citeth, and naturally tendeth to increase, and praise is the duty in which pure love to God above ourselves and all, even as good and perfect in himself, is exercised. As love is the highest grace, or inward duty; so is praise the highest outward duty, when God is praised both by tongue and life. And as soul and body make one man, of whose existence generation is the cause; so love and praise, of mouth and works, do make one saint, who is regenerated such by believing in the Redeemer, who hath power to give the Spirit of holiness to whom he pleaseth. But of this more afterwards.

Direct. 8. Exercise your love to man, especially to saints, in doing them all the good you can; and that for what of God is in them. For as this is the fruit of the love of God, and the evidence of it; so doth it tend to the increase of its cause partly as it is an exercise of it, and partly as it is a duty which God hath promised to reward. As it is the Spirit of Christ, even of adoption, which worketh both the love of our Father, and our brethren in us; so God will bless those that exercise love, especially at the dearest rates, and with the fullest devotedness of all to God, with the larger measures of the same Spirit.

CHAP. XIX.

Exhort. 5. Place your Comforts in Health and Sickness in Mutual Divine love. 2. See that you sincerely love God. How known? Doubts answered.

IT is of the greatest importance to all mankind, to know what is best for them, and in what they should place and seek their comforts: to place them most with the proud, in the applauding thoughts or words of others, that magnify them for their wit, their beauty, their wealth, or their pomp and power in the world, is to choose somewhat less than a shadow for felicity, and to live on the air, even an unconstant air. And will such a life be long or happy? Should not a man in misery rather take it for a stinging, deriding mockery or abuse, to be honoured and praised for that which he hath not, or for that which is his snare, or consisteth with his calamity? Would not a malefactor at the gallows take it for his reproach to hear an oration of his happiness? Will

it comfort them in hell to be praised on earth? This common reason may easily call, an empty vanity.

To place our comforts in the delights of sensuality, had somewhat a fairer show of reason, if reason were made for nothing better; and if these were the noble sort of pleasures that advanced man above the brutes; and if they would continue for ever, and the end of such mirth were not heaviness and repentance, and they did not deprave and deceive men's souls, and leave behind them disappointment and a sting. But he is unworthy the honour and pleasures of humanity, who preferreth the pleasures of a beast, when he may have better.

To place our comforts in those riches which do but serve this sensuality with provisions, and leave posterity in as vain and dangerous a state as their progenitors were, is but the foresaid folly aggravated.

To place them in domination, and having our wills on others, and being able to do hurt, and exercise revenge, is but to account the devils happier than men, and to desire to be as the wolf among the sheep, or as the kite among the chickens, or as the great dogs among the little ones.

To place them in much knowledge of arts and sciences, as they concern only the interests of the body in this life; or as knowledge is but the delight of the natural fantasy or mind, doth seem a little finer, and sublime, and manly; but it is of the same nature and vanity as the rest. For all knowledge is for the guidance of the will and practice; and therefore mere knowing matters that tend to pride, sensuality, wealth, or domination, is less than the enjoyment of sensual pleasures in the things themselves. And the contemplation of superior creatures, which hath no other end than the delight of knowing, is but a more refined sort of vanity, and like the mind's activity in a dream.

But whether it be the knowledge or the love of God, that man should place his highest felicity in, is become among the schoolmen and some other divines, a controversy that seemeth somewhat hard. But indeed to a considering man, the seeming difficulty may be easily overcome: the understanding and will and executive activity, are not several souls, but several faculties of one soul; and their objects and order of operation easily tell us, which is the first, and which the last which tendeth to the other as its end, and which object is the most delightful and most felicitating to

the man, viz. That truth is for goodness, and that good as good is the amiable, delectable and felicitating object; and therefore that the intellect is the guide of the will, and faith and knowledge are for love and its delight. And yet that man's felicity is in both, and not one alone, as one faculty alone is not the whole soul, though it be the whole soul that acteth upon that faculty. Therefore the latter schoolmen have many of them well confuted Aquinas in this point.

And it is of great importance to our Christian practice. As the desire of more knowledge first corrupted our nature, so corrupted nature, is much more easily drawn to seek after knowledge than after love. Many men are bookish that cannot endure to be saints: many men spend their lives in the studies of nature and theology, and delight to find increase of knowledge, who are strangers to the sanctifying, uniting, delightful exercise of holy love. Appetite is the pondus' or first spring of our moral actions, yea and of our natural, though the sense and intellect intromit or illuminate the object. And the first act of natural appetite, sensitive and intellectual, is necessitated. And accordingly the appetite as pleased is as much the end of our acts and objects, as the appetite as desiring is the beginning: even as (ʻ si parvis magna,' &c.) God's will as efficient is the absolutely first cause, and his will as done and pleased is the ultimate end of all things. It is love by which man cleaveth unto God as good, and as our ultimate end. Love ever supposeth knowledge; and is its end and perfection. Neither alone, but both together are man's highest state; knowledge as discerning what is to be loved, and love as our uniting and delighting adherence to it.

