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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41099	The maxims of the saints explained, concerning the interiour life by the Lord Arch-bishop of Cambray &c. ; to which are added, Thirty-four articles by the Lord Arch-Bishop of Paris, the Bishops of Meaux and Chartres, (that occasioned this book), also their declaration upon it ; together with the French-King's and the Arch-Bishop of Cambray's letters to the Pope upon the same subject.; Explication des maximes des saints sur la vie interieure. English	Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe-, 1651-1715.; Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe-, 1651-1715. Correspondence.; Louis XIV, King of France, 1638-1715. Correspondence.; Noailles, Louis-Antoine de, 1651-1729.; Godet des Marais, Paul, 1647-1709.; Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 1627-1704. Instruction sur les estats d'oraison, où sont exposées les erreurs des faux mystiques de nos jours.	1698 (1698)	Wing F675; ESTC R6318	100,920	267

review of his actions and the Gifts he hath received in order to feed self-love to seek out a common support or to take up too much with himself 18. Mortifications are agreeable to a Christian in every state and are often necessary and to make the same separate from the duty of Believers under a pretence of perfection is openly to condemn St. Paul and to presuppose an Erroneous and Heretical Doctrine 29. Continual Prayer consists not in one perpetual act which is supposed to be without interruption and which also ought never to be repeated but in a disposition and habitual and perpetual preparation to do nothing that is displeasing unto God and to do every thing that is pleasing to him The contrary Proposition that would exclude in any condition whatsoever yea in a state which is perfect all pluralities and succession of acts is erroneous and opposite to the Tradition of all the Saints 20. There are no Apostolick Traditions but those that are acknowledged for such by the whole Church and the Authority whereof is decided by the Councils of Trent the contrary proposition is Erroneous and pretendedly secret Apostolical Traditions would be a Snare to the Faithful and a way to introduce all manner of evil Doctrines 21. Dilatory and quiet Prayer or such as is attended with the simple presence of God and all other extraordinary Prayers not excluding passive ones approved of by St. Francis de Sales and other spiritual ones received by the whole Church are not to be rejected nor suspected without great rashness and they do not hinder a man from being always disposed to produce all the forementioned acts in convenient time but to reduce them to implicit or apparent acts in favour of the most perfect under pretence that the love of God ties them all up to a certain method is to elude the obligation and to destroy that distinction which is revealed by God 22. Without these extraordinary Prayers one may become a very great Saint and attain to Christian Perfection 23. To reduce the inward state and purification of the Soul to these extraordinary Prayers is a manifest Error 24. It 's alike dangerous to exclude the state of Contemplation the Attributes the three Divine Persons in the Trinity and the Mysteries of the Incarnation of the Son of God and more especially that of the Cross and of the Resurrection and all those things that are seen no otherwise than by Faith are the Object of a Christians Contemplation 25. It s not allowable for a Christian under pretence of passive or other extraordinary Prayer to expect that God in the Conduct as well of the Spiritual as temporal Life should determin him to every action by way of particular inspiration and the contrary leads men to Illusions carelesness and the tempting of God 26. Laying aside the circumstance and moments of Prophetical or extraordinary inspiration the true submission which every Christian Soul tho' perfect owes to God consists in serving him with the natural and supernatural Light as he received the same and according to the Rules of Christian prudence in presupposing always that God directs all things in the Course of his Providence and that he is the Author of every good Counsel 27. We ought not to tye up the gift of Prophecy and much less the Apostolical state to a certain state of perfection and Prayer and to do so is to bring in an Illusion rashness and Error 28. The extraordinary ways and marks which those that have been approved Spiritualists have given concerning themselves are very rare and subject to the Examination of Bishops Ecclesiastical Superiors and Doctors who are to judge of the same not so much according to Experiences as according to the immutable Rules of the Scriptures and of Tradition and to teach and practice the contrary is to shake off the Yoke of Obedience that is due to the Church 29. If there is or if there has been in any part of the World a small number of chosen ones whom God by an extraordinary and particular way of prevention best known to himself stirs up every moment in such a manner to all those actions that are essential to Christianity and to other good works whereof there was no necessity of giving them any prescriptions to excite them thereunto we will leave them to the judgment of the Almighty and without avowing the like states we do only make this practical Observation that there is nothing so dangerous nor so subject to Illusion as to guide Souls in such a manner as if they had already attained thereto and that however it is not in these sort of preventions that