20. Let thus much have been said with regard to charity, without which in us there cannot be true patience, because in good men it is the love of God which endureth all things, as in bad men the lust of the world. But this love is in us by the Holy Spirit which was given us. Whence, of Whom cometh in us love, of Him cometh patience. But the lust of the world, when it patiently bears the burdens of any manner of calamity, boasts of the strength of its own will, like as of the stupor of disease, not robustness of health. This boasting is insane: it is not the language of patience, but of dotage. A will like this in that degree seems more patient of bitter ills, in which it is more greedy of temporal good things, because more empty of eternal.

CAPUT XXIII.

20. Quomodo charitas verae patientiae, ita cupiditas fons malae patientiae. Haec propter charitatem dicta sint, sine qua in nobis non potest esse vera patientia: quia in bonis charitas Dei est, quae tolerat omnia, sicut in malis mundi cupiditas. Sed haec charitas per Spiritum sanctum est in nobis, qui datus est nobis. Unde a quo nobis est charitas, ab illo est patientia. Mundi autem cupiditas, quando patienter sustinet onera cujuslibet calamitatis, gloriatur de viribus propriae voluntatis, tanquam de stupore morbi, non de robore sanitatis. Insana est ista gloriatio; non est patientiae, sed dementiae. Voluntas ista tanto videtur patientior acerborum malorum, quanto est avidior temporalium bonorum, quia inanior aeternorum.