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But seeing we have not power naturally to love God
above all things, why have we naturally an
inclination to it? Is not nature vain to incite us to
a love which she cannot bestow upon us? Why does she
give us a thirst for a precious water of which she
cannot give us to drink?
Ah! Theotimus, how good God has been to us! The
perfidy which we committed in offending him deserved
truly that he should have deprived us of all the
marks of his benevolence, and of the favour which he
deigned to our nature when he imprinted upon it the
light of his divine countenance, and gave to our
hearts the joyfulness of feeling themselves inclined
to the love of the divine goodness: so that the
angels seeing this miserable man would have had
occasion to say in pity: Is this the creature of
perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth?(1)
But this infinite clemency could never be so
rigorous to the work of his hands; he saw that we
were clothed with flesh a wind which goeth and
returneth not,(2) and therefore according to the
bowels of his mercy he would not utterly ruin us, nor
deprive us of the sign of his lost grace, in order
that seeing this, and feeling in ourselves this
alliance, and this inclination to love him, we should
strive to do so, that no one might justly say: Who
showeth us good things?(3) For though by this sole
natural inclination we cannot be so happy as to love
God as we ought, yet if we employed it faithfully,
the sweetness of the divine piety would afford us
some assistance, by means of which we might make
progress, and if we second this first assistance the
paternal goodness of God would bestow upon us another
greater, and conduct us from good to better in all
sweetness, till he brought us to the sovereign love,
to which our natural inclination impels us: since it
is certain that to him who is faithful in a little,
and who does what is in his power, the divine
benignity never denies its assistance to advance him
more and more.
This natural inclination then which we have to love
God above all things is not left for nothing in our
hearts: for on God's part it is a handle by which he
can hold us and draw us to himself; and the divine
goodness seems in some sort by this impression to
keep our hearts tied as little birds in a string, by
which he can draw us when it pleases his mercy to
take pity upon us - and on our part it is a mark and
memorial of our first principle and Creator, to whose
love it moves us, giving us a secret intimation that
we belong to his divine goodness; even as harts upon
whom princes have had collars put with their arms,
though afterwards they cause them to be let loose and
run at liberty in the forest, do not fail to be
recognized by any one who meets them not only as
having been once taken by the prince whose arms they
bear, but also as being still reserved for him.
And in this way was known the extreme old age of a
hart which according to some historians was taken
three hundred years after the death of Caesar;
because there was found on him a collar with Caesar's
device upon it, and these words: Caesar let me go.
In truth the honourable inclination which God has
left in our hearts testifies as well to our friends
as to our enemies that we did not only sometime
belong to our Creator, but furthermore, though he has
left us and let us go at the mercy of our free will,
that we still appertain to him, and that he has
reserved the right of taking us again to himself, to
save us, according as his holy and sweet providence
shall require.
Hence the royal prophet terms this inclination not
only a light, in that it makes us see whither we are
to tend, but also a joy and gladness,(4) for it
comforts us when we stray, giving us a hope that he
who engraved and left in us this clear mark of our
origin intends also and desires to reduce and bring
us back thither, if we be so happy as to let
ourselves be retaken by his divine goodness.
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