THE SECOND DOUBT. We must trust in God's If our sins trouble us with respect to confession and satisfaction. Let us cast off servile fear, and be confident that what is past is pardoned by God's mercy and our humble confession; and what is to may be prevented by God's grace and our own and for the diligence and endeavours. THE THIRD DOUBT. come mercy for the past, future to His grace. We must have re four reme If we can neither pray with fervour, nor suffer with patience; neither feel God present, nor be content in His absence. Let us have recourse to these four things, which will supply our defects and satisfy for our faults: -1. Obedience. 2. Resignation. 3. Confi- course to dence. 4. Good desires. Therefore, in all dies. our fears, crosses, and troubles, let us make use of these four points in this or the like manner :-'O my Lord God, Who deservest from me all love and honour, and Whom I desire to serve with all my soul, behold, I come out of confidence in Thy mercy, having no other end but only to please and praise Thee; wherefore, I resign myself to Thy will, beseeching Thee to turn all to Thy glory and my good.' THE FOURTH DOUBT. If we fear that God is angry with us, that we want grace, that we only seek ourselves, that we yield to all temptations. Let us build upon these three foundations:—1. Humility in acknowledging our own deformity. build upon 2. Sincerity in confessing it. 3. And confi- dations. We must three foun dence of pardon for it. And so persevering constantly and courageously in a course of prayer, according to direction and obedience, we shall soon find ease, rest, and peace. THE FIFTH DOUBT. If our consciences are unquiet and our souls fearful by reason of our proneness to sin. Let us apply these following salves, and put this We must lint into our spiritual wounds, as deep as we apply eight salves to our trou bled conscience. can, every day for a time, till the cure be perfected: 1. Let us be assured that we are now at this present moment in a state of grace, supposing we have already or are now resolved to do what is necessary for the expiation of our past sins, and the avoiding all sins for the future. 2. That having a will to please God and perform our duties, our prayers are profitable to us, and acceptable to God; and we may without presumption take courage and comfort, though we are yet full of passions and imperfections. 3. That the feeling of troubles, fears, temptations, are neither sins in us nor signs of God's anger against *It does not follow, when the inferior faculties are in disorder, that the same disorder should be communicated to the superior also. It does not always lie in our power wholly to suppress the instability and obstinacy of the imagination, nor the unruliness of sensuality, which ofttimes do resist our superior reason. But we are always enabled by the ordinary grace of God to keep in repose our superior soul, that is, to hinder it from attending to the suggestions of the 4. That we are not bound to reflect continually whether we have consented to sin or not, nor to judge whether this or that consent be mortal or venial, nor to meddle with the sins of our past life, having endea imagination (which we may reject), or to deny consent or approbation to the motions of sensuality; and this, at least, it must be our great care to do. Neither ought a well-minded soul to be discouraged or dejected at the contradictions that she finds in sensuality; but resisting it the best she can, she must be resigned and patient with herself, as she would be at the refractory humours of another, till, by God's blessing, a longer exercise of prayer and mortification do produce a greater subjection of sensual nature to reason and grace. In the mean time, she may comfort herself with this assurance, that all merit and demerit lies in the superior will, and not at all in sensuality considered in itself, and as divided from the will. During the conflict between reason and sense or appetite, there may be a real tranquillity in the superior region of the soul, although the person be not able to discern that there is any such quietness; yea, on the contrary, to fearful natures it will seem that whensoever the sensitive part is disturbed, the spiritual portion doth also partake of its disorders; and this uncertainty, mistake, and fear that a fault has been committed is the ground of much scrupulosity, and by means thereof, of great unquietness indeed, even in the superior soul, to persons that are not well instructed in the nature and subordination of the faculties and operations of the soul. 'However, a well-minded soul may conclude that there is a calmness in the reason, and in the will a refusal to consent to the suggestions of sensuality, even in the midst of the greatest disorder thereof, whilst the combat does not cease, and as long as the outward members, directed by reason, and moved by the superior will, do behave themselves otherwise than the unruly appetite would move them. For example, when a person being moved to anger, though he find an unquiet representation in the imagination, and a violent heat and motions about the heart, as likewise an aversion in sensitive nature against the person that hath given the provocation; yet, if notwithstanding he refrains himself from breaking forth into words of impatience to which his passion would urge him, and withal contradicts designs of revenge suggested by passion, such a one practising internal prayer and mortification is to esteem himself not to have consented to the motions of corrupt nature, although, beside the inward motion of the appetite, he could not hinder marks of his passion from appearing in his eyes and the colour of his countenance.' Sancta Sophia, vol. i. treat. 2, sect. 1, chap. viii. § 3, 4, 5, 6. voured to discharge our consciences once of them in confession. 5. That we may and must convert our hearts to God humbly and confidently at all times, in what state soever we be, without hesitation or apprehension, preferring His will before our own quiet. 6. That in saying our office or prayers it sufficeth that we have a good intention to praise and please God and satisfy our obligation, using moral diligence in driving out bad thoughts, and so we need trouble ourselves no further. 7. That so long as we make choice of God for our God, and of His will for our only end, and can say cordially I love God, I desire no sin,' we need fear nothing. 8. That we are not bound to do that which our conscience dictates or what we fancy it tells us is a divine call, for this is the way never to have true peace and to be ever subject to illusions.* Therefore let us follow the old, simple, and secure rule:-1. trust; 2. obey; 3. let pass; 4. and pray. These will prove our safest haven in the sea of this world, and our heaven upon earth; thus may we enjoy the peace of God, and lodge in our hearts the God of peace-be blind, and yet see God. N.B. These aforesaid salves are to be used accord To bind oneself by vow always to do the most perfect thing would be the climax of presumption, unless, like St. Teresa, one had received a special call from God to do so. ing to discretion, and with the approbation of our spiritual director. SIXTH DOUBT. If we are full of fears and apprehensions of our state, because of experiencing in our souls such slender effects of God's grace and love, and have little devotion, no inward peace. rely more and seek 1. Such souls can never be cured till they submit their judgments, look with more confidence We must upon God's mercy, and seek less their own upon God, satisfaction and assurance. For this is an in- self less. fallible truth:-That in this life (without revelation) we can have no certainty of our state, but must still live in ignorance as to that knowledge.* To hold the contrary is heresy, and to seek it inordinately is self-love and curiosity. We must, therefore, work out our salvation betwixt fear and hope; and if we should see or feel anything in ourselves which should make us secure, it were very suspicious and dangerous. serve these 2. Let us humbly observe these three points :—1. Resolve still to serve and please God in the And obbest manner we can. 2. Resign ourselves to three rules. His will and divine ordinance for time and eternity, without further reflections. Build upon the word and warrant of our director, and rest quiet and confident. They who seek more knowledge and satisfaction by feel Man knoweth not whether he be worthy of love or hatred' (Eccles. ix. 1). And St. Bonaventure: Scire se habere charitatem, non est necessarium ad salutem, sed solum habere.' Cited by Dr. Sweeney, O.S.B., in his Life and Spirit of F. Augustine Baker, O.S.B., p. 172. + Calvinism. |