given to prayer, I should have gone on falling and rising till I
tumbled into hell. I had many friends to help me to fall; but as
to rising again, I was so much left to myself, that I wonder now
I was not always on the ground. I praise God for His mercy; for
it was He only Who stretched out His hand to me. May He be
blessed for ever! Amen.


1. See Way of Perfection, ch. xl.; but ch. xxvii. of the
former editions.

2. See Relation, i. section 18.

3. A.D. 1537, when the Saint was twenty-two years old (Bouix).
This passage, therefore, must he one of the additions to the
second Life; for the first was written in 1562, twenty-five years
only after the vision.

4. See ch. xxvii. section 3.

5. In the parlour of the monastery of the Incarnation, Avila, a
painting of this is preserved to this day (De la Fuente).

6. Ch. vi. section 4.

7. See Inner Fortress, v. iii. section 1.

8. Ch. i. section i.

9. Ch. xix. sections 9, 17.