A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soul of man With the…A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soule of man With the…

Love hath in moral and divine things the same effect which fire hath in natural, to congregate homogeneall, or things of the same kind, and to separate heterogeneall, or things differing: as we see in the Love of God, the deeper that is, the more is the spiritual part of man collected together, and raised from the earth. And therefore in heaven, where love shall be perfect, all things shall be harmonious and homogeneal, not in regard of natural properties, but in a pure and unmixed spiritualness of affections in a perfect unity of minds and motions.

Love hath in morall and divine things the same effect which fire hath in naturall, to congregate homogeneall, or things of the same kinde, and to separate heterogeneall, or things differing: as we see in the Love of God, the deeper that is, the more is the spirituall part of man collected together, and raysed from the earth. And therefore in heaven, where love shall bee perfect, all things shall be harmonious and homogeneal, not in regard of naturall properties, but in a pure and unmixed spiritualnesse of affections in a perfect unity of minds and motions.

From the union of love proceeds another secret effect, namely, a resting of the mind in the thing ⟨p. 102⟩loved. In which respect the Philosopher calleth knowledge the rest of the understanding. And this can only be total and perfect in the Union of the Soul with God, the chiefest good thereof. Whence some have made the threefold Appetite ¹in man, Concupiscible, Rational and Irascible, to have their final perfection and quiet by a distinct union to the Three Persons in the Trinity: for the Concupiscible power is carried ad bonum to good, which they say is the Attribute of the holy Spirit; the Rational adverum, to that which is true, which is the Attribute of the Son; and the Irascible ad Ard•um, to Power, which is the Attribute of the Father. But to let that pass for a spiders web (curious, but thin) certain it is that God only is that end, who can fully accomplish the perfection and terminate the desires of those creatures, whom he made after a peculiar manner to know and enjoy him. But proportionably, there ariseth from the Union unto any other Object of Love, a satiating and quieting of the Faculty; which, in a word, is then only, in Objects of inferior order and goodness, regular, when the Object is natural, and the Action limited. Disproportion and Enormity are the two Corruptions in this particular.