the Will of God If I have not a great care the Devil will deceive me and make me delay to my own ruine CHAP. XX. Of the different Caresses God vouchsafes a Soul in Prayer THose who practise Prayer know by Experience that God unites Himself to the Soul in different manners all most intimate most pure and full of Sweetness Oftentimes by the pleasing Attractions of his Goodness and Mercy so delightful to the Soul that for the time she in a manner enjoys a Heaven upon Earth Sometimes God unites Himself to the Soul by the Rigours of his Justice trying her with interiour and exteriour Sufferings so that only the supreme part of the Soul remains united to God the inferiour part being in a Suffering condition Sometimes God unites himself to the Soul by his Sanctity his Bounty Power and other Perfections and to the end all these Unions may be pure it suffices that the Soul render her self passive to the Operations of God in her whether sweet or bitter comforting or afflicting with Respect and Affection 'T is observable that to live this Divine Life it is not necessary to find no Repugnance from sensual Nature it suffices if we continue firm in this state by the Superiour part whether Grace could only advance us and where we cannot subsist but by being dead to all Creatures He that will live this life must resolve to suffer All the Interiour Commerce between God and the Soul passes principally in the Will the Understanding is not so capable thereof but the Will receives the more intimate more pure and more perfect Communications being more proper for it The Understanding herein is more lyable to Illusions the Will is more assured in her way and the Devil cannot counterfeit what passes in her in the feelings of pure Love For the Soul that has experience of the effects of pure Love cannot easily be deceived From hence it comes that the Purity of the Will is the principal Disposition for the Prayer of Vnion be it ordinary or more sublime by the powerful influences of preventing Grace This Purity is altogether necessary God being not pleased to work these Wonders but in a purified Soul And this Purity consists in willing nothing but Gods good pleasure being dead to all other things contenting her self with the orders of Providence God finding the Soul thus purified especially in her Will takes up his mansion in her Interiour where he exercises his Divine Operations putting her into divers states acording to the different Designs he has upon her Sometimes he is pleased to inflame her Affections with Divine Love and to kindle this holy fire in her Breast manifests to her his Divine Perfections Other times he puts her upon the Cross and exercises his Justice for her greater good Sometimes he hides himself the more to purify her and make her dye to whatever is not God Otherwhile he gives her Councels to advance her in Perfection and then if she has not been faithful to his motions he gives her interiour Checks of Conscience Sometimes he enlightens her Understanding to enflame her Will and the Soul being retired within her self finds her Divine Bridegroom working something in her to which she is to be purely passive and adhere in all simplicity of heart to his gracious Operations Being thus retired into the Cabinet of her Heart she is elevated above her self and all Creatures and being united to God though he send her Sufferings she is not taken up with them but Divine Love she feels his Caresses is inricht with his Gifts and imploys all her Intellectual Powers to Love and Glorify her Well-beloved Here is her ordinary abode from whence she descends not to her inferiour part but for necessity and enjoying the Embraces of her Divine Bridegroom she adheres to him by pure Faith and Love without being diverted by her Imagination in intellectual Contemplation I cannot but think that a Mistress of a House that had a King and Queen in her Closet willing to converse with her would have a care not to divert her self by other matters and quit them to wash dishes in the Kitchen What strange Incivility would this be yea what Infidelity would it be in a Soul that is honoured with the Presence of God in the Cabinet of her Heart to have her near himself to converse with her and to ravish her with these Spiritual Delights which are ineffable Souls that are thus favour'd of God if they quit him for exteriour Imployments and temporal affairs neglecting the Presence of the King of Glory for some inconsiderable Business by this strange Neglect or Contempt of his special Favours must needs be guilty of deep Ingratitude O my Soul be thou faithful to the Divine Calls thou art too much favour'd of God considering thy too frequent not complying with his Graces He calls thee to himself his Attracts are powerful and sweet let us quit Temporal things and leave them to who will take them fear not we shall want nothing having God in possession If Divine Providence dispense to us with so liberal a hand the great Favours of God's Spiritual Graces let us not think he will deny us his lesser blessings which concern the Body and are as nothing in comparison Let us betake our selves to Prayer and never leave it for that is our great and sole Affair The End of the Seventh Book BOOK VIII Some Maxims of great Importance to conduct us in a Spiritual Life CHAP. I. To have above all things an extreme Horrour of Sin THere is nothing of greater Concern to us in this World than to manage well our Love and Hatred to which Passions our Will principally owes her Motions Our Love ought wholly to be fixt on God who is an infinite Good and our final Happiness Our hatred ought to have no other Object but Sin which is an infinite evil and utter ruine of our Souls Love makes all things easie and what is done with great Love is of great value in the sight of God Who knows to love cordially knows how to do whatever God requires of him seeing Love includes in it all Perfection Hatred also makes all things easy for from a torrent of Hatred commonly flows an inundation of evils He who really and from his heart hates an infinite Evil that is Sin will be reveng'd on himself by severe Penance and fly from it with such a Horrour and Detestation that he would sooner cast himself alive into Hell than commit a Sin that breaks Friendship with God A Soul that sees clearly the enormous Malignity of Sin and how it fights against the great God of Heaven and Earth to annihilate Him if it was possible will easily conceive an implacable Hatred against Sin and abhorr it to the utmost with an irreconcileable Enmity knowing well that Sin can only separate her from God her final Happiness This hatred ought to possess the Soul with permanency and such extensions as not only to preserve her from
this Interiour Poverty and Dereliction finds that she has a call to Interiour Sufferings she ought not to seek after sensible things to raise her to God but couragiously bear this Interiour Cross as long as it pleases her Divine Bridegroom to continue her Tryal This state is bitter indeed but withall purifying and makes a Soul capable of more intimate union with God CHAP. X. Of the Sacred Darkness of Prayer ON St. Mary Magdalen's day it seem'd to me that my Prayer chang'd and became more simple more strong and elevated My Spirit went on knowing God not by Lights or Gusts of Devotion but by a certain Darkness wherewith God is surrounded as with a Cloud This Darkness made me see that God cannot be known but is Infinitely above our understanding which cannot better know him then by acknowledging we cannot know him as he is At other times Gusts and Lights were instrumental to unite me to God but now this Darkness only was my Guide and my Soul finding her self lost in a profound Ignorance of God yet seem'd to me to know him better than ever and I had no difficulty to Contemplate God in this manner which leaving in me deep impressions of the Divinity did also augment my Interiour dispositions of the Love of God hatred of sin and such like matters It seem'd to me that at this time my Prayer became more continual And I was much encourag'd with that saying of St. Denis That this ignorance is the best and highest knowledge we have here of God I therefore readily made my Addresses to God in the aforesaid manner understanding well that the knowledge we have of God by this way is greater than that we learn by discourse or Lights or Gusts in Prayer To know we cannot know God is to know him as much as he can be known in this Life his Grandeurs being Infinitely above our Understanding And that our Understanding may live wholly to God it must die to whatsoever is not God whom we see by naked Faith in a Luminous obscurity By this way God is more known and lov'd than by many Lights and Affections all which are lost in the obscurity of this Sacred Darkness which makes a Soul see that the Perfections of God are incomprehensible Many good effects arise from hence As a profound Joy and Peace of Conscience a firmness in our good Resolutions and practice of Virtues a great love of Self-denyal in imitation of the unspeakable Humiliations of Jesus Christ One of the surest marks to know whether this Prayer of Darkness comes from God is to see whether it leave in the Soul the knowledge of our Miseries and Infidelities For the more we possess God the better we see the least Imperfections As for example whether our intention be pure or Nature has some Interest with Grace Whether we too easily leave the presence of God for other things Whether we comply with Gods Inspirations or commit Infidelities These and such like being clearly seen by this means do much humble us and make us careful to amend them The Soul in this disposition knows nothing of God but that he is Incomprehensible and looses her self in this Darkness that surrounds his Grandeurs This view with a view sees nothing distinctly of God in particalar but is a knowing Ignorance of what God is in himself For though the excessive Glory of this Divine Sun makes his Light inaccessable to our weak eyes yet this Darkness pierces our Interiour and we know God in a transcendent manner by strong impressions of the Divinity and are rais'd to a most intimate union with him God requires of a Soul great Purity in this state This then is an excellent manner to take up our Thoughts with God in our Addresses to him by annihilating all our Lights and Knowledge to get into this Sacred Darkness that surrounds his Glory that being thus dead to our own Abilities we may confess that God is as much above our Understanding as he is amiable above our Affections Thus to know God and confess he is above our Understanding and to love God and acknowledge we cannot Love him according to his Perfections is to live dead to our Selves and our Abilities and such God Loves best and knows with Approbation CHAP. XI Of the Lights of Prayer GOd sometimes in Prayer discovers himself to a Soul as the Sun filling her with Light by which and in which he is known and all other things she stands in need of or which the Omniscient is pleas'd to manifest to her We see well enough this Light by which we know God but God himself is inaccessable As we behold the Light of the Natural Sun and not the Body thereof which blinds our Eyes and by the benefit of its Beams the things of this World are made visible to us One born Blind imagins that if he could see the Light he might see the Sun But he would find by experience that this Light would only serve to make him clearly see that he cannot behold the Sun by reason of its excessive Brightness In the same manner when we are in Interiour Darkness we think we can know God better in the Light and when this Light comes it only serves to let us see that God cannot be known by us in Mortal Bodies When in Prayer I have a view of God or some of his Perfections of Jesus or some of his Dispositions or Maxims it seems to me that all these Objects have a particular Light in them which serves much to discover their excellency to the Soul But it seems to me that these Verities namely We must slee from Evil and do Good hate Sin and embrace Virtue and such like as considered barely in themselves have no particular Light in them to manifest their Goodness But their Beauty and Excellency are discover'd to us by help of the Light of Faith As those Bodies which are out of the Sun see not themselves but by the Light thereof For this reason I believe 't is best for a Soul to take up her Thoughts with God and those Verities that regard him or with Jesus and Christian Truths as resident in this Sacred Breast By this means the Heart and Affections will be much inflam'd with the Love of God to adore and serve him and imitate the Perfections of Jesus Christ This sort of Prayer is simple and does not put the Soul to the labour of much Discourse For any Divine Perfection and the Exteriour effects thereof are seen by her at once by a singular act of the understanding As she may consider the Omnipotency by its self or together with the Creation of the World she may behold and adore the Divine Providence by it self together with its admirable effects in the Government of the Universe The Soul herein needs not multiply Discourses but may behold all this at one prospect When we meditate on any Christian Verity as for example the Excellency of Poverty without the Relation it
the Courts of Emperours Armogastus liv'd amongst Beasts as if good for nothing he deserv'd not the company of men O Armogastus where is the generous spirit of a Cavalier where is the courage of a Gentle-man why do you not quit this employment at least that you may shine bright in the grand exercises of Christianity Free your self by flight and in some other Countrey preach the Gospel do marvels in helping the poor and miserable but continuing thus miserable in your self you cannot arrive to any excellency in Christian Virtue Let me alone says this great Saint in my abject condition this suffices me and I am content to be thus thought as a thing of no worth O how well am I pleas'd to be thus scorn'd and forgotten Happy are those who preach the Gospel happy are those who are merciful to others I have as great an esteem of them as you but likewise happy are those who are as nothing in their own eyes To be poor despised annihilated and miserable shall be the only matter of my discourse as long as I live by this means I am emptied of my self and of all Creatures and made capable to be filled with Divine graces O that these things did touch our hearts with a sensible Devotion CHAP. V. That we have only so much of the true Spirit of Jesus Christ as we have an inclination to abjection IF the purity of love be on Earth it is in the heart of those who love abjection seeing they desire nothing but the interest of God his glory purely being in a manner wholly absorpt in self-oblivion To behold God advancing others to states sublime and glorious that they are but as atoms in comparison and to rest content in their abjections is a matter of greatest difficulty because herein they quit even their own spiritual interests being satisfied with whatever God does for them and with that measure of glory he will have us bring unto him though never so little 'T is true that this sort of abjection was not in Jesus Christ because being God the fulness of all grandeurs belong unto him But this is altogether proper to us because we are Creatures poor and abject and that little God gives us is more than we deserve seeing we of our selves can merit nothing 'T is to be feared there are but few who follow Jesus Christ in the practice of that abjection he loved for our sakes In our thoughts and words we may do it but when any occasion of humiliation or suffering happens we make the bravest pretensions possible to be freed from it Even such who make a profession of Devotion will suffer the want of nothing nor any injury from others they are for governing affairs as they please without any subjection or dependance shunning abjection because they think they can more glorifie God by Grandeur and Reputation in the world This is a meer illusion of self-love and a vanity of nature which in every thing affects to be exalted and not to be humbled Not with standing let us think and say what we please what measure we have of the Spirit of Jesus Christ is according to the degree of true mortification and self-denyal we find in us He expects we should honour his voluntary humiliations with the sacrifice of our pride Now in a Sacrifice the Host immolated is destroy'd and depriv'd of its former being so that we must make a continual Sacrifice of our reason and understanding of our will and inclinations to the judgments and commands of others of our reputation by a love to abjection of our goods by poverty of our health and corporal satisfactions by pains and austerities In a word we must sacrifice all our natural inclinations to the honour of God being as well content with adverse accidents as prosperous successes because the good use of humiliations is better for us than prosperity It is an excellent Lesson we learn by the love of abjection but 't is very hard to take out and without a continual looking over is soon forgotten The virtues which consist in action are more easily practised less troublesom to us and more satisfactory to others But those that consist purely in suffering as Humiliation Patience Abnegation are very difficult O Jesus abject and humble infuse into my Soul the Science of Saints and a relish of contempt of the world and I shall learn perfectly the Lesson of true humility which is above the apprehension of human reason Our blessed Saviour sometimes puts us upon the undertaking of certain good designs whereof he wills not the Execution but the Practice of many Virtues which arise in their pursuance and failing of the desired issue Nature is much disturb'd at ill successes but God by the wonderful contrivance of his wisdom oftentimes more glorifies himself by adverse than favourable events For the dispositions of humiliation resignation and contentedness which he sees in a Soul are more pleasing than what she designed St Lewis earnestly desired to re-establish the glory of God in Palestine all fell out contrary to his good designs but the purposes which God had to advance his glory took good effect For this great King was humbled and made abject in the eyes of the world falling into the hands of his Enemies his Army being destroyed either by the Sword or Pestilence O how these grand humiliations in the midst of which the invincible Soul of this holy King rested more content than in a Trpumph did render a marvelous homage to the Son of God in the self-same place where he suffered for us Perhaps this glory was greater in his sight than if the Sword of St. Lewis had sacrificed all the Infidels in Palestine Our weaknesses and imperfections are as ill Trees because they cannot of themselves bring things to maturity however they do not fail of bringing forth fruit in the worst successes by abjection humiliation and self-denial When we cannot do the good we would 't is no small good to acknowledge our insufficiency and unworthiness When we are hindred from our usual recollection by some incommodity we may hope that one good hour of suffering and abjection with a contented mind will prove better to us than an hour of Prayer wherein perhaps we should take more self-satisfaction When we think the Soul is not in fit temper to converse with God because we are disturb'd with many importunities let us remember that this may proceed from Nature but the repose of grace is that which is only necessary for recollection Now the repose of grace finds her self better in crosses and pains and abjections than otherwise In tribulatione dilatasti mihi My heart was enlarged towards God in tribulation CHAP. VI. That the sight of our own Nothing inspires us with self-contempt and the love of God THe principal reason of our little or no amendment is because we do not sufficiently depend upon grace we are not so frequent as we ought in our recourse to God we
