8. After such explanations, and with such authorities, to clear my path, I put away from me, as you would wish, without any hesitation, as matters in which my heart and reason have no part (when taken in their literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them), such sentences, and phrases, as these: that the mercy of Mary is infinite; that God has resigned into her hands his omnipotence; that (unconditionally) it is safer to seek her than her Son; that the Blessed Virgin is superior to God; that he is (simply) subject to her command; that our Lord is now of the same disposition as his Father toward sinners, viz., a disposition to reject them, while Mary takes his place as an advocate with Father and Son; that the saints are more ready to intercede with Jesus than Jesus with the Father; that Mary is the only refuge of those with whom God is angry; that Mary alone can obtain a Protestant's conversion; that it would have sufficed for the salvation of men if our Lord had died not to obey his Father, but to defer to the decree of his mother; that she rivals our Lord in being God's daughter, not by adoption, but by a kind of nature; that Christ fulfilled the office of Saviour by imitating her virtues; that, as the incarnate God bore the image of his Father, so he bore the image of his mother; that redemption derived from Christ indeed its sufficiency, but from Mary its beauty and loveliness; that us we are clothed with the merits of Christ, so we are clothed with {90} the merits of Mary; that, as he is priest, in like manner is she priestess; that his body and blood in the eucharist are truly hers and appertain to her; that as he is present and received therein, so is she present and received therein; that priests are ministers, as of Christ, so of Mary; that elect souls are born of God and Mary; that the Holy Ghost brings into fruitfulness his action by her, producing in her and by her Jesus Christ in his members; that the kingdom of God in our souls, as our Lord speaks, is really the kingdom of Mary in the soul--and she and the Holy Ghost produce in the soul extraordinary things--and when the Holy Ghost finds Mary in a soul he flies there.