how much she was troubled to see him so much honoured and esteemed by men Who answered her First That she had great reason for it in that he so little deserved it And secondly upon her demand how those commendations assected him He replied I neither attend nor return any answer to them they affect me no more than a stock through the grace of God I am insensible of praise and dispraise the one nor the other make not any impression upon my spirit but I entertain them without reflexion And he had good reason since'as all the prayers men bestow upon us make us not one jot the better so neither their opprobries the worse Besides that ordinarily in the distribution of these the greatest piece of injustice in the world is committed by commending such as least deserve it but rather shame and confusion and blaming such whom God highly esteemeth In the fourth place he was dead and crucified to all supernatural good things all spiritual delights and favours which without comparison are of greatest value above all that we have named even to all gifts vertues perfections which he desired and sought after with a most disengaged and self-denying spirit not lusting after this or that vertue this or that degree of perfection but willing and desiring all according to Gods will about which he expressed himself further thus The love of our selves is so afraid to be stripped out of any thing that it suffers us not to be carried forth to our true rest as long as it can subsist and uphold it self by its own right and property which should teach us to use all diligence for the annihilation of our own desires even of those that seem to us to tend onely to vertue I say that seem to us whereas indeed if God gave us a true light we should undoubtedly see that the course which tends to our divesting of all these things carries us on secretly but most really to the true possession of them and our own preservation and that we must daily descend to our own nothingness in which alone God is to be found Thrice happy are all such poor in spirit He was also dead and annihilated to all gusts of Devotion all sensible Graces and Consolations of which our love-sick souls are so greedy Upon which subject he expressed himself thus I am better satisfied with those graces in which sense hath no part than with those that have more of the sensible of which indeed I am somewhat jealous for we finde amongst spiritual persons great store of counterfeit riches of the Spirit those I mean who are all for gusts and sensible consolations and illuminations in this state of exile wherein we ought to live rather by faith than feeling and which is much to be â—amented We meet very few that are not infected with this â—â—ch it being the natural condition of man to desire to see and to that end to affect and search for enlightnings and wanting the experimental knowledge of that which comes from God which is not to be gotten but by quitting his own he looks after that which he findes in himself mistaking it for Divine because it is modeliz'd to his own gust and fancy And in another Letter thus As for obscurities aridities and other troubles of spirit they are to be born with upon any terms and we must give up our selves as forlorn creatures throwing our selves into God on all sides of us as a fish in the Ocean which is its proper element into God at all times and for all things If we be true members of our Saviour Christ Jesus we shall see nothing but submissions and abnegations and shall sense nothing else but these He was dead and annihilated also to all glorious and extraordinary favours enjoyments of which he had no other feeling than the Sun which being covered over with light and crowned with glory yet is no way sensible thereof insomuch that having received by the mouth of a great Saint promises of some great favours from God he returned this answer to his Director Those things whereof they have given me notice and assurance must be as they may I rest nothing upon them nor confide in them knnowing it to be my duty to live by faith Being certified at another time of a special favour received from our Saviour it had no other operation upon him but the impression of a great confusion and profound humility And as they gave him all these things in writing at large he parted with them all to his Director together with all his other secrets and most important papers of Devotion especialy those written with his own blood formerly mentioned an evident demonstration of his great humility by reason that most men are taken with those parcels of piety grounding this their affection to them upon some benefit receiveable by them But the reliance which is placed upon God must be disengaged from every thing else This he made appear by this Letter to his Director I have received the paper which mentions this grace and favour whereof I send you the copy having no other reflection thereupon but to meet it with the greatest latitude of heart I can possible to bless God acknowledge his goodness and serve him for it I have burnt the original with several other papers of the like nature If you judge it not convenient that I should do so let me receive your commands accordingly for the future I could wish if there be any thing left for me to wish that I had nothing left me but my God This is the sure replenishment of the soul and rich treasure of the heart Moreover he was wholly dead to all that God wrought by him taking no share thereof nor interesting himself any more with them after they were done than if they had been performed by another Fifthly he was crucified and dead to all affections not onely such as are irregular but those also which are purely natural of all creatures and in particular of those who used his counsel and depended upon him for the conduct of their souls wherein the obligations and relations on both parts use to be more than ordinary insomuch that upon a separation there falls out de jection of spirit and distractions of Devotion To this purpose he writ to one of those persons thus I cannot without much trouble bear the great matter you make of my converse and of my removes Let us breath after God and make good our alliance with Jesus Christe to learn in and from him a profound abnegation of our selves And in another Letter thus Jesus Christ is ever the same and his grace is continually advancing and as long as I am to him so long shall I be to you for him and in him he is not wont to part souls by the separation of bodies since his custom is to separate onely what is imperfect as being that which very often brings with it some hinderances to the perfect life of
the spirit which is never so compleat as when it is alone Giving notice to a friend of the death of the Countess of Castres for whose spiritual good and perfection he had taken very much pains He writeth thus I was not in Paris but at Citry when she departed I was sent for post the day of her death which was Saturday but came two hours too late Entring the Town I understood the news from them that spake openly of it in the streets Presently I fixed my self to the will of God whereupon I found no more alteration in my soul than if she had been alive I see his order in this that I assisted her not at her death and make no doubt but that he permitted it for her advantage To a friend that had lost his Spiritual Director he writ thus Touching the remove of your Ghostly Father it would without question prove a great loss to you and all the Countrey from whence he went if the providence of God herein did not rather sanctifie and establish than destroy and if oftentimes by removing these petty visible and sensible supports he did not make way to settle us more firmly in our progress to which he designs us which is to dwell and to hold our selves in God together with Christ Jesus where we finde all truth and all power and who is so neer to us that he is even in the midst of â— and proportionably as our dependence upon creatures faileth through his providence he makes it appear aâ—d we experimentally finde that we are not left destitute thereby but that supply is made either by his Spirit that resideth continually in us for our relief or by the conduct of his Ministers which the fewer they are the more is that grace dilated and multiplied which we receive by them So great is the providence of our Heavenly Father as to take care of the meanest necessities of all his children who to him behave themselves as children Neither indeed ought we to be further engaged to those persons who assist us in our Spiritual conduct than as to Gods instruments whose help it is his will we should make use of but no longer than he pleaseth and when his will is either by death or otherwise to take them from us we ought not to be afflicted nor lose our courage but with submission and gratitude resign all to him which will be a good means to move him to provide others who perhaps with more advantage to us may understand the pulse of our souls In fine he was dead to all love of himself which he had so perfectly subdued that being naturally quick and hasty as we have formerly hinted he became so staid and equal in all his demeanor as caused admiration in those that knew him being naturally of a high spirit he had acquired a most profound humility of heart whereof he produced most evident actions exteriourly at all times and in all places And though his genius inclined him to wit and scoffing yet he so corrected it that none was more respectful and courteous to all even the meanest As for his passions those were so perfectly subdued and regulated that they never broke loose upon any occasion so that you might say he had none at all He had arrived to a perfect death in the superiour faculties of his soul his memory so emptied of all worldly things that it never presented any Idea's sufficient to distract his Devotions He made not any imperfection upon what was past as we have observed and our Saviour had endowed him with this singular grace not to be busied in his thoughts about those actions in which he was conversant which after they were done were obliterated wholly as to any care for them and quite blotted out of his memory that they might be no hindrance to what was in hand This Letter was writ to a familiar friend relating hereunto It is some while ago that finding my self in the midst of a world of people my spirit was enlightned and affected neither to desire to know any body nor to be known to any This hath wrought in me a wonderful separation from every thing and methinks herein consisteâ—h one of the chiefest points of a Spiritual Life which requires great purity of spirit wonderful estrangement and distance from the creature and which placeth the soul in this world as if it were no part of it in a state of perfect oblivion and ignorance of things which do not concern her that is no longer able to endure but onely what is necessary He was dead to his spirit reason and judgement living onely the life of Faith which is a Christians proper death It may be gathered from what hath been mentioned already that he acted nothing by this faculty of its self no more than if he had had no such power but wrought all by the moving of Christ Jesus who lived in him and operated by him Lastly he was annihilated and dead to his own will which we have placed after all as being the most important faculty in relation to Moral actions This therefore he had entirely resigned in conformity to Gods will not desiting absolutely any thing but in order thereto I adore saith he in one of his Letters so affectionately the will of God in whatsoever he pleaseth to make out for me that Hell it self should be my Paradise if he decreed me thither And in another thus Far be it from me to act in this business by my own spirit I would have it wholly annihilated that it might know no other language but Nothing and continually Nothing to follow in all the footsteps of the Divine will according to its measure and manner And to a third thus My Saviour hath graciously brought me into such a state of indifferency for every thing that I could be very well cortent all my life to be fixed to my bed a Paralytique not able to stir without making any reflection upon any service I might render to my neighbour or that I could render him no more all things according to the will of God being equal to me And in a fourth thus Of late I have been busied in such occasions both Exteriourly and Interiourly as were sufficient to have gravel'd such a weak mean spirit as mine had it not been absolutely resigned to the will of God It is upon him alone by this way of Abnegation that I bottom my self adoring with you and by your instruction the decrees of his Sacred and Divine Will who holdeth all things in his own hands to keep us subyect unto him by his justice and to sanctifie us also by love If the effects thereof upon us do evidence us to have the hearts of children that is 〈◊〉 Spirit of Christ Jesus to sigh after our heavenly Father and cry Abbâ— Peter SECT 2. Continuation of the same subject MOnsieur Renty was so absolutely resigned to God having quite lost and annihilated his own will into thâ—â— of God
