with patience for I experiment and see clearly that though we labour and wish earnestly to get out of our imperfections our Lord sometimes leaves us there a long while to make us know our weakness and to humble us He desired to be advertised of and reprehended for his faults and we shall see now what he observed therein at the beginning of his call to this high perfection It came to pass that a person which was much below him had order from his Director to advertise him if he saw any thing in him that was contrary to perfection when this person gave him notice of some failing though very light and indeed but of the shadow of a fault he listned thereto with respect and thanks and humbled himself for it as if he had committed some crime and he accused himself when he thought he had made any failing upon his knees saying he was a miserable sinner and that he had committed such a fault which yet often very hardly could one discern to be any This exercise as being most wholesome and efficacious was very useful to him for the making of a great progress for our nature by reason of its feebleness hath need of such props to walk uprightly and not fall If his imperfections and his sins humbled him his excellent qualities and the graces which he received from God did the same also And the same things from which the greatest part of men draw nothing but vanity served him for motives of self-abasement The Spirit of Jesus Christ wherewith he was enlivened extremely estranged him from the Grandeurs of the world making him not onely contemn them but also to be ashamed thereof so that he took occasions of abasements from his own condition because so high in the world and from the secular advantages which it gave him which made him often to groan before the Majestie of God and to say that he was in a condition very low and plebeian according to the Spirit of Jesus Christ and that he had great confusion to see himself in that estate From whence it came that being born a Gentleman of so good rank as we have said he renounced his Nobility and gave it into the hands of our Lord who in return imparted his own to him as he made it known to a holy soul that is to say his love which by its proper force transforming man in God divests him of himself and leaves nothing in him but God alone there living and reigning and by this means raiseth him thus Deified to the highest degree of Nobility that he can mount to Hence it was that he endured with pain that one should call him Monsieur and he said sometimes smilingly among his familiars I am a fine Monsieur it is well for me and in his Letters he complained that they treated him as in that quality And in one of them giving another course or carreer to his humility he said Believe me I pray you it is great pitty of me I take again the Monsieur which I had rejected my pride must have these her Appendixes rather than deceive your Candor which else perhaps make you mistake in me a piece of glittering glass for a Diamond Out of his humility it was that he would not bear the title of Marquess which was due to him as proper to his house in regard the Emperor Charles the fift had erected Renty into a Marquifate and he suffered onely that of Baron of Renty by which he was commonly called For the graces and gifts of God as they were received in a soul well disposed so produced they most excellently their true effect which was to abase and elevate the soul both together to raise it to God and to abase it to it self And first his humility made him hide as much as he could the gifts of God and so hath rob'd us of the knowledge of a thousand brave actions which might have been very serviceable to this History Secondly when he received any favour from God or that one rendred him any honour the light whereby he saw the Nothingness of the creature and the discernment he was endowed with in distinguishing the precious from the vile and that which is done on Gods part in all-all-good things from that which man bringeth thither of his own was the cause that in those things he assum'd no share at all but referred all to God as to the true Source and so in the management of these great goods which God enriched him withal he had always his hands clean without doing wrong to God or touching that which appertain'd to him and for himself he kept quite out of sight of all vanity which slides most subtilly and most easily into a spirit that abounds in riches of heaven as well as those of the earth if he look not very close unto it Nor would he therefore that any one should consider him in what he said or did but regard God alone therein He wrote thus to one that much desired of him a visit I cannot bear but with pain the account you make of my visits and society Let us look much upon God let us binde our selves strictly to Jesus Christ that we may learn of him a profound annihilation of our selves O my God when will it be that we shall have no more a sight upon our selves when we shall speak no more of our selves and when all vanity shall be destroyed And he wrote to another I beseech you not to regard in me save my infirmities and a depth of wickedness and pride very horrible that is in me that 's it for which I shall have need that all the world talk to and punish me In the third place he esteemed himself most unworthy of the graces and favours of God and beleived there was not one of them how little soever it were but was far above his merits and for the great ones he was so full of they did put him to a Non-plus He wrote to a confident The gifts of God are sometimes so great that they put us as I may so say beyond our selves and if it were possible we could finde the means to recoil our selves further off than beyond Nothingness we should do it You see among men that when one receives a gift that bears some proportion to him he renders thanks and acknowledgement to the giver for it but if a Prince be Liberal to a poor man according to the Grandeur of his own power whether it be a sum of money or a place you shall see this poor man recoil and say Alas my Lord I think you know me not I must not have so much I am unworthy of it In like manner there are blessings that go beyond our expectations capacities and which make us see what we are without daring to lift up our eyes towards them their brightness doth so much dazle and their greatness so much astonish In fine he humbled himself always for the favours of God because he thought
