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All these terms of love are drawn from the
resemblance there is between the affections of the
mind and the passions of the body. Grief, fear, hope,
hatred, and the rest of the affections of the soul,
only enter the heart when love draws them after it.
We do not hate evil except because it is contrary
to the good which we love: we fear future evil
because it will deprive us of the good we love.
Though an evil be extreme yet we never hate it except
in so far as we love the good to which it is opposed.
He who does not much love the commonwealth is not
much troubled to see it ruined: he who scarcely loves
God, scarcely also hates sin. Love is the first, yea
the principle and origin, of all the passions, and
therefore it is love that first enters the heart; and
because it penetrates and pierces down to the very
bottom of the will where its seat is, we say it
wounds the heart.
"It is sharp," says the apostle of France,(1) "and
enters into the spirit most deeply." The other
affections enter indeed, but by the agency, of love,
for it is this which piercing the heart makes a
passage for them. It is only the point of the dart
that wounds, the rest only increases the wound and
the pain.
Now, if it wound, it consequently gives pain.
Pomegranates, by their vermilion colour, by the
multitude of their seeds, so close set and ranked,
and by their fair crowns, vividly represent, as S.
Gregory says, most holy charity, all red by reason of
its ardour towards God, loaded with all the variety
of virtues, and alone bearing away the crown of
eternal rewards: but the juice of pomegranates, which
as we know is so agreeable both to the healthy and to
the sick, is so mingled of sweet and sour that one
can hardly discern whether it delights the taste more
because it has a sweet tartness or because it has a
tart sweetness.
Verily, Theotimus, love is thus bitter-sweet, and
while we live in this world it never has a sweetness
perfectly sweet, because it is not perfect, nor ever
purely satiated and satisfied: and yet it fails not
to be of very agreeable taste, its tartness
correcting the lusciousness of its sweetness, as its
sweetness heightens the relish of its tartness. But
how can this be?
You shall see a young man enter into a company,
free, hearty, and in the best of spirits, who, being
off his guard, feels, before he goes away, that love,
making use of the glances, the gestures, the words,
yea even of the hair of a silly and weak creature, as
of so many darts, has smitten and wounded his poor
heart, so that there he is, all sad, gloomy and
depressed. Why I pray you is he sad? Without doubt
because he is wounded. And what has wounded him?
Love. But love being the child of complacency, how
can it wound and give pain? Sometimes the beloved
object is absent, and then, my dear Theotimus, love
wounds the heart by the desire which it excites; this
it is which, being unable to satiate itself,
grievously torments the spirit.
If a bee had stung a child, it were to poor purpose
to say to him: Ah! my child, the bee that stung you
is the very same that makes the honey you are so fond
of. For he might say: it is true, that its honey is
very pleasant to my taste, but its sting is very
painful, and while its sting remains in my cheek I
cannot be at peace, and do you not see that my face
is all swollen with it?
Theotimus, love is indeed a complacency, and
consequently very delightful, provided that it does
not leave in our heart the sting of desire; for when
it leaves this, it leaves therewith a great pain.
True it is this pain proceeds from love, and
therefore is a loveable and beloved pain. Hear the
painful yet love-full ejaculations of a royal lover.
My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God;
when shall I come and appear before the face of God?
My tears have been my bread day and night, whilst it
is said to me daily: where is thy God?(2) And the
sacred Sulamitess, wholly steeped in her dolorous
loves, speaking to the daughters of Jerusalem: Ah!
says she, I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if
you find my beloved, that you tell him that I
languish with love.(3) Hope that is deferred
afflicteth the soul.(4)
Now the painful wounds of love are of many sorts.
I. The first strokes we receive from love are
called wounds, because the heart which appeared
sound, entire and all its own before it loved, being
struck with love begins to separate and divide itself
from itself, to give itself to the beloved object.
Now this separation cannot be made without pain,
seeing that pain is nothing but the division of
living things which belong to one another.
2. Desire incessantly stings and wounds the heart
in which it is, as we have said.
3. But, Theotimus, speaking of heavenly love,
there is in the practice of it a kind of wound given
by God himself to the soul which he would highly
perfect. For he gives her admirable sentiments of and
incomparable attractions for his sovereign goodness,
as if pressing and soliciting her to love him; and
then she forcibly lifts herself up as if to soar
higher towards her divine object; but stopping short,
because she cannot love as much as she desires: - O
God! she feels a pain which has no equal. At the same
time that she is powerfully drawn to fly towards her
dear well-beloved, she is also powerfully kept back
and cannot fly, being chained to the base miseries of
this mortal life and of her own powerlessness: she
desires the wings of a dove that she may fly away and
be at rest,(5) and she finds not. There then she is,
rudely tormented between the violence of her desires
and her own powerlessness. Unhappy man that I am,
said one of those who had experienced this torture,
who shall deliver me from the body of this death?(6)
In this case, if you notice, Theotimus, it is not
the desire of a thing absent that wounds the heart,
for the soul feels that her God is present; he has
already led her into his wine-cellar, he has planted
upon her heart the banner of love: but still, though
already he sees her wholly his, he urges her, and
from time to time casts a thousand thousand darts of
his love, showing her in new ways, how much more he
is lovable than loved. And she, who has not so much
force to love as love to force herself, seeing her
forces so weak in respect of the desire she has to
love worthily him whom no force of love can love
enough, - Ah! she feels herself tortured with an
incomparable pain; for, as many efforts as she makes
to fly higher in her desiring love, so many thrills
of pain does she receive.
This heart in love with its God, desiring infinitely
to love, sees notwithstanding that it can neither
love nor desire sufficiently. And this desire which
cannot come to effect is as a dart in the side of a
noble spirit; yet the pain which proceeds from it is
welcome, because whosoever desires earnestly to love,
loves also earnestly to desire, and would esteem
himself the most miserable man in the universe, if he
did not continually desire to love that which is so
sovereignly worthy of love. Desiring to love, he
receives pain; but loving to desire, he receives
sweetness.
My God! Theotimus, what am I going to say? The
blessed in heaven seeing that God is still more
lovable than they are loving, would fail and
eternally perish with a desire to love him still
more, if the most holy will of God did not impose
upon theirs the admirable repose which it enjoys: for
they so sovereignly love this sovereign will, that
its willing stays theirs, and the divine contentment
contents them, they acquiescing to be limited in
their love even by that will whose goodness is the
object of their love.
If this were not so, their love would be equally
delicious and dolorous, delicious by the possession
of so great a good, dolorous through an extreme
desire of a greater love. God therefore continually
drawing arrows, if we may say so, out of the quiver
of his infinite beauty, wounds the hearts of his
lovers, making them clearly see that they do not love
him nearly as much as he is worthy to be beloved.
That mortal who does not desire to love the divine
goodness more, loves him not enough; sufficiency in
this divine exercise is not sufficient, when a man
would stay in it as though it sufficed him.
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