113. Standing behind an oblong partition set up in the palace, facing the doors, were some strangers from Africa. These called out to the natives of Europe, "Permit one of us also to offer an opinion concerning the origin of conjugial love and its virtue or potency"; and all at the tables signified with their hands that it was allowed.
One of the strangers then entered and, standing by the table whereon the tiara had been placed, he said: "You Christians deduce the origin of conjugial love from the love itself, but we Africans deduce it from the God of heaven and earth. Is not conjugial love a love chaste, pure, and holy? Are not the angels of heaven in that love? Is not the whole human race and thence the whole angelic heaven the seed of that love? Can a thing so supereminent spring from any other source than God himself, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe? You Christians deduce conjugial virtue or potency from various rational and natural causes, but we Africans deduce it from the state of the conjunction of man with the God of the universe, a state which we call the state of religion, but you the state of the Church; for when the love is from this source and is stable and perpetual, it cannot do otherwise than operate its virtue, and this is like itself and so is also stable and perpetual. Love truly conjugial is known only to those few who are near to God, and therefore to no others is the potency of that love known. This potency with the love is described by angels in the heavens as the delight of perpetual spring."