Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The…

THE apostle's discourse of the great love of Christ to men, Eph. 5. 25. to the end, leads us thus to think of the love of Christ to his church; as coinciding with his love to himself, by virtue of the strict union of the church with him. Thus "husbands love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it—that he might present it to himself a glorious church. So ought men to love their wives, as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself—even as the Lord the church; for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones."

Now I apprehend that there is nothing in this manner of God's seeking the good of the creatures, or in his disposition to communicate of his own fullness to them, that at all derogates from the excellence of it, or the creature's obligation.

Now I apprehend that there is nothing in this manner of God's seeking the good of the creatures, or in his disposition to communicate of his own fulness to them, that at all derogates from the excellence of it, or the creature's obligation.

GOD'S disposition to communicate good, or to cause his own infinite fullness to flow forth, is not the less properly called God's goodness, because the good that he communicates, is something of himself; a communication of his own glory, and what he delights in as he delights in his own glory. The creature has no less benefit by it; neither has such a disposition less of a direct tendency to the creature's benefit; or the less of a tendency to love to the creature, when the creature comes to exist. Nor is this disposition in God to communicate of and diffuse his own good, the less ⟨p. 47⟩