goodly Story is like to be marred by the Imprudence of the Relators The Devil it seems owed them a turn and revenged himself upon their Memory For the same Historians relate that the Devil far from being afraid at their Names their Pictures or their Letters sometimes seized upon their very Bodies and handled them very roughly Thus St. Francis being once perswaded to betray his Humility so far as to accept a Lodging in a Cardinals Palace was at night most unmercifully beaten by the Devils and left for dead Ignatius was often most cruelly scourged by the Devil more especially one Night at Rome when the Devil catch't him by the Throat and squeezed him so hard that the Saint straining himself to call upon the Name of Jesus continued hoarse many days after However these Bastinadoes might for a while mortify the Saints and intirely blast the repute of their arbitrary command over the Devils yet at least they conferred this benefit upon them that hereby they more nearly resembled the ancient Heroes of the Legend among whom the Great St. Antony underwent the same fate For unadvisedly peeping into the hole of a Rock and discovering there a whole nest of Devils the Devils sallied out upon him and beat him so unmercifully that his Servant carried him away for dead Not only in this respect were the Writers of his Life injurious to the Memory of Ignatius in not telling their Story plausibly and without any repugnance between the several parts of it but also by their improvident zeal to raise the Honour and Grandeur of their Saint have so imprudently represented many of his most illustrious and wonderful Actions that we might justly suspect the concurrence of evil Spirits in the performance of them if we either believed the truth of those Actions or were ready to admit any such suspicions When he first dedicated himself to the Blessed Virgin as soon as he had ended his Prayer he heard a mighty noise the House trembled all the Windows of the Chamber were broke and a rent made in the Wall which remaineth to this day This Bouhours would gladly attribute to God testifying thereby the acceptance of Ignatius his Prayers as formerly of the Prayers of the Apostles by a like sign However he doth not deny that it might possibly have been caused by the Devil who by that Earthquake endeavoured to put a period to Ignatius his Life Bussieres makes no doubt of it but confidently affirms it to have been caused by the Devil A little after the Devil excited in him an extraordinary nauseousness of the Hospital into which he had voluntarily entred and shame to see himself in the company of Beggars At Manreze he appeared to him in the Habit of an honest Young man disswading him from the use of so great Austerities While he learned the Latin Tongue at Barcelona the Devil to hinder his Learning instigated him to practices of Piety filled him with Consolations raised in him such tender sentiments of God that all the time of his study was spent in devout Thoughts Of the Demoniacks which he dispossessed some were lifted up into the Air and himself in time of Prayer was often seen to be raised from the ground and be elevated in the Air. From this pendulous posture Procopius concludes that Iustinian the Emperor was a Devil and no man. That Apparition of the Devils hovering in the Air before his Eyes in form of Stars he mistook a long while for an Angelical Vision and effect of the Divine Favour to him When a Spanish Maid was brought to him under the notion of a Demoniack raging with violent contortions over all her Body he asserted she was not possest and that those extraordinary motions proceeded from a natural cause and that if the Devil had any part in it it was only in disturbing the Imagination of the sick Person Lastly being told of a Religious Woman at Bologna endued with an extraordinary gift of Prayer and having frequent Raptures and Extasies during which she had no sense of feeling altho fire were applied to her he assures Ribadeneira that God indeed did operate in his Soul and abundantly infuse into it the Vnction of his Spirit but that this happened rarely and only to Persons much in favour with God whereas the Devil who could act nothing upon the Soul I know not how this can be reconciled with the former assertion was wont to counterfeit externally Divine Operations and by such appearances impose upon the Credulous That this was the case of the Nun as in effect it was afterwards found out that all her pretended Holiness was but an Illusion of a Wicked Spirit If then the Devil can externally counterfeit Divine Operations suspend the Senses and cause extraordinary Extasies and Raptures of the Soul and by these Impostures procure to any one a great repute of sanctity and devotion in the Church of Rome If he can disturb the Imagination of Men without possessing their Bodies or taking from them the liberty of their Will If Ignatius actually mistook an Illusion of the Devil for a Divine Favour and was often observed in the same pendulous posture with Demoniacks If the Devil sometimes inspired him with good Thoughts and Resolutions as well as at other times diverted him from them Lastly if it be uncertain which miraculous Actions of Ignatius are to be ascribed to God and which to the Devil it cannot but remain infinitely doubtful whether God or the Devil had the greater share in the Actions of Ignatius whether he acted by the power and impulse of