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Member 3 Charity Combining All Three Kinds of Love Pleasant Profitable And…

MEMBER 3 Charity combining all three kinds of love Pleasant profitable and honourable

Besides the love that arises from usefulness, pleasure or honour—for justice requires one good turn in return for another—and the love that proceeds from natural law, training or philosophy, there is another love combining all three: charity. It includes piety, affection, goodwill, friendship and all such virtuous dispositions; for love is the equant circle of all other affections, which Aristotle discusses at length in his Ethics. God commands it, and no one can properly practise it unless he is a Christian and truly born anew.

This is “to love God above all, and our neighbour as ourselves”; for this love is “a lamp that kindles and is kindled,” a light that communicates itself, able to illuminate itself as well as others.

All other objects are fair and very beautiful, I admit: kindred, marriage ties, friendship, the love we owe our country, nature, wealth, pleasure, honour and such moral considerations. Read Aristotle’s ample account in his Ethics. One human being is loved by another simply as a human being; but all these loves become far more distinguished and great when they arise from a sanctified spirit with a true feeling for religion and a regard for God.

Nature binds all creatures to love their young: a hen will attack a lion to save her brood, a hind will fight a bull, a sow a bear, a helpless sheep a fox. That same nature urges a person to love his parents—“Father, may all the gods hate me if I do not love you more than my own eyes!” As Cicero holds, this love cannot be broken “without a detestable offence.” How much more binding, then, is God’s commandment, which enjoins a child’s love and obedience.

“The love of brothers is great, like an arch of stones: if one is dislodged, all comes down.” No love is so powerful, strong and honourable, with nature, circumstance and virtue happily joining to unite it; yet even this love falls short of charity.

It is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country—

“It cannot be expressed how much affection that single name, country, contains.”

Love of praise and country serves as pay;

The Decii “devoted themselves to death”; the Horatii, Curii, Scaevola, Regulus and Codrus sacrificed themselves for their country’s peace and welfare.

One day had sent all the Fabii to war; One day destroyed those sent to war.

One day the Fabii fought bravely; One day the Fabii were destroyed.

Fifty thousand Englishmen willingly lost their lives near Battle Abbey in defence of their country. Paolo Emilio, book 6, tells of six councillors of Calais who came to the king of England with nooses in their hands, to die for the rest. This love makes so many writers take such pains—so many historians, physicians and others—for the public safety and their country’s benefit, or so they claim.

“The name of friendship is sacred; the fellowship of companions is holy”: friendship is a holy name and a sacred communion of friends. “As the sun is in the heavens, so friendship is in the world,” a most divine and heavenly bond. As married love creates humankind, friendship perfects it; and, if you accept Cornelius Nepos’s judgement, it should be preferred to ties of marriage or blood: “in friendship, similarity of character has more power than relationship by marriage,” and so on.

The cords of love bind more firmly than any other bond. Take friendship away and you take all pleasure, joy, comfort, happiness and true contentment out of the world. It is the greatest tie, the surest contract, the strongest bond; and, as our modern Virgil decides, it is far to be preferred to the rest.

Hard is the question, difficult to judge, When all three kinds of love meet together And divide the heart with overwhelming power, Which will tip the balance: namely, The dear affection for beloved kindred, The raging fire of love for women, Or friends’ devotion, joined by matching virtues. But of them all, the bond of a virtuous mind, I think, should bind the noble heart most surely.

For natural affection soon dies down, Quenched by Cupid’s greater flame; But faithful friendship overcomes them both And tames them with its ruling discipline, Through thoughts aspiring to eternal fame. For as the soul rules the earthly body And orders all its service, So love of soul surpasses love of body As pure gold surpasses the poorest brass.

A faithful friend is better than gold, a remedy for misery, a possession beyond compare. Yet this love of friends, married love, passionate love, useful, pleasant and honourable love—all three kinds together—are worth little unless they come from a true Christian soul enlightened by God, unless they are practised “with reference to God,” for God’s sake.

“Though I had the gift of prophecy and spoke with the tongues of men and angels, though I fed the poor with all my goods and gave my body to be burned, without this love it profits me nothing,” 1 Corinthians 13:1, 3. Without charity it is “splendid sin.” This is an all-embracing love, a love that makes us godlike, a refined, pure, divine love, the essence of all love, the true philosopher’s stone.

“For no one,” as Augustine concludes, “can truly be a friend to another human being unless he is first a friend of truth itself”: he is no true friend who does not love God’s truth.

