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Chapter IX. Patience

The three dispositions which compose the normal state of the spiritual life, struggle, fatigue, and rest, are each of them beset with a darkness and difficulty of their own, requiring attendant virtues to enlighten them. Struggle obviously requires patience; fatigue is only safely endured when singleness of purpose secures us from human respect; and rest is in need of courageous mortification. In this chapter, therefore, we must speak of patience.

Is it not true that we do not ordinarily appreciate the importance of this virtue in the spiritual life? We readily admit the importance of prayer, examen, mortification, and spiritual reading, as means of holy living, and as forming a necessary portion of the ascetical exercises of each day; but it is to be doubted whether we allow its proper place to the exercise of patience. I am speaking especially to persons living in the world; and whose holiness consequently is of a more hidden character than that of religious, external circumstances concentrating it within, and not providing it with the almost hourly beautiful developments in which it would display itself with graceful freedom in conventual life. I say that the holiness of a holy person in the world is of a more hidden character than that of a religious; and it would seem at first sight as if this gave the secular the advantage. God forbid! [f external circumstances make holiness in the world more hidden, and so form it into an interior spirit, th« religious enjoys the inestimable privilege of obedience, which is a continual supernatural pressure upon the soul, training it in the most delicate interior spirit, and for the absence of which nothing else can compensate, and which is unlike any obedience a secular can pay to his director. But I make much of the fact, which both experience and the published lives of holy persons attest, that the holiness of a person in the world is more hidden; because it has sometimes been the fashion to write spiritual books in a strain of hyperbole and exaggeration, quite alien to the calm discretion and sober moderation which is needful in handling such matters, and the upshot of which is to represent all holiness to be in the cloister, and all the world beside a reprobate mass. Besides being unsound doctrine, the exaggeration is foolish in every way, and leads infallibly to a low standard of monastic perfection; just as in the days of Tronson, worldly priests tried to put the whole burden of sacerdotal perfection upon religious, in order that their own lives might be more easy and more free.

There is hardly any subject in the spiritual life more unfairly dealt with than this; yet if we refer to older writers, especially the three great Jesuit ascetics, Platus, Alvarez de Paz, and Da Ponte, there is no portion of spiritual theology in which the principles are more clearly laid down than here. Monastic perfection is something far higher than any which can be aimed at in the world. Yet if we were to tell a nun that certain practices of perfection, which as a matter of fact are practised by seculars, were only fit for the convent, we should at once lower her standard of her own obligations; and it would be much if nature did not get the better of grace, and cause her to settle down in a level of life no higher than that of holy seculars in society. So, if we represent the perfection attainable by a secular priest as the property of a religious, we injure at once both the religious and the secular, by lowering their standards. The religious recognizes in the portrait of a perfect secular the picture of a perfect monk, and the secular does not recognize himself at all. And, as Tronson shrewdly remarks, all this is the more mischievous because spiritual writers have often observed that, while it is a sign of a relaxed religious order to run down perfection in the world and among the secular clergy, because of the obvious consequences to the order itself of allowing this doctrine, the secular clergy, " far from testifying/' I am using Tron-sou's words, "this esteem of their own vocation, are often th»* first to combat it. If you do not believe me, make the experiment yourselves. Put forward an ecclesiastical ma*im which tends to establish you (he is speaking to secular priests) in perfection, whether it concerns detachment from the world, or the flight from worldlmess, or th1 condemnation of the world's maxims, to which ecclesiastics are more particularly and more strictly obliged, and you will see that ecclesiastics themselves will be the first to oppose you; so that they who ought tu defend these truths, and who are engaged by their state to maintain them with the utmost vigour, are those who will contest them with the greatest heat and vehemence. See what we are come to!" * The same principles are laid down by Alvarez de Paz,2 by Da Ponte,f and by Platus.J This last writer says that the Church is made up of three orders, laymen, religious, and clerics; and he says of this last, that " it has all the disadvantages, without the advantages of the other two states. For clerics have the same obligation of attaining perfection which religious have, and without doubt even a greater one, because of the excellence of their ministry, the divinity of the sacraments, and the government of souls. Yet they have not the helps which religious have, nor the influx of a richer grace. " All these writers, with the exception of Tronson, were Jesuits: I quote one more, also a Jesuit, as spiritual theology has been one of their man)' excellences, and their writers are generally the most clear and defined, uniting science with their unction. It is F. Surin.3 He says of the condition of a secular priest that his " state demands all the purity of life of religious and of solitaries; and the priest would delude himself extremely, who, to excuse the little care he takes to aim at the highest sanctity (la plus haute saintete), when any one speaks to him of a point of perfection, such as recollection, prayer, mortification, and zeal for the glory of God, should say that that is good for a Carthusian, a Ca-45 puchin, or a Jesuit, but that for himself he does not aim so high."

