• fomewhat I may despise for Chrift, who is totus de'fiderabilis, et totum defiderabile.' And this love is the fum of all he requires of us; it is that which makes all our meanest services acceptable, and without which, all we offer to him is diftafteful. God doth not only deferve our love by his matchlefs excellency and beauty; but by his matchlefs love to us, and that is the ftrongest loadftone of love, He hath loved me, faith the Apostle, Gal. ii. 20. How appears that? in no less than this, He hath given himself for me. Certainly then there is no clearer character of our love than this, to give ourselves to him, that hath fo loved us, and given himself for us.

This affection must be bestowed fomewhere: There is no man but hath fome prime choice, fomewhat that is the predominant delight of his foul; will it not then be our wifdom to make the worthieft choice? feeing it is offered us, and is extreme folly to reject it.

Grace doth not pluck up by the roots, and wholly deftroy the natural paffions of the mind, because they are diftempered by fin; that were an extreme remedy, to cure by killing, and heal by cutting off: No, but it corrects the diftemper in them; it dries not up this main ftream of love, but purifies it from the mud it is full of in its wrong courfe, or calls it to its right channel, by which it may run into happiness, and empty itself into the ocean of goodness. The Holy Spirit turns the love of the foul towards God in Chrift, for in that way only can it apprehend his love: So then Jefus Chrift is the first object of this divine love; he is medium unionis, through whom God conveys the fenfe of his love to the foul, and receives back its love to him.

And if we will confider his incomparable beauty, we may look on it in the holy Scriptures, particularly in that divine fong of loves, wherein Solomon borrows all the beauties of the creatures, dips his pencil in all their feveral excellencies, to fet him forth unto us, who is the Chief of ten thoufands. There is

an

an infeparable intermixture of love with belief, and a pious affection, receiving divine truth; fo that in effect, as we diftinguish them, they are mutually ftrengthened, the one by the other, and fo though it feem a circle, it is a divine one, and falls not under cenfure of the fchool's pedantry. If you afk, how fhall I do to love? I answer, believe. If you afk, how fhali I believe? I answer, love. Although thefe expreffions to a carnal mind are altogether unfavoury, by grofs mistaking them; yet to a foul taught to read and hear them, by any measure of that fame fpirit of love wherewith they were penned, they are full of heavenly and unutterable fweetness.

Many directions, and means of begetting and increafing this love of Chrift may be here offered, and they that delight in number may multiply them; but fure this one will comprehend the greatest and best part, if not all of them, Believe, and you fall love; believe much, and you shall love much; labour for ftrong and deep perfuafions of the glorious things that are spoken of Chrift, and this will command love. Certainly did men indeed believe his worth, they would accordingly love him; for the reasonable creature cannot but affect that moft which it firmly believes to be worthy of affection. O! this mifchievous unbelief is that which makes the heart cold and dead towards God. Seek then to believe Chrift's excellency in himself, and his love to us, and our interest in him, and this will kindle fuch a fire in the heart as will make it afcend in a facrifice of love to him.

Many figns likewife of this love may be multiplied, according to the many fruits and workings of it; but in them all, itself is its own moft infallible evidence. When the foul finds that all its obedience and endeavour to keep the commands of Jefus Chrift, which himself makes its character, do flow from love, then it is true and fincere: For do or fuffer what you will, without love all paffes for nothing; all are cyphers without it, they fignify nothing, 1 Cor. xiii.

This

This is the meffage of the Gospel, and that which the miniftry aims at, and therefore the minifters ought to be fuitors, not for themselves, but for Chrift, to efpouse fouls to him, and to bring in many hearts to love him. And certainly this is the most compendious way to perfuade to all other Chriftian duties, this is to converfe with Jefus Chrift; and therefore where his love is, no other incentive will be needful: For love delights in the prefence and converse of the party loved. If we are to perfuade to duties of the second table, thé fum of those is love to our brethren, refulting from the love of Chrift, which diffuseth such a sweetness into the foul, that it is all love, and meeknefs, and gentlenefs, and long-fuffering.

If times be for fuffering, love will make the foul not only bear, but welcome the bitterest afflictions of life, and the hardest kinds of death for his fake. In a word, there is in love a fweet constraint, or tying of the beart to all obedience and duty.

