The advantages of divine love.
4. Again, as divine love advances and elevates the soul, so it is that alone which can make it happy. The highest pleasures, the most substantial delights, that human nature is capable of, are those which arise from a well-placed and successful affection. That which imbitters love, and makes it ordinarily a very troublesome passion, is the placing it on those who have not worth enough to deserve it, or gratitude to requite it, or whose absence may deprive us of their converse, or their miseries occasion our trouble. To all these evils are they exposed, whose chief affection is placed on creatures; but the love of God delivers us from them all.
The worth of the object.
5. First, Love must needs be full of disquietude, when there is not excellency in the object to answer the vastness of its capacity: So violent a passion cannot but torment the spirit when it finds not wherewith to satisfy its cravings; and indeed so large and unbounded is its nature: that it must be extremely straitened, when confined to any creature: nothing below an infinite good can afford it room to stretch itself, and exert its vigour and activity. What is a little skin-deep beauty, or some small degrees of goodness, to satisfy a passion which was made for God? No wonder lovers do so hardly suffer any rival, and do not desire that others should approve their passion by imitating it: They know the scantiness of the good which they love, that it cannot suffice two, being in effect too little for one. Hence love, which is strong as death, occasioneth jealousy, which is cruel as the grave; the coals whereof are coals of fire, which hath a most violent flame.
6. But divine love hath no mixture of this gall. When once the soul is fixed on that supreme good, it finds so much goodness, as doth not only satisfy its affection, but overpower it too: It finds all its love to be too languid for such an object, and is only sorry that it can command no more: It wishes for the flames of a Seraph, and longs for the time when it shall be wholly dissolved in love. And because it can do so little itself, it desires the assistance of the whole creation, that angels and men would concur with it in the admiration and love of these infinite perfections.
The certainty to be beloved again.
7. Again, love is accompanied with trouble, when it misses a suitable return of affection. Love is the most valuable thing we can bestow, and by giving it, we in effect give all that we have: and therefore it must needs be afflicting, to find so great a gift despised; that the present which one hath made of his whole heart cannot obtain any return. Perfect love is a kind of wandering out of ourselves; it is a sort of voluntary death, wherein the lover dies to himself, and all his own interests; not thinking of them, nor caring for them; and minding nothing but how he may please the party whom he loves. Thus he is quite undone, unless he meets with reciprocal affection; he neglects himself, and the other hath no regard to him: But if he be beloved, he is revived, as it were, and liveth in the soul and care of the person whom he loves. And now he begins to mind his own concernments, not so much because they are his, as because the beloved is pleased to own an interest in them; he becomes dear unto himself, because he is so unto the other.
8. And herein the divine lover hath unspeakably the advantage, having placed his affection on him whose nature is love, whose goodness is as infinite as his being; whose mercy prevented us, when we were his enemies, therefore cannot chuse but embrace us, when we are become his friends. It is impossible that God should deny his love to a soul devoted to him, and which desires nothing so much as to please him. He cannot disdain his own image, nor the heart on which it is engraven. Love is all the tribute which we can pay him, and it is the sacrifice which he will not despise.
The presence of the beloved person.
9. Another thing which disturbs the pleasure of love, and renders it a miserable and unquiet passion, is absence from those we love. It is not without a sensible affliction that friends part, tho’ for some little time: But if death have made the separation, as some time or other it must, this occasions a grief scarce to be parallel’d by all the misfortunes of human life. But, O how happy are those who have placed their love on him, who can never be absent from them! They need but open their eyes, and they shall every where behold the traces of his presence and glory, and converse with him whom their soul loveth; and this makes the darkest prison, or wildest desart, not only supportable, but delightful to them.