The sun and stars please me in ministering to you. They please me in ministering to a thousand others as well as you. And you please me because you can live and love in the Image of God: not in a blind and brutish manner, as beasts do; by a mere appetite and rude propensity, but with a regulated well-ordered Love, upon clear causes, and with a rational affection, guided to divine and celestial ends. Which is to love with a Divine and Holy Love, Glorious and Blessed. We are all prone to love; but the art lies in managing our love: to make it truly amiable and proportionable. To love for God's sake, and to this end, that we may be well-pleasing unto Him: to love with a design to imitate Him, and to satisfy the principles of intelligent nature, and to become honorable, is to love in a Blessed and Holy manner. |