maxims and truths of Christianity, will find suitable subjects for the mind to dwell on. Here those on whom the impulse of tender and affecting devotion makes deep impression will meet whatsoever tends to inflame still more the heart of a Christian already touched with the love of God. Here, in fine, those whom God wishes to attract to himself by a happy simplicity of spirit, will find instructions and examples proportionate to their capacity and peculiar vocation.
Now to say something of the author himself, and thereby to give an idea of the value we ought to set on his work, I will here set down in a few words what the historians of his order have written of him : — He was born at Valladolid in the year 1526, and in the 20th year of his age he renounced the world to consecrate himself to God, in the Society of Jesus at Salamanca. After having been engaged about thirteen years in teaching moral divinity at Monterey, he was sent to Montille, in the province of Andalusia, to be there master of novices ;"and to deliver such spiritual exhortations, as are delivered weekly in all the houses of the Society. In these two employments he acquitted himself for thirty years together, with all possible zeal and ability, and hereby evinced how skilled he was in the science of saints, and in the direction of souls. Being afterwards chosen to go to Rome, to the Fifth General Congregation, he there also gave marks of exemplary virtue, and consummate prudence. At his return he was sent to Corduba, where for twelve years he had the direction of spiritual things, that is to say, the care of taking an account of the interior state of all the religious in the house, and to help them to overcome and root out of their souls whatsoever opposed their advancement in perfection. As at Montille so at Corduba, his office was to make the weekly exhortations : and it was towards the end of the twelve years he remained here, that collecting together what he had written upon different subjects, he compiled these three volumes of the Practice op Christian Perfection. He did not, however, publish them till a long time after, when he went to the Provincial Congregation held at Seville in the year 1606, where he was ordered to stay to take care of the novices ; and at the same time to publish this his work. After having applied himself for eight years together, without any relaxation, to the discharge of both these duties, he became so infirm, that he had neither force to exercise any longer the painful function of master of novices, nor even% to celebrate the holy sacrifice of
