richest benefits; unless we see him as an all-sufficient good, we shall never love him with our whole heart: The affection to so unseen and spiritual a being as God is, can never rise high where the esteem is but low: Where the love ought to be superior to all other loves, the esteem must be transcendent.

II. The affectionate and supreme love of God, presupposes some hope of an interest to be obtained in his favour, and the highest advantages to be derived from him. If I lie down in despair of his mercy, I cannot look on God, even in all his supreme excellencies, with an eye of love. The devil, the worst of creatures, knows more of the transcendent glory and worth of the great God, than the wisest and the best of mortals here on earth: But he knows there is no hope for him to obtain an interest in his favour, and therefore he continues in his old enmity. His rebellion has cut him off from all expectation of divine mercy, and therefore he cannot love this God of infinite excellency. A dreadful state indeed for an intelligent being, that he cannot love what he knows to be infinitely amiable.

Hope is the most alluring spring of love. Terror and slavish fear stand opposite to this holy affection: Such fear has torment in it, and so far as we fear God as an enemy, we are not made perfect in his love; 1 John iv. 18. We love him, because we hope that he has, or he will love us: It is the assurance, or at least the expectation of some interest in God that engages the most affectionate love: And, perhaps, the words of my text may have some reference hereto, when it is said, thou shalt love the Lord thy God. When we believe or hope that the Lord is our God, we cannot but love him.

III. This love of the heart implies a strong inclination of the will toward God, a steady bent of soul toward this blessed Author of our being and happiness: It implies a choice of him above and beyond all things else, as our most desirable portion and our eternal good. If any thing in this world be the chosen portion of our souls, if any thing beneath and besides God be made our chief hope, our support, and our life, our hearts will run out in strongest affections toward it, for it is our chief happiness; and then we can never love God as it becomes a creature to love his Creator.

The holy Psalmist was a most affectionate lover of his God, and, how often does he call him the "portion of his inheritance, his refuge, and his hope? Ps. xvi. 5. cxlii. 5. and in Ps. lxxiii. 26. Thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. Blessed saint! He had chosen God for his

eternal all.

Under this head I should add also, that where the will is thus attached to God, the soul will exert itself in continual wishes for the honour of God in the world: It is the nature of love to

wish well, and to do good to the beloved object; and since God can receive no other good from us, but the manifestation of his excellencies and honours among men, we shall earnestly seek and wish this glory of God, if we are sincere lovers of him.

IV. This affectionate and supreme love of God includes in it an out-going of the heart after him, with most intense longings, and most pleasing sensations! This is what we are wont to call more eminently the love of desire, and the love of delight, which I shall speak of more at large in the following discourse. The heart of a sincere good man is restless till it find God, that is, till it obtain a solid hope and persuasion of his love, a growing conformity to him, and constant delight in him. The heart is not easy without God: It acquiesces and rests in him alone. If I have God for my friend, and my everlasting portion, I have all: If he be absent, O that Í knew were I might find him! Job xxiii. 3. And if he manifest his presence with his divine influences," Come back, O my soul, from amongst the creatures; come back, and return to God thy rest." Ps. cxvi. 7.

V. Where the love of God reigns in the affections it will command all the other powers of nature, and all the rest of the passions to act suitably to this sovereign and ruling affection of love: The eye will often look up to God in a way of faith and humble dependance: The ear will be attentive to his holy word: The hand will be lifted up to heaven in daily requests: The knees will be bended in humble worship: All the outward powers will be busy in doing the will of God, and promoting his glory: He that loves God, will keep his commandments, and fulfil every present duty with delight: He will endeavour to please God in all his actions, and watch against and avoid whatsoever may offend him. And while the several outward powers are thus engaged, all the inward affections of nature will be employed in correspondent exercises. Supreme love will govern all the active train of human passions, and lead them captive to chearful obedience.

This brings me to the next thing I proposed: But before I enter upon it I would make these four reflections, which will conclude the present discourse.

[This discourse may be divided here.]

Reflection 1. How vain are all their pretences to love God who know little or nothing of him, who are neither acquainted with the glorious perfections of his nature, nor with the wondrous discoveries of his grace! Love must be founded in knowledge. How vain are their pretences to love God with all their heart, and in a supreme degree, who never saw him to be a being of transcendent worth, or surpassing excellency, and capable of

making them for ever happy; who value their corn, and their wine, and their oil, their business, their riches, or their diversions more than God and his love! How senseless and absurd is the pretence to love God above all things, if we do not resolve to live upon him as our hope and happiness; if we do not chuse him to be our God, and our All, our chief and all-sufficient portion in this world, and that to come! Where the idea of God as a being of supreme excellence doth not reign in the mind, where the will is not determined and fixed on God, as our supreme good, men are strangers to this sacred and divine affection of love. Til this be done, we cannot be said to love God with all the heart.

II. How necessary and useful a practice it is for a christian to meditate often on the transcendent perfection and worth of the blessed God, to survey his attributes, and his grace in Christ Jesus, to keep up in the mind a constant idea of his supreme excellence, and frequently to repeat and confirm the choice of him, as our highest hope, our portion, and our everlasting good! This, will keep the love of God warm at the heart, and maintain the divine affection in its primitive life and vigour. But if our idea of the adorable and supreme excellency of God grow faint and feeble, and sink lower in the mind; if we lose the sight of his amiable glories, the sense of his amazing love in the gospel, the rich promises and his alluring grace, if our will cleave not to him as our chief good, and live not on him daily as our spring of happiness, we shall abate the fervency of this sacred passion, our love to God will grow cold by degrees, and suffer great and guilty decays.

