What is it to love our souls?

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MW

Puritanboard Amanuensis
Hugh Binning (Practical Sermons), Works, p. 581:

Self-love is generally esteemed infamous and contemptible among men. It is of a bad report every where; and indeed as it is taken commonly, there is good reason for it, that it should be hissed out of all societies, if reproaching and speaking evil of it would do it. But to speak the truth, the name is not so fit to express the thing, for that which men call self-love, may rather be called self-hatred. Nothing is more pernicious to a man’s self, or pestilent to the societies of men than this; for if it may be called love, certainly it is not self-love, but the love of some baser and lower thing than self, to our eternal prejudice. For what is ourselves, but our souls? Matt. 16:26; Luke 9:25. For our Lord there shows that to lose our souls, and to lose ourselves, is one and the same thing. But what is it to love our souls? Certainly it is not to be enamoured with their deformed shape, as if it were perfect beauty? Neither can it be interpreted, any true love to our souls, to seek satisfaction and rest unto them, where it is not at all to be found; for this is to put them in perpetual pain and disquiet. But here it is that true self-love, and soul-love centereth, in that which our Saviour propounds, namely, to desire and seek the everlasting welfare of our souls, and that perpetual rest unto them, after which there is no labour nor motion any more. Therefore, to draw unto himself the souls of men the more sweetly, and the more strongly too, he fasteneth about them a cord of their own interest, and that the greatest, real rest; and by this he is likely to prevail with men in a way suited to their reasonable natures. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are wearied, and I will give you rest.”
 
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