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

WITH respect to the manner in which a virtuous love in created Beings, one to another, is dependent on, and derived from love to God, this will appear by a proper consideration of what has been said; that it is sufficient to render love to any created Being virtuous, if it arise from the temper of mind wherein consists a disposition to love God supremely. Because it appears from what has been already observed, all that love to particular Beings, which is the fruit of a benevolent propensity of heart to Being in general, is virtuous love. But, as has been remarked, a benevolent propensity of heart to Being in general, and a temper or disposition to love God supremely, are in effect the same thing. Therefore, if love to a created Being comes from that temper or propensity of the hea•e, it is virtuous.—However, every particular exercise of love to a creature may not sensibly arise from any exercise of love to God, or an explicit consideration of any similitude, conformity, union or relation to God, in the creature beloved.

WITH respect to the manner in which a virtuous love in created Beings, one to another, is dependent on, and derived from love to God, this will appear by a proper consideration of what has been said; that it is sufficient to render love to any created Being virtuous, if it arise from the temper of mind wherein consists a disposition to love God supremely. Because it appears from what has been already observed, all that love to particular Beings, which is the fruit of a benevolent propensity of heart to Being in general, is virtuous love. But, as has been remark'd, a benevolent propensity of heart to Being in general, and a temper or disposition to love God supremely, are in effect the same thing. Therefore, if love to a created Being comes from that temper or propensity of the hea•e, it is virtuous.—However, every particular exercise of love to a creature may not sensibly arise from any exercise of love to God, or an explicit consideration of any similitude, conformity, union or relation to God, in the creature beloved.

THE most proper evidence of love to a created Being, its arising from that temper of mind wherein consists a supreme propensity of heart to God, seems to be the agreeableness of the kind and degree of our love to God's end in our creation and in the creation of all things, and the coincidence of the exercises of our love, in their manner, order, and measure, with the manner in which God himself exercises love to the creature in the creation and government of the world, and the way in which God as the first cause and supreme