A61396:248
A plain discourse upon uprightness showing the properties and privileges of an upright man…A plain discourse upon uprightness shewing the properties and priviledges of an upright man…
A plain discourse upon uprightness showing the properties and privileges of an upright man / by Richard Steele ...A plain discourse upon uprightness shewing the properties and priviledges of an upright man / by Richard Steele ...
London: printed for E. Calvert, 1672
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.
II. The second mark of an upright man is, He chiefly loves God. To love the Lord our God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the strength, is an infallible Character of an upright man. When it comes to be a disputable case between God and Mammon, God and the Belly, God and Relations, God and a right Eye or Hand; if thou cannot find (at least for the most part) thy soul determining for God, over-ruling the case in his behalf, and that thy love to him can make thee contemn the world, and all that is in it; fear nothing, thou hast an upright heart. Try now, do you use the World to enjoy God, or do you make use of God to enjoy the World? 1Do you love him for himself, do you love him like himself, in every thing, above every thing?
- 1He love• thee little, O Lord, that loves any thing with thee, which he loves not for thee Aug.
Object. But how should I know I love him best?
Answ. Hath he, if not the most, yet the heartiest of your thoughts? When ⟨p. 144⟩your ends are raffled to the bottom, do they end at him, or self? *do you love the hours and duties that tend towards him? Are not you troubled that you can love him no more? is not Heaven it self desirable to you on this account, because there you will love him and hate sin, perfectly, and eternally? can you delight in your mercies, when you fear they come not in love? can you live contentedly, under the sense or fear of his absence or displeasure? in a word, doth that please you best, that tends and ends in his honour, though it shame your persons, or cross your other designs? do you dearly affect his blessed word, and those parts thereof that have nothing to commend them to you, but their holiness? not only the Histories of the Bible, but the Doctrine, the Precepts of the Bible: Can you taste more sweetness in a Sermon of Christ, an Epistle of Paul, the hundred and nineteenth Psalm, than in any human writings in the world? Doth the remembrance of your communion with God, and communication from him, more refresh you than the review of other delights?