Study Edition · Essay 15
Of Charity, or the Love of God
Source: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650), Chapter IV, Section III, from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (footnote references omitted). Obvious misprints in the source are silently corrected. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
Taylor's Holy Living is a practical handbook of Christian devotion, famous for the beauty of its prose. This section explains what “charity” (in its old sense, the love of God) is, how it shows itself, how to keep it steady, how to grow it, and how to keep religious zeal from turning into anger against others. Taylor organises it into numbered rules, and his sentences can be very long, but the images (mirrors, rivers, tides, sugar-cane, perfume) are vivid. In this text, “charity” means love, not giving to the poor.
86 sentences: 7 simple, 30 moderate, 49 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- charity(old sense) Christian love of God and neighbour
- gracesvirtues given by God
- chastesexually pure; restrained
- temperatemoderate, especially in food and drink
- beatitudesupreme blessedness; the happiness of heaven
- immutabilitythe quality of never changing
- omnipotenceunlimited power
- omniscienceknowing everything
- iniquitywickedness; sin
- obnoxious(old sense) exposed or vulnerable to
- voluptuousdevoted to pleasure
- felicityhappiness
- seraphicallike the seraphs, the highest, most ardent angels
- sulliedstained; dirtied
- fancyimagination
- solicitudeanxiety; worry
- ejaculation(old sense) a short, sudden prayer
- assiduousconstant and careful; diligent
- excrescencean outgrowth
- alacrityeager readiness
- zealintense religious enthusiasm
The Essay
Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for himself is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves and carry with it all that is ours.1 The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the law.2 It does the work of all other graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue.3 For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation, and without opportunity, so does the love of God; it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace without any other arms but those of love.4 It is a grace that loves God for himself, and our neighbours for God.5 The consideration of God's goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from him, may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory.6
We need no incentives by way of special enumeration to move us to the love of God, for we cannot love anything for any reason real or imaginary, but that excellence is infinitely more eminent in God.7 There can but two things create love -- perfection and usefulness: to which answer on our part, 1. Admiration; and 2. Desire; and both these are centered in love.8 For the entertainment of the first, there is in God an infinite nature, immensity or vastness without extension or limit, immutability, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, holiness, dominion, providence, bounty, mercy, justice, perfection in himself, and the end to which all things and all actions must be directed, and will, at last, arrive.9 The consideration of which may be heightened, if we consider our distance from all these glories, our smallness and limited nature, our nothing, our inconstancy, our age like a span, our weakness and ignorance, our poverty, our inadvertency and inconsideration, our disabilities and disaffections to do good, our harsh natures and unmerciful inclinations, our universal iniquity, and our necessities and dependencies, not only on God originally and essentially, but even our need of the meanest of God's creatures, and our being obnoxious to the weakest and most contemptible.10 But for the entertainment of the second, we may consider that in him is a torrent of pleasure for the voluptuous; he is the fountain of honour for the ambitious; an inexhaustible treasure for the covetous.11 Our vices are in love with fantastic pleasures and images of perfection, which are truly and really to be found nowhere but in God.12 And therefore our virtues have such proper objects that it is but reasonable they should all turn into love; for certain it is that this love will turn all into virtue.13 For in the scrutinies for righteousness and judgment, when it is inquired whether such a person is a good man or no, the meaning is not, What does he believe? or what does he hope? but what he loves.14
The Acts of Love to God
1. Love does all things which may please the beloved person; it performs all his commandments: and this is one of the greatest instances and arguments of our love that God requires of us -- this is love, ‘That we keep his commandments.’15 Love is obedient.16
2. It does all the intimations and secret significations of his pleasure whom we love; and this is an argument of a great degree of it.17 The first instance is, it makes the love accepted; but this gives a greatness and singularity to it.18 The first is the least, and less than it cannot do our duty; but without this second we cannot come to perfection.19 Great love is also pliant and inquisitive in the instances of its expression.20
3. Love gives away all things, that so he may advance the interest of the beloved person: it relieves all that he would have relieved, and spends itself in such real significations as it is enabled withal.21 He never loved God that will quit anything of his religion to save his money.22 Love is always liberal and communicative.23
4. It suffers all things that are imposed by its beloved, or that can happen for his sake, or that intervene in his service, cheerfully, sweetly, willingly expecting that God should turn them into good, and instruments of felicity.24 ‘Charity hopes all things, endures all things.’25 Love is patient and content with anything, so long as it is together with its beloved.26
