Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. And hence the second part of the Exhortation is, to something which concerns us with a respect to God.

1. If God be eternal, How worthy is he of our choicest affections, and strongest desires of communion with him? Is not every thing to be valued according to the greatness of its Being? How then should we love him, who is not only lovely in his nature, but eternally lovely; having from everlasting all those perfections centred in himself, which appear in time? If every thing be lovely, by how much the more it partakes of ⟨p. 202⟩the nature of God who is the chief Good, how much more infinitely lovely is God, who is superior to all other goods, and eternally so? Not a God of a few minutes, months, years or millions of years; not of the dregs of time or the top of time, but of Eternity; above time, unconceivably immense beyond time: The loving him infinitely, perpetually, is an act of homage due to him for his eternal excellency: We may give him the one, since our Souls are immortal, though we cannot the other, because they are finite: Since he encloseth in himself all the excellencies of Heaven and Earth for ever, he should have an affection, not only of time in this wo•••, but of eternity in the future; and if we did not owe him a love for what we are by him, we owe him a love for what he is in himself; and more for what he is, than for what he is to us: He is more worthy of our affections because he is the eternal God, than because he is our Creator; because he is more excellent in his nature than in his transient actions: The beams of his goodness to us, are to direct our thoughts and affections to him; but his own eternal excellency, ought to be the ground and foundation of our affections to him. And truly, since nothing but God is eternal, nothing but God is worth the loving; and we do but a just right to our love, to pitch it upon that which can always possess us and be possessed by us; upon an Object that cannot deceive our affection, and put it out of countenance by a dissolution