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13. For why is it, pray, that we burn when we hear and read,
"Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of
salvation: giving no offense in anything, that the ministry be not
blamed: but in all things ap-proving ourselves as the ministers of
God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in
distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in
watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by
long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love
unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor
of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and
dishonor, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet
true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we
live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway
rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet
possessing all things?" Why is it that we are inflamed with love of
the Apostle Paul, when we read these things, unless that we believe
him so to have lived? But we do not believe that the ministers of God
ought so to live because we have heard it from any one, but because we
behold it inwardly within ourselves, or rather above ourselves, in the
truth itself. Him, therefore, whom we believe to have so lived, we
love for that which we see. And except we loved above all else that
form which we discern as always steadfast and unchangeable, we should
not for that reason love him, because we hold fast in our belief that
his life, when he was living in the flesh, was adapted to, and in
harmony with, this form. But somehow we are stirred up the more to
the love of this form itself, through the belief by which we believe
some one to have so lived; and to the hope by which we no more at all
despair, that we, too, are able so to live; we who are men, from
this fact itself, that some men have so lived, so that we both desire
this more ardently, and pray for it more confidently. So both the
love of that form, according to which they are believed to have lived,
makes the life of these men themselves to be loved by us; and their
life thus believed stirs up a more burning love towards that same form;
so that the more ardently we love God, the more certainly and the more
calmly do we see Him, because we behold in God the unchangeable form
of righteousness, according to which we judge that man ought to live.
Therefore faith avails to the knowledge and to the love of God, not
as though of one altogether unknown, or altogether not loved; but so
that thereby He may be known more clearly, and loved more
steadfastly.
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