1 any respect to government and subjection, may be said to oblige to moral duty as such, is a question that I am not concerned to determine, as long as God is both Governor and Benefactor, and his government may give the formal, moral obligation, as his benefits provide the greatest materials of the duty though this much I may say to it, that I cannot see but the duty of a beneficiary, as such, may be called moral, as well as the duty of a subject as such; and if it were supposed that two men were absolutely equals as to any subjection, and that one of them should, by kindness, exceedingly oblige the other, all will acknowledge ingratitude to be an unnatural thing; and why that vice may not be called properly moral in a rational, free agent, I am not yet convinced. You will say it is true; but that is because that both those men are subjects to God, whose law obligeth them both to gratitude, and therefore ingratitude is a sin only as against the law of God in nature to which I reply, that I grant God's law of nature maketh ingratitude a sin; and I grant, that a law is properly the instrument of a governor as such; and so, as ingratitude is the violation of a law, it is only a sin against government as such. But I question whether, as love is somewhat different from wisdom and power, and as a benefactor and an attractive good hath the highest, and a peculiar kind of obligation, so there be not something put by God into our nature, which, though it be not formally a law, yet is as obligatory, and as much, if not more than a law, which maketh it more than the duty of a subject to answer love and goodness with gratitude and love; so that if, per impossibile, you suppose that we had no other obligation to God but this of love and goodness (or abstract this from the rest) I question whether it be not most eminently moral, and whether the performance of it do not morally fit us for the highest benefits and felicity, and the violation of it merit not, morally, the rejections of our great Benefactor, and the withdrawing of all his favours to our undoing but in this controversy my cause is not much concerned as I have said, because the same God is our Sovereign also. Sect. 2. The duty which we especially owe to God, in this highest relation, is love; which, as such, is above obedience as such. The difference of understandings and wills requireth government and obedience, that the understanding and will of the superior may be a rule to the subjects: but love is a concord of wills; and so far as love hath caused a concord, there is no use for government by laws and penalties, and therefore the law is not made for a righteous man as such; that is, so far as love hath united his soul to virtue, and separated it from sin, he need not be constrained or restrained by any penal laws, any more than men need a law to command them to eat and drink, and preserve their lives, and forbear self-destruction. But so far as any man is unrighteous or ungodly, that is, hath a will to sin, or cross or averse to goodness, so far he needeth a penal law; which, therefore, all need while they remain imperfect. Nature hath made love and goodness like the iron and the loadstone. The understanding doth not so ponderously incline to truth as the will doth naturally to good; for this being the perfect act of the soul, the whole inclination of nature goeth after it therefore, love is the highest duty, or most noble act of the soul of man; the end and perfection of all the rest.t Sect. 3. The essential act of this love is complacency; or the pleasure of the mind in a suitable good. But it hath divers effects, concomitants, and accidents, from whence it borroweth divers names. Sect. 4. The love of benevolence, as it worketh towards the felicity of another, is the love of God to man, who needeth him; but not of man to God, who is above our benefits, and needeth nothing. Sect. 5. Our love to God, respecteth him either, 1. As our efficient; 2. Dirigent ; 3. Or final Good; which hath accordingly commitant duties. Sect. 6. 1. Our love to God as our chief Good efficiently, containeth in it; 1. A willing, receiving love; 2. A thankful love; 3. A returning, devoted, serving love, which among men amounts to retribution. t * Seneca, (Ep ist. 31,) saith, Quærendum est quod non fiat indies deterius; cui non possit obstari; quo nil melius possit optari; Quid hoc est? Animus sed hic rectus, bonus, maguus. Quid aliud voces, hunc, quam Deum in humano corpore hospitantem? Hic animus tam in equitem Romanum, quàm inservum potest cadere; Quid est eques Romanus? Aut. libertinus? Aut servus? Nomina ex ambitione, aut ex injuriâ nata, subsilire in cœlum ex angulo licet: exurge modo, et te dignum finge Deo, finges autem, non auro, non argento: non potest ex hac materia imago Dei exprimi similis. Plato saith, that man's end is, to be made like God.Laert. in Plat. Socrates said, that God was the best and most blessed; and the nearer any one came in likeness to him, so much was he the better and more blessed. Non potest temperantiam laudare, qui suinmum bonum ponet in voluptate.-Cicero. Sect. 7. 1. An absolute, dependent beneficiary ought with full dependence on his total benefactor, to receive all his benefits with love and willingness. " An undervaluing of benefits, and demurring or rejecting them, is a great abuse and injury to a benefactor. Thus doth the ungodly world, against all the grace and greatest mercies of God they know not the worth of them, and therefore despise them, and will not be entreated to accept them; but take them for intolerable injuries or troubles, as a sick stomach doth its physic and food, 'because they are against their fleshly appetites. An open heart to receive God's mercies with high esteem, beseemeth such beneficiaries as we. Sect. 8. 2. Thankfulness is that operation of love which the light of nature hath convinced all the world to be a duty; and scarce a man is to be found so brutish as to deny it and our love to God should be more thankful than to all the world, because our receivings from him are much greater than from all. * Sect. 9. 3. Though we cannot requite God, true gratitude will devote the whole man to his service, will, and honour, and bring back his mercies to him for his use, so far as we are able. Sect. 10. II. Our love to our dirigent benefactor, is, 1. A fiducial love. 2. A love well pleased in his conduct. 