CHAPTER 11.

STABILITY, EXPERIENCES, ELEVATION, EXTREME PURITY, AND PEACE OF THE SOUL IN THE CONDITION OF ABANDONMENT — ^ALL IS PURELY GOD TO IT — FOR ITS LOST LIBERTY IT FINDS THAT OF GOD — STATE IN WHICH ALL IS DIVINELY SURE, EQUAL, AND INDIFFERENT.

HTHE soul having attained a divine state, is, as I have already said, an immovable rock, proof against all blows or shocks, unless it be when the Lord desires it to do something contrary to custom ; then, if it does not yield to His first promptings, it has to suffer the pain of a constraint to which it can offer no resistance, and is compelled by a violence, which cannot be explained, to obey His will.

It is impossible to tell the strange proofs to which God subjects the hearts which are perfectly aban-doned, and which offer no resistance to Him in any-thing ; neither, if I could speak of them, should 1 be understood. All that I can say is, that He does not