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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2022
Of Love and Hatred. The necessity and sweetness of Love. Its General use and efficacy. The several kinds of love. Of the Power, Inclination and act of Love. Its extent and capacity.
BECAUSE Love is the most Desirable Employment of the Soul, the Power of Loving is to be accounted the most High and Noble of the Faculties. It is not seated by it self in the mind, but attended with a mighty Proneness and Inclination.
THERE is no Creature so unsociable and furious but it is capable of loving something or other. Wolves and Tygres live at peace among themselves, Lions have an Inclination to their Grim Mistresses, and Deformed Bears a natural Affection to their Whelps, expressed in their Rage, when they are bereaved of them. Things must either be absolutely Dead, or live in misery, that are void of love. Whatsoever is endued with Life and sence delights in easie and grateful Operations. Love is a necessary Affection of their Souls, because it is impossible to apprehend any thing Delightful, but it must be pleasing; and what is Pleasing must be Lovely. For to be Pleased, and to love are the same thing. If there be any difference, the pleasure we take in any Object is the root of that Desire, which we call Love; and the affection, whereby we pursue the pleasure that is apprehended in it, is part of the Love that we bear unto it; the end of which is the Completion of that pleasure which it first perceives: All is Love variously modified, according to the Circumstances wherein the Object is represented.
AS Love is the only Easie and Delightful Operation, so is Hatred of all other the most troublesom and tormenting. Displeasure and Enmity are the Ingredients of its nature; and the fruits of it (allyed to their Root) as Bitter as Gall, and Wormwood. Murder, and Vexation, and Grief are the off–spring of the one, with Separation, Contention, and Horror; Peace and Embraces are the Fruit of the other, with Praises and Complacencies, Honors, Services, Benefits and Pleasures. These are the little Cupids that flie about this coelestial Venus, when it is, what it ought to be, the Mother of Felicity, and the Daughter of GOD.
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