That imperfect love is a true and formal love of God, not a merely implicit one
Yet on his view that imperfect love is not merely, as some more recent Schoolmen think, an implicit love of God wrapped up in the intention of some moral honesty. It is a true and formal love of God; without this love of the Creator no one, according to Augustine, uses creatures well, whether he is a believer or an unbeliever, righteous or a sinner; and a believer, even a sinner, by no means lacks it in certain works.
So in that man's view the charity, or love, now in question, which believers do not wholly lack even when lying in sin, is an imperfect love of God, or a certain imperfect delight in God. It goes before the charity commonly known, the charity that loves God above all, and it begins all righteousness. This can be seen more fully in that author, in that chapter 4 of book 4 of On the state of fallen nature.
Latin
XLIX. Et tamen, juxta ipsum, amor ille imperfectus non est solum, ut opinantur recentiores nonnulli Scholastici, amor quidam Dei implicitus, & in intentione alicujus honestatis moralis involutus, sed verus & formalis aliquis Dei amor; sine quo amore creatoris nullus, secundum Augustinum, bene utitur creaturis, sive fidelis, sive infidelis, sive justus, sive peccator sit: & quo fidelis, etiam peccator, in quibusdam operibus nequaquam caret. Adeoque ex viri illius sententia, charitas seu amor de quo jam quaestio est, & quo fideles, quamvis in peccato jacentes, non omnino destituuntur, est imperfecta Dei dilectio, seu imperfecta quaedam in Deo complacentia, quae charitatem illam vulgo notam, & Deum super omnia diligentem praevolat, & omnem inchoat justitiam. Ut latius videre est apud authorem istum, cap. illo 4. lib. 4. de statu naturae lapsae.