52. Our neglect of love to the church on earth, and to the kingdoms and public societies of mankind, is a sinful neglect of our love to God in them, and a hinderance of our higher love to him; and the true use of such a public love, would greatly further our higher love.
53. If those heathens who laid down their lives for their countries had neither done this for fame, nor merely as esteeming the temporal good of their country above their own temporal good and lives, but for the true excellency of many above one, and for God's greater interest in them, they had done a most noble, holy work.
54. Our adherence to our carnal selves first, and then to our carnal interests and friends, and neglecting the love of the highest excellencies in the servants of God, and not loving men according to the measure of the image of God on them, and their relation to him, is a great neglect of our love of God in them, and a hinderance of our higher immediate love. And to use ourselves to love men as God appeareth in them, would much promote our higher love. And so we should love the best of men above ourselves.
55. The loving of ourselves sensually, preferring our present life and earthly pleasure before our higher spiritual felicity in heaven, and our neglecting to love holiness, and seek it for ourselves, and then to love God in ourselves, is a neglect and hinderance of the love of God.
56. Man hath not lost so much of the knowledge and love of God, as appearing in his greatness, and wisdom, and natural goodness in the frame of nature, as he is the Author of the creatures' natural goodness, as he hath of the knowledge and love of his holiness, as he is the holy Ruler, Sanctifier, and End of souls.
57. The sensitive faculty and sensitive interest are still predominant in a carnal or sensual man; and his reason is voluntarily enslaved to his sense: so that even the intellectual appetite, contrary to its primitive and sound nature, loveth chiefly the sensitive life and pleasure.
58. It is therefore exceeding hard in this depraved state of nature, to love God or any thing better than ourselves; because we love more by sense than by reason, and reason is weak and serveth the interest of sense.
59. Yet the same man who is prevalently sensual, may know that he hath a rational, immortal soul, and that knowledge and rectitude are the felicity of his soul; and that it is the knowledge and love of and delight in God, the highest good, that can make him perpetually happy: and therefore as these are apprehended as a means of his own felicity, he may have some kind of love or will unto them all.
60. The thing therefore that every carnal man would have, is an everlasting, perfect, sensual pleasure; and he apprehendeth the state of his soul's perfection mostly as consisting in this kind of felicity: and even the knowledge and love of God, which he taketh for part of his felicity, is principally apprehended but as a speculative gratifying of the imagination, as carnal men now desire knowledge. Or if there be a righter notion of God and holiness to be loved for themselves, even ultimately above our sensual pleasure and ourselves; yet this is but an uneffectual, dreaming knowledge, producing but an answerable lazy wish: and it will not here prevail against the stronger love of sensuality and fantastical pleasure, nor against inordinate self-love. And it is a sensual heaven, under a spiritual name, which the carnal hope for.
61. This carnal man may love God as a means to this felicity so dreamed of; as knowing that without him it cannot be had, and tasting corporal comforts from him here: and he may love holiness as it removeth his contrary calamities, and as he thinks it is crowned with such a reward. But he had rather have that reward of itself without holiness.