Wesley Corpus

(Preached onboard the London Galley, between Charles Town and Boston.) Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. Mark, xii. 30. When God had formed man out of the dust, and breathed into him the breath of life, when he had stamped his own image and superscrip tion upon him, in his understanding, will, and affections, he gave him a law, even to love Him in whose image he was made; and love, the one thing which his Creator required in return for all his benefits, he therefore re quired, because it was the one thing needful to perfect the happiness of his creature. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God" was the whole of that law which God enjoined to man in his original state ; but when he had wilfully degraded himself from that state of happiness and perfection, by transgressing the single pro hibition which was appointed for the test of his love, a more particular law became needful for a remedy of those many inventions he had found out, whereby, being alienated from the love of God, he was enslaved to the love of his creatures, and consequently to error and vice, to shame and to misery. A more particular law was accordingly given him, by the rules whereof he was fully apprised of every avenue at which sin and pain might break in upon his soul. By this he was also directed to those several means which his mer ciful Creator had appointed for the renewal of his nature ; and to complete its use, (till his nature was restored to the image of Him who created him,) it pointed out all those thoughts, and words, and works, by so many express in junctions, which the love of God (when that was the spring of his soul) produced without any injunction. Yet we may easily perceive that, even in this state of man, love is still the fulfilling of the law ; of every law which hath proceeded out