“I love my Saviour, as he is _the Lord_, he that studies my salvation: and as _Christ_, made a person able to work my salvation; but when I see him in the third notion, _Jesus_, accomplishing my salvation, by an actual death, I see those hands stretched out, that stretched out the heavens, and those feet racked, to which they that racked them are footstools: I hear him, from whom his nearest friends fled, pray for his enemies, and him, whom his Father forsook, not forsake his brethren: I see him that clothes this body with his creatures, or else it would wither, and clothes this soul with his righteousness, or else it would perish, hang naked upon the cross; ... when I conceit, when I contemplate my Saviour thus, I love the _Lord_, and there is reverent adoration in that love, I love _Christ_, and there is a mysterious adoration in that love, but I love _Jesus_, and there is a tender compassion in that love....” (Works, II. 181.) Whenever Platonism enters into this tender passion it always elevates the emotion into a higher region, where the more intellectual or spiritual nature of Christ or God is the object of contemplation; and it does this by affording the poets a conception of the object of the soul’s highest love, as a philosophical principle, whether of beauty, of good, or of true being. The first way by which this elevation of a purely sensuous passion into a higher region was effected was through the Platonic conception of the “idea.” Plato had taught that in love the mind should pass from a sight of the objects of beauty through ever widening circles of abstraction to the contemplation of absolute beauty in its idea. This can be known only by the soul, and is the only real beauty. Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Love” is the best example of the application of this idea to the love of Christ. In this poem he sings the praise of Christ as the God of Love. He finds the chief manifestation of Christ’s love in his sacrifice. At first he treats this as a spectacle to move the eye. He dwells upon the mangling of Christ’s body (ll. 241–247), and exhorts the beholder to “bleede in every vaine, At sight of his most sacred heavenly corse.” (ll. 251–252.) But later, instead of calling upon the beholder to lift up his “heavie clouded eye” to behold such a manifestation of mercy (ll. 226–227), he directs him to lift up his _mind_ and _meditate_ upon the author of his salvation (l. 258). Christ’s love then will burn all earthly desire away by the power of “that celestiall beauties blaze,” (l. 280.) whose glory dazes the eye but illumines the spirit. And then, when this final stage of refinement is past, the ravished soul of the beholder shall have a sight not of “his most sacred heavenly corse” (l. 252.) but of the very idea of his pure glory.