let Him go.*

This is He Whom by reading I sought, by meditation I found, by prayer I desired, and by contemplation I enjoy.

O, how fetid is the earth! How loathsome are all creatures to me! O taste, O sweetness, O true and solid pleasure! O, how great is the difference between this spiritual delight and all fleshly delights! O, the multitude of Thy sweetnesses which Thou hast laid up, O Lord, for them that fear and love Thee. O light! O delights! O ecstasy of spirit!

Wound me, O sweet God, burn me, consume me, crucify me! Let me cry out with that lover :-' Restrain, O Lord, the floods of Thy grace, or enlarge my heart, for I can endure no longer. I thirst, Lord; give me this water. O when? How long? How much?'

7. O my soul, how good is it for us to be here! O sweet and secure home and harbour! Let us remain

and rejoice here for ever. I will keep Thee, O my dearly Beloved, and I will kiss Thee; I will conjure Thee to remain with me; I will rather lose myself than leave Thy presence.

My Beloved is mine; His honour is mine, His heart is mine, His heaven is mine. Behold, I am His; behold the key, the keeper, the soul, the body, the Lord the whole, O my God, is Thine. Behold my liberty, my life, my love—all is Thine, O my Jesus, and Thine alone. Repose, therefore, as a sweet posie between my breasts; sleep like a bridegroom in my

*Cant. of Cant. iii. 4.

heart, and reign like a king in the most secret closet of my soul.

Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly;* take full possession of Thy own. Come and please Thyself, love Thyself, and serve Thyself in me, as Thou desirest and deservest to be pleased, loved, served.

Let Thy love, O King of love, be the life of my soul and the lease of my life, that when I cease to love I may cease to live.

In Thy love, O Jesus, I end this act of love, though my desire actually to love Thee be endless. O, let me live and die in Thy love, and for Thy love, that by love I may for ever reign and remain with Thee, in Thy kingdom of love. Amen.

* Apoc. xxii. 20.

Third Treatise.

OF THE STEPS AND DEGREES OF PERFECTION.

They shall go from virtue to virtue: the God of gods shall be seen in Sion. Psalm lxxxiii. 8.

THE FIRST AND LOWEST DEGREE OF PERFECTION.

1. THE first step and groundwork of all virtue and Upon the perfection is, to be well settled in the Catholic

first step of

stand be

are faithful

this ladder faith, fearful of God's severe judgments, and ginners who careful to avoid all mortal sin. This is the Catholics. church-porch and entrance into God's holy Temple. But they who stand here remain cold in charity, careless and undiligent in their lesser duties, remiss in spiritual exercises, negligent in thinking of their obligation by which they stand engaged to tend towards perfection; and finally, they greedily gape upon all conveniences of their corrupted nature, and give themselves up to glut and solace their depraved sensuality.

But they

have little

2. These beginners have but very little or no inward light; they know not what is the meaning of mortification, what it is to get into their interior, or what introversion signifies; but they seemingly

inward light,

satisfy themselves and rest secure in this:-that they have a will to avoid the known and capital sins, and thereby hope to escape hell and avoid God's heavy judgments.

on slippery

3. Surely such souls stand upon very unsafe and slippery ground, and their salvation is in a and stand doubtful and dangerous condition, for they are ground. so blinded and bewildered with self-love and sensuality that they cannot well distinguish, perfectly discern, nor rightly judge what sins are of mortal danger and what not; so that, conversing daily amidst such multitude of perils, and shaking hands with the world the flesh and the devil with so much freedom, and so little care and precaution, what do they else but dance, as it were, upon the very brink of hell, from whence, if they once tread awry, they infallibly tumble headlong into that bottomless dungeon of eternal perdition.

they may

yet so as by

4. Yet, in case they should indeed foot it so warily all their lifetime that death takes them neither Though tripping, nor fallen into mortal sin-a thing be saved, most rare, and not to be presumed on by any one fire. who carries himself so carelessly-they shall nevertheless be saved, yet so as by fire.* They must expect a most sharp and severe punishment, a long and piercing purgatory, by reason of their unmortified affections to venial sins, by reason of their giving scope to their unbridled senses, their neglect of God's love, their coldness in charity, and their tepidity in tending to perfection. And as for their good works, they are not then.

1 Cor. iii. 15.

likely to be of much avail, since their groundwork was servile fear, their end self-love, and their whole drift and intention altogether sinister and wanting in that purity and perfection wherewith they should have been performed.*

second step

ficients who

shun venial sins and consequent

THE SECOND DEGREE OF PERFECTION.

1. They stand on the second step who, hearkening On the to God's holy inspirations, following His instand pro- ternal attractions, and obeying the sweet invitations of His Spirit, keep themselves disensensuality, gaged from all vain affections to the world, yield not to the enticements of flesh and blood, resist the suggested temptations of the devil, and carefully avoid all occasions of offending their Lord and Maker, so much as venially. To help on this pious design, they put themselves into good company, seek to converse with virtuous people, are diligent in their devotions, zealous frequenters of the sacraments, and painful practisers of the corporal and spiritual works of charity.

2. But because they are yet slow in the pursuit slow in of solid virtue, and slack in their tendency to

but are

Though we should have succeeded outwardly in life, and have won position, and have gained renown, though we should have laboured much, and have written works, and have built churches, and should have saved many souls, yet this will avail us nothing, and give us no comfort or confidence in the hour of death, if in these things we have left God out, and sought our own gratification and not His honour and glory. O, the folly of working for anything save for God alone! O, the vanity of all things which do not advance the soul in perfection and lead it to the perfect love of its divine Saviour!