CHAPTER III.

Notes on that which is to follow.
Proficients, then, experienced during the past time these sweet communications, in order that the sensual ^ part of the soul, allured and attracted by the spiritual sweetness overflowing from the spirit, may be united and made one with the spiritual part ; both parts eating the same spiritual food, each in its own way, off the same dish of their one being, that, thus in a certain way become one and concordant, they might be prepared for the sufferings of the sharp and rough purgation of the spirit which is before them. In that purgation the two parts of the soul, the spiritual and the sensual, are to be wholly purified, for neither of them can be perfectly purified without the other, and the purgation of sense is then effectual when that of the spirit com- mences in earnest.
T 2. Hence it is that the night of sense may and should I be called a certain re-formation and bridling of desire,
* Os. ii., 20 .
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CHAP. III.] OF THE SOUL.
rather than purgation, because all the imperfections and disorders of the sensual part having their strength and roots in the mind, can never be wholly purged away until the evil habits, rebelliousness and perverseness of the mind are corrected. Therefore, in this night ensuing, both parts of the soul are purified together : this is the end for which it was necessary to have passed through the re-formation of the first night, and to have attained to that tranquillity which is its fruit, in order that sense and spirit, made one, may both be purified and suffeit together with the greater courage, most necessary for soL violent and sharp a purgation.* For if the weakness of the lower part be not redressed, and if it have acquired no courage in God, in the sweet communions with Him subsequently enjoyed, nature would have been unpre- pared and without strength for the trials of this night.
3. The intercourse of proficients with God is, however, still most mean, because the gold of the spirit is not purified and refined. They think, therefore, and speak of Him as children, and their feelings are those of children, as described by the Apostle : ‘ When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ; '* because they have not reached perfection, which is union with God in love. But in the state of union, having grown to manhood, they do great things in spirit — all their actions and all their faculties being
* 1 Cor. xiii. 11.
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now rather divine than human, as I shall hereafter explain* — for God is stripping them of the old man, and clothing them with the new, as it is written : * Put on the new man, who is created according to God ; 't and again, ‘ Be reformed in the newness of your mind/+
4. He now denudes the faculties, the affections, and feelings, spiritual and sensual, interior and exterior, leaving the understanding in darkness, the will dry, the memory empty, the affections of the soul in the deepest affliction, bitterness, and distress ; withholding from it the former sweetness it had in spiritual things, in order that this privation may be one of the principles, of which the mind has need, that the spiritual form of the spirit, which is the union of love, may enter into it and be one with it.
5. All this our Lord effects in the soul by means of contemplation, pure and dark, as it is described by it in the first stanza. That stanza, though explained in the beginning of the night of sense, the soul understands it principally of this second night of the spirit, because that is the chief part of the purification of the soul. I shall, therefore, apply it in this sense, and explain it here again.
* Ch. iv. § 2. f Ephes* iv. 24. J Rom. xii. 2.
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OF THE SOUL.
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