ty Nature--did not
require the absolute perdition of any spirit called by Him into
existence, we are certainly not entitled to consider the
perpetual misery of many individuals as incompatible with
sovereign love."

"In the Supreme Nature those two capacities of Perfect Love and
Perfect Joy are indivisible. Holiness and Happiness, says an old
divine, are two several notions of one thing. Equally
inseparable are the notions of Opposition to Love and Opposition
to Bliss. _Unless therefore the heart of a created being is at
one with the heart of God, it cannot but be miserable._
Moreover, there is no possibility of continuing forever partly
with God and partly against him; we must either be capable by
our nature of entire accordance with His will, or we must be
incapable of anything but misery, further than He may for awhile
'not impute our trespasses to us,' that is, He may interpose
some temporary barrier between sin and its attendant pain. _For
in the Eternal Idea of God a created spirit is perhaps not seen,
as a series of successive states_, of which some that are evil
might be compensated by others that are good, _but as one
indivisible object of these almost infinitely divisible modes_,
and that either in accordance with His own nature, or in
opposition to it....

"Before the gospel was preached to man, how could a human soul
have this love, and this consequent life? I see no way; but now
that Christ has excited our love for him by showing unutterable
love for us; now that we know him as an Elder Brother, a being
of like thoughts, feelings, sensations, sufferings, with
ourselves, it has become possible to love as God loves, that is,
to love Christ, and thus to become united in heart to God.
Besides, Christ is the express image of God's person; in loving
him we are sure we are in a state of readiness to love the
Father, whom we see, he tells us, when we see him. Nor is this
all; the tendency of love is towards a union so intimate as
virtually to amount to identification; when then by affection
towards Christ we have become blended with his being, the beams
of eternal love, falling, as ever, on the one beloved object,
will include us in him, and their returning flashes of love out
of his personality will carry along with them some from our own,
since ours has be