SERMON XIII. XIV.
UPON THE LOVE OF GOD.
Everybody knows, you therefore need only just be put in mind, that there is such a thing as having so great horror of one extreme as to run, insensibly and of course into the contrary; and that a doctrine's having been a shelter for enthusiasm, or made to serve the purposes of superstition, is no proof of the falsity of it: truth or right being somewhat real in itself, and so not to be judged of by its liableness to abuse, or by its supposed distance from, or nearness to, error. It may be sufficient to have mentioned this in general, without taking notice of the particular extravagances which have been vented under the pretence or endeavour of explaining the love of God; or how manifestly we are got into the contrary extreme, under the notion of a reasonable religion; so very reasonable as to have nothing to do with the heart and affections, if these words signify anything, but the faculty by which we discern speculative truth.
By the love of God, I would understand all those regards, all those affections of mind, which are due immediately to him from such a creature as man, and which rest in him as their end. As this does not include servile fear, so neither will any other regards, how reasonable soever, which respect anything out of, or besides, the perfection of the Divine nature, come into consideration here. But all fear is not excluded, because his displeasure is itself the