5. Love is also impatient of anything that may displease the beloved person, hating all sin as the enemy of its friend; for love contracts all the same relations, and marries the same friendships and the same hatreds; and all affection to a sin is perfectly inconsistent with the love of God.27 Love is not divided between God and God's enemy: we must love God with all our heart; that is, give him a whole and undivided affection, having love for nothing else but such things which he allows, and which he commands or loves himself.28
6. Love endeavours for ever to be present, to converse with, to enjoy, to be united with its object; loves to be talking of him, reciting his praises, telling his stories, repeating his words, imitating his gestures, transcribing his copy in everything; and every degree of love; and it can endure anything but the displeasure and the absence of its beloved.29 For we are not to use God and religion as men use perfumes, with which they are delighted when they have them, but can very well be without them.30 True charity is restless till it enjoys God in such instances in which it wants him; it is like hunger and thirst, it must be fed, or it cannot be answered: and nothing can supply the presence, or make recompense for the absence of God, or of the effects of his favour and the light of his countenance.31
7. True love in all accidents looks upon the beloved person, and observes his countenance, and how he approves or disapproves, and accordingly looks sad or cheerful.32 He that loves God is not displeased at those accidents which God chooses, nor murmurs at those changes which he makes in his family, nor envies at those gifts he bestows; but chooses as he likes; and is ruled by his judgment, and is perfectly of his persuasion, loving to learn where God is the teacher, and being content to be ignorant or silent where he is not pleased to open himself.33
8. Love is curious of little things, of circumstances and measures, and little accidents, not allowing to itself any infirmity which it does not strive to master, aiming at what it cannot yet reach, desiring to be of an angelical purity, and of a perfect innocence, and a seraphical fervour, and fears every image of offence; is as much afflicted at an idle word as some at an act of adultery, and will not allow to itself so much anger as will disturb a child, nor endure the impurity of a dream.34 And this is the curiosity and niceness of divine love: this is the fear of God, and is the daughter and production of Love.35
The Measures and Rules of Divine Love
But because this passion is pure as the brightest and smoothest mirror, and, therefore, is apt to be sullied with every impurer breath, we must be careful that our love to God be governed by these measures:36
1. That our love to God be sweet, even, and full of tranquillity, having in it no violences or transportations, but going on in a course of holy actions and duties, which are proportionable to our condition and present state; not to satisfy all the desire, but all the probabilities and measures of our strength.37 A new beginner in religion has passionate and violent desires; but they must not be the measure of his actions; but he must consider his strength, his late sickness and state of death, the proper temptations of his condition, and stand at first upon defence; not go to storm a strong fort, or attack a potent enemy, or do heroical actions, and fitter for giants in religion.38 Indiscreet violences and untimely forwardness are the rocks of religion against which tender spirits often suffer shipwreck.39
2. Let our love be prudent and without illusion, that is, that it express itself in such instances which God has chosen or which we choose ourselves by proportion to his rules and measures.40 Love turns into doting when religion turns into superstition.41 No degree of love can be imprudent, but the expressions may: we cannot love God too much, but we may proclaim it in indecent manners.42
3. Let our love be firm, constant, and inseparable; not coming and returning like the tide, but descending like a never-failing river, ever running into the ocean of divine excellency, passing on in the channels of duty and a constant obedience, and never ceasing to be what it is till it is turned into sea and vastness, even the immensity of a blessed eternity.43
Although the consideration of the divine excellencies and mercies is infinitely sufficient to produce in us love to God (who is invisible, and yet not distant from us, but we feel him in his blessings, he dwells in our hearts by faith, we feed on him in the sacrament, and are made all one with him in the incarnation and glorifications of Jesus): yet, that we may the better enkindle and increase our love to God, the following advices are not useless:44
Helps to increase our Love to God, by Way of Exercise
1. Cut off all earthly and sensual loves, for they pollute and unhallow the pure and spiritual love.45 Every degree of inordinate affection to the things of this world, and every act of love to a sin, is a perfect enemy to the love of God; and it is a great shame to take any part of our affection from the eternal God, to bestow it upon his creature in defiance of the Creator, or to give it to the devil, our open enemy, in disparagement of him, who is the fountain of all excellences and celestial amities.46
2. Lay fetters and restraints upon the imaginative and fantastic part; because our fancy, being an imperfect and higher faculty, is usually pleased with the entertainment of shadows and gauds; and because the things of the world fill it with such beauties and fantastic imagery, the fancy presents such objects as are amiable to the affections and elective powers.47 Persons of fancy such as are women and children, have always the most violent loves; but, therefore, if we are careful with what representments we fill our fancy, we may the sooner rectify our love.48 To this purpose it is good that we transplant the instruments of fancy into religion, and for this reason music was brought into churches, and ornaments, and perfumes, and comely garments, and solemnities, and decent ceremonies, that the busy and less discerning fancy, being bribed with its proper objects, may be instrumental to a more celestial and spiritual love.49
