Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind.

Everybody knows, you therefore need only just be put in mind, that
there is such a thing as having so great horror of one extreme as to
run insensibly and of course into the contrary; and that a
doctrine's having been a shelter for enthusiasm, or made to serve
the purposes of superstition, is no proof of the falsity of it:
truth or right being somewhat real in itself, and so not to be
judged of by its liableness to abuse, or by its supposed distance
from or nearness to error. It may be sufficient to have mentioned
this in general, without taking notice of the particular
extravagances which have been vented under the pretence or endeavour
of explaining the love of God; or how manifestly we are got into the
contrary extreme, under the notion of a reasonable religion; so very
reasonable as to have nothing to do with the heart and affections,
if these words signify anything but the faculty by which we discern
speculative truth.

By the love of God I would understand all those regards, all those
affections of mind which are due immediately to Him from such a
creature as man, and which rest in Him as their end. As this does
not include servile fear, so neither will any other regards, how
reasonable soever, which respect anything out of or besides the
perfection of the Divine nature, come into consideration here. But
all fear is not excluded, because His displeasure is itself the
natural proper object of fear. Reverence, ambition of His love and
approbation, delight in the hope or consciousness of it, come
likewise into this definition of the love of God, because He is the
natural object of all those affections or movements of mind as