2. Consider the freeness of God's love. The value of all benefits ariseth from the necessity of him that receiveth, and the good-will of him that giveth. God wanted not us, our love is no benefit to him ; but we wanted him, we are undone without him. Yet he hath more delight in pardoning than we in salvation, and he is more ready to give than we to ask.i He often calleth upon us to call upon him ; as if he were afraid we would not ask, or not enough, or not soon enough, or not often enough. A man would think that our wants should be importunate enough to put us upon requests, and that we needed not enforcements to prayer ; yet you see God doth not only prevent the request, but make the prayer, and stirreth us up to utter it. But we are not only needy creatures, but guilty creatures; and that God should love us ! When we were in our blood and filthiness, it was ' a time of loves,' Ezek. xvi. 7. This is the great miracle of divine love, that a time of loathing is a time of loves. And we will wonder at it more if we consider the active and endless hatred of his holiness against sin, and therefore why not against sinners ? The holiness of his nature and essence sets him against them ; and natural antipathies and aver- sions can never be reconciled, as a man can never be brought to de- light in a toad, or a lamb in a wolf. And consider again his infinite wisdom. We may love that which is not lovely, because we are often blinded by inordinate affection ; but now God's love is not blind and overcome with the vehemency of any passion, as man's is. This maketh the wonder, there is no blindness and passion in him that loveth, and yet the thing that is loved is vile and uncomely.
3. The frequency of the expressions of his love. It would weary the arm of an angel to write down God's repeated acts of grace : Rom. v. 16, ' The free gift is of many offences unto justification.' We carry loads of experiences with us to heaven. God's book of remembrance is written within and without. This will be our wonder and amazement at the last day, to see such huge sums cancelled with Christ's blood : every day pardoning mercy is put in : our past lives are but a constant experience of our sinning and God's pardoning. We are weary of
^ ' Dii multa dedere neglecti.'
VeR. 2.] UPON THE EPISTLE OF JUDE. 77
every thin, 2j but sin ; we care never weary of that, because it is natural to us. The very refreshments of life by continuance grow burden- some : meat, drink, music, sleep, the chiefest pleasures, within a while need to be refreshed with other pleasures ; man is a restless creature, and loveth shift and change. But now we are never weary of sin ; we have it from the womb, and we keep it to the grave ; and yet all this while we subsist upon God. We subsist upon him every moment ; we have life, and breath, and hourly maintenance from him, whom we thus grieve and offend. Dependence should beget observance, but in us it is otherwise. As a dunghill sendeth out vapours to obscure the sun that shineth upon it, so do we dishonour the God of our mercies, and grieve him day by day. How long hath God been multiplying pardons, and yet free grace is not tired and grown weary !
4. Consider the variety of the expressions of his love. We have all kind of mercies ; we eat mercy, we wear mercy, we are ' encom- passed with mercy as with a shield.' The apostle saith, 2 Peter i. 3, ' He hath given us all things that pertain to life and godliness ; ' that is, as I would interpret, all things that are necessary to life natural, to life spiritual, to maintain grace here, and to bring us to glory here- after. He that hath an interest in Christ, his portion is not straitened ; he hath a right to all things, and a possession of as much as provi- dence judgeth needful; therein we must not be our own carvers. A man of mortified affections thinketh he hath provision enough if he hath things necessary to life and godliness; and will you not love God for all this? Certainly we do not want obligations, but we want affections. Look, as too much wood puts out the fire and causeth smoke, so the multitude and daily experience of God's mercies lesseneth the esteem of them. We have but too many mercies, and that maketh us unkind and neglectful of God. What shall I tell you of sabbaths, ordinances, food, raiment ? If a man would be but his own remembrancer, and now and then come to an account with God, he would cry out, '0 the multitude of thy thoughts to us- ward, how great is the sum of them ! ' Ps. cxxxix. 17. Or if a man would but keep a journal of his own life, what a vast volume would his private experiences make ; how would he find mercy and himself still grow- ing up together! Shall I show you a little what a multitude of mercies there are? I will not speak of the higher and choicer mercies, such as concern the soul, but of such as concern the body. What a deal of provision is there for the comfort and welfare of the body ! I instance in these mercies, partly because they are so common that they are scarce noted; partly because carnal men prize the body most; they prefer it above the soul. Now the Lord would leave them with- out excuse ; they that love the body shall not want arguments to urge them to love God, since he hath bestowed so much of his love and care upon the body, to gratify all the senses not only for necessity but delight. There is light for the eye ; the poorest man hath glorious lamps to light him to his labours ; for the taste, such variety of refreshments of a different sap and savour ; for the smell, delicious infusions into the air from flowers and gums and aromatic plants ; for the ears, music from birds and men ; and all this to make our pilgrimage comfortable, and our hearts better. How many creatures