told him that of a long time he had left off the use of a sword and that after he had commended the business to God by prayer he should follow his inspiration assuring himself that his protection over us is much according to our relying upon him These words were found in one of his Letters to his Director My soul being armed with Confidence Faith and Love fears neither the Devil nor Hell nor all the stratagems of man neither think I at all on Heaven or Earth but onely how to fulfil the will of God in every thing He hath been noted to do very notable things through the strength of this Vertue even at such times when he hath been afflicted with great aridities in his Interiour In our aridities and privation of the sense and feeling of grace saith he in a Letter to a friend is manifested an heroick abnegation of our selves to the will of God when under Hope believing against Hope we shew our selves to be true sons of Abraham Isaac shall not dye though the knife be at his throat and in case the true Isaac should in fine be crucified it is but to make us conformable to the Cross and cut of our ashes to raise us to a true and better life Thus likewise he writ to his Director I have a very clear insight into the great want I have of my Saviour him I behold in his riches and my self in my deep poverty him I look upon invironed iâ— power and my self in weakness whereby my spirit being filled with content by the impression of these words Quid est homo quod memor es ejus What is man that thou art mindeful of him doth rest upon a total abandoning of its self into his bounty These words Longanimiter ferens bearing patiently have dwelt longe upon my spirit though I did not at first remember whence they were taken or what they meant onely this that I must wait with patience for the commands and approach of my Saviour without putting my self forward by my own inquest or endeavours but rest with faith and reverence begging his grace and hope in him But a few days ago taking up the New Testament in opening the Book I did light upon the sixth Chapter to the Hebrews where the Apostle speaks of Faith and Patience whereby we obtain the promises qui fide patientia haereditabit promissiones who by faith and patience shall inheret the promises and to prove this brings in the example of Abraham sic longanimiter ferens adeptus est repromissionem and so waiting patiently obtained the promise This passage touched me to the very heart and relieved my languishing together with another passage of S. James which presented it self to my eye at the same time Patientes igitur estore fratres usque ad adventum Domini ecce agricola expectat preciosum fructum terrae patienter ferens Be patient therefore my brethren till the coming of our Lord behold the husbandman waiteth patiently till he receive the fruit of the earth Hereby I was settled in peace upon the solid foundation of Hope and Abnegation As this incomparable Vertue enricheth the soul that is perfectly stated in it with a profound repose a solid joy a wonderful courage and sets it aloft above all Terrestrial things with a generous contempt of whatsoever the world esteems and desires giving it a taste of the pleasures that are Eternal as it is not difficult for him that hath assured hopes of a glorious Kingdom to set at nought a Pad of straw so did it communicate to this holy man all these excellent treasures and imprinted in his soul all these noble reflections Whereby he was incited with all his strength to encourage others in the pursuit of this Vertue knowing by his own experience the inestimable benefits thereof understanding it to be our Lenitive in all disasters our staff and stay in all weaknesses and our secure haven in all tempests instructing them continually how that God to the end that he might drive us into this Port and cause us to rest in it doth frequently permit us to be assaulted with temptations and tryals the deeplier to engage us to have recourse to him begging his aid and succour and relying upon him with confidence The like instruction he gave to a certain person upon occasion of the Apostles amazement when they beheld our Saviour walking upon the waters and took him for a Chost Think you this was without a special providence that our Saviour suffered his Disciples to go alone into that ship and permitted a contrary winde to arise Who knows not that in the same manner he fashions the souls of the faithful by his absences and by their tryals that he may afterwards manifest his power upon the seas and tempests quickning thereby our Faith and shewing himself to be the Messias and true Deliverer of the world But observe we how many Christians in their sufferings are affrighted with the Apostles seeing our Saviour marching on the waters Every thing makes them afraid the winds the waves yea even Christ himself that is the anxiteies of their spirit their own disputings and also those good coursels that others give them for their establishment upon Christ Jesus before God All this appears but as a Ghost to amaze them unless Christ himself graciously appear yet more unto them to comfort and strengthen them Shall we always want confidence thus to think Christ a Phantasm Shall we not address our selves to him in all our necessities as to our Lord and Deliverer The Jews