Whoever knows the truth is free, and a free person does not sin, for “one who sins is a slave of sin.” Truth is the mother, knowledge is the father. Those who do not allow themselves to sin the world calls free. They do not allow themselves to sin, and knowledge of the truth lifts them up—that is, it makes them free and superior to all. But “love builds up.” Whoever is free through knowledge is a slave because of love for those who do not yet have freedom of knowledge. Knowledge enables them to be free. Love [never says] it owns something, [though] it owns [everything]. Love does not [say, “This is mine]” or “That is mine,” but rather, “[All that is mine] is yours.”

(6) "God," then, being good, "is love," it is said. Whose "love worketh no ill to his neighhour," neither injuring nor revenging ever, but, in a word, doing good to all according to the image of God. "Love is," then, "the fulfilling of the law; " like as Christ, that is the presence of the Lord who loves us; and our loving teaching of, and discipline according to Christ. By love, then, the commands not to commit adultery, and not to covet one's neighbour's wife, are fulfilled, [these sins being] formerly prohibited by fear.

(1) The love of God is the highest of all topics, and is the final aim to which we have been tending hitherto. We have spoken of spiritual dangers as they hinder the love of God in a man's heart, and we have spoken of various good qualities as being the necessary preliminaries to it. Human perfection resides in this: that the love of God should conquer a man's heart and possess it wholly, and even if it does not possess it wholly it should predominate in the heart over the love of all other things. Nevertheless, rightly to understand the love of God is so difficult a matter that one sect of theologians have altogether denied that man can love a Being who is not of his own species, and they have defined the love of God as consisting merely in obedience. Those who hold such views do not know what real religion is.

(1) Love is a perfect muzzle of evil suggestions; Without love who ever succeeded in stopping them? Be a lover, and seek that fair Beauty, Hunt for that Waterfowl in every stream! How can you get water from that which cuts it off? How gain understanding from what destroys understanding? Apart from principles of reason are other principles Besides this reason of yours God has other reasons By your carnal reason you may procure earthly food, When, to win enduring love of God, you sacrifice reason, God gives you "a tenfold recompense;" yea, seven hundred fold.

(3) Love joins us to God, does all things in concord. In love, all the chosen of God were perfected. Apart from love, nothing is well pleasing to God." "Of its perfection there is no unfolding," it is said. "Who is fit to be found in it, except those whom. God counts worthy?" To the point the Apostle Paul speaks, "If I give my body, and have not love, I am sounding brass, and a tinkling cymbal."

(4) "Let your love be without dissimulation," it is said; "and abhorring what is evil, let us become attached to what is good, to brotherly love," and so on, down to "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, living peaceably with all men." Then "be not overcome of evil," it is said, "but overcome evil with good."

(41) We see this in the Evil Spirit; he perceiveth and knoweth good and evil, right and wrong, and the like; but since he hath no love for the good that he seeth, he becometh not good, as he would if he had any love for the truth and other virtues which he seeth. It is indeed true that Love must be guided and taught of Knowledge, but if Knowledge be not followed by love, it will avail nothing. It is the same with God and divine things. Let a man know much about God and divine things, nay, dream that he seeth and understandeth what God Himself is, if he have not Love, he will never become like unto God, or a “partaker of the divine nature.” But if there be true Love along with his knowledge, he cannot but cleave to God, and forsake all that is not God or of Him, and hate it and fight against it, and find it a cross and a sorrow. And this Love so maketh a man one with God, that he can nevermore be separated from Him.

(32) All this is not asked about nor looked at. And such a creature doth nothing for its own sake, or in its own name, for it hath quitted all Self, and Me, and Mine, and We and Ours, and the like, and these are departed. It no longer saith, “I love myself, or this or that, or what not.” And if you were to ask Love, “What lovest thou?” she would answer, “I love Goodness.” “Wherefore?” “Because it is good, and for the sake of Goodness.” So it is good and just and right to deem that if there were ought better than God, that must be loved better than God. And thus God loveth not Himself as Himself, but as Goodness. And if there were, and He knew, ought better than God, He would love that and not Himself. Thus the Self and the Me are wholly sundered from God, and belong to Him only in so far as they are necessary for Him to be a Person. Behold! all that we have said must indeed come to pass in a Godlike man, or one who is truly “made a partaker of the divine nature”; for else he would not be truly such.

(2) A cardinal question is where we are to place the freedom of action ascribed to us.

It must be founded in impulse or in some appetite, as when we act or omit in lust or rage or upon some calculation of advantage accompanied by desire.

But if rage or desire implied freedom we must allow freedom to animals, infants, maniacs, the distraught, the victims of malpractice producing incontrollable delusions. And if freedom turns on calculation with desire, does this include faulty calculation? Sound calculation, no doubt, and sound desire; but then comes the question whether the appetite stirs the calculation or the calculation the appetite.

