comprehending some three or four considerations, whose number is noted in the margin; it will be good to divide such a point into many, and briefly to gather for the meditation two or three verities of those considerations, to ruminate them more at leisure. And if any one desire to have more copious matter of meditation he may make of two points one.
Yet it is to be noted that although we prescribe in them the practice of mental prayer, exercising affections, petitions, and colloquies, yet we tie no man to those words in which they are delivered; but he himself may invent them, as our Lord shall dictate the same to him, and the light of the verity which he considers, and his own feeling of devotion, which (as has been said) is the tongue of the soul, may suggest; and whosoever has it knows very well how to speak with Almighty God, [1] and without it is as it were mute and dumb; and then it is good to make use of those colloquies here set down, making them as if they were his own.
iii. The third end of reading these meditations may be to practise them with others; for it belongs to spiritual masters and confessors to give and prescribe such points of meditation to their disciples and penitents, exercising them in this manner of prayer when they are capable thereof; but they are not to give all alike to all, but select those meditations, points, and considerations that are most accommodated to the state and capacity of him that receives them.
iv. And besides this, they may also help themselves with these for their own sermons or spiritual speeches, which are used to be made in common to such as live in religion or out of the same, with desire to obtain that perfection that is proper to their state.
- ↑ Cap. ii. S. Bern, serra. 45 in Cantic.
