A25478:31
A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…
A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically resolved by sundry ministers
London: printed for Thomas Cockerill, 1676
Sermon 1: Quest. How may we attain to love God with all our Hearts, Souls, and Minds? Serm. I.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
It is not a natural love, for that may as well be brutish, as rational; and divine love is transcendently rational.
It is not a (merely) moral love, for that consists in a mean, but divine love is always in an extreme.
It is not a (meerly) moral love, for that consists in a mean, but divine love is alwayes in an extream.
Divine love is a compound of all the former, but it adds infinitely more to them, than it borrows of them. Divine love is supernaturally natural; it turns Moral virtues into Spiritual graces. It engageth men to attempt as much for the glorifying of God, as all the creatures besides, from the highest Angel to the most insensible Stone.
2. What it is love to God? Methinks a lax description best suits my design. This Divine love, 'tis the unspeakable enlargement of the heart towards God:1 'tis the ecstasy and ravishment of the heart in God; 'tis the Soul's losing its self in God: 'tis the continual working of the heart towards God: every faculty of the Soul is actually engaged: The Mind is musing and plodding how to please God, and enjoy him; the Will is graciously obstinate, the policy of hell cannot charm it off it's object; the Affections are all Passions in their eager motions towards God; the Conscience is a busy-body necessitating the whole man to a jealous watch. I said this love 'tis the enlargement of the heart towards God; when the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, 'tis as the breaking of a Ball of lightning, it sets all on a flame immediately. It is the unspeakable enlargement of the heart towards God; the highest Rhetoric is too flat to express it, as is obvious in that Song of Songs, that Song of loves. I have no way to set this out unto you, but by words, the plainest and most intelligible expressions I can give you, shall be by several similitudes, which I shall pursue till they leave me to admiration: I shall borrow Metaphors from things without life, from Plants, from sensitive Creatures, from Man.