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Thedesire which precedes enjoyment, sharpens and
intensifies the feeling of it, and by how much the
desire was more urgent and powerful, by so much more
agreeable and delicious is the possession of the
thing desired.
Oh! my dear Theotimus, what pleasure will man's
heart take in seeing the face of the Divinity, a face
so much desired, yea a face the only desire of our
souls? Our hearts have a thirst which cannot be
quenched by the pleasures of this mortal life,
whereof the most esteemed and highest prized if
moderate do not satisfy us, and if extreme suffocate
us.
Yet we desire them always to be extreme, and they
are never such without being excessive,
insupportable, hurtful. We die of joy as well as of
grief: yea, joy is more active to ruin us than grief.
Alexander, having swallowed up, in effect or in hope,
all this lower world, heard some base fellow say,
that there were yet many other worlds, and like a
little child, who will cry if one refuse him an
apple, this Alexander, whom the world styles the
great, more foolish notwithstanding than a little
child, began bitterly to weep, because there was no
likelihood that he should conquer the other worlds,
not having as yet got the entire possession of this.
He that did more fully enjoy the world than ever any
other did, is yet so little satisfied with it that he
weeps for sorrow that he cannot have the other worlds
which the foolish persuasion of a wretched babbler
made him imagine to exist.
Tell me, I pray you, Theotimus, does he not show
that the thirst of his heart cannot be slaked in this
life, and that this world is not sufficient to quench
it? O wonderful yet dear unrest of man's heart! Be,
be ever, my soul, without any rest or tranquillity on
this earth, till thou shalt have met with the fresh
waters of the immortal life and the most holy
Divinity, which alone can satisfy thy thirst and
quiet thy desire.
Now, Theotimus, imagine to yourself with the
Psalmist, that hart which, hard set by the hounds,
has neither wind nor legs; how greedily he plunges
himself into the waters which he panted after, and
with what ardour he rolls into and buries himself in
that element. One would think he would willingly be
dissolved and converted into water, more fully to
enjoy its coolness.
Ah! what a union of our hearts shall there be with
God there above in heaven, where, after these
infinite desires of the true good never assuaged in
this world, we shall find the living and powerful
source thereof. Then, truly, as we see a hungry child
closely fixed to his mother's breast, greedily press
this dear fountain of most desired sweetness, so that
one would think that either it would thrust itself
into its mother's breast, or else suck and draw all
that breast into itself; so our soul, panting with an
extreme thirst for the true good, when she shall find
that inexhaustible source in the Divinity, - O good
God! what a holy and sweet ardour to be united and
joined to the plentiful breasts of the All-goodness,
either to be altogether absorbed in it, or to have it
come entirely into us!
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