that either by his sloth he was not answerable to their extent or that by the sole misery of nature he used them and made them lose some part of their force as it happens to Plants of the Levant which removed into a strange soil do not retain their vertue but degenerate and savour of the earth they are removed to And if the spiritual things of nature are allayed and corrupted in their passage through our senses how much more reason is there to think that the Divine and spiritual things of grace will there become enfeebled and altered These considerations rendred him most humble even in the greatest gifts of God and in things of most sublimity SECT 2. The pursuance of his Humility in heart AS the affections we bear to any thing are always founded upon the esteem we make of it so Monsieur de Renty esteeming himself so low so little and nothing in consequence thereof did extreamly abase and vilipend himself within his heart This he did in every thing and one of his strongest inclinations according to grace which is a great token of the Spirit of God in a soul was to be always condemning of himself He wrote to his Director I have at the same time two apprehensions quite contrary the one to avow to you with thankful acknowledgement to God that he fills me with effects of his goodness and impressions of his Kingdom and the other that I am more disposed to condemn than to regard my self for upon the whole what I do is pittiful Another time after some speech to him of many great enlightnings and excellent sentiments which God had communicated to him he told him I rest not upon all this I told you onely what is past to render you an account not making use of my judgement but to condemn my self for vices suspending it as to other things and committing it to God He wrote to another Confident I know not what will become of our business one must not speak a word in sweetness and patience but I shall lose my credit somewhat if this could be throughly lost it would be great justice Alas if no body endur'd me and all the world condemn'd me my pride perhaps would be humbled Carried on by this Spirit he had an ardent desire though always with his ordinary tranquillity and giving himself up to the orders of God to receive some disgrace If I were to wish any thing it should be to be much humbled and nullified and to be treated as an off-scouring by others This would be my joy but I believe I deserve not so great a favour This desire carried him to such a point that had he not been withheld with the consideration of greater good he had done strange things to be disesteemed and receive confusion Out of this sentiment and abundance of his heart he said thus to one I should have great pleasure if it were permitted me to go naked in my shirt through the streets of Paris to make my self disesteemed and taken for a fool Whence we must observe two things the first that God gives sometimes to holy souls some thoughts affections and desires so raised above the common pitch and humane reason that they may seem extravagant as this here which he gave to Monsieur de Renty and which was before him also in our founder S. Ignatius The second is that we must not at all put in execution such desires till before hand they have been well examined and justly weighed in the ballance of Charity and edification of our Neighbour This burning desire which he had to be diesteemed made him seek for and love his own abjection and when it came to take it not onely with patience but also which is the highest step that one can mount in humility with joy He gave an evident and notable testimony thereof in the first journey he made to Dijon whither a suit that he had with the Lady his Mother and which to him by an extraordinary dispensation of God was one of the greatest exercises of patience and humiliation that he underwent in all his life of which I shall speak more at large in the following Chapter had obliged him to go for thus he wrote to his Director the 24. of July 1643. I am at Dijon now seeing God is so pleased where I have learnt by the prejudicate opinions that were entertained concerning me what it is that God would draw from my journey which is that I lead a life secret and unknown to men in the spirit of penance The bruit which they had spread concerning me was that I was a Bigot and had nothing but artifices and shews of devotion for the colouring of my naughtiness that indeed I have kept my self much private in my closet out of fear to give by coming abroad rather scandal than any example of vertue I have found a generality that sollicited against me though such as from whom I had good cause methinks for divers good reasons to hope for a prop than from any other but have found the quite contrary But so also as God hereby hath done me many favours I have been to see them where I have received humiliation with great joy I have been very wary of opening my self in any thing that might recommend me unto them I have onely done in my business what truth required and for any thing else I made it matter of confusion and humiliation as I ought to do I shall be here I believe as one excommunicate and the Scape-Goat of the old Law chased into the wilderness for my enormous sins for which I am of opinion God would have me do penance not by meer pain onely but by such as withal brings shame and confusion with it I tell you this to render you some account not dwelling on it any longer my sole scope being to love God and to condemn my self SECT 3. His Humility in words THe Humility of heart in which Monsieur de Renty was deeply rooted produced in him the Humility of speech which hindred him ever from speaking any word that savoured of vaunting or that carryed the least tincture of arrogance and esteem of himself or which was uttered in a haughty manner or in a tone imperious or conceited but on the contrary they were all of them tempered with humility and modesty and as he deemed himself to be indeed a sinner lazy ungrateful perfidious ignorant so did he set forth and qualifie himself with these names and titles We have seen hereof already something before whereto we will adde also this which he writ to a certain person I am to speak the truth but an Idiot a poor Layick and a sinner Writing to a Priest he said What do I an unclean one and a Plebeian in grace and in condition in the Church who live in a state that Jesus Christ refused for himself I speak to a Priest and to the anointed of the Lord my God if I should make a reflection
