many temptations and miseries, nothing can excite us so powerfully to endure with fortitude the toils and hardships of the present life, or even comfort us in adversity, as the Life, or example, and the Death and Passion of our Saviour. For, Christ having suffered in the flesh, let us also be armed with the same thought;[1] relying on the hope that, if we suffer , we shall also reign with him.[2] Hence the Sixth Part will treat of the Contemplation and Imitation of the Life and Passion of Christ.
VII. While, therefore, we live continually devoted to these exercises and holy studies, we are hastening at the same time to the goal of life. But this we shall the more certainly accomplish if we live in the constant recollection of death, and are always, even until death, assiduous in the worship of the Virgin Mother of God, the mother of life, and the Mistress of death. To this end the Worship of the Virgin Mother and the Care of Death are set forth in the Seventh Part. That, as God rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done , so also, by her in whose tabernacle the Lord has rested, [3] man may at length rest happily from his labours in the eternal enjoyment of God, who is himself his labourers’ reward.
In this method and plan it appears to me that I have comprised all that is to be desired for the exercise and practice of Christian devotion. For it has been my special purpose to comprise within the compass of one small and convenient volume, what is, in theory as well as in practice, the sum and pith of all piety. And it is my wish that the Meditations or Exercises with which each Part commences, should be read and weighed with attention, since in them are expressed, in words and sentences taken principally from Holy Scripture, the most important lessons of the spiritual life. And this I have done in the form of a colloquy between Christ and Man, because I hold it certain, that the greater the authority of the teacher and the counsellor, the more
