Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

I will not look upon the quickening sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run; The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages.

If every gnat that flies were an archangel, all that could but tell me that there is a God; and the poorest worm that creeps tells me that.

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

God made sun and moon to distinguish the seasons, and day and night; and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decrees to distinguish the seasons of His mercies. In Paradise the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always autumn. His mercies are ever in their maturity.

As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there.

Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.