3. Remove solicitude or worldly cares, and multitudes of secular businesses, for if these take up the intention and actual application of our thoughts and our employments, they will also possess our passions, which, if they are filled with one object, though ignoble, cannot attend another, though more excellent.50 We always contract a friendship and relation with those with whom we converse; our very country is dear to us for our being in it; and the neighbours of the same village, and those that buy and sell with us, have seized upon some portions of our love; and, therefore, if we dwell in the affairs of the world we shall also grow in love with them; and all our love or all our hatred, all our hopes or all our fears, which the eternal God would willingly secure to himself, and esteem amongst his treasures and precious things, shall be spent upon trifles and vanities.51
4. Do not only choose the things of God, but secure your inclinations and aptnesses for God and for religion; for it will be a hard thing for a man to do such a personal violence to his first desires as to choose whatsoever he has no mind to.52 A man will many times satisfy the importunity and daily solicitations of his first longings; and, therefore, there is nothing can secure our loves to God but stopping the natural fountains, and making religion grow near the first desires of the soul.53
5. Converse with God by frequent prayer.54 In particular, desire that your desires may be right and love to have your affections regular and holy.55 To which purpose make very frequent addresses to God by ejaculations and communions, and an assiduous daily devotion; discover to him all your wants, complain to him of all your affronts; do as Hezekiah did, lay your misfortunes and your ill news before him, spread them before the Lord, call to him for health, run to him for counsel, beg of him for pardon; and it is as natural to love him to whom we make such addresses, and on whom we have such dependencies, as it is for children to love their parents.56
6. Consider the immensity and vastness of the divine love to us, expressed in all the emanations of his providence; 1. In his creation; 2. In his conservation of us.57 For it is not my prince, or my patron, or my friend, that supports me, or relieves my needs; but God who made the corn that my friend sends me; who created the grapes, and supported him, who has as many dependencies, and as many natural necessities, and as perfect disabilities, as myself.58 God, indeed, made him the instrument of his providence to me, as he has made his own land or his own cattle to him, with this only difference, that God, by his ministration to me, intends to do him a favour and a reward which to natural instruments he does not; 3. In giving his Son; 4. In forgiving our sins; 5. In adopting us to glory; and ten thousand times ten thousand little addicents and instances happening in the doing every of these -- and it is not possible but for so great love we should give love again; for God, we should give man; for felicity, we should part with our misery.59 Nay, so great is the love of the holy Jesus, God incarnate, that he would leave all his triumphant glories, and die once more for man, if it were necessary for procuring felicity to him.60
In the use of these instruments, love will grow in several knots and steps, like the sugar-canes of India, according to a thousand varieties in the persons loving; and it will be great or less in several persons, and in the same, according to his growth in Christianity.61 But in general discoursing there are but two states of love; and those are labour of love, and the zeal of love: the first is duty; the second is perfection.62
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.63 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.64 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.65 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.66
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.67 Concerning which these cautions are to be observed:68
Cautions and Rules concerning Zeal
1. If zeal is in the beginnings of our spiritual birth, or is short, sudden, and transient, or is a consequent of a man's natural temper, or comes upon any cause but after a long growth of a temperate and well-regulated love -- it is to be suspected for passion and forwardness, rather than the vertical point of love.69
2. That zeal only is good which in a fervent love, has temperate expressions.70 For let the affection boil as high as it can, yet if it boils over into irregular and strange actions, it will have but few, but will need many excuses.71 Elijah was zealous for the Lord of Hosts, and yet he was so transported with it, that he could not receive answer from God till by music he was recomposed and tamed; and Moses broke both the tables of the law by being passionately zealous against them that broke the first.72
3. Zeal must spend its greatest heat principally in those things that concern ourselves; but with great care and restraint in those that concern others.73
4. Remember that zeal, being an excrescence of divine love, must in no sense contradict any action of love.74 Love to God includes love to our neighbour; and therefore no pretence of zeal for God's glory must make us uncharitable to our brother; for that is just so pleasing to God as hatred is an act of love.75
5. That zeal that concerns others can spend itself in nothing but arts and actions and charitable instruments, for their good; and when it concerns the good of many that one should suffer, it must be done by persons of a competent authority, and in great necessity, in seldom instances, according to the law of God or man; but never by private right, or for trifling accidents, or in mistaken propositions.76 The Zealots, in the old law, had authority to transfix and stab some certain persons, but God gave them warrant; it was in the case of idolatry, or such notorious huge crimes, the danger of which was insupportable, and the cognizance of which was infallible; and yet that warrant expired with the synagogue.77
