jabez's blog
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Thursday, December 7th, 2006
The Fire of Love (XXIII, i) by Richard Rolle
Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef.
CHAPTER XXIII
THAT PERFECT LOVE MINGLES NOTHING WITH GOD:
AND WHY.
AND THAT IT IS NEEDFUL TO LOVE:
AND OF THE BLINDNESS OF FLESHLY LOVE
Perfectly forsaking the filth of sin,
And leaving back the vices of this world,
We find we may love nothing else but God.
How truly should God be our all in all
If nothing were in us beside His love?
No man has joy unless he so has love.
The more therefore that we have love in God,
The more and plenteously he shall joy in us;
Because we busily, fervently desire,
In what we get, more heartily we joy.
Therefore we joy because we reach for God;
And that God truly is the Joy we are:
The which forsooth none have, that seek aught other.
If I would grasp at anything for myself,
And make not God the end of my desire,
I certain make a traitor of myself,
My hidden guilt more openly is shown.
God truly will become us in this wise:
That none be mingled with Him in His love.
For if you fracture and divide your heart,
Dread not to love another thing with Him,
Know well, your love will be forsook of God;
For God will not behold a part of love.
All the whole truly, or the nought, He takes;
For when he died, then He gainbought the whole.
And in the sin, forsooth, of Father Adam
Your body and your soul were damnèd all;
Wherefore God came down to a Maiden’s body
And gave the price of your deliverance,
That He might deliver you your soul,
Taken from the power of the fiends,
And He might make your body with your soul
Blessèd at the ending of the world.
Therefore also you have ten commandments
Which mark your path to find eternal life.
If you will enter in that kingdom, lost,
And after, will be cleaned with Christ’s own blood,
It behooves you now keep God’s commandments.
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| Posted By jabez @ 6:53 AM | [Comment on this blog post] |
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