selves, in supposing that God has so little value for their love and esteem. For as the nature of love, especially great love, causes him that loves to value the esteem of the person beloved; so that God should take pleasure in the crea ture's just love and esteem will follow both from God's love to himself and his love to his creatures. If he esteem and love himself, he must approve of esteem and love to himself, and disapprove the contrary. And if he loves and values the creature, he must value and take delight in their mutual love and esteem, because he loves not because he needs them.

3. As to what is alleged of its being unworthy of great men to be governed in their conduct and achievements by a regard to the applause of the populace; I would observe, what makes their applause to be worthy of so little regard, is their ignorance, giddiness and injustice. The applause of the multitude very frequently is not founded on any just view and understanding of things, but on humor, mistake, folly and unreasonable affections. Such applause is truly worthy to be disregarded. But it is not beneath a man of the greatest dignity and wisdom, to value the wise and just esteem of others, however inferior to him. The contrary, instead of being an expression of greatness of mind, would shew an haughty and mean spirit. It is such an esteem in his creatures only, that God hath any regard to: For it is such an esteem only that is fit and amiable in itself.

OBJECTION 4. To suppose that God makes himself his ultimate end in the creation of the world derogates from the freeness of his goodness, in his beneficence to his creatures; and from their obligations to gratitude for the good communicated. For if God, in communicating his fulness, makes himself, and not the creatures, his end; then what good he does, he does for himself, and not for them; for his own sake, and not their's.

ANSWER. God and the creature, in this affair of the emanation of the divine fulness, are not properly set in opposition, or made the opposite parts of a disjunction. Nor ought

God's glory and the creature's good to be spoken of as if they were properly and entirely distinct, as they are in the objection. This supposeth, that God's having respect to his glory, and the communication of good to his creatures, are things altogether different: That God's communicating his fulness for himself, and his doing it for them, are things standing in a proper disjunction and opposition. Whereas if we were capable of having more full and perfect views of God and divine things, which are so much above us, it is probable it would appear very clear to us, that the matter is quite otherwise; and that these things, instead of appearing entirely distinct, are implied one in the other. That God, in seeking his glory, therein seeks the good of his creatures. Because the emanation of his glory (which he seeks and delights in, as he delights in himself and his own eternal glory) implies the communicated excellency and happiness of his creature. And that in communicating his fulness for them, he does it for himself. Because their good, which he seeks, is so much in union and communion with himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of God's glory. God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself, and in seeking himself, i. e. himself diffused and expressed, (which he delights in, as he delights in his own beauty and fulness) he seeks their glory and happiness.

This will the better appear, if we consider the degree and manner in which he aimed at the creature's excellency and happiness in his creating the world; viz. the degree and manner of the creature's glory and happiness during the whole of the designed eternal duration of the world, he was about to create ;. which is in greater and greater nearness and strictness of union with himself, and greater and greater communion and participation with him in his own glory and happiness, in constant progression, throughout all eternity. As the creature's good was viewed in this manner when God made the world for it, viz. with respect to the whole of the eternal duration of it, and the eternally progressive union and communion with him; so the creature

object to excite them or draw them forth; but all that is good and worthy in the object, and the very being of the object, proceeding from the overflowing of his fulness.

These things shew that the supposition of God's making himself his last end, in the manner spoken of, does not at all diminish the creature's obligation to gratitude, for communications of good it receives. For if it lessen its obligation, it must be on one of the following accounts. Either, that the creature has not so much benefit by it, or that the disposition it flows from is not proper goodness, not having so direct a tendency to the creature's benefit, or that the disposition is not so virtuous and excellent in its kind, or that the beneficence is not so free. But it has been observed that none of these things take place, with regard to that disposition, which has been supposed to have excited God to create the world.

I confess there is a degree of indistinctness and obscurity in the close consideration of such subjects, and a great imperfection in the expressions we use concerning them, arising unavoidably from the infinite sublimity of the subject, and the incomprehensibleness of those things that are divine. Hence revelation is the surest guide in these matters, and what that teaches shall in the next place be considered. Nevertheless, the endeavors used to discover what the voice of reason is, so far as it can go, may serve to prepare the way, by obviating cavils insisted on by many; and to satisfy us that what the Word of God says of the matter, is not unreasonable, and thus prepare our minds for a more full acquiescence in the instructions it gives, according to the more natural and genuine sense of words and expressions, we find often used there concerning this subject.

must be viewed as in infinite strict union with himself. In this view it appears that God's respect to the creature in the whole, unites with his respect to himself. Both regards are like two lines which seem at the beginning to be separate, but aim finally to meet in one, both being directed to the same centre. And as to the good of the creature itself, if viewed in its whole duration, and infinite progression, it must be viewed as infinite; and so not only being some communication of God's glory, but as coming nearer and nearer to the same thing in its infinite fulness. The nearer any thing comes to infinite, the nearer it comes to an identity with God. And if any good, as viewed by God, is beheld as infinite, it cannot be viewed as a distinct thing from God's own infinite glory.

The apostle's discourse of the great love of Christ to men, Eph. v. 25, to the end, leads us thus to think of the love of Christ to his church, as coinciding with his love to himself, by virtue of the strict union of the church with him. Thus, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might present it to himself a glorious church. So ought men to love their wives, as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself, even as the Lord the church; for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones."

Now I apprehend that there is nothing in this manner of God's seeking the good of the creatures, or in his disposition to communicate of his own fulness to them, that at all derogates from the excellence of it, or the creature's obligation.

God's disposition to communicate good, or to cause his own infinite fulness to flow forth, is not the less properly called God's goodness, because the good that he communicates, is something of himself; a communication of his own glory, and what he delights in as he delights in his own glory. The creature has no less benefit by it; neither has such a disposition less of a direct tendency to the creature's benefit; or the less of a tendency to love to the creature, when the creature comes to exist. Nor is this disposition in VOL. VI.

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