things else are but deceit and vanity 3. They considering the Mysteries of Jesus begin to discover the beauty of his Humiliations and Sufferings which yet is shadowed with some obscurity 4. Their eyes being more open'd they behold distinctly the Beauty of the Sufferings Contempts and Poverty of the Word Incarnate and thereupon conceives a great contempt of the World 5. In persuance hereof they contemplate the Divine Mysteries and if they be Faithful to imitate Christ Crucified they will arrive to a great knowledge of the Divinity 6. Then if they keep close to Purity of Heart they are wholly in a manner taken up with the Divine and Humane Mysteries of Jesus being very sensible what an Infinite Mercy it is to be deliver'd from the darkness of that ignorance which is in carnal men who have no feeling in the things of God or their Salvation 7. Their Light increasing they more and more discover the Perfections of God in the Creatures more clearly without comparison in the Sacred Humanity of Jesus but yet more transcendently in their Source the Divinity sweetly applying themselves thereto with much Felicity Behold this is what God gave me to know â—n a little time and this Light will increase if I be Faithful to practice the Virtues of Jesus Crucified who is the True Way to the Divinity the center of the Soul and her perfect repose In my third Prayer I found my self in a disposition to admire the operations of the Holy Spirit in our Souls God our Creator works in them what he pleases he having endowed them with a certain capacity extraordinary to receive his extraordinary Divine operations This must needs be extraordinary to our Faculties which before had great difficulty in believing the Mysteries of Faith and with great obscurity and with little or no gust But no sooner is this Light darted into our Souls but we see and tast them with great delight not as in Glory but in a very sublime and extraordinary manner The Meditations of many years cannot attain to this 't is a special gift we must receive from the Father of Lights to which we can only dispose our selves by Humility and Mortification O what Happiness is it for a Mortal man to be thus elevated and Spiritualiz'd by the Holy Ghost Let us therefore O my Soul humble our selves profoundly for the Spirit of God takes not up his Mansion but in a humble heart I know we ought to go whither God is pleas'd to Call us and not refuse his Gifts under the pretence of a counterfeit Humility But I know also that 't is not displeasing to God for us to be careful how we entertain extraordinary attracts least we be too ready by innate Pride of heart to walk in ways above our capacity In my fourth Prayer I consider'd the admirable preventions of the Holy Spirit in the conduct of Souls How he awakes us from the sleep of sin and draws us from the love of the World to unite us to himself by undeserved preventing Graces What wonders are there unknown to Carnal men which pass in these preventions I know nothing that may work in us more Love or more Humility For would any but a God of Infinite Goodness look with an eye of Mercy upon a Soul all black with Sin Ingratitude and Infidelity This miserable Creature is beloved of God having nothing to invite him but on the contrary to avert him from us and if his exceeding love had not surmounted the Infinite hatred God has of sin we had perish'd for ever without a Saviour To Love us Redeem us and prevent us with such Mercies does only proceed from his incomprehensible Goodness I am astonish'd to see that any Soul believing these admirable preventions should not be enflam'd with Divine Love What can more humble a poor Creature than to consider that we are nothing but Misery from which we can never free our selves unless God prevent us with his Grace and Favour What can more enflame us with Divine Love than to consider that God then loved us and prevented us with his unspeakable Mercies when we were just objects of his Eternal Hatred O my God who can comprehend the riches of your Infinite Goodness O my Soul acknowledge with thankfulness the great obligations thou hast to Love God with all thy Powers and Loving him to Praise him to all Eternity Eighth Day IN my first Prayer this thought presently possess'd my mind that all Power is attributed to the Father all Wisdom to the Son and all Goodness to the Holy Ghost And seeing these three Divine Persons are in each other by a Communication of the same Substance and Infinite Perfections the Eternal Father is the Power of the Son and Holy Ghost the Son is the Wisdom of the Father and Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is the Goodness of the Father and the Son A pure Soul that lives in the sublime exercises of a Supernatural Life becomes a Mansion for the Divine Persons and receives from them the impressions of Power Wisdom and Goodness The Power of the Eternal Father dwelling in her gives her strength and a Christian generosity to conquer all the obstacles of Perfection and she discovers that many difficulties are rather imaginary than real insomuch as the Principal and the most difficult of Christian actions is to believe that they are possible and that nature shall not suffer so much thereby as is imagin'd The Wisdom of the Son cummunicated to her affords her Light and Overtures to defend her self against the apparent reasons of sensual nature which damp many excellent Spirits that they can make no great advancement in the ways of God because they have too much of humane consideration and too little of this Divine wisdom which discovers to us the Beauty of Contempts and Sufferings in following Jesus The Goodness of the Holy Spirit imprinted on her makes her conquer the Inclinations of corrupted nature which is more or less according to the degrees of Grace in us He that is Holy let him be Holy still but we shall never rise to the heighth 'till we come to Glory In my second Prayer I considered that the adorable Trinity is the Treasury of all Beings Increated and Created That in respect to the Divine and Uncreated Beeing the Eternal Father is a Treasury that is exhausted by communicating all his Infinite Perfections to the Son and Holy Ghost But in respect of Created Beings the Sacred Trinity is an inexhaustible Treasury because all the whole World or ten thousand more cannot exhaust or diminish the least drop of his Infinite Power and Goodness I was almost equally taken up with both these wonders That a Million of Worlds drawn out of the Treasury of Gods Omnipotency should not make the least diminution of his Power is certainly matter of admiration But much more that the Grandeurs of the Eternal Son should be so elevated above the World as to exhaust the whole Substance and Perfections of
in their hearrs to engage them efficaciously in his Love and Service So be it Amen The Contents BOOK I. OF the Love of Humiliations which is the solid Foundation of all Christian Perfection Chap. 1. That we ought to endeavour to attain Christian Perfection with the spirit of Humility Pag. 1. Chap. 2. The foundation of Christian Humility 5 Chap. 3. That the Centre of the Creature is his own Nothing 8 Chap. 4. That the greatest Saints have attain'd to Perfection by a singular Love of Self-contempt and Abjection 11 Chap. 5. That we have only so much of the true Spirit of Jesus Christ as we have an inclination to abjection 14 Chap. 6. That the sight of our own Nothing inspire us with Self-contempt and the love of God 17 Chap. 7. That God is glorified by our annihilation 20 Chap. 8. That the Soul is rich when she possesses the Love of Self-contempt 23 Chap. 9. What profit we draw from Humiliations 26 Chap. 10. The way how to arrive to perfect Humiliation 29 Chap. 11. That we ought to leave our selves wholly to God to become annihilated 32 Chap. 12. That we must renounce our sense and humane reason to love humiliations 34 Chap. 13. That the experience of God's goodness to us does annihilate us powerfully 44 Chap. 14. That a Soul espousing Jesus Christ espouses his Cross and Sufferings 41 Chap. 15. That the experience of Gods goodness to us does annihilate us powerfully 44 Chap. 16. To be content with abjection after our faults repairs the injury to God and makes up our ruins 46 Chap. 17. Considerations upon tho vileness of this corruptible body 51 Chap. 18. Considerations upon the natural inclinations we have to evil 54 BOOK II. Of the Supernatural Life which is the Life of all true Christians Chap. 1. The Idaea or description of the Supernatural Life 75 Chap. 2. Of the high esteem we ought to have of the Christian Life 60 Chap. 3. That we ought with St. Paul to convert our selves wholly to God 63 Chap. 4. Of the Alliance we must make with the holy Folly of the Cross 67 Chap. 5. How we ought to conform our Interiour to that of Jesus Christ. 70 Chap. 6. The sublimity of the Christian Life 74 Chap. 7. There are divers degrees of this supertural Life 77 Chap. 8. The practice of a Supernatural Life 80 Chap. 9. Of the Liberty we enjoy by the exercise of the supernatural life 81 Chap. 10. Our greatest happiness on earth is to profess the way of Christianity 87 Chap. 11. That Truth is only found in the Spirit of Christianity the rest is Vanity 91 Chap. 12. There are many wayes in Christianity all which are according to the Life of Jesus Christ 94 Chap. 13 Some Maxims concerning a supernatural life 98 Chap. 14. What content a soul receives in a supernatural life 101 Chap. 15. That it 's impossible to live this supernatural life by humane prudence 105 Chap. 16. The Conclusion That we ought to apply our selves to the practice of a Supernatural Life 108 BOOK III. Of the Presence of God and giving our selves up to Divine Providence Chap. 1. Our first thought in the morning ought to be That God is present 111 Chap. 2. The presence of God in the soul makes us little value the absence of the Creatures 114 Chap. 3. That we can and ought to conserve the presence of God in occasions of Extroversions 118 Chap. 4. That the presence of God is clearly seen in a purified interiour 121 Chap. 5. That our union with the Presence of God ought to be the Rule of our Actions 125 Chap. 6. That the presence of God in us puts us in a state of suffering and enjoying 128 Chap. 7. That the Divine Presence makes us to love Prayer or Action as best pleases God 132 Chap. 8. The Presence of God brings us into a disesteem of other things 136 Chap. 9. Where we may best find the Presence of God 139 Chap. 10. That we ought to give our selves up with Divine Providence 143 Chap. 11. To be indifferent to all things but Gods good Pleasure 146 Chap. 12. We ought to comport our selves with a respectful reverence in God's presence 149 Chap. 13. To give our selves up to the conduct of Gods Spirit 153 Chap. 14. How the perfect abandon of our selves to God makes us find a Paradice upon Earth 157 Chap 15. How the Beauty that is in the Order of God contents a Soul 161 Chap. 16. The practice of the Presence of God for the seven days of the Week 163 The first Day The Beeing of God 164 The second Day The Omnipotency of God 166 The third Day Of the Wisdom of God 167 The fourth Day The Patience of God 169 The fifth Day Of the Love of God 174 The sixth Day The Justice of God 172 The seventh Day The Mercy of God 173 BOOK IV. Of Solitude and the Practice of two excellent Retreats of ten Days Chap. 1. Of the Beauty of Christian Solitude 175 Chap. 2. Of the necessity of Solitude 179 Chap. 3. The difficulties of Solitude 182 Chap. 4. The Occupations of Solitude 186 Chap. 5. How we may put our Soul and Senses into a Solitude 189 Chap. 6. A Solitude or Retreat of ten days upon the infallible Mystery of the Sacred Trinity 192 First Day 195 Second Day 199 Third Day 203 Fourth Day 207 Fifth Day 211 Sixth Day 215 Seventh Day 219 Eighth Day 224 Ninth Day 228 Tenth Day 232 Chap. 6. Another Retreat of ten Days upon the Adorable Person of Jesus Christ 236 First Day Of the Mystery of the Incarnation Ibid. Second Day Jesus an Infant 241 Third Day Jesus Poor and Abject 245 Fourth Day Jesus the Fountain of Grace and Piety 249 Fifth Day Jesus Zealator of souls 253 Sixth Day Jesus contemplating and enjoying 257 Seventh Day Jesus our Exemplar and Guide 262 Eighth Day Jesus our Light 266 Ninth Day Jesus suffering and dying 280 Tenth Day Jesus risen from Death and Gloririous 285 BOOK V. Of Communion and its Effects Chap. 1. Of Preparation before Communion 291 Chap. 2. To Communicate worthily we must put our selves in a state conformable to that of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament 294 Chap 3. To receive the Communion Worthily we must imitate those Actions which Jesus Christ practised when he Instituted it 298 Chap. 4. Interiour Entertainments during Communion 303 Chap. 5. Other Entertainments to give Thanks after Communion 306 Chap. 6. Another Method of Thanksgiving after Communion 309 Chap. 7. The first Effects of Communion is to beget in us the Love of Crosses and Humiliations 313 Chap. 8. Continuation of the same subject 316 Chap. 9. The second Effect of Communion is to Transform us 319 Chap. 10. The third Effect of Communion which is the perfect and consummate Vnion 323 Chap. 11. The fourth Effect of Communion is to confer the highest Love 327 Chap. 12. The fifth Effect of Communion is to give strength and perseverance in the service
of God 332 BOOK VI. Of Interiour and Exteriour Crosses Chap. 1. That we must have a high esteem for Crosses 337 Chap. 2. That we must have a Love for Crosses 341 Chap 3. That we must have a great Love for Crosses 444 Chap. 4. God is pleased to send us Crosses in the place of Persecutions that our Life may be a continual Martyrdom 347 Chap. 5. Of exteriour Crosses by the loss of Goods Chap. 6. Dispositions during Sickness where the Body suffer'd and the Soul rejoyced Chap. 7. Other Dispositions in the time of Sickness where Body and Soul are on the Cross 357 Chap. 8. The Interiour Crosses of the Soul in Obscurity 360 Chap. 9. Of the heaviness of interiour Crosses 364 Chap. 10. The great Fruit we may reap from interiour Crosses 368 Chap. 11. That we must bear patiently our Imperfections 371 BOOK VII Of Ordinary Prayer and Contemplation Chap. 1. What esteem we ought to have for Prayer 377 Chap. 2. Of the different sorts of Mental Prayer 380 Chap. 3. That we ought to be indifferent to what manner of Prayer God is pleased to give us 384 Chap. 4. That above all things 't is necessary to practise Prayer 387 Chap. 5. Of the impediments of Prayer 392 Chap. 6. Of the Means that facilitate the Exercise of Prayer 396 Chap. 7. That we must not presume of our selves to attempt any manner of Prayer but what is ordinary 400 Chap. 8. How to pass from Ordinary Prayer to Contemplation 404 Chap. 9. Of the Prayer of Faith 407 Chap. 10 Of the Sacred Darkness of Prayer 411 Chap. 11. Of the Lights of Prayer 414 Chap. 12. Of Passive Prayer 414 Chap. 13. Of pure and perfect Prayer 421 Chap. 14. Of the hungring of the Soul after God and of her being satiated with him 425 Chap. 15. Of infused Prayer 429 Chap. 16. Of Prayer of quiet 433 Chap. 17. Of the intimate Vnion of the Love of the Soul with God in Prayer 437 Chap. 18. Of interiour Silence where God speaks and is heard 441 Chap. 19. Of most purifyed Contemplation 444 Chap. 20. Of the different Caresses God vouchsafes a Soul in Prayer 448 BOOK VIII Some Maxims of Great Importance to conduct us in a Spiritual Life Chap. 1. To have above all things an extreme Horrour of Sin 453 Chap. 2. To keep an even pace with Grace neither out-running it nor following too slowly 456 Chap. 3. That a Soul must wholly give her self up to God 459 Chap. 4. We ought to make it our Business to be content to suffer 461 Chap. 5. To renounce or selves wholly and strive against our proper Inclinations 463 Chap. 6. How to comport our selves well in Superiority 466 Chap. 7. That we ought to have our intentions purified from all Self-interest 469 Chap. 8. A conference clearing many difficulties touching Prayer 471 THE Interiour Christian BOOK I. Of the Love of Humiliations which is the solid Foundation of all Christian Perfection CHAP. I. That we ought to endeavour to attain Christian Perfection with the spirit of Humility LEt us endeavour after Perfection not because it is a sublime and elevated condition but because it is the will of God We ought not to set upon the practice of Piety by a motive of grandeur and to become greater Saints but only to do what God wills and expects from us and rest therewith content and satisfied Our happiness consists in a constant dependence on his divine will and pleasure with a perfect submission and resignation thereunto I must be content with my condition whatever it be seeing it is what God expects from me and 't is no small presumption to assume to our selves what great Saints have found in the practice of Piety God calls some persons to glorious performances others he places in a lower rank in all this we must suffer him to work his will upon us and receive with thankfulness his Divine Impressions whether great or little 't is enough for us that they come from God This is the way God calls us to walk in a way sublime pleasant full of peace in which we desire nothing but to please God It concerns us to take whatever he gives with simplicity of heart be it never so little 't is certainly more than we deserve To be annihilated in God is to will nothing but what God wills and in what manner he pleases otherwise we seek our selves and our own satisfaction and not purely God and his good pleasure We must labour for Perfection with a Spirit wholly dis-engaged from all self-interest To suffer to live poor and despised being the only way among infinite other means the Eternal Father made choice of for us to attain to Glory and regain those Excellencies Adam lost for himself and us by sin This being his design from Eternity his Son in the fulness of time embraced the Cross with affection and was inflamed with the desire of suffering valuing the Cross as a thing of great excellency being the Altar chosen for the life-giving Sacrifice by his heavenly Father preferring the Glory and the Will of God before the natural inclinations of his Humanity which had a repugnancy in the sensitive part thereof to pains and sufferings This is evident from that of the Evangelist Pater si possibile est transe at c. Father if it be possible let this Cup pass from me yet not my will but thine be fulfilled And that of the Psalmist Sacrificium Oblationem noluisti c. Thou would'st not have Sacrifice or Oblation but thou hast prepared a Body for me and behold I come to do thy will And so he did run his course with joy though full of sufferings because he knew it was the good pleasure of his Father Wherefore by how much the more welove and esteem the Cross by so much the more do we participate of the Spirit of Christ and please his heavenly Father For to suffer is to sacrifice to God our pleasures and interests uniting our selves to the design that Jesus had by suffering to repair his Father's Glory O my Soul if these Verities have made deep impression in thee thou ought'st from henceforth to glory in being despised seeing thy Glory is to procure the Glory of God which cannot be done more advantagiously than by imitating his only Son O good Jesus possess my heart with your divine Spirit that may enable me to live your life O how your humiliations seem great unto me your abjections honourable your poverty rich and your Cross pleasant My Soul doth languish to possess your Spirit and desires it most ardently whatever has not a relish of your Spirit is not grateful to me O that I had inflamed affections to embrace the Cross and that I could bear the greatest can happen to me In the interim it seems to me that I do nothing and when occasion presents it self I find difficulty to suffer the least afflictions Dear Saviour how is this life troublesome unto me Strengthen
to their substance is to keep our selves in the bounds of human reason to which they are conformable but to observe them in an elevated manner so as our obedience may be meritorious to follow Divine Inspirations in loving Contempts Poverty Mortifications and embrace Evangelical Counsels To do this we must be elevated above our selves and live a Supernatural Life See then what I understand by a Supernatural and Christian Life To live Christianly is to live according to the Spirit of Jesus according to the Grace of Jesus the New Man A Grace far different from the Grace given to old Adam in the state of Innocency A Life more holy and more eminent and which carries along with it different effects and contrary proceedings The Grace of Adam did enable him to use the Creatures virtuously and by the holy use of Pleasures Honours and Riches to arrive to his final happiness This was the way of the state of Innocency from whence being fallen the infinite Wisdom hath found out another way quite different which is the way of privations of the Cross of sufferings of humiliations in which Jesus Christ marched from the first moment of his Incarnation to his last breath on the Cross This is the true foundation of the Christian Life this is the true Principle this is the only way out of which there is no Salvation or Perfection Worldly men and too many Christians are ignorant of it and not knowing supereminentem Scientiam Jesu Christi this supereminent Science of Jesus Christ they know nothing as they ought because they know not Jesus crucified This Doctrine is harsh to flesh and blood and wholly contrary to the Spirit of the World But the Saints have practis'd it and I must walk the same way except I will be very faithless and renonnce the Spirit of Jesus Christ O my God! I will become a New Man in my Understanding Will Life Proceedings and to this end I will change my Doctrine my Principles and Maxims I will deny my self and take up my Cross to follow Jesus I will be content with Poverty Contempt and Mortifications my inclinations shall tend this way for the future and sufferings for your sake shall be delights unto me And if I do otherwise it shall not be through wilfulness but human weakness O good Jesus give me to live with you a crucified Life on Earth that you may make me partaker of your glorified Life in Heaven There is a time for all things This is a life of Sufferings the other of Enjoyments O blindness of Christians not to see the excellency of the Christian Life Some are busie to make themselves fit for worldly Employments some are all for Science others for War c. but few make it their chief work to become good Christians as being of little value with them O the ignorance of Christians not to see that all things besides are pure vanity CHAP. II. Of the high esteem we ought to have of the Christian Life JESUS on the day of his Ascension was elevated to the highest Heavens where he sits at the right hand of God upon which my Soul rejoyc'd with her Saviour in admiration of his Tryumphs and breathing out after him a thousand Praises and Benedictions with all Saints and Angels found motions in my self to follow him not to Heaven but to Mount Calvary not in his Tryumphs but Humiliations O my Jesus said she that I was elevated above my self that I could so keep Nature under as to live a supernatural Life and tryumphing over human Reason and natural Maxims I may repose quietly in the Bosom of your Cross and there live happily in that content the world knows not with that peace which passeth all understanding I know that all the Patriarchs which you led in tryumph were justly ravished with joys unspeakable But if you please to raise me by Grace to a supernatural Life I will not envy their happiness They are elevated to Enjoyment but as for me I am for Privation for Contempt and Miseries which seem to me being suffered for your sake dear Jesus more delicious than Paradice If I persevere with Fidelity in a crucified Life I will not trouble my self about the life of Glory But alas my frequent falls and failings by reason of my weakness and inconstancy make me desire that Life where is no fault or imperfection The ascension of a Soul to Heaven O how delightful is it the ascension of a Soul to a supernatural Life O 't is admirable How happy are they who are acquainted with it O my God! clear up the eye of Faith in me that I may behold the wonders you work in Souls in this valley of tears What if I say That a Soul is as happy and tryumphant in going out of her self for the love of the Cross to embrace abjection as in going out of the World to possess Heaven So many sallies as she makes out of her self for the love of the Cross are so many glorious ascensions which delight even God himself the Saints and Angels beholding it with admiration The same Faith which opens my eyes to see Jesus poor and abject does assure me that the triumph of a Soul in humiliations is no less admirable than in Glory What can be done more to make us have the highest esteem of this supernatural Life when we see God the Father among so many possible ways hath from all eternity chosen this for his Son while he liv'd upon Earth How did his well-beloved Son who is infinitely wise leave the bosom of his Father with joy to embrace this life with love and affection How did the holy Spirit who reposed in his breast as the centre of his more noble sentiments carry him on by most powerful inspirations to the Cross Contempts Poverty Humiliations during the whole course of this mortal life What other way can those who belong unto Christ take to make themselves conformable to him but by treading in his steps But when our blessed Saviour liv'd in the world this wonderful life Mundus eum non cognovit the world knew him not because he lay hid in poverty pains and sufferings In like manner those who live a life most conformable to him the world knows them not for we must have eyes cleared by Divine Irradiations to discover the excellency of this state And yet so much Glory and Grandeur is enveloped in the shadows of this Life that they who live it do most glorifie God and exalt his Honour Take courage then and let us tend to the perfection of Divine Love which we shall find in the solid practice of this supernatural Life Let others do what they please we will follow the conduct of God's holy Spirit and march stoutly after Jesus Christ abject and crucified O what happy advantages enjoys that Soul to whom God is pleas'd to give a view of this supernatural Life a Life hidden and unknown to worldly men 'T is of more worth than all
ashamed to be so much attached to worldly things she is taken with the excellency of this admirable way and begins to be mortified to her self and the world aspiring after a profound oblivion and contempt of all Creatures and desiring to be in privations the better to curb her sensual inclinations and practice Virtue Thus the Soul proceeds in the purgative way of this supernatural Life The Soul thus purged advances to partake of the Divine Illuminations of this Life and becomes in a manner clear-sighted thereby her understanding receiving many illustrations and discoveries of its excellency and grandeur She sees the wonders couch'd in the mystery of Jesus poor suffering and annihilated She perceives the eminency of those sanctified Souls who have followed Jesus in his humiliations She begins to apprehend that a Soul which has no knowledge nor esteem of this life is buried in darkness She is amaz'd at the blindness of Christians in being besotted on empty vanities And lastly she perceives that there is enjoyment in suffering and that by crosses and privations we come to union with God The Soul thus illuminated enters into the Unitive state of this life and tends to a continual union with God whom she sees present in her Interiour Nothing can hinder this union as long as the Soul finds enjoyment in sufferings This proceeding of grace in a Soul is not extraordinary God behaves himself in a Soul as a King in a Kingdom newly conquer'd who kills and destroys all that oppose the establishment of his Dominion Notwithstanding the Prince hereby seems to put all things in disorder 't is but to procure peace and to rule without disturbance by the conquest of his Enemies God proceeds in like manner As soon as he enters into a Soul to set up his Kingdom he makes a havock of all his Enemies by penetential rigour to bring the Soul wholly to his Obedience Then he establishes the Maxims of his Policy and convinces the Soul how good and just they are by the following illustrations First That the greatest Treasure on Earth is to have part of the Poverty of Jesus Christ. Secondly That the greatest Glory is to be partaker of his abjections Thirdly That the greatest Joy is to suffer pains with him Fourthly That the Life of Christianity is to deny our selves take up our Cross and follow Jesus That when we cease to die to our selves and crucifie our Lusts we leave off to be Christians and die in a manner to Christianity because we lose the Spirit thereof Fifthly That there 's nothing more amiable more precious and more honourable in the world than to imitate Jesus poor and abject seeino this state was most precious in the eyes of God his Father Finally The Soul being persuaded of these verities which are in a manner evident unto her tho' by the obscure light of Faith has no love for any thing upon Earth nor any pretensions but those of Jesus Christ and these were only to suffer and be annihilated to perfect in his Person the designs of his eternal Father by dying on the Cross Then she absolutely forsakes her self to give her self up wholly to the Maxims and Spirit of Jesus Christ uniting and conforming her self as much as may be to his states and her thoughts are far different from others sentiments And this is not to be wondred at seeing St. Peter says of Christians that they are Gens sancta Genus electum regale Sacerdotium a holy Nation a chosen People a royal Priesthood to offer to God Sacrifices of good Odour which is by crucifying themselves with Jesus Christ who is a continual Sacrifice O the sublime state of a Soul in this supreme degree of a supernatural life Alas the sentiments of Nature do too much take up our hearts so that those of a supernatural life have little or no place in them What a misery is this CHAP. VIII The practice of a Supernatural Life WE without cause esteem our selves spiritual if we march not streight without reserve by the ways of Jesus Christ or pretend to any thing on Earth then to be conformable to him This does not consist in sole speculation for we can never do it better than when the occasions of abjection and contempt present themselves to embrace them heartily as the most necessary means to make us conformable to Jesus Christ God the Father cannot praedestinate us to be conform to the Image of his Son but he must prepare for us from all Eternity many occasions of contempt and abjection which time brings forth Our fidelity lies in complying with these occasions to follow Jesus without reserve by his Light and Power I will tell you how it must be done We ought before all things to have an eye to Jesus abject and despised repose our selves in his bosom abide there with delight and then make upon our selves some short and sharp reflections Reflections that may form in us the Image of Jesus Christ without any great trouble to our selves These when done to the purpose are as so many powerful Thunderbolts to beat down our natural inclinations and destroy the Maxims of human Prudence according to which we commonly square our actions Such Reflections breath into us a supernatural wisdom which gives us a relish of the proceedings of Jesus Christ crucified so little known by worldly men But perhaps it would be better to regard nothing but the infinite beauty of Jesus in the state of his abjections without making any reflections on our selves or busying our selves with our own miseries considering only the example of Jesus expos'd to our view and the power we receive from his grace to follow him It is enough if he vouchsafe to cast a glance of his Divine rays on our natural repugnances to quell and conquer them O my Jesus I will regard you in your humiliations and then you will look propitiously upon me and that is sufficient O Jesus annihilated in your sufferings make me as it were lost in my self by suffering with you that I may be absorpt in you and by you in God Shall the men of this world be more provident than the children of Light What shall they have a care of their affairs and I neglect my business I will enrich my self as well as they with my own ruins and from my humiliations I will draw great aids and succours to follow Jesus for my resolution is to march after him absolutely without reserve To do any great matters in the ways of the world we must have much Wealth many Friends and good success To do great matters in the ways of God it will suffice to be poor and despicable to have Enemies and ill successes For the more a Soul suffers the more she does great matters in God's service the more she is deprived of the Creatures the more is she enriched with the Creator Therefore she must work as hard for poverty of Spirit and Self-denial as worldly men do labour to enrich themselves
according to Nature and must employ all means and Motives to this effect I will set down some of them 'T is a good Motive or means to renounce all Creatures and our selves by a spirit of denudation saying with great fervour and affection Away Creatures get hence from me and leave a place in my heart for God alone 2. 'T is a good Motive to do this by a spirit of Poverty for it is not possible to follow Jesus poor and abject unless in due circumstances we be willing to leave all things for Jesus sake and become poor to follow him Let us therefore be content to quit all things joyfully and be glad to have nothing to possess God himself alone 3. ' Tisae good Motive to die to all things by a spirit of abjection What greater happiness is there O my Soul than to live in humiliation seeing this was the life of God upon Earth To be despised with Jesus is a state of beatitude Worldly Prosperity is a hindrance to our happiness 4. 'T is a good Motive to abandon all things by a spirit of oblation sacrificing and annihilating our selves sincerely to pay homage to the Infinite Majesty of God with such a confidence in him so as to rely never more on any Creature Quid enim mihi est in Caelo aut à te quid volui super Terram Deus cordis mei O my God! shall any Creature take part of my heart with you when all is yours If it was possible to love you too much I might give place to something else but seeing I am infinitely below my duty in that particular what Creature can pretend to have the least part with you CHAP. IX Of the liberty we enjoy by the exercise of the Supernatural Life 'T Is wonderful to see the great liberty which a Soul enjoys by the exercises of a supernatural life When the illuminations of this state irradiate a Soul throughly she enters into a new region of light full of Peace and Love marvelous large and spatious in which she lives in high union with God A union which is not so liable to vicissitudes and disturbances as formerly because accidental occurrences as sickness disgraces c. do not hurt such a Soul by reason they make no strong impression in her and by consequence being become less sensible she is not easily diverted from the supernatural Object of her love Yea such a Soul improves hindrances and divertisements to her greater recollection and increase of Divine Love because in this state she is dis-engag'd from the Creature and so freed from fear of miseries which she can chearfully embrace as the occasions of her happiness whereby she enters into a perfect liberty and great purity of Virtue I could never well understand what that is which is called Purity of Virtue but now I see 't is the state of a supernatural life wherein the Soul lives no more in her self and of her self and for her self but in God and of God and for God being wholly separated from the Creatures and united to God Alas how is this poor Soul afflicted to do things so much below her self in this high condition For oftentimes she must act according to her natural inclinations and the dictates of pure reason which affords her matter of sighs and languishings after her Beloved This is that which kindles in her breast an ardent desire to be dissolved and leave this earthly Tabernacle wherein by the common misery of mankind she lives a life displeasing to her self for being not wholly for God as she desires it seems to her a kind of death And seeing she cannot continually live this supernatural life without vicissitudes it is as it were a death unto her A Death unknown to sensual men but such that are spiritual are very sensible thereof O Jesus deliver me from this life of mortality seeing here I cannot live your life of purity in comparison of which all other lives are but death and corruption To see so clearly the excellencies of a life so lovely and not to be able to live but little of it considering my frailty makes me resent my misery and acknowledge dear Jesus how necessary your Grace is for me O how great is the dependence which my Soul hath on your mercy 't is so mighty and essential dependence that words cannot sufficiently express it However this comforts me herein that it gives you all the Glory of the Interiour beauty in the Soul which is a work more magnifies your Power Bounty and Wisdom than the whole outward work of the Creation Your greatest wonders dear Saviour are secret and hidden A Soul that lives this supernatural life above her inclinations does more set forth the great power of God than to elevate the Heavens above the Earth for this is as miraculous as to elevate the Earth above the Heavens This makes me O my God desire to live this blessed life that I may thereby bring greater Glory to your Name Assist me powerfully with your Grace for if I be once left to my self I shall relapse into my natural weakness which is but a meer Nothing and Infirmity Some trouble themselves too much in philosophising on this spiritual life which is needless it being enough to say The Spirit of Jesus must be the Spirit of my Interiour 't is He by whom I must live this life and act accordingly and so free our selves from other considerations which may hinder our liberty to follow this light and fall faithfully to practice on the occasions of Crosses Contempts and Disgraces which happen to us in this life I ought daily to endeavour after purity although I cannot attain the highest practice because the course of my life wherein God has placed me will not permit it nor does exact of me to attempt of my self the grand effects of purity lest I should be discourag'd by failing in the enterprize This is only the perfection of the greatest Saints and herein we must give our selves up to the conduct of the Spirit of Jesus Christ who being infinitely wise we need not fear having him for our Leader But as we ought not to be too rigorous so we must not be too faint-hearted in the ways of perfection but apply our selves with love and resolution to all occasions by suffering peaceably and with contentation whatever injuries we may receive from others in seeking too much their own interest All sufferings are to be entertain'd with love but especially what we suffer by Injustice For is not this that which the Son of God hath done principally upon Earth by suffering innocently Do not therefore say I would suffer this injury if he that does it had the least reason for it for this proceeds from self-love and passion It may well be that he has no reason to do you this injury but Divine Reason and the spirit of Christianity teach you to bear it patiently 'T is good to suffer thus and in this to imitate Jesus is
