by the violent heat of heavenly love ;* and here she is in the degree of contemplative purgation, when she finds no support, no stay, no taste, no quiet, no content in anything whatsoever; and therefore she soon soars up from this step to the next.

St. Francis of Sales explains in the following passages what is meant by being 'wounded' with love:-'Love always precedes the affections, of which it is the source and origin. As it penetrates deeply into the will, which is its seat, it is said to wound the heart. St. Denis says that love has a sharp point, by which it penetrates the soul. The other affections also enter it, but it is love which opens them a passage, by piercing the heart. It is only the point of an arrow which wounds; whatever part enters after this point only enlarges the aperture, and increases the pain....

'Those who have long and faithfully exercised this sacred virtue of divine love receive a kind of wound which God Himself inflicts on those whom He designs to raise to an exalted perfection. He presses and solicits the soul, by powerfully attracting her to His sovereign goodness, and exciting feelings of ardour which she had never before experienced, and which produce great astonishment.

'The soul, thus animated, exerts all her endeavours to wing her flight towards the divine object who so strongly attracts her towards His Divine Majesty. But she soon perceives that her efforts are insufficient, that she cannot soar as high as she aspires, and that her love for God is far from having attained the perfection she desires. Who can express the extreme anguish which she experiences from this conviction? Invited on one side to fly to her Beloved, and restrained on the other by her own weakness, and the weight of the miseries of this mortal life, she longs for the wings of the dove, that she may fly away and be at rest. But these ineffectual desires only serve to torment her; they keep her suspended between efforts to bound to her God, and weakness which prevents her from doing so. Apostle had experienced this struggle when he said :—Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Rom. vii. 24.) In this case it is not the desire of an absent blessing which wounds the soul; she feels that the God whom she loves is present; that He has already introduced her into the mystical cellar where He keeps His precious wine, and that He has implanted in her heart the sacred standard of His love. But God, who sees that she is wholly His, ceases not to pursue her, and from time to time He wounds her with new arrows, by imparting to her a conviction that the God of her affections is infinitely more amiable than loved.

The great

In the

second she seeks her

THE SECOND DEGREE OF LOVE.

1. Wherein she rouseth and raiseth up herself, and casts about which way she may seek and find Physician, her loving Physician, who alone can cure and comfort her. She gets up early, and eagerly inquires after Him, without intermission or cessation, whom she failed to find in her bed at night,* in the first degree. She faithfully follows the prints of His steps, turns over Nature's book, dives into all creatures, questions all she meets-0, have you seen him whom my soul loveth? Yet she stays nowhere, stoops not to the lure of any created object; she demands, and passes on; she

'The soul then endures inexpressible anguish, because she sees that the ardour of her love is not much increased by her redoubled exertions; that her power to love is nothing in comparison to her desire; and that the God whom she sighs to love in proportion to His infinite amiability will never be sufficiently or worthily loved. She makes new efforts, but each succeeding endeavour, rendering her more sensible of her weakness and misery, renews and augments her suffering.

'A heart thus transported with love for God allows no limits to its desire of loving Him, and yet acknowledges that, comparatively with what the Almighty merits, it can neither worthily love nor sufficiently desire to love Him. This insatiable desire is like an arrow which pierces it. The wound it inflicts occasions a sweet pain, because those who ardently desire to love take great pleasure in this desire, and would consider themselves most unfortunate if they did not incessantly sigh to love what is sovereignly amiable. Desire produces sorrow; yet the happiness which results from desire renders pain pleasing and agreeable.

The blessed in heaven, who are aware that they do not love God as ardently as He deserves to be loved, would experience the poignant anguish occasioned by this conviction; their desire of loving more ardently would be an eternal source of suffering, if the will of God did not anticipate their wishes, prevent this desire, and establish them in the sweet and unalterable repose they enjoy.' Treatise on the Love of God, pp. 270-273.

In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not.' Cant. iii. 1. † Cant. iii. 3.

leaves all for Him whom she only loves and longs after; she holds no discourse with angels themselves, but listens only to His heavenly voice, and desires nothing but to see a glimpse of His beautifying countenance :

*

thinking of

O, show me thy face; let thy voice sound in my ears. 2. Here love bears all the sway, and hath made so deep an impression in the pious soul that she and is ever is perpetually solicitous for love, ever sighing Him. after love, and still caring, seeking, and stretching after her well-Beloved in all things. All her thoughts tend to Him, all her discourses point at Him, all her affairs end in Him. If she sleeps, she dreams of Him; if she wakes, she talks of Him. Finally, she is always, in all things, in all places, transported into this object of her love, and swayed towards this centre of her life, and, recovering new strength, ascends upwards to a further degree.

THE THIRD DEGREE OF LOVE.

third she

own un

worthiness

1. Wherein she works with more heat and vigour, and of which the King-prophet speaks:- Inte Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord; he fears her shall delight exceedingly in His command- and the love ments. Whence may be inferred that if fear, loved, which is love's daughter, causes such effectual desires, how efficacious will those desires be which proceed immediately from love itself!

of her Be

2. The soul in this degree believes that her best

works done in the behalf of her Beloved are very base and deems and inconsiderable; she runs over her registers

her best

actions

worthless. of accounts, sums up her numerous exploits, measures her long sufferings, and surveys her high services; and they seem at best but poor and mean performances of a greater duty, and she finds them nothing worth by reason of the excess of affection which inflames and consumes her.* If Jacob's love to Rachel had so powerful an influence upon his spirit, that his twiceseven-years' apprenticeship seemed to him but a few days, because of the greatness of his love,† what admirable effects will not the Creator's love produce in that soul which it hath absolutely seized upon, entirely possessed, and thoroughly penetrated in this third degree! She will be piously troubled and angry with herself that she doth so little for so great a Majesty; and if she might lawfully, she would most willingly give up herself to be minced into a thousand morsels for His love, honour, and service, and receive therein full comfort, content, joy, and satisfaction. It truly seems to her that she troubles the earth she treads upon and the air she breathes in, and that she unprofitably takes up a place in the world as a barren tree, which brings forth neither flowers nor fruit. Hence springs a further admirable effect, that she verily thinks herself the worst of all things created, considering what she owes and calculating what she pays. For love teacheth her

* How many and illustrious examples of this loving humility do we meet with in the lives of the saints! † Genesis xxix. 20.

how much God deserves, and humility tells her how little she doth. And because she finds that all her best endeavours are full of defects and imperfections, and that her highest way of corresponding to the love of her heavenly Lord is so low and unbeseeming His Majesty, she is inwardly pained and confounded in herself. A soul in this state is far from any puff of pride, presumption, vain-glory, or censuring of others, and is therefore duly disposed to mount up to the next degree.

THE FOURTH DEGREE OF LOVE.

fourth she

suffers for

1. Which is, of suffering for her Beloved, freely and cheerfully, without the least repining or re- In the luctancy, because true love makes the heaviest willingly burden seem light and the greatest labours love. easy. In this estate was that spouse when she spake to her Beloved :-Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm; for love is strong as death, the lamps thereof are fire and flames.* The Spirit hath here such a vigour that it absolutely subjects and subdues the flesh, and slights all motions of sensuality as much as a well-rooted tree doth the movement of one of its little leaves. Here the soul seeks not at all her own taste or comfort either in God or in any of His gifts, nor demands any grace in order to her own solace and support; but all her care is, to cast about her which way she may render some acceptable service to the Divine Majesty, and how she may content and please Cant. viii. 6.