Letter X. To a Superioress of the Visitation (Perhaps the Same)

She is not to dwell on her miseries, and is to commit to God the care of her reputation. Singularity and self-will in spiritual exercises a dangerous delusion. Virtue depends not on feeling but on the consent of the will. On change of confessors.

i^th January 1620.

I WROTE to you the day before yesterday, my dear daughter, and replied to your two previous letters. 0 my daughter, the truly well-beloved of my heart, act just in this way. Do not permit your spirit to consider its miseries, let God work; he will make something good out of it. Have but little reflection upon what your nature may mingle with your actions. These sallies of self-love must be treated by neglect; having disavowed them twice or thrice a day you have finished with them. They must not be rejected with violence, it is enough to say a little no.

You are right; a daughter who belongs to God ought not to think of her reputation; it would be unbecoming. As for me, says David,* / am very young and despised; biit I forgot not thy justifications. Let God do with our life, and our reputation, and our honour, as he chooses, for it is all his. If our abjection serve for his glory ought we not to glory in being abject? / ivill glory in my infirmities, said the Apostle,t that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

• Ps. cxviii. 141. t 2 Cor. xii. 9.

What power of Jesus Christ? — humility, consent to abjection.

I am writing to this poor dear daughter. I never saw a temptation more manifest or more patent than this: it is almost without cover or pretext. To break vows in order to fast! To pretend to be good in solitude and not good in the congregation! To want to live for self by way of living for God! To desire to have the entire control of one's own will in order better to follow the will of God — what chimeras! That a melancholy, strange, disagreeable, hard, sour, bitter, self-willed inclination, or rather fancy and imagination, can be an inspiration — what a contradiction! To give up praising God and to be silent through ill-humour in the offices which holy Church appoints, because one cannot give praise in a corner according to one's wish — what an extravagance! But still, I hope that God will draw glory from all this, since this poor dear daughter submits herself in every thing that is commanded her and has a reverence for your presence. Often give commands to her, and impose upon her mortifications opposed to her inclina tions: she will obey, and although it will seem to be by force it will still be profitably, and according to the grace of God.

Indeed, my dear daughter, you must truly make no difference between your soul and mine in' the confidence which you must have in me; and take good courage to form the acts of union and of acquiescence in God's will by the superior portion and point of your spirit, without distressing yourself at all for not having feelings of devotion during your times of weakness, since consent to good and to evil can be given

LET. xi.] Later Letters to Visitation. 187 without feelings, and feelings can be without consent.

One ought not to be fickle in wanting to change a confessor without strong reason; but one ought not either to be altogether unchanging, because legitimate causes of changing may arise; and Bishops ought not to tie their hands so closely that they cannot make a change when necessary, above all when the sisters with common consent request it: the same of the spiritual father. I have no leisure. Vim Jesus, in all and everywhere, and above all in the midst of our hearts! Amen.