To these means I add that, and most amiable, we shall then become disposed to render him, what we perceive he best deserves, entire reverence and affection. 5. But I commend further, as a most necessary mean of attaining this disposition, assiduous earnest prayer unto God, that he would in mercy bestow it on us, and by his grace work it in us: which practice is indeed doubly conducible to this purpose; both in way of impetration, and by real efficacy: it will not fail to obtain it as a gift from God; it will help to produce it as an instrument of God's grace. 4. A special help to breed in us this holy disposition of soul, will be the setting ourselves in good earnest, with a strong and constant resolution, to endeavour the performance of all our duty toward God, and keeping his commandments, although upon inferior considerations of reason, such as we are capable of applying to this purpose; regards of fear, of hope, of desire to avoid the mischiefs arising from sin, or attaining the benefits ensuing upon virtue. If we cannot immediately raise our hearts to that higher pitch of acting from that nobler principle of love, let us however apply Upon the first account it is absolutely that we can reach unto practice, striving necessary; for it is from God's free repas we are able to perform what God re-resentation of himself as lovely to our quires of us; exercising ourselves, as to material acts, in keeping a conscience void of offence toward God and toward man; the doing which, as it may in time discover the excellency of goodness to our mind, so it will by degrees reconcile our affections thereto; then, by God's blessing (who graciously regards the meanest endeavours toward good; who despiseth not the day of small things; who will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed)," from doing good out of a sober regard to our own welfare, we shall come to like it in itself, and consequently to love him, unto whose nature, and to whose will, it renders us conformable for as doing ill breeds a dislike to goodness, and an aversation form him who himself is full thereof, and who rigorously exacts it of us; as a bad conscience removes expectation of good from God, and begets a suspicion of evil from him, consequently stifling all kindness toward him; so, doing well, we shall become acquainted with it, and .friends thereto; a hearty approbation, esteem, and good-liking thereof will ensue; finding by experience, that indeed the ways of wisdom, virtue, and piety, are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace; that the fruits of conscientious practice are health to our body and to our soul, security to our estate and to our reputation, rest in our mind, and comfort in our conscience: goodness will become precious in our eyes, and he who commends it to us, being himself essential goodness, will appear most venerable Isa. xlii. 1; Zech. iv. 10. minds, and drawing our hearts unto him (although ordinarily in the use of the means already mentioned, or some like to them), that this affection is kindled; our bare consideration is too cold, our rational discourse too faint: we cannot sufficiently recollect our wandering thoughts, we cannot strongly enough impress those proper incentives of love upon our hearts (our hearts so damped with sensual desires, so clogged and pestered with earthly inclinations), so as to kindle in our souls this holy flame; it can only be effected by a light shining from God, by a fire coming from heaven: as all others, so more especially this queen of graces must proceed from the Father of lights, and Giver of all good gifts: he alone, who is love, can be the parent of so goodly an offspring, can be get this lively image of himself within us: it is the principal fruit of God's holy spirit,” nor can it grow from any other root than from it; it is called the love of the spirit, as its most signal and peculiar effect: in fine, the love of God, as St. Paul expressly teaches us, is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given unto us ;Þ given, but that not without asking, without seeking a grace so excellent, God, we may be assured, will not dispense; a gift so precious he will not bestow on them who do not care to look after it, who will not vouchsafe to beg it: if we are not willing to acknowledge our want thereof; if we refuse to express our desire of it; if we will not show that we regard and value it; if, when God freely Gal. v. 22. Rom. xv. 30. offers it, and invites us to receive it (he doth so by offering his Holy Spirit, the fountain thereof, unto us), we will not decently apply ourselves to him for it; how can we expect to obtain it? God hath propounded this condition (and it is surely no hard, no grievous condition), if we ask we shall receive; he hath expressly promised that he will give his spirit (his Spirit of love) to them who ask it: we may be therefore sure, performing the condition duly, to obtain it; and as sure, neglecting that, we deserve to go with out.c * Prayer, then, is upon this account a needful means; and it is a very profitable one upon the score of its own immediate energy or virtue for as by familiar converse (together with the delights and advantages attending thereon) other friendships are begot and nourished, so even by that acquaintance, as it were, with God, which devotion begets, by