The love of God is requifite in minifters for their preaching of the word; fo our Saviour to St Peter, Joh. xxi. 15. Peter, loveft thou me? then feed my lambs. It is requifite for the people that they receive the truth in the love of it, and that Chrift preached may be enterained in the foul, and embraced by faith and love.

You that have made choice of Chrift for your love, let not your hearts flip out, to renew your wonted base familiarity with fin; for that will bring new bitternefs to your fouls, and at least for fome time will deprive you of the fenfible favour of your beloved Jesus. Delight always in God, and give him your whole heart; for he deferves it all, and is a fatisfying good to it. The largeft heart is all of it too ftrait for the riches of confolation that he brings with him. Seek to increase in this love; and though it is at first weak, yet labour to find it daily rife higher, and burn hotter and clearer, and consume the drofs of earthly defires.

Receiving the end of your faith.] Although the foul

that

that believes and loves, is put in prefent poffeffion of God, as far as it is capable in its fojourning here; yet it defires a full enjoyment, which it cannot attain to, without removing hence. While we are prefent in the body, we are abfent from the Lord, faith the Apostle. And because they are affured of that happy exchange, that being united and freed of this body, they fhall be present with the Lord, having his own word for it, that where he is, they fhall be alfo; this begets fuch an affured hope, as bears the name of poffeffion. Therefore it is faid here, receiving the end of your faith.

This receiving likewife flows from faith. Faith apprehends the present truth of the divine promifes, and fo makes the things to come present; and hope looks out to their after accomplishment: Which if the promifes be true, as faith avers, then hope hath good reafon firmly, to expect. This defire and hope are the very wheels of the foul that carry it on, and faith the common axis on which they rest.

In the words there are two things: 1. The good hoped for, in Chrift fo believed on and loved; 2. The affuredness of the hope itself, yea it is as fure as if it were already accomplished.

I. As for the good hoped for, it confifts, 1. In the nature of it, viz. the falvation of their foul; 2. In a relative property of it, the end of their faith.

ift, The nature of it is, falvation, and falvation of the foul, it imports full deliverance from all kind of mifery, and the fafe poffeffion of perfect happiness, when the foul fhall be out of the reach of all adverfaries and adverse accidents, no more fubjected to those evils that are properly its own, namely, the conscience of fin, and fear of wrath, and fad defections; nor yet fubject to those other evils it endured, by fociety with the body, outward diftreffes and afflictions, perfecutions, poverty, difeafes, &c.

It is called falvation of the foul: Not excluding the body from the fociety of that glory, when it shall be raised and reunited to the foul; but because the foul VOL. I.

N

is

is of itself an immortal fubftance, and both the more noble part of man, and the prime fubject both of grace and glory, and because it arrives first at that bleffednefs, and for a time leaves the body in the duft to do homage to its original, therefore it is only named here. But Jefus is the Saviour of the body too, and he fhall, at his coming, change our vile bodies, and make them like his glorious body.

2dly, We have the relative property of this hope, the end of your faith. The end or reward; for it is both. It is the end, either at which faith aims, or wherein it ceafeth. It is the reward, not of their works, nor of faith, as a work deferving it, but as the condition of the new covenant, which God, according to the tenor of that covenant, firft works in his own, and then rewards as if it were their work. And this falvation, or fruition of Chrift, is the proper reward of faith, which believes in him unfeen, and fo obtains that happy fight. It is the proper work of faith to believe what thou feeft not, and the reward of faith, to fee what thou haft believed.

II. This is the certainty of their hope, that it is as if they had already received it. If the promise of God and the merit of Chrift hold good, then they that believe in him, and love him, are made fure of falvation. The promises of God in Chrift are not yea and nay; but they are in him yea, and in him amen. Sooner may the rivers run backward, and the course of the heavens change, and the frame of nature be diffolved, than any one foul that is united to Jefus Chrift by faith and love can be fevered from him, and fo fall fhort of falvation hoped for in him; and this is the matter of their rejoicing.

Te rejoice with joy unspeakable.] The natural man, fays the Apostle, receiveth not the things of God, for they are foolifonefs unto him; and he adds the reafon why he cannot know them, for they are fpiritually difcerned. He hath none of that faculty by which they are difcerned. There is a vast disproportion be