Christian perfection doth consist 30. In all the above named Articles as to what regards Concupiscence imperfections and principally sin our meaning is not for the honour of our Lord to take in the Holy Virgin his Mother 31. As for those Souls whom God is pleased to exercise with Tryals Job who is a pattern for such teaches them to benefit themselves by lucid intervals in order to produce the most excellent acts of Faith Hope and Love The Spiritualists teach them to find these in the top or highest part of the Soul They are not therefore to be allowed to acquiesce in their apparent damnation but their directors with St. Francis de Sales are to assure them that God will never forsake them 32. It 's well in every condition and especially in this same to adore the vindictive Justice of God never to wish the exercise of the same upon our selves in all its rigour seeing that even one of the effects of this rigour is to deprive us of Love Christian Abandoning is to cast all our Cares upon God to hope in his goodness for our salvation and as St. Augustine after St. Cyprian teaches us to attribute all to him ut totum detur Deo 33. Troubled and truly humbled Souls may also be inspired with a submission and agreement to the Will of God tho' even by a very false supposition instead of the eternal good which he hath promised the Just he would detain them by virtue of his own good pleasure in eternal torments and this without being deprived at the same time of his Grace and Love which is an act of perfect resignation or self-abandoning and of a pure love practised by the Saints and which may be useful with that particular grace of God to Souls truly perfect without derogating from the Obligation of the other fore-mentioned Acts which are essential to Christianity 34. Over and above which it is certain that the Perfect and such as are Novices or beginners ought to be conducted respectively by different ways and that the former have a more full and deeper insight into Christian Truths than the other THE French King's LETTER TO THE POPE Most Holy Father THE Book written by the Archbishop of Cambray having for some Months past made much noise in the Church within my Kingdom I caused the same

Spirit of God does inspire them thus upon every occasion that this inspiration is nothing but that which is common to all Just Souls and which never exempts them in the least from the whole extent of the written Law that this inspiration is only stronger and more special in Souls elevated to pure love than in those who are acted only by interested love because God communicates himself more to the perfect than to the imperfect So when some mystical Saints have admitted into holy indifference inspired desires and rejected the others we must take heed not to think that they would exclude the desires and the other acts commanded by the written Law and admit none but those that are extraordinarily inspired This would be a Blasphemy against the Law and raise above it a Phantastical inspiration The desires and other inspired acts mentioned by those Mysticks are either those commanded by the Law or those approved by the Counsels and which are formed in an indifferent and disinterested Soul by the inspiration of ever preventing grace without the mixture of any interested eagerness to prevent grace So that all is reduced to the letter of the Law and to the preventing grace of pure love to which the Soul does co-operate without preventing it To Speak thus is to explain the true sense of good mystical persons 't is to take away all equivocations which may seduce the one and offend the other 't is to precaution Souls against whatsoever is suspected to be illusive it is to keep up the form of Sound Words as S. Paul does recommend it 2 Tim. C. I. V. 13. VII False SOuls dwelling in an holy indifference have no regard for any though a disinterested desire which the written Law obliges them to form They ought to desire nothing more but those things which a miraculous or extraordinary inspiration moveth them to wish without any dependency from the Law they are acted and moved by God and taught by him in every thing so that God alone desireth in them and for them and they are in no need to co-operate with it by their free will Their holy indifference eminently containing all desires dispenseth with them from forming ever any Their inspiration is their only rule To Speak at this rate is to elude all Counsels under pretence of fulfilling them in a most eminent manner it is to establish in the Church a sect of impious Fanaticks 't is to forget that Christ Jesus came upon the Earth not to dispense with the Law or to lessen the authority of it but on the contrary to fullfill and perfect it so that Heaven and Earth shall pass away before the Words of our Saviour pronounced for the confirmation of the Law shall pass Finally it is to contradict grosly all the best mystical Writers and pull down from top to bottom their whole system of pure Faith manifestly incompatible with all miraculous or extraordinary inspiration which a Soul would voluntarily follow as her rule and support for dispensing with the fulfilling the Law VIII ARTICLE True HOly indifference which is never any other but the disinterest of love becometh in the most extream tryals what the holy Misticks have called abandoning or giving one self up that is to say that the disinterested soul gives her self up totally and without any the least reserve to God in all her own interest but she never renounceth either love nor any of those things wherein the Glory and good pleasure of her beloved