De visione Dei

Unless God were triune, there would be no happiness. Would that, Lord, all might open the eyes of the mind, who have been endowed with them by your gift, and might see with me how you are a jealous God. For because you are loving love, you can hate nothing. For in you, the lovable God enfolding all lovable things, you love every lovable thing. That they might thus see with me by what pact or bond you are united to all. You love, God, loving all things as you love single things. You spread your love to all. But many do not love you, who prefer to you something other than you. But if lovable love were not distinct from loving love, you would be so lovable to all, that they could love nothing besides you, and all rational spirits would be necessitated to the love of you. But you are so noble, my God, that you will the loving of you by rational souls to be in freedom, or not. Wherefore from your loving it does not follow that you are loved. You therefore, my God, are united to all by the bond of love, because you spread your love over every creature of yours. But not every rational spirit is united to you, because it casts its love not upon your lovableness, but upon another to which it is united and bound.

You have espoused every rational soul with your loving love, but not every bride loves you the bridegroom, but most often another to whom she clings. But how could your bride, my God, the human soul, attain your end, unless you were lovable, so that by loving you as lovable, she might arrive at the most happy bond and union!

Who therefore can deny you to be a triune God, when he sees, that neither would you be noble, nor a natural and perfect God, nor would there be a spirit of free choice, nor could it arrive at the fruition of you and its own happiness, if you were not triune and one! For because you are understanding intellect, and intelligible intellect, and the bond of each, then the created intellect can attain in you, its intelligible God, union with you and happiness.

So since you are lovable love, the created loving will can attain union and happiness in you, its lovable God. For he who receives you, the receivable rational light of God, will be able to arrive at such union with you, that he be united to you as a son to a father.

I see, Lord (with your illumination), that rational nature cannot attain union with you except because you are lovable and intelligible.

Whence human nature is not unitable to you as loving God (for thus you are not its object) but is unitable to you as its lovable God, since the lovable is the object of the lover.

So likewise, the intelligible is the object of the intellect. But we call that the truth which is the object. Wherefore you, my God, since you are intelligible truth, the created intellect can be united to you. And so I see human rational nature unitable only to your divine nature, intelligible and lovable, and that man, receiving you, the receivable God, passes into the bond which by reason of its strictness, can take the name of sonship. For we know no bond stricter than the bond of sonship. But if this bond of union is the greatest than which none greater can exist, this will necessarily come about, because if you, lovable God, cannot be loved more by man, then that bond arrives at the most perfect sonship, so that that sonship is the perfection enfolding every possible sonship, through which all sons attain ultimate happiness and perfection. In which highest son there is sonship as art in the master, or light in the sun. But in others as art in disciples, or light in stars.