let him but heap up his own miseries and lay himself thereon as Isaac was on the Altar and then sacrifice himself by a voluntary annihilation with the fire of Divine Love and God will be glorified thereby When a Soul is left to her self in Prayer so that aridities and desolations do darken her wonted light and deprive her of the usual feelings she had of God and Goodness she may make her address in these or such-like words My God! I am nothing and I am contented with all my heart with this dealing with me it is your pleasure thus to mortifie me and I have no other will but yours You have sometimes vouchsafed unto me illuminations and consolations which were dear unto me but now you are pleas'd to deprive me of them blessed be your name I am contented with your pleasure If poverty or ill success or sickness afflict us let us apply our selves to God with these or such-like words My God! I can do nothing of my self but I am well pleased with what you do unto me sacrifice me wholly to the grandeur of your Majesty whatever reluctance I find in Nature upon the Altar of my miseries and imperfections Little Isaac ready to be sacrificed by his Father's hand might have said these or such-like words I had hopes that in after-times I might have been signally instrumental for the glory of God and that according to his promise out of my Loins by continued Generations should come the Messias but I sacrifice all this before-hand and reflect on nothing but the Burnt-offering God is pleased to make of me by my Father's hand St. Lewis had hopes to establish the glory of Jesus Christ in Palestine but seeing his Army defeated he might comfort himself in saying O my God! seeing 't is not your pleasure to have it so but have humbled me and my Army by the Pestilence and Sword of your Enemies your will be done I submit unto it I behold the generous Enterprises of your Servants and their great Attempts and bless you for them but my comfort is in the consideration of my objections which have brought me to a state wherein I see God alone and possess Him in the denudation of all Creatures after the example of Jesus Christ Christus non sibi placuit whose work was only to do your will Let us not then so much disquiet our selves with our imperfections They are indeed but an ill brood and deserve not to be loved but we must bear them with patience seeing they serve to debase our selves in our own eyes and to conform us in some sort to the infinite humiliations of Jesus Christ crucified for us Man was created in the state of innocency now he is born in a sinful condition He has then had two opposite ways to conduct him to Glory The first was a state of Exaltation happy and enjoying all Creatures freely but the second is a state of Abjection in misery and denudation of all Creatures He that will walk a third way attempts above the condition of that from whence he is fallen and that provided for us after this life CHAP. X. The way how to arrive to perfect humiliation I Conceive three deprivations necessary to effect this First the deprivation of all exteriour things as Riches Honours Pleasures This is the first advance a Soul must make to draw near to God for as long as there remains the least inordinate affection to these things she can never make any great progress in finding God being fetter'd as it were by other affections and so cannot have perfect possession of God being excluded by the Creatures which more or less take up the heart When necessity or charity require it we may have the real possession of these things and live only in disposition of spirit and affective poverty However it will be matter of joy to be freed from them because for the most part they rather hinder than advance us towards union with God And if we have not a great care Nature will cheat us with a pretext of Charity and helping others which is but a good illusion for sometimes they who have the less Riches have the more charitable hearts 'T is good counsel to forsake Riches and Honours when it may be done conveniently but when by secret tracts of Divine Providence they forsake us 't is our duty to possess our Souls in patience and be contented which is in a manner better than if we our selves had left them especially when we believe these losses happen'd by our own fault and imbecility for this brings us to a greater abjection and self-contempt which is the centre whither we ought to tend If there was nothing else good in poverty but this that it mortifies our liberty and independance whereof naturally we are so amorous 't is a great happiness to be enrich'd therewith When we are out of Employment and Honour in the world we are look'd upon as unprofitable and easily forgotten and forsaken by our best Friends 't is so much the better for our humiliation This is the second deprivation that we must suffer O the great Grace that is necessary to carry on a Soul to God when we are despised by our Friends whereby they become rather the subject of affliction than affection to us Without doubt we have a strong inclination to them to whom we are so glew'd that without some great and special grace we can never mortifie our selves therein without some attach to conserve such friendship They are happy occasions whereby we are depriv'd of our Friends without sin in losing them we lose a great upholder of self-love in us St John Baptist when very young left his Father's house to live in a Desart with God alone Great Saint they are Saints whom you forsake I know that very well says he but they are my Relations that have an affection for me O what a violence is this to nature For when an attach to Friends especially if virtuous seems more spiritual and reasonable than any other affection to mortifie our selves in this is an extraordinary Sacrifice to God and only granted to such Souls whom he carries on to great perfection But we must pass further yet For there 's a third deprivation to lose our selves which is to be esteem'd as Fools for Christ's sake according to that of St. Paul Nos stulti propter Christum To love to obey and be in subjection to have no reason and yet to renounce our own reason and to enthrone Faith in our Souls for direction O how the pure light of Faith discovers to us that we ought to be well pleased to have no great natural parts but to be as it were good for nothing For the view thereof if it come to the heart does powerfully annihilate the natural inclination we have to be esteemed To consent willingly to be abject and despised is a great means to empty us of this self-self-love and according to the measure of this evacuation
Poverties Abandonments and Crosses so that whatsoever is agreeable to Nature seems wholly contrary to Grace Why do you not dear Saviour bring man to his Nothing in a moment by your Omnipotency to make him thereby a new Creature Why will you that he must annihilate himself and contribute to his own destruction O how the methods of your Wisdom are admirable Your design is hereby to bring man to love you But he can never do this more generously than by the strongest efforts of self-contempt and annihilation Human reason prompts us to self-love and self-esteem Divine reason inspires us with self-contempt and abnegation Abraham sacrificing his Son did foolishly in the judgment of human reason as being an enemy to Himself and his whole Family but this was an action of wonderful prudence in the judgment of Divine reason shewing thereby that he loved God more than himself and his dearest Relations Come then O my Soul let us strive to be dead to all things but God and to annihilate our selves for his sake I see an unspeakable beauty in the horror of mortifications and sufferings seeing they are the source from whence purity flows into the Soul CHAP. XIII That self denyal and annihilation is better learnt by practice than speculation I Know now better than ever that abjection is the way wherein we must march to advance assuredly to the perfection we aim at all other ways are liable to deceit but self-denial is without delusion O how few do consider the proceedings of Jesus Christ and fewer dive into and comprehend his holy dispositions But fewest set upon a perfect imitation of what they know Let us fall to work we know enough of it We are not ignorant how Jesus humbled himself in the Womb of his Virgin-Mother and there remained nine months and at his Nativity did increase his humiliation by being born in a Stable continued them all his life-time and finished them by his Death upon the Cross the grand Theatre of his humiliations We know all this it only remains to imitate him Grace will conduct us if we faithfully correspond to God's Inspirations To this end God permits that our Friends fall off from us that some little disgraces happen that we are somewhat despised and suffer by others that our imperfections are discovered and made known and that we are censur'd for undertaking to aim at perfection All this tending to humble us is good what way soever it come and no better thing can arrive unto us To be faithful on these occasions doth far transcend all speculations If you still complain of cross accidents if you don't hide your self from the eyes of men if you love not poverty and contempt and the things of this world have still some hold upon you thou art not annihilated and God hath not wrought the marvels of his love in thy heart Hearing sung in the Church these words of the Psalmist In toto corde meo exquisivi Te I have sought Thee O Lord with my whole heart it seemed to me that our blessed Saviour answer'd me interiourly Thou hast made a fair search after me every where but thou wilt not find me any where on Earth but there where I have been in the stations of my mortal life in solitude and silence in poverty and sufferings in persecution and reproaches in crosses and annihilation The Saints find me in Heaven in the splendors of Glory and Joys ineffable but this is after they have found me on Earth in Disgraces and Pains I am throughly convinc'd of this Truth and humbly thank our blessed Saviour for making it so clear unto me and I beseech his infinite goodness so to imprint it in my heart that I may practice it without delay Alas how long shall I behold the excellency of humiliations by Divine Irradiations darted into my Soul and practice them so little Divine Jesus take from me this rebellious heart if it refuse to be conformable to you in your annihilations open my breast and take it from me for I had rather have none at all and die than have a heart that has other Maxims and Affections than what you have taught me O my beloved Jesus I do not in this desire cruelty to my self but a signal favour The eternal Father who beheld you hanging on the Cross with complacency will not be offended with this bloody spectacle O my Jesus what a love have I for your Cross and humiliations The view of their beauty so well-pleasing to your eternal Father does at present so ravish and transport me that I shall become as it were a Fool I shall lose my senses and speak I know not what unless dear Jesus you put a stop to your Divine motions and eclipse those Heavenly Rays which present to my view sufferings and humiliations so amiable I have a particular Devotion to make a Litany of Jesus in all his humiliations and when I feel a repugnancy to the practice of annihilation and self-denial I find great encouragement by reciting it Have mercy upon me Jesus poor and abject Jesus unknown and despised Jesus hated calumniated and persecuted Jesus abandon'd by men and tempted by the Devil Jesus betray'd and sold at a vile price Jesus blamed accused and condemned unjustly Jesus array'd with a shameful Garment Jesus buffetted and mocked Jesus reputed a Fool and to have a Devil Jesus scourged in a bloody manner being bound with Cords Jesus thought worse of than Barrabas Jesus exposed naked with Infamy Jesus crowned with thorns and saluted with scoffs Jesus sorrowful to death Jesus oppressed with injuries pains and humiliations Jesus affronted spit upon and despightfully used Jesus charged with your Cross and our Sins Jesus crucified between two Thieves Jesus dishonoured before men and thought as nothing O good Jesus who hast suffered for the love of me an infinity of disgraces and humiliations above my comprehension imprint powerfully in my Soul an esteem and love of them that I may practise them by your example CHAP. XIV That a Soul espousing Jesus Christ espouses also his Cross and Sufferings THe infinite Wisdom of God has condescended to espouse the lowness of our human Nature by his Incarnation This same human Nature hath espous'd the Cross Sufferings Abjections Death and when a Soul espouses Jesus Christ she contracts an eternal Union with all these during her Pilgrimage O happy Alliance She is married to Jesus and Contempts and Sufferings are the Dowry O precious Riches If she love her Beloved indeed she ought to have a tender affection to the gifts she presents to him at the Espousals because she gives them and he much values them O my Soul being thus espoused to Jesus Christ behold then how strictly thou art bound and engaged to him for hereafter thou must suffer pains of body griefs of mind affronts and injuries thou must be well content with humiliations love disgraces and make sport for others thou must be content to be thought but unconstant by Devotes
and of little understanding by worldly persons thou ought'st not to be discourag'd at bad successes and thereupon drink deep of the Cup of humiliations whether thou be in fault or not to be content to see others advanced and willingly embrace a low condition O my Soul this engagement may terrifie thee but take courage thou canst do all things through Christ strengthening thee Jesus Christ was praedestinated from all Eternity to sufferings and abjections by the Decree of his Heavenly Father to satisfie for our sins And 't is certain that all the Friends of God are praedestinated to be conformable to Jesus Christ and so are praedestinated to sufferings to satisfie God offended and repair his Glory Whosoever therefore refuses sufferings and humiliations forsakes the way of the Praedestinate for doubtless by how much the more a Soul participates of the states of the life of Jesus so much the more is she in God's favour being more conform to the great Exemplar of those who are praedestinated to Life eternal Crosses and humiliations are best for Christians and nothing does them more hurt than temporal Prosperity O my God! burn kill mortifie disgrace debase crucifie me otherwise I shall not have your face and favour nor be numbred among your Friends Make me wise in good earnest to the end I may walk in your ways that I may have a love for crosses and humiliations that my heart may not be at rest till it rest there as in a Centre I should never have believed if experience did not make it evident that a Soul can be brought to such a state by the conduct of Grace as to rejoyce exceedingly to be plung'd in all sorts of miseries But these joys are so pleasant and so sweet that after a relish of their goodness all things upon Earth seem nothing to them A Soul then much wonders at her self to be terrified so much with the sight of abjections seeing now they seem to her a Coelestial Paradice and next to Heaven she desires no other for she knows that Jesus Christ enjoy'd on Earth both these Paradices that of Glory in Heaven and this of Humiliations on Earth She knows that in the Paradice of Glory she shall be glorified of God she knows that in the Paradice she conceives to be in Crosses and Abjections God is glorified by Her This is that which makes her have such an esteem and love for sufferings She thinks it a punishment to part with this Paradice and she cannot sufficiently lament the blindness of men who hunt after Honours and Preferments of which she has no small abhorrency She sees clearly that those advanced to Honours commonly seek their own Glory but by self-denial and abjections we aim at the Glory of God And therefore laying most to heart the Glory of God she falls in love with humiliations A Soul once enlightned with these irradiations if she refuse abjections and sufferings is very faithless and deserves to be in the world without crosses and humiliations which is the most formidable chastisement that can happen to us upon Earth CHAP. XV. That the experience of God's goodness to us does annihilate us powerfully LEt us not imagine we have the Spirit of suffering and true humility because we are affected with the thoughts