[36] We only lose God, the uncreated Good, by an unlawful attachment to created good; if we are free from this attachment, we tend to Him without effort. [37] The subsequent condemnation, in 1687, of this doctrine, as taught by Molino, could not, of course, be foreseen by Blessed Albertus writing in the thirteenth century. [38] John xiv. 6. [39] And this she does because creatures no longer occupy her, except for God's sake. [40] This is so because, according to true philosophy, the essence of a thing is distinct from its existence. [41] Every actual cause is more intimately present to its accomplished work than the work itself, which it necessarily precedes. [42] John i. 3, 4. [43] We cannot always experience Divine things, and at first we can only compare them to the things which we experience here below. [44] We deny that there is in God anything which is a mere potentiality, or an imperfection. We deny in Him also the process of reasoning which is the special work of the faculty of reason, because this implies the absence of the vision of truth. We deny "being as it is found in creatures," because in creatures it is necessarily limited, and subject to accident. [45] "Nom. Div.," i. [46] Exod. xxxiii. 11; Num. xii. 8; Heb. iii. 2. [47] It would be well to quote St. Thomas, the disciple of Albert the Great, upon this important doctrine: "A thing may be said to belong to the contemplative life in two senses, either as an essential part of it, or as a preliminary disposition. The moral virtues do not belong to the essence of contemplation, whose sole end is the contemplation of truth.... But they belong to it as a necessary predisposition ... because they calm the passions and the tumult of exterior preoccupations, and so facilitate contemplation" ("Sum.," 2, 2{ae}, q. 180, a. 2). This distinction should never be lost sight of in reading the mystic books of the scholastics. [48] John xvii. 3. [49] Ps. xvi. 15. [50] This admirable doctrine condemns a whole mass of insipid, shallow, affected and sensual books and ideas, which have in modern times flooded the world of piety, have banished from souls more wholesome thoughts, and filled them with a questionable and injurious sentimentality. [51] Matt. xi. 6; xiii. 57, etc. [52] This shows an excellent grasp of the meaning of the celebrated maxim "Perinde ac cadaver." [53] Luke x. 42. [54] _Ibid._ [55] Luke ii. 14. [56] Nothing could be more conformable to the teaching of the Gospel than this doctrine.