lity and thanksgiving, and with great wariness and prudence, following certain directions which we shall give in this book, especially in the third part, in meditating the miracle in which Christ was held for a phantasm; and in the fifth part, in meditating the apparitions and revelations that Christ our Lord made to His apostles and disciples; in which we will describe the signs and effects that are wrought in the soul by the visitation of God and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and to what height of life He exalts men by the means of His seven gifts and celestial inspirations, which is the thing we all ought to desire and pursue.
3. But that we may have some light of these extraordinary and marvellous means that God has to cheer souls, and to communicate Himself to them in mental prayer, I will point at some of them; in which also are touched certain things that pass ordinarily in all, and it is good to know them, for they will help to understand an ordinary form of prayer by application of the senses, of which we are hereafter to treat.
4. For explanation of which I premise, that as the body has its five exterior senses with which it perceives the visible and delectable things of this life, and takes experience of them, so the spirit, with its faculties of understanding and will, has five interior acts proportionable to these senses, which we call seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching spiritually, with which it perceives the invisible and delectable things of Almighty God, and takes experience of them; from which springs the experimental knowledge of God, [1] which incomparably exceeds all the knowledge that proceeds of our reasonings, as the sweetness of honey is much better known by tasting a little of it than by using much reasoning to know it. [2] And so by these experiences mystical theology is obtained, which is the savoury wisdom and science of
