De Substantia Dilectionis [Incertus]

A single book on the substance of love. Chapter one. The two streams of love: charity and cupidity. Hence all good or evil. Love is one motion and manifold. We daily weave a discourse on love, lest perchance a spark flash in our hearts and kindle a fire that makes a flame, either consuming a heap or purging a safe place. For from it is everything that is good, and everything that is evil is from it. One spring of love leaping within pours forth two streams: one is love of the world, cupidity; the other is love of God, charity. The heart of man is indeed the middle, whence the spring of love bursts forth: and when it runs down through appetite to external things, it is called cupidity; but when it directs its desire to interior things, it is named charity. Therefore there are two streams that flow from the spring of love, cupidity and charity: and the root of all evils is cupidity, and the root of all goods is charity. Hence everything that is good is from it; and everything that is evil is from it. Therefore whatever that is, it is great that is in us; and from it is everything that is from us: this, however, is love. What is love, and how great is love, or whence is love? And the word of God speaks of love. Surely this business is not rather for those who are accustomed to prostitute chastity? Behold how many willingly undertake its ministries: and how few who do not blush to bring its words into the open! What then do we do? Perhaps.

with such great shamelessness we have a broken brow, who do not blush to sound out an unindicted rumor: which even the impudent sometimes cannot express without shame in words. But it is one thing to investigate a vice so that it may be uprooted; another to exhort toward vice so that virtue and truth are not loved. We therefore investigate and seek, so that we may know, and knowing, beware, what they investigate so that they may know, but know so that they may do, what that thing in us is which divides our desires in so many ways, and leads one heart into diverse directions. We find, however, that this is nothing other than love: which, though it is known to be singular and unique according to the nature of the heart, is divided according to its action; when it moves inordinately, that is, toward things it ought not, it is called cupidity; when it is ordered, it is called charity. Therefore, by what definition shall we be able to signify this very motion of the heart, which we call love? It behooves us to examine it more closely, lest it lie hidden in some way and not be known; and because of this, neither be guarded against when it is evil, nor sought after or found when it is good; from which, when it is evil, so many evils come, and when it is good, so many goods proceed.

CHAPTER II. What love is. What evil is. How then do we define it? Let us investigate, let us consider; for what is sought is hidden, and the more deeply it is placed within, the more it dominates the heart in both respects. That, then, seems to be love. And love is a delight of the heart of someone toward something on account of something, a desire in seeking, and in enjoying, a joy, running through desire, resting through joy. Hence the human heart is good, and hence it is evil; because you are good from no other source, if you are good, nor evil from any other source, if you are evil, except that you love what is good either well or ill. For everything that is, is good: but when what is good is loved ill, that good is not good, and this is evil. Therefore neither the one who loves is evil, nor what he loves is evil, nor the love with which he loves is evil: but that he loves ill is evil, and this whole thing is evil. Therefore set charity in order, and already there is no evil.

CHAPTER III. Of beatitude, men are capable through the grace of God. Through love they become partakers. We wish to commend a great matter, if indeed we are able to do what we wish. Almighty God, who lacks nothing, because He Himself is the highest and true good; who can receive nothing from another by which to grow, since all things are from Him; nor lose anything of His own by which to fall, since all things abide immutably in Him: He created the rational spirit out of charity alone, by no necessity, that He might make it a partaker of His own beatitude. Moreover, that this same being might be fit to enjoy so great a beatitude, He placed in it a spiritual love, in a certain way sensitizing the palate of the heart through this for the taste of internal sweetness: so that through this very love, it might savor the delight of its own happiness, and cleave to it with unwearied desire. Therefore, through love God joined the rational creature to Himself, so that by always cleaving to Him, it might suck from the good by which it was to be beatified, and from Him in a certain way draw through affection, and drink of Him through desire, and possess Him through joy. Suck, O little bee, suck; suck and drink the ineffable sweetness of your sweetness. Immerse yourself, and be filled; because He knows not how to fail, if you do not begin to loathe. Therefore, adhere and inhere, take and enjoy: if the taste is everlasting, the beatitude also will be everlasting. Let us no longer be ashamed nor repent of having made mention of love: let there be no repentance where there is such utility, no shame where there is such honor.

CHAPTER IV. On the twofold cord of charity. Therefore, through love the rational creature is united to its creator, and the bond of affection alone binds both into one, and all the more happily, the more strongly. For this reason, so that an undivided society and perfect concord on both sides might be maintained, the bond is doubled, in the love of God and of neighbor: so that through the love of God all might cohere to the one, and through the love of neighbor all might become one with each other; so that what each one could not grasp in himself of that one to whom all cling, he might possess more fully and perfectly through the love of neighbor in another, and the good of all might become the whole of each individual. Therefore, order charity. What does it mean, to order charity? If love is desire, let it run well; if it is joy, let it rest well. For love, as has been said, is a delight of the heart for something on account of something, desire in seeking, and joy in enjoying, running through desire, and resting through joy, running toward that thing, and resting in it. Toward what, or in what?