the former or by the assistance and suggestion of the latter It cannot be pretended that the Church by giving attestation to the sanctity of his Life and the truth of his Miracles in his Canonization hath removed all suspicions of this nature and vindicated the Memory of Ignatius from all possibility of disadvantageous Scruples For till the late Jesuits of Clermont proposed their Theses it never was pretended that the Church much less the Pope is infallible in determining matters of fact and that the Pope in attesting the sanctity of Ignatius was actually deceived and imposed upon the credulous World I will undeniably demonstrate In the Bull of his Canonization the Pope affirmeth that from the time of his Conversion no word or action proceeded from him which can be accounted a mortal Sin. Despair of the Divine Mercy is by Divines commonly accounted the greatest of all Sins and even this may receive greater or less aggravations as it is more or less unreasonable Ignatius committed this sin in the most aggravating circumstances some while after his Conversion when he had received frequent Illuminations from Heaven had enjoyed infinite Raptures and Extasies performed stupendious acts of apparent Charity and undergone the most severe exercises of external Mortification which if they be indeed acceptable to God as the Admirers of Ignatius and the Church of
prayed earnestly against his Wish and by good fortune the Confessor died before him Alas What a loss did the immature Death of Eguia bring to Christendom Such a loss no doubt the World had before suffered in the case of Don Quixot a great part of whose most noble Adventures were not mentioned in the Records of Mancha Ambition is the chief and fundamental Quality of an affected Enthusiast that Ignatius was eminently endued with it we have now proved Other accedaneous Qualities are required to constitute a compleat Fanatick which were not wanting in our Saint I shall instance only in two weakness of Body and want of Judgment The first is commonly antecedent to and in some measure the cause of Enthusiasm but must necessarily be contracted by those immoderate Fermentations and Commotions of the Blood which attend the Extasies of Enthusiasts which may for a time confer an unusual Vigour upon the Body but when the Heat is expired and the Tempest calmed leave it languid and dejected The Production and Conservation of a strong and irregular Imagination by gross and impure Spirits supposeth a vehement Indisposition of the Body and general Corruption of Blood which also that very Imagination promotes and augments And this alone might unanswerably detect all the Illusions and Impostures of Enthusiasts who pretend to intellectual Visions and divine Raptures For if those Visions were indeed purely intellectual no extraordinary motion of the Body would attend them whereas the violent Ebullition of the Spirits which accompany these pretended Visions of Enthusiasts demonstrate them to be wholly owing to their Imaginations and disturbed Brains Thus St. Phillip Neri being often overflowed with celestial Pleasures was forced to fall flat upon the Ground and rowl himself to and fro And in praying his whole Body was wont so much to Quake and Tremble as would cause the Chamber to shake and the Stools in it to dance about Nay once this shaking proceeded so far that the poor Saint broke two of his Ribs by it Ignatius began his fits of Devotion in a violent Fever and ever after maintained them in a weak and crazy Body In his Retirement into the Vale of Paradice where he enjoyed such extraordinary Raptures he impaired his Health so far in a few days that his Friends searching for him found him in a Swound which wmmediately followed by a desperate Fever In his Meditations and Raptures he poured forth so great an abundance of Tears that he was often very near blinded by it In all his Extasies his Body was wonderfully weakned By reciting Mass wherin he always pretended to receive a flood of Consolations he often became so languid that he was forced to be carried to his Chamber upon the Shoulders of other Men not being able to stand upon his own Legs for weakness Sometimes in praying or celebrating Mass he burned with such vehement Heat that all the Parts of his Body seemed to be on Fire his Face grew red as Scarlet his Pulse beat violently and all his Veins swelled through the extraordinary Fermentation of his Blood and the hair of his Head stood upright Or as another Author expresseth it His Countenance was inflamed in praying and commonly in the heat of his Devotion he had very violent Palpitations of Heart and frequent Raptures withal he poured out a Torrent of Tears till he obtained of God by Prayer that he might be able to restrain his Tears but when they were kept in he felt in his Soul an Inundation of spiritual Delight From which last words it is manifest That he mistook the extraordinary motion of his Blood which commonly produceth a grateful sentiment of Pleasure for spiritual Delights since from the restrainment of his Tears no other effect could follow than that the motion not being allayed by an Evacuation of Tears should continue longer in its first Vigour To mention no more our Saint Whensoever he thought of Death and the Love of God had such furious motions in his Heart that his Health was exceedingly injured for a long while after After so many manifest Indications of a violent