There is a double fear arises from love.
metal. The fire of love purges out sin. "Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols!" (Hos. 14:8). He who loves God will have nothing to do with sin, unless to give battle to it. Sin strikes not only at God's honour, but His being. Does he love his prince who harbours a traitor to the crown? Is he a friend to God who loves what God hates? The love of God and the love of sin cannot dwell together. The affections cannot be carried to two contrarieties at the same time. A man cannot love health and love poison too; so one cannot love God and sin too. He who has any secret sin in his heart allowed, is as far from loving God as heaven and earth are distant one from the other.
7. Another fruit of love is crucifixion. He who is a lover of God is dead to the world. "I am crucified to the world" (Gal. 6:14). I am dead to the honours and pleasures of it. He who is in love with God is not much in love with anything else. The love of God, and ardent love of the world, are inconsistent. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15). Love to God swallows up all other love, as Moses' rod swallowed up the Egyptian rods. If a man could live in the sun, what a small point would all the earth be; so when a man's heart is raised above the world in the admiring and loving of God, how poor and slender are these things below! They seem as nothing in his eye. It was a sign the early Christians loved God, because their property did not lie near their hearts; but they "laid down their money at the apostles' feet" (Acts 4:35).
Test your love to God by this. What shall we think of such as have never enough of the world? They have the dropsy of covetousness, thirsting insatiably after riches: "That pant after the dust of the earth" (Amos 2:7). Never talk of your love to Christ, says Ignatius, when you prefer the world before the Pearl of price; and are there not many such, who prize their gold above God? If they have a south land, they care not for the water of life. They will sell Christ and a good conscience for money. Will God ever bestow heaven upon them who so basely undervalue Him, preferring glittering dust before the glorious Deity? What is there in the earth that we should so set our hearts upon it? Only the devil makes us look upon it through a magnifying glass. The world has no real intrinsic worth, it is but paint and deception.
8. The next fruit of love is fear. In the godly love and fear do kiss each other. There is a double fear arises from love.
(i.) A fear of displeasing. The spouse loves her husband, therefore will rather deny herself than displease him. The more we love God, the more fearful we