than the new which consisteth in the alliance and union of Charity with Jesus Christ His patience likewise in bearing with the faults and imperfections of others was very exemplary still extennating them with some word of mitigation and excusing and covering them with Charity if it were possible Being told of one that had put a cheat upon him in a business of small concernment belonging to his Law-Suit at Dijon he straightway covered the fault and by an act of humility said it is I that continually cheat my God then changed the discourse to another business In this he looked upon the example of God and his Son our Saviour who infinitely hating of sin and shedding his blood for the destruction of it notwithstanding daily do suffer such an innumerable multitude of most enormous sinners with so great patience and forbearance Neither was this his patience and connivance at faults without the design to correct them as much as he could which he managed with great prudence and courage When ever he intended to reprove another he commonly in the first place accused himself the better to dispose their spirit by the example of his own humility and the setting forth of his weakness to receive his sayings and afterwards requested the same Christian office from them back again All which he performed in such a graceful way that there be many who received good and retain the memory of it to this day Having one day a design to admonish one he began a discourse of that unity of spirits and freedom of hearts that ought to be amongst Christians in telling one another the very truths For want of which we are ignorant of them and so grow gray in our vices and carry them along with us to our graves And therefore that he should hold himself extreamly obliged if any one would perform toward him this charity The other finding his heart exceedingly softned with this discourse besought him to deal freely and plainly with him in telling him whatsoever in him he saw amiss which thing then he did When he had to deal with stubborn sinners his language was sharp and severe knowing when it was fir to yield and when to reprove sharply And his counsel to a friend concerning a third party was this Take heed of humbling your self before that man such abasing of your self in this case will both prejudice him and the cause of God Reprove him severely and roundly He put a great difference betwixt Christian patience in our own concernments and fortitude requisite in the things of God and the good of our Neighbour and for the worthy preserving of our just Authority SECT 8. Two other qualities of his zeal THese two qualities likewise accompanied his zeal Freedom and prudence For although his great Humility of which we have formerly spoken hath robbed us of the knowledge of many and most profitable things he did and caused him to conceal many of his inward graces and outward actions yet did his zeal bring many of them to light and compel him to manifest them in a sincere charitable and holy simplicity where he saw it necessary for the glory of God and good of his neighbour as we may gather from some Memorials we have from him According to which necessity and that spirit of Charity sometime he spake directly of himself and sometime in a third person as S. Paul of his own Revelations To which purpose see how well and fitly he wrote in the year 1649. to a vertuous Lady Give me leave Madam to declare unto you my thoughts concerning that liberty we ought to use in communicating freely the gifts of God bestowed on us to such persons as may reap fruit from them not stifling within our selves what we receive from above whereby we obstruct a second fruit which God expects from his graces Which is after our receiving good from them to communicate them to others with charity and discretion Improving them like good seed sown in good ground bringing forth abundance of fruit I wish that we would consider our selves set in this world as a Chrystal which placed in the middle of the Vniverse would give free passage to all that light it receives from above And that by good example by a high estimate set of vertue by discountenancing of vice by comforting others by pious convease we would impart those talents we have received from heaven to all creatures and this without disguisement or the least claim of propriety Giving obedience and passage to them as the Chrystal to light Furthermore that all those honours and commendations which we receive from below should freely pass through us again up to God without making any stay with us No otherwise than the Chrystal transmits the beams of several torches set under it purifying and darting them more sparkling towards heaven for this indeed is our bounden duty to render unto God all that honor praise we receive from men who alone is worthy of all honor and glory And who hath therefore bestowed upon us such things as are praise-worthy not that the praise thereof should rest upon us but pass thorow us towards him that he may be blessed and praised in all things Moreover it is observable if nothing be opposed to the Chrystal to receive that light which passeth thorow it it appeareth not at all And though the Sun bestoweth his beams from above and the torches their flames from below yet these for want of a reflection remain onely imperceptible in the Chrystal In like manner though we receive the heavenly light and abundance of graces if we make no approaches to God and our neighbour by rendring to the one what is his due and to the other what is Charitable it may be we have a light but that 's onely in our selves and hidden under a bushel Which being so straitly confin'd cannot produce its effect of communication and is in danger in a short time to be choaked and extinct Consider also that when the Sun shineth upon a clear Chrystal there is not any corporeal thing more capable of that lustre or that receives its beams with so great splendour Moreover betwixt it and the Sun no light is seen but after it hath past thorow the Chrystal it becomes bright and glorious and also burns according to the figure to which it is disposed To shew us that what passeth betwixt God and us is a work onely of the Closet which ought not to appear abroad until it hath passed thorow us to others Let us then suffer our selves to be penetrated by the graces of God that after their beams have lightned and warmed us they may afford the like to all about us Let us imitate that clear Chrystal which composed of solid matter yet gives free passageonely to the light let us like it be impenetrable to all but what proceeds from God and returns to him Let us not as we commonly do descend to the appetites of sense and lust inordinately after earthly
