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God draws men's spirits unto him by his sovereign
beauty and incomprehensible goodness, which two
excellences are however but one supreme divinity, at
once most singularly beautiful and good.Every
thing is done for the good and for the beautiful, all
things look towards them, are moved and stayed by
them. The good and beautiful are desirable,
agreeable, and dear to all, for them all things do
and will whatsoever they do and will. And as for the
beautiful, because it draws and recalls all things to
itself, the Greeks give it a name which signifies
recalling.(1)
In like manner, as to good, its true image is light,
especially because light collects, reduces and turns
all things towards itself,
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whence the sun is named amongst the Greeks from a
word2 which shows that its influence causes all
things to be drawn together and united, bringing
together things dispersed; as goodness turns all
things unto itself, being not only the sovereign
unity, but sovereignty unitive, since all things
desire it, as their principle, their preservation and
their last end. So that in conclusion, the good and
the beautiful is but one and the same thing, because
all things desire the good and the beautiful.
This discourse, Theotimus, is almost entirely
composed of the words of the divine S. Denis the
Areopagite; and certainly it is true that the sun,
the source of corporeal light, is the true image of
the good and the beautiful; for amongst merely
corporeal creatures there is neither goodness nor
beauty equal to that of the sun. Now the beauty and
goodness of the sun consist in his light, without
which nothing would be beautiful, nothing good, in
this corporeal world.
As beautiful he illuminates all, as good he heats
and quickens all: insomuch as he is beautiful and
bright, he draws unto himself all seeing eyes in the
world; insomuch as he is good and gives heat, he
gains unto himself all the appetites and inclinations
of the corporeal world. For he extracts and draws up
the exhalations and vapours, he draws and makes rise
from their originals plants and living creatures; nor
is there any production to which the vital heat of
this great luminary does not contribute.
So God, Father of all light, sovereignty good and
beautiful, draws our understanding by his beauty to
contemplate him, and draws our will by his goodness
to love him. As beautiful, replenishing our
understanding with delight, he pours his love into
our wills; as good, filling our wills with his love,
he excites our understanding to contemplate him, thus
love provoking us to contemplation, and contemplation
to love: whence it follows that ecstasies and
raptures depend wholly on love, for it is love that
carries the understanding to contemplation and the
will to union: so that, finally, we must conclude
with the great S. Denis, that divine love is
ecstatic, not permitting lovers to live to
themselves, but to the thing beloved: for which cause
the admirable Apostle S. Paul, being possessed of
this divine love, and participating in its ecstatic
power, said with divinely inspired mouth: I live, now
not I, but Christ liveth in me.(3) As a true lover
gone out of himself into God, he lived now not his
own life, but the life of his beloved, as being
sovereignly to be loved.
Now this rapture of love happens in the will thus.
God touches it with the attractions of his sweetness,
and then, as the needle touched by the loadstone
turns and moves towards the pole, forgetful of its
insensible condition, so the will touched with
heavenly love moves forward and advances itself
towards God, leaving all its earthly inclinations,
and by this means enters into a rapture, not of
knowledge, but of fruition; not of admiration but of
affection; not of science but of experience; not of
sight but of taste and relish.
It is true, as I have already signified, the
understanding enters sometimes into admiration,
seeing the sacred delight which the will takes in her
ecstasy, as the will often takes pleasure to perceive
the understanding in admiration, so that these two
faculties interchange their ravishments; the view of
beauty making us love it, and the love thereof making
us view it.
Rarely is a man warmed by the sunbeams without
being illuminated, or illuminated without being
warmed. Love easily makes us admire, and admiration
easily makes us love. Still the two ecstasies, of the
understanding and of the will, are not so essential
to one another that the one may not very often be
without the other; for as philosophers have had more
knowledge than love of the Creator, so good
Christians often have more love than knowledge, and
consequently exceeding knowledge is not always
followed by exceeding love, as I have remarked
elsewhere.
Now if the ecstasy of admiration be alone, we are
not made better by it, according to what he said of
it who had been lifted up in ecstasy into the third
heaven. If I should know, said he, all mysteries, and
all knowledge, - and have not charity, I am nothing;
(4) and therefore the evil spirit can put into an
ecstasy, if we may, so say, and ravish the
understanding by proposing unto it wonders which hold
it suspended and elevated above its natural forces,
and further, by such lights he can give the will some
kind of vain, soft, tender and imperfect love, by way
of sensible complacency, satisfaction and
consolation.
But to give the true ecstasy of the will, whereby
it is solely and powerfully joined unto the divine
goodness, appertains only to that sovereign Spirit by
whom the charity of God is spread abroad in our
hearts.(5)
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