divine love; for she seeks not her own things. The bitter root of self-love is most hard to pluck up; this strongest and sweetest love of Christ alone doth it actually though gradually. This love makes the soul like the lower Heaven, slow in its own motion, most swift in the motion of that first which wheels it about; so, the higher degree of love, the more swift. It loves the hardest tasks and greatest difficulties, where it may perform God service, either in doing or in suffering for him. It is strong as death, and many waters cannot quench it. (Eccles. viii. 6, 7.). The greater the task is, the more real are the testimony and expression of love, and therefore the more acceptable to God.

2dly, There is in true love, a complacency and delight in God; a conformity to his will; a loving what he loves: it is studious of his will, ever seeking to know more clearly what it is that is most pleasing to him, contracting a likeness to God in all his actions, by conversing with him, by frequent contemplation of God, and looking on his beauty. As the eye lets in this affection, so it serves it constantly, and readily looks that way which love directs it. Thus the soul possessed with this love of Jesus Christ, the soul which hath its eye much upon him, often thinking on his former sufferings and present glory, the more it looks upon Christ, the more it loves; and still the more it loves, the more it delights to look upon him.

3dly, There is in true love a desire; for it is but small beginnings and tastes of his goodness which the soul hath here; therefore it is still looking out and longing for the day of marriage. The time is sad and wearisome, and seems much longer than it is, while it is detained here. I desire to be dissolved (saith St. Paul) and to be with Christ.

(Phil. i. 23.) God is the sum of all things lovely. Thus excellently Gregory Nazianzen expresseth himself, Orat. 1: "If I have any possessions, health, credit, learning, this is all the content"ment I have of them, that I have somewhat I may despise "for Christ, who is totus desiderabilis, et totum desiderabile, "(the all-desirable one, the every thing desirable)." And this love is the sum of all he requires of us; it is that which makes

all our meanest services acceptable, and without which all we offer to him is distasteful. God doth deserve our love, not only by his matchless excellency and beauty, but by his matchless love to us, and that is the strongest loadstone of love. He hath loved me, saith the Apostle, Gal. ii. 20. How appears that? In no less than this, He hath given himself for me. Certainly, then, there is no clearer character of our love than this, to give ourselves to him who hath so loved us, and given himself for us.

This affection must be bestowed somewhere; there is no man but hath some prime choice, somewhat that is the predo minant delight of his soul; will it not then be our wisdom to make the worthiest choice? seeing it is offered us, it is extreme folly to reject it.

Grace doth not pluck up by the roots and wholly destroy the natural passions of the mind, because they are distempered by sin !—that were an extreme remedy to cure by killing, and heal by cutting off; no, but it corrects the distemper in them; it dries not up this main stream of love, but purifies it from the mud which it is full of in its wrong course, or turns it into its right channel, by which it may run into happiness, and empty itself into the ocean of goodness. The Holy Spirit turns the love of the soul towards God in Christ, for in that way only can it apprehend his love: so then Jesus Christ is the first object of this Divine love; he is medium unionis, through whom God conveys the sense of his love to the soul, and receives back its love to Himself.

And if we will consider his incomparable beauty, we may look on it in the Holy Scriptures, particularly in that divine song of loves, wherein Solomon borrows all the beauties of the creatures, dips his pencil in all their several excellencies, to set him forth unto us, who is the chief of ten thousands. There is an inseparable intermixture of love with belief, and a pious affection in receiving Divine truth; so that in effect, as we distinguish them, they are mutually strengthened, the one by the other; and so, though it seem a circle, it is a divine one, and

falls not under censure of the schools' pedantry. If you ask How shall I do to love? I answer, Believe. If you ask, How shall I believe? I answer, Love. Although the expressions to a carnal mind are altogether unsavoury, by grossly mistaking them, yet, to a soul taught to read and hear them, by any measure of that same spirit of love wherewith they were penned, they are full of heavenly and unutterable sweetness.

Many directions, as to the means of begetting and increasing this love of Christ, may be here offered, and they who delight in number may multiply them; but surely this one will comprehend the greatest and best part, if not all of them: Believe, and you shall love; believe much, and you shall love much; labour for strong and deep persuasions of the glorious things which are spoken of Christ, and this will command love. Cer→ tainly, did men indeed believe his worth, they would accord. ingly love him; for the reasonable creature cannot but affect that most which it firmly believes to be worthiest of affection. O! this mischievous unbelief is that which makes the heart cold and dead towards God. Seek then to believe Christ's excellency in himself, and his love to us, and our interest in him; and this will kindle such a fire in the heart, as will make it ascend in a sacrifice of love to him.

