Anabaptists...

Excerpted from Hans Denck's Concerning True Love 1527
Love is a spiritual power. The lover desires to be united with the beloved. Where love is fulfilled, the lover does not objectify the beloved. The lover forgets himself, as if he were no more, and without shame he yearns for his beloved. The lover cannot be content until he has proven his love for the beloved in the most dangerous situations. The lover would gladly and willingly face death for the benefit of the beloved. Indeed, the lover might be so foolish as to die to please his beloved, even knowing that no other benefit could come from the act. And the less his beloved acknowledges his love, the more passion the lover feels. He will not cease in his love but strives the more to prove his love, even if it will never be acknowledged.

When love is true and plays no favorites, it reaches out in desire to unite with all people (that is, without causing division and instability). Love itself can never be satisfied by lovers. Even if all lovers were to desert their loving, even if the joy of loving were no more with them, love is such a richness in itself that it was, is, and will be satisfied into eternity. Love willingly denies all things, no matter how cherished. Yet love cannot deny itself.

If it were possible, love would even deny itself for the sake of love. Love would allow itself to cease and become as nothing so that love's object could become what love is. We might even say that love hates itself, for love selflessly desires only the good of others. If love were unwillingly to deny itself for the sake of the beloved, it would not be true lov­ing but a form of selfishness in love's own eyes. Love knows and recognizes that total giving for the sake of the beloved is good. That is why love cannot deny itself. Love must finally love itself, not selfishly, but as loving what is good.