and sentiments thereof for we can only know it assuredly in the effective occasions O how rare a thing is it to be wholly crucified to the things of this life Nature must pay dear to purchase this Jewel 'T is not because the fruits are not sweet which are indeed so ravishing that no other sweetness in the world may be compared to it insomuch that those Souls who have once tasted thereof are as I may say daily mounted on the Cross as a Tree of Life Search for sweetness where you please you will never find it so full as in the bosom of the Cross all other sweetness is but superficial and fleeting this is solid permanent and efficacious But this a Soul cannot know by thoughts only and sentiments thereof but by the real effects of suffering Some Souls are as St Cordula in whom the weakness of Nature was so strong that she hid her self to escape Martyrdom but the power of Jesus Christ made her a little after discover her self and lay down her life for his sake There 's a wonderful frailty in human Nature but the power of Grace in man is marvellous the sight of One makes us tremble for fear but beholding the Other we are encourag'd by hope Humility and confidence in God are two Virtues very necessary to man who left to himself is all weakness and is not strong but by the Grace of Jesus Christ in whom poor humble Souls arrive to their Crowns of Glory and he is also crowned by them for they cannot conquer the World and Nature but by Him and this puts eternal Crowns upon his Head The Crowns which the Saints wear on their heads belong not to them as if they had gain'd them by their own abilites but to Jesus Christ the Crown of the Blessed in Heaven Jesus Corona Sanctorum omnium O dear Jesus I am well pleas'd with your sweetness and consolations and with the moderation you use towards me in trying me only with small afflictions as well knowing my weakness would be over-whelm'd with a torrent of sufferings I am pleas'd with those sensible influences you infuse into my Soul in Devotions for though they be evident signs of my weakness yet they are assured effects of your amiable Providence to strengthen my frailty against temptations Glorifie then in the depth of my Misery the riches of your Mercy When a Soul calls to mind her imperfections and inclination to evil God thinks upon her and supplies her with his assisting Graces When she forgets her miseries and corruptions God also forgets her for he loves not Vanity but Verity For this reason the most usual exercise of a Soul ought to be to endeavour for a perfect sight of her imperfections This is an Altar on which we sacrifice all self-conceits and desire of our proper excellence to do homage to the sovereign Perfection and infinite Majesty of God This Altar ought to be every day prepared What corrections and reproofs we may receive from others are not to be thought full of passion and exaggeration yea they come from our greatest Enemies for they are less than our sins and corruption the source whereof is so profound that no Creature can fathom it but God alone O what a blindness is it then to complain CHAP. XVI To be content with abjection after our faults repairs the injury to God and makes up our ruins YOu know my last inconsideration This fault has made me see very well my extreme misery and the little strength my Soul hath on such occasions I see methinks the depth of my weakness and know how little I am mortified and how active my passions are yet in me God of his mercy grant that
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
the Treasures of the Earth We ought daily according to our abilities to examine our selves to the end to purifie our hearts from all affections that tend not to this supernatural Life It resides in the superiour part of the Soul and therefore we must not wonder if the inferiour part has degusts and aversions from it We must expect that Nature Sense Friends the World and ordinary Christians will keep a noise and trouble our ears with many Arguments against it But to all this it is enough to answer in few words with St. Blandina Christiana sum Christiana sum I am a Christian Let us say to such who endeavour to divert us I have undertaken to lead this supernatural Life I will never abandon it maugre all the contradictions of worldly Maxims and the repugnances of sensual Nature I know to become a perfect Christian I must be turn'd up-side down destroy'd annihilated according to my natural inclinations hate in a manner all that the world naturally loves Riches Honours Pleasures yea though innocent and love what the world naturally hates Poverty Contempt and Sufferings This is a great attempt but we have powerful helps for we can do all things through Christ strengthening us CHAP. III. That we ought with St. Paul to convert our selves wholly to God I Am now resolv'd in good earnest to convert my self wholly to God to be taken solely with his Divine Beauty and Infinite Goodness forsaking all Creatures which heretofore have too much taken up my time and affections O my God! deal with me as you did with your Apostle strike me down to the ground humble me make me blind to all things but to You who are in the interiour of my heart beaming forth Lights which discover sufficiently your Divine presence This makes me ask you O my God what you will have me to do And methinks you answer That this manifestation of your presence in me should make such an extraordinary impression on me as to change my life and conform my self wholly to your Divine will and pleasure Behold it seems to me this is what you would have me to do First Not to persecute the sentiments and inclinations I have to a Christian Life by taking part with the struglings of old Adam in me St. Paul persecuted Jesus Christ in persecuting the Primitive Christians and I also persecute the same Jesus when I stifle the motions of Grace in me and will not suffer my Soul to live his life which he did lead here for me to follow Pardon me good Jesus I will no longer persecute you by stifling your holy Inspirations I desire to be a Christian and your Disciple I will profess Christianity in the face of the Sun and only be asham'd to live after the Law of old Adam To be a Christian this is my Glory this is my Life this is my Delight Poverty Contempts Pains Humiliations I will no more be affraid of you but make much of you seeing Jesus hath loved you even to death To live this Life we must become blind and have no other light than what the rays of Faith afford us For Nature cannot teach us the Grandeur Excellence and Eminency of Christianity St Paul after his Conversion suffered a thousand hardships He was whipt banish'd despis'd mock'd imprison'd tormented us'd as if he was the filth and off-scouring of the world which is as much as to say St. Paul after his Conversion was a Christian to death nothing could deter him from living the life of Jesus Christ Let us then O my Soul be true Christians that is let us be content to live in Sufferings Persecutions Mortifications and the Ignominies of the Cross of Jesus Christ Let us embrace the wisdom of the Word Incarnate and become as Fools in the eyes of the world who persecute true Christians that is those who die to themselves and all things else to live to Jesus Poor Christian Life little art thou known how ill art thou treated in the world Thou dwell'st in the lips of many but few afford thee a place in their heart I am fully persuaded that a Soul truly converted loves God entirely that this entire love of God is a perfect union with his goodness that such a union implies a universal detachment from the Creature that such a detachment cannot be got without the profession of Virtues and among the rest Poverty and Self-denial by which we are interiourly disengaged from earthly things and exteriourly when God pleases contentedly suffer miseries sickness loss of Goods and whatever the world naturally abhors as evil but by the work of Grace are for our greater good because they advance our union with God When we abound with Riches and Honours we live in a continual fear of having too great an affection for them but in sufferings a Soul possesses a stronger assurance of Divine Love Nothing but Grace can teach us these verities and a greater Grace can only make us relish and practice them the weight of our natural inclinations still hindring us from rising to so great Perfection When we give up our selves to God with resolutions daily to advance in Virtue we can more easily conceive what this perfection is than practice it However let us take courage nothing is impossible to God and we shall find doubtless this Jewel by a perfect abnegation that is possessing nothing not the very means of serving God but with a spirit of resignation To follow Jesus naked on the Cross we must divest our selves of all Creatures that we may be solely united to him Yea dear Jesus my desire is only to be for you my resolution is to serve you and in what manner you please be it by action or by suffering or contemplation I will be attached to nothing but You my desire is to be dis-engag'd from all Creatures to find You and possess You as my only happiness CHAP. XV. Of the Alliance we must make with the holy Folly of the Cross AFter many illustrations of Grace which have cleared up to me the beauty of the sacred Folly of the Cross after many proposals and reviews I have at last espous'd it saying with fervour the same words which Christ us'd to his Spouse in the Canticles Sponsabo te in aeternum My Friend my Spouse my Sister I have espoused thee for ever Methinks I say these words for ever but yet faintly my infinite frailties making me fearful I may become an inconstant Lover Notwithstanding I say for ever with a real heart in hope that by virtue of that immense Love whereby the Divinity hath for ever espoused our human Nature and this same Humanity hath espoused the Cross sufferings and abjections our blessed Saviour will vouchsafe me some part of the Grace of this Divine Alliance to enable me to walk his way and live his life in annihilation humiliations and self-denial Let us then O my Soul live this life of the Son of God any other life is but a real death Jesus
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-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
that Purity wherewith I ought to love him who is essentially good and perfect I know God is a jealous God who will admit no Rival in his love and that with great reason because he is only truly amiable as our Soveraign good O that he was loved according to his Beauty My Soul is inflamed with a great desire to disengage her self from all Creatures that I might wholly be busied about God alone I see clearly that this is my principal concern and not to meddle with other affairs without necessity For a Soul whom God attracts to a sublime union with himself must cut off abundance of superfluous thoughts discourses and occupations or else she will be lyable to a thousand amusements For my part I often say to my self Come my Soul let us to our principal work and let the rest alone that does but estrange us from our happiness We must live a life more retired than ordinary with greater silence and attention to God and Holy Duties This life will seem a little abject and will not be so pleasing to many who are for unprofitable recreations But will be amiable to such who are wholly taken up with the exercises of Divine love in a beloved retirement For they have tltogether given themselves up to the good pleasure of God and love nothing but the accomplishment of his holy will This perfect abandon is wrought in us by pure love and this pure love cannot raign in our hearts without a generous mortification to all Creatures and a freedom from an attach to imperfections This death doth work but according to the measure of our love to sufferings which sufferings for God wonderfully unites us to him with the bond of Perfection Purity love suffering God what would we more If Providence so order I shall freely forsake my solitude though most dear to me I will endeavour to die to all things to apply my self wholly to Gods pleasure and sacrifice my self and whatever I have to his holy Will Has he a mind to reduce me to my first nothing If he will have it so I am content Will he have me in a suffering condition His will be done neither will I complain but have recourse to Jesus Suffering for me on the Cross and rest contented with his good pleasure A Soul that loves God and his Will more than the Creature is content and peaceable in all events seeing Faith assures her that the will of God is accomplish'd therein She embraces miseries and afflictions as proper means for her sanctification and discovers more clearly therein the good pleasure of God then in prosperity O my Soul we must now give our selves to God in good earnest indeed by embracing contempt and poverty forsaking the vain respects of the World and sensual delights to expose a Penitent poor hidden abject life so contrary to worldly men Methinks hitherto I have had but Idaeas now I desire to fall to the practice of Perfection after the example of St. Elizabeth While she was a Princess how did she abhor the life of Worldlings and what love had she for a poor abject life O my God when shall I give you the practice of so many excellent truths whereof you have given me the knowledge by heavenly illuminations O my God speak powerfull to my heart and make me faithful in my obedience take from me all other things and attach me entirely to your good pleasure CHAP. XII We ought to comport our selves with a respectful reverence in God's presence A Soul that sees God present with her by the light of Faith will often times feel in her self the great veneration she has for so infinite a Majesty and Benefactor She cannot but have a respectful regard for all the inspirations and secret advices conducing to perfection all good desires which come from God yea she has a reverence and love for Crosses that come from the hand of her Soveraign good The Soul in this state is peaceable and may so continue a long time O my Soul remember this well and when any thing comes into thy thoughts which thou believest to be an inspiration cherish it with great respect and be faithful to the designs of God upon thee according to the measure of their manifestation O what irreverence wilt thou be guilty of not to be Faithful in such cases Above all be content to look upon crosses and humiliations with respect and love and hold thy self happy to be accounted worthy to suffer for Christs sake Vobis datum est ut in Jesum credatis pro eo patiamini God is pleas'd to manifest to me with what dispositions I ought to walk in his presence and in his ways namely humility patience longanimity simplicity and purity When we find our selves in good disposition of heart humility makes a Soul to esteem it highly be it never so small and thinks her self happy to have it because she deserves nothing yea is rather worthy of eternal punishment This will free us from sadness and discouragements when we see others glittering with greater Graces and pulls down our pride from exalting our selves higher than God will have us to be Moreover by patience the Soul is well composed and labours after perfection with courage and perseverance be the time never so long before God bestow on her the gift of Prayer By longanimity the Soul suffers and supports her self in her defects and imperfections so that self-love shall not discourage her in her endeavours Simplicity makes her still to have an eye to God and to follow his conduct whereby at length she arrives to Purity Our chief work must be to do Penance with all humility and if God gives us not the gift of sublime Prayer and eminent virtues to abide peaceable in that little we have and we shall find favour in the eyes of God What we ordinarily want is a noble generosity to support crosses and surmount the contradictions we meet with from nature in the occasions of Fidelity These difficulties make us timerous and fearful but we must be content to be feeble that the Power of the Grace of Jesus Christ may be glorified in us When I am weak then am I strong says St. Paul Virtus in infirmitate perficitur This acknowledgment of our weakness does wonderfully humble us and opens our eyes to see our own poverty and the great need we have to relie on the Grace of Jesus Christ I find that God requires of me to be Faithful in these following practices 1. First I must be very indifferent to whatsoever it shall please God to do with me and to be content either with action or suffering being attent wholly to his good pleasure Why therefore should I long after the Graces of others because great and glorious 'T is enough for me to bless God for them and be faithful to my own with peace and contentedness seeing our happiness consists in serving God in what manner he pleases 2. When I find my self in