For these three moneths I have not it may be spent three or four hours at my prayers upon my knees together out of the Church and should I perform them at all no otherwise than on this fashion I should but very ill discharge my â—uâ—y It is certain that I have discharged it ill enough yet I understand that God is pleased in the midst of these imployments to which he hath appointed me to make me sensible of his presence and power in uniting my soul to himself by certain intimate ways and that the outward work may be performed by the hand whilst the soul solaceth herself in that real alliance of Sons with their Father by the Spirit of the Son who admitteth us into his communion together with that of the blessed Virgin the Angels and Saints yea and of the whole Heaven if you will Such a wonderful expansion of soul can our Lord give when and how he pleaseth I enjoyed at the same time such a sensible impression of God yet excelling all sense as being acted in the more noble part of the Soul viz. the Spirit that if I had been thrown like a boul I could never have lost the sight of my God All things are here transitory for our Lord turns this boul in a strange manner when it pleaseth him And these dâ—verse turnings are done for the souls advantage whereby she is fashioned for every occasion that she may do nothing for or by herself but all for God and according to him Moreover I evidently see that a person whom God employeth in these low affairs if he follow them with the same fidelity as if they were greater keeping his station by obedâ—ence and self-denial is as acceptable to him as he that is occupied in the noblest functions The work it self making not the difference but the faithful execution of it by submitting to his good pleasure Will nothing please you but to convert a thousand worlds and bring all souls to God you shall be content to carry stones and sometime to sit still and do nothing The Sâ—crifice of Patience is both well pleasing to God and comfortable to our selves And I believe it is without comparison more rare to finde a soul faithful in patience and content to do no more than God would have him than faithful in actions which appear abroad I know well that God doth all in all but this Sacrifice of Patience and of Câ—ssation is more commendable in a heart who hath the love and zeal of his honour and in pursuit hereof is hurried on to action and hath need of greater force to withhold it from doing than to incite it This kinde of Cessation seems to be nothing at all available for the nourishment of such zeal and this hunger and thirst after righteousness which would devour the four quarters of the world is reverberated like the fire pent in which circles and works about until it finde a vent by this consideration that God is all-sufficient in himself and hath no need of us for advancing of his glory that we receive more honour from our imployments than he service being so impure that we blemish every thing we meddle with and rob it of some lustre and prove often not onely unprofitable but endamaging servants I have one word more to tell you that you may direct me in it which is that I am really ashamed and confounded in my self that I do no more for God considering his dignity hâ—s love his gifts and communications by the alliance of Jesus Christ and his Spirit Which indeed together with the sense of my great imbecility for any thing that is good of my sins and miseries would work my extream torment did I not bethink my self of his all-sufficiency in himself and that he doth with us as he pleaseth in keeping us in obedience and profound annihilation Thus far his Letter wherein are many good things to be learnt CHAP. 4. The excellent use he made of all things and his application to the Infancy of our Lord for that purpose IT must needs be that Monsieur Renty made excellen use of all accidents that occurr'd to him and generally of all creatures to attain to such a height of perfection whereof this usage of them as muâ—h as is in man is undonbredly the prinâ—ipal means to which all others are subordinate otherwise and without it unpâ—ofitable and meer hinderâ—nâ—es True it is that God hath placed in the bosom of each thing as in riches poverty honours disgrace health sickness good and evil a secret vertue and moral capâ—city to advantage us in our salvation and to be instruments of perfection even as so many cords to draw and unite us to himself but all this according to our usâ—ge of them For bâ—ing well used they produce good effects but contrarily abused instead of uniting us to God they estrange us further from him rendring us more imperfect and vicious and instead of advantages prove the instruments of our ruine Wherefore he being well instructed in this grand secret of Spiritual life imployed all his care to practise it perfectly Which that we may better understand it will not be amiss to follow it to the Spring-head The holy man had continually in his heart making it the principal conduct of his devotions as we have mentioned and may be easily deduced from the series of this History to unite himself to our Lord Jesus Christ and that upon good grounds Since out of him as saith S. Peter there is no salvation God having chosen him the sole Mediator of Redemption and the repairer of our miseties loving no creature in the world but him with a love of perfect amity Whereupon by S. Paul he is stiled the Son of his love and good pleasure and we alone are accepted in and thâ—ough him who are found beautiful and shining with glory when we are united to him and out of him we appear deformed hideous and most abominable being indeed without him filled with sin and his enemies Wherefore every man is so far dear and amiable to him as he stands united to his Son which is manifested in the Blessed Viâ—gin and his Apostles all our actions pleasing him so far as they are united to him even as each member of our body participates of life according as it is animated by our soul Having therefore perfectly learn'd this fundamental truth of Christianity his study was to unite himself to our Lord Jesus Christ and to copy him forth as his Rule and Law for the regulating of his Exterior and Interior adoring him daily under this notion applying himself with great reslection to his words actions designs and the several mysteries receiving from each of them great enlightnings Thus he writ to me one day upon the mysterie of his Incarnation I have had the grace divers times very intimately to understand that ineffable mysterie hidden with God from all ages and manifested now to the Saints according to S. Paul which is the
before the Blessed Sacrament for I fell all along I resolved to try whether upon retiring and refreshing my self a little I should be any better But for all that I found my self more tired and discomposed in body and minde than if I had had the courage to have lain there still all along upon the ground Hereupon I reflected upon what I had formerly read in a Paper you sent me concerning a certain vertuous person afflicted with the like stupefaction Whereupon I rose up and set my self under the Crucifix before the Holy Sacrament determining to honour my Saviour in all conditions and tempers Being thus upon my knees by the Divine assistance I got the victory over my self and my spirit was enlarged Whereupon I received from the Blessed Sacrament this illumination That to become Bread which hath relation to that Mysterie I must first be ground like the corn than kneâ—ded with water and lastly baked in the even And that this was the right way to be incorporated into that mystical Bread our Lord and Saviour and at the same instant that this was revealed unto me I felt in my self a vehement desire to be thus dealt with which hath remained in me ever since And now I understand that to enter into a Spiritual estate we must like the corn before we be sent to the mill be first threshed and winnowed from our earthly impurities and that the grain is not fit for use till it be pure and that it becomes not fruitful till it first dyeth in the ground The meditation upon this material Bread hath taught me great Mysteries during this Octave of the Heavenly Bread in the Sacrament viz. how that Jesus Christ being bruised and broken in his Passion giveth himself to us for food to the end that we might set forth and express his Death his Lnve and Vertues in our life And in this condition I now finde my self much in love with Jesus Christ desirous to be wholly to him and to render unto him in my affliction this which he hath given me and my goods and my body and my soul and my time and my eternity I have a great thirst upon me to serve him and other longings which I reserve to communicate until I have the happiness to see you This his singular affection to the B. Sacrament caused him to write in Capital Letters upon a Chimney piece in his Castle at Citry Blessed for ever be the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar This made him walk on foot to visit all Churches within two leagues round about him to see in what decency the B. Sacrament was reserved there and to bestow in several parts a great number of silver pixes to keep it in upon poor Parishes and Tabernacles likewise which he made gilded with his own hands having a great dexterity in all such Manual works Of which he writ something to me the 26 of September in the year 1646. Since Advent I began a work which I have designed this long time viz. at such times as my urgent occasions will give leave which commonly is after supper till prayer time to practice some handicraft work where having all my tools I make Tabernacles for the B. Sacrament and if I finish but one in a moneth my time will not be ill spent for they may be serviceabe to some poor Churches that want them Guided by the same zeal in the year 1641. he cast to set up in his Parish of S. Paul a company of devout Ladies every one in their turn to spend an hour in prayer every afternoon before the Sacrament He wrote a short Treatise of the conduct