with a Father to whom he had communicated his inclinations to leave all who told me that one day he desired of him with many tears and on his knees his advice in the matter and that he was never more surpriz'd than to see Monsieur de Renty at his feet and in these sentiments of poverty And I have heard him say that the touch from God to separate him from the creatures and to make him quit the manner of living suitable to his birth was so powerful over his soul that if another touch from the same hand had not kept him back at the same time he had abandoned all and according to the example of S. Alexis had gone to live a poor life as he did but that God that imprinted this desire of poverty in him did hinder the effecting of it to keep him in the state wherein he had placed him which was to him no small cross because the desire torments and afflicts the soul in proportion to its vehemency when it cannot arrive to the possession of the thing desired But because he was absolutely conformable as it was his duty in all things to the will of God he bare this cross as contrary as it was to his affection with great peace and a perfect submission to what God had ordered Another witness of like authority gives him this testimony He told me said he often in the confidence we had together that he was ashamed when he entred into his house to see himself so well lodged in this world and that it was one of his greatest afflictions to have so much wealth and to be so much at ease that he should be ravished to see himself reduced to bread and water and to get the same by labour and the sweat of his bâ—ows Having one day asked him how he could be so quiet amongst all the faâ—idious accidents and incommodities that he suffered He answered me upon condition that I would keep it secret that through Gods mercy he found himself in a disposition of peace and state of indifferency in affliction as well as in joy and that he had no sentiments any more of fear or desire of any thing And of this my self hath seen the experience in some difficulties where the better part of his estate ran a great hazard without any appearance of the least commotion in him and his words were Seeing God hath given me the management of this estate I will do to preserve it what shall behove me and then it is all one to me what success shall follow Another reports thus He had the Evangelical poverty in its perfection being inâ—irely estranged in spirit and thought in heart and affection from all the wealth of the world and he told me that he fealt no greater cross than to have riches and that he should be extreamly glad to be a beggar and unknown if it had been the will of God Hence it came that he bare a kinde of holy envy towards the poor that he deemed them very happy that in beholding them he said sometimes with sighing but with a sigh that one might see came from the bottom his heart Ah! that I am not as they that he honour'd lov'd caress'd and kneel'd before them not onely in humility but in esteem of their estare in its disposing us so much to the perfection of the new Law and resemblance it hath with Jesus Christ Being one day visiting the poor in the great Hospital of Caen he was seen bare headed and on his knees upon the floor of the great Hall beating in a Morter some Drugs for the use of the poor sick people such was the respect and honour that he bore to those for whom he laboured that it put him into that posture But for an end let us hear him tell us himself his sentiments upon this matter and although he speak of himself le ts make no scruple to believe him as being a person most worthy of credit Behold therefore what he wrote to the Nun abovementioned Sister Margaret of the Holy Sacrament my most holy Sister I have it in my heart that the Holy Childe Jesus the Infancy of Jesus was one of the Mysterieâ— to which more particularly and profitably he applyed himself as we shall see in its due place would have something of me which he hath a desire I should beg of him and dispose my self for the obtaining of it And I avow to you that the more there comes to me of the riches of this world the more do I discover the malignity the eto affixed and that they produce nothing but garboil and trouble and afford not much means of doing good My heart is most strongly carried to an effective stâ—ipping my self of all and to follow him alone seeing he is my way as being the most poor and depressed amongst all his followers But that I know that it would be a presumption to believe my self capable of this estate and a temptation to put my self upon it being at present related as I am I â—ould pant and sigh thither ward very much that which I will draw hence is this that being ignorant of the coursels of God I cannot tell how he will dispose of me for the future and I offer my self up to whatsoever it shall please him knowing that with him I can do every thâ—ng as without him I have neither the power nor will for any thing My most dear Sister I have great need of doing penance and to be humbled I am greatly ashamed of my condition and of what I am I have the commodity and abundance of all things of this world but my family and estate of things permits it not to be otherwise and I see the Churches and the poor upon whom I would bestow it all at least as much as I may in justice part with or else to be poor as the poor are so that I may be no more ashamed of being better provided than they Thus you have his thoughts which by Gods permission are come to light to make us see what grace can do in a heart well disposed and to what a pitch arrives this perfect Poverty of spirit SECT 2. His outward Poverty THe high esteem and affection which this great servant of God had of the forsaking the goods of this world being not able to contain it self within the Interior of his soul appear'd outward and visible in a thousand effects and carried him on to the poverty Exterior in all ways possible for not to speak of the great Alms he gave to the poor far different from the course of many who though full of riches yet never think of using them according to Gods rule he divested himself of very many things to be impoverished as much as he could for he parted with some books because richly bound wore no cloaâ—hes but plain and close together used no gloves what season soever or at least a rare thing it was to see him have any in effect
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
alliance he hath contracted with us in Jesus Christ This knowledge produceth in me as much astonishment as love And to tell you my sense of it a man possessed with these verities remains no more a man but becomes annihilated and all his desire is to be lost and melted on purpose to change his nature and enter into this Spirit of Jesus to act no less in him than by him I have conceived such great things of our Saviours Humanity united to the Divinity as cannot be uttered How hath this alliance of the Divinity most deeply abased the sacred Humanity into a self-annihilation and a sacrifice of love upon the sight of the greatness of God What an honour is this to the Humane Nature to be thus predestinated and What a glory to us to be chosen and called to an entrance into his favour and a rising to God and the everlasting enjoyment thereof through him It would spend me this whole day to write to you the view that I have had of the wisdom and bounty of God touching this mysterie of Love which he hath opened unto us in his Son And though he was truly devoted to all the mysteries of our Lord yet in a most special manner to that of his Infancy The occasion whereof was thus Being constrained to make a journey to Dâ—jon by reason of a suit of Law beforementioned he heard much talk of Sister Margaret of the blessed Sacrament a Religious Carmeline of the Covent of Beaulne on whom our Saviour had conferred particular favours who led a life very extraordinary grounded upon true and solid vertue And as our Lord hath several ways to sanctifie a soul and fit it for his sacred purposes so he was pleased to exercise this choice woman absoluâ—ely in the mysterie of our Saviours Infancy and through that pipe to convey into her soul a torrent of grace and extraordinary gifts not onely for herself but others as may be seen in her life now in writing by a person most worthy of such a work Monsieur Renty had a desire to go to Beaulne being but seven leagues from Dijon to recommend himself to the prayers of this holy Virgin And though when he came thither he neither spake to her nor saw her she having by a particular conduct of our Saviour been retired for thirteen years from the speech of any secular person yet notwithstanding he received much benefit from his journey as he expressed in a Letter writ back from Dijon to the Prioress of that place I want words to express the mercies I received by my journey to Beaulne Sister Margaret hath marked me out in the holy Infant Jesus such a divesting of my self of all worldly things that it appears to me my rendezouz where I must strip my self naked of all things else The year after he made a second journey where God having altered her resolution for speech and converse with others he had the happiness to discourse with her and contracted at that time a very intimate alliance of grace receiving great gifts by means thereof The chiefest and source of all the rest being that our Saviour engaged him as he had done her in a more particular devotion to the mysterie of his Infancy and imprinted in him the lineaments of the like Graces and Spirit This holy man whose judgement may be highly esteemed by us considering his extraordinary insight into spiritual matters greatly valued this Religious woman approving exceedingly her directions and testifying how great a blessing he reckoned her acquaintance and what benefit he had reaped from her even after her death To which purpose he writ thus to me the eighteenth of June 1648. the year of her death The holy Infant sweet Jesus hath taken to himself our good Sister Margaret whose death was consonant to the dispositions of her life and miraculous graces I have received from her since her death great comfort That grace I reâ—eived according to my present estate and weakness to enter into the Infancy of our Saviour hath since been renewed to me and I have understood it more solidly About a moneth after I received these lines from him I had yesterday by the singular bounty of God a view of his Divine Majestie of S. John Baptist and Sister Margaret of the B. Sacrament so clearly represented to me in my spirit that I cannot suspect the truth of it O what effects were produced by their presence and what love by these sights I am wholly renewed in my respects to that great Saint my Patron and to that glorious servant of God who honoured him very much whilst she was living and from whom without doubt since her death she hath beggâ—d to be my Protector It is mâ—st certain that the work of God in her was one continued prodigie of grace and a master-piece of his hand But let us return to his application made to the Infancy of our Saviour chiefly begun in his second journey to Beaulne Of which we may understand something from this Letter written to a Father of the Oratory Confessor to the Carmelines there I must needs tell you that upon my first journey which I made to you above a year agoâ— I brought back with me a great esteem and devotion to the Infancy of our Saviour but I was not yet well settled in it I attempted it from time to time but could not yet make it my principal food Since which the holy Infant by a supernatural grace hath manifested and opened himself to me and now I finde every thing in him and am remitted thither for all And to the Prioress he writ thus I must acquaint you that the holy Infant Jesus will grant me the favour to apply my self pâ—rticularly to his honour to give my self to him and to his holy dispositâ—ons ordering my life and the sacrifice of my self by the conduct of his Spirit In order hereunto he cousecrated and gave up himself thereto in these terms a copy whereof written with his own hand and in his own blood he sent to Sister Margaret which is kept with great devotion in that Covent And another something more inlarged to his Ghostly Father to which he wrote his name onely in blood in these words To the honour of my King the Holy Infant Jesus I Have consecrated my self this Christmass-Day 1643. to the holy Infant Jesus offering up to him my whole Being my Soul my Body my Free-will my Wife my Children my Family the Estate which he hath given me and finally all that I am concerned in having beseeched him to enter into full Possession Property Jurisdiction of all that I am That I may live no more but in and to him in the quality of a Victim separate from every thing of this world and challenging no more share thereof than according to the applications which he shall give and shall allow me Insomuch that from henceforward I shall look at my self meerly as an instrument in the hand of the holy Infant
herself may arrive Seeing a Gentleman of his birth and age in a Secular life and the throng of so great employments attained hereto onely if we use the like diligence and be faithful to the Spirit of God the onely means to attain to this perfection CHAP. 6. His great Reverence to Holy Things MOnsieur Renty did not onely carry a great Reverence to God but likewise to all things belonging to his Service and to all Holy things which sprang from that sense of Vertue and Religion imprinted in his soul producing the like fruits Exteriourly In the first place he had a singular respect to all Holy places and it will be very hard to recoâ—n with what Respect and Devotion he behâ—ved himself in Churches At his entrance his demeanour was exceeding modest and religiously grave He never sare down there nor put on his hat not so muâ—h as in Sermon time he would abide there as long as possibly he could and hath been observed upon great Festivals to remain there upon his knees for seven or eight hours He was very silent in the Church and if any person of any condition spoke to him his answer was short and in case the business required longer time he would carry him forth or some other way free himself thereof Secondly he used great veneration to all Ecclesiastical persons even to the meanest but the Reverence he gave to Priests was wonderful He would never take the upper hand of them without extream violence as appears by that passage in the former Chapter Whensoever he met them he saluted them with profound humility and in his travel would light off his horse to do it and render them all honour possible When they came to visit him he entertained them cordially with exceeding great respect at their departure waiting on them to the gate and if any dined at his table gave them the upper place which civility he observed to his own Chaplain When any Mission was in any of his Lordships he entertained the Missioners apart where they were served in plate when other Gentlemen and persons of quality that visited him were onely in pewter waving herein all humane respects A Nobleman and his Lady came one day to him upon a visit accompanied with a Priest that was Tutor to their children After he had received them observing the Priest at the lower end of his Hall with some of their Retinue quitting civilly the Nobleman and his Lady he went down to the Priest shewing great respect to him as to the most honoatable person of the company In fine his opinion of the Priesthood was so venerable looking upon it as the most potent means for procuring the glory of God that he said to a friend That he had a design to enter into that Order if God should ever bring him into a condition capable of it And as he had this singular Reverence toward them so likewise had he an earnest desire that they and generally all Ecclesiastical persons should understand the excellency of the condition to whiâ—h God had call'd them leading a life agreeable to their Dignity He writ to his Director in the year 1645. upon occasion of several Ecclesiasticks of his acquaintance who correspond not to their Profession and Obligation that his heart melted into sorrow for them and that he prostrated himself before his Saviour and begged with tears for some Apostolike Spirits to be sent amongst us our poor Fishermen Give us O Lord our poor Fishermen I often repeated I meant the Apostles But this word ran much in my minde not being able to use any other and my spirit wronght much upon these words Pescheurs Pecheurs Fishermen and Sinners I look upon these men simple indeed in their Exteriour but great Princes in their Interiour whose life and outward appearance vile in the eyes of men and estranged from the pomp of the world converted souls by their Sanctity by their Prayers by their Vâ—gilance and restless Labours And herein I discover a great mistake ordinary in the world which believes that outward greatness and pomp is the way to keep up ones credit and render him more capable to do