Centuries of Meditations

67

Were not Love the darling of God; this would be a rash and a bold sally. But since it is His Image, and the Love of God, I may almost say the God of God, because His beloved, all this happeneth unto Love. And this Love is your true self when you are in act what you are in power: the great Daemon of the world, the End of all things, the desire of Angels and of all nations. A creature so glorious, that having seen it, it puts an end to all curiosity and swallows up all admiration. Holy, wise, and just towards all things, blessed in all things, the Bride of God, glorious before all, His offspring and first born, and so like Him, that being described, one would think it He. I should be afraid to say all this of it, but that I know Him, how He delighteth to have it magnified: And how He hath magnified it infinitely before because it is His bride and first-born. I will speak only a little of its violence and vigour afar off. It can love an act of virtue in the utmost Indies, and hate a vice in the highest heavens. It can see into hell and adore the justice of God among the damned; it can behold and admire His Love from everlasting. It can be present with His infinite and eternal Love, it can rejoice in the joys which it foreseeth: Can Love Adam in Eden, Moses in the wilderness, Aaron in the tabernacle, David before the Ark, S. Paul among the nations, and Jesus either in the manger or on the Cross: All those it can love with violence. And when it is restored from all that is terrene and sensual to its true spiritual being, it can love those and any of those, as violently as any person in the living age.