eminent ways but judging our selves unworthy thereof and content with little our Saviour shall please to give us we must co-operate humbly and faithfully with that small portion of Grace we have already and not grow idle wishing for those eminent Graces wherewith perhaps our Souls shall never be beautified This is one of the chiefest points of humility to be content with that little portion we have in the state of Grace and judge our selves unworthy of God's favour 'T is true there 's nothing we ought so highly esteem as Grace and its increase in us and desire it of God with incessant prayers but this must be with perfect submission to his Divine will and pleasure that we may not disturb the peace of our Souls On one side I behold my extreme misery and I find my self so depressed that all my natural strength and endeavours do what they can to the utmost can never bring me out of my self On the other side I burn with desire to be wholly for God by living a supernatural and spiritual life It is to you O Divine Spirit I address my sighs the infinite source of all Graces you know I have a longing to live this spiritual life in the exercise whereof I shall find the true practice of Divine Love by which I shall satisfie my ardent desires to be wholly for Jesus and shall live no more after my natural inclinations and the Maxims of human Prudence But I see how impossible it is for me to attain this unless you vouchsafe to assist me with your illuminations against my darkness with your strength against my weakness with your continual supplies against my relapses For how often O Divine Spirit have I begun this supernatural life and fallen from it conquer'd by my Nature and worldly temptations Draw me after you so powerfully and continually that I may no more return into my self but may follow your attracts with perseverance I will follow you dear Jesus in the states of your mortal life in annihilations contempts poverty and sufferings And if I lose the sight of you in those obscurities which sometimes cloud my Soul yet let me not lose courage Provided I continue in your ways that is in the esteem and love of the true Christian Life you will not be far from me it being impossible that Jesus annihilated and suffering should not be near to a Soul suffering and annihilated Well then though we may lose the sight of Jesus the light we have in Prayer leaving us though we feel him not by sensible influences yet we are assured that he is near us if we be in his ways by self-denial and a love of humiliations for his sake O how happy is a Soul to be content to follow the annihilations of Jesus without the feeling of his persumes and sweetnesses She does practice the purity of love in this condition For to be deprived of light and consolations which is very harsh to Nature and suffer it contentedly is one of the most excellent acts of a spiritual life which consists chiefly in a perfect resignation to suffer as well inwardly as outwardly when God pleases I am very sensible by experience that there 's a vast difference between thinking and doing talking and living this true Christian life When we meet with no repugnance we find it not difficult to practice Virtue whereof the Idaea's are as sweet as the Acts are bitter of such as consist in privations and sufferings I am in a state wherein I feel repugnances and am resolved thereby to humble my self the more and keep the peace of my Soul by an entire confidence of the succours which the Grace of God will vouchsafe unto me I consider that nothing was more seeble than the Apostles before Pentecost They hid themselves abandon'd their Master in his sufferings and Peter deny'd him but after they had received the Holy Ghost he infus'd such strength into their Souls that they became powerful and couragious to admiration CHAP. XV. That 't is impossible to live this Supernatural Life by Human Prudence THe supernatural Life is a continual mortification of depraved Nature 1. For 't is certain First That we cannot live this excellent life but by annihilating our sense and reason 2. Secondly That this life is wholly according to the Spirit which cannot be but the Spirit of God which inspires the Soul with his influences and sacred motions 3. Thirdly That the Soul which lives this life must be elevated above sense und reason whether it be in Prayer or the practice of Virtue which cannot be done but by offering up her self to God as a continual Sacrifice That though oftentimes w must do things sensual as to eat and drink yet these must be done as Grace directs us And other things according to reason as to love our Relations and Friends yet this must be only in God and as his Oracles do dictate to us O life of Grace how art thou a continual death and mortification Who lives Christianly lives a Martyrdom Tota vita Christiana Crux est Martyrium However 't is a joyful Martyrdom for solid joy cannot but make glad the Soul where Grace inhabits O that this fundamental truth of our Salvation did once well sink into our hearts The Son of God and eternal King of Glory leaves the bosom of his Father and becomes man to live and die in infinite humiliations Jesus gives us life by his death He puts us in a state of Grace by ruining himself according to Nature He purchases Eternity for us by yielding up his temporal life And the Evangelist expressing his death doth on set purpose use these words Emisit Spiritum He sent forth his Spirit Without doubt he sent it into the hearts of his faithful Servants to the end they may learn to live by his Spirit to him who died for them So says St. Paul Misit Deus Spiritum Filii sui in corda nostra ut qui vivunt jam non sibi vivant sed ei qui pro ipsis mortuus est What remains then but that we banish our carnal Spirit which carries us on to sensual delights although sometimes not sinful Let us love the Spirit of penance of suffering of self-denial and humiliations Gerson hath an excellent saying By how much the more Nature is mortified by so much the more Grace is infused We must often call to mind that the Grain of Wheat cast into the Earth except it die cannot bring forth fruit If we do not die to our selves and the World and the Spirit of Nature we can never become perfect Christians nor bring forth the fruits of Divine Love We must be as nothing before men that we may be something in the sight of God Why should the Disciple be above his Master The Spirit of Grace and the Spirit of Nature do continually jar and war one against the other The exercise of the spiritual life will afford us light to discern their different motions but when
discerned it requires great courage to be faithful to the motions of Grace To yield to Nature weakens and darkens the Soul to follow Grace gives life and vigour It concerns us therefore to take part with God against our selves This practice is clear and efficacious to conquer our passions and carry us on to the purity of Virtue when this light is infus'd into us after the manifestation of God's goodness to us Reason may be serviceable to conquer our passions but this light must give place when the beams of Grace display their splendors For we ought as much as we can to stifle the Maxims of reason that we may become more capable of Divine Illuminations which elevate us above human reason In a word as no man can come unto the Son unless the Father draw him by preventing Grace so no man can come unto the Father but by the Son following his Maxims and Example and obeying the motions of his Spirit This is the order and way of Grace and 't is in vain for us to look for any other in a spiritual life CHAP. XVI The Conclusion That we ought to apply our selves to the practice of a Supernatural Life WE must have a special care that we place not Perfection amiss for this will much retard us in the way of Virtue Hence it will do well not to have too great an esteem of the Vnitive and Mystick way Not but 't is good yea excellent for a Soul to be so elevated by God's gracious conduct However we must acknowledge that the unitive way brought to practice is more excellent and necessary seeing this is the Christian life in action and the other is a mystick life consisting in extraordinary elevations of the Soul and wonderful unions with God in Prayer and Contemplation I observe that our blessed Saviour says Whosoever will be my Disciple must take up his Cross and follow me He does not say that he must be elevated in Prayer but that he must take up his Cross that is he must practice the Maxims of the Gospel Happy then are they who are crucified to the world though they be not elevated in Spirit and those elevated Souls are but happy in that they are conformable to Jesus crucified and by their unions more disposed to the Cross and Sufferings The crucified Life is as it were the end of the mystick life whose illuminations and sweet influences do much conduce to fortifie the Soul to bear the Cross S. Teresa observes That one of the best signs of a Divine Extasie is when it works in the Soul an extraordinary desire of suffering and that a Soul cannot return to her self from such holy communications with God but well instructed which must needs be that the perfection of love consists in suffering for Jesus and not in enjoying him Enjoyment in this life is not of so much worth as suffering This more than That advances our Glory Let us not then complain that we have not our part in the mystick life so that we be but crucified Christians and let us be content to feel our Spirit in Prayer among Thorns of aridities coldness and desolation as well as among the sweet perfumes of a sensible Devotion We must take up our Cross to follow Christ as well when we suffer in Soul as Body For 't is the property of a true Christian to glory in the Cross of Jesus Christ But this did extend as well to his Soul as to his body The Divine Soul of Jesus was left without sensible influences and succours from the superiour part and from his Father for some time We must love to be conformable to him herein and rest there with resignation and contentment Let our affections be more inflamed with the love of her sufferings here than of enjoyments And if we complain of any thing let it be when we do not suffer something for Jesus Christ The End of the Second BOOK BOOK III. Of the presence of God and giving our selves up to Divine Providence CHAP. I. Our first thought in the morning ought to be That God is present AS soon as I awake I ought to consider that I am in the bosom of God for in Him we live move and have our being We live and are indeed in his presence and yet hardly think of him I am surrounded with his Grandeurs his Mercies his Riches his Divine Perfections and yet am taken up with petty matters O what blindness what darkness is this I fall from one sleep into another my Soul being no more awake by day than by night my interiour senses being then bound up as before the exteriour I am like a blind man asleep doubly blind for sleep takes away his sight a second time When he awakes he sees not the light of the Sun nor the beauty of the Universe nor the variety of Creatures that are before him He walks in the world but beholds not the different parts thereof when he is asleep his blindness increases In like manner when we sleep we are in a profound forgetfulness of God But what is lamentable we continue this Oblivion when we are awake by reason we seldom think on God and his Perfections our Souls are so wholly taken up with worldly business Alas how dangerous is this sleep and forgetfulness We have no excuse seeing Nature does teach us better manners Tempus est de somno surgere When the Sun rises 't is time to walk as Children of light When natural sleep leaves me let me not dear Saviour lose my self in the crowd of Creatures but take up my thoughts with your Perfection with your Love with your Mercies that I may not sleep all day long by being unmindful of your presence Dear Jesus 't is not in my power to hinder this spiritual drowzyness and my misery will not permit me to think on you continually but be pleased to watch for me that I may be conversant with God by your divine and holy Occupations that I may know him by your knowledge that I may have an eye to him by your regards that I may love him by your loves and by this means I shall be strengthened in my weakness If we do not awake with Jesus Christ we sleep with the men of this world who sleep their sleep being wholly taken up with worldly matters To be awake with Jesus Christ is to be exercised in the operations of this life to do as he did and be content to take up our Cross and suffer with him Pains sufferings reproaches ought to be dear to us seeing they make us to be awake with Jesus Christ and live his life a life of sufferings On the contrary we must look on HOnours Pleasures and Worldly advantages with a suspicious eye because they are apt to make us forgetful of God When we see with the eye of Faith that God is every-where and is the first Mover we take delight therein and look upon God as the Soul of the world and
behold you on the Cross with carnal eyes else next to the Divinity they would discover nothing more sweet and lovely Do not therefore stay me up with Flowers but with Thorns do not encompass me with Apples but with Nails because I languish with love The beauties and sweets of Jesus pierce my heart and I cannot suffer more than to be without suffering in the sight of my suffering and crucified Jesus But some say to suffer much is hurtful to us Alas do we find it hurtful to us to love much Wherefore will ye that love crucifying shall be more moderate then love-enjoying which too often weakens the Soul and sometimes wounds us to death A too great solicitude about corporal health is a sign we do not take up our abode in the wounds of Jesus crucified We are never better then when sighing under the burden of the Cross God beholding himself takes infinite delight in his own perfections out of himself he is alike pleased to see those Perfections crowned in his Creatures His mercy does triumph in the Blessed Saints and Angels and his Justice in Hell A Soul introverted in solitude with God alone finds sweetness unspeakable in considering these marvels She feels also an excessive joy to see that the travels and sighs and sufferings and blood of Jesus are crowned with a Glory by the Elect on earth whether it be by suffering or enjoying When they conquer a temptation the blood of Jesus is crowned When they practise heroick acts of Virtue the blood of Jesus is crowned All glory be to him both in Time and Eternity O Mortals come and see if there be any beauty goodness and perfection comparable to that of Jesus our God and Saviour O how lovely is he and yet how little is he beloved How great and yet how despised How infinite in his Perfections and yet how little known O the only desire of my Soul discover your self somewhat more clearly to me that being ravish'd with your Beauties I may be solely taken up with your Perfections Shall any creature after this oblige me to regard it No my eyes shall be fixed on God alone Farewell then poor Creatures I am above you you shall never more amuse me I leave you to place my thoughts on my Well-beloved Methinks I feel his powerful attracts drawing me out of my self to possess him alone My Friends do not molest me any more leave me in my self to possess my God and admire his Perfections You may serve him by helping others but leave me to serve him in himself I desire none but him nor to be taken up with any thing but him seeing he is pleas'd to let me know it is his pleasure Farewell Creatures farewell Friends farewell Devotes farewell World I am going to God to unite my self unto him by a constant retreat that shall never suffer a separation CHAP. II. Of the necessity of Solitude I am resolv'd on the Vigil of All Saints to mount up to Heaven to congratulate their Happiness and beg their Charity for surely they will be very liberal on their general Festival and my Soul hopes for great succours from them in her miseries However I will chiefly sollicit the Blessed Hermits and Solitary Monks whose habitation in this Life was in Desarts and Monasteries I have a call from Heaven to address my self to them to beg their Intercession for some part of their Spirit of Introversion retirement from the World and Interiour poverty which is the true life of Holy Recluses being in a profound solitude of Soul by a denudation of all Creatures while their Bodies inhabit the most secret Desarts Great Saints what do you here upon Earth You labour not to help others being far remov'd from the company of Men so that you seem to be but unprofitable servants Alas how ill do sensual men judge of the Interiour of Saints I tell you these are the great Servants of God who in their Desarts offer up continual Sacrifices to the Grandeurs of an incomprehensible Majesty by profound poverty of Spirit and annihilation of themselves And being in a denudation of all Creatures their desires are for God and him alone This is the Happy state this is the Paradice my Soul sighs after at present to live so sequestred from Creatures as if I were in the Desarts of Lybia Good Jesus there 's nothing impossible to your Grace grant me this poverty of Spirit and if Exteriour poverty be necessary to possess this Interiour whereof I speak make me as poor as Job if my Friends must leave me I will freely part with them and be content to be forgotten in their affections for ever O my God estrange me from all Creatures give me that profound poverty of Spirit which methinks I understand though I cannot express it Thus dead to the World I shall enter into the joy of my Saviour for there 's no enjoying of God without a perfect denudation of all Creatures But how shall I get this Treasure who have the dominion of Temporal Possessions I must either really quit them to gain this Jewel or possess them as if I possess'd nothing The examples of the Blessed in Heaven afford me both comfort and satisfaction The Saints are rich for they want nothing and notwithstanding they are poor in Spirit because they continually annihilate all the riches of their glory in the presence of the great God being ready to part with their Felicity and to be annihilated if such was the Will of God In this manner I must possess what I have being prepared to part with it when God will have it so I observe that for want of Solitude the Soul does not discern the more subtile workings of God in her interiour which afterwards she discovers by experience These are great Graces but come to no effect for want of introversion and attention I know well enough that Faith is sufficient to direct the Soul to attain to the knowledge and love of her Creator But 't is true also that the God of love has more secret and in-time ways wherewith the Divine Wisdom works the Soul into a temper to make her sensible of his amorous embraces O my God how are you hidden in the fund of our Souls And you do not discover your self to us except in a perfect Solitude when we are out of the noise of Creatures God and the Soul being alone together O poor Mortals how long shall your hearts hanker after the things of this World Turn your selves perfectly to God and see and taste how sweet he is Happy are those moments although but short wherein we have a taste of the Divine sweetness and partake of the effects of his sensible presence Such a Soul will find in her self a certain aversion and disgust of worldly Vanities a desire to leave them a love of Solitude and Silence to be the more at liberty to attend to Gods Service all other things now appearing to her but as dross and dung and
of no value Speak to such a Soul of worldly affairs and you seem to cast dust in her eyes which hinders her from beholding the beauties of her Beloved and as soon as she can she clears her eyes to recover her Happiness This inconvenience makes her flee from the World to preserve her purity from being fullied with the dust of Creatures When we leave our Solitude by the order of God to converse with men we find our selves better dispos'd to the practice of Heroick Virtues to a perfect contempt of riches and honours to patience in cross affairs to the love of enemies to an affability condescendance and fidelity to our Friends Thus expressing in our actions the Image of Jesus Christ by faithfully complying with the occasions of Virtue Pure Mortification pure Virtue these are the delights of a Soul that hath convers'd with God in a holy retirement where she hath learn'd to love him purely and suffer for him CHAP. III. The difficulties of Solitude I find by experience that nothing more hinders our Salvation and Holiness than to overwhelm our selves with multiplicity of Affairs though lawful so as to loose thereby the times alotted for Prayer and Mortification the proper nourishment of a Spiritual Life A gracious Soul must therefore so comport her self in converse and action as not to engage at all her affections therein for God alone is the life of her Spirit without whom she finds her self both poor and miserable 'T is God only makes our Solitude amiable being a kind of participation of the Life of God which consists in knowing and loving This Solitary life is much endang'red and sometimes lost in a croud of Creatures nor can the Soul approach to them without some spiritual detriment She must therefore have a care not to leave her retirements to follow Worldly business unless it be by some inspiration from God or obedience to Superiours In which cases if she labours to do good to others it will be no prejudice to her self You may give them a hearing who tell you that 't is not well done thus to retire from the World for they may speak this out of Charity but yet without a true knowledge and understanding of your way To discern this aright we must have a care not to confound spiritual maxims some whereof are proper for a Contemplative others for an Active Life These are to be put in practice without partiality for otherwise we shall much disorder the ways of God and disquiet others Seeing the Active and Contemplative Life are different the practice must be different likewise The Active requires to spend much time to do others good both Spiritually and Corporally which cannot be done without abilities and possessions to relieve the poor These possessions cannot be kept without some care and trouble and this care of Temporals is suitable enough to the Active Life But damagable to the Contemplative which layes aside all Temporal Affairs least they should divert them from their principal employment which is the actual love of God and attention to his Divine presence The Active Life requires possessions to have wherewithall to give to the poor 'T is enough for the Contemplative to have himself in possession that he may give himself up wholly to God whereby he possesses him with great advantage Those that undertake this Solitary Life of Contemplation must expect sufferings on every side yea some spiritual men will account them Sycophants There 's little discourse of them because they live a hidden life and pass in a manner for unprofitable Persons They live unknown and die in abjection and living a despis'd life they are esteemed by too many but as the dust of the earth And which is the greatest cross of all if their Directors have not light and judgment in these matters they force them to an Active Life and so bring them off from their way and center with a continual rack and violence to their Conscience and Inclinations The Devil Persecutes them in their Solitudes endeavouring to divert them by disgusts or by Idaeas of great matters they shall do by helping others and that they ought to prefer the salvation of one only Soul before all their Prayers and Contemplations Notwithstanding all this they ought to continue constant to the Solitude to which they have a call from Heaven unless God give them different Inspirations to apply themselves to an Active Life Holy Abraham did quit his Hermitage upon these terms to search out his debauched Neece to save her Soul The truest Rule for Contemplatives either to continue or quit their Solitude is to observe the instincts and motions of God in their Interiour examin'd by skilfull Directors in those matters We must have a special care that in the eager pursuit of the things of God we do not withdraw our selves from the Divine Order concerning us in a course of spirituality Our great efforts must be not to do much but to please God And seeing God is pleas'd with a little from us though all we can do for his glory is always very little and almost nothing we must be content to do little since such is the order of his Providence Let every one go on in his own way with indifferency love and fidelity leaving others Peaceable in theirs with a great esteem of the Grace of God in them and continuing on our course 't is no prudence to discover the actings of God in us unless to such who are Practitioners in Contemplation Who has a call to Solitude and Contemplation must free himself from Creatures as much as possible shun discourses of News and reflections on Worldly Affairs unless constrained by necessity or Charity For a little matter will darken the Soul and hinder her from being elevated to God by Contemplation To conclude believe me a true Contemplation must be endowed with profound Purity of Virtue which cannot be attained by a constant Mortification of sensual nature which is no small and a lasting Martyrdom CHAP. IV. The Occupations of Solitude MEthinks for some days past I have had many inward motions inviting me to Solitude and Contemplation which notwithstanding did not relish with me because in such retirements we do little or nothing for the good of others But we ought to carry our selves above such considerations resolutely following the conduct of God with a firm adherence to his Orders In this faithful complyance with Divine Inspirations consists the Purity and Happiness of our Souls it being the principal work and most advantagious means to attain to Perfection and union with God O my God I am in a manner good for nothing you have not endow'd me with great Talents for the good of others But I must needs acknowledge your singular mercies to me in enriching my Soul with Divine love and continual aspiring after union with you Let others do what you have set them about 't is sufficient for me if the ardours of Divine Love inflame my heart To
co-operation O how did I discover clearly the abuses most men commit by profaning the Faculties of their Soul in employing them about Vanities and unprofitable Curiosities as are for the most part our Worldly Affairs We see not except in a Retreat and Solitude how Worldly business hinders the actual knowledge and love of God wherein consists the true Life of our Soul O the happy condition of true Solitaries O how great Wisdom is it to free our selves from Worldly Affairs the better to mind the one thing necessary that is to live a life Divine for which we were created Let us O my Soul flie from distractions and the amusement of Affairs which engage us in a thousand Discourses Vanities Extravagancies and Weaknesses Let us be Faithful O my Soul and give our selves up wholly to God that we may live up to the end of our Creation In my third Prayer this Truth made deep impression on me that the most Sacred Trinity made Man after the Image of God which afterwards being disfigured by sin the same adorable Trinity vouchsafed to imprint it anew and more exactly in our Holy Baptism when we are Baptiz'd In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost We owe our Christianity to this impression of the three Divine Persons We enter not into the Church but by this great and ineffable Mystery which is the foundation of our Catholick Faith I do not see that the Sacred Trinity brings forth any thing created of a more noble Production than a Christian the whole Machine of the World is less considerable for the order thereof is only Natural but a Christian is a Supernatural work wherein it seems the most Sacred Trinity takes delight to be born as it were anew by imprinting his Image in our Souls Shall we deface this Image to make our Souls deformed by some monstruous resemblance Yet this is that we do O my Soul when instead of carefully preserving the Image of the most Sacred Trinity imprinted on us by Baptism not considering the great Honour and Happiness we receive thereby we deform our selves by sin and deface this Image with unclean resemblances O my Soul when shall we be purified Flie from the World and betake thy self to a Holy Solitude For my fourth Prayer God was pleas'd to inspire me with this thought that my Conversation ought to be in Heaven already that is in God for 't is God is our Heaven and 't is in Him I ought to take up my Mansion seeing I was created to consider his Eternal and Temporal Affairs and to contemplate his Infinite Perfections I call the Eternal Affairs of God his Divine Interiour operations the generation of the Eternal Word the procession of the Holy Spirit and the Infinite Complacency which he takes in his incomprehensible Beauties and Grandeurs the Eternal Designs of the Mysteries of the Word made Flesh which was to be accomplish'd in the fulness of time in which however he took an Infinite satisfaction from all Eternity I call the Temporal Affairs of God the execution of his Divine Decrees touching the Mystery of the Incarnation and Passion of Jesus Christ the Creation of the World the Justification and Reprobation of Men God before all time having Infinite Sallies in himself by the Production of the Son and Holy Spirit hath in time had Sallies out of himself full of wonders and admiration O my God how a Soul enlightned from Heaven finds great joy and content in contemplating these Eternal and Temporal Verities out of which all is but deceit and vanity But how low Spirited are they who never attempt the knowledge of these Truths For my part I will never more stand in admiration to see the Holy Hermits forsake the World with intentions never more to return to earthly matters when once they have discover'd the Truth and Beauty of things Eternal and Divine O my God make me dead to the World that I may live to you alone and my Thoughts may be only taken up with your Perfections Second Day BEhold what suddenly comes into my mind about this great and incomprehensible Mystery I am wonderfully content to be in a state of inability to understand it in that the Powers of my Soul are led captive by Faith surrounded with Clouds This inability this obscurity this captivity are pleasing to me and for the future I 'll believe that there is no better way upon earth to please God then by submitting our understanding and will to his Revelations Yea I do more value this captivity to Faith in believing what I see not than all Splendours imaginable How is this submission of our Spirit naturally curious and inquisitive pleasing to God! How much hereby do we honour and glorifie him O glorious Saints with all due reverence I challenge you to be more in love with your Eternal Splendours than I am with these Clouds of Holy Faith If you be content I am no less to be so happy as willingly to captivate my understanding to the high Mysteries God has revealed And that which fills me with joy and makes me happy before I come to Heaven is to find my will in perfect submission to my God and to the meanest Creature for love of him O blessed Souls I am a little too bold with you yet I speak the Truth and ye well know it I aspire to Perfection of Divine Love and this submission is the way to practise it A way sure and excellent In my second Prayer I yet found my Soul taken up with the Grandeurs of this incomprehensible Mystery and being almost lost in this Ocean of infinite wonders was full of Faith and Sweetness at the sight of such adorable Perfections though all surrounded with clouds of darkness For as soon as this Mystery presents it self to the eye of the Soul her light is obscured and casts our Spirit into a thick darkness which yet brings with it a Light to see what reason cannot Nox illuminatio mea My night hath some day and I perceive the Infinite distance between the Creator and his Creature and being plung'd into the Abiss of my own Nothingness I acknowledge O my God and adore your Grandeurs and Perfections I admire I love I obey O my God I adore and believe stedfastly what you are pleas'd to reveal to your Church I neither know nor comprehend nor desire it but am content with my ignorance and submission Let us O my Soul abide as low and abject as Grace can make us for nothing renders us more pleasing to God than profound Humility and annihilation God who is infinitely delighted to dwell in his own Grandeurs is also well pleas'd to see an abject Creature content with its own nothing 'T is an error in Spirituality and savours of self-love to shun abjection under pretence to advance our selves in Divine Love O my Soul let us comply with Gods will and march on in the ways of abjection if God be pleas'd
