De Contemptu Mundi

THEY are happily linked in the bond of blood who are held together in the bond of love. And for this gift - which is descended to us from the father of lights, - both you and myself may greatly rejoice: whom love as well as kindred hath united, and those two fair obligations have betrothed in one entire affection. One of them we took from the fathers of the flesh, and the other from our private dispositions. This double tie by which - love bounding us on the one side, and blood on the other, - we are mutually knit together, hath enforced me to enlarge myself in this Epistle with some excess more then usual: that I might commend unto your consideration the cause of your own soul, and assert the work of our profession to be that supreme beatitude which is only true, and capable of those things which are eternal.

And indeed your own pious propension is not repugnant of holy living, who already by a forward felicity of manners have in some points prevented, and met with many things which are taught unto us by sacred learning: so that by the means of provident and discrete Nature, you seem unto me to have seized upon many duties of religion; as the concessions and indulgencies of our good God towards you, whose gift it is, that the divine wisdom should partly find in you, and partly confer upon you the riches of His kingdom.