6. Zeal may be let loose in the instances of internal, personal, and spiritual actions, that are matters of direct duty, as in prayers, and acts of adoration, and thanksgiving, and frequent addresses, provided that no indirect act passes upon them to defile them, such as complacency and opinions of sanctity, censuring others, scruples and opinions of necessity, unnecessary fears, superstitious numberings of times and hours; but let the zeal be as forward as it will, as devout as it will, as seraphical as it will, in the direct address and intercourse with God there is no danger, no transgression.78 Do all the parts of your duty as earnestly as if the salvation of all the world, and the whole glory of God, and the confusion of all devils, all that you hope or desire, did depend upon every one action.79
8. Let zeal be seated in the will and choice, and regulated with prudence and a sober understanding, not in the fancies and affections; for those that will make it deep and smooth, material and devout.80
The sum is this; that zeal is not a direct duty, nowhere commanded for itself, and is nothing but a forwardness and circumstance of another duty, and therefore is then only acceptable when it advances the love of God and our neighbours, whose circumstance it is.81 That zeal is only safe, only acceptable, which increases charity directly; and because love to our neighbour and obedience to God are the two great portions of charity, we must never account our zeal to be good but as it advances both these, if it is in a matter that relates to both; or severally if it relates severally.82 St. Paul's zeal was expressed in preaching without any offerings or stipend, in travelling, in spending and being spent for his flock, in suffering, in being willing to be accursed for love of the people of God and his countrymen.83 Let our zeal be as great as his was, so long as it is in affections to others, but not at all in angers against them: in the first there is no danger -- in the second there is no safety.84 In brief, let your zeal (if it must be expressed in anger) be always more severe against yourself than against others.85 The other part of love to God is love to our neighbour, for which I have reserved the paragraph of alms.86
Sentence Notes
In plain English: Love is the greatest gift God can give us, since God himself is love; and it is the greatest gift we can give God, because in giving love we give ourselves and everything we have.
Reference & context: Biblical: 1 John 4:8, “God is love.” Grammar: “himself is love” means “he himself is love.”
In plain English: St. Paul calls love the bond that holds perfection together. It is the old commandment and the new one, the greatest commandment, and in fact all the commandments together, because love fulfils the whole law.
Reference & context: Biblical: Colossians 3:14 (“charity, which is the bond of perfectness”); Matthew 22:37–40 (the great commandment); John 13:34 (“a new commandment … that ye love one another”); Romans 13:10 (“love is the fulfilling of the law”).
In plain English: Love does the work of every other virtue, using no tool except its own direct power.
In plain English: Just as a love of sin makes a person sin against his own reason, against wise arguments, against friends' advice, even with no temptation or opportunity, the love of God works with the same force in the other direction. It makes a person pure without exhausting fasts and penances, moderate even at a feast, and able to choose good without any other motive, reaching for heaven's glory armed only with love.
Reference & context: Structure tip: “as … so does …”. The first half describes the power of sinful love; the second shows divine love working with equal force for good.
In plain English: Love is a virtue that loves God for his own sake, and loves other people for God's sake.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A perfect two-part summary of Christian love, with God at the centre of both halves.
In plain English: At first we usually love God because we think about his goodness and generosity and experience the good things that flow from him. But once we have started, and tasted his goodness, we love the source itself for its own sake. We move from feeling to reason, from thanks to worship, from the senses to the spirit, from thinking about ourselves to being united with God. This is a small picture of heaven, or rather the first childhood of heavenly glory.
Reference & context: Biblical echo: Psalm 34:8, “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”
In plain English: We don't need a detailed list of reasons to love God, because whatever good quality makes us love anything, real or imagined, exists infinitely more in God.
In plain English: Only two things can make us love something: its perfection and its usefulness. In us these produce two responses, admiration and desire, and both meet in love.
In plain English: To feed our admiration, God has an infinite nature: vastness without size or limit, changelessness, eternity, all power, all knowledge, holiness, sovereignty, providence, generosity, mercy, justice, perfection in himself; and he is the final goal toward which everything must be directed and at which everything will finally arrive.
Reference & context: Theology: this is a traditional list of the “attributes of God” from medieval and Reformation theology.
In plain English: Our admiration grows when we compare ourselves: how far we are from God's glory, how small and limited, how nothing, how changeable, how short our lives, how weak, ignorant and poor, careless and thoughtless, unwilling to do good, harsh and unmerciful, sinful throughout, and dependent not only on God but on the humblest creatures, and vulnerable even to the weakest and most contemptible.
Reference & context: Biblical: Psalm 39:5, “thou hast made my days as an handbreadth.” Note: “obnoxious” here keeps its Latin sense, “exposed to harm,” not the modern “unpleasant.”
