2. For all these ends I have endeavoured that the meditations should go confirmed and accompanied with places and sentences of Holy Scripture which were written for the same ends. So that here are declared, in a manner, all the four Evangelists: — the greater part of the Acts of the Apostles: — the beginning of Genesis, and many other places of the Old and New Testaments. And as many of them may have divers senses, I have endeavoured to make choice of the most received, according to the exposition of the saints, from whom I have collected these considerations; as also from that which other spiritual men have experienced to whom our Lord has communicated these tastes and feelings.
3. So that, by this means, such as are lovers of variety in these exercises of the spirit will find in this book divers meditations for the several times of Advent, Lent, Sundays, and principal feasts of the year, accommodating themselves in every time to the spirit, which in them the Church represents. And as many have a devotion for meditations distributed according to the seven days of the week, they will here also find variety of them.
i. Those which treat of purifying themselves from vices in the purgative way will find meditations of the seven deadly sins, — for every day its meditation; and they themselves may easily collect others of the seven principal things that are in this life, that is to say, meditation of sins, death, judgment particular and universal, hell, purgatory, and the glory of heaven. As also of the seven notorious sinners that our Saviour Christ converted, namely — St. Matthew, St. Mary Magdalen, the woman of Samaria, the woman found in adultery, Zaccheus, the good thief, and Saul, otherwise called Paul.
ii. Those who treat of gaining virtues in the illuminative way will find meditations on the seven petitions of the