of God is all in all unto her and without it all things are as nothing seeing she 's only content with the will of God The Soul that truly understands this Truth lives always well pleas'd in the changes of this Life observing therein the order of Gods Providence wherewith she is well satisfied and resolv'd to be indifferent to every condition If we be not content with a low vocation as well as with great Graces it proceeds from interest and self-love Great Saints of God your ways are high and sublime and mine are low and ordinary in which however I live well pleas'd without aspiring after your elevations because I taste a sweetness in Gods order that contents my heart To abide in interiour peace and tranquility with submission to the Orders of God by a strong union with his good pleasure in all things is not the work of a day we must fight couragiously many years with all sorts of enemies before we can gain so great a victory In my judgment there 's nothing more dangerous than to leave the order of God and to aim at greater things than he will have us But a Soul content with Gods good pleasure is well pleas'd with any state wherein is no Sin nor beloved Imperfections But our Pride is the source of a thousand disturbances and we continually trouble our selves if we will aim at too high a perfection or run too fast to that which God discovers to us by light from Heaven A pure Soul must desire nothing but the pure satisfaction of God and not her own interest though she find in her self much imperfection Jesus Christ to whom she has absolutely given her self such as she is is all perfection this is enough for her she will find in him her repose her tranquility her beatitude without troubling her self too much with her defects and failings I know not how it comes to pass but I am content and imperfect both together and yet my imperfections do not please me neither by the Grace of God shall they disquiet me I do not seek for the object of my contentment in my self but in my God and Saviour the only love and center of my Soul CHAP. XVI The practice of the Presence of God for the seven days of the Week THe solid foundations of a Spiritual Life are Mortifications pure Virtue to shun excess of business though never so good to converse with Holy Persons but above all Prayer and the love of Solitude which affords more liberty to attend to the one thing necessary The Soul that loves cannot but suffer at the absence of her Beloved and therefore love sets her to Prayer to make him present And the better to converse with God and entertain him with amorous discourses she applyes her self sometimes to the Being of God sometimes to this or that Divine Perfection considering him as the Being of Beings who only is of himself and before whom the whole Creation is nothing Sometimes her Meditations present him to her all-powerful with his only word creating and conserving all things And then again she considers him as infinitely wise ordering all things by his wonderful Providence Sometimes as infinitely merciful and patient bearing with our manifold sins and provocations And then again as infinitely loving and amorous of our Souls in a manner unspeakable Sometimes as infinitely just hating iniquity with an implacable aversion not sparing his only Son being a Sacrifice for sin Lastly as infinitely good and merciful pardoning our innumerable sins and transgressions Each day of the Week may take up one of these considerations in mental Prayer if God do not suggest to the Soul some other matter of Meditation The first Day The Being of God IS it so that we live move and are continually in the bosome of God In ipso vivimus movemur sumus and yet think so little of him He vouchsafes to dwell in our hearts and our hearts run after Creatures to rest in them that is in nothing for the Being of all things is nothing else in respect of God but as shadows about us What takes up the greatest part of the World does consist but in imagination as Honour Dignity Praises Reputation c. so much beloved and admired There be other things have a Being to our Senses visible and palpable yet but corporeal and corruptible to day here and gone to morrow however poor Creatures as we are we set our hearts upon them as if they were eternal There are other things whose Being is more permanent and elevated above sense as universal Verities which consist in the understanding however not eternal nor immense nor without defect O my God I elevate my self as I am able to find you and I discover that your Being depends not upon imagination or sense or reason but you are above all this Incomprehensible O Eternal Being You never had beginning nor ever shall have end O infinite Being You are nothing of what we see or know here below You are an Infinity to whom nothing is wanting to whom nothing can be added from whom nothing can be taken away Your Perfection is Infinite O immense Being You fill all things without extension without quantity without parts or composition 't is You alone in whom is the eternal source of Life and Being When I search for you if I go out of your self what do I find but privation and nothing O my God what damage what annihilation is it when we fall into sin or imperfection For this is to go out of our Being to plunge our selves in the Abiss of nothingness Ad nihilum redactus sum O my Soul wilt thou always commit folly Wilt thou daily run after deceits and vanity that is the Grandeurs and pleasures of this World Wilt thou continually tire thy self to follow a shadow that flies from thee And wilt thou forget God the Being of Beings who is every where present and offers himself unto thee O my God so take me up with your presence that I may forget all other things to think on you my only Happiness The second Day The Omnipotency of God 'T Is no better than a Prison to confine our Souls within the small limits of created Beings 't is a slavery to be tyed to the intollerable yoak which the World and Vanity impose on their Servants 't is a Hell to be precipitated into the dungeon of exorbitant Passions and filthy Vices But 't is a Paradice and glorious liberty to be taken up with the Thoughts of God where we may walk at large finding all in him to be infinitely great his Goodness his Beauty his Sweetness and to apply our selves to admire sometimes This then That perfection This day O my Soul let us contemplate the Omnipotency of God wherein we may behold so many wonders O how the effects thereof are admirable in the Production conservation and operations of all Creatures 'T is by this Power the Immense Machine of the World is upheld upon
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
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
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
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
another as I have loved you which was the subject of my second Prayer I then found that when a Soul has made a good entrance into the heart of Jesus Christ and by the light of Prayer sees the infinite love of God towards men Grace then discovers how this divine charity is free generous and magnificent Free having a love for us when objects of his just displeasure Generous surmounting all difficulties and conquering all resistances Magnificent in giving his own life for our Redemption This is a Zeal truly Divine for the Salvation of Souls Now his pleasure is that the charity we have for our Neighbour be regulated by this divine Model that we love them to do the will of God and obey his Commands That we love them generously without any regard to natural aversions or injuries they have done us or any temporal advantages we may receive from them but after the example of Jesus to love and do good even to our greatest enemies O how many great Saints considering the ardent love of Christ to us have burn'd with the flames of a holy Zeal and spent themselves in labours to do good to those Souls for whom Christ died But alas we have little zeal for God for our Neighbour or our selves My third Prayer passed in considerations of the prodigious goodness of Jesus to men who seem'd to forget himself and depose the grandeurs of his Majesty to debase himself in the search of our Souls to indulge and love them with as much affection as if they did contribute to his felicity He prevents them with wonderful mercies and though they be unworthy of his love he gives them sensible feelings thereof by speaking to the heart in this or such-like manner My Sister my Spouse my love takes a delight in thee knowest thou well who I am 'T is I that am thy God thy Creator thy Saviour 'T is I who came from the bosom of my Father into this world to find thee being lost and tell thee how I love thee and I demand nothing but love again My Soul thus prevented with the blessings of this sweetness and powerfully touched with a sense thereof wanted words to express my thankfulness However I said O my God! You are my love I love you and will love you eternally with all my heart for what else have I to return but love for love 'T is a wonderful love for you to debase the grandeurs of your Divinity to search after poor sinful Souls Nor is it less wonderful for you to draw these Souls out of themselves to free them from their miseries and advance them to your embraces and place them in your heart as some rich Treasure This is the wonderful excess of the love of Jesus Zelator of Souls This love that so humbled Jesus does elevate a Soul to these amorous exercises and makes her see her own unworthiness and the incomparable beauty of her well-beloved In my fourth Prayer I had a deep impression of Jesus humbled and doing Penance for us I beheld him as it were annihilated in the presence of his eternal Father to honour his eternal Beeing by sacrificing his humanity which he continued his whole life and consummated on the Cross I beheld also how being charged with our sins he did continual Penance for us to satisfie the divine Justice and give content to that infinite love he has for our Souls Let us love then O my Soul our Jesus as he has loved us and imitate his sufferings by a spirit of penance and annihilation I am a great sinner and therefore ought to entertain a spirit of penance and thereby make advantage of all evils and infirmities which happen to me My principal affair in this world ought to be to annihilate my self and to suffer to annihilate my self to pay homage to the infinite grandeurs of God and to suffer as a just punishment of my sins After Confession having but one Gloria Patri for my penance it came into my thoughts that no penance is little when 't is united to the sufferings of Jesus Christ who by them has done penance for our sins It seemed to me that one only Ave Maria united to the sufferings of the Son of God which are of infinite merit and did infinitely satisfie his eternal Father becomes a penance which wonderfully satisfies for our sins My Soul was comforted with this truth and I had no more to do than to unite my little Crosses to the Cross of Jesus Sixth Day Jesus contemplating and enjoying OUr blessed Saviour did fill my Soul with such super-abundant consolation in my morning Prayer that I seem'd to have some part of that state of enjoyment which is reserv'd for the Saints in Glory O amorous enjoyment how wonderfully dost thou purifie our Souls Thou takest our hearts off from the World thou dost Crucifie us with a delightful Martyrdom thou dost enlighten thou dost purifie thou dost inflame thou dost mortifie thou dost fortifie thou makest us live and die together A small tast of this Ocean of delights will inebriate the Souls of men and the Angels in Glory This is that Blessed Life which is granted to some Servants of God honouring him by continual enjoyments which he pours into their Souls 'T is a great secret of the Interiour Life to be passive to the operations of God in us whether he visits us with dolorous and crucifying or joyful and beatifying impressions Our fidelity consists in a pure correspondence to his designs without reluctance If he please to make our Soul a Garden of Delights embrace his Favours All the ways of God are good in themselves but that which he puts us in is best for us O how the state of Jesus suffering is adorable O how his state of enjoying is admirable We must apply our selves to one or other according to the designs of the Divine Wisdom I found an Image of Jesus in Contemplation his Look and Posture ravish'd me and this took up my second Prayer I was not satisfied with beholding his Divine Aspect I admir'd and ador'd him Considering the profound attention he had to the Grandeurs of his Eternal Father and how he was absorp'd in the Divinity I made it my work to contemplate also by him and in him uniting my self to the utmost of my Power to his Divine entertainments O Jesus contemplating Jesus taken up with your Father with whom you pass in Prayer whole nights made as bright as the days of Eternity Jesus living a retir'd life in the Divine Essence You are the object of my Love I see nothing so beautiful as you are in this state My Soul hath no greater delight upon Earth than to have an eye to Jesus to think of him to speak of him to sigh after him O how happy is that Soul which Jesus makes his Mansion I know not how Jesus comes into a Soul but he 's there sometimes sooner then perceiv'd filling her with Blessings and making her to find that
he ought nor lov'd with thankfulness He loves us so as to die for us and we make no reciprocal returns O the prodigious insensibility of men Is then Jesus Christ a stranger to us and not our God and Saviour Does the History of his holy Passion pass with us as a profane or indifferent thing Ought not the bloody Tragedy of Calvary fill all Christian hearts with love and sorrow For my part I could hide my head with shame that I have so little compassion and love for Jesus dying on the Cross for our Salvation O my Jesus I confess my fault in that I have so little known my infinite obligations to you But seeing your Grace discovers now to me more clear than heretofore what you are I will never more lose sight of you I will love nothing more than You and esteem nothing more than to do you honour You are my true Father my true Brother true Friend true King true Redeemer O how great a truth is it that you are all in all unto me O that I have been so long without knowing you aright O Jesus how Happy am I that I have found you O let me never so much loose my self as to forsake you For my fourth Prayer I stood at the Sepulcher of Jesus and seeing his precious Body dead and covered with Wounds I made this Epitaph Here lyes Love Yes yes here lyes Love indeed for his excessive Love to us brought him to this state and condition A state full of horror and wounds Blood and Infamy But a state well pleasing to God as satisfying his Justice for mans Redemption I embraced his precious Body and kiss'd his Sacred Wounds I adored Jesus in this state and said O my Soul we must either cease to Love Jesus or die with him seeing Love equalizes Lovers and makes them alike My Soul then chose to die with Jesus and after many sighs and desires to please her Beloved she died with Jesus never willing more to live a Natural and Humane Life but a Life Divine and Supernatural as that of Jesus And I made for her this Epitaph Here lyes a Soul dead of Love Behold in what consists the death of my Soul 't is to live no longer according to the natural Inclinations but according to the motions of Grace which are the Love of Poverty Contempt and Sufferings While these dispositions live in a Soul she is dead to Sensual desires and lives a Life of Grace a Life Supernatural Therefore for the future I will never hunt after Honours or Pleasures or Riches willingly and by Election but I will either heartily forsake them or if I use them it shall be upon Divine Motives for the good of my Neighbour or for pure necessity seeing That is the Will of God the surest rule of all our Actions Tenth Day Jesus risen from Death and Glorious IN my Morning Prayer I consider'd the Glory of Jesus Christ in the state of his triumphant Resurrection O Jesus how Glorious are you How well does this become you Verily 't was a strange state whither your Love had brought you A state of Misery Shame and Sorrow This was well for us Criminals but in no sort agreeing to you who are Innocence it self For what belongs to you is Majesty and Glory What joy did swell my heart to see Jesus Glorious My Tongue cannot express what my Heart feels This great Feast of the Resurrection is to be celebrated by all Creatures seeing 't is the day wherein Jesus appears as God O Feast of the Glory of Jesus O Feast of the Glory of Mary 'T was a Miracle she did not die of Sorrow at the Death of her Son and 't is another Miracle she did not die of Joy at his Glorious Resurrection O my heart be thou enlarged with Joy for 't is a general rule without exception that the Interest of the Creator is to be preferr'd before all Creatures And therefore O triumphant Jesus I more rejoyce that you are Glorious then that I hope to be Glorified with you Yea though I should never be raised your Glory does ravish me It glads me when I consider that damnation only concerns the Creature for the Interest of Jesus suffers not thereby seeing God is Glorified by the Reprobates as well as by the Saints in Glory 'T is also a certain rule that the Elect O Divine Jesus are Images of you and so necessarily must resemble you in your Sufferings if with you they will be Glorified 'T is a folly to think not to suffer here some way or other more or less seeing the way to Glory is by Sufferings O my Soul be thou united to Jesus Crucified and then thou shalt have part with Jesus Glorified To this end thou must love the Cross and desire of Jesus to die or suffer O World thy way is meer folly and nothing else In my second Prayer I was taken up with these words of Divine Jesus Ought not Christ first to suffer and so to enter into Glory I discover'd how all the Divine Perfections did wonderfully shine forth therein But above all the Wisdom of God doth ravish those hearts which contemplate the works of Grace and Mercy O Divine Wisdom how well is the Oeconomy of your Mysteries order'd to work our Salvation and bring us to Glory Every Mystery which I consider'd did raise a new Fire in my breast to inflame my affections with the Love of Jesus Sometimes they altogether did as with so many arrows pierce my heart and made me languish with Divine Love For seeing my self so Belov'd of good Jesus how could I but Love him again O Infinite Love of Jesus for whom shall I have a heart if not for thee O Love 't is for thee my heart is reserved Thy attracts are powerful enough do not redouble them so sweet and charming 't is enough my heart is for thee O Love except thou wilt have me die do not wound me any more Yet I will die willingly if thou wilt have it so on the Cross of Interiour and Exteriour Suffering that I may be conform to my Loving Saviour My third Prayer was a continuation of the Sentiments of the Love of Jesus I made use of the words of great St. Austin in his Confessions O my Jesus you have wounded my heart with the arrows of your Charity and I have devoted it to your Love Since that you have scatter'd my Darkness and made your self known unto me I have not forgot you Since I had the Happiness to know you I have imprinted you in my memory there I find you and I tast perfect Delights and receive extreme Joy and Contentment when I remember you My Soul feeling Divine Fires within her which did fill her with Pleasures I did sing extempore Canticles to my Beloved and though not methodical yet they better express'd her amorous languishings Though alone in my Chamber I spake of Jesus aloud as if I had had many Auditors to be partakers of my
