Till she was able to say to them
all that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken such and such
things within her. And hence arises what I may call the quite
extraordinary purity and spirituality of her life of prayer. 'Defecate'
is Goodwin's favourite and constant word for the purest, the most rapt,
the most adoring, and the most spiritual prayer. 'I have known men'--it
must have been himself--'who came to God for nothing else but just to
come to Him, they so loved Him. They scorned to soil Him and themselves
with any other errand than just purely to be alone with Him in His
presence. Friendship is best kept up, even among men, by frequent
visits; and the more free and defecate those frequent visits are, and the
less occasioned by business, or necessity, or custom they are, the more
friendly and welcome they are.' Now, I have sometimes wondered what took
Teresa so often, and kept her so long, alone with God. Till I remembered
Goodwin's classical passages about defecated prayer, and understood
something of what is involved and what is to be experienced in pure and
immediate communion with God.
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