A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

72. It is possible to love God, and holiness, and heaven, as a conceited state and means of our sensual felicity, and escape of pain and misery; but to love God as the true felicity of the intellectual nature, and as our spiritual rest, and yet to love him only or chiefly for ourselves, and not rather for himself as our highest end, implieth a contradiction. The same I say of holiness, as loved only for ourselves. The evidence whereof is plain, in that it is essential to God to be not only better than ourselves and every creature, but also to be the ultimate end of all things, to which they should tend in all their perfections. And it is essential to holiness to be the soul's devotion of itself to God as God, and not only to God as our felicity: therefore to love God only or chiefly for ourselves, is to make him only a means to our felicity, and not our chief end; and it is to make ourselves better, and so more amiable than God, that is, to be gods ourselves.

73. This is much of the sense of the controversy between the Epicureans and the sober philosophers, as is to be seen in Cicero, &c. The sober philosophers said, that virtue was to be loved for itself more than for pleasure; because if pleasure as such be better than virtue as such, then all sensual pleasure would be better than virtue as such. The Epicureans said, that not all pleasure, but the pleasure of virtue was the chief good, as Torquatus's words in Cicero show. And if it had been first proved, that a man's self is his just, ultimate end, as the finis cui or the personal end, then it would be a hard question, whether the Epicureans were not in the right as to the finis cujus or the real end (which indeed is but a medium to the personal, cui). But when it is most certain, that no man's person is to be his own ultimate end, as cui, but God, and then the universe, and societies of the world as before said, it is then easy to prove that the sober philosophers were in the right, and that no man's pleasure is his ultimate end, finis cujus; because no man's pleasure is either such a demonstration of the divine perfection as virtue is, as such; nor yet doth it so much conduce to the common good of societies or mankind, and so to the pleasing and glorifying of God. And this way Cicero might easily have made good his cause against the Epicureans.

74. Though no man indeed love God as God, who loveth him not as better than himself, and therefore loveth him not better, and as his absolutely ultimate end; and though no man desire holiness indeed, who desireth not to be devoted absolutely to God before and above himself: yet is it very common to have a false, imperfect notion of God and holiness, as being the felicity of man, and though not to deny, yet to leave out the essential superlative notion of the Deity; and it is more common to confess all this of God and holiness notionally, as was aforesaid, and practically to take in no more of God and holiness, but that they are better for us than temporary pleasures. And some go further, and take them as better for them, than any (though perpetual) mere sensual delights; and so make the perfection of man's highest faculties (practically) to be their ultimate end; and desire or love God and holiness (defectively and falsely apprehended) for themselves, or their own felicity, and not themselves, and their felicity and holiness, ultimately for God. Which showeth, that though these men have somewhat overcome the sensual concupiscence or flesh, yet have they not sufficiently overcome the selfish disposition, nor yet known and loved God as God, nor good as good.

75. Yet is it not a sin to love God for ourselves, and our own felicity, so be it we make him not a mere means to that felicity, as our absolutely ultimate end. For as God indeed is, 1. The efficient of all our good; 2. The dirigent cause, that leadeth us to it; 3. The end in which our felicity truly consisteth; so is he to be loved on all these accounts.

76. If God were not thus to be loved for ourselves, (subordinated to him,) thankfulness would not be a christian duty.

77. Our love to God is a love of friendship, and a desire of a kind of union, communion, or adherence. But not such as is between creatures where there is some sort of equality: but as between them that are totally unequal; the one infinitely below the other, and absolutely subject and subordinate to him.

78. Therefore, though in love of friendship, a union of both parties, and consequently a conjunct interest of both, and not one alone, do make up the ultimate end of love; yet here it should be with an utter disproportion, we being obliged to know God as infinitely better than ourselves, and therefore to love him incomparably more, though yet it will be but according to the proportion of the faculties of the lover.

79. The purest process of love, therefore, is, first thankfully to perceive the divine efficiencies, and to love God as communicative of what we and all things are, and have, and shall receive, and therein to see his perfect goodness in himself, and to love him as God for that goodness; wherein is nothing but the final act, which is our love, and the final object, which is the infinite good. So that the act is man's, (from God,) but nothing is to be joined with God as the absolutely final object; for that were to join somewhat with God as God.

80. And though it be most true, that this act may be made the object of another act, and (as Amesius saith, Omnium gentium consensu dicimus Volo velle, so) we may and must say, Amo amare, I love to love God, and the very exercise of my own love is my delight, and so is my felicity in the very essential nature of it, being a complacency, and being on the highest objective good: and also this same love is my holiness, and so it and I are pleasing unto God; yet these are all consequential to the true notion of the final act, and circularly lead to the same again. We must love our felicity and holiness, which consisteth in our love to God, but as that which subordinately relateth to God, in which he is first glorified, and then finally pleased; and so from his will which we delight to please, we ascend to his total perfect being, to which we adhere by perfect love. In a word, our ultimate end of acquisition (and God's own, so far as he may be said to have an end) is the pleasing of the divine will, in his glorification; and our ultimate end of complacency, objectively, is the infinite goodness of the divine will and nature.

81. There is, therefore, place for the question whether I must love God, or myself, more or better? as it is resolved. But there is no place for the question, whether I must love God or myself? Because God alloweth me not ever to separate them; though there is a degree of just self-loathing or self-hatred, in deep repentance. Nor yet for the question, whether I must seek God's glory and pleasure, or my own felicity? for I must ever seek them both, though not with the same esteem. Yea, I may be said to seek them both with the same diligence; because by the same endeavour and act that I seek one, I seek the other; and I cannot possibly do any thing for one, that doth not equally promote the other, if I do them rightly, preferring God before myself, in my inward estimation, love, and intention.