Happy man, who is dead to the world, and alive to God! separated from the world, and collected into Christ! Blessed is the man into whose heart such Divine graces are infused, as withdraw it wholly from every tendency to inferior things, and exalt it to the supernal light and glory in the heavens. To obtain which, it is needful to pray daily and instantly to God: seeing it is not possible for a Christian to live without it,

Let therefore this PURE LOVE OF CHRIST prompt thee to all that is good; let this be the motive of mortifying thy flesh with all its desires: and let the remembrance of that death which he most willingly accepted for thee, make thee willing to lay down thy life for him; and out of sincere gratitude for all his inestimable benefits, to accept the cross at his hand, and to resist sin and the world even unto blood.

By daily contrition, and habitual mortification of the flesh, man is day by day RENEWED, bearing heavenly fruits and celestial graces, of an inexplicable sweetness. Contrariwise, the pleasure of the world bringeth heaviness of heart, vexation of spirit, and a wounded conscience: yea, so great hence is the calamity of the soul, and so heavy the loss of the heavenly gift (a loss which necessarily flows from the pleasures of the flesh, and from worldly delights) that he who duly calls the same to mind, cannot be exceedingly fear and dread any of the fleshly and worldly joys, which serve but to divert him from those that are spiritual and heavenly, and to quench in him the most sweet grace of devotion that brings the soul into the kingdom of God.

Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection of the interior poverty to which they are obliged.