wherein consists their Felicity The Father is the source of Being the the Son the term of his Knowledge and the Holy Spirit of his Love The Son and Holy Ghost are from the Father The Father and the Holy Spirit know the Son The Father and the Son love the Holy Ghost These are the wonders that make Heaven Happy Firmly to believe them is our Blessedness on Earth and to Contemplate them continually brings solid consolation to the Soul I saw clearly that to dispose my self for this incomparable Happiness I was to purifie my Interiour and to mortifie some natural resentments which yet live in me As namely too great a fear about the loss of Worldly things or to be despis'd by others or ill success of Affairs besides too great a sense of humane respects and a backwardness to follow the instincts of Grace for worldly considerations I know God sometimes suffers these Imperfections to live in us for the exercise of Virtue and the Tryal of our Fidelity However his will is that we strive to be dead to the World and our selves having our affections so fix'd on Heavenly things as to live a Divine Life in Mortal Bodies Believe me 'till our Interiour be throughly purified we shall not not be capable of high contemplation nor arrive to much knowledge in the secrets of God Fourth Day IN my first Prayer I was principally taken up with the adorable Person of the Eternal Father Methought I saw how he was ravish'd with Infinite Joy in Himself with the Son and the Holy Spirit And what complacency he also took in the Suffering of the Humanity of Jesus Christ though he loves him with the same love wherewith he loves himself And because these sufferings were pleasing to his Divine Father as satisfactory for our sins he did thirst to suffer more to fulfill his will And therefore after such variety of dolorous sufferings dying on the Cross he cryed out Sitio I Thirst It much rejoyc'd my heart to see what Infinite Complacency the three Divine Persons took in the Divinity and said within my self O Sacred Trinity enjoy eternally these Infinite delights But I desire as much as I can to add to your Exteriour Contentments by imitating the suffering of my Blessed Saviour And herein I will not have so much an eye to the reward to please the Sacred Trinity whom I adore Behold then what hereupon it seems to me God put into my mind 1. To eat neither Fish nor Flesh but in case of Sickness 2. To Discipline every day 3. To be pleas'd with occasions of Contempt 4. To despise all Temporal things to follow the attracts of Divine Love 5. To lie down upon a hard Bed 6. To cut off all Worldly Visits and retire my self into a Solitude where the World may despise me I consider'd in my second Prayer that the Son of God in the bosom of his Divine Father in possession of Infinite Delights and Joys unspeakable out of love to his Father did quit his bosom and cloath himself with Mortal Flesh to plunge himself in the depth of Miseries abjection and sufferings that he might glorifie his Divine Father by his humane and suffering Life and teach us Men his Brethren that the way to enter into the Love and Glory of his Father is by the gate of Sufferings Is it You O only begotten Son of the Eternal Father is it You born in a Stable working in a Shop dying on a Cross You that are all Splendor and Glory the Light of the World and the Delight of Heaven Is it You that are so poor and abject so void of Friends so full of Disgraces so scorn'd and despis'd Is it You whom they esteem as the out-cast of men and not worthy to live on the face of the Earth O the Love of the Son towards his Father O the strange invention of the Son to advance the Glory of his Father O my Jesus how admirable are you in your Divinity But how amiable are you in your Humanity I desire O dear Jesus to follow you all the days of my life and seek no other Glory than in your Cross and Poverty your Humiliations and Sufferings Absit mihi gloriari nisi in Cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi The Cross of Christ is my Crown and Glory We ought not to possess Honours Riches and Worldly Preferments without Fear and Humility Have we not cause to fear that in a state of Worldly greatness Nature will seek her self and not follow Jesus poor and humble which ought to be done either effectively or in affection A state of Suffering under the Cross is truly Glorious and full of Interiour Consolation In my third Prayer I consider'd that the union of the Father with the Son and of the Son with the Father is by the Holy Ghost a union Infinite and adorable O Holy Spirit seeing 't is your property to unite unite my heart so intimately to the adorable Trinity present in me that I may never suffer a seperation and that this adorable union may be frequent in my Thoughts and Meditations Blessed be your Holy Name my God that you are pleas'd to be so merciful unto me as to take up my thoughts with this incomprehensible Mystery O how do I begin too late having been too long amuz'd with vain trifles My past Life displeases me and the course of the World is troublesome unto me seeing it hinders me from conversing with you as I desire Natural Necessities as to Eat to Sleep to Recreat are burdensom unto a Soul quickened with your Spirit strongly inclining us to live here on Earth as in Heaven in a perfect and perpetual union with your Goodness The consideration which took up my thoughts in my fourth Prayer was that the Eternal Son and Holy Spirit seem'd to have more commerce with men then the Eternal Father because they appeared to us by external Missions the Son being made Man for to die for us and the Holy Spirit taking divers forms for the Service of man and to enflame our hearts with Divine Love The Eternal Father seem'd always to remain in himself ravish'd with his own Infinite Beauties and Perfections O adorable Mansion of the Eternal Father within himself O wonderful Missions of the Son and Holy Spirit towards us Men and for our Salvation eternal matter of Adoration O my God when shall I go out of my self to elevate my heart to you and converse with you I see very well that to enter into a Spirit of Prayer Retirement is requisite Abstinence and Spiritual Exercises And to conserve the same temper of Soul we must practice silence as much as our condition and affairs will permit If the Son of God and Holy Spirit did appear here upon Earth only for our good certainly we ought to endeavour to have our Conversation in Heaven and adore the most Sacred Trinity for these Infinite Mercies Fifth Day MY first Prayer past in acknowledgment and admiration of the Fulness of
The poorer we are in Spirit the richer we are in Grace the more a Soul is nothing in her self the more God is all in her and is pleased to work great things for her Jesus presented himself to my spirit in my second Prayer discovering to me in general the different states of his life passive in his Sufferings active in Virtues and how he is the Origen and Source of all purity to which we aspire by a spiritual life I conceiv'd first That there 's a purity of suffering which is great indeed when we suffer without seeking relief carrying this Cross for God's sake as long as he pleases There is a purity of action when we act not whether interiourly or exteriourly but by the motion of God's spirit with pure intentions Here arguments of humane reason are cut off and we stir not without some impressions of Grace working only for God by his working in us We must labour hard and be perfectly dead to the world before we can come to this state of purity There 's a purity of intention when we have only an eye to the will of God to do what pleases him without acting upon other Motives though good and laudable wherein seems to be some self-interest as fear to offend to be faithful to God's call to be more loved and rewarded A Soul in this state has no regard to her self but solely to the will of God her End and Object There 's a purity of imployment when a Soul will not divert her thoughts from God but by Order from God himself by some motion of his holy Spirit Hence we shun unnecessary visits unprofitable words superfluous occupations and that is superfluous to one Soul which is not to another by reason of the different degrees of Grace imparted to them We must suffer many mortifications to attain this purity and such a Soul must fear nothing more than Infidelity This is but a branch of the purity of action There 's a purity of Virtue when we practice only what God will have us to do There 's a purity of spiritual delight when the superiour part of the Soul receives no consolations willingly from any Creature or sensual things but stands upon her guard to keep them out And there 's a purity of Prayer when the Soul elevated above her self by the workings of God in her is in extasie of spirit and united to God alone by contemplation A Soul that once has had a feeling of God in her sees an infinite difference between Him and the holiest Creatures and entring into a great interiour solitude converses with God alone All these sorts of purity appeared to me in the Interiour of Jesus as in their Source In my third Prayer I came to know that the mysteries or states of Jesus Christ are not only the exemplar but also the efficient of our states so that we suffer not only to imitate Jesus in his sufferings but because Jesus by his sufferings imprints on us the virtue of his spirit to give us the grace to suffer for him When we pray 't is not only to imitate Jesus in contemplation but because he infuses into our hearts the gift of Prayer by his holy Spirit And if a Soul arrive to that heighth as to possess Jesus Christ in an extraordinary manner he then does all in her and for her she being only pliable to his Divine Operations We cannot continue in this state without wonderful purity the least sally of immortified Nature will much endamage it How often has God been pleas'd to give me experience of this when Jesus uniting himself unto me in the holy Communion annihilates all my thoughts words and affections to become to me all things in me He is my Thankfulness my Offering my Humility my Charity my Prayers and I do nothing but remain united to him who works all for my Soul as it were annihilated in his presence Words as well as thoughts fail us in the presence of the WORD who pleads to his Fathers for those Souls he possesses in such a mysterious manner What marvels are there hidden beyond expression In my fourth Prayer I consider'd that being a Christian I had a strict obligation to follow Christ but besides that general tie I had a special vocation to imitate Jesus in his humiliations To follow him in this way with purity I must forsake all grandeur and be content with poverty and objection and labour stoutly for a perfect abnegation of my self Since God has given me a generous resolution to sacrifice my self wholly to his service I will follow his call though I die for 't Methinks I am enabl'd to do it with great peace and liberty of Spirit What evil can happen to me if I die for God who died for Me Those who choose to be poor out of desire to follow Jesus are peculiar Objects of God's care and providence which extends it self to all men but especially to those who are the lively Images of his Son He is their Father in a peculiar manner and sets a watch about them more than others For is it possible he should not give Bread to them who leave all their Temporals to serve him better and love him purer Let us stifle all humane reasonings on this subject let us go whither Grace calls us and fear nothing If we die in the service 't will be happy for us 'T is a great favour from God when we breath out our Souls in the flames of Divine Love Fifth Day Jesus Zelator of Souls IN my first Prayer I apply'd my self to Jesus as Zelator of Souls for whom he gave his most precious Blood I beheld what I could not comprehend that this Zeal of Jesus for the good of Souls was infinite It seemed to me that my Soul receiv'd some small portion of this holy Zeal and I was powerfully inclin'd to lay out my self for my Neighbours good offering my self to God to do and suffer what he pleased But I perceiv'd this Zeal for Souls must be infused into us we must not run before we be sent otherwise we shall neither do good for others nor our selves but disturb our Interiour and commit many disorders When this Zeal is kindled in our Souls by the breathing of God's holy Spirit it puts nothing out of order but we go in Perfection and advance in Prayer However all must be regulated by Prudence lest we out-run our call and hurt our selves while we would do good to others For our care must be to procure the good of others according to the grace conferred upon us Some in an active life by Preaching and Instructing some by works of corporal Charity others by offering up to God their contemplative life their Solitudes their Austerities their Sufferings their Prayers There are many ways to be instrumental for the good of others Let every one imploy his proper talent Our blessed Saviour being near his Passion left us as a Legacy this divine Commandment Love ye one
and Redeemer to lay out thy self upon the Creature and not correspond to his Inspirations who calls thee to himself What a horrible Infidelity would this be Let us not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom we are Sealed to the day of Redemption The subject of my third Prayer was the admirable Oeconomy of the Incarnation in that by the excess of Love and Goodness God was made Man and Man became God I had profound veneration for the adorable Humanity absorpt in the Divinity and with an amorous confidence beheld the Divinity as it were annihilated in the Humanity which seem'd to me as a Tabernacle of Honour where God dwelt with Infinite Delight This Humanity also in a manner diviniz'd takes Infinite Delight in the Divinity from whence it receives wonderful Impressions of Annihilation to be poor abject and despis'd Crucified For after God was made man he inspir'd the Humanity with ardent desires and love of Sufferings for us Men and our Salvation O Jesus when you communicate your self to a Soul she receives impressions from you which incline her to a love of Contempts and Sufferings And when a Soul feels in her self the greatest propension to Sufferings and Self-denyal 't is then she most participates of your communications and has the greatest assurance of them For O good Jesus your Spirit is full of such impressions from the Divinity and the Soul where you reign as King does Infallibly receive the like impressions from your presence In my fourth Prayer I was touch'd with a great desire to leave this Mortal Life so full of Sin and Misery and depriv'd of the Beatifical Vision of God my Saviour Oh how irksom is it not to be in a capacity to contemplate at leasure this Infinite Beauty this Essence full of Infinite Perfections this only true Object of the Loves of Heaven and Earth O when shall I be deliver'd from this Prison of Flesh that I may behold Jesus the Light of my Eyes and Joy of my Heart Must I yet continue longer in this banishment What a cross is it to live here What a punishment is the delay Death how welcom wilt thou be in my embraces We must languish with Love after the Infinite Beauty of Jesus Christ and sigh to enjoy him O my Soul do not amuse thy self with Creatures love the Cross which is the high-way to Happiness Is it possible to believe in Jesus Christ and Love him and to languish with Desires to enjoy Him To stand much in fear of Death is a sign we have little desire to see the Infinite Beauties of God seeing Death only opens the gate of Paradice O Death thou art desirable come and put me in possession of the Object of my Love that I may live with Jesus who is the source of Life and the joy of the Blessed In the interim O my Soul let us have neither Love nor Life nor operation but what is in him and for him our Soveraign Happiness Vivit in me Christus Eighth Day Jesus our Light JEsus was present to me in my first Prayer as the Light of the World which discover'd to me such a Beauty in the Mysteries of our Religion with rayes of a new Light that I saw more then ever the vanity of the World and the strange Sottishness of such men who preferr'd the Darkness of Falsehood before the Light of Truth Insanias falsas The beams of this Light works wonders in a Soul for it leaves such impressions as bring her to know Truth in another manner then by the sole Light of Reason or Faith either If we be in the Closet of some great King in the dark we know well there be excellent pieces there we may know their number bigness and value of the Precious Stones the rareness of the Painting and what else we see not But when once the least light of day appears then we begin to have a view of all their Riches Beauties and Excellencies and the whole order of the Closet salutes our eyes and in admiration thereof we are taken with it in an extraordinary manner When it pleases God to give us a sight of his Divine Beauties discovering them to a Soul by the least Ray of his Heavenly Light then the Soul is wonderfully affected and being more then ever transported with admiration looks upon all things of the World as nothing Faith indeed gives us a certain assurance of her Objects but leaves in obscurity But one sole Ray from the Eyes of Jesus when he is pleas'd to dart it into a Soul doth confirm fortifie encourage and refresh her with Illustrations extraordinary and Soveraign consolations Accedite ad eum illuminamini We cannot approach to Jesus and not be enlightned I came to know in my second Prayer that when Jesus is pleas'd to manifest himself to a Soul he infuses a Light into her which gives her a marvellous Facility to believe the Verities of the Word Incarnate She has a certainty and as it were experience that his Thoughts his Words his Actions his Proceedings his Doctrine his Sufferings were Divine and brought a Soveraign Honour to the Divinity O Science of Jesus how art thou sweet and admirable All other knowledge in respect of thee is but ignorance and vanity I have by the great goodness of God had some little experience to know Jesus in this manner but I cannot express it The more this knowledge increases the less is it explicable The profound attention to Jesus does so take up my Spirit that it takes away my Speech It calls me from all Creatures to converse with him alone and draws me out of my self to be ravish'd with him O World how blind art thou not to see the Beauty of the Poor and abject states of Jesus His Doctrine and his Maxims are the only true Light All that thou hast O ignorant World seduced by the Prince of Darkness is but meer Darkness thy opinions thy imployments thy hopes thy fears thy desires thy entertainments are but Darkness and disorder thou stumblest almost at every step because thou walkest in Darkness out of which thou canst never get but by Jesus Christ For as the Sun is the principle of Corporal Light to the World so Christ the Sun of Righteousness is the source of all Spiritual Light and whom his Grace and Doctrine do not enlighten they wander in Darkness Ego sum Lux mundi qui sequitur me non ambulat in tenebris My third Prayer pass'd in continual astonishment in that I had so little known Jesus Christ and of that extreme blindness wherein I had liv'd At present I had almost a continual sight and a sweet and forceable inclination to regard this admirable Object so that I thought every moment lost which was not so imployed To behold him with amorous affections is a Cure for all my evils For when my Soul is afflicted with fears of loosing Gods favour or with experience of her Miseries or with difficulties about Perfection one
refuse the most charming and most tender embraces to the most unworthy and most perfidious of all his Enemies Judas whom Envy had already poisoned even to the heart whom Avarice had perverted and made a Thief Insensibleness had blinded and made ungrateful whom Malice had corrupted and made an Apostate a Traytor a very Devil yet this Judas in this condition that he was and in which Jesus saw him at the bottom of his heart is not excluded from the eminent Grandeurs of the Love of our Saviour which feeds this Demon with the Manna of Angels O Love how thou art admirable O Love how thou art invincible an abundance of waters cannot extinguish thy flames And now my Soul is it possible thou shouldst continue tepid and insensible while thou art near so great a Fire Hadst thou all the Ardours of the Seraphins thou wouldst still be too little on Fire to answer and reflect the Fires of that incomparable Love which inflames his heart when he comes to give himself to thee A good Religious Capuchin called Br. Bonaventure felt his Soul so inflamed with this Sacred Fire when he approached to the Holy Table that one day among others finding himself more than ordinary replenished with an Ardent desire to unite himself with God and seeing the most Blessed Sacrament in the Priests hand ready to Communicate him his heart seem'd to make strong efforts to leap out of his Breast and meet the only Object of its desires which also broke forth into words For the abundance of his Love forced out their amorous Aspirations My Jesu My Jesu My Jesu But to let both him and us know that the Love of Jesus in this unspeakable Mystery surpasses all ours in an Infinite measure the Holy Host quitted the Priest's hand and as it were all on a flame and encircled with Glorious Rayes of Light of its own accord flew into the Mouth of this worthy Servant of God CHAP. IV. Interiour Entertainments during Communion SOme times when I was Communicating it came into my mind to think that my heart was an Altar and that Jesus Christ came to continue upon it the same operations that he had performed on that Altar where the Holy Mass is Celebrated Wherefore my heart received him lovingly and simply united it self to all his Divine Operations relating both to his Heavenly Father and to Creatures And my Soul adhering to all his Adorations all his Sacrifices all his Love that he bears his Eternal Father became wholly passive like an Altar upon which Jesus does all that he pleases as well in regard of the Divinity as in regard of Men to whom he distributes and dispenses his Mercies It seemed to me that in the first place he apply'd himself to honour his Divine Father to annihilate himself before his greatness to love his Goodness and other Divine Perfections and then he turned himself to succour my weakness and shew his Mercies upon me by giving me a glimpse of what he is and a fight of the strick and close alliance whereby I ought to be united to him that I ought not to subsist a moment but by his Life that his Holy Spirit ought to animate my Soul and be the first spring of all its motion as my Soul moves my Body and is the Principal of all its operations That to live a Life purely Humane is a state wherein though a Soul does not offend God yet she cannot please him which is a thing Love cannot suffer nor will it endure that a Soul wherein it reigns should cease any one moment from pleasing her Beloved O Jesus enter into so absolute a possession of my Soul that she may be wholly yours and that she may never have any other motion than what your Grace gives her 'T is the great desire of my Soul which would not live to you partly and partly to Creatures but that all the actions of my Life be Consecrated to your Love I have need of a Powerful Grace O Jesu to continue thus elevated above my self in all sort of occasions But vouchsafe to magnifie your Omnipotence in my weakness your Mercies in my Miseries Another time after Communion I had represented to me the manner how all the Interiour Faculties of Jesus Christ in his Mortal Life did most worthily Glorifie his Eternal Father All the parts of his Holy Soul were taken up in this imployment the Intellectual Powers of the Superiour part the Beatifical Vision and Fruition the Inferiour part and his Body by a most perfect Suffering I saw the admirable connexion which was between these so different states and their joynt accord to Glorifie the Eternal Father And the wonderful Oeconomy of this Sacred Interiour charmed my Soul I continually offered it up to God in the pressures I lay under in the midst of my troubles I entred into these Holy Dispositions and united my Sufferigs with his my Actions with his Divine ones This disposition remains deeply imprinted in me and serves me for a comfort and support upon all occasion of our contempt pains or any other affliction Another time my Interiour entertainment during Communion was after this manner I consider'd that a Christian has but two concerns in this Life how to maintain the Life of Nature and that of Grace thereby to arrive to that of Glory Generally men think of nothing but the first though it be of no consequence and but for a moment besides that is full of Miseries and they forget the second which is Eternal and Infinite importance yet scarce any body minds it for every one lives in the darkness of Imperfection and the blindness of Sense O what a Misery And on the contrary how Happy are they who set no value but upon the Life of Grace and consequently love those Exercise which nourish and improve it as Mortifications Prayer frequent Communion O how clearly do I see that I ought to disingage my self from Temporal Affairs to apply my self more fully to the Exercises of the Life of Grace and to pure Prayer I made another time my Action of Grace after this manner An attention to the Presence of God before Communion had raised in me a great and awful respect towards that most Sacred Majesty before whom the highest Seraphins in Heaven do tremble The like impression continued in me also after Communion My Soul was all adoration seeing the adorable Jesus was become her Guest His Presence heightned my respect as being the source of all Graces and of all good Dispositions I saw himself also sometimes paying a profound respect to God the Father and then I plunged my self deeper and even lost my self in those Divine Respects unwilling to come out of them And fearing least some persons should come to visit me and interrupt my Devotion I hid my self that I might remain thus wholly plunged in this Sentiment of Reverence which Perfumed my Soul CHAP. V. Other Interiour Entertainments to give Thanks after Communion THe Dispositions most frequent
in Corporal Infirmities I have a mind to call my Hermitage the Hospital of the Incurable and only to lodge with me such poor Spiritual Christians who have a good will to heal their Imperfections but yet still fall into relapses At Paris there 's an Hospital for those who are Incurable in Body But mine shall be for such in Soul The end of the Sixth BOOK BOOK VII Of Ordinary Prayer and Contemplation CHAP. I. What Esteem we ought to have for Prayer WE must have a great care not to place Perfection where it is not for this will much retard us in the path of Virtue We must not therefore have too great an esteem for the Unitive Mystick way not but that it is good and very good for a Soul that God conducts to Perfection by such extraordinary Elevations But we may safely believe the Unitive Practical way to be as excellent and more necessary seeing 't is nothing else but the practice of a Christian Life and the other consists in Elevations and Unions of Spirit with God by Contemplation 'T is observable that our Blessed Saviour says Whosoever will come after me must take up his Cross and follow me He says not he must be Elevated in Prayer but he must take up his Cross that is he must practice the Maxims of the Gospel Happy then are those who suffer although they be not elevated in Spirit And those who are elevated in Spirit are not happy but inasmuch as they are conform to Jesus Christ Crucified and by such Unions are more disposed to the Cross and Sufferings The Crucified Life is in a manner the end of the Mystick Life whose Gusts and Lights conduce to fortifie the Soul to carry her Cross the better St. Teresa says That 't is a good sign after a Soul has been in an extasie if she find in her self extraordinary desires to suffer in that she cannot return from those Holy Communications with God but well instructed For the Perfection of Love here consists in Suffering for the Love of Jesus and not enjoying him Let us not complain then if we be not elevated by Mystick Unions but rather rejoyce too see our poor Soul in Prayer among the Thorns of dryness and aridities than the Roses of a sweet and gustful Devotion Interiour as well as Exteriour Sufferings must be pleasing to us seeing a true Christian ought to Glory in nothing but the Cross of Christ But that did extend it self as well to his Soul as Body for his Divine Soul was deprived of sensible succours in this Dereliction on the Cross and we must Love to be conform to him and rest content Happy are those Souls that love Sufferings rather than Enjoyments and complain of nothing sooner than not to suffer A Soul which receives no great Light from God in Prayer but is left in darkness and Interiour Sufferings carries in reality a heavy Cross But a Soul illuminated in Prayer by illustrations from Heaven endures another Cross more intime and burdensom For this Light discovering to her the great merit of pure Suffering 't is a pain to her not to suffer and so she remains without all sort of consolation seeing the state of Light and Sweetness appear to her not preferrable to that of obscurity And so tasting of those Sweets they are not now so pleasant having discover'd that the bitterness of Aridities is more acceptable to a Soul that desires nothing but the pure Love of Jesus Christ Crucified and that thereby may be more firmly united to her Saviour When I am in Darkness and Aridities I stand in need of an indifferency in every state that I may bear with Patience my Abjection and Poverty I have more need of Indifferency when my Soul is enlightned which irradiations God vouchsafes us to strengthen our weakness and not as I have thought heretofore to advance us in the practice of Divine Love which is more eminent in the contrary condition I have stood in need of comfort in my Sufferings and I have stood more in need of it in a state of Joy and Sweetness I said heretofore when I abounded with Consolations that I should never suffer again At present I think I shall suffer as long as I live seeing I find Crosses in every state and I frame my self to an Indifferency to Gods will and Pleasure in his dealings with me Heretofore inebriated with Consolations I said Fulcite me floribus stipate me malis quia amore langueo Surround me with Flowers and Aples to augment my Comforts and increase my Love But now I say surround me with Crosses Contempts and Sufferings for languishing with Love I desire to Love Jesus better than ever 'T is a wonderful thing that I should be more poor now then when I was deprived of all Consolation I will not then too greedily seek after Light and Sweetness seeing methinks they make me poorer I stand amaz'd to see a Soul to find her self desolate by Consolation In Desolations the Inferiour part of the Soul suffers but in Consolations the Superiour part and more elevated but little known I perceive that the Supreme part of the Soul cannot be content and comforted but by the Death of the sensual part and a seperation from all inordinate Affections to the Creature I should therefore rather desire a state of Desolation and Fidelity therein than all the Delicious gusts of Prayer though so elevated as to bring the Soul to ravishing extasies CHAP. II. Of the different sorts of Mental Prayer I Find a comparison which explicates very well the difference of ordinary Prayer and Prayer Passive A man may see well enough the Furniture of a chamber and the riches of a Cabinet by striking Fire and lighting a Candle to view the particulars Or by the lighting of the Sun when we have nothing to do but to open our eyes to behold those Objects Meditation much resembles the first way of seeing with a Candle Perfect Contemplation the second way of seeing by the Sun because 't is done not only without labour but all at once and with delight When the Light of the Sun fails us we must supply it with a Lamp or Candle When God does not Communicate himself by Contemplation we must seek after him by Meditation and be content with Gods Gifts whatever they be with Peace and Humility When God withdraws his Passive Light 't is in vain to strive to retain it We must acquiess in his Pleasure 'till it return again as he thinks good If God please to leave us in darkness without Sun or Candle 't is an opportunity to practice Humility and Patience for we must desire nothing but God alone and in what manner he thinks best Let a Soul be never so perfect she is never continually elevated to a high degree of Contemplation but more or less as it pleases God she must descend to the practice of Virtue and exercises of Charity or to discursive Meditation by Applications to God in the
little or no Service but I rest contented herein seeing God hereby does magnify his Goodness and Mercy to me I doubt not but there are many Souls in Heaven who have in the eyes of the World done little Service for God as Solitares in the Deserts and many Persons without Talents and yet have high Places in the Mansions of Eternity They spent all their Time to purify their Interiour by being faithful to the Graces they have received from the infinite Bounty of God and the Service they rendred him to the Glory of his Name is only written in his Omniscience but will be laid open to the World at the great Day of Manifestation CHAP. V. Of the Impediments of Prayer I Clearly see and know by Experience that the temporal Affairs of our Oeconomy does not a little take us off from God We do ill in it yea it being our Obligation 't is pleasing to God to manage our Temporals with a good Intention though it would be better if we can to lay aside these Worldly Distractions to spend our time only in God's Service And those who have a Call from God to attend on him alone in a state of Prayer and Contemplation cannot without being unfaithful to his Grace continue in the solicitous Distractions of worldly Affairs I must needs say that Worldly Business darkens and hinders my Soul in her Spiritual Exercises and I would never spend time therein upon Humane Considerations but purely because God has so order'd it However it must be our care not to spend more time therein than necessity requires Too delicate Dyet though it may strengthen Nature yet it weakens Grace When the Body is brought down by Abstinence the Soul is more vigorous in her Elevations to God I find this true in me by Experience A Soul must be very well grounded in Grace that among temporal Imployments and worldly Cares can keep her self up in Fervour and Purity She meets with a thousand Occasions to move her to Anger Impatience Sadness and vain Joy and though she do not give way to them yet she is sensible of them and this must needs more or less disturb her Interiour Peace whereby she is united to God her Happiness A little thing will hinder a Soul from raising her self to Contemplation and a less matter will somewhat darken her when elevated because the least emotion of Spirit will indispose her to receive Divine Impressions Therefore a man of Prayer must be a man dead and mortified for that is not pure Prayer which does not work in us a victory over our Passions and Vicious Inclinations and bring us to the practice of all Christian Virtues I see now more clearly than ever that the Spirit of Prayer does not persevere and gather strength but in those who are dead to Sensuality austere to themselves Penitent and disengaged from whatsoever is not God 'T is true as for Corporal Austerities a tender Complexion must follow the Councel of a Director But commonly we are too indulgent to our selves and far from the practice of great Penitents who were very severe to themselves and also great Contemplatives We deceive our selves if we think to enter into a state of Prayer and take delight in Worldly things Though in rigour this may in some sort be permitted to Candidates of Devotion yet not to Proficients in whom the Spirit of Prayer and Conformity to Jesus Christ Crucified ought to be wholly predominant For 't is our Duty to live Conformably to that state where God has put us Gerson says very well If we refuse Exteriour Consolations we shall receive Interiour The reason hereof seems to me to be this because Interiour Consolations participate of the Purity of their source which is the union of God with the Soul and will not permit any mixture with Impurity and Imperfection For sensual Joyes and Consolations are Earthly Impure and Imperfect and consequently are contrary to the Spirit of Grace which makes the Soul pure and Penitent and Mortified to the things of this Life Moreover Interiour Consolations are slender participations of those Infinite Delights which God has in himself of himself and he is jealous of such favours not communicating them but to a Soul entirely beloved that takes no delight but in him alone But when earthly consolations enter into a Soul they draw her partly from God and so God withdraws his favours from her For this reason the Saints who would be wholly for God mortified themselves without reserve as much as humane weakness would permit that no sensual or Worldly Pleasures might have any part in their Affections but God alone Take courage O my Soul let us embrace the Cross and follow Jesus Christ who will conduct us through the garden of his Delights Let us not trouble our selves with Worldly Affairs unless we know 't is the Will of God for otherwise we shall find affliction of Spirit and decay in Spirituality Thrice happy is he who shuns multiplicity for this will dispose him to pure Love Many things seem to us necessary which serve but to entertain the corruption of Nature still working in us If God should severely examine all our Actions perhaps he would hardly find one in all respects well pleasing to him We too much follow Nature and our Humane Inclinations if Grace sets us a working we hardly go through with it but Nature creeps in some way or other to sully our Actions What is purely Natural cannot be Meritorious all merit proceeding from a Principle of Grace and therefore no Actions but what have an influence from Grace can dispose us to a union with God O how rare a thing is pure Virtue That which seems best is not for the most part without some blemish Those who have Illustrations from Heaven discover these Impurities others in the dark see nothing but grosser Faults and Imperfections From all this we may conclude that there are principally four great Obstacles which hinder for the most part the exercise of Prayer 1. To engage our selves in Worldly Affairs more than the order of God requires 2. To be too delicate and use very little Corporal Austerity 3. To practice little either Interiour or Exteriour Retreats and to have no Love for Recollection and for Solitude 4. Want of zeal and Courage in the ways of God and so living a Life meerly Humane by following our Naetural Inclinations But he shall never be a Man of Prayer who does not live a Super-natural Life and practice all Christian Virtues with a Faithful and Generou Resolution And Blessed is he who by his constancy in Spiritual Exercises has brought his Soul to such a temper that 't is in a manner as easie for him to Pray as breath Hic accipiet Benedictionem à Domino Misericordiam à Deo Salutari suo quia haec est generatio quaerentium Dominum He that thus seeks God while he may be found shall enjoy him there where he can never be lost CHAP.
