Chapter 8.—In What Desire
and Love Differ.
[Conceived] therefore, either by
desire or by love: not that the creature ought not to be loved; but
if that love [of the creature] is referred to the Creator, then it
will not be desire (
cupiditas
), but love (
charitas
).
For it is desire when the creature is loved for itself. And then it
does not help a man through making use of it, but corrupts him in
the enjoying it. When, therefore, the creature is either equal to
us or inferior, we must use the inferior in order to God, but we
must enjoy the equal duly in God. For as thou oughtest to enjoy
thyself, not in thyself, but in Him who made thee, so also him whom
thou lovest as thyself. Let us enjoy, therefore, both ourselves and
our brethren in the Lord; and hence let us not dare to yield, and
as it were to relax, ourselves to ourselves in the direction
downwards. Now a word is born, when, being thought out, it pleases
us either to the effect of sinning, or to that of doing right.
Therefore love, as it were a mean, conjoins our word and the mind
from which it is conceived, and without any confusion binds itself
as a third with them, in an incorporeal embrace.