experience therein how sweet and good he is, this affection is produced and strengthened. As want of intercourse weakens and dissolves friendship, so if we seldom come at God, or little converse with him, it is not only a sign, but will be a cause of estrangement and disaffection toward him according to the nature of the thing, prayer hath peculiar advantages above other acts of piety, to this effect: therein not only as in contemplation the eye of our mind (our intellectual part) is directed toward God; but our affections also (the hand of our soul by which we embrace good, the feet thereof by which we pursue it) are drawn out and fixed upon him; we not only therein behold his excellences, but in a manner feel them and enjoy them; our hearts also being thereby softened and warmed by desire become more susceptive of love. We do in the performance of this duty approach nearer to God, and consequently God draws nearer to us (as St. James assures: Draw near, saith he, unto God, and he will draw near to you), and thereby we partake more fully and strongly of his gracious influences; therein indeed he most freely communicates his grace, therein he makes us most *Πολλὰς μὲν φιλίας ἀπροσηγορίη διέλυσε. Luke xi. 9, 13; Matt. xxi. 22; vii. 7; 1 Chron. xxviii. 9; 2 Chron. xv. 2. d James iv. 8. sensible of his love to us, and thereby disposeth us to love him again. I add, that true (fervent and hearty) prayer doth include and suppose some acts of love, or some near tendencies thereto; whence, as every habit is corroborated by acts of its kind, so by this practice divine love will be confirmed and increased. These are the means which my meditation did suggest as conducing to the production and growth of this most excellent grace in our souls. III. I should lastly propound some inducements apt to stir us up to the endeavour of procuring it, and to the exercise thereof, by representing to your consideration the blessed fruits and benefits (both by way of natural causality and reward) accruing from it; as also the woful consequences and mischiefs springing from the want thereof. How being endued with it perfects and advances our nature, rendering it in a manner and degree divine, by resemblance to God, (who is full thereof, so full that he is called love,) by approximation, adherence, and union, in a sort, unto him: how it ennobles us with the most glorious alliance possible, rendering us the friends and favourites of the sovereign King and Lord of all, brethren of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven; enriches us with a right and title to the most inestimable treasures, (those which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man to conceive, which God hath prepared for them that love him,)© a sure possession of the supreme good, of all that God is able to bestow, all whose wisdom and power, whose counsel and care it eternally engageth for our benefit; how all security and welfare, all rest and peace, all joy and happiness, attend upon it; for that the Lord preserv• · eth all them that love him,' (preserveth them in the enjoyment of all good, in safety from all danger and mischief,) and that to those who love God, all things cooperate for their good: how incomparable a sweetness and delight accompa nying the practice thereof, far surpassing all other pleasures; perfectly able to content our minds, to sustain and comfort us even in the want of all other satisfactions, yea, under the pressure of whatev O Lord, who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass man's understanding; pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. SERMON XXV. OF THE LOVE OF OUR NEIGHBOUR. MATTH. xxii. 39.—And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. er most grievous afflictions can be fall us. | is not only a mean and way to happiness, How contrariwise the want thereof will but our very formal happiness itself; the depress us into a state of greatest imper- real enjoyment of the best good we are fection and baseness, setting us at the capable of; that in which alone heaven greatest distance from God in all respects, itself (the felicity of saints and angels) both in similitude of nature, and as to all doth consist; which more than comprefavourable regard, or beneficial commu- hends in itself all the benefits of highest nication from him; casting us into a dignity, richest plenty, and sweetest pleawretched and disgraceful consortship sure. But I shall forbear entering upon with the most degenerate creatures, the so ample and fruitful subjects of meditaaccursed fiends, who, for disaffection and tion, and conclude with that good Collect enmity toward God, are banished from of our church: all happiness; how it extremely impov-| erisheth and beggareth us, divesting us of all right to any good thing, rendering us incapable of any portion, but that of utter darkness; how it excludeth us from any safety, any rest, any true comfort or joy, and exposeth us to all mischief and misery imaginable; all that being deprived of the divine protection, presence, and favour, being made objects of the divine anger, hatred, and severe justice, being abandoned to the malice of hell, being driven into utter darkness and eternal fire, doth import or can produce. I should also have commended this love to you by comparing it with other loves, and shewing