ON HOSEA XIV. -- VERSES 2, 3. 117 in the earth strikes back a heat into the air again. The woman in the gospel, having much forgiven her, loved much, Luke vii. 47. " We love him because he loved us first ;" and love will not suffer a man to wrong the things which he loves. What man ever threw away jewels or money when he might have kept them ? except when the predominant love of something better made these things comparatively hateful, Luke xiv. 26. What woman could be persuaded to throw away her sucking child from her breast unto wild beasts to devour it ? Our love to Christ and his law will not suffer us to cast him off, or to throw his law behind our backs. New obedience is ever joined unto pardon of sin and repentance for it, by the method of God's decrees, by the order and chain of salvation, and ariseth out of the internal character and disposi- tion of a child of God. We are not sons only by adoption, appointed to a new inheritance ; but we are sons by regeneration also, partakers of a new nature, designed unto a new life, joined unto a new head, descended from a new Adam, unto whom therefore we are in the power of his resurrection, and in the fellow- ship of his sufferings to be made conformable, Phil. iii. 10. And the apostle hath many excellent and weighty arguments to enforce this upon us : " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God ; when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory," Col. iii. 1 -4. 1. Our fellowship with Christ ; " we are risen with him :" what he did cor- porally for us, he doth the same spiritually in us. As a Saviour and Mediator, he died and rose alone ; but
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