Christian virtue and which is the soul and essence and summary
according to the various occasions, objects, and manners, attendants and circumstances of its exercise. There is some one holy principle in the heart that is the essence and sum of all grace, the root and source of all holy acts of every kind, and the fountain of every good stream, into which all Christian virtues may ultimately be resolved, and in which all duty and [all] holiness is fulfilled.
Thus the Scripture represents it. Grace in the soul is one fountain of water of life, (John iv. 14,) and not various distinct fountains. So God, in the work of Regeneration, implants one heavenly seed in the soul, and not various different seeds. l John iii. 9 - " Whosoever is born of God cloth not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him." . . . The Day [that] has arisen on the soul is but one. The oil in the vessel is simple and pure, conferred by one holy anointing. All is " wrought" by one individual work of the Spirit of God. And thus it is there is a consentanation* of graces. Not only is one grace in some way allied to another, and so tends to help and promote one another, but one is really implied in the other. The nature of one involves the nature of another. And the great reason of it is, that all graces have one common essence, the original principle of all, and is but one. Strip the various parts of the Christian soul of their circumstances, concomitants. appendages means, and occasions, and consider that which is, as it were, their soul and essence, and all appears to be the same. [I observe]
2. That principle in the soul of the saints, which is the grand Christian virtue and which is the soul and essence and summary comprehension of all grace, is a principle of Divine Love. This is evident,
(1.) Because we are abundantly taught in the Scripture that Divine Love is the sum of all duty; and that all that God requires of us is fulfilled in it,—i.e., That Love is the sum of all duty of the heart, and its exercises and fruits the sum of all [the] duty of life. But if the duty of the heart, or all due dispositions of hearts, are all summed up in love, then undoubtedly all grace may be summed up in LOVE.
The Scripture teaches us that all our duty is summed up in love; or, which is the same thing, that 'tis the sum of all that is required in the Law; and that, whether we take the Law as signifying the Ten Commandments, or the whole written Word of God. So when by the Law is meant the Ten Commandments: Rom, xiii 8— " Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law ;" and, therefore, several of these commandments are there rehearsed. And again, in ver. 10, " Love is the fulfilling of the Law." And unless love was the sum of what the Law required, the Law could not be fulfilled in Love. A law is not fulfilled but by obedience to the sum of what it contains. So the same Apostle again: 1 Tim. i a—" Now the end of the commandment is charity" [love.]
If we take the Law in a yet more extensive sense for the whole written Word of God, the Scripture still teaches us that Love is the sum of what is required in it. [Thus] Matt. xxii. 40. There Christ teaches us that on these two precepts of loving God and our neighbour hang all the Law and the Prophets,—that is, all the written Word of God. So that what was called the Law and the Prophets was the whole written Word of God that was then extant. The Scripture teacher this of each table of the Law in particular.
Thus, the Lawyer that we read of in the X.th chapter of Luke, vv. 2a28, mentions the love of God and our neighbour as the sum of the two Tables of the Law; and Christ approves of what he says. When he stood up and tempted Christ with this question, " Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life ? " Christ asks him what was required of him " in the Law?" He makes answer, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself; " and Christ replies, " Thou hast answered right; this do, and thou shalt live ;" as much as to say, " Do this, then thou hast fulfilled the whole Law."
So in Matthew xxii., vv. 36-38, that commandment, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," is given by Christ himself as the sum of the first Table of the Law, in answer to the question of the Lawyer, who asked Him, " Which is the great commandment of the Law ?" And in the next verse, loving our neighbours as ourselves is mentioned as the sum of the second Table, as it is also in Romans xiii. 9, where most of the precepts of the second Table are rehearsed over in particular: " For this, Thou not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself''
The Apostle James seems to teach the same thing. James ii. 8— " If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well."
Thus frequent, express, and particular is the Scripture in teaching us that all duty is comprehended in Love. The Scripture teaches us, in like manner, of nothing else. This is quite another thing than if Religion in general had only sometimes gone under the name of the Love of Cod, as it sometimes goes by the name of the fearing of God, and sometimes the knowledge of God, and sometimes feeling of God.
This argument does fully and irrefragably prove that all grace, and every Christian disposition and habit of mind and heart, especially as to that which is primarily holy and Divine in it, does summarily consist in Divine Love, and may be resolved into it: however, with respect to its kinds and manner of exercise and its appendages, it may be diversified. For certainly there is no duty of heart, or due disposition of mind, but what is included in the " Law and the Prophets," and is required by some precept of that Law and rule which He has given mankind to walk by. But yet the Scripture affords us other evidences of the truth of this.
