thousands of thousands,were brought together into one, and became one; neither is any such thing God. Neither if you were to think of the same spirits as without bodies — a thing indeed most difficult for carnal thought to do. Behold and see, if you can, O soul pressed down by the corruptible body, and weighed down by earthly thoughts, many and various; behold and see, if you can, that God is truth. For it is written that
God is light;not in such way as these eyes see, but in such way as the heart sees, when it is said, He is truth [reality]. Ask not what is truth [reality] for immediately the darkness of corporeal images and the clouds of phantasms will put themselves in the way, and will disturb that calm which at the first twinkling shone forth to you, when I said truth [reality]. See that you remain, if you can, in that first twinkling with which you are dazzled, as it were, by a flash, when it is said to you, Truth [Reality]. But you can not; you will glide back into those usual and earthly things. And what weight, pray, is it that will cause you so to glide back, unless it be the bird-lime of the stains of appetite you have contracted, and the errors of your wandering from the right path?
we walk as yet by faith, and not by sight,we certainly do not yet see God, as the same [apostle] says,
face to face:whom however we shall never see, unless now already we love. But who loves what he does not know? For it is possible something may be known and not loved: but I ask whether it is possible that what is not known can be loved; since if it cannot, then no one loves God before he knows Him. And what is it to know God except to behold Him and steadfastly perceive Him with the mind? For He is not a body to be searched out by carnal eyes. But before also that we have power to behold and to perceive God, as He can be beheld and perceived, which is permitted to the pure in heart; for
blessed are the pure in heart. for they shall see God;except He is loved by faith, it will not be possible for the heart to be cleansed, in order that it may be apt and meet to see Him. For where are there those three, in order to build up which in the mind the whole apparatus of the divine Scriptures has been raised up, namely Faith, Hope, and Charity, except in a mind believing what it does not yet see, and hoping and loving what it believes? Even He therefore who is not known, but yet is believed, can be loved. But indisputably we must take care, lest the mind believing that which it does not see, feign to itself something which is not, and hope for and love that which is false. For in that case, it will not be charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned, which is the end of the commandment, as the same apostle says.
He who loves iniquity, hates his own soul.
For we know that all things work together for good to them that loveGod;and again,
But if any man loveGod, the same is known of Him;and that,
Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us;and many other passages; because he who loves God must both needs do what God has commanded, and loves Him just in such proportion as he does so; therefore he must needs also love his neighbor, because God has commanded it: or whether it be that Scripture only mentions the love of our neighbor, as in that text,
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ;and again,
For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself;and in the Gospel,
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the Law and the prophets.And many other passages occur in the sacred writings, in which only the love of our neighbor seems to be commanded for perfection, while the love of God is passed over in silence; whereas the Law and the prophets hang on both precepts. But this, too, is because he who loves his neighbor must needs also love above all else love itself. But
God is love; and he that dwells in love, dwells in God.Therefore he must needs above all else love God.
Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.And He does not say, Learn of me, because I raise those who have been dead four days; but He says,
Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.For humility, which is most solid, is more powerful and safer than pride, that is most inflated. And so He goes on to say,
And you shall find rest unto your souls,for
Love is not puffed up;and
God is Love;and
such as be faithful in love shall rest in Him,called back from the din which is without to silent joys. Behold,
God is Love:why do we go forth and run to the heights of the heavens and the lowest parts of the earth, seeking Him who is within us, if we wish to be with Him?
God is love; and he that dwells in love, dwells in God;but when I see love, I do not see in it the Trinity. Nay, but you see the Trinity if you see love. But if I can I will put you in mind, that you may see that you see it; only let itself be present, that we may be moved by love to something good. Since, when we lovelove, we love one who loves something, and that on account of this very thing, that he does love something; therefore what does lovelove, that love itself also may be loved? For that is not love which loves nothing. But if it loves itself it must love something, that it may love itself as love. For as a word indicates something, and indicates also itself, but does not indicate itself to be a word, unless it indicates that it does indicate something; so love also loves indeed itself, but except it love itself as loving something, it loves itself not as love. What therefore does lovelove, except that which we love with love? But this, to begin from that which is nearest to us, is our brother. And listen how greatly the Apostle John commends brotherly love:
He that loves his brother abides in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.It is manifest that he placed the perfection of righteousness in the love of our brother; for he certainly is perfect in whom
there is no occasion of stumbling.And yet he seems to have passed by the love of God in silence; which he never would have done, unless because he intends God to be understood in brotherly love itself. For in this same epistle, a little further on, he says most plainly thus:
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loves is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not, knows not God; for God is love.And this passage declares sufficiently and plainly, that this same brotherly love itself (for that is brotherly love by which we love each other) is set forth by so great authority, not only to be from God, but also to be God. When, therefore, we love our brother from love, we love our brother from God; neither can it be that we do not love above all else that same love by which we love our brother: whence it may be gathered that these two commandments cannot exist unless interchangeably. For since
God is love,he who loves love certainly loves God; but he must needs lovelove, who loves his brother. And so a little after he says,
For he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? because the reason that he does not see God is, that he does not love his brother. For he who does not love his brother, abides not in love; and he who abides not in love, abides not in God, because God is love. Further, he who abides not in God, abides not in light; for
God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.He therefore who abides not in light, what wonder is it if he does not see light, that is, does not see God, because he is in darkness? But he sees his brother with human sight, with which God cannot be seen. But if he loved with spiritual love him whom he sees with human sight, he would see God, who is love itself, with the inner sight by which He can be seen. Therefore he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he loveGod, whom on that account he does not see, because God is love, which he has not who does not love his brother? Neither let that further question disturb us, how much of love we ought to spend upon our brother, and how much upon God: incomparably more upon God than upon ourselves, but upon our brother as much as upon ourselves; and we love ourselves so much the more, the more we love God. Therefore we love God and our neighbor from one and the same love; but we love God for the sake of God, and ourselves and our neighbors for the sake of God.
Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation: giving no offense in anything, that the ministry be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things?Why is it that we are inflamed with love of the Apostle Paul, when we read these things, unless that we believe him so to have lived? But we do not believe that the ministers of God ought so to live because we have heard it from any one, but because we behold it inwardly within ourselves, or rather above ourselves, in the truth itself. Him, therefore, whom we believe to have so lived, we love for that which we see. And except we loved above all else that form which we discern as always steadfast and unchangeable, we should not for that reason love him, because we hold fast in our belief that his life, when he was living in the flesh, was adapted to, and in harmony with, this form. But somehow we are stirred up the more to the love of this form itself, through the belief by which we believe some one to have so lived; and to the hope by which we no more at all despair, that we, too, are able so to live; we who are men, from this fact itself, that some men have so lived, so that we both desire this more ardently, and pray for it more confidently. So both the love of that form, according to which they are believed to have lived, makes the life of these men themselves to be loved by us; and their life thus believed stirs up a more burning love towards that same form; so that the more ardently we loveGod, the more certainly and the more calmly do we see Him, because we behold in God the unchangeable form of righteousness, according to which we judge that man ought to live. Therefore faith avails to the knowledge and to the love of God, not as though of one altogether unknown, or altogether not loved; but so that thereby He may be known more clearly, and loved more steadfastly.