he pleases without her knowledge or discovery Before the Soul can fix in this state she must suffer much from her imagination which will be still proposing her Representations Lights and Sentiments according to her usual practice but the Soul must quit all these to yield her self passive to the operations of God Yea even Spiritual Lecture at this time proves hurtful because it keeps up the ordinary way of working in the Soul Neither is this to tempt God seeing he will have the Soul to treat with him in this manner and her present disposition thus requiring she ought to be Faithful in complying with it There be many degrees of this denudation whereof I speak The first takes from the Soul what Lights and Affections she got discursive Meditations to give her in lieu thereof a more noble knowledge and love of God The second evacuates this knowledge by infusing particular and distinct notions of God The third after our way of conception is a pure and general knowledge of God by Faith The Soul must pass through these several dispositions as it pleases God to conduct her therein and remain in a perfect denudation adhering only to God and his good Pleasure We must not be discourag'd at the difficulties we shall meet with in this sublime exercise but prepare our selves to bear the Cross they must endure who are call'd to this state and contentedly loose our selves to be found in God Doubts frequently arise for although the Soul in this Prayer hath often assurances of her well doing yet this sometimes does not appear and the humane Spirit which is wholly blind herein is much terrified But when the Soul thus dies to her self and the World not by her own but the operations of God in her she is not idle as she may fear but disposes her self to receive the Divine enactions altogether extraordinary and Super-natural which are hindred in her by her own operations For the Humane Spirit must die before a new Super-natural Life can arise in her The Soul begins this passive Prayer by having an eye to God in himself confus'd and general After which she receives Divine Infusions as God sees good or remains suffering in a total denudation desiring nothing else but to suffer seeing she finds at present that this is the will of God The Soul cannot well give an account of what passes in her in this state of Passivity God working in her and by her what she knows not Only she sees obscurely that all goes well with her in her Interiour and that God is hers and that suffices And indeed she need not fear seeing a Soul thus passive and given up totally into the hands of God is more under the Sacred wings of his Protection than ever and belonging in a singular manner to his Providence Nor is it expedient the Soul should always know this work of God in her who would but hinder it by her reflections and complacences and therefore God keeps often from her knowledge for her good This passive Contemplation cannot be understood but by experience For God takes posseossin of the Soul in a much other manner than in active Prayer 'T is God that works his wonders as he pleases and the Soul receives the Divine operations co-operating therewith in a sort very sublime and Spiritual For the Soul is not idle but acts with a real activity elevated above her ordinary manner of working This is possible for the Blessed in Heaven are perfectly passive and yet very active their Powers working in a most sublime manner By how much the more our Prayer is pure it appears more passive in respect of us who apprehend not things Spiritual but by the service of our Senses The Soul in this state has daily experience of Divine impressions not only in Prayer but in many other matters according to that of St. Paul Spiritualis homo judicat omnia The Spiritual man discerns all things And this is wrought in a different manner for sometimes God immediately infuses his Light and Love into the Soul without any previous disposition sometimes by the looking on an Image sometimes by bringing to mind some passage in Scripture we have read before sometimes by a Sermon sometimes by Conference c. But 't is God always who works powerfully in the Soul these Exteriour things being only subservient to his Grace The Soul then makes no Acts but is wholly taken up with God and his Perfections or with Jesus and his states or the subject given her in Prayer I understood not this before this Light was Infus'd into me and now my former Exercises in Prayer seem nothing in comparison What is it that the Soul pretends to by her Meditations and Affections but to unite her self to God But when she does already possess him she needs not but to repose her self in him and live in him and of him as she desires And all the Sacraments especially the Holy Eucharist serve only to establish and plunge her more deeply in God Oh how rarely does a Soul free her self from all her own operations And yet that hinders her perfect union with God She leaves him to come to him again when she had nothing to do but to keep close to him I observe that upon my waking my Soul has an eye to Jesus Christ and reposes her self as in his bosom by whom she finds her self attracted to the Contemplation of the Divinity by the Light of Faith This Divine Idaea of Jesus Christ eclipsed all the Images of Creatures and at last my Soul was insensibly lost in a general and amorous knowledge of God and afterwards she perceived no more of what God wrought in her being then environed with Darkness which clouded the Light of her understanding I also laid aside all Exteriour occupations except such as I saw clearly God required of me Spiritual Entertainments Actions of Charity Visiting the Poor c. To intermedle much with such like things does take up the time for Prayer and Contemplation which is my chief and principal affair And as I ought to serve God in a denudation of all Creatures so I ought to be dis-engaged from too many Exteteriour occupations to treasure up time enough with Mary Magdalen for the one thing necessary And because Solitude and Retirement from Worldly Conversation do much cherish this manner of Life I must embrace it as much as possible But however with a high esteem of the Exercises of the Active Life which are excellent in the order of Divine Providence Sometimes the string is to be slakned a little to divert my Thoughts by Recreation or Exteriour Actions I have known Solitaries that have done so for the preservation of their Health and advancement of their Spiritual Exercises I know very well that my Life has been too much taken up with amusements and therefore now I ought to be more Solitary and retir'd otherwise I shall not be Faithful to the Grace of my Vocation nor conform my self to
THE Interiour Christian OR THE Interiour Conformity WHICH CHRISTIANS Ought to have with JESUS CHRIST Divided into Eight BOOKS which contain most Divine Meditations Extracted out of the Writings of a great Servant of God of this Age. Non magna loquimur sed vivimus St. Cyprian Not our Tongues but our lives speak the Excellency of Christianity Translated out of the 12th Edition in French Antwerp Printed in the year 1684. THE EPISTLE TO THE READER Christian Reader IN this unhappy Age of Contentions about Religion wherein the heat of Controversy hath so much cooled the fervour of true Devotion among us that even some great Pretenders to Piety have only an outward form of Godliness without the inward Power like guilded Sepulchers full of dead-mens Bones it cannot but be very seasonable to teach all those who believe in Jesus how to be real and Interiour Christians Now in my Judgment this Book written in French and often Printed for its Excellency has so well presented to the eye this Heavenly Lesson that I would not let so precious a Treasure lie hid to the greatest part of our Nation in an unknown Language but have taken Pains to expose it to the publick view for a publick Good and God give a Blessing to my Endeavours If you ask me What is it to be an Interiour Christian I 'le briefly tell you An Interiour Christian is one who being well grounded in Faith walks with God in simplicity of Heart and Purity of Intention loves him above all things serves him Faithfully endeavours to please him constantly and had rather die than willfully by mortal Sin break friendship with him There 's no Devil he hates worse than Hypocricy his chiefest care being to be really in the sight of God what he appears to be in the eyes of Men Yea he is more inwardly then he seems outwardly as well considering that God who sees our hearts will reward us accordingly We may say of the Interiour Christian what our Blessed Saviour said of Nathanael Ecce verè Israelita in quo non est dolus Behold Joh. 1. a true Israelite in whom is no deceit And he may truly say of himself with good Hezekiah O Lord I have walked before thee in Truth and with a Perfect Isa 38. Heart and have done that which is good in thy sight And he may say also with St. Paul Herein do I exercise my self to have a Conscience Acts 24. void of Offence towards God and towards Men. And therefore may safely say with the same Saint else-where Vivo ego jam non ego vivit verò in me Christus 'T is not so mueh I that live as Gal. 2. Christ who lives in me Making me a new Creature by Internal Sanctification whereby I become Crucified to my Lusts and dead to the World that I may live to him who died for me Now we must know that there are infinite degrees of Internal Sanctification and the least degree is sufficient to put us in Gods favour and the state of Salvation and make us really Interiour Christians As the least Pigmy is as much essentially a man as the greatest Gyant This I mention least some timerous and well-meaning Souls who really endeavour to please God in sincerity of Heart reading in this Book and other Spiritual Authors more sublime and elevated wayes of advancing our union with God then they experience in themselves or perhaps ever shall in this Life should he discourag'd and tortur'd with scruples as if they did not serve God as they ought and were not truly Interiour Christians I must put such Souls in mind of what St. Paul tells us That there are diversities of Gifts but the 1 Cor. 12. same Spirit dividing to every man severally as he will and pleases Some indeed are wonderfully elevated Saints rapt with St. Paul into the third Heaven ravish'd in an extatical manner with the Glimmerings of Glory and those joyes which may be felt but are inexpressible Such Contemplations and Unions with God are rare and admirable Others in their Re-collections and mental Prayer receive from Heaven Divine Visits and wonderful Illuminations which direct them how to purifie their Hearts more and more and to advance in Piety and Godliness These are great Proficients and walk in a region of Light above ordinary Christians But if Gods Holy Spirit has not vouchsaf'd us these special Gifts and Graces we ought not to be discourag'd in our Pious Endeavours but rest contented with our present state in the course of our Devotions if upon severe examination of our Conscience we find that with Zakariah and Elizabeth we really endeavour to walk in all the Commandments of God blameless and dayly make it our work to conquer our selves to mortifie our Passions to kill our Inordinate Desires and to make a progress in the wayes of Holiness This is sufficient to entitle us to Heaven and make us Interiour Christians though without raptures and extasies without visions and unions extraordinary without wonderful irradiations in mental Prayer which God only vouchsafes to some special Favourites Think upon this and be content with what measure of Grace Heaven bestows upon thee walking with God in true Humility of Soul and Spirit 'T is not much material good Reader in what order thou readest these excellent Instructions every Treatise containing a Compleat Subject independent on each other But my advice is to make those more familiar to thee wherein thou findest most gust and Spiritual profit to thy Soul This I am sure of whatever order thou observest they will highly conduce to the end they were written namely to withdraw our hearts from the Love of the World and to advance our Union with God by taking up our Cross to follow Jesus This is the Spirit and Soul of this Book and I heartily wish it may work these effects in every Reader In the perusal whereof Remember in thy Prayers Thine in Christ Jesus A. L. ADVERTISEMENTS I Thought good Courteous Reader to explain some terms frequently occurring in this Treatise to prevent mistakes in such who are not accustomed to such expressions The word Annihilation is not to be taken Physically but Morally Now a Moral Annihilation is to acknowledge our selves as St. Paul tells us Not able so much as to think a good thought as of our selves But that all our sufficiency is of God for whom is both the Will and the Work in Meritorious Actions Gratia Deisum id quod sum By Grace we are saved Our nothing our ruine self-destruction Poverty of Spirit are terms which for the most part signifie the same thing as Annihilation So that to ruine or destroy our selves is to bring our selves to this Annihilation Annihilation in some places signifies to be content to be thought of by others as of no worth or good for nothing an unworthy person of reputation And in this Sense 't is often applyed to our Blessed Saviour But that the Reader may the better
interests to advance God's glory A Soul ought to be well-pleas'd that her body shall be crumbled to dust and as it were reduced to nothing to exalt the Glory of God and glorifie his Justice A holy person much wondred how the Saints who are powerful with God kept their bodies so long entire not obtaining that they might be humbled by putrefaction because they knowing the inestimable value of humiliation which most glorifies God ought as it seems to have procur'd it to their bodies But if God think best to glorifie himself by preserving them from corruption his Divine Will is and must be the Rule of their desires Sometimes I have desired death as amiable because it would give me free access to enjoy God but at present I have the spirit of annihilation This annihilation is a state above that of death and by it we offer a perfect Sacrifice A Soul which seeks the Glory of God desires death to enter into this perfect annihilation What is most horrible in Death paleness deformity noisomness putrefaction pleases her best for these are companions of a perfect annihilation to humble her as much as possible O death how lovely art thou to such a Soul 'T is a strange thing that the fire of Divine Love burns no brighter in our hearts upon the frequenting of the Sacraments Oftentimes we exercise our selves twice a day in mental Prayer sometimes by holy Conferences daily Lectures and Considerations Now I think the cause of this is that we are sad dejected with abjections which so chills the heart that the fire of Divine Love is stifled thereby but when once humiliation is a joy unto us the heart presently becomes enflamed My Soul having a great degust of this life feels a wonderful desire of death she never was more sensible than now of her Captivity and Prison in this mortal body She sighs after the liberty to see God and enjoy him without any disturbance whatsoever for all created things do divert this happy exercise in which consists her felicity Being a Prisoner in this Body she is yet in darkness and distractions by eating sleeping several affairs and accidents O how is she crucified in being deprived of the full Embraces of her Beloved Quis me liberabit de corpore mortis hujus This made St. Paul earnestly desire to be freed from the Prison of this mortal body I admire the happiness of those who die in our Lord and do wonder at the blindness of of such who passionately desire this present life and are taken up so much with the care of the Body Goods Employments which are so many impediments of our converse with God and Christian Perfection O how importunate is sensuality with us and yet how contemptible is every thing that is not God! We ought not to be discomforted at the loss of temporal things because thereby some chains of our Captivity are broken Much less ought we to be troubl'd to see our Body the Prison of our Soul to weaken by degrees and threaten death Take courage we shall soon see our desires accomplish'd and shortly we shall enjoy God in full possession This state of desires and languishings after God is a state whereby we honour him as our final happiness and being so he deserves by reason of his excellence that we should continually sigh after him Such as have no love for their final end make no matter of it and give too much evidence that they find their repose in something else which is a most dreadful disorder But considering our happiness by death methinks I see nothing more lovely than crosses and abjections which can only refresh a Soul panting after the full possession of God and sometimes so content with it that she forgets the pain of her banishment seeing her self in a state wherein she may glorifie God in so transcendent in a manner which is what she chiefly desires aspiring to enjoyment without having regard to her proper satisfaction CHAP. XVIII Considerations upon the natural inclinations we have to evil A Stone held in the Air if let go falls naturally to the ground by its own weight and 't is no more matter of wonder when we fall into imperfections If God leave us to our selves we are presently in our own nothing weakness and infirmity And if the Grace of God was not very great unto us we should fall more often They may be thought valiant who bear up stoutly against the blast of strong temptations Alas take us at the best we are as frail as Glasses on a Cupboard If some are sooner broken 't is because they are more used and found in the hand of an ill manager Those that stand still on the Cupboard if they had reason would not brag of their strength but only acknowledg that they have not been tryed by occasions When the Grace of God keeps us from falling we ought not to take complacence therein as if we were better than others by reason of such Divine Favours but our content ought to be in the good pleasure of God who is so munificent to his Creatures yea the most unworthy To be thus pleas'd only with God's will is also very necessary when it is God's pleasure to leave a Soul to combat with some singular imperfection a long time without victory For it being the will of God to leave a Soul thus to fight it out she ought to be as well content as if she was more elevated by Grace seeing in this state she meets with the Divine pleasure which is the object of her complacency Insomuch that the Soul has no more inclination for one Grace than another but indifferent to all being content to have her faults made known to glorifie God by the love of abjection Secret faults do us the greatest hurt when manifested if we make good use of it they may bring no small advantage to us I have at present a wonderful distast of this Life which is hardly a Life but a continual Death because it deprives us of knowledg and and love in perfection O how this mortal life is a great punishment and full of Crosses Here we sin here we forget God and run a hazard to lose him eternally Love here finds little nourishment being fed with slender knowledg sometimes much clouded and continual propensions to evil Dear Saviour when will you deliver me from the body of this death This was the desire of St. Paul which I take the courage to make being so much out of love with this miserable life The End of the first BOOK BOOK II. Of the Supernatural Life which is the Life of all true Christians CHAP. I. The Idaea or description of the Supernatural Life WE can never attain Perfection by the sole conduct of human reason which is the light of Philosophers Faith is the light of Christians which teacheth us to renounce the ratiocinations of carnal prudence to follow in simplicity a Jesus Crucified To observe the Commandments of God as
delight is to honour the eternal Father which is best effected by this means A faithful Soul will never part with an esteem and love of the Cross as to the Interiour because her desire is to please God and we best please him by humiliations Let us well ground our selves in this exercise of the designs of God who would have us conformable to his Son and consequently to have a love for sufferings and abjections Whatever disposes us to this conformity ought to be precious to us as few natural Talents Sickness ill successes and the like The Spirit of the World and Nature find therein their punishment but the Spirit of Jesus Christ takes pleasure therein and so advances a faithful Soul to Perfection We are not yet spiritualiz'd if we be not faithful to the love of sufferings and abjections And we are not faithful herein if we are not content with those things that humble us and cause abjection A right prospect of abjection and sufferings is supernatural and delicate and requires time to bring it to perfection and must be first tried in our selves before we extend it to others As for my particular when I see a person in great misery and poverty I am not much troubled at it because I consider the real good that Soul may procure to her self by this abjection On the contrary I am in fear for those who are advanced to Honours and have great natural abilities for the difficulty they must needs find to curb the Spirit of Nature and the World and bring them off from the love of these things which are so powerful in them and hinder in them the love of Jesus Christ Let us therefore remember that the purity of Virtue consists in a faithful tendance to abjection and suffering and by how much a Soul is more faithful herein the greater advancements she makes in Virtue Abjection being as the centre of the Soul the more she is humbled the nearer she draws to her repose and by consequence has a greater feeling of God in inward peace A Peace that the World nor Nature can ever give us a Peace that passeth all understanding CHAP. VI. The sublimity of the Christian Life NOthing but God made man poor annihilated sacrificed could honour God according to his greatness The designs of the eternal Father to this end are admirable full of Divine Wisdom of unspeakable Love and Mercy towards Man and most ardent Zeal for his own Glory O the wonderful oeconomy that discovers it self in all the mysteries of the Word Incarnate O the ineffable mystery of Jesus By you the eternal Father is loved glorified honour'd and his Justice satisfied to the utmost rigour In this mystery is contain'd an inexplicable Commerce and Trafique of God the Father with his Son the Interest of his Glory in the Salvation of mankind The will of the eternal Father was that his Son should be incarnate circumcised poor scorn'd and crucified and the Son of God in all these states of his life intended thereby to render to his Father all the humiliations respects love and adoration which were due unto him These are the annihilations which so much elevate and exalt the Christian Reliligion to these she owes her grandeur and excellence O amiable eminent and excellent Religion how unknown art thou to wordly men who tast no sweetness but in sensual pleasures O Christian Religion how art thou admirable how art thou ineffable whose chief business is to employ your Children with the Divine Trafique of the eternal Father with his Son Incarnate When thy Heavenly Lights shine upon a Soul she sees the deceit the vanity and pitiful baseness of the thoughts of those men who love not God nor aim at his Glory O my Soul how wretched wilt thou make thy self if thou follow thy sensual appetite and walk not in the ways of Jesus Christ But this we cannot do of our selves but by Grace and Power of the same Jesus who is our hope and only helper We ought to bear no less respect to the Maxims of a supernatural Life than to Jesus Christ who hath establish'd them seeing we ought to believe that they are full of Divine Wisdom and ineffable Sanctity To have no esteem for poverty contempt and humiliations is to undervalue the Wisdom of Jesus Christ Some are so brutish as to be led only by sensuality others follow only the light of Reason and human Prudence but neither of them know the excellency of Christianity but such only who are conducted by the light of Faith O Life supernatural how sublime art thou How dost thou so elevate a Soul as to become blind to things here below yea to her self and to see nothing but God in her by the rays of Grace Be pleased O Divine Spirit of Jesus to bestow upon us some part of this holy life which the world can neither receive nor know Quem mundus non potest accipere nec scit eum as St. John testifies The world cannot receive it being wholly taken up with Creatures nor can know it being blinded with sensuality What a malediction is this But what a happiness is it to know and embrace this supernatural life This was wrought in the hearts of the Apostles who return'd with joy to be found worthy to live this life that is to be whipt and despised for the name of Jesus Verily if there was nothing to suffer here I know not why we shou'd desire to live here We should endeavour to imitate that great Saint who suffer'd a greater Martyrdom among Roses and Suavities than by Racks and Tortures Worldly pleasures are a kind of torment to a Soul that loves Jesus Christ crucified Let us take a resolution O my Soul not to be pleased but with the Cross and when that does not relish let us please our selves with our own annihilation seeing the Creature is nothing in effect but what she is in the sight of God But she is no more in his eyes than inasmuch as she is a Christian and she is no more a Christian than inasmuch as she loves this supernatural life While then we are too sensible of a suffering condition we have no great share of the spirit of Christianity that is of the spirit of Jesus abject suffering and annihilated CHAP. VII There are divers degrees of this Supernatural Life GOD has been very gracious to us to draw us out of nothing but more gracious and merciful in withdrawing us from sin and the occasions of displeasing him But the choicest of his favours is to advance us from a common to a supernatural Life That is when the eternal Father does lead us into the states of the mortal life of Jesus by abjections sufferings and annihilations which is the choicest of his Mercies and Favours on Earth because thereby we bring to him the greatest Glory A Soul is not all at once elevated to the perfection of this life But as soon as she beholds the beauty thereof being
pleasing to him And seeing this exercise of the supernatural life does bring with it a universal Peace and this Peace cannot be preserved without suffering contentedly all injuries whatsoever this excellent life does teach us holy Patience Now this Patience preserves this Peace and this Peace brings with it an admirable Liberty and Resolution to mind principally the One thing necessary which is to give up our selves to God and his direction CHAP. X. Our greatest happiness on Earth is to profess the way of Christianity I Have a great resentment of joy and thankfulness to see my self a Member of Christ's Church and in the number of the Faithful I have a sensible taste of this happiness which is incomparable O my God! what shall I return unto you for having prevented me with this signal mercy why have you chosen me out among so many thousands Alas this is the excess of your sole bounty to me To be a Child of the Church O what a happiness is this 'T is of more worth than to be Monarch of the whole world The Church is the Congregation of the Faithful that is of those who believe and confess Jesus Christ and have no other Maxims nor Sentiments than his O my Soul let us then live as becomes our Profession that Jesusmay live in us according to his holy will and inclinations To be a Member of Christ's Church is to be a person who ought to have an affection for humiliations and crosses to be well content not to thrive in the world and to advance in Virtue by opprobrious usage and contradictions What a misery is it to see us live so little in the exercise of Christianity We account it an honour to be in authority to be well descended to have a generous spirit but to be a Christian we are affraid to own it by our actions O the beauty that adorns our Christian Profession How wonderful is it and yet how little esteemed by us I shall be very honourable and happy to keep that with me when other things are gone and vanish'd O how amiable are the Maxims of a supernatural life in what an excellent order do they put all things They give to every one what is their due to God all Honour and Glory and to me a wretched sinner Contempt and Confusion For I ought to consider my self as a centre of all miseries and deserved punishments God is the Centre and Object of all the adorations of Men and Angels Glory is his just tribute but to me belongs confusion If I should be beaten disgracefully I ought to take it with contentation to see Justice so well done to me on this occasion And if I was truly animated with the spirit of Christianity I ought as much desire to be humbled as worldings thirst after Honours Praises and Preferments 'T is a supernatural disorder not to love Ignominies and not to endeavour the destruction of our corrupted Nature Jesus hath built his Mystical Body on the ruins of our Natural Body and we cannot form in us the same life of Jesus without the ruin of ours that is to say our natural life according to our depraved inclinations Poverty Pains Contempts your dear Companions good Jesus make sometimes my heart ake and then again they refresh me breathing forth such sweet Perfumes as chear my spirits A Perfume that purifies and calms my Soul into a fit temper to converse with you I will now wonder no more that your Spouses run after you in the Odour of your Perfumes A Perfume that doth strengthen me to accomplish the desires I have to be conformable to you My heart dilates it self with hope to see that happy day in this life when I shall be free from all molestation of Creatures and have some participation of the poverty and abjections of Jesus crucified We cannot live here without some Director or other for either the Humanity of Jesus will direct us or the Humanity of Adam will govern us If we live the life of Christianity the First will conduct us and impart to us such directions as his holy Soul receiv'd from the Divinity which are all for the Cross and humiliations If we love only a human life the Other will guide us in the ways of self-love 'T is as great a miracle for a Soul to live a supernatural life as for a stone to elevate it self into the air because the corruption of sin hath made the Soul so heavy that of her self she cannot but tend downward to sin and misery This is that which magnifies the power of Grace in us So that it is a prodigious vanity to boast of our good actions when being done by the supernatural power of Grace they are not the fruits of human Nature If a Soul loses the sight of the light of Faith she will soon lose her self in the Mist of self-love If she does not live in a continual mortification by curbing her natural appetites she must needs fall into superfluities and imperfections The sweetness and joy that a Soul receives from austerities crosses poverty denudation of Creatures makes her spiritual peaceful chearful and affords her solid content and satisfaction The content and delights she receives from sensual pleasures though lawful as Meat and Drink temporal successes Reputation c. make her carnal and afford her but a false peace and vain joy and instead of elevating her to contemplation do more or less depress her to sensuality CHAP. XI That Truth is only found in the Spirit of Christianity the rest is Vanity WHen the beams of the light of Faith are darted into a Soul they discover to her that there 's nothing true indeed but the verities of Christianity which Jesus came from Heaven to teach us and all the rest but deceit and vanity O what happiness is it for a Soul to be thus irradiated Then she begins to know how she hath been enveloped with darkness and dwelt in obscurity O what joys do now refresh her How rich and glorious is she in perceiving that what she thought to be true Riches Glory and Joy is false and counterfeited and in reality but poverty infamy and sorrow These heavenly Illustrations do open her eyes to see perfectly the vanities of this world which now she values not but Jesus is her only joy her life and verity Whatsoever is not Christian that is to say according to the Maxims of Christianity she esteems now as folly death and perdition and what to the world and the flesh is folly death and perdition she accounts to be wisdom life and the greatest gain O when the rays of this light do pierce a Soul how on a sudden becomes she knowing content and elevated 'T is hardly credible how much such a Soul is alienated from her self and whatsoever is not God She sees so much wisdom in the folly of Saints and so much beauty in their miseries that all the allurements of the world cannot win her affections For having been taken
Behold whither a Soul is conducted whom many think good for nothing O how the judgments of men are different from the thoughts of God! Let then every one honour God by the way and life that is proper for them otherwise they will fall into perturbations of spirit and being disquieted will become troublesom to themselves and others But this is not the work of a day we shall find it a hard task to become dead to the world and our selves Every state is good yea the most abject All Grace is excellent yea the least and meanest There are many sorts of Graces which we perhaps do not much value and yet are really to be more esteemed than Visions Rapts or Revelations To labour and suffer for God is of greater worth than Extasies 'T is a truth well enough known by many though practis'd but by few that a little matter hinders the operation of God's grace in us One only small natural inclination unmortified suffices to retard our progress to perfection For this reason we must exactly die to all Creatures annihilate in us every motion that tends not to God some way or other As for example To give no refreshment to the body by meat drink or sleep c but for necessity We must also mortifie in us the desire of Honour and temporal Commodities yea love abjection pains and poverty willing nothing but what may conduce to advance God's glory I more value the union of a Soul with God in humiliations and sufferings than in consolations CHAP. XIII Some Maxims concerning a Supernatural Life O God! what a poor Christian am I in occasions of tryal I have imprinted in me some Idaea's and Sentiments of a supernatural Life but when it comes to put them in practice my timerous Nature shrinks and makes excuses to shun sufferings and then the occasion being over I have great regreat for not being couragious and come to know thereby my little Virtue and small Perfection I then see that the rule of Perfection is the conformity which we have with Jesus crucified poor and abject When that is great our Perfection is great also But that I find I have little or no affective conformity with Jesus crucified Behold here those lights and directions I have learnt by conference with a holy person and are good for my practice and solid establishment in a supernatural life 1. We must accustom our body to austerities exercising it with loving chastisements for our own transgressions and the sins of others 2. We can never attain to contemplation and a perfect love of the Divinity but by passing first by Jesus crucified poor and abject We see him poor and despised attended with few followers because we refuse to walk in those rough paths he hath set before us 3. We must have an ardent love for solitude and recollection to the end we may be wholly for God and correspond faithfully to the inspirations of his holy Spirit And although we ought to have a general indifferency to all states and calls of God yet 't is better to incline rather to retirement and solitude not meerly to enjoy the sweetness thereof but that we may not be wanting to co-operate with the Grace of God vouchsaf'd unto us Holy solitude is the region of Divine Communications Ducam eam in solitudinem loquar ad cor ejus saith God by the Prophet I will lead a Soul into solitude and speak interiourly to her heart 4. The reason why we see so few even devout Christians make progress in perfection is because they limit the Grace they have received hindring its enlargement by natural arguments and human prudence They say 'T is enough for me to do this or that I ought not to aspire to so high perfection those who live in the world cannot be so elevated in the ways of God These and such-like excuses they make which hinder the Grace of God from working fully what he intended If we did but consider the ardent desire that Jesus hath to advance Souls in the ways of Divine love and how ready he is to bestow on us new Graces upon our faithful corresponding with the former we would be both ravished and ashamed also to be so backward in giving our selves up to the conduct of God who desires nothing so much as that we may love him perfectly and enjoy him eternally But as while Jesus was on Earth 't is said of him That the world knew him not and his own received him not for seeing him born in a Stable circumcis'd as a sinner live poorly as a Carpenter persecuted accused condemned to die an infamous death on the Cross they wou'd not take him for the promised Messias so as yet he is not well known and many Christians themselves do not receive him nor let his Spirit and Maxims reign in their hearts Yea some who profess the way of perfection do not as they ought esteem and embrace his humiliations and abjections For we too much desire Honour and Preferment and too much fear abjection and suffering O my Soul what hast thou done hitherto not to have as yet begun this life crucified and annihilated I confess my folly and blindness O my God! make me presently to set upon it and let not any day pass over without the happiness of suffering something for your love CHAP. XIV What content a Soul receives in a Supernatural Life WE have oftentimes no need of any other care than to be faithful to an ordinary way of Devotion without pretending to what is extraordinary and we have reason to fear that motions now and then to undertake a life of greater perfection may proceed rather from a seeking of our own excellency than a true desire of pleasing God Among these dangers blindness and obscurities we stand in great need of the light of Grace and conduct of some holy Person who is able to discern what is best for us However putting our confidence in God and living in an entire dependence on him we shall find peace and quiet of mind If we have desires for any thing let it be for such things as Jesus crucified desired for they are contrary to our natural inclinations And though there may possibly occur some self-seeking yet this is the way of Grace inasmuch as the Found of our Soul is agreeable to the Interiour of Jesus and not to that of Adam Let us have a desire to be mortified daily with good St. Paul Mortificamur tota die We must endeavour to draw profit from incommodities and ill successes by using them for the advancement of Grace in us By this means we shall purifie our selves and the Interiour of our Souls will empty it self and make room for the spirit of Jesus Christ bringing with him joy and peace unspeakable When we shall have found out the corruption of our heart our inability to any good yea to the least good thought as of our selves 't is not for us to aspire after the most
our Soul tends to him as to her Centre and sweet repose This repose works in her a will to give her self up wholly to his Ordinations with an entire love This resignation when 't is general and real indeed doth powerfully free her from the love of the world making her passive to the Conduct of God and his holy Attracts and Inspirations What good thoughts God sends her in the morning she nourishes all day long making use of them on all occasions and takes from the hand of God whatever happens peace or trouble sweet or bitter rest or labour because 't is God's will who glorifies himself by all events This carries a Soul on to the practice of pure Virtue CHAP. II. The presence of God in the Soul makes us little value the absence of the Creatures I Find my Heart and Soul so content in that God is inseparably united to me that I am hardly sensible of the absence of my dearest Friends I know not when I shall suffer any thing for all mortifications prove sweet unto me by reason of the abundant joy the presence of God affords unto me God is in me and I in him and nothing can separare me from him because he is always present in me by his Immensity which is his Essence The thought hereof does so affect my heart that I value not the privation of all Creatures but rather I get this advantage in that methinks by their absence God is more intimately present with me And by how much the more I am elevated above all Creatures though some be holy persons and dear to me by so much the more I feel my heart more united to God as to its Centre where I find true quiet and repose I take for a special grace and favour the employment God gives me by his sacred Providence What have I to do with Creatures seeing God is in me and I in him seeing he is for me and I for him O what Riches it is to possess God! But this cannot be without being dead to the world Blessed Mary Magdalen being dead to the world and forsaking it yea her dearest Brother Lazarus and her beloved Sister Martha found God present in her Soul and that sufficed I participate a little the joys of this Saint in possessing God after I have so happily found him When a Soul complains of the absence of any Creature 't is a sign she has not yet found God so well as she ought But may not some Creatures be instrumental to bring us to God I grant it But when we have found him why don't we then leave off all affection to worldly things Alas how flat is the gust that Creatures affords after we have tasted of God's sweetness 't is but a torment to us to continue with them O my God! seeing I have found you I will never forsake you My Soul is so present with you that methinks I enjoy you Separate me more and more from all Creatures that this sweet enjoyment may increase in my Soul What need shall I then have of converse with Creatures 'T is of singular profit to consider how many holy men and women have as it were buried themselves in solitudes flying the society of all Creatures that they might be wholly taken up with the presence of God! Saint Mary of Aegypt hid her self in a vast Desart to be far from the sight and remembrance of the world that she might only find her God and Creator O my God! how happy was she by thus finding you living without the help of any Creature without Cloaths and almost without any refection She had no person to comfort her no person to complain to of her sufferings no person to take part of her consolations she alone was with God alone in a general deprivation of all Creatures O how this Spirit of separation from all created things is excellent O how necessary is it to a Soul who desires to be wholly for God and enjoy the sweets of his Divine Presence But to come to this we must suffer much both from our selves and others to the end we may be freed from the love of the world God himself who will be all in all to his Creatures oftentimes brings us home to himself by great variety of afflicting events This makes the lives of the Servants of God full of continual alterations as well in temporal affairs as spiritual designed for his greater Glory sometimes it goes well sometimes ill with them in their Souls and bodies by constant changes These vicissitudes oblige them to love nothing but the Sovereign Good and in this general abandon of all Creatures God is pleas'd to let them feel the sweets of his Divine presence and by this happy experience of God's presence they grow insensible of the privation of things dearest to them in which before they found Contentment 'T is true those Servants of God with whom we can converse are as so many Conduit-pipes by which God conveys some streams of living Water so that we learn from them eternal verities and many secrets of spirituality with much advantage to our Souls But these are only Pipes Jesus Christ God-man is the true Source and Fountain from whence those Streams flow which we receive from them or rather by them 'T is from the splendours of his Divinity we can have a prospect of his Grandeurs and Perfections 'T is from his sacred Humanity we must learn the exercises of all Christian Perfection When you please dear Saviour you will make a Soul to know the difference that is between the Spring-head and the Pipes between drawing the living Water of your Graces from your self and from your Saints between a view of your Interiour and the Perfections of Servants And so to lose the presence of the holiest persons to enjoy the presence of God in a more transcendent manner is no loss but a gain To be without the converse of God's Servants to have more of their Divine Masters company is no prejudice but an advantage The pierced side of Jesus Christ is as it were a Sacred Mouth from whence his Heart speaks more divinely to us in dumb Eloquence than can the Tongues of Saints and Angels CHAP. III. That we can and ought to conserve the presence of God in occasions of Extroversion A Soul may be as much separated from Creatures in the midst of Towns and Cities as in the Desarts Behold how I conceive this may be done When God once makes a Soul sensible of his Grandeurs and gives her lively resentments of his presence this Soul thus illuminated begins to be dead to the world and regardless of it because the light that brings her to know and tast God present makes the Creature disgustful to her Neither is it so much the insufficiency of Creatures that causes this disgust as the all-sufficiency of God and the lively feeling of his Divine presence which may be had as well among the crowd of men as in the
