VOL. mitted from age to age to continue in this course,

I.

and are fuffered by vengeance to live, when the whole bufinefs of their lives is to express how much more they value defpicable nothings, creatures like themselves, than the great, the bleffed, and glorious LORD of heaven and earth! Certainly it fhould be often our business to set ourselves to admire the sparing and fuftaining mercy which GOD exerciseth towards this world, while this is the state of things between him and apostate men.

SERM.

SERMON V.

Preached September 20, 1676.

I JOHN IV. 20.

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

E have hitherto been fhewing you from these words, That men are lefs apt to love Go D than one another, principally for this reafon, because GoD is not the object of fight as men are. We are now to go on to the

SECOND thing obferved from them, namely, That we are most indifpenfibly obliged to the exercise of this duty though we fee him not, and therefore notwithstanding this excufe, it is a most intolerable thing not to love Go D.

THIS hath its manifeft ground in the text, and doth fundamentally belong to the Apostle's reasoning in this place. For the argument or medium which he reafons from is this, that if we do not love our brother whom we have seen, then we cannot fo much as love GOD whom we

I.

VOL. have not feen. By which he endeavours to reprefent how grievous a thing it would be, if Christians fhould continue in a mutual neglect of one another. Now all this would fall to the ground, and fignify nothing, if they were difengaged from loving GOD upon the account of his invifibility. But the Apostle takes it for granted, that all men must esteem it a moft horrid thing to be convicted of not loving GOD; otherwife his argument would be altogether to no purpose. For it might have been replied to him, "Though we be convicted of this, that "we do not love GoD, in as much as we do "not love one another, yet what is the inconvenience of such a neglect? We grant the whole, "but what are the ill confequences that follow

66

upon it?" Now the Apostle doubts not but they would fee the confequences, and that every man muft needs take it to be an intolerably hateful thing to pass for one that is no lover of Gop., This therefore is fuppofed by the Apoftle as a fundamental circumftance in his difcourfe, That not to love God, though we fee him not, is a moft horrid hateful thing, as well as abfolutely," inexcufable.

Now as this is plainly to be collected, so it is very necessary to be infifted upon. For as it is apparent, that as men commonly do not love GOD, or at least are lefs difpofed to it, because they see him not; fo they are very apt to excuse exempt themselves from guilt upon this acWhy fhould I look upon it, says one,

and

Count.

"as fo abominable a thing not to live in the SER M. "exercise of love to GOD? He is out of fight,

fure he expects no fuch thing from us who "cannot fee him, and who live at fo great a "diftance from him "What multitudes are there who can wear out the whole time of life, and never charge themselves with any fault all their days for not having lived in the love of GOD? As if the old heathenifh maxim was their fettled notion*, "We have nothing to do with "what is fo far above us."

V.

AND befides, this is not only the latent fenfe of moft, or that which lies clofely wrapt up even in the very inwards of their fouls, to wit, that they have little to do with GOD, and, need not concern themselves about him; but it is also what many have the confidence to speak out, and to declare in plain exprefs words. It is very notorious that there are fundry perfons in the world, not of one denomination or party only among the profeffors of the Chriftian name, who are not afraid to avow this very fenfe. Those who have made it their concern to look into the doctrines that have been handed about in the Chriftian world, do well know whose cafuistical divinity this is, "That we are not obliged to love God, "unlefs it be once or twice a year." Or as fome have prefumed to fay, "If it be only once ❝in a man's life-time it may ferve the turn," as a worthy perfon, now removed from us, hath largely fhewn; as alfo what the morals and practical

Quæ fupra nos, nihil ad nos,

I.

VOL. practical divinity of that fort of men are. And another of quite a different ftrain, who hath difciples more than a good many in our time, in his difcourfe of the human nature, would flily infinuate, that we are not obliged at all to formal direct acts of love to GoD, from this very paffage of Scripture in the next chapter of this Epiftle, This is the love of GOD, that we keep his commandments a. As if because the Apoftle would there include all the external effects virtually in the principle, it was therefore fit to exclude the principle it felf by the external effects. Nor indeed was there ever any time or age wherein the heart and life of practical religion and godliness were fo openly ftruck at, as in our days, by the perverse notions of fome, and the fcorns of others: as if it was thought a very feasible thing to jeer religion out of the world; and that men ought to be ashamed to profess love to GOD, because they can have the impudence, and be fo daring as to laugh at this and fuch like things.

WE are therefore fo much the more concerned to beftir our felves, and to look more narrowly into the very grounds and bottom of our own practice in the ways of religion. We are to confider whether indeed we have a reason to oblige us to be godly, yea or no; and especially is it incumbent upon us to defend this great principle and fummary of all godliness, THE LOVE OF GOD. For certainly if we must yield to the extinction

Hobbes. 2 John v. 3: