Chapter 4 (107)
Distinction XXIX | 121 ourselves, but not as much as we love God because, insofar as he is man, he is less than God.
Chapter 4 (107) IN WHAT WAYS THE TERM NEIGHBOUR IS USED. Here is to be noted that the term neighbour is used in different ways, namely by the condition of first birth, by hope of conversion, by nearness of relationship, by reason of the conferral of a benefit.
DISTINCTION XXIX
Chapter | (108)
1. ON THE ORDER OF LOVING: WHAT [COMES] BEFORE, WHAT AFTER. After
the above matters, we must discuss the order of charity, because the bride says: He brought me into the wine cellar and he set in order charity within me.'—AMBROSE: "And so let us examine the order, what is to be before and what after. For he sins, who acts in a disorderly manner; indeed, to know what you are to do, but not to know the order in which to do it, does not pertain to perfect knowledge. Ignorance of right order upsets the form of merits.""
2. AUGUSTINE, IN BOOK 1, ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. Augustine indicates the order of loving, saying: "He has an ordered love who does not love what is not to be loved, nor fails to love what is to be loved, nor loves equally what ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves less or more what ought to be loved equally. Any sinner, insofar as he is a sinner, is not to be loved; and any man, insofar as he is man, is to be loved for God's sake, but God for his own sake. And God is to be loved for his own sake more than any man, and anyone ought to love God more than himself. Moreover, another man is to be loved more than our own body, because all things are to be loved for the sake of God, and another man can enjoy God with us, whereas our body cannot, since the body only lives through the very soul by which we enjoy God."
3. You have now heard some things regarding the order of charity; it has been made clear that we are to love God more than all men and ourselves, and another man's soul more than our own body. In the enumeration outlined above* of the four things to be loved, first is placed that 'Canticle 2, 4.
? Ambrose, Expositio de Psalmo 118, 27, sermon 4 n12.
>Augustine, De doctrina christiana, bk | ¢27 n28.
'Dist. 28 cl nl.