Motives to holy living, or, Heads for meditation divided into consideratins, counsels, duties : together with some forms of devotion in litanies, collects, doxologies, &c.

§. 111.

17. There are two acts of Prayer; Meditation, and Contemplation; One the discoursive part thereof, performed more by the Ʋnderstanding, and used more in the begin∣ning of Prayer; the other the more enjoying, and passiona∣tive part, performed chiefly by the will; and happening more in the end of Prayer; at least to those not much practised. Of these the second ordinarily is produced by the first; the working of the brain by degrees kindling passions in the heart; and long meditation of God, and his perfections &c, enflaming our affections towards him; and

the Holy Spirit operateth in both: in one, by illumination; and, in the other, by love; but more chiefly in the second. Sometimes the vehement inclinations of the will (by a more immediate power of grace) preceding the acts of the Ʋnderstanding, and forcing it to follow them; but more commonly the intellect, by reasoning, exciting the will, and the passions. You therefore here are to use the fore-named acts of the Soul interchangeably: only the first yielding to the second, as it grows to any strength; but then, when the second languisheth, it is to be excited again by the first: for we are neither to think we pray best, when we think of nothing at all, nor when we are most full of loquacity. For, the brain being wholly idle, the affections go out for want of fuel; nor is there any operation of the passions without some using (at the same time) of the imagina∣tion. And again, the affections not operating, the specu∣lations of the intellect are fruitless, and comfortless. But, if at the first also the understanding happen to be dull, slug∣gish, and unoperative, as is usual to new beginners, and to the same persons at some times much more than at others, you are to excite both it, and the affections by reading some select book of devotion (taken with you to Prayer) till you find your self able, without its help, to proceed. Teresa (in the 4th Chapter of her Life) reports of her self, that for eighteen years she never durst betake her self to mental Prayer without a Book in her hand, that she might still repair to reading, in case of any distraction from impertinent thoughts, or aridity, and barrenness of Soul.