But in truth these great Jesuit ascetics were not in any way departing from the spiritual tradition of the more ancient doctors. They have not got beyond the grand light of the Church, St. Thomas, the angel of th-a schools; and he professes to give us the tradition of Ambrose, Chrysostom, and the older fathers. He who defended the religious state and its perfection in his wonderful tract on Perfection says, " If then a religious is unordained, as is the case with lay brothers, it is manifest that the pre-eminence of order excels as to dignity. For by holy orders a man is deputed to the most dignified ministries, to serve Christ in the Sacrament of the altar. For this a greater interior sanctity is required than even the religious state demands; for as Dionysius says,6 the monastic order ought to follow the sacerdotal orders, and after their imitation ascend to divine things. Hence, other things being equal, a cleric in holy orders, when he does anything contrary to sanctity, sins more gravely than a religious who is not in holy orders, although the lay religious is bound to regular observances, and the clerk is not."f

I have dwelt upon this, because unless we have our first principles clear on the subject of perfection in and out of the religious state, nearly everything that is said7 is capable of being taken the wrong way j and it has much to do with the subject of patience. For what I want to say is that while obedience, community life, exact observance of primitive rule, fidelity to the original spirit of the canonized founder, and above all the practice of evangelical poverty, put the perfection of religious far above the reach of seculars in kind, there can be no question or comparison between them at all as to degree. A person may have a higher degree of a lower hind of perfection than another. Theologians say that probably some saints on earth have loved God more than some angels in heaven. This illustrates my meaning; for no one will say that an angel in heaven is not higher in kind than a saint upon earth. Thus a man in the world may attain a higher degree of perfection in his kind than a certain religious may have attained in the cloister in his kind) and so have corresponded more faithfully to grace, and be more acceptable to God. To deny this seems to be a simple confusion of principles. Men who dispute about it must be using words in two different senses. The thing itself is surely self-evident. Is there any one who would rather be a very ordinary religious than a very holy secular? *8

Furthermore, what obedience is to religious (not all that it is, but the functions it performs), that patience is to seculars. Independently of its directly supernatural virtue, obedience sanctifies the religious for four reasons principally: because it comes from without, because the religious has no control over its requirements, because he must be ready at all moments, and because it involves the giving up of his own will and way. Now all these four offices patience discharges in its measure to the secular. The circumstances which exact its exercise come upon us from without; we have no control over them; they may come upon us at all moments; and they always involve the sacrifice or the mortification of our own will and way. I do not say that patience equals religious obedience; but that it is itself the obedience of seculars. It is necessary to their perfection. What obedience is to the higher and different perfection of monks and nuns, that patience is to the indubitably lower, yet genuine perfection of men in the world.

A few words must be said of all the four exercises of patience, patience with others, patience with self, patience with our director, and patience with God.

We may say that, partly from our own badness and partly from theirs, all mankind, far and near, kindred and strangers, are a trial to our patience in some way or other. If those who are above us exercise our patience, our natural inclination is immediately to revolt, and we are quite as much kept in subordination by human respect, by fear and the consequence to our own interests, as by the real tice of evangelical poverty is a height unapproachable by seculars, t,o say coining of the sanctification of vowed obedience. The superiority of the religious state over the secular is immeasurable but, I repeat, the difference is one of kind, not of degree.

grace of patience. Even when we obey ws take tin bloom off our obedience by a sulky manner, or by a sullen word or a downcast look, or a complaint to others, or a general reproachful sadness of demeanour by which we manage t<? make superiors unhappy and disquieted, and to show them what an exercise of authority they are putting forward when they constrain us to what we do not like. The sanctifying power of half our life is lost by this single ungracefulness. If the trial of our patience comes from those below us, we sometimes proudly exhibit our sense of their inferiority. We crush them by a reprimand, or wither them by a look, or sting them with coldness. If the trial comes from our equals, how often do we offend by rudeness, abruptness, unkindliness, and a want of mutual respect! When we are engaged with others in any kind of work, or are constantly in society with others, our patience is often exercised. We encounter stupid, passionate or importunate people; and we do not look at each of these meetings as a gift from God, who is going to watch how we behave and visit us accordingly. Almost every circumstance in life has a manner, time, place and degree, by which it tries our patience; and it is not too much to say, especially in the earlier stages of the devout fife, that this exercise does more for us than fast or discipline j and that when we can go through with it for love of the sweetness of Jesus, we are not far from interior holiness.

