-- Tit. 5. The Counterfeits of Christian Love
them obedience. Subjects they can think well of and command, but brethren they cannot love nor tolerate.
Enemy XII. Lastly, the counterfeits of Christian love deceive abundance, and keep them from that which is love indeed. They might be brought to it, if they had not thought that they had it already, when they have it not.
Tit. 5. The Counterfeits of Christian Love Count. I. It is but counterfeit love to Christians, when they are loved only for being of the common religion of the country, and the same that you say you are of yourselves: as one Mahometan loveth another.
Count. II. Or to love one only sect or party of Christians, which you espouse as the only party or church; and not to love a Christian as a Christian, and so to love all true Christians whom you can discern to be such.
Count. III. To love only those Christians who are your kindred or relations, or those that have been some way benefactors to you.
Count. IV. To love Christians only for their familiarity, or kind and loving conversation, and civil, obliging deportment among men.
Count. V. To love them only because they are learned, or have better wits and abilities of speech, in preaching, prayer, or conference than others.
Count. VI. To love them only upon the praise which common commendations may sometimes give them, and for being magnified by fame, and well spoken of by all men. Thus many wicked men do love the saints departed, when they hate those that are alive among them.
Count. VII. To love them only for being godly in themselves at a distance, so they will not trouble them with their godliness; while they love not those that reprove them, and would draw them to be as godly.
Count. VIII. To love them only for suffering with them in the same cause. Thus a profane person taken by the Turks, may love his fellow captives who refuse to renounce Christ. And thus a sufferer for an ill cause, or in an erroneous sect, may love those that suffer with him above others.
Count. IX. To love them only for holding strict and right opinions, while they will not endure to live accordingly: thus many love the light that cannot bear the heat and motion: many love an orthodox person, of a sound judgment, that is against looseness and profaneness in his opinion, and do not like the folly of the licentious, who yet like licentious practice best.
Count. X. To love them for some parts of godliness only, while some other essential part will not be endured (of which before).
Count. XI. To love them in a kind fit only, as Saul with tears professed to do his son David; but to have no habitual constant love.
Count. XII. Lastly, to love godly men a little, and the world and fleshly interest more; to love them only so as will cost them nothing; to wish them fed, but not to feed them, and to wish them clothed, but not to clothe them, and to wish them out of prison, but not to dare to visit them for fear of suffering themselves. He that hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up the bowels of his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him: surely if the love of his brother were in him, the love of God had been in him. But he that hath no true love to his brother, that will only love him on terms that cost him little, and not give and suffer for his love. All these are deceiving counterfeits of love to the children of God.