the more he may make you grow in the holy use of your suffering to accomplish perfectly in your person what S. Paul saith Absit mihi gloriari nisi in cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi God forbid that I should glory in any thing save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ I assure you it is a great shame to a Christian to pass his days in this world more at ease than Jesus Christ here passed his Ah! had we but a little faith what repose could we take out of the Cross But if all have not this grace how much ought they to whom it is given to cherish it seeing it is a mark of the high degree of glory that they one day shall possess for who doubts but that in proportion as we shall be conformed to the death of the Son of God and to his pain we shall in the same degree be to his glory and receive the recompence thereof in bliss And afterwards teaching him the way of well-suffering he gives him this advice which contains all the secret But the beauty of suffering is in the interior in the holy dispositions of Jesus Christ who is and it is a thing to be well marked and always studied as well the model as the head of all sufferers And to another out of the same thought he said It is a great favour to suffer All the worlds deceiv'd supposing this a common favour it is very rare It is true we may say that many suffer but of them there are very few that suffer in the dispositions of Jesus Christ very few which suffer with a perfect resignment to what God ordains concerning them very few without some inquietude and dwelling in their thoughts upon their pressures few that give up all events to the conduct of God without making reflection thereupon for to employ themselves entirely in his praise and to give way by our acquiescence and submission for him to exercise all his rights and power over us He fortifies and encourageth in this sort a Lady much in pain Few understand the secret of Christianity many call themselves Christians and few have the spirit thereof many in their prayers and ordinary affairs look up to heaven but in their important actions they are children of nature not looking but on the earth whence if they life up their eyes to heaven it is but to complain and pray him to condescend to their desires and not to shew their acceptance of his They give some small things to God but will retain those which their love ties them to and if he separate them from them it is a violence and a dismembring which he must make and to which they cannot consent as though the life of Christians were not a life of sacrifice and an Imitation of Jesus Christ crucified God who knows our wretchedness takes from us for our greater good the cause of our evil a Parent a Childe a Husband that he may by another evil which is affliction draw us to himself and make us see that all these alliances and connexions to whatsoever it be that separates us from him are so many obstacles of so great importance that one day in the face of all the creatures we shall confess that the greatest mercy that he ever did us was to free us of them It is a wormwood-bitter onely to the mouth and taste but wholesome to the heart kills the old Adam to make alive in us Jesus Christ it is a great winter which is the assurance of the beauty of the other seasons But we must beware that what is given us out of favour we take not as a thing by chance or a misfortune for this would be to turn the remedy into poyson and to receive the grace to chase it away Let us enter into the holy and adorable disposition which was always in Jesus Christ to suffer willingly for the honour of his Father and for our salvation Is not this a strange thing that men knowing that the way which Jesus Christ past thorow to glory was ignominy pain and the cross yet they that call themselves his disciples and followers should expect and beg of him for themselves another way to walk in Is the Disciple greater than the Master and if the head willingly passed that way what remains for the members ought not they to follow him Let us therefore go after him and suffer after his model Blessed be sickness the loss of honour of riches of goods and of the nearest things and the separation from all creatures which hold us bowed towards the earth if it set us streight and make us lift up our eyes to heaven and to enter into the designs that God hath over us Blessed be the plague the war and the famine and generally all the scourges of God which produce these effects of grace and salvation in us I conclude in these words which he sent to another person While we live here it is our season of patience where faith and hope would be unprofitable if all were clear and nothing caused us to suffer It is in the obscurity of this desertion and in all the sorts of tryals as well from within as without that those vertues are established in our souls and that they make us hope wall of our salvation SECT 2. His Domestick crosses THe greatest exercise of patience that Monsieur Renty ever had in all his life was that which was given him by the Lady his Mother who whether she were angry that he was so forward in devotion always among Prisons always among Hospitals always employed in actions low and abject in the eyes of the world far beneath as she thought his birth and that she should have been glad to see him in glistering and glorious employments wherein his Ancestors had appeared or were it that she was pushed thereto by some evil counsel or otherways So it was that she gave him and for a long time matter of suffering and one may say that as she contributed much to the making him man so she contributed much to the making him a perfect Christian The case was thus The Lady pretending to great rights in the goods which her deceased husband had bequeathed to her Son did demand the same of him who with great submission and respect gave her all that he believed was her due and over and above but she not content therewith demanded more which her son finding by advice of learned Counsel that it could not be done without wrong to his children did remit the business to Arbitrators and agreed for the satisfaction of his mother that she should chose them all as she pleased persons of ability and honesty of her acquaintance and such as he knew not at all to determine what he might give her without prejudice to his conscience When they were chosen he went to finde them out and prayed them to content the Lady his mother in every thing that might lawfully be done without having
