and fit to be condemned; we look on God as being just and powerful to punish us: but when Christ is betwixt, God looks on us in him as justified, and we look on God in him as pacified, and see the smiles of his favorable countenance. Take Christ out, all is terrible; interpose him, all is full of peace: therefore set him always betwixt, and by him we shall believe in God.

ours.

II. The warrant and ground of believing in God by Christ is this, that God raised him from the dead and gave him glory, which evidences the full satisfaction of his death; and in all that work, both in his humiliation and exaltation, standing in our room, we may repute it as If all is paid that could be exacted of him and he is therefore set free from death, then are we acquitted and have nothing to pay. If he was raised from the dead, and exalted to glory, then so shall we. He hath taken possession of that glory for us, and we may judge ourselves possessed of it already, because he, our head, possesseth it. And this, the last words of the verse confirm to us, implying this to be the very purpose and end for which God, having given him up to death, raised him up and gave him glory; it is for this end expressly, that our faith and hope might be in God. The last end is, that we may have life and glory through him; the nearer end, that in the mean while, till we attain them, we may have firm belief and hope of them, and rest on God as the giver of them, and so in part enjoy them Before-hand, be upheld in our joy and conflicts by the comfort of them. And as St. Stephen in his vision, faith doth, in a spiritual way, look through all the visible heavens, and see Christ at the Father's right hand, and is comforted by that in the greatest troubles, though it were amidst a shower of stones, as St. Stephen was. The comfort is no less than this, that being by faith made one with Christ, his present glory wherein he sits at the Father's right hand, is an assurance to us, that where he is we shall be also.

and

Ver. 22. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.

IT is a known truth, and yet very needful to be often represented to us, that redemption and holiness are undivided companions; yea, that we are redeemed on purpose for this end, that we should be holy. The pressing of this is here the apostle's scope; and having enforced it in the general, he now takes it as concluded and confessed, and so makes use of it particularly to exhort to the exercise of that main Christian grace of brotherly love.

The obedience and holiness mentioned in the foregoing verses, comprehend the whole duties and frame of a Christian life towards God and men; and, having urged that in the general, he specifies this grace of mutual Christian love, as the great evidence of our sincerity and the truth of our love to God; for men are subject to much hypocrisy this way, and deceive themselves. If they find themselves diligent in religious exercises, they scarcely once ask their hearts, how they stand affected this way, namely, in love to their brethren. They can come constantly to the church, and pray, it may be, at home too, and yet cannot find in their hearts to forgive an injury.

We have here, I. the due qualifications of brotherly love; II. a Christian's obligation to it. 1. The qualifications are three sincerity, purity, and fervency. The sincerity is expressed in the former clause of the verse, unfeigned love, and repeated again in the latter part, that it be with a pure heart, and the purity is included in fervency.

1. Love must be unfeigned. It appears that dissimulation is a disease that is very incident in this particular. The apostle St. Paul hath the same word, Rom. xii, 9, and the apostle St. John speaks to the same effect, 1 John iii, 18. He requires that our love have that double reality which is opposed to double dissembled

love; that it be cordial and effectual; that the professing of it arise from truth of affection, and, as much as may be, be seconded with action; that both the heart and the hand may be the seal of it rather than the tongue; that it be not court holy-water and empty noise of service and affection, which fears nothing more than to be put upon trial. Although thy brother with whom thou conversest cannot, it may be, see through thy false appearances, he who commands this love looks chiefly within, seeks it there, and if he find it not there, hates them most who most pretend it: so that the art of dissembling, though never so well studied, cannot pass in this King's court, to whom all hearts are open and all desires known. When after variances men are brought to an agreement, they are much subject to this, rather to cover their remaining malices with superficial verbal forgiveness, than to dislodge them and free the heart of them, This is a poor self-deceit. As the philosopher said to him, who being ashamed that he was espied by him in a tavern in the outer room, withdrew himself to the inner, "That is not the way out; the more you go that way, you will be the further within it ;" so when hatreds are upon admonition not thrown out, but retire inward to hide themselves, they grow deeper and stronger than before; and those constrained semblances of reconcilement are but a false healing, do but skin the wound over, and therefore it usually breaks forth worse again.

