we have the luftings or defires of the heart of these men, and what they desired, a fair fhew in the flesh. What for? that men might fee it; it was to make a fhew to others, and that these preachers might glory in their flesh, in their having gained profelytes to circumcifion, which circumcifion is in the flesh; for fuch labourers know that the children of the flesh will glory in fuch profelytes, and admire their diligence and fuccefs in this work. And I believe that this thirst for human applaufe, and of feeking honour one of another, has driven some, in times of old, and in the present times too, to compass sea and land to make one profelyte; not profelytes to God, but to themselves; and have made them, in the fight of God, twofold more the children of hell than themselves.

It is remarkable that, whatever name the love of God goes by, this law of fin goes by the fame, only with different appendages. I believe that the love of God, fhed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghoft, is the fulfilment of the moral law, and the decreed end of God in the proclamation of the everlasting gofpel, called the end of the commandment. "Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good confcience, and of faith unfeigned,” 1 Tim. i. 5. Corrupt affections, or a love to death, to darknefs, and to the praise of men, go by the fame name, and are called a law, which is faid to be

the law of fin, the law of fin and death, and the law in the members.

The love of God is called the bond of all perfectness, uniting fouls to God, to Chrift, to the Spirit, to the faints of God, and to the angels in heaven; and is the bond between the King of faints and his fubjects, between the Lamb and his wife, and between the father and his family, making every union perfect and complete. And corrupt affections are a bond alfo, only with this appendage, it is called the bond of iniquity; which bond was ftrong in Ananias and his wife, who could act the hypocrite, tempt the Spirit of God, counterfeit the hofpitality of the faints, and lie unto the Holy Ghoft, by an attempt to live on the church's stock, as the poor faints of God did, when they kept back part of the price as an independency to themselves.

The love of God fhed abroad in the heart is called the root of the matter by Job, and is explained by the apoftle to be love; "Be ye rooted and grounded in love," Ephef. iii. 17. Corrupt affections go by the fame name. In idolaters they are called a root that beareth gall and wormwood, Deut. xxix. 18; but in the covetous they are called the love of money, and the root of all evil, 1 Tim. vi. 10.

Love is the incorruptible feed lodged in the foul by the Holy Spirit; and is intended to abolifh death, to expel legal bondage, and all the

flavish and fervile fear which is adminiftered to the soul by the law, and which is peculiar to fervants who ferve God, not in the exercife of grace, and with the powers of the foul, but with bodily exercife only; not in newnefs of Spirit, but in the. oldness of the letter; and that not with the power and life of godliness, but with an external form only. But the love of God in the faints is the lively principle and the constraining power that influences, actuates, allures, attracts and compels, with an invincible sweetness, the foul to deny felf, loath the world, and follow through fire and water, through the fhadow of death, and death itself, rather than come fhort of the defired and expected end. This love is the produce of divine agency; "That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit;" that is, the love of God, which is a grace of the Spirit of God, and a grace that is born of God, is Spirit; it is called the love of God, and it is of God. It is an incorruptible feed from the incorruptible God; it is the divine nature from the Divine Being; which fhews that God will be worshipped with nothing but his own. By God's own Spirit are the men of God furnished for every good work, as Paul declares, 2 Tim. iii. 17; and he adds, "Our fufficiency is of God," 2 Cor. iii. 5. And indeed in God's light men fee light; when he shines into their hearts his glory is seen in the face of Jefus. And it is the life of God in the foul that gives us all our fpiritual motions, and a

fense of our wants; all our appetites and cravings after spiritual provifion, all our hungerings and thirstings for the bread of life, and the water of life, fpring from life; and every promife, every grace, every divine vifit, every deliverance, every divine indulgence from God, or fenfible nearness to God, every answer to prayer, every delivering mercy or fmiling providence, ferve, to feed the principle of divine life, wrought in the foul by the Holy Spirit of God. And, if what Paul says be true, that "I live, yet not I, but Chrift liveth in me," then it is the life of Chrift in us that is fed by all the before-mentioned fweet morfels. In fhort, God is worshipped in his own Spirit, and by his own truth; he is admired and adored by his own love; confeffed and abode by in his own ftrength; waited for and waited on in his own patience, and fubmitted to in his own fubmiffion; approached in his own meekness, and exalted by his own humility; confided in by his own confidence, hoped for by his own hope, and honoured in his faithfulness by his own faith; for every good and perfect gift is from the Father of lights. "What haft thou," fays Paul," that thou didst not receive?" 1 Cor. iv. 7. Whatfoever is more than these is not worship in the Spirit, but human invention and fuperftition; and all that is lefs is bodily exercife.

The faint's living law has two branches, faith and love, and the former always works by the

latter; whatever faith brings in love admires, and love works to caft out and keep out flavish fear, that such fear may not clog or hinder faith. The giver of this law is the Holy Ghoft; hence it is called the law of the Spirit, Rom. viii. 2; and the Holy Spirit ftyles himself the Spirit of faith, 2 Cor. iv. 13, and the Spirit of love, 2 Tim. i. 7; not only because he works thefe graces in us, but because he is the fpirit, the life, and the power of thein; and all their actings and exercises depend upon his influence and operations. I have called this a living law, becaufe Solomon fays, "The law of the wife is a fountain of life," Prov. xiii. 14; because faith and love afcend and defcend, and in the exercise of thefe we go in and out and find pafture, John x. 9.

So, on the other hand, Satan has ufurped an empire over the children of men, and filled them with fin, fo that poor finners are his fubjects and flaves, because it rules in them; hence fin is fet forth as a king or fovereign, reigning and ruling. "Sin," fays Paul, "has reigned unto death," Rom. v. 21. In this mafs of corruption there is a law, which the apoftle mentions three times: "I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is prefent with me," Rom. vii. 21. Here the apoftle calls this law evil. Again, " But I fee another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of fin which is in my members,"