" Before prayer prepare thy soul, and be not as a man that tempteth God." [1] Other virtues go side by side with her, as are charity, religion, devotion, and wisdom, and those other gifts of the Holy Ghost which illuminate the understanding, and aid marvellously to prayer, as will be seen in the twenty-seventh meditation of the fifth part of this work. Innumerable other virtues follow after her, as are fervent desires and purposes of all that is good in matter of obedience and patience, of temperance, modesty, chastity, and the rest And as well the one as the other interlacing themselves with prayer, exercise among themselves divers acts that are an ornament and decking the one of the other; for humility joins herself with confidence and charity; charity with religion and thanksgiving; religion with obedience and resignation; and thus with a celestial and divine accord they make a harmony of many voices. Upon which many holy Fathers [2] say that prayer makes men like angels, not only because it is a work of the superior faculties, in which men are like them, but because it communicates to men an angelical life full of purity and sanctity. By prayer (when it is perfect) they participate in the ardent love of the seraphim — the fulness of knowledge of the cherubim — the peace and quietness of the thrones — the rule over themselves of the dominations — the power against devils of the powers — the magnanimity for marvellous things of the virtues — the discretion in government of the principalities — the fortitude in difficult and hard things of the archangels — and the obedience in all things of the angels — and, finally, the wisdom, chastity, and cleanness of the celestial spirits. " For there can be nothing (says St. Chrysostom) more wise, more just, or more holy than a man that speaks to God as it is meet for Him from whom he receives most abundantly those gifts
