Treatise on the Love of God

At the same time no mortal creature, as I think, ever loved the heavenly lover solely with this perfectly pure love, except that Virgin who was his spouse and mother both together; on the contrary, as regards the practice of these four differences of love, one can hardly live without passing from one of them to another. The souls which like young maidens are still entangled in some vain and dangerous affections are not, at times, without feelings of a purer and supreme love; but as these are but momentary and passing flashes, we cannot say that they raise them from the state of young novice, or apprentice, maidens. It happens also sometimes, to the souls who are in the degree of singular and perfect lovers, that they forget themselves and fail very sadly, even as far as to the committing great imperfections and grievous venial sins, as we see in various somewhat bitter dissensions which have occurred between great servants of God, yea even amongst some of the divine Apostles, who, as we cannot deny, fell into some imperfections; certainly charity was not violated by them, but the fervour of it was. Nevertheless, as these great souls ordinarily loved God with the perfectly pure love, we are not to say that they were not in the state of perfect love. For as we see that good trees never produce any hurtful fruit, yet sometimes bear green or defective and worm-eaten fruit, or mistletoe and moss; so great saints never produce any mortal sin, but still they produce some useless, immature, harsh, rough and ill-flavoured actions. In such cases we must allow that these trees are fruitful, otherwise they would not be good trees; but still we must not deny that some of their fruits are fruitless. For who will deny that catkins and the mistletoe of trees are fruitless fruits? And who also will deny that slight angers and little excesses of joy, of laughter, of vanity and of other similar passions, are unprofitable and unlawful movements? Yet the just man brings them forth seven times a day, that is, very often.