mine! With the blood which issued out of Thy five precious wounds wash the stains that have issued from those my five ulcerous fountains! Stop, now, O Lord, their abominable current, and aid me with Thy grace to restrain it, that, imitating the mortification that Thou didst exercise in Thy life and sufferedst in Thy death, I may merit to obtain Thy glory! Amen.
MEDITATION XXVII.
ON THE INTERIOR FACULTIES OF THE SOUL.
POINT I.
1. The first shall be to consider the vices and sins that have their particular seat in the understanding, and the injuries that proceed from them; examining that part which appertains to me in every one of them, which may in all be reduced to seven.
i. The first is ignorance of those things that I ought to know, such as those which I ought to believe, to ask, to receive and to do; which are included in the creed and prayer of the " Our Father," in the sacraments, and in the commandments of Almighty God, and in the other obligations proper to every man's state or office, [1] for I can but ill accomplish them not understanding them. And, as St. Paul says, " If any man know not he shall not be known," [2] God saying to him, "I know thee not." With this vice agrees much the culpable forgetfulness of Almighty God, and of His law, and of such things as I may and ought to remember, of which we may likewise say, that whosoever forgets shall be forgotten; for if I sinfully forget