8440.Charity here is Christian love of God and neighbour, broader than almsgiving. Honest means morally honourable, while dilection means love or affection. The astronomical image of an equant circle presents love as a principle ordering the other affections. Regenerate means spiritually born anew. The claim that this love requires Christianity belongs to Burton’s theological argument.

8442.Lychnus is a lamp. Accendens and accensus make love both a source and a recipient of illumination. The marginal comparison makes love of God and love of neighbour the two supports of divine law, as two poles support the world.

8444.Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, books 8–9, examines friendship, including friendships grounded in usefulness, pleasure and virtue. Burton incorporates this moral scheme into his Christian account of charity. Alliance here includes connections through marriage, not only political treaties.

8447.Silly means weak or defenceless; a hind is a female deer. The filial declaration is attributed to Terence’s Adelphoe 4.5. Cicero, On Friendship 27, describes the natural bond between parents and children as breakable only by a detestable crime. Burton moves from natural affection to the stronger obligation of a divine command.

8449.Seneca, Letters 95.53, compares human society to an arch supported by its parts. Burton applies this to brothers. His margin begins with parental love, echoing Cicero, On Friendship 27, before the Senecan image. The combined wording and differing applications remain. The closing “it” is read as charity, this member’s subject.

8450.Horace, Odes 3.2.13. Burton omits est, “is,” from the familiar Latin line. The statement praises patriotic self-sacrifice within his survey of natural and civic loves; he will subordinate these to Christian charity.

8452.Stipendium means pay, especially soldiers’ pay. The sentence presents praise and patriotism as rewards in themselves. The printed asterisk has no separately recoverable corresponding marginal text on this page; an exact source is not supplied here.

8453.The list gathers Roman and Greek exemplars of devotion to a community. Se devovere refers to dedicating oneself to death, particularly the Roman Decii. Not every figure named simply died for the state; Burton compresses different stories of courage, sacrifice and public service. Curii is retained without substituting another name.

8455.Ovid, Fasti 2.235–236, on the destruction of the Fabii. Burton follows the Latin couplet with his own English couplet. Both are preserved and modernized separately: his “stoutly warred” is a freer rendering of the Latin “sent to war.”

8457.Battle Abbey evokes the battle of Hastings. The figure of fifty thousand English dead is Burton’s reported number, retained rather than endorsed as an established count. Calice is Calais; its six Senators are civic leaders, here rendered councillors. The margin dates the story to 1347 and adds Jacob Meyer’s Annals of Flanders to the body’s reference to Paolo Emilio. These historical citations remain for full collation.

8461.Affinity means relationship through marriage; consanguinity means blood relationship. Nepos, Atticus 5.3, explains Cicero’s friendship with Atticus by shared character rather than family connection. Burton restates the indirect Latin as a maxim. The first Latin sentence and its English repetition remain. The Cicero and Lucian Toxaris passages still require exact collation.

8462.Indenture means a binding written agreement. Maro is Virgil’s cognomen; Burton’s “modern Maro” is Edmund Spenser, whose verses follow. The comparison gives Spenser the stature of a classical epic poet.

8464.Spenser, The Faerie Queene 4.9.1–2, rather than the margin’s book 5. The three loves in these stanzas are family affection, erotic love and friendship, not exactly Burton’s useful, pleasant and honourable categories. Deem means judge; dispart means divide; gentle means noble. Burton’s variants, including “by vertues” and “Me thinks,” are retained. The modernization preserves the two nine-line stanzas without imposing a new rhyme scheme.

8468.Nuptial love is married love; heroical is passionate or erotic love in Burton’s terminology. An only possession means an exceptionally valuable or incomparable possession. The three marginal authorities are Sirach, Plutarch and Xenophon; their exact passages remain for collation. In ordine ad Deum specifies God as the end or governing purpose of the love.

8469.Burton combines 1 Corinthians 13:1–3, including the prophecy of verse 2 although his printed locator names 1 and 3. Splendidum peccatum means a splendid or impressive sin: outwardly admirable action lacking charity. Quintessence is the purest essence; the philosopher’s stone is the imagined alchemical agent of transformation. Here both are metaphors for charity’s perfecting power.

8471.Compare Augustine, Letter 155.1.1 to Macedonius, which begins this sentence Nemo enim potest. The margin’s Letter 52 is retained; it differs from the numbering of the consulted text. Burton’s English gloss makes “truth itself” explicitly “Gods truth,” and both formulations remain in the modern column.