Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

16th Saturday after Trinity

Christ went before by nature, and we come after by grace.  His nature is more worthy than grace, and grace is more worthy than our nature.  And in this he letteth us know fully that we may on no wise follow him to the mount of perfection, as it ought to be in the use of this work, unless we be stirred and led by grace; and that is full truth.

The Epistle of Privy Counsel.

All truth is shadow except the last truth.  But all truth is substance in its own place, though it be but a shadow in another place.  And the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance.

Isaac Pennington.

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

God which moveth mere natural agents as an efficient only, doth likewise move intellectual creatures, and especially his holy angels: for beholding the face of God, in admiration of so great excellency they all adore him; and being rapt with the love of his beauty, they cleave inseparably for ever unto him.  Desire to resemble him in goodness maketh them unweariable and even unsatiable in their longing to do by all means all manner good unto all the creatures of God, but especially unto the children of men: in the countenance of whose nature, looking downward, they behold themselves beneath themselves; even as upward, in God, beneath whom themselves are, they see that character which is nowhere but in themselves and us resembled.

Richard Hooker: Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

The Cause of all is not one, as one among many, but before every one and every multitude, and it determines every one and every multitude.

Dionysius the Areopagite: On The Divine Names.

16th Friday after Trinity

Bees cannot stay in place where there are echoes or reboundings of voices; nor can the Holy Ghost remain in a house where there are a clamour, strife, contradictions and altercations.

St. Francis de Sales: The Devout Life.

The Truths of God are connatural to the soul of man, and the soul of man makes no more resistance to them than the air does to light.

Benjamin Whichcote: Aphorisms.

16th Thursday after Trinity

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favour.

Francis Bacon: Essays; Of Adversity.

If thou has a woe tell it not to the weakling, Tell it to thy saddle-bow and ride singing forth.

Proverbs of King Alfred.

"Thou thyself," he says, "must go through Christ's whole journey, and enter wholly into his process."

Jakob Boehme: True Repentance.

God glorifies in Himself God glorified in the Son of man.

St. Hilary of Poitiers, quoted in Aquinas: Catena Aurea.