brought all their sick folks to him and he cured them What is he become a greater Physician of the body than of the soul No no our little Faith our little Love our little Confidence is the cause of our languishings and unfruitful anxieties of spirit Let us go strait to him and all will be cured CHAP. 4. His Love of God SEeing the Love of God is without contradiction the most excellent and perfect of all vertues and that which principally and above all the rest makes a man a Saint we cannot doubt that this holy man was possessed thereof in a very eminent degree and that he loved God with all his heart This Love he founded upon his infinite perfections and favours which may be perceived by what he writ to his Director in the year 1648. concerning this Queen of all Vertues Our Glorious Lord hath from time to time with his resplendent beams shone upon my soul quickning her therewith which have appeared in such several manners and have wrought such great things in a short time as would take up far more to write them which really I am afraid to undertake or begin They all concenter in this one point the love of God through Jesus Christ his communication of himself to us by the Incarnation of his Eternal Word and ours to him through the same Word becoming our brother conversing with us and erecting as it were a mutual society
his labour and vertue which had made this blessed work in him and had changed his nature for they that knew his youth report that naturally he was of a swelling hasty haughty and jeering disposition which he had so corrected or to say better annihilated that in truth it was admirable insomuch that he was become moderate staid patient humble and respectful in a degree of consummate perfection So that if we consider him well a man may say that he was of a disposition quite contrary and diametrically opposite to that which he brought from his mothers womb teaching us by an example so assured and illustrious that a man may prevail much over himself if he endeavour it sincerely and that whatever vice he hath he may at last rid himself of it if he force himself according to those words of our Lord The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force And therefore he recommended in a special manner this holy courage and the necessity of self-enforcement as being that by which we may measure what profit we have made in true vertue and a means also absolutely necessary for the gaining of perfection He wrote to a person that practised devotion thus O how much to be feared is it that we cheat our selves with the name and the appearances of devotion relying much on our exercises of piety which it may be are barely performed and in speculation onely never coming to the practise nor to the conquest over our selves In the morning we worship Jesus Christ as our Master and Director and yet our life all the day following is not directed by him we look upon him as our pattern and imitate him not we take him for our rule and guide of our affections and yet we do not sacrifice to him our appetites we make him the model of our conversation which yet is never the more holy we promise him to labour and get above our selves but it s no more than in imagination The truth is that if we know not our devotion rather by the violence and enforcement we make upon our selves and the amendment of our manners than by the multiplication and simple usage of spiritual exercises it is to be feared they will be rather practises of Condemnation than of Sanctification For after all to what purpose all this if the work follow not if we change not our selves and destroy not that which is vitious in our nature It is no otherwise but as if a builder should pile together many materials towards making of a brave Edifice and yet never begin it And yet we see the work of Jesus Christ is almost reduced to this pass amongst the spiritual persons of these times He said to another that the love which a Christian soul was obliged to bear to he vertues which Jesus Christ hath taught us ought not to end in the simple sentiments of esteem and respect toward them whereby souls of the common sort are easily perswaded that they have done their duty but therein they deceive themselves for that our Lords will is undoubtedly that they make a further entry into the solidity of his Divine practises specially in Mortification Patience Poverty and Renouncement of our selves and that is the cause why there are so few souls truly Christian and solidly spiritual yea even sometimes amongst the Religious was this that men contented themselves to make a stand at this first step I will end this Chapter and this Second Part with a Letter which he writ to his Director who had thought it fit for him to visit a person that had great need of succour and instruction for some spiritual dispositions which he performed with much success and benediction This Letter dated the 14 of May in the year 1647. will make us well see the great disengagement that he had from himself and his perfect Mortification attended with gifts inestimable and his great light whereby he clears and explicates matters of great subtilty The tenour is as followeth For the person whom you know and the visit I made him it is God and your direction that hath done all I am so much afraid to mingle