are concern'd This abandoning is nothing else but that abnegation or renounciation of ones self which Jesus Christ requires of us in the Gospel after we have forsaken all outward things This abnegation of our selves is only pointed against our self-interest and ought never to hinder that disinterested love which we owe in our selves as to our Neighbour for God's sake The extream tryals wherein this abandoning is to be exercis'd are the temptations whereby our Jealous God will purify love in hiding from it all hope for its interest even eternal These Tryals are represented by a very great number of Saints as a terrible Purgatory which may exempt from the Purgatory of the other world those Souls who suffer it with entire Fidelity Only mad and wicked Men saith Cardinal Bona will deny their belief of those sublime and secret things and despise them as False though not clear when they are attested by Men of a most venerable Virtue who speak by their own experience of God's Operations in their hearts These tryals are but for a while and the more true souls are in them to Grace by leaving themselves to be purify'd from all self-interest by Jealous love so much the shorter are these tryals 'T is ordinarily the secret resistance of the Souls to grace under specious pretences 't is their interested and eager endeavour for retaining these sensible supports wherefrom God is willing to deprive them which render their tryals both so long and so painful for God never makes his Creature suffer to make him suffer without fruit It is with a design only to purifie the Soul and to overcome her resistances Those Temptations whereby love is purify'd from all self-interest are in nothing like to other common Temptations Experienced Directors can discern them by certain tokens but nothing is more dangerous than to take the common Temptations of beginners for trials tending to the entire purification of love in the most eminent Souls This is the source of all illusion This causeth deceived Souls to fall into hideous and dreadful Vices These bitter trials are not to be suppos'd to be but in a very small number of pure and mortified Souls in whom Flesh hath been a long while already entirely brought under the Spirit and who have solidly practised all the Evangelical Virtues They ought to be docile so as never willfully to strain at any of those hard and abject things which may be commanded them They ought not to fall in love with any comfort or freedom they should be taken off from all things whatsoever and also from the way that teacheth them this freedom they should be ready for all the practises that are laid upon them they are to stick neither to their kind of Prayer nor to their Experiences nor to their Readings nor to those persons they have consulted formerly with trust and reliance One ought to have had the Experiment that their Temptations are of a different nature from the common Temptations in this that the true means to still them is not to be willing to find a known Prop to Self-interest To speak thus is word for word to repeat the Experiences of Saints as they have related them themselves 'T is at the same time to prevent those very dangerous Inconveniences one might fall into by Credulity should one admit too easily in matter of Practice these Tryals which happen but very seldom by reason that few Souls have attained that Perfection where nothing remains to be purified but some

overjoy'd at it believes himself to be already at the very gates of that City and that there is nothing now remaining but a little way and that very good for him but as he moves forwards the lengths and difficulties which he had not foreseen at first sight do proportionably increase he must be obliged to descend by Precipices into deep Vallies where he loses the sight of that City which he thought he could almost touch He must be forc'd oftentimes to creep up over sharp Rocks and 't is not without great trouble and dangers that he arrives at last at that City which he thought at first to have been so near him and so easie to come at It 's the very same thing with that Love which is entirely disinterested the first cast of the Eye discovers it in a wonderful perspective one thinks he has hold of it he supposes with himself that he is already confirmed therein or at least that there is between him and it but a short and even space but the more he advances towards it the more tedious and painful he finds the way There is nothing so dangerous for a Man as to flatter himself with this pretty Idea or Conceit and to believe that he lives in the practice of the same when it is not really so He that makes this Love to be speculative would fret himself to a Skeleton if God should put him to prove how this Love doth purifie and realize it self in the Soul In short he must have a care of believing that he hath the same in reality when he only has a view of it and is charmed with it That Soul which dares presume by a decisive reflection that he is arrived to it shews by his presumption how remote he is from it the small number of those that have reached it do not know whether they are really so and as often as they do reflect upon themselves in relation to it they are ready to believe it is not so with them when their Superiours declare the same unto them They speak of themselves as of another person in a dis-interested manner and without reflection and act with simplicity by a pure obedience according to true necessity without ever voluntarily judging or reasoning concerning their state In short tho' it be true to say that no man can set exact