hose who love our divine Redeemer, who was
born, lived, and died, in extreme poverty. Few persons ever appeared
to be more perfectly dead to the world than this holy man. A certain
nobleman, who was showing him his curious gardens, canals, and
buildings, expressed his surprise to see that no beauties and
wonders of art and nature could fix his attention or raise his
curiosity. The holy man replied, "I trust confess that nothing of
this kind gives me any satisfaction because my heart takes no
pleasure in them." This holy man was so entirely possessed with God,
and filled with the love of invisible things, as to loathe all
earthly things, which seemed not to have a direct and immediate
tendency to them. He preached at Seville, Cordova, Granada, Baeza,
and over the whole country of Andalusia. By his discourses and
instructions, St. John of God, St. Francis of Borgia, St. Teresa,
Lewis of Granada, and many others, were moved, and assisted to lay
the deep foundation of perfect virtue to which the divine grace
raised them. Many noblemen and ladies were directed by him in the
paths of Christian perfection, particularly the Countess of Feria
and the Marchioness of Pliego, whose conduct, first in a married
state, and afterwards in holy widowhood, affords most edifying
instances of heroic practices and sentiments of all virtues. This
great servant of God taught souls to renounce and cast away that
false liberty by which they are the worst of slaves under the
tyranny of their passions, and to take up the sweet chains of the
divine love which gives men a true sovereignty, not only over all
other created things, but also over themselves. He lays down in his
works the rules by which he conducted so many to perfect virtue,
teaching us that we must learn to know both God and ourselves, not
by the lying glass of self-love, but by the clear beam of truth:
ourselves, that we may see the depth of our miseries, and fly with
all our might from the cause thereof, which is our pride, and other
sins: God, that we may always tremble before his infinite majesty,
may believe his unerring truth, may hope for a share in his
inexhausted mercy, and may vehemently love that incomprehensible
abyss of goodness and charity. These lessons he lays down with
particular advice how to subside our passions. In his treatise on