B. On Charity

19. Having seen how faith and hope are extinguished, we must see how charity remains the same in the fatherland and on the way to it. For, suppose that this is the idea of charity, namely that it is friendship with God as he is good in himself. This habit does not incline distinctly to a perfect act of loving God the way he is loved when he is present in himself and perfectly. Nor does it distinctly incline to an imperfect act the way God is loved when he is present imperfectly and in a mirror. Rather it indistinctly inclines to both this act and that.a

a.a [Interpolation] But the inclination to love God in himself will remain in the fatherland; therefore the charity that inclines to such love of him will remain.

20. And that such a habit can be something one has is plain from what was just said of hope [n.18]. For what was said there is more reasonable about a habit tending to God as he is good in himself than of a habit tending to him as he is good for me [the advantageous good]. For the act that tends to God as he is good in himself does not vary according to the perfect or imperfect presence of God the way that the act varies that tends to God as he is an advantageous good. For the first variation [according to the perfect or imperfect presence of God] is either not in species or, if it is, not in a species as remote as the second variation [according to advantageous good]. From the fact then that the inclination to love God in himself will remain in the fatherland, so will remain the inclination to the act posited to belong to charity the way it is posited to be the act of charity; and so the habit will be able to remain.

21. If you say in objection that the presence or variation of such and such an object can vary the act in its species, and so there can be two habits distinct in species, one of which is a principle for loving God in himself as he is present through faith (and this one will be extinguished in the fatherland), and the other of which is a principle for loving God as he is present through vision, and this habit follows on vision - I concede that two such habits can exist together in the will. But here the idea of charity is being posited, not because it would precisely be the principle of an imperfect act about a hidden object, but because it would be indistinctly the principle of an act tending to God as he is good in himself.