therein any thing of mine that going to the place where he is yet I perceive I shall not visit him without a new order from you or that he much desire it I have not since that time so much as sent any commendations to him considering with my self that we must keep the man reserved and in great sobriety And I thought it fit to cast all this upon you as my guide in the business Ha Father the great imperfection of souls is the not waiting enough on God the natural disposition strugling and not brought into subjection comes in with fine pretexts and thinks to do wonders and in the mean while it is that which sullies the purity of the Soul that which troubles its silence and turns aside its sight from Faith from Affiance and from Love whence it hapneth that the Father of Lights expresseth not in us his Eternall Word nor produceth in us his Spirit of Love The Incarnation hath merited all not onely for the abolition of our faults but also for all the dispositions of grace whereunto Jesus Christ is minded to â—ssociate us of which this is the principal and was in him so far as he was man to do nothing our selves but to speak and act according as we receive knowing that we alone are not to do the work but that the holy Spirit which is the Spirit of Jesus and which governed him in all his ways is within us which would stamp upon us his impressions and give us the life the life real and experimental of our faith if ballasted and held back by patience we would but wait his operation This is it in which I feel my infirmity and yet whither I finde a great attractive I see that which I cannot utter for I possess that which I cannot express And the cause Father why I am so brief comes both from the imperfection of my natural disposition and from ignorance as also from a great largeness of the Divine goodness which works in me that which I cannot utter The effect of this is a fulness and a satiating of the truth and clearness of the magnificence of God of the greatness of Jesus Christ and of the riches which we have in him of the most Holy Virgin and of the Saints one sees here all praise and adoration and comtemplates them within I tell you here of many things me seems and yet all this is done with one draught so simple and so strong in the superiour part of the Spirit that I am nothing diverted from it by any exteriour employments I see all I understand all and I do though it be ill all that I have to do This is that I present you with to receive therein from you instruction and correction Thus we see the admirable benefits that come from perfect Mortification and
the delicious fruits that are produced from this mysterious grain of wheat when it is dead PART III. CHAP. 1. His application to our Lord Jesus Christ in regard of his Neighbour WE have observed in the first part of this History that the grand exercise of Monsieur Renty was to apply and unite himself to our Saviour and from that union and his example to derive all his vertues and good works This was the general course he held in them all to mould himself after him for the composition of his Exterior and Interior never taking his eye off this Divine Copy but endeavouring to draw each line exactly and pensil his true lineaments making him his native and perfect Original This was the scope of all his designs and cares and particularly of his charity to his neighbour for which he propounded our Saviour as his grand Exemplar marking what he had done and what he had suffered for men weighing those affections and tendernesses he bore towards them how he sought after and conversed with them how he instructed comforted and encouraged them sometimes reproving otherwhiles bearing with their infirmities and at all times carrying them in his most dear embraces and most intimate inclosure of his heart He pondered what he had delivered concerning this vertue of charity that it was it that he had established as the ground and perfection of his new Law having left us this one command more expresly which with special propriety he had termed his own and the execution whereof he had inforced above all other he much thought upon it how that this Master had charged us to love our neighbour according to the model measure and fashion that he had loved us And finally that he had made this vertue and no other the distinctive character betwixt such as possessed his Spirit in truth and those that had it onely in appearance Wherefore having well-weighed these actions and doctrines of our Saviour and resolved to do his utmost to render himself a good Christian and his perfect Imitator he determined as far as he could both to embrace this doctrine and follow his actions and to love his neighbour with the bent and spirit of of such a divine Master Writing to Sister Margeret a Carmelite of Beaulne he said I sigh after my Saviour Jesus desiring to imitate and follow him whither he pleaseth I beseech you by your prayers obtain for me his Spirit to be my life my whole life sigh and groan for me after my God that I may be wholly for him in his Son that I may follow him and not live but by his Spirit And to another person he writ thus I have so great a view of the love and of all the effects of the love of the most Holy Soul of our Lord that this Interior so full of clemency bounty and charity