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So high and sovereign is the exercise of mental prayer, in which we meditate upon the mysteries of our holy faith, and converse familiarly with Almighty God, that the principal master of it can be no other but the Holy Ghost Himself, who, as St. John says, is the unction from whom we receive all things; by whose inspiration the holy Fathers learned it, and left us in writing many counsels, and documents of much importance, how to exercise it with profit, following the motion of that principal master whom they followed; in imitation of whom, availing myself of their doctrine and experience, I will here make a summary of the principal things which mental prayer comprehends, which shall be brief, clear, and distinct, that all may understand it, and reduce it to practice; referring, wherever I shall be found too brief, to that which other doctors have written more at large.

Nevertheless, for the manifestation of the truth, and authority of what I am to say, as well in this summary as in the meditations of this book, I will allege in the margin the