Happiness I make Colloquies among many Lovers of Jesus I think I hear St. Romuald say My dear Jesus my sweet Love the inestimable Object of my Desires the Delight of Saints the Joy of Angels who will give me to Love you as much by my Self as they do altogether Another answered Seeing your Perfections O good Jesus have no limits the Love which all hearts have for you ought to be Infinite Another said O Saviour the Fruits are Testimonies of true Love your appear to me admirable in the effects of your Sufferings and that bloody Death you endured for me But what have I done as yet to testify my Love or make you Love me Another concluded and said Let us Love and Suffer and let us die by the hands of the same Love which made Jesus die upon the Cross O Sacred Love how kindly cruel art thou to those who fall into thy hands For thou dost cut and mortifie and humble and annihilate All thy Servants more or less carry the marks of thy Severity St. Philip Nereus in his Ribbs St. Francis in his Hands and Feet and very Heart But O Divine Love I fear not thy Cruelty Mortifie me Crucifie me Burn me Alive I desire to die by no other hand The conclusion of all the Prayers of my Solitude was an absolute abandon of my self to Jesus Christ to whom I gave my self up in a new manner irrevocably to live or die to act or suffer to be in such a state as best pleases him Ardently desiring that his Sacred Love would make me die to all things but himself The Martyrdom of Love is longer then that of Tyrants and sometimes more tormenting fighting against all our natural Inclinations breaking through all oppositions whatsoever to practice the virtues of the Word Incarnate Without doubt we suffer much to follow that Grace which calls us to die on a Cross poor contemned and abandoned But he that Loves finds sweetness in these Sufferings 'T is a great wonder to make a Creature of nothing But 't is a far greater to make a sinner a Saint And this O Jesus is the only work of your Grace 'T is you that are victorious and triumphant in all your Elect over the corruption and malignity of Sin O Jesus how great is the Power of your Grace How is your right Hand glorified by working wonders O Jesus the Infinite source of Power and Virtue of Grace and Sanctity of Beauty and Perfection O that I have as yet so little known you In Heaven they only see you clearly but yet 't is a Favour and Happiness beyond expression to have some knowledge of you in this Life When I behold Jesus my Soul wants words and can say nothing but Jesus and in saying Jesus it says all it would though it be ineffable O Jesus vouchsafe me some little sight of you in this banishment that my Soul may be comforted Jesus God and Man the eternal Splendour and Crown of Saints be you hereafter the only Object of my Desires and Love that I may be so united to you as never to suffer a separation When Jesus once possesses a Soul her Thoughts are on him her Words are to him and her Love is for him She then lives in a region of Light Beautiful beyond all expression and in her ardours of Love she seems wholly Passive to the operations of Jesus in her Jesus is enlightning enflaming Piercing and Consummating Jesus is more in the Soul then her self and lives more in her then her self all is converted into Jesus by a co-operation of Love which she feels but cannot explicate It seems to my Soul that hitherto she has been but in continual amusements How many vain Idaeas have taken up her Thoughts But at the sight of Jesus all Creatures appear'd but as Dreams and they fled before him as Owls at Sun-rising I know you then O amiable Jesus I see that you are Verity and all the World but Vanity O Divine Jesus reign for ever in my Soul establish your Empire in my heart and be absolute King there for it is yours Let all the Blessed Angels and Saints in Heaven and all Creatures Bless you and Praise you and help me to return you Thanks for all the Favours your Infinite Goodness has vouchsased me in this Retreat Add this also O most Merciful Jesus to your other Graces that I may have a perpetual dependance on your Holy Will and live in you and for you who lives and reigns World without end Amen The End of the Fourth BOOK BOOK V. Of Communion and its Effects CHAP. I. Of Preparation before Communion A Person that often receives his God in the Holy Communion ought to direct all the Actions of his Life to that end and render them a Preparation to it And as those Acts whereby we prepare our selves ought to be most Holy most replenished with Grace so by consequence the Life of one that does often frequent the Sacrament ought to be a continued exercise of Holy and Supernatural Acts. We ought to lead a Life worthy of the Divine Bread which is given us in this adorable Sacrament A common and material Bread supports the Life of Nature But he who is himself the Bread of Graces bestows on us a Life of Grace a Life Holy and Divine and Infinitely rais'd above the Humane Life And therefore is little known little sought by such as lead a common Life and are unwilling to leave themselves and their Temporal concerns to live to Jesus Christ who to that end gives himself to them that he may be their Life O my God how Ignorant and Earthly has my past Life been since I am so little acquainted with this Life more than Humane But now out of your Mercy you vouchsafe to bestow on me such Sentiments as incline me to enter upon this Life For I plainly see that a Soul well settled in the state of Grace ought to live no longer according to Nature but according to Grace The Motions Maxims and Designs of the Supernatural Life take their Original from Grace and are of a very different relish from such as affect Souls which move only by the impressions of Nature For the Soul actuated by this Life embraces Contempts Sufferings Abjection and her delight is to be annihilated in the esteem and love of Creatures so far it is from seeking those things never so little To live this Life is to live the Life of Jesus and to become one and the same with him and it is an excellent Disposition to live by him while the Soul receives him as its proper nourishment Qui manducat me vivet propter me Your Delights O Lord are to be with the Children of Men But these Delights ought to be Reciprocal that is to say That Souls ought to take their Delights in you in your state of Poverty and Abjection that so you may take your Delights in them What an excess of Goodness is this O Lord that being so
with me after Communion are 1. Jesus entring into my Mouth vailed with the Sacramental Species I Sacrifice to him all my Being my Faculties and Operations in Homage to his Grandeur And after this Act I remain quite annihilated and passive to Jesus operating towards his Heavenly Father Love Respect and Praise towards my Self Death Annihilation and Alliance with his Divine Life 2. A second Disposition after the Holy Communion is that Jesus entring into me presently operates a streight Vnion At that time I have no sight of any that may annihilate me only at first he unites me to the state of his Humanity in its Poverty and Abjections the Contempt Labours and Sufferings of his Mortal Life and being hereby purified next he draws me to a Vnion with the state of his Divinity that is to say to render to his Eternal Father Love Praises and complacency in his Grandeurs 3. Another time after Holy Communion these great words of our Lord presented themselves to my mind to serve for my Entertainment Rogo Pater ut sint consummati in unum Father I beseech you that they may be consummated in one They disclose to me a little of that perfect Vnity or consummated Vnion that ought to be contracted between Jesus and us His Love requiring that our Souls should be confirmed in that Vnion by the frequent use of the Holy Communion and that they act continually according to the conditions of this Alliance from whence they fall by the least Infidelity and very much offend God who sees himself neglected and as it were contemned and post-poned to Creatures after he has called them to so perfect a Vnion and come expresly to work it in them Wherefore a perfect Vnion requires that our heart be united the most continually that possibly it can and that it tend incessantly to a Vnity of Love with Jesus Christ to a Vnity of Instinct of Inclinations of Desires and to a great conformity with the condition of his Mortal Life which is that whereby we are to walk during our present Life if we desire to arrive to the enjoyment of his Divine Life 4. Sometimes after Communicating I have had this representation in my mind that Jesus giving himself to me seemed to speak to me but without any kind of words For the sole manifestation of his Love imparted to the Soul is in lieu of speaking and the Soul answers by Acquiescence and Admiration that cannot be expressed In effect the Soul in this state does not understand any Interiour words after the manner that Mystique Divines explain them in their Writings But the lively and clear representation that is made to her of the state of Jesus in each Mystery without any thing else serves her for Discourse While she is in this condition it seems to her that Jesus says Hear Daughter and see and forget your People and the House of your Father to enter into an imitation of me To which words the Soul makes answer by acquiessing and without any noise in her Interiour she signifies her acceptance by a most efficatious consent She hears by seeing and Jesus speaks by manifesting himself Another while at the Communion I had a general view of the multitude of the great wonders that Jesus operates in these Mysteries of Faith in favour of Men with whom he takes his Delight This general view raised me to a high admiration which nevertheless terminated in a sense of a most profound acknowledgment of the Goodness of God seeing that all these wonders tend to no other end than to manifest unto us the intenseness of the Love he bears us and import that he expects Love for Love That is your only design my good Jesu in bestowing on me this Divine Food to bestow on me the Life of your Love but this Life may very well cause my Death O Love Love Love was all that I could then say being struck dumb with admiration CHAP. VI. Another Method of Thanksgiving after Communion I Find a great gust in the understanding of these words Fortis est ut mors dilectio Love is strong as Death Methinks I see them practically verified in the Holy Communion where I see that Love has reduced Jesus to the state of Death and of a Sacrifice immolated as Death reduced him upon Mount Calvary I consider that while his Love severs him from the Splendours of his Glory to unite himself to me it excites me at the same time to separate my self from Creatures from my Self and from all other things thereby to unite my self to him alone My Soul thoroughly penetrated with a desire to correspond with this design of her Beloved Jesus and clearly discerning that the love of Crosses and Contempt is necessary to dispose and prepare her for this great Favour she looks on them with affection and delight as so many Springs whence flows her Happiness Another wonder which sometimes my mind has been intent upon and received great Comfort from it is the Infinite desire that God has to Communicate himself and to lift us up to a full participation of his Divinity This view well penetrated into discovers so many wonders of the Love of God towards Men of the Felicities to which they are destined after the Miseries of this World of the Dignity of their Creation since the end for which they were made is to possess God of the Infinite desire God has to unite himself to them and of the perfect corresponding and complyance they are from thence oblig'd to especially such Souls as are chosen and in a particular manner called to this state that after all this it is scarce possible to resist such cogent impulses and attractives of God They make one desire to die to all things the better to prepare for so great a work of Love the hurries and business of the World is not to be any longer endured and one becomes passionately in Love with Solitude My Soul reflect diligently upon the Grace is given thee and correspond to the Love of God towards thee which thou art now so thoroughly acquainted with Thou hast no other business but this for thou must never betake thy self to any other imployment unless thou receive express orders from God for it The more one is estranged from Creatures the better a Soul is disposed to this Divine Union wherefore Disgraces ought to be our Felicity because they are the means to obtain it The Cross Purity of Love Union God alone These are the degrees that Grace leads us through and our Fidelity calls us to There is also another good method of giving Thanks after Communion which consists in abandoning and resigning our selves absolutely and without reserve to the power and dependance of Jesus Christ who coming into our hearts ought to be master there and command as Soveraign When it pleases him to continue with a Soul to entertain her and to unite her to him by a most delightful feeling of his presence we must not think that
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
elevate his Heart by frequent Prayer to God and Contemplation of his Divine Perfections or that dissipates his Spirit abroad by the impulses of Nature engaging himself in Temporal Affairs without being called thereto by the Inspiration and guidance of Grace though something of zeal appear in the thing and as one thinks a good intention I say this Interiour Fire in such a Person is to be compared to these Meteors or Lambent Fires which are carried about with every motion of the Air and shine but do not burn CHAP. XII The fifth Effect of Communion is to give Strength and Perseverance in the Service of God ONe day as I entred into a Church I heard them sing these words in Honour of the Blessed Sacrament Ambulavit in fortitudine cibi illius usque ad montem Dei He walked in the strength of this Bread even to the Mount of God These words affected me and made me Hope that notwithstanding my Miseries and continual weakness I might be so strengthned by receiving this Divine Bread that at last I might arrive to the Mount of God might raise my self above the low inclinations of Nature and mount to the participation of the Spirit of Jesus and Perfection of a Super-natural Life which Life is a high Mountain which no body can climb by the meer strength of Nature I observed before that the peculiar intention of Jesus in Instituting the Holy Sacrament was to give us a foundation to Life and Strength and for that reason 't is the only Sacrament that is given in the form of Nourishment The rest are prescribed by way of Remedy to purge the Soul from Sin or conferr'd by Ceremony of Cousecration to dedicate the Person to the peculiar Duties of Religion and Holy Things and so others respectively But this is the only one given by way of Heavenly nurture to enable us to live by the Life of Grace a perpetual Life over which the death of Sin has no power For Jesus Christ among other effects of this Divine Food assures us that it bestows Eternal Life Qui manducat hunc panem vivet in aeternum And it seems very reasonable and conform to the Infinite Goodness of God that the most excellent of Sacraments should confer the most excellent of Graces which is that of Perseverance A Grace so Sublime so Divine so precious that we cannot merit it by any or all the good Actions we can do But how rare and how noble soever it be we have much subject to hope that the Father of Mercies and God of all Consolations will grant us it since he has already enriched us with that which is Infinitely more than this Grace the Prefence of his only Son in the Blessed Sacrament Corporal Nutriment is Elementary and Material and therefore no better than Corruption Yet if the Body could take it always in a just proportion and were perfectly well disposed to draw the strength it affords it would continue our Natural Life and we should never die How much more would the Heavenly Bread the Living Bread which contains in it self the ever-flowing sources of Life confer a perpetuity and infectibility of Spiritual Life by Grace if the Soul duly used and were disposed to receive the abundance of Graces Virtues and Super-natural strength that this adorable Food brings with it When we Communicate we drink of the same Fountain the Blessed do in Heaven But to them it is the Water of Life Everlasting and what else can it be to us but that of the Life of never failing Grace which is the pledge and assurance of the Eternity of Glory O my Soul dost thou think that any of the Blessed in Heaven after they have tasted the Delights of that Torrent of Pleasures can be oloy'd with them or be contented to be deprived of that Divine and Happy Life How then canst thou be so unconstant and irresolute in the way of Grace and unfaithful in the Union thou hast contracted with God who hast drank the Waters of Joy from the same Fountains of thy Saviour When he presents himself really and in Person and demands to be admitted into thy Heart say not to him as St. Peter did Retire from me O Lord But breath out the Sentiments of perfect Love saying with the Spouse Tenui eum nec dimittam I will never abandon him O what a pleasant Society how profound a Peace does the enjoyment of the Soveraign Good bring to the Soul But both imperfect till they are finished in Heaven The fullest possession thereof she can acquire on Earth serves only to inflame her thirst more the more she tasts God the more she desires him and since there is no possibility of satisfying her desire in this Life she suffers a continual Martyrdom that makes her both die and live together Her pain is full of sweetness and that sweetness begets a languishing and longing after her Beloved She is disgusted with all created things and forceably drawn off from them Nothing pleaseth her in this condition but that which augments her flame She cannot read with satisfaction unless there be some mention of her Beloved All Conversation and Discourse are burthen some and tedious unless the subject be his Love My God you see the bottom of my Heart I conceive things that I cannot utter 'T is true I suffer but I would not but suffer I can do nothing but aspire to a fuller possession of your Infinite Goodness 'T is very much that you vouchsafe to give your self unto me in the adorable Sacrament with such an immense Love but still you give me only a hidden Treasure I possess you indeed but do not enjoy you to my hearts desire I am in the condition of Holy Simeon who held you in his Arms in the Temple and yet dyed with a desire to see you It is time O Lord now permit my Soul to depart in Peace and quit this Mortal Life because I receive within me the Spring and Source of Immortality I know for certain that in Paradice I shall obtain the perfect accomplishment of all my Desires yet I do not desire it till it be your good will and Pleasure Your Love makes me press forward and tend incessantly to the Beatifical Union but 't is your Love too that stops my course that draws me back inspiring me with the highest indifference and absolute dependance on your Divine Will O Jesus how admirable is your Providence you open my eyes to see the comfortable and Blessed sight of the Power and Purity of Love which ought to possess the Soul that has the Happiness to receive you often in the Holy Communion I relinquish and resign my self more than ever into your Divine Hands guide me as it shall best please you There is nothing left to ask you more since you have unasked bestowed your self upon me and crowned me with Mercies even beyond all my Hopes My business is to remain annihilated in your presence and quietly receive your Divine