The blessings which result from this practice in the interior life are manifold. The English spirit of always standing up for our rights is fatal to perfection. It is the opposite of that charity of which the apostle says, that it seeks not its own. Now this spirit is admirably 12* mortified by the exercise of patience. It involves also a continual practice of the presence of God; for we may be come upon at any moment for an almost heroic display of good temper. And it is a short road to unselfishness; for nothing is left to self. All that seems to belong most intimately to self, to be self's private property, such as time, home, and rest, are invaded by these continual trials of patience. The family is full of such opportunities, and the sanctity of marriage abounds with them. It may be added, for it is no slight thing, that there is not a spiritual exercise less open to delusion than is this, though the subtle, disheartening Gruillore fills three whole chapters with them.

In truth there are certain admonitions which are necessary concerning this exercise of patience with others. It is a practice which requires a long apprenticeship, so that it is in itself an exercise of patience. To be impatient because they are not patient is no uncommon exhibition in spiritual persons. Progress in the acquirement of this virtue is not easily perceived, as in the substantial self-denial there is often much inward trouble and heat Hence we must take comfort and go on making efforts It is a matter in which every effort is in reality an advance. There are also particular times when we must be very cautious not to be irritable and impatient. After long prayer, great sweetness in meditation, or an unusually fervent communion, or, indeed, any spiritual effort, we are extremely liable to lose our temper, partly through a law of our physical constitution, and partly because the devil wants to repair the losses we have just made him suffer. We must be content, therefore, at first with inaterial patience, irritable patience. We must not be vexed or cast dowi. about it. Something better will come of it presently. It is well to accuse ourselves of the slightest fault against patience at confession, to make frequent acts of contrition about it during the day, and to cast many a loving look at our Crucifix, that touching emblem of the patience of God. Strange to say, notwithstanding God is impassible, there is something peculiarly Godlike in the virtue of patience. If it is true of any one grace, beside charity, it is true of patience, that it is the beauty of holiness.

But if it is a hard thing to be patient with others, how much harder is it to be patient with ourselves! Indeed, so much is this branch of the virtue neglected that we seem almost to think its opposite a merit, as if impatience with self were a heroism or a meritorious mortification. There is a vast difference between hatred of self and impatience with self. The more of the first we have the better, and the less of the last. Once let us surmount the difficulty of being patient with ourselves and the road to perfection lies clear and unobstructed before us.

But what do we mean by impatience with self? Fretting under temptations, and mistaking their real nature, and their real value also. — In actual sin being more vexed at the lowering of our own self-esteem than being grieved at God's dishonour. — In being surprised and irritated at our own want of self-control because of our subjection to unworthy habits. — Being depressed because we experience lively movements of anger or give way to fits of sadness, even where, as is possible, there is no sin, either in the one or the other. — Being annoyed with our own want of sensible devotion, as if it was at all in oui Dwn power, and as if patience in dryness was not;ust the very way to earn sweetness and spiritual consolation. — Being disquieted because we do not find the remedies we have applied to our faults act as we expected, forgetting that they need time, and that we often put secret obstacles in the way. To these symptoms we may add a sort of querulousness about the want of spiritual progress, as if we were to be saints in a month.

All these dangerous symptoms of impatience with self come from one or other of four causes, and it is there we must seek them, and kill them in the nest, before they are able to fly. Verily they are birds of prey to our spiritual life. The first cause is self-love, which is unable to brook the disappointment of not seeing ourselves in times of trial come out beautiful, erect and admirable. The second is want of humility, which causes us not to appreciate our own real meanness, or to comprehend the.incapacitating effects of our past sins. The third is the absence of a true estimate of the huge difficulties of the spiritual life, and therefore of the necessity of an utter divorce with the world and a formal abjuration of its maxims, before we can really give ourselves to God. The fourth is an obstinate disinclination to walk by faith. We fret under it. We want, nature wants, self-love wants, everything in short, except faith itself, wants, — to see, to know, to be sure, to reason, to ascertain that success is inevitable.