and disturbed Imagination we cannot with any shew of reason ascribe his spiritual Delights and Visions to the serene and calm Operation of the Holy Ghost but must impute them to the Phantomes of his Brain an effect which naturally followed his method of Devotion and Meditation insomuch as Peter Faber having wholly resigned up himself to his Conduct and to the Rules prescribed in his Book of Spiritual Exercises felt such fervour in his Meditations that he was forced often to go down from his Chamber into a little Court to take fresh Air and cool his Brains Ignorance and Weakness of Understanding is so necessary a quality to those Enthusiasts who are perswaded of the truth and reality of their Dreams and Visions such as Ignatius seems to have been at least in the former part of his Life that without it Enthusiasm could gain neither Admission nor Belief even in their own Breasts For this reason St. Philip Neri Above all things endeavoured that his Disciples should suppress in themselves the too nice Inquisitions of the rational Intellect and often said it was the Abridgment of all Spiritual Life to lay aside Reason and Arguings This affected Ignorance not only disposeth them to submit their Judgment to the Direction of an irrational Imagination and resign up their Conduct to the fortuitous Impulse of irregular Motions in the Body but also disables them from discovering the Folly and false Ideas of Enthusiasm from perceiving that nothing can be more contrary to the genius of Christianity than Fanaticism that right Reason is the greatest Ornament as well as Perfection of Mankind that whatsoever violates the Laws of Decency and Sobriety cannot be Divine and instead of merit that God is dishonoured by ridiculous Actions and irrational Austerities The great Founders of Monastick Orders are observed to have been Ignorant and Stupid to a Prodigy and Ignatius far from being Ambitious to surpass them in Learning thought it meritorious to be more ignorant than them all He judged it a great Perfection to be esteemed a Fool and made it one of his chief Maxims that whoever would do great things in Gods Cause must have a care of being too wise Nature it seems had taken care that he should not be too wise if the Writers of his Life do not foully misrepresent him Vitelleschi saith plainly That he was an Ideot Bouhours That he was but meanly instructed in the Mysteries of the Faith. Maffeius That he had scarce learning enough to preserve him from Heresy Orlandinus That he was devoid of all Learning He was so far indeed conscious of his own Ignorance that he put himself to School and bestowed many years in learning Philosophy and the Latin Tongue but all his Labour met with small success his natural Stupidity was too prevalent for the greatest Industry In the
pass for real Sanctity But there are other Actions of Enthusiasts so extravagantly absurd and ridiculous that they can be ascribed to no other cause than the unaccountable Phrensies of a disturbed Brain to whose irregular Motions the Enthusiast yielding a blind obedience is betrayed to the commission of all those Follies and Absurdities which an heated Imagination can invent or suggest These above all other Actions give the greatest scandal to the unthinking part of Mankind as not to be palliated with any pretence of Piety and do infinite prejudice to the common Cause of Christianity while unlearned Persons taking their measures of it from the Actions of reputed Saints accuse it of Folly and Superstition and believe it rather to have been designed for the Sport than the Salvation of Mankind St. Philip Neri often caused his Disciples and among them the Great Baronius to do many Ridiculous Actions and walk the Streets in Antick Habits on purpose that they might be derided St. Francis as soon as he was converted being drunk with the Spirit putting off his Breeches and all his Cloaths before a Multitude said to his Father Hitherto I have called you Father here on Earth but now I may securely say Our Father which art in Heaven Passing into Hospitals he kisseth the Hands and Mouths of Lepers waits upon them washeth their Feet kisseth their Ulcers and sucks out the filth of them Meeting a company of Beggars he tears and cuts his Cloaths in pieces to distribute them to them not being able to stay till he could pull them off Travelling in the Road he sings Psalms all along with a loud voice and whensoever the Spirit moves him kneels down in the Streets or dirt to pray Imagining himself commanded by God to repair his decayed House he serves the Masons gratis in repairing of Churches Retiring alone into the Woods he fills them with sighs and groans and bedews them with tears beats his Breast with his fist and continually talks to God as he were present with him Whensoever he hears the name of Christ he licks his lips as if he felt some sweetness in the sound He gives the title of Brother or Sister to the meanest Beasts even Worms and Flies and thinks it meritorious to redeem Lambs from slaughter A Lamb being presented to him he daily reads lessons of Instruction to it and enjoins to it great attention in praising God. The Lamb in a little while becomes illuminated kneels reverently in time of Divine Service bleats before the Altar of the Blessed Virgin in an humble posture and to the eternal conviction of all Hereticks kneels down at the elevation of the Host. Finding a flock of Birds or