4. I know the first and the last, I embrace them all with an inestimable love.
I am to be praised in all my saints, I am to be blessed above all things, and to be honoured in every one of them whom I have thus gloriously magnified, and eternally chosen without any foregoing merits of their own.
He therefore that despises one of the least of my saints, honours not the greatest, for both little and great I have made:
And he that derogates from any one of the saints, derogates also from me, and from all the rest of them in the kingdom of heaven.
They are all one through the band of love; they have the same sentiment, the same will, and all mutually love one another.
5. And yet (which is much higher) they all love me more than themselves and their own merit.
For being elevated above themselves, and drawn out of the love of themselves, they are wholly absorpt in the love of me, in whom also they rest by an eternal enjoyment.
Nor is there any thing which can divert them from me, or depress them; for being full of the eternal truth, they burn with the fire of a charity that cannot be extinguished.