A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

Whether God may be the object of passionate love.

2. Our love to God is not ordinarily so passionate as our love to creatures; because the nearness and sensibleness of the creature promoteth such sensible operations. But God is not seen, or felt, or heard, but believed in by faith, and known by reason. And the narrowness of the creature making resistances, stops, and difficulties, occasioneth a turbulent passionateness of love; when the infiniteness of God hath no such occasion. Our love to creatures is like the running of a stream in a channel that is too narrow for it, where stops and banks do make it go on with a roaring violence; but our love to God is like the brook that slideth into the ocean, where it is insensibly devoured. Therefore our love to God must principally be perceived, not in violent passions, but in, 1. A high estimation of him. 2. In the will's adhering to him. 3. And in the effects (to be mentioned anon). Yet when a passionate love is added to these, it may be the most excellent significatively and effectively. Some philosophers think that God cannot at all be loved with a passionate love, because he is a pure, immaterial Being, and therefore cannot be the object of a material act or motion, such as our passions are; and, therefore, that it is some idol of the imagination that is so loved. But, 1. If they mean that his pure essence, in itself, is not the immediate object of a passion, they may say the same of the will itself; for man (at least in flesh) can have no other volition of God, but as he is apprehended by the intellect. And if by an idol they mean the image of God in the mind, gathered from the appearances of God in creatures, man in flesh hath no other knowledge of him; for here we know him but darkly, enigmatically, and as in a glass, and have no formal, proper conception of him in his essence. So that the rational powers themselves do no otherwise know and will God's essence, but as represented to us in a glass. 2. And thus we may also love him passionately; it being God in his objective being as apprehended by the intellect that we both will and passionately love. The motion of the soul in flesh may raise passions, by the instrumentality of the corporeal spirits, towards an immaterial object; which is called the object of those passions, not merely as passions, but as the passions of a rational agent; it being more nearly or primarily the object of the intellect and will, and then of the passions, as first apprehended by these superior powers. A man may delight in God; or else, how is he our felicity? and yet, we know of no delight which is not passion. A man may love his own soul with a passionate love; and yet it is immaterial. When I passionately love my friend, it is his immaterial soul, and his wisdom, and holiness, which I chiefly love.

What of God is the object of our love.

3. It is not only for his excellencies and perfections in himself, nor only for his love and benefit to us, that grace doth cause a sinner to love God; but it is for both conjunctly; as he is good, and doth good, especially to us, in the greatest things.

What is the motive of our first love to God.

4. Our first special love to God, is orderly and rationally to be raised, the belief of his goodness in himself, and his common love and mercy to sinners, manifested in his giving of his Son for the world, and giving men the conditional promise of pardon and salvation, and offering them Christ and life eternal, and all this to us as well as others: and not to be caused by the belief or persuasion of his special, peculiar, electing, redeeming, or saving love to us above others, that have the same invitations and offers. It is the knowledge of common love and mercy, and not of special love and mercy, as already possessed, that is appointed to be the motive of our first special love to God. (Yet there is in it an apprehension that he is our only possible felicity, and that he will give us a special interest in his favour, if we return by faith in Christ unto him.) For, 1. Every man is bound to love God with a special love: but every man is not specially beloved by him: and no man is bound to love God as one that specially loveth him but those that indeed are so beloved by him; for else they were bound to believe a falsehood, and to love that which is not; and grace should be an error and deceit. The object is before the act. God's special love must in itself be before its revelations; and as revealed it must go before our belief of it; and as believed it must go before our loving it, or loving him as such, or for it. 2. The first saving faith is inseparably conjunct with special love; for Christ is believed in and willed, as the way or means to God as the end (otherwise it is no true faith). And the volition of the end (which is love) is in order of nature before the choice or use of the means as such: and if we must love God as one that specially loveth us, in our first love, then we must believe in him as such by our first faith: and if so, it must be to us a revealed truth. But (as it is false to most that are bound to believe, so) it is not revealed to the elect themselves: for if it be, it is either by ordinary or extraordinary revelation. If by ordinary, either by Scripture directly, or by evidences in ourselves which Scripture maketh the characters of his love. But neither of these; for Scripture promiseth not salvation to named, but described persons; and evidence of special love there is none, before faith, and repentance, and the first love to God. And extraordinary revelation from heaven, by inspiration or angel, is not the ordinary begetter of faith; for faith is the belief of God, speaking to us (now) by his written word. So that where there is no object of love, there can be no love; and where there is no revelation of it to the understanding, there is no object for the will; and till a man first believe and love God, he hath no revelation that God doth specially love him. Search as long as you will, you will find no other. 3. If the wicked were condemned for not loving a false or feigned object, it would quiet their consciences in hell when they had detected the deceit, and seen the natural impossibility and contradiction. 4. The first love to God is more a love of desire, than of possession; and therefore it may suffice to raise it, that we see a possibility of being for ever happy in God, and enjoying him in special love, though yet we know not that we possess any such love. The nature of the thing proclaimeth it most rational and due, that we love the infinite Good, that hath done so much by the death of his Son, to remove the impediments of our salvation; and is so far reconciled to the world in his death, as by a message of reconciliation, to entreat them to accept of Christ, and pardon, and salvation freely offered them, 2 Cor. v. 19, 20; and is himself the offered happiness of the soul. He that dare say, that this much hath not an objective sufficiency to engage the soul in special love, is a blind undervaluer of wonderful mercy. 5. The first special grace bringeth no new object for faith or love, but causeth a new act upon the formerly revealed object.

5. But our love to God is greatly increased and advantaged afterwards by the assurance or persuasion of his peculiar, special love to us. And therefore all christians should greatly value such assurance, as the appointed means of advancing them to greater love to God.

6. As we know God here in the glass of his Son, and word, and creatures, so we most sensibly love him here, as his goodness appeareth in his works, and graces, and his word, and Son.

7. The nearer we come to perfection, the more we shall love God for himself and his infinite natural goodness and perfections, not casting away the respects of his goodness and love as to ourselves, but highliest regarding himself for himself, as carried to him above ourselves.

II. Though love in its own nature be still the same, and is nothing but the rational appetite of good; or the will's volition of good apprehended by the understanding; the first motion of the will to good, arising from that natural inclination to good, which is the nature of the will, and the pondus animæ, the poise of the soul; or from healing grace which repaireth the breach that is made in nature; yet love in regard of the state of the lover, and the way of its imperate acting, is thus differenced. 1. Either the lover is in the hopeful pursuit of the thing beloved, and then it is desiring, seeking love. 2. Or he is, or seemeth to be, denied, destitute, and deprived of his beloved (in whole or in part); and then it is a mourning, lamenting love. 3. Or he enjoyeth his beloved, and then it is enjoying, delighting love. 1. The ordinary love which grace causeth on earth is a predominancy of seeking, desiring love, encouraged by some little foretastes of enjoying, delighting love, and, in a great measure, attended with mourning, lamenting love. 2. The state of deserted, dark, declining, relapsing, and melancholy, tempted christians, is a predominance of mourning, lamenting love, assisted with some help of seeking, desiring love; but destitute of enjoying, delighting love. 3. The state of the glorified is perfection of enjoying, delighting love alone. And all the rest are to bring us unto this.[114]