regard to him which was a request altogether extraordinary made to Judges by one of the parties and which well makes appear the affection and the honour which Monsieur de Renty bore to his mother and how far he was from seeking his own interest The day being come wherein these Gentlemen were to give their sentence whilst they were employed in the framing of it the said Lady was in one chamber of the house and her son with Madam his Lady and a Gentlewoman in another where the employment of her most vertuous son was to pray to God for a success of the business to his glory and the procurement of peace and for this end he caused them to say with him some hymns till the time that there was brought him the award to sign it which was read to him and which he heard with great calmness of spirit and although it was not advantagious to him and that there was a notable forfeiture on them that should not stand to it he signed it without dispute or endeavour to get better terms Upon this believing that his mother would be fully satisfied with what had been decreed when he returned to his lodging he caused to be sung Te Deum Laudamus beginning it first himself and from his heart in way of thanksgiving for this conclusion which he supposed would be a bond of peace between his mother and him and a means of living happily with her the rest of his days But God to purifie and refine him yet more and to lay a cross upon his shoulders which he bore divers years in a most holy disposition permits that the thing should not take effect according to his desire because his mother not accounting herself satisfied with this advantage which these Arbitrators had given her found our a way to appeal from the award yet without being obliged to pay the forfeiture for refusal and to sue him for her pretended right at the Parliament of Dijon Her son did all that was possible for him to make her alter this design and to sweeten her heart towards him and for the bringing of this about he had recourse to remedies supernatural he made long prayers and joyning penance thereto he fasted with extraordinary rigour and macerated his body with great austerities hoping God would have regard to these actions and to the sincerity of his intentions After he had thus prepared himself for some time he went to his mother and cast himself on his knees before her with a reverence humility and submission able to mollifie the most obdurate heart the which thing he did not for once onely but often and with abundance of tears and begg'd of her with the most efficacious words that he could make use of that she would be pleased to take him and all his family unto her and entertain them as she thought meet and after that she might dispose as she pleased of all the goods that his father had left him She would not consent to this humble and reasonable request but persisted in her resolution to go to Dijon and sue him there which he perceiving though he might by an expedient presented to him have crost that and never stirr'd out of Paris yet out of respect to her and to comply with her in this business would not make use of it but determined to go thither and did so And this he did out of a disposition to confusion and debasement which indeed he met with to purpose finding mens minds prejudiced against him with a perswasion of great injury for one that made profession of so high piety to deal so with his mother which he endured that he might be partaker of the reproaches and honour the self-abasement of the son of God who came into the world for our sakes in the similitude of sinful flesh and appeared as a criminal although he was very Innocence it self And so passed he here for a guilty person in this business though he was not at all in fault but on the contrary exercised therein actions of Heroical vertue of which you shall now see some of them A person of piety and Superiour of a Religious House acquainting him with all the evil and strange reports which were spread abroad of him in Dijon where none were to justifie him being a meer stranger there he heard it all without any sign of passion but with admirable calmness elevated himself to God in heart and words and humbled himself before him whereat she was much edified She demanded after this whether there had been put in any injurious papers against his mother as was reported He answered No though Proctors and Advocates sometimes say more than one would have them yet that he had seen all the writings and found them all drawn with that respect which was due to a mother She ask'd him also if he was not afflicted at her manner of proceeding against him seeming very harsh and extraordinary He said No because I so much adore the order of God over me that I cannot be afflicted at that which he permits to befal me I am a great sinner and therefore not onely my mother but all the world have just cause to take part against me In brief he was never heard to make any complaint of hard usage from his mother but continually laid the blame upon his sins The same person addes in a Memorial how that divers seeking out ways of accord had the greatest trouble in the world to make her joyn in it every day inventing new difficulties even when it was believed that all had been given her whatsoever she desired and that in the midst of these delays from day to day herself said to Monsieur Renty Sir I shall willingly say the Te Deum when once I hear your business ended And one day when they believed Articles would have been signed without retracting on which day notwithstanding all was broken off he came with a pleasant countenance to desire her to say the Te Demm It is now the time to say the Te Deum said he since you had the goodness to promise it And may I be so bold as to desire to say it with you O what a great and wise God have we who knows well how to do all things as they ought and when they ought not according to our precipitations but to his order which is our Sanctification Hereupon he said the Te Deum with a spirit so elevated to God as gave sufficient evidence of his being wholly filled with him And afterward said It s well though nothing be done yet it was very meet to say the Te Deum to render thanks to God for that he hath done his own will and not that of a finner unworthy to be heard or regarded This action filled me with admiration wrote this person and so much the more because the business was believed to be broken without hopes of making up again And I no less admired his silence in a business that
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