how far in its nature, in its causes, in its properties, in its effects, it excelleth them; even so far as the object thereof in excellency doth transcend all other objects of our affection; how this is grounded upon the highest and surest reason; others upon accounts very low and mean, commonly upon fond humour and mistake this produceth real, certain, immutable goods; others at best terminate only in goods apparent, unstable, and transitory this is most worthy of us, employing all our faculties in their noblest manner of operation upon the best objects; others misbescem us, so that in pursuing them we disgrace our understanding, misapply our desires, distemper our affections, mispend our endeavours. I should have enlarged upon these considerations, and should have adjoined some particular advantages of this grace: as, for instance, that the procuring there- of is the most sure, the most easy, the most compendious way of attaining all others; of sweetening and ingratiating Of the same goodness we may be well all obedience to us; of making the hard-assured by that common providence est yoke easy, and the heaviest burden which continually doth uphold us in our light unto us. In fine, I should have being, doth opportunely relieve our needs, wished you to consider, that its practice The essential goodness of God, and his special benignity toward mankind, are to a considering mind divers ways very apparent; the frame of the world, and the natural course of things, do with a thousand voices loudly and clearly proclaim them to us; every sense doth yield us affidavit to that speech of the holy Psalmist, The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord: we see it in the glorious brightness of the skies, and in the pleasant verdure of the fields; we taste it in the various delicacies of food, supplied by land and sea; we smell it in the fragrances of herbs and flowers; we hear it in the natural music of the woods; we feel it in the comfortable warmth of heaven, and in the cheering freshness of the air; we continually do possess and enjoy it in the numberless accommodations of life, presented to us by the bountiful hand of nature. ■ Psal. xxxiii. 5; cxix. 64. man (whom we cannot value but for his gifts, to whom we can owe nothing but what properly we owe to him) no less obligatory, to declare it near as acceptable as the love of himself, to whom we owe all. To him, as the sole author and free donor of all our good, by just corres doth protect us in dangers, and rescue us from imminent mischiefs, doth comport with our infirmities and misdemeanours; the which, in the divine Psalmist's style, doth hold our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved; doth redeem our life from destruction; doth crown us with loving-kindness and tender mer-pondence, all our mind and heart, all our cies. The dispensations of grace, in the revelation of heavenly truth, in the overtures of mercy, in the succours of our weakness, in the proposal of glorious rewards, in all the methods and means conducing to our salvation, do afford most admirable proofs and pledges of the same immense benignity. But in nothing is the divine goodness toward us more illustriously conspicuous, than in the nature and tendency of those laws which God hath been pleased, for the regulation of our lives, to prescribe unto us, all which do palpably evidence his serious desire and provident care of our welfare; so that, in imposing them, he plainly doth not so much exercise his sovereignty over us, as express his kindness toward us; neither do they more clearly declare his will, than demonstrate his good-will to us. And among all divine precepts this especially, contained in my text, doth argue the wonderful goodness of our heavenly Law-giver, appearing both in the manner of the proposal, and in the substance of it. The second (saith our Lord) is like to it; that is, to the precept of loving the Lord our God with all our heart and is not this a mighty argument of immense goodness in God, that he doth in such a manner commend this duty to us, coupling it with our main duty toward him, and requiring us with like earnestness to love our neighbour as to love himself? He is transcendently amiable for the excellency of his nature: he, by innumerable and inestimable benefits graciously conferred on us, hath deserved our utmost affection; so that naturally there can be no obligation bearing any proportion or considerable semblance to that of loving him yet hath he in goodness been pleased to create one, and to endue it with that privilege; making the love of a strength and endeavour, are due and reasonably might he engross them to himself, excluding all other beings from any share in them; so that we might be obliged only to fix our thoughts and set our affections on him, only to act directly for his honour and interest; saying with the holy Psalmist, Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none on earth that I desire beside thee: yet doth he freely please to impart a share of these performances on mankind; yet doth he charge us to place our affection on one another; to place it there, indeed, in a measure so large, that we can hardly imagine a greater; according to a rule, than which none can be devised more complete or certain. O marvellous condescension! O goodness truly divine, which surpasseth the nature of things, which dispenseth with the highest right, and foregoeth the greatest interest that can be! Doth not God in a sort debase himself, that he might advance us? Doth he not appear to wave his own due, and neglect his own honour for our advantage? How otherwise could the love of man be capable of any resemblance to the love of God, and not stand at an infinite distance, or in an extreme disparity from it? otherwise could we be obliged to affect or regard any thing beside the sovereign, the only goodness? How otherwise could there be any second or like to that first, that great, that peerless command, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart?