12. It was not without cause, therefore, that St. Paul preferred the love of Christ to all other knowledge or science: and with him we ought to pray that we may experimentally “know this love of Christ which passeth knowledge” (Eph. 3:19), that so we may thereby be “filled with all the fulness of God.” Now there is no man that has the love of Christ in him, but he must necessarily also love the humility and meekness of Christ, and from sincere love to him readily embrace them. By this means he is still more and more enlightened, and day by day transformed into the image of Christ, “as from glory to glory.” 2 Cor. 3:18. And the reason of this is evident; for God delights to give grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5), as the Scripture tells us: agreeably to what St. Bernard says, “The rivers of grace flow downwards, not upwards.” They visit and refresh the valley, but will not rest upon mountains, or upon anything that is high and lifted up. How should then the grace of the light and knowledge of God come to a man that walks not in the humble and holy light of Christ, but in the way of Lucifer? For if there be any faith in us, and if this be attended with suitable fruits and practice, it will not leave us “barren and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:8. In an humble soul Christ lives, and then also his Spirit rests upon it (the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord), as truly as it rested upon Christ himself. For in whomsoever the light and the life of Christ dwell, in him is also Christ himself, who is the very light and life of a Christian. And this also is the reason that the gifts and graces of the divine Spirit rest upon a true Christian, as well as upon Christ himself, according to the prophecy of Isaiah. Ch. 11:1-3. 13. Hence St. Peter, speaking to the Jews, exhorts them to repent (or to be renewed in their minds): “and ye shall,” says he, “receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Acts 2:38. Whence it plainly appears, that those who are in a state of faith and repentance, are the only men duly prepared for receiving the divine Spirit, the true enlightener of hearts. 14. Whoever, therefore, desires to be delivered from the blindness of his heart, and from eternal darkness, yea, from the devil himself, let him faithfully follow Christ in true faith, in unfeigned conversion, and in a thorough newness of life. The nearer we are to Christ, the nearer we are to the eternal light; the more closely we adhere to unbelief, the more we adhere to darkness and to the devil himself. For even as Christ, faith, and all the virtues, are nearly allied and belong together, so in like manner, are the devil, unbelief, and all the vices, and works of darkness, so nearly combined, as to render it impossible to conceive of one without the other.