formerly and made them himself before them in the place Commonly he came thither alone somtime in company of some Noblemen of good quality who encouraged by such an example strove to imitate it in some sort and to have a part in such holy actions Neither did he onely visit the sick but they likewise sought him and would finde him out where ever he came if they were able to go abroad At Dijon they would come to him in troops for all sorts of sicknesses and distempers In the year 1642 going to his estate in Normandy he spent about four moneths in these works of mercy administring Physick and Chyrurgery to all sick of that Countrey in such sort that from all quarters they came to him and in such multitudes daily that one could scarce come near him This puts me in minde of that we read of our Saviour how from all parts they brought to him all that were sick of all diseases to be healed by him which seems to be represented in some measure by this his servant and true disciple in that the sick the weak the lame or otherwise in firm came to him from all sides and we have seen him compassed about with a throng of them some to be let blood some for his oyntments some for his powders or other medicines some for counsel or consolation some for an alms or for ease in some case or other Treating all with the like diffusive Christian Charity with the like bowels of pitty and compassion the like spirit of love as wherewith the Son of God of whom he received it had pitty upon us And stood in the midst of them with the like goodness and patience endeavouring to do good and minister comfort to them all SECT 3. A further prosecution of the same Charity and the success BEyond all these his Charity yet ascended higher even to the care and cure of such diseases as were very troublesome and which to nature carried much horror and aversion along with them At his Castle at Beny he entertained poor people infected with scall'd heads lodging them in a chamber fitted and furnished for them where himself visited them plucking off their scabs with his plaisters attending and feeding them till their recovery At Paris likewise he visited the same in the Suburbs of S. Germains which was their usual abode carrying them some collections of Alms joyning Humility also with his Charity forasmuch as he hath been seen standing in the midst of these noysome sick folks bare-headed attending to a Sermon which he had procured for them A credible witness testifieth thus of him I have seen Monsieur Renty in his Hall at Beny dressing a Cancre which a man would not look upon at some distance without aversion and horror which he having mastered all such squeamishness of nature did handle with pleasure and respect During his abode at Dijon he met with a Wench who had been taken with the Souldiers by whom she had gotten the foul Disease some charitable people had perswaded the Religious Nuns the Vesulines to take her into their care who lodged her in a poor neighbours house Her body was in a very sad condition even nothing but â—ottenness casting out such a stinking infectious smell that none could come near her and the house she lodged in were ready to turn her out of doors so that she was in a forlorn condition had not the Superiour there a woman of great vertue bethought herself to confer with Monsieur Renty to whom she bore a very great respect about the means of relieving this poor creature This good mans Charity like a perpetual motion giving him no rest or truce not for a moment carried him instantly to visit this poor creature and to provide for her extremity In the first place he hireth a woman to attend her and deals with her Host to keep her there after this he provides her Dyer-drinks and Physick proper for her disease bringeth her broths his own self with all other convenient nourishment stayeth by her a long time at each visit and whilst she was in a sweat wipes her with his own handkerchief using the same himself afterward a thing more admirable than imitable Moreover having as great a care of her soul as body instructs and comforts her taking the pains once in a day to read her a Lecture out of some Book of Devotion enduring with much courage and delight all the difficulties of trouble and inconvenience that so noysome a disease could present by its stench and rottenness at all which his heart leapt as if it had been entertained by some delicate perfume which was no doubt the sweet odour of Jesus Christ whom he look'd upon in these poor people as we have said before which perfumed all their infections and caused him to finde delicacies in the greatest loath-someness In fine by his care he retrived this poor creature from misery and the very jaws of death brought her into the state of a good Christian insomuch that she spent the rest of her time very vertuously and when ever she came to the Monastery of the Vesulines she could not hold from relating with great fâ—eling the unparalel'd Charities of Monsieur Renty together with her deepest obligations which she every where published with the highest recognition of her gratirude to so worthy a person Neither were these generous acts of his Charity enclosed within the walls of Dijon several other places and Hospitals bearing witness of the like which we have heard from divers and have good cause to believe To which we may add his ardent desire for the erecting of an Hospital for the infected with the Kings Evil there being none such in Paris nor in all France Thus did this great servant of God imploy himself about diseases and those the most noysome And now let us consider what blessings and success God gave to his endeavours and Medicines which will appear little less than miraculous Being in low Normandy much busied amongst his sick people men were astonished to see how he cured all diseases even the most desperate and extraordinary and that with remedies sometimes which scarce appeared to have any thing in them which made those that took notice of them apt to believe that the cures were wrought not so much by any natural power of the Medicines as by Grace and Miracle The same opinion they had at Dijon of the cures he wrought there that they were healed by some way supernatural To which purpose I cannot let pass the discourse he had with the Prioress of the Carmelites a great Confident of his whom he visited often to whom he related how a little before a woman in child-bed had been sick unto death and given over by all the Physicians whom he visited notwithstanding and tryed whether in so great extremity his remedies might minister any ease I went to her said he and made up the best Medicine I had yet such as I could not imagine to
