[Many passages of the book are dialogues between Love and an increasingly confused Reason. Reason leads souls to God in one way, Love in another; Porete uses the dialogues to try to explain the difference:]
"...Love," says Reason, "...my understanding and my intelligence and all my advice, as well as I can advise, all tell me that one should long for contempt, poverty, and every kind of tribulation, and Masses and sermons and fastings and prayers, and that one should fear all kinds of love, whatever they may be, because of the dangers which may be in them, and that one should long above all for Paradise and fear Hell, and that one refuse every kind of honor and temporal goods, and every ease, denying Nature what it asks, except only that without which it could not exist, following the example of the suffering and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the best," says Reason, "which I can say and advise to all those who live in my obedience...."
"It is well asked" says Love, "and I shall satisfy all your prayers and questions."
"I assure you, Reason," says Love, "that these Souls who are guided by Perfect Love value shame as highly as honor, and honor as dearly as shame, poverty as highly as riches, and riches as dearly as poverty; suffering at the hands of God and his creatures as highly as consolation from God and his creatures, being loved as highly as being hated, being hated as dearly as being loved, being in Hell as highly as being in Paradise, and being in Paradise as dearly as being in Hell; lowly estate as highly as great, and great estate as dearly as lowly, whether it be for soul or for body....
"...Such Souls do not know what is better for them, nor how God wants to provide their salvation nor the salvation of their neighbors.... And therefore the Soul set Free has no will at all to will or not to will, except only to will the will of God, and to submit in peace to the divine command." [ch.13, pp.30-31]
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"This is utter bewilderment!"
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[What Reason simply cannot accept is Love's apparent rejection of the mediation of the Church:]
"This Soul," says Love, "...no longer seeks God through penance or through any sacrament of Holy Church; not through reflections or words or works, not through any creature here below or through any creature there above, not through justice or mercy or the glory of glories, not through divine knowledge or divine love or divine praise."
"O God! O God! O God!" says Reason. "What does this creature say? This is utter bewilderment! What will those whom I nurture say? I could find nothing to say to them nor to answer them so as to excuse this."
"I am not at all amazed," says this Soul, "for these men have feet that tread no path, have hands that do no work, have mouths that speak no words, have eyes that see no light, have ears that do not hear, have reason but do not reason, body but no life, have hearts but do not understand, in everything that concerns this state of being. That is why those you nurture are amazed beyond all amazement."
"Truly, these are marvels," says Love, "most amazing to them, for they are too far from the land where these are the customs to have any sublimity. But those who are such, and who are of the land, such men in whom God dwells are not at all amazed." [chs. 85-86, pp.109-10]
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"And yet, elected daughter, you must know that Paradise shall be their fill."
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[God, like Love, is less censorious about those who follow Reason and "Holy Church the Less" than is the Soul. The Holy Trinity later tells the Soul:]
"Dear daughter, now I beg of you,
My sister and the only love for me.
For love's sake if you will,
No more of our secrets that you tell
Which you know well.
For others would perdition find
Where your salvation is assigned.
Since none but Reason and Longing are their lords
And Dread and Will.
"And yet, elected daughter, you must know
That Paradise shall be their fill."
"Paradise?" says this elected one. "Do you not award differently to them? So murderers are to have this too, if they are willing to cry for mercy! But even so I will be silent, since that is your wish." [ch.121, p.149]
http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/porete.html#anchor170289