where our Saviour himself has placed it. He tells you how imperfect the old doctrine was, because it required of us only to love our friends, and permitted us to hate our enemies: but God, fays he, loves and does good to his enemies, as well as his friends. This is perfect love, not reftrained by partialities. When therefore it follows, Be ye perfect, as your Father; the precife meaning is, let your love be univerfal, unconfined by partialities, and, with refpect to its objects, as large as God's is: not that our love either to enemies or friends can be fuppofed in other refpects, and as to the effects of it, to bear any proportion to the divine love.

But, as in this case of extending our love, the example is proper, and therefore alfo the exhortation to follow it; fo in others it would be very injurious to the Deity to suppose, that any example could be drawn from his perfections. In our present state of corruption, it is a great part of religion to govern our thoughts well, and the inward inclinations of our hearts; but it would be as reasonable to bid us govern the world as God governs it, as to govern our thoughts as he governs his: he is liable to none of the imperfections, which make the government of our thoughts to be a neceffary duty in us: he has told us, My thoughts are not as your thoughts: and where there is no fimilitude in the cafes, no example can be drawn from the one to the other. So that in this, and in many other inftances which might be given, we have a duty incumbent on us, towards the due performance of which we can draw no example from the divine perfections. Since then the exhortation to imitate the divine perfections cannot reach

to all parts of our duty, I fee no reason why it should be extended to any upon the authority of our Saviour, to which he himself has not extended it; and as the use of it is peculiarly reserved in holy writ to the cafe of mercy and forgiveness, it ought by no means to be drawn into a general precept, to the perplexing as well the understandings, as the confciences of the weak. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Ephefians, exhorts them to be followers of God, as dear children: but then it is with regard to this very cafe; for he had faid immediately before, chap. iv. 32. Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Chrift's fake hath forgiven you; and, with reference to this duty, he adds, ver. 1ft of the next chapter, Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; to which he fubjoins, And walk in love, as Chrift alfo hath loved us, giving himself for us, ver. 2. So that his exhortation to follow God ftands inclofed on both fides with the precepts of love and charity, as if he intended to fecure it from being applied to any thing else. And if our Saviour meant any thing more in the text, if he had a view to any other duties or commands than that of love and mercy only, when he placed before us the example of our heavenly Father, St. Luke, I am fure, has done him great injury in reporting his doctrine. He, in the fixth chapter of his Gofpel, gives us the fermon on the mount; when he comes to the topic of love and forgiveness, he introduces the example of God, who is kind to the unthankful, and to the evil. He concludes alfo with an exhortation referring to the example, as St. Matthew does: but inftead of the ge

neral phrase used by St. Matthew, Be ye perfect, as your Father is perfect; St. Luke has it only, Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father alfo is merciful. The two Evangelifts are giving an account of the same sermon, and of the fame paffage; and if they are confiftent, St. Matthew's, Be ye perfect, as God is perfect, can relate only to that particular perfection of mercy and forgiveness, which our Saviour had been recommending, and is of no greater extent than St. Luke's, Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father alfo is merciful. The holy writers often require of us that we should be perfect and blamelefs; that is, as St. Paul expreffes it in the fourth of the Coloffians, and twelfth verfe, that we should Stand perfect and complete in all the will of God: but it is one thing to be perfect in all the will of God, and another to be perfect even as he is perfect. The will of God, however manifefted to us, is the proper rule of the perfection we ought to aim at; but the tranfcendent perfections of the Deity are to be reverenced and adored, but never attained to by any creature.

It is true, that as the moral perfections of the Deity afford us the trueft image of holiness and purity, fo are they the best patterns to place before our eyes for the conduct of our own lives. It is praiseworthy to imitate a perfection as far as we are able, though we can never hope to come up to the great original: and though there is no room to exhort men to be perfect as God is perfect, yet it is reasonable to prefs them to imitate their heavenly Father. For neither he who advises the imitation, nor he who attempts it, go upon the fuppofition,

that it is either neceffary or poffible to be as perfect as he but this they both agree in, that the nearer any one can come to the pattern, the more perfect he will be; and therefore the imitation of God has not for its end the attaining to the perfections of God, but the attaining to the greatest perfection we are capable of. In this fenfe St. Peter exhorts us to be holy, becaufe God is holy: For as he, fays the Apostle, which hath called you is holy, fo be ye holy in all manner of converfation, 1 Pet. i. 15. And St. John in his first Epistle, chap. iii. 3. to the same purpose: Every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself even as he is pure. The notion we have of the purity and holiness of God is a very powerful motive to us to be holy and pure, fince nothing but holiness and purity can recommend us to the favour and protection of a being, who is holy and pure. A conformity therefore to the divine nature in the moral perfections of it, is the utmost excellence and happiness of human fouls, and that which we ought to labour to attain with the greateft ardor and contention of mind. It is a noble fubject for the entertainment of our thoughts; but it has had the misfortune to owe more to the power of imagination than to the light of reafon; and has had fo great a place allowed it in some enthusiastical writers, as to be less cultivated than it deferves by foberer inquirers. And yet this conformity to the divine nature was a leffon taught by fome few wife heathens, who found, by the light of reafon and nature, wherein the true dignity and happiness of man confifted: for the imitation of God is not a new principle introduced into religion by the reve

lation of the Gofpel, but has its foundation in the reason and nature of things.

And this was the fecond thing I proposed to confider.

That we should endeavour to be perfect, even as God is perfect, in the ftrict meaning of the words, is no more the direction of reafon than it is of revelation: he knows but little of himself, and lefs of God, who is capable of fuch a thought. But that we should aim at the resemblance of the divine perfections, as far as our prefent ftate will permit, is but the natural confequence arifing from the knowledge we have of God, and the obligation we are under to cultivate and improve our own minds. God is a rational being, and fo are we, though at a great distance from him. As we are thus far made in the image and likeness of God, so are we capable, by the enlargement of our faculties, of a nearer approach to him: for the moral perfections of all rational minds are in kind the fame, however vastly they differ in degree. Were it otherwise, the perfections of the Deity could not be fo much a pattern for us to follow. Were holinefs, righteousness, justice, and mercy, of a different nature confidered in God, from what they are when confidered in man, it is plain, that the holiness or goodness of God could be neither the example nor the motive of holiness in men: and it would be abfurd to fay, as the Scripture does, Be ye holy, for I am holy; unlefs holiness in both cafes, as applied to God, and as applied to man, denoted a moral perfection of the fame kind, proper to both as rational beings, though attainable by us only in that proportion