OF THE LOVE OF GOD, AND THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE PASSIONS. DISCOURSE L The Affectionate and Supreme Love of God. Mom xii. 30. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. AMONG all the teachers of religion that have been sent from God to men, the most eminent and illustrious are Moses and Christ ; Moses the servant of the living God, and Christ his only begotten Son. Both of them lay the foundation ofall true reli- gion in the unity ofGod, and both of them make our religion to consistin love. Thus saith Moses in the sixth of Deuteronomy, whence my text is cited, and thus saith the blessed Jesus in the place where my text lies, Hear O Israel, the Lordour Godis one Lord. Thou shalt love him with all thy heart. It is no wonder that all the powers of our natures, with all the utmost extent of our capacities, must be devoted to the love and service of this God, since there is but one, since " is God alone, and there is none besides him ; Is. xliv. ü. He must reign over the heart and the soul, over all our intellectual and our bodily powers, supreme, and without a rival. Though the love ofour neighbour is required by Moses and Christ, as a necesl sarypart of our religion, yet it mustnever stand in competition with the love of our God. Some suppose the supreme and intense degree of this love, to be the whole design of Christ, in recommending the love of God to us in all these four expressions, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, andwith all thy soul, with allthy mind, and with all thy strength, viz. to intimate in general that all the faculties, of nature should be employed in the love and service of God, with the greatest intenseness and full vigour of exercise. But if we should distinguish these sentences, according to the different powers of nature, into so manydifferent significa- tions, I think they may be most naturally thus explained : God must be loved wills all the mind, that is, he must stand highest in xk2
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=