God; will.

that we may do nothing but what is conformable to his

5. To be watchful in mortifying our senses, and particularly our tongue, that nothing may escape them but what is regular and just.

6. To do our neighbour, whoever he be, all the good we can ; and so to enlarge our hearts towards him, that the power of assisting him may be wanting rather than the will.

7. Never to harbour any hatred or bitterness, how small soever it be, and though of never so short a duration.

8. Never to suffer any sin on our conscience, particularly if it is considerable, without bewailing it, and having speedy recourse to the sacrament of penance.

9. Never to neglect our exercises of piety, nor the inspirations of God; and faithfully to pursue those motions he inspires us with. 10. To be distrustful of those things for which we feel a strong inclination, whether they be good or bad; and to have always the fear of God before our eyes.

11. Not to be attached to our own will, but to condescend to that of others, when it may be done without sin.

12. Not to have any esteem of ourselves, and to do nothing for the mere purpose of gaining that of men; to propose to ourselves only God's glory, and never to prefer ourselves to any one, how imperfect soever he may appear to us.

13. To bless God in all the accidents of life, and to receive them from his hand with thanksgiving.

Besides these general instructions, there are some particular ones, which regard, 1. The duties of every person in his own state of life. 2. The amendment of his common failings. 3. The attention which he ought to have to those occasions which might assist or impede his spiritual advancement. 4. The regulation of his time and actions. The manner in which he ought to act and converse with his neighbour. For he that would please God, should always have in view the advancement in his love, the avoiding of sin, the profiting by everything that happens, and the renewing, changing, augmenting, and diminishing his resolutions, according to the circumstances which offer themselves. It is necessary, therefore, to neglect nothing in such an important affair, and to examine ourselves strictly with regard to all these things.

III. Let him, then, who desires to acquire purity of heart, after having made the sign of the cross, and said the Lord's prayer, present himself in presence of God, as a prodigal child that returns to his father; or as the publican, who dares not to lift up his eyes to heaven; or as holy Magdalen, bewailing her sins at her Saviour's feet; or as the leper, begging his cure of him at a distance; or in fine, as a miserable creature, who, overwhelmed with the weight

B

of his miseries, stands in great need of the mercy of his Creator. Let him afterwards make a sincere acknowledgment of all his sins in particular, and beg pardon for them with sorrow and humility : let him compare his faults with his resolutions, bless the patience of God for his long forbearance, and, lastly, conclude his examen by this, or some such like prayer.

IV. Behold here, O my Lord and my God! this miserable creature. Behold him whom thou supportest with so much goodness, and for whom thou hast done such great things: this unprofitable, weak and ungrateful servant, rebellious to thy light, and faithless in thy service; who has done so much ill, and so little good. What will become of me, O Lord! if thou hast not mercy on me? Thou, without whom I am nothing, I know nothing, I can do nothing but sin, and not reclaim myself; fall, and not rise again; go astray, and not return into the right road; lose thee, and not seek thee; offend thee, and not appease thy wrath, unless I am assisted with thy light and grace. Thou knowest that all comes from thee, the will, the desire, and the execution. Thou art the refuge of the poor, and the comfort of the miserable. Behold, here, a poor and miserable sinner, who casts himself into the arms of thy mercy. Look upon me, O Lord! with the eyes of thy goodness; forget my sins, compassionate my miseries, and moisten the dryness of my heart with the salutary waters of thy grace. O divine light, dispel my darkness! O infinite power, fortify my weakness! receive my desire, O Lord! assist my will, forget what I have committed against thee, and give me what thou hast merited for me. Such as I am, I desire to be wholly thine; supply my unworthiness by thy grace; let that same goodness, which inspires me with the desire and resolution of serving thee, oblige thee to produce in me what thou desirest from me, that I may never do anything but to thy glory. Amen.

V. After having spoken to God in this manner, let him implore the assistance of the Blessed Virgin, his angel guardian, and his patrons; and then conclude with the desire of being faithful to God, and of performing his resolutions. But when God, by a ray of his light, discovers to the soul the great purity he requires of it, he gives it also a clearer knowledge of its defects, urges it to examine them more strictly, and to search for its most secret inclinations, not only the vicious but natural ones. Would to God that sinners would bewail their greatest crimes, with as much sorrow as that soul then bewails its smallest faults! As such a soul dwells in a region of light, I do not write this for it, but only for beginners.

CHAP. V. Considerations proper for exciting in us the love of Christ suffering.

Among an infinite number of motives capable of kindling in our hearts the love of Christ, in consideration of his sufferings; and of showing us the obligation we have of imitating him; we shall only set down some of them here, hoping that God will be pleased to suggest others to those, who shall come, according to the expression of the prophet Isaias (xii. 3), to draw waters in joy from the fountains of our Saviour.

I. He suffered willingly, and out of the pure love he had for us, without being obliged thereto either in rigour of justice, or by reason of our merits; for, on the one hand, we are all sinners; and, on the other, though he was engaged to suffer by his promise and obedience, both having been voluntary; yet his sacrifice was not so much a sacrifice of justice as of love.-Ps. iv. 6.

II. He suffered joyfully: for though the Scripture compares his torments to the waves of a raging sea, he was urged with an earnest desire of undergoing them; and it is in this view the Prophet Jeremiah foretold of him, that he should be filled with reproaches.Lament. iii. 30. This is a most bitter food, and very hard to digest; but, for our redemption it was palatable to Christ.

