children have for a
parent, but a union much deeper and stronger; giving me all that was
necessary for them, to bring them to walk in the way by which He would
lead them, as I shall show.

CHAPTER 4

I would willingly suppress what I am now about to write if anything of
it were my own, also on account of the difficulty of expressing myself
as because few souls are capable of understanding divine leadings which
are so little known, and so little comprehended. I have myself never
read of anything like it. I shall say something of the interior
dispositions I was then in, and I shall think my time well employed, if
it serves you who are willing to be of the number of my children; it
serves such as are already my children, to induce them to let God
glorify Himself in them after His manner, and not after their own. If
there be anything which they do not comprehend, let them die to
themselves. They will find it much easier to learn by experience than
from anything I could say; expression never equals experience.

After I had come out of the trying condition I have spoken of I found
it had purified my soul, instead of blackening it as I had feared. I
possessed God after a manner so pure, and so immense, as nothing else
could equal. In regard to thoughts or desires, all was so clean, so
naked, so lost in the divinity, that the soul had no selfish movement,
however plausible or delicate; both the powers of the mind and the very
senses being wonderfully purified. Sometimes I was surprised to find
that there appeared not one selfish thought. The imagination, formerly
so restless, now no more troubled me. I had no more perplexity or
uneasy reflections. The will, being perfectly dead to all its own
appetites, was become void of every human inclination, both natural and
spiritual, and only inclined to whatever God pleased, and to whatever
manner He pleased. This vastness or enlargedness, which is not bounded
by anything, however plain or simple it may be, increases every day. My
soul in partaking of the qualities of her Spouse seems also to partake
of His immensity. My prayer was in an openness and singleness
inconceivable. I was, as it were, borne up on high, out of myself. I
believe God was pleased to bless me with this experience. At the
beginning of the new life, He made me comprehend, for the good of other
souls, the simplicity and desirableness of this passage of the soul
into God.

When I went to confess, I felt su