of this Devotion and the grounds of undertaking it the cheif whereof was upon the consideration that our Saviour being continually in this adored Mysterie to give himself to us it was therefore but reasonable that some persons should be present in the Church to render to him their homage and honour and correspondent to that his desire of giving himself to us This Treatise he presented with all humility and due respect to his Parish Priest for his consent and the putting it in practice if he thought it fitting which was done accordingly and continueth to this day with great edification and profit and succeedeth so happily that the like institution is taken up in several other Parishes and Towns as at Dijon where Monsieur Renty erected it at his first journey thither with great zeal and courage overcoming several difficulties and oppositions against it He likewise excited several persons in his Parish to accompany the Holy Sacrament when it was carried to the sick in such sort that a great company of men and women were seen to follow our Blessed Saviour with lighted torches where he attended likewise with great diligence notwithstanding his daily employments spending for a long while almost all the morning in this Holy Exercise in all seasons of heart and cold One day amongst other being very foul he much distempered with rheume he was wish'd to forbear that time being so very incommodious for him to walk bare-headed to the great prejudice of his health All which moved him not a jot but he went chearfully thorow these difficulties and which is very observable at his return was cured of his rheume Another time accompanying the H. Sacrament a coach with six horses passed by without stopping or saluting the same whereupon he suspecting them to be ill-affected persons and much offended with their impietie stirred up with zeal to defend the honour of his Master adventured to admonish them of their duty and casting himself before the horses with much hazard to his person stayed the coach in its career and engaged the persons to do reverence thereto by staying till it was past which heroick action caused great admiration in all the beholders CHAP. 8. His Prayer THis Chapter and the next contain some things in them that cannot so well be expressed by way of History by reason that things of such difficult nature must be dilated upon to make them intelligible In this Chapter we shall speak of his Prayer which we may fitly term the large channel which conveys the gifts of God into our soul the most certain means for procuring of help and all graces requisite to our salvation the most universal instrument whereof we serve our selves in our spiritual life to perform all the functions thereof for our advancement in the Purgative way for rooting out vices in the Illuminative way for the practice of vertue and in the Unitive for arriving unto an union with God in which consisteth our perfection All the Saints that ever were have set so high a value upon this Divine action that quitting as it were all other affairs they have passed their days and nights in prayer many having left their Crowns and Scepters and retired into Monasteries and Solitudes to have the honour to converse with God more secretly and for longer time Monsieur de Renty enlightned by their
not onely from evil but even from our ordinary way and manner of doing that which is good undertaking what the Divine Providence presents to us by making our way by God to them and not by them to God which is a course more naked unengaged and abstracted which sees nothing but God And not so much if I may so say as the things she doth of which nothing stays in her neither choice nor joy nor sorrow for their greatness or for their littleness for good or bad success but onely the good pleasure and order of God which ruleth in all things and which in all things sufficiently contenteth the soul which adheres to him and not to the vicissitude of affairs whereupon she is constantly even equal and always the same in the midst of all changes In another he writ thus to the same purpose An absolute abnegation will be necessary to all things to follow in simplicity without reserve or reflection what our Saviour shall work in us or appoint for us let it be this or that This way was shewed me in which I ought to walk towards him and hence it is that all things to me ordinarily are without any gust or delight Moreover in another thus I apprehend great matters concerning the verity and simplicity of the annihilation I ought to have and I had for the twinkling of an eye the sight how simple this should be that the soul it self cannot take notice of it This is the state of Death and Annihilation without regard to any thing save our being wholly to God by Sequestration Faith and Affiance Lastly to another Assure your self there is no security in any estate but this of Dying and Annihilation which is to be baptized into Christs death that we may live the life of Mortification not that other ways may not be good but not secure especially any thing we do of our selves Our best way is therefore to divest our selves of all that the Holy Infant Jesus govern all He used the word All because this death must be universal thorow every part of old Adam even as a dead body is not onely dead in an eye or ear or hand but in every sense and member so much we dye to riches and poverty to pleasure and pain honour and dishonour praise and dispraise being affected with none of these because we are dead to all Moreover the spirit must be dead not onely to one faculty as the Understanding or Will but to all and to every thing onely the difference is this that the body being once deprived of her life cannot naturally recover it again but the Spirit will easily live again and the malignity of the old Adam return upon us if great heed be not taken because we are not able by this death to reach the very centre of nature Just as in your Garden you may either suffer a noysom weed to grow if you meddle not with it but give it liberty to spread its leaves and encrease or if you would not have it appear you may cut it or pluck it up by the roots but after all is done you cannot prevent that the earth should not produce the like if it be thereto disposed naturally Even so it is in your power to permit unruly affections to live in your soul producing therein disorders and exercising their tyranny or you may mortifie them so that they get not head although the root remains or further may root them up as heroick spirits do changing their nature and turning the course thereof introducing contrary inclinations from evil to good from vice to vertue yet although these generous spirits arrive to this height yet will their nature continue still rotten at bottom ready to bear the same cursed weeds without our daily vigilancy SECT 1. Of the same subject TO decypher particularly the mystical death of this renowned person we may aver That in the first place he was dead to riches and all the wealth of this world in which he so absolutely divested himself both of any affection to them in his heart and of the real possession of them that he quitted as we have formerly mentioned all property to them using them no otherwise than in the quality of a very poor man with an ardent desire that he might also be deprived of the very use of them I acknowledge before God saith he in a Letter to his Director his great mercy to me through his Son in freeing me from the things of this world and my constant thoughts are that if his order did not oblige me otherwise in that condition he hath set me to give away and quit all I have This is my earnest desire after which I long exceedingly not out of presumption of my own strength but in the power of Jesus Christ in imitation of his life And to another person he writ All that can be imagined in this lower world is of small concernment though it were the losing of all our goods and the death of all the men in it This poor Antchill is not worthy of a serious thought had we but a little faith and a little love how happy should we esteem our selves in giving away all to attend no more save on God alone and to say Deus meus omnia My God and my all In his suit of Law at Dijon he acted with so little shew of interest and so like a mortified man to gain or loss that he could not be perswaded not onely to solicite the Judges but not so much as to commend his case to them himself not out of any faulty supine indifferency or neglecting what he thought absolutely necessary but because by an heroick vertue he had lost the sense of all these earthly things entirely committing the success thereof to God and knowing that these things succeed better by our prayers to and affiance in him than with our addresses to men through the multitude of solicitings many times fruitless Secondly he was dead and crucified to all recreations and pleasures of this life having renounced them at the beginning of his Conversion remaining constantly in the condition of a sacrifice of body and soul no God which was his great exercise and his usual phrase making no further use of his senses and their objects than what was of absolute necessity following herein the pattern of our Saviour He was so wholly taken up with God as we have said before in his soul that when he had very grievous pains in his body and was very sick he scarce thought upon them but accounted it a trouble to speak or complain thereof as appeared notably in his last sickness Thirdly he was annihilated and dead to honour his great birth and nobility wherefrom he solemnly degraded himself in the arms of our Saviour to render himself the more humble He was dead also to all esteem and praise of men and to disgrace likewise of which he gave a notable testimony to a familiar friend who told him
that he neither desired noâ— feared any thing in this world And in fine enjoyed such a sweet tranquillity of spirit and repose which nothing could disturb or alter that from thence arose a wonderful and invariable equality shining forth in his Exterior at all times in all places upon all occasions One of his intimate friends desirous to try one day whether he had an affection to any thing questioned with him about every thing he could think of to put him to the rest and among other things asked him whether he desired not that these works which he had undertaken for the glory of God might succeed and take effect To whom â—he replied that he had no other aim in all his actions and enterprizes than the accomplishing of the will of God and that although he used his utmost endeavour that such things might succeed yet notwithstanding he was perfectly resigned in all things to his Majesties good pleasure adding many other expressions testifying his Mortification to all desires and a perfect transformation of his will into that of Gods This discourse was not quite finished but there hapned an occasion to put it to the tryal for one came running in crying that all the Heaven was on fire which news usually very frightful made no alteration in him at all who most calmly and composedly looking up to the heavens said the fire is here in Paris without any further distance though he understood presently that it was so violent that the street he lived in was in danger to be burnt down and his neighbours said it was necessary to quite forsake their quatters by reason that the fire was not far off and was likely in a very short space to reach them In this publique fright he keeping his ordinary equality and referring all to the will of God went into his Chappel where he continued long time