THAT OUR PROGRESS IN HOLY LOVE DOES NOT DEPEND ON OUR NATURAL TEMPERAMENT.
A GREAT religious of our age has written that our natural temperament much conduces to contemplative love, and that such as are of an affectionate and loving nature are best adapted for it. Now I suppose he means not that sacred love is distributed to men or angels according to, or much less in virtue of, natural conditions; nor would he say that the distribution of divine love is made to men according to their natural qualities and abilities: for this were to belie the Scripture, and to violate the ecclesiastical canon, by which the Pelagians were declared heretics.
For my part, I speak in this treatise of the supernatural
love which God out of his goodness pours into our hearts, and
whose residence is in the supreme point of the spirit; a point
which is above all the rest of the soul, and independent of all
natural disposition. And withal, though souls inclined to love
have on the one hand a certain propensity which makes them
more ready to desire to love God, they are, on the other hand, so
subject to set their affections upon lovable creatures, that their
propensity puts them in as great danger of being diverted
from the purity of sacred love by a mixture of other loves,