So that it will fasten upon any inferior, unsuitable
object, rather than none at all. The soul may sooner leave off to
subsist than to love; and, like the vine, it withers and dies if it
has nothing to embrace. Now this affection, in the state of innocence,
was happily pitched upon its right object; it flamed up in direct
fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to
its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name
for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and
deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much
from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat
from the burning of a fever.
Then for the contrary passion of hatred. This we know is the passion
of defiance, and there is a kind of aversation and hostility included
in its very essence and being. But then (if there could have been
hatred in the world when there was scarce anything odious) it would
have acted within the compass of its proper object; like aloes, bitter
indeed, but wholesome. There would have been no rancor, no hatred of
our brother: an innocent nature could hate nothing that was innocent.
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