in prayer offering up himself in sacrifice to God and resigning up his own will unto him some persons looking upon him with great admiration in this posture whilst so many hundreds were at their wits end and preparing for a speedy flight He professed to another secret and familiar friend that he felt himself through the mercy of God in such an absolute state of death to every thing that neither Angels nor men the loss of all he had the subversion of his family nor any other accident could remove him from his settled tranquillity And this he said not hyperbolically or by way of ostentation but out of a solid experimental establishment in that fortitude common with him to all great Saints Such was the mystical death and annihilation of this man of God by which his soul was enriched with a vast treasure of spiritual wealth causing him to lead a most perfect life and uniting him most intimately to God to which this death is absolutely necessary because no being can arrive to that which it was not formerly without ceasing first to be what it was as wood cannot pass into the nature of fire as long as it keeps its former nature this must be quitted and the matter be divested of all the form of wood both in substance and accidents and reduced into a state of privation to be made capable of the fires unitement to it And this is a general rule in nature admitting no exception that each subject must be predisposed to receive a new form and so much more as this form is more noble and this disposition consists in the privation of the subject and loss of other forms to gain a new one So also to make a spiritual man he must no more live according to nature but that he may be capable to be united to God must necessarily dye and be annihilated to himself And if fire require this total privation in the matter to communicate it self thereto with greater reason doth God who is altogether a spirit infinitely pure the first and soveraign entity require of a man this universal nakedness and privation this death and annihilation to himself and all created beings before he give and unite himself with him for in giving himself he giveth also the fruition of himself of his beauty goodness wisdom and his other perfections and by this union renders the receiver happy Hence also may be gathered what admirable purity is requisite in a soul for this union with God in Heaven in the state of glory that for this we must either conserve our Baptismal Innocence or if that hath been lost or fullied we must be purged here or in Purgatory by severe penances notwithstanding our other good works and the high degrees of sanctity to which we have attained And the same in proportion may be averred of the soul here in this estate of grace where it must be very pure to prepare it well for its union with God here in this life And seeing her pollution ariseth from her love to the creature and to herself and from the life of the first Adam according to the lusts and appetites of our own spirit it must dye to all these creatures and likewise to its self just as the body to be made perfect and to partake the true life of immortality and bliss must necessarily dye first so likewise must our souls if we will have them arrive to perfection consisting in this union with God to lead a holy and Divine life which alone can truly be called life To this purpose he writ thus to his Director I see clearly that the onely way to a Divine Union is to be perfectly divested of every thing that is not God and dead to our selves and every creature O that I well understood the importance of this nakedness and death and what is it that hinders the bonds of this Celestial love and union with his Divine Majestie and that Soveraign Beauty but a certain shew of and light adherence to some creature and shall we suffer that a thing so small and so unworthy should possess in the room of God and that Holy Spirit which is an all-consuming fire of love invirancing us on all sides should not have the power to work upon us the same effect which this elementary fire worketh upon wood Why should not I vicious and discontented creature in the midst of these my wretched plenitudes acquire happiness in the possession of God which I may do by his grace in separating my self gently from the creature by a single and affectionate application to the Creator To another person he writ thus When S. Paul saith You are dead and your life is hid with God in Christ Jesus He layeth death as the necessary foundation of a Christian whereby to remove from him all affection and inclination to the creature As we see that a dead man hath no more any motion or sense of any thing for though we are frequently sensible of the rebellious motions of corrupted nature yet they onely spring to be choaked and stifled in their birth To this purpose the
number the time favourable and themselves fresh setting upon men harrass'd out and tired with the pains of a long march Thus God watcheth over them that fear him and for their sakes many others also This lodging might have faln to the lot of some one less deserving such a favour from God and that would not have made use of it so prudently For execution of business he was not at all defective therein having a body strong and robust a spirit active generous and resolute not fearing any danger But for an Additament hereto as it were the soul to the body and light to beauty we finde in him the fear of God Piety and Uprightness without which Nobility hath but a false glister power is destructive and War brings with it mischiefs horrible and without number Monsieur de Renty all the time of his being in the Armies performed constantly his Prayers and other Exercises of Devotion when he came to his quarters if there were a Church there His first care was to visit it and to do his devoir to our Lord if there were any Religious House he took up there his lodging and that he might not incommode them for himself alone when the Army staid any time in a place while many and much elder than he past away their time in Gaming Drinking Rybaldrie Swearing and other Disorders he contain'd himself within the bounds of his usual wisdom avoiding all these base and vitious actions and entertaining himself in Exercises of Vertue and Honour In every place where he had any power he wholly employed it to keep off disorders He forbad peremptorily his men the treating ill of their Hosts that entertain'd them or giving them occasion of complaint and he never took horse but he made come before him them with whom he quartered to tell him themselves if any had done them wrong and if he found that any of his had offended he forthwith saw it remedied and did them right One day being mounted and ready to depart having made this enquiry of his Hostess and she complaining that one of his Servants had stoln a shirt he caused them all forthwith to come before her that she might finde out the Thief which being done and one of them confessing that he had it upon his back he incontinently ordered that he should be stript of it before them all and it restored to the woman notwithstanding many persons of quality thought it very harsh and opposed the business But he always kept himself firm to Justice and said he would by no means endure any Thieves If all that have commands dealt in this sort as they ought people would not stand so much in dread of their Souldiers as of the most cruel of Enemies and God who is the Lord of Hosts would afford more blessing and success to their Arms. But as the passage most dangerous to Nobility of making Shipwrack of their Salvation is falling out and Duels so God was pleased that his Servant should meet with this perilous occasion to teach all Gentlemen and those that wear a Sword how they ought to behave themselves therein Being in the Army he he had a falling out with a punctilious Gentleman which coming to the knowledge of the Chief Officers he made it appear that this Gentleman had no reason at all to be agriev'd at him which thing they judged also to be very true But the other party not acquiescing in this determination appeal'd â—o that judgement which according to the unhappy Maxime of the World his Sword could yield him and challenged Monsieur de Renty to Duel who returned this answer to him that brought the challenge that the Gentleman was in the wrong and that he had given all satisfaction which in Justice he could desire But this not contenting this untoward spirit he persisted in his perilous design to make him meet with his sword to which finding himself much press'd he made an answer vvhich is so much the more considerable in that he vvas so young and had not as yet a reputation but vvas to get it by Arms The ansvver vvas this that he vvas resolv'd not to do it since God and the King had for bidden othervvise he vvould have him knovv that all his satisfactions he had endeavoured to give him came from no fear of him but of God and of his displeasure and that he vvould go every day after his vvonted manner vvhither the necessity of his affairs call'd him and that if he did assault him he vvould make him repent it This quarrelsome man seeing he could not provoke him to an open Duel found one day the means to meet him and so to make him dravv his Svvord vvhere by the just judgement of God this other came very ill off for he and his second being hurt and disarm'd got nothing for their rashness but shame and sorrovv But then this true Christian Gentleman instead of doing them more harm as he might led them to his Tent caused Wine to be given them their vvounds to be drest and their Svvords to be restor'd them And joyning to Charity and Generosity both Humility and Modesty as his greatest ornaments he kept the thing ever after in secret never opening his mouth concerning it to any as some vvould have done out of vain-glory and vvhich is more to be vvondred at he never aftervvards spake vvord thereof to his man vvho vvas present and serv'd him for a second in this Assault to vvhom also before the deed vvhen he savv himself forced to a defence he gave charge by no means to kill This was not the onely difference but he had others also with some of the Neighbours or at least good cause to complain of them to which business he brought all that Prudence Patience and Charity could contribute and always came off most happily and he was wont to say to his Domesticks concerning his own differences or theirs that there was more of courage and generosity to bear any injury for the love of God than to requite it with another and to suffer than to revenge because the thing was far more difficult that Bulls themselves had courage enough but that it was a brutish courage whereas that of ours should be reasonable and Christian CHAP. 3. His entire change and call to a high Perfection MOnsieur de Renty having lived to the age of 27 years it pleased God to touch him now more closely to enlighten him more clearly and to call him to that high Perfection whereunto by the faithful co-operation which he yielded to this call we have seen him to arrive that like a great Torch or Luminary he hath spread his beams far and wide to Paris and in all places where he hath been This came to pass at a Mission made by the Fathers of the Oratory some six or seven Leagues from Paris whither he went on foot and where he made a general Confession with all the care that those take who desire to do it
