comprehend; remembering still that he is perfectly good, and our friend as well as our governor. Wisdom, power, goodness, accidentally viewed anywhere, would inspire reverence, awe, love. And as these affections would be raised in higher or lower degrees, in proportion as we had occasionally more or less intercourse with the creature endued with those qualities, so this further consideration and knowledge, that he was our proper guardian and governor, would much more bring these objects and qualities home to ourselves; teach us they had a greater respect to us in particular; that we had a higher interest in that wisdom, and power, and goodness. We should, with joy, gratitude, reverence, love, trust, and dependence, appropriate the character, as what we had a right in, and make our boast in such our relation to it. And the conclusion of the whole would be, that we should refer ourselves implicitly to him and cast ourselves entirely upon him. As the whole attention of life should be to obey his commands, so the highest enjoyment of it must arise from the contemplation of his character, and our relation to it, from a consciousness of his favour and approbation, and from the exercise of those affections towards him, which could not but be raised from his presence. A being who hath these attributes, who stands in this relation, and is thus sensibly present to the mind, must necessarily be the object of these affections. There is as real a correspondence between them, as between the lowest appetite of sense and its object.
That this Being is not a creature, but the Almighty God; that he is of infinite power, and wisdom, and goodness, does not render him less the object of reverence and love, than he would be, if he had those attributes only in a limited degree. The Being who made us, and upon whom we entirely depend, is the object of some regards. He hath given us certain affections of mind, which correspond to wisdom, power, goodness; i.e., which are raised upon view of those qualities. If, then, he be really wise, powerful, good, he is the natural object of those affections