In plain English: To feed our desire, consider that God offers a flood of pleasure to the pleasure-lover, a fountain of honour to the ambitious, and endless treasure to the greedy.
Reference & context: Biblical: Psalm 36:8, “thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.” Taylor's point is that what every desire really wants is found in God.
In plain English: Even our vices are chasing imaginary pleasures and perfection, and the real versions of these exist only in God.
Reference & context: Philosophy: an echo of St. Augustine, who argued that every sin is a misdirected longing for some good that only God can satisfy.
In plain English: So our virtues have such fitting objects in God that it's only reasonable for them all to become love; and this love, in turn, will make everything virtuous.
In plain English: When we judge whether someone is righteous, and ask whether he is a good man, the real question is not “What does he believe?” or “What does he hope for?”, but “What does he love?”
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A single question that cuts through creeds and claims: a person is defined by what they love.
Reference & context: Theology: this comes from St. Augustine's Enchiridion (ch. 117): to know whether a man is good, ask not what he believes or hopes, but what he loves.
Modernized: be → is
In plain English: Love does whatever pleases the one it loves, and so it obeys all God's commands. This is one of the greatest proofs of love God asks of us: “this is love, that we keep his commandments.”
Reference & context: Biblical: 1 John 5:3, “this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.”
In plain English: Love obeys.
In plain English: Love also follows every hint and unspoken sign of what the beloved wants; and this shows love of a high degree.
In plain English: Obeying commands makes our love acceptable; following unspoken wishes makes it great and outstanding.
In plain English: Obedience is the minimum, and nothing less will do our duty; but without the second kind we can't become perfect.
In plain English: Great love is also flexible, and always looking for new ways to express itself.
In plain English: Love gives away everything to advance the interests of the beloved: it helps everyone he would want helped, and spends itself in whatever practical ways it can.
In plain English: Anyone who would give up any part of his faith to save money never loved God at all.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A blunt test of sincerity that is hard to argue with.
In plain English: Love is always generous and always shares.
In plain English: Love cheerfully and willingly endures whatever the beloved sends, or whatever happens for his sake or in his service, trusting that God will turn it all into good and into means of happiness.
Reference & context: Biblical: Romans 8:28, “all things work together for good to them that love God.”
In plain English: “Love hopes all things, endures all things.”
Reference & context: Biblical: 1 Corinthians 13:7, from St. Paul's famous chapter on love.
Modernized: hopeth → hopes; endureth → endures
In plain English: Love is patient and happy with anything at all, as long as it is with the one it loves.
Modernized: so it be → so long as it is
In plain English: Love can't tolerate anything that might displease the beloved, and hates all sin as the enemy of its friend. Love adopts all the same relationships, “marrying” the beloved's friends and enemies alike. Any fondness for sin is therefore completely incompatible with loving God.
In plain English: Love can't be split between God and his enemy. We must love God with all our heart, giving him our whole, undivided affection, and loving nothing except what he allows, commands, or loves himself.
Reference & context: Biblical: Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:37, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.”
In plain English: Love always tries to be near the beloved, to talk with him, enjoy him, be united with him. It loves to talk about him, praise him, tell his stories, repeat his words, copy his gestures, and follow his example in everything. It can bear anything except his displeasure and his absence.
Reference & context: Image: “transcribing his copy” comes from the schoolroom, where pupils copied a master's handwriting from a model. The phrase “and every degree of love” seems garbled in the source.
In plain English: We must not treat God and religion like perfume, which people enjoy when they have it but can easily do without.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A sharp image of casual religion: pleasant but optional, like a scent.
In plain English: True love is restless until it has God wherever it feels his absence. It is like hunger and thirst: it must be fed or it can't be satisfied. Nothing can replace God's presence, or make up for his absence, or for the loss of his favour and the light of his face.
Reference & context: Biblical: Psalm 4:6, “Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.” Echo of Augustine, Confessions I.1: “our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
In plain English: Whatever happens, true love watches the beloved's face to see whether he approves or disapproves, and looks sad or happy accordingly.
In plain English: A person who loves God isn't upset by the events God chooses, doesn't grumble at the changes he makes in his household, and doesn't envy the gifts he gives others. He chooses what God likes, is guided by God's judgement and agrees with him completely, loving to learn where God teaches, and content not to know, and to stay silent, where God chooses not to reveal himself.
Reference & context: Biblical echo: Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God.”
In plain English: Love pays attention to small details, circumstances and minor events. It allows itself no weakness that it isn't trying to overcome, reaches for what it can't yet attain, wants the purity of angels, perfect innocence and seraphic passion, and fears even the appearance of wrongdoing. It is as upset by a careless word as some people are by adultery, won't allow itself enough anger to upset a child, and won't tolerate even an impure dream.
