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42. But since these are in one person, as man is, some one may say
to us, These three things, memory, understanding, and love, are
mine, not their own; neither do they do that which they do for
themselves, but for me, or rather I do it by them. For it is I who
re member by memory, and understand by understanding, and love by
love: and when I direct the mind's eye to my memory, and so say in
my heart the thing I know, and a true word is begotten of my
knowledge, both are mine, both the knowledge certainly and the word.
For it is I who know, and it is I who say in my heart the thing I
know. And when I come to find in my memory by thinking that I
understand and love anything, which understanding and love were there
also before I thought thereon, it is my own understanding and my own
love that I find in my own memory, whereby it is I that understand,
and I that love, not those things themselves. Likewise, when my
thought is mindful, and wills to return to those things which it had
left in the memory, and to understand and behold them, and say them
inwardly, it is my own memory that is mindful, and it is my own, not
its will, wherewith it wills. When my very love itself, too,
remembers and understands what it ought to desire and what to avoid, it
remembers by my, not by its own memory; and understands that which it
intelligently loves by my, not by its own, understanding. In brief,
by all these three things, it is I that remember, I that
understand, I that love, who am neither memory, nor understanding,
nor love, but who have them. These things, then, can be said by a
single person, which has these three, but is not these three. But in
the simplicity of that Highest Nature, which is God, although there
is one God, there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit.
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