good to his neigbours But we are foully mistaken for it is grace that hath power upon souls and an holy and humble life that gaineth hearts With the same spirit he bewailed much the hasty and irreverent reciting of their Office in many places Being this day present at Divine Service saith he in a Letter to me many words therein put me in minde of the holiness thereof and yet I could not without much grief take notice of some chanting it hastily without devotion or spirit and others hearing it accordingly Good God what pitty is this where is our faith My eyes were ready to run over with tears but I forced my self to refrain them In the third place he had a great respect and love to Religious Persons and all such as dedicated themselves to the Service of God encouraging and assisting them with all his might This Letter he writ to one that was assaulted with great combats I must needs let you know the tender resentment I have of those tempests and present storms that you endure I know no reason why men should alarum you thus nor that you have done any thing against the Gospel which is the onely thing they should condemn you for I believe it will be very hard for them to gather a just cause of reproach from your design For my own part I do not wonder at these crosses its sufficient to know that you belong to Jesus Christ and do desire to follow him reckoning contradiction to be your portion in these days of your flesh Be you onely firm in your confidence upon our Lord suffering no storms from without to trouble you or obscure that light that hath guided and pressed you to this business I pray God deliver you from the reasonings of flesh and blood which often multiply upon us in such matters assuring you that if you give not car to them God will manifest himself unto you that is he will comfort and fortifie you in faith and in experience of the gifts of his Holy Spirit To another he writ thus Blessed for ever be the Blessed Infant Jesus for the happy entrance of those two devout souls into Religion which you mention I shall rejoyce exceedingly in their perseverance the best argument of their effectual calling If the other party you know of had a little more confidence and courage to break her fetters it would be a great step for her And surâ—ly there is not need of so much prudence and deliberation to give up our selves to him who to the Gentiles is foolishness and to the Jews a stumbling block This world is a strange cheat and amusement insinuating into and infecting every thing God hath no need of our good parts nor of our rare qualities who commonly confounds the wisdom of the wise by little things which he chuseth
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
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
and Annihâ—lation 312 Sect. 1. More of the same subject 317 Sect. 2. Continuation of the same subject 328 Chap. 10. Of his Corporal Death 335 The Conclusion of the Work how we ought to read the Lives of Saints 346 ERRATA PAge 88. l. ult for som read from p. 90. l. 2. for a boot of hay-ropes r. a bottle of hay p. 91. l. 15. for possessing it all r. possessing it at all THE HOLY LIFE OF Mon r De RENTY c. PART I. CHAP. 1. Of his Birth Infancy and Youth SO great and glorious were the vertues and good deeds of the late deceased Mon r de Renty that I can begin my discourse no otherwise than by ingenuously confessing my disabillity to set them out as they deserve not even so much of them as appeared outwardly to the eyes of men and much lefs the inward Treasure that lay hid in his Soul though that be the principall Yet notwithstanding undertake I must to write something thereof as not able to deny the requests of many persons of Piety and quality who well knowing that I had enjoyed the happiness of his acquaintance in a singular maner for divers years together even when he was in the very height of the glory of his Vertues and that so great a Treasure so much concerning the glory of God and the publicue good as this excellent and perfect Christian life of his was ought by no means to be buried in Oblivion did judge me in a sort obliged to prevent so great a damage Come we therefore to the business for the greater Glory of God who is admirable in his Saints and of our Lord Jesus Christ who replenished this rare man with his Graces and abundant communication of his Spirit and let us do it in the strength of that Divine assistance which as I stand in very great need of so I humbly beg it with all my soul Monsieur de Renty draws his Original from one of the most Noble Houses of Artois which is that of Râ—nty famous for its Anâ—iquity for its great Alliances and in particular to the House of Crowy whence came the Dukes of Arscot and Princes of Sâ—may for the Honorable Employment of its Ancestors and their Noble Acts in Arms and Battels and above all for its Piety a great testimony whereof was left in the year 1570. by Wambert called the good Count of Renty and Hamburg his Lady who were not contented onely to found and richly endow within their Territories an Abbey under the name and protection of St. Denis which had the blessing to have a Saint for Abbot to wit St Bertulphe but went on encreasing more and more like the Morning light in vertue and good works and built besides that three other Churches one dedicated to St Peter another to St. Martin and the third to St. Wast Monsieur Renty was the onely Son of Charls de Renty and Magdalen of Pastoureau who also descended by her Mother from the same House of Renty He was born at Beny in low Normandy in the Diocess of Bajeaux in the year of Grace 16â—â— having the Poor to present him at the Fonâ— God so ordering it by a particular Providence that the Poor should be Godfathers to him who afterwards during his life should be a Sollicitor Protector and Father of the Poor He was at the Font named Gaston and at Confirmation John Baptist being brought up where he was born till he was between six or seven years of age and then by the Lady his Mother was he brought to Paris and lived there with her about two years till he was put into the Colledge of Navarre and from thence sent to Caen to the Colledge of the Jesuit Fathers having with him for his conduct a Tutor being a Church-man and besides him a Governour who unhappily prov'd an Huguenote and might in â—he sequel have been notably prejudicial to him in corrupting his faith and manners But God out of his singular and paternal care of him as intending to make him one day a great instrument of his glory and of the salvation of many souls preserved him from the pernitious intents and endeavours of that dangerous man and became himself his Governor which occasioned him since then to say that God from his infancy had been most gratio â— to him and as David saith of himself had been hiâ— keeper from his mothers womb As he had naturally a very good wit piercing reach and great judgement so was he very notable and famous for his progress in his studies from the which notwithstanding he was taken at the age of seventeen and put into an Academy as they call their Schools of Gentile Exercises at Paris where he shewed himself most dextrous and accomplish'd in all the Exercises there taught but that which most of all pleased and as I may so say charmed him was the Mathematicks which he applyed himself to with such diligence that he deprived himself of all sorts of divertisemenis which youth is given to and therein attained to such proficiency that he understood them perfectly and composed therein some Books But the time being now come when God was minded to go closer to the work he had in hand and to dispose this choice soul to the execution of those things which he was designed for it pleased him so to order it that a Stationer to whom Monsieur de Renty often repaired to buy such Books as he stood in need of for satisfying the curiosity and ardent desire he had of knowledge in all Sciences suitable to his condition did one day present to him the famous little Book of the Imitation of Christ and desired him to read it but he having as then his minde taken up with other notions made no account of it for that time The Stationer having brought him another day some Books that he had need of presented the same again to him and with some earnestness besought him to be pleased to read it thereupon he yielded and read it and was thereby so enlightned and touched as before him a great multitude of persons of all sorts had been that entertaining now no other thoughts or affections he resolv'd to minde seriously his salvation and give himself up to God so that amongst the great fruits and signal victories obtained by that book we may well reckon for one this work of grace and change wrought upon Monsieur de Renty who also from that time forward had that Book in so great love aad esteem that he always carried it about him and made use thereof on all occasions The gracious effect which the reading of this Book wrought in his soul was so great that it bread and enkindled in his heart the thought and desire to quit the world to consecrate himself entirely to the service of God and to make himself a Carthusian although he could not but see himself to be an onely Son the Heir of a great Estate and endowed with qualities and perfections
to God which kept him from any other diversion I cloath my self which is soon done and after pass to the Chappel through a little Parlour where over the Chimney I have set an Image of the Holy Virgin holding her Son as the Lady of the House I kiss the earth before her and say Monstra te esse matrem c. I devote my self to her service entirely with the offering up of my Family Wife Children Domesticks and I have practic'd this offering of them to her a long time that by her means they all may be perfected for God and rising up I say to her Mater incomparabilis or a pro nobis After that I enter into the Chappel where I cast my self down and adore God abasing me before him and making me the most little most naked most empty of my self that I can and I hold me there by faith having recourse to his Son and to his Holy Spirit that whatsoever is his pleasure may be done by me and so I abide If I have any Penance to do upon half an hour after six I do it and then I read two Chapters of the New Testament barcheaded and on my knees At seven a clock I go up to a Closet where there are three Stations the first to the Virgin the second to St. Joseph and the third to Teresa to all which I render my little Devoirs and afterwards I give place to my affairs but if there be no business urgent I prostrate my self before God till the time that I go to Mass staying at the Church till half an hour after eleven except on those days when we dine some poor people for then I return at eleven Before dinner I make the Examen of the morning and some Prayers for the Church for the Propagation of Faith and the Souls in Purgatory after that I say the Angelus I dine at twelve and in that while have something read half an hour after twelve I spend an hour with them that have business with me and that 's the time I appoint for that purpose Afterwards I go forth whither the order of God shall direct Some days ore order'd and assign'd for certain Exercises therest are reserv'd and unlimited from one week to another Now if it fall out that I have nothing to do I pray in a Church but happen what will I endeavour not to fail to visit every afternoon the Holy Sacrament and to spend about evening an hour in Devotion About seven a clock when I have made some vocal prayers we go to supper during which time one reads the Martyrologie and the life of the Saint for the day following Supper being done I talk to my children and tell them something for their instruction At nine a clock the bell rings to Prayer which all my Family is to be present at which done each one retires but I keep me in the Chappel in Meditation till ten and then I go to my Chamber recommending my self to my God according to my Bottom of Self-Annthtlation to the Holy Virgin my good Angel and other Saints I take holy water and lay me down in bed where I say the de Profundis for the dead and some other little Prayers and so endeavour to repose And so you have in some sort the order of the day as to my Exterior But for the order of my Interior I have not as I may say any for since I left it will be a yearâ— the Holy Week next my breviary all my forms have left me and now instead of serving meâ—â—s means to go to God they would become hinderance I bear in me ordinarily but with many infidelities so great in all this that I am about to speak of that I write it not without regret because I am nothing but vice and sin I bear I say in me ordinarily an experimental verity and a plenitude of the presence of the most Holy Trinity or indeed of some Mysterie which elevates me by a simple view to God and with that I do all that the Divine Providence enjoyns me regarding not any things for their greatness or littleness but onely the order of God and the glory which they may render him For the Examens and things done in Community which I mentioned before I often cannot rest my self there I perform indeed the Exterior for the keeping of order but I follow always my Interior without making any change there because when a man hath God there 's no need to search him elsewhere and when he holds us in one manner it is not for us to take hold of him in another and the soul knows well what it is which bottoms it more clearly what unites it and what multiplies and distracts it For the Interior therefore I follow this Attractive and for the Exterior I see the Divine Will which makes me to follow it and which carrieth me to govern my self according to it with the discernment of his Spirit in all simplicity and so I possess by his grace in all things a great silence Interior a profound Reverence and solid Peace I confess me usually on Thursdays according to the order that hath been given me and communicate almost every day as perceiving my self drawn thereto as also to stand in great need of it In a word the Bottom which hath been shewed me to stand on is to render my self to God through Jesus Christ with such a purity as hath in it operation to worship God in Spirit and Truth after a manner altogether stript and naked and of loving him with all my heart with all my soul and with all my power and of seeing in all things and adoring the conduct of God and following it And this onely abiding in my soul all other things in me are defaced and blotted out I have nothing of sensible in me unless now and then some transitory touches but if I may dare to say it when I sound my will I finde it sometime so quick and flaming that it would devour me if the same Lord who animates it though unworthy did not restrain it I enter into an heat and into a fire and even to my fingers ends feel that all within me speaks for its God and stretcheth it self forth in length and breadth in his Immensity that it may there dissolve and there lose it self to glorifie him I cannot express this thing as it is I do not make a stand upon any thing that passeth in me but fall always into my nothingness where I finde my act of purity towards God as above He concludes afterward in these terms I beg your pardon my Reverend Father if this thing here be so ill ordered I have set it down as it hath happened to me I should be very happy if you could know all my miseries for you would have them in great commiseration This was the writing he gave to his Director They that shall read it will judge without doubt if they understand it well and penetrate