III. How greatly and eternally are we indebted to Jesus the Son of God, who has revealed the Father unto us in all his most amiable characters and glories, and brought him, as it were, within the reach of our love! The three great springs of love to God are these: A clear discovery of what God is in himself; a lively sense of what he has done for us; and a well-grounded hope of what he will bestow upon us. All these are owing chiefly to our blessed Jesus. Let us consider them distinctly :

1. It is he, even the beloved Son of God, who lay in the bosom of the Father, who has made a fuller and brighter discovery to us what God is, what an admirable and transcendent being, a spirit glorious in all perfections. It is true, the light of nature, dictates some of these things to us, and the ancient prophets have given further manifestations. But none knows the Father so as the Son does, and those whom the Son will reveal him; Mat. xi. 27. That blessed person, who is one with the Father, must know him best. That illustrious man, who is so intimately united to God, and in whom dwells all the fulness of the godhead bodily; Col. ii. 9. He whose name is Emanuel, God with us; Mat. i. 23. or God manifest in the flesh; 1 Tim. iii. 16. he must

know the Father with such an exquisite knowledge, as far transcends the reach of all our ideas.

Let it be noted also that the blessed Jesus came down from heaven not only to shew God all-glorious to men, but to make him appear all-lovely and desirable iu the eyes of sinners, by representing him in all the wonders of his compassion, and forgiving mercy. Even a great, a just, and a holy God, is lovely and amiable in the sight of guilty creatures, when he is willing to reconcile the world to himself; in and by his Son Jesus Christ, not imputing to them their iniquities; 2 Cor. v. 19. Such a sight of God, is the first attractive of our love.

2. It is the Son of God who came to inform us what God has done for us, and thereby to engage our love. The reason of man and our daily experience, teach us that he is the author of our being and our blessings: "He causes the sun to shine, and his rain to descend on the earth;" Mat. v. 45. " he gives us fruitful reasons, and fills our hearts with food and gladness;" Acts xiv. 17. But it is Jesus, who has told us the eternal counsels of his Father's love, and what kind designs he formed for our recovery from sin and hell, when, in his own fore-knowledge he beheld us fallen and miserable: He has told us, what eternal and unfailing provision God has made for us, by giving us into the hands of his Son, even into those hands, where he has entrusted the infinite concerns of his own honour; and that he appointed his Son to redeem our lives, by his own bloody death.

This is love glorious indeed, and fit to allure and kindle our warmest affections to God. It is the blessed Son of God himself, who, by liis Father's appointment, has suffered agonies and sorrows of unknown kinds, unknown degrees, for us. He poured out his own soul to death to secure us from the deserved wrath and vengeance of God; he sustained many a painful stroke, to make a way for us to partake of his Father's mercy, and to render the offended Majesty of heaven a proper and more engaging object of our love.

3. Again, it is this same glorious person, the Son of God, who has informed us at large, not only what God has already done, but what he will do for us; and has given us the hope of everlasting blessings. He has confirmed all the words of grace that God spake to men by angels and prophets in former ages; and he has added many a rich and most express promise of a glorious resurrection, and a future state, and set them before us in a divine light, beyond what the prophets or the angels ever knew in ancient times: He has assured returning sinners of the pardon of highest crimes, and the most aggravated iniquities; and he hath secured the everlasting favour and presence of God to all his followers; for by the Father's appointment he is gone to prepare mansions of glory for them; that where he is they may be also; that they may dwell with him and with his Father for ever.

Thus it appears that our everlasting thanks and praises are due to the blessed Jesus, who has laid the foundation of love between an offended God and his guilty creature, man. He has revealed the great God to us, has told us what he is, and has set him before us, in his most amiable glories: He has taught us what wonders of mercy God hath wrought for us already, and what blessings he will bestow on us through the future ages of eternity And thus he hath opened all the springs of love to allure our hearts to God. What christian can withhold his love and praise from so worthy, so divine a benefactor?

IV. I may therefore well add, in the last place, that no person in heaven or earth was so proper to recommend to us this divine virtue, the love of God, as Christ Jesus, our Saviour, who speaks the words of my text: He who who was himself the beloved Son of God, the first favourite of heaven, the highest object of his Father's love, and the best and most perfect lover of his Father: He who was the great peace-maker between God and sinners, the chief minister and messenger of his Father's love to men. If he had not undertook to make peace, we had still continued children of wrath, and in the same state with fallen angels, who are never invited to return to the love of God. There is no prophet, no messenger sent to require or charge them to love God, for there is no priest or peace-maker appointed for them.

Who is so fit a person to urge upon our consciences this blessed command of love to God, as he who came to redeem us from our state of rebellion and enmity to deliver us from the anger of God, and the curse of the law, and everlasting death? Who can give us such pathetic motives, and so powerful a charge to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, as he who came to write his Father's love to us in lines of blood, even his own blood? He whose heart was pierced for the sake of sinful men; he who came to seal the covenant of love between God and man with the anguish of his soul, and the blood of his heart! How all-glorious and well chosen is this messenger of the love and precepts of God! This blessed prophet, who is sent from God to recommend to us eternal duty of divine love; who is also our great high-priest to reconcile us to God! Yet how little success has the message had on the hearts of men! What a sad and just occasion of shame and holy mourning! Forbid it, O God, that such a messenger and such a message should be sent from heaven in vain!

Meditation." What shall I do to become a true lover of God? Since I know there is but one God, I would give up my whole heart to him alone; I would fain have him reign in my affections supreme and without a rival. But let me recollect myself a little, and let me not deny what God and his grace have