Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: first commandment doth not supersede the necessity of the others. For our love towards the Lord does not supersede other rational, natural, spiritual and subordinate loves; and that universal love, which is the life of man, is a fountain with many streams, which run through many channels. Still, however, God is one. To love him above all things is the first commandment. And the life's love of man is one, which is either simply and harmoniously directed towards the true object, or is divided and distracted with the discordant, heterogeneous pursuits of hell, in consequence of being turned away from God towards self or this world. But to be more particular, let it be observed, that there are three universal kinds of experimental idolatry, viz. the first is grounded in self love; the second in the love of the world; and the third in the love of pleasures. The love of self is the most essentially and completely opposite to the love of our God, of all other loves. Therefore, this is the most infernal and diabolical. It is an inversion and perversion of the heavenly life of man, being altogether narrow, confined, oblique, and destructive of all social harmony, happiness and use. The love of this world, for its own sake alone, is indeed opposite to heavenly love, but not so malignant and dreadful in degree. It is a sordid, not an ambitious love. It makes the soul cleave to the dust. It is opposite to the love of our neighbour, as self love is opposite to the love of our God. The love of this world, which we have not long inhabited, and must shortly leave for ever, is madness and folly, which can only be exceeded by the madness and folly of wanting to be gods ourselves. The third and last kind of idolatrous love, of the experimental class I mentioned, is the love of pleasures. This ...
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