Love of God and of the Neighbor.

1st Chapter

4. He then who does not fulfill the small Commandments of the Law / how shall he fulfill the great ones? Only every deed that is done out of God's Love is good and pure / because Love alone occupies everything; and a perfect Lover passes entirely into that which he loves; and the more Noble an Object is / the more it devours its Lover.

5. To know in the Intellect alone / what the First and Great Commandment of the Law is / and not to do the Least Commandment in one's heart / that is exactly the work of a Tempter / or Satan / and of a Pharisaic Scholar of the Law and Scripture; they think that when they know all the Commandments / and teach others to do them / that they have fulfilled them / without having to fulfill them to the highest degree themselves. But what does it help / they do not wish to do them anyway: they much prefer to leave the doing to Jesus and to his Prophets / Apostles and True Disciples: they need not stir the Commandments of God with their fingers / if they only make the Phylacteries original: "Gedenk-Cedels"; literally 'memorial-slips', referring to the Jewish practice of wearing prayer boxes containing scripture portions (tefillin or phylacteries), which Jesus criticized the Pharisees for making "broad" to show off piety. of the Law and Prophets broad / they always have the words in their mouth / they know them by heart; they have learned to understand them exactly from word to word / and from letter to letter.

6. Do you see now then / that all Letter-Knowers original: "Letter-Weters"; a derogatory term for those who have intellectual knowledge of the scripture's text without any spiritual or lived understanding. / in whom the Law is written only in a heart of stone / do nothing else than tempt Jesus / [who is] Salvation itself: though they know [the commandments] / or ask them of Jesus a hundred