stand connected with the love of God, and Christ, and the Gospel. But some of its highest actings I have seen in a sweet tempered infidel, who never discovered malice against any object but the Gospel of Christ. Further, if humanity were holy love it would in all persons wish its objects the best kind of happiness, that of communion with God. And lastly, it would take the highest complacency in that benevolence which makes God its centre, and would long to see this temper universal. But in these three important respects it fails. It acts vigorously in many an infidel without exciting one solitary wish that men may enjoy communion with God, without producing the least complacency in religion, or any desire to see it prevail, without checking a violent opposition to the religion of Christ in every form. This decisive proof of unholiness lies against all these natural principles. You will find them all in violent opposers of God and the Gospel. You might have found them all in the Jews, of whom our Saviour said, that they had both seen and hated both Him and His Father. You might have found them all in Adam immediately after the fall, before he began to be restored by grace, when it will be acknowledged that he was totally depraved. Indeed in a slavish subjection to these and other limited affections, which had raised their objects to the place of God, his whole depravity consisted. Further, if these principles were holy, we should expect to see the love of God and real godli ness prevail exactly in proportion to their strength. But so far from this you often find most of them in greater strength in infidels and libertines of mild and generous dispositions, than in others who, with tempers naturally contracted and sour, are real Christians. It is another conclusive proof of the unholiness of all these principles, that they not only are unaccompanied with the love which the divine law requires, but have no tendency to produce it. The instincts, for instance, have no tendency to carry forth the heart to God and His Kingdom, because affections limited in their very nature have no tendency to become unlimited. And no love to God can enter into an affection that is not universal benevolence, because to love God is to be like Him, and God is universal love. If these instincts restrain selfishness, they do not diminish the whole strength of the limited affections that oppose God. Of course they have no tendency to weaken the body of sin. They may garnish that body, they may vary its forms, but they still leave it in full life. Show me an unsanctified worldling who possesses all these principles in the highest degree, and has cultivated them with the most studious care, and I will show you one who loves himself as inordinately as any other sinner, though his pride, and education, and the manners of cultivated society, may have thrown that selfishness into new forms, and drawn over it the vail of good breeding. I will show you one whose pride is in full strength, whose idolatrous love of the world is not a whit abated, and whose unbelief has never opened its eyes. And with these four grand sins of a depraved soul in full vigour, what has he gained, in point of real sanctification, by all his natural principles? A little paring and polishing of the extremities, but the pulse of sin still beats strong at the heart. The most that he can boast is love to man. But is that love such as the divine law requires? The love contemplated in the Second Table is not natural, but "the fruit of the spirit," the offspring of regenerating grace: "Beloved let us love one another, for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." "We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren." "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments."* So long as men retain "the carnal mind" that "is enmity against God," they exercise none of that charity to their fellow men, not even to good men, which is required. In every point of view they want that "love" which "is the fulfilling of the law." And this wanting, what are all their natural affections? This wanting, miruculous powers are nothing; to give all their goods to feed the poor and their bodies to be burned, is nothing. Still their inscription is, Destitute of that "holiness without which no man shall see the Lord." Gal. v. 22. 1 John iii. 14. and iv. 7. and v. 2. † 1 Cor. xiii. 1-3 |