other faculties of the soul which are inferior also aid the exercise of it.
1. Among these, the first is the imaginative; which, when it is untamed and disordered, as it notably hinders prayer, so also aids much, when it can with facility form within itself certain figures or images of such things as are to be meditated, as if it were present According to this, it were good before we begin meditation to endeavour with the imagination to form within ourselves some figure or image of the things we intend to meditate with the greatest vividness and propriety that we are able. If I am to think upon hell, I will imagine some place like an obscure, strait, and horrible dungeon full of fire, and the souls therein burning in the midst of those flames. And if I am to meditate on the birth of Christ, I will form the figure of some open place without shelter, and a child wrapped in swaddling-clothes, laid in a manger; and so in the rest.
But here we are to notice, that this be done without fatiguing the head: for whoever finds much difficulty in forming such figures, it were better to leave them, and use only the spiritual faculties in the manner already mentioned. And contrariwise, those that are very imaginative are to be very well advised; because their vehement imaginations may be to them an occasion of many illusions, by supposing their imagination to be revelation, and that the image which they form within themselves is the thing itself which they imagine; and so, through their indiscretion they come to confuse their head, and convert to their hindrance that which, taken with moderation, might have been to their profit
2. The tongue likewise may help in prayer, for (as St Thomas says) mental prayer, and vocal, which is done with exterior words, are not contrary, but sisters, that help one another. [1] Mental prayer is wont sometimes to break out
- ↑ 2, 1, q. lxxxiii., art. 12.
