Wesley Corpus

Thirdly, to answer the grand objection against it. First, I am to lay down a plain sense of this commandment. The love of God may be taken in various tenses : first, as it implies obedience to him. Thus St. John : " This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments ;" and such a metonomy, or putting the cause for the effect, frequently occurs in the Sacred Writings, where as the love of Him is placed for outward obedience, of which it is the vital principle, so the fear of God is said to be the departure from evil, which is the necessary consequence of it. By the same figure, the love of God has been sometimes taken for a desire of en joying his presence ; for this immediately flows from love, and increases in the same proportion with it : whereas some eminent men have un warily confounded the stream with the fountain, and have improperly termed the desire of en joying God, love of desire, as if love and de sire were all one ; but desire is as essentially distinct from the love that produces it, as is any fruit from the tree upon which it grows.