1. Labour therefore with all your industry, to know God that you may love him; it is that love that must be your comforting grace, both by signification, and by its proper effective exercise. 1. True love will prove that your knowledge and faith are true and saving, which you will never be sure of, without the evidence of this and the consequent effects. If your expressive art or gifts be never so low, so that you scarcely know what to say to God or man, yet if you so far know God as sincerely to love him, it is certainly true saving knowledge, and that which is the beginning of eternal life. Knowledge, belief, repentance, humility meekness, patience, zeal, diligence, &c. are so far and

no further sure marks of salvation, as they cause or prove true love to God and man, predominant. It is a hard thing any otherwise to know whether our knowledge, repentance, patience, zeal, or any of the rest be any better than what an unjustified person may attain: But if you can find that they cause or come from, or accompany a sincere love of God, you may be sure that they all partake of sincerity, and are certain signs of a justified soul. It is hard to know what sins for number, or nature, or magnitude, are such as may or may not consist with a state of saving grace. He that considereth of the sins of Lot, David, Solomon, and Peter, will find the case exceeding difficult: But this much is sure, that so much sin may consist with a justified state, as may consist with sincere love to God and goodness. While a man truly loveth God above all, his sin may cause correction but not damnation; unless it could extinguish or overcome this love. Some question whether that the sin of Lot or David, for the present stood with justification: If it excussed not predominant habitual love, it intercepteth not justification: If we could tell whether any or many heathens that hear not of Christ, have the true love of God and holiness, we might know whether they are saved.

The reason is, because that the will is the man in God's account; and as voluntariness is essential to sin, so a holy will doth prove a holy person. God hath the heart of him that loveth him. He that loveth him would fain please him, glorify him, and enjoy him: and he that loveth holiness would fain live a holy life.

Therefore it is that divines say here, that desire of grace is a certain sign of grace, because it is an act of will and love. And it is true, if that desire be greater or more powerful than our averseness, and than our desire after contrary things, that so it may put us on our necessary duty, and overcome the lusts and temptations which oppose them: though cold wishes which are conquered by greater unwillingness and prevailing lusts, will never save men.

2. And as love is our more comforting evidence, so it is our most comforting exercise. Those acts of religion which come short of this, come short of the proper life and sweetness of true religion. They are but either lightnings in the brain that have no heat; or a feverish zeal, which destroyeth or troubleth, but doth not perform the acts of life; or else

even where love is true, but little, and oppressed by fears, and grief and trouble; it is like fire in green wood, or like young green fruits, which is not come to mellow ripeness. Love of vanity is disappointing, unsatisfactory and tormenting: most of the calamities of this life proceed from creaturelove. The greatest tormentor in this world, is the inordinate love of life; and the next, is the love of pleasures and accommodations of life: which cause so much care to get and keep, and so much fear of losing, and grief for our losses, especially fear of dying; that were it not for this, our lives would be much easier to us (as they are to the fearless sort of brutes). And the next tormenting affection is the love of children, which prepareth men for all the calamity that followeth their miscarriages in soul and body: their unnatural ingratitude, their lewdness and debauchery, and prodigality, their folly and impiety would nothing so much torment us, were they no more loved than other men. And our dearest friends do usually cost us much dearer than our sharpest enemies. But the love of God and satisfying everlasting good, is our very life, our pleasure, our heaven. on earth. As it is purest and highest, above all other because of the object, so is it yet more pleasant and contenting; because it includeth the hopes of more, even of those greater delights of heavenly, everlasting love, which, as a pledge and earnest, it doth presignify. As in nature, conception and the stirring of the child in the womb, do signify that same life is begun, which must shortly appear and be exercised in the open world; so the stirrings of holy love and desires towards God, do signify the beginning of the heavenly life.

Humility and patience, and diligent obedience, do comfort us by way of evidence, and as removing many hindrances of our comfort; and somewhat further, they go. But faith, hope, and love, do comfort us by way of direct efficiency: faith seeth the matter of our joy; love first tasteth it, so far as to stir up desires after it; then hope giveth some pleasure to us in expecting it. And lastly complacential love delightfully embraceth it, and is our very joy itself, and is that blessed union with God and holy souls, the amiable objects of true love, which is our felicity itself. To work out our comforts by the view of evidences and signs, is a necessary thing indeed: but it requireth a considerate search, by an