and miserable I had so little strength that my sufferings did stifle the enjoyment of Gods presence in me and the sensibility of them did eclipse the other And because I thought that this enjoyment of God could not be found but in a Soul exempt from all sorts of Sufferings when Sadness or Pains or Troubles did seize upon me I got free as soon as possible to regain my former state of enjoyment But I see my error for now these sufferings shall become the means to unite me more strictly to God I am content with them and will offer them a sacrifice to that hidden Majesty who is really present in my Soul For I conceive that the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Hypostatically united to the Word had God most intimately present remaining in this union in a state of enjoyment and suffering also As Man he offer'd up to the Divinity a continual Sacrifice of his Humiliations Poverty and Sufferings and the Divinity imparted to him a wonderful enjoyment of sweetness by his presence And in this manner God is yet glorified in a Soul He bestows upon her a profound Peace in the Superiour faculties by being sensible of the Divine Presence And in the mean time being mortified in the inferiour part she makes a perpetual homage of Sacrifice to God by offering up her Suffering to him A Soul in this state is an excellent Image of Jesus as both Traveller and Comprehensour God does not always manifest his presence to a Soul by abundance of Divine Irradiations but sometimes by a sensible Peacefulness which gently touches the heart and unites it to God In this the Intellectual Faculties do nothing but barely eye God and now and then the heart breaths forth some amorous Aspirations As O what a Happiness is it to have God present without a possibility of Separation What can I desire more then to have the possession of God O my God be my Portion and my Heritage for ever Sometimes also the Soul receives a certain prospect of the Grandeurs of God present which works in her Adorations and Humiliations Sometimes the Soul is mov'd with such sensible touches that she experimentally finds God present in her whereby she melts into affections respect and love and praises to the Divine Majesty and thereupon enjoys a Peace that passes our understanding Crosses and Sufferings may bring a Soul in time to a more union with God though not to the pleasures of enjoyment A union so much the more excellent by how much the more 't is imperceptible to the Soul who seeking her own satisfaction has some mixture of self-love in the sweets of enjoyment but cannot happen in the Crucified union which joyns the Soul to God in such a manner as is hardly perceptible That state is most perfect which brings us to the greatest Interiour Purity but this cannot take up a mansion in our heart without an entire death to all Creatures Now in the Crucified union the Soul being only attached to the will of God and not reflecting on her own operations and so taking no self-satisfaction from them she thinks all is lost and that she has no part in the love of God which is the only thing she passionately desires What great pity is it to love and not to know it Nevertheless this Soul that seems to her self in so sad a condition is a delightful Object in the eyes of God who sees in her the love only of his interests in that she is content with a total denudation and confessing she is not worthy of Gods Graces wherewith she beholds others adorned and admiring their beauty perceives not all this while what she is her self And this ignorance of her own state possessing her Spirit by a true sense of her own indignity she easily concludes that she is a miserable Creature And 't is no wonder if discouragment and sadness set upon a Soul in this disposition at least to affect the Inferiour part I clearly see that this union Crucified does advance us in the participation of the states of Christ Suffering which is the greatest advantage a Soul can pretend to in this Life of Mortality seeing this puts us in a condition of most expressing our love to God This great Truth well consider'd will wonderfully comfort a Soul that desires to be conform to the Image of Jesus Crucified The Crucified union carries Mortification to the marrow of the Soul making it die to whatsoever is not God seeing that she lives by the privation of all Creatures But the sensible union does nourish it self by reflections upon such a state which will indeed purifie a Soul from worldly affections however she will go on but slowly to the purity of Perfection if God be not very merciful unto her O my God how ought we to give up our selves wholly though in the dark to the conduct of your Divine Providence 'T is your wisdom to lead us through Obscurities to the end we may deny our own judgment which is no lover of Mortification O how this insensibility does purifie the operations of the Will which cannot relish in this state of denudation any thing but only your good pleasure The Soul in this Crucified union has the advantage to know how tenderly Jesus Christ loved her in his abandonments and humiliations He makes us to suffer this that we may know the greatness of that and this experimental knowledge discovers to us how much Jesus suffer'd in the state of his Humiliations and puts the Soul in a disposition to follow him in his Humiliations And seeing the greatness of the love of Jesus to us was most manifested by his Sufferings for us so our love to him is greatest by our Sufferings for him 'T is to be observ'd that the highest degree of this Crucified union is to have no sight of the excellency of this state which once being perceived begins to lessen our Holy Sufferings CHAP. VII That the Divine Presence makes us to love Prayer or Action as best pleases God I find the Life of Man to be poor and miserable we see not God unless surrounded with Clouds Our true Life consists in a Holy Converse with God present whereby a Soul enjoys a delightful repose and is fill'd with Peace unspeakable And being ravish'd with such lovely sweets does melt into enjoyments which transcend infinitely all earthly pleasures In this disposition a Soul does not relish the affairs of this World Ordinary Discourses though never so harmless are troublesome to her Yea the occasions to help our Neighbour though Good and Holy are not then convenient nor pleasing to her She is all for to be at the feet of Jesus with Mary Magdalen in a perfect repose and let Martha go about her business Notwithstanding God makes us to understand that sometimes we must go out from this in time presence and undertake Exteriour Actions in the Affairs of his Glory Ingredi egredi And this is the Life of a Holy Soul She goes out by
secret Orders well known to her self and walks Peaceably in the pursuance of those Affairs which have immediate relation to God And is content also to be extroverted by Secular Affairs as Goods and Honours to serve our Corporal necessities and help our Neighbours But 't is God present in us that sets a a Soul on work by his Orders and necessary Instructions 1. We must undertake no business yea not good works without a Mission that is without some Interiour Call from God And therefore it concerns us to have recourse to him by Prayer to know his will least we do what he does not require of us 2 When we know that God sets us on work we ought to be very faithful in the performance of it I observe that affairs of obligation do not distract our Introversion 3. We must acknowledge our insufficiency to bring our endeavours to a Happy issue 'T is the Sun that makes the Plants to grow to blossom and fructifie and not the Gardiner that sets and waters them In like manner 't is the Grace of God that makes our endeavours prosperous Paul may plant and Apollo may water but God gives the increase 4 To regulate the times of our Exercises without which the Soul will languish and grow feeble Charity well order'd begins at home I must not for others neglect the most important affair of my own Salvation O my God when I am in the privation of the sensible sweets of your presence and find a dryness on my Soul it seems to me not hard to bear it But when I am ravish'd with enjoyment to be call'd from it to mind other business this seems to me more difficult and mortifying We may strive to have the like content in other affairs but our infirm condition will not suffer it and do what we can we fall short of the sweets of such enjoyment It remains then to make an excellent act of abnegation and by an amorous resignation of our will to Gods make it our contentment to have no other contentment than Gods good pleasure who will not have us to be disturb'd to want enjoyment And thus we offer up to God an excellent Sacrifice seeing we give to God what is most dear and precious to us by dying to our selves to live to him I am therefore resolv'd to fall a working without troubling my Spirit too much with the Ideas of Affairs that I may still conserve an actual endeavour to practice on divers occasions and maxims of Christianity and Evangelical Councils by self-denyal and a love of Sufferings for Christs sake And if I continue in this Spirit of Sacrifice and entire abnegation it will make me content with that little Service God requires of me being unworthy by reason of my sins to be advanced to greater performances He is indeed our Soveraign Lord and he may be do with his Creatures what he pleases But whatever we undertake let us have a care to do our works for God with purity of intention and in ill successes to have a Spirit of resignation which may prove to us of more worth than the conversion of Souls When we are in the heat of our Affairs it much concerns us not to let them deface in our Soul the incomparable Idea of the Interiour of Jesus which is the Copy we must endeavour to write after in imitation whereof we always find sufficient matter of glorifying God which is the only pretention we ought to have both for Time and Eternity In this Abiss of Perfections I find how to behave my self in Prayer in Action in Affairs in Contempts in Temptations in Aridities in Disconsolations And without the Idea of this Divine Interiour we do but blunder in the way to Perfection and seek our own esteem and excellency There are in Spiritual Persons three sorts of Purity 1. Purity of Conscience 2. Purity of Virtue 3. Purity of Perfection Whoever is careful to avoid sin even those that proceed from Frailty has purity of Conscience Those who on all occasions practice Virtue without a mixture of nature have Purity of Virtue And those who being divested entirely of themselves and the creatures endeavour purely to practice the perfect acts of Virtue are arrived to the purity of Perfection By these degrees of Purity we may discover the different states of Virtuous Souls CHAP. VIII The presence of God brings us into a disesteem of other things AFter God has manifested himself to a Soul making her to see that he is all the Soul enamour'd on this adorable presence takes no rest but in him finding her self ill at ease without him who is all in all unto her O how Powerful is this Divine Idaea to withdraw a Soul from all Creatures that she may be united to her all How does she happily loose her self in this great all O my God says she how true is it that you are all and I am nothing Dear Lord what can we do for you You are all and have no need of our goods Of the all of our Souls how little are you known and beloved I know not what men intend in not having their thoughts taken up about him who is our all Where art thou O my Soul when thou art not in this all Without doubt thou art in nothing for as long as thou art in thy self or in the Creatures thou art in the depth of nothingness The content I have in that God is all is more as it seems to me for him then my self For my joy is to know him to be what he is before I was any thing O great all be you for ever what you are and that you shall be our all everlastingly does comfort and ravish me I see that God is not only all but that all Glory all Grandeur all Beatitude is in him neither loses he any thing by his communications to his Creatures He takes infinite Pleasure to do good to them by his mercy and no less content is he to punish them by his Justice because they deserve it for nothing can disturb his happiness O what Felicity is it to a Soul that loves God purely to be assured that God shall be infinitely happy to all Eternity and that no malice of man can alter his Beatitude Such a Soul is greatly pleased to consider the contentment God takes to make her live to make her die to keep her in Health or in Sickness to supply her Corporal necessities and furnish her Interiour with all Graces For God draws great Glory to himself by all his Creatures Be comforted then O my Soul and be not disconsolate seeing that God is always happy Be not troubled for any thing seeing that every thing which torments thee may bring Glory to God Do not value any thing but God alone seeing in his presence the most excellent Creatures are as pure nothings Tanquam nihilum ante te 'T is easie and pleasant for a Soul to value nothing in the presence of God she finds in
indisposition of Health I ought to value it and not forsake my usual Devotions nor have recourse to such refreshments as satisfie sensuality But to take pleasure for once to make bold with my body that hath often made bold with my Soul Notwithstanding this must be done with discretion 3. I must rejoyce at crosses and difficulties which I meet withall as affording matter to practice many great virtues which prepare the Soul for great graces and make her worthy of great love What God pleases to give oftentimes to his best Friends in this life are fair occasions to suffer for Christs sake by a generous renunciation of what the World most affects and nature most desires 4. I ought to be strongly perswaded that I shall be so far rich in virtue as I shall be poor in worldly goods provided I be faithful to the Grace of my vocation which invites me to be dead to all things but only God I must therefore have a care not to harken to the arguments of humane prudence which still finds pretensions enough to shun contempts and sufferings Our sensuality does much retardus in the way to perfection but humane reason more being more subtile and powerful to perswade The only remedy is to abandon our selves to the conduct of Grace and fall in love with the folly of the Cross CHAP. XIII To give our selves up to the conduct of Gods Spirit WE must not use violence in the practice of a Spiritual Life by binding our selves severely to this or that way but sweetly follow the motions of Gods Holy Spirit We must row against the stream of our corrupt nature but not strive against the wind that comes from Heaven Work we must but by following Gods holy Inspirations which are sensible enough to holy hearts a Soul accustomed to the conduct of God's Spirit does know his motions I cannot explicate this as I would but 't is an assured truth she knows them by experience I must wholly depend on Divine Providence without any dependance on Creatures though holy casting my self into the arms of God as an Infant that takes no care but to lye in the Mothers bosome to suck the teat and delighted therewith does love her dearly I confess our blessed Saviour treats me after this manner for without any sollicitude of mine to nourish my Soul with Spiritual food or without any searching into Books for that end but only in his Sacred heart I experience that I want nothing which sometimes does strike me with admiration and fear that I have been negligent to do my duty But this fear does presently vanish seeing God was pleased to provide for me before I thought on 't This makes me know experimentally that God will have me wholly depend upon him without any support from Creatures for if I seek to them his care diminishes and my Soul falls into indigence finding little succour from the Creatures she had recourse to which makes her soon retire to the Paps of Providence and this suffices A Mother sometimes has milk in one Pap and not in the other if the little Infant will change he is deceiv'd but finding little help from the left Pap he returns to the right and now will not quit it being grown wise by experience My Soul thus finding little help from the creature returns presently to the Pap of Providence and there abides I fear sometimes to have too many consolations in Prayer but this does satisfie me that God will have me live as an Infant that stands in need of such comforts He make choice of other Souls for great performances that regard his glory If an Infant should leave the bosome of his Mother to do her service he would fall and hurt himself and do no good He must then let others work and be content with his Mothers embraces Wherefore what I have to do is to stick close to God and let others travel in great affairs as more grown up in grace in comparison of whom a little Infant is nothing but weakness My perfection consists in my fidelity in a perfect abandon of my self to God which will increase as I advance in the ways of God and his designs I must therefore be in a manner passive and in my thoughts desires actions dispositions interiour and exteriour depend on the pure conduct of God and his pleasure A Soul well illuminated loves not the dispositions she finds in her self but God who gave them and his will is the sole object of her complacencies it being all one to her to be in this or that disposition as best pleases God and loving nothing more than a perfect abandon of her self to his Providence O dear abandon Thou art at present the object of my love which by thee is purified augmented and enflamed whosoever possesses thee does know and tast the amiable transports of great liberty of Spirit A Soul loses her self happily in thee after having lost all Creatures for the love of abjection and finds her self no where but in God being dead to all things besides him O dear abandon Thou art the disposition of dispositions and all other do refer to thee Happy are they that know thee being of more worth than all other graces A Soul in abandon hath a pure regard to God and is not concern'd but for his Interests yea desires not abjection nor any thing else but Gods good pleasure Few words cannot explicate the great effects that it works in the Interiour to establish a Soul perfectly in God 'T is abandon that makes her insensible in all kinds of accident and nothing but the loss of abandon can afflict her You are admirable O my God you are admirable in your holy operations and assentions that you make in Souls whom you conduct from light to light by your Divine Providence which is not known but by experience Sometimes it seem'd to me that the grace to love abjection was the highest pitch but now I see that abandon mounts the Soul to a more elevated state O dear abandon Thou doubtless wilt be the ultimate disposition I desire nothing but thee and death as the gate whereby to enter into an eternal abandon Dear death how pleasant and lovely dost thou seem unto me What allurements do I see in thee Deliver me from my captivity that I may fully enjoy my well-beloved However if thy coming will interrupt my abandon come not for thou art nothing in comparison and all thy delights will be bitter to me O dear abandon Thou art the beloved of my heart which ardently breaths after thee But when shall I know that I possess thee perfectly This shall be when the Divine will shall raign perfectly in me For my Soul shall be established in an intire indifferency to all events and means of perfection when she shall have no other joy then in God no other content no other felicity Our blessed Saviour sayes often to a Soul abandon'd to his will Think upon me and I will think upon
have inflamed affections for you is my greatest work but to bring my heart to such a temper it must become like dry wood being emptyed of humidity by a seperation from all Creatures This desire of inflamed affections puts me upon purifying my heart and the expectation of enjoyment makes me eager in the practice of Mortification by embracing Evangelical Councels and maxims of Christianity Seeing poverty contempt and crosses increase the flames of Divine Love they are welcom to me for I ardently desire to see them arise to their highest elevation I know a good Religious man who in his Solitudes is in continual Prayer not only by the elevation of his Spirit but by union with God in a wonderful manner My Soul finds great contentment in his discourse and conversation In sickness his enjoyment of God is not so vigorous nor his Peace of Soul so savorous though always great Worldly conversations seem but as dreams to him and when past they did only leave confus'd Idaeas in his memory A blessed man doubtless while here on earth And conversing with me in simplicity of heart by obedience he declar'd to me what wonderful enjoyments God was pleas'd to vouchsafe unto him He told me that to attain Purity of Heart we must divest our selves of all affections to Creatures and not satisfie our natural desires which is a great Mortification when 't is continual In sickness we must stand very much upon our guard for we easily relax and yield too much to nature Not to correspond to a known inspiration is gross infidelity and much retards our advancement in a Spiritual Life A principal point of Devotion is by a punctual fidelity to omit no occasion to practice virtue whether of humility patience abjection or any other This Contemplative told me that the choicest effect wrought in us by Revelations or Visions is this punctual fidelity to Gods calls 'T is an affair will take up the whole Soul to free her self from any engagement with Creatures and conquer her own natural Inclinations that she may enter into the states of Jesus crucified and into his ways with his Spirit that is with his intentions and dispositions Let us O my Soul in the profound silence of our Solitude often say to Jesus O Divine Jesus despised for me contemptible poor for me a poor Creature annihilated for me a meer nothing Terms which in some sort express the perfect union that the Soul ought to have with Jesus Crucified And this union is the grand occupation of Solitaries In the Court of Kings the Cooks and Bakers and other meaner Officers labour more than a Gentleman of the Chamber who has little to do but to attend his Majesty as a Companion rathen then a Servant A Favourite has yet less employ being admitted into his Prince's Closet to converse freely with him and entertain each other with mutual caresses In the House of God they who are appointed most for action are not the greatest Favourites those to whom God vouchsases extraordinary visits in Contemplation labour less and yet are more accepted by him T is not for us to apply our selves too much to Exteriour actions of Charity but to correspond to Gods Holy Inspirations if he call us to Solitude to attend on himself alone out of the noise of Creatures Is it not great pity that Temporal affairs should take up the best days of our years and the choicest hours of our days leaving us little time in comparison to apply our selves to the one thing necessary the work of our Eternal Salvation 'T would be better for us if we would allot more time to our Holy retirements to converse with God by Prayer and Contemplation and begin on earth what we must continue without end in ever Blessed Eternity CHAP. V. How we may put our Soul and Senses into a Solitude LEt us not deceive our selves in being content to receive the seed of Divine Inspirations without bringing forth any fruit according to the designs of God If we have a discerning Spirit in the ways of Grace we shall soon discover that this our only affair and all the rest is but amusement and folly To nourish this Divine Seed in us we must shun the conversation of Worldly wisemen who are guided only by Carnal Prudence and so being strangers to the Procedings of Grace leave in us more or less by their Discourse some Impression of their ill opinions which will retard our advancement in the ways of God To put the Soul into Solitude we must retire from all Creatures and put our selves absolutely in the hands of God to do with us what he pleases and apply our selves to him alone with all possible endeavours To be faithful herein we must resolve to suffer much for we cannot abide Peaceably in this Divine Hermitage without leaving Parents Friends Worldly Entertainments Affairs and to suffer almost a continual Persecution on every side For one tells you that it is an Hypocritical and unprofitable Life Another that so much Solitude cannot be good in that we ought to have some Charity for our Neighbour But let them talk on every one is to follow his own work and the will of God according to their vocation The best and most noble imployment in the World is to converse with God and do that on Earth which the Saints and Angels do in Heaven How the Devil persecutes a Soul in this state under fair pretences But she must stop her ears and quit all to adhere to her Soveraign good when he vouchsafes to call her to attend on him alone When God says he will lead a Soul into a Solitude Ducam eam in Solitudinem 'T is a singular Mercy For we shall find but few in the World prepar'd for the Cross and resolv'd to go through all the difficulties of a Life so supernatural A Soul that is in such a happy disposition will live Solitary not troubling her self with the cryes of others When God once speaks Powerfully to the heart 't will make more impression on us than all the noise of the World It comes into my mind that to be Faithful to the Call of God which I have to Solitude requires of me to spend six hours a day in Prayer and to comply therewith to retire my self about five in the Afternoon and eat little at night Methinks also I ought to observe a general Solitude not only in relation to my Soul but to my Interiour and Exteriour Senses yea when I shall converse with my Friends and behold her I conceive this may be done Sacred Solitude consists in being alone with God in a vacancy from Creatures and whatevet is not God It seems to me then when we discourse of God and his affairs we make our tongue Solitary and so speak like a Hermit When we will not give ear to any but Divine Discourses our ears turn Hermits When we will not allow our eyes any Objects but such as are pleasing to God we put them into
to require it of us My third Prayer pass'd on in these Thoughts that the most Sacred Trinity being Eternally Knowledge and Love Substantial my Soul ought to endeavour to produce in her self an actual knowledge and love of God the better to resemble this adorable Trinity A Soul in the state of Contemplation renders this honour to God in a more peculiar manner enjoying God by the guift of Prayer in as transcendent a manner as Mortality permits 'T is true the prospect I have of this Divine Life here below draws my Soul Powerfully after it and I love it better than formerly But I see that to persevere therein we must be very poor in Spirit that is not only free from exorbitant Passions but all distracting Images which pass by the senses that are not Mortified News attended with curiosity or the eyes attached to sensible objects or such like immortifications fill the Soul with unprofitable Images which make her uncapable of Divine impressions by corresponding to which we most benefit our selves and most glorifie God In my fourth Prayer I was taken up with a view of those amorous complacencies and those Infinite joyes wherewith the three Divine Persons replenish the Souls of the blessed in Heaven It seem'd to me that the Happiness of the Saints was the clear vision of the Ineffable Mystery of the most Sacred Trinity and to be made partakers of that knowledge and love which is reciprocal among the Divine Persons To see God clearly is the Beatifical Vision Alas how ought we to be humbled to consider how Infinitely we fall short in our Devotions of the continual Hallelujahs of the Saints in Glory Yet this is the end of our Creation and our hope is at last to bear them company O how this life is poor and miserable where all is vanity and vexation of Spirit The view of my own weakness making me sensible that all I do for God is as nothing what shall I say at the sight of my sins and unworthiness I have nothing to say dear Lord but that I merit Eternal Confusion which must needs fall upon me unless your goodness have pity on me according to the greatness of your Mercies Can we imagine we can do any thing too much for God 'T is for the glory of his Bounty and Goodness that he is pleas'd to accept of our small service and endeavours and reward them eternally O how great a Truth is it that Grace and Glory are the effects of his pure Goodness and Mercy vouchsafed to us Blessed be his Name to all Eternity Third Day IN my first Prayer of this day I consider'd that the three Divine Persons were Happy in Contemplation of themselves from all Eternity When they created the World the Preservation and Government thereof does not at disturb their repose and Felicity The Father is the center of the Son and the Father and the Son is the center of the Holy Ghost Three in One and one in Three Infinitely Happy in each other before all Time and shall be to all Eternity O what ravishing Beauties do they behold in each other and what unspeakable Delights do they take in ther Infinite Perfections Nothing without them can interrupt their Joys or add to their Happiness Tho true Solitaries who live the Life of God in like manner repose only in him and being dead to themselves and all Creatures live only in him to him and for him O Divine Life of Solitude Thou art here begun on Earth and canst not be perfected but in Heaven A true Hermits life is not a Sensual but Divine Life God calling me to Contemplation I will repare to Church as to a Hermitage where I may live this Divine Life The Psalmody there much rejoyces my heart and lifts up my Soul to Contemplation Through Natural Considerations I have condescended to please others against my own inclination but now I have the Happiness to converse with the three Divine Persons I can no more relish the Company of my Friends and Relations except rarely to maintain Peace and Union or for some great necessity and if they be displeas'd I must not value it My second Prayer was an amorous attention upon what past Eternally among the three Divine Persons How the Father knowing his Divine Perfections did beget his Son and how the Father and the Son by an Infinite Love did produce the Holy Ghost The Father is an Infinite Ocean of Perfections by an Infinite Fecundity begetting his Son and they being absorpt in each other produce the Holy Spirit by an everlasting flux and reflux of Love This I did contemplate with great repose of Soul and yielded up the Intellectual Powers thereof to the obedience of Faith to receive some Rayes of Divine Light about such great and Incomprehensible Mysteries God then working in my Soul I became passive contenting my self to behold simply and sweetly the Infinite operations of the Sacred Trinity and said within my self Blessed Trinity know your selves for I can do nothing towards it 't is enough for me to contemplate that mutual Love which is among you which I believe and admire with adoration It seems to me that no other Mystery of our Faith can so take up and content my Soul nothing being more Divine than the Divinity No other practice is so charming to me we being created to know that Knowledge and to love that Love which God has to himself to all Eternity In my third Prayer I consider'd the Souls of Just Men and Blessed Spirits are as so many Sacred Vessels into whom God infuses his love and knowledge by a continual emanation Which love and knowledge returns to God its source as the water of a running Fountain rises as high as the Spring from whence it had its Origen This love and knowledge does establish God in us and also does firmly establish us in God So that God takes a delight and repose in the Soul and the Soul finds her center and rest in him Thereby faintly representing how the Divine Persons have a mutual repose in each other Empty Vessels are most capable to be fill'd And by how much the more our Souls are empty of Self-love and Nature by so much the more are they capable of Divine Love and Knowledge A Soul in such a state delights in Solitude and cares not to live in the thoughts and affections of men What most saddens our Spirits and retards us in the ways of God is a natural aversion we have from a hidden life For man naturally desires to be known and lov'd and thinks life is as nothing without repute And as long as we are full of this liquor we are not vessels proper to receive the influences of Divine Love and Knowledge Let us O my Soul empty our selves of Self-love that Divine Love may take place in us In my fourth Prayer I found an amorous complacency in my Soul in that God being but One doth subsist in three Persons knowing and loving themselves
God An Infinite Fulness containing an Infinity of Perfections each of which hath an Infinity of Excellencies incomprehensible A Fulness which is the Source of all good in the Creature we being of our selves but a meer privation and pure nothing full of imperfections and lyable to Infinite Miseries Alas O my God I now see more then ever that you are all good Omne bonum you are the Source of our Being and Existence and without your continual influx for our preservation we should in a moment return to our first nothing The general Idaea of this Truth is in every understanding but well to consider it and lodge it in our Heart is very rare We believe this as many other points of our Religion but without deep reflection or correspondent actions Hence it proceeds that we are without perfect self-denyal and abnegation being not sufficiently perswaded that of our selves we are nothing And therefore God leaves in us many Imperfections unconquer'd that we may know by experience that we are of our selves nothing but weakness O my God for ever Blessed be your Holy Name for discovering to me your Fulness and my Poverty I adore your Infinite Fulness with a cordial affection because it shews your Grandeurs and I am pleas'd with my Poverty because it humbles me in your presence I am well content O my God to be nothing that you may be all Kneeling down to make my second Prayer I desir'd our Blessed Saviour to take up my thoughts with what he pleas'd And it came into my mind to consider the three Divine Persons as they are to teach other the center of all Happiness repose and Glory I beheld this fixedly and with an amorous resentment and complacency of mind it seeming to me that the repose the joy and the Glory that the Divine Persons have in the Sacred Humanity is infinitely below that repose and Glory they have in themselves And that delight they have in the Saints is much below that which they have in the Sacred Humanity I sometimes adored this Divine center in it self and sometimes I adored the occupations of the Soul of Jesus towards this Divine center and I endeavour'd to fix my thoughts with a complacency therein God then gave me to see that accidental occasions of Charity are not repugnant to my Solitude and designs of extraordinary Devotion But to take upon me the care of a Family and to have a continual eye over them as I had formerly was inconsistant with it For that engag'd me to many Conferences many Letters much care and Extroversion and for the present God does not require that of me but calls me to a retreat to Solitude to Exteriour and Interiour Silence to Mortification to converse with Him alone This is my present affair upon Earth In my third Prayer I discover'd how just and reasonable it is not only to adore the Divine Life of the most Sacred Trinity but also to Honour the Service which the Soul of Jesus render'd to his Father on Earth by a continual and ineffable application I observ'd that all the Mysteries of the Life of Jesus are honour'd according to the various applications of devout Souls as inspir'd from Heaven Some have a special Devotion to Jesus as regarding Mary Magdalen with an eye of Mercy Others are much taken with his Divine Discourses with the Samaritan Woman and her Conversion And shall we forget to adore the Divine regards and converse the Soul of Jesus continually had with the Divine Persons There 's nothing in God made man more worthy of veneration this being his most noble employment while he was upon Earth Let us therefore O my Soul according to our Duty set upon this work without delay Let our greatest care be to please Jesus and then many Worldly affairs will become burdensom unto us Let us recollect our Spirits and Affections from other things and place them wholly on God our final Happiness A true Christian indeed will be so generous as to esteem all things besides God not worth his labour 'T is true while the Soul is imprison'd in the Walls of flesh she cannot always soar up to Heaven on the wings of Contemplation but this she must sigh after and considering her present condition on all occasions exercise her self in works of Humility In my fourth Prayer God and his Perfections did possess my Soul rejoycing in that he was perfect and happy I had a mind then to take up my thoughts wholly with the Perfections of God without any reflection on my own Interiour or requesting any thing to supply my wants for 't is not seasonable to do this when God calls us to contemplate his adorable Perfections The Soul then forgets his own Interests to mind only those of God I then was pressed with a vehement desire to forget my self entirely and have God only in my remembrance I was then much pleased with the multitude that followed Jesus in the Desart taking no care for Bodyly Provision Their Divine Master provided for them being well pleas'd with their affection in being only attentive to his words What content was it to me to remember how Mary Magdalen forgot her self yea in some sort our Blessed Saviour in not serving him in her Castle at Bethanie by reason she was so intent on his Divine words O my Soul let us not be too Solicitous for the things of this Life if we think on God he will think on us and nothing necessary shall be wanting to us Sixth Day IN my first Prayer my Soul found her self much taken with the Beauty of those excellent words in the Gospel Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect I consider'd how impossible it is for Mortals even to conceive the Idaea of an Infinite Perfection and if we cannot conceive it how can we imitate it But God the Father has provided against this inconvenience in sending to us the perfect Image of all his Infinite Perfections his Eternal Son and exposing him to our view says to us Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect open your eyes and behold this Model here is the Perfection you must imitate let it be your care to conform to this Exemplar and you will be perfect as I am perfect 'T is hard to say to what sublimity of Perfection we are call'd by a Christian Life and how glorious a thing it is even to pretend to imitate God himself But alas how far are we from the Spirit of this grand Exemplar Jesus would have us to be annihilated poor despis'd living a hidden life in Solitude by dayly converse with God But just contrary we desire to appear in the World to be esteemed to have all things according to our hearts desire and enjoy the Creatures Alas we do not sufficiently endeavour to dive into the inclinations of the Spirit of Jesus to conform our selves thereto and annihilate our own The Science of Jesus is not well known there are few persons that study it
