Wesley Corpus

of the mouth of God, at sundry times and in divers places, and particularly of that which in these last days he hath given us by his Son. Love is the end of every commandment of Christ, all of which, from the least even to the greatest, are given to man, not for his own sake, but purely in order to this. The negative commands, what are they, but so many cautions against what estranges us from the love of God ? and the positive either enjoin the use of means of grace, which are only so many means of love, or the practice of those particular virtues which are the genuine proofs of love, and the steps whereby we ascend from strength to strength towards a perfect obedi ence of this first and greatest commandment that commandment which contains all, pre ceded all, and which shall remain when all the rest are done away ; " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." I shall endeavour to lay down, First, a plain sense of this commandment ; Secondly, to prove this sense to be the tru« one ; and,