1. Love is a spiritual conjoining. 2. True love cannot remain inactive in itself, nor be restricted within its own confines; but it desires to go out and embrace others in love. 3. True love desires to be conjoined to others and to impart and give its own things to them, 4. True love desires to dwell in others, and to dwell in itself from others. 5. Divine love, which is love itself and God Himself, desires to be in a subject that is an image and likeness of Himself; consequently it desires to be in man, and desires man to be in Him. 6. For this to be brought about, it follows from the very essence of the love that is in God, and hence for an impelling reason, that a universe had to be created by God, in which there should be earths, upon which there should be men, and in the men minds and souls with which a Divine love can be conjoined. 7. All the things, therefore, that have been created have regard to man as an end. 8. Because the angelic heaven is formed of men, of their spirits and souls, all the things that have been created have regard to an angelic heaven as an end. 9. The angelic heaven is the dwelling-place itself of God with men, and of men with God. 10. Eternal blessednesses, happinesses, and delights are ends of creation at the same time because they are of love. 11. This end is inmost; thus it is as it were the life and soul, and as it were the force and effort in every single created thing. 12. That end is God in them. 13. This end implanted in created things in the whole and in the part causes the universe to be preserved in its created state, in so far as the ends of a contrary love do not hinder or overthrow. 14. God, in His Divine Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience unceasingly provides that contrary ends from contrary loves shall not prevail, and the work of creation be overthrown to the point of utter destruction. 15. Preservation is an unceasing creation, just as subsistence is an unceasing coming forth.