{Addressed to God:}... what would be more absurd than to ask that you give yourself to me, you who are all in all? And how will you give yourself to me if you do not at the same time give me heaven and earth and all that are in them? And, even more, how will you give me yourself if you do not also give me myself?
And when I thus rest in the silence of contemplation, you, Lord, answer me within my heart, saying: "Be yours and I too will be yours!"
O Lord, the Sweetness of every delight, you have placed within my freedom that I be my own if I am willing. Hence, unless I am my own, you are not mine, for you would constrain my freedom since you cannot be mine unless I also am mine. And since you have placed this in my freedom, you do not constrain me, but you wait for me to choose to be my own. This depends on me and not on you, O Lord, for you do not limit your maximum goodness but lavish it on all who are able to receive it. But you, O Lord, are your goodness.
But how will I be my own unless you instruct me? You teach me that sense should obey reason and that reason should be lord and master. When, therefore, sense serves reason, I am my own. But reason has no guide except you, O Lord, who are the Word and the Reason of reasons. I see now that if I listen to your Word, which does not cease to speak in me and which continually shines forth in my reason, I will be my own, free and not the slave of sin. And you will be mine and will grant me to see your face, and then I will be saved. May you be blessed, therefore, in your gifts, O God, who alone are able to comfort my soul and to lift it up so that it might hope to attain to you and to enjoy you as its very own gift and as the infinite treasury of all that is desirable.
(p. 247)
Who could understand how all things, though different contingently, are the image of that single, infinite Form... The infinite form is received only in a finite way; consequently, every creature is, as it were, a finite infinity or a created god, so that it exists in the way in which this could best be. It is as if the Creator had spoken: "Let it be made," and because God, who is eternity itself, could not be made, that was made which could be made, which would be as much like God as possible. The inference, therefore, is that every created thing as such is perfect, even if by comparison to others it seems less perfect. For the most merciful God communicates being to all in the manner in which it can be received... Therefore, every created being finds its rest in its own perfection, which it freely holds from the divine being. It desires to be no other created being, as if something else were more perfect, but rather it prefers that which it itself holds, as if a divine gift, from the maximum, and it wishes its own possession to be perfected and preserved incorruptibly.
(p. 134)
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