Reference & context: Biblical: Matthew 12:36, “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof.” Seraphs are the highest order of angels, traditionally burning with love.
Modernized: strives not → does not strive
In plain English: This careful precision is what the love of God looks like; it is what the Bible calls “the fear of God,” and it is love's daughter, born from love.
Reference & context: Theology: Taylor turns the usual order around. The “fear of God” is not terror but the careful attentiveness that love produces.
In plain English: Because this love is as pure as the brightest, smoothest mirror, it is easily clouded by the slightest breath of impurity. So we must make sure our love for God follows these rules:
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The mirror image is exact: the purer the surface, the more easily a single breath clouds it.
In plain English: Our love for God should be gentle, steady and calm, without violent outbursts or ecstasies, carried on through holy actions and duties suited to our condition. It should match not all our desire, but what our strength can realistically manage.
In plain English: A beginner in faith has passionate, intense desires, but these must not decide what he does. He must take into account his strength, his recent spiritual sickness and “death” in sin, and the temptations of his situation. At first he should stay on the defensive, not storm strong fortresses, attack powerful enemies, or attempt heroic feats better suited to spiritual giants.
Modernized: hath → has
In plain English: Reckless intensity and premature eagerness are the rocks on which young, tender souls are often shipwrecked.
In plain English: Our love should be sensible and free from illusion: it should show itself in ways God has chosen, or in ways we choose that fit his rules.
Modernized: hath → has
In plain English: Love becomes silly infatuation when religion becomes superstition.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A crisp parallel that marks the line between devotion and superstition.
In plain English: No amount of love is too much, but the ways we show it can be unwise: we can't love God too much, but we can express it in inappropriate ways.
Reference & context: Note: “indecent” here means unfitting or unseemly, not obscene.
In plain English: Our love should be firm, constant and lasting: not ebbing and flowing like the tide, but flowing steadily downhill like a river that never dries up, always running toward the ocean of God's perfection through the channels of duty and obedience, until at last it becomes the sea itself, the vastness of a blessed eternity.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: One of Taylor's finest images: inconstant love is a tide; true love is a river that ends in the ocean.
Modernized: be → is
In plain English: Thinking about God's perfections and mercies is more than enough to make us love him. He is invisible but not far away: we feel him in his blessings, he lives in our hearts through faith, we feed on him in Communion, and we are united with him through Christ becoming human and being glorified. Still, to kindle and increase our love further, the following advice is useful.
Reference & context: Biblical: Ephesians 3:17, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.”
Modernized: be → is
In plain English: Cut out all worldly and physical loves, because they pollute and unsanctify pure, spiritual love.
In plain English: Any excessive attachment to worldly things, and any love of sin, is a complete enemy of the love of God. It is shameful to take any part of our love from the eternal God and give it to one of his creatures in defiance of the Creator, or to give it to the devil, our open enemy, as an insult to God, the source of all goodness and heavenly friendship.
In plain English: Restrain the imagination, because it is an imperfect faculty that enjoys shadows and trinkets; and since worldly things fill it with beautiful, fanciful images, it presents to our emotions and will things that seem lovable.
Reference & context: Old psychology: the “fancy” (imagination) was thought to stand between the senses and reason, presenting images to the will.
In plain English: Imaginative people, like women and children, always love most intensely; so if we are careful what images we feed our imagination, we can more quickly set our love right.
Reference & context: Context: Taylor's remark about women reflects the common prejudice of his time, which grouped women with children as ruled by imagination.
Modernized: be → are
In plain English: For this reason it's good to bring the things that appeal to the imagination into religion. That is why churches have music, decorations, incense, beautiful robes, and dignified ceremonies: so that the restless, undiscerning imagination, “bribed” with the things it likes, can help us toward a higher, spiritual love.
Reference & context: Historical: in 1650 Puritan authorities had banned the Book of Common Prayer and stripped churches of music and ornament. Taylor, an Anglican, is quietly defending what had been taken away.
In plain English: Get rid of anxieties, worldly worries and too much secular business. If they occupy our thoughts and activities, they will take over our feelings too; and once our feelings are filled with one object, however unworthy, they can't attend to another, however much better.
Modernized: be → are
In plain English: We always grow attached to whatever we spend time with. Our country is dear to us simply because we live in it; our village neighbours and the people we trade with have claimed a share of our love. So if we live absorbed in worldly business, we'll come to love it, and all our love and hatred, hopes and fears, which God would gladly keep for himself as treasures, will be wasted on trivial, empty things.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A simple psychological truth: we come to love whatever we spend our time with.
