f God, sustaining all His operations whether
gratifying or mortifying, suffering itself to be conducted, from moment
to moment, by His hand, and annihilated by the strokes of His
Providence, without complaining, or desiring anything but what it has;
it would soon arrive at the experience of the eternal truth, though it
might not at once know the ways and methods by which God conducted it
there.

People want to direct God instead of resigning themselves to be
directed by Him. They want to show Him a way, instead of passively
following that wherein He leads them. Hence many souls, called to enjoy
God Himself, and not barely His gifts, spend all their lives in running
after little consolations, and feeding on them--resting there only,
making all their happiness to consist therein.

If my chains and my imprisonment in any way afflict you, I pray that
they may serve to engage you to seek nothing but God for Himself alone,
and never to desire to possess Him but by the death of your whole
selves, never to seek to be something in the ways of the Spirit, but
choose to enter into the most profound nothingness.

I had an internal strife, which continually racked me--two powers which
appeared equally strong seemed equally to struggle for the mastery
within me. On the one hand, a desire of pleasing Thee, O my God, a fear
of offending, and a continual tendency of all my powers to Thee--on the
other side, the view of all my inward corruptions, the depravity of my
heart, and the continual stirring and rising of self. What torrents of
tears, what desolations have these cost me? "Is it possible," I cried,
"that I have received so many graces and favors from God only to lose
them;--that I have loved Him with so much ardor, but to be eternally
deprived of Him; that His benefits have only produced ingratitude; His
fidelity been repaid with infidelity; that my heart has been emptied of
all creatures, and created objects, and filled with His blessed
presence and love, in order now to be wholly void of divine power, and
only filled with wanderings and created objects!"

I could now no longer pray as formerly. Heaven seemed shut to me, and I
thought justly. I could get no consolation or make any complaint; nor
had I any creature on earth to apply to. I found myself banished from
all beings without finding a support of refuge in anything. I could no
more practice any virtue with facility. "Alas!" said I, "is it possible
that this heart, form