Centuries of Meditations

46

In all Love there is some Producer, some Means, and some End: all these being internal in the thing itself. Love loving is the Producer, and that is the Father Love produced is the Means, and that is the Son For Love is the means by which a lover loveth. The End of these Means is Love: for it is love by loving: and that is the Holy Ghost. The End and the Producer being both the same, by the Means attained. For by loving Love attaineth itself and being. The Producer is attained by loving, and is the End of Himself. That Love is the end of itself, and that God loveth that He might be Love, is as evident to him that considers spiritual things, as the Sun. Because it is impossible there should be a higher end, or a better proposed. What can be more desirable than the most delightful operation; what more eligible, than the most glorious being; what further can be proposed than the most blessed and perfect life? Since God therefore chooseth the most perfect life, what can be more perfect than that life and that Being which is at once the Fountain, and the End of all things? There being in it the perpetual joy of giving and receiving infinite treasures. To be the Fountain of joys and blessings is delightful. And by being Love God is the Fountain of all worlds. To receive all and to be the End of all is equally delightful, and by being Love God receiveth, and is the End of all. For all the benefits that are done unto all, by loving all, Himself receiveth: What good could Heaven and Earth do Him, were it not for His Love to the children of men? By being what He is, which is Love unto all, He enjoyeth all.