In any case, we shall have to beware of considering Bossuet’s contentions as to the specific character of Charity, Love, and as to the possibility, for man here below, of single acts of pure love, to be representative of the ordinary Catholic teaching either before or since the condemnation. On both these fundamental points Fénelon’s positions are demonstrably, and indeed have been generally admitted to be, a mere restatement of that teaching, as is shown, for instance, in the Jesuit Father Deharbe’s solid and sober, thoroughly traditional and highly authorized essay: _Die vollkommene Liebe Gottes … dargestellt nach der Lehre des h. Thomas von Aquin_, Regensburg, 1856. It is this most useful treatise and the admirable _Analyse Raisonnée de la Controverse du Quiétisme_ of the Abbé Gosselin,[162] (which has already much helped me in the preceding section), that have been my chief aids in my careful study, back through Bossuet and Fénelon, to St. Thomas and his chief commentators, Sylvius, who died in 1649, and Cardinal Cajetan, who died in 1534, and to the other chief authorities beyond them.--I group the main points, which alone need concern us here, under three heads: the specific Nature of Pure Love; single Acts of Pure Love; a State of Pure Love. (1) Now as to the specific Nature of Charity, or Pure, Perfect Love, St. Thomas tells us: “One Kind of Love is perfect, the other kind is imperfect. Perfect Love is that wherewith a man is loved for his own sake: as, for instance, when some one wishes well to another person, for that other person’s sake, in the manner in which a man loves his friend. Imperfect love is the love wherewith a man loves something, not for its own sake, but in order that this good thing may accrue to himself,--in the manner in which a man loves a thing that he covets. Now the former kind of love pertains to Charity, which clings to God for His own sake, whereas it is Hope that pertains to the second kind of love, since he who hopes aims at obtaining something for himself.”[163] And Cardinal Cajetan explains that this wishing well to God, “this good that we can will God to have, is double. The good that is in Him, that (strictly speaking) is God Himself,--we can, by Love, will Him to have it, when we find our delight in God being what He is. And the good that is but referred to God,--His honour and Kingdom and the Obedience we owe him,--this we can will, not only by finding our pleasure in it, but by labouring at its maintenance and increase with all our might.”[164]