In plain English: Don't just choose God's things; train your natural inclinations toward God and religion. It is very hard for anyone to force himself, against his first instincts, to choose what he doesn't want.
Modernized: hath → has
In plain English: People usually give in to the constant pressure of their first desires. So the only way to secure our love for God is to block those natural springs and make religion grow close to the soul's deepest desires.
Modernized: making religion to grow → making religion grow
In plain English: Talk with God through frequent prayer.
In plain English: Above all, pray that your desires themselves will be right, and that your feelings will be well-ordered and holy.
In plain English: So speak to God very often, with short spontaneous prayers, with Communion, and with faithful daily devotion. Tell him all your needs, complain to him of every insult. Do as King Hezekiah did: lay your troubles and bad news before the Lord, call on him for health, run to him for advice, beg him for forgiveness. It is as natural to love someone we talk to like this and depend on so much as it is for children to love their parents.
Reference & context: Biblical: 2 Kings 19:14. When King Hezekiah received a threatening letter from the Assyrian king, he “spread it before the Lord.” Note: “ejaculation” in Taylor's English means a short, darting prayer (Latin jaculum, a dart).
In plain English: Think about how vast God's love for us is, shown in everything his providence does: first in creating us, and second in keeping us alive.
In plain English: It isn't my king, my patron or my friend who really supports me and meets my needs; it is God, who made the grain my friend sends me and the grapes, and who supports my friend too, since he has just as many needs, dependencies and weaknesses as I do.
Reference & context: Personal: when he wrote this, Taylor had lost his church post and was living on the charity of a patron, the Earl of Carbery, in Wales.
Modernized: hath → has
In plain English: God did make my friend the means of providing for me, just as he made my friend's land and cattle the means of providing for him, with one difference: by letting him serve me, God means to honour and reward him, which he doesn't do for land and cattle. God's love is also shown third, in giving his Son; fourth, in forgiving our sins; fifth, in adopting us into glory; and in countless small acts within each of these. It's impossible not to return such great love: in return for God, we should give ourselves; in return for happiness, give up our misery.
Reference & context: Biblical: John 3:16 (“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”); Romans 8:15 (adoption as God's children). “Ten thousand times ten thousand” echoes Daniel 7:10.
Modernized: hath → has
In plain English: In fact, Jesus, God made human, loves us so much that he would leave all his glory and die for us again if that were needed to win our happiness.
In plain English: As we use these methods, love will grow in stages, joint by joint, like sugar cane, varying in a thousand ways from person to person; it will be greater or smaller in different people, and in the same person, depending on his spiritual growth.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: An unusual image for spiritual growth: not smooth, but in visible stages, like the joints of a cane.
Reference & context: Image: sugar cane grows in visible segments separated by knots, and was an exotic import from the East and West Indies in Taylor's day.
In plain English: Speaking generally, though, there are only two levels of love: the labour of love and the zeal of love. The first is duty; the second is perfection.
Reference & context: Biblical: “labour of love” comes from 1 Thessalonians 1:3. (The source misprints “is” as “if”.)
In plain English: Even the smallest love must be obedient, pure, sincere and generous: it must reject all love of sin and all excessive love of the world, show itself as far as we can in doing our duty, and love for love's sake. The highest example of this love is martyrdom, meaning a willingness to suffer any evil rather than do any.
In plain English: Jesus said that no one has greater love than this; it is the highest duty and the greatest love God asks of anyone.
Reference & context: Biblical: John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
In plain English: And yet even the most imperfect believer must have this same love, at least as a readiness of mind, and differs from others only in how promptly and eagerly he acts on it.
In plain English: In this sense, anyone who truly loves God, even with a young and tender love, loves him “with all his heart,” meaning with the degree of love that is our highest duty. And someone who loves God with all his heart can still grow as God gives growth, just as the saints love God to different degrees, though each loves him with everything he has.
Reference & context: Biblical: Colossians 2:19, “increaseth with the increase of God.”
In plain English: The higher state of love is the zeal of love, which sends out new growths and shoots like a fruitful tree, or bursts into fragrant resin, and produces fruit that is not monstrous but extraordinary and heroic in size.
In plain English: About this zeal, the following warnings should be kept in mind:
In plain English: If zeal appears at the very start of our spiritual life, or is brief, sudden and passing, or simply comes from someone's natural temperament, or arises from anything other than a long, steady growth of balanced love, it should be suspected of being mere emotion and over-eagerness, not the high point of love.
Reference & context: Astronomy: the “vertical point” is the zenith, the point directly overhead, where the sun is highest.
Modernized: be → is; be → is; be → is; come → comes
In plain English: The only good zeal is a passionate love that expresses itself with restraint.