Where the appetites are dictated by the very nature they are the desires of the conjoint of soul and body and then soul lies under physical compulsions: if they spring in the soul as an independent, then much that we take to be voluntary is in reality outside of our free act. Further, every emotion is preceded by some meagre reasoning; how then can a compelling imagination, an appetite drawing us where it will, be supposed to leave us masters in the ensuing act? Need, inexorably craving satisfaction, is not free in face of that to which it is forced: and how at all can a thing have efficiency of its own when it rises from an extern, has an extern for very principle, thence taking its Being as it stands? It lives by that extern, lives as it has been moulded: if this be freedom, there is freedom in even the soulless; fire acts in accordance with its characteristic being.

We may be reminded that the Living Form and the soul know what they do. But, if this is knowledge by perception, it does not help towards the freedom of the act; perception gives awareness, not mastery: if true knowing is meant, either this is the knowing of something happening- once more awareness- with the motive- force still to seek, or the reasoning and knowledge have acted to quell the appetite; then we have to ask to what this repression is to be referred and where it has taken place. If it is that the mental process sets up an opposing desire we must assure ourselves how; if it merely stills the appetite with no further efficiency and this is our freedom, then freedom does not depend upon act but is a thing of the mind- and in truth all that has to do with act, the very most reasonable, is still of mixed value and cannot carry freedom.

(19) And for those who are aiming at perfection there is proposed the rational gnosis, the foundation of which is "the sacred Triad." "Faith, hope, love; but the greatest of these is love." Truly, "all things are lawful, but all things are not expedient," says the apostle: "all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not." And, "Let no one seek his own advantage, but also that of his neighbour," so as to be able at once to do and to teach, building and building up. For that "the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," is admitted; but the conscience of the weak is supported. "Conscience, I say, not his own, but that of the other; for why is my liberty judged of by another conscience?

(43) Further mark ye; that when the True Love and True Light are in a man, the Perfect Good is known and loved for itself and as itself; and yet not so that it loveth itself of itself and as itself, but the one True and Perfect Good can and will love nothing else, in so far as it is in itself, save the one, true Goodness. Now if this is itself, it must love itself, yet not as itself nor as of itself, but in this wise: that the One true Good loveth the One Perfect Goodness, and the One Perfect Goodness is loved of the One, true and Perfect Good. And in this sense that saying is true, that “God loveth not Himself as Himself.” For if there were ought better than God, God would love that, and not Himself. For in this True Light and True Love there neither is nor can remain any I, Me, Mine, Thou, Thine, and the like, but that Light perceiveth and knoweth that there is a Good which is all Good and above all Good, and that all good things are of one substance in the One Good, and that without that One, there is no good thing. And therefore, where this Light is, the man’s end and aim is not this or that, Me or Thee, or the like, but only the One, who is neither I nor Thou, this nor that, but is above all I and Thou, this and that; and in Him all Goodness is loved as One Good, according to that saying: “All in One as One, and One in All as All, and One and all Good, is loved through the One in One, and for the sake of the One, for the love that man hath to the One.” Behold, in such a man must all thought of Self, all self-seeking, self-will, and what cometh thereof, be utterly lost and surrendered and given over to God, except in so far as they are necessary to make up a person. And whatever cometh to pass in a man who is truly Godlike, whether he do or suffer, all is done in this Light and this Love, and from the same, through the same, unto the same again. And in his heart there is a content and a quietness, so that he doth not desire to know more or less, to have, to live, to die, to be, or not to be, or anything of the kind; these become all one and alike to him, and he complaineth of nothing but of sin only. And what sin is, we have said already, namely, to desire or will anything otherwise than the One Perfect Good and the One Eternal Will, and apart from and contrary to them, or to wish to have a will of one’s own.

(42) Behold, this they call understanding, and knowing. Yet this is not knowledge, but belief, and many things are known and loved and seen only with this sort of perceiving and knowing. There is also yet another kind of Love, which is especially false, to wit, when something is loved for the sake of a reward, as when justice is loved not for the sake of justice, but to obtain something thereby, and so on. And where a creature loveth other creatures for the sake of something that they have, or loveth God, for the sake of something of her own, it is all false Love; and this Love belongeth properly to nature, for nature as nature can feel and know no other love than this; for if ye look narrowly into it, nature as nature loveth nothing beside herself. On this wise something may be seen to be good and not loved. But true Love is taught and guided by the true Light and Reason, and this true, eternal and divine Light teacheth Love to love nothing but the One true and Perfect Good, and that simply for its own sake, and not for the sake of a reward, or in the hope of obtaining anything, but simply for the Love of Goodness, because it is good and hath a right to be loved. And all that is thus seen by the help of the True Light must also be loved of the True Love. Now that Perfect Good, which we call God, cannot be perceived but by the True Light; therefore He must be loved wherever He is seen or made known.

(10) Take, for instance, the case of a man who has sold a slave girl without knowing how much he was attached to her till she is quite out of his reach. Then the love of her, hitherto dormant, wakes up in him with such intensity as to amount to torture, stinging him like a snake, so that he would fain, cast himself into fire or water to escape it. Such is the effect of love of the world, which those who have it often suspect not till the world is taken from them, and then the torment of vain longing is such that they would gladly exchange it for any number of mere external snakes and scorpions.

