15. For, as the Divine
utterances testify, “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love
dwelleth in God, and God dwelleth in him.”26672667 Whoso therefore contends that love
of God may be had without aid of God, what else does he contend,
but that God may be had without God? Now what Christian would say
this, which no madman would venture to say? Therefore in the
Apostle, true, pious, faithful patience, saith exultingly, and by
the mouth of the Saints; “Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For Thy sake we
are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the
slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us:” not through ourselves, but,
“through Him that loved us.”26682668 And then he goes on and adds;
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able
to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord.” This is that “love of God” which “is shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us.” But the
concupiscence of the bad, by reason of which there is in them a
false patience, “is not of the Father,”26692669 as saith the Apostle John, but is
of the world.