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kingdom so large, as that nothing limits it, and yet he hath banished many natural subjects thereof, even those legions of angels which were created in it, and are fallen from it; what soul amongst us shall doubt, but that he that hath thus much, and loves thus much, will not deny her a portion in the blood of Christ, or a room in the kingdom of heaven? No soul can doubt it except it have been a witness to itself, and be so still, that it love not Christ Jesus, for that is a condition necessary: and that is the third branch to which we are come now in our order; that this love be mutual, I love them, &c.

If any man loves not our Lord Jesus, let him be accursed, says the apostle; now the first part of this curse is upon the indisposition to love; he that loves not at all is first accursed. That stupid inconsideration, which passes on drowsily, and negligently upon God's creatures, that sullen indifferency in one's disposition, to love one thing no more than another, not to value, not to choose, not to prefer, that stoniness, that inhumanity, not to be affected, not to be entendered, to wear those things which God hath made objects and subjects of affections; that which St. Paul places in the bottom, and lees, and dregs of all the sins of the Jews, to be without natural affections", this distemper, this ill complexion, this ill nature of the soul, is under the first part of this curse, if any man love not; for he that loves not, knows not God, for God is love.

But this curse determines not upon that, neither is it principally directed upon that, not loving; for as we say in the schools, Amor est primus actus voluntatis, The first thing that the will of man does, is to affect, to choose, to love something; and it is scarce possible to find any man's will so idle, so barren, as that it hath produced no act at all; and therefore the first act being love, scarce any man can be found, that doth not love something: but the curse extends, yea is principally intended upon him that loves not Christ Jesus; though he love the creature, and orderly enough; yea, though he love God, as a great and incomprehensible power, yet if he love not Christ Jesus, if he acknowledge not, that all that passes between God and him, is in, and for Christ Jesus, let him be accursed, for all his love.

7 Rom. i. 30.

Now there are but two that can be loved, God and the creature: and of the creatures, that must necessarily be best loved, which is nearest us, which we understand best and reflect most upon, and that is ourselves; for, for the love of other creatures, it is but a secondary love; if we love God, we love them for his sake; if we love ourselves, we love them for our sakes: now to love ourselves is only allowable, only proper to God himself; for this love is a desire, that all honour, and praise, and glory should be attributed to one's self, and it can be only proper to God to desire that to love ourselves then, is the greatest treason we can commit against God; and all love of the creatures determines in the love of ourselves: for though sometimes we may say, that we love them better than ourselves; and though we give so good (that is, indeed, so ill testimony) that we do so, that we neglect ourselves, both our religion and our discretion for their sakes, whom we pretend to love, yet all this is but a secondary love, and with relation still to ourselves and our own contentments: for is this love which we bear to other creatures, within that definition of love, relle bonum amato, to wish that which we love, happy; doth any ambitious man love honour or office therefore, because he thinks that title, or that place should receive a dignity by his having it, or an excellency by his executing it? doth any covetous man love a house or horse therefore, because he thinks that house or horse should be happy in such a master or such rider? doth any licentious man covet or solicit a woman therefore, because he thinks it a happiness to her, to have such a servant? No, it is only himself that is within the definition, vult bonum sibi, he wishes well (as he mistakes it) to himself, and he is content, that the slavery, and dishonour, and ruin of others should contribute to make up his imaginary happiness.

O dementiam nescientem amare homines humaniter! What a perverse madness is it, to love a creature and not as a creature, that is, with all the adjuncts, and circumstances, and qualities of a creature, of which the principal is that, that love raise us to the contemplation of the Creator; for if it be so, we may love ourselves, as we are the images of God; and so we may love other men, as they are the images of us, and our nature; yea, as

"Augustine.

they are the members of the same body; for omnes homines una humanitas, all men make up but one mankind, and so we love other creatures, as we all meet in our Creator, in whom princes and subjects, angels and men, and worms are fellow servants.

Si male amaveris, tunc odisti'; If thou hast loved thyself, or any body else principally, or so, that when thou dost any act of love, thou canst not say to thine own conscience, I do this for God's sake, and for his glory; if thou hast loved so, thou hast hated thyself, and him whom thou hast loved, and God whom thou shouldest love.

Si bone oderis, says the same father, If thou hast hated as thou shouldest hate, if thou hast hated thine own internal temptations, and the outward solicitations of others, amasti, then thou hast expressed a manifold act of love, of love to thy God, and love to his image, thyself, and love to thine image, that man whom thy virtue and thy example hath declined, and kept from offending his, and thy God.

And as this affection, love, doth belong to God principally, that is, rather than to anything else, so doth it also principally another way, that is, rather than any affection else; for, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but the love of God is the consummation, that is, the marriage, and union of thy soul, and thy Saviour.