to the bottom the sense of his words that very great were the Vertues and highly rais'd the perfection of this excellent servant of God and by so much the more ought they to judge so as they may assure themselves that he hath not a jot exceeded in the report of the things which concern him but rather that he hath diminished them being by grace and indeed by nature also extreamly reserved and most considerare in whatsoever he said and especially in speaking of himself SECT 2. The Source from whence these Vertues flowed IF now we will examine the Principal of those Vertues and Perfections and the Well-spring whence they issued we shall finde that it was from the intimate Union which he had with the Lord Jesus Christ whereunto he alwaies above all things gave up himself His sage and illuminated Director the Reverend Father de Condrien knowing that the Union with Jesus Christ is the foundation of our Predestination Justification and Sanctification of all the grace and glory which we can ever have that Jesus Christ being the way whatsoever is out of this way can be nothing else but wandring that he being the Truth whatsoever is nor conformable thereto is nothing but lying that he being the Life whatsoever lives not by this life nor is quickned by the Spirit of Jesus Christ is not alive but of necessitie dead he did therefore that which ought alwaies to be done with great care by all Directors of souls which was to make him to know the importance and the necessity of this Unon to fix him stronglie and constanâ—lie to Jesus Christ for the Government of his Interior and Exterior to put him this Way to binde him to this Truth and to Unite him to this Life Monsieur de Renty followed exactly this conduct and therein made a great progress which he went on in perfecting to his death with marvellous improvements so that as the last touches which the Painter gives to his Picture are far different from those of the first rude draughts or as the Sun hath more of heat and light as he advanceth higher in his carreer and approacheth to Mid-day than when he but newlie riseth In like manner the applications the ties and the unions which this excellent man in his latter years had with Jesus Christ and the actions which he either did for him or received of him were quite other from those at his beginning for he was then wholie consummate in Jesus Christ he had as it were passed into him and he carried him as it were in a livelie manner in his soul in his thoughts in his affections in his desires in his words and in his works Hence it was that he had no other object before his eies but Jesus Christ that he thought not but of him that he loved nothing but him that he spake not but of him that he wrought not but for him and alwaies after his sampler that he read not but the New Testament which he carried alwaies with him and endeavoured by all means possible to engrave the knowledge and love of it in all hearts Wriâ—ing to his Director the year 1646. concerning his dispositions he sent him these words among other To speak to you of my Interior I feel my self not to will but God and in union with our Lord Jesus Christ to yield him all my homages This is the fulness of my heart and I feel this well when I sound it He said this to him in another Letter I am in great necessity of Jesus Christ but I ought to tell you by an acknowledgement of the Mercy of God by a certitude of this truth that I feel that he is more ruling in me than my self I know for all that that of my self I am but sin but withal I experiment my Lord in me who is my streâ—gth my life my peace and my All I beseech him to become our plenitude Moreover in another thus I finde my self said he much troubled what to send you because all things become raz'd out of my minde as soon as passed and I cannot retain within me anything but God and this in a kinde of a hoodowink'd blinded manner with a naked faith which faith making me know the evil bottom which is in my self gives me notwithstanding great force and confidence by way of abandoning and Self-Rejection upon our Lord Jesus Christ in God I haue found this morning a possage in S. Paul which I believe our Lord hath put into my hand to express my self by seeing it is the very â—ruth of what I experiment Fiduciam â—urem talem habemus per Christum ad Deum non quod sufficientes simus cogitare aliquid a nobis quasi ex nobis sed sufficientia nostra ex Deo est This boasting we have by Christ to God-wards not as if we were sufficient to think any thing of our selves as of our selves but our sufficiency is of God It is about a fortnight since these words were put upon my spirit without any contribution on my part or of any thing that might renew the Idea's of them quaere venam aquarum viventium seck the vein of living water and just as they were exprest to me my spirit like as when one comes up a River to its Spring-head was to seek Jesus Christ from the beginning of his Pilgrimage to the point of his Glory when set down in his Throne at the right hand of his Father whence he sends his spirit to animate his Church and enliven those that are his I saw that there indeed was the Source whence the springs of living waters do flow to us and that thither we were to make our addresses I could report here more such touches with which his letters to his Director were besprinkled but I believe I have given enough for the present to evidence his disposition towards our Lord and his union with him When he wrote to other persons he always insened something of our Lord to excite them to binde themselves to him and to propose him to themselves in all things as a model of their actions One while he writes thus Let us forget all to think of this faith which makes alliance between God and us through Jesus Christ who is come to publish this truth which he hath sealed with his blood and which he will consummate in his glory at that time when we shall appear to have been faithful in following his Spirit Let us go after and with Jesus Christ to God for he is our way Another while thus 'T is a thing admirable that it hath pleased God to seud us his Son to the end that we may not look on him any more as our Creator onely but also through the alliance that we have with him we may call him Father He is therefore our Father from this time forward and it is certain that he considers us as his children in the person of his Son Incarnate But the thing of importance is a firm
aniting of our selves to this Son contiruing that life of his upon earth within this of ours by the direction of his Spirit Thus also in another Letter Let Jesus Christ be in each of us our bond our soul our life as he is our pattern Le ts take a nearer view of this Holy Original enter into his Principles lay hold on his desires execute his works and let men know that we are Christians Writing to another he spake thus I adore and bless with all my heart our Lord Jesus Christ for that he opens you his heart to possess wholly yours he will make it to dye and will reduce it to a Holy Poverty which shall cause you to taste the true Life and compleat Riches and to avow that it is a great mercy to belong to Jesus Christ I beseech him to bestow on you his most sanctifying graces and that we may beth dye well and live well by his Spirit Let us enter into this Spirit which will give us the Sentiments and the Energie of the Children of God All other presence and application to the Divine Majestie which is not by this union of the Soul to Jesus Christ is onely of the creature towards the Creator which carries indeed respect but gives not the life and approaches of children towards God their Father where being united to the Interior operations of Jesus Christ we finde there the affections of true children which we canâ— not have but by being united to the true Son Let us end with that which a person to whom he unbosom'd himself confidently in this matter reports of him This rare man said he appeared touched with a verie tender and fervent love towards our Lord Jesus Christ I have observed that his Conversations and Discourses did shoot alwaies at this mark to imprint in souls the knowledge and love of our Lord with true soliditie In discourse with him I had often from him these words I avow that I have no gust in any thing where I finde not Jesus Christ and for a soul that speaks not of him or in which we cannot taste any effect of grace flowing from his Spirit which is the principal of operations both inward and outward that are solidly Christians speak not to me at all of such a one Could I as I may so say behold both miracles and wonders there and yet not Jesus Christ nor hear any talk of him I count all but amusement of spirit loss of time and a very dangerous Precipice And at several other times he said Let us love Jesus Christ let us unite our selves to his Spirit and Grace miserable sinner as I am who love him not yet should I be much joy'd at least to see my defects supplied by others that love him fervently but I am too unworthy to obtain a matter so great and wherein my self do bear so small a part Seeing then this faithful servant and follower of Christ Jesus had so strong an application and intimate union with his Divine Lord as 't is easie to gather from what hath been spoken we cannot but ascribe to this application and union all his vertues which we are going now to speak of in several and to look upon them as effects of this cause streams of this Fountain and branches of this Stem PART II. His Vertues in particular and first the Vertues which did perfect him in regard of himself CHAP. 1. His Penances and Austerities AS our flesh and senses are by their nature and more by their corruption very opposite to a Spiritual Life and among the enemies of our weal and perfection none more importunate or more violent than they so God useth when he intends to elevate any to the accomplishment of vertue and to make them Saints to inspire in them at the beginning of their conversion a spirit of Penance and mortification of their bodies Monsieur de Renty being destin'd by God to this glory and quickned by this Spirit encounters his body with rigorous Austerities thereby to reduce it to its duty and hinder it from annoying him in his Interior Exercises He begins therefore to fast every day making but one meal which he continued divers years until he was enjoyned otherwise and to take more nourishment to be the better able to undergo the great labours he undertook for his neighbour Some days in the week he wore an iron Girdle set with a double rank of long prickles and a bracelet of the same on other days he disciplin'd himself rigorously at some times wore haircloath having continually on his breast a brass Crucifix reaching to the bottom of his stomack the nails whereof being very sharp entred into his flesh When he went into the Countrey and was come to his Inn he would go into the Kitchin to eat there if it might be among servants and other mean persons and that for two ends both there to morâ—ifie his body and to speak some good thing to those poor people and when night constrained him to take his chamber he dismissed his servants to lie in other rooms and himself past the night in a chair or cast himself on a bed in his cloathes and boots which was his custom till death Being come to Amiens where I was and a Lady one of the chief of the Town having prepared a stately bed in a brave Chamber for him in honour of his vertue and cuality he was much troubled and would not at all use it but laid him down upon a bench and the day after as being much asham'd complained to me of the Lady for it so that to enjoy the blessing of lodging him at her house she was fain to change his chamber and bed and to accommodate him after his own mode that is to say where he might not be so much at his ease His Mortification in diet was very great eating little and always of the worst as not forgetting that our misery came not but by eating of delicious fruit Dining in company on a Fish-day one of the guests that noted his actions observed that all he eat was some Pears onely and that with so great modesty and recollection that one might easily discern that his minde was on God and not upon his meat When one of his friends a man of piety at Caen entertain'd him one day at dinner with some little ceremony as a person of quality he ate very little became much mortified and ashamed as he declared afterwards that Christians should be Feasters adding that a little would suffice and what a torment it was to him to be where there was so muâ—h chear as a thing quite contrary to the poverty of Christ who notwithstanding should be to us for our rule He would tell his friends that a little bread a little lard and butter was sufficient Hereupon his friends acquainted with this grace of Mortification in him took no more thought concerning his diet knowing his best entertainment to be the meanest fare The perfection
of a Christian life and the fulfilling of Gods will was to him after the example of our Lord as most exquisite and delitious meat and viands and when any gave him opportunity or left him to his liberty to practise this Mortification it pleased him exceedingly Often at Paris when some deed of charity had drawn him far from home that he could not return to dinner he would step in all alone or unknown to a small Victualling-house or some Bakers shop and make his dinner with a piece of bread and a draught of water and so very gay and chearfull go on with his business And what he pracrised for the mortifying of his gust was in like manner done for his other senses the sight the hearing the smell and the touch Being come to Pontois on a very cold day in winter and lodging at the Carmelite Nuns he desired earnestly the Nun that was the Door-keeper to have no fire made nor bed prepared for him and after he had discoursed with some of them he old the last that he must go make some little visits and that was to visit the Prisoners the poor that were ashamed to beg and to employ himself in some other deeds of charity which he never forgot at any time how little soever was his leisure He returned about nine a clock at night when the Nuns went to say Matins and without taking any thing to eat went into the Church to his prayers which he continued till eleven a clock and then retired into his chamber not suffering a fire to be made for him although by his own confession the cold did incommode him very much He constantly kept a vigilant eye over himself in every time place occasion and even in the meanest things for the mortifying of his body daily putting it to some hardship or at least hindring it from sense of pleasure And to that end had found out some very notable and ingenious inventions so bearing continually about him the mortification of the Lord Jesus in his body that the life of Jesus might live and shine forth in it well knowing as the same Apostle elsewhere saith That those that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lust thereof And to say the truth the more a man is full of one thing the less room there is for its contrary the more one sinks into darkness the further off from light and as we said above there is nothing more opposite to the Spirit than the flesh so must we of necessity conclude the more a man pampers his flesh the more doth he indispose and estrange himself from the life of the Spirit Thus this illuminated person dealt with his body as with his enemy out of the design he had to lead a life truly spiritual Whatsoever might content and flatter his senses was insupportable to him whence it happened that one day there slipt from him this word to a confident that God had given him a great hatred of himself and this was advanc'd so far by his fervent and unsatiable desire of mortifying himself that beside the moderation that his Director was obliged to lay upon him a famous person of our days the Carmelite Nun of the Covent of Beaulne Sister Margaret of the Holy Sacrament who lived and dyed in a fragrant odour of Sanctity with whom he was most intimate in the bonds of grace did out of divine light she had in that matter much reprehend him for it and gave him her advice in the business whereunto for the confidence he had in her and that not without good cause being willing to yield he remitted something of his rigour although not without complaint which he testified to a person thus in writing I know not said he why one stould strive to keep in so lazy a beast that stands more in need of the spur than bridle For all he was thus held in he left not off the war which he made with his body in each thing he could but without transgressing the Orders he had received till he thereby came to such a point of perfect Mortification that his body became as it were dead and insenâ—ble in all things which now in a manner made no impression upon his senses eating without gust himself saying that all meats were to him alike seeing as it were without sight so that after he had been along time in some Churches most richly adorned with stately ornaments and those before his eyes when one asked if they were not very fine he answered plainly that he had seen nothing By reason of his Mortification he had no pain nor trouble at all from those things which make other men so fret and take on who are alive to themselves and enslav'd to their bodies neither was he onely without pain but which as Arâ—stotle saith is the highest perfection of a vertue he took great pleasure therein which came not to him so much from abundance of sensible consolations which may sweeten Austerities to an unmortified man but from the ground and bottom of vertue intirely acquir'd and possessed CHAP. 2. Of his Poverty SECT 1. Of his Poverty of spirit ONe of the most great and admirable Vertues that shone in Monsieur de Renty was this that in the possession of riches he was utterly disingaged from the love of them and possessed in a most high degree as we shall now declare the first of the Beatitudes which pronounceth Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven of grace in this world and of glory in the other A truth which served him for a powerful attractive to endeavour the gaining of this rich treasure Whereof writing to a person of Pietie he thus said I was the other day touch'd in reading the eight Beatudes and upon this word Beatitude I took notice that in effect there were no other Beatitudes but these for if there had our Lord would have taught them and therefore those ought to be our whole study But what shall I say we ground not our selves upon them nor desire the grace to do it but run after the Beatitudes of the world and our own Concupiscience quitting that which is clear and given us by our head Christ Jesus to be in a state of hurley-burley and confusion and consequently of trouble danger and unhappiness It was not to these kinde of Beatitudes that he ran but to those of the Gospel and in particular to the first concerning which le ts hear what one saith of him a person very credible and of his intimate acquaintance I never sew mâ—n said he in so perfect a poverty of spirit nor in so ardent a desire to feel the effects of it as was he And in the fervour of his desire he said to me Procure by your prayers that we may change this form of life when will you labour with God that this may be this habit and this wealth is to me most painful I have talked since his death
