1. LASTLY, to prevent all misunderstanding of this most
holy and most necessary doctrine touching our obligation to
attend unto (and to practise accordingly) the divine inspirations
2. For the clearing, therefore, and dissolving of this supposed difficulty and inconvenience, we are to consider that, though in this discourse we have promiscuously used the terms of inspirations, lights, impulses, divine calls, &c., yet the former are only such operations of God as are internal; whereas the term of divine calls imports both an external ordination of God, and also His internal operation in our souls suitable to the external call. And both these are properly termed calls, because by both of them God doth signify His will to souls; for by the external ordination and commission given by God to all in lawful authority under Him, God by them doth reveal His will unto us, which we obey whilst we submit unto and execute the commands and wills of His substitutes. And by His internal operation He directs us to perform such obedience, in a spiritual manner, for the good and advancement of our souls in His divine love.
3. All laws, therefore, all constitutions, precepts, and commands of superiors, and all external or internal duties of obligation by virtue of our state of life as Christians, or moreover as religious or ecclesiastical persons, &c., are, indeed, and so to be esteemed by us, true divine calls, necessarily to be attended to, known, and performed by us.
4. And as for internal inspirations which have regard unto
those external calls, the end for which they are given us is not
only simply to direct and incline us to perform all our Christian,
regular, or other duties with readiness and cheerfulness
5. Therefore, whatsoever internal suggestions, motions, or impulses we may find that shall be contrary or prejudicial to such external calls to obedience and regularity, we are to be so far from hearkening to them or esteeming them for divine, that we ought to despise and reject them, judging them to be no better than diabolical illusions. Yea, this is to hold, although the said external laws, commands, or observances be such as we in our private judgment cannot think to be very proper or convenient for us in particular.
6. Now the reason why no internal suggestion ought to take place of external obligations is evident and convincing; because such external calls to obedience being of themselves both manifest and certainly unquestionable tokens and expressions of the divine will, they ought not to give place to any supposed internal significations of the same will whatsoever, which are not nor can be so manifest, but rather to prescribe rules unto them and overrule them. We know the former to be God's will, and to proceed from Him, and therefore we cannot rationally believe that those things that are opposite thereto can be acceptable to Him. Besides, God's will revealed to a subject by the mouth of his superior, or by established laws, has a kind of public authority, being derived by a public person and mean, and therefore must needs take place and be preferred before an inspiration or signification of the divine will to a private person alone.
7. Yea, moreover, so indispensably careful and even scrupulous
ought we to be that exterior order and due subordination
8. Yea, I will add further, that if a religious subject shall
have an inspiration which he confidently believes to be divine,
by which he is invited to the doing of anything, yet if his superior
shall declare such an inspiration not to be divine, and
forbid the executing of what it directs, the subject ought not
only to obey his superior by forbearing to do according to such
an inspiration, but he is also obliged to submit his judgment
and to believe his superior. And this he may sincerely and
securely do; because though it were so that in truth the
inspiration came from God, and did direct to the doing of a thing
more perfect or to a more perfect omission, yet all this is to be
understood only conditionally, that is, upon supposition that a
lawful superior did not judge and command otherwise. For in
such a case it would be an act of greater perfection in the subject
to obey him forbidding the doing or forbearing of anything,
though in itself (and such prohibition not considered) more perfect.
Yea, and a divine light and a new inspiration will inform
and direct the subject to obey and believe the superior declaring
against the former inspiration. For though nothing that a superior
in such circumstances can say will make the former inspiration
not to have come from God, yet his declaring against it
will show it not to be of force now, since that all such
inspirations do and ought to suppose the consent, or at least
the nonopposition, of the superior, before they be put in practice;
and therefore they are to give place to an inspiration of obeying,
which is absolute. True it is that in such a case it may happen
that the superior may commit a great fault, and must expect to
be accountable to God for it; but howsoever, the subject, in
9. As it concerns, therefore, particular souls to depend principally upon their internal director, so likewise are superiors and spiritual guides no less obliged to penetrate into the dispositions of their subjects and disciples, and to discover by what special ways the Spirit of God conducts them, and suitably thereto to conform themselves and to comply with the intention of the Divine Spirit. And this duty our holy patriarch, in the 64th chapter of his Rule, requires from all abbots or superiors, forbidding them to use rigour in the correction of their subjects, or so rudely to scour the vessels as thereby to endanger the breaking of them. He would not have them likewise to be restlessly suspicious and jealous over their subjects, but in their impositions to use great discretion (which he calls the mother of virtues), considering each one's ability, and saying with Jacob, 'If I force my flocks to travel beyond their strength, they will all of them die at once,' &c. If the superior, therefore, in a humour of commanding, on his own head, should impose commands on his subjects without any regard to the divine will and guidance, such commands will probably prove unprosperous as to the subject, and certainly very dangerous to the superior. Yet so it may be, that the subject may reap spiritual profit by them; for then it may please God to give him an interior enablement to turn such undue commands to his own good and advancement, by increasing in him the habit of resignation and humility. It will, indeed, be very hard for imperfect souls to reap benefit by such inconsiderate superiors; but as for perfect ones, they have both light and spiritual strength to convert all the most unreasonable commands of superiors to the benefit and advancement of their own souls.
10. In case a superior should forbid a subject to pray at this
or that time, or should command him to spend no longer than
11. But concerning the duties and obligations of superiors towards souls whose profession is to tread these internal ways of contemplation, more shall be said hereafter in its proper place; where it shall be demonstrated, that these instructions are so far from prejudicing their authority, that true cordial obedience will never, nor can be, perfectly performed to them but by such souls as are most zealous and constant in the essential duties of prayer and attending to the inspirations of God's Holy Spirit.
12. To conclude this whole discourse concerning divine inspirations:
As these advices are not curiously to be applied to
the practice of fearful scrupulous souls, whose unquiet thoughts
make them in a manner incapable of either light or impulses of
God's spirit in matters about which their scrupulosity is exercised,
so in those cases they are to follow instructions peculiarly
13. And it may very reasonably be believed that the principal ground and reason why true spirituality is in these days so rare, and why matters go so amiss among souls that pretend to aspire to contemplation, is because this most necessary duty of observing and following divine inspirations is either unknown or wilfully misunderstood, and suspected (if not derided) by some who, in popular opinion, are held and desire to pass for chief masters in spirituality. And no wonder is it that such should be disaffected to this doctrine, of the perfect practice whereof themselves are incapable, by reason of their distractive employments and imperfect degree of prayer; and consequently, neither can they, nor perhaps if they could would they, teach it to others, since thereby many souls would quickly be discharged from any necessity of continuing in a dependence on their managing and directions.
14. If any there be that, notwithstanding all that hath been
[the Appendix here promised was not given. But, as will be seen at the end, Father Cressy partly supplies the omission in an Advertisement and a Postscript to the Reader.--J. N. S.]