Love in us is a passion of the soul, and being such, is subject to ebb and flow, and to be extreme both ways. For whatever is a passion of the soul, whether love or hatred, joy or fear, is more apt to exceed, or come short, than to keep within its due bounds. Hence, oft-times that which is loved today is hated to-morrow (2 Sam 13:15).
...love in us is apt to choose to itself undue and unlawful objects, and to reject those, that with the leave of God, we may embrace and enjoy...
Love in us, requires, that something pleasing and delightful be in the object loved...for the love that is in us, is not of power to set itself on work, where no allurement is in the thing to be beloved.
...Love in us decays, though once never so warm and strongly fixed, if the object falls off as to its first alluring provocation; or disappointeth our expectation with some unexpected reluctancy to our fancy or our mind.
...All this we know to be true from nature, for every one of us are thus...our love, as we are natural, is weak, unorderly, fails and miscarries, either by being too much or too little...
...We therefore must put a vast different betwixt love, as found in us, and love as found in Christ...here there is no ebbing, no flowing, no going beyond, no coming short; and so nothing of uncertainty...Love in Christ pitcheth not itself upon unlawful objects...Love in Christ requireth no taking beauteousness in the object to be beloved, as not being able to put forth itself without such attracting allurements (Ezek. 16:6-8)...
Love in Christ decays not, nor can be tempted so to do by anything that happens, or that shall happen hereafter, in the object so beloved...The reason is, because Christ loves to make us comely, not because we are so (Ezek. 16:9-14).
-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 48-50.
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