There is no word, in perhaps any language, which has been used with so loose a definition as love. This definition has been stretched between divinity and sensuality, with the result that the author of the Fourth Gospel, a man most careful of definitions, was driven to contrast two Greek words, in a famous passage, in order to make his meaning entirely clear, whilst Tyndale, breaking away from Wycliffe, substituted lovers for friends in his translation of Luke, "And ye schalbe betrayed of youre fathers and mothers, and youre bretheren, and kynsmen, and lovers, and some of you shall they put to deeth," only to be broken away from in turn, by Cranmer and the revisers, in a return to friends.
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