13. In sensitive self-love, therefore, self, that is, life, is both the material and formal object: we love ourselves even because we are ourselves; we love this individual person, and loathe annihilation or dissolution.
14. Though the will (or higher faculties) are naturally inclined also to love ourselves, and our own felicity, yet they exercise this inclination with a certain liberty; and though the act of simple complacency or volition towards our own being and felicity be so free as yet to be necessary, yet the comparative act (by which comparing several goods, we choose one and refuse another) may be so free as not to be necessary; that is, a man may will his own annihilation rather than some greater evil, (of which anon,) not as good in itself, and therefore not willed for itself, but as a means to a greater good; and so he may less nill it than a greater evil.
15. Also a tolerable pain may on the same account be willed, or less nilled, and so consented to, for the avoiding a greater evil; but intolerable pain cannot possibly be willed or consented to, or not nilled, because it taketh away the exercise of reason and free-will: but what is to be called intolerable I determine not, it being variously measurable according to the patient's strength.
16. The soul as intellectual, by its rational appetite, hath also a natural inclination to intellectual operations (to know and love) and to intellectual objects as such, and to intellectual perfections in itself. Yet so that, though it necessarily (though freely) loveth the said acts and perfections while it hath a being; yet doth it not necessarily love all the said objects, nor necessarily choose the continuance of its own being, but in some cases, as aforesaid, can yield or consent to an annihilation as a lesser evil.
17. The rational soul being not of itself, nor for itself alone, or chiefly, is naturally inclined not only to love to itself, and that which is for itself, but also to love extrinsic good, as was aforesaid; and accordingly it should love that best which is best: for a quatenus et ad omne et ad gradum, valet argumentum. If we must love any thing or person because it is good, (as the formal reason,) then we should love all that is good, and love that best which is best, if so discerned.
18. Though I must love greater, simple, extrinsic good above myself, with that love which is purely rational, yet it cannot ordinarily be done with a more sensitive and passionate love.
19. I am not always bound to do most good to him that I love better than others, and ought so to love, nor to him that I must wish most good to. Because there are other particular laws to regulate my actions, diverse from that which commandeth my affections: as those that put children, relations, families, neighbours, under our special charge and care; though often others must be more loved.
20. That good which is the object of love, is not a mere universal or general notion, but is always some particular or single being in esse reali, vel in esse cognito. As there is no such thing in rerum natura, as good in a mere general, which is neither the good of natural existence, or of moral perfection, or of pleasure, profit, honour, &c.; yea, which is not in this or in that singular subject, or so conceived; so there is no such thing as love, which hath not some such singular object. (As Rada and other Scotists have made plain.)
21. All good is either God, or a creature, or a creature's act or work.
22. God is good infinitely, eternally, primitively, independently, immutably, communicatively, of whom, and by whom, and to whom are all things: the beginning, or first efficient, the dirigent and ultimately ultimate cause of all created good; as making and directing all things for himself.