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As soon as man thinks with even a little attention of
the divinity, he feels a certain delightful emotion
of the heart, which testifies that God is God of the
human heart; and our understanding is never so filled
with pleasure as in this thought of the divinity, the
smallest knowledge of which, as says the prince of
philosophers, is worth more than the greatest
knowledge of other things; as the least beam of the
sun is more luminous than the greatest of the moon or
stars, yea is more luminous than the moon and stars
together.
And if some accident terrifies our heart, it
immediately has recourse to the Divinity, protesting
thereby that when all other things fail him, It alone
stands his friend, and that when he is in peril, It
only, as his sovereign good, can save and secure him.
This pleasure, this confidence which man's heart
naturally has in God, can spring from no other root
than the affinity there is between this divine
goodness and man's soul, a great but secret affinity,
an affinity which each one knows but few understand,
an affinity which cannot be denied nor yet be easily
sounded. We are created to the image and likeness of
God: - what does this mean but that we have an
extreme amity with his divine majesty?
Our soul is spiritual, indivisible, immortal;
understands and wills freely, is capable of judging,
reasoning, knowing, and of having virtues, in which
it resembles God. It resides whole in the whole body,
and whole in every part thereof, as the divinity is
all in all the world, and all in every part thereof.
Man knows and loves himself by produced and
expressed acts of his understanding and will, which
proceeding from the understanding and the will, and
distinct from one another, yet are and remain
inseparably united in the soul, and in the faculties
from whence they proceed.
So the Son proceeds from the Father as his
knowledge expressed, and the Holy Ghost as love
breathed forth and produced from the Father and the
Son, both the Persona being distinct from one another
and from the Father, and yet inseparable and united,
or rather one same, sole, simple, and entirely one
indivisible divinity.
But besides this affinity of likenesses, there is an
incomparable correspondence between God and man, for
their reciprocal perfection: not that God can receive
any perfection from man, but because as man cannot be
perfected but by the divine goodness, so the divine
goodness can scarcely so well exercise its perfection
outside itself, as upon our humanity: the one has
great want and capacity to receive good, the other
great abundance and inclination to bestow it.
Nothing is so agreeable to poverty as a liberal
abundance, nor to a liberal abundance as a needy
poverty, and by how much the good is more abundant,
by so much more strong is the inclination to pour
forth and communicate itself. By how much more the
poor man is in want, so much the more eager is he to
receive, as a void is to fill itself. The meeting
then of abundance and indigence is most sweet and
agreeable, and one could scarcely have said whether
the abounding good have a greater contentment in
spreading and communicating itself, or the failing
and needy good in receiving and in drawing to itself,
until Our Saviour had told us that it is more blessed
to give than to receive.(1)
Now where there is more blessedness there is more
satisfaction, and therefore the divine goodness
receives greater pleasure in giving than we in
receiving.
Mothers' breasts are sometimes so full that they
must offer them to some child, and though the child
takes the breast with great avidity, the nurse offers
it still more eagerly, the child pressed by its
necessity, and the mother by her abundance.
The sacred spouse wished for the holy kiss of
union: O, said she, let him kiss me with the kiss of
his mouth.(2) But is there affinity enough, O
well-beloved spouse of the well-beloved, between thee
and thy loving one to bring to the union which thou
desirest? Yes, says she: give me it; this kiss of
union, O thou dear love of my heart: for thy breasts
are better than wine, smelling sweet of the best
ointment. New wine works and boils in itself by
virtue of its goodness, and cannot be contained
within the casks; but thy breasts are yet better,
they press thee more strongly, and to draw the
children of thy heart to them, they spread a perfume
attractive beyond all the scent of ointments.
Thus, Theotimus, our emptiness has need of the
divine abundance by reason of its want and necessity,
but God's abundance has no need of our poverty but by
reason of the excellency of his perfection and
goodness; a goodness which is not at all bettered by
communication, for it acquires nothing in pouring
itself out of itself, on the contrary it gives: but
our poverty would remain wanting and miserable, if it
were not enriched by the divine abundance.
Our soul then seeing that nothing can perfectly
content her, and that nothing the world can afford is
able to fill her capacity, considering that her
understanding has an infinite inclination ever to
know more, and her will an insatiable appetite to
love and find the good; - has she not reason to cry
out: Ah! I am not then made for this world, there is
a sovereign good on which I depend, some infinite
workman who has placed in me this endless desire of
knowing, and this appetite which cannot be appeased!
And therefore I must tend and extend towards Him,
to unite and join myself to the goodness of Him to
whom I belong and whose I am! Such is the affinity
between God and man's soul.
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