CHAPTER XIX.

AFTER THE PRECEDING WAYS, THERE REMAINS AN AFTER WAY, PREPARATORY TO DIVINE UNION, IN WHICH WIS-DOM AND JUSTICE MAKE THE PASSIVE PURIFICATION OF THE SOUL, ALL WHICH IS TREATED IN DETAIL IN THE FOLLOWING TREATISE, ENTITLED ** SPIRITUAL TORRENTS."

T T is impossible to attain divine union by the way of meditation alone, or even by the afifections, or by any luminous or understood prayer. There are several reasons. These are the principal.

First, according to Scripture, " No man shall see God and live" (Exod. xxxiii. 20). Now all discursive exercises of prayer, or even of aciwe contemplation^ regarded as an end, and not as a preparation for the passive^ are exercises of life by which we cannot see God, that is, become united to Him. All that is of man, and of his own industry, however noble and elevated it may be, must die.

St John tells us that " there was silence in heaven."