mass. Lest, however, he should he deprived of the precious body of Jesus Christ, he daily received it from the hand of another; and having lived two years in this languishing condition, at length, upon the 21st of February, in the year 1616, in a good old age, full of merits, he happily rested in our Lord in peace. His death was not less universally regretted than his sanctity was esteemed. He was a great lover of retirement, an exact observer of rules, and had a very great zeal for the salvation of souls ; his self-abnegation was such that in all things he had but God in view. The time in which he was not engaged in the discharge of other indispensable duties, he spent in prayer and spiritual reading, adding to these pious exercises very frequent austerities, which he continued to the end of his life ; and when it was represented to him that he could not practise such penances without shortening his days, he answered : " An unmortified religious man is already dead." Behold, in short, the life of this most excellent master of a spiritual life ; but the reading his works will still give you a better knowledge of him, for there was nothing he proposed to others to practise, of which he gave not first an example in himself; his life being nothing else than' a constant practice of what in his writings he had taught others.
