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This is part of a long sermon by Pusey on 1 Corinthians 13:13
HOLY MEN HAVE DISTINGUISHED FOUR STAGES OF LOVE
1. The first state of fallen man is, alas! to “love himself for himself.” In this state, he rather fears God than loves Him.
2. Yet man needs God; and so he begins by faith to seek after and love God, because he needs Him. And so he is brought to a second stage of love, to love God for man’s own sake. Much as a man might value the sun, because it warms him and ripens his corn, so man makes himself his centre, and loves God because he needs Him. Yet God so humbleth Himself, that He willeth even thus to be loved. Nay, He has therefore surrounded us with the blessings of nature, that all things around us may teach us to love God, because He made them “very good.” Yet in some such way might a heathen love. It is a Christian form of this love of God for man’s own sake, if a man loves Him, because He has redeemed him, because, without Him, he cannot be saved, and he hopes to be saved by Him.
3. Next God becomes known to the soul, and consequently sweet to it; and so, having “tasted that the Lord is good,” he passes to the third degree, and loves God for His own sake. Yet even in beginning to love God for His own sake, there is a snare lest men should love God for sensible sweetnesses and the consolations which, when He sees good, He gives in prayer or the Holy Sacrament; and so He often withdraws these comforts, and leaves the soul in darkness, after showing her His light, and in dryness, after having bathed her in His sweetness, that He may prove the soul that she follows Him, not for the loaves and fishes, but for love of Himself alone. This is a pure chaste love, which loves God not for any gifts of His, not even for everlasting bliss as His gift. Pure love would not be contented with all the glories and brightness and beauty of heaven itself: it stops short of nothing, it could be satisfied with nothing, but the love of God Himself. It loves God “because He is good “; and so it loves the will of God, and becomes conformed to it, and wills, or wills not, not for its own pleasure, but for the will of God.
4. And so the soul is formed towards that last stage of love, of which, blessed are they who have for a moment some faint glimpse in this life, but which is life eternal, that man should love himself only for the sake of God. In this the soul, borne out of itself with Divine love, losing itself in a manner, as though it were not, emptied of itself, “goeth forth wholly into God, and cleaving to God, becometh one spirit with Him, so that it may say, ‘My flesh and my heart faileth, but Thou art the God of my heart and God my portion for ever.'” For since God is the centre of all things, so the soul, when perfected, must will to be nothing but what God wills; to be, only that He may live in it; to be dissolved, as it were, and wholly transfused into the will of God. Of these stages of love, the love of God only for one’s own sake, is blessed as a step towards that which is better; yet there is much danger lest, if God gives a man not what he wills, or what he wills not, he should lose what love he seemed to have. Thus people have become embittered or impatient through misfortunes, as though God had dealt hardly with them, and have thrown off the love of God.
IV. HOW, THEN, ARE WE TO KNOW WHETHER WE HAVE LOVE; HOW GAIN IT? The tests whereby we may know whether we have this love of God for Himself are also the means of gaining it, or of increasing it. How is it with those whom you dearly love on earth? Be this the proof of your love of God.
1. You gladly think of them, when absent. You are glad to turn from converse with others, to speak with them. One word or look of theirs is sweeter than all which is not they.
2. You are glad to hear of those you love; you are glad when others speak good of them.
3. You love anything which belongs to them
4. You gladly suffer for them.
5. You have no other will than theirs.
6. You are jealous for their honour.
7. For their sake you value not any outward things which others prize.
8. You do all things for their sake and count nothing too little, nothing too great to do for them. Conclusion: Faint not, any who would love Jesus, if ye find yourselves yet far short of what He Himself who is love saith of the love of Him. Perfect love is heaven. When ye are perfected in love, your work on earth is done. There is no short road to heaven or to love.Do what in thee lies by the grace of God, and He will lead thee from strength to strength, and grace to grace, and love to love.
1. Be diligent by His grace to do no wilful sin; for sin, wilfully done, kills the soul, and casts out of it the love of God.
2. Seek to love nothing out of God. God re-makes a broken heart and fills it with love. He cannot fill a divided heart.
3. Think often of God. For how canst thou know or love God if thou fillest thy mind with thoughts of all things under the sun, and thy thoughts wander to the ends of the earth, and thou gatherest them not unto God?