he had his hands so employed in deeds of charity that little leisure he had to keep them within gloves He carried no silver about him but for Alms and good works growing daily richer in this Exteriour poverty and effective diminishment of what he had I have seen him at first in Coach with a Page and Lackey afterwards in Coach with a Lackey without a Page then without Coach on foot with a Lackey and in fine alone without Lackey and in effect without himself Speaking one day to a Confident of Evangelical poverty he told him that God had given him so ardent desires to possess it that being not able by reason of the bonds that withheld him to abandon his goods as he had often wished for the better following of the most not rich but poor Christ Jesus made poor for us he endeavoured to pass with as little as he could and to cut off for his person not onely superfluous and the very commodious but also whatever was not precisely necessary That walking alone in the Fields his consolation was to be there in liberty to live as he pleased But that after all he was not able to finde out a better cure for the fervour of his desires than to despoil himself as much as he was able of the property of all his goods and to account himself no more than a Trustee and meer Steward in regard of his family considering himself in the possession of them no otherwise than a poor man that received his necessaries from God by the hand of his wife The forementioned person speaks of an Heroick action which this excellent man did of which see here an account more at large in a Memorial which I have under his own hand I make a resolution in the presence of my God to have care of Reparations of Manufactures of High-ways and Causeys with the goods that he hath given me to dispose of and this so much the more as he shall give me the grace to make a total dismission and resignation to him of my self and of what I have at this next approaching Feast of his Nativity and to put my self into such a condition that he shall be the Proprietary and owner and I the steward and servant onely to distribute the same in readiness to yeild it up at the least notice of his will By his grace therefore I acknowledge this day that being from hence forward in a Plebeian and underling condition among Christians I ought to apply my self to these businesses as far as there shall be need and occasions permit namely to labour in them even in the lowest employments that are as to remove rubbish to play the Mason and the like since by his grace I have skill in some of these Arts And I ought to make as much account of these employments as of those of assisting souls not looking upon the things as they are in themselves but on the will of God and what he requires of me I beseech the Lord from my heart to pardon me my failings herein to this time I make this present Memorial upon the sight which he hath given me of them this fifth of November 1643. to serve me as a remembrancer of my Obligation This was his resolution and promise Now let us look upon the performance He made a building at Citry which was one of the Demesns he had in Bry and the better to observe with what purity of Conscience sublimity of thoughts and disingagement of affection he applied himself to it I shall set down what I had in a Letter from him corncerning it May 8. 1648. Blessed for ever be our great God by Jesus Christ and by all the righteous that are filled with his Spirit I believe the order of God requires of me outward labour among many other workmen seeing necessity thereto obligeth me as Father of the Family about a house considerable for my children which was like to fall having not been inhabited for a long time I avow to you my heart doth much long after another Edifice than that which is built with materials of stone But I look upon this my work as a part of Gods justice who destin'd the first man after the fall and all his children to labour and thereupon I revere it and apply my self thereto with a good heart and courage though with some Mortification from the nature of this penance that relates so little to the life of the Spirit We know some of our ancient Popes who were great Saints condemn'd to keep Mules and I that am a great sinner and deserve hell and so mercifully dealt with that I am not sent but to the stone Quarries not into the banishment and penury of our first Christians but into those grounds that go for my own Oft in a day I think that this Labour is unacceptable and to what purpose say I sometimes so many houses which we must leave so soon and which themselves will come at last to nothing I am humbled for the work but not for the application of my self to it In that of the 19th of July thus he said upon the same subject The time that I live here in this place I count very dear regarding it as ordered by God for the doing of a little part of the penance due to my great sins If grace did not uphold me with this consideration I should be much tormented in a labour so ingrate and so limited as to build in the house of a secular and bestow my time upon this work which requires assiduity But I have a feeling that the order of God is in it and by his motions I quit the state of Mary to take that of Martha accepting this humiliation with Self-annihilation and with contemplation of the Divine Justice That which makes me the more to know that there is of Gods order in it is this That from time to time both Holidays and Sundays the mercies of the Lord are so great to me that I resent more of retribution from him in one instant than the patience and humiliation of a sinner could merit in all his life He opens himself so to me that my hardness is mollified and makes me melt into tears my eyes are so full of them that very often I have much ado to keep them in pierced as I am with love with reverence and with acknowledgement of the effects of his goodness which he renews in me by his inlightning presence and manifestation of his inexplicable conduct which I cannot utter I understand hereby that we are to reckon among graces this following the order of God and not that of our own by a singular and private spirit of pride pretending the glory of God that we may dispence with our selves though we perceive it not from labouring in things mean and painful in our conditions which notwithstanding our Lord blesseth not according to the choice we make but according to their agreement to his order And our faithfulness draws
with patience for I experiment and see clearly that though we labour and wish earnestly to get out of our imperfections our Lord sometimes leaves us there a long while to make us know our weakness and to humble us He desired to be advertised of and reprehended for his faults and we shall see now what he observed therein at the beginning of his call to this high perfection It came to pass that a person which was much below him had order from his Director to advertise him if he saw any thing in him that was contrary to perfection when this person gave him notice of some failing though very light and indeed but of the shadow of a fault he listned thereto with respect and thanks and humbled himself for it as if he had committed some crime and he accused himself when he thought he had made any failing upon his knees saying he was a miserable sinner and that he had committed such a fault which yet often very hardly could one discern to be any This exercise as being most wholesome and efficacious was very useful to him for the making of a great progress for our nature by reason of its feebleness hath need of such props to walk uprightly and not fall If his imperfections and his sins humbled him his excellent qualities and the graces which he received from God did the same also And the same things from which the greatest part of men draw nothing but vanity served him for motives of self-abasement The Spirit of Jesus Christ wherewith he was enlivened extremely estranged him from the Grandeurs of the world making him not onely contemn them but also to be ashamed thereof so that he took occasions of abasements from his own condition because so high in the world and from the secular advantages which it gave him which made him often to groan before the Majestie of God and to say that he was in a condition very low and plebeian according to the Spirit of Jesus Christ and that he had great confusion to see himself in that estate From whence it came that being born a Gentleman of so good rank as we have said he renounced his Nobility and gave it into the hands of our Lord who in return imparted his own to him as he made it known to a holy soul that is to say his love which by its proper force transforming man in God divests him of himself and leaves nothing in him but God alone there living and reigning and by this means raiseth him thus Deified to the highest degree of Nobility that he can mount to Hence it was that he endured with pain that one should call him Monsieur and he said sometimes smilingly among his familiars I am a fine Monsieur it is well for me and in his Letters he complained that they treated him as in that quality And in one of them giving another course or carreer to his humility he said Believe me I pray you it is great pitty of me I take again the Monsieur which I had rejected my pride must have these her Appendixes rather than deceive your Candor which else perhaps make you mistake in me a piece of glittering glass for a Diamond Out of his humility it was that he would not bear the title of Marquess which was due to him as proper to his house in regard the Emperor Charles the fift had erected Renty into a Marquifate and he suffered onely that of Baron of Renty by which he was commonly called For the graces and gifts of God as they were received in a soul well disposed so produced they most excellently their true effect which was to abase and elevate the soul both together to raise it to God and to abase it to it self And first his humility made him hide as much as he could the gifts of God and so hath rob'd us of the knowledge of a thousand brave actions which might have been very serviceable to this History Secondly when he received any favour from God or that one rendred him any honour the light whereby he saw the Nothingness of the creature and the discernment he was endowed with in distinguishing the precious from the vile and that which is done on Gods part in all-good things from that which man bringeth thither of his own was the cause that in those things he assum'd no share at all but referred all to God as to the true Source and so in the management of these great goods which God enriched him withal he had always his hands clean without doing wrong to God or touching that which appertain'd to him and for himself he kept quite out of sight of all vanity which slides most subtilly and most easily into a spirit that abounds in riches of heaven as well as those of the earth if he look not very close unto it Nor would he therefore that any one should consider him in what he said or did but regard God alone therein He wrote thus to one that much desired of him a visit I cannot bear but with pain the account you make of my visits and society Let us look much upon God let us binde our selves strictly to Jesus Christ that we may learn of him a profound annihilation of our selves O my God when will it be that we shall have no more a sight upon our selves when we shall speak no more of our selves and when all vanity shall be destroyed And he wrote to another I beseech you not to regard in me save my infirmities and a depth of wickedness and pride very horrible that is in me that 's it for which I shall have need that all the world talk to and punish me In the third place he esteemed himself most unworthy of the graces and favours of God and beleived there was not one of them how little soever it were but was far above his merits and for the great ones he was so full of they did put him to a Non-plus He wrote to a confident The gifts of God are sometimes so great that they put us as I may so say beyond our selves and if it were possible we could finde the means to recoil our selves further off than beyond Nothingness we should do it You see among men that when one receives a gift that bears some proportion to him he renders thanks and acknowledgement to the giver for it but if a Prince be Liberal to a poor man according to the Grandeur of his own power whether it be a sum of money or a place you shall see this poor man recoil and say Alas my Lord I think you know me not I must not have so much I am unworthy of it In like manner there are blessings that go beyond our expectations capacities and which make us see what we are without daring to lift up our eyes towards them their brightness doth so much dazle and their greatness so much astonish In fine he humbled himself always for the favours of God because he thought
great pains he took he made answer that our Lord humbled himself and took toilsome pains for the good of souls in a far other manner sure and that he was his pattern Being one day to go see a person of very great quality about a business which much concerned the glory of God he would not use his Coach although he were to traverse in a manner all Paris and that when it pour'd down with rain but go thither on foot one motioned that he would at least let a cloak be carried by a Lackey to take it when he came thither and not present himself before that person in a Cloak altogether wet and speak to him in such unseemliness but he yielded not yet to accommodate his humility with decency he cast that cloak above his own and past through the streets so far in this humble equipage and afterwards in the Noblemans house laid aside the wet cloak and appeared in the other ordinary one of his own But behold here another effect of this humility whereof he wrote to his Director the 20 of December 1646. It behoves me now saith he that I render you an account of a business that passed the other day Madam my Lord Chancellors Lady sent me a packet of letters wherein I found some from the King with all the Seals and formalities wherein I was made Councellor of State but my thoughts were not taken up at all with the business I sent her word that I would assume the honour to see her to thank her for that my Lord Chancellor vouchsafed to think of me that I honoured more than so that which had the mark of the King and which came from their hands than not to receive it with all respect But I most humbly begg'd one thing of her that living in a kinde of plain and vulgar manner as I did she would be pleased to take in good part if with all acknowledgement premised of my exceeding obligations to them I did not accept those letters and that the business might sleep without noise some represented it to me as a thing worth thinking on for that a Committimus might be very necessary for me in some sort of occurrences and that a pension of 2000 livers per ann about 200 l. Sterling would afford me ability for the giving of more alms To the first point I answered that by the goodness of God I had no need of it and that often the Committimusses prove a great vexation to those upon whom they are executed That this should be our work to bear our own little ordinary crosses without laying extraordinary ones upon others And for the second that God having given me more of riches than I had need of I thought I was not obliged to augment them but to keep me in my little way of living you see how we stand as to this business Whereupon let me tell you that this thing cannot be affected so but that I must take upon me also the quality of a Councellor of State and must have a dependence upon the State as a Pensioner of the King Now by the paper that some while ago I sent you you may see that I have given up my worldly Nobility to God and this thing here would derogate much from it and moreover it would be a step to an engaging of me I know not where which now I see not nor will see having other things to six my eyes on My disposition towards affairs