Spiritual Torrents

Spiritual Torrents is a work by Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon, translated from the Paris Edition of 1790 by A. W. Marston. The preface says some apology is perhaps needed when a Protestant thus brings before Protestant readers the works of a consistent Roman Catholic author. The text says: let us look, with divine aid, at these three classes of persons, under the three figures that the writer has proposed.

Chapter II is headed Of the First Way, Which Is Active, and of Meditation, and the text describes the first class of souls as those who, after their conversion, give themselves up to meditation, or even to works of charity. A section is headed Third Degree of the Spoliation of the Soul, which concerns its beauty, or the perceptible action of divine virtue. The text says it is a terrible thing for a soul to be thus stripped of the gifts and graces of God. The text says God, being our original source, has created us with a nature fit to be united, transformed, and made one with Himself.