Modernized: hath → has
In plain English: Let feeling boil as high as it likes; but if it boils over into erratic, bizarre behaviour, it will have few excuses and need many.
Modernized: boil → boils
In plain English: Elijah was zealous for God, but he was so carried away that he couldn't hear God's answer until music had calmed him down; and Moses broke both tablets of the Law in his passionate fury against the people who had broken the first commandment.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A sharp irony: in his zeal against law-breakers, Moses broke the Law himself, literally.
Reference & context: Biblical: 1 Kings 19:10 (“I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts”). The calming music actually belongs to Elisha, Elijah's successor (2 Kings 3:15); Taylor runs the two prophets together. Moses smashing the tablets on finding the golden calf: Exodus 32:19.
In plain English: Zeal should burn hottest about our own faults, and be used with great care and restraint when it comes to other people's.
In plain English: Remember that zeal grows out of divine love, so it must never contradict any loving action.
In plain English: Loving God includes loving our neighbour. So no claim of zeal for God's glory can justify being unkind to our fellow human beings; that pleases God about as much as hatred counts as love.
Reference & context: Biblical: 1 John 4:20, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.”
In plain English: Zeal directed at others may only take the form of kind actions done for their good. If the good of many requires that one person suffer, that must be decided by proper authority, in real necessity, rarely, and according to divine or human law; never by private individuals, never over trivial matters, and never on mistaken grounds.
Reference & context: Context: Taylor wrote just after the Civil War, when self-appointed religious zealots on all sides had used violence.
In plain English: Under the Old Testament law, zealots were sometimes allowed to spear certain people, but only with God's permission, in cases of idolatry or other enormous, notorious crimes whose danger was intolerable and whose guilt was certain; and even that permission ended with the old covenant.
Reference & context: Biblical: Numbers 25:7–13. Phinehas speared an Israelite and a Midianite woman, and was praised for his zeal. Taylor insists this licence no longer applies to Christians.
In plain English: Zeal may run free in inner, personal, spiritual acts that are direct duties, like prayer, worship, thanksgiving and frequent turning to God, as long as nothing taints them: no smugness or sense of one's own holiness, no judging others, no anxious scruples, no needless fears, no superstitious counting of times and hours. Within that, let zeal be as eager, devout and angelic as it likes; in direct communication with God there is no danger and no sin.
Reference & context: Note: “intercourse” here has its old sense of “communication” or “dealings.”
Modernized: pass → passes
In plain English: Do every part of your duty as seriously as if the salvation of the whole world, all of God's glory, the defeat of every devil, and everything you hope for depended on each single action.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A stirring standard of effort: treat each small act as if everything depended on it.
In plain English: Zeal should be rooted in the will and in deliberate choice, guided by wisdom and clear thinking, not in imagination and emotion; will and reason will make it deep, calm, substantial and devout.
Reference & context: The source jumps from rule 6 to rule 8; there is no rule 7.
In plain English: In short, zeal is not a duty in itself; it is never commanded for its own sake. It is only the eagerness that accompanies some other duty, so it is acceptable only when it advances love of God and neighbour, which it is meant to serve.
In plain English: The only safe and acceptable zeal is zeal that directly increases love. Since love of neighbour and obedience to God are the two great parts of love, we should count our zeal good only if it advances both (when a matter involves both), or each one separately (when it involves only one).
Modernized: be → is
In plain English: St. Paul showed his zeal by preaching without payment, travelling, spending himself and being spent for his churches, suffering, and even being willing to be cursed by God for the sake of his fellow Jews.
Reference & context: Biblical: 1 Corinthians 9:18 (preaching without charge); 2 Corinthians 12:15 (“I will very gladly spend and be spent for you”); Romans 9:3 (“I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren”).
In plain English: Let our zeal be as great as Paul's, provided it shows itself in love for others and never in anger against them. Zeal as love carries no risk; zeal as anger is never safe.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A memorable chiasmus (“no danger … no safety”) that sums up the whole section on zeal.
Modernized: so it be → so long as it is
In plain English: In short, if your zeal must come out as anger, always aim it more harshly at yourself than at anyone else.
Modernized: thyself → yourself
In plain English: The other half of loving God is loving our neighbour, which I will deal with in the section on almsgiving.
Fun Fact
In 1725 a 22-year-old Oxford student named John Wesley read Taylor's Holy Living and its companion Holy Dying, and said the books made him resolve to dedicate his whole life to God. Wesley went on to found Methodism, one of the largest Protestant movements in the world. Taylor himself wrote Holy Living as a banned clergyman. The Puritan government had outlawed the Anglican prayer book, and he was imprisoned more than once, so his calm warnings against zealots who use force were written from experience.