God, in such way that St. Dionysius says of divine Hierotheus that he had knowledge of divine things, not only by the doctrine of the Apostles, nor only by his industry and discourse, but by affection and experience of them, which is obtained by means of the five interior senses, of which the said Scripture makes much mention, and the holy fathers, especially St Augustine, [1] Gregory, Bernard, [2] and others, whose sayings St. Bonaventure copiously allegesin his treating of the seven ways to eternity, in the sixth way; from whom I will borrow somewhat of that which I am about to state, presupposing that (as the glorious St Bernard says), " In hujusmodi non capit intelligentia, nisi quantum experientia attingit;" " In many of these things the understanding attains no more than that which experience perceives." [3] And therefore I will go on also pointing as it were to that which belongs to all.
i. First, God our Lord communicates Himself sometimes by a spiritual presence with His illuminations, communicating to the understanding a manner of light so elevated that by it, like another Moses, it beholds and regards the invisible as if it were visible. [4] And although it retains the virtue of faith, yet it retains it so illustrated and perfected concerning the mysteries thereof, that it appears another light This sight is used to go accompanied with a kind of spiritual alacrity, which is called joy, leaping as it were with pleasure and joy for the strangeness of the divine greatness that it has seen, according to that which is written in Job, "He shall pray to God, and He will be gracious to him, and he shall see His face with joy." [5]
To this manner of contemplation or interior beholding our Lord Himself invites us, saying, " Be still, and see that
