IIOW TO DO GOOD TO 3I.1NY. 545 verily that it is good. How many Both the, church suffer by, while they prosecute their mistakes, who yet do much good in promoting the common truth which-Christians are agreed in ! 2. He that will do good to all or many, must have an unfeigned love to them. Hatred is mischievous; and neglect is unprofitable. Love is the natural fountain of beneficence. ,Love earnestly long- eth to do good; and delighteth in doing it: it maketh many to be as one, and to be as readyto helm others -as each member of the body is to help the rest. Love maketitanothe^'s wants, sufferings, and sorrows, to be our own: and who is not killing to help him- self? Love is a principle ready, active, ingenuous, and constant; it studieth to dogood, and would still dq more : it is patient with the infirmities of others, which'men Void of love do aggravate into odiousness, and make them their .excuse for all their neglects, and their pretense for all their cruelties. Could yoq make all the slanderers, backbiters, revilers, desliiaers, persecutors, to love their neighbors as themselves, you may easily judge what would be the effect; and whether they would revile, or persecute, or imprison, ' or ruin themselves, or study how to slake themselves odious or suborn perjured witnesses against themselves. 3. Yea, he that will do good to many, must love many better than himself, and prefer the common good much before his own, and seek his own in the common ,.vellàre. He that lovethgood -, as good, will best love the best ; and an honest old Roman would have called him an unworthy beast that preferred his estate or life before the. common welfare. To be ready to do, suffer, or die, for their country, was a virtue which all extolled: A narrow- spirited, selfish man will serve others río further than it serveth himself; ór, at least, will stand tr:th his own safety or prosperity. He will -turn as the weathercock, and 'be for them that are for his worldly interest. I confess that God oft useth such for cominon good: but it is by raising such storms as would sink them with the ship, and leaving them no great hope to escape by being false, or by permitting such vilianies as threaten their own interest. A covetous father may be against gaming and prddigality in his chil- dien : the men of this world are wise in their generation: many that have abbey lands will be against Popery; and even atheists, and licentious glen, may be loath to be slaves to politic priests, and to come under confession, and perhaps the inquisition; and those that !lave not sinned themselves into madness or ¡Joss delusions, will be loath to set up a foreign jurisdiction, and become the sub- jects of an unknown pldest, if they can help it. God often useth vice against vice ; and Vimworldly, selfish men were' the country's or the church's helpers, it mustsuffer, or trust to miracles. But. yet there is no trust to be put in these raen further than VOL, H. 69
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