both add new strength to the former arguments with those who have been at all wrought on by them, and will also be of weight with those whom the former motives may have laid no hold of, as reaching to all men who have any regard to their eternal salvation.

Now the sinfulness of proposing to ourselves such opposite ends as the salvation of our souls and the gratification of our lusts, the obliquity of sharing our affections equally between heaven and earth, the unlawfulness of dividing our obedience betwixt such opposite masters as God and mammon, will appear from the inconsistency of such double intentions, such divided affections, such mixed obedience, with that sincere love of God which the gospel hath plainly made the necessary condition of our salvation.

And first the sinfulness of such double intentions is evident from its contrariety to that love of God which the gospel expressly requires.

When our Saviour was asked with an evil intention by a lawyer which was the great commandment of the Mat. xxii. law, he, who was the eternal Lawgiver, and therefore must know on which of his own laws he himself laid the greatest stress, and which therefore ought with men to be of the greatest weight, said unto him, and by him to all who should ever make the same inquiry with better intentions,. Thou shalt love the Lord thy Ver. 37, 38. God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind: this, he tells us, is the first and great commandment; the first in order and in dignity; the first to be laid down, as the foundation of all other precepts; and the first and chief to be practised, as that without which the performance of all other duties will be unacceptable. This was the first commandment of the law, and this is still the first commandment of the gospel on this, with the other, concerning the love of

our neighbour, hang all the law and the prophets; and on these two also depend all the gospel and the apostles. But on this first depends that other concerning the love of our brethren; so that, in the last resort, on this one hangs all the law and the gospel. Now, whatever be the full import of this fundamental precept, whether it is to be understood in the most rigorous sense of which the words are capable, or whether it admits of a more favourable construction; whether we keep strictly to the very letter of it, and make God the sole object of our love, exclusively of all other beings, or whether we construe it with some latitude, and make God no more than the chief object of our love, in preference to all other beings; either of these expositions of the precept sufficiently proves the iniquity of that double-mindedness which we are now concerned to expose as sinful, and the necessity of that purity of heart which we are now engaged to prove a thing absolutely requisite to salvation. Some persons of eminent piety and great zeal for the honour of God, whose affections and whose thoughts are raised much above the common level, have thought it clear, from the letter of this commandment, that God ought not only to be the principal, but the sole object of our love; that we are by this first and greatest law required to love God so entirely, as that we must love nothing else with a love of desire, though it should be only with subordination to him; that no one can be said, with any tolerable sense, to love God with all his heart and all his soul who only loves him above all other things, at the same time allowing other things a share, though a much inferior and much smaller share, in his love; that therefore, if we would truly come up to the sense of this commandment, we are bound to withdraw every degree of love or desire from the crea

ture: for that we may as well worship the creatures as love them; that to love the creature, though but relatively to God, is to give that love to the creature which is proper to God; that such relative love of God is like the relative worship of the papists, and as much idolatry as that; in short, that he who desires or loves any thing besides God, whatever he pretends, or however he deceives himself, doth not truly love God.

Now if these doctrines are at the bottom as solid as they seem pious; if they are as consistent with the analogy of other scriptures, as they are with the letter of this precept; if they give us the sense intended by the Lawgiver in this first and great commandment, and not barely the sense of which according to grammatical construction the words of the law are capable; then the sinfulness of dividing our affections equally betwixt the Creator and the creature is plainly proved; because if God alone is to be beloved, if the least degree of love is to be withdrawn from every other object, then must an equal desire of worldly and eternal happiness, and the seeking of this world's goods as earnestly as the kingdom of God and its righteousness, be much more inconsistent with the true love of God, and much more strictly prohibited in this first and great commandment. But it must be owned that most interpreters, as well ancient as modern, have thought that this commandment is not to be strained to so high a pitch as to forbid all degrees of love to the creature, but only such degrees of affection as make them come in competition with the Creator; they therefore understand by this precept, not that God alone is to be beloved by us, but that he is to be beloved above all things; that nothing is to beloved comparatively with him; nothing but by way of relation and subordination to him: that we then love God SMALRIDGE, VOL. II.

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with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, when we prize nothing so much as God in our understanding; when we cleave to nothing so much as to him in our wills; when we desire nothing so fervently as him in our affections; when in our actions we pursue nothing but in relation to his glory, and in subordination to his will declared unto us by his holy laws.

Now this interpretation, if it doth not quite come up to the letter of the commandment, yet certainly it raises the duty to as great an height as is perhaps possible for human nature to reach, or as it is required of a good Christian to come up to. For temporal blessings are promised to good men as a reward of their obedience, and may therefore be an object of their desire: we are commanded to pray for them, and therefore may lawfully have some degree of affection for what we ask we are bid to look upon them as the gift of God, and therefore must acknowledge them to be in some measure good, since they are the gracious effects of divine goodness: we are to thank God for bestowing them upon us, which we shall be less disposed to do, if we look upon them as noways amiable, noways desirable, noways contributing to our happiness: we are required to use industry in the procurement of these things, which industry would be very ill employed, if these temporal enjoyments had nothing in them which might engage our affections: in short, the desire of these things is natural, and therefore cannot be sinful; it is irresistible, and therefore it is not to be conquered by us; it is implanted by God in the frame and constitution of our beings, and therefore cannot be thought to be forbidden by the same God in the body of his laws.

If we examine things closely, we shall, I believe, find, that the dispute betwixt those who make God

the sole, and those who make him the principal object of our love, those who deny any thing besides God to be good and desirable, and those who allow other things also to be good and amiable, differs rather in expression than in notion, or at least that the difference between them is merely in speculation, and can have no influence at all upon our Christian practice. For this controversy in divinity is nothing else but the renewal of an old controverted point in philosophy. Some philosophers of old, considering that man was made up of body and soul, made the happiness of man to consist in the perfections of both: they were at the same time aware of the preeminence of the soul above the body; and therefore taught, that much more care was to be taken of the former than of the latter. Good health, freedom from pain, and a perfect use of their senses they reckoned to be good for their bodies, and to be for their own sakes truly desirable: honour, riches, esteem, friends, and other outward advantages, they looked upon to be in their way also good, and, where they could be got and kept without injuring their virtue, to be desired. These goods of the body and fortune they did not think equal with the goods of the mind, and therefore taught that they were not so eagerly to be aimed at, so much to be beloved, so industriously to be courted, as those greater goods: if indeed both could be had together, they thought both to be worthy of their wishes and endeavours; but if the goods of the mind were not to be purchased but by the loss of their bodily or worldly goods, they thought these were willingly to be quitted for the easier attainment of the other; for that though they were in themselves good and desirable, yet in comparison to virtue, which was the greatest good, they were trivial and contemptible.