Volume I, Treatise V, Chapter VI

In Whitch This Doctrine Is‘more Particularly Explained and Confirmed

For a more full and clear confirmation of this doctrine, the saints and the masters of a spiritual life affirm, that to arrive at this kind of prayer and high contemplation we speak of, we must in the first place apply ourselves to the mortification of our passions—to the laying a solid foundation of all Christian and moral virtues; and to the exercising ourselves a long time in their practice. Without this, say they, it is to no purpose to pretend to apply ourselves to contemplation, and to make a kind of particular profession thereof. “For we must wrestle like Jacob, before we can see God like Israel; and be able to say, I have seen God face to face.” You must strive against your passions—you must overcome them together with all your bad habits, before you can attain this intimate union with God. Blosius says, that he who would raise himself to a most eminent degree of the love of God, and notwithstanding, does not carefully endeavour to correct and amend himself, by suppressing his vices, and freeing himself from the inordinate love of creatures, is like a man, who being loaded with iron and lead, and bound hand and foot, would attempt to climb up a high tree. Wherefore we ordinarily take notice, that such as are appointed for the spiritual direction of others, before they speak to them of contemplation, first teach them how to mortify thoroughly their passions, and to accustom themselves to patience, humility, and obedience; so that exercising them continually in all sorts of virtues of the active life of a Christian, they make them get a good and perfect habit therein. Many by not having observed this method, and by being elevated upon a sudden to a contemplative life, without having passed through the active, which ought to precede, find themselves, after many years of prayer, as defective in virtue, as impatient, as choleric, as proud as before; so that if they be in the least hurt, or admonished for any of their defects, they presently shew their resentment in impatient and angry words; whereby they discover their imperfection, and the little command they have over themselves. Father Everard Mercurianus, general of the suciety of Jesus, explains this very well, in a letter he wrote upon this subject. Many, says he, hearing of another more sublime exercise of prayer, and of the love of God, than that whichis ordinarily practised, as of certain anagogical acts, and of I know not what silence of all the faculties of the soul, would, more through want of insight and experience, than from any true desire of their spiritual advancement, raise themselves before their time to the exercise of the unitive life, as to the most heroic and most perfect exercise of al] others; by means whereof they doubt not but to overcome their vices with less labour and pains, and to acquire virtues with greater facility. But because they are raised to it before their time, they lose a great deal of time therein to no purpose, and are so little advanced, that at the end of many years they find themselves as unmortified in their passions—as much tied to their own will and opinions—as wedded to their own ease as if they had never had any conversation or communication with God. In fine, when the superior would employ them in anything that does not please them, or is not according to their mind, they are as little docile and tractable, as they were the first day they entered religion; and have as great a repugnance as ever to submit their judgment to the will of their superiors. This happens, because they would needs fly before they had wings; and because, instead of going in the highway they ought to have kept, they would shorten it, by unadvisedly taking a cross path. For they build not upon the solid foundation of mortifying their passions, and practising of virtues; so that they could do nothing that was substantial; and having built upon the sand, the building they raised with a great deal of pains falls down at the first blast of wind.

But that which still more evidently proves the truth of this doctrine, and how generally it is received, is, that it is commonly followed by all saints, when they establish the three sorts of prayer, according to the three sorts of ways that lead thereunto; which they call purgative, illuminative, and unitive. St. Gregory Nazianzen, and all those who have written of spirituality, have taken this doctrine from St. Denis the Areopagite, and they all agree herein, that before we apply ourselves to this kind of high prayer, which corresponds to the unitive, we ought to apply ourselves to what concerns the purgative and illuminative ways. We must first exercise ourselves a long time in gaining a lively sorrow for our sins; in labouring to root out our vices and bad inclinations; and we must endeavour, by imitating Jesus Christ, to acquire those true virtues that were most conspicuous in his life. But if acting otherwise, and without having travelled this road, we pretend to advance still farther, we shall but labour in vain, and be always deceived. We know that to raise ourselves to the knowledge of higher studies, we must exercise ourselves a long time in the lower; and to come to the top of the ladder, we must ascend by the first steps.

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