makes me conceive far otherwise than ever how that we ought to live of this Divine love even in our deportment towards men and how in effect it is in him that the whole Law is accomplished in its perfection Furthermore to the same party thus Since God hath manifested himself to us by his Son and hath admitted us through him into his grace and made us partakers of all his actions both towards God and man how can we ever quit this his dear Son He that hath Jesus Christ hath a key which opens many doors it discovers unto us large prospects it enricheth us with vast treasures and breaks open the prison of mans heart as being too strait for his Immensities And to the same thus also Ah how good is that desart when after Baptism we are conducted thither with our Lord by the Spirit of God Thence it was that our Saviour came out to converse with men to teach them and work their salvation Since therefore we together with him make up but one Jesus Christ as having the honour to be his members we should live his life take on us his Spirit and walk in his steps This was the ground that made this perfect Disciple apply himself with all his power to this admirable Charity which we are now coming to speak of at large endeavouring in all the commerce he had with men to unite himself most intimately to our Saviour rendring himself up as an instrument to be guided by his hand in the helping of others beseeching him to breath upon him this Spirit of Charity recommended so much to us in his word but more in his actions and to inflame him with this divine fire which he hath kindled in the midst of his Church to be wholly burnt and consumed with it he consulted him in all his doubts concerning it begging of him to inspire what and how and when he should speak and act for the good of his neighbour and that in him and by him these might all be done He look'd upon men not according to their natural qualities their beauty nobility riches dignities and wordly honors but according to their more noble relations and those common to all viz. as creatures divine the lively images of God created to praise and love him to all eternity as dyed and purpled in the blood of Jesus brothers and co-heirs with him his purchase and inheritance bought with the price of his life and a thousand dolours and who therefore must be infinitely dear unto him and most passionately beloved of him In this capacity it was that he beheld men loving and applying himself to their necessities and he arrived by the purity of this conduct to so far perfection that as on the one side he was extreamly useful to his neighbour and received therein wonderful blessings from God so on the other this communication with them did not distract nor bring any prejudice to himself but very much good There are that advise them who have to do with others in the matter of their salvation especially with such from whose converse any danger may arise to consider them as bodies without souls or as souls without bodies and as pure spirits The counsel is good and some make profitable use of it but Monsieur Renties view was to look upon God and Jesus Christ in every man and to consider that it was they that demanded succour of him and prepared his thoughts to talk to them and perform what was necessary for their souls and bodies believing truly that it was to God and Christ that he rendred these assistances and service And this same thought is much to be made use of that we may do good and take no hurt from others otherwise we shall hazard ourselves and do little good for when we proceed upon the inclination and motives of nature the effects have a relish of their cause proving no more but natural or vicious or at most indifferent viz. loss of time light discourses amusements engagement of affections which carry in them much of sense and degenerate afterwards into something worse whereby instead of purifying one another a
man pollutes and undoes himself He that will conduct souls to Christ and God must of necessity carry them through such ways as lead thither CHAP. 2. His Charity to his Neighbour taken in general HAving a purpose to speak of his Charity which his man of God had towards his Neighbour I shall speak first of it in general and say thus much that it was so great and enlarged that it seemed to have no bounds in that he loved not onely all Christians and faithful people but even all men not excepting any because he beheld motives in all of them of a true charity and sincere love looking upon them as creatures of God and his chief Workmanship for whom our Saviour became man and laid down his life whom he loved and desired to save these all he likewise loved and laboured their good Thy Commandment saith David is exceeding broad the same dimensions he prescribed to his charity loving the present and absent domesticks and strangers good and bad esteeming all according to their degree honoring all speaking well of and doing good to all and ill to none There was not any considerable publique good work done either at Paris and a great way off it wherein he had not a great share There was no undertaking there that rended to the honour of God or good of man of which he was not either the Author or Promoter or Finisher and very often all these together He was one at all the meetings