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Whate'er from this immediately distils

Has afterwards no end, for ne'er removed

Is its impression when it sets its seal.
Whate'er from this immediately rains down
Is wholly free, because it is not subject
Unto the influences of novel things.
The more conformed thereto, the more it pleases;

For the blest ardor that irradiates all things

In that most like itself is most vivacious.

With all of these things has advantaged been

The human creature; and if one be wanting,

From his nobility he needs must fall.

T is sin alone which doth disfranchise him,

And render him unlike the Good Supreme,
So that he little with its light is blanched,
And to his dignity no more returns,

Unless he fill up where transgression empties
With righteous pains for criminal delights.

Your nature when it sinned so utterly

In its own seed, out of these dignities Even as out of Paradise was driven, Nor could itself recover, if thou notest With nicest subtilty, by any way,

Except by passing one of these two fords:

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Either that God through clemency alone

Had pardon granted, or that man himself
Had satisfaction for his folly made.
Fix now thine eye deep into the abyss

Of the eternal counsel, to my speech
As far as may be fastened steadfastly!
Man in his limitations had not power

To satisfy, not having power to sink
In his humility obeying then,

Far as he disobeying thought to rise;

And for this reason man has been from

Of satisfying by himself excluded.

Therefore it God behoved in his own ways

Man to restore unto his perfect life,

I

say in one, or else in both of them.

But since the action of the doer is

power

So much more grateful, as it more presents

The goodness of the heart from which it issues,
Goodness Divine, that doth imprint the world,

Has been contented to proceed by each
And all its ways to lift you up again;
Nor 'twixt the first day and the final night
Such high and such magnificent proceeding
By one or by the other was or shall be;

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For God more bounteous was himself to give
To make man able to uplift himself,
Than if he only of himself had pardoned;
And all the other modes were insufficient

For justice, were it not the Son of God
Himself had humbled to become incarnate,

Now, to fill fully each desire of thine,

Return I to elucidate one place,

In order that thou there mayst see as I do. Thou sayst: 'I see the air, I see the fire,

The water, and the earth, and all their mixtures Come to corruption, and short while endure; And these things notwithstanding were created'; Therefore if that which I have said were true, They should have been secure against corruption.

The Angels, brother, and the land sincere

In which thou art, created may be called

Just as they are in their entire existence;

But all the elements which thou hast named,

And all those things which out of them are made,

By a created virtue are informed.

Created was the matter which they have;

Created was the informing influence

Within these stars that round about them go.

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The soul of every brute and of the plants
By its potential temperament attracts
and motion of the holy lights;

The
ray
But your own life immediately inspires
Supreme Beneficence, and enamors it

So with herself, it evermore desires her.
And thou from this mayst argue furthermore

Your resurrection, if thou think again

How human flesh was fashioned at that time

When the first parents both of them were made."

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CANTO VIII.

HE world used in its peril to believe

THE

That the fair Cypria delirious love

Rayed out, in the third epicycle turning; Wherefore not only unto her paid honor

Of sacrifices and of votive cry

The ancient nations in the ancient error,

But both Dione honored they and Cupid,

That as her mother, this one as her son,

And said that he had sat in Dido's lap; And they from her, whence I beginning take,

Took the denomination of the star

That wooes the sun, now following, now in front.

I was not ware of our ascending to it;

But of our being in it gave full faith

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My Lady whom I saw more beauteous grow.

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And as within a flame a spark is seen,

And as within a voice a voice discerned,

When one is steadfast, and one comes and goes,

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