_Answ._ It is better to the highest ends, God's glory, and the universal order, to be a punished man, than to be nothing (when God will have it so); because punishment, as to those highest ends, is good; though it is not best for the poor miserable sinner: but the same cannot be said of sin. It is indeed better also to those highest ends, to be a man though a sinner (while God continueth humanity); but not to be a man and a sinner: for the latter implieth some good to be in the sin which hath no good, and therefore God neither causeth it, nor willeth it, though he permit it. But though a sinful man is better than no man to God's ends, it followeth not, that to be a man is better than to be a good man.
_Object._ X. If that be best and most amiable which is most to the glory of God, then it is more amiable to be a sinner in hell torment glorifying his justice, than not to be at all, or to be a brute.
_Answ._ It is neither of these that is offered to your love and choice, but to be holy. All good is not matter of election; but that good which is in hell is not the sin, but the punishment. For the sin doth reputatively, and as much as in it lieth, rob God of his glory, and punishment repaireth it. Therefore love the punishment if you can, and spare not, so you love holiness better; for that would honour God more excellently, and please him more.
_Object._ XI. If I must love to be like God, I must love to be great, and I must love the greatest as most like him.
_Answ._ You must love to be like him in those perfections which you are capable of, and the ends and uses of your proper nature: therefore you must be desirous to be like him in your measure, even in such power and greatness as are suitable to the nature and ends of a rational soul. Not in such strength as he giveth a horse, or such magnitude as he giveth a mountain, which is not to be most like him; but in the vital activity and power of an intellectual free agent: to be powerful and great in love to God and all his service, and in all good works, to be profitable to the world, to be lively and ready in all obedience, strong to suffer, and to conquer sin and all temptations; in a word, to be great and powerful in wisdom and true goodness. Thus seek even in power to be like God in your capacities.
_Object._ XII. God himself doth not love men only for their goodness, nor love that best which is best. For he loveth his elect while enemies and ungodly; and he telleth Israel he loved them because he would love them, and not because they were better than others; and in the womb he loved Jacob best, when he was no better than Esau.
_Answ._ 1. Distinguish between God's complacence and benevolence. 2. Between the good that is present, and foreseen good with a present capacity for it.
1. God had a greater benevolence to Jacob than Esau, and to the Israelites than to other nations that were perhaps not much worse. And it is not for our goodness that God decreeth to make us good, or to give us a double proportion of any of those mercies, which he giveth not as Rector, but as Dominus and Benefactor, as an absolute Owner and free Benefactor. And with this love of benevolence he loveth us when we are his enemies, that is, he purposeth to make us good; but this benevolence is but a secondary love and fruit of complacency, joined with the free, unequal distribution of his own.
2. But for complacency, which is love in the first and strictest sense, God so loveth the wicked though elect, no further than they are good and lovely, that is, (1.) As they have the natural goodness of rational creatures: (2.) And as they are capable of all the future service they will do him, and glory they will bring him; (3.) And as his infinite wisdom knoweth it fit to choose them to that service. Or, if the benevolence of election do go before his first complacence in them above others, as being before his foresight that they will serve and love better, yet still this proper love, called complacence, goeth not beyond the worth of the thing loved.
_Object._ Doth God love us complacentially in Christ, beyond the good that is in us?
_Answ._ Not beyond our real and relative good, as we are in ourselves, by his grace, and as we are in Christ related to him, and both ways such as demonstrate the divine perfections, and shall love, and glorify, and please him for ever.
So much for the opening of the true nature of love to God, ourselves, and others, and of man's ultimate end, and of the nature of holiness and goodness, and those mysteries of religion which are involved in these points.