THEREFORE it was a moft merciful law SER M. that faid unto us, "Love the LORD your VIII. "GOD with all your heart, with all your foul, " and with all your ftrength." It is a law teaching us to be happy, and to folace our felves in the rich plenitude of divine goodness. Our neceffity doth at once urge us, and the divine goodness invite us here to place our love. This is the true folution of Plato's riddle, "That "LOVE is the daughter of PLUTO and PENIA." For it plainly appears that the rich plenty of divine goodness, and the poverty and indigence of the poor creature that cannot otherwise dispose of itself, are the true parents of love.

THIS is a thing alfo that will coft us nothing. To love GOD therefore is the most unexceptionable thing in the world. It is what we are capable of in the worst external circumftances. If a man be never so poor he may yet love God. If he be fick and infirm, if he be never fo mean, if he have no eftate, no intereft, or be never fo little in repute, he is yet capable of loving GOD. This he can do any where, in any place, in any defart or cave, or upon the most afflictive bed of languishing. There is no pretence against loving GOD, let a man's cafe be what it will, or fuppofed to be. It is therefore a moft intolerable thing to offend against a law that provides fo directly for our happiness and most urgent neceffities. It is fuch a law, an obedience to which will coft us nothing, neither can there be the least pretence

VOL. of gaining any thing by the neglect of it. I. The fin is therefore the more horrid, and foul

and fhameful it is to difobey in a cafe wherein we have nothing to fay for our felves. And again,

7. IT is a direct contradiction to our own light, and the common fentiments of mankind. For this is no difputable thing, whether we are to love God yea or no. There are many things in religion, and many things more that are afFixed to it, that make much matter of difputation, and great ventilating of arguments there is pro and con, this way and that; but pray who can tell how to form an argument against the love of God? To deny this is to affront our own light, and that of the world in common; for there is no man that will profess himself to be no lover of GOD. Did you ever meet with any one that would profefs enmity to him? And the foul of man cannot be indifferent in this cafe, It must either be a friend or an enemy, muft either love or hate. GoD is not indifferent, or a mere nothing to us, and how fhould we be affected to him, if not by love? And we further add,

8. It is a most unnatural wickednefs to the Parent of that being which we are each of us furnished with, to difaffect our own original. That men fhould difaffect him from whom they immediately sprang, and whofe image they exprefsly bear, is, I fay, a moft unnatural crime. Suppose there were a fon to be found that never

could

could love his father, and always hated the womb SERM. that bare him; what a strange prodigy in nature VIII. would he be thought! But is not this infinitely more prodigious to difaffect the intire and fupreme author of our own life and being, of which parents are but partial, or at moft but fubordinate authors. And in the

LAST place, not to add more, it is blafphemy against the divine goodness. It is a practical blafphemy. It is the most emphatical way of denying GOD. For as the man that does not believe him, denieth his truth and makes him a liar, fo by manifest parity, he that doth not love him denieth his goodness, a great deal more fignificantly than can be done by words. For men many times earnestly speak what is not their fettled judgment, and what they are afterwards ready to retract. But how horrid a thing is this, that a man by a continued course and series of practice fhould discover this to be the fixed fenfe of his foul, that GOD is not worthy of his love! that a race of reasonable creatures fhould bear their joint teftimony against the great and bleffed GOD, the common author and caufe of all being, that he is not worthy of the love of any of them! For we practically fay fo while we live in the neglect of this duty. What do we talk of words in this cafe, when deeds and our conftant practice do more fignificantly and directly speak? and what doth the course of a man speak, who loves not GOD, but this, that he is not to be loved?

Therefore

VOL. Therefore fure, not to love GOD, though we fee I. him not, is not only a fin, but a moft monftrous and horrid one.

WE fhould go on to make some practical inferences from all that has been said on this part of our fubject, that we might thereby the more closely apply all; but of this hereafter.

SERM.

SERMON IX.

Preached October 11, 1676.

I JOHN IV. 20.

-He that loveth not his Brother, whom he bath feen; how can be love GOD, whom he bath not feen?

I

N fpeaking to the fecond part of our fubject we have largely infifted in fhewing you, that

our not feeing GOD is no excufe for our not loving him. We have fhewn particularly, that it is infufficient, and also very abfurd to be alledged as an excufe; and that it is not only a finful omiffion, but a moft horrid wickedness, not to live in the exercise of love to Go D, notwithstanding this excufe that we cannot fee him.

IT now remains, as we promised in our last, to deduce from the whole some practical inferences, by which (if GOD will fo direct his word) all may be applied, and brought home with the greater pungency to our own hearts. And,

1. WE may hence take notice of the infolent wickedness of the world, that they fo generally agree to confine the little love that is left in it to one another, and to exclude the Bleffed Gop.

That,