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A great religious of our age has written that our
natural temperament much conduces to contemplative
love, and that such as are of an affectionate and
loving nature are best adapted for it.
Now I suppose he means not that sacred love is
distributed to men or angels according to, or much
less in virtue of, natural conditions; nor would he
say that the distribution of divine love is made to
men according to their natural qualities and
abilities: for this were to belie the Scripture, and
to violate the ecclesiastical canon, by which the
Pelagians were declared heretics.
For my part, I speak in this treatise of the
supernatural love which God out of his goodness pours
into our hearts, and whose residence is in the
supreme point of the spirit; a point which is above
all the rest of the soul, and independent of all
natural disposition. And withal, though souls
inclined to love have on the one hand a certain
propensity which makes them more ready to desire to
love God, they are, on the other hand, so subject to
set their affections upon lovable creatures, that
their propensity puts them in as great danger of
being diverted from the purity of sacred love by a
mixture of other loves,
as they have facility in wishing to love God; for the
danger of loving amiss is attached to the facility of
loving.
It is true that souls of this kind, being once well
purified from the love of creatures, work wonders in
holy loving, as love finds a great facility in
diffusing itself throughout all the faculties of the
heart: and thence proceeds a most delightful
sweetness, which appears not in those whose souls are
peevish, harsh, melancholy and churlish.
Nevertheless, if two persons, the one of whom is
loving and sweet by nature, the other harsh and sour,
have an equal charity, they will love God equally,
but not alike.
The heart naturally sweet will love more easily,
more amiably, more sweetly, though not more solidly
nor more perfectly; yea, the love which shall spring
amongst the thorns and repugnances of a harsh and dry
nature shall be the more noble and glorious, as the
other shall be more delightsome and lovely.
It imports not much then, whether one have a
natural inclination to love, when it is a question of
a love which is supernatural and exercised
supernaturally. Only this, Theotimus, I would gladly
cry out to all men: O mortals, if you have hearts
disposed for love, why do you not devote yourselves
to celestial and divine love? But if you be hard and
sour-tempered - since you are wanting in natural
love, why do you not aspire to supernatural love,
which shall be lovingly bestowed upon you by him who
calls you to his so holy love ?
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