Then the light in which the marvellous life of the poor man of God had been narrated to me broke the silence among those concordant deities, and said, “Since one straw is threshed, since its seed is now garnered, sweet love invites me to beat out the other. Thou believest that in the breast, wherefrom the rib was drawn to form the beautiful cheek whose taste costs dear to all the world, and in that which, pierced. by the lance, both after and before made such satisfaction that it overcomes the balance of all sin, whatever of light it is allowed to human nature to have was all infused. by that Power which made one and the other; and therefore thou wonderest at that which I said above, when I told that the good which in the fifth light is inclosed had no second. Now open thine eyes to that which I answer to thee, and thou wilt see thy belief and my speech become in the truth as the centre in a circle.
“That which dies not and that which can die are naught but the splendor of that idea which in His love our Lord God brings to birth;[1] for that living Light which so proceeds from its Lucent Source that It is not disunited from It, nor from the Love which with them is intrined, through Its own bounty collects Its radiance, as it were mirrored, in nine subsistences, Itself eternally remaining one. Thence It descends to the ultimate potentialities, downward from act to act, becoming such that finally It makes naught save brief contingencies: and these contingencies I understand. to be the generated things which the heavens in their motion produce with seed and without.[2] The wax of these, and that which moulds it, are not of one mode, and therefore under the ideal stamp it shines now more now less;[3] whence it comes to pass that one same plant in respect to species bears better or worse fruit, and that ye are born with diverse dispositions. If the wax were exactly worked,[4] and the heavens were supreme in their power, the whole light of the seal would be apparent. But nature always gives it defective,[5] working like the artist who has the practice of his art and a hand that trembles. Nevertheless if the fervent Love disposes and imprints the clear Light of the primal Power, complete perfection is acquired here.[6] Thus of old the earth was made worthy of the complete perfection of the living being;[7] thus was the Virgin made impregnate;[8] so that I commend thy opinion that human nature never was, nor will be, what it was in those two persons.
[1] The creation of things eternal and things temporal alike is the splendid manifestation of the idea which the triune God, in His love, generated. The living light in the Son, emanating from its lucent source in the Father, in union with the love of the Holy Spirit, the three remaining always one, pours out its radiance through the nine orders of the Angelic Hierarchy, who distribute it by means of the Heavens of which they axe the Intelligences.
[2] Through the various movements and conjunctions of the Heavens, the creative light descends to the lowest elements, producing all the varieties of contingent things.
[3] The material of contingent or temporal things, and the influences which shape them, are of various sort, so that the splendor of the Divine idea is visible in them in different degree.
[4] If the material were always fit to receive the impression.
[5] Nature, the second Cause, never transmits the whole of the Creative light.
[6] If, however, the first Cause acts directly,—the fervent Love imprinting the clear Light of the primal Power,—there can be no imperfection in the created thing; it answers to the Divine idea.
[7] Thus, by the immediate operation of the Creator, the earth of which Adam was formed was made the perfect material for the f ormation of the creature with a living soul.
[8] In like manner, by the direct act of the Creator.