I repented he received me graciously: and therefore I hope, if I do my endeavour, he will totally forgive me. 5th, He helped my slow and beginning endeavours; and therefore I hope he will lead me to perfection. 6th, When he had given me something first, then he gave me more: I hope therefore he will keep me from falling, and give me the grace of perseverance. 7th, He hath chosen me to be a disciple of Christ's institution; he hath elected me to his kingdom of grace; and therefore I hope, also, to the kingdom of his glory. 8th, He died for me when I was his enemy; and therefore I hope he will save me, when he hath reconciled me to him, and is become my friend. 9th, "God hath given us his Son; how should not he with him give us all things else?" All these St. Bernard reduces to these three heads, as the instruments of all our hopes: 1st, The charity of God adopting us; 2d, The truth of his promises; 3d, The power of his performance which if any truly weighs, no infirmity or accident can break his hopes into undiscernible fragments, but some good planks will remain after the greatest storm and shipwreck. This was St. Paul's instrument: "Experience begets hope, and hope maketh not ashamed."

10. Do thou take care only of thy duty, of the means and proper instruments of thy purpose, and leave the end to God: lay that up with him, and he will take care of all that is entrusted to him: and this being an act of confidence in God, is also a means of security to thee.

11. By special arts of spiritual prudence and arguments secure the confident belief of the resurrection, and thou canst not but hope for every thing else which you may reasonably expect, or lawfully desire, upon the stock of the Divine mercies and promises.

12. If a despair seizes you in a particular temporal instance, let it not defile thy spirit with impure mixture, or mingle in spiritual considerations; but rather let it make thee fortify thy soul in matters of religion,

that by being thrown out of your earthly dwelling and confidence, you may retire into the strengths of grace, and hope the more strongly in that, by how much you are the more defeated in this, that despair of a fortune or a success may become the necessity of all virtue.

SECTION III.

Of Charity, or the Love of God.

LOVE is the greatest thing that God can give us, for himself is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to God, for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is "the old," and it is "the new,” and it is "the great commandment,” and it is all the commandments, for it "is the fulfilling of the law." It does the work of all other graces, without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation, and without opportunity; so does the love of God; it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace, without any other arms but those of love. It is a grace, that loves God for himself, and our neighbours for God. The consideration of God's goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from him, may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our love: but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking

to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory.

We need no incentives by way of special enumeration to move us to the love of God, for we cannot love any thing for any reason real or imaginary, but that excellence is infinitely more eminent in God. There can but two things create love, perfection and usefulness; to which answer on our part, 1st, Admiration, and 2d, Desire; and both these are centered in love. For the entertainment of the first, there is in God an infinite nature, immensity or vastness without extension or limit, immutability, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, holiness, dominion, providence, bounty, mercy, justice, perfection in himself, and the end to which all things and all actions must be directed, and will at last arrive. The consideration of which may be heightened, if we consider our distance from all these glories; our smallness and limited nature, our nothing, our inconstancy, our age like a span, our weakness and ignorance, our poverty, our inadvertency and inconsideration, our disabilities and disaffections to do good, our harsh natures and unmerciful inclinations, our universal iniquity, and our necessities and dependencies, not only on God originally and essentially, but even our need of the meanest of God's creatures, and our being obnoxious to the weakest and most contemptible. But for the entertainment of the second, we may consider that in him is a torrent of pleasure for the voluptuous, he is the fountain of honour for the ambitious, an inexhaustible treasure for the covetous. Our vices are in love with fantastic pleasures and images of perfection, which are truly and really to be found no where but in God. And therefore our virtues have such proper objects, that it is but reasonable they should all turn into love for certain it is that this love will turn all into virtue.

For in the scrutinies for righteousness and judgment, when it is enquired whether such a person be a good man or no, the meaning is not, What does he believe, or what does he hope, but what he loves?

The Acts of Love to God are

1. Love does all things which may please the beloved person: it performs all his commandments: and this is one of the greatest instances and arguments of our love that God requires of us; "This is love, that we keep his commandments." Love is obedient.

2. It does all the intimations and secret significations of his pleasure whom we love; and this is an argument of a great degree of it. The first instance is it that makes the love accepted: but this gives a greatness and singularity to it. The first is the least, and less than it cannot do our duty: but without this second we cannot come to perfection. Great love is also pliant and inquisitive in the instances of its expression.

3. Love gives away all things, that so he may advance the interest of the beloved person: it relieves all that he would have relieved, and spends itself in such real significations as it is enabled withal. He never loved God, that will quit any thing of his religion to save his money. Love is always liberal and communicative.

4. It suffers all things that are imposed by its be loved, or that can happen for his sake, or that intervene in his service, cheerfully, sweetly, willingly, expecting that God should turn them into good, and instruments of felicity. Charity hopeth all things, endureth all things'." Love is patient and content with any thing, so it be together with its beloved.

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5. Love is also impatient of any thing that may displease the beloved person, hating all sin as the enemy of its friend: for love contracts all the same

1 1 Cor. 13.

relations, and marries the same friendships and the same hatreds; and all affection to a sin is perfectly inconsistent with the love of God. Love is not divided between God and God's enemy: we must love God with all our heart, that is, give him a whole and undivided affection, having love for nothing else, but such things which he allows, and which he commands or loves himself.

6. Love endeavours for ever to be present, to converse with, to enjoy, to be united with its object, loves to be talking of him, reciting his praises, telling his stories, repeating his words, imitating his gestures, transcribing his copy in every thing; and every degree of union and every degree of likeness is a degree of love; and it can endure any thing but the displeasure and the absence of its beloved. For we are not to use God and religion as men use perfumes, with which they are delighted when they have them, but can very well be without them. True charity is restless till it enjoys God in such instances in which it wants him: it it like hunger and thirst, it must be fed or it cannot be answered; and nothing can supply the presence, or make recompence for the absence of God, or of the effects of his favour, and the light of his countenance.

7. True love in all accidents looks upon the beloved person, and observes his countenance, and how he approves or disapproves it, and accordingly looks sad or cheerful. He that loves God, is not displeased at those accidents which God chooses, nor murmurs at those changes, which he makes in his family, nor envies at those gifts he bestows: but chooses as he likes, and is ruled by his judgment, and is perfectly of his persuasion, loving to learn where God is the teacher, and being content to be ignorant or silent, where he is not pleased to open himself.

8. Love is curious of little things, or circumstances and measures, and little accidents, not allowing to itself any infirmity which it strives not to master,