bounds to the operations of God in the Soul and that there is none but the Spirit of God that can sound the depths of this same Spirit yet it is also true to say that no internal perfection can allow a Christian to dispence with those real acts that are essential to the accomplishment of the whole Law and that all perfection reduces it self to this habitual state of sole and pure love which effects in these Souls with a dis-interested Peace all that which a mixt love does in others with some remains of an interested eagerness In a word there is nothing but a peculiar interest that cannot and which ought not at all to be found in the exercise of dis-interested Love but all the rest is there still in a more abundant manner than ordinarily in just Persons For us to speak with this precaution is to confine our selves within the bounds set us by our Fathers this is a Religious observance of Tradition and hereby is a relation given without any mixture of innovation of the Experiences of the Saints and the Language they have used in speaking sometimes of themselves with simplicity and pure Obedience XLV False TRansformed Souls are capable of judging themselves and others or to be assured of their internal Gifts without any dependance upon the Ministers of the Church or else direct themselves without any Character without an extraordinary Call and even with marks of an extraordinary Vocation against the express Authority of Pastors To talk in this manner is to teach an innovated Doctrine full of Prophaneness and to attack one of the most essential Articles of the Catholick Faith which is that of an entire subordination of Believers to the Body of Pastors to whom Jesus Christ said he that heareth you heareth me The Conclusion of all these Articles HOly indifference is nothing else but disinterested Love Tryals are nothing else but the Purification of it the abandoning of the same is but its exercise in Tryals The disappropriating of Vertue is nothing besides the laying aside of all Complaisance all Consolation and all Self-Interest in the exercise of Vertue by pure Love The retrenching of all activity implies no more than the retrenching of all inquietude and interested eagerness for pure Love Contemplation is but the plain Exercise of this Love reduced to one simple Motive Passive Contemplation is but pure Contemplation without activity or eagerness A Passive state whether it be in a time bounded with pure and decent Contemplation or in those Intervals wherein a Man does not at all Contemplate doth exclude neither the real Action nor the successive Acts of the Will nor the specifick distinction of Vertue as they relate to their proper Subjects but only simple activity or interested inquietude it 's a peaceable Exercise of Prayer and Vertue by pure Love Transformation and the most essential or immediate Union is nothing but the Habit of that pure Love which of it self makes up all the internal Life and then becomes the only Principle and Motive of all the deliberate a●● meritorious Acts but this habitual State is never fixt unvariable nor unliable to be lost The true love of that which is right saith Leo carries in it self Apostolick Authorities and Canonical Sanctions THE Lord Archbishop of Cambray 's LETTER TO THE POPE Most Holy Father I have resolved with utmost expedition as well as with all manner of submission and respect to your Holiness to send the Book that I wrote some time since concerning the Maxims of the Saints in relation to an internal Life It 's a duty which I am obliged to pay not only to the Supream Authority with which you preside over all the Churches but also to those Favours you have been pleased to heap upon me But to the end that nothing may be omitted in a matter of such importance and concerning which Mens Minds are so tossed about and agitated and for removing any Equivocations that might arise from the diversity of Languages I have undertaken to make a Latin Version of my whole Work to which I apply my self wholly and will very quickly send this Translation to be laid down at your Holiness his Feet I would to God most Holy Father I could my self in person bring you my Book with a zealous and submissive heart and then receive your Apostolical Benediction but the Affairs of the Diocess of Cambray during the misfortune of the War and the instruction of the young Princes which the King has done me the honour to intrust me with will not allow me room to hope for this Consolation And now most Holy Father I come to give the

both in his Treatise and in his Letter Nevertheless he falls into the same absurdity by allowing of such still peaceable Acts that they have nothing whereby the Soul may be able to make a true distinction of them they being such as are disturbed with no manner of joltings so uniform and so even that they seem as much to be no acts at all as one continued Act during the whole course of ones Life Lastly we have more particularly taken care in our Articles lest Christian Perfection holiness or purity or the internal Life should be placed in passive Prayer or in other quiet and extraordinary ones of that kind wherein all contemplative and formal persons are with us but on the contrary the said Book doth assert that the same Prayer and Contemplation do consist in pure love which doth not only justify and purify of it self but consummate accomplish and make perfect and is consequently the last degree of Christian perfection Wherein the Author doth extreamly err and not only differs from spiritual men but even from himself He differs from spiritual Persons or Mysticks