sufficiently and fewer that practice it in Purity and really aspire to form the true image of Jesus in them In my second Prayer I did apply my self to consider how the Son of God being eternally in the midst between the Father and the Holy Spirit came down from Heaven to be a Mediator between his Eternal Father and us Sinners He tells us that no man can come to Father but by him and that he is the way which leads to Happiness And is it not a sad case that men should so much go astray This is a low and humble way and they puff'd up with Pride will march over mountains in ways above them This is a poor penitential suffering way and they are for a way easie delicious rich and commodious Is it possible to come to the bosom of the Eternal Father except we will march by the way of his Son There 's no other way to come to him and if we take our own way at every step we go farther from him O my God how long shall my Soul lag behind meerly in a way of nature When shall we O my Soul enter into Dispositions truly Christian and conform to the Dictates of a supernatural Life O Jesus my Saviour Redeemer my Exemplar my Way my Light 't is only by following you and your Divine Maxims that we can enter into the light of Life Of necessity then we must pass by Jesus Crucified to come to the Divinity of the Father and enjoy Jesus Glorified We must take up our Cross and follow him if we will enter into Glory My third Prayer was a continuation of like Thoughts I then understood that there 's no entring into Society with the three Divine Persons or arriving to such a height of Prayer as thereby we may live in them a Divine Life but by entring into communication with Jesus Christ and conforming our Life to his example This is a general Rule without exception The Life of Jesus was a severe self-denying Life and ours ought to be of such an austerity as may not ruine our health or dull the Spirit but humble the Body to elevate the Soul In a word we must daily endeavour to humble and annihilate our selves having only in our eye the Will of God The Eternal Father cannot take delight in any Soul that does not endeavour to resemble his Son It concerns us therefore to examine our hearts to see how they stand affected to Sufferings on all occasions If we cannot relish them but flie and complain 't is to be fear'd nature does possess us and not the Spirit of Jesus Christ Water in a glass remains quiet but if it finds the least passage it tends to its own element from whence it can only be kept by force In like manner a Soul that has overtures of Sufferings afforded her will find an inclination to embrace them if Jesus Crucified be her center It matters not by what means these occasions to suffer happen whether by the imprudence of Friends or the malice of Enemies Or her own neglect or any other accident she layes hold on the occasion to unite her self to the abjections of Jesus as to her center Happy is that Soul which is in this temper Grace and the Spirit of Jesus has wrought it in her In my fourth Prayer I went on to entertain my self with the wonders of the Son of God I admir'd that being in the Glory of his Father he descended to our Miseries that he might glorifie his Father in a new manner by purchasing for him such holy Souls who being animated with his Spirit after his example would be in love with Sufferings for Gods sake I saw clearly how the Son of God by his Eternal Birth is most glorious with Infinite Perfections and how he became Man to be capable of Sufferings for our sake And that we must follow Jesus in his Humiliations if we will be partakers of his Glory O what dark Souls have they who see not these Glorious Truths We live here a sensualor worldly life or at most do follow the light of reason rarely do we live a Christian and very rarely a Divine Life A thousand times happy are they who dear Jesus are enlightned by you the true Light of the World Jesus Christ cloath'd himself with a Mortal Body that he might suffer and be Sacrific'd upon the Cross and we ought to bear part with him The Saints who have known and tasted of his Spirit have Martyr'd their Bodies by a thousand Austerities Others have wasted away by degrees in the flames of Divine Love All have been desirous to suffer more or less But we are afraid to hurt our selves and are too apprehensive to endamage our Health For whom do we keep our embraces or for what is it that we are so desirous to live long upon Earth 'T is a vain fear to think we shall shorten our days by our endeavouring to live a Divine Life in our Mortal Bodies Seventh Day I Began my first Prayer by a peculiar instinct of the Holy Spirit bringing often to my mind those precious words of St. Paul God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into our Hearts crying Abba Father And then I found that a Soul assisted with the extraordinary infusions of the Holy Spirit is elevated above her self which is the effect of the gift of Wisdom freely communicated whereby she sees and tasts the ineffable Mysteries of our Religion O what a gracious gift is this What a great favour is it when God is pleas'd thus to communicate himself unto us It then seem'd to me that the faculties of my Soul ceas'd their ordinary operations and the obscurity of Faith as it were vanish'd this Divine Wisdom elevating them in such a manner which they cannot conceive who know not by experience to a very sublime way of working much above their ordinary proceedings The Soul stands wondring at it and can hardly believe she could arrive to such a point of Perfection Then a Divine Light gave me to see at once my unworthiness to receive the Graces of God his Goodness and Mercy to bestow them on me and the merits of Christ whereby they were purchas'd I was much amaz'd that God should vouchsafe so great favours to so wretched a sinner And I did melt in acknowledgements being humbled in my self with an entire confidence in the merits of Jesus I continued my second Prayer and this Divine Light increas'd in my Soul and discovered the favours God vouchsafes to Souls of which there are many degrees according to the proportion of their Purity of heart 1. They see the Deformity of Sin clear enough to conceive a horrour and detestation of it and know confusedly the Christian Virtues the Mysteries of the Sacred Humanity and Divinity 2. They see more clearly some Christian Principles as an Eternity of a Happy or Miserable condition after this Life that our Salvation is our Principal concern and the one thing necessary aend that all
for ever-Blessed Eternity O my Soul let us not follow our own Fancy but serve God in what manner he will have us by a perfect resignation of our selves to his good pleasure The Eternal Song of the Saints in Heaven was the subject of my fourth Prayer I consider'd with great delight that all the Angels and Glorious Saints shall Eternally Glorifie the adorable Trinity with this Sacred Trisagion Holy Holy Holy Lord God of Sabbath Me-thought the first of the Seraphins began this Anthem with an admirable Air and all the Choirs of Angels joyn'd their Voices all Singing with a Tone more or less elevated proportion'd to the degree they possess in Glory And this innumerable multitude of Angelical Voices made a most Melodious and admirable Harmony wherewith the Divine Persons were much delighted It came into my thoughts that the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ the noblest of all created Entities the Sacred Virgin Mother of God and Queen of Angels with all the multitude of Holy Patriarchs Prophets Apostles Martyrs Confessors and Virgins did bear a part in this Sacred Harmony with great contentment And my Soul being much delighted therewith desir'd to Glorifie God as much as possible I saw that the Church Militant in a Holy emulation of the Church Triumphant did use to the Glory of the most Sacred Trinity a like Canticle repeating in her Divine Offices on all occasions Gloria Patri Filio Spiritui Sancto Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost And so Heaven and Earth did Eccho forth incessantly the Glory of the adorable Trinity I heartily wish'd that all Creatures had Voices to Praise God continually and with much affection I often repeated Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost Tribus honor unus Amen Tenth Day THis day beginning my Prayer I felt my Soul prevented with an extraordinary Sweetness I represented my God in the fund of my Heart as my Beloved and I return'd him Thanks for his manifold Visits My Disposition was then as a Spiritual Spring-time I scented the Odour of the Flowers of Virtue perfuming my Interiour and I made thereof a Crown for the Bridegroom of my Soul and set it on his Head and he seem'd to be much pleas'd with it and my Soul took great complacency therein I observ'd that when the Spiritual Bridegroom comes to Visit his Spouse whether it be in the Holy Communion or by any Visit extraordinary 't is with different effects Sometimes the Soul is as it were inebriated with Divine Love at other times she has a feeling of great variety of Virtues wherewith the Interiour is Beautified as a Garden with Flowers The Soul is is not then taken up solely with the Sweets of Love but being adorned with variety of Virtues sometimes she presents this sometimes that sometimes altogether to her Beloved My second Prayer was a continuation of the same Thoughts And I perceived that every step the Divine Bridegroom of our Souls made in the Garden of his Spouse gave a new Birth to different Flowers This is no small contentment to the Soul but what ought most to affect her herein is that her Beloved is pleas'd to take with her his recreation who delights to be sometimes with the Children of men Then 't is He refreshes us with the Perfumes and Odours of his Graces as Glorified and we must give our selves up to his Divine Will Other times he Visits a Soul in this Crucified state bringing with him nothing but Thorns and Nails and Bitterness and Sufferings But a Soul must not think that her Beloved is not then well pleas'd with her because of this rough usage for this is his Will and 't is best for her I was much astonish'd to see the excess of Gods goodness to me who deserv'd to have been treated as an enemy But he was pleas'd to unite me to himself with such ravishing transports as transcend expression O that I had a heart so full of love as might be answerable to the greatness of his Mercies vouchsafed unto me O Jesus the Love of my Heart if you continue thus I shall die of Love for you O amorous flames consume my heart to ashes that nothing may be found there but Love and Humility O my Friends come and see what great things God has done for my Soul My third Prayer was taken up with the amiable Communications that the most Sacred Trinity is pleas'd to have with our Souls The Divine Nature unites the three adorable Persons in the Sacred Trinity The Person of the Son unites two Natures in Jesus And Grace unites Jesus to purified Souls And this unions of Grace and Love is perfected by exercises of Prayer and wonderful communication in contemplation This union sometimes is so high and elevated that Jesus and the Soul seem to be but one thing one Spirit one Knowledge one Love and is in a manner the Soul of our Soul And in this state she Glorifies God in a transcendent way being wonderfully united to that Love and Glory Jesus renders to the Divinity and the Divinity to it self The design of the Son of God by communicating himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament is to augment this gracious union that as he Prayed to his Father we may be one as they are one By which wonderful union he gives unto us a fulness of Grace and Divine Love imprinting on us unless we be refractory the like inclinations he received from his Father to keep us continually united to him by Love and Honour him with the grateful Sacrifice of our Humiliations My last Prayer was an amorous repose of my self in Jesus Finding my self in this disposition I dwelt upon it knowing well that a Soul united to Jesus is transformed into him by amorous affections and so Glorifying God does Love and Honour and Adore the Divinity by the Love and Adoration of Jesus Christ The Soul in this amorous repose finds all her wants supply'd As Courage in Adversity Humility in Successes Perseverance in Good Actions and Grace to practice all those Virtues which God commands on all occasions By how much the more the Soul is thus amorously united to Jesus in Prayer by so much the more does she participate of his Spirit and Dispositions and consequently is more in love with the Cross and Sufferings To have union with Jesus Christ in Prayer and to be divided from him in our Life and Actions is an illusion for one principal effect of pure Prayer is to imprint in us a love to follow the Life of Jesus There now comes into my mind an excellent Observation of a Father of the Church That the Holy Spirit having visibly descended to us as well as the Son did not as the Son visibly return to Heaven but takes up his Mansion with us here on Earth to unite our hearts with our Heavenly Father as in the Divinity he is the union of the Father and the Son
O Sacred Spirit of Love and Union what consolation is it to my Soul and what encouragement for my weakness that you will vouchsafe to unite my heart to God from whom you proceed from all Eternity O Divine Spirit so unite me to your self that I may never forsake you but depend absolutely on your conduct In You and by You I adore I love and return all possible Thanks to the most Sacred Trinity for all Graces and Favours received in this retreat Amen CHAP. VI. Another Retreat of Ten Days upon the Adorable Person of Jesus Christ First Day Of the Mystery of the Incarnation I Entred into this retreat being greatly desirous to know Jesus Christ and my first Prayer pass'd in view of the Incarnation a Mystery to be admir'd by Men and Angels to all Eternity the source of all our Happiness A Mystery brighter then the morning Star which ushers in the day to Mortal eyes by shewing to us the Sun of Grace to enlighten the darkness of our Hearts and Cloath us with Immortality and Glory A Mystery of Mercies an evidence of the greatness of Gods goodness to us Christ manifested in our flesh to die for us A Mystery big with wonders where God is made Man and Man becomes God by an Hypostatical union O unspeakable Mystery what Grandeurs and secrets are contain'd in Thee above our understanding O Mystery that brings Heaven upon Earth that scatters our darkness that cures all our evils that teaches me to know and love God thus debased and annihilated for love of me O what sweetness do I tast in this consideration What wonders do I discover of the goodness of God herein beyond all expression O happy those who know it by experience Hereafter I will not trouble my self how I may Love God according to his Goodness or do him Homage according to his Greatness or Praise and Adore him according to his Excellency seeing the only begotten Son of the Father was born of a Virgin-Mother and gave himself to me to discharge these Infinite obligations for me O my Jesus seeing you have wholly given your self to me that I might by you acquit my Obligations my care shall be to Love God by your Love to Obey by your Obedience and to Adore by your Adorations Be you my Light my Strength and my Conductor to find you to know you to be perfectly united to you in this retreat In my second Prayer I consider'd the great Happiness of the Blessed Virgin in being chosen from all Eternity to be the Mother of the only begotten Son of God And I said within my self Doubtless this is the greatest Favourite of God among all Creatures enabled with more eminent Graces than any other for there can be no greater Priviledge or Prerogative Communicated to a meer Creature then to be the Mother of God How are your Thoughts O my God above the Thoughts of Men You bring your Designs about in ways most admirable This most excellent of all Creatures the greatest Favourite of Heaven Mother of God must be Espoused to a Carpenter a poor Tradesman working for his Living She brings forth her Son the King of Glory in a Stable flies into Egypt lives but poorly and suffers Infinite shame and dolours to see her Beloved Jesus Crucified Behold the Designs of the Eternal Father about this Blessed Virgin whom he had chosen to be the Mother of his only Son The weakness of Humane Reason cannot fathom this But this is to teach us to have an esteem for Poverty Sufferings and Abjections seeing God deals thus with his dearest Friends He is pleas'd to put them in this condition that they may be able to render him the greatest Love and Service is possible upon Earth To Love God Supernaturally is to love him at our own expence and being content with Sufferings for his sake A Creature having nothing more to do for God then to offer to him what he most values namely his own Interest and Satisfactions O my Soul do not now complain that thou canst do nothing for God 't is enough that thou canst suffer for him 'T is no easie thing to sound the depth of this verity In my third Prayer I was much taken up with the Grandeurs of the Sacred Humanity of Jesus being elevated to the Divinity in the Mystery of the Incarnation where by a Personal Union it entred into a state of Purity and Love towards the Divinity in so transcendent a manner and surpassing the understanding of Men and Angels that we are fit for nothing but Adoration O what Grandeurs were communicated to the most Sacred Humanity in the first Blessed moment of the Incarnation My understanding though enlightned by Faith found it self lost in this Ocean of Wonders and my Will was actuated with an esteem and Love of Jesus beyond all expression Hence such a Joy possessed my Soul in knowing Jesus with such content and satisfaction that all other knowledges seem'd nothing to it and with St. Paul Non aestimavi me scire aliquid nisi Jesum I esteem'd my self to know nothing but Jesus and Him Crucified I perceived that an amorous union with Jesus Christ does elevate a Soul to a wonderful excellency because it puts us in possession of whole Jesus his Divinity his Humanity his Mysteries and Verities For this union is accompanied with a perfect amity and that makes all things common among Friends O my Jesus although I am of my self nothing but Weakness and Misery being a sinful Creature nevertheles I love you with all my heart and having my part in you I can supply my wants with your Perfections as belonging to me and among my Inabilities present them to the most Sacred Trinity to acquit my manifold obligations O how admirable is this union with Jesus Christ What wonderful benefits does it bring to a Soul who having nothing of her self hath all things in him and by this means becomes Infinitely rich These Thoughts continued yet with me in my fourth Prayer and I admired Jesus from the first moment of his Birth in his applications towards his Divine Father to whom he then offer'd himself a Sacrifice to do him Homage And in his amiable Communications towards us his poor Brethren little worms of the Earth In these Discoveries I was much troubled that I could not serve him by reason of my Inabilities and could not please him by reason of my Infidelities O that I was so happy as to spend my self in his Service and die with Love This is a favour granted but to some special Favourites And alas I am a most unworthy and ungrateful wretch At this time methought I heard our Saviour speaking to me and giving me a strong impression of his Presence O what Happiness is it to know Jesus O what favour is it to find him What sweet repose finds that Soul who has a feeling knowledge of Jesus in her When this Science of Jesus appears in her Interiour all is sweet and lovely full
of Joy and Peace and It then seems to her that heretofore she was wandring in darkness In effect it seems to her that she now lives in another World with other Lights and other Principles and other Proceeding and another tast of Spiritual things She now seeks occasions to mortifie her Senses obedience dependance contempts losses do relish with her and she 's pleas'd only to live a Life of Faith making no matter of the mockeries of Worldly men who judge not but by Sense or at best but according Humane Reason Second Day Jesus an Infant BEginning my Morning Prayer these words of the Prophet were presented to my Thoughts Consideravi opera tua expavi I have considered your Works O my Saviour and stand amazed with admiration And how could I be otherwise affected to see the Eternal God an Infant To see that Immensity which the Heavens cannot contain lie Swadled in a Manger Eternity but one day old Omnipotency become weakness The joy of Angels in a suffering condition O God of Love who can but fall into an Extasie to see these wonders this excess of Goodness above the comprehension of Men and Angels But Blessed Saviour 't is your Glory to have nothing and do nothing but what is altogether incomprehensible I observ'd a great silence in Heaven and Earth where the whole Creation seem'd to be struck dumb with admiration of the great Mysteries then brought to pass I beheld how the Virgin Mary and good Joseph fixing their Eyes on the Infant God-man lying in a Manger spake not one Word being transported with Love and Admiration and wholly astonish'd at an Humiliation so Prodigious and I wonder'd all Creatures did not stand immoveable for a whole Age at the sight of so incomprehensible a Mystery All Expressions are below this excess of Love and Condescention Let us O my Soul be silent with a respectful attention loveing adoring admiring these great things God has done for us Methinks I have a desire to stand always in silence at the feet of Infant Jesus I apply'd my self in my second Prayer to consider the universal denudation of all things that seem'd most necessary at his coming into the World To be born as an Exile out of his Mothers House to have no lodging usual for men but a Stable which is prepar'd for Beasts to be his Bed-chamber and a Manger for his Cradle to suffer the rigours of Winter for want of Fire what poor miserable Creature could be reduced to a greater denudation Notwithstanding this is that which ravish'd both Heaven and Earth and the Glorious Angels found nothing in Heaven of equal admiration and therefore hither they came to contemplate these wonders and to bring the glad tidings thereof to men making the Air to eccho with their joyful Melody and without any mention of the Divinity declare only to them that they shall find an Infant wrapt in swadling Cloaths lying in a Manger And hither the Shepherds ran transported with Joy and the World has followed them When the Wise men demanded of Herod Where he was born who was King of the Jews This Idaea of Royalty did much afright him and in rage he design'd a Cruelty more Barbarous than what as yet the Sun did ever behold 'T is a great Truth that Grandeur and an elevated condition though in the Person of God himself made man is attended with many evils and commotions but abjection and Humiliations in the Infant Jesus has force enough to win our hearts And yet we will not understand this In my third Prayer I discover'd that since the Mystery of the Incarnation which is the wonderful union of the Creator with the Creature then Sons of men are called to a higher degree of Prayer and Converse with God then formerly The gift of sublime Prayer is one effect of this Divine Mystery and we ought to value and preserve it as a Treasure The heart of Jesus is the center of men and when a poor Soul is distracted she must gently lead her self to the heart of Jesus to offer to the Eternal Father the holy dispositions of that adorable heart to unite that little we do with that Infinite service Jesus renders to his Eternal Father Thus our little will be made great by Jesus Christ O my Soul let this Divine heart of Jesus for the future be thy Oratory 'T is in him and by him thou must offer all thy Prayers to God to make them acceptable to the Divine Majesty Make this thy School to learn there the supereminent knowledge of the Love of God which is quite contrary to that of the World Thou wilt find there Principles sublime and pure a Treasure which will enrich thee with Purity Love and Fidelity and what is very plentiful in this Treasury Humiliations Poverty and Sufferings The love and esteem of these things is a precious Jewel which principally and originally is found in the heart of Jesus Other hearts how noble soever have more or less of it according to the measure they receive from this exhaustible Treasury In my fourth Prayer I had a strong Idaea of the dispositions which the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph had towards the Infant Jesus 'T was revealed to a Holy Soul that the Blessed Virgin passed all the time in Prayer while her Sacred Womb was the Tabernacle of the Son of God and never ceas'd to adore the Word made Flesh That St. Joseph entring with the Holy Virgin into the Stable at Bethlehem was elevated in high contemplation upon the Mysteries there to be Accomplish'd and in this Prayer was so replenished with the Holy Spirit that his desires for the coming of the Messias were more pure and more ardent then of all the Holy Patriarchs before And that next to the Holy Virgin he was enlightned with the wonders of the Mystery of the Incarnation At the moment of the wonderful Nativity of the Infant Jesus such Rayes of Glory and admirable Splendors were darted from his Soul as pierced the Spirit of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph and discover'd to them the Infinite Grandeurs of that Babe through all the weaknesses their eyes were witness of And in deep silence and contemplation they offer'd to him a pure and amorous offering of their whole Being as to their God O who can comprehend the wonderful effects that his presence caus'd in their Hearts These considerations did sweetly possess my Soul during my Prayer and I found my self in a disposition of great Love for Internal Prayer in Silence and Solitude with Infant-Jesus Third Day Jesus Poor and Abject IN my Morning Prayer I found in my self a great esteem and love for Poverty seeing Jesus had so esteem'd and lov'd it and we have an obligation to be conform to him And I said within my self O Poverty of Spirit what riches dost thou bring to a Soul Thou givest her possession of a Kingdom of Peace Thou dost purifie her to unite her to Jesus in his Humiliations which
gives her a right to the riches of Glory for Truth hath said it Blessed are the Poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven O how a Soul which once hath beheld the Beauties of Holy Poverty is ready to follow Jesus poor and abject and conform her self to his example She finds her self freed of her Fetters which keep men Captives and Slaves to the World and it seems to her to be depriv'd of all Creatures is the greatest Treasure upon Earth She growes rich by her losses and when God will have her to possess Goods and Honours 't is yet with a disposition to quit them and possess God alone She therefore only keeps them by a pure dependance on the Divine Will without an esteem or love for them but loves in them solely the Will of God These were the impressions my first Prayer made in me In my second Prayer I continued to consider the poor and abject states of Jesus Christ God in his Eternal Decrees had a love for the humane ways of the Word Incarnate Those Souls who are favour'd with Illustrations from Heaven are strongly carried the same way discerning clearly that they can do nothing better upon Earth than to tread the footsteps of God himself To this end the Divine Wisdom elevates them above themselves and their natural inclinations to conduct them solely by the instincts of Grace whereby they make a glorious conquest over the weakness of Nature Self-love and Carnal Prudence which stand in the way to Christian Perfection and hinder us from following Jesus in his Abjections It highly concerns us to die daily to the World that we may attain to the Purity of Divine Love that is Possess and Love God alone The Pride of Adam will not die in us unless we be content to follow Jesus in his Abjections O my Soul let us fall in Love with this state of Jesus Christ which is little known to the World and take it for a Soveraign favour from Heaven to become so contemptible for Gods sake as to pass for one hardly good for any thing O Jesus how few Companions have you of your extreme Poverty Many Honour this Virtue in you but few practice it They must be Faithful Friends indeed who follow you in these ways so bitter and distastful to Flesh and Blood O Jesus be Merciful unto me and grant me this Fidelity that I may never forsake you in Life nor Death My third Prayer was taken up with a general view of the Humiliations of the Son of God for which I felt my Soul had much Love and Respect These Divine Humiliations did ravish me beyond comparison and I discover'd such wonderful Beauty in them that I could not be satisfied with beholding them I was deeply possess'd with a desire to conform my self to Jesus in his Humiliations and to spend my days in his imitation and I was much troubled I could not yet quit all things to live a poor abject retir'd life 'T is no less the work of Grace to bring us to relish the Abjections of Jesus Christ as to be taken with his Grandeurs His Grandeurs are incomprehensible but nothing in my eyes seem more great and rich and precious than his Humiliations The unspeakable Love that Jesus Christ has for Souls does manifest it self by making them partakers of his Humiliations Be content O my Soul with what part he shall give thee For it seems to me a punishment to abound with Riches and Honours whereby we become unlike to Jesus and march on in ways contrary to his practice and example When I reflect upon my sins I cannot sufficiently admire the great Graces God is pleas'd to vouchsafe me A strong argument to convince of his Infinite goodness and affords much matter of Humiliation considering how unworthy I am of the least favours But for me a poor wretch to have a call to solitude to converse only with God and his Holy Angels what a Mercy is this It came into my mind that Moses who had been a Captain of Thieves was afterwards a Holy Hermit and I had a special Devotion to him desiring him to help me by his Prayers O the wonderful effects of Grace that a Robber should become a Hermit I have a Devotion to Saints that have been great sinners methinks they are Powerful with God to help sinners to be converted This view of the extreme humiliations of Jesus yet continuing was the subject of my fourth Prayer And I found in my self great desires to begin a new kind of life to give my self absolutely to God as a Sacrifice by dying to all things of the world by a vow of Poverty But I being not yet in a condition to forsake my temporal affairs I resolv'd to make such a Vow when all things were settled and I took care that my affairs might be so regulated as to put me in a condition to comply with the call of God Having taken this resolution I found my heart inflamed with desires to be wholly for God and to conform my self as much as possible to Jesus in his humiliations Nature felt some afflicting resentment hereat and furnish'd me with arguments to divert me from it But the light of Grace scatter'd these thoughts and taught me to neglect the help of Creatures by casting my self wholly into the arms of his Providence O my Jesus the only love of my Soul though the most despised of men your Divine attracts and inspirations do so powerfully invite me to follow you in your ways of poverty that I shall never soon enough see the happy moment to engage my self thereto by a Vow never to be recalled Fourth Day Jesus the Fountain of Grace and Piety IN my first Prayer God gave me to see the infinite grandeurs of the Sacred Humanity united to the Divinity in the same person This ineffable union was the general and amorous object of my regard which wrought in my Soul a very great esteem and singular love and union with Jesus Christ This state of Jesus rejoyced my heart and I dwelt upon it my Soul being satisfied with wonderful contentment I had interiour assurances and very great certitudes of the Divinity of Jesus nothing in him seemed dark unto me though all surpassed the strength of reason I beheld him as the Principal of Grace and Glory This manifestation was in me by a Divine light and I found it filled my heart with most pleasing impressions The small conviction we have of the Divinity of Jesus makes us such cold Christians and that we walk so slowly in the ways of Grace For who firmly believes that Jesus is God will have a singular esteem of his Doctrine of his Counsels of his Proceedings and think it his Glory for to follow him The perfect belief of the Divinity of Jesus carries a Soul to real endeavours after perfection to despise the world to take up the Cross and follow Jesus in his abjections This is to be the Image of Jesus Christ
he is her repose and true Felicity Alas when shall it be that Jesus possesses my Soul so as never to leave me This is what I sigh after and I will purchase it at any rate So to possess Jesus is a Heaven upon earth and all we have is too little to gain it Come O dear Jesus and make my Heart your Mansion for ever Of all your Graces and Favours I only desire you to be always present with me and that I make it my business so to serve you as in some sort to be made partaker of those admirable disposition of your contemplative Life I then had a sight of the Infinite difference between the service of Jesus between the Sensual and a Spiritual Life This cannot be discerned unless Jesus imprint his Maxims his Spirit and Sentiments in our hearts which will enable us to Crucifie our Sensuality and obey his motions I observ'd that my Devotion to the Sacred Humanity increas'd daily and felt in my Soul such Powerful attracts that no sooner was I in a Praying posture but Jesus possess'd my heart and discover'd something of his Grandeurs to me This Grace I received from his goodness in my third Prayer After which me thought I knew Jesus Christ in a new manner who though inaccessable to the Creature by reason of his Divine and Infinite Perfections yet sometimes he does most clearly manifest himself to special Favourites Such a view of Jesus is more to be valued than the whole World and a Soul that once has been vouchsafed this Grace esteems her self so rich that she looks upon all Worldly things as dross and dung adhering close to Jesus as her only Treasure We can never know what admirable effects this sight of Jesus works in a Soul but by experience 'T is true there 's a great deal of difference between the Visions of Jesus A Soul in the beginning of a Spiritual Life is taken up with the sensible part of the Sacred Humanity but in the progress she receives such pure discoveries of Jesus that she only relishes Jesus wholly Divinized but cannot express what she sees in him Souls thus dispos'd receive much of the Spirit of Jesus Christ and his humane states seem to them so elevated and transcendent that they find nothing more beautiful more precious or more charming to win their Affections O that we did know Jesus as he ought to be known O that we could see the inestimable riches the rare and precious Treasures contained in him My fourth Prayer was only to open the eyes of my Soul to see Jesus Christ as we behold any Object with the eyes of our Body to consider it attentively He was pleas'd so to manifest himself to my Soul as my joy was superabundant and I was dead to all things and my self to live in Jesus and love his Beauties I found my self in a manner like a drunken man who is not himself but as a dead man he knows not what he says nor is capable of any business nor can govern himself his drunkenness has possess'd him and made him fit for nothing else Enjoyment for the time it continues has the like effects in a Soul she is then capable of nothing but this enjoyment which is all in all unto her Such Souls are now and then put upon the rack by themselves or their directors fearing least this may savour of idleness They think it may be better to suffer and more profitable to help their Neighbour and that self-love may creep into this enjoyment This sometimes brings a Soul to quit this enjoyment so as to put her self out of the way where God has plac'd her except some particular Grace preserve her in the performance of Gods will A Soul capable of this Grace must be in a state of great Purity disengaged and dead to all things Exteriour and Interiour indifferent to all Divine Ordinations whatever and be in a perfect disposition to adhere to God and his Divine operations in what manner he pleases O how great is our humane weakness O how often do we resist the Designs of God by our Imperfections Seventh Day Jesus our Exemplar and Guide IN my first Prayer I consider'd how Jesus was a scandal to the Jews and to the Gentiles foolishness that the same Person should be God and Man and die upon a Cross to save the World the belief of this seem'd a pure extravagancy to poor blinded Creatures I consider'd also how a true Supernatural Christian Life seems but as folly to Worldly-wise-men who cannot understand it being elevated above sense and humane reason wholly Spiritual and repugnant to the Inclinations of depriv'd nature Alas how the practice of the true Christian Life is rare To love crosses and contempts and poverty and humiliations and to rejoyce in Persecutions by preferring the Maxims of Faith before humane Wisdom is a proceeding very extraordinary to Carnal men who in a manner are wholly guided by their Senses If Grace do not open the eyes of Faith in us our poor Soul has no director but Reason which casts a mist before us to hinder our sight from Christian Verities The same Grace also discover'd to me that as Jesus lived a Suffering Life we likewise should conform to his states and be content with crosses and contrarieties pains and deprivations and be pleas'd with whatsoever comes from the hand of God The poor retir'd abject Life I resolv'd to lead answerable to my Vocation without doubt will be accounted a folly by Worldly men and may sometimes so seem to my self But take courage O my Soul a lively Faith will discover the deceit by a Light from Heaven The Proceedings of a Spiritual Life are not govern'd by Humane Arguments but Divine and Supereminent Motives For we must suffer to do Penance and we must love Poverty to advance pure Love which despises all things to have God in possession In my second Prayer I clearly saw that Jesus took no pleasure without necessity to prescribe such rough Maxims to us He knew that the corruption of our Nature was great our inclination to things of this World was continual and therefore to live in his Love requir'd constant Mortifications and Contradictions to Nature And the degree of Love is according to the degree of Self-denyal and Mortification Jesus hath founded Christian Perfection upon two high Mountains Calvary and Tabor on the one we learn Perfection and Mortification on the other the Perfection of Prayer and on both the Sublimity of Divine Love To follow Jesus Christ upon one or th' other mountain we must die to the World and never let the love of the Cross and Mortification to languish in us Solitude must be dear to such Souls and they must take no imploy but what God will have them least interessing themselves and spending their Spirits in other matters they make themselves unable to follow vigorously the works of their Vocation My Soul would it not be a sad thing to quit thy Creator
great so full of Glory you come to humble your self and to annihilate your self in a Soul so Criminal so Unfaithful 'T is true Abjections were not inconsistent with the condition of your Mortal Life But since now you are in Glory methinks you ought to be exempt from them If my Soul had any Love for your Interests she would not procure you such Humiliations and therefore she would do better not to Communicate so often for then she would not be the occasion of humbling you so often This Sentiment joyned with the knowledge of my own unworthiness would make me abstain from Communicating if I did not know withall that your Delights are to be with such Souls as desire likewise to take their Delights in you and that you have said in St. John That if we do not eat your Adorable Flesh we shall not have Life in you When I consider my Indignity and yet present my self to Communicate with a Soul that is an ever-flowing source of Vices and Sins I should be very much afflicted to see Jesus Christ so ill lodged in the midst of my Imperfections not knowing in what part of my Soul I might place him Where he might not see things unworthy of his Presence This sight would doubtless cause me a great deal of pain if another regard did not encourage me I consider that when the Sun enters into a stinking and and offensive Dungeon he is received there more in his own Brightness and Lustre than in the Dungeon it self and that so he is there without prejudicing his Grandeur or Purity When I have this Idaea before my eyes I say to my Lord 'T is true you enter into me all miserable as I am But it is true also that you are more in your Self in your Glory and in your Brightness Be therefore received in your Self O Divine Jesus in your Beauty and in your Grandeurs I rejoyce that the offensiveness and streightness of my Dungeon cannot prejudice your Beauties or your Greatness Enter therefore into me without going out of your Self Be received in me but more in your Self O bright Sun of Glory Live for ever in the midst of your own Splendours and Magnificence but do not cease to live also in the middle of my Obscurities and Misery Convert me unto you wholly and without reserve CHAP. II. To Communicate worthily we must put our selves in a state conformable to that of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament JEsus Christ chose to give himself to us in this stupendious Mystery in the state of Death as to any thing that concerns the life of the Senses but as a Fountain of Life in regard of the Interiour Life a Divine Life a Life of Grace a Life of Contemplation and of continual application of the mind to adore the Majesty of God his Father A Life I say poor and nothing to the Exteriour but shining with the Divinest and most awful Lustre and Infinitely rich under the vails of the outward Species that hid it from the eyes of the World Thus and with these dispositions he presents himself to us requiring that we likewise present our selves unto him with dispositions conformable to his His Sacred Humanity that he gives us in the Holy Communion was rais'd to a Divine Life by the Hypostatical Union So also must we be by Grace viz. Our understanding must be elevated above it self by a high illustration of Faith and our Will inflamed by a sublime Sense of the Love of God and so in fine our whole Soul must be animated with the Life of Grace O the Sublimity of the Life of Grace How Admirable art thou how High how Ineffable Thou raisest man from Earth to Heaven thou makest him live in God I and of God too since thou dost prepare him to live in this World upon the same Substance which nourisheth the Blessed in Heaven O great Life of Grace thou art poor to the Exteriour but most rich to the Interiour Thou appearest low but art most high I am ravished with thy Beauties I cannot live a moment without Thee who makest us live with a Life Divine who placest the Soul in the heart of God and disposest her to see God placed in her own Heart When the Charms and Beauty of this Life have once discovered themselves to the Soul she willingly quits all other things to imbrace them and whatsoever else seems to her no better than Death and Corruption she renounces the World Pleasures and Riches she condemns her self to Pennances Mortifications and Poverty to obtain this Divine Life and feels a Sacred hunger after this adorable nourishment that is her only support O that I did throughly know that I did Faithfully pursue this Divine Life a Life so little known so little practis'd in the World where People do not thirst after the Living Waters of your Eternal Fountain O my God! O Jesus draw me after you through all the Actions and Duties of the Life of Grace which is at its greatest height among Injuries and Miseries Draw me O Lord and I will run after you in the Odour of your Perfumes What a pleasure is it O my Soul to see you march like a Gyant in the ways of Grace nourished and strengthened in your course with the Bread of Heaven Ambulavit in fortitudine cibi illius usque ad montem Dei To live in Death as Jesus seems to do in the Blessed Sacrament to change Glory for Contempt to be most delighted when one is annihilated and even Sacrificed is the true Character of the Life of Grace It makes all things die to the Exteriour and live only to the Interiour and above all things it confers the Spirit of Prayer keeping the Soul almost in a continual exercise and elevation by fixing its regard upon that Infinite and incomprehensible Being which she adores and is not able to understand and therefore annihilates her self in his presence suspended with admiration of those Divine Grandeurs which she sees annihilated in the Holy Eucharist O my Soul how great is thy Vileness how extream is thy Poverty What is man that thou O Lord art mindful of him Dost visit him and takest pleasure to come and dwell personally in him His Soul is drawn out of nothing his Body is but a piece of Clay and still you vouchsafe to set your eyes upon him How can a Creature so filthy so wretched so gross receive within it the Infinite Majesty of God Sink and humble your self to the very center of your Nothing and confess your Indignities O my Soul Cast down your eyes and acknowledge that you are unworthy so much as to lift them up towards this formidable Grandeur and more than all be penetrated with the deep sense of Admiration Gratitude and love of this excessive Goodness which condescends in this incomprehensible Mystery to annihilate it self to come and give it self to you even in the state of your own Nothing We must needs be very much in Love with our