Grashoppers he preacheth to them then sets a Psalm and invites them to joyn with him in praising God. On Christmas Eve he gets a company of Asses and Oxen into a Stable reads Mass at the Manger and makes a Sermon to them He feareth to touch Lights Lamps or Candles because he would not defile them with his hands Walks gingerly upon the stones in honour of him who was called Stone Gathers the small Worms out of the way that they may not be trod on by Passengers and feareth even to kill the Vermin of his Body Saint Macarius had done penance by going naked six months in the Desert and suffering hmself to be stung of Flies for having killed a Flea Not only Animals but the very Elements did St. Francis imagine to be endued with understanding For being in a grievous sickness necessitated to admit a Cauterism he thus bespeaks the Fire My Brother Fire God hath created thee beyond all other things handsome and vertuous and fair and useful Be thou kind and courteous to me in this moment Now see the force of an eloquent Complement the Fire is applied but doth not burn him Being one day full of the Spirit he calls together the People of Assisium enters into the great Church causeth a Rope to be fastned to his Neck and commands himself to be drawn naked in the sight of all to a Stone on which Malefactors were wont to be placed before their Execution Getting upon this he preacheth naked to the People in a cold Season confesseth himself to be a very great Sinner a carnal Man and a Glutton This Phrenzy could not be ended but with his Life in the last period of which he commands himself to be carried into the Church and to be there laid naked upon the ground that he might expire in the sight of all the People and boast before them that he left the World as naked as he entred it disburdened of all Possessions Those many ridiculous Actions which I have already related of Ignatius might justly supersede any farther labour yet at least to equal the Merits of St. Francis I will produce some few Instances of a no less extravagant Folly. In his retirement at Manreze feeling some temptations of Vain-glory he enters into an Hospital and applies himself to serve the sick Persons licks their Sores and sucks out the filth of their Ulcers As soon as he was made General of his Order the first thing he did was to serve in the Kitchin in quality of a Scullion where for some while he executed the most vile and sordid Offices Sending for his Companions from France to Venice he instructs them to sing Psalms as they travelled in the Road and when the Spirit moved to kneel down and pray They punctually perform his Instructions travel through Heretical Countries with Beads about their Necks and out of the abundance of their zeal refuse to eat with any Lutheran Minister as fearing some Contagion from him While he studied at Paris he had often in vain employed his Reason to convert a Fornicator who held an unlawful commerce with a Woman living in a Village near the City Ignatius watcheth his walk by a Ponds side in a frosty Morning Perceiving him coming he strips himself and runs into the Water up to the Chin. The Man coming by he calls to him thunders out damnation against him tells him that he there did penance for him and intended by the cold which he voluntarily undertook to temper the ardent heat of his Lust being resolved to continue this practice every day till he should be converted To produce no more examples the constant Flouts and Derisions of the Rabble which for many years after his conversion attended him at his entrance into any Town demonstrate that all his Actions had somewhat ridiculous in them which might excite and deserve the laughter of the Vulgar Certainly Folly may be advanced to a great perfection when it is affected and elaborate and the Enthusiast is ambitious of being ingeniously ridiculous Our Saint thought it a great perfection to be esteemed a Fool and therefore often resolved and earnestly desired to cover himself with horns and in that equipage march through the Streets of
to sing Mattins see no Apparition but find Pascall transported into an Extasy with the Imagination of it The frequent Splendor and supernatural Brightness of his Face is no better attested Isabella Rosella a credulous Woman fancied she often saw it at Barcelona while standing amidst a croud of People he heard Sermons in the Church altho no other Person present could perceive any such thing In Spain two Women of his Kindred peeping through the Keyhole while he prayed saw his Countenance enflamed as with a Fever for it shined with such a Light that it dazled their Eyes Being once at the point of Death as he expected Extreme Unction his Health was miraculously restored to him Vitelleschi confesseth that this Miracle would never have been known had not his good Hostess by great fortune been in the Chamber with him at that very juncture of time This consideration also defeats the credit of the greatest part of Apollonius his Miracles being known only to his confident Damis with whom being chained in Prison he drew his Leg out of the Chain and shewing it unchained to Damis immediately put it in again by which Miracle he was first convinced that somewhat Divine and more than Human was in Apollonius The Miraculous Splendor of his Face was better attested if we may believe Philostratus for while he was led to the Tribunal of Domitian the whole People of Rome saw