(215) From love comes grief, from love comes fear; he who is free from love knows neither grief nor fear.

(5) While in the first it well directed is, And in the second moderates itself, It cannot be the cause of sinful pleasure; But when to ill it turns, and, with more care Or lesser than it ought, runs after good, 'Gainst the Creator works his own creation. Hence thou mayst comprehend that love must be The seed within yourselves of every virtue, And every act that merits punishment. Now inasmuch as never from the welfare Of its own subject can love turn its sight, From their own hatred all things are secure; And since we cannot think of any being Standing alone, nor from the First divided, Of hating Him is all desire cut off. Hence if, discriminating, I judge well, The evil that one loves is of one's neighbour, And this is born in three modes in your clay. There are, who, by abasement of their neighbour, Hope to excel, and therefore only long That from his greatness he may be cast down; There are, who power, grace, honour, and renown Fear they may lose because another rises, Thence are so sad that the reverse they love;

(2) And should it be granted that the affections specified above, when produced rationally, are good, yet they are nevertheless inadmissible in the case of the perfect man, who is incapable of exercising courage: for neither does he meet what inspires fear, as he regards none of the things that occur in life as to be dreaded; nor can aught dislodge him from this - the love he has towards God.

(33) The right love in the divine nature cometh from the fountain of the Son of God. Behold, thou child of man, let this be told thee: The angels know already what is the right love toward God, but thou needest it in thy cold heart.

(51) And where it chooseth whatever it will unhindered, it always chooseth in all things what is noblest and best, and all that is not noble and good it hateth, and findeth to be a grief and offence unto it. And the more free and unhindered the will is, the more is it pained by evil, injustice, iniquity, and in short all manner of wickedness and sin, and the more do they grieve and afflict it. This we see in Christ, whose will was the purest and the least fettered or brought into bondage of any man’s that ever lived. So likewise was Christ’s human nature the most free and single of all creatures, and yet felt the deepest grief, pain, and indignation at sin that any creature ever felt. But when men claim freedom for their own, so as to feel no sorrow or indignation at sin and what is contrary to God, but say that we must heed nothing and care for nothing, but be, in this present time, as Christ was after His resurrection, and the like;—this is no true and divine freedom springing from the true divine Light, but a natural, unrighteous, false, and deceitful freedom, springing from a natural, false, and deluded light. Were there no self-will, there would be also no ownership. In heaven there is no ownership; hence there are found content, true peace, and all blessedness. If any one there took upon him to call anything his own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell, and would become an evil spirit. But in hell everyone will have self-will, therefore there is all manner of misery and wretchedness. So is it also here on earth. But if there were one in hell who should get quit of his self-will and call nothing his own, he would come out of hell into heaven. Now, in this present time, man is set between heaven and hell, and may turn himself towards which he will. For the more he hath of ownership, the more he hath of hell and misery; and the less of self-will, the less of hell, and the nearer he is to the Kingdom of Heaven. And could a man, while on earth, be wholly quit of self-will and ownership, and stand up free and at large in God’s true light, and continue therein, he would be sure of the Kingdom of Heaven. He who hath something, or seeketh or longeth to have something of his own, is himself a slave; and he who hath nothing of his own, nor seeketh nor longeth thereafter, is free and at large, and in bondage to none. All that hath here been said, Christ taught in words and fulfilled in works for three-andthirty years, and He teacheth it to us very briefly when He saith: “Follow Me.” But he who will follow Him must forsake all things, for He renounced all things so utterly as no man else hath ever done. Moreover, he who will come after Him, must take up the cross, and the cross is nothing else than Christ’s life, for that is a bitter cross to nature. Therefore He saith: “And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me, and cannot be My disciple.”53 But nature, in her false freedom, weeneth she hath forsaken all things, yet she will have none of the cross, and saith she hath had enough of it already, and needeth it no longer, and thus she is deceived. For had she ever tasted the cross she would never part with it again. He that believeth on Christ must believe all that is here written.

(1) AND therefore I pray thee, lean listily to this meek stirring of love in thine heart, and follow thereafter: for it will be thy guide in this life and bring thee to bliss in the tother. It is the substance of all good living, and without it no good work may be begun nor ended. It is nought else but a good and an according will unto God, and a manner of well‑pleasedness and a gladness that thou feelest in thy will of all that He doth.

(1) God said, "Do thou grant his earnest request, Freewill is as the salt to piety, In its revolutions reward and punishment were needless, For 'tis freewill that has merit at the great reckoning. If the whole world were framed to praise God, Place a sword in his hand and remove his impotence, Because freewill is that wherewith 'we honor Adam,' The faithful yield honeycombs like bees, For the faithful feed on choice herbs, So that, like bees, their chyle yields life-giving food,