Comformity to all his States This Divine Light discovered to me a great many Verities very important for my direction and conduct 1. That we are never to be without Sufferings For the Spirit of Christianity is the Spirit of the Cross The Grace that feeds and supports it is the Fruit of the Cross and the adorable Bread so full of Delights inspires no other Sentiments then those of the Cross Venite mittamus lignum in Panem ejus 2. That as Jesus manifests the Purity of the Love he bears us by dying for us upon the Cross so ought we to prove the Sincerity of ours by nailing it to the Cross 3 That he worked our Salvation by the only means of Suffering Therefore it is a manifest deceit to hope that we can co-operate towards our Salvation by any other means than that of Suffering 4. That we must attend and harken very diligently to the Spirit of Jesus within us which of it self sometimes furnisheth us with Crosses of Providence or else inspires us to seek them of our selves We must embrace them all cheerfully or search them amorously 5. That no other Soul but what is in Love with Crosses can tast the ways of the Spirit and its Heavenly Sweetness For God who mixes the Pleasures of Worldlings with wormwood and Gall does often sweeten our Sufferings after an admirable manner Moreover I was taught in the Holy Communion that Jesus is a Sun which was Eclipsed during this transitory Life but now shines in Heaven full of Lustre and Glory And according to the measure Souls partake of his Eclipse and Darkness they shall proportionably share of his Splendours in Glory Why then flee we Poverty Contempt and the Cross For that which Eclipseth a Soul with Jesus Christ is the Seed of an Immense Glory in Heaven What is the reason that we see nothing but Crosses in Churches All the Altars are adorned with the Cross the Priest going to Celebrate weares the Cross in his Vestments while he is saying Mass while he is saying Mass he makes a great many Signs of the Cross when he is about to Communicate to us he first gives us his Benediction with the Sign of the Cross even the last Action he does holding the Blessed Sacrament in his Hand and ready to present it to us is forming the Sign of the Cross with the Sacred Host We are told also that in Antient times when Christians received it in their Hands they placed them in form of a Cross laying the Right Hand a Cross over the Left What can we learn from all this but that the Christian who Communicates ought to be Crucified and that as he receives his God among Crosses so he should take delight in passing his Life amongst Sufferings My Soul when shall I begin the practice of a Life wholly Crucified a throughly Christian and Supernatural Life When shall I love Poverty Contempt Affronts Injuries O my God that I might begin this very day to serve you and trample upon all the Sentiments of Nature which ought to be continually upon the Cross And therefore I ought not to be troubled at such things as impoverish and ruine me The more poor the more dead one is to the World I ought even exteriourly if People would believe me to live poorly and become vile and contemptible in the eyes of men following the example of Jesus Christ who lived thirty years in a Shop like a Servant Therefore it is my Duty to tend contrary to all that which the World with its Wisdom of the Flesh esteemeth And that suddenly for I am already grown Old and have not yet begun In becoming wretched according to the opinion of the World I shall answer the Grace of my Vocation who am called to Poverty and a Solitary Life I shall obtain Peace and become a man of Prayer Assist me with your Powerful Graces O Jesus and grant me Perseverance Let us follow Jesus O my Soul He from the very first instant of his Life walked like a Gyant in the ways of Humiliations and Sufferings the ways that his Father appointed him All his concern was to co-operate with his Fathers Eternal purposes which regarded himself Let us walk couragiously in the rough and Holy Paths which Jesus has traced out Let us not fear our Natural Weakness since he did not fear his Humanity but shew'd himself obedient even to Death and to the Death of the Cross Let us count every thing Folly that is contrary to this Wisdom and let us quit one for all every thing else to follow none but him CHAP. IX The second Effect of Communion is to Transform us THe following consideration after Communion entertained me long and continued a whole Morning That the principal Effect of Communion is to produce in us an intimate Union with Jesus This Union is a perfect Assimulation to his States and Mysteries And this Assimulation is the same thing which they call a Transformation into God and renders a person wholly Divine and devoted to the Interests of God insomuch that by Grace he becomes Divine as having no other Inclinations then those of God living by the Life of God and desiring nothing but the Love and Glory of God In this sight which appeared to me very clear I beheld the lowness and imperfections of such Sentiments and Actions as are meerly Natural I wondered at the blindness of men who set such a value upon an operation of Nature though it be of it self so infinitely vile and contemptible It seems they never understood the importance of advancing towards Perfection with all their sorce nor the miserable condition of an imperfect Soul This Light wonderfully separated me from Imperfection and I am now as full of Horror of it as I was formerly full of Sin It seemed to me that Jesus who so prodigiously debaseth himself in the Blessed Sacrament by a Miracle of Love of Mercy and of incomparable bounty did thus excite me to rise from Nature to Grace and and from a Humane to a Super-natural Life Towards which I felt in my self such strong Inclinations and such powerful Obligations by my frequent Communions that I had rather have died than have passed one moment of my Life in the state of Nature We ought to tend incessantly to the Purity of Jesus and if to enter into it more readily and more perfectly one must quit Honours Goods and Friends let us quit them my Soul and take in their places Poverty Contempts and Pains The Purity of Virtue charms me and animates me to pursue it I do not find any Creatures that I do not willingly abandon nor any difficulty that I do not easily conquer O my God separate me by your Holy Grace from every thing which hinders this Divine Transformation and grant that I may cease to be what I am according to Nature that I may become what you are by the power of Grace When shall I be wholly united and transformed into you When shall
Divinity O how great is the dignity of pure Souls when they Communicate O how low and abject are all the Grandeurs of the World They are a meer Nothing compared with this For what Glory is comparable to that of a Soul intimately united with the Supream Being My God how delightful and transporting is the sight of the Wonders and profound Secrets wrapt up in your Mysteries how they penetrate the Soul you disclose them to This Union with Jesus in Communion is inessable For as the Father and the Son are one in Unity of Essence the Word and Humane Nature one in Unity of Person so the Soul that is one in Jesus partakes of both the Unions Divine and Humane Jesus is in her according to both his Natures and she is All in Jesus and while she does all things in him he works all in her he Prayes Adores Loves Suffers Labours insomuch that this perfect Union produces a certain Unity between God Jesus and the Soul and between all their operations It settles a kind of Partnership and Community of Goods and Possessions between them In a word it imports more than can be expressed Now this condition must needs be most Holy and Divine where God works in the Soul and the Soul in God In me manet ego in eo And the Alliance between them grows continually streighter and closer proportionably to her increasings in Virtue in this Life and receives its ultimate Perfection only in Heaven O amiable Jesus with what a profusion of Goodness and Love you entertain our Souls in this Sacrament You conceal your Presence under the External Species to give us occasion and advantage to exercise our Faith which beholds you so much more clearly as you are more secretly and obscurely present Again on the other side you manifest and shew your self by innumerable effects of your Grace and Divine Sentiments which you breath in the Soul to excite and exercise our Love What can a Soul do when she sees her self so prevented so convinced so pressed by evident instances and experimental proofs of your endless and unwearied Bounty What can she do but Love Love without stint render Love for Love how many excellent things might be said upon this Subject But how can those Sentiments be expressed that can hardly be conceived CHAP. XI The fourth Effect of Communion is to Confer the highest Love OFtentimes before and after Communion I was taken up with Contemplating the Perfections of God Which being one and the same in themselves yet they are different in our manner of conception and the verity of their effects Now when any one of them discovers it self it appears in full Beauty and Majesty and all the other seem to sink in to it and lend all their Ornaments and Excellence to increase its Lustre An instance hereof we have in the Blessed Sacrament where the Divine Love displayes all its Magnificence and the other Attributes contribute to that design the brightest of their Charms and Perfections Eternity Immensity Wisdom Omnipotence Justice Mercy and whatsoever is most eminent and adorable in the Divine Nature are present there and attend upon the triumph of Love Each of these Perfections espouse the Interests and put on the Inclinations of Love which are Liberality and Magnificence and accordingly operate in a Soul when Love makes his triumphant entry at the time of Communion For Love as its proper effect produceth in the Soul a reciprocal Love Eternity imprints continuance and perseverance Immensity spreads the Affection and gives it an unbounded extent wisdom sheds round about a Super-natural Light to guide its good purposes and illustrate the ways of Virtue Omnipotence inspires an invincible strength to surmount all difficulties and obstacles Thus in Communion a Soul does not only receive the impressions of Love but of Love attended with the Lustre and Excellencies of all the Divine Perfections It is observable that Jesus Christ together with his Eternal Father sent the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles to replenish them with Love in the same place where he had given them Himself in the Sacrament So that this Divine Sanctuary was chosen two several times to be the Theater where the two greatest Actions of Love were represented that ever the goodness of God exhibited out of himself The first in giving us his Son to reside in our Hearts who from all Eternity rests in his own Bosom and thereby enabling us to live Divinely by him as he lives by his Father The second in sending on us the adorable Spirit of the Father and the Son to be the knot of the Eternal Espousals of the Soul with her God to Beautify her with his In created Light to warm her with his Sacred Flames to animate her with his Heavenly Force and Virtue and in a word to render her entirely Spiritual And both these Actions are perpetuated in the Holy Church when at the same time we are Feasted with the precious Body of the Son of God and inebriated with the Spirit of his Love O who can conceive the admirable Commerce and Caresses that are interchanged between Jesus Christ and pure Souls in this Divine Sacrament The World which discerns nothing but by meditation of the Senses is too gross and stupid to comprehend them It thinks that Souls which are escaped from its snares and dis-engaged from its business lead an idle and unprofitable Life it fancies they do nothing because their Actions are not seen that their Fire is extinguished because it does not blaze in the eyes of Men. But on the contrary they resemble those Mountains full of Sulpher which carry vast Globes of Fire in their Bosomes though they break out but at certain times and then they are not only seen but whole Provinces feel the Conflagrations Towns and Villages are Burned and Fields covered with Ashes In like manner those retired Souls which burn inwardly with Divine Love and for the most part shine only to God and themselves yet when the command and service of the Lord excite them to External Duties they produce such extraordinary Effects that numbers of Souls are set on fire with their Virtues Example and Instructions In this kind we have had many great Servants of God who having conceived a thousand good desires in their retirement and inflamed with Heavenly fire by the frequent use of the most Holy Communion issue from their retreat and this Sacred Table like Lyons breathing nothing but flames and setting all on fire about them Such have made the great Conversions of Sinners changed the face of whole Provinces and Kingdoms and all this performed only by one or a small number of such Servants of God who appeared so powerful in Works and Words that all their Actions seemed to be so many Miracles Here we must observe that this Interiour Fire in a person not sufficiently retired within himself or that from time to time is not careful to lay on more Fewel to nourish it I mean to
Divinity repos'd with Infinite joy in the Humanity of Jesus Christ in his Suffering state And a Soul never loves more nor renders a greater homage to the Divine Perfections than by the Cross and Sufferings Sacrificing her self to Gods Interests and Glory This then is the Motto of a loving Soul Aut pati aut mori Jesus let me suffer or let me die CHAP. II. That we must have a Love for Crosses A Life without a Cross is a Life without Love This Saying too common among us That we must live an easie Life does not become the Lips of a Christian for 't is all one as to say We must live a Natural Sordid Life Next to the Divinity nothing is more amiable than the Cross of Christ We must either enjoy with the Divinity or suffer with the Humanity and the more we suffer with the one the more we shall enjoy with the other A Soul conducted by enjoyments must also participate of great Sufferings for these make those more sweet and pleasant We find by experience that the least contentment taken in Creatures does diminish Divine enjoyment and therefore the Saints have been severe to themselves so as to allow Nature only what is purely necessary by a resolute denyal even of Lawful Pleasures We too often enlarge the Law of necessity and indulge our selves in our Refections and Recreations and Accomodations Nature is content with little but the clamours of others and the fear of prejudicing our Health does us no small hurt in our way towards Perfection 'T is a sign we march couragiously in the way of the Cross when we find in our Souls such a Peace and Serenity that does not indeed hinder Nature to feel the bitterness of Sufferings but inspires with a generous resolution to embrace and cherish them looking upon them as special favours from Heaven notwithstanding the regrets of Nature to prove our Fidelity and advance our Glory It comes into my mind that to take away the bitter tast of Crosses we must sweeten them with several Sauces that is with different confiderations Sometimes by accepting from Gods hand with a Spirit of Pennance Other times with a Spirit of Sacrifice And then again with the Spirit of pure Love Sometimes to be conformable to Jesus Christ in his suffering state and besides to do the Will of God and submit our selves with all Humility to the Orders of his Divine and Sacred Providence Thus the Soul may make use of several considerations to sweeten the bitterness of Sufferings and so preserve a Love of the Cross among all the repugnances of Humane Nature When God designs to advance Divine Love in a Soul he affords her great occasions of Suffering by the order of his Providence and she contentedly embraces them though very bitter to sensual Nature Such favours are precious and we ought to manage them with Prudence and Councel 'T is very true what our Blessed Saviour says in the Gospel Multi sunt vocati pauci verò electi Many have calls to Perfection by Inspirations Lights and Motions of Grace And yet they arrive not to it for want of Fidelity and overmuch sparing themselves by too tender a love of their Body Goods Friends and Relations giving an ear more to Humane reason than the voice of Grace Sometimes we perswade our selves that Devotion is a Life full of Peace without Crosses but we deceive our selves nor ought we to enter into the Service of God without a disposition of Indifferency to all states to be mortified there not as we would have it but after what manner best pleases God Crosses from the immediate hand of God do much conduce to Sanctifie us but what arise from our vanity or too much love of the World are for the most part unprofitable and rather a hindrance to the Soul in her way to Perfection Suffer we must more or less and what pleases God we must accept of with contentation O how rare is it to find Souls truly amorous of Crosses I am of Opinion that the little love we have for Sufferings is the only cause we so little advance in the ways of Grace and if we well examine our selves we shall acknowledge it The love of Sufferings is quite repugnant to our Natural Inclinations but God can make that easie by Grace which is impossible to Nature and if we ask this great Grace as we ought we shall receive it as God has promised Neither does the Love of the Cross so much consist in great Corporal Austerities as embracing with an amorous generosity all those little Contradictions Mortifications and Humiliations we dayly meet withall either from others or our selves or by the secret orders of Divine Providence and to make good use of them for our Spiritual advantage is not the work of Nature but of Grace The more perfect our Virtue is the more we have a love for the Cross that we may be more conformable to our Blessed Saviour Know we not that they who will live Piously in Christ Jesus must suffer Persecution They shall suffer indeed on all sides from the Flesh from the Spirit from the World and God himself will try them with Afflictions This on earth is the high way to Heaven wherein Love must walk to come to Perfection which can never be gain'd without a labourious and couragious resolution CHAP. III. That we must have a great Love for Crosses WE must have a great Intellectual thirst to suffer all sorts of Crosses This is the Character of true Christians this is the Mark to know that Jesus Crucified is establish'd in us And this thirst ought to continue in us whatever our condition be because it much augments our Enjoyments and Consolations The more the Soul enjoyes the more she becomes thirsty not only of a more Savorous Union but also of a more heavy Cross Jesus Christ did thirst after his Passion for us and Dying on the Cross his thirst Increased being not quenched with all his Sufferings We say we ought to have the Image of Jesus Christ Crucified imprinted on our Souls and what is this but to have a thirst for Sufferings as he had O how the cup of affliction is pleasant to a Soul athirst for Sufferings When some great Cross happens to such a Soul she finds comfort and satisfaction therein as one enflamed with heat is refresh'd with Drinking God has a strange thirst for our Sufferings he is a thirst in us by the Fire of his Divine Love wherewith he loves himself and his Divine Perfections why do we not refresh him with our Sufferings But alas this Divine thirst is little known to men O how is it hidden from sensual eyes O Jesus how little are you known How little are you loved These Proceeding of Jesus are not understood by those who only follow the Light of Sense and Reason Emitte lucem tuam Whence once the Spiritual man discovers this nothing is more desirable to him then Suffering The great desire of the
obscurity of Faith She must therefore keep her self in an Indifferency rising and falling according to the conduct of Gods Holy Spirit Always esteeming her self unworthy of the least Grace and never pretend by forcing her Spirits to the extraordinary favours of high Contemplation But when she has a call to such elevations in Prayer the way to arrive thither is by a perfect death to all things and a Faithful imitation of Jesus Christ in his Crucified states of Abjection and Poverty with a Love of Solitude as much as our condition will permit There 's a great deal of difference between that Light and Fervour which is imparted to a Soul in the elevations of passive Prayer and that Light which is procured by the ordinary Grace of Meditation That is more in time and piercing and full of Heavenly Benedictions This however suffices to acquire Virtues and serve God in the state of our Vocation 'T is our duty to attend to our present condition with Peace and Humility and submission to the Divine Will and let God alone to order as he pleases the time of his Visits and our manner of Prayer Sometimes this will be by simple Thoughts sometimes by Discourse sometimes by Faith alone and sometimes by passive Illuminations But whatever is given us we must receive from the hand of the Divine Goodness with great respect and Thankfulness acknowledging our selves unworthy of the least good Thought That which a Soul ought to do both in and out of Prayer is to be very attentive to Gods Holy Inspirations and follow them with Courage and Fidelity If she find that God elevates her to extraordinary Contemplation let her yield to those Divine impressions If she be kept in an ordinary way let her there abide If she be left in Aridities let her also sit down without complaining The great secret of a Spiritual Life is for a Soul to purifie her self so as to comply with the motions of God who is our Alpha and Omega our Origen and final end There are things sufficiently declared as the Commandments of God and the Church the Duties we owe to Obedience Charity or Necessity There 's no need to expect immediate Light from God for the performance of these things But only in such which are neither commanded nor forbidden And in these great Purity of Soul is necessary to discern the motions of Grace for fear we be deceiv'd by our own imaginations Those Saints who by the Impulses of Gods Holy Spirit have writ Spiritual Treatises to direct Interiour Christians in the wayes of God oftentimes affect us with their Thoughts and Sentiments because they Pray in Heaven for this Blessing on their labours on Earth and therefore t is Beneficial to read their Books to advance our Devotion But do what we can we shall never know what that Prayer is by what those Books write of it unless by the practice and Light of the same Prayer We know well enough in general that Prayer is the source of all Virtue in the Soul who leaves that off falls into Luke-warmness and Imperfections Prayer is a Holy Fire that warms the Heart and Affections which without it must of necessity grow cold in Devotion In Health or Sickness Joy or Sorrow we must always Pray except we have a mind to fall from Grace to our utter ruin CHAP. III. That we ought to be indifferent to what manner of Prayer God is pleased to give us WE ought to shun two Extreams equally vitious The one is to covet more Grace and Perfection than God intends us so as to be troubled and disgusted to see others more elevated in Gifts of Prayer than our selves The other is not to co-operate faithfully with the Grace vouchsaf'd us either for want of Courage in the Difficulties that occur in the practice of Virtue or of Attention to observe the Motions of Grace or being observed by too easily diverting our selves to other matters and so neglecting the Mercies of God When a Soul is well purified and hath experience of the Impulses of Grace in her and can distinguish them from the motions of Nature she must give free ingress to the rayes of this Light from Heaven that she may be throughly illuminated and warm'd in her Devotions For to do otherwise under a pretence of Humility and fear of deception is not to yield to the Conduct of God's Spirit who inspires when and whom he pleases 'T is then our Duty to be entirely passive that God may fully work his Will in us When these Divine Illuminations are withdrawn from a Soul for the Glory of God and her good and so left in darkness or when her own Imperfections have made her not so capable of supernatural Lights she must rest contented with these privations till it pleases the Sun of Righteousness to shine upon her A purified Soul is satisfied and resign'd on such occasions because God only is her joy and not his gifts which he by his infinite Goodness communicates to her when he pleases And this is the reason that she loves not her inward peace and joy when she is deprived of heavenly Irradiations and Gifts in Prayer He who gives himself up to his Prince for his sole interest and satisfaction without seeking his own peculiar concerns and contentment does not much matter what Service he renders and what Rewards he receives provided his Prince be well pleased and satisfied If he keep him near his person to caress him he is content not that he is caressed but because it is his Princes pleasure If he imploy him afar off in troublesome Affairs he is content not to be so far from his Person and in a hazardous Employment but because this is the Pleasure of his Prince whose Content he only had an eye to in giving himself up unto his Service This is the true case of a Soul that desires to serve God purely for the Love of God If God caress her in Prayer with Visits full of Sweetness she is content because this is his Pleasure if he affords not his Presence but leaves her in Darkness she is content because 't is the good pleasure of God If God call her to the exercises of Charity in a life more active and laborious than the contemplative she is content because this is the good pleasure of God which is the only thing she seeks and desires in his Service This indifferency disposes a Soul to receive great Graces for by this means she sometimes arrives to a total oblivion of her self and all creatures without any reflection on her own Interests Temporal or Eternal haveing nothing in her eye but the good pleasure of God and desiring him alone insomuch that if any thing of self creep in at any time as soon as she discovers it 't is distasteful to her This is a state of great Nakedness and entire Mortification and a perfect disposition to most sublime Prayer whether God elevates a Soul whom he sees ready to submit
to the least degree of Prayer or Dereliction if so he pleases It happens oftentimes that in a state of Privations a Soul is so surrounded with darkness that she sees nothing of God who seems entirely to be hid from her and that which augments this Cross she is so wholly taken up with her Loss that she thinks not of the means to recover her happiness If in this state a Soul be content with this rigorous usage with all humble submission to the good pleasure of God though she apprehends it not at present she is united to God in a transcendent manner and possesses her soveraign-Good when she fears she has lost him This is the preheminence of a Soul which is not wedded to one manner of Prayer more than another but holds her self in an indifferency to receive of God whatever he pleases And let her Prayer be what it will she will be sure not to perform the Work of God negligently CHAP. IV. That above all things 't is necessary to practise Prayer VVE must understand aright that all our Perfection and all the Glory we can bring to God lyes in our Interiour and not so much in our Exteriour Actions Alas we pass away our time vainly and unprofitably both to God and our selves There 's nothing so precious as his Interiour nothing is to be preferred before it seeing thereby God is most glorified And therefore of all our Sacrifices the Heart is the principal and none of our Offerings are acceptable without it Fili mi da mihi cor tuum 'T is from the Interiour proceeds the pure Love of God and of our Neighbour the Purity of Intention the Zeal of the Glory of God and whatever Riches the Soul possesses And yet we too often neglect this to make a fair outward show in exteriour actions which are ordinarily sullied with impurity by a mixture with the Interests of corrupted Nature Too many pass away the greatest part of their Life in Impurity and Imperfections for want of Light and they want Light because it is not ordinarily obtained but by Prayer and they neglect Prayer under specious pretences of gaining time to do good to others and advance the glory of God and so want this Light and thereupon fail in their corresponding to the Grace of God A Soul must be constant to her Times of Prayer if she intend to nourish the Life of Grace in her and not to pray only then when she has nothing else to do that is good and commendable which is but an artifice of Satan by other Exercises of Charity to withdraw well-meaning Souls from Prayer and this we must have a gseat care of being a subtile Temptation If hereby he can weaken the vigour of the Soul 't is that he lookt for and then he will soon induce us to fall into such Defects and Imperfections which will bring great Prejudice to a spiritual Life How many Souls are there who endanger their Ruine even by Works of Charity either by over-doing or not doing them according to the order of God and Grace We must have a generous Fidelity to the Exercise of holy Prayer by means whereof we approach to the Divine Source from whence the Soul rceives all Strength and Vertue Prayer is a holy fire to which who draws near has warm affections for God who shuns it must of necessity fall into Tepedity and Lukewarmness Whatever our condition be whether in Sickness or Health in Abjection or Honour in Poverty or Abundance let us never fail of our Duty to God by Prayer in the best manner we can being the Powerful means to procure and advance our union with God our only Happiness I canot possibly wish a greater Good to any person I love than the Gift of Prayer knowing that thereby we enter into the Cabinet of the Secrets of God and are made partakers of his Graces Prayer then is the Source of all Grace in the Soul without which by degrees she tends to ruine No affairs whatsoever could ever hinder the Saints from their constant Devotions Jesus Christ himself has shew'd us this by his example spending whole Nights in Prayer and Contemplation Our Disorders proceed much by too lightly engaging our selves for want of Circumspection in humane affairs to which we have no Call from God and therefore are not favoured by him with Success whereby we fall into many Defects and become too often indispos'd to Prayer and Prayer failing us we want all things The first Wheel that must set all a going in our Spiritual Life is this Maxim That our perfection consists principally in our Interiour But it cannot go well with our Interiour without Fidelity to Grace which works in us a Love of Mortification and Austerities an Inclination to Solitude and a kind of Abhorrence of Sensual Pleasures and such Vanity as the World admires Now this Grace that brings forth these good Fruits in us is not obtained but by Prayer nor ordinarily augmented but by Prayer nor well known so as to correspond to its motions but by Prayer But 't is very difficult and in a manner impossible to preserve the Spirit of Prayer in the Multiplicity of Affairs which for the most part are instrumental to divert our Thoughts from God and so few Souls attain to Perfection because few dispose themselves to pure Prayer neglecting it too much under a pretence of gaining Time to do good to others A Soul that would be wholly for God must discreetly shun the Obstacles of Perfections though never so specious with Courage and Fidelity Who is weak in Prayer must not lay out himself too much in Action for then he will profit little in the wayes of God and his Interiour will not advance in Vertue When we see many great Servants of God to do glorious things for the Love and Service and Honour of their great Master with high Commendation this sometimes raises an emulation in us to follow their Examples but our Fidelity does not consist herein it being our Duty to make the best we can of the Grace we have received and admire without envy the Gifts of others Methinks I have a Desire to be but as God will have me neither more nor less either interiourly or exteriourly in Nature or Grace I see others Perfect and my self Imperfect without discouragement I behold even with Content others commanding their Passions and my self fighting for Victory others doing much for God and I in a manner doing nothing others Strong and Couragious in the Service of God and my self nothing but Weakness and Misery I am comforted in considering the Designs of God concerning me and acquiesce in his good Pleasure For God refuses us not sometimes to take unprofitable Servants into his house who only serve to set forth his Bounty and Magnificence as we see with us some great Persons do show their Grandeurs When we have nothing to do but only to pray we seem to some to be but unprofitable and do God but
VI. Of the Means that facilitate the Exercise of Prayer WHosoever is resolved to undertake the Exercise of Prayer must expect to suffer all sorts of Temptations from Satan who above all others hate the Praying Nation And no less from Nature which hath strange repugnances to so Crucifying a Life and such Exercises as elevate her above all her Natural Inclinations And also from the World which does not relish at all so much Solitude and Mortification But we cannot be true Servants of Jesus Christ Crucified without taking up our Cross to follow him A Poor Abject Despised Suffering Life contented with pure Necessities for Food and Cloathing is a good Disposition to Prayer It will very much dispose us to this Holy Exercise to keep our selves in a Conformity to the states of the Suffering Life of Jesus Christ and in the practice of pure Virtues on all occasions To esteem the Sacred folly of the Cross the greatest Wisdom and correspond to the Inspirations of Gods Holy Spirit against all opposition whatsoever that thwart the Designs of God and hinders the operations of his Grace in us 'T is a great help to Prayer to make it our sole and only business and doubtless of high concern seeing 't is to do that on Earth which the Saints do in Heaven to Contemplate and Love the Beauties of God However if we have other Affairs at least we must make this the principal to which the rest ought to give place and not as alas too many do regulate our Devotions by our Secular Affairs Why should we overcharge our selves with Imployments by offering our service to others on the pretence of Charity Martha who was very busie about the Corporal Service of Jesus Christ was reprov'd for troubling her self with so many distracting Offices and her Sister commended for attending to the only thing necessary the Love of God and Contemplation 'T is a good help to Prayer not to engage our selves in Worldly concerns nor in giving or receiving Visits without necessity such as the Oblations of Charity or of our place and condition requires of us If we be free to shun all entertainments that are dangerous or unprofitable and chuse to converse with such who commonly discourse about the one thing necessary which consists in the Service of God and the exercise of Prayer But all this must be so done as our Discretion may not be call'd in question nor Charity wounded 'T is an important help to Prayer to stand always upon our guard in the time of Sickness or Indisposition of Health so as not wholly to leave off our usual Exercises of Devotion Under pretence to cherish the Body we commonly yield too much to Nature and so sometimes in a short Sickness we loose long habits of Mortification which cost us dear in their acquisition Prayer is not to be laid aside at such a time but we must endeavour to keep up our Union with God by Interiour acts of Virtue which require no strength of Body nor gusts of Devotion but agree well enough with a state of Trouble and Dereliction 'T is a very profitable help to Prayer to accustom our selves to do nothing of concern without a motion from God The Holy Spirit is in us to conduct us and we may safely follow such a Leader This keeps the Soul in great Purity which knows the Inspirations of Grace by the Internal Peace Sweetness and Liberty that always more or less attend them And if she quit them to follow Nature the secret stings of Conscience tell her she has been Unfaithful to Gods Graces and retarded her progress towards Perfection 'T is a very necessary help to Prayer for a Soul to get a habit of being so dead to the World as to live only to God and in God her only center and true repose This is the end of our Creation and if she deviate therefrom to take a complacency in her self or any Creature she falls short of the Designs of God I know well enough that in the beginning of a Spiritual Life 't is very hard to bring our minds off from thinking on vain and Worldly matters and to habituate the Soul to strive against Imperfections and adorn her self with all Christian Virtues However she must then reflect on her Imperfections her good and evil Inclinations as she finds the motions of Grace to Dictate to her She is not as yet capable of a more elevated degree of Prayer and so her Thoughts are profitably imploy'd in this lower exercise But when God is pleas'd to enter into her as to make her enter into him by a more intimate Union her Thoughts then must be all upon God and for him seeing he is only her true rest and repose Many Spiritual Persons fail herein not well observing the method and ways of God in the conduct of Souls They have not an eye severe enough on their Interiour to discover all the motions of the Heart to examine and search and find out the least root of their Imperfections This must be done and is good and profitable in its season But when God calls us to higher elevations in Prayer we must follow the conduct of his Holy Spirit or we shall never advance in the ways of Perfection CHAP. VII That we must not presume of our selves to attempt any manner of Prayer but what is ordinary IN our Spiritual Exercises we must ordinarily prepare the Subject of our Prayer and converse with God This is the Practice of all holy Persons and to do otherwise is to fail in our respect to the Majesty of Heaven If we be to speak to a King or any Person of Quality we think thereon aforehand and shall we not have consideration of what we have to say to the King of Glory This preparing of the matter of Prayer must be done some little time before we set upon the Duty Then we must lift up our Hearts to God and desire him to put into our minds what may be most pleasing to him in our Recollections and what ever it be to entertain it in our Thoughts and dwell upon it unless God inspire us with some other matter that calls upon us for our Attention and Fidelity For to comply with this we ought to quit the Subject we have prepared for our Exercise Let us not soar above our Abilities but make choice of such matters for Prayer as are most suitable to our Spiritual State and we find by our Interiour to be most agreeable to the will of God Let us never begin our Prayers without asking God pardon of our Sins and imploring his mercies For to put our selves into his Sacred Presence and to converse with him without a detestation of these Imperfections wherewith we have displeased him is to make our selves unworthy of his Grace and Favour 'T is of very great importance to know how God usually conducts Souls to Perfection that we may the better comply with the Designs of his Grace All are not call'd
to the same sort of Prayer and without a special Vocation we ought not to apply our selves but to the more ordinary way of Devotion whether we converse with God by discursive Considerations to raise our Affections taking some Book to our Assistance or whether we call to mind some Subject wherein we formerly have found some Gust and Spiritual Advantage Let this be done with Humility Dependance and Fidelity for a Soul having no Call from God to a more elevated Prayer if she cease her own Operations she ceases to Pray and falls into Distractions or is guilty of Idleness But it is far otherwise with her when she is raised from Meditation by the workings of God in her to Prayer of Contemplation 'T is true that a Soul having plac'd her self in the presence of God and thinking on the Subject she has prepared ought to meditate thereon with great attention of Spirit but if God please to take her Thoughts up with something else she ought without any Disturbance leave her own to comply with the Operations of Gods holy Spirit For when God is thus pleased to possess a Soul by the operations of his Grace she ought to put no Obstacle thereto which we do too often by our Industries which seem to us necessary and without which we believe we should do nothing when as then we should give way to those Divine Operations to the end they may become more efficacious Otherwise we have less respect for God than we would have for some earthly Prince to whom we speak with much Reverence as long as he is pleased to give us Audience but as soon as he thinks good to speak we presently are silent and give ear to his words with much Attention and Respect not presuming in the least sort to interrupt him Our principal affair is to serve God the Vnum necessarium recommended to us by our Blessed Saviour and therefore it concerns us not to distract our selves with too many exteriour Imployments though good and lawful Because if the heart be bound with a Chain of Gold 't is no more at Liberty to converse with God than if it was fetter'd with Links of Iron Wherefore whatever we can do for the Service of God and Good of our Neighbour let us do it with Willingness of Heart according to our Talents and Abilities But above all we must have an esteem of Prayer and a desire to practise it being firmly perswaded there 's nothing whereby we can better serve God or more profit our selves in a Spiritual Life For my part I in some sort more value Prayer though imperfect than the best Actions that carry more of outward Splendour and and seem more Glorious in the eyes of men We must therefore never be disgusted with Prayer nor quit the frequent Exercise thereof because we to our thinking make little Advancement therein but persevere faithfully to practise it in the best manner we can and expect with patience the good pleasure of God If we do our Endeavours we have discharg'd our Duty and Obligation The Servant that had but one Talent was blamed by his Lord because he did not improve it by his Industry When my Soul is not in a temper for the Exercise of Prayer I use short Reflections to call to mind what is most distastful to me and I make a Resolution to do it or set upon it presently if I can as to converse with one from whom I have an Aversion or make some visit where I know I shall be much mortified that I may conquer my self in those things which raise a continual War within me I have oftentimes by this facilited the Exercise of Prayer God being pleased by so much the more to dispose our hearts by how much the more we offer Violence to our selves to surmount all Difficulties CHAP. VIII How to pass from Ordinary Prayer to Contemplation A Soul that does not nourish in her self any voluntary Imperfection having efficacious desires to live the Life of Jesus ought to be passive to the Conduct of God in Prayer and aspire after great Simplicity by giving a check to the Discourse of her Understanding and multiplicity of Acts in her Will and Affections I am not ignorant that she ought to exercise her self in Meditation and a lower degree of Prayer till God is pleased to raise her to Contemplation but withall she must elevate her self as soon as she feels interiour Attracts and shun a false Humility which hinders us to follow the Motions of God's holy Spirit who communicates his Graces to the Perfect to augment their Purity and to the Imperfect to purify their Souls from Terrene Desires In my judgment 't is of great importance in the Exercise of Prayer to receive with Humility the impression of the Rayes of the Divine Sun who rides in the Interiour of our Soul 'T is he that can enlighten us without the Succours of our Discourse who inflames us with Divine Love without troubling our Will with the production of a multiplicity of Acts and in a manner almost imperceptibly makes all Virtues to grow ripe in us and arrive to Perfection If a Soul makes it her work to mortifie all her Imperfections and desires to live a suffering life for Prayer she need not much trouble her self God will do her Work for her and in a manner above her Hopes and Understanding God does not work this but in such a Soul that freely puts her self into his Hands with all submissive Humility to be guided by Him In this state of Prayer the subject prepared for our Exercise sometimes may be useful sometimes God suggests some other matter as he sees best and the Soul must peaceably comply with his Communications We cannot give certain Rules to such who are in this state of Prayer God working in them as he pleases in different manners All the Counsel can be given is To keep themselves in an entire Indifferency to Illustrations or Privations to Sweetness or Rigour Nevertheless I believe we may profitably descend to a lower Degree of Prayer when we have no Overture to one more elevated but this is not to be done till we often knock at the gate of Mercy with a holy Importunity But if the Bridegroom of our Souls is not pleased to vouchsafe us a Kiss of his Lips by Contemplation let us keep our selves at his Feet by Conversing with him in Meditation It will much conduce to elevate a Soul to a more perfect Union with God to have in memory many universal Verities of the Divinity and Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ 1. As That God is Omnipotent and an Infinite Goodness 2. That his Love to us is from Eternity and the Eye of his Divine Providence is watchful over us to conduct us to Happiness 3. That God being Love requires nothing of us but Love and Affection 4. That God is the Center of our Soul which can find no true Repose but in him alone 5. That Grace and Truth is
