The Mind’s Ascent to God by a Ladder of Created ThingsIntroduction

Holy Scripture doth often admonish us to seek

God diligently, for although God is not far from any one of us, since, as the Apostle says, ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; 2 yet we are far from God, so that unless we daily dispose our hearts to ascend, and make for ourselves a ladder into heaven and seek God very earnestly, we shall, like the prodigal son, come to feed swine in a land far off from our Father and our home.3 And to explain shortly how these states can exist together, to wit, that God is not far from us, because he always seeth us and before his eyes all things are present: he always thinketh of us, because he careth for us :4 he always toucheth us because he beareth along all things by the Word of his power:5 but we are far from God, because we do not see him and have no power to see him, for he dwelleth ‘in the light which no man can approach unto,’® and we are ‘not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves’;7 much less are we able to touch him and cleave to him with pious affection

1 e.g. Deut. iv.29; 1 Chron. xvi. 11; Ps. lxix. 33, cv. 4; Is. lv. 6. unless his right hand receive us and draw us unto himself. And therefore when David said, ‘My soul hangeth upon thee,’ he added immediately, ‘Thy right hand hath upholden me.’! And we are far from God, not only because we cannot see him, but also because being busied about temporal goods with which we are encompassed and overwhelmed, we very easily forget God and with a cold heart we scarce even with our lips pronounce his Name in psalms and sacred prayers. And so this is the cause why the Holy Ghost in the Holy Scriptures, as we were saying even now, doth so often admonish us to seek God.

* Seek ye after God and your soul shall live’;? and ‘Seek his face evermore’;3 and ‘The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him’;4 and ‘Seek ye the Lord while he may be found’;5 and ‘In simplicity of heart seek him’; ® and ‘If thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart.’ 7

But although this diligence in seeking God should be the duty of all the faithful, yet it most properly appertains to the prelates of the Church, as Saint Augustine, Saint Gregory, Saint Bernard, and other holy fathers witness. For they plainly write that a bishop cannot profit himself or others unless he diligently apply himself to meditation on divine things and the renewing of his own mind. Saint Augustine in his book The City of God saith: ‘The love of truth requireth a holy retiredness, and the necessity of charity a just employment, which if it be not imposed upon us we ought not to seek it, but betake ourselves wholly to the holy inquest of truth: but if we be called forth into a place the law and need of charity bindeth us to undertake it. Yet may we not for all this give over our first resolutions, lest we lose the sweetness of

T Po. Initi..9g. 7 Rev Aig. Fgue od PExcvige 4 Team. ideal. that, and be surcharged with the weight of the other.’! And the same Saint Augustine, speaking in his Confessions of himself and of his frequent meditation on God by the consideration of creatures, saith: ‘I often do this; it delights me, and when I can be spared from my necessary business I have recourse unto this pleasure.’ Saint Gregory in his book on the pastoral charge saith: ‘Let a prelate be equal unto any in compassion and before all in contemplation, that through the tenderness of piety he may take over the infirmities of others unto himself and by the height of contemplation in seeking after things invisible he may overpass himself’;3 and, Saint Gregory in the same connection brings forward the examples of Moses and of Christ. For Moses often went into the tabernacle and again came out. He went in, that he might contemplate the hidden things of God; he came out, that he might bear the infirmities of his neighbours. And Christ himself in the daytime by preaching and working miracles sought the salvation of those around him, but the nights he passed without sleep in prayer and contemplation. ‘He continued all night in prayer to God,’ writes Saint Luke.4 Many things also like unto these may be read in the last chapter of the same book. Moreover, Saint Bernard, in order to admonish Pope Eugenius, formerly his pupil, not to give himself wholly to action, but sometime every day to recollect himself and to enjoy holy rest and heavenly food, wrote five books Of Considerations in which he not only exhorts him unto the daily meditation on divine things, but also plainly teaches him the manner and method of meditation and how by meditation to ascend, and by ascension to unite himself to God in understanding and affection. Neither does he admit that excuse which he might have put forward and which many do nowadays offer: to wit, that the over many businesses wherewith the office of a bishop is accompanied would not afford him leisure enough to apply himself unto meditation on divine things. For none truly ought to give himself so wholly to outward businesses, but that he may take some time to strengthen his body with meat and drink and sleep. And if the body without doubt require refection and rest, with how much more reason doth the soul require her meat and sleep, and it is not possible for her amidst the encumbrances of so many important affairs, without this provision, to fulfil her office rightly. But the meat of the soul is prayer, and her sleep is contemplation, by the which ladders are framed in the heart, that the God of gods may be seen in Sion.!

But we mortal men, as_it seemeth, can find no other ladder whereby to ascend unto God, than. the works of God: for those who by the singular gift.. have by another way become admitted into Parades to hear God’s secrets which it is not lawful for man to utter, are not said to have ascended, but to have been rapt.; and this Saint Paul plainly confesses of himself, ~ when he says, ‘I was caught up into Paradise and heard many unspeakable ‘words, which. it is not lawful: for a man to utter.’? And that a man may by the works of God, that is by creatures, ascend unto the knowledge and love of the Creator, the book of Wisdom doth teach3 and the Apostle to the Romans:4 and reason itself doth sufficiently confirm it, since the efficient cause may be known by the effects, and the pattern by the image: and there can be no doubt that all creatures are the works of God and that man and the angels are not only his works, but also his images, as the Scriptures teach us.

I therefore, moved by these reasons, and having some small degree of leisure from public affairs and

Ps, lxxxiv.7. + 2 Cor. xii.4. 3 Wisd. xiii, 4 Rom. i. 19. admonished by the example of Saint Bonaventura, who in a like time of leisure wrote a book entitled The Pilgrimage of the Mind to God, have essayed from the contemplation of creatures to make a ladder, by which we may in some sort ascend to God. And I have divided it into fifteen steps after the pattern of the fifteen steps of ascent unto the temple of Solomon, and of the fifteen psalms which are called Gradual, or Songs of Degrees.