8th. In considering our past faults, we must first see how we could have avoided falling; then with a tranquil heart lay before Jesus our misery and the will to be faithful to Him which He gives us; finally, we must not vainly amuse ourselves with estimating the difficulty or the facility we experience in doing good. We must not go to God circuitously, but unceasingly rouse ourselves to that pure and generous disinterestedness which will lead us directly to His most loving and adorable Majesty. II. On Perfect Abandonment. BY BOSSUET. When we are truly abandoned to God’s will, we are ready for all that may come to us: we suppose the worst that can be supposed, and we cast ourselves blindly on the bosom of God. We forget ourselves, we lose ourselves: and this entire forgetfulness of self is the most perfect penance we can perform; for all conversion consists only in truly renouncing and forgetting ourselves, to be occupied with God and filled with Him. This forgetfulness of self is the martyrdom of self-love; it is its death, and an annihilation which leaves it without resources: then the heart dilates and is enlarged. We are relieved by casting from us the dangerous weight of self which formerly overwhelmed us. We look upon God as a good Father who leads us, as it were, by the hand in the present moment; and all our rest is in humble and firm confidence in His fatherly goodness. If anything is capable of making a heart free and unrestrained, it is perfect abandonment to God and His holy will: this abandonment fills the heart with a divine peace more abundant than the fullest and vastest floods. If anything can render a mind serene, dissipate the keenest anxieties, soften the bitterest pains, it is assuredly this perfect simplicity and liberty of a heart wholly abandoned to the hands of God. The unction of abandonment gives a certain vigor to all the actions, and spreads the joy of the Holy Spirit even over the countenance and words. I will place all my strength, therefore, in this perfect abandonment to God’s hands, through Jesus Christ, and He will be my conclusion in all things in virtue of the Holy Spirit. Amen. III. A Short and Easy Method of making the Prayer of Faith, and of the Simple Presence of God. BY BOSSUET. 1st. We must accustom ourselves to nourish our soul with a simple and loving thought of God, and of Jesus Christ, our Lord; and to this end we must gently separate her from all discourse, reasoning, and a multitude of affections, to keep her in simplicity, respect, and attention, and thus bring her nearer and nearer to God, her sole and sovereign good, her first principle, and her last end.