of meditation and discourse. In the same manner as a woman, when she intends to marry a man, spends many days in askiDg and certifying herself what he is, inquiring of his lineage, wealth, condition, health, affability, discretion, virtue, and other parts, reasoning and thinking much upon them; and, finding him to be to her liking, is content to love him and take him for her husband; but afterwards, when she has known him and taken him for her husband, she needs make no new discourses, but with only seeing him, or remembering him, or hearing his name, she loves him, and desires to give him content and to be always with him. The like happens with a scholar that would make choice of some new master; or with a servant that intends to take a new lord; or with one friend that desires to make a new and strict league of friendship with another.
2. Even in like manner beginners in virtue and in the exercise of prayer had need to spend much time in meditations and reasonings, inquiring what and who God is, who Christ our Saviour is, what be His perfections, virtues, and His marvellous works; moving themselves with these considerations to love Him, and to take Him for their Master, for their Lord, for their friend and spouse of their souls. But after they are much exercised and practised in this, it happens oftentimes that a single view or remembrance of God, without new discourses, is enough to inflame them in His love and in the other affections aforesaid. There are even some that with only hearing the name of Jesus or Father, or but hearing the name of mortal sin, hell, or heaven, penetrate in a moment what is comprehended in them with great affections of love or sorrow. True it is, that as our understanding lays not much hold on things that it perceives not with the senses, it easily loses the estimation of spiritual and divine things and forgets them, and so has need often to renew those meditations and reasonings which