To be patient with self is au. almost incalculable blessing, and the shortest road to improvement, as well as the quickest means by which an interior spirit can be formed within us, short of that immediate touch of God which makes some souls interior all at once. It breeds considerateness and softness of manner towards others

It disinclines us to censoriousness, because of the abiding sense of our own imperfections. It quickens our perception of utterest dependence on God and grace, and produces at the same time evenness of temper and equality of spirits, because it is at once an effort, and yet a quiet sustained effort. It is a constant source of acts of the mrv't genuine humility. In a word, by it we act upon self from without, as if we were not self, but self's master, or self's guardian angel. And when this is done in the exterior life as well as the interior, what remains in order to perfection?

There are various means by which we may cultivate this patience with ourselves. Frequent meditation on our own nothingness is a great help to it; and an especial dwelling upon any meanness and vileness and deceit of ")ur past lives, the reconsideration of which can be attei ded with no danger because of the intrinsic disgust and cutting shame which the details of such meanness a>»<ike within us. When we hear of some great crime, we may consider that we might have done it ourselves, or periaps worse, were it not for grace. We must be careful als* • at confession, and in preparing for it, not to mistake *elf-vexation for real contrition: and then we may persevere in asking for patience in a special way after communion. We must try, it is very hard, but time wins its way through hard things, to rejoice in all encounters which show us our need of grace, and the possibility of dreadful sins which we always carry about with us. Neither must we be in a hurry to forget past sin, and to force our way into the sunshine. If God gives us quite a depressing sense of sin, let us cherish it and stagger on beneath the burden. Blessed is any weight, however overwhelming, which God has been so good as fasten with His own hand upon our shoulders. In a word, patience with self is almost a condition of spiritual progress; and St. Catherine of Genoa is its patron saint.

From patience with self we must pass to patience with our director. Patience with superiors is of the essence of religious obedience; and a director is something like a superior without the overawing insignia of authority; but our obedience to him is and ought to be limited, and we may transfer it elsewhere any day without sin, if not without indiscretion.

Now we have first of all to subject our understanding to our director, and this in many ways and under many diiferent circumstances. He often differs from us in our own view of ourselves, and puts a low price upon what we think rare and precious. He keeps us back when we are for bounding forward, and he spurs us on when we wish to sit down and rest, and admire the view which we have now climbed high enough to see. He persists that something we make much of is a delusion, and he will not agree with us as to what is really our ruling passion. He changes our line, and we think he is making a serious mistake with us, and while we are detailing to him some supposed inspiration, he looks cold and distracted, and as if he wished we would go away. There is surely ample room for the understanding to practise patience here.

The subjection of our will is not less trying. He thwarts our desires and gives us no reason but his own will, so that there are many things we repent we ever asked him. He refuses us austerities and extra-communions, neither will he confer with us as often as we wish, or for as long time as our own self-love deems reasonable for persons of such importance to the Church as we are. • He will not let us read the books we like to read, and he is provokingly slow in making up his mind on questions we have laid before him. When self-will has patiently gone through this, will it be far from being tamed into Christian docility?

We must be patient also with him when he is evidently mortifying us. This is not so hard, because it is more direct. He mortifies us by refusing us consolations, by giving us absolution without a word, when we have expected a conference, and are full of words which we want to pour out, and yet to let it seem as if he drew them out. He mortifies us by sending us to communion without absolution, and otherwise ridiculing our scruples, by speaking harshly to us with manifest exaggeration, and by keeping us under monotonous mortifications which have long ceased to be mortifications, till we are almost wearied out, in other words, till they have become mortifications again, and of a better and more killing kind.

But it is a harder task to be patient with him when we are in doubt, half suspecting he is mortifying us, and yet not being quite sure whether it is not laziness or indifference. This takes place when he seems, almost studiously, to take no interest in us, and treats us as an annoyance to him, or when he contradicts, interrupts, or appears purposely to misunderstand us. At other times he says he quite forgets our case, and bids us repeat it, and looks as if he were making no effort to listen even then. Another while he contradicts himself, counter-orders things, and gives opposite advice different weeks. Then he hints he would have us leave him, and when we refuse, pubmits to keep us with a languid and inattentive air.

But he may try our patience harder still. He may be and often is, plainly in fault. Impatience, discourtesy, and irritability, are always faults, whatever amount of extenuation may be pleaded in their behalf. He may be guilty of occasional acts of substantial unkindness, and at times he may be destitute of the grace to bear with our weaknesses and to sympathize with our sorrows. Opportunities may offer when it becomes a duty on his part to make exertions and to take trouble for us, and he refuses to do so. Or he may visit us hastily with the fatal punishment of leaving us to direct ourselves, because we have been surprised into taking ourselves in hand, when we thought him listless and forgetful, and all the while he was praying and saying mass for us. In all this he is clearly wrong, and yet we must have patience with him. And if direction were altogether a supernatural thing, patience would be easier, because it would be dignified. But with the great bulk both of penitents and directors, direction is, and ought to be, and ought never to pretend not to be, almost as much natural as supernatural.

