[Footnote 1: Book i. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Book ii. 13.]
[Footnote 3: Peter v. 2, 3.]
[Footnote 4: 1 Peter iv. 12.]
[Footnote 5: Job xxi. 14.]
UPON THE LOVE OF GOD, CALLED LOVE OF BENEVOLENCE.
You ask me what I have to say as regards the love of benevolence towards
God. What good thing can we possibly wish for God which He has not already,
What can we desire for Him which He does not possess far more fully than we
can desire Him to have it?
What good can we do to Him to Whom all our goods belong, and Who has all good in Himself; or, rather, Who is Himself all good?
I reply to this question as I have done to others, that there are many spiritual persons, and some even of the most gifted, who are greatly mistaken in their view of this matter.
We must distinguish in God two sorts of good, the one interior, the other exterior. The first is Himself; for His goodness, like His other attributes, is one and the same thing with His essence or being.
Now this good, being infinite, can neither be augmented by our serving God and by our honouring Him, nor can it be diminished by our rebelling against Him and by our working against Him.
It is of it that the Psalmist speaks when he says that our goods are nothing unto Him.
But there is another kind of good which is exterior; and this, though it belongs to God, is not in Him, but in His creatures, just as the moneys of the king are, indeed, his, but they are in the coffers of his treasurers and officials.
This exterior good consists in the honours, obedience, service, and homage which His creatures owe and render to Him: creatures of whom each one has of necessity His glory as the final end and aim of its creation. And this good it is which we can, with the grace of God, desire for Him, and ourselves give to Him, and which we can either by our good works increase or by our sins take from.