knew what rapture was until he faw the incomparable Conftantia, in whose perfon and manners are concentered all the charms of beauty, and all the graces of virtue.

Now, if love, when directed to a creature, can open fuch a heaven in our bofoms, what must it do when directed to God, the eternal fountain of all perfection and goodness? Would you know the bleffing of all bleffings, it is this love dwelling in the foul, fweetening our bitter, lightening our dark, enlivening our fad, and filling to the full of joy the fouls that must ever thirst until they come to this great fountain of all happiness. There is no peace, nor ever can be for the foul of man, but in the exercise of this love; for as love is the infinite happiness that created man; fo love is the only perfection and felicity of man; and no one can live in happiness, but as he lives in love. Look at

every pain and disorder in human nature, you will find it to be nothing else but the spirit of the creature turned from love to selfishness; and thence, in course, to anxiety, fear, covetoufnefs, wrath, envy, and all evil: So that love alone is, and only can be, the cure of every evil; and he who lives in love is rifen out of the power of evil into the freedom and joy of one of the spirits of heaven. All wants are fatisfied, all diforders of nature are removed; no life is any longer a burden; every day is a day of peace; every thing is a spring of joy to him who breathes the fweet gentle element of love.

BUT some men, of gloomy and melancholic humours, will afk, Is it certain that God loves mankind? Surely the innumerable favours which he la vishes upon us, muft fet his love beyond all doubt.

Те

To ask whether God loves mankind, is indeed to ask whether he is good, which is the fame as queftioning his very existence; for how is it poffible to conceive a God without goodnefs? And, what goodness could he have were he to hate his own works, and to defire the mifery of his creatures?

A GOOD prince loves his fubjects; a good father loves his children: We love even the tree we have planted; the house we have built; and is it poffible for God not to love mankind? Where can fuch a fufpicion rife, except in the minds of those who form a capricious and barbarous being of God; a being who makes a cruel fport of the fate of mankind; a being who destines them, before they are born, to hell, referving to himself one, at most, in a million, and that one no more meriting that preference, than the others have deferved their damnation? Impious blafphemers,

phemers, who endeavour to give me an averfion to God, by perfuading me that I am the object of his averfion!

You will fay, he owes nothing to man; well, but he owes fomething to himSelf; he must neceffarily be just and beneficent. If a virtuous heathen could declare that he had much rather it fhould never be faid that there was fuch a man as Plutarch, than that he was cruel and revengeful, how muft the Father of mercies be displeased to find himfelf charged with fuch hateful qualities?

BESIDES, I know he loves me, by the very love I feel for him; it is because he loves me that he has engraved on my heart this fentiment, the most precious of all his gifts. His love is the fource of mine, as it ought to be, indeed, a motive to it.

GIVE me leave, in order to convey an idea of the love of God, to describe the paffion of a virtuous lover for his mistress

miftrefs. The comparison in itself has nothing indecent. Love is a vice only in vicious hearts. Fire, though the pureft of all fubftances, will yet emit unwholesome and noxious vapours when it is fed by tainted matter; fo love, if it grow in a vicious mind, produces nothing but fhameful defires and criminal defigns, and is followed with fear, vexation and mifery. But let it rise in an upright heart, and be kindled by an object adorned with virtue as well as beauty, it is fafe from cenfure; far from being offended, God gives it his approbation. He has made amiable objects only that they might be loved.

Now let us fee what paffes in the heart of a perfon deeply fmitten with love. He thinks with delight of the perfon beloved; he hurries with impetuofity towards the charming object, and whatever keeps or removes him from her is tormenting; he is afraid of giving

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