(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.

(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.

(21) Now observe, The gracious, amiable, blessed love, which is the fifth fountain-spirit in the divine power, is the hidden source, fountain or quality which the corporeal being cannot comprehend or apprehend, but only when it riseth up in the body, and then the body triumpheth therein, and behaveth itself friendly, lovely and courteously; for that quality or spirit belongeth not to the imaging or framing of a body, but riseth up in the body, as a flower springeth up out of the earth.

(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."

(6) Now love is conceived in many ways, in the form of meekness, of mildness, of patience, of liberality, of freedom from envy, of absence of hatred, of forgetfulness of injuries. In all it is incapable of being divided or distinguished: its nature is to communicate. Again, it is said, "If you See the beast of your relatives, or friends, or, in general, of anybody you know, wandering in the wilderness, take it back and restore it; and if the owner be far away, keep it among your own till he return, and restore it." It teaches a natural communication, that what is found is to be regarded as a deposit, and that we are not to bear malice to an enemy. "The command of the Lord being a fountain of life" truly, "causeth to turn away from the snare of death." And what? Does it not command us "to love strangers not only as friends and relatives, but as ourselves, both in body and soul?" Nay more, it honoured the nations, and bears no grudge against those who have done ill. Accordingly it is expressly said, "Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, for thou wast a sojourner in Egypt;" designating by the term Egyptian either one of that race, or any one in the world. And enemies, although drawn up before the walls attempting to take the city, are not to be regarded as enemies till they are by the voice of the herald summoned to peace.

(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.

(3) We come now to treat of love in its essential nature. Love may be defined as an inclination to that which is pleasant. This is apparent in the case of the five senses, each of which may be said to love that which gives it delight; thus the eye loves beautiful forms, the ear music, etc. This is a kind of love we share with the animals. But there is a sixth sense, or faculty of perception, implanted in the heart, which animals do not possess, through which we become aware of spiritual beauty and excellence. Thus, a man who only acquainted with sensuous delights cannot understand what the Prophet meant when he said he loved prayer more than perfumes or women, though the last two were also pleasant to him. But he whose inner eye is opened to behold the beauty and perfection of God will despise all outward sights in comparison, however fair they may be.

(2) Various teachers have praised love greatly, as St Paul does, when he saith, "to whatever height I may attain, if I have not love, I am nothing." But I set sanctification even above love; in the first place because the best thing in love is that it compels me to love God. Now it is a greater thing that I compel God to come to me, than that I compel myself to go to God. Sanctification compels God to come to me, and I prove this as follows:--

(39) Yet you must know, that the Corporeity of the Element of this Creature is inferior to the Deity; for the Deity is Spirit, and the Element is generated out of the Word from Eternity; and the Lord entered into the Servant, at which all the Angels in Heaven wonder. And it is the greatest Wonder that is done from Eternity, for it is against Nature; and that may [indeed rightly] be [called] Love.

(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.

(17) Through the higher love the whole life of man is to be elevated from temporal selfishness to the spring of all love, to God: man will again be master over nature by abiding in God and lifting her up to God.

(64) As the members of man's body love one another, so do the spirits also in the divine power; there is nothing else but a mere longing, desiring, and fulfilling, as also a triumphing and rejoicing the one in the other: For through these spirits come the understanding and distinction in God, in angels, in men, in beasts, in fowls and in everything that liveth.

(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.

(18) So also the Sound, where the Love is predominant; it brings most joyful Tidings or News into all the Forms of the Birth, as also the Fire in the Love, that kindles the Love rightly in all the Fountain-Spirits, as is mentioned above; and the Love kindles Love in its Essence. When the Love is predominant in Love, it is the sweetest, meekest, humblest, most loving Fountain of all that springs in all the Fountains; and it confirms and fixes the heavenly Birth, so that it is a holy divine Essence or Substance.

(2) And I: "By philosophic arguments, And by authority that hence descends, Such love must needs imprint itself in me; For Good, so far as good, when comprehended Doth straight enkindle love, and so much greater As more of goodness in itself it holds; Then to that Essence (whose is such advantage That every good which out of it is found Is nothing but a ray of its own light) More than elsewhither must the mind be moved Of every one, in loving, who discerns The truth in which this evidence is founded. Such truth he to my intellect reveals Who demonstrates to me the primal love Of all the sempiternal substances. The voice reveals it of the truthful Author, Who says to Moses, speaking of Himself, 'I will make all my goodness pass before thee.' Thou too revealest it to me, beginning The loud Evangel, that proclaims the secret Of heaven to earth above all other edict." And I heard say: "By human intellect And by authority concordant with it, Of all thy loves reserve for God the highest.

(1) A true lover is proved such by his pain of heart; The lover's ailment is different from all ailments; Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries. A lover may hanker after this love or that love, However much we describe and explain love, Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, When pen hasted to write, When the discourse touched on the matter of love, In explaining it Reason sticks fast, as an ass in mire; Naught but Love itself can explain love and lovers!

(6) But these people know not, as appears, the divinity of love. For love is not desire on the part of him who loves; but is a relation of affection, restoring the Gnostic to the unity of the faith, - independent of time and place. But he who by love is already in the midst of that in which he is destined to be, and has anticipated hope by knowledge, does not desire anything, having, as far as possible, the very thing desired. Accordingly, as to be expected, he continues in the exercise of gnostic love, in the one unvarying state.

(29) In truth, if the love of God really takes possession of the heart all other love is excluded. One of the Children of Israel was in the habit of praying at night, but, observing that a bird sang in a certain tree very sweetly, he began to pray under that tree, in order to have the pleasure of listening to the bird. God told David to go and say to him, "Thou hast mingled the love of a melodious bird with the love of Me; thy rank among the saints is lowered." On the other band, some have loved God with such intensity that, while they were engaged in devotion, their houses have caught fire and they have not noticed it.