The Practice of Perfection and Christian VirtuesPart One On prayer Of the Value and Excellence of Prayer Of the Need in Which We Stand of Prayer That We Owe Much to God for Having Made So Easy for Us a Thing at Once So Excellent and So Necessary Of Two Sorts of Mental Prayer How Holy Writ Lays Before Us These Two Sorts of Prayer Wherein This Doctrine Is Further Explained and Confirmed Of Ordinary Mental Prayer Of the Necessity of Meditation Of One Good Result and Great Advantage That We Should Draw from Meditation, and of the Method to Adopt in Order to Profit Thereby Of Other Good Things and Advantages That There Are in Meditation Of the Conduct to Be Held in Meditation, and the Fruit to Be Gathered from It How Important It Is to Dwell on the Acts and Affections of the Will Satisfying the Complaint of Those Who Say They Are Unable, and Have No Idea How, to Meditate and Reason with the Understanding Two Pieces of Advice Calculated to Aid Us Much in Making Our Meditation Well and Drawing Fruit Therefrom How It Is to Be Understood That in Meditation We Should Take to Heart One Thing, That of Which We Have Greatest Need, and Insist Thereon Until We Get It How We May Dwell Long in Meditation on One and the Same Thing; and a Very Profitable, Practical Method of Meditation by Descending to Particular Cases That in the Consideration of the Divine Mysteries We Should Also Proceed Leisurely, and Not Pass Over Them Superficially; and of Some Means to Help Us to Do This Showing in Practice How It Is in Our Power Always to Make a Good Meditation and Gather Fruit from It Of Some Other Easy Means and Methods How to Make a Good and Profitable Meditation That We Must Be Content with the Prayer Described, and Not Repine or Complain at Not Reaching Anything Higher Of the Causes of Distraction at Prayer, and Remedies for It Of Other Means of Keeping Up Attention and Reverence at Meditation A Great Comfort for Those Who Are Troubled with Distractions at Prayer Of the Temptation to Sleep, Whence It Comes, and the Remedies to Meet It How Proper It Is to Take Some Extraordinary Times to Give Ourselves More to Prayer Of the Fruit That We Should Gather When We Betake Ourselves to These Exercises Some Directions That Will Help Us to Profit More by These Exercises Of Spiritual Reading, How Important It Is, and of Sundry Means That Will Help Us to Make It Well and Profitably
