Book 3, Chapter 14 — Receiving Contemplation

Pursues the Same Matter.

133. God doth not always communicate himself with equal abundance in this sweetest and infused Contemplation: sometimes he grants this Grace more than he doth at other times; and sometimes he expects not that the Soul should be so dead and denied, because this Gift being his meer Grace, he gives it when he pleases, and as he pleases; so that no general rule can be made of it, nor any rate set to his Divine greatness: nay, by means of this very Contemplation he comes to deny it to annihilate and dye.

134. Sometimes the Lord gives greater light to the understanding; sometimes greater love to the will. There is no need here for the Soul to take any pains or trouble; it must receive what God gives it, and rest united, as he will have it; because His Majesty is Lord, and in the very time that he lays it asleep, he possesses and fills it, and works in it powerfully and sweetly, without any industry or knowledge of its own: insomuch, that before ever it is aware of this so great Mercy, it is gained, convinced, and changed already.

135. The Soul which is in this happy state, hath two things to avoid, the activity of human Spirit, and interestedness: Our humane Spirit is unwilling to dye in it self, but loveth to be doing and discoursing after its way, being in Love with its own Actions. A Man had need to have a great fidelity, and devesting himself of selfishness, to get a perfect and passive Capacity of the Divine Influences; the continual habits of operating freely, which it has, are a hindrance to its annihilation.

136. The second is interestedness in contemplation it self: Thou must therefore procure in thy Soul a perfect devesting of all which is not God, without seeking any other end or interest, within or without, but the Divine Will.

137. In a word, the manner that thou must use, on thy part, to fit thy self for this pure, passive, and perfect Prayer, is, a total and absolute consignment of thy self into the hands of God, with a perfect submission to his most holy Will, to be busied according to his Pleasure and Disposition, with a perfect resignation.

138. Thou must know, that few be the Souls which arrive at this infused and passive Prayer; because few of ‘em are capable of these divine influences with a total nakedness and death of their own activity and Powers, those only which feel it, know it so, that this perfect nakedness is acquired (by the help of God’s Grace) by a continual and inward mortification, dying to all its own inclinations and desires.

139. At no time must thou look at the effects which are wrought in thy Soul, but especially herein; because it would be a hindrance to the divine operations, which enrich it, so to do: all that thou hast to do is to pant after indifference, resignation, forgetfulness, and, without thy being sensible of it; the greatest good will leave in thy Soul a fit disposition for the practice of vertue, a true love of the Cross of thy own contempt, of thy Annihilation, and greater and stronger desires still of thy greater Perfection, and the most pure and affective Union.