Matthew Poole and continuators on 1 John 4:16

16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him .

Inasmuch as the transformative Efficacy of God's Love upon us, depends upon our certain Apprehension of it he doubles the Expression of that Certainty: We have known and believed, i. e. we are assured of it, both by experimented Effects, and by Faith; implying, that by having this Conception of God throughly setled in our Souls, that He is Love, (as was also said, v. 8.) we shall be so throughly changed into this very Nature and Image, as to dwell in Love, as in our ow[illegible: 1 letter] Element, or a thing now become wholly connatural to us. Which will indeed be (by Consequence) to be so intimately united with God, that he and we may truly (tho in a Sense most remote from Identification, or being made the same, an horrid Notion! not only inferr'd by what is here said, but inconsistent with it, and refused by it, for Things united, are thereby imply'd to be distinct) be said to indwell one another.

Marginal references: Vers. 12.