such different parts, and
dissentient qualities, do conspire together in such an exact perfect unity
and agreement, in which the wisdom of God doth most appear, by making all
things in number, weight and measure. His power appears in the making all
the materials of nothing, but his wisdom is manifested in the ordering and
disposing so dissonant natures into one well agreeing and comely frame; so
that this orderly disposition of all things into one fabric, is that
harmonious melody of the creation, made up as it were of dissonant sounds,
and that comely beauty of the world, resulting from such a proportion and
wise combination of divers lines and colours. To go no further than the
body of a man, what various elements are combined into a well ordered
being, the extreme qualities being so refracted and abated as they may
join in friendship and society, and make up one sweet temperament!

Now, it is most reasonable to suppose, that, by the law of creation, there
was no less order and unity to be among men, the chiefest of the works of
God. And so it was indeed. As God had moulded the rest of the world into a
beautiful frame, by the first stamp of his finger, so he did engrave upon
the hearts of men such a principle, as might be a perpetual bond and tie
to unite the sons of men together. This was nothing else but the law of
love, the principal fundamental law of our creation, love to God, founded
on that essential dependence and subordination to God, and love to man,
grounded upon that communion and interest in one image of God. All the
commandments of the first and second table are but so many branches of
these trees, or streams of these fountains. Therefore our Saviour gives a
complete abridgment of the law of nature and the moral law, "Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy mind, this is the first and great commandment. The second is like
unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," Matth. xxii. 37, 38,
39. And therefore, as Paul says, "Love is the fulfilling of the law," Rom.
xiii. 10. The universal debt we owe to God is love in the superlative
degree, and the universal debt we owe one another is love in an inferior
degree, yet of no lower kind than that of our selves. "Owe no man any
thing, but to love one another" (Rom. xiii. 8), and that collateral with
himself, as Christ speaks. Unto these laws all other are subordinate, and
one of them is subordinate to the