of that nature is to have no share at all in them if per-force and without my seeking they come upon me I shall count it a real cross which our Lord will in such a case give me strength to bear To conclude Elegi abjectus esse in domo dei mei absit mihi gloriari nisii in cruce domini nostri Jesu Christi I have chosen to be a door-keeper in the house of my God and God forbid that I should rejoyce in any thing save in the Cross of Christ So have you the inclinations I finde in my self This was that he writ to him concluding with these words which carry with them another touch of humility and much wisdom I have been willing the business might be concealed for the avoiding of Ostentation which is found often in the refusal of things that have something of lustre and give occasion of talk And thus he carried himself in that conjuncture but notwithstanding sometime after he was constrained by good advice in consideration of a business that much concerned the glory of God and relief of the poor to accept of these letters and that quality and to make use of it In a paper he wrote to the same person I finde this that follows which makes much to our purpose Walking one day this Lent thorow the streets of Paris much be-dirted and very poor to look at I bore in me the resentment of the Apostle 1 Cor. 4.13 when he saith That he was as the scum and off-scouring of the world I returned in my minde blessing for reviling and the rest of that passage so much as fell under my passive obedience both actually receiving illumination to understand it and strength to execute it I know well how much neatness and new things even to a boot even to a glance and a look do hurt if one take not good heed the simplicity and dignity of this Christian self-vilifying And I saw that it was a great temptation for a man to think to preserve his estate of Grandeur and note in hopes to be thereby more exemplary and have more weight and authority for the service of God This is a pretext that our infirmity makes use of in the beginning but perfection draws off at last to Jesus Christ who was humbled upon the Cross and made the lowest of men What an honour is it to keep company with Jesus Christ so lovely and so little followed in his ignominies and his humiliations it is one of my errours that I have not yet well begun it The great knowledge and marvellous sense that he had of these truths and of the lowliness of Spirit whither ought to tend and come the true children of God and perfect followers of Jesus Christ made him often to say Let us be little and very little Oh this holy littleness it is a great matter From this Spirit it was that he loved low and mean things and shun'd whatsoever it was that outwardly carried splendor with it whither he knew that nature in a secret reflex upon it self is always carried and even in things most spiritual and holy as on the contrary Grace as being the grace of Jesus Christ carries to things of no reputation such as he embraced And he avoided out of the fame thought whatever it was that held of the extraordinary and said that in exercises wherein there appeared even most of perfection as in observing Fasts and other penances more than others there was not in them sometimes so much as in the
common exercises for the meanness of which is recompenced with the mortification of our nature which nature very often seeks its self in the extraordinaries and the singularities being much pleased to have something above others and so be thought of and spoken of with the more esteem He kept the same guard upon his speech that he might not in discoursing of spiritual things and the highest mysteries make any use of terms magnifick and pompous or of words new and uncouth and if it fell out that he uttered any such he shewed it was with pain and because he could not express himself otherways insomuch that neither in his actions nor in his words would he have any thing that made appearance of Grandeur or of singularity It was moreover an act of humility and wisdom in him to make esteem and to speak with advantage of other mens carriages for their Interior although they were far below his own saying that we ought most carefully take heed of speaking like the Pharisee I am not as other men And writing to me one day of this subject God forbid said he that I should believe there is any thing singular and extraordinary in me although I ow him extream acknowledgements for his infinite mercies But among all the effects and testimonies of his humility the manner of his carriage towards his Director ought without doubt to have place in the first rank He did nothing were it of never so little consequence that concerned himself without his conduct to him he propounded the thing either by word of mouth if he were present or if absent by writing clearly and punctually desiring his advice his pleasure and benediction upon his resolution These were his terms and that with so much humility respect dependence and submission of his own sense as was admirable and after without return or disputing he followed simply and exactly his order even as much as could be done in a well reformed Religious order by the most resigned and obsequious novice His director having written to him something concerning his perfection he answered him in these terms I beseech you believe that although I am most imperfect and a great sinner if yet you do me the honour and favour to send me a word of what you know to be necessary for me I hope with Gods help I shall profit thereby I pant not after any thing but to finde God and Jesus Christ with as much simplicity as verity I pretend to nothing in this world but this and out of this I desire nothing See what a submission here was although he had which makes the marvel an excellent and most clear spirit and was endued with so high prudence and great insight in each thing that he was consulted by word of mouth and by letters from diverse places by a very great number of persons of every age sex and condition both of Secular and Religious For the practising so highly this submission he fixed his eyes upon our Lord who in each thing was his model and his light in that submission which he rendred to S. Joseph wherewith he was extraordinarily affected Being one day at the Carmelite Nuns of Pontoise praying in their Church and opening himself in this matter to a person to whom with prudence and charity he might do it he thus told him It is true that I have received this morning a grand favour in the weditation on the subjection and dependency which the son of God was pleased to render to S. Joseph to whom he was subject and obedient in all things as a childe to his Father Oh what an honour and grace was it to this Saint but Oh what a vertue and self-annihilation in Jesus Christ that the Son of God being equal to his Father should be subject to a creature and submit to a poor Carpenter as if he had not known how to demean himself I am given to understand how by this example of the Son of God we are highly instructed and after a manner worthy such a Master concerning the dependance which the Creatures ought to have upon God and concerning the strict obligation which engageth us to submit to the Soveraign power which he hath over us and to the direction of men in such sort that our heart may not have repose but in this subjection united to that which Christ Jesus renders to a Creature O how profound is this mysterie and how it teacheth me This said he continued a while after without speaking as if he had been wholly taken up with the greatness of this grace and the person to whom he spake having told him that he felt some communication of this grace he fell down on his knees and so did that person also and both of them praying adored Jesus Christ in this estate of dependence and submission to a creature devoting themselves to him for imitation SECT 5. His love of a private and retired life VVE place also as an effect of his humility the love he had to a private and unknown life for he loved it not onely for its affording him more time to attend upon God and communicate more with our Lord who was the dear object of his heart but the more for having thereby the means to fly from the esteem the honour and the praises of men and to be blotted out of their mindes and remain in oblivion to all the world Being pressed with this love he said that if God had not tied him to this state wherein he was he should have gone into some strange and remote Countrey to live there in obscurity the rest of his days that he wished not to be known by any one in the world that it was not expedient that one should know so much as that he was there and that it would have been a singular pleasure to him to be banished from the hearts of all men and unknown by all the creatures whereunto he contributed on his part all that he could not doing any thing that might bring on acquaintance and gain affections and it was noted that the more he advanced in light and graces the more strong grew the Bent he had plant to this hidden life and desire to be unknown as he witnessed five or six moneths before his death He beheld herein our Lord and he example that he gave us of this life not having appeared for the space of thirty years but once onely in the Temple although there was no danger on his part to be frequented by men and one would think also he might thereby have done them much good in cultivating polishing and sanctifying them by his conversation and by his words being indeed come into the world on purpose to teach them He cast also his eyes upon God whom the Prophet calls a Secret God and who effectually hath kept himself hid a whole Eternity within himself and who through all the discoveries that he hath made of himself which is shewed abroad is nothing near
answerable to what is still undiscovered within him These were the models after which this servant of God and illuminated soul fashioned himself In a Memorial written the fifth of March 1645. which he gave to his Director to render him an account of that which passed in his Interior he said One time being in the street where coaches passed to and fro and not knowing whether I ought or no look on them that were in them because it was in a place of my acquaintance and whether this would not give some occasion of talk to see that I went in that manner on not looking at all aside I had on a sudden upon my spirit but after a manner that I cannot doubt but it was of God Trouble not thy self about being known and Stand not upon knowing These two words gave me so great light and force that I dwelt more than eight upon this Contemplation That herein consists the greatest aids of the life spiritual and I have it daily for a ground It is certain that since the greatest part of our evils and imperfections come from a desire to be seen and to see this amusement must have in it great venome against the advancement of a soul although she often perceives not the damage nor feels the hurt that comes from it That which defiles our actions of Piety is that self-love makes one glad when they are known and observed men shew always the most fair and hide the foul and insidâ— and all the outside is so composed that the minde is often more taken up about that than about God And very few there are that have not a great part in this vain eying and regard passive and active of the creatures O how these words wrought in me a great separation from the world what purgation and and what purity is it to be upon the earth and there see nought but God! O how undoubtedly such a one would live as if he were not known without caring what the world says or thinks without desire of taking or receiving any part there of knowing or being known of any neither by name livery or visage but according as our Lord did How one would march naked pure and free of spirit I was then in t he midst of the streets and of noise among crouding and justling in such tranquillity so united to God and so much taken up by him as if I had been in a desart and since that time I go thus through the streets yet with liberty to look upon what I should see but without being fixt to it And these words are again sent into my spirit in necessary occurrences and they keep and conserve me in God I am for all that very unfaithful to this Grace but the centre and the ground of it is not blotted out of me and this renders me more culpable Thus we have what was in his Memorial Let us end with what he wrote to a Lady 1643. upon this business of a life that is secret and retired from communion with the creatures to whom he said Let us encourage our selves to lead this life unknown and wholy hid from men but most known to intimate with God divesting our selves chasing out of our mind all those many superfluities and those many amusements which bring with them so great a damage that they take up our mindes instead of God so that when I consider that which thwarts and cuts into so many pieces this holy this sweet and amiable union which we should have continually with God it appears that it is onely a Monsieur a Madam a complement and talking indeed a meer foolery which notwithstanding doth ravish and wrest from us the time that is so precious and the fellowship that is so holy and so desireable Let us quit this I pray you and learn to court it with our own Master let us well understand our part our own world as we here phrase it not that world I mean which we do renounce but that wherein the children of God do their duties to their Father CHAP. 4. Of the disesteem he made of the world THat great affection which he bore to an obscure life was an evident mark of his disesteem of the world for if he had esteemed it he would not have desired to quit it Now to say to what height he mounted in the disesteem of it is a thing very difficult 'T is enough for us to know that he had it in extream contempt by observing as abovesaid how he renounced as far as in him lay all that the world could promise and could give him and wherewith it useth to enslave and captivate men how he degraded himself of his Nobility how he yielded up his goods and stript himself of their property as no otherwise to use them than in quality of a poor man withdrew himself from pleasures rejected the honors dignities to which his birth and excellent perfection gave him very great overtures how he floured all its allurements trampled under foot all its glories He beheld for this end our Lord as his pattern who from his entry into the world and birth made an open profession of an absolute contempt of the world because as he said he was not of the world I finde written by his own hand in a Memorial which he gave to his Director this rare and solid illumination som our Lord in this matter Being saith he in the moneth of November 1644. in a Chappel richly Wainscoted and adorned with very excellent Sculpture and with Imagery I beheld it with some attention having had some skill in these things and saw the bundels of flowers diluces and of flowers in form of borders and of very curious workmanship it was on a sudden put into my minde The original of what thou seest would not detain thee at all in seeing it And I perceived that indeed all these and those flowers themselves and not in picture would not have taken me up and all the ornaments which Architecture and Art inventeth are but things most mean and low running in a manner onely upon Flowers Fruits Branches Harpies and Chymaera's part whereof are in their very being but things common and vile and part of them meerly imaginary and yet man who croucheth to every thing renders himself amorous and a slave of them no otherwise than as if a good workman should stand to copy out and counterfeit some trifles and sopperies I considered by this sight how poor man was to be cheated amused and diverted from his Soveraign good And since that time I could make no more stand to consider any of these things and if I did it I should reproach my self for it as no sooner seeing them in Churches or elsewhere but this is presently put upon my spirit The original is nothing the copy and the image is yet less each thing is vain except the employment of our selves about God alone And in truth a Christian who is nurtured and elevated for
