"It is sufficient to render love to any created being virtuous, if it arise from the temper of mind wherein consists a disposition to love God supremely."
Stated more fully, philosophically, and theologically by Edwards:
The most proper evidence of love to a created being, its arising from that temper of mind wherein consists a supreme propensity of heart to God, seems to be the agreeablenss of the kind and degree of our love to God's end in our creation and in the creation of all things, and the coincidence of the exercises of our love, in their manner, order, and measure, with the manner in which God himself exercises love to the creature in the creation and government of the world, and the way in which God as the first cause and supreme disposer of all things, has respect to the creature's happiness, in subordination to himself as his own supreme end.In a footnote to this prolix sentence, Paul Ramsey condenses and highlights well what Edwards is asserting:
The sentence above takes the measure of truly virtuous love of fellow creatures to be its "coincidence"—its perfect alignment in manner, order, or degree—with "the manner in which God himself exercises love to the creature . . . in subordination to himself as his own supreme end."Only one small quible with Ramsey's restatement of what Edwards is saying. Edwards does not mean by "coincidence" that the alignment in view must be "perfect," as Ramsey puts it. But he does mean this: where there is greater agreement in that alignment between the creature's love for a creature and God's God-centured love for a creature, the more virtuous an action truly is.
—Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings (vol. 8 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 557–558.
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