CHAPTER V. Ordered charity: with respect to God, with respect to neighbor, with respect to the world. Hear, if we can perhaps explain whither our love ought to run, or wherein it ought to rest. There are three things which can be loved well or ill: that is, God, neighbor, and the world. God is above us, neighbor is beside us, the world is beneath us. Therefore order charity. If it runs, let it run well; if it rests, let it rest well. Desire runs, joy rests. For this reason joy is uniform, because it is always in one thing, nor can it be varied by change: but desire admits of mutability, and therefore does not contain itself in one, but represents various forms. For every course is either from that, or with that, or into that to which it is directed. How then ought our desire to run? There are three: God, neighbor, world. Let three have God, two have neighbor, one have the world in the course of our desire; and in this is ordered charity. For love through desire can run in an ordered way from God, and with God, and into God. It runs from God, when it receives from Him that by which it loves Him. It runs with God, when it contradicts His will in nothing. It runs into God, when it seeks to rest in Him. These are the three things which pertain to God. But two are of the neighbor. For desire can run from the neighbor and with the neighbor, but it cannot run into the neighbor. From the neighbor, so that it rejoices in his salvation and progress.

With the neighbor, so that it may desire to have him as a companion of the journey and a partner in reaching the goal on the way of God. But it cannot [place its hope and trust] in the neighbor, that is, in man. These are the two things which pertain to the neighbor: that is, concerning him, and with him, and not in him. One thing pertains to the world: to run concerning it; not with it or into it. For desire runs concerning the world when, having observed God’s work outwardly, through admiration and praise it turns itself more ardently inward to Him. It would run with the world if, on account of the mutability of temporal things, it conformed itself to this, either by being cast down in adversity or by being lifted up in prosperity. It would run into the world if it wished always to rest in its pleasures. Therefore, order charity so that it runs concerning God, in God, and into God; concerning the neighbor, with the neighbor, and not into the neighbor; concerning the world, neither with the world nor into the world, so that it may rest in God alone through joy. This is ordered charity, and apart from it everything that is done is not ordered charity, but disordered cupidity.

CHAPTER VI. Love is never idle. The true rest of the heart. Whether this is perfect here. Love is the life of the heart, and therefore it is utterly impossible for a heart that desires to live to be without love. Consider what follows from this. For if the human mind cannot be without love, it must necessarily love either itself or certainly something else besides itself. But because it does not find perfect good in itself, if it loved only itself, its love would not be happy. Therefore, if it desires to love happily, it must seek out something else besides itself to love. But if it begins to love something imperfect outside itself, it will indeed set its love in motion, but it will not exclude misery. Therefore, it does not love happily until it turns itself, through the desire of love, to the true and highest good. Because the highest and true good is God alone, the one who loves God loves happily, and the more he loves, the more happily. This, then, is the true rest of our heart, when it is fixed in the love of God through desire, and seeks nothing further, but delights in what it holds with a certain happy security. For because that desire neither draws it onward nor fear drives it back, it rests in a kind of joy without disturbance in that very thing.

But because of the weakness of the human mind, which cannot—I will not say always, but scarcely ever—be caught up into that sweetness of divine contemplation, it must be accustomed to stability by some intermediate effort toward that which it is not yet able to attain: that is, if we cannot always think of God, let us at least hold our heart back from unlawful and vain thoughts by restraining it. In considering the works of God and his wonders, let us hold to that; so that while we always strive to be less unstable, we may at length, by God’s gift, become truly stable. CHAPTER VII. How it is to be compared. Faith a ship on the waves of this world. From what it is to be built. That I may give you some example of this progression, the whole of this world is like a kind of flood, in that all things which are in this world, like water, run on with uncertain outcomes, fluctuating. But true faith, which promises not transitory but eternal things, raises the mind upward from the lust of this world, as if from certain waves: and it can be carried by the waters, but it cannot be drowned at all; because it uses this world out of necessity, but is not entangled in its desires through affection. Therefore, whoever, not believing in eternal things, seeks only transitory things, is like one laboring without a ship in the waves, and the force of the running water drags him along with it. But whoever, believing in eternal things, loves transitory things, suffers shipwreck next to the ship.

Those, however, who both believe in and love eternal goods, placed in a ship, pass safely through the waves of the tossing sea; and because they do not step beyond the ship through the desire of faith, they already in some way imitate the stability of the land amidst the waves. First, therefore, if we wish to cross this great sea unharmed, let us build a ship, so that we may have an integral faith; then let us inhabit the ship of faith through charity, so that we both believe what we ought to love, and love what we have believed; and thus both the law of God is in our heart through the knowledge of right faith, and our heart is in the law of God through love. But that you may more easily know how or from where you should build this ship or ark in your heart, through which, led out from the shipwreck of this deluge, you may arrive at the harbor of rest; consider two works of God, namely the work of creation, and the work of restoration. The work of creation, however, is the creation of heaven and earth, and of all things that are contained in them, which were made in six days. The work of restoration, indeed, is the incarnation of the Word, and all things that from the beginning of the world until the end, either preceded to announce it, or are to follow to confirm it itself: all of which happen in six ages. But the works of restoration pertain more to the Catholic faith, which the saints therefore love more, because in them they recognize the remedies of their salvation. These, however, are done partly through men, partly through angels.

partly through himself God has worked: so that in the spiritual ark the first dwelling is the works of men, the second the works of angels, the third the works of God, the highest chamber, the author of all things being God.