2. To do nothing for vain-glory, but wholly for the interests of religion, and these articles we believe; valuing not at all the rumours of men, but the praise of God, to whom, by faith, we have given up all our intellectual faculties.

3. To be content with God for our judge, for our patron, for our Lord, for our friend; desiring God to be all in all to us, as we are, in our understanding and affections, wholly his.

Add to these; 4. To be a stranger upon earth in our affections, and to have all our thoughts and principal desires fixed upon the matters of faith, the things of heaven. For, if a man were adopted heir to Cæsar, he would (if he believed it real and effective) despise the present, and wholly be at court in his father's eye; and his desires would outrun his swiftest speed, and all his thoughts would spend themselves in creating ideas and little fantastic images of his future condition. Now God hath made us heirs of his kingdom, and co-heirs with Jesus: if we believed this, we would think, and affect, and study accordingly. But he, that rejoices in gain, and his heart dwells in the world, and is espoused to a fair estate, and transported with a light momentary joy, and is afflicted with losses, and amazed with temporal persecutions, and esteems disgrace or poverty in a good cause to be intolerable; this man either hath no inheritance in heaven, or believes none; and believes not that he is adopted to be the son of God, the heir of eternal glory.

5. St James's sign is the best: "Show me thy faith by thy works." Faith makes the merchant diligent and venturous, and that makes him rich. Ferdinando of Arragon believed the story told him by Columbus, and therefore he furnished him with ships, and got the West Indies by his faith in the undertaker. But Henry the Seventh of England, believed him not; and therefore trusted him not with shipping, and lost all the purchase of that faith. It is told us by Christ, "He that forgives, shall be forgiven;" if we believe this, it is certain we shall forgive our enemies; for none of us all but need and desire to be forgiven. No man can possibly despise, or refuse to desire, such excellent glories, as are revealed to them, that are servants of Christ, and yet we do nothing, that is commanded us as a condition to obtain them. No man could work a day's labour without faith: but because he believes he shall have his wages at the day's or week's end, he does his duty. But he only believes, who does that thing which other men in the like cases do, when they do believe. He that believes money gotten with danger, is better than poverty with safety, will venture for it in unknown lands or seas: and so will he that believes it better to get heaven with labour, than to go to hell with pleasure.

6. He that believes, does not make haste, but waits patiently till the times of refreshment come, and dares trust God for the morrow, and is no more solicitous for the next year, than he is for that which is past and it is certain, that man wants faith, who dares be more confident of being supplied, when he hath money in his purse, than when he hath it only in bills of exchange from God; or that relies more upon his own industry than upon God's providence, when his own industry fails him. If you dare trust to God, when the case, to human reason, seems impossible, and trust to God then also out of choice, not because you have nothing else to trust to, but because he is the only support of a just confidence, then you give a good testimony of your faith.

7. True faith is confident, and will venture all the world upon the strength of its persuasion. Will you lay your life on it, your estate, your reputation, that the doctrine of Jesus Christ is true in every article? Then you have true faith. But he that fears men more than God, believes men more than he believes in God.

8. Faith, if it be true, living, and justifying, cannot be separated from a good life: it works miracles, makes a drunkard become sober, a lascivious person become chaste, a covetous man become liberal; "it overcomes the world-it works righteousness,' and makes us diligently to do, and cheerfully to suffer, whatsoever God hath placed in our way to heaven.

The means and instruments to obtain faith are, 1. A humble, willing, and docile mind, or desire to be instructed in the way of God: for persuasion enters like a sunbeam, gently, and without violence: and open but the window, and draw the curtain, and the Sun of Righteousness will enlighten your darkness.

2. Remove all prejudice and love to every thing, which may be contradicted by faith. "How can ye believe (said Christ,) that receive praise one of another?" An unchaste man cannot easily be brought to believe, that, without purity, he shall never see God. He that loves riches, can hardly believe the doctrine of poverty and renunciation of the world: and alms and martyrdom and the doctrine of the cross, are folly to him that loves his ease and pleasures. He that hath within him any principle contrary to the doctrines of faith, cannot easily become a disciple.