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
Blessed in Heaven is Enjoyment but we Travellers on earth ought to desire nothing more then to suffer for Jesus This Suffering does mortifie Old Adam in us by Holy Violence makes us die to the World and separates from us whatever is Impure and Earthy as Gold is purified in a burning Furnace Our Corruption cannot be ruin'd but either by Fire or the Sword of Afflictions which should induce us to embrace them with Contentment seeing the more we Suffer the more we are Purified Let us have an Honourable esteem for the greatest Crosses because they work in us the profoundest Purity and the purest Love of God which is the Life of our Soul and the end of our Creation I am much pleas'd with my present state of affliction seeing it is the readiest way to form Jesus Christ in me and make me a Perfect Christian which is the work of works the highest Honour the richest Treasure and the Soveraign Happiness of this Life While we are Pilgrims on Earth we are exiles from Gods presence Which must needs be a Cross to Souls that sigh after the Beatifical vision I know not how it is but methinks I see more Purity of Love of resignation of Perfection in my present Suffering condition then what I have found in the joyes of union which puts my heart in repose and quiet It seems to me that I can say more truely than at other times O my God what do I desire in Heaven or on Earth but you who are my Portion and my Heritage for ever My Life is Crucified with Jesus Christ and altogether hid with him in the good Pleasure of God To send us Crosses and make us content with a Suffering condition is one of the choicest effects of the Providence of God Seeing he has an Infinite Love for himself his will is that all Creatures capable of his Love should love him also To dispose them thereto the better he sends them Crosses which purifie our corrupted Nature and produce in us dispositions fit for Divine Impressions O Infinite Goodness O merciful Justice I return you Thanks with all my Heart that you have afflicted me to make me love you Losses Contempts Poverty Sufferings come you are welcome my heart is open to give you entertainment Behold I receive you with open arms because you bring with you Divine Love CHAP. IV. God is pleas'd to send us Crosses in the place of Persecutions that our Life may be a continual Martyrdom I Am much taken with this Saying of St. Clement of Alexandria That seeing our Love and Fidelity to God does not at present appear by shedding our Blood for our Faith the Persecutions of Tyrants being ceas'd we must now manifest them by making our Faith visible in all our Actions To do the will of God is a great testimony of our Love to him but 't is a far greater to suffer for him Souls loving God and beloved of him are careful to correspond to Divine Graces whether by acting or Suffering and are so couragious in their Resolutions that no humane fears though of loss of Life it self is able to stop the torrent of their Affections Witness that good Religious man who askt his Spiritual Guide whether it was not better to die than complain of the Infirmarian who provided Diet not proper for him We now suffer more notably in some things than the Martyrs of Old by Bloody Persecutors For our Crosses Interiour or Exteriour being impressions of the Divine Holiness though they separate not the Soul from the Body yet they separate the Soul from the Love of all Creatures to unite us to God alone This Holiness of God having an Infinite abhorrence of whatsoever is not Pure and Holy Delights to purifie the Elect by Tribulations as Gold in the Fire When therefore the Soul feels her self as it were nail'd to the Cross by Derelictions Aridities and Interiour Sufferings let her not strive to free her self but continue in this Suffering contentedly as long as pleases God because hereby she Glorifies him and Purifies her self Seeing 't is certain that the Cross is the Source of Graces and Purity we are inconsiderate to complain and shun Afflictions for we flee from our advancement in Spirituality and the Purity of Love neither will we permit God to accomplish in us his good pleasure To die naked on the Cross is the ultimate disposition of pure Love 'T is in vain to pretend to the Perfection of Divine Love unless with St. Teresa We desire either to die or suffer The Holy Martyrs could not attain it but by dying for God nor we except by Suffering for him When I am in Prayer in the Presence of God I am much ashamed of my self to suffer so little and with so much Imperfection in a manner so different from the Saints I am in such confusion hereat that I dare hardly stay in Gods Presence were it not that to repair my Miseries and make him satisfaction I offer up to him Jesus suffering poor and abject for us sinners And thereupon I make resolutions to endure whatsoever Crosses happen to me with all the Fidelity that Grace requires It seems to me that a Soul can hardly be content without some Suffering or other I have had experience hereof in some little tempest that now is over And which is more I cannot believe so much content may be taken in limiting our sufferings as desiring greater if God thinks good because the Peace and Content of the Soul consists in Loving and Love is best satisfied with what most pleases God and therefore in suffering for him From these words of our Blessed Saviour If any one will come after me he must deny himself and take up his Cross and follow me I learn that the state of this present corrupt Life requires that we must live in a continual dying to the World seeing the enjoyment of Creatures does too much work upon our weakness to bring us off from God Our Corruption and the long habit of taking Pleasure in the things of this World makes it very difficult for us to live this dying Life which is a great Cross and a long Martyrdom It cannot be denyed but we must suffer much to arrive to the possession of God in a Super-natural Life however to taste the sweetness of God for one moment does Infinitely transcend the pains of gaining him And when he hides himself and tryes us with Derelictions what a Cross is it 'T is a state of great Perfection indeed to be content without Comforts both Divine and Humane Many Martyrs have suffered less in dying for God then the Soul does sometimes in this condition Patience a little and God e'er long will sufficiently recompense us with abundance of his Graces and Consolations Sometimes God seems to abandon his most Faithful Servants as he dealt with Holy Job permitting Satan to assault them with several Temptations sometimes against Charity sometimes against Chastity and sometimes against Faith 'T is
true these are Crosses and Cruel Persecutions but if we bear them Faithfully with Love 't is a Martyrdom pleasing to God and profitable to us The Persecuting Tyrants tempted the Primitive Christians sometimes against their Faith sometimes against their Chastity which were Glorious Tryals of their Fidelity O how Blessed a thing is it to fight for that Faith and Fidelity we owe to God O what lovely Charms are there in this Martyrdom to those who behold them with the eye of Faith CHAP. V. Of Exteriour Crosses by the loss of Goods BEing in a Friends House who served God truly news was brought me that the Soldiers had ceas'd upon all my Goods at home and Blessed be God it little troubled me But rather I rejoyc'd and put my self into the Hands of God to do what he pleas'd with me preparing my Heart to undergo greater Losses contentedly I was much comforted by my Friend and I went home full of Joy and Cheerfulness accounting my self Happy that Divine Providence had brought me to Poverty and Abjection And I said with my self Courage my Soul our Blessed Saviour continues his Mercies Poverty and Abjection will afford us wings to flee to Perfection Behold now is the opportunity to make great Progress in Virtue if we be but Faithful It seem'd to me that at this time few Persons pityed me and yet they talk'd of my Affliction as no ordinary Tryal They blam'd me in some sort of Proceedings and after all I found my self an Abject and little considered I could never consent to the Councel of those who would have me either yield to anger or discontent For I always thought I ought not to part with that Meekness and Humility which becomes a Christian for the greatest Temporal loss that can happen to me I considered with my self that these little Crosses were hardly to be named with those that they suffer who are tormented with anguishes of Spirit or those who are Slaves under the Turk or such who are put to Death with grievous Tortures That which I suffer is nothing in comparison of those poor Creatures For I instead of being contristated by Suffering found a certain joy to possess my heart and a greater desire to suffer more Hereupon one told me That our Saviour sent me Crosses adorn'd with Flowers which though they took not away their heaviness yet their Odours did refresh and strengthen me to bear them This Persecution continuing I found my self always disposed to suffer it with great Interiour Peace and I kept my Soul from harbouring any thoughts of Bitterness against those who assisted my Plunderers I Saluted them with a Cordial Love although Nature had a repugnance to their Proceedings I beheld with contentment the Fall of our Family how our Friends did forsake us and some treat us very unworthily and yet I could not think it a misfortune but a signal favour from the hand of Providence And I did not complain but digest all this bitter Cup with Interiour joy O bona crux O good Cross The words of St. Andrew seem'd to me very true O how Crosses are good though full of Bitterness We ought to love what is good and make much of it In reality there 's an exquisite goodness in Sufferings and the Fruit of the Cross is wonderful Savorous For at last we shall find that the degrees of Glory shall be according to the measure of our Sufferings and degrees of Love I was then told some means how to get out of this Suffering condition Nature began to resent this with some joy but Grace repress'd it stifling this emotion of Nature that I might have no joy but in God alone and in the accomplishment of his good Pleasure CHAP. VI. Dispositions during Sickness where the Body suffer'd and the Soul rejoyced GOd has been pleas'd to make me enjoy during my Sickness an Interiour Peace so profound and great that I was altogether astonish'd at it considering my Miseries and former Transgressions I said within my self What is this that I find within me How comes it to pass that so miserable a Creature should be thus content and satisfied For my Soul was in a perfect calm from all her Passions feeling nothing but a pure and total union to the good pleasure of God and an absolute abandon of my self to the conduct of Divine Love It seemed to me that some dayes before this Sickness I was in a disposition of extraordinary Peace and Tranquility and one day after Dinner I was taken with a continual Feaver accompanied with much Head ach and Pains throughout all my Body But Divine Love methoughts continued his operations and set me all a flame with Holy Fires So that I often cryed out O Love O Love O Love And could say nothing else When I seem'd as a dying man my Friends weeping about me and every one saying I could hardly Recover my Soul beheld all this without being touched with any Sentiments of regret or tenderness for my Friends being wholly taken up with Divine Love which did so entirely unite me to the good Pleasure of God that methought I could never be seperated from it 'T was no part of my care to beg for my Life and one of my Friends proposing to send me some Reliques of Saints which had done Miraculous Cures I only thank'd him for though I have no small veneration for them yet I had no mind to make use of them for my Recovery but I would wholly put my self into the hands of Divine Love and leaving my self entirely to the conduct thereof whether for Life or Death for Time or Eternity In this extreme weakness of Body my Soul found her self Victorious and Triumphant to see that fall of Pain and her self full of Love and instead of being compassionate seem'd to me to smile at these Sufferings This was an extraordinary effect of Love that in this great weakness of Body my Soul kept up her strength and especially that the great Pains of my Head did not hinder her Interiour occupations This disposition of Love continued as long as my Sickness and I entertain'd my Friends with little consideration and I believe with too much talking fearing now to have discover'd then too much those Holy Fires that inflam'd my heart and that Self-love made me declare too freely my inward feelings My thoughts now make me suspect this defect but being inebriated with Love I said I know not what being like a drunken man that for a time forgets his Poverty and Miseries So in this disposition I forgot my Sins and extreme Frailties and cast my self into the Arms of Love that I might be united with my Well-beloved and enjoy his Reciprocal embraces I had a care to examine my conscience and confess my sins as a dying man and set in order my Temporal Affairs to pass to Eternity Finding my self not able to give much to the Poor it was a joy to me to die in Poverty and I was as well content to give
nothing as if I had been able to bestow much on pious uses The love of Jesus poor and despised did deeply pierce my heart and to satisfie my self therein I made them bring to me a poor Infant in whom methought I saw the Poverty of little Jesus and kissing his Hand I rendred what homage I could desiring to love poor Jesus to my last breath I acknowledge dear Jesus that I am very unworthy of your Divine states But alas must I die without entring effectually into the Poverty and Abjection of your Mortal Life At least O good Jesus I die with that Love and Respect I ought to have for them and be pleas'd to accept of that Conformity I desire to have for them I remember that Praying on Sunday in the Evening the day before I fell Sick at the Carmes Church where I was at Vespers our Blessed Saviour put these words into my mind Christo confixus sum Cruci I am fastned to Christ on the Cross Whereupon I felt an ardent desire to have not one moment of my Life without being able to say I am Crucified with Jesus Christ I think this Divine Love did then dispose me to be nailed on the Cross And in effect my Sickness beginning with a grievous Head-ach which made my eyes to be swoln with pain it came into my mind that I might on this occasion Honour the crowning of our Saviour with Thorns And it was some Contentment to me to have any conformity to this dolorous state of Jesus And as my pain did extend to all parts of my Body I imagin'd it had some little resemblance to the state of a Body Crucified Thus you have an account of my dispositions in this Sickness which I have done in obedience to the command imposed on me Perhaps they are explicated with too much advantage but the relation is true as to the substance Bless therefore with me the God of Mercies who has been pleas'd to be so bountiful to his most ungrateful Creature but it be-seem'd his Goodness to glorifie his Mercies by the greatness of my Miseries This then is my comfort and I cannot but declare his bounties to me and say Venite videte omnes qui timetis Deum quanta fecit Dominus animae meae Come all ye that fear God and see what great things he hath done for my Soul CHAP. VII Other Dispositions in the time of Sickness where both Body and Soul are on the Cross I Began to go out of that state wherein I had been more than five Weeks My corruptible Body did bring down the Soul as it were to nothing so that I had much ado either to know or love God of whom methought my Soul had little or no remembrance Seeing my self in this state of Incapacity I remain'd without any other prospect but of my own nothing and depth of my Miseries being amazed at the strange weakness of a Soul when left to her self This thought which wholly took up my Soul proceeded from a certain experience rather than any Light in the understanding 'Till God brought my Soul to this point she did not well know her own weakness but now she discover'd a thousand false Opinions and vain esteems she had of her self of her Lights Sentiments and Devotions She saw now she had some secret relyance on something besides God which she did not perceive till this state of privation What thus passed in me were the effects of a Natural Malady which nevertheless brought me to nothing and much humbled me For I was in so great a forgetfulness of God that you may be