-- Tit. 3. Motives or meditative Helps to Love the godly
contemplate thereon, and the more your conversation is in heaven, the more will you love your fellow soldiers and travellers, with whom you must live in blessedness for ever.
Tit. 3. Motives or Meditative Helps to the Godly Mot. I. 'Consider what relation all the regenerate have to God.' They are not only his creatures, but his adopted children: and are they not honourable and amiable who are so near to God?
Mot. II. 'Think of their near relation to Jesus Christ:' they are his members, and his brethren, and the purchase of his sufferings, and co-heirs of everlasting life.
Mot. III. 'Think of the excellency of that Spirit and holy nature which is in them.' Regeneration hath made them partakers of the Divine nature, and hath indued them with the Spirit of Christ, and hath by the incorruptible seed made them new creatures, of a holy and heavenly mind and life; and hath renewed them after the image of God! And what besides God himself can be so amiable as his image?
Mot. IV. 'Think of the precious price which was paid for their redemption:' if you will estimate things by their price, (if the purchaser be wise,) how highly must you value them?
Mot. V. 'Remember how dearly they are beloved of God, their Creator and Redeemer.' Read and observe God's tender language towards them, and his tender dealings with them. He calleth them his children, his beloved, yea, dearly beloved, his jewels, the apple of his eye. Christ calleth the least of them his brethren. Judge of his love to them by his incarnation, life, and sufferings! Judge of it by that one heart-melting message after his resurrection, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my
God and your Godh." And should we not love them dearly who are so dearly beloved of God?