And if we duly consider its nature, two things will appear- (continued)
reason teaches that it must be in vain; for if there be no love to God in it, there car. he no true respect to him From this it appears, that love is always contained in a true and living faith, and that it is its true and proper life and soul, without which, faith is as dead as the e body is without its soul; and that it is that which especially distinguishes a living faith from every other: but of this more particularly hereafter. Without love to God, again, there can be no true honour to him. A man is never hearty in the honour he seems to render to another whom he does not love; so that all the seeming honour or worship that is ever paid without love, is but hypocritical. And so reason teaches, that there is no sincerity in the obedience that is performed without love; for if there be no love, nothing that at is done can be spontaneous and free, but all must be forced. So without love, there can be no hearty submission to the will of God, and there can be no real and cordial trust and confidence in him. He that does not love God will not trust him: he never will, with true acquiescence of soul, cast himself into the hands of God, or into the arms of his mercy.
And so, whatever good carriage there may be in men toward their neighbours, yet reason teaches that it is all unacceptable and in vain, if at the same time there be no real respect in the heart toward those neighbours; if the outward conduct is not prompted by inward love. And from these two things taken together, viz. that love is of such a nature that it will produce all virtues, and dispose to all duties to God and men, and that without it there can be no sincere virtue, and no duty at all properly performed, the truth of the doctrine follows-that all true and distinguishing Christian virtue and grace may be summed up in love.
2. The Scriptures teach us that love is the sum of all that is contained in the law of God, and of all the duties required in his word. This the Scriptures teach of the law in general, and of each table of the law in particular.
First, The Scriptures teach this of the law and word of God in general. By the law, in the Scriptures, is sometimes meant the whole of the written word of God, as in John x. 34-" Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods ? " And sometimes, by tile law, is meant the five books of Moses, as in Acts xxiv. 14, where it is named with the distinction of the " law " and the " prophets." And sometimes, by the law, is meant the ten commandments, as containing the sum of all the duty of mankind, and all that is required as of universal and perpetual obligation. But whether we take the law as signifying only the ten commandments, or as including the whole written word of God, the Scriptures teach us that the sum of all that is required in it is love. Thus, when by the law is meant the ten commandments, it is said, in Rom. xiii. 8, "He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law;'' and therefore several of the commandments are rehearsed, and it is added, in the tenth verse' that " love " (which leads us to obey them all) "is the fulfilling of the law." Now, unless love was the Sum of what the law requires, the law could not be wholly fulfilled in love; for a law is fulfilled only by obedience to the sum or whole of what it contains and enjoins. So the same apostle again declares (1 Tim. i. 5), "Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned," &c. Or if we take the law in a yet more extensive sense, as the whole written word of God, the Scriptures still teach us, that love is the sum of all required in it. In Matt. xxii. 40, Christ teaches, that on the two precepts of loving God with all the heart, and our neighbour as ourselves, hang all the law and the prophets, i.e. all the written word of God; for what was then called the law and the prophets, was the whole written word of God that was then extant. And,
Second, The Scriptures teach the same thing of each table of the law in particular. The command, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,', is declared by Christ (Matt. xxii. 38) to be the sum of the first table of the law, or the first great commandment; and in the next verse, to love our neighbour as ourself, is declared to be the sum of the second table; as it is also in Rom. xiii. 9, where the precepts of the second table of the law are particularly specified: and it is then