love God for himself and his infinite natural goodness and perfections; not casting away the respects of his goodness and love as to ourselves; but highliest regarding himself for himself, as carried to him above ourselves.

II. Though love, in its own nature, be still the same; and is nothing but the rational appetite of good: or the will's volition of good apprehended by the understanding; the first motion of the will to good, arising from that natural inclination to good which is the nature of the will, and the pondus animæ,' the poise of the soul; or from healing grace which repaireth the breach that is made in nature; yet love in regard of the state of the lover, and the way of its imperate acting, is thus differenced. 1. Either the lover is in the hopeful pursuit of the thing beloved: and then it is Desiring, Seeking Love. 2. Or he is, or seemeth to be denied, destitute, and deprived of his beloved (in whole, or in part): and then it is Mourning, Lamenting Love. 3. Or he enjoyeth his beloved: and then it is Enjoying, Delighting Love. 1. The ordinary love which grace causeth on earth, is a predominancy of seeking, desiring love, encouraged by some little foretastes of enjoying, delighting love, and, in a great measure, attended with mourning, lamenting love. 2. The state of deserted, dark, declining, relapsing, and melancholy, tempted Christians, is, a predominance of mourning, lamenting love, assisted with some help of seeking, desiring love; but destitute of enjoying, delighting love. 3. The state of the glorified is perfection of enjoying, delighting love alone. And all the rest are to bring us unto this*.

III. The Reasons why love to God is so great, and high, and necessary a thing, and so much esteemed above other graces, are: 1. It is the motion of the soul that tendeth to the end; and the end is more excellent than all the means as such. 2. The love, or will, or heart is the man; where the heart or love is, there the man is: it is the fullest re

* Nobilius et præstantius est charitatem exercere in Deo, quam virtutes propter Deum. Charitas compendiosissima ad Deum via est per quam celerrime in Deum pervenitur; nec sine charitate aliqua virtus supernaturaliter homini sapit: charitas enim forma omnium virtutum est. Per hoc charitatis exercitium, homo ad tantam sui abominationem venit, ut non solum seipsum contemnat, verum etiam se ab aliis contemni æquo animo ferat; imo etiam ab aliis contemptus gaudeat.-Thaulerus, flor. c. 7. p. 114.

signation of the whole man to God, to love him as God, or offer him the heart. God never hath his own fully till we love him. Love is the grand, significant, vital motion of the soul; such as the heart, or will, or love is, such you may boldly call the man. 3. The love of God is the perfection and highest improvement of all the faculties of the soul, and the end of all other graces, to which they tend, and to which they grow up, and in which they terminate their operations. 4. The love of God is that spirit or life of moral excellency in all other graces in which (though not their form, yet) their acceptableness doth consist, without which they are to God as a lifeless carrion is to us. And to prove any action sincere and acceptable to God, is to prove that it comes from a willing, loving mind, without which you can never prove it. 5. Love is the commander of the soul;, and therefore God knoweth that if he have our hearts he hath all, for all the rest are at his command; for it is, as it were, the nature of the will, which is the commanding faculty, and its object is the ultimate end which is the commanding object. Love setteth the mind on thinking, the tongue on speaking, the hands on working, the feet on going, and every faculty obeyeth its command. 6. The obedience which love commandeth participateth of its nature, and is a ready, cheerful, sweet obedience, acceptable to God, and pleasant to ourselves. 7. Love is a pure, chaste, and cleansing grace; and most powerfully casteth out all creature pollution from the soul: the love of God doth quench all carnal, sinful love; and most effectually carrieth up the soul to such high delights, as causeth it to contemn and forget the toys which it before admired. 8. The love of God is the true acknowledging and honouring him as good. That blessed attribute, his Goodness, is denied or despised by those who love him not. The light of the sun would not be valued, honoured, or used by the world, if there were no eyes in the world to see it: and the goodness of God is to them that love him not, as the light to them that have no eyes. If God would have had his goodness to be thus unknown or neglected, he would never have made the intellectual creatures. Those only give him the glory of his goodness, that truly love him. 9. Love (in its attainment) is the enjoying and delighting grace: it is the

very content and felicity of the soul, both as it maketh us capable to receive the most delightful communications of God's love to us, and as it is the soul's delightful closure with its most amiable, felicitating object. 10. Love is the everlasting grace, and the work which we must be doing in heaven for ever. These are the reasons of love's pre-eminence".

IV. The love of creatures hath its Contraries on both extremes, in the excess and in the defect; but the love of God hath no contrary in excess: for Infinite Goodness cannot possibly be loved too much (unless as the passion may possibly be raised to a degree distracting or disturbing the brain). The odious vices contrary to the love of God are, 1. Privative; not loving him. 2. Positive; hating him. 3. Opposite; loving his creatures in his stead: all these concur in every unsanctified soul. That they are all void of the true love of God, and taken up with creature love, is past all doubt; but whether they are all haters of God, may seem more questionable. But it is as certain as the other; only the hatred of God in most doth not break out into that open opposition, persecution, or blasphemy, as it doth with some that are given up to desperate wickedness; nor do they think that they hate him. But the aversation of the will is the hatred of God; and if men had not a great aversation to him, they would not forsake him, and refuse to be converted to him, notwithstanding all the arguments of love that can be used to allure them. Displicency, nolition, and aversation are hatred.

