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The apostle proceedeth from common gifts, powers, and habits, to actions, and instanceth in two; the first of which might be a great service to men; the latter, an appearance of a great service to God.
Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor; though, saith he, I feed the poor with my goods, and that not sparingly, but liberally, so as I spend all my estate in that way, and make myself as poor as they:
and though I give my body to be burned; though I die in the cause of Christ, for the testimony of his gospel, or for owning of his ways; and that by the sharpest and most cruel sort of death, burning; and be not dragged to the stake, but freely give up myself to that cruel kind of death:
and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing; yet if I have not a root and principle of love to God in my heart, that carrieth me out to these actions and these sufferings, they all will signify nothing to me, as to my eternal salvation and happiness. From whence we may observe, that:
1. The highest acts of beneficence or bounty towards men, (which we usually call good works), are not meritorious at the hand of God, and may be separated from a true root of saving grace in the soul.
2. That the greatest sufferings for and in the cause of religion, may be separated from a true root and principle of saving grace.
3. That no actions, no sufferings, are sufficient to entitle any soul to heaven, further than they proceed from a principle of true love to God, and a desire to obey and to please him in what we do.
Faith and love must be the roots and principles of all those works which are truly good, and acceptable to God, and which will be of any profit or avail to us with reference to our eternal happiness.