so great things as the possession of God and Eternal glory ought to undervalue all that which is is here below yea how resplendent soever with much more reason than a great King will reject a boot of hay-ropes to which hay indeed the Prophet compares all worldly glories in comparison of his Crown and Kingdom This was the cause that employed this servant of God to animate a Lady to the vilifying of the world by writing to her in this manner I shall tell you that seeing we are not Christians but by the tie the dependence and the life we have of Jesus Christ I wonder how it comes about that a thing so little as man drawn out of nothing in his first original infected with his first Parents sin and the addition of his own raised to so high a degree of honour as the alliance of Christianity gives him in being one onely Christ with the Son of God in being his brother and a co-heir with him in the life to come I wonder I say how after such admirable Prerogatives man can esteem the world and make any account of its vanities Shall he have his heart here and be a man of this world after these considerations The things of the earth whereof death also will quite strip us and for ever shall they fill our hearts in that little time we have to be here to work out our salvation to obtain the treasures prepared for us and to render thanks to God for his mercies should we not make appear to God and men a faith that is altogether lively in quitting freely the things of this world its honours false or at least not profitable its establishments perishable its opinions extravagant and all that which will pass away like a dream even as we see our great Grandfathers are gone and there is no more memory of them their risings and settings their contentments and displeasures which did stick so close to their hearts and which they had so much pain to accommodate to the Law of Jesus Christ and to the genius of their times all this is vanished away Is it not true that we have cause to think them to have been out of their wits if they considered any other thing but God in their ways The same thing will happen to us each thing will pass away and God alone will abide O how good it is to be fastned to him alone He encourageth the same Lady in another Letter thus Courage all is well we must dye to the world and search out the obstacles that it brings to our perfections to condemn them and to live in the world in the Apostles sense as not living there at all possessing it as not possessing it all Let us drive stoutly out of our mindes the complacence and affection to our brave houses let us ruine the delights of our gardens let us burn our Groves let us banish these vain images which we have of our children hiding secretly in the love of them that which is but indeed our own self-love though we seem dead to it and it makes us desire esteem and approve in their persons that which we condemn in our selves to wit the luster and glittering of the world I know there is a difference of conditions but all ought to reject these entailments as men account them upon great birth and noble blood I mean these principles of aspiring to the highest and entertaining no sufferings such principles as these our children carry from that birth we give them but it behoveth that the second birth which we procure them from Jesus Christ do repair these disorders Let us take from them this vanity of minde all these stately demeanors and the examples of these Grandees in story whose punishments are as eminent in hell as their presumption hath been glittering on the earth for otherwise it will be found we shall conduct them to no better end In another Letter he explains to her what he had said concerning her Houses and Gardens and which without this Explication would seem to be very harsh My design said he was not that you should demolish your walls and let run into a rude wilderness your gardens to be more at liberty for God I understand my speech of the disingagements and the ruines which must be made in our mindes and not be executed on things insensible and which have no worth in them but in form When I say we must set all on fire my thoughts were of following that admirable spirit of the Apostle who would that we have poverty among our riches and divestment in the midst of our possessions he means that our spirits be truly purified and separated from the creatures which we really make our solace because a Christian that tends to perfection doth himself great wrong in dwelling upon these amusements and entertaining in his heart other inclinations than those of Jesus Christ who saw all the world without destroying it but withal without applying himself to it the business of his Father and his glory was his life the windings of rivers and the ornaments of fields were to him but things of feeble consideration and not matters of imployment Hither it is that I would have one come and desire no more It is in effect thus That we must contemn the world whereunto God carries us and to bring us thither more efficaciously he permits by turns and often that we receive therein disgraces and meet with pain and trouble as when a man sets thorns in a way to make men take another The which Monsieur de Renty knowing very well see what he writes thereof to a certain person God hath his ends through all these contrarieties which is that those that are his should be yet more his in affiance in recumbency in life and in all The bruite of the world and its turning upside down are advantageous to make known its spirit its confusion its vanity to them that are not of it and who being in the spirit of death wait for nothing more there than for death bringing forth in the mean while the effects of life eternal which is a kinde of advancement out of mortality whilst we are in it CHAP. 5. Of his Patience QUestionless the humble man is patient because he esteems himself worthy of the evil he suffers and of much more also And if we will search into the true cause of our impatiences and drive up to the spring head we shall finde it to be our pride and the esteem of our selves Monsieur de Renty being most humble as we have seen was also by consequence most patient as this Chapter is going to relate And now at first when I am thinking of it there comes into my minde the description that Tertullian makes of patience representing her with a visage sweet and calm a forehead serene without all shew of frowning or sadness a carriage always equal few words and a contenance such as one sees in persons innocent and assured
touched him so near in that he never spake word to me of it nor of his mother save onely to desire that they both might be recommended to God And from the beginning that I had the honour to speak to him when I gave him notice of the offers that divers persons had made us to ferve him he thankt me most heartily for my good will with great acknowledgment towards those persons and without speaking any more thereof he fell upon discoursing of God never after opening his mouth about that business which evidenced a wonderful disengagement and death to every thing though of never so sensible an interest There past also many other things at Dijon and since at Paris during these differences even to the death of his mother yea and after which required an extream deal of patience and which he practised in an Heroical perfection even to the astonishment of those who were acquainted with the business But it is enough of this matter we have spoken sufficiently and I doubt not Monsieur de Renty who is now as his eminent vertues give us sufficient ground to believe in the place of perfect Charity doth approve of my design in not speaking more thereof and of using reservedness towards that Lady to whom all his life he bore so much love and respect CHAP. 6. Of his Mortification WHat we have spoken hitherto in this Second Part of the Austerities of the Poverty Humility and Patience of Monsieur de Renty makes appear evidently to what height he was mortified and that he was a true grain of that mysterious wheat mentioned by our Saviour which by dying brings forth much fruit yet besides all this we shall touch here some other effects of his Mortification The grand secret of Christian-life consists in the destruction of what our nature hath in it vitious the better to give way to grace in crucifying the old man that Jesus Christ may live there who hath taught us that this is not acquired but by continual Mortification and to that end hath told us that if any man doth not take up his Cross and that dayly he cannot be my disciple This excellent Scholar of that great Master having well learnt his lesson employed all his care in the beginning of his Conversion to mortifie himself in every thing to subdue his passions to regulate his motions Interior and Exterior to annihilate his desires and to dye to all the inclinations of corrupt nacure with so great faithfulness and constancy that as soon as he perceived her to carry him to any thing with some imperfection and that his natural will enclined one way he did the quite contrary And he told an intimate person that having undertaken the endeavour to oppose his nature in each thing by the grace of God he had always surmounted it insomuch that in all things he proceeded with a spirit of death and continual sacrifice making no further use of his passions senses nor of any thing in him but with an eye always open to hinder the operations of malign nature and whatever she brought thereto of her own following the conduct of our Lord saying that a man must disengage himself from himself and every creature that God onely may be his object And accordingly he performed it exactly for when in his sickness he endured most sharp pains he was so taken up with God and abstracted from them that he thought not of them It was impossible to finde a man more reserved in speaking of that which troubled him than he For as he knew that nature is apt to seek and comfort it self in discoursing of that which hurts her so he deprived her of that satisfaction and content lifting up in the mean while his heart to God and offering him his pain without otherwise dwelling upon it being glad that Gods work went forward that the body of sin was in destroying his sacrifice advancing He that is baptized said he ought to be dead in Jesus Christ and to lead a life of suffering and in this suffering of application to God let us march on to our end which is sacrifice in each thing in the manner that God will have it upon the bottom of obedience to his orders and of the annthilation of our selves in the imitation and by the Spirit of Jesus Christ Let us be so many Victims entertained and taken up with these Interior dispositions and sentiments that Christ had from his conception to his death and to the last period of his offering up Hence it was he had often in his mouth these words Sacrifice Vnion minding to say thus that we ought to study and enforce our selves to dye in each thing to our selves and for the attaining thereof to sacrifice to God our spirit our judgement our will our thoughts our affections our desires our passions and all in the union and after the manner of Jesus Christ In these apprehensions he wrote to a person that he had great devotion to these words which the 24 Elders sang in the Revelations to the Lamb which is our Lord prostrate before his Throne Thou hast made us Kings and Priests and we shall reign upon the earth In that this divine Lamb causeth that God establisheth his Kingdom in us by reigning in our souls and in our bodies by his grace that we are Priests to offer up our selves to him in sacrifice and that by this means we shall reign for ever with him in the land of the living So that this excellent man in all occasions where it behoved him to deny something to his nature and to dye to himself cast his eyes upon this estate of sacrifice and of victime to offer up himself to the glory of God by the pattern of his Son our Lord. This great and continual care which he had to mortifie himself in each thing brought about that he had so tamed his passions so regulated the motions of his soul and body so changed his inclinations and subdued his nature that at length he came to such a point of Mortification passive and of death that he felt no more in the spirit any opposition to any thing painful and was not mortified with any thing whatsoever From thence came it that writing to his Director concerning his disposition he said that he understood not that which they call Mortification because that where there is no contradiction nor resistance there is no mortification and when there befel any thing of a much mortifying nature and would have touch'd him much if he had been as yet alive to himself if any familiar person spake to him of the pain thereof he said smiling that the thing went well and that we must gain upon our selves that nothing may mortifie us any more and that we be as it were insensible to each thing He came to this pass not by the goodness of his nature nor by a kinde of stupid indifferency which sometimes is found in certain sleepy spirits but by
hopes always that he will and in the interim beareth all things from him These are the vertues in which he must be particularly exercised that will deal profitably with his Neighbor without which he labors in vain for experience will shew him that after much time and pains he shall profit little for the more any one is filled from God and animated by the Spirit of Jesus Christ the more shall he advance holiness in himself and good in others yea though his words be few and ordinary for that our employments receive not their force from the hands that acts them nor our words from the mouth that utters them as from the disposition of the heart and the Spirit that animates it Now as bare Vertue alone is not sufficient to compleat a man for this design but one must also have a capacity thereunto So this charitable man besides that capacity wherewith God had abundantly furnished him as well of a great wit piercing solid well disposed resolute laborious and constant as of a body well made of a good grace and presence and besides the Sciences and fine knowledge which he had learnt in his youth he had also by his own industry and travel being good at every thing learnt several things not onely for his own use but to teach them to others whereby to help themselves or make some other use of them as to let blood to make medicines for cuting of wounds to compound remedies for several diseases of which he had books writ with his own hand which he communicated abasing himself to learn the meanest skills which might any way be useful to others One day in Paris he carried a friend with him to a poor man who got his living with making hots and wicker baskets in a cave into which he entred and in the presence of his friend finished a hot which he had begun some days before with design having learned the thing to teach it to some poor people in Countrey to help to get their living he left the hot and a peice of money to boot for teaching him with the poor man which indeed deserved to have been reposited in some Cabinet of Rarities or rather in some place of Devotion as a glorious Monument of an Heroick Charity Understanding when he was at Dijon that the Religious Veselines whom he affected very much provided out of Charity Drugs and Medicines for poor people he was much pleased with it and to improve their good work taught the Sisters belonging to the Infirmary to make some excellent Compositions which had very great vertue against several maladies preparing them dispensing and boyling them himself stooping to the meanest and most troublesome labors as much as could be done by any servant holding his head for a long time over the smoak of those medicines which sent forth no pleasant fumes before a great fire not desisting till all in a sweat without any word or sign at all of complaining of what he suffered The Religious desired him to suffer the lay Sisters to help and assist him but his minde was so set upon it that they must let him alone and give place to that fire of Charity which inflamed him all within and which sweetned unto him or rather consumed all the the pains the outward material fire could inflict yea and moreover he urged them out of great prudence to acquaint him with the hours of their devotions and set times of their meetings that he might not divert them from these being a punctual observer of the time they appointed him that he failed not one minute though with much difficulty considering his several other employments to which he stood engaged The like he observed in all other things insomuch that he took upon him all shapes transformed himself into any figure condescended to all accommodations for the good of his neighbor and all these by vertue of this celestial fire which melted and cast him wholy into the mould of Charity his thoughts words actions and each thing in him was charity which made him say one day thus in a letter to one of his great Confidents Methinks my soul is all Charity and I am not able to express with what ardency and strange expansion I finde my heart to be renewed in the Divine life of my new born Saviour burning all in love towards mankinde SECT 1. His Charity to the poor FIrst of all concerning his Charity and affection to the poor I shall say this that Jesus Christ was not onely the fountain from whence this grace did flow but also the motive and object in that he beheld him in them and him chiefly he imagined to assist and serve in their persons so that his thoughts stayed not upon their torn and ragged habit nor upon their vile and despicable outside which naturally displeaseth the eye offendeth the smell and other senses But passing further he beheld within and under these with the eye of faith our Lord Jesus Christ present and dwelling in them whom he esteemed as his native images loved and valued by him And as he burned with an ardent affection toward our Lord so he loved tenderly the poor succoured them with all his might and left nothing unattempted for their sakes With these eyes and not those of nature must each one behold the poor that will love them indeed and have bowels of compassion and a true resolved and constant Charity to towards them In the second place resolving to give you this Charity by retail we will begin with that which he exercised in his house where from the year 1641. he invited to dinner poor men two in number and at first twice every week on Tuesdays and Fridays but five or six years after finding himself much engaged in other services for the honor of God and good of his neighbor he reduced them to one day which ordinarily was Thursday and then invited three which he ordered in this manner willing to joyn his Spiritual Alms with his Corporal an important secret to be learned and practised by all charitable persons each one according to their capacities he sought out such poor as seemed to him to have greatest need of instruction wherefore during his abode at Paris after his morning devotions he went to S. Anthonies gate and there took up such as were newly arrived whom courteously saluting he brought home and if it were winter brought them to the fire always making them sit down and afterwards with a cordial affection which appeared in his countenance and whole deportment and with a marvellous grace he instructed them in what was needful for them to know in the mysteries of the Holy Trinity the Incarnation of our Lord and Holy Sacrament He likewise instructed them how to make Confession and to communicate worthily and in brief how to live vertuously this done he gave them water to wash set them down at table where himself served bareheaded with exceeding great respect and set the dishes before
