Page:MeditationsOnTheMysteriesOfOurHolyV1.djvu/71

 gratiae, et precum," "the spirit of grace and of prayer," without which spirit none pray rightly. For, as St. Paul says, " We are" not " sufficient to think anything" holy " of ourselves, as of ourselves,"  nor do " we know" " what we should pray for, as we ought,"  if the Spirit of God does not teach us and move us to it. For this He has divers ways, guiding some one way and some another, so that it would be an intolerable error to imagine that all are to go by the same way that I am guided; for the Spirit of God " est unicus et multiplex," is " one" only and " manifold;"  one only in the substance and principal end which it aims at, and manifold in the means and ways it takes to obtain it.

2. These ways, in general, are two: one ordinary, which comprehends all the forms of prayer that hitherto we have treated of; the other extraordinary, which comprehends other forms of prayer more supernatural and special, which we call prayer of quiet or silence, with suspension, extacy, or rapture, and with imaginary figures of truths which are discovered, or with only an intellectual light of them, together with revelations and interior speeches, and with other innumerable means that Almighty God has to communicate himself to souls, of which no certain rule can be given, because they have no other rule but the teaching and direction of the Sovereign Master, who teaches it to whom He will and how He will. For such sorts of prayer are not to be desired nor attempted by ourselves upon pain of being proud and presumptuous, and in that case unworthy of them — nay, rather on our part we are to refuse them with humility, because of the danger we may incur of being deluded by Satan, transfigured into an angel of light. But when God shall communicate them, they are to be received with humi-