Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/466

452 particularly when these celestial visitations were afforded her, she herself, in the beginning of the book, informs us, was in the year 1373, that is, about three years before the death of the famous conqueror king Edward III; at which time she herself was about thirty years of age. And, in the last chapter of the book, she signifies that more than fifteen years after these revelations had been shewed her, for resolution of a certain doubt of her's, touching the meaning of one of them, our Lord himself was pleased to answer internally in ghostly understanding."

"As for the manner of these revelations, it was the same of which we read innumerable examples, both among ancient and modern saints. The objects of some of them were represented to the imagination, and, perhaps also, to the outward sight; sometimes they were represented in sleep, but, most frequently, when she was awake. But those which were more pure in time, and withal more certain, were wrought by a divine illapse into the spiritual part of the soul, the mind, and understanding, which the devil cannot counterfeit, nor the patient comprehend, though withal it excluded all doubt or suspicion of illusion."

"She was far from expecting or desiring such unusual supernatural gifts. Matters stood thus with her: she thought herself too much unmortified in her affections to creatures, and too unsensible of our Lord's love to her. Therefore to cure the former, she requested a sickness in extremity, even to death, in her own and other's conceit; a sickness full of bitter pain and anguish, depriving her of all outward refreshments, and of all inward comforts also, which might affect the sensual portion of the soul. And, for a remedy to the latter, she begged of the Lord, that he would imprint on her