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 ourselves 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; it is a fire that can live upon the fuel which itself créates, and maintain itself for ever in strength and vigour, by feeding upon the joys and pleasures which it pro duces 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.

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Having thus demonstrated the proposition in the text, That wheresoever the love of God is, it will express itself in obedience to his will; I shall now. conclude the whole with some practical inferences.

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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 thorough 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, merely 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 mischief, and tear us in pieces; but this is merely the religion of slaves, who are forced to un→ dergo one evil for fear of another; and to do what they hate, for fear of suffering what they cannot endure. And as slaves do generally hate those whom they fear, and even whilst they are fawning and cringing to their imperious masters, had much ras ther cut their throats if they could do it with safety'; so when men are acted in their obedience to God merely 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 withhold. 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 conjoined with such an inveterate hatred to his person and government, and restrains men only by 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 itself in an open rebellion than in a forced submission, had it but power enough to defend itself 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 freeborn minds, to offer to the great Sovereign of the world, we must be sure to purge out all those sour and rigid notions of God, that represent him any ways unlovely to us.

2. Hence I infer, how miserably those men are

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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 mere 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 merely the effect of an amorous complexion, 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 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 drachm of true piety in them, who yet in their religious exercises can put themselves into wondrous 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 ecstasies of joy which is purely to be resolved into the different tempers of men's bodies; some tempers being

naturally 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 rejoice 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 romantic heroes. 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 în such carnal metaphors and allusions, as their sensual minds are most apt to be taken with; and then imagine that it smiles on them, and kisses and caresses them with all the pretty endearments of a doating lover; whereupon they grow so extremely 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 goddess; and while they think

they have God and Christ in their arms, embrace nothing but a spectre 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 choose the objects of their love according to the different inclinations of their sexes; and the reason why they choose 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 merely doat upon the different images of their own fancies; which do not at all represent those divine beauties for which those sacred persons do well deserve to be beloved. And thus it is too commonly among ourselves, when yet we pretend to be zealous lovers of God. Wherefore, unless we have ' a mind to deceive ourselves, let us no longer depend on such fallacious evidences as these, but let us try our love of God by his own touchstone, and that is, our obedience to his heavenly will. If any man love me, saith our Saviour, he will keep my words, John xiv. 23. and, Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you, John xv. 14. for this, saith St. John, is love, that ye walk after his commandments, 2 Epist. 6.

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