of course feel the affections of love, reverence, desire of his
approbation, delight in the hope or consciousness of it. And surely all
this is applicable, and may be brought up to that Being, who is
infinitely more than an adequate object of all those affections; whom we
are commanded to _love with all our heart_, _with all our soul_, _and
with all our mind_. And of these regards towards Almighty God some are
more particularly suitable to and becoming so imperfect a creature as
man, in this mortal state we are passing through; and some of them, and
perhaps other exercises of the mind, will be the employment and happiness
of good men in a state of perfection.

This is a general view of what the following discourse will contain. And
it is manifest the subject is a real one: there is nothing in it
enthusiastical or unreasonable. And if it be indeed at all a subject, it
is one of the utmost importance.

As mankind have a faculty by which they discern speculative truth, so we
have various affections towards external objects. Understanding and
temper, reason and affection, are as distinct ideas as reason and hunger,
and one would think could no more be confounded. It is by reason that we
get the ideas of several objects of our affections; but in these cases
reason and affection are no more the same than sight of a particular
object, and the pleasure or uneasiness consequent thereupon, are the
same. Now as reason tends to and rests in the discernment of truth, the
object of it, so the very nature of affection consists in tending
towards, and resting in, its objects as an end. We do indeed often in
common language say that things are loved, desired, esteemed, not for
themselves, but for somewhat further, somewhat out of and beyond them;
yet, in these cases, whoever will attend will see that these things are
not in reality the objects of the affections, _i.e._ are not loved,
desired, esteemed, but the somewhat further and beyond them. If we have
no affections which rest in what are called their objects, then what is
called affection, love, desire, hope, in human nature, is only an
uneasiness in being at rest; an unquiet disposition to action, progress,
pursuit, without end or meaning. But if there be any such thing as
delight in the company of one person, rather than of another; whether in
the way of friendship, or mirth and entertainment, it is all one, if it
be without respect to fortune, honour, or increasing our