinitum and consequently our Obligation to be more and more perfect increases according to the Improvement of our Power A Babe in Christ or Beginner in Religion hath not the Strength and Power of a Man that is of one that hath made a considerable Progress and consequently he is not immediately obliged by this Law to the same Degree of Growth and Perfection but whatsoever Degree is within his Power in the different Periods of his Growth and Progress that he is actually and immediately obliged to and while he continues defective in it he sins against the Law of Perfection So that in short this Law requires us to be in all Respects as good in the several Stages of our Christian Progress as at present 't is possible for us to be and so far as we fall short of any Attainment that is within our Power we are guilty of violating its righteous Obligation 'T is true this Law doth not oblige us under the Pain of eternal Damnation and indeed if it did no Flesh could be saved since there never was any mere Man but might have possibly been better than he was had he been so diligent as to improve himself to the utmost Degree of his Power The proper Sanction therefore of this Law is this that we should actually do all the good and acquire all the Degrees of Virtue that are at present within our Power under the Pain of losing some Degree of Happiness in the other World which otherwise we should have attained which is no more than what naturally follows upon all sinful Defects For every sinful Defect is a Privation of some Degree of Goodness and Goodness is so essential to Happiness that there cannot be a Privation of the one without a Diminution of the other But besides those Defects of Happiness that are naturally consequent to our Defects of Virtue the Scripture plainly assures us that God himself will substract from our Reward hereafter in Proportion to our moral Defects and Nonimprovements in this Life for he which soweth sparingly saith the Apostle shall reap sparingly And he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully 2 Cor. ix 6 And Luke xix our Saviour by way of a Parable doth expressly teach us that our Reward shall be apportioned to the Degrees of our Improvement for there he represents himself as a Master coming to take Account of his Servants among whom he had intrusted a Stock of Ten Pounds giving every one of them an equal Share the first by an extraordinary Diligence had improved his Pound into Ten and he is rewarded accordingly with the Government of ten Cities Vers. 16 17. The other had been faithful though not altogether so diligent and by his one Pound had gained five and proportionably is made Lord of five Cities Vers. 18 19. By which he plainly declares that so much as we come short of the utmost Improvement in Virtue so much will he substract from the utmost Degree of our Reward So that in short the Sense of the Law of Perfection is this as thou wouldst not incur the Forfeiture of some Degrees of thy Happiness in the other Life be sure to imploy thy utmost Diligence in improvlng thy self in every Grace and Virtue of Religion But then 2 ly There is the Law of Sincerity which only requires the Being and Reality of all Christian Graces and Virtues in us together with the proper Acts and
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
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
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
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
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
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