The Easy Way to God, Tr. by H. Collins - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XX. Of the Love of God. What Love is. Its Origin, Prerogatives, and Properties. By what Persons its Nature is described. God can be Loved more easily than He can be Known. HAVE now completed, as far as my poor abilities have allowed me, the work I promised. It seems suitable to say a few closing words on the Love of God. For the mystical way, whose paths are a short route to God, as I have already taught, begins from love, and ends in love. Love is a delight in something good, or a propension of the appetite to what is good. It is the primary motion of the will. All the other affections have love for their root and primary source. They all spring from it,--it springs from none. So says the Philosopher Phaedrus. The Abbot William calls it a vehement, well-ordered, will. It is a certain propension of the soul, which, by its own weight, carries it to its end. "My love is my weight. It is love which carries me there, wheresoever it be that I am carried." It is the connecting chain, which binds all things together, by an unspeakable friendship, a union indissoluble. Saint Denys, the Areopagite, quotes this expression from the hymns of Hierotheus. It is an everlasting circle without beginning or end, proceeding from good and ending in good. It is exercised for the sake of good. It never declines from this path of good, whether it go forth, or return, or abide. Whatever is contained in the Sacred Scriptures or in the books of the Saints, is either love itself, or something to do with love. 2. If you seek the source of love, I shall not send you to the Symposium of Plato, or the learned fables of the Poets. We have a better grounded teaching from Him who said, " God is love. He that abideth in love, abideth in God and God in him" Love was in the pure and ...