astonish'd at it and I would have hardly believ'd that a Soul having received so many sensible testimonies of the Love of God could ever have so long a privation of actual Love by reason of her former negligence and Infidelity What vast difference is there between my former and this Sickness In that my Soul was all inflamed with Divine Love luminous vigorous far above any disturbance from the Body In this she was cold and dark yea darkness it self feeble infirm depress'd and over-burden'd with mortal flesh We discover our Nothing and Frailties in Prayer but the Lights and Gusts that we receive therein hinder us from being sensible of them what makes us feel them to the quick must be some extraordinary affliction It seem'd to me that nothing was then prevalent in me but Sentiments of Impatience and inclinations to Peevishness but by the Grace of God I did not always consent to them though they often molested me I was somewhat encouraged by the Relation of the Happy Death of two Fathers of the Society who ended their days in the exercises of Charity after they had assisted the Souldiers many years attending them in their Maladies and dolorous Necessities to help them to live well and die Happily At last they died of the Plague and desiring passionately to suffer one of them gave great Stroaks with his Fist upon his Soar to endure something more for Jesu Christ whom they both lov'd with most ardent Affections 'T is said our Blessed Saviour appear'd to them at the point of Death to Crown them and make them Happy with his Presence after which they died Smiling full of Joy and Consolations This did much comfort me extremely rejoycing at their Happiness in that they died in the Service of the Hospital for Souldiers after they had continually endanger'd their Lives by exposing them to the Mouths of Musquets and Canons and a thousand Incommodities of Soul and Body by the cares and solicitudes incumbent on them O how glorious was their Death O the amiable Sufferings that brought them to it What are my little Sufferings in comparison of these What a shame is it for me to feel so much repugnance to endure them Alas I consider that there 's not a day in the year wherein the Church does not make particular Commemoration of many Martyrs who have had the zeal and courage to give up their Lives for Jesus Christ who died for them that they might Honour his Sufferings by the Torments they endured for his sake Some have been expos'd to be devour'd by Beasts others broke upon the Wheel others burned Alive others nailed to Crosses and all have been Miraculous by embracing with joy and cheerfulness the cruellest of Deaths that most barbarous Tyrants could invent to make them miserable O good Jesus I see all these go by the way of the Cross to come to the Perfection of Divine Love and I stay behind as one abandon'd and unworthy to suffer for you What can I then do O blessed Saviour For you have said That he who will not take up his Cross to follow you is not worthy to be your Disciple O Love Crucifie me Burn me Martyr me Si non per Martyrium carnis saltem per incendium cordis If not by Sacrificing my Body yet by Sacrificing my Heart And let my affectionate desire to suffer make my Life and
with so ungrateful a Creature Neither am I at all amazed at my failings for what wonder is it to see frailty it self frail What most humbles me is to feel in my self so great repugnance to suffer so little What would become of me if I should be charged together with Interiour and Exteriour Sufferings O how far am I from the Patience of Saints and the Love that they have for the greatest Crosses Humble thy self O my Soul humble thy self to the very center of thy own nothing Blessed is the man who always fears God leaves us on purpose in this World without a certainty of our Salvation so that no person knowes whether he be worthy of Love or hatred This uncertainty is a great Cross and God to try us by Sufferings permits us now and then to fall into perplexing doubts concerning our Interiour state and dispositions to which our Spiritual Guides are as lyable as our selves and therefore cannot give us any Infallible assurance 'T is no ordinary perplexity to travel in a difficult way without assurance whether we be right or wrong to come to our journey's end To doubt whether we be deceived by the shadows of our ignorance rather than conducted by the Light of Grace is one of the heaviest Crosses of a Spiritual Life But 't is also most conducing to purifie the Soul and make her die to her own Interest and Abilities that in the midst of all her troubles she may cast her self wholly upon God and absolutely abandon her self to his Protection CHAP. XI That we must bear Patiently our Imperfections COnferring about Patience with some Servants of God we concluded that a Soul ought not only apply her self to bear with the Imperfections of others but more especially her own For after our failings we must not with an impetuous Sollicitude search after the means to Cure an Evil that oftentimes displeases us rather for our own Interest than the Interest of God Nor is it prudential while we are in a heat to resolve suddenly to make so many Examens Meditations and undergo so many Austerities but principally we must have an eye to God and his Glory and make an act of Contrition to repair the injury we have done him by our fault And then practice Patience whereby we shall bear with Peace and Tranquility the sight of our Misery which too often makes us sad and anxious But this proceeds from want of Love for Abjection for whosoever can be content to be abject shall never be disquieted but will enjoy a profound Peace in the greatest Humiliations Discite à me quia mitis sum humilis corde invenietis requiem animabus vestris We must not then spend our time unprofitably after our failings as we too often do But continuing in Peace of mind and being humbled for our defects we shall be better disposed to return to union with God where is the practice of Virtue without being too much dejected In this state let us say with a full confidence in Gods Mercies Cor Contritum Humiliatum Deus non despicies A Contrite and Humble Heart O God thou wilt not despise For he that is contrite because he has offended his Heavenly Father and truly humbled for his Unworthiness cannot but be Gracious in Gods fight This well understood and faithfully practis'd leaves the Soul in great Peace makes her Humble and Patient to bear all defects with meekness and compassion But because we are more sensible of our own Failings than those of others we have need of more Patience on our own behalf 'T is an effect of pure Love to make the Soul displeas'd with our Imperfections and Failings without being disquieted at the Humiliation and Confusion that attend them We ought indeed to afflict our selves for offending God but rejoyce that we are asham'd we have offended him for this plucks down our Pride and repairs the injury done to the Divine Majesty But if we refuse to acknowledge our Failings we are so much the more miserable in that we will not confess our misery Patience and Longanimity are very necessary for us to go fairly on in the ways of God Christian Perfection is not the work of a day we must bear with our Frailties and Imperfections many years 'T is a gross mistake arising from Self-love to think to march more speedily in ways of Grace than That enables us to perform From hence it proceeds that we are less taken up with the thoughts of God than of our selves and our own condition We are full of afflicting apprehensions that what we do in Gods Service is nothing worth that the best things are bad as we use them Imperfection and Misery being our constant attendants But this perpetual looking downward on our selves is prejudicial to our advancement in Perfection when we should principally look up to God and such as we are cast our selves into the Arms of Jesus Christ having an eye to him and relying upon him When we are resolv'd to take up our thoughts with God and put our confidence in him without so much ruminating on our own Failings this will not bury them in oblivion but God will discover them to us in a way incomparably better than what we can know by our own endeavours for all we can do is nothing in respect of those helps we shall find in him to advance us in Perfection What gain we by thus perpetually picking quarrels with our own selves After all we shall never be without Imperfection What can we discover in the ground of our Hearts but that Thornes and Briers do grow there daily with a thousand Failings use what diligence we can to manure and cultivate it As long as we bottom upon our selves we languish continually with Imperfections Let us free our selves from our selves as soon as we can when we have once learn'd to be more careful to please God then our selves we shall go on much pleasanter in the ways of God and arrive sooner at the region of Peace and Tranquility 'T is the true course of a Super-natural Life to give our selves up to the conduct of Grace which sometimes puts us to combat with our Passions at other times tryes us with Interiour and Exteriour Sufferings sometimes leaves us to discursive Prayer and then again elevates the Soul on the wings of Contemplation refreshing her with variety of Spiritual Dainties Sometimes makes all things easie to us without travel or difficulty and sometimes to feel a kind of tedious weariness in the ways of God But in all this the Soul that is abandon'd to the good pleasure of God keeps her self Peaceable and contented and indifferent to whatsoever God shall determine of her For my part I too often feel the repugnances of my depraved Nature but then I endeavour to make this a matter of Humiliation 'T is a great Misery to be always Imperfect and not to be able to cure our Spiritual Maladies But we must as well practice Patience in these as
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
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
a Prayer of Desires which I may call a Hungring after God For my intellectual Will had a strong Appetite for God without any Production of other particular Acts of Love or Complacency c. as when we have a longing after Nourishment without a Desire of this or that but only we have a hungry Disposition In this state the Soul only Thirsts after God as known by Faith in a general manner This Prayer was very Intellectual my Natural Appetite had rarely any part in it I neither sent up Sighs nor Ejaculations and it seem'd to me to be compatible with some Affairs and did continue though the Soul had Distractions in the imagination and understanding Methought this Prayer was wholly Spiritual for I know not how it came into my Soul nor what it did there only I felt a Hungring and Thirsting after God and it seem'd to me that I might still hunger after him though I did possess him This Prayer may be of long durance without breaking the Brain but we must be dead to Nature whilst it continues I felt also in my self a Hungring after the states of Jesus Christ the possession whereof is absolutely necessary to the Purity of Love and Infallibly disposes us to it Whosoever desires pure Love must have a desire of them also the one not subsisting without the other Therefore at present instead of fearing Poverty I desire it Instead of Fearing to Suffer I have Inclinations to it And my delight is to take my Cross and follow Jesus This kind of Prayer did appease Interiour Combates and Struglings in me and I found in my self some assurance of a Suffering Humble state where God will have us live purely of Him and for Him What is more purely for God than that which has nothing of self in it Grace carries us to a Love of Poverty and what seems contrary to our particular good which we relinquish voluntarily that we may advance the sole Interests of God A Soul that lives this Life lives in Purity of Love and participates of the pure Virtues of Jesus Christ O what generous Resolutions must a Soul have to Love God purely She must deny her self to please God only There 's no living a Life of Grace without a continual violence to our natural Inclinations by taking up our Cross to follow Jesus We confess O good Jesus that except your Grace always prevent and follow us we shall never relish well this Sacred Hunger of Sufferings and Humiliations and Poverty which is some small participation of your Abjections It often comes to pass that God who opens his Liberal hand to fill all Creatures with his Blessings is pleas'd to satisfie this hunger he has rais'd in a Soul by communicating himself to her in such a manner that she finds her self wholly contented and full of God This fulness of God being once tasted the Soul is ravish'd with Joy and Sweetness This disposition sometimes so totally possesses all the Powers of the Soul Understanding Will Memory Imagination that there 's no room for other Thoughts to enter being wholly taken up with God Prayer then is a feeling of God filling the Heart with Joy and Contentment O when will it please your Infinite Goodness to infuse into Souls some little participation of this Fulness that they may purely rejoyce in you who only can give us this satisfaction This is a satisfying Fulness indeed that leaves no place for other desires This Prayer is rarely granted unless to Souls much mortified and well advanced in the ways of God For a Soul must be emptyed of all Creatures before God can fill it When a Soul finds her self thus satisfied with God she must yield her self passive to the workings of Grace and she will feel in her Interiour such a content and sweetness as will render disgustful to her whatever is not God I find this disposition different from that which ordinarily we receive by Union with God This satisfaction being a more profound and intimate possession of God making all Comforts from Creatures even most pleasing to us become distastful in comparison of those Joyes that ravish'd the Soul in this disposition This Satisfaction and Contentment does sometimes Exteriourly show it self the Senses being so affected therewith that if such persons imploy themselves about any sensible object they do it as if they were a sleep The Dispositions God is pleas'd to give me increase in me daily a new desire of Solitude and Contempt of the World where I find nothing but Impediments to my Union with God And seeing all my desires tend that way whatever diverts me from it is displeasing to me It seems to me I am now no more fit for Worldly Affairs and I look upon my self as an old piece of Houshold stuff that is good for little or nothing but the Fire for methinks God would have me do nothing hereafter but burn with the Sacred Fire of Divine Love Or like a poor Criple who cannot work for his Living I must die of Hunger That is my Soul having a continual Hunger and Thirst after God must die to all things but God himself her sole repose and satisfaction CHAP. XV. Of Infused Prayer OUr Blessed Saviour has been so Merciful as to give me to my thinking some understanding and experience of infus'd Prayer In my Morning Prayer I found my self in the presence of God in silence with Admiration Reverence and Peace This took me up a long time and though some Temptations arose in Inferiour Nature yet the Superiour part of my Soul remain'd united to God without any prejudice to her Interiour quiet This Peace and Tranquility was greater than ordinary more Solid and more Assured I conceive also that what God is thus pleas'd to infuse into us be it Light or Affection Peace or Love 't is hidden from Deceits of Nature the Temptations of Satan and the noise of Creatures For God immediately infuses it into the center of the Soul without the Ministry of our Senses and so is not lyable to their onfets and vicissitudes but always remains entire as long as it pleases God to continue his operations I also conceive very well that the Interiour of Soul is a Sacred Mansion where God resides and does his works Independant on all Humane Industry and endeavours There he sometimes manifests Himself and his Perfections sometimes Christian Mysteries after what manner he thinks best It seems to me that the least Ray from his presence is enough to make known to us what he pleases Illuminet vultum suum super nos This is a very great favour for God to converse with the Soul alone in her Interiour I am now no more astonish'd at what the Saints affirm that their heart is a Tabernacle where God dwells with him and they enjoy him in a wonderful manner Nor that Souls of much Prayer do this without labour and almost continually for receiving so much and labouring so little I do not wonder at the Facility
