other, but to nothing else. And so, as
long as the love of God may go before, the love of man should follow, and
whatever doth not untie the bond of divine affection, ought not to loose
the knot of that love which is linked with it. When the uniting of souls
together divides both from God, then indeed, and only then, must this knot
be untied that the other may be kept fast.

But this beautiful and comely frame of man is marred. Sin hath cut in
pieces that divine love that knit man to God; and the dissolving of this
hath loosed that link of human society, love to our neighbour. And now all
is rents, rags, and distractions, because self love hath usurped the
throne. The unity of the world of mankind is dissolved, one is distracted
from another, following his own private inclinations and inordinate
affection, which is the poison of enmity, and seed of all discord. If the
love of God and of one another had kept the throne, there had been a
coordination and co-working of all men in all their actions, for God's
glory and the common good of man. But now self love having enthroned
itself, every man is for himself, and strives, by all means, to make a
concurrence of all things to his own interest and designs. The first
principles of love would have made all men's actions and courses flow into
one ocean of divine glory and mutual edification, so that there could not
have been any disturbance or jarring amongst them, all flowing into one
common end. But self-love hath turned all the channels backward towards
itself, and this is its wretched aim and endeavour, in which it wearies
itself, and discomposes the world, to wind and turn in every thing, and to
make, in the end, a general affluence of the streams into its own bosom.
This is the seed of all division and confusion which is among men, while
every man makes himself the centre, it cannot choose but all the lines and
draughts of men's courses must thwart and cross each other.

Now, the Lord Jesus having redeemed lost man, and repaired his ruins, he
makes up this breach, especially restores this fundamental ordinance of
our creation, and unites men again to God and to one another. Therefore he
is our peace, he hath removed the seeds of discord between God and man,
and between man and man. And this is the subject of that divine epistle
which the beloved apostle, full of that divine love, did pen, "God is
love, and in this was the love of God manifested, that God sent his only
beg