That which I shall at present discourse upon is this : —
Observation. Love, and its exercise, is the principal grace and duty that is required among, and expected from, the saints of God, especially as they are engaged in church- fellow ship.
I shall not prove it in general, but speak to these three things: — I. I shall show you the nature of this love that is thus signalized in the gospel precept. II. Give you the reasons of the necessity and importance of it, by mentioning some of them the Scriptures give. III. Lay down some directions for its practice : —
I. Concerning the first we may observe, that the love here intended
speak his ability, and the confidence reposed in him by the leading men of his day. The savour of his piety yet remains in his works; which consist chiefly of sermons, and his bulky but precious commentary on Job. He had some share in the pre- paration of an English-Greek Lexicon for the New Testament; and his qualifica- tions for the task must have been considerable, when they extorted from Anthony Wood the commendation of their author as " a learned and zealous Noncon- formist."
Before his death, his congregation had been for some years worshipping in Leadenhall Street. The church under the care of Owen had been in the habit of assembling for worship at no great distance from them. About four months after the death of Caryl, the two churches united. It appears that, previously to the union, Owen's congregation consisted only of 36 members; in the Leadenhall Street congregation there were 136 communicants. In this small number, how- ever, amounting only to 172, there were many whose names deserve to be held in remembrance for their rank in society and public services, and still more for their eminent Christian worth. — See " Life of Owen," vol. i. p. xc.
On the 5th of June 1673 the two congregations met together for the first time under the ministry of Owen; and it was in these circumstances he preached this sermon, — very suitable to the occasion, and rich in suggestions for the cultivation of Christian unity and love. — Ed.
VOL. IX. 17
258 GOSPEL CHARITY.
is the second great duty that was brought to light by the gospel. There is nothing of it in the world, neither as to the degree nor as to the knowledge of it, but what proceeds from the gospel. The world neither hath it nor knows what it is. Variance, strife, wrath, entered by sin ; for when we fell off from the love of God, and from his love to us, it is no wonder if we fell into all hatred and variance among ourselves. The love of God was originally, in the state of inno- cency, the bond of perfection : when that was broke, all the creation fell into disorder, — all mankind, in particular, into that state described by the apostle, Tit. iii. 3, " Living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another/' There is carnal and natural love still in the world, that follows necessarily upon natural relations; and the same is in some degree in brutes themselves. There is also a love that arises from a society in sin, in pleasure, — from a suitableness of humour in conversation, or of design as to political ends ; to which heads you may reduce all the love in the world : but all these are utter strangers from this evangelical love. And therefore, when it was brought to light by the gospel, there was nothing so much amazed the heathen world as to see this new love among Christians. It was even a proverb among them : " See how they love one another ! " To see persons of different sorts, different nations, tempers, degrees, high and low, rich and poor, all knit together in love, was the great thing that amazed the heathen world. And I shall show you the grounds of it afterward. You may likewise observe, that this love is the means of commu- nion between all the members of the mystical body of Christ, as faith is the instrument of their communion with their head, Jesus Christ. And, therefore, our apostle doth seven or eight times in his epistles join faith and love together, as the entire means of the communion and fruitfulness of the ntystical body of Christ. And in one place he hath so ordered his words, to show their inviolableness and indissolu- bleness, that you must make a distribution of them to gather their right sense. It is in Philemon, verse 5, ''"Hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints." A man would think that both the objects relate to both the duties, — faith and love towards Christ, and towards all the saints. But though Christ be the object of our love also, the saints are not the object of our faith; so that you must make a distribution of the words: " Hearing of thy faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ, and of thy love towards all the saints." But the apostle so places them to show how indissoluble these things are, that they must go together; — where the one is, there will be the other; and where the other is not, there that will not be. It is therefore the life, and soul, and quickening form1 of all duties that are performed among believers toward one