3. Prayer, which is instrumental to every thing, hath a particular promise in this thing. "He that lacks wisdom, let him ask it of God:" and, "If you give good things to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give his Spirit to them that ask him?”

4. The consideration of the Divine omnipotence and infinite wisdom, and our own ignorance, are great instruments of curing all doubting, and silencing the murmurs of infidelity.

5. Avoid all curiosity of inquiry into particulars, and circumstances, and mysteries: for true faith is full of ingenuity and hearty simplicity, free from suspicion, wise and confident, trusting upon generals, without watching and prying into unnecessary or indiscernible particulars. No man carries his bed into his field, to watch how his corn grows, but believes in the general order of providence and nature; and, at harvest, finds himself not deceived.

6. In time of temptation, be not busy to dispute, but rely upon the conclusion, and throw yourself upon God; and contend not with him but in prayer, and in the presence, and with the help, of a prudent untempted guide and be sure to esteem all changes of belief, which offer themselves in the time of your greatest weakness (contrary to the persuasions of your best understanding) to be temptations, and reject them accordingly.

7. It is a prudent course, that in our health and best advantages, we lay up particular arguments and instruments of persuasion and confidence, to be brought forth and used in the great day of expense; and that especially in such things in which we used to be most tempted, and in which we are least confident, and which are most necessary, and which commonly the devil uses to assault us withal, in the days of our visitation.

* 2 Cor. xiii. 5. Rom. viii. 10.

OF CHARITY, OR THE LOVE OF GOD.

LOVE is the greatest thing that God can give us; for himself is love : and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the law. It does the work of all other graces, without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation, and without opportunity; so does the love of God: it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace, without any other arms but those of love. It is a grace that loves God for himself; and our neighbours, for God. The consideration of God's goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from him, may be, and, most commonly, are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to a union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory.

We need no incentives by way of special enumeration to move us to the love of God; for we cannot love any thing for any reason real or imaginary, but that excellence is infinitely more eminent in God. There can but two things create love, perfection and usefulness to which answer on our part 1. Admiration; and, 2. Desire; and both these are centered in love. For the entertainment of the first, there is in God an infinite nature, immensity or vastness without extension or limit, immutability, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, holiness, dominion, providence, bounty, mercy, justice, perfection in himself, and the end, to which all things and all actions must be directed, and will at last arrive. The consideration of which may be heightened, if we consider our distance from all these glories: our smallness and limited nature, our nothing, our inconstancy, our age like a span, our weakness and ignorance, our poverty, our inadvertency and inconsideration, our disabilities and disaffections to do good, our harsh natures and unmerciful inclinations, our universal iniquity, and our necessities and dependencies, not only on God originally and essentially, but even our need of the meanest of God's creatures, and our being obnoxious to the weakest and most contemptible. But, for the entertainment of the second, we may consider, that in him is a torrent of pleasure for the voluptuous; he is the fountain of honour for the ambitious; and inexhaustible treasure for the covetous. Our vices are in love with fantastic pleasures and images of perfection, which are truly and really to be found nowhere but in God. And therefore our virtues have such proper objects, that it is but reasonable they should all turn into love; for certain it is, that this love will turn all virtue. For in the scrutinies for righteousness and judgment, when it

1. Love dus al ings i nes piram de bored persia ; in performs al is ommandments: and this is que of the greatest instants and arga

his commandments Love is sokovic

2. It does al the famous and were senćcacies of his pleasure, hom we jone; and this is an argument dé a great degree of it. The first instance is it makes the inne annegres : but this gives a greatters and siaparty wit The first is the least, and less than in cannot do our duty; but, without this woood, we cannot oume to perferace. Great love is also plast and inquisitore in the instatones of its expressad

3. Love goes away al things, that so he may advance the interest of the beloved person: it rões al that he wocit have rebered, and spends itwif in each real spirations, as it is enabled with a He never loved God, that will quit any thing of his region to save his money. Love is always Eberal and excntirative.

