And then that deathless hymn to Pure Love, the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, not only culminates with the proclamation that, of all man can hope and wish and will and do, of all his doings and his graces, “there remain these three, Faith, Hope, Love, (Charity): but the greatest of these is Love (Charity).” But the Love that has this primacy is Pure Love, for “it seeketh not its own.” And though of this Love alone it is said that “it never passeth away,” ever persists in the Beyond: yet even here already it can and does get exercised,—and this, not only without any suppression of parallel acts of the other virtues, but with these other virtues and their specific motives now taken over and deepened, each in its special characteristic, by the supreme virtue and motive of Pure Love: “Love believeth all things, hopeth all things, beareth all things.”[158] Thus Faith, Hope, Patience, and all the other virtues, they all remain, but it is Love that is now the ultimate motive of all their specific motives. These, his culminating teachings, indicate clearly enough that virtue’s rewards are regarded by him, ultimately and substantially, as “the wages of going on and not to die”; or rather that they are, in their essence, manifestations of that Eternal Life which is already energizing, within souls that earnestly seek God, even here and now. This Life, then, however great may be its further expansion and the soul’s consciousness of possessing it, already holds within itself sufficient, indeed abundant motives, (in the fulfilment of its own deepest nature and of its now awakened requirements of harmony, strength, and peace through self-donation), for giving itself ever more and more to God.
(3) And with regard to the Joannine teaching, it will be enough for us to refer back to the texts discussed in the preceding chapter, and to note how large and specially characteristic is here the current which insists upon the reward being already, at least inchoatively, enclosed in the deed itself, and upon this deed being the result and expression of Eternal Life operating within the faithful soul, even already, Here and Now. Only the declaration that “perfect love casteth out fear,” that it does not tolerate fear alongside of itself, 1 John iv, 18, appears to be contrary to the Pauline doctrine that Perfect Love, “Love” itself “beareth all things, believeth, hopeth, endureth all things,” 1 Cor. xiii, 7. Love then can animate other virtues: why not then a holy fear? But this Joannine saying seems in fact modelled upon St. Paul’s quotation and use of a passage from the Septuagint: “Cast out the bondwoman (the slave-servant) and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir together with the son of the free,” Gal. iv, 30; and hence this saying will not exclude “children of the free-woman,”—a holy fear as well as faith, hope, patience,—but only “children of the slave-woman,” superstition, presumption, weakmindedness, and slavish fear.
2. The “Pure Love” controversy.
In turning now to the controversy as to, Pure Love (1694-1699) and its assured results, we shall have again to distinguish carefully between the lives and intentions of the writers who were censured, and the doctrines, analytic or systematic, taught or implied by them, which were condemned. This distinction is easier in this case than in that of Quietism, for the chief writer concerned here is Fénelon, as to whose pure and spiritual character and deeply Catholic intentions there never has been any serious doubt.
But in this instance we have to make a further distinction—viz. between the objective drift of at least part of his Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie Interieure, published in 1697, and especially the twenty-three propositions extracted from it which were condemned by Pope Innocent XII in 1699; and the teaching which he increasingly clarified and improved in his numerous apologetic writings against Bossuet and other opponents in this memorable controversy—especially in his Latin writings, intended for transmission to the Pope, and written as late as 1710 and 1712.[159] It is certain that Bishops and theologians who opposed his Maximes were found warmly endorsing such pieces as his wonderfully clear and sober Première Réponse aux Difficultés de M. l’Evêque de Chartres. It is these pieces, comprising also his remarkably rich Instruction Pastorale, his admirably penetrating Lettre sur l’Oraison Passive and Lettre sur la Charité, and his extraordinarily compact and balanced Second Epistle to Pope Clement XI, 1712 (where all the censured ambiguities and expressions are carefully avoided), and which alone among Fénelon’s writings shall be accepted in what follows.[160] Indeed even the earlier of these writings fail in but one thing—in justifying the actual text of the condemned book, as distinguished from the intentions of its writer. Bishop Hedley sums up the real position with the treble authority of a spiritually trained Monk, of a practised theological writer, and of a Catholic Bishop of long experience: “The doctrine intended by Fénelon, in his Maximes des Saints, and as explained by him during his controversy with Bossuet, has never been censured, although the opposite party laboured hard for its condemnation. Fifteen years after the condemnation of his book, we find him re-stating to Pope Clement XI (who, as Cardinal, had drawn up the Brief of his condemnations), in careful scholastic language the doctrine intended by himself, but which he himself had misstated in his popular treatise. As there were errors, the other side, whatever the crudity or novelty of some of its contentions, whatever its motives or methods—and some of them were far from creditable—was sure in the end to succeed. And it is well that it should have succeeded as far as it did succeed.”[161]
In any case, we shall have to beware of considering Bossuet’s contentions as to the specific character of Charity, Love, and as to the possibility, for man here below, of single acts of pure love, to be representative of the ordinary Catholic teaching either before or since the condemnation. On both these fundamental points Fénelon’s positions are demonstrably, and indeed have been generally admitted to be, a mere restatement of that teaching, as is shown, for instance, in the Jesuit Father Deharbe’s solid and sober, thoroughly traditional and highly authorized essay: Die vollkommene Liebe Gottes … dargestellt nach der Lehre des h. Thomas von Aquin, Regensburg, 1856. It is this most useful treatise and the admirable Analyse Raisonnée de la Controverse du Quiétisme of the Abbé Gosselin,[162] (which has already much helped me in the preceding section), that have been my chief aids in my careful study, back through Bossuet and Fénelon, to St. Thomas and his chief commentators, Sylvius, who died in 1649, and Cardinal Cajetan, who died in 1534, and to the other chief authorities beyond them.—I group the main points, which alone need concern us here, under three heads: the specific Nature of Pure Love; single Acts of Pure Love; a State of Pure Love.
