The two States of Love to God.

The least love that is must be obedient, pure, simple, and communicative; that is, it must exclude all affection to sin, and all inordinate affection to the world, and must be expressive, according to our power, in the instances of duty, and must be love for love’s sake; and for this love, martyrdom is the highest instance — that is, a readiness of mind rather to suffer any evil than to do any. Of this our blessed Saviour affirmed that no man had greater love than this; that is, this is the highest point of duty, the greatest love, that God requires of man. And yet he that is the most imperfect must have this love also in preparation of mind, and must differ from another in nothing, except in the degrees of promptness and alacrity. And in this sense, he that loves God truly, (though but with a beginning and tender love,) yet he loves God with all his heart, that is, with that degree of love which is the highest point of our duty and of God’s charge upon us; and he that loves God with all his heart may yet increase with the increase of God; just as there are degrees of love to God among the saints, and yet each of them love him with all their powers and capacities.

2. But the greater state of love is the zeal of love, which runs out into excrescences and suckers, like a fruitful and pleasant tree; or bursting into gums, and producing fruits, not of a monstrous but of an extraordinary and heroical, greatness. Concerning which these cautions are to be observed: