“I perceive,” replied the monk, “from the strain of your remarks, that you need some information on the doctrine of our fathers regarding the love of God. This is the last feature of their morality, and the most important of all. You must have learned something of it from the passages about contrition which I have quoted to you. But here are others still more definite on the point of love to God—Don’t interrupt me, now; for it is of importance to notice the connection. Attend to Escobar, who reports the different opinions of our authors, in his ‘Practice of the Love of God according to our Society.’ The question is: ‘When is one obliged to have an actual affection for God?’ Suarez says, it is enough if one loves him before being _articulo mortis_—at the point of death—without determining the exact time. Vasquez, that it is sufficient even at the very point of death. Others, when one has received baptism. Others, again, when one is bound to exercise contrition. And others, on festival days. But our father, Castro Palao, combats all these opinions, and with good reason—_merito_. Hurtado de Mendoza insists that we are obliged to love God once a-year; and that we ought to regard it as a great favor that we are not bound to do it oftener. But our Father Coninck thinks that we are bound to it only once in three or four years; Henriquez, once in five years; and Filiutius says that it is _probable_ that we are not strictly bound to it even once in five years. How often, then, do you ask? Why, he refers it to the judgment of the judicious.” I took no notice of all this badinage, in which the ingenuity of man seems to be sporting, in the height of insolence, with the love of God.