trust to himself, but to humble himself in the presence of God. And all this I am to beg of our Lord, at my entrance to meditation, beseeching Him to illustrate with His divine light my understanding to know it; and to move my will to have a feeling of it with great affections of contrition, and to aid me that I may be warned by others' miseries, before the chastisement light upon my own head.
2. And that this meditation, and those which follow, may make the deeper impression in the soul, I am to form first in my imagination a figure of Christ Jesus our Lord, as of a judge seated upon his tribunal to give judgment — with a severe countenance [1] — from whose throne issues forth a river of fire to burn sinners; and I will imagine myself before Him like a deep and heinous offender, bound with the fetters and chains of innumerable sins, fearing and trembling like one that deserves to be condemned and burnt with that terrible fire.
POINT I.
The first point is to call to mind the sin of the angels who were created by God in the empyreal heaven, replenished with wisdom and grace; but, abusing their free will, they grew proud against their Creator, for which they were thrown out of heaven and cast into hell; losing for ever the end and blessedness for which they were created. [2] In this truth of the Catholic faith there are three things.
1. First, I will reason considering how liberal Almighty God was to the angels, creating them according to His own image and likeness, and communicating to them, without any merit of theirs, most excellent gifts of nature and grace. By reason of which we may say of all, as was said of one, that they were adorned with nine stones very precious — that is, with nine excellences, which Lucifer
