Spirit of God from the human and natural spirit.
Although they are left just as I wrote them, yet I am ready, if
ordered, to adjust them according to my present light.

Didst thou not, O my God, turn me a hundred ways, to prove whether I
was without any reserve, through every kind of trial, or whether I had
not yet some little interest for myself? My soul became hereby readily
too pliable to every discovery of the divine will, and whatever kind of
humiliations attended me to counterbalance my Lord's favors, till
everything, high or low, was rendered alike to me.

Methinks the Lord acts with His dearest friends as the sea with its
waves. Sometimes it pushes them against the rocks where they break in
pieces, sometimes it rolls them on the sand, or dashes them on the
mire, then instantly it retakes them into the depths of its own bosom,
where they are absorbed with the same rapidity that they were first
ejected. Even among the good the far greater part are souls only of
mercy; surely that is well; but to appertain to divine justice, oh, how
rare and yet how great! Mercy is all distributive in favor of the
creature, but justice destroys everything of the creature, without
sparing anything.

The lady, who was my particular friend, began to conceive some jealousy
on the applause given me, God so permitting if for the farther
purification of her soul, through this weakness, and the pain it caused
her. Also some confessors began to be uneasy, saying that it was none
of my business to invade their province, and to meddle in the helps of
souls; that there were some of the penitents which had a great
affection for me. It was easy for me to observe the difference between
those confessors who, in their conducting of souls, seek nothing but
God, and those who seek themselves therein. The first came to see me,
and rejoiced greatly at the grace of God bestowed on their penitents,
without fixing their attention on the instrument. The others, on the
contrary, tried underhand to stir up the town against me. I saw that
they would be in the right to oppose me, if I had intruded of myself;
but I could do nothing but what the Lord made me do. At times there
came some to dispute and oppose me. Two friars came, one of them a man
of profound learning and a great preacher. They came separately, after
having studied a number of difficult things to propose to me. Though
they were matters far out of my reach, the Lord made me answer as
justly as