“I wish,” said he, in another place, “that God would declare to us his most holy will, concerning the ministries and countries where I may best employ my labours for his glory.  I am ready, by his grace, to execute those things which he makes me understand to be most pleasing to him, of whatsoever nature they may be; and, undoubtedly, he has admirable means of signifying his good pleasure to us; such as are our inward sentiments and heavenly illuminations, which leave no remaining scruple concerning the place to which he has designed us, nor what we are to undertake for his service.  For we are like travellers, not fixed to any country through which we pass.  It is our duty to be prepared to fly from one region to another, or rather into opposite regions, where the voice of heaven shall please to call us.  East and west, north and south, are all indifferent to me, provided I may have an opportunity of advancing the glory of our Lord.”

He says elsewhere, “I could wish, that you had ever in your mind this meditation, that a ready and obedient will, which is entirely devoted to God’s service, is a more pleasing sacrifice to the Divine Majesty, than all the pomp and glitter of our noisy actions, without the interior disposition.”

Being thoroughly convinced that the perfection of the creature consists in willing nothing but the will of the Creator, he spoke incessantly of God’s good pleasure, and concluded almost all his letters with his desires of knowing and fulfilling it.  He sacrificed all to that principle; even his ardent wishes to die for Jesus by the hands of the barbarians:  for though he breathed after martyrdom, he well understood that the tender of our life is not acceptable to God, when he requires it not; and he was more fearful of displeasing him, than desirous of being a martyr for him.  So that he died satisfied, when he expired in a poor cabin of a natural death, though he was at that very time on the point of carrying the faith into the kingdom of China:  And it may be therefore said, that he sacrificed not only his own glory, but even that of Jesus Christ, to the good pleasure of God Almighty.

A man so submissive to the orders of heaven, could not possibly want submission in regard of his superior, who was to him in the place of God.  He had for Father Ignatius, general of the Society of Jesus, a veneration and reverence, mixed with tenderness, which surpass imagination.  He himself has expressed some part of his thoughts on that subject, and we cannot read them without being edified.  In one of his letters, which begins in this manner, “My only dear Father, in the bowels of Jesus Christ;” he says at the conclusion, “Father of my soul, for whom I have a most profound respect, I write this to you upon my knees, as if you were present, and that I beheld you with my eyes.”  It was his custom to write to him in that posture; so high was the place which Ignatius held within his heart.