the third and fourth part For in the third we will put the mysteries of what He did and said the three years of His preaching, from His baptism to His last entrance into Jerusalem, and in the fourth the mysteries of His passion and death. And although both mysteries teach us to do and to suffer, yet the one is most resplendent and shining in the first, and the other in the last, which are the most powerful to move us to all kind of virtue, with greater excellence and perfection.
3. Finally, those which arrive to the state of perfection, walking in the unitive way, have two other paths to attain to the perfect union of love. The first is, by contemplating the glorious life of our Saviour Christ, and the wonderful works that He did after His resurrection, sending upon His disciples the Holy Ghost, which is the Spirit of Love; and of these mysteries the fifth part treats. The other way is, by contemplating the mysteries of the Divinity and Trinity of God, His perfections and benefits, of which the sixth part treats. And these two last parts are most proper to such as are perfect, according to the saying of David in Psalm ciii. " The high hills are a refuge for the harts, the rock for the irchins;" [1] giving us to understand in a mystical sense, (as Cassian notes,) that perfect men who, like stags, run lightly in the way of heaven, feed themselves with the consideration of the mysteries of the divinity and glory of Christ, figured by the high mountains; but men full of prickles like irchins, with the prickles of their sins and imperfections, or afflicted with troubles, take for remedy the consideration of the earth and dust, and the mysteries of the humanity and humility of Christ Jesus our Lord, figured by the rock, in whose wounds they repose, and with whose doctrine and examples they sustain and profit themselves. [2]
