An answer to the discourse of Mr. William Sherlock, touching the knowledge of Christ,…

Secondly, ¹these men oppose our Love to the person of Christ, to our love to our selves: The first destroys the Reason, and the Object of our Love; and this destroys the principle of it: It is made the character of a wicked man, ²who wants an inward principle of love to God and Christ; That though he seeks to honour God never so much, yet all that he doth, he doth out of love to himself, self-credit, self-ease, self-content, self-safety; he makes himself a God. Hence the same author exhorts sinners: away out of your selves to the Lord Jesus, take hold on him, not with the hand of presumption, and love to thy self, to save thy self; but with the hand ⟨p. 604⟩of Faith and Love to honour him: Here is the strongest difficulty of all to row against the stream, to hate a mans self, (our own souls and eternal Salvation) and then to follow Christ fully: Now is it not an hard case, that before we can love God and Christ, as we ought, we must root out the very principle of all love, that we may learn to hate Salvation and Eternal Happiness, before we can close with Christ for Salvation! This is the strongest difficulty of all; for indeed it is impossible: Love to our selves is the foundation of our love to all other things, even to God himself: He that doth not love himself, will love nothing else; he that hates himself, his own soul, and despises eternal Salvation, will not care for Christ or Salvation by him: All the Motives and Arguments of the Gospel to persuade us to love and fear, and obey God, are founded on self-love; for how is it possible, that we should be affected with a due sense of Gods goodness to us? That we should be excited and quickened by the hopes of such great rewards? That we should be restrained and governed by the fears of punishment? If we did not love our selves, if we did not care what became of us; whether we were ⟨p. 605⟩happy or miserable for ever. It is a vain thing to persuade a man not to love himself: For this is as natural and necessary, as it is for the Fire to burn, or Sun to shine: It is not matter of our choice;

Secondly, ¹