Nevertheless, when this respect to future blessedness is warrantable, it must be considered as an expedient for our glorifying God, while we behold his glory; and when we consider it as a reward, we must not look upon it as what is merited by our service, or conferred in a way of debt, but as a reward of grace, given freely to us, though founded on the merits of Christ. Footnote 4: He who glorifies God intentionally, thereby promotes his own happiness. Our enjoying God is glorifying him. The two objects coalesce. Vide note on page 19. Footnote 5: The answer connected with this question makes the glorifying and enjoyment but _one_ end; and thus the enjoyment is supposed to consist in the glorifying God. Footnote 6: It is not probable that the idea of a _book of life_, which is not to be understood literally, was at all in use in the days of Moses. The term ηυχομην used by Paul is not hypothetical, but affirmative, and in the past tense, _I did wish_, or rather _I was wishing_ to be separated from Christ. The truth of this assertion no one, who is acquainted with his history, can doubt; for he had been a persecutor. Such a wish, made after he was a subject of saving grace, would have been unnatural, irrelevant, impious and impossible. It has been nevertheless, zealously contended by some learned and pious modern divines that, “the benevolent person is disposed, and willing to give up, and relinquish his own interest and happiness, when inconsistent with the public good, or the greatest good of the whole.”[7] By _benevolence_ they mean love to being in general, without regard to any excellency in that being, “unless mere existence”[8] be such. In this they place all virtue, and all religion. And that they may the more clearly distinguish this species of love from that of _complacency_ and _gratitude_, in which the party ever has his eye upon his own advantage, they usually adopt the phrase _disinterested benevolence_, yet not wholly discarding the idea of the party’s own interest, but viewing it only on the general scale with that of all other beings.