Three things are necessary for spiritual and supernatural vision. First, the light of the divine grace, then the free conversion of the will towards God, and lastly, a conscience pure from all mortal sin. Now observe: God being a God common to all, and His boundless love being common to all, He grants a double grace; both antecedent grace, and the grace by which one merits eternal life. All men, heathens and Jews, good and bad, have in common antecedent grace. In consequence of the common love of God towards all men, He has caused to be preached and published His name and the deliverance of human nature, even to the ends of the earth. He who wishes to be converted can be converted. For God wishes to save all men and to lose none. At the day of judgment none will be able to complain that enough was not done for him, if he had wished to be converted. So God is a common Light and Splendour which illumine heaven and earth, and men according to their merits and their needs. But though God is common, and though the sun shines on all trees, some trees remain without fruit, and others bear wild fruit useless to mankind. This is why we prune these trees and graft fertile branches upon them, that they may bear good fruit, sweet to taste and useful for men. The fertile branch which comes from the living paradise of the eternal kingdom, is the light of divine grace. No work can have savour, or be useful to man, unless it comes from this branch. This branch of divine grace, which makes man acceptable and by which we merit eternal life, is offered to all. But it is not grafted on all, for they will not purge away the wild branches of their trees--that is to say, unbelief or a perverse will, or disobedience to the commandments of God. But in order that this branch of divine grace may be planted in our soul, three things are necessary; the antecedent grace of God, the conversion of our free will, and the purification of the conscience. Antecedent grace touches all men; but all men do not attain to free conversion and purification of the conscience, and this is why the grace of God, by which they might merit eternal life, fails to touch them. The antecedent grace of God touches man from within or from without. From without, by sickness or loss of outward goods, of relations and friends, or by public shame; or perhaps a man is moved by preaching, or by the examples of saints and just men, by their words or works, till he comes to the knowledge of himself. This is how God touches us from without. Sometimes also a man is touched from within, by recalling the pains and sufferings of our Lord, and the good which God has done to him and to all men, or by the consideration of his sins, of the shortness of life, of the eternal pains of hell and the eternal joys of heaven, or because God has spared him in his sins and has waited for his conversion; or he observes the marvellous works of God in heaven, on earth, and in all creation. These are the works of