Amid the present darkness and distress this little book may help to
minister consolation and inspire drooping hearts with courage, by
reminding them that suffering is the Church's heritage, the very
condition of her well-being, nay, her highest privilege, inasmuch
as it renders her most like to her Divine Spouse and is the pledge
and surety of her triumphs. As of the Lord Himself (Luke 24:26), so
of His Church it may be truly said that she ought to suffer these
things and so to enter into her glory. Her most signal successes
have been preceded, and indeed attended, by humiliations and
apparent failures, and have been accomplished, like all the great
designs of God, under the heavy weight of the Cross. It is not,
however, of exterior trials and sufferings that the author
principally treats, or of those obvious temptations to which all
Christians are exposed, but of those deep interior miseries, those
subtle devices of self-love, those illusions and preternatural
assaults of the evil one, which, in some form or other, they must
be prepared to encounter who strive to pursue the arduous paths of
spiritual perfection. And if testimony were wanted to the high
character and the great practical usefulness of the work, it might
be sufficient to cite the words of the doctors in theology who were
commissioned to examine and report upon its contents previous to
its publication in the year 1671. From the terms in which their
approbation is couched, it will be seen that the doctrine which the
treatise enforces, as it is necessary for all times, so is
particularly applicable to our own, when men who profess to
represent the highest intellects of this boasted age of progress
are inviting Christian people to exchange the truths of divine
faith and the life-giving lessons of the Cross for the base,
uncertain tenets of a sensual philosophy and of a false and godless
science. " It is a book," say they, " as full of instruction for
souls which desire to rise to perfection as for those whose office
it is to direct them on their way. We have found in it a teaching
all divine, which the light of faith alone is capable of rendering
intelligible to those who read it, and which divine love alone can
enable them to relish. It is a knowledge which God hides from
worldlings who allow themselves to be guided by their senses, and
from men of mundane policy who regulate their actions by the sole
light of human reason. This science of the Cross, unhappily, is
ignored, neglected, or despised by the greater part of men,
comprising even a number of the learned, who, devoting all their
life to the study of the speculative sciences, pay no regard to the
science and the maxims of Jesus Crucified, ' in whom' nevertheless
' are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge' (Col. 2:3). It
may be hoped," they add, " that the reading of this book will
inspire those who peruse it with the desire of dying wholly to
themselves and following Jesus Christ, seeing that it is replete
with the unction of the Spirit of God."
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