Page:AceticLibraryV2PreparationForDeath.djvu/14

 " Considerations " has a technical and special signification. They treat of life and death, of the value of time, of the mercy of God, of the habit of sin, of the general and particular judgments, of the love of God, of the Holy Communion, and of kindred subjects equally important. The "Consideration," as here used, implies far more than a mere inquiry. Its equivalents, the Italian Considerazione, and the Latin Consideration do~not fully express its particular meaning in this Treatise, where it stands for a reflectional meditation. It calls into play the exercise of the memory, which puts together all the circumstances of the subject under notice; it excites the imagination, which represents, as in a picture, all such circumstances, bringing ~ them vividly before the mind's eye; and, lastly, it urges the will so to. fix and detain these things in the soul, that, by its own effort, it may unite itself with the will of God, so that God's will and the will of man may become one.

S. Thomas Aquinas defines Consideration to be " an act of the intellect, and of the beholding the truth of a proposition," (Sum. 22 E. Q. liii. 4); to be,"moreover, principally related to the judgment. As one of the three divisions of prayer, properly so called, these Considerations must also be considered as reflections, as reasonings of the mind upon definite subjects, either for its perfect conviction of