Love is higher than the Highest. Love is greater than the Greatest. Yea, it is in a certain sense greater than God; while yet, in the highest sense of all, God is Love, and Love is God. Love being the highest principle is the virtue of all virtues; from whence they flow forth.
Just as a drop of water in the ocean cannot avail much; but if a great river runneth into it, that maketh a great commotion.
A shepherd, in whom the spirit of God works, is more highly esteemed before God than the wisest and most potent in self-wit, without the divine dominion.
For God is himself the Being of all Beings, and we are as gods in him, through whom he revealeth himself.
The pure Deity is in all places and all corners, and present every where all over: the birth of the holy Trinity in one essence is every where: and the angelical world reacheth to every part, wherever you can think, even in the midst of the earth, stones, and rocks: as also hell and the kingdom of God's wrath is every where all over.
If Love dwelt not in Trouble, it could have nothing to love. But its substance which it loves, namely the poor soul, being in trouble and pain, it hath thence cause to love this its own substance and to deliver it from pain, that so itself may by it be again beloved.
A Christian is of no sect. He can dwell in the midst of sects, and appear in their services, without being attached or bound to any. He hath but one knowledge, and that is, Christ in him.
Adam was the image of God, he was man and woman, and yet neither of them before his Eve, but a masculine virgin in peculiar love, full of chastity and purity.
In this world, with thy earthly life, thou art under heaven, stars, and elements, also under hell and devils; all ruleth in thee, and over thee.
All that men will serve God with must be done in Faith, viz. in the Spirit. It is the Spirit that maketh the work perfect, and acceptable in the sight of God. All that a man undertaketh and doeth in Faith, he doth in the Spirit of God, which Spirit of God doth co-operate in the work, and then it is acceptable to God.
If men would as fervently seek after love and righteousness as they do after opinions, there would be no strife on earth, and we should be as children of one father, and should need no law or ordinance. For God is not served by any law, but only by obedience.
The virtue of Love is nothing and all, or that Nothing visible out of which All Things proceed. Its power is through All Things; its height is as high as God; its greatness is as great as God.
The sweet quality is set opposite to the bitter, and is a gracious, amiable, blessed and pleasant quality, a refreshing of the life, an allaying of the fierceness. It maketh all pleasant and friendly in every creature; it maketh the vegetables of the earth fragrant and of good taste, affording fair, yellow, white and ruddy colours.
There is nothing in nature wherein there is not good and evil; everything moveth and liveth in this double impulse, working or operation, be it what it will.
Very exceeding wonderful is the history concerning Abraham, for the kingdom of Christ is therein wholly represented.
The soul shall mightily rule in all hidden secrets: but it must not let in the devil.
God's love-eye does not see essentially into the wicked rebellious apostate soul; neither also into the devil, but his anger-eye sees thereinto; that is, God, according to the property of the anger or fire of wrath, sees in the devil, and in the false soul.
All strife concerning Christ's testaments cometh hence that men do not understand that Heaven wherein Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. They understand not that he is in this World, and that the World standeth in Heaven, and Heaven in the World, and are in one another, as Day and Night.
He that serves God is resigned up into him, and in all things has respect to truth and righteousness, and will promote that.
Men should friendly confer together, and offer one another their gifts and knowledge in love, and try things one with another, and hold that which is best, and not so stand in their own opinion as if they could not err.