Now they that knew him will say that this is the very portraicture of him in his native colours as being the very image of Patience to the life having all these qualities in a very high degree He had also many other interior qualities necessary for this vertue for those now mentioned concern onely the exterior Persons that had lived a very long time with him and had studied with care all his actions never heard him complain for any thing whatsoever neither for sickness nor loss nor in any other occasion of sufferance but they always observed in him a constancy immoveable a patience invincible and which passed often into joy with an eveness so great and so marvellous that he spake not one word higher than another nor used any gesture which might argue a spirit over eager or forward In his second journey to Dijon which he made with the Lady his wife and the late deceased Countess of Chastres the second or third day he was assaulted with a violent Rheumatism which put him into pain all over his body and being to lie down in bed as need was he went thither quite stooping supported by a staff and by a person that led him In this voyage he suffered extream pain without saying ever a word or making the least complaint These Ladies perceived it seeing him grow wan and pale as a clout and afterwards in a moment all on fire and although they told him that surely he was very ill he answered nothing to it nor embraced the easement of talking of his grief which naturally the sick desires but entertained them with discourses of the excessive dolours of Jesus Christ and what a favour it was from God when a soul suffers for him but in terms so full of sweetness and with so much of love and zeal that the company was affected with great devotion in hearing him These two Ladies not able to get out of him what his pain was and desiring much to know it they requested the Prioress of the Carmelites of Dijon supposing she might have more power with him than themselves to ask him concerning it which she did To whom he answered plainly My pains are great even to crying out and swouning but although I feel them in the greatest extremity yet through Gods grace I yeild not up my self to them but to him He told her moreover that being led into his Chappel of Citry and set down upon a bench by reason of his sickness the bench broke without any appearance at all to him that such a thing could happen and that he believed the evil spirit had broken it to move him to impatience making him to fall untowardly But by the mercy of God I was no more moved thereat said he than you see me now although the pains that surprized me were very sharp A man had need have great command of himself and be very patient to be able in like occasions not to be moved at all and to keep himself in the same posture of spirit as if nothing had hapned I had the favour said this good Mother to be with him about two hours while he was exercised with these great torments which I saw him bear with so much calmness and modesty without stirring at all and talking just no otherwise than if in going out of the Speak-house he had been in perfect health whereas God knows he was in great pain resting upon a staff and going twofold All our Nunnery was much afflicted to see him in this condition and it was the motion of some to make a vow for his health to the Lady of Grace whose Image here they honour believing that the Mother of God would not deny them it both for the veneration that this servant of God rendred to this Image as also for the great obligations our house had to him The whole Society made the vow upon the day of her Nativity after Mass whereat Monsieur de Renty was present but by no means being able to kneel The vow was accepted for after that night he came without staff into the Parlour and a few days after he could kneel down and was grown well within the nine days of the Vows continuance They keep the staff in the Covent in devotion and memory of this grace and he in acknowledgement of the benefit received sent a Heart of Chrystal in a Case of Gold to hang about the Neck of the Virgin Having lost a Son whom he dearly loved he endured this sharp affliction without saying a word save onely in testifying his perfect submission to the orders of God and with so much patience as might justly render it an action Heroical Often had he great exercise of patience in the works of Charity which he rendred to his Neighbour not onely enduring hunger thirst heat cold wet weariness of body and other outward pains inseparable attendants on the employments he had but also contempts and reproaches While he was employed on certain set days in an Hospital in catechising poor Passengers a certain man that was there setled was offended at this action of humility and signal charity in a person of that condition looking upon it as an encroachment and intrusion upon his office and came to finde him out as he was in the midst of the poor instructing them and gave him in their hearing divers injurious and offensive words to discourage him from coming again Monsieur de Renty seeing this man take on so against him heard him without being moved and patiently enduring his contempt and outrages after all makes answer with much humility and respect that he desired to teach those poor people which he saw to have great need of it that he was not willing to come on any such days as he would take but seeieg that he would not be at the pains himself he prayed him not to hinder a good work This did not satisfie the man at all but he comes four days together into the Hospital to drive out Monsieur de Renty as soon as he began the Catechism doing it instead of him which this most courteous Nobleman endured all the time with an admirable patience He practised this vertue with great care and conduct through all the things of this life whereof there is not any but will give occasion of patience so that whatsoever hapned general or particular though it check'd and justled his nature his body spirit judgement will inclinations desires designs and those of the best sort every thing that concerned him in what way soever he endeavoured to improve it towards grace and perfection and possess his soul in patience and tranquility receiving and suffering all without any alteration or being either exalted or dejected by them Praying to God before the Holy Sacrament saith he in a memorial under his own hand a poor man came to me to beg an Alms at that time I applied my self to recollection when men use to receive such interruptions with some contradiction and the word
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
things which is to cast dirt upon the Chrystal whereby that which is clear in it self by reason of that filth that invirons it is no more capable of light than is the dirt upon it And if we will restore it to its former transparency and penetrability we must wash it well I mean our polluted souls in the clear waters of repentance Let as finally â—ffer up our selves to our blessed Saviour that we be not defective in the right use of his graces which he bestows upon us neither for our selves nor for others that we bury not his talents Imitating likewise herein the Chrystal which is first penetrated by light onely and then seattereth it abroad Let us appear without a Mask before the face of all the world speaking aloud both by the mouth of our actions with the Spouse in the Canticles My Beloved is mine and I am my Beloveds and by our example and diligence encrease the number of those souls that thus love opening and making plain the way of love For ever blessed be the God of love in whom I am c. By this Letter we may perceive that notwithstanding the design of his Humility to hide those gifts and graces he had received yet his zeal often caused him to bring them to light when the glory of God and good of his neighbour might be promoted thereby And yet this he managed with admirable prudence that though his zeal was free yet not so indiscreet as to be its own Herald upon every appearance of doing good but was very circumspect weighing all circumstances of time place persons and necessity Wherefore in the same Letter he gave this sage advice to that Lady touching the order and measure which are necessary to be observed in this communication To some we must lay open our hearts more freely and exactly to others more reservedly keeping aloof off and beating about the bush to others altogether lockt up concealing those secrets from them in whom we see no disposition at all to make good use of them One of the most necessary qualities of this zeal whereby to render it profitable and prevent many miscarriages is that it be well seasoned with discretion and prudence to consider things well and execute them in the best manner To foresee and prevent mischiefs and redress them in time when they have hapned applying such efficacious remedies as may have as much of sweetness and as little of acrimony as may be And in desperate cases or where the cure would prove worse than the disease to suffer and dissemble them as we do in those of the body viz. blindeness lameness and crookedness souls having sometimes some certain defects which are as it were incorrigible which God suffers often thereby to save and perfect through humility those that are infected therewith and others likewise who deal with them by their patience and charity Thus was Monsieur Renty both by grace and nature very prudent and advised His zeal made up with all these perfections and guided its self every where with these illuminations One writing to him to procure a pardon for a young Gentleman who had committed murder his mother promising in lieu of that favour eight hundred pound Sterling to be imployed in works of Piety and Alms. In his first answer he desired to be informed whether the party was truly penitent for his fault In the second he writ thus I cannot perswade my self to stir in this business because it would seem that under the pretence of Alms impunity is aimed at I am not willing to foul my hands with the price of blood In a word although others undertake the business without scuuple and I see very considerable Alms that would come of it yet for all that I cannot afford my assistance The Divine Providence will never forget his holy poor ones One great point of prudence requisite in a zealous man is not to overthrow his body with excessive travel nor overcharge his minde with too much business which by their number and weight may choak his devotions but so to have a care of the salvation of others as not thereby to neglect his own but according to his strength to proportion what ought to be both to the one and other Concerning the first of these he exprest himself thus to a Clergy man upon occasion of some distemper he had contracted with extraordinary pains in his Mission Give me leave Sir to deal plainly with you in telling you that amongst those many cares I have for you this is not the least that I would not have you impose too much upon your self and for want of moderation to render your self altogether unserviceable The enemy usually takes no small advantage of such free and well disposed natures You are not herein your own but a man for the whole world and with St. Paul a debter to all men preserve yoer self therefore not so much I mean by making much of but by forbearing to destroy your self by labours and travel I am told how greatly your endeavours are blessed give me leave from that interest my self challengeth therein with all humility and respect to admonish you thus much Concerning the second touching our own salvation he had a special regard hereto managing those affairs which belonged to the good of his neighbour by the rules of a well ordered Charity which in this case begins at home indispensably performing all his Exercises of Devotion and reserving a considerable part both of the day and night for his conversing with God and prayer yea as he passed to and fro in the day time in the streets he often went into the Churches remaining there whole hours together before the B. Sacrament when his occasions would any way permit and especially toward his latter end as his imployments increased so was he in continual recollection from which neither his business nor any exterior objects did distract him Whereupon a most familiar friend asking him whether in that great throng of business he observed his usual two hours of prayer He answered when I can I keep three hours sometimes four or five but when occasion is offered to serve my neighbour I easily quit them for God of his mercy hath given me the grace to be inseparably with him even in the crowd of business SECT 9. The success which God gave to his zeal GOd indued this his servant with such a powerful vertue for the good of his neighbour that not onely his words and actions but even his very presence made impression upon others for their eternal good So that one familiarly acquainted with him said that he believed him to be indued with an Apostolick spirit for as the Apostles received the grace to inkindle the life of Faith and fire of Charity and set up the Kingdom of God in all Countreys and places where the Divine Majestie sent them in like manner was Monsieur Renty even far beyond the bounds of his condition filled with grace and assisted