for Piety and in many as the soul and primum mobile he kept correspondence through the whole Kingdom concerning works of charity received from all parts letters desiring his advice in all difficulties that occur'd in the erecting or advancing of Hospitals Seminaries of Religion Places of Devotion Fraternities of Vertuous Persons agreeing to associate together for the better applying themselves to their own and others salvation and for the managing of all sorts of good works One of good report writ thus concerning him from Caen Monsieur Renty was our support and onely refuge in the execution of all our designs which related to the service of God the saving of souls and relief of the poor and distressed To him we wrote continually as well for the settling of our Hospitals and houses for receiving of loose women converted as also for the suppressing the insolence of some Hereticks who shewed contempt of the blessed Sacrament too openly Finally we received counsel and succour from him in all like occasions in which he expressed a great zeal for the glory of God and extirpation of vice Since his death we have not met with any to whom we could have the like recourse about the things of God Another from Dijon wrote thus We cannot but acknowledge the great benefit this Province hath received from Monsieur Renty wherever he came wherein he hath wonderfully advanced all works of Piety We may truly say that his days were filled with the plenitude of God and we believe that he scarce lost one minute of time in which he either spake not or acted not something tending to his service He applied himself to the necessities of the English Irish and captives in Barbary and of the Missions into the Levant he took very great pains for the good of the Hospital at Marcelles for the relief of Galley-slaves and contributed much to the advancing of the affairs of new France in America he had a design likewise to purge all Trades and Manufactures from corruptions that had grown upon them to rectifie and sanctifie them that men might live upon them like Christians which thing he together with others had happily begun and perfected the same in two of them as shall be shewed hereafter Moreover as one of the great effects of Charity is Concord and Union so had he a wonderful care to conserve encrease and perfect it in himself and others wherefore he lived in perfect amity with all the world with Seculars Ecclesiasticks and Religious esteeming respecting and speaking honorably of them all and when any difference fell out among them he was greatly afflicted for it endeavoring by all means to pacifie and unite their spirits and to accord their divisions knowing that the God whom we worship is a God of peace who would have us live in peace and that never any discord comes from him but from the Devil the sower of Tares that nothing is more opposite to the spirit of Christianity that spirit of Union and Love than Division and Schismes in Charity making us not live like brothers but strangers and enemies that instead of profiting in vertue we multiply and encrease our sins and vices The spirit of the new Law is a spirit of such perfect Charity and intimate Union that as St. Paul saith it makes no distinction as to the heart of Jew nor Gentile of Barbarian nor Scythian of bond nor free but Jesus Christ is all to all to unite and close and oblige them all in himself According to which this true Christian writeth thus in one of his letters The words which we ought chiefly to imprint upon our hearts are those of mutual love which our Saviour bequeathed us in the close of his Testament this love should inspirit all Christians to perfect them in one and cause them to live and converse together as brethren and children yea as one sole childe of God And because this Union with Christ our Saviour to whom we all belong is the best and most necessary disposition in such as are employed about the good of their neighbor to the end that they may receive from him both light and strength to enable them according to his purposes together with his saving Spirit to assist and ground them in all vertues and especially such as qualifie a man for that purpose therefore his utmost endeavour was to unite himself intimately to him and in all things to act by his Spirit and to acquire these vertues and render himself perfect in them These vertues are set down by St. Paul in the first Epistle to the Corinthians upon which he made frequent reflections and long meditations and although he carried always the New Testament in his pocket yet that he might read and consider them often he wrote them down with his own hand carrying it apart about with him The Contents whereof were Charitas patiens est benigna est Charitas non aemulatur non agit perperam Non in flatur non est ambitiosa Non quaerit quae sunt sua non irritatur c. Charity is patient full of sweetness envieth not is not malicious nor hurtful is neither vain nor ambitious seeketh not her own interests is not froward nor cholerick thinks no ill but interprets all to a good sense rejoyceth not at the faults of others but on the contrary takes great content in others well-doing suffereth much believeth all things not out of feebleness of spirit but out of goodness and holy simplicity if its neighbor mend not presently