1. Ch. xx. § 30. 2. Ch. xx. § 34. 3. Exod. xxiii. 15: "Non apparebis in conspectu meo vacuus." 4. Apoc. ii. 23: "Dabo unicuique vestrum secundum opera sua." 5. See ch. xxxii. § 1. 6. "Farsa de esta vida tan mal concertada." 7. Inner Fortress, iv. ch. i. § 11. 8. Rom. vii. 24: "Quis me liberabit de corpore mortis hujus?" 9. Ch. xvi. § 7. 10. 1 Cor. ii. 9: "Quæ præparavit Deus his qui diligunt Illum." Chapter XXII. The Security of Contemplatives Lies in Their Not Ascending to High Things if Our Lord Does Not Raise Them. The Sacred Humanity Must Be the Road to the Highest Contemplation. A Delusion in Which the Saint Was Once Entangled. 1. There is one thing I should like to say--I think it important: and if you, my father, approve, it will serve for a lesson that possibly may be necessary; for in some books on prayer the writers say that the soul, though it cannot in its own strength attain to this state,--because it is altogether a supernatural work wrought in it by our Lord,--may nevertheless succeed, by lifting up the spirit above all created things, and raising it upwards in humility, after some years spent in a purgative life, and advancing in the illuminative. I do not very well know what they mean by illuminative: I understand it to mean the life of those who are making progress. And they advise us much to withdraw from all bodily imagination, and draw near to the contemplation of the Divinity; for they say that those who have advanced so far would be embarrassed or hindered in their way to the highest contemplation, if they regarded even the Sacred Humanity itself. [1] They defend their opinion [2] by bringing forward the words [3] of our Lord to the Apostles, concerning the coming of the Holy Ghost; I mean that Coming which was after the Ascension. If the Apostles had believed, as they believed after the Coming of the Holy Ghost, that He is both God and Man, His bodily Presence would, in my opinion, have been no hindrance; for those words were not said to the Mother of God, though she loved Him more than all. [4] They think that, as this work of contemplation is wholly spiritual, any bodily object whatever can disturb or hinder it. They say that the contemplative should regard himself as being within a definite space, God everywhere around, and himself absorbed in Him. This is what we should aim at.