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our heart, and the love we have to bestow on him; and though it is infinitely due of debt, yet he will take it as a gift—My son, give me thy heart.

Therefore the soul that begins to offer itself to him, although overwhelmed with the sense of its own unworthiness and the meanness of its love, yet may say,

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Lord, I am ashamed of this gift I bring thee; yet, because thou callest for it, such as it is, here it is ; the heart and all the love I have, I offer unto thee; and had I ten thousand times more, it should all be thine; as much as I can I love thee, and I desire to be able to love thee more; although I am unworthy to be admitted to love, yet thou art most worthy to be loved by me, and, besides, thou dost allow, yea commandest me to love thee; my loving of thee adds nothing to thee, but it makes me happy; and though it be true, the love and heart I offer thee, is infinitely too little for thee, yet there is nothing besides thee enough for it."

The Lord, or Jehovah, thy God. There lie the two great reasons of love, το αγαπητον and το ίδιον, Jehovah, the spring of being and goodness, infinitely lovely. All the beauty and excellencies of the creatures are but a drop of that ocean. And thy God, to all of us the author of our life, and of all that we enjoy, that spread forth those heavens that roll about us, and comfort us with their light and motions and influences, and established this earth that sustains us; that furnisheth us with food and raiment, and, in a word, (and it is the apostle's,) that gives us, sony xaι v

τα παντα

Ta wavra-Life, and breath, and all things; and to the believer, his God in a nearer propriety, by redemption and peculiar covenant. But our misery is, the most of us do not study and consider him, what he is in himself and to us, and therefore do not love him, because we know him not.

And thy neighbour as thyself. If we will not confess nor suspect ourselves, how much we are wanting in the former, yet our manifest defect in this will discover it; therefore the apostle, Rom. xiii. 10, and Gal. v. 14, speaks of this as all, because, though inferior to the

other, yet connected with it, and the surest sign of it; for these live and die together. The apostle St. John is express in it, and gives those hypocrites the lie plainly. If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar, &c. We have no real way of expressing our love to God, but in our converse with men, and in the works of love towards them.

Certainly that sweet affection of love to God cannot consist with malice and bitterness of spirit against our brethren. No, it sweetens and calms the soul, and makes it all love every way.

As thyself. As truly both wishing, and, to thy power, procuring his good, as thy own. Consider how much unwilling thou art to be injured or defamed, and have the same thoughts for thy brother; be as tender for him. But how few of us aspire to this degree of charity!

Thy very enemies are not here excluded. If selflove be still predominant in thee, instead of the love of God, then thou wilt make thine own interest the rule of thy love; so when thou art, or conceivest thou art wronged by any, the reason of thy love ceaseth; but if thou love for God, that reason abides still:* "God hath commanded me to love my enemies, and he gives me his example; he does good to the wicked that offend him."

And this is indeed a trial of our love to God: one hath marred thee; that gives thee to think that thou hast no cause to love him for thyself: be it so; selflove forbids thee, but the love of God commands thee to love him. God says, "If thou lovest me, love him for my sake." And if thy love to God be sincere, thou wilt be glad of the occasion to give so good a testimony of it, and find a pleasure in that which others account so difficult and painful.

* Amicus diligendus in Deo, et inimicus propter Deum. Augustine.

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DISCOURSE

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HEBREWS viii. 10:

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.

THE two great evils that perplex sensible minds, are the guiltiness of sin and the power of it; therefore this new covenant hath in it two promises opposite to these two evils, free pardon to remove the guilt of sin, and the subduing of its power by the law of God written in the heart. Of this latter only for the present. Having spoke somewhat of the sense of the law in ten commandments, and of the sum of it in two, this remains to be considered as altogether necessary for obedience, and without which all hearing and speaking, and all the knowledge of it, will be fruitless; though it be made very clear and legible without, we shall only read it, and not at all keep it, unless it be likewise written within.

Observe, 1, The agreement of the law with the gospel: the gospel bears the complete fulfilling of the law, and satisfying its highest exactness in our surety Jesus Christ, so that way nothing is abated; but, besides in reference to us ourselves, though it take off the rigour of it from us, because answered by another for us, yet it doth not abolish the rule of the law, but establisheth it. It is so far from tearing or blotting out the outward copies of it, that it writes it anew, where it was not before, even within; sets it upon the

heart in sure and deep characters. We see this kind of writing of the law is a promise for the days of the gospel, cited out of the prophet Jeremiah, xxxi. 33.

There is indeed no such writing of the law in us, or keeping of it by us, as will hold good for our justification in the sight of God; therefore that other promise runs combined with it, the free forgiveness of iniquity. But again, there is no such forgiveness as sets a man free to licentiousness and contempt of God's law; but, on the contrary, binds him more strongly to obedience; therefore to that sweet promise of the pardon of sin, is inseparably joined this other of inward writing of the law. The heart is not washed from the guiltiness of sin in the blood of Christ, that it may wallow and defile itself again in the same puddle, but it is therefore washed that the tables or leaves of it may be clean, for receiving the pure characters of that law of God which is to be written on it.

Concerning this writing there are three things you may mark: 1, what it is; 2, what its necessity; 3, who is its writer. The writing of the law in the heart is briefly no other but the renewing and sanctifying of the heart by the infusion of grace, which is a heavenly light that gives the soul to know God aright; and that is added here as the same with the writing of the law in the heart, and an illustration of it-They shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest. And this light bringeth heat with it.* That right knowledge of God being in the soul, begets in it love to him; and love is the same with the fulfilling of the whole law it takes up the whole soul-I will put it in their mind, and write it in their hearts. If we will disingtuish these, then it is, they shall both know it and love it; it shall not be written anew in their heads, and go no deeper, but written in their hearts; but we may well take both for the whole soul, for this kind of knowledge and love are inseparable; and where the one is, the other cannot be wanting.

* Lux est vehiculum caloris.

So, then, a supernatural, sanctified knowledge of God is the law of God written in the heart; when it comes and entertains him as holy within it, then it hath not a dead letter of the law written in it, but voμov euxor, νομον εμψυχον, the lawgiver himself; his name and will is engraven on it throughout, on every part of it; all that they know of God shall not be by mere report, and by the voice of others, but they shall inwardly read and know him within themselves; which (by the bye) makes not the public teaching and work of the ministry superfluous to any, even to those that know most of God, but sig nifies only this, that all they that do indeed receive and believe the gospel, are inwardly enlightened by the Spirit of God to understand the things of God, and have not their knowledge on bare trust of others that instruct them, without any particular persuasion and light within; but what they hear of spiritual things, they shall understand and know after a spiritual manner: and the universality of the promise signifies, that this kind of knowledge should be more frequently and more largely bestowed in the days of the gospel, than it was before.

2. The necessity of writing the law on the heart. Although there be in the natural conscience of man some dim characters of the law, convincing him of grosser wickedness, and leaving him inexcusable, of which the apostle speaks, Rom. ii. 15; yet he is so far naturally from the right knowledge of God, and the love of his whole law, that, instead of that knowledge, his mind is full of darkness, Eph. iv. 18; and, contrary to that love, his heart is possessed with a natural enmity and antipathy against the law of God, Rom. viii. 7. There is a law within him directly opposite, which the apostle calls the law of sin, Rom. vii. 23; sin ruling and commanding the heart and whole man, making laws at his pleasure, and obtaining full obedience. Therefore of necessity, before a man can be brought to obey the holy law of God, the inward frame of his heart must be changed, the corrupt law of sin must be *Tolerabis iniquas interiùs leges. Claud.

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