(2.) The Apostle speaks of Divine Love as that which is the essence of all Christianity in the XIII.th chapter of [the] 1st [Epistle to the] Corinthians. There the Apostle evidently means a comparison between the gifts of the Spirit and the grace of the Spirit. In the foregoing chapter the Apostle had been speaking of the gifts of the Spirit throughout, such as the gift of wisdom, the gift of knowledge, the gift of faith, the gift of healing or working miracles, prophecy, discerning spirits, speaking with tongues, &c.; and in the last verse in the chapter he exhorts the Corinthians to " covet earnestly the best gifts;" but adds, " and yet I shew you a more excellent way," and so proceeds to discourse of the saving grace of the Spirit under the name of agape' love, and to compare this saving grace in the heart with those gifts. Now,'tis manifest that the comparison is between the gifts of the Spirit that were common to both saints and sinners, and that saving grace that distinguishes true saints; and therefore, charity or love is here understood by Divines as intending the same thing as sincere grace of heart.
By love or charity here there is no reason to understand the Apostle [as speaking] only of love to men, but that principle of Divine Love that is in the heart of the saints in the full extent, which primarily has God for its object. For there is no reason to think that the Apostle doesn't mean the same thing by charity here as he does in the VIII.th chapter of the same Epistle, where he is comparing the same two things together, knowledge and charity, as he does here. But there he explains himself to mean by charity the love of God: [verses 1-3] " Now, as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth And if any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. But if any man love God, the same is known of Him," &c.*
'Tis manifest that Love or charity is here (chap. xiii.) spoken of as the very essence of all Christianity, and is the very thing wherein a gracious sincerity consists. For the Apostle speaks of it as the most excellent, the most necessary, and essential thing of all, without which all that makes the greatest, and fairest, and most glittering show in Religion is nothing—without which, " if we speak with the tongues of men and angels, we are become as sounding brass and tinlding cymbals"—and without which, though we have " the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all faith, so that we could remove mountains, and should bestow all our goods to feed the poor, and even give our bodies to be burned, we are nothing." Therefore, how can we understand the Apostle any otherwise than that this is the very thing whereof the essence of all consists; and that he means the same by charity as a gracious charity, as indeed it is generally understood. If a man does all these things here spoken, makes such glorious prophecies, has such knowledge, such faith, and speaks so excellently, and performs such excellent external acts, and does such great things in religion as giving all his goods to the poor and giving his body to be burned, what is wanting but one thing
The very quintessence of all Religion, the very thing wherein lies summarily the sincerity, spirituality, and divinity of Religion. And that, the Apostle teaches us, is LOVE
And further, 'tis manifestly the Apostle's drift to shew how this excellent principle does radically comprehend all that is good. For he goes on to skew how all essences of good and excellent dispositions and exercises, both towards God and towards man, are virtually contained and will flow from this one principle: " Love suffereth long, and is kind, envieth not, . . . endureth all things," &c. The words of this last verse especially respects duties to God, as the former did duties to men, as I would shew more particularly afterwards.
Thus the Apostle don't only love or charity as the most excellent thing in Christianity, and as the quintessence, life and soul of all Religion, but as that which virtually comprehends all holy virtues and exercises. And because Love is the quintessence and soul of all grace, wherein the divinity and holiness of all that belongs to charity does properly and essentially consist; therefore, when Christians come to be in their most perfect state, and the Divine nature in them shall be in its greatest exaltation and purity, and be free from all mixtures, stripped of these appurtenances and that clothing that it has in the present state; and [when] it shall lose many other of its denominations, especially from the peculiar manner and exercises accommodated to the imperfect circumstances of the present state, they will be what will remain. All other names will be swallowed up in the name of charity or love, as the Apostle, agreeably to his chapter on tiers, (1 Cor. chap. xiii,) observes in verses 8-10— Charity never faileth.... But when that which is perfect is come then that which is in part shall be done away." And, therefore, when the Apostle, in the last verse, speaks of charity as the greatest grace, we may well understand him in the same sense as when Christ speaks of the command to love God, &c., as the greatest commandment— viz, that among the graces, that is the source and sum of all graces, as