® How This indeed is the highest commendation whereof any law is capable: for as to be like God, is the highest praise that can be given to a person; so to resemble the divinest law of love to God is the fairest character that can be assigned of a law: the which indeed representeth it to be vouos Barilinòs, as St. James' calleth it; that is, a royal and sovereign law; ex- | of beneficence toward others, and of alted above all others, and bearing a sway comfort in ourselves; it in like manner on them. St. Paul telleth us, that the end doth assimilate us to God, rendering us of the commandment (or, the main scope conformable to his nature, followers of of the evangelical doctrine) is charity his practice, and partakers of his feliciout of a pure heart, and a good con- tyk it is of like use and consequence science, and faith unfeigned; that charity toward the regulation of our practice, is the sum and substance of all other and due management of our whole life: duties, and that he that loveth another in such respects, I say, this law is like hath fulfilled the whole law, that charity to the other; but it is however chiefly so is the chief of the theological virtues, for that God hath pleased to lay so great and the prime fruit of the divine Spirit; stress thereon as to make it the other and the bond of perfection which com- half of our religion and duty; or because, bineth and consummateth all other graces, as St. John saith, This commandment and the general principle of all our have we from him, that he who loveth doings. St. Peter enjoineth us, that to God, love his brother also; which is to all other virtues we add charity, as the his praise a most pregnant demonstration top and crown of them; and, Above all of his immense goodness toward us. things (saith he) have fervent charity among yourselves. St. John calleth this law, in way of excellence, the commandment of God and our Lord himself claimeth it as his peculiar precept; This, saith he, is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you: A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another: and maketh the observance of it the special cognizance of his followers; By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another. : These indeed are lofty commendations thereof, yet all of them may worthily veil to this; all of them seem verified in virtue of this, because God hath vouchsafed to place this command in so near adjacency to the first great law, conjoining the two tables; making charity contiguous, and, as it were, commensurate to piety. It is true, that in many respects charity doth resemble piety; for it is the most genuine daughter of piety, thence in complexion, in features, in humour, much favouring its sweet mother: it doth consist in like dispositions and motions of soul; it doth grow from the same roots and principles of benignity, ingenuity, equity, gratitude, planted in our original constitution by the breath of God, and improved in our hearts by the divine Spirit of love; it produceth the like fruits 1 Tim. i. 5; Rom. xiii. 8, 9; Gal. v. 14; 1 Cor. xiii. 13; Gal. v. 22; Col. iii. 14; 1 Cor. 2 Pet. i. 7; 1 Pet. iv. 8. xvi. 14. i 1 John iii. 23, 11; iv. 21; John xv. 12; xiii. 34, 35. J 1 John iv. 7, 11. But no less in the very substance of this duty will the benignity of him that prescribeth it shine forth, displaying itself in the rare beauty and sweetness of it; together with the vast benefit and utility, which it, being observed, will yield to mankind; which will appear by what we may discourse for pressing its observance. But first let us explain it, as it licth before us expressed in the words of the text, wherein we shall consider two particulars observable: first, the object of the duty; secondly, the qualification annexed to it: the object of it, our neighbour; the qualification, as ourselves. 1. The object of charity is our neighbour; that is (it being understood, as the precept now concerneth us, according to our Lord's exposition, or according to his intent and the tenor of his doctrine), every man, with whom we have to do, or who is capable of our love, especially every Christian. The Law, as it was given to God's ancient people, did openly regard only those among them who were linked together in a holy neighbourhood or society; from which all other men being excluded were deemed strangers and foreigners; (aliens, as St. Paul speaketh, from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise.) For thus the Law runneth in Leviticus: Thou shalt not bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but Matt. v. 45; Eph. v. 1, 2. 1 Matt. xxii. 40; 1 John iv. 21. m |