Currently, I am reading his book "The Sinner's Guide", and I will post excerpts from it when I come across some material that I believe to be of benefit to readers. And what follows are just that: excerpts. If you want to read the book in its entirety, then I strongly recommend that you do so. Included is a link to Saint Benedict Press at the bottom of the post. They are publishers of high-quality Catholic classics, and they publish a very beautiful edition of this ascetical and mystical work.
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| Louis of Granada |
The First Motive Which Obliges Us to Practice Virtue and to Serve God:
His Being in itself, and the excellence of His Perfections:
Two things, Christian reader, particularly excite the will of man to good. A principle of justice is one, the other the profit we may derive therefrom. All wise men, therefore, agree that justice and profit are the two most powerful inducements to move our wills to any undertaking. Now, though men seek profit more frequently than justice, yet justice is in itself more powerful; for, as Aristotle teaches, no worldly advantage can equal the justice of virtue, nor is any loss so great that a wise man should not suffer it rather than yield to vice.
God being essentially goodness and beauty, there is nothing more pleasing to Him than virtue, nothing He more earnestly requires. Let us first consider upon what grounds God demands this tribute from us.
The first, the greatest, and the most inexplicable is the very essence of God, embracing His infinite majesty, goodness, beauty, mercy, justice, wisdom, omnipotence, excellence, fidelity, immutability, sweetness, truth, beatitude, and all the inexhaustible riches and perfections which are contained in the Divine Being.
All of these are so great that if the whole world, according to Saint Augustine, were full of books, if the sea were turned to ink, and every creature employed to writing, the books would be filled, the sea would be drained, and the writers would be exhausted before any of His perfections could be adequately expressed. Augustine adds, "Were any man created with a heart as large and capacious as all men together, and if he were enabled by extraordinary light to apprehend one of the Divine Attributes, his joy and delight would be such that, unless supported by special assistance from God, he could not endure them"
All beings are in His power; He disposes of them as He wills. It is He who propels the heavenly bodies, commands the winds, changes the seasons, guides the elements, distributes the waters, controls the stars, creates all things; it is He, in fine, who, as King and Lord of the universe, maintains and nourishes all creatures.
To lead us to a knowledge of God, St. Dionysius teaches us first to turn our eyes from the qualities or perfections of creatures, lest we be tempted to measure by them the perfections of the Creator. Then, turning from things of the earth, he raises our souls to the contemplation of a Being above all beings, a Substance above all substances, a Light above all lights—rather a Light before which all light is darkness—Beauty above all beauties and before which all other beauty is deformity. This is what we are taught by the cloud into which Moses entered to converse with God, and which shut out from his senses all which was not God. And the action of Elias, covering his face with his cloak when he saw the glory of God passing before him, is a lively expression of the same sentiment. Therefore, to contemplate the glory of God, man must close his eyes to earthly things, which bear no proportion to this supreme Being.
https://www.tanbooks.com/index.php/sinners-guide-1888.html