Sun of Righteousness For if the skill of curing the body be difficult and onely conjectural by reason that we are guided therein by Exterior Signs which often prove ambiguous and equivocal whereupon the most expert Physicians finde themselves frequently mistaken and prescribe quite contrary remedies how much more must the skill of governing Souls in the matter of their salvation which are spiritual and remote from sense yea and supernatural be attended with great difficulties and involved in wonderful obscurity But Monsieur Renty proved very skillful herein having received a wonderful light from God to search out the mysterious secrets and understand the most abstruse windings of Souls in which his own experience was no small advantage to him His more than ordinary light served him to discern truth from falsehood the safe from dangerous the motions of a good spirit from those of the evil one to bring disquieted souls to their repose to fortifie and en ourage them to disengage them from all worldly things to unite them to our Saviour Jesus Christ and by him to the Divinity to be guided in all things by his holy Spirit I shall here present you with a taste of this excellent skill and some beams of this Divine light in these matters which I found amongst his Papers under his own hand which may give great insight into the mysteries of a Spiritual life There be saith he in those Papers three kindes of elevations and groanings of the Soul after God about which she ought constantly to be busied to enable her to accomplish the Precepts of our Saviour that is to pray always and never to slacke this holy Exercise lest she fall into oblivion of God and after that into sin The first is the elevation and groaning of the Penitents who begin at the Purgative way The second is of the Believers who have proceeded to and do practise the Illuminative And the third is of the Perfect who are arrived at the Unitive The first are exercised in the renouncing of sin and the vanities of the world in bewatilng their former life and seeking God sending forth from the depth of fear and revexence their groans and sighs to him which is the beginning of life eternal The Believers seek after the knowledge of his will by his Word which is his Son desiring to conform their lives after his example who is our Way our Life and Truth And this is the progress of this life The Perfect groan in the presence of God after an Union with him in imitation of our Saviour exercising it by acts of love and so fulfilling the first and great Commandment in which consisteth the perfection of our life here below There are some Souls in the first estate who renouncing sin and quitting the vanities of the world receive great sensible consolations from God and taste ravishing delights But if they endeavour not to pass on to the second to understand and practise the will of God in his Son the Devil will soon deceive them by this bait causing them to rest in the complacency of these gusts So that not making progress in Christ who is their way they will wander into by-paths to the danger of a precipice Their condition being a kinde of imperfect floating self-denial and desire to be for God to do his will and love him with a false Interior peace upon which they rest and whence afterwards they degenerate into a very dangerous condition because they are not truly grounded upon Jesus Christ whom God hath appointed for our sole Guide But if after they are thus purged from the gross affections of the world they be not likewise purified from themselves giving up all to Christ Jesus with a serious resolution to imitate him and enter into his Sacrifice of Self-annihilation Instead of receiving the Spirit of God they shall confirm themselves in their own and forming to themselves false illuminations shall be guided by their own sense and by what their own corrupt nature suggests to them as glittering and pleasing with great danger of falling headlong into the errours of the Enthusiasts who perswade themselves that every thing that occurs to their phansie comes from God Out of an opinion that they neither will nor seek nor love any thing but God and so become little or nothing at all sensible of the checks of their own Conscience If you observe those that begin their Spiritual life in this manner you will finde them to have little faith or dependance on Christ Jesus And if you ask them what they desire or whetherto they tend they will answer in general To whatsoever God will have It will be necessary to set these right and if they be not too far gone with these gusts and sensible consolations to carry them to desine indeed what God will have but desire it according to the model of our Saviour and the precepts of his Gospel which he hath left us as his Will and Testament and to be our Light and the Rule of our inlightnings We have many who rest in this first step being yet esteemed and admired even by persons who pass for spiritual and of on by their Ghostly Directors calling this the my stical way In which notwithstnading the decaitful spirit of Nature and the Devil play their game under the mask of these dark illuminations of these false peaces of these quaint terms high words and mysterious notions of these volumes of spiritual writings the fruits whereof are for the most part in the paper from whence it is seen so often that those who have begun well and with much purity do fall afterwards into gross faults whilst Property and Self-pleasing steal into the soul in the room of Christ Jesus We have others which heed no other thing than the preaching of John Baptist by their Austerities and Pennances setting up there rest here without proceeding on to Christ Jesus to receive his Spirit relying upon an inward satisfaction and confidence in their mortifications and sticking there Others so stay upon Jesus Christ onely as if he had no Father having affectionate devotions to his Humanity and much led by the sensible go no further They know Jesus Christ but not Jesus Christ God and man who is our Life Truth and Way Others build all their hopes upon the Blessed Virgine and other Saints and their particular Devotions to them which are very good when they are grounded upon repentance for their sins and a true conversion of the soul But these grosly deceive themselves by hoping of succour from the Blessed Virgin and the Saints or of having any communion in their merits when they quit not their own vicious courses These three estates thus understood and distinguished afford great light in the conduct of souls whereby to understand their beginning progress and perfection with the deviations they are subject unto And every one of these estates hath its proper work its sufferance and its prayer The work of the first
all pollution from them like as the Sun shineth upon a dunghil without taint or imperfection Simplicity quitted him from all multiplicity engagements reflections upon his own Interest Complacencies Vanity passion of Joy or Sadness from any of his own Performances or Speeches from Praise or Dispraise or from the Vices of the Times Places or Persons he conversed with to receive any pollution from them no otherwise than a new-born childe beholdeth a Pageantry which passeth before it which is forgotten as soon as removed Lastly Purity directed his eye in a straight line to God pretending to nothing but his glory in any thing that man had a hand in And this proceeding of his all ought to imitate if they desire to make progress in Vertue and arrive to perfection and particularly those that treat much with their neighbour in the negotiation of his salvation that they may do it with more advantage to him and with no damage to themselves PART IV. His Vertues whereby he was elevated and united to God CHAP. 1. His Interiour and his Application to the Sacred Trinity ALthough what we have hitherto said of the Heroick Vertues and famous Actions of Monsieur Renty which had respect either to his own perfection or the good of his neighbour is very remarkable Yet the principal and more admirable is that which remains viz. The state of his Interiour and his communication with God So David saith that the Kings-daughter is all glorious within and the Holy Ghost setteth forth in lofty expressions the Spouse in the Canticles for the beauty of her face and of her whole body But it addes that nothing could sufficiently be uttered concerning the hidden graces of her Soul and Interiour which were far more charming and attractive even as the chief excellencies of our B. Saviour consisted not in his Exteriour or in those things he did either for himself or for men but in the intimate union he had with God and those actions he produced in the profundity of his Spirit towards him In like manner our perfection consists not in our good works which appear outwardly nor in the exercises of Charity Humility Poverty and the like Vertues open to the eye but in the application of our spirit to God and our union with him by the acts of vertue and chiefly of the three Theological ones It consisteth I say in honouring and adoring him in the Temple of our souls in performing to him there the Sacrifices of a lively Faith upon the Altar of our Understanding in offering up the Holocausts of perfect Hope and ardent Charity upon the Altar of our Will and in a total subjection of our spirits to his and an union of all our faculties with him whereby we become purified sanctified and deified proportionably as the blessed Saints are in heaven where this perfection is compleated This was Monsieur Renties practice whereby he had a true feeling of S. Pauls words Your life is hid with God through Jesus Christ concerning which he expressed his thoughts thus to a friend There is nothing in this world so separate from the world as God and the greater the Saints are the greater is their retirement into him This our Saviour taught us whilst he lived on earth being in all his visible employments united to God and retired into the bosom of his Father His principal care was incessantly to cultivate and adorn his soul to unite it intimately