The spiritual guide which disintangles the soul, and brings it by the inward way, to the getting of perfect contemplation, and the rich treasure of internal peace. / Written by Dr. Michael de Molinos, priest : with a short treatise concerning daily communion, by the same author. Translated from the Italian copy, printed at Venice, 1685.

CHAP. VIII. A Sequel of the same.

47. WIth new efforts thoul't exercise thy self, but in another manner than hitherto, giving thy consent to receive the secret and di∣vine operations, and to be polished, and purified by this Lord, which is the only means whereby thou wilt become clean and purged from thine ignorance and dissolutions. Know, however, that thou art to be plunged in a bitter sea of sorrows, and of internal and external pains, which torment will pierce into the most inward part of thy Soul and Body.

48. Thou'lt experience, that the creatures will forsake thee, nay, those too from which thou hoped'st for most favour and compassion in thy streights; the brooks of thy faculties will be so dried up, that thou shalt'st not be able to form any ratiocination, nay, nor so much as to con∣ceive a good thought of God. Heaven will seem to thee to be of brass, and thou shalt re∣ceive no light from it. Nor will the thought

comfort thee, that in times past so much light and devote consolation have rained into thy Soul.

49. The invisible enemies will pursue thee with scruples, lascivious suggestions, and un∣clean thoughts, with incentives to impatience, pride, rage, cursing and blaspheming the Name of God, his Sacraments, and Holy Mysteries. Thou'lt find a great lukewarmness, loathing, and wearisomness for the things of God; an ob∣scurity and darkness in thy understanding; a faintness, confusion and narrowness of heart; such a coldness and feebleness of the will to resist, that a straw will appear to thee a beam. Thy desertion will be so great, that thou'lt think there is no more a God for thee, and that thou art rendered incapable of entertaining a good desire; so that thou'lt continue shut up betwixt two walls, in constant streights and anguish, without any hopes of ever getting out of so dreadful an oppression.

50. But fear not: all this is necessary for pur∣ging thy Soul, and making it know its own mi∣sery, and sensibly perceive the annihilation of all the passions, and disordinate appetites, where∣with it rejoyced it self. Finally, to the end the Lord may refine and purifie thee after his own manner with those inward torments, wilt thou not cast the Jonas of sense into the sea, that thereby thou mayest procure it? With all thy outward disciplines and mortifications, thou'll never have true light, nor make one step to∣wards perfection: so that thou wilt stop in the

beginning, and thy Soul will not attain to the amiable rest, and supreme internal peace.