If you think it impossible, that men can hate God, whom they confess to be infinitely good, consider for the true understanding of this hatred, 1. That it is not as good that they hate him; 2. and it is not God simply in himself considered; and therefore it is not all in God; 4. and it is not the name of God; 5. but it is, 1. God as he seemeth unsuitable to them, and unfit for their delight and love; which seeming is caused by their carnal inclination to things of another nature, and the sinful perverting of their appetites,

Austin, (Tract. 9. in Johan.) having shewed that among men, it maketh no one beautiful to love one that is beautiful, saith, Anima nostra fœda est per iniquitatem: amando Deum pulchra efficitur: qualis amor qui reddat pulchrum amantem? Deus semper Pater est: amavit nos foedos, ut ex fœdis faceret pulchros: pulchri erimus amando eum qui pulcher est. Quantum in te crescit amor, tantum crescit pulchritudo; quia ipsa charitas animæ pulchritudo est.

and the blindness and error of their minds. 2. And it is God as he is an enemy to their carnal concupiscence; whose holy nature is against their unholiness, and hateth their sin, and his laws forbid them the things which they most love and take delight in; and so they hate God, as a madman hateth his keeper and physician, and takes them for his enemies; and as a hungry dog doth hate him, that keepeth him from the meat which he loveth, or would take out of his mouth. 3. And they hate God, as one by his holiness, justice, and truth is engaged to condemn them for their sin, and so (consequently to their sin) is their enemy that will destroy them (unless they forsake it): when their wills are enslaved to their sins, and they cannot endure to be forbidden them, and yet see that God will damn them in hell-fire if they cast them not away: this filleth them with displacency against God, as holy and just. 4. And then, consequently, they hate him in the rest of his attributes: as his omniscience, that he always seeth them; his omnipresence, that he is always with them; his omnipotency, that he is irresistible and able to punish them: his very mercy as expressed to others, when they must have no part in it; yea, his very immutability, eternity, and being, as he is to continue an avenger of their iniquity: so that the wicked in despair do wish that there were no God; and in prosperity, they wish he were not their Governor and Judge, or were unholy and unjust, allowing them to do what they list without account or punishment. Thus God is hated by the wicked according to the measure of their wickedness, and carnal interest, and concupiscence which he is against. Where you may note, 1. that the hatred of God beginneth at the sensual love of things temporal which he forbiddeth; 2. that the wicked great ones of the world, and those that have the strongest concupiscence, are justly the greatest haters of God, as having the greatest adverse interest, and being most in love with the things which he prohibiteth and will condemn.

V. The Counterfeit of love to God is something that seemeth like it, and yet is consistent with prevalent hatred, or privation of true love, and maketh self-deceiving hypocrites. 1. One is when so much of God is loved as men think hath no opposition to their lusts and carnal interest (as his mercy and readiness to forgive); and then they

think that they truly love God, though they hate his holiness and other attributes. 2. Another counterfeit is, to love God upon mistakes, imagining that he is of the sinner's mind, and will bear with him and not condemn him, though he continue sensual and ungodly: this is not indeed to love God, but something contrary to God. If men's fantasies will take God to be like the devil, a friend to sin, and no friend to holiness, and false in his threatenings, &c. and thus will love him; this is so far from being indeed the love of God, that it is an odious blaspheming of him. 3. Another counterfeit is, to love God only for his temporal mercies, as because he preserveth and maintaineth them, when yet he is resisted when he would give them things spiritual. 4. Another is, when the opinionative approbation of the mind, and honouring God with the lips and knee, are mistaken for true love. In a word, whatever love of God respecteth him not as God indeed and is not superlative, but is subservient to creature love, is but a counterfeit. VI. The Directions for the exercise of the love of God are these.

Direct. 1. 'Consider well that the love of our Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator, is the very end for which we are created, redeemed, and regenerated; and how just it is, that God should have the end of such excellent works: and that by neglecting or opposing the love of God which is the end, we neglect or oppose the works of creation, redemption, and regeneration themselves.'-Let us plead these works of God with our hearts, and say, ['O sluggish soul! dost thou forget the use for which thou wast created, and for which thou wast endued with rational faculties? Dost thou repent that thou art a man, and refuse the employment of a man? What is the means or instrument good for, but its proper end and use of action? God made the sun to shine, and it shineth; he made the earth to support us and bear fruit, and it doth accordingly: and he made thee to love him, and wilt thou refuse and disobey? How noble and excellent is thy employment in comparison of their's? Is the fruit of the earth, or the labour of thy beast, or the service of any inferior creature, so sweet and honourable a work as thine, to know and love thy bountiful, glorious Creator? How happy is thy lot! how blessed is thy portion in com