There is need of zeal and severity and yet withal sometimes of Clemency where there is promise of amendment with appearance of repentance 9. A Chief Justice may upon good information without form of Process commit a man to Prison for 24 hours with bread and water for blasphemy or any other notorious vice and afterward admonish him that if he continue he shall be proceeded against according to form of Law 10. Some persons are reclaimed sooner by a mulct of the purse than by corporal punishment such are to be fined without remâ—ssion when found guilty 11. Scandalous offenders ought to be deprived of the priviledges and favours of the Court yea and are to be burthened in taxes and other cases where they are in a common condition with their neighbours that they may understand thereby that they speed the worse for their vâ—cious life On the contrary vertue is to be cherished and countenanced with priviledges and publique favours and protection 12. Offices ought to be bestowed gratis that thereby fit and able Officers may more easily be chosen and be prevented from the least pretence of Bribery and Injustice 13. Lords should give good example by refusing presents from their Tenants for freeing such from common services or from those who have business depending before them or from the poor shewing themselves disinterested noble and uncorrupted whereby their Authority may be preserved and both their Officers and Tenants kept in strict obedience and respect For Royalties 1. They ought to recommend it to the Gentlemen their neighbours and observe it themselves not to hunt or hawk unseasonably to the prejudice of poor mens corn 2. They ought not to introduce any such custom upon Countrey people of keeping their Hounds 3. That Coney-warrens be not maintained or erected to the prejudice of their Tenants except such as are of ancient standing For payment of Taxes 1. They are to take care that the rich lay not the burthen upon the meaner sort 2. That their Officers and Bailiffs be not unnecessarily multiplied to the burthening of their Tenants 3. That they set not Lands at too high rents upon pretence that by their power they can remit their taxes A thing very much to be considered by reason of some priviledges Lords have in this kinde whereof the excess tends to great injustice 4. That the taxes be equally assessed according to mens abilities it being usual with Assessors to receive money of the meaner sort to return them insufficient and non solvent To prevent which they should give order that the tax be laid so justly that what returns are afterward made of insufficiency in any be imposed upon the Assessors themselves For the Church 1. It were convenient for the Lords often to visit the Pastors that the people might thereby take notice of the respect they give him and learn thereby their own duty And likewise to know of them if any abuses be committed to be remedied by the Civil power of which there are some things mentioned in the Articles for Officers and in particular what reverence is observed in the Church whether the people are attentive at the prone whether they send their children to be catechized and come themselves at which also you and your family shall be present 2. Whether the Church stock be improved and the Church-wardens quit themselves well in their accompts clearing them at the years end and that the Churches stock be not made use of for paying of taxes or other publique charges and in case it be so to prevent such abuses by complaint to the Bishop 3. To review the former accompts and provide necessaries for the Church a Chalice of silver a decent Tabernacle for the B. Sacrament with comely Ornaments 4. To learn of the Curate who are the poorest in the Parish to take a note of them and consider them in the first place 5. I would never take place of the Priest especially in sight of the people These are such Instructions as I have collected rudely and think fit to be observed besides which the bringing in of Missions is most excellent for the planting of the Spirit of Christianity in the hearts of the people to which every one should contribute their best assistance Moreover the Gentlemen of the Countrey shall do well to meet once a moneth to confer about their duty and encourage one another in the service of God who may also settle in Villages petty Societies of well devoted persons to take care for preventing abuses and the occasions of sin and to relieve and comfort poor people who are ashamed to beg There might be found also a way to settle amongst good Women an association of Charity for instructing comforting and succouring the poor and sick But above all a company of pious Clergy who may meet once a moneth to confer about the faithful discharging of their weighty function upon which depends the universal good of the people Certain Directions for Ladies and Gentlewomen THe way of God is to cause grace to superabound where sin hath abounded The first woman brought death into the world and the Virgin Mary hath given the Church occasion to sing that it was a happy fault since by it was occasioned our alliance with her Son and his union with the Deity But this is not all for if the first woman brought so much evil into the world it seems to have pleased God to make use of women for the reparation thereof having by his wisdom ordained that they should have the education of children and care of the family whilst men being of a stronger constitution are more employed abroad they more sedentarily disposed attending within doors where they have the knowledge and oversight and conduct of all From whence it follows since all orders of Clergy Nobility Magistracy and people are raised out of private Families as their common Nursery that to this Sex is deputed by God a business of the greatest consequence in the world viz. The nurturing of souls in the spirit of their Baptism preserving them unspotted tables to receive the impressions of Gods will and holy vocation to what future estate he shall design them for his glory and their own eternal good Wherefore it highly concerns them to make frequent reflections upon this since the greatest good and most eminent evil of mankinde in part depends on them for which they must render one day a strict account 1. Wherefore they ought to take great care of the education of their children in their tender years correcting by vertue and a gentle hand what nature discovers in them reprehensible Remembring that for the most part vice grows up through their esteeming it to be little and out of taking pleasure in whatever they see children do by which compliance their errours grow up with them until heat of blood and youth render them uncapable of correction 2. That they be vigilant in instructing their domesticks shutting the door against all blasphemy impurity all unlawful games
and pastimes and other vices 3. To prevent that their Servingmen haunt not Taverns and oppress not others 4. The Mistris of the house must provide that her servants be carefully treated and tended in their sickness that she visit them in her own person even being as our brethren and fellow-servants of the same God and Father of us all And at all other times make provision for their necessaries that they be not tempted to pilfer or murmure 5. Let her also endeavour not onely in her own house but also among her neighbours to bring in the custom of common prayers at night and if her husband be absent let her supply his place in calling them together and praying with them 6. Let her and her children be continnally in some imployment that their lives be not unprofitable or their family brought up in idleness remembring the Apostles rule that he that will not work shall not eat which thing prudently ordered will prevent many inconveniences 7. Let her often visit her poor neighbours to comfort and encourage them in vertuous living 8. Let her take into her eare the repairing of the Ornaments and Linnen of the Church lest the holy mysteries of our faith be undervalued where decency is neglected 9. Let her shew great recverence to the Clergy not regarding the meanness of their birth but the dignity to which Jesus Christ hath advanced them Hereby both putting them in minde of their honourable function and the people by her example of their duty 10. Let her entertain Visitants with the spirit of Hospitality great Charity and Christian Civility taking opportunity thereby to do some good not losing precious time in frivolous discourses 11. Let her keep no obscene or immodest pictures in her house much less permit her danghters or herself to appear such by going naked Avoiding likewise all curious and phantasticul fashions which are evident signs of impenitent hearts and breed nothing else but the nourishing the soul in its corruption and the averting it from God These are the Directions he left under his own hand for Ladies and Gentlewomen Moreover he studied for a long time how to reform Trades and free them from those abuses and corruptions which in process of time they had contracted and so to sanctifie them that some at least in each profession might live like the Primitive Christians in such sort as to make all their gain common deducting onely sufficient for their own necessary maintenance and bestowing the rest upon the poor And at length God so blessed his endeavours that he found some Tradesmen of the same minde and spirit so that at this present there be two companies in Paris one of Taylors the other of Shoo-makers and of these in two several quarters of the City and the like at Tolose who live and do all in Community They rise they go to bed they eat and work together morning and evening they say their prayers together and at the beginning of every hour in the day exercise some act of Devotion as singing a Psalm reciting their Chaplet reading in some book of Devotion discoursing of some head of the Catechism They call Brothers and live accordingly in very great unity and concord Monsieur Renty was the chief Agent in establishing this business and with the help and assistance of some Religious persons drew up Rules for the ordering of their Spiritual Exercises They chose him their first Superior in which Office he had a very particular care of them visiting them frequently and when he found them upon their knees at any of their Spiritual Exercises joyned with them not permitting them to rise to salute him or interrupt so good a work making himself as it were one of the Brotherhood Moreover besides these Tradesmen living in Community there were a great number of others of all Professions that came to him for advice instruction and assistance Whom he treated with wonderful respect and Charity most affectionately discoursing with them answering their quaeries resolving their doubts and instructing them what they should pursue and what avoid in their Vocations for the saying of their souls SECT 6. The Continuation of the same subject HIs zeal carried him on to endeavour the good of all sorts of persons He had a particular inclination to prevent the danger that threatned young Maids who wanted subsistence and to reclaim such as were faln And indeed it would be too great a task to recount all his actions of this nature and the number of those Maids whom he placed forth and contributed towards their maintenance some in houses erected for such purpose others in the Monastry of St. Mary Magdalen and others with devout Ladies who addicted themselves to this kinde of Charity Which is so highly commendable as that which doth not onely save such women as are in peril of shipwrack of their honour and vertue and retrive such as have already lost both But likewise doth prevent the destruction of many men and the committing of many enormous sins and disorders We mentioned before what is recorded of his Charity in instructing the poor at the great Hospital in Paris And now I shall relate how he behaved himself in that of St. Gervaise where passing by one day in the year 1641. he enquired to what Charities that place was devoted To which answer was made that they lodged poor Travellers He was much pleased with this Institution and perceiving withal that so great a number of poot that lodged there every night wanted instruction he found himself moved from God to perform that Office And shortly after came to beg of the Superiour with great humility and submission leave to Catechize them in the evening when they were assembled together To which the Superiour willingly assented without any knowledge of him who would not tell his name but concealed himself for the space of six-Moneths He undertook the imployment and performed it with great content because every night he found there new comers whom he duly Catechized and instructed coming thither commonly alone and on foot both Summer and Winter in â—ain and snow without light in the dark After Chatechism ended he caused them to kneel down with him to examine their Conscience saâ— their Prayers then sung the Commandments with them and distributed some Alms. This 〈◊〉 he continued for many years till some Eccle 〈◊〉 persons moved by his example undertook 〈…〉 and continued it to this day with great 〈◊〉 〈…〉 and renderness of heart was exceeding 〈…〉 poor people whom he had never seen 〈…〉 also with such humility as cannot not easily be expressed When he met any one at the Hospital he saluted them with great respect and put them before him talked with them bareheaded and very reverently If at any time they kneeled to him he did the like to them and continued on his knees till they rose first One of them observing him diligently and knowing him to be Lord of the place where himself lived was