to God by the operations of his understanding and will to give up himself with all his strength to this hidden and divine life of Faith Hope and Charity of Religion of a mystical Death and entire Abnegation of himself Some years before his death his particular attractive was the contemplation of the B. Trinity being the last end in which all must terminate Whereof he gave this account to his Spiritual Guide in the year 1645. I carry about with me ordinarily an experimental verity and a plenitude of the presence of the Holy Trinity And in another Letter thus All things vanish out of my fancy as soon as they appear nothing is permanent in me but God through a naked faith which causing me to resign my self up to my Saviour affordeth me strength and confidence in God the Trinity in that the operation of the three Divine persons is manifested to me in a distinct manner viz. The love of the Father which reconcileth us by his Son the Father and the Son who give us life through the Holy Spirit the H. Spirit which causeth us to live in in Communion with Jesus Christ which worketh in us a marvellous alliance with the Sacred Trinity and produceth often in our hearts by faith such inward feelings as cannot be expressed He writ also to a confident friend and one that was much devoted to this Sacred Mysterie How that the proper and special effect of Christian grace is to make us know God in the Trinity uniting us to the Son who causeth us to work by his Spirit And to say the truth we are consecrated by our Baptism to the worship of the B. Trinity Therein we are consecrated to his Glory receive its Seal and put on its Badge and Livery to manifest to us and to all the world that we are perfectly and absolutely its own He writ to the same party in the year 1648. on the same subject The Feast of the blessed Trinity giveth me this occasion to write that we may renew our selves in the honour and dependance we have upon this incomparable Mysterie I desire to joyn hearts with you to adore that which we are not able to express Let us melt into an acknowledgement thereof and foâ—tifie our selves by the grace of Faith through Christ to be perfected in this adorable Mysterie Infinite things might be spoken which my heart resenteth of the latitude of this grace but I cannot utter them I beseech you let us adore God let us adore Jesus Christ let us adore the holy Spirit which Spirit discovereth unto us the operations of love and mercy of these Divine Persons in us and let us make good use thereof The same year he clearly expressed his condition and the manner of wholly applying himself â—oâ—th Sacred Trinity how that his soul was most entirele united to the three Divine Persons from whence he received illuminations that surpassed all humane understanding how he lived perpetually retired and locked up as it were with the Son of God in the bosom of his Father Where this Son became his Light his Life and Love and the holy Spirit his Guide his Sanctification and Perfection how he did bear within himself the Kingdom of God which he explained by a resemblance of what the Blessed enjoy in heaven by vertue of that view and transcendent knowledge of the sacred Trinity which was communicated to him and that pure Love by which he felt his heart inflamed and as it were transformed into God in whom he possessed a joy and repose beyond all expression That
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
Blessed be that littleness which is held for weakness and yet overthroweth all the Power and Prudence of flesh Treating with some Religious Persons he seemed as it were rapt on a sudden with the consideration of their happy condition speaking to them thus O how happy are you my Sisters After which falling upon a discourse of their Vocation he spake so effectually as wrought in them an ample acknowledgement of their obligation to God and a courage to proceed in well doing This following Letter he writ to a Gentlewoman newly entred into Religion who next under God did owe her calling to him I thank my Saviour with all Reverence for those good dispositions to your Profession signified in your Letter I understand and am sensible of abundant grace wrought in you whereby I assure my self of a noble pregress I am to expect from the bounty of God who is to that soul that gives herself to him Merces magna nimis Her exceeding great reward You have made a leap which puts you in a new world Blessed and adored be God who in the fulness of time out of his wisdom and love to a soul sends his Son unto it to redeem â—t from the Law of Servitude and translates it into the Adoption of his Sons This hath he now wrought in you in a more special manner and the excellentest way that could be You was never united to Jesus Christ as you are now by your holy Profession You had heretofore something to give that was never before engaged and he something to receive that was not formerly in his possession But now all is given and all is received and the mutual donation is accomplished No more Self no more Life no more Inheritance but in Jesus Christ He is all in all things until the time that according to the Apostle he delevering us up all and wholly to his Father his Faâ—her also shall be iâ— Jesus and in all his members all in all for ever Amen Fourthly he had a very great Devotion to all the Saints in Heaven but more partifulatly to S. Joseph and S. Teresa whom in the year 1640. he chose for his Patroness and above all the rest to the Saint of Saints the B. Virgin in testimony whereof he dedicated himself to her Service at Ardilliers then when he designed himself for a Carthusian And in the year 1640. he desired to be admitted into the Society erected to her honour in the house of the professed of the Jesuits of S. Lewis and for many years he wore a seal upon his arm with her Image graven wherewith he sealed all his Letters We have likewise mentioned how he gave to an Image of Nostre-Dame de Grace a heart of Chrystal set in Gold to testifie to that Admirable Mother as he used often to stile her his love and that with this heart he resigned up to her his own Finally this man of God most entirely honoured and loved the Spouse of Christ his Holy Church reverencing every thing that came from her making great account of all her ceremonies saying That he found a certam grace and particular vertue in the prayers and customs of the Church conforming himself most readily to her practises Being present commonly at High-Mass in Paris he would go to the Offering amongst the people and ordinarily with some poor man He assisted at ceremonies where it was rare to finde not onely men of his quality but far meaner persons as the consecrating of the Fonts in the Holy Week at long Processions in all extremities of weather Upon which occasion he writ one day to a friend Our Procession goeth this day into the Suburbs and since our Saviour hath favoured us with this great mercy to be of this little flock we ought to follow his standard and I take it for a signal honour to follow the Cross which way our holy Mother the Church leads us there being nothing in her but what is glorious since she acts in every thing by the Spirit of Religion in the presence of God whereby she unfolds great mysteries to those that are humble and respective From which expressions actions we may infer that he being a man of such quality and taken up with such a multitude of business had a very reverend esteem of all the ceremonies of the Church otherwise he would never have rendred such Obedience and Honour to them And though it be most true that he highly honoured these ceremonies yet he desired likewise that by the Exteriour pomp that appeared to the eyes Christians might be led on to the Interiour and more Spiritual complaining that the outward Magnificence wherewith Churches are adorned do often stay and amuse them and instead of carrying them on to God their chief end diverts them from him To this purpose he writ thus to a friend We should take notice of that simplicity in which the Divine Mysteries were conveyed to us that we may not be held too long with the splendour in which at this day they are celebrated These thoughts came into my minde in hearing the Organs and Church Musick and beholding the rich Ornaments used in the Divine Office we must look thorow this state at that spirit of Simplicity Purity and Humility of their primitive Institution Not but that these are holy and useful but that we should pass thorow it to the Simplicity and Poverty of Bethlehem Nazareth Egypt the Wilderness and the Cross But above all he was singularly devoted to an union of spirit and affection and universal communion of all good things whith all the faithful in all places of the world and to be admitted into the communion of Saints being an Article of our Creed very dear unto him Wherefore he highly valued all of each Nation and Profession without espousing any particular spirit or interest to respect one above others to magnifie one and derogate from another He honoured all Ecclesiasticks Secular and communicated with them concerning all his Exercises of Charity for his Neighbour he gave great respect to all Parish Priests was very serviceable to him of his own Parish he frequented the Societies of the Religious loved and made use of them for direction of his conscience And notwithstanding the great variety and several orders of them in the Church yet was not his heart divided but affected with an equal esteem and approbation and a general affection to all according to their degree being guided herein by one Spirit viz. that of Christ Jesus which enliveneth all the faithful as members of his body in the same manner as out bodily members notwithstanding they be different in sight figure and offices are knit together and all perfectly agree because they are all quickned by the same soul All misintelligence and disagreeing is a sign of two spirits that rule there and division is the principle of death Concerning this communion of Saints he one day suffered some difficulty Whereupon he writ this excellent Letter to his Directoâ— I
