Hugh Binning (Treatise of Christian Love), Works, p. 523:
As God had moulded the rest of the world into a beautiful frame, by the first stamp of his finger, so he did engrave upon the hearts of men such a principle, as might be a perpetual bond and tie to unite the sons of men together. This was nothing else but the law of love, the principal fundamental law of our creation, – love to God, founded on that essential dependence and subordination to God; and love to man, grounded upon that communion and interest in one image of God. All the commandments of the first and second table are but so many branches of these trees, or streams of these fountains. Therefore our Saviour gives a complete abridgment of the law of nature and the moral law, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; this is the first and great commandment. The second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” Matt. 22:37-39. And therefore, as Paul says, “Love is the fulfilling of the law,” Rom. 13:10. The universal debt we owe to God is love in the superlative degree, and the universal debt we owe one another is love in an inferior degree.
As God had moulded the rest of the world into a beautiful frame, by the first stamp of his finger, so he did engrave upon the hearts of men such a principle, as might be a perpetual bond and tie to unite the sons of men together. This was nothing else but the law of love, the principal fundamental law of our creation, – love to God, founded on that essential dependence and subordination to God; and love to man, grounded upon that communion and interest in one image of God. All the commandments of the first and second table are but so many branches of these trees, or streams of these fountains. Therefore our Saviour gives a complete abridgment of the law of nature and the moral law, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; this is the first and great commandment. The second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” Matt. 22:37-39. And therefore, as Paul says, “Love is the fulfilling of the law,” Rom. 13:10. The universal debt we owe to God is love in the superlative degree, and the universal debt we owe one another is love in an inferior degree.