by Divine Power in all the Cities Villages Private houses as well Religious as Secular whither the Divine Providence conducted him to enlighten men with the knowledge of God and his Son Christ Jesus To inkindle in their hearts perfect Charity and bring them to a good life In all which he was exceedingly blessed with happy success as shall be shewed hereafter Being one day at Paris in the time of Lent going to a poor mans house to exercise some of his ordinary acts of Charity and hearing a great noise of people singing and dancing in the next house he left his poor man and went in thither and look'd upon them who were so surprized and astonished at his presence that they presently quitted their dancing and singing And he fell into a discourse against those disorders and dissoluteness in that holy time of Lent with such fervour as drew tears from their eyes and wrought so effectually upon some of them that the next day they went to Confession Another time he visited a poor maid who being abused by a young man and gotten with childe was lest in great necessity whom he found plunged in so deep a melancholly that she had resolved to make away herself yet by the grace and power which God gave to his good counsel he comforted her dejected spirits and brought her into such a condition that she went to Confession After this he went to seek out the young man who at the first onset behaved himself very ill contemning his wholesome advice But after several arguments inforced from the danger of his soul and other threatnings of Gods Judgements hanging over his head he melted into tears promising to do whatever he pleased to command him insomuch that by his advice he was reconciled to God by true repentance and to the maid by wedlock and since that time have led a good life together During his abode at Amiens a poor woman had undone herself by selling salt a thing forbidden in France under heavy penalties and being taken in it Who thereupon fell into an excessive sadness and grief retaining also such an hatred against them that had reduced her to this misery that she could not be perswaded upon any terms to forgive them whereby she became uncapable of the Sacraments in the extremity of her sickness Monsieur Renty was brought to her in the company of two or three other persons who talked with her a long time without any success Insomuch that seeing whatever he said prevailed nothing fell upon his knees in the middle of the room inviting the company to do the like and after some few prayers bespake the sick party saying and will not you joyn with us to beg mercy of God To which she yielding he caused her to repeat after him word by word certain acts of repentance and charity by which she found her minde so strangely altered that she appeared quite another woman and openly professed that she did forgive them from her heart And receiving with much meekness all his instructions prepar'd herself to the worthy receiving of the Sacraments Being one day at the great Hospital in Paris instructing the sick how to dispose themselves for a general Confession one of the Religious women intreated him to speak with a person that was newly brought in thither who had been without any cause at all run thorow the body with a sword and was so incensed against the party that he could not indure with patience any should speak of forgiving him But no sooner did Monsieur Renty urge to him the duty of a good Christian in such a case with other speeches to pacifie and sweeten his spirit but he was appeased and said he forgave him with all his heart adding that he was ready both to see and embrace him expressing moreover very much sense of Piety Certain Abbots and other Ecclesiasticks of quality and vertue met at Pontoise to settle a Mission Monsieur Renty who was very intimately acquainted with the most part of them came to visit them where according to his usual custom without speaking thereof to any one he went to the prison and meeting there with a most obstinate sinner who had continued so along time and neither by intreaty nor threatning by fair means nor foul nor by any other means which the Mission could use be brought to Confession The Mission sending for Monsieur Renty to dine with them word was brought after much search for him that they might happily meet with him at the Prison where he was found sitting at the table with the Prisoners for whom he had provided a dinner discoursing lovingly with them comforting and stirring them up to a good life Amongst the rest the foresaid party in particular upon whom he had the greatest design to whom he spake with so much power dealing with him so discreetly or divinely rather that he brought him to his bent working in him a resolution effectually to change his life and make a good confession of all his sins which gave a just occasion to one of the Mission to say That Monsieur Renty had accomplished that in three days which others would have had much ado to have brought about in three years I omit many others of the like kinde concluding with this one which seems very remarkable He was requested to visit a devout woman who was tormented with excessive pains both inward and outward and had great need of comfort and direction who received so great relief from his instructions that within some few days she writ as followeth The effect which I found by the conference I had with this worthy servant of God was such that as soon as I had gotten victory over my self to speak and lay open my heart unto him straightway my blessed Saviour communicated his goodness so powerfully to me that I was even peirced by the effects of his presence I found also a very particular assistance from the blessed Virgin whom this holy man did invoke at the beginning of our discourse And I can assure you of a truth that I was sensible of much comfort and ease of my affliction insomuch that his speeches had so great an influence upon my soul and wrought so effectually that I have continued ever since in a good condition And though my pains are not abated yet I finde such an alteration in my self that I seem to be no more my own but all that is within me breatheth after nothing but the Execution of the will of God and the accomplishment of his good pleasure at any rate And though nature suffers some difficulty in it yet she must now learn to yield to grace and make resistance no longer My torments are not changed and yet I profess to suffer nothing because I am very well content to suffer And although my inferiour sensitive part is much pained yet my superiour part cannot nor indeed is it capable of suffering by reason of its conformity to the will of God All my care during
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