3. A following love. Though it belongeth to God chiefly as our sapiential Governor, to be the dirigent cause of our lives: yet he doth it also as our benefactor, by a commixture of the effects of his relations. Sect. 11. 1. So infinite and sure a friend, is absolutely to be trusted, with a general confidence in the goodness of his nature, and a particular confidence in the promises or significations of his good-will. Infinite good cannot be willing to deceive or disappoint us: and if we absolutely trust him, it will abundantly conduce to our holiness and peace. Sect. 12. 2. We must also love his conduct, his precepts, and his holy examples, and the very way itself in which he leadeth us. All that is from him is good, and must be loved, both for itself and for him that it cometh from, and for that which it " Gratus sum; non ut alius mihi libentius præstet, priori irritatus exemplo ; sed ut rem jucundissimam faciam.-Senec. Ep. 28. * Credamus itaque nihil esse grato anime honestius. Omnes hoc urbes, omnes etiam ex barbaris regionibus gentes conclamabuut: in tanta judiciorum diversitate, referendam benè merentibus gratiam, omnes uno ore affirmabunt; in hoc discors turba consentiens.-Senec, ib. leadeth to; all his instructions, helps, reproofs, and all his conducting means, should be amiable to us. Sect. 13. 3. Love must make us cheerfully follow him in all the ways, which by precept or example, he is pleased to lead us. And so to follow him, as to love the tokens of his presence, and footsteps of his will, and all the signs of his approbation, and, with an heroic fortitude of love, to rejoice in sufferings, and venture upon dangers, and conquer difficulties for his sake. Sect. 14. III. Our love to God, as our final good, is, 1. A desiring love; 2. A seeking love, and, 3. A full, complacential, delighting love, which is the perfection of us and all the rest; and, accidentally, it is sometimes a mourning love. Sect. 15. 1. Man being put in via, under the efficiency and conduct of love, to final love and goodness, hath his end to intend, and his means to use; and, therefore, love must needs work by desire. Sect. 16. So far as a man is short of the thing desired, love will have some sense of want; and so far as we are crossed in our seekings, and frustrated in any of our hopes, it will be sorrowful. Sect. 17. 2. Man being appointed to a course and life of means to his last end, must needs be employed in those means for the love of that end; and so the main work of this life ist that of a desiring, seeking love." Sect. 18. 3. The complacential, delighting love, hath three degrees; the first, in belief and hope; the second, in foretaste; and the third, in full, inflamed exercise. Sect. 19. 1. The well-grounded hope of the foreseen vision and fruition of the infinite good, which is our end, must needs possess the considerate mind with a delight which is somewhat answerable to that hope. Bene meritos quin colas, nec exorari fas est, neque est excusatio difficultatis : neque æquum est tempore et dic memoriam beneficii definire.- Cicer. z Vos, vos, apello, qui Mercurium, qui Platonem, Pythagoramque sectamini: vosque cæteros qui estis unius mentis, et per easdem vias placitorum inceditis unitate. Audetis ridere nos-- -Quid Plato vester nonne animo surgere suadet è terris, et circa Deum semper (quantum fieri potest) cogitatione ac mente versari? Audetis ridere nos quod animarum nostrarum provideamus saluti? Id est ipsi nobis ? Quid enim sumus homines, nisi animæ corporibus clausæ ? Vos enim nonne omnes pro illarum geritis incolumitatibus curas? Metus ille vos habet ne velut trabalibus clavis affixi, corporibus hæreatis? Quid illi sibi velint secretarum artium ritus, quibus affamini nescio quas potestates, ut sint vobis placidæ, neque ad sedes remeantibus patrias obstacula impeditionis opponant.—Arnob, adv. Gentes, lib. 2. p. 14. Sect. 20. 2. When the soul doth not only hope for its future end, but also at present close with God, sub ratione finis, in the exercise of pure, complacential love, in prayer, praise, or contemplation, he hath some measure of fruition even in via, and a sensible foretaste of his future perfection, according to the degree of this his love. There is a delight that cometh into the mind by the mere foresight and hope of what we shall be, and have, and do hereafter, and this cometh by the means of promise and evidence; and there is also a delight which cometh in upon the present exercise of love itself on God as present; when the soul, in the contemplation of his infinite goodness, is wrapt up in the pleasures of his love, and this is a degree of fruition of our end, before the perfect fruition of it: and, therefore, take notice, that there are these two ways of our comfort in this life. 1. Exploratio juris, the trial of our title. 2. Exercitium amoris, the feasting of the soul in the exercises of love. Sect. 21. 3. The final, perfect act of love will not be in via, but when we have fully reached the end. Sect. 22. This final act is not well expressed by the common word fruition,' because it intimateth that we are the finis cui, ourselves, and that our own enjoyment of God as our felicity, is the finis ultimate-ultimus, which is not true. Sect. 23. Yet is fruition one ingredient into our end, because our final act of love is for ourselves, though not principally. Sect. 24. All the difficulties, de fine hominis, are best resolved by understanding that it is finis amantis, and what that is. The nature of love is an inclination or desire of union or adhesion; and therefore it includeth the felicity of the lover, together with the attractive excellency of the object, and is both gratia amantis and amati simul. But when the lover is infinitely above the object, the lover is the chief end, for his own complacency, though the object have the benefit: and when the object is infinitely better than the lover, the object must be incomparably the chief end, cujus gratia potissimum, though the lover, withal, intend his felicity in fruition." Sect. 25. But if any soul be so far above self-love as to be drawn up in the fervours of holy love, in the mere contemplation of the infinite object, not thinking of its own felicity a Magistris, Diis et parentibus, non potest reddi æquivalens.—Aristot. 9. Ethic. |