VISIO SECUNDA, cap. IX
The Binding Power of Virtue
Divine providence joins the cosmic circles together, symbolizing how the Holy Spirit binds virtues within the faithful to withstand vice and accomplish good works.
All six of these circles were joined to one another without any gap between them, because if divine providence had not made them fast in this way, the firmament would have been torn apart and could not have held firm — showing that virtues, once perfectly joined together in a faithful person through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, are so strengthened that, fighting against the devil's vices, they can together bring every good work to completion.12
Fire and Light in the Soul
The first circle ignites the others with fire while the fourth tempers them with light, revealing the dynamic interplay of spiritual fervor and illumination.
The first circle sets the others ablaze with its fire, the fourth tempers them with its light, and all of this is shown to us in a figure.
Read the original Latin
Omnes vero isti sex circuli absque omni interstitio ad invicem conjuncti erant, quia si divina dispositio ista conjunctione eos sic non solidasset, firmamentum dirumperetur, nec consistere posset, ostendentes quod perfectae virtutes in fideli homine sibi consociatae per inspirationem Spiritus sancti ita confortantur, ut contra vitia diaboli pugnantes, quaeque bona opera unanimiter perficiant.
Quod primus circulus igne suo alios inflammet, quartus eos lumine suo temperet, et quod hoc in nobis figuraliter ostendat.
Notes
- 1 ↩The Latin term 'confortantur' (strengthened) carries both the sense of inner strengthening and the theological sense of being empowered by grace; rendered as 'strengthened' to preserve both registers.
- 2 ↩The form 'solidasset' (from solido) is unusual and its parsing is uncertain; translated as 'had made fast' based on the most plausible intended sense of the conditional clause.
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