To come therefore to express moi'e particularly this affection of love, ■which is the disposition that God requires and works in all those that he intends heaven to. Let us search into the nature of this love to God. What it is to love we need not be taught, for all men know it well enough. It is better known, indeed, by the afl'ection than by discourse. What it is to love is known by those that love better than by any books or treatises whatsoever, for it is the aflection that is in all men. Natural love, it is in those that have no grace at all, and civil love in those that are evil men. They know what it is to love by reason of that wild fire, that carnal love that is in them, that transports them. A man may see the nature of it in those as well as in any ; for set aside the extravagant nature of it in such kind of persons, we may see the nature of it. Therefore I will not meddle with that point ; it is needless. I come therefore to this love of God, to shew how this stream of afiection should be carried in the right channel to God, the right object of it, who only can make us happy by loving of him. Other things, by loving of them, they make us worse, if they be worse than ourselves ; for such as we love, such we are. Indeed, our understandings make us not good or ill, but our love doth. By loving God and heavenly things we become good. Our afiections shew what we are in religion.*
There be four things in this sweet affection in true natural love.
1. There is an estimation and valuing of some good thing, especially ichen the love is to a better, irhen it is not between equals. Now there is a great distance between God and us. There is a high esteem in common love ; love will not stoop to nothing. There cannot be love maintained but upon sight of a supposed excellency ; love will not stoop but where it sees some- what worth the valuing. Therefore there is a high esteem of somewhat as the spring of it. And that is the reason that we say a man cannot be wise and love in earthly things, because love will make a man too much to value those things that he that apprehends better would not.
2. In the second place, tliere is a desire to be joined to it, that we call the desire of union.
3. In the third place, upon union and joining to it, there is a resting, a comjylacency and contentinent in the thing to which we are united, for what is happiness itself but fully to enjoy what we love ? When we love upon judg- ment and a right esteem, to enjoy, that is happiness and contentment indeed.
4. In the fourth place, where this true affection is, there is a desire of contentment to the party loved, to j)lease him, to approve ourselves to him, to displease him in nothing. Every one knows that these things are in that affection by nature.
■"^ Cf. President Edwards' treatise on ' The Religious Affections.' — G.
A GLANCE OF HEAVEN. 183
Look to carnal self-lovo, a man may know what it is to lovo ; tlie affec- tion is all one in both. Take a man when ho makes himself his idol, as till a man love God he loves himself above all, he is the idol and the idolater ; he hath a high esteem of himself, and those that do not highly esteem him he swells against them. Again, self-love makes a man desire to enjoy himself, and to enjoy his content, to procure all things that may serve for his contentment.
Now, when the Spirit of God hath purged our hearts of this carnal idolatry of self-love, and self-seeking, and sufficiency, and contentment in himself, then a man puts God instead of himself; grace, and the Spirit doth so ; and instead of highly esteeming of himself, he esteems highly of God, and of Christ, and religion. Then, instead of placing a sufficiency in him- self and the things of this life, and resting in them, there is a placing of sufficiency in God all-sufficient. And instead of seeking his own will and content in all things, mens rnUii pro recjuo, my mind is to me a kingdom,* then a man seeks to give contentment to God in all things, and 'to be a fool, that he may be wise,' 1 Cor. iii. 18, and to have no will and no delight in anything that cannot stand with the pleasure of and obedience to God.
Thus a man, by knowing what his own natural corruption is, he may know what his affection is to better things.
First of all, there must be an estimation, an esteem of God and Christ ; for to avoid misconceit, we take both these to be one : God^our Father in Christ, and Christ. Whatsoever Christ did for us in love, he did it from the love of the Father who gave him. And when we speak of the love of God, we speak of the love of Christ to us. Therefore there must be a high esteem- ing, and valuing, and prizing of God above all things in the world, and of his love.