prove in the love of thee. Thou haft placed us in various kindreds, friendships, and relations, as the School of difcipline for our affections: help us, by the due exercife of them, to improve to perfection; till all partial affection be loft in that entire univerfal one, and thou, O God, shalt be all in all.

SERMON XIII, XIV.

UPON THE LOVE OF GOD.

MATTH. XXII. 37.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy foul, and with all thy mind.

EVERY body knows, you therefore need only just be put in mind, that there is such a thing, as having fo great horror of one extreme, as to run insensibly and of course into the contrary; and that a doctrine's having been a shelter for enthusiasm, or made to ferve the purposes of superstition, is no proof of the falfity of it: truth or right being fomewhat real in itself, and so not to be judged of by its liableness to abuse, or by its supposed distance from or nearness to error. It may be fufficient to have mentioned this in general, without taking notice of the particular extravagancies, which have been vented under the pretence or endeavour of explaining the love of God; or how manifeftly we are got into the contrary extreme,

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treme, under the notion of a reasonable religion; fo very reasonable, as to have nothing to do with the heart and affections, if these words fignify any thing but the faculty by which we difcern speculative truth.

By the love of God, I would understand all thofe regards, all thofe affections of mind which are due immediately to him from fuch a creature as man, and which reft in him as their end. As this does not include fervile fear; fo neither will any other regards, how reasonable foever, which respect any thing out of or befides the perfection of the divine nature, come into confideration here. But all fear is not excluded, because his displeasure is itself the natural proper object of fear. Reverence, ambition of his love and approbation, delight in the hope or confciousness of it, come likewife into this definition of the love of God; because he is the natural object of all thofe affections or movements of mind, as really as he is the object of the affection, which is in the ftricteft fenfe called love; and all of them equally rest in him, as their end. And they may all be understood to be implied in these words of our Saviour, without putting any force upon them: for he is fpeaking of the love of God and our neighbour, as containing the whole of piety and virtue.

It is plain that the nature of man is fo conftituted,

ftituted, as to feel certain affections upon the fight or contemplation of certain objects. Now the very notion of affection implies refting in its object as an end. And the particular affection. to good characters, reverence and moral love of them, is natural to all those who have any degree of real goodness in themselves. This will be illuftrated by the description of a perfect character in a creature; and by confidering the manner, in which a good man in his prefence would be affected towards such a character. He would of courfe feel the affections of love, reverence, desire of his approbation, delight in the hope or consciousness of it. And furely all this is applicable, and may be brought up to that Being, who is infinitely more than an adequate object of all thofe affections; whom we are commanded to love with all our heart, with all our foul, and with all our mind. And of these regards towards Almighty God, fome are more particularly fuitable to and becoming fo imperfect a creature as man, in this mortal state we are paffing through; and some of them, and perhaps other exercises of the mind, will be the employment and happiness of good men in a state of perfection.

This is a general view of what the following discourse will contain. And it is manifeft the subject is a real one: there is nothing in it enthusiastical or unreasonable. And if it be