Reason teaches that whatever performances or seeming virtues there are without love are insincere and hypocritical. If there be no love in what men do, then there is no true respect to God or men in what they do; and if so, certainly there is no sincerity. What is religion without respect to God? The very notion of religion or worship is the creature's exercise and expression of respect to the Creator. But if there be no true respect or love, then all his religion is but seeming religion, and there is no real religion in it, and therefore it is vain. Thus if men's faith be of that sort, that there is no true respect to God, reason teaches that it must be vain. What is faith good for, which contains in it no manifestation of respect to God? But if there be no love to God in it, there is no true respect to God. From this it appears that love is centered in a true and living faith, and it is the proper life and soul of it, without which faith is dead, as the body is without the spirit; and that it is the most distinguishing thing of a saving faith from other faiths. But of this more particularly afterwards
