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The love of God, which brings us as far as contempt
of self, makes us citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem;
self-love, which pushes us forward to the contempt of
God, makes us slaves of the infernal Babylon.
It is true that only little by little we come to
despise God, but we have no sooner done it than
instantly, in a moment, holy charity forsakes us, or
rather wholly perishes. Yes, Theotimus, for in this
contempt of God does mortal sin consist, and one only
mortal sin banishes charity from the soul, inasmuch
as it breaks the connection and union with God, which
is obedience and submission to his will: and as man's
heart cannot live divided so charity, which is the
heart of the soul and the soul of the heart, can
never be wounded without being slain: as they say of
pearls, which being conceived of heavenly dew perish
if any drop of salt water get within the shell that
holds them.
Our soul, as you know, does not go out of our body
by little and little, but in a moment, when the
indisposition of the body is so great that it can no
longer exercise the actions of life in it: even so,
the very instant the heart is so disordered by
passions that charity can no longer reign there, she
quits and abandons it: for she is so noble, that she
cannot cease to reign without ceasing to be.
Habits acquired by our human actions alone do not
perish by one single contrary act: for a man is not
said to be intemperate for one single act of
intemperance, nor is a painter held an unskilful
master for having once failed in his art; but, as all
such habits are acquired by the influence of a series
of acts, so we lose them by a long cessation from
their acts or by many contrary acts.
But charity, Theotimus, which in a moment the Holy
Ghost pours into our hearts as soon as the conditions
requisite for this infusion are found in us, is also
in an instant taken from us, as soon as, diverting
our will from the obedience we owe to God, we
complete our consent to the rebellion and disloyalty
to which temptation excites us.
It is true that charity increases by degrees and
goes from perfection to perfection according as by
our works or by the frequenting of the sacraments we
make place for it, yet it does not decrease by a
lessening of its perfection, for we never lose any
least part of it but we lose it all.
In which it resembles the masterpiece of Phidias
so famous amongst the ancients; for they say that
this great sculptor made at Athens an ivory statue of
Minerva, twenty-six cubits high, and in the buckler
which she held, wherein he had represented the
battles of the Amazons and Giants, he carved his own
face with so great art that one could not take away
one line of it, says Aristotle, without destroying
the whole statue, so that this work, though it had
been brought to perfection by adding piece to piece,
yet would have perished in an instant if one little
parcel of the workman's likeness had been removed.
In like manner, Theotimus, though the Holy Ghost
having infused charity into a soul increases it by
adding one degree to another and one perfection of
love to another, yet still, the resolution of
preferring God's will before all things being the
essential point of sacred love, and that wherein the
image of eternal love, that is of the Holy Ghost, is
represented, one cannot withdraw one single piece of
it but presently charity wholly perishes.
This preference of God before all things is the dear
child of charity. And if Agar, who was but an
Egyptian, seeing her son in danger of death had not
the heart to stay by him, but would have left him,
saying: Ah! I will not see the child die,(1) is it
strange then that charity, the daughter of heavenly
sweetness and delight, cannot bear to behold the
death of her child, which is the resolution never to
offend God? So that while free-will is resolving to
consent to sin and is thereby putting to death this
holy resolution, charity dies with it, saying in its
last sigh: Ah! no, never will I see this child die.
In fine, Theotimus, as the precious stone called
prassius loses its lustre in the presence of any
poison, so in an instant the soul loses her splendour,
grace and beauty, which consist in holy love, upon
the entry and presence of any mortal sin; - whence it
is written that the soul that sinneth, the same shall
die.(2)
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