by Jesus Christ there being no other Means to attain Salvation 6. That the Sacred Trinity which consists in the perfect Knowledge and pure Love of the Divine Persons is the true Model of Perfect Prayer These deeply consider'd are very instrumental to elevate a Contemplative Soul to so high a pitch that sometimos she in a wonderful manner participates of that Life Eternal which is in God himself I have made a Resolution to desire of God that my Prayer may be altogether Intellectual to the end I may not feel such sensible Gusts of Heavenly Consolations which prejudice Nature These are but sweet Baiâ—s for self-Love which sullies the Purity of Prayer and diminishes the Contemplative Attention which continues more strong and vigorous when kept on the point of the Spirit whereby the Fire of Divine Love burns brighter and with more constant Flames This is that continual Union which is the Object of Perfection and whatever hinders this ought to be suspected as are sensible Gusts of Devotion in Inferiour Nature O my Soul let us therefore entirely give up our selves to God in Prayer to receive from him such impressions as he thinks best let our chief care be fully to submit our selves to him and to be disingag'd from all worldly things and accept with Thankfulness whatever he gives us If he gives us nothing let nothing content us and peaceably acquiesce in Union with his Divine Will A Soul faithful in the state of Privations will sooner or later as God sees best be raised to pure Union and Enjoyments on the lofty Wings of Contemplation CHAP. IX Of the Prayer of Faith THis Prayer is a bare reflection or simple remembrance of God who is believed by naked Faith as he is seen and known by the Light of Glory 'T is the same Object here and there but known by the Soul in a different manner The way of knowing God here is but learned Ignorance Earth is the Land of Believing Heaven of Seeing To see God as we are seen of Him and understand all Divine Mysteries is reserv'd for the Light of Glory here we must walk by the obscurities of Faith This Faith must be naked without Images or Representations simple and without Discourse universal without a distinct consideration of particulars The operation of the Will is conform to that of the Understanding Naked Simple Universal Spiritual Independant on the Senses We must expect great Combats in this way from our Spirit which will still be working and rely on Creatures But though it be much distasted by the understanding part of the Soul yet she must strive to die to her own operations and willingly entertain what helps her in this Combat as Aridities Privations Desolations which at last leave the Soul in exercise of pure Faith whereby God is known in a higher manner than those Lights which serve as a Medium between God and the Soul for this Union of our Spirit with God by pure Faith is immediate and so more elevated The Will also must die to what ever is not God To live only in Him and to him by pure Love For the Life of the Will is this Death and this Death is not ordinarily wrought but by Privations This kind of Prayer is uniform and not much lyable to alterations nor brings any damage to the Body For Nature has nothing to do in it being not procurable by greatest endeavours of Humane Industry but depending purely on the Will of God who alone gives it when and to whom he pleases 'T is true this pure and naked Contemplation of God by Faith is given but rarely and to those who have past through many Purgatories and states of Penance to fit them for it In the beginning it darts into the Soul but Transient Irradiations like flashes of Lightning if at any time they continue about half an hour 't is very much However they work in the Soul very great Effects One of the principal is that this Light of Faith discovers to us the verity of Divine Mysteries Imperfections and the Perfections we want and practical Virtues And all this at once not successively one after another by discourse which could never arrive to produce a knowledge so clear and universal But indeed the understanding has much ado to die to its own operations and not act by Humane Lights by being wholly given up to the obscurity of Faith However this must be done to be rightly disposed for Divine Operations There are divers degrees of Contemplations but what God is pleas'd to give us must be received with submissive Thankfulness While we live in Mortal Bodies we shall have always something to purifie and therefore always something to suffer Three parts of our Life pass away in a Suffering condition In a state of obscurity the Soul is intimately united to God although she be not sensible thereof I am much taken with the way of pure Faith in Prayer whereby the Soul knows God as much as she can do in this Life and though it be obscure it matters not being sure and certain For my part take as much as you will of my Light of Reason if the Light of Faith increase thereby O how Beautiful is pure and naked Faith It much conduces to Spiritualize a Soul to live continually by Faith to esteem and love nothing but what we ought to esteem and love Man rarely will relinquish his Reason and nevertheless he must raise himself above it or drag on the Earth with Imperfections Faith is a participation of the Eternal Wisdom she only conducts us with true assurance for her Lights though dark are certain and their obscurity does incomparably transcend the clearest evidence of Natural Reason Moreover to make Prayer more Intellectual and that Nature may have no hand in it we must leave off some things which usually did raise our hearts to God with a sensible Devotion As Musick Rich Ornaments Devout Pictures in Churches and the like This is good and profitable in the beginning of a Spiritual Life and some time after but when a Soul has attained purity of Prayer there 's no need to take her nourishment that is her Knowledge and Love but from pure Faith and Supernatural Lights infused into her When we take not good heed we keep not our selves sufficiently passive to the Operations of God but we go a beging for the Life of the Soul to sensible Objects when God himself would nourish her with more purified Knowledge and Diviner Love Why should we hanker after sensible Gusts of Devotion seeing Nature is commonly too much taken with them to the damage of naked Faith and the hindrance of our pure Union with God which requires a total denudation of all Creatures Notwithstanding when God tryes us with Derelictions and gives us not admittance into his presence but by things sensible and Discoursive Prayer we must humbly comply with this state and not pretend to higher elevations in our Addresses to him Yet if a Soul in
hath to Jesus the Soul loosing the sight thereof falls into distraction being carried insensibly to a different matter But when she considers Poverty as inshrin'd in the heart of Jesus and practis'd by him she is taken up with Jesus which is much better And so this digression proves profitable and she gains by this loss 'T is the same when we meditate on any Perfection of God and falling from our first subject we are happily lost in the depths of the Divinity where we find no Love but of God himself O Happy loss There 's no knowledge more necessary for us than of our Miseries and Imperfections because that or nothing will well ground us in Humility without which we cannot raise Virtues to any height in a Spiritual Life We may get this knowledge two manner of ways Either directly by considering them in themselves Vir videns paupertatem meam Or by considering the Divine Perfections in the Light whereof by reflection we discover our own Miseries and Imperfections The first manner is somewhat like a Winters-day wherein we feel nothing but Cold and see nothing but Sterility yet it affords Light enough to work in us a low esteem of our selves But this Humility oftentimes causes in the Soul disquiet dependency and discouragement The other manner resembles a fair Summers-day which is more Warm and Lightsome and full of Refreshment The sight of our Miseries by this way is more advantagious and begets in us a more generous Humility and fuller of confidence in God For the view of the Divine Perfections which is the chief and direct work of the Soul raises in her a Holy Fire which inflames her Affections towards God in the midst of her Miseries Behold now the reason why 't is a great secret in a Spiritual Life to behold all things of God who is an Infinite Light and never to forsake him because in him and by him we can best know and do our Duty After that a Soul is habituated to march through the ways of Faith and Purity she gets so great a Facility to converse with God that 't is a trouble to her to descend to Creatures knowing by experience that he only is her center where she finds true repose and her only Light to conduct her to Happiness The Soul of Jesus Christ our Grand Exemplar did not only abide in God by Apostatical Union but all his Thoughts and Affections were absorpt in the Divinity which replenish'd this admirable Creature with Grace Light and Truth for the Execution of the Eternal Decrees of his Heavenly Father for the Redemption of Man He finish'd the Mysteries of his Mortal Life but still conversing with God and plung'd in the Divinity wherein he beheld what he came to do upon Earth Let us follow his example that we may receive from God a Light to conduct us which ordinarily is communicated to us in Prayer Accedite ad eum illuminamini Draw near to God and ye shall be Enlightned CHAP. XII Of Passive Prayer PAssive Prayer is after this manner We take a view of God in his Perfections or of Jesus in his states or of some Christian Verity by the Light of Faith and then the Soul abides in a perfect repose gently receiving the Divine Impressions which enter with so much Conviction that she is presently warm'd and inflam'd with all sorts of Vertues And though she does not distinctly practise their interiour acts yet she feels a delightful Joy by the sweetness of those impressions and finds her self well aispos'd to be faithful to them on all occasions In Meditation God works with us but we in a manner do all in passive Prayer we cooperate with God but in a manner the whole work is his We must not easily believe that we are in a state of passive Prayer To be disposed thereto requires great Purity and long Practice of Prayer with the advice of a good Director and in the interim to exercise our selves in Meditation A Soul elevated to the state of passive Prayer finds her self united to God without any Labour of her own and receives from him many Lights and Illustrations Desires and Affections according to his various Workings in her Then the Soul purely adheres to Grace holding close to the Infusions of God's holy Spirit and follows the Divine Motions by the Annihilations of her proper Operations When she is thus passive and dead to her self her state changes not although her ordinary dispositions may alter for then she receives with equal Contentment from the hand of God Darkness as Light Aridities as Comforts Poverty as Abundance in a firm Resolution to will nothing but what pleases God with an entire Indifferency and a perfect Death to her own Operations 'T is observable in this passive state that the Soul sometimes remains in Union with God and Contemplation of his Divine Perfections keeping her self in a profound Repose as it were without Action and at other times she acts by her own Faculties as it pleases God to excite her to these Acts her only business being to submit perfectly to the Motions of Grace and she acting as Grace excites her does not leave her state of Passivity seeing she only moves her self according to the Motions of God's Spirit A Soul cannot arrive to this passive state unless she be dead to her self unless she be advanced in Virtue unless her Interiour Peace be great and stable unless her Prayer be in a manner continual and unless she be purifyed from all voluntary Defects For how can God in such a gracious manner visit a Soul which is free from Disquiet and Ordinary Imperfections How can she hear the Voice of God amongst the Noise of Creatures if they live in her with any Affection To put our selves into the hands of God to do with us what he pleases in our Addresses to him we must be exactly attentive to his Orders which he will interiourly make known to us either by Illustrations in our Understanding or Instincts and Motions in our Will Perfect Purity of Heart requires that the Soul have no Eye to her own Interest but solely to do the Will of God Her principal Care must only be to regard him to love and serve him without curiously examining his Gifts and Graces she knows well enough that in passive Prayer there are many wayes to come to God and divers manners to sacrifice our selves to Divine Love Some spend themselves in doing Good to their Neighbour others in Suffering for their Faith by the Cruelty of Tyrants some by Mortifications and Penances others by Ardours of Love in Prayer The Soul must be indifferent to be sacrific'd by Love what way best pleases God the Divine will being the sole Rule of her Choice and not the Beauty or Perfection of the State so that when she knows it is God's Will a less elevated Condition is pleasing to her God is our Father and Directour operating in us in different manners Sometimes he infuses more
Light into the Understanding sometimes more Love into the Will so that one Faculty seems to be lost in the other The Soul must be content with either as God pleases and cease her own Operations to be passive to the Actings of God in her by his gracious Motions A great deal of Work is done for us by this means in a little time towards Christian Perfection The Soul that is in this state must carefully shun two things the Activity of her own Spirit and the Impurity of her Affection As for the first our Spirit is very unwilling to dy to it self but will be acting and discoursing we loving much our own Operations so that we have much ado to conquer our selves that we may enter into an entire Passivity as to be only susceptible of Divine Motions The long Habitudes of acting with Liberty hinders this Annihilation but we must fight for the Victory and Grace at last will make it easy As for the second the Impurity of Affection we must be perfectly dead to whatsoever is not God so as to seek nothing but him and his good Pleasure without any mixture of Self-interests The infinite Love of God to us obliges us to be faithful to him and the Love we ought to have for our own good obliges us to spare no pains to attain to Perfection CHAP. XIII Of Pure and Perfect Prayer IT much disposes a Soul to attain to pure and perfect Prayer to give her self up into the hands of God with an entire Submission to his holy Will touching this Exercise to bestow upon her what state he pleases A Soul that finds Attracts from God to depend on his Providence the Matter and Manner of her Prayer must receive thankfully what comes from God whether it be Contemplatio or Meditation be it with Delight or Difficulty with Sweetness or Aridities A Soul so purely united to the Divine Will and dead to all things else possesses God in a wonderful manner not only in Consolations but Interiour Crosses Purity of Prayer as the present Light I have tells me consists in a simple View of God by the Light of Faith without Discourse or Imagination Reason and Imagination have their part in Meditation but not in pure Prayer It seems to me that the Soul ought to be absorpt in God and remain there in repose being dead as it were to her own Operations This Repose in God is by Knowledge and Love whereof sometimes this sometimes that is more abundant and affects the Soul as God pleases When God elevates a Soul above ordinary Prayer to converse with him alone she must make it her business to comply with him The Virtues and Dispositions which another time would be the Life of the Soul are not now when she must live no Life but the Life of God that is of his sole Knowledge and Love without any Reflection on her self God then takes the Care himself of such a Soul furnishing her with all necessary Dispositions Think on me and I will think on thee said Jesus Christ to St. Catherine In Prayer God infuses into her practical Lights of no long Durance but efficacious and out of Prayer she receives the same to be applyed to the Practice of most excellent Virtues on all occasions Pure and Perfect Prayer does not consist in Gusts of Devotion but in the supreme part of the Spirit in a peculiar manner that is ineffable For this supreme Region of the Soul is the sacred Temple where God is pleas'd to dwell where she feels and tasts a Sweetness above all created Entities The Soul conducted by Faith and attracted by these Divine Perfumes finds God in this his Sanctuary and converses with him with such a Familiarity as astonishes the Angels to behold it 'T is here where she makes pure Prayer seeing there 's nothing but God and the Soul without any Creature to interrupt this sacred Interview God working all that passes by Himself without Representations or Discourses or Gusts of Devotion This supreme part of the Soul being not capable of sensible Objects God alone takes Possession thereof communicating his Illustrations and Sentiments which are necessary for a pure Union with him Perfect Prayer then is a certain experimental Manifestation which God gives of Himself of his Goodness Peace and Sweetness An admirable Gift that is not imparted but to the purest Souls and ordinarily is but of small Continuance But the Condition of Mortality will not permit of more where we must live in Humility Patience and Sufferings The Soul returning from these Divine Embraces carries away with her great Love and a high Esteem of God a profound Knowledge of her own Imperfections and finds her self altogether disposed to act and suffer and practise pure Virtues on all occasions Few persons arrive to this Purity of perfect Prayer because few make themselves susceptible of those Divine Motions by an entire Annihilation of their own Powers These great Favours would be more frequently bestow'd if we had Hearts prepared to recive them Favours which are of more worth than the whole World and cannot be known but by Experience For my part I know nothing I only have heard say that in this pure and perfect Prayer there are admirable Unions most intimate Embraces Ardours of Love so Pure as may almost compare with the Flames of Seraphims We come to a perfect Union with God by a perfect Denudation of all Creatures and this Denudation is acquir'd by continual Mortification and sometimes by Divine Infusion We must therefore pray much and dye daily to our selves and all Creatures Since that Original Sin hath depraved our Nature we cannot live a Life of Grace without dying a continual Death When God acts with us in the Practice of Mortification we shall soon dye to our selves for he breaks us all to pieces on a sudden with wonderful Contrition of Heart and kills our Corruptions unknown to us so that a Soul dies more in one day by the loving Stroaks of his powerful Hand than she would in some years by ordinary Mortifications Let us therefore adore this Divine and loving Hand which kills us to make us live and never complain but of the little Returns we make for his gracious Favours The Loss of Goods of Friends of Honours of Consolations do much conduce to bring a Soul to this living Death for commonly we quit such allurement when we lose the materials of those Fetters In this Divine Exercise the Soul is wholly taken up with God without diverting her Thoughts on any other Object And though then to reflect on the effects of Prayer would be a kind of Distraction yet without her thinking God leaves powerful Impressions in her and pregnant Dispositions to practise great Virtues and above all a love of the Cross and Humiliations seeing he cannot possibly please God more than by suffering for Him CHAP. XIV Of the Hungring of the Soul after GOD and of her being Satiated with Him I Sometimes find my self in
nothing to work this amourous Tendency towards God Not but that sometimes it presents some excellent Truths to quicken Love but yet that Truth was there without it I admire that after the Visits of Friends I alwayes find my will converted to God the only center of my Soul and I know not how this amourous Inclination is entertained and preserved in me I find by Experience that in this state my Soul is well dispos'd to practise all sorts of Virtues though she make thereof no formal Resolution After the Exercise of this Prayer the Soul is extreamly in love with Mortification and Self-denyal desiring nothing but God alone She understands also that she cannot persevere in this happy state without a constant Love of the Cross of which she daily becomes more amorous I begin this Exercise of Prayer without any other Preparation than Purity of heart as soon as I find my self in such a Disposition for God loving the Soul does sometimes prevent her before she perceives it I continue herein me thinks without any Industry or Trouble provided my Soul be but amorous of perfect Purity and faithful to the Practice of Mortification If I deeeive not my self God has been pleas'd to vouchsafe me this Mercy and it concerns me to be thankful and desire the Divine Goodness to assist me with his Grace that my Infidelities may not deprive me of this State and Favour CHAP. XVIII Of Interiour Silence where God speaks and is heard WE can never arrive to this Happy state of Interiour Silence where are the most secret Communications between God and the Soul except we pass through three tryals wherein we find much trouble and bitterness The first is the Death of the Exteriour Senses whereby all Sensible Objects become in a manner distastful to the Soul for as long as she does amuse her self with any Sensual Delights she can never arise to this Elevation This general Mortification is so difficult that the greatest part of Devotes suffer themselves to be conquer'd herein and pass no further The second is the Annihilation of the workings of their Interiour Senses wherein we have such difficulties to conquer that unless God who conducts Souls by his Divine Motions does strengthen them in this Combat and bring about this Interiour death by the secret workings of his Grace they will quickly loose courage in this attempt The third tryal is yet more laborious for we must mortifie the operations of our Spiritual Faculties the Memory Understanding and Will then which nothing is more difficult 'T is a long time before the Soul can understand how this must be done and longer before she can bring it about And except God be pleas'd to withdraw from the Soul those helps she receives from her own Lights and Affections she will never compass it In this Combat the Soul meets with a thousand Temptations As that we do but loose our time that 't is no better than pure idleness and much hinderance sometimes from Directors who having no experience of this way cannot understand it much less approve it Happy is the Soul that meets with a Director to strenghthen and encourage her in the difficulties of this passage otherwise she will never arrive to this Sacred Silence unless by some extraordinary Grace and Favour The Soul then thus dead and annihilated enters into this Sacred Silence the beginnings whereof are somewhat bitter though with a mixture of sweetness by a certain experience of the presence of God in the Soul Which being elevated above all natural Lights to behold God by the single Light of Faith is assisted by another Light that seems to participate of Faith and Glory For it has something of the Rayes of Glory Not that 't is really either this or that but a resemblance of them Wonderful are the effects which God produces in the Soul in this state of Interiour Silence For he deals with her as a Painter does with a Blank prepared for his Work where he draws divers lines as seems best to him God sometimes makes a silence in all the Powers of the Soul keeping them bound in the dark but in a disposition to do whatsoever he pleases with them The Spirit is a little busie to see what is doing but being check'd is quiet and the Soul having nothing to rely upon being annihilated in her self rests solely on God reposing her self in him with Patience and Humility Otherwhile God puts the Soul without any operation of her own in great repose and quiet neither willing nor applying her self to any thing in particular but in a readiness to do whatsoever God manifests to be his Will And this seems to me to be the most usual disposition of the Soul in the state of Interiour Silence At other times the Soul feels such a Fulness of God that she seems wholly to possess him insomuch that the Senses are partakers of the gusts and sweetness communicated to them the Soul in the Interim wholly Mortified by a constant readiness to be Sacrific'd to the Will of God At other times the Soul is wholly taken captive by Divine Love which giving her a relish of her Soveraign good all other things how excellent soever they may seem are but bitter to her The understanding here makes no use of the Light of Reason but God is pleas'd to infuse certain manifestations quick and suddain which work so secretly such changes in the Soul that she cannot perceive 'till they are done At other times when the Soul is in doubt or troubled with some disorder or discourag'd by her own weakness she finds God showing himself present with her to instruct to quicken to strengthen to succour her according to her present necessities The Soul in this state is disposed to whatsoever God pleases desires nothing required of her God works his will in her and she is Humble and Faithful and altogether submissive and plyable to his operations Thus the Soul must stand affected in respect of God but she can never come to this without great Combates continual Deaths and long Sufferings However all the Crosses can be endured in this World are but a cheap rate to purchase the enjoyment of God but for a moment In this state of Interiour silence the Soul cannot prescribe any Law to her self in her Spiritual Exercises but wait with all Humility to receive what God shall give her and be Faithful in corresponding thereto Sometimes she Suffers sometimes she Acts either in this or that manner according to the Nature of the Divine Impressions CHAP. XIII Of most Purified Contemplation ON St. Alexius's Day our Saviour gave me knowledge of a state of Prayer wherein at present I must constantly exercise my self as some Servants of God advise me but the reason they tell me I understand not My Prayer then is a denudation of all Creatures where the Soul as it seems to her does nothing but enter into possession of God in a peculiar manner who works in her what
the good pleasure of God does not at all hinder her Co-operation whether it be to act with God in Prayer or exteriour Imployments God by this means works in the Soul a disposition to enjoy or suffer of Action or Contemplation of Darkness or Light as he pleases For then she desires to do nothing of her self but to follow entirely the Attracts and Motions of God's Holy Spirit A Soul that sets her self a work without an eye to God and her Interiour is imprudent for what she so undertakes is of no value in that she does not the will of God but withdrawing her self from her necessary Dependance endeavours as it were to conduct God when she ought only to be conducted by him If we were sensible of our misery herein we would be afraid of our selves Self-confidence is a thing so formidable and we should discover a continual disorder in all proceedings except in those wherein we have an eye to God and are industrious to conform our selves to his Divine Pleasure When a Soul has fully given up her self to God she receives Interiour Irradiations from Heaven by which she discovers what she ought to do and what God requires of her and so is not disquieted with solicitous Thoughts but walks on securely in the ways of Perfection For this Abandonment preserves this Interiour Light which daily directs her in the Knowledge of God's Will to do her Actions with Interiour Purity As the Light of the Sun guides us in our wayes without which we should take one thing for another so the rayes of Grace discover to us what God would have us do and if the Soul should not be thus enlightned she would wander in the dark and our poor Life go on without the Conduct of God in Mysts of Misery and Infidelity The common Life of Christians is more guided by the Light of Reason than the Light of Grace but those that live by Faith are Interiour Christians CHAP. IV. We ought to make it our Business to be content to Suffer IF we will follow the ways of Virtue in this earthly Pilgrimage we must be content to suffer continual Mortifications lead what Life we will be it Active or Contemplative In the Active Life spending our selves for the good of others if we be not in a Disposition to sacrifice our own Wills with a Spirit of Resignation while we would profit others we shall endammage our selves for we must expect to meet with Crosses and Occasions of Patience for which if we be not prepared we shall without doubt fall into many Imperfections Yea in the Sweets of Contemplation we shall find some Thorns as well as Roses to put us in mind of our Suffering Condition In a word the Union with Jesus Christ crucisyed is the perfectest Union we can attain in this Life When Jesus Christ conducts his Saints to Mount Tabor they in a manner are out of themselves being ravished with the Glimmerings of Glory but upon Mount Calvary they receive the best Impressions of Perfection 'T is requisite a Soul should have a view of the Beauties of Jesus before she see and feel the Horrours of the Cross lest she should be scandalized at this last state and her Palate should not relish the bitterness thereof Spiritual Infants stand in as much need of Milk as Corporal Our heavenly Father does not take his Children from the Breast 'till he sees them strong enough and capable of more solid Food He lays the first Dispositions of a Spiritual Life in the Sweetness of Enjoyments but he compleats it in the Bitterness of Sufferings That which makes us profest Christians is Faith and Baptism but the Cross and Sufferings make us practical Christians and the greater they are being born with the Christian Patience and Resignation they advance us higher in Perfection We ought not then to fear Crosses and Sufferings but rather embrace them with Peace and Affection And we must hold this for a Maxim that we advance in the way to Perfection according to the Degree of Mortification and Self-denyal which we cannot attain but by a Suffering Life Let us therefore above all things abandon our selves to the Divine Providence desiring nothing but by the pure will of God without troubling our selves at what happens to us 'T is no just matter of Astonishment to see in this world the wayes of the Just beset with Thorns and Bryars of Affliction and the wicked to abound with worldly Comforts in Beds of Roses Those who will have no portion in the Joys of Heaven have refreshments in this world and find here their Paradice to recompense that little good they have done among those many evils they have committed But such who are preserved from Eternal Pains have their Souls purifyed in this Life in the Furnace of Affliction from those stains they have contracted which else would somewhat darken the Beauty of their virtuous Actions Thrice happy are they who by the Sufferings of this Momentany Life have just Cause to hope they shall never suffer everlasting Burnings CHAP. V. To renounce our selves wholly and strive against our proper Inclinations WHosoever designs to be wholly for God must likewise endeavour to curb the Motions of his Interiour and Exteriour Senses which have not their Rise from Grace but Nature yea all such like Thoughts and Desires and the Objects of our own Will which we in Prayer mingle with those Communications God is pleased to work in us by heavenly Visits But above all we must have a care to desire nothing without an entire Resignation and Submission to the Will of God which ought to be the sole Rule of all our Actions and Intentions Hence it proceeds that we have no Will to serve God but as he pleases according to the manner and designs of his Providence and when God will vouchsafe us nothing extraordinary in a Spiritual Life we sit down content with Peace and Humility For we are dead to our Selves to be living only to God's good Pleasure which is the Soul of our Souls our Riches our Grandeur our Perfection and Blessedness To renounce our own Will and all means which our own Industry presents as most excellent and give our selves up purely to the Divine Guidance conduces very much to Perfection To renounce our Judgement and follow the sentiment of others as better in works of Piety so as voluntarily to act but with Dependance is a means to mortify by degrees our own Will and Affections If we be content that our Defects should be made known we shall glorifie God with the Love of Abjection We get no good but rather hurt by our Defects concealed but we may draw much good by their Manifestation if so be they work our greater Humiliation We ought to remain in a Disposition of Self-denyal and Humility in the Presence of God and desire nothing but the pure Ordination of his Will who can make us poor or rich in Grace as he pleases A Soul that receives excellent
God to deal with her as seems best pleasing to him For ought she knows 't is best for her to be afflicted and therefore she willingly submits to Gods chastisements rejoycing thereat and Blessing him for them Yea if she may but bring Glory to God thereby she is content to be cast into Hell In this state her Love is wholly centred in God and she gives her self up to the rigours of Justice that she may be entirly Sacrific'd to Gods Glory which is an Intention pure from all Self-interest An indifferency to any state does possess that Soul which has a well purified Intention with a perfect resignation to the good pleasure of God to remain content with her present condition being satisfied with whatsoever portion of Grace she has received with profound Humility and Mortification Being thus disposed she has no mind to any thing but what pleases God and does that Faithfully and by this means obtains wonderful Peace of Conscience and joy in the Holy Ghost To Will nothing but what God Wills requires a great degree of Mortification and being dead to all Greatures for this is the highway to the Purity of Divine Love What did the Ancient Hermits search for in the Deserts but by a perfect denudation of all Creatures to arrive to the Perfection of Divine Love Let us fear and sigh to see our selves so engaged and beset with several Temptations in the World 'T is a hard matter but some or other may cease upon us and rob us of that perfect poverty of Spirit which puts us in full possession of God alone 'T is a special favour of God to have a vocation to the Poor and Abject states of Jesus Christ And 't is no small Grace when God conducts us to them by a Happy necessity with little noise or stir to call the eyes of others upon us 'T is well enough if the Soul consent purely to the Ordinations and events of Divine Providence CHAP. VIII A Conference clearing many difficulties touching Prayer Qu IN what consists precisely good mental Prayer I find many sorts thereof in Books The Saints have practic'd it with much difference and yet all so good that I am taken with them To which of them shall I betake my self Ans The ways of Souls in Mental Prayer are so wonderful various that 't is best for every one to hold to that which they find most proper for them Or else they will loose their time in a wilderness of Thoughts without Spiritual profit Hence it is that in Mystical Authors we seldom meet with what is proper for every Soul And though we find very sublime and solid Verities concerning Prayer in the Writings of St. Teresa Blessed John de la Croix and others yet they have but described their own experiences and not how the case stands with other Souls unless a light discovery in some things agreeable to their illuminations Such Instructions are good to read but not exactly to be followed so as to conform our selves entirely to their manner of Prayer We shall find in such Books matter very profitable and 't is time well spent in Spiritual Lectures and not without delight to Virtuous Souls Qu. From whence proceeds these different manners of Prayer seeing there 's but one Soveraign and single Verity in God to be known one Soveraign good to be Loved and Charity being of the self-same Nature in all Souls one would think there ought to be a great conformity among all those who know and love God Ans That which makes so many different manners of Prayer arises from the different manner of knowing God Some conversing with him by Meditation and humane Ratiocination Others receive from God Heavenly irradiations above the Powers of Reason by which he manifests himself immediately to the Soul as the Sun by his Beams Others contemplate God by the obscure Light of Faith in an ineffable manner which is a kind of feeing him without seeing him These different manners of treating with God make not only different manners of Prayer but cause also much diversity in every manner For example in the Prayer of Faith which seems more simple than the other there are many degrees which represent to the Soul different views of God and Divine matters When Faith is seated in an understanding well purified from Images and alien Representations she then discovers God more sublimely as he is in himself though but in a manner negative general and confus'd yet efficacious to work in the heart a great esteem of God and ardent Charity All Books and Sermons and Conferences will not satisfy a Soul advanced to this kind of knowing God For those manners of speaking and conceiving God seem to her too full of Imperfection Faith wholly purified contents her self with having an eye to the Light of Glory which discovers God in his Infinity although but obscurely and according to the measure that Faith is more or less pure and simple these discoveries are more or less perfect Qu. Are all sort of People capable of these sublime manners of Prayer and if any one desire to attain them by what means must he go about it Ans The gift of Prayer is not proper for all People yea some great Saints have never had it as some good Servants of God who have become Holy in the Exercises of an Active Life which would not afford them much time for Contemplation and accustom'd themselves to the ordinary method of Meditation which is good and advantagious for such Souls whom God calls not to a more sublime way Those whom God favours with the extraordinary gift of Prayer do possess an inestimable Treasure and with this only Grace which is the source of many more they are rich enough though never so poor in things of this Life But seeing 't is the meer gift of God I account it Folly and Rashness to think we can bring our selves to the sublime state of Contemplation unless God elevate us by his immediate work and special favour All that we can do therein is to dispose our selves by corresponding Faithfully to the motions of Grace by dying daily to our Natural Inclinations in the practice of Mortification and leave God to do the rest Except God build the House they labour in vain who think to raise the Edifice by their own Abilities Qu. A Soul establish'd in a sublime manner of Prayer and that hath a long time practic'd it can she easily fall from this state Ans If such a Soul gives her self over to her Sensual Inclinations and commit gross Imperfections becoming Faithless to Gods Holy Inspirations she may fall from it But 't is very credible she will return to it For she cannot long endure the loss of so great a Happiness without forcing her self by her Humiliations and Penitences to recover her former state And as much as she dies to all Creatures so much she advances to God But she can never attain it without Practice a Fidelity and therefore it highly concerns her to free her self from too many Worldly Affairs and love Retirement Notwithstanding those which God requires of us as belonging to our Duty will not hinder us from arising to such a degree of Prayer as God hath prepared for us from all Eternity Qu. The most elevated and perfect Prayer is not without Darkness and Privations and sometimes perplex'd with Interiour Crosses and Desolations But is there not a state of Light and enjoyment to be attained here wherein the Soul may possess God clearly and peaceably without any disturbance Ans No the permanent state of Enjoyment is reserv'd for Heaven In this Life indeed we are visited without Divine Irradiations and Glimmerings of Glory but they are only now and then and transient The term of this Life is working Time and not of Rest for acquisition not possession where the Soul may daily purchase new Graces and advance her self in Prayer according to her progress in Virtue and Purity by being Faithful to the Calls of God on all occasions Gods usual way is to make Souls pass through Darkness Temptations Derelictions Desolations Exteriour and Interiour Sufferings to come to a good Stock of Virtue and a higher degree of Purity which raises them to a more sublime state of Prayer And being exercised some way or other to raise them nearer to Heaven by Spiritual Ascensions they at length leave Time to meet with Eternity Neither must we wonder to see the wayes of the Just thus beset with Thorns and Bryars for this is expedient to advance them in Perfection and Divine Love Qu. How much time must we imploy daily in Prayer if we mean to Profit thereby so as to attain Perfection Ans We cannot much advance in Prayer without a long and constant usuage of this Divine Exercise 't is not enough to do good Works but we must spend some Hours in our daily Devotions 'T is by Prayer we advance in the ways of God and not otherwise We must be careful to imploy much time in the Exercise thereof if God calls us to it and not apply our selves to the Active way Let us not be too Sollicitous to discharge our other Obligations for a Soul in the state of continual Prayer performs readily what she ought on all occasions When the time comes for Confession she is presently all dolorous Love Contrition When she Communicates she is all Humility all Desire and flaming Affection When she is to correct she is all Sweetness and Charity When she is to help her Neighbour she is all Zeal and Love When she must act for God she has an intention purified from all Self-Interest And all this she performs in Virtue of Prayer as it were without distinct Acts but habitually and in an excellent sublime manner by the special operation of Gods Holy Spirit and not by Meditations or Considerations which are means only to find God A Soul that thus once hath laid hold on God does take her repose and rest in him making it her only business to Love and Worship him in Spirit and Truth FINIS