The signs likewise of this love may be multiplied, according to the many fruits and workings of it; but in them all, itself is its own most infallible evidence. When the soul finds that all its obedience and endeavour to keep the commands of Jesus Christ, which himself makes its charaeter, do flow from love, then it is true and sincere; for do or suffer what you will, without love all passes for nothing; all are ciphers without it, they signify nothing. (1 Cor. xiii.)

This is the message of the Gospel, and that which the ministry aims at; and therefore the ministers ought to be suitors, not for themselves, but for Christ, to espouse souls to him, and to bring in many hearts to love him. And certainly, this is the most compendious way to persuade to all other Christian duties: for this is to converse with Jesus Christ, and where his

love is, no other incentive will be needful; for love delights in the presence and converse of the party loved. If we are to persuade to duties of the second table, the sum of those is, love to our brethren, resulting from the love of Christ, which diffuseth such a sweetness into the soul, that it is all love, and meekness, and gentleness, and long-suffering.

If times be for suffering, love will make the soul not only bear, but welcome the bitterest afflictions of life, and the hardest kinds of death for his sake. In a word, there is in love a sweet constraint, or tying of the heart to all obedience and duty.

The love of God is requisite in ministers for their preaching of the word; so our Saviour to St. Peter, John xxi. 15. Peter, lovest thou me? then feed my lambs. It is requisite for the people that they receive the truth in the love of it, and that Christ preached may be entertained in the soul, and embraced by faith and love.

You that have made choice of Christ for your love, let not your hearts slip out, to renew your wonted base familiarity with sin; for that will bring new bitterness to your souls, and at least for some time will deprive you of the sensible favour of your beloved Jesus. Delight always in God, and give him your whole heart; for he deserves it all, and is a satisfying good to it. The largest heart is all of it too straight for the riches of consolation which he brings with him. Seek to increase in this love; and though it is at first weak, yet labour to find it daily rise higher, and burn hotter and clearer, and consume the dross of earthly desires.

Receiving the end of your faith.] Although the soul that believes and loves is put in present possession of God, as far as it is capable in its sojourning here, yet it desires a full enjoyment, which it cannot attain to without removing hence. While we are present in the body, we are absent from the Lord, saith the Apostle. And because they are assured of that happy exchange, that being untied and freed of this body, they shall be present with the Lord, having his own word for

it, that where he is they shall be also; this begets such an assured hope, as bears the name of Possession. Therefore it

is said here Receiving the end of your faith.

This receiving likewise flows from faith. Faith apprehends the present truth of the Divine promises, and so makes the things to come, present; and hope looks out to their afteraccomplishment, which, if the promises be true, as faith avers, then hope hath good reason firmly to expect. This desire and hope are the very wheels of the soul which carry it on, and faith is the common axis on which they rest.

In these words there are two things: I. The good hoped for in Christ so believed on and loved; II. The assuredness of the hope itself: yea, it is as sure as if it were already accomplished.

I. As for the good hoped for, it consists, 1. In the nature of it, viz., the salvation of their soul; 2. In a relative property of it, the end of their faith.

1st. The nature of it is salvation, and salvation of the soul: it imports full deliverance from all kinds of misery, and the safe possession of perfect happiness, when the soul shall be out of the reach of all adversaries and adverse accidents, no more subjected to those evils which are properly its own, namely, the conscience of sin, and fear of wrath, and sad defections; nor yet subject to those other evils which it endured by society with the body-outward distresses and afflictions, persecutions, poverty, diseases, &c.

It is called salvation of the soul: not excluding the body from the society of that glory, when it shall be raised and reunited to the soul; but because the soul is of itself an immortal substance, and both the more noble part of man, and the prime subject both of grace and glory, and because it arrives first at that blessedness, and for a time leaves the body in the dust to do homage to its original; therefore it is alone named here. But Jesus is the Saviour of the body too, and he shall, at his coming, change our vile bodies, and make them like his glorious body.