Now if God should ever open the eyes of your understanding, must not the love of God be the immediate consequence? Do you imagine you can see God without loving him? Is it possible in the nature of things? _Si virtus conspiceretur occulis_, said the old Heathen, _mirabiles amores excitaret sui_. How much more if you see him who is the original fountain, the great archetype of all virtue, will that sight raise in you a love that is wonderful, such as the gay and busy world know not of! 23. What benevolence also, what tender love to the whole of human kind, will you drink in, together with the love of God, from the unexhausted source of love? And how easy is it to conceive, that more and more of his image will be then transfused into your soul? That from disinterested love, all other divine tempers will, as it were naturally, spring? Mildness, gentleness, patience, temperance, justice, sincerity, contempt of the world; yea, whatsoever things are venerable and lovely, whatsoever are justly of good report. And when you thus love God and all mankind, and are transformed into his likeness, then the commandments of God will not be grievous; you will no more complain, that they destroy the comforts of life. So far from it, that they will be the very joy of your heart; ways of pleasantness, paths of peace! You will experience here that solid happiness, which you had elsewhere sought in vain. Without servile fear or anxious care, so long as you continue on earth, you will gladly do the will of God here, as the angels do it in heaven. And when the time is come that you should depart hence, when God says, “Arise and come away,” you will pass with joy unspeakable out of the body, into all the fulness of God. * Now does not your own heart condemn you, if you call _this_ religion _enthusiasm_? O leave that to those blind zealots, who tack together a sett of opinions and an outside worship, and call this poor, dull, lifeless thing, by the sacred name of _Christianity_. Well might you account _such Christianity_ as this, a mere piece of empty pageantry, fit indeed to keep the vulgar in awe, but beneath the regard of a man of understanding. But in how different a light does it now appear? If there be such a religion as I have sketched out, must not every reasonable man see, there is nothing on earth to be desired in comparison of it?――But if any man desire this, let him ask of God: he giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not. 24. May you not ask, quite consistently with your principles, in some manner resembling this;