2. It must be pure, with a pure heart. This is not all one with the former, as some take it. It is true, doubleness or hypocrisy is an impurity, and a great one; but all impurity is not doubleness. One may really feel that friendship and affection he expresses, and yet it may be most contrary to that which is here required, because impure; such a brotherly love as that of Simeon and Levi, brethren in iniquity, as the calling them brethren, Gen. xlix, is taken to mean. When hearts are cemented together by impurity, by ungodly conversation and society in sin, as in uncleanness or drunkenness, this a swinish fraternity, a friendship which is contracted, as it were, by wallowing in the same mire. Call it good fellowship or what you will, all the fruit that in the end can be expec

ted out of unholy fellowship in sinning together, is, to be tormented together, and to add each to the torment of the other.

The mutual love of Christians must be pure, arising from such causes as are pure and spiritual, from the sense of our Saviour's command and of his example; for he himself joins that with it; A new commandment I give unto you, saith he, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another, John xiii, 34. They that are indeed lovers of God are united; by that their hearts meet in him, as in one centre: they cannot but love one another. Where a godly man sees his Father's image, he is forced to love it. He loves those whom he perceives godly, so as to delight in them, because that image is in them; and those that appear destitute of it, he loves them so as to wish them partakers of that image. And as the Christian's love is pure in its cause, so in its effects and exercise. His society and converse with any, tends mainly to this, that he may mutually help and be helped in the knowledge and love of God. He desires most that he and his brethren may jointly mind their journey heavenwards, and further one another in their way to the full enjoyment of God. And this is truly the love of a pure heart, which both begins and ends in God.

3. We must love fervently, not after a cold indifferent manner. Let the love of your brethren be as a fire within you, consuming that selfishness which is so contrary to it, and is so natural to men. Let it set your thoughts on work to study how to do others good. Let your love be an active love, intense within you, and extending itself in doing good to the souls and bodies of your brethren as they need, and you are able.

It is self-love that contracts the heart and shuts out all other love both of God and man, save only so far as our own interest carries, and that is still self-love; but the love of God dilates the heart, purifies love, and extends it to all men, but after a special manner directs it to those who are more peculiarly beloved of him, and that is the particular love here required.

II. Love of the brethren. In this is implied our obligation after a special manner to love those of the household Div.

No. V.

L

of faith, because they are our brethren. This includes not only, as Abraham said, that there ought to be no strife, but it binds most strongly to this sincere, and pure, and fervent love; and therefore the apostle, in the next verse, repeats expressly the doctrine of the mysterious new birth, and explains it more fully, which he had mentioned in the entrance of the Epistle, and again referred to, 14, 17.

There is in this fervent love, sympathy with the griefs of our brethren, desire and endeavour to help them, bearing their infirmities, and recovering them too, if it may be; raising them when they fall; admonishing and reproving them as is needful, sometimes sharply, and yet still in love; rejoicing in their good, in their gifts and graces, so far from envying them, that we be glad as if they were our own. There is the same blood running in their veins; you have the same Father, and the same Spirit within you, and the same Jesus Christ, the head of that glorious fraternity, the first-born among many brethren, of whom the apostle saith, that he hath re-collected into one, all things in heaven and in earth, Eph. i, 10. The word is, gathered them into one head; and so suits very fitly to express our union in him. In whom, says he in the same epistle, the whole body is fitly compacted together; and he adds that which agrees to our purpose, that this body grows up and edifies itself in love. All the members receive spirits from the same head, and are useful and serviceable one to another, and to the whole body. Thus these brethren, receiving of the same spirit from their head, Christ, are most strongly bent to the good one of another. If there be but a thorn in the foot, the back boweth, the head stoops down, the eyes look, the hands reach to it, and endeavour its help and ease in a word, all the members partake of the good and evil, one of another. Now by how much this body is more spiritual and lively, so much the stronger must the union and love of the parts of it be each to every other. You are brethren by the same new birth and born to the same inheritance, and such an inheritance as shall not be an apple of strife amongst you, to beget debates and contentions: no, it is enough for all,