s. In the fiftieth year of his age he began to be
afflicted with the stone, frequent fevers, and a complication of
other painful disorders: under the sharpest pains he used often to
repeat this prayer, "Lord. increase my sufferings, but give me also
patience." Once, in a fit of exquisite pain, he begged our Redeemer
to assuage it: and that instant he found it totally removed, and he
fell into a gentle slumber. He afterwards reproached himself as
guilty of pusillanimity. It is not to be expressed how much he
suffered from sickness during the seventeen last years of his life.
He died with great tranquillity and devotion, on the 10th of May,
1569. The venerable John of Avila was a man powerful in words and
works, a prodigy of penance, the glory of the priesthood, the
edification of the church by his virtues, its support by his zeal,
its oracle by his doctrine. A profound and universal genius, a
prudent and upright director, a celebrated preacher, the apostle of
Andalusia, a man revered by all Spain, known to the whole Christian
world. A man of such sanctity and authority, that princes adopted
his decisions, the learned were improved by his enlightened
knowledge, and St. Teresa regarded him as her patron and protector,
consulted him as her master, and followed him as her guide and
model. See the edifying life of the venerable John of Avila, written
by F. Lewis of Granada; also by Lewis Munnoz: and the abstract
prefixed by Arnauld d' Andilly to the French edition of his works in
folio, at Paris, in 1673.

ST. FELIX, B.C.

HE was a holy Burgundian priest, who converted and baptized Sigebert,
prince of the East-Angles, during his exile in France, whither he was
forced to retire, to secure himself from the insidious practices of his
relations. Sigebert being called home to the crown of his ancestors,
invited out of France his spiritual father St. Felix, to assist him in
bringing over his idolatrous subjects to the Christian faith: these were
the inhabitants of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire. Our saint being
ordained bishop by Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, and deputed by
him to preach to the East-Angles, was surprisingly successful in his
undertaking, and made almost a thorough conversion of that country. The
most learned and most Christian king, Sigebert, as he is styled by Bede,
concurred with him in all things, and founded