The blessedness of the righteous discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 /The blessednesse of the righteous discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 /

He argues from the less to the greater; and this is the ground upon which his argument is built: That the loving of God is a matter of greater difficulty, and from which the Spirit of m•n is more remote, then the loving of his neighbour. And he withal insinuates an account why it is so; Gods remoteness from our sense, which is indeed a cause, but no excuse. For is our so gross sensuality no sin? that nothing should affect our hearts but what we can see with our eyes? as if our sense were the only ⟨p. 217⟩measure or judg of excellencies. We are not all flesh, what have we done with our souls? if we cannot see God with our eyes, why do we not with our minds? at least so much of him we might, as to discern his excellency above all things else: How come our souls to lose their dominion, and to be so slavishly subject to a ruling sense? But the reason less concerns our present purpose; that whereof it is the reason; that implied assertion, that men are in a less disposition to the love of God then their neighbour, is the sad truth we are now considering. There are certain homiletical virtues, that much adorn and polish the nature of man; Urbanity, Fidelity, Justice, Patience of Injuries, Compassion towards the Miserable, &c. and, indeed, without these, the world would break up, and all civil societies disband; if, at least, they did not in some degree obtain. But in the mean time men are at the greatest distance imaginable from any disposition to society with God. They have some love for one another; but none for him. And yet it must be remembered that love to our neighbour, and all the consequent exertions of it, becoming duty by the Divine Law; ought to be performed as acts of obedience to God; and therefore ought to grow from the stock and root of a Divine Love; I mean love to God. They are otherwise but Spurious Virtues, Bastard Fruits (men gather not Grapes of Thorns, &c.) they grow from a Tree of another kind, and what ever semblance they may have of the true, they want their constituent form, their ⟨p. 218⟩life and soul.¹ Though love to the brethren, is made a character of the regenerate state, of having past from death to life; 'Tis yet but a more remote, and is it self brought to trial by this higher, and more immediate one, and which is more intimately connatural to the new creature,