world that you may have no part therein And above all my children that you may live in the fear and love of God and yield due obedience to your Mother On Saturday which was the day of his death about half an hour past ten in the forenoon being newly recovered out of a violent fit of a Convulsion which had like to have carried him away looking attentively on those that were present he made signs with his hands head and eyes with a pleasant countenance for a person of quality and his intimate friend to come neer him Which being done he spake thus to him Sir I have one word to say to you before I dye then pausing a little to recover his strength he testified his affection to him but in words that could not distinctly be understood at length raising his voyce and speaking more articulately and plainly he proceeded The perfection of Christian life is to be united unto God in the faith of the Church We ought not to entangle our selves in novelties let us adore his conduct over 〈◊〉 and continue faithful to him unto the end let us adhere to that one God crucified for our salvation let us unite all our actions and all that is in us to his merits hoping that if we continue faithful to him by his grace we shall be partakers of the glory of his Father I hope we shall there see one another one day which shall never have end The party ready to reply and give him thanks Monsieur Renty stopped his mouth saying Adieu this is all I have to say to you Pray for me Some time after this and a little before his death fixing his eyes stedfastly upon heaven as if he had discovered something extraordinary he said The Holy Infant Jesus where is he Thereupon they brought him his Picture which he kissed devoutly and asking for his Crucifix took it in his hands and kissed it most affectionately Then turning himself towards death presently entred into his last agony which held not above a quarter of an hour of which he spent the most part in pronouncing the Holy name of Jesus making as well as he could acts of Resignation and commending his spirit to God after which he expired sweetly and his holy soul as we have good cause to believe departed to its place of rest Thus lived and dyed Monsieur de Renty one of the most glorious lights that God hath bestowed upon his Church in this age and one of the greatest ornaments of true devotion that hath appeared this long time He died at Paris the 27 year of his age the 24 of April 1649. about noon neer the time of our Saviours elevation on the Cross of which a certain person having a particular knowledge in his prayers applied the merits of this passion to him at the instant of his death in such sort that this application together with his own acts of resignation and annihilation which he had made and with which he both honoured and embraced the Cross are piously believed to have perfectly purged his soul and put it into a condition of entring into its beatitude and enjoyment of God at the instant of its dissolution There are reports of several Revelations and Visions concerning his state of glory and how at the instant of his death a Globe of light was seen ascending from earth to heaven Certain miraâ—ulous cure are also related to be done by his intercessions and spiritual relief supernaturally afforded to several devout persons by his admonitions which things will not seem incredible when we consider his holy life and heroick vertues rendring him one of the miracles of our age Yet since I have not the like assurance of these as of what I have already written and that true Sanctity and Châ—istian perfection consists not in suâ—h things which are not at all imitable I shall not insist upon them I onely adde by way of conclusion that we have great reason to admire the secret counsels of God in taking out of the world a man so useful who being in his full strength and flower of his age and in such an eminent degree of credit reputation and capacity might wonderfully have advanced the honour of God and good of his neighbour But when I say it was the hand of God all things are therein concluded And hereby he is pleased to let us know that he hath no need of us for the advancing of his glory the execution of his designs which he can bring about without us and when he is pleased to make use of us his instruments therein we are to behave our selves with great humility in his presence He hath translated him to another place where he glorifies his Majestie with greater perfection to a place and state that truly deserves the name of glory and that not onely in consideration of what the Saints receive but of what they render to the King of glory Moreover we may affirm that these holy men great pillars of the Church and comforts of the faiâ—hful are frequently taken away before their time as a just punishment upon us for the little use and benefit we make of their conversation and example And truly when first I heard the news of his sickness and the danger that he was in I could not but make this reflection that considering so solid and compleat a vertue notwithstanding that great need the world had of him and the exceeding great good he might still have done in it it was very likely he might dye as being a fruit ripe for heaven even as fruit in its maturity is ready to be gathered and takes hurt by being plucked too soon or too late Thus did God gather this good man in the maturity of his graces and perfection of his vertues as a man perfect and compleated to place him in heaven there to receive his just reward where he waits for us to adore and glorifie and love together with him in all perfection God the Father the Son and H. Ghost to whom be Honour Praise Benediction and all sorts of Adoration and Service now and for ever Amen THE CONCLUTION OF THE WORK How we ought to read the Lives of Saints TO conclude this work and render it more useful to the Reader I think it will not be amiss to afford him some instructions how to read the Lives of Saints and Histories of persons eminent in vertue to the end that that fruit may be reaped by them for which they were compiled These eminent souls then are to be considered two several ways 1. As they have relation to God 2. As to our selves For the first as they relate to God it is certain that these Saints and Persons famous for Piety are the greatest Master-pieces the richest Ornaments the most precious Jewels the choicest Works and the greatest Instruments of Gods Glory that are upon earth For if the meanest righteous man is incomparably more noble and honourable than all sinners put together since