62. He may also love and desire Christ, as a means (conceived) to such an end; and he may use much religious duty to that end; and he may forbear such sins as that end can spare, lest they deprive him of his hoped-for felicity. Yea, he may suffer much to prevent an endless suffering.
63. As nature necessarily loveth self and self-felicity, God and the devil do both make great use of this natural pondus, or necessitating principle, for their several ends. The devil saith, thou lovest pleasure, therefore take it and make provision for it. God saith, thou lovest felicity, and fearest misery: I and my love are the true felicity; and adhering to sensual pleasure depriveth thee of better, and is the beginning of thy misery, and will bring thee unto worse.
64. God commandeth man nothing that is not for his own good, and forbiddeth him nothing which is not (directly or indirectly) to his hurt: and therefore engageth self-love on his side for every act of our obedience.
65. Yet this good of our own is not the highest, nor all the good which God intendeth, and we must intend; but it is subordinate unto the greater good aforementioned.
66. As a carnal man may have opinionative, uneffectual convictions, that God and his love are his spiritual felicity (better than sensual); yea, and that God is his estimate end above his own felicity itself; so the sanctifying of man consisteth in bringing up these convictions to be truly effectual and practical, to renew and rule the mind, and will, and life.
67. Whether this be done by first knowing God as the beginning and end, above ourselves, and then knowing (effectually) that he is man's felicity; or whether self-love be first excited to love him as our own felicity, and next we be carried up to love him for himself, as our highest end, it cometh all to one when the work is done; and we cannot prove that God tieth himself constantly to either of these methods alone. But experience telleth us, that the latter is the usual way; and that as nature, so grace beginneth with the smallest seed, and groweth upward towards perfection; and that self-love, and desire of endless felicity, and fear of endless misery, are the first notable effects or changes on a repenting soul.
68. And indeed the state of sin lieth both in man's fall from God to self, and in the mistake of his own felicity, preferring even for himself a sensible good before a spiritual, and the creature before the Creator: and therefore he must be rectified in both.
69. And the hypocrite's uneffectual love to God and holiness is much discovered in this, that, as he loveth dead saints, and their images and holidays, because they trouble him not, so he best loveth (opinionatively) and least hateth (practically) the saints in heaven, and the holiness that is far from him, and God as he conceiveth of him as one that is in heaven to glorify men; but he hateth (practically, though not professedly) the God that would make him holy, and deprive him of all his sinful pleasures, or condemn him for them: and he can better like holiness in his pastor, neighbour, or child, than in himself.
70. Therefore sincerity much consisteth in the love of self-holiness; but not as for self alone, but as carrying self and all to God.
71. As the sun-beams do without any interception reach the eye, and by them without interception our sight ascendeth and extendeth to the sun; so God's communicated goodness and glorious revelation extend through and by all inferior mediums, to our understandings, and our wills, and our knowledge and love ascend and extend through all and by all again to God. And as it were unnatural for the eye illuminated by the sun, to see itself only, or to see the mediate creatures, and not to see the light and sun by which it seeth (nay, it doth least see itself); so it is unnatural for the soul to understand and love itself alone, (which it little understandeth and should love with self-denial,) and the creatures only, and not to love God, by whom we know and love the creature.