from this fountain. It is this which actuates all our powers and faculties, keeps the world awake, and prevents a general lifelessness and inactivity.

As God has implanted in us this principle of self-love, the spring of all our movements, so has he also endowed us with reason and thought for the direction of it. Reason and thought hold out the light, and shew us the way to happiness, while the instinct of self-love drives us on in the pursuit of it. The latter without the former would be no better than blind instinct and the former without the latter would be but useless speculation, and dull lifeless theory.

Now self-love, while it is under the guidance of reason directing it to true and solid happiness, is rightly employed, and may be called a rational and commendable self-love. One general rule may serve to distinguish the true and rational self-love, from that which is culpable and vicious. Self-love directed to and pursuing what is, upon the whole, and in the last result of things, absolutely best for us, is innocent and good: and every deviation from this is culpable and vicious; more or less so, according to the degree and the circumstances of it. I choose thus to state the matter with reference to ourselves and our own good, because this rule is the clearest from all ambiguity, as well as most certain in itself: besides that it is best adapted to the principles of those whom I am now concerned with; and is indeed such a rule as all other rules and measures must at length resolve into. If any man should rather state the rule this other way, or to this effect, self-love pursuing the dictates of religion and virtue, &c. it would at length amount to the same thing, and in the mean while would be more ambiguous. For if it be asked whether a man should adhere to religion and virtue, on supposition that upon the whole, and in the last result, he should become the more miserable for doing it; it must be answered, that it is neither reasonable nor possible for a man, with his wits about him, to do it which comes to the same as to say, that there could be no virtue or religion in so doing. Be a thing ever so good otherwise, yet if it be not so likewise with respect to ourselves, first or last. it loses all its influence upon us; and cannot be the object of a rational and deliberate choice. It might seem perhaps reasonable, in the nature of the thing, (if we may be allowed to put an impossible case,) for a man to submit to die, and to be eternally extinct or miserable, for saving of many thousand souls;

because this is preferring a public to a private interest, the whole to a part. And yet this is what no one could deliberately choose, while he has a principle of self-love remaining, neither could it be reasonably expected of him. We can never be obliged to choose any thing which upon the whole, and in the last result, tends to our destruction: or to refuse any thing which upon the whole, and finally, tends to our happiness. For this would be obliging us to hate ourselves, which is impossible: it would be obliging us to something under pain of being happy upon refusal, and in hopes of being rewarded with misery, which is all over contradictory and absurd; and therefore no obligation. But the wisdom and goodness of Almighty God is highly conspicuous in this affair; that whereas the general happiness of the whole rational or intellectual system is what himself proposes as the noblest end, and holds forth to all his creatures; yet since no one can pursue any good but with reference to himself, and as his own particular good, God has been pleased so to connect and interweave those two, one with the other, that a man cannot really pursue his own particular welfare without consulting the welfare of the whole. His own private happiness is included in that of the public: and there is, in reality, no such thing as any separate advantage or felicity, opposite to the felicity of the whole, or independent of it.

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Now, to resume our thread of discourse, we may depend upon it as a safe and certain rule, that "self-love, pursuing what is upon the whole, and in the last result of things, absolutely "best for us, is innocent and good." This will take in all manner of virtues, and all degrees of them; and withal carries a sufficient motive along with it; namely, that into which the force of every obligation is finally resolved. From this general principle, thus asserted and vindicated, I may now proceed to particular acts and instances of an innocent and commendable self-love, for the clearer illustration of it.

It is evident to every considering man, that we are not born for an hour, or for a day, or for this life only, but for endless ages. And therefore the wisest course for any man to take, is to secure an interest in the life to come. This is certainly, upon the whole, and in the last result, absolutely best for him. He may love himself, in this instance, as highly and as tenderly as he pleases. There can be no excess of fondness, or self-indulgence, in respect of eternal happiness. This is loving himself in the

best manner and to the best purposes. All virtue and piety are thus resolvable into a principle of self-love. It is what Scripture itself, in other words, resolves them into, by founding them upon faith in God's promises, and hope of things unseen.

In this way, it may be rightly said, that there is no such thing as disinterested virtue. It is with reference to ourselves, and for own sakes, that we love even God himself. "We love "him, because he first loved us b:" that is, because we love ourselves. He is our sovereign good, our prime felicity; and we most truly love ourselves in loving him.

Some Divines of the mystic way, not distinguishing carefully between esteem and love, pretend that God is to be loved for his own sake only, for his own intrinsic excellency and perfections. But this is a difference rather in words than in things. We do love God for his own sake, when we love him not for any low regards, or little sinister ends; when we love him as being infinitely more lovely, that is, infinitely more able to make us happy, than all things else besides. And yet this is loving him for our own sakes, and with regard to ourselves, who have our happiness in him, so amiable, and so kind a Being. In a word, to love God is in effect the same thing as to love happiness, eternal happiness; and the love of happiness is still the love of ourselves.

