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As good ground having received the seed renders it
back in its season a hundredfold, so the heart which
has taken complacency in God cannot hinder itself
from wishing to offer another complacency to God.
No one pleases us but we desire to please him.
Cool wine cools for a while those who drink it, but,
as soon as it grows warm within the receiver, it
reciprocally warms him, and the more heat is given to
it, the more it gives back. True love is never
ungrateful, but strives to please those in whom it
finds its pleasure; and hence comes that loving
conformity, which makes us such as those we love.
The most devout and most wise King Solomon, became
idolatrous and foolish when he loved women who were
foolish and idolatrous, and served as many idols as
his wives had. For this cause the Scripture terms
those men effeminate who passionately love women as
such, because love metamorphoses them from men into
women, in manners and humours.
Now this transformation is made insensibly by
complacency, which having got entry into our heart
brings forth another complacency, to give to him of
whom we have received it. They say there is a little
land animal in the Indies, which finds such pleasure
with fishes and in the sea, that by often swimming
with them it becomes a fish, and of an animal of the
land becomes entirely an animal of the sea.
So by often delighting in God we become conformed
to God, and our will is transformed into that of the
Divine Majesty, by the complacency which it takes
therein. The example of those we love has a sweet and
unperceived empire and insensible authority over us:
it is necessary either to imitate or forsake them.
He who, drawn by the sweetness of perfumes, enters
a perfumer's shop, while receiving the pleasure which
he takes in the smell of those odours, perfumes
himself, and going out, communicates to others the
pleasure which he has received, spreading amongst
them the scent of perfumes which he has contracted.
Our heart, together with the pleasure which it
takes in the thing beloved, draws unto itself the
quality thereof, for delight opens the heart, as
sorrow closes it, whence the sacred holy Scripture
often uses the word, dilate, instead of, rejoice. Now
the heart being opened by pleasure, the impressions
of the qualities on which the pleasure depends find
easy passage into the spirit; and together with them
such others also as are in the same subject, though
disagreeable to us, creep in amid the throng of
pleasures, as he that lacked his marriage garment got
into the banquet amongst those that were adorned with
it. So Aristotle's scholars took pains to stammer
like him, and Plato's walked bent-backed in imitation
of their master.
In fine the pleasure which we take in a thing has
a certain communicative power which produces in the
lover's heart the qualities of the thing which
pleases. And hence it is that holy complacency
transforms us into God whom we love, and by how much
greater the complacency, by so much the
transformation is more perfect: thus the saints that
loved ardently were speedily and perfectly
transformed, love transporting and translating the
manners and disposition of the one heart into the
other.
A strange yet a true thing! Place together two lutes
which are in unison, that is, of the same sound and
accord, and let one of them be played on: - the other
though not touched will not fail to sound like that
which is played on, the affinity which is between
them, as by a natural love, causing this
correspondence. We have a repugnance to imitate those
we hate even in good things, nor would the
Lacedaemonians follow the good counsel of a wicked
man, unless some good man pronounced it after him. On
the contrary, we cannot help conforming ourselves to
what we love.
In this sense, as I think, the great Apostle said
that the law was not made for the just:(1) for in
truth the just man is not just but insomuch as he has
love, and if he have love there is no need to press
him by the rigour of the law, love being the most
pressing teacher and solicitor, to urge the heart
which it possesses to obey the will and the intention
of the beloved.
Love is a magistrate who exercises his authority
without noise, without pursuivants or sergeants, by
that mutual complacency, by which, as we find
pleasure in God, so also we desire to please him.
Love is the abridgment of all theology; it made the
ignorance of a Paul, an Antony, an Hilarion, a
Simeon, a Francis, most holily learned, without
books, masters or art. In virtue of this love, the
spouse may say with assurance: My beloved is wholly
mine, by the complacency wherewith he pleases and
feeds me; and I, I am wholly his, by the benevolence
wherewith I please and feed him again. My heart feeds
on the pleasure it takes in him, and his on my taking
pleasure in him for his own sake. As a holy shepherd
he feeds me, his dear sheep, amidst the lilies of his
perfections, in which I take pleasure; and I, as his
dear sheep, feed him with the milk of my affections,
by which I strive to please him.
Whosoever truly takes pleasure in God desires
faithfully to please God, and in order to please him,
desires to conform himself to him.
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