and admired it This also ruins the Authority of St. Francis's Miracles the far greater part of which were performed by him after his Death in Apparitions to sick Persons Apparitions which are owing only to the disturbed Imagination of the foolish Votaries first desiring his assistance and then fancying him to be present Such Miracles as these have nothing extraordinary in them and are fitted only to amuse the ignorant part of Mankind who not knowing their natural cause recur to the Divine Power Many Miracles of Ignatius lay open to the same Objection and may be rationally solved without any deep Philosophy All his Apparitions after death and Cures of sick Persons making their application to him and other like Miracles which fill up the far greater part of his Legend are of this nature The former may be ascribed to the whimsies and vapours of a disturbed Brain the latter to the effect of Chance altho even the strength of imagination may not a little concur to the happiness of the effect If among a thousand Persons which implore the assistance of Ignatius in any sickness danger or undertaking one hundred recover escape or obtain their desire a blind Credulity shall ascribe the whole event to the miraculous Power and wonderful Benignity of the Saint altho in all appearance the Invocation of Aesculapius Mahomet or Don Quixot had produced the same effect As for the remaining nine hundred which obtain not the grant of their Petitions their unhappiness shall be ascribed to their want of Faith to the coldness of their Devotion and perhaps to the multiplicity of business wherein the Saint was then engaged Thus Miracles can never be wanting to a Romish Saint when once the People are perswaded to offer up their Petitions to him Many even of the most illustrious Miracles performed by Ignatius in his life-time may be resolved into the same cause and when examined will be found to have nothing worthy admiration in them I will instance but in one the raising of a man from the dead at Barcelona which all the Writers of his Life magnify as a great Miracle The case was this A Man had hung himself in the House where Ignatius lodged Ignatius comes hastily into the Chamber and cuts the Rope The Man revives but had already so far weakned the union of Soul and Body that his life could be continued no longer than while he confessed and commended his Soul to God. Here is nothing extraordinary in all this but only an impertinent Story magnified and exalted into a Miracle in imitation of those frequent Fables of Legends which to aggrandize the Power of Priests represent them saving the Souls of Men by some pretty Artifice performed in a minute without any concurrence of themselves and sometimes even against their wills Thus Pope Gregory by one short Prayer translated the Soul of Trajan the Emperor from Hell to Heaven and St. Dunstan did the same kindness to King Edgar when they least thought of it But St. Patrick did somewhat more majestick when he raised from the dead Glasse a Pagan Giant in Ireland an hundred foot high after he had been dead one hundred years and having baptized him sent him back to his Grave with assurance of Salvation St. Benedict used a more compendious way who when any of his Monks died in a doubtful state as to their future Happiness laid the consecrated Host upon the Breast of the dead Body which immediately opened it self to receive it and then all was safe There are other Miracles ascribed to Ignatius which may be evidently convinced of falsehood and forgery and if this Charge be once proved the credit and authority of all his other Miracles is intirely overthrown It would be highly unreasonable in a Cause of so great moment to admit the testimony of a Witness once convicted of Perjury since all his Miracles are equally founded upon the same Authority and a voluntary Fraud proved in one case will subject the whole Relation to a just suspicion of the like Imposture Thus it is sufficient to oppose to all the Miracles of Apollonius that Damis his Companion from whose sole Authority Philostratus professeth to receive them hath wilfully obtruded an evident Fable upon the World in relating that the Constellation of the Bear cannot be seen in the Red Sea where he remained with Apollonius many months and could not be ignorant of the truth of that matter To this we may add that whereas Apollonius pretended and Philostratus relates of him that by an extraordinary gift of God he understood all Languages and as Porphyry would perswade us even the Language of Beasts and Birds yet when he came into India he was forced to make use of an Interpreter by the confession of the same Historian That the History of Ignatius his Miracles receiveth the same prejudice from the disagreement and contrariety of the Historians I will briefly demonstrate in some few Examples His Conversion is commonly represented to have been begun by a Vision of Saint Peter touching his Wounds and healing them immediately Yet Bouhours confesseth the Cure was not yet performed of many weeks after this supposed Vision and at last so performed that a visible deformity and perpetual lameness remained in his Leg altho Vitelleschi proposeth it as a certain rule of Miracles that they are ever perfect and in nothing deficient At Barcelona Ignatius was so grievously beaten by some Ruffians that he underwent great danger of his life His recovery is ascribed to a glorious