We have still to speak of patience with God. The very word sounds strange. Let it not breed familiar or irreverent thoughts. It is a very serious question, and must be approached with the profoundest respect, remembering of what an infinite majesty and unfathomable condescension it is of which with all abasement we are venturing to speak. Again and again I have said, it is an awful thing to have dealings with Almighty God. His favours are our fears. And yet let us think of this with the intensest filial and confiding love. Oh that we could always speak reverently of Him whom we do far more than either fear or love, whom we worship as our God!

God condescends to try our patience, who are dutst and ashes, in various ways; and some of them are peculiar or belong chiefly, to the spiritual life. His ordinary providence, therefore, the ways of His justice, and the darkness of His decrees, do not now concern us: His majesty is adorable, His glory inscrutable in them all. In the spiritual life He vouchsafes to try our patience first of all by His slowness. Slowness is the grand characteristic of the Creator as seen by the side of His creatures. Were it not for His slowless, where should we have been long since? We forget this, when His slowness makes us impatient. He is slow; we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been from eternity. Thus grace for the most part acts slowly, and mortification is as long as levelling a mountain, and prayer as the growth of an old oak. He works by little and by little, and sweetly and strongly He compasses His ends, but with a slowness which tries our faith, because it is so great a mystery. We must fasten upon this attribute of God in our growth in holiness. It must be at once our worship and our exemplar. There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them.

He tries us also by His hiddenness and by the impenetrable obscurity in which He shrouds almost all His supernatural processes, both in the sacraments and out of them. As the Bible says, He is a God who conceals Himself. If we could see Him, so we say, 0 then cheerfully would we follow Him! 0 were we but sure it was He! But we cannot see Him. Often He could not show Himself to us, if He would. That is, His mercy could 13 K not, for the sight would slay us. Darknesu is good for us when light would blind us. But look over the exercises, the trials, the temptations, and the vicissitudes of the spiritual life, and what a gain it seems as if it would be to us, could we only see Him! It is not so. It is best as it is. The enigma is our life. We must be patient with it. Sometimes He condescends to look mutable and fickle. He lets the moon amid the driving clouds of night be His emblem. He entices us into a road, and then leaves us just where it branches into two. He shows His face and then He hides it. We see it for a moment, and it is gone before we have caught the expression of it. Or the light so pleased us, we did not look at the dark objects it was meant to enlighten. Why does He interweave His bright and dark with us so perpetually? Sometimes He puzzles us as to His will. He lets half words fall into our hearts. He sends us what look like leadings, and are not so. He feigns, as our Lord did when He made as if He would pass the boat that stormy night on the water. He lets us think that He has contradicted Himself, He who is eternal truth, unchangeable simplicity. He looks as though He were entrapping us, getting us to commit ourselves to Him, and then reproaching us, and going away as if we had offended Him, or changing his mien and throwing us into prison and making slaves of us, as if in contempt of our generosity, as if our best were an insult to Him, as it would be but for the infiniteness of His amazing compassion. One while He is the most indulgent of fathers, another while the least forbearing of masters: now the most patieut of teachers, and again the sharpest of critics: here the most gracious of sovereigns, there the most exacting of despots: now almost a plain t;ff to our human hearts, and again the most vindictive of persecutors. Look as Thou wilt, most gracious Lord! nothing of Thee will we believe but that Thou art an infinitely good God, in Thy wrath remembering mercy, and as unchangeably a Father as Thou art eternally a God!

His chastisements also try our patience. Not only because they are never really light; for He never punishes in vain; but because they are unexpected, and seem inconsistent with what we have heard, and look disproportionate to such little failings. For if He caressed us when we greatly sinned, and forgave us even when we longed to be chastised, why for a trifling infidelity or an almost natural defect does the slow, heavy, regular lash endure so long? Does He forget we are creatures made of clay, and that if He does not mind, He will break us? Any chastisement which seems out of keeping with His usual dispensations tries our patience and is specially hard to bear. In the matter of answers to prayer we are equally bewildered. If He does not answer, faith faints. If He does, the answer is like Himself, it is slow and obscure and a riddle. Sometimes it is as if He answered in anger and took us at our word in a strange way for a Father. At last He abandons us. At all events there would be no bewilderment here, were we not told that this is precisely the hour of His especial and sustaining grace. Strange! for it is like a mountain falling on our hearts. It wrung a cry even from the silence-loving Heart of our ever-blessed Saviour on the Cross.