(1) Now as to the specific Nature of Charity, or Pure, Perfect Love, St. Thomas tells us: “One Kind of Love is perfect, the other kind is imperfect. Perfect Love is that wherewith a man is loved for his own sake: as, for instance, when some one wishes well to another person, for that other person’s sake, in the manner in which a man loves his friend. Imperfect love is the love wherewith a man loves something, not for its own sake, but in order that this good thing may accrue to himself,—in the manner in which a man loves a thing that he covets. Now the former kind of love pertains to Charity, which clings to God for His own sake, whereas it is Hope that pertains to the second kind of love, since he who hopes aims at obtaining something for himself.”[163] And Cardinal Cajetan explains that this wishing well to God, “this good that we can will God to have, is double. The good that is in Him, that (strictly speaking) is God Himself,—we can, by Love, will Him to have it, when we find our delight in God being what He is. And the good that is but referred to God,—His honour and Kingdom and the Obedience we owe him,—this we can will, not only by finding our pleasure in it, but by labouring at its maintenance and increase with all our might.”[164]
And, says St. Thomas, such Perfect Love alone is Love in its strict sense and “the most excellent of all the virtues”: for “ever that which exists for its own sake is greater than that which exists in view of something else. Now Faith and Hope attain indeed to God, yet as the source from which there accrue to us the knowledge of the Truth and the acquisition of the Good; whilst Love attains to God Himself, with a view to abide in Him, and not that some advantage may accrue to us from Him.” And perhaps still more clearly: “ When a man loves something so as to covet it, he apprehends it as something pertaining to his own well-being. The lover here stands towards the object beloved, as towards something which is his property.”[165] And note how, although he teaches that whereas “the beatitude of man, as regards its cause and its object, is something increate,” i.e. God Himself, “the essence of the beatitude itself is something created,” for “men are rendered blessed by participation, and this participation in beatitude is something created”: yet he is careful to explain some of his more incidental passages, in which he speaks of this essence of beatitude as itself man’s end, by the ex professo declaration: “God” alone “is man’s ultimate end, and beatitude is only as it were an end before the very end, an end in immediate proximity to the ultimate end.”[166]
(2) And next, as to the possibility, actual occurrence and desirableness of single Acts of such Pure Love, even here below: all this is assumed as a matter of course throughout St. Thomas’s ex professo teaching on the matter. For throughout the passages concerning the Nature of Pure Love he is not exclusively, indeed not even primarily, busy with man’s acts in the future life, but with the respective characteristics of man’s various acts as executed and as analyzable, more or less perfectly, already here below. And nowhere does he warn us against concluding, from his reiterated insistence upon the essential characteristics of Pure Love, that such love cannot, as a matter of fact, be practised, at least in single acts, here below at all. Hence it is clear that, according to him, the soul as it advances in perfection will—alongside of acts of supernatural Faith, Hope, Fear, etc. (and the production of such acts will never cease), produce more and more acts of Pure Love: not necessarily more, as compared with the other kinds of contemporary acts, but certainly more as compared with its former acts of the same character.
But there is a further, profoundly and delicately experienced doctrine. Not only can Pure Love be exercised in single and simple acts, alongside of single and simple acts of other kinds of virtues, supernatural or otherwise: but Pure Love can itself come to command or to inform acts which in themselves bear, and will now bear in increased degree, the characteristics of the other kinds of acts. St. Thomas tells us, with admirable clearness: “An act can be derived from Charity in one of two ways. In the first way, the act is elicited by Charity itself, and such a virtuous act requires no other virtue beside Charity,—as in the case of loving the Good, rejoicing in it, and mourning over its opposite. In the second way, an act proceeds from Charity in the sense of being commanded by it: and in this manner,—since Charity” has the full range of and “commands all the virtues, as ordering them (each and all) to their (ultimate) end,—an act can proceed from Charity whilst nevertheless belonging to any other special virtue.” And he assures us that: “The merit of eternal life,” “the fountain-head of meriting,” “pertains primarily to, consists in Charity, and pertains to and consists in other kinds of supernatural acts in only a secondary manner,—that is, only in so far as these acts are commanded or informed by Charity” or Pure Love.[167]