15. For, as the Divine utterances testify, “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God dwelleth in him.”41    1 John iv. 16 Whoso therefore contends that love of God may be had without aid of God, what else does he contend, but that God may be had without God? Now what Christian would say this, which no madman would venture to say? Therefore in the Apostle, true, pious, faithful patience, saith exultingly, and by the mouth of the Saints; “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us:” not through ourselves, but, “through Him that loved us.”42    Rom. viii. 35–39 And then he goes on and adds; “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is that “love of God” which “is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us.” But the concupiscence of the bad, by reason of which there is in them a false patience, “is not of the Father,”43    1 John ii. 16 as saith the Apostle John, but is of the world.

CAPUT XVIII.

15. Ut charitas ex Deo, ita ex ipso patientia vera quae manat a charitate. Sicut enim divina testantur eloquia, Deus charitas est, et qui manet in charitate, in Deo manet, et Deus in illo manet (I Joan. IV, 16). Quisquis ergo contendit haberi posse Dei charitatem sine Dei adjutorio, quid aliud contendit, nisi haberi Deum posse sine Deo? Quis autem hoc dicat Christianus, quod nullus dicere audeat insanus? Exsultans ergo apud Apostolum vera, pia, fidelisque patientia, dicit ore sanctorum : Quis nos separabit a charitate Christi? Tribulatio? an angustia? an persecutio? an fames? an nuditas? an periculum? an gladius? sicut scriptum est, Quia propter te mortificamur tota die, deputati sumus sicut oves victimae. Sed in his omnibus supervincimus per eum qui dilexit nos: 0620 non per nos, sed per eum qui dilexit nos. Deinde sequitur et adjungit, Certus sum enim, quia neque mors, neque vita, neque angeli, neque principatus, neque potestates, neque praesentia, neque futura, neque altitudo, neque profundum, neque creatura alia poterit nos separare a charitate Dei, quae est in Christo Jesu Domino nostro (Rom. VIII, 35-39). Haec est illa charitas Dei, quae diffusa est in cordibus nostris: non ex nobis, sed per Spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis. Malorum autem concupiscentia, propter quam in eis est falsa patientia, non est ex Patre, sicut dicit apostolus Joannes, sed ex mundo est.