4. It suffers al things that are imposed by its beloved, or that can happen for his sake; or that intervene in his service, cheerfully, sweety, willingly; exporting that God should turn them inte gooi, and instruments of Sanity,Charity bopeth all things, endureth a things. Love is patient and content with any thing, so it be together with its beloved.

5. Love is also impatient of any thing that may displease be beloved person; hating all sin as the enemy of its friend; for love contracts all the same relations, and marries the same friendships and the same hatreds; and all affection to a sin is perfectly inconsistent with the love of God. Love is not divided between God and God's enemy: we must love God with all our heart; that is, give him a whole and undivided affection, having love for nothing else, but such things which be allows, and which be commands, or loves himself.

6. Love endeavours for ever to be present, to converse with, to enjoy, to be united with its object; loves to be talking of him, reciting his praises, telling his stories, repeating his words, imitating his gestures, transcribing his copy in every thing; and every degree of union and every degree of likeness is a degree of love; and it can endure any thing but the displeasure and the absence of its beloved. For we are not to use God and religion, as men use perfumes, with which they are delighted when they have them, but can very well be without them. True charity is restless, till it enjoys God in such instances in which it wants him : it is like hunger and thirst, it must be fed, or it cannot be answered: and nothing can sup ply the presence, or make recompense for the absence of God, or of the effects of his favour and the light of his countenance.

7. True love in all accidents looks upon the beloved person, and observes his countenance, and how he approves or disapproves, and accordingly, looks 4 or cheerful. He that loves God, is not displeased at those accidents,

* 1 Cor. xiii.

which God chooses; nor murmurs at those changes, which he makes in his family; nor envies at those gifts he bestows; but chooses as he likes, and is ruled by his judgment, and is perfectly of his persuasion; loving to learn where God is the teacher, and being content to be ignorant or silent, where he is not pleased to open himself.

8. Love is curious of little things, of circumstances and measures, and little accidents; not allowing to itself any infirmity, which it strives not to master, aiming at what it cannot yet reach, desiring to be of an angelical purity, and of a perfect innocence, and a seraphical fervour, and fears every image of offence; is as much afflicted at an idle word, as some at an act of adultery, and will not allow to itself so much anger, as will disturb a child, nor endure the impurity of a dream. And this is the curiosity and niceness of divine love: this is the fear of God, and is the daughter and production of love.

THE MEASURES AND RULES OF DIVINE LOVE.

BUT because this passion is pure as the brightest and smoothest mirror, and, therefore, is apt to be sullied with every impurer breath, we must be careful, that our love to God be governed by these measures.

1. That our love to God be sweet, even, and full of tranquillity: having in it no violences or transportations, but going on in a course of holy actions and duties, which are proportionable to our condition and present state; not to satisfy all the desire, but all the probabilities and measures of our strength. A new beginner in religion hath passionate and violent desires; but they must not be the measure of his actions: but he must consider his strength, his late sickness and state of death, the proper temptations of his condition, and stand at first upon his defence; not go to storm a strong fort, or attack a potent enemy, or do heroical actions, and fitter for giants in religion. Indiscreet violences and untimely forwardness are the rocks of religion, against which tender spirits often suffer shipwreck.

2. Let our love be prudent and without illusion: that is, that it express itself in such instances, which God hath chosen, or which we choose ourselves by proportion to his rules and measures. Love turns into doating, when religion turns into superstition. No degree of love can be imprudent, but the expressions may: we cannot love God too much, but we may proclaim it in indecent manners.

3. Let our love be firm, constant, and inseparable; not coming and returning like the tide, but descending like a never-failing river, ever running into the ocean of Divine excellency, passing on in the channels of duty and a constant obedience, and never ceasing to be what it is, till it comes to be what it desires to be: still being a river, till it be turned into sea and vastness, even the immensity of a blessed eternity.

Although the consideration of the divine excellences and mercies be infinitely sufficient to produce in us love to God (who is invisible, and yet not distant from us, but we feel him in his blessings, he dwells in our hearts by faith, we feed on him in the sacrament, and are made all one with him in the incarnation and glorification of Jesus ;) yet, that we may the better enkindle and increase our love to God, the following advices are not useless.