19. He left me consoled and fortified: our Lord came to my succour and to his, so that he might understand the state I was in, and how he was to direct me. I made a firm resolution not to swerve from anything he might command me, and to this day I have kept it. Our Lord be praised, who has given me grace to be obedient to my confessors, [18] however imperfectly!--and they have almost always been those blessed men of the Society of Jesus; though, as I said, I have but imperfectly obeyed them. My soul began to improve visibly, as I am now going to say. 1. At the end of ch. ix. The thirteen chapters interposed between that and this--the twenty-third--are a treatise on mystical theology. 2. She refers to Magdalene of the Cross (Reforma de los Descalços, vol. i. lib. i. c. xix. § 2). 3. The college of the Society at Avila was founded in 1555; but some of the Fathers had come thither in 1553 (De la Fuente). 4. Ch. vii. § 37. 5. Ch. xix. §§ 7, 8. 6. Gaspar Daza had formed a society of priests in Avila, and was a very laborious and holy man. It was he who said the first Mass in the monastery of St. Joseph, founded by 5t. Teresa, whom he survived, dying Nov. 24, 1592. He committed the direction of his priests to F. Baltasar Alvarez (Bouix). Juan of Avila acted much in the same way when the Jesuits settled in Avila (De la Fuente). 7. Don Francisco de Salcedo. After the death of his wife, he became a priest, and was chaplain and confessor of the Carmelite nuns of St. Joseph. For twenty years of his married life he attended regularly the theological lectures of the Dominicans, in the house of St. Thomas. His death took place Sept. 12, 1580, when he had been a priest for ten years (St. Teresa's Letters, vol. iv. letter 43, note 13: letter 368, ed. of De la Fuente). 8. Doña Mencia del Aguila (De la Fuente, in a note on letter 10, vol. ii. p. 9, where he corrects himself,--having previously called her Mencia de Avila). 9. § 4. 10. Subida del Monte Sion, by a Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Laredo (Reforma, vol. i. lib. i. c. xix. § 7). 11. § 6. 12. See ch. xxv. § 18. 13. See ch. xxviii. § 18. 14. See Relation, vii. § 17. 15. See ch. iv. § 6. 16. 1 Cor. x. 13: "Fidelis autem Deus est, qui non patietur vos tentari supra id quod potestis." 17. F. Juan de Padranos, whom St. Francis de Borja had sent in 1555, with F. Fernando Alvarez del Aguila, to found the house of the Society in Avila (De la Fuente). Ribera, i. 5, says he heard that F. Juan de Padranos gave in part the Exercises of St. Ignatius to the Saint. 18. See Relation, i. § 9. Chapter XXIV. Progress Under Obedience. Her Inability to Resist the Graces of God. God Multiplies His Graces.