e full."

It was sin that did first break off that fellowship that was between God
and man, and cut off that blessed society in which the honour and
happiness of man consisted. But that fundamental bond being loosed, it
hath likewise untied all the links of society of men among themselves, and
made such a general dispersion and dissipation of mankind, that they are
almost like wild beasts, ranging up and down, and in this wilder than
beasts, that they devour one another, which beasts do not in their own
kind, and they are like fishes of the sea, without rule and government.
Though there be some remnants of a sociable inclination in all men, that
shows itself in their combinings in societies, and erecting governments,
yet generally that which is the true bond and ligament of men, which alone
can truly knit them together, is broken,--that is, love, the love of God
and our neighbours. And therefore, notwithstanding of all the means used
to reduce, and to contain mankind in order and harmony by government, yet
there is nothing but continual rents, distractions, dissipations,
divisions, and dissolutions in commonwealths amongst themselves and
between nations, so that all men may be represented as lions, tigers,
wolves, serpents, and such like unsociable creatures, till the gospel come
to tame them and subdue them, as it is often holden out in the prophets,
Isa. ii. 4, xi. 6-8, lxv. 25.

Now indeed, you have here the express end and purpose of the gospel, to
make up these two great breaches in the creature, between God and men, and
between men and men. It is a gospel of peace. Wherever it takes hold of
men's spirits, it reduceth all to a peaceable temper, joins them to God,
and one to another. For the very sum and substance of it is the love of
God to mankind, and proposed for this end, to engage the love of man
again, and love is the glue, the cement that alone will conjoin hearts
unto this fellowship. It is a strange thing, and much to be lamented, that
Christendom should be a field of blood, an aceldama, beyond other places
of the world, that where the gospel is pretended to be received, that men
have so far put off even humanity, as thus to bite and devour one another.
Certainly it is, because where it is preached, it is not believed.
Therefore, sin taketh occasion by it to become the more sinful. Always let
us take heed to this, that it is the great purpose and grand design of the
gospel preached to us, to restore us t