III. That desire of suffering, excited by love for us, sweetened to him the bitterest things. Thus, it was sweet to him to be subject to his parents during so great a number of years; to live among men whose manners were so different from his own; to be tempted by the devil; and to subject himself to many other most humbling and grievous punishments, of which we are to speak at large, and in which that love made him find incredible delights.

IV. He wrought in himself a continual miracle, that he might be able to suffer: for, beholding God clearly, and, consequently, enjoying happiness, he refused his body the glorious qualities of brightness, agility, subtilty, and impassibility, which the soul should naturally have communicated to it; and, that love which made him so often work miracles, to free the martyrs from a sense of pain, made him permit himself to become capable of suffering and dying for us.

V. He has transferred to and made us a perfect donation of whatever he merited by his sufferings; as he himself was already happy, he had no need of merits but for his exterior glory, which he miraculously suspended in the manner we have mentioned, and, which he prevented from being outwardly resplendent. Thus he merited all the rest for us, that is to say, the pardon of, and satisfaction for sin; grace and glory; but in such abundance, that though one single sigh of his could have merited for all men the means and possession of eternal salvation by the infinite value

which the dignity of his person gave to the least of his actions; yet he was pleased, in satisfaction of his love, to suffer the most dreadful torments: and this was the foundation of that superabundant redemption, and inexhaustible treasure of graces which he distributes daily to us.

VI. His love had no beginning, and will never have an end: for though it appeared only in time by the works which God performed exteriorly, it burned from all eternity in his heart; and, as it is eternal and infinite, it is incapable of any change; for Christ loves us with his whole essence, and with the same love which unites the three divine persons together. As there is but one essence in God, there cannot be a plurality of loves in him; therefore, he loves his creatures with the same love, every one in proportion to his merits.

VII. This love is neither divided, nor capable of division. God loves me with the same love wherewith he loves all men; he has suffered no less for me alone than for them; and he belongs as much to me as he does to all others together. So that I may say

with St. Bernard, "Thou art wholly mine, O my amiable Jesus! and wholly sacrificed to my necessities." I may call him with the Apostle St. Thomas, "my Lord and my God;" as if there was no other soul in the world but mine for which he died. And though he communicates himself to men but in proportion to the dispositions he finds in them, yet, it is certain, that by his own inclination, he is ready to do each of them in particular as much good, and even more than they request of him; for, according to the observation of St. Chrysostom (Hom. 20 in Matt.), it is always the fault of him that asks, when he receives little. It cannot be doubted but that God's goodness is infinite; therefore, the smallness of his gift proceeds not from his little love, but from our want of disposition. If God bestows a small blessing on his creature, it is not because of the little love he bears it, but of the smallness of love returned. When he suffered, I was present to his knowledge, which is no less infinite than his love; and he offered his sufferings to his eternal Father for all my necessities in particular, as if he had suffered only for me alone.

VIII. In order to resemble me the more, he had no regard to himself, he concealed all the splendour and majesty of his divine person, that he might subject himself to all those humiliations, which he could suffer without sin. He passed for a sinner, was treated as a slave, and made no account of his own life, though it was the most precious thing in the world, further than it might serve for my salvation; he permitted his soul, which was happy and incapable of suffering, to be chased by the violence of torments out of a body which had always been perfectly subject to it, and to which it naturally desired to remain united. He was pleased

that his divinity, which could not suffer of itself, should concur, at least, in all his labours and sufferings, after a particular manner. In a word, he was not satisfied till his body, soul, and divinity, were become my nourishment; and he has set so high a value upon me, though a miserable wretch as I am, that he has given me all—and suffered all for me.

IX. Many of his pains were to such a degree of violence, that he could never have supported them without dying if he had been a mere man; such was his fast of forty days in the desert-his sorrow in the garden of Olives, which St. Luke calls an agony— he sustained his humanity by the divine power, in order to make it suffer more than the weakness of nature could bear. In the same manner also he used his body during his passion; for though such violent pains ought naturally to have deprived him of life, he preserved it by the power of his divinity, until he had filled up the measure of those punishments he had resolved to suffer for us. So he concealed, at the same time, the splendour of his divinity, that he might not be spared in his sufferings: and he excited its power, to add to humanity the strength of suffering the more.

X. In fine, what infinitely exalts the greatness of his charity, as the Apostle St. Paul says (Rom. v.), is the unworthiness of those whom he loved. It is not perhaps above the mind of man to comprehend that one might give his life for a just man: because he who, by an unjust condemnation, suffers death for an innocent person, augments thereby his own merit and glory, very far from losing any part of either; but to die for a wicked, criminal, ungrateful person-one who perpetually offends his own benefactor, and even makes use of the favours he has received from him to his dishonour; this is what surpasses human understanding, and what the love of God alone is capable of comprehending and executing. For when we were enemies to God, the Eternal Father delivered up his only Son to death for us; the Son offered himself joyfully thereto, and the Holy Ghost, that divine fire, kindled in the Father and the Son that infinite charity by which we are loved, notwithstanding our unworthiness and demerits. God does not regulate the love he bears us according to our merits, but to his own goodness; and the more unworthy we are of it, the greater, more pure, and worthy of him, is his merciful love. It is your duty, O Christian soul! to consider what you owe to God for all his favours.