Chapter 20.—We are Required to Despise All Sensible Things, and to Love God Alone.
37. Bodily delights have their source in all those things with which the bodily sense
comes in contact, and which are by some called the objects of sense; and among these the
noblest is light, in the common meaning of the word, because among our senses also, which
the mind uses in acting through the body, there is nothing more valuable than the eyes, and
so in the Holy Scriptures all the objects of sense are spoken of as visible things. Thus in the
New Testament we are warned against the love of these things in the following words:
"While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for
the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."102
This shows how far from being Christians those are who hold that the sun and moon are
to be not only loved but worshipped. For what is seen if the sun and moon are not? But
we are forbidden to regard things which are seen. The man, therefore, who wishes to offer
that incorrupt love to God must not love these things too. This subject I will inquire into
more particularly elsewhere. Here my plan is to write not of faith, but of the life by which
we become worthy of knowing what we believe. God then alone is to be loved; and all this
world, that is, all sensible things, are to be despised,—while, however, they are to be used
as this life requires.
102 2 Cor. iv. 18.
We are Required to Despise All Sensible Things, and to Love God Alone.
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We are Required to Despise All Sensible Things, and to Love God Alone.