4. Bring all things, as thou mayest, nigh to God; let not them hurry thee away from Him.
5. Be not held back by any thought of unworthiness or by failures from the childlike love of God.
6. Be diligent, after thy power, to do deeds of love. Think nothing too little, nothing too low, to do lovingly for the sake of God. Bear with infirmities, ungentle tempers, contradictions; visit the sick, relieve the poor, etc.
7. Where, above all, shouldest thou seek for His love but in the feast of His love? Without it, ye cannot have any true love.
All Along the Watchtower 
What a nice summary of the stages of the spiritual life. Simply stated and yet profound in the depth of the message to the journey all men of good will. A very good guide to the life of the soul and the roadmap that needs be traveled.
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Yes, I think it one of Pusey’s finest. How strange that we should have let such gems get lost.
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Sad really. We are now getting sermons on being nice and tolerant to everyone and the soul is left to starve to death.
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It is, alas, the truth of the matter.
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We hunger and thirst and our shepherds would rather watch their flocks from afar. What about the command to feed my sheep? It seems that we are left to graze wherever we might wander these days.
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I fear so, my friend. I think you will like tomorrow’s instalment – on the subject of true free will.
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Another subject that is ignored these days. Sounds good. I will look forward to it.
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We seem to be taught nowadays that it is fine – we forget, as Pusey did not, the fallen nature which drives our will if we let it.
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It does indeed. Just as it is our will that is responsible from making us saints or demons in this world. The training of the will is of upmost importance if we wish to run the race well and end up with a laurel wreath or left in a ditch on the side of the road.
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Agreed, my friend. We seem to have forgotten that our faith is also a discipline on us – and a very necessary one too.
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Sounds too much like work to become popular these days.We’re looking for a handout and free ticket to heaven.
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That just about sums it up!
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Man or humanity simply no longer has so-called “free will”, but only a form of responsible will, because of the Adamic Sin! Adam was the so-called Federal Head of the race! Romans 5: 12-14, noting too 1 Cor. 15: 45.
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Quite so – it is an illusion that we do – one of the devil’s best.
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Sadly too, “Theological Augustinianism” is quite small these days, in both Catholicism and Lutheranism, and not even considered much in some Reformed! Modernity and postmodernity is centre stage in too much of Christendom!
Btw, I have been reading Newman since my Irish Roman Catholic days! I have several old favorites: Young Mr. Newman, by Maisie Ward; and too what I consider a classic by the old Belgium Dominican, Fr. Jan Hendrik Walgrave: Newman the Theologian, The Nature of Belief and Doctrine as Exemplified in His Life and Works, (Geoffrey Chapman, London 1960). Though of course I am myself a Reformed (Neo-Calvinist) Anglican.
Good to share our different views! 🙂
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It is indeed – and orthodoxy crosses confessional boundaries – as does modernism, alas 🙂
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Btw too, I have my copy of Pusey’s Sermons: Parochial and Cathedral Sermons (524 pages), and my copy is an old 1882, Parker & CO. Oxford And London… I do myself like much of Pusey! Like many of the older Anglican rectors and theolog’s he shot for the heart and mind!
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Yes, they are excellent – and good to have them in published form too – and that’s an early one.
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I miss them London Bookshops! I am now in the USA, the So. Cal. My wife (younger too than I) has health needs, and the weather here is hard to beat!
Yes, confessional boundaries are much less today, sometimes a good thing, sometimes not! But of course “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” (Heb. 13: 8) Blessings here on all!
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I envy you the weather, and now there are fewer bookshops in London, you may have the best of the trade 🙂
Thank you for your blessings, which are reciprocated.
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Yes, my oldest son (24… I had my two son’s in my 40’s, not bad eh?) tells me London is not what it used to be. He lives in our home in greater London these days. We have been here several years now, I am semi-retired…I will be 65 late this Oct. Between here and there, I have my share of books! I come from the generation of books. And I have my share of Bibles too! I tend toward the more “Cognitive equivalence” – the literal translation approach. But having said that, I have been quite enjoying the New NIV 2011. I was given the New NIV Study Bible with the 2011 NIV Translation. And so far so good! I have just about every English Bible Translation known to man! But, I read my Greek NT every A.M. as a good Anglican presbyter. 😉 I also still have my original Douay-Rheims Bible I was given at my Catholic Confirmation. But yes, I am more of the “biblicist”! And this includes the Bible’s proper genre, whenever, wherever.
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