But can we love God when we will? do we not find, that in the love of some other things, or some courses of life, of some ways in our actions, and of some particular persons, that we would fain love them, and cannot? when we can object nothing against it, when we can multiply arguments, why should we love. them, yet we cannot but it is not so towards God; every man may love him, that will; but can every man have this will, this desire? Certainly we cannot begin this love; except God love us first, we cannot love him; but God doth love us all so well, from the beginning, as that every man may see the fault was in the perverseness of his own will, that he did not love God better. If we look for the root of this love, it is in the Father; for, though the death of Christ be towards us, as a root, as a cause of our love, and of the acceptableness of it, yet Meritum Christi est 9 Augustine.

affectum amoris Dei erga nos1, The death of Christ was but an effect of the love of God towards us, So God loved the world that he gave his Son: if he had not loved us first, we had never had his Son; here is the root then, the love of the Father, and the tree, the merit of the Son; except there be fruit too, love in us, to them again, both root and tree will wither in us, howsoever they grew in God. I have loved thee with an everlasting love, (says God) therefore with mercy I have drawn thee", if therefore we do not perceive, that we are drawn to love again by this love, it is not an everlasting love, that shines upon us.

All the sunshine, all the glory of this life, though all these be testimonies of God's love to us, yet all these bring but a winter's day, a short day, and a cold day, and a dark day, for except we love too, God doth not love with an everlasting love: God will not suffer his love to be idle, and since it profits him nothing, if it profits us nothing neither, he will withdraw it; Amor Dei ut lumen ignis, ut splendor solis, ut odor lucis, non præbenti proficit, sed utenti, The sun hath no benefit by his own light, nor the fire by his own heat, nor a perfume by the sweetness thereof, but only they who make their use, and enjoy this heat and fragrancy; and this brings us to our other part, to pass from loving to enjoying.

Tulerunt Dominum meum, They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him; this was one strain of Mary Magdalen's lamentation, when she found not her Saviour in the monument: it is a lamentable case to be fain to cry so, Tulerunt, They have taken, other men have taken away Christ, by a dark and corrupt education, which was the state of our fathers to the Roman captivity. But when the abjecerunt Dominum, which is so often complained of by God in the prophets, is pronounced against thee, when thou hast had Christ offered to thee, by the motions of his grace, and sealed to thee by his sacraments, and yet wilt cast him so far from thee, that thou knowest not where to find him, when thou hast poured him out at thine eyes in profane and counterfeit tears, which should be thy soul's rebaptization for thy sins, when thou hast blown him

10 Augustine.

11 Jer. xxxi. 3.

12 Ambrose.

away in corrupt and ill intended sighs, which should be gemitus columbæ, the voice of the turtle, to sound thy peace and reconciliation with God; yea when thou hast spit him out of thy mouth in execrable and blasphemous oaths; when thou hast not only cast him so far, as that thou knowest not where to find him, but hast made so ordinary and so indifferent a thing of sin, as thou knowest not when thou didst lose him, no nor dost not remember that ever thou hadst him; no, nor dost not know that there is any such man, as Dominus tuus, a Jesus, that is, thy Lord. The tulerunt is dangerous, when others hide Christ from thee; but the abjecerunt is desperate, when thou thyself dost cast him

away.

To lose Christ may befall the most righteous man that is; but then he knows where he left him; he knows at what sin he lost his way, and where to seek it again; even Christ's imagined father and his true mother, Joseph and Mary, lost him, and lost him in the holy city, at Jerusalem; they lost him and knew it not, they lost him and went a day's journey without him, and thought him to be in the company; but as soon as they deprehended their error, they sought and they found him, when as his mother told him, his father and she had sought with a heavy heart alas, we may lose him at Jerusalem, even in his own house, even at this present, whilst we pretend to do him service; we may lose him, by suffering our thoughts to look back with pleasure upon the sins which we have committed, or to look forward with greediness upon some sin that is now in our purpose and prosecution; we may lose him at Jerusalem, how much more, if our dwelling be a Rome of superstition and idolatry, or if it be a Babylon in confusion, and mingling God and the world together, or if it be a Sodom, a wanton and intemperate misuse of God's benefits to us, we may think him in the company when he is not, we may mistake his house, we may take a conventicle for a church; we may mistake his apparel, that is, the outward form of his worship; we may mistake the person, that is, associate ourselves to such as are no members of his body: but if we do not return to our diligence to seek him, and seek him, and seek him with a heavy heart, though we begun with a tulerunt, other men, other temptations took him away, yet we end in an

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