finde experimentally a real union both in light and faith with the party I mentioned which is more than palpable giving me assurance that we are all one Upon this occasion I shall acquaint you in what manner my minde hath been busied these few last days and is yet full of it and to the end my relation may be more intelligible I shall take the matter somewhat higher The operation I have found in my self for these two or three years hath constantly held me fixed in the pursuit of our Saviour Christ to finde in him Eternal-Life before God the Father through the influence of his Spirit of which I have from time to time given you account And now I confess to you that though for that time I also honoured from the bottom of my heart our B. Lady the Saints and Angels and have been desirous to express it upon all occasions yet so it was that their presence and their commerce was obscured in and as it were very remote from my soul I assure you that those thoughts hath frequently run in my minde saying thus within my self I so much honour our Lady and some other Saints and Angels and I know not where they are I lifted up my heart easily towards them but there was no presence of them at all at least such as I now perceive it Some moneths ago I possessed an opening and a light in my soul accompanied with powerful effects concerning love and dear union with God making me to conceive inexplicable things of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost who is perfect Charity not by the reasonings and discourses of the understanding but by a single view most by one touch penetrating the heart with love And I beheld how the Son of God our Saviour came to advance us by his Incarnation into this love uniting himself to us whereby to reduce us all into this intimate and sweet union until he shall have compleated us all in himself to be made all of us one day all in God after he hath delivered up his Kingdom to his Father Ut sit Deus omnia in omnibus That God may be all in all And we enter into this blessed union with the Father Son and Holy Ghost Some ten or twelve days since being in my morning prayers on my knees to pray unto God I perceived in my self that I could findâ— no entrance unto him onely I kept my self there much humbled but the sight of the Father the access to him of the Son with whom I ordinarily converse with as much confidence as if he were yet upon earth and the assistance of the holy Ghost seemed at a strange distance withheld from me and I perceived an unworthiness in my self so great so real and so penetrating that I could no more lift up the eyes of my soul to heaven than these of my body Than was iâ— given me to understand that I had really that unworthiness which I felt But that I must seek my entry to God and to our Saviour in the Communion of Saints Whereupon I was on an instant possessed with a wonderful presence of the respect and love and union of the B. Virgin the Angels and Saints which I am not able to express nor to utter the greatness and solidity of this grace For this union is Life Eternal and the Ecclesiastical Paradise and this union is both for the Saints in Heaven and those on earth which I have almost always in full view and presence From thenceforward I understood that we were not made by God to be alone and separate from others but to be united unto them and to compose with them one divine total Even as a beautiful stone fitted for the head of a column is altogether unprofitable till it be settled in its place and cemented to the body of the building without which it hath neither its preservation its beauty nor its end This meditation left me in the love and in the true and experimental connexion of the communion and communication of Saints yet with a due order of those to whom I am more united which is my Life in God and in Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the contents of that Letter CHAP. 7. His devotion to the Holy Sacrament ONe of the greatest Devotions of this holy man was that to the H. Eucharist considered both as a Sacrifice and as a Sacrament of which he had ever an incredible esteem honouring it with all possible reverence and affecting it with tender love blessing and praising God for its institution and exciting both by his word and pen the whole world to do the same He was accustomed to say that it was instituted to stay and place our Saviour God and Man in the midst of us to obtain for us all the benefits of grace whereof we are capable here and to dispose us for those of glory That the great design of God in the Incarnation the Life Death and Resurrection of his Son was to convey unto us his Spirit to be unto us Life Eternal which Spirit he hath taught us by his Word merited for us by his Death doth more confer upon us from his estate of Glory And the better to convey this unto us to cause us to live thereby and dye in our selves he giveth himself to us in this most Holy Sacrament dead raised up and glorified to produce in us by the operation of his Spirit these two effects of death and life He was not onely present every day at Mass but took it for a great honour to serve the Priest himself He received every day if not hindred by very important business or some pressing occasion of Charity And as the honour we render to this B. Sacrament consists not in often receiving but in communicating well and perfectly he took all care thereof that could be expected from one of so holy life and eminent Piety He spent many hours in prayers upon his knees before the Blessed Sacrament And being once asked by a friend How he could remain there so long He answered That there he recreated his spirit receiving from thence refreshment and new forces and yet sometimes he encountred with some trouble in that Devotion which may be gathered from this Letter to his Director dated the 27 of June in the year 1647. I have been very poor all this moneth I know not whether I was ever so lumpish both in spirit and body as I was upon the Festival day of the Blessed Sacrament I was present at Service at Procession at Mass at Communion heard the Sermon at Vespers and Compline but like a very beast not knowing how to demean my self either kneeling or standing I was in a kinde of restless condition of body and very wandring and distracted in spirit onely I knew well that in the bottom of my soul I had a desire to honour God through his Son Christ Jesus After Compline I found my self so dull and heavy that seeing my self unable to remain
it by God and for God In another Letter to him thus I finde for some time that my prayer is no more regular I possess the Sacred Trinity with a plenitude of verity and clearness and this with such an attraction so pure and so vigorous in the superior part of my soul that my outward employment create me no diversion at all And another time he writ thus Jesus Christ worketh the experience of his Kingdom in my heart and I finde him there my Lord and Master and my self wholly his I discover now a greater enlarging of my heart but so simple that I am not able to express it save onely thus that it is a simple but most real sight of the Trinity accompanied with praising blessing and offering up all homage thereto All which is done so silently that it causeth no noise below neither can it be discerned in the higher part of my soul by parcels so as to be expressed except it be by reflexion Whether I utter my self well to you or no I know not This blessed man thus united by contemplation to God the supream verity received abondant light both for himself and others upon all subjects but especially those he had for the understanding of the holy Scriptures and especially the New Testament and therein the mysteries of our Saviour were admirable Thus in a Letter to his Director Upon one word I shall read in the New Testament I shall sometimes discover notions of those truths in so full and piercing a manner that I ever feel my body replenished therewith that is my whole nature penetrated And to one of his friends thus When I read the Sacred Scripture I fortifie my self to enter into those effects they work which is a plenitude of the truth of God wherewith the soul is solidly and experimentally satisfied And he made notes upon all the Lent-Gospels full of piety and those great illuminations with which his spirit was replenished This is a short account of the Prayer of this great servant of God so far as we could discover it for the chief part thereof is that which passed within the Sanctuary of his own Soul where his union and converse with God was so wonderful that after he had spent seven or eight hours therein he found himself in the end as if he had onely then begun it except onely that he had then yet more desire to continue it and at length arrived to that height that he never ended it at all being wholly and constantly in recollection and application to God Whereupon he professed to an intimate friend that he need neither particular place nor time for prayer since in all places times and business he continued it CHAP. 9. The state of his Mystical Death and Annilation WE are now come to the highest degree of Vertue and the ultimate disposition of soul to render her capable of a most intimate union with God wherein her perfection consists She must dye first before she can live this new life and must be annihilated to become truly something This death and annihilation stands not in the destruction of mans naturals to deprive him of understanding memory will and affections much less of his senses but in the ruine of the old man which is wholly corrupt and infected with sin in such sort that the understanding and other faculties spiritual and corporal be cleansed and animated by the Spirit of Christ Jesus to work no more according to nature corrupted nor yet nature pure but nature elevated by grace and sanctified by Jesus Christ Now as the corruption and malignity of the old man holds an entire possession of our nature and the poyson of sin is spread all over body and soul so that from the crown of the head to the soul of the foot as saith the Prophet there is no sound part in us So all these parts must be healed this corruption purged out and the malignity perfectly mortified and destroyed When I say perfectly I mean so much as this can be done here on earth for it is onely in heaven in the estate of glory where this happiness is compleatly perfected but in this world there will still remain something to be purged This holy man writing to one concerning this state of death and annihilation tells him how that singing in the Church with others the Magnificat he was illuminated upon these words Deposuit potentes de sede c. He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble which represented to him a soul full of it self compleat in the power and riches of its parts and natural endowments in its life of Exterior and Interiour sense undertaking to see and understand every thing full of it self and quite empty of God Then he addes Now our Saviour gave me to understand in this verse that he divesteth this soul of her own proper arrogant spirit rich in nothing but iniquity that he humbles and empties and annihilates her and so exalteth the lowly advancing her at length to a wonderful condition where I saw her reduced to an happy and rich annihilation emptied of herself and dispoiled of what she possessed of sense and man divested not onely of the old man but of the gifts of God that are in her to be presented before him in nakedness and simple obedience I understood that in this estate the soul being affected with great humility and affiance likewise God did in her that which he pleased and that she was throughly enlightned and that she discovered afar off the least things as we usually do a little bush in the midst of a mown field He writ this following Letter to his Director upon the same subject Since the time that I gave up my liberty to God signed with my blood as I told you I was given to understand to what a state of annihilation the soul must be brought to render it capable of union with him I saw my soul reduced into a small point contracted and shrunk up to nothing And at the same time I beheld my self as if encompassed with whatsoever the world loves and possesseth and as it were a hand removing all this far from me throwing it into the occan of Annihilation In the first place I saw removed all Exterior things Kingdoms great Offices stately Buildings rich Houshold-stuff Gold and Silver Recreations Pleasures all which are great encombrances to the souls passing on to God of which therefore his pleasure is that she be stripped that she may arrive at the point of nakedness and death which will bring her into possession of solid riches and real life Secondly all Interior things which are more delicate and precious as Acquired Sciences skill and sublime Learning operations of the Memory and strength of Vnderstanding humane Reason experience of Sense of which the soul must likewise be purged and dye to itâ— own proper actions And I perceived that we must come like little Infants simple and innocent separated