Shall I say then, be patient with God? Better say, Let us worship as heretofore; for is He not still God?

There are various ways in which we offend against this sublime exercise of patience. The first is by petulance in prayer, bold words of complaint, as if God had injured us, or as if He liked them, and that it was for every one to dare to be with Him as Job was of old, and to pour out his heart in those bitter burning words, whereby God mysteriously acknowledged that he had justified himself. Or our impatience may show itself in an indiscreet and inordinate pursuit of virtue, a greediness for graces, and a wounded vanity from venial imperfections. It makes us capricious and fickle. We give up prayer, because the answer lingers. We weary of sacraments because of their monotony. We shift our spiritual exercises, because they have not wrought miracles. We abandon medicines because health has not followed instantaneously. All infidelity is impatience with God. Thus we mar our mortifications by it. We begin them on impulse; we practise them without sobriety; and we leave them off because we are grown tepid and do not like the pain. So in the same manner a good work suggests itself: we cast up to heaven one ejaculation, far more full of self-will than of pure zeal; and we begin the work forthwith without prayer or counsel or deliberation. What wonder we leave it half done? Is not the land round about us all full of these follies of impulse, impatience and conceit, which we ourselves have set up amid the mute wonder of pitying angels? We give ourselves vocations, and then charge them again. We confer missions on ourselves, tyrannize over ourselves by multiplying our responsibilities, and send ourselves on embassies to the very end of the earth. We can hardly relieve sorrow or allay distress, but there is some impatience in it. We pray God daily not to lead us into temp taticn, yet we are daily placing ourselves in dangerous oc* oasions which we have reached almost out of breath, leaving Him far behind, who will not be hasten 3d on His way. But what are the remedies for this? "We must study God. We must drink of the spirit of His ways. We must love God, ardently, intensely, to the death. But we must fear Him also, with a fear unutterable, abasing, perpetual. Fear must beat in our blood, and quiver in our limbs, and many a time tongue-tie us and throw us down. 0 how we shall love God, when we fear Him thus! Magnificent fear! thou art a gift of the Holy Ghost! We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the cold and the dark. "Wait, and He will come. He never comes to those who do not wait. He does not go their road. When He comes, go with Him, but go slowly, fall a little behind; when He quickens His pace, be sure of it, before you quicken yours. But when He slackens, slacken at once. And do not be slow only, but silent, vary silent, for He is God.

Footnotes

  1. Entretiens, tome ii., p. 11. ↩

  2. De Vita Spirituali, 1. ii., Pars v. de Statu Clericali. ↩

  3. De Perfectione Ecclesiasticorum, being the first of the seven tracts of the fourth vol. de Perfectione. ↩

  4. De Bono Status Religiosi, lib. i., cap. xxxvii. Comparatio status religiosi cum ordine clericorum simplicium. See also "Walter Hilton, the English Carthusian's Treatise to a Devout Man of Secular Estate, teaching him how to lead a spiritual life therein. London, 1659, neat the little north door of St. Paul's. ↩

  5. Lettres Spirituelles. Lett. xiv. ↩

  6. In cap vi. Bccles. Hierarch. ↩

  7. Ad quod (the priesthood, diaconate and subdiaconate) requiritut major sanctitas interior quam requirat etiam religionis statue. Quia, eicut Dionysius dicit, Monasticns ordo debet sequi sacerdotales ordines, et ad eorum imitationem ad divina ascendere. (Secunda Secundse. Quaest. clxxxiv. Art. viii., in which he undertakes to show that a religiuuB is more perfect than an archdeacon.) ↩

  8. St. Thomas may be said to have exhausted the subject of the comparative states of perfection in the last seven questions of the Secunda Secundae. Spiritual books are mostly written by religious, and for the use of religious. Hence it is that St. Thomas's doctrine on the perfection of the Secular Clergy is so often, not misrepresented, but simply pretermitted; although the non-recognition of it, injurious as it is to the best interests of the clergy, is almost equally so to the religious as lowering their standard of monaetic perfection. A religious who is a priest has an obligation to a double perfection; yet loosely- written books sometimes refer what belongs to his sacerdotal perfection to the obligations of his monastic state. The prac* ↩

Chapter 10 of 28