Simple Yet Growing Love for God

It may be asked again, as indeed we see it is true, what is the reason that sometimes lowly, simple Christians have more loving souls than great scholars? One would think that knowledge should increase love and affection? So it does, if it be a true knowledge. But great thinkers and great scholars busy themselves about questions and intricacies and are not so much about the affections. A lowly, simple Christian ofttimes takes those things for granted that scholars study, and dispute, and question. There is a heavenly light in the simple soul that God is my Father in Christ, and Christ is my Mediator. He takes it as truth, and so his affections are not troubled. Whereas the other, having corruption answerable to his parts, he is tangled with doubts and arguments. The scholar studies to inform his brain; the simple soul to heat his affections. Instead of disputing, he believes, and loves, and obeys; and that is the reason that many a lowly, simple soul goes to heaven with a great deal of joy, when others are tangled and wrapped in their own doubts.
At the same time, it is our duty to aim at the highest pitch of love that we can, and not to rest in the lowest pitch. The lowest pitch of loving God is to love God because he is good to us. The Scriptures stoop so low as to allow that God would have us love him and holy things for the benefit we have by them. But that is mercenary if we rest there. We must love God, not for ourselves, but labour to rise to this pitch, to love ourselves in God, and to see that we have happiness in God, and not in ourselves. Our being is in him. We must love ourselves in him and be content to be lost in God. Do others what they will, we will love him, and ourselves for his excellencies, and because we see ourselves in him and are his children. We must labour to rise to that, and that is the highest pitch that we can attain.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
A Glance of Heaven, Works, vol. 4, p. 194
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