who in persuance to the Authority of St. Theresia the Expositions of John de Jesus and the sentiments of James Alvarez de Paz who was a follower of them and that of St. Francis de Sales and several others have taught that either a person may arrive at a state of perfection without quiet prayer or that this Prayer is in the number of such blessings as seem very much to appertain to those graces that are purely free that it is neither of a perfecting nature and justifies no man yea and that the same may consist with mortal sin He differs from himself in that he asserts every where That Christian perfection consists in this sort of Prayer which is nothing else but a love that is very pure and teaches at the same time the greatest part of holy Souls and those who by a peculiar Title are called Saints could never attain to this sort of Prayer nor consequently to perfection because they had not the inward light nor the advantages of attractive Grace From hence he conludes that the Doctrine of pure love wherein all Evangelick perfection doth consist and to which all Tradition beareth a Testimony is yet a mystery which is concealed not only from Christians in general but even from the greatest part of Saints and that 't is the business of a director of Mens Consciences to leave the same unto God and to wait for his opening the Heart by his internal Unction as if the word of the Gospel would be of no use to those who ought to be endued with pure love as if Unction should exclude and shut out the good word of Salvation From whence it follows that that command of Christ Be ye perfect doth not appertain to the Saints nor that neither thou shalt love c. which derogate from the perfection of Christian calling There is also as much contradiction between these Propositions That the gift of pure Love and Contemplation depends upon grace or divine inspiration which is common to all that are justifyed and that yet there are many Saints to whom the same is not communicated and which would be but a trouble and offence to them were the same proposed to them These things therefore and those other before mention'd which run through the whole Book are contrary to our Censures and the Thirty Four Articles so often mentioned neither are those that follow less opposite to the same Doctrine or any more consonant to Truth In the first place altho' the said Book doth in the beginning and in divers other places onwards make an enumeration of false spirituallizers If I may so call them whereof he makes the Gnosticks of old the Beguardians in the middle age and the late Illuminates of Spain to be of the number yet he makes no manner of mention of Molinos and his followers nor more particularly of that Woman upon whose account the Articles were framed whereas in the mean time it must be said that they should have been chiefly spoken of seeing the whole Church is filled with the noise their Writings have made and the Censures past upon them by the Pope's authority To which these Positions must in like manner be added that the love of pure Concupiscence how impious and sacrilegious soever it be doth yet prepare Sinners for to be justifyed and converted tho' this preparation proceeds from no other motions than such as are excited by the Spirit or at least the impulse thereof That justifying love whereby a person seeks not its own happiness but as a means that doth refer unto and subordinates it self to the last end which is God's glory is in this Book called mercenary which is contrary to the judgment of the Schools and that Axiom of St. Augustin so well known among Divines That we are to deliver our selves according to a known Rule That an impossible case to wit that a just Soul who loves God even to the end should yet be condemned to eternal punishments is rendred possible and that St Francis de Sales seems to have found himself to be in the same state tho neither he himself nor any of those that have writ his Life say any thing of it and that no just Soul can be brought to believe it That direct Acts and such as escape the reflections of the Soul are the very same operation of the Soul which by St. Francis de Sales are called the top of the Soul tho' he says nothing of it in all his Writings That in these Acts there is a strange and unheard of division of the Soul in it self to be found since perfect Hope subsists in the upper part as the lower is abandon'd to despair and which is worse the former is in direct Acts and the other in reflex ones which are in themselves the most deliberate and efficacious especially if allowed by the director of the Conscience insomuch that Hope being expelled by reflex Acts subsists in those that are direct That in this division of the Soul labouring under an unvoluntary impression of despair and making an absolute Sacrifice of its own interest for that of Eternity it doth die on the Cross with Christ saying my God my God why hast thou forsaken me as if despairing Souls could expire with Christ and yet bewail their state in being forsaken by him That in these last Tryals or Experiments he makes a separation between the Soul and it self according to the Example of Christ who is our pattern wherein the inferior part had no Communication with the superior neither in its unvoluntary troubles nor faintings that in this separation the motions of our inferior part are blind and full of unvoluntary Trouble As if there had been such perturbations in Christ as there are in us which is an abominable Opinion and which the fam'd Sophronius hath condemned as such with the approbation of the sixth Council As