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Self-Love
473. Natural Man. Conversion. Self-Love. Common Work of the
Spirit. From a principle of self-love, that is to say, from a love
of pleasure and a love of being loved, and a hatred of pain and an
aversion to the being hated, many things may arise. First, there may
arise the affection of gratitude, for as the soul necessarily loves
pleasure or respect, so it loves that which the soul sees to be the
cause of that pleasure or good, or to be the person that exercises that
love and respect. A person may have a kind of benevolence and
complacence in an immediate thing that has been the occasion of much
delight and pleasure to him, by a certain kind of association of ideas
and inclinations and acts of the mind. Ideas that are habitually
associated together do partake of one another’s love and complacence and
benevolence, i.e., in the benevolence and delight the soul
exercises towards them. But especially is it natural to the soul to
exercise gratitude to persons that it conceives of as not only causes of
pleasure but also, therein, exercising respect — and that both as it
loves the pleasure and the respect. As it is natural to the soul to
exercise anger or malevolence to a person that it conceives of as hating
him and doing him ill, so is there also a natural gratitude in the soul.
Mat. 5:46, “If ye love them that love you, what reward have ye, do not
even the publicans the same?”
2.
From self-love a person may come to love another person for good
qualifications of mind. If a person conceives of another as having those
qualifications of mind that would enable him to do him good and minister
to his profit or pleasure, and as being disposed to respect and
benevolence (which he will look upon as more or less valuable as he
conceives of the person as greater or less, more or less considerable
and honorable) — this may beget in his mind strong desire of a person’s
friendship, and of having a propriety in him and union with him, and may
for the present cause a kind of benevolence from the person’s
imagination (whereby he imagines himself as being in friendship and
union and enjoyment of him) and a complacence from that love of virtue
which there may be from self-love, which we now are about to speak of.
3.
There may be a love to many virtues that arises from self-love. So there
may be a love of justice and a love of generosity because it conceives
of such virtues as tending directly to man’s good, and finds and knows
that they tend to his own good whenever exercised towards him. And when
the contrary vices are exercised, they are for his ill and excite his
anger. And so a person may habitually hate it, yet desire it and make
association with it. For the person is restrained from such acts
himself, and therefore he is not an actor but only a sufferer by such
vices, and so he has not benefit but only injury by them. For man may
come to scorn some vices from pride, if it greatly affects his actions
and his natural conscience suggests to him the relation between some
vices and shame and contempt. A man may hate other vices from the things
that usually attend them, as he may hate drunkards for their other
vicious dispositions that attend it, as their boisterousness and
ungoverned spite and scoffing, which he may hate for the reason
aforesaid. A man may dislike men for some vices from envy, for he is
restrained and he has not the pleasure of them, and his envy in such a
case is without restraint, for he looks upon his zeal as good, and gives
it the reins.
821. Self-Love. Common Grace. Saving Grace. There are two
affections that are natural to men, that do especially seem to imitate
virtue. The one is gratitude, or a disposition to love others that love
them. It is as easy to account for such an affection’s arising from
self-love, as to account for anger and revenge, whereby men are disposed
to hate those that hate them… [Biblical citations are omitted.]
2.
It is very plain, by experience, that pity is an affection natural to
men. But this does not argue that men naturally have any true or proper
love to others that does not arise from self-love. For men may pity
those that they have no love to, provided they do not hate them, or if
they do hate them, they may pity them if they see that their misery goes
beyond their hatred. Pity is a painful sensation in us arising from the
sight or sense of misery in others that is disproportionable to our
disposition towards them. Whenever there is a disproportion between our
disposition towards others and the state we see them in, it has a
tendency to excite uneasiness in us, let that disposition be what it
will. When we see those happy that we do not love, or when their
happiness exceeds our love, or when their misery is less than our hatred
— that excites our envy. And on the other hand, when we see those
miserable that we do not hate, or when their misery exceeds our hatred,
or when their happiness is less than our love, it excites our pity. This
natural pity may excite in men hatred of many acts of sin. We have a
remarkable instance in David, when he does not seem to have been much in
the exercise of grace. 2 Sam. 12:5-6, “And David’s anger was greatly
kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, as the Lord liveth, the
man that hath done this thing shall surely die, and he shall restore the
lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”
And
self-love may have influence to cause men to love virtue many more ways
than one would be ready to imagine. The ways of the working of a man’s
heart are so mysterious that in many instances it may be difficult to
give an account how such and such things should arise from self-love.
That natural men should love just, generous, meek, and benevolent
persons, and persons possessed of such like virtues, with a love of
appetition and complacence, though they have never received any benefit
by those virtues in them and possibly have no expectation that ever they
shall, is no more unaccountable than that they should love that sweet
fruit and pleasant food, the sweetness of which they are sensible of or
have an idea of, though they as yet receive no benefit of it, and do not
know that ever they shall. Yet they love it, because they conceive of it
as in itself tending to their pleasure, if there were opportunity and
due application. So they conceive of those mentioned virtues as, in like
manner, in their own nature tending to their good. Self-love makes them
love the quality in general, in one case as in the other.
A
natural man may love others, but it is some way or other as appendages
and appurtenances to himself; but a spiritual man loves others as of
God, or in God, or some way related to him. |