produce in her admirable effects To have tasted of them once or twice is sufficient to make her rich by infusing into her Understanding a certitude of the Mysteries of our holy Faith and inflaming the Will with ardent and solid affections to practise Virtue And thus she knows more of God in a Moment than before she did in many Months By these extraordinary Graces a Soul is more convinc'd and dispos'd to suffer Contempt and Poverty and leave all things to follow Christ than by a thousand discursive Meditations However God does not cease to communicate these effects by other wayes as by spiritual Lectures holy Conferences Meditations c. But when God is pleas'd to work all by himself in a Soul he does much for her in a little time One of the principal Virtues that this state imprints in the Soul is To draw her to God and keep her with him so that she 's more in Him than her self Divine Love being a weight that alwayes carries her to her Well-beloved Amor meus pondus meum If a great Prince should send some magnificent Present to one of his poor Subjects this would give him more Knowledge of his Prince's Royal Grandeurs and Bounty than to send him all the Oratours of his Realm to set forth his Greatness by their Eloquence So a Soul knows more of God by the aforesaid Favours than by the large Discourses of Famous Preachers These extraordinary Favours are not necessary to Salvation nor yet to Perfection but very advantagious to confirm us in Grace For these more special Communications work in the Soul this admirable Repose and sweet Calmness to dispose her for the Receipt of great Graces which bring her to a more intimate Union wherein she sucks from the Bosom of the Divinity a Sweetness ineffable Strengthening Purifying and Comforting When the Soul is not in this Quiet let her do what she can no endeavours of her can procure it If God sends it let us receive it if he send it not we must be patient and prepare our selves thereto by the exercise of Mortificacation and pure Virtue according to the Grace betstow'd upon us Having been in this Prayer of Quiet many days it seem'd to me to be taken from me for contesting a little with my Friend to perswade him to prevent another with a charitable courtesie O my God how nice and delicate a thing is Grace and the greater the Grace it is the more delicate I learn by this Substraction how poor a thing a Creature is how unable we are of our selves to retain Your Graces and to see that this also proceeds from Grace I will hereafter make it my work to love pure Virtue and practise perfect Mortification CHAP. XVII Of the intimate Vnion of the Love of the Soul with God in Prayer THe wonderful Secrets of this Disposition of the Soul in Prayer can hardly be expressed only we may call it The Prayer of Vnity of Love because herein the Will feels no other Love in her Affections than that which God has for Himself One only Love seems sufficient for God and the loving Soul it being enough for her to adhere to him with great Simplicity and Unity with this only Love which God has for his infinite Beauties and Perfections The particular Love of the Soul is absorpt like a Drop of Water in the infinite Ocean of his Love by a Union inexplicable and being so lost is found more perfect as a Spark of Fire in a little Coal cast into a Furnace gives a heat infinitely greater than what it had of it self alone It seems to the Soul that she does not love but God loves himself in her and in this manner her Will having such Impressions of the Divine Love has no other Sentiments nor Interiour Dispositions than those which God has for Himself When she loves God in this manner as he loves Himself she also hates Sin in the same manner as God hates it by this ineffable Union In this state of Prayer the Soul receives wonderful Discoveries of the admirable Wisdom of God in his Proceedings about the Redemption of Mankind by the Life and Death of his Son so full of Sufferings and Abjection God loving Himself cannot but love the Cross which satisfied his Justice and the Soul cannot but have a Will to suffer seeing she is in the Unity of Love with God which Unity must needs elevate the Soul above Nature And as the Soul of Jesus wholly absorpt in the Love of his Father did rejoyce in his Sufferings and Humiliations so if we be in the Unity of this Love Contempts and Mortifications Dolours and Death it self will be lovely and desireable though quite contrary to our Natural Inclinations This Vnity of Love does so powerfully constrain us to love Sufferings that I make little difference between Love and the Cross and I see so clearly that all the Counsels of Jesus Christ do so wonderfully advance the Purity of Love that no natural Aversion shall deterr me from them I find in my Heart a tacit Consent of Love to abandon my self to Divine Providence and not to disquiet my self about Perfection For I must pacify all the Emotions of my Heart as well good as bad to be in so profound a Peace as to attain this Union When God is pleased to communicate to a Soul this Purity of Love he disposes her to so great a Favour by some Sufferings Crosses and Humiliations He that knows the Riches of true Love knows these also for they are inseparable so that he who will not suffer cannot arrive to Purity of Love My Prayer then tends to unite me intimately and continually to the only Love wherewith God loves himself and my Soul has at present Attracts to nothing else In this Love it seems to her she finds the Practice of all Virtues in a more excellent manner than in themselves I know very well that Love is a weight that continually carries the Soul towards her beloved Object and my Will bending always towards God it moves thither by a longing Inclination full of Love and Sweetness It seems to me that my Understanding herein does not with its Lights assist my Will for I find my Affections all on fire and panting after God without any previous Illustrations I found me thought Divine Love immediately working on my heart by such most secret Touches as put me in a state of perfect Union I find nothing to explicate this better than a Needle touched by the Adamant which then turns continually by a secret Virtue to the Pole and is unquiet till there it fix Thus it stands with my Soul being touched I know not how by Divine Love having no repose but by fixing on God and parting with all Creatures she gently tends to her Divine Center without any Violence being sweetly attracted to a perfect Union My Understanding in this state sees well enough what passes in my Will and Affections but it seems to me to contribute
Sin but even from Passions and occasions thereof and whatever may induce us to evil In a word we detest Sin above all things detestable in our selves and others also interiourly bewailing the Unhappiness of our mortal Condition in which we so often offend God and are in danger to lose him I knew a virtuous Soul whom God had made so sensible of the horrour of Sin because injurious to God that she perfectly detested it with ardent Desires never more to commit any She did with continual Prayers and Tears implore the Divine Majesty to preserve her from it offering her self to suffer any thing yea the pains of Purgatory or Hell it felf if it was necessary rather than commit a Mortal Sin to which no evil can be compared She understood that Sin is a Rebellion against God and injurious to him but that all the Pains we can endure either in Time or Eternity are but evil to the Creature and all Creatures being as nothing in comparison of God all the evil of Punishment they are capable to endure has less Malignity in it than one only Sin And seeing the Divine Justice has not ordained the pains of Purgatory or Hell but for the Chastisement of Sin committed she desired they might work in her this good effect as to serve her for a Remedy against Sin so as never to commit it saying to God Lord you justly punish Sinners because they have offended your infinite Majesty punish me in mercy that I may not offend you In others the pain is the Punishment of Sin preceding and the greater is the Sin the greater is the Punishment but dear God of your great Goodness grant me this singular Favour that the pain in me may prevent Sin so that the Chastisements which I should have deserved for my Offences if I had committed them I may suffer before hand not because I have committed them but to preserve me from offending your sacred Majesty By this means O my God your Interests are secured you shall receive neither Offence nor Injury the Creature only shall suffer something But what is all the Interest of the Creature in comparison of yours If the pains be too few which such Sin would have merited inflict on me what Punishments You please provided you preserve me from falling into Sin so injurious to You. This so noble and generous a Resolution could not proceed but from the pure Love of God and from the perfect hatred of Sin and in both respects must needs be in a high degree well pleasing to God and we may very well believe that God bestowed on such a Soul very wonderful Graces CHAP. II. To keep an even pace with Grace neither out-running it nor following too slowly IT is our Unhappiness that either we do not act answerably to the full power of what Grace we have received by the repugnance of our Sensuality or by our natural Levity and Inconstancy of Mind or on the contrary when the Heart is heated with the Fervour of Devotion we will force Grace beyond her strength by undertaking extraordinary Exercises and Austerities prejudicial to us 'T is our duty to shun both these Extremities to correspond faithfully to what the Grace we have can do and also to be humbled in consideration of that little we have received offering up to God those motions of natural Love which carries us to things extraordinary above our Abilities Not but that we ought daily to desire the Increase of Grace and Divine Love in us but it must be with Humility and Resignation without Interiour Disquiet well knowing that we can never advance in Grace by the strength of nature What hinders us from fully corresponding to the motions of Grace are some secret attaches to Creatures our affections being not throughly purifyed For when Grace acts in a Soul wholly dis-ingaged from the world she gives up her self fully to God's Conduct and moves towards him as her Center with more violence than a stone held in the Air being let go would descend to the Earth I say with more violence for God being a Center of Infinite Goodness has more powerful attractions than the finite Center of the Earth The nearer any thing approaches to its Center the faster it moves so the Soul hastens to the greatest Union with God by how much the more she approaches to him with inflamed Affections But we must have a care not to advance too speedily to the elevated states of Perfection whether as yet the Grace we have does not invite us Oftentimes we would rather regulate our selves by the Graces we see in others than our own for observing them do wonderfully well in perfecting themselves and profiting others we will needs follow their example and this may sooner proceed from a natural desire of our own excellence and esteem then from a motion of Grace and to please God And so we put our selves out of the way going rather back than advancing we will be following their wayes and not walk in that where Grace has put us It concerns us therefore every one to observe and follow faithfully the Attracts of that Gracethey have received for what have we to do with the Graces of others which make a glorious show and to which we have not a Call from God The Beauty of Christianity is not in the Outside for the greatest Saints seem sometimes more despicable than others but interiour Graces Omnis Gloria Filiae Regis ab Intus which working wonderfully in them makes them in love with Contempt and Poverty with Pains and Sufferings whereby they become like to Jesus poor despised suffering and forsaken Behold herein the Essence Life and Heart of Christianity For 't is in his Suffering Saints that God works the most admirable effects of Grace and he takes the greatest delights in them because they are so many Copies of his Well-beloved Son in small Characters But here lyes the mystery that a Soul suffer her self to be in the hand of Grace as soft Wax plyable to her Impressions and faithful to follow her Directions To be faithful I say to be faithful to the Motions of Grace is all in all in a Spiritual Life CHAP. III. That a Soul must wholly give her self up to God IT highly concerns us to keep close to the Conduct of God's holy Spirit and not confide in our own abilities which may quite destroy the work of God in us What can a poor creature do if the Soveraign Creatour work not his will in us All the Solicitudes and Contrivances on our part are not so prevalent as to abandon our selves wholly to God by whose Grace we are what we are and without which we are nothing but Frailty and Infirmity It is best with us when we have in our Prospect and Affection God alone and his good Pleasure being content with whatever he pleases to give either for Soul or Body In this state a Soul goes on very well in all affairs for an indifferency to
Graces and Gifts from God ought not to rejoyce in the abundance of such Favours but her whole content ought to be in the pleasure that God takes to be so bountiful to his Creatures so unworthy of his Blessings Wretched is that man who has less care of his Soul than his Body loving more to follow the Inclinations of Sensuality than the Inspirations of Grace Wretched is he who is all for the good things of this Life a good House good Apparel good Provision c. and is content to have a bad Soul Wretched is he who by his vitious Course of Life makes himself the most contemptible thing of his whole Family For he who forsakes God to follow his Sensuality is in worse state than the meanest Creature O sad condition Believe 't is far more easy to command our Passions than obey them to conquer our natural Inclinations than to satisfy them and therefore more pleasant to walk in the wayes of Salvation than Perdition 'T is a wonderful Punishment to suffer the continual Lashes of a guilty Conscience an unspeakable Torment to have our Hearts always terrified with the Judgement of God hanging over our Heads with the fears of Death which is uncertain and the horrours of Hell which cannot be avoided by such who neglect the Service of God and die in their sins To become slaves to the World and our passions and vicious Inclinations most cruel and ungrateful Tyrants and to have no repose nor contentment not one only moment of true solid joy is to suffer a Hell in time before that of Eternity We shall find nothing to be compared to the way of Heaven the yoak of our Blessed Saviour is Easie his Burden Light his Will is Lovely his Helps are Powerful and the Consolations wherewith he refreshes the Souls of his Servants so abundant that they are far more Happy with their Crosses than Carnal Men with all their Worldly Delights and Pleasures CHAP. VI. How to Comport our selves well in Superiority JEsus be your Light and your guide and your support in Superiority To be in this condition seems to some troublesome and insupportable because things do not succeed as they desire but believe themselves to be a hindrance to the increase of Grace in the Souls of their Subjects who might have been better govern'd by a Person more capable and advanc'd in Perfection 'T is indeed well said and the pretence is specious and yet notwithstanding all this may proceed from Self-love and desire of our own excellence Prostrate thy self at the feet of Jesus Christ and if he dart into thy Soul Divine Irradiations thou wilt discover the Truth of what I have said herein That little resignation we have to the Ordinations of God create these troubles in us God only expects from us such a certain measure of Glory and we are for rendring more than he requires of us 'T is our Happiness not to conform our wills to Gods good Pleasure touching the manner of Glorifying himself what pleases him does not content us He will have us glorifie Him by Suffering and we are for Action We are for giving Alms and He for receiving in a word we do not entirely conform our selves to the pure will of God We ought not to perplex and disquiet our selves with the Defects and Imperfections of those with whom we live and are under our charge They are Mortal and infirm Creatures and not Angels and to expect they should be faultless is to look for Impossibilities and flatter our Impatience which would have no occasion of displeasure This is but to afflict our selves for the loss of our own esteem which appears by our ill conduct in such small matters And yet we pretend only to seek Gods Honour and the good of Souls Those who truly seek the Glory of God sometimes are troubled but 't is a displeasure joyn'd with Peace and Tranquility yea abounding with influences of Heaven and Divine Love A displeasure that rather increases than takes away the Peace of the Soul and disposes her to a perfecter union with God and to the practice of all Christian Virtues I know no better means to be humbled in our own eyes and in the sight of others than the miscarriages that arrive by our manifold Imperfections If I do a good Action for which others think the worse of me I shall not seem so to my self But if I shall fall into a gross Imperfection which neither I nor others discover how shall I be ashamed and learn thereby a lesson of Mortification When Nature is surpriz'd and as it were amaz'd to see her own Frailties what prop can she find to uphold her Ambition She must needs be humbled by this means and so draws much good from evil Who are we that we should presume to think that out pains and industry can add any thing to augment God's Glory Know we not that he is Self-sufficient by reason of his Infinite Perfections and therefore so replenish'd with his own Glory that all the Glory Creatures can render to him is nothing in comparison Alas the greatest Saints in this respect can truly say they are unprofitable Servants All Creatures are oblig'd to serve their Creator 't is their Duty and not to do it makes them guilty but this brings no profit to God who is no less nor more Happy in Himself thereby but only from hence it proceeds that he bestows on his Servants great and glorious rewards For my part I would never afflict my self nor be discourag'd for not doing all the good I desire and ought to do in the charge incumbent on me but instead of being troubled with my own Insufficiency I would rejoyce in the All-sufficiency of God O my God what complacency do I take to see you so Rich and so All-sufficient I am well content with my weaknesses seeing they make it more evident that you stand not in need of your Creatures O beautiful Sun enrich'd with an Infinite Light live Happy in your self absorp'd in your own Beams nothing can alter your Felicity For all the Sins of Men or Devils though they offend you yet do not hurt you no more than dirt cast against the Sun would darken his Splendors in his High-noon Glory When I consider the defects in my self and the faults I have not hindred in others either for want of zeal or capacity I will exercise my mind in such Thoughts as these O my God your Beauty is not Sullied hereby nor your Glory darken'd nor your Mercies diminished I know 't is my Duty to be sorry for what Sins offend your Majesty But likewise I ought to rejoyce that you are immutable in your self and your Blessedness cannot be disturb'd by our Iniquities CHAP. VII That we ought to have our Intentions Purified from all Self-Interest THe Soul that seeks purely to please God ought to be content with all designs of Providence whatsoever whether of Mercy or Justice giving her self up wholly into the hands of
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