But will it not (may some ask) be giving the preference to ourselves, if we love God only for our own sakes? I answer, No. If we were to make our own selves the object of our happiness, pretending to be happy from ourselves alone, then indeed we might be thought to give the preference to ourselves: but while we acknowledge our own nothingness, and our entire dependance upon God for our felicity, we give him the preference in our love, as desiring him above all things. This matter may be made something clearer by distinguishing the double senses of the word love, which sometimes stands for love of desire, and sometimes for love of good-will. For instance, when Isaac is said to have loved savoury meats, or the Psalmist is said to have loved God's law, precepts, testimonies, &c. the meaning is, that they desired those things, found delight, pleasure, or complacency in them. This is love of desire. But when we are commanded to love our neighbours, or to love one another, the meaning is, that we wish well to each other, and be ready to do any kindnesses This is love of good-will. To apply this distinction to

we can.

our present purpose: our love of God is most strictly and properly of the former kind; it is love of desire, rather than love of good-will: for God is above our best wishes; and it is not easy to say what good-will towards a Being infinitely happy, and not capable of any accession or improvement to his perfections, means. If then our love of God be properly love of desire, it is plainly loving him as being the object of our desire, and the source of our happiness; and so it is loving him for our own sakes. And there is no room for the question, Whether we give him the preference to ourselves in this kind of love : for preference must be supposed between object and object, not between the subject of such happiness, that is, ourselves, and God the object of it. And when we are said to love God above all things, the meaning strictly is, that we prefer him, not before ourselves, (who pretend not to be the objects of our own happiness,) but before all other objects, before all other things which might be supposed to contribute any thing to our happiness.

It may be said, perhaps, that there is a certain sense wherein we may be conceived to love God with a love of good-will: that we may bear a kind of good-will towards him, when we wish that his name may be exalted, his laws observed, and his glory promoted; and that we ought to wish for this in the first place, even before our own happiness, and without any regard to it. But these fine-spun notions, however they may appear in theory, and carry a resemblance of the most resigned devotion and most exalted piety, yet are, I am afraid, much too high for practice, and perhaps hardly reconcilable with the reason and nature of things. For not to mention that all good-will towards God and his glory is really, in the result, nothing else but good-will towards the creature, which is alone capable of receiving any advantage, or benefit, from a display of God's glory; I say, not to mention this, we may venture to assert further, that it is utterly impraeticable for any reasonable creature, having a principle of self-love, to act at all without some motive, that is, without a view to his own good, present or future. And however any man may pretend to abstract from all self-regards, and to fix his aims, wishes, and desires upon God's glory, and that only; yet amidst all that seeming disregard to his own welfare, this thought will perpetually steal in, that the further he runs off from self, the more impossible will it be for him to fail of being happy; the more

he shuns it, the surer he must be of it: so that, at length, this seems to be only going a little more round about, to bring him back again to the same point: so necessary is it to regard ourselves in every thing which is so true, that if any person should conceive that he had no interest at all to serve, here or hereafter, in the belief of a God, but that he must be for ever miserable on the supposition that there is one; his first and most natural wish would be that there were none. And it is upon this only principle that any thinking man can be an Atheist.

In opposition to the doctrine here laid down, some fanciful men have pretended that any view to our own interest and happiness is mercenary, and takes off from the merit of piety and virtue; leaving it less worthy of esteem as if it were not suf ficient for perfect love to cast off fear, but it must cast out hope too. Virtue, they say, must be entirely disinterested, separate not only from all low and sordid views of temporal things, but from all views whatever, all prospect of advantage, and chosen for its own sake only. But these gentlemen mistake the maxim of the old philosophers, from whom they seem to have borrowed their notion, attending more to the sound of words, than to the truth of things. The meaning is no more than this, that true virtue is not, cannot be founded or any low temporal regards; neither ought it to be forsaken, however unserviceable it may sometimes prove to our worldly interests or pleasures. True and solid virtue is indeed disinterested, in respect of any mean and sinister views, but not entirely and absolutely so. Those who pretend to follow virtue for virtue's sake, yet are used to heighten and magnify the delight and pleasure attending it: they plead that it is agreeable to nature, as food is to the appetite; as beauty, order, and symmetry to the eye or to the mind: that is, it carries temporal pleasure and satisfaction along with it; and it is for the sake of that pleasure they embrace and follow it. And what else is this, but choosing virtue upon a principle of self-love, self-love pursuing a present satisfaction, and making temporal good its end? The difference then is only this; that they who practise virtue without any regard to a life to come, do it upon an inferior motive, of meaner, because present, consideration: and there will be so much the less of virtue in it as it comes short of that noble and generous principle of faith, by which a man can be content to wave all thought of present pleasure and advantage, and to wait for a reward hereafter. In a word then, there is no