killed all that ought to. die in us, then shall the spring reanimate all, and friendship with all other divine gifts, shall be restored a hundred fold. They now feel their former inclination for true friends revive within them; they no longer love them in and for themselves, but in and for God, with a lively and tender friendship, accompanied with taste and sensibility: for God knows how to render the sensibility pure. It is not sensibility but self love that corrupts our friendship. They now deliver themselves up to the joys of chaste friendship, because it is God that makes the impression: they love through him without interruption: it is him they love in that which he has made lovely. As we are by the order of providence linked to certain persons, so God binds us to them, by making them the objects of our affection; nor are we afraid to wish for a return, because he who impresses the desire, renders it pure, and without any wish of property in their affection. We wish to be loved as we desire another should be loved, if it was the will of God. We look up to him without complacency in ourselves, and without self interest. In this reanimated friendship, all is disinterested and without any regard to self. We can now, without disgust, perceive all the defects of our friends and their friendship. Before this purification, the most pious persons are exceptious, jealous, and critically delicate in their friendships; because self love is always afraid to lose, and greedy of gain, even in a commerce which is apparently the most generous and disinterested: if they do not seek to gain profit or honour by their friend, they at least seek the advantages arising from friendly intercourse, the consolation of esteem and confidence, the joy of reposing their heart in the bosom of their friend, which is the cordial of life, and in fine, the exquisite pleasure of

disinterested affection.

Take away this consolation, disturb this friendship which seems so pure, and self love is disconsolate. We lament and would that others should lament with us; we are so out of temper with ourselves, as to be almost frantic: it is for self we are so vexed, which shows it was ourselves we loved in our friend. But when it is God we love in our friend, we are steady and unreserved. And even should the friendship be by the will of God dissolved, all is peace at the bottom of the soul: it has lost nothing, for it had nothing to lose, because it had already lost itself. If it grieves, it is for the person it loved, lest the rupture should be detrimental to him. As the friendship was fraught with sensibility, the pain may be lively and bitter; but still it is not destructive of peace, and is exempt from the smart, the vexation and chagrin of an interested affection.

There is yet another difference to be remarked, in that friendship which is exalted by the grace of God. The man who makes self the centre of all, can only have a limited friendship; his affections are always straitened, and the greatest generosity this world can produce, has always limits which it cannot pass. If the glory of an uncommon love carries him far, he will likewise stop short when he attains it, or when, by any accident, he imagines this glory in danger of being hurt. But for those souls who really lose and forget themselves in God, their friendship is immense as him in whom they love. It is only the consideration of self that limits our heart, for God has given it a kind of immensity with regard to himself. Wherefore the soul that is not concerned for self, and accounts itself as nothing, finds in that nothing the immensity of God: it loves immeasurably, without

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end, without motive, because it is God, who is love itself, that loves in it. This was the state of the Apostles, so well expressed by St. Paul: he felt all with an infinite purity and vivacity, he carried all the churches in his heart; a heart for which the whole universe was too little; he rejoices, he mourns, he is angry, and he relents; his heart is the seat of all the strongest passions. He exalts, he abases himself: he has the authority of a father, and the tenderness of a mother: he would even be content to be anathematized, to save his children: all these sentiments are impressed on him by God: and it is thus he will cause all those to love, who are not attached to themselves.

CHAP. XVIII.

Of the internal operation of God, to bring Man back to the true end of his Creation.

IN the infancy of our spiritual life, God attacks us outwardly, to tear from us by degrees, all the creatures that we love too violently, and contrary to his law. But this outward work, although necessary for the foundation of the edifice, constitutes but a very small part of it. The internal work, although invisible, is incomparably the greatest, most difficult and wonderful. There comes a time, when God, after having stripped us, and mortified us by the creatures to which we were attached, attacks us inwardly, to tear us from ourselves. It is not foreign supports he then deprives us of, but that very self which was the centre of all our love. All the rest we only loved for self, and it is this self which God

incessantly pursues. Strip a man naked, and you use him ill; but it is nothing in comparison to the tearing off his skin and leaving him no flesh to cover his bones. Cut off the branch of a tree, so far from killing it, you add strength to the sap, and you will see it bud with redoubled vigour, but attack the trunk, go to the root of it, and it will immediately languish, cast its leaves, and at length die.

Thus would God have our old man completely killed. As for the outward mortification of the senses, God effects it by enabling us to act courageously against ourselves. The more this courage vanquishes the senses, the more the soul sees her own virtue and relies on her own strength. But in the sequel, God himself attacks the bottom of that soul, and snatches it to himself, until the life of self is reduced to the last gasp. Then it is no longer the strength of the soul that combats outward objects, but by the weakness of the soul, God turns it against itself. It sees itself with horror, it continues faithful, but is no longer conscious of its fidelity. All the defects it ever had, present themselves to its view; and frequently new ones appear, of which it had no suspicion. It no longer finds in itself that resource of favour and courage which formerly supported it. It faints away, it is, as Jesus Christ, sorrowful even unto death. All that remains in it, is the will to hold by nothing but God, and to suffer him to act without resistance. Even still, it has not the consolation to perceive in itself this will, which is simple, neither sensible nor reflected, but void of all returns to self, and the more hidden it is, so much the greater is its depth in the soul. In this state, God fails not to do all that is necessary for detaching this person from himself. He

strips him by degrees, and takes from him one after another, every shred with which the old man was clad. The last stripping, though not always the greatest, is notwithstanding the most vigorous. Though the robe should in itself be more precious than the inner garment, yet they are more sensible of the loss of the latter: when their outer garments are taken from them, what remains, supplies in some measure their place, and they wrap themselves the closer in them; but when the last is torn from them, there remains nothing, but nakedness, confusion, and regret. You will ask perhaps, what are the things that God thus tears from men? but this is a question I cannot answer, they being as different as men are from one another. Each man is attached to a number of things that he never thought of; nor is he sensible of the attachment, until deprived of the beloved object. Each man has his peculiar sufferings, according to his necessities, and the designs of God. How can any one know of what he shall be stripped, if he knows not with what he is clad? I feel not the hairs of my head until they are plucked from thence. God by degrees lays open the most inward recesses of our hearts, which were before unknown to us, and we are surprised to discover, even in our virtues, vices of which, till now, we believed ourselves incapable. It is like a cave apparently dry on all sides, which notwithstanding, suddenly jets out water from places the least of all suspected.

God seldom deprives us of that which we might naturally suppose. Where we expect an attack we are prepared, and therefore such would not be proper for the destruction of self. God surprises us by ways the most unsuspected. They are perhaps the merest trifles he deprives us of, but then they are trifles that self love