this time of resignation of my self to sufferings is to make good use of my affliction and endeavour after solid vertue with a perfect abandoning of my self to the will of God Behold here the blessings of God upon his endeavours for the good of his neighbours which working such strong impressions upon their hearts to bring them to God almost always accompanied his labours At which indeed we ought not much to wonder if we consider him as a happy instrument fastened and united to the Lord of hearts and Saviour of souls singly aiming at the glory of God and good of others and sparing nothing he conceived necessary thereunto To which purpose his custom was before he undertook any such business to give himself up to our Lord they are his own words to speak by his Spirit and in his Power And this Lord who desireth infinitely the salvation of man finding him so well disposed and fitted to his hand used him for noble imployments and furnished him with suitable graces and favours even to work wonders Which may serve both for the instruction and shame of such who by their calling are designed for the procuring of the salvation of men and yet through their own fault do it with so little profit I finde moreover that God gave him sometimes beforehand knowledge and foresight into the affairs which he would have him do thereby to prepare him to undertake them without fear and to acquit himself well therein Being at his house in Citry at the latter end of the year 1642. he had a secret intimation from God that at his return to Paris he should finde a new imployment about the poor and should be much taken up therein Which fell out accordingly two days after his arrival there certain persons coming to advice with him about a course to relieve such poor as were ashamed to beg throughout that City intreating him to take it into his care which he did accordingly undertaking for his share to visit the fourth part and distribute there alms according to their necessities which was a sufficient employment for one man to take up his whole time though he had no other business which yet he performed notwithstanding the multitude of his other occupations so that we may say that according to humane reason and without a special assistance from God he could never have been able to have done and suffered such great matters But God who hath given us a limited strength of body and minde can as easily heighten them when and how he pleaseth One day he said to one of his great Confidents with much humility and devotion I have been this night bathed all over in tears by a view which our Lord hath given me At which words making a stand remaining sometime recollected in silence and transported with that grace he had received afterward he went on saying that whilst he was at prayer he understood that there was a great imployment assigned him for new France in the Indies Which afterward fell out and chiefly in the building of a Church in the Island of Mont-real In which noble design other pious persons whom God had chosen thereunto joyning with him He by his cares counsels credit and liberality both of his own and what he begg'd from others was highly serviceable Sometime he received beforehand not so great light of his business but onely a bare knowledge and present impulse of doing something without any further discovery As when he was much pressed in Spirit to go to Pontois without understanding any reason for it having at the same time much employment at Paris yet with obedience to the inspiration without debating he undertaketh the journey where unexpectedly he met with a Nobleman of great quality from a Province far distant who came thither conducted by God to ask of Monsieur Renty and receive from his mouth instructions for his souls health and how to serve God perfectly which he had little known and less practised Which thing Monsieur Renty then taught him professing at his return from thence that he could give no account what afterward became of the party or how he lost him SECT 10. His grace in assisting particularly some choice souls THough this great servant of God had an excellent faculty in assisting all men for the good of their souls yet was he more eminently happy in some particular choice persons to whom our Saviour had assigned him for the curing of their imperfections to make them march on apace and that thorow the narrow way of vertue and perfection But because the greatest number of these are yet living whose modesty I dare not offend I shall speak something onely of some who are dead and chiefly of one person which may serve as a taste of all the rest This was the Countess of Chastres who being deeply in the affections of this world according to the custom of most young Ladies of her quality it pleased God out of his infinite love to her to bring her before her death from those vanities and conduct her by the thorny strait-way to the paths of vertue and high perfection for which great work Monsieur Renty was assigned from God He inspiring the one to request assistance and counsel and the other to afford it and this with so happy success that within less than a years space her advancement herein was so notable that he himself was astonished at it For in that short time she became so perfectly disingaged from all those petty conveniences and accomodations which our Ladies flattering themselves pretend still to have need of that one presenting her with something of that nature wherein she had formetly taken delight she returned this answer which may serve for a good lesson to us all especially if we consider that she was well known to be of a very delicate tender complexion and very sickly how apt we are to multiply necessities I thank God I have quitted this and far more other things for the love of God and yet finde no want at all It is true that nature of her self is dainty and prone to flatter her self upon the pretence of necessities which she is willing to apprehend much greater than truly they are and often maketh them such by her imagination God indued him with great grace and light to discern her proper way and to perswade her to follow it to advance her in the pathes of solid vertue and to teach her by degrees to dye to herfelf to support her in great interior afflictions and to instruct her very effectually in what was most proper for her present condition he being accomplished with all the qualities of a fit Director and she on her part perfectly resigning up herself to believe what he said and force her self to put it in execution A thing very requisite in those that resolve to make use of the conduct of others to good purpose She received his counsel with all the resignation she could imagining our
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
estate of beginners and Penitents is to finde out all that inclineth to sin that obstructeth our salvation or withdraweth us from God to avoid it Their Cross or Sufferance is to bewail their offences to mortifie their passions and subdue their bodyâ—n any thing that makes it rebel against Reason and the Spirit and also to punish the irregular motions of Concupiscence Their prayer is to beg grace and strength for their performance of these things The work of the second namely of Believers is to study Jesus Christ his Life and Doctrine Their Cross is to bear the troubles that befal them in imitation of our Saviour to suffer contempt and persecutions which attend all such as follow him Their prayer is to beg his Life his Spirit and his frame of Soul to act interiorly and exteriorly after his model The work of the third and Perfect one is to do each thing by the Spirit of Christ through their union with God Their Cross is in bearing with as they ought ought the corruptions darkness and stupidity of this world as also persecution for righteousness which thing shall never be wanting Their prayer is to ask continually a more abundant participation of the Spirit of Christ a more intimate union with God a greater dying to themselves a more faithful improving of his grace and talents received with perseverance to the end Moreover in the first estate we must labour hard in resisting of sin in vanquishing our passions and renouncing vanities which young beginners cannot do without many repeated acts much violence to themselves But those to whom God hath given an entrance into the two other estates do it easily with a simple and facile guidance of their spirit not diminishing their acts of humiliation but hindering the oppression and trouble thereof In the second estate is requisite on our parts a vigorous correspondence in following Iesus Christ not acting any more from our selves but in him in singleness of heart and enduring with patience and longanimity the purging and purifying of our spirits by Iesus Christ In which work we must be content to suffer many secret tempests and inward tumults arising from the reluctancies of our old habits and our spirit stirred up by the motions of nature full of many images and impressions And finally be content to lose our very souls with much patience that we may receive them again cloathed with Christ Iesus In the third estate is contained a work of Passion that is of Prayer where the bounty of God doth all as it were the soul tasting a certain experimental satiety of the presence and truth of God and of his love in Iesus Christ in which she reposeth She findes herself often absorpt in the joy of the greatness the power the goodness and the infinite perfections of God of the alliance with his Son his love his manner of conversation and the admirable effects which the participation of his Spirit produceth joying in the possession of these good things with a tranquility content and vigour surpassing all sense and expression A good progress thorow the two former estates makes way for the third where we must be careful considering the uncertainty and mutableness of our natures to use great industry to be sure of going forward and of repeating also what we have done the better to ground our selves and repair our losses Thus we have his insight into spiritual things evidencing the great advancement of his illuminated Spirit which God had enlightned in more than an ordinary manner declaring unto him the designs he had upon souls Giving him to penetrate into the obscurest recesses of their Consciences and to discover what was most secret and hidden to speak with words not studied and premeditated but which were inspired and put into his mouth at that hour which proved most powerful and effectual In the year 1644. A maid whom God had indued with pious affections was desirous to become a Carmeline She communicated her intentions to Monsieur Renty begging his advice Who at first finding some difficulties in the business judged it fitting for her to think no more of it Notwithstanding afterwards God inspired him at his prayers with a very great certitude that it was his will she should proceed in the business maugre all difficulties pointing out to him the very place where the thing should be done He informed her thereof which she hearkned unto with due respect as if Christ himself had spoken unto her and commanded her to enter into that Monastery where she remains at this very day In the year 1647. having visited a person afflicted with great pains who had need of such a man as he he writ thus to his Director I have been with the party you know of and have told her what I thought convenient to her condition Our Saviour enlightned me to discover to her his good pleasure concerning her how that this sad and dark condition was not sent to bring her to a stand and trouble at it but to facilitate her way to perfection and carry her without amusement to our Saviour Christ Lesus who is our Sanctification I acquainted her how we ought to lay this sure foundation that our selves are nothing but infirmity and misery it self So that when any one tells us thereof he tells us no news And that God from this insufficiency of our selves to all good means to extract that excellent vertue of Humility and Diffidence of our selves obliging us thereby to go to his Son our Saviour to finde strength in him and remedy for all our miseries I was much enlarged upon each thing which she told me and God gave her so great a plenitude of light and grace that she spake marvellous things touching the operation of the Holy Trinity in her with other excellent notions manifesting a very particular assistance of his Divine Grace In this estate I left her Concerning himself he addes thus As concerning my self I have not much to say onely I finde within my self through the mercy of God a great tranquility in his presence through the Spirit of Christ Jesus and such an inward experience of Eternal Life as I am not able to express And this is that whither I am most bent and drawn Yet I finde my self so strangely naked and barren that I wonder at the condition I am in and by which I discourse For in my addresses to this party I begun my speech not knowing how to pursue it and after the second sentence I had not the least foresight of what should be the third and so of the rest Not but that I seem to have a perfect knowledge of the things I speak in such a manner as I am capable of it But I onely utter what is given me and in the same way as it is communicated I communicate it to others Which done there seems to remain nothing in me but the foundation from whence it springs He grew to so high a reputation in this knowledge of
soul matters joyned with extraordinary graces that many Ecclesiastical persons and many Superiors of Religious Orders and well governed Communities thought themselves very happy in communicating with him and following his advice in matters of great weight being assured by undoubted signs that he was replenished by the Spirit of God And very many both Ecclesiasticks and Seculars of each Sex and quality even such as were arrived to great perfection sent to receive his instruction and assistance in the conduct of their spiritual affairs In the year 1641. he began particularly to apply himself to this way But of all the imployments our Saviour call'd him to for his service there was none wherein he met with more pain or more contradiction of his Spirit than in this judging himself most unworthy and uncapable resolving to proceed no further in it notwithstanding his several impulses thereunto without asking counsel Which counsel after good examination of the business was this that he ought to undertake it and that it was the will of God To which he submitted with exceeding great confusion and shame in himself manifested by his countenance words and behaviour in his communication with the parties that asked his advice yielding to their requests with very great humility and reverence as all those can witness who knew him And they likewise assuring themselves that God resided spake and acted in him and by him remained in his presence with great respect and relied most confidently upon his conduct And God made it evident by his blessing and wonderful success upon his endeavours that his actings herein were perfectly agreeable to his will Teaching us hereby that he hath no need of us for the execution of his designs and that he serves himself of whom he thinks good and many times of such a one whom he findes well disposed passing by those whom their vices render uncapable And the best preparation to be imployed by God in great affairs is to abandon our selves wholly to his designs and become very little in his own esteem as this holy man was CHAP. 2. His outward behaviour and Conversation UNdoubtedly a mans outward composure and the whole oeconomy of his conversation is of great consequence in the service of our neighbours either to further or hinder our design for their salvation being that which onely lies open to the eye and makes the first and strongest impression upon their spirits and either wins or alienates them according as it is well or ill ordered Whence it came to pass that Monsieur Renty who had an ardent desire to assist his neighbour and to procure to that purpose at any rate whatever might be requisite thereto did whatever he could for the well composing of his exterior keeping his demeanor gestures motions looks words silence and other parts of his Conversation in such a harmony as he conceived most suitable to draw his neighbor to God which he managed with such advantage that we may say with truth and the allowance of all that knew him that in this point of good outward comportment he was admirable and that no man of long time hath been seen to go beyond him He was very modest always calm and inviolably equal Amongst all the things which I have observed in the deceased Monsieur de Renty saith a sufficient witness who was iutimately acquainted with him his rare modesty and great equality in his behavior and deportment gave me the first and most pregnant Idea's of his Sanctity There was something in his looks that carried so much reverence in it that one might easily judge thereby that he was always actually in the presence of God In every place condition employment whatsoever the same in his looks gesture words and actions whether alone or in company with friends or strangers rich or poor before his children or servants yea even before his Lacquey in the field or town at the table and every where We may freely avouch that compleatly Master of himself he must be that possesseth such an immutability At which it is impossible for any to arrive who applieth not himself continually to the presence of God and hath not absolutely conquered his passions and interiour motions For easie it is amongst so many encounters which daily present themselves from without to have our spirit discomposed put out of frame and be transported and disâ—over its irregularities by cholar word or gesture or some other sign And such a constant equality is more admirable when it is found in such a person as Monsieur de Renty who was not Phlegmatick by Complexion but Cholerick hot and of an active spirit but the exact and perpetual care force and watch that he had over himself held and preserved him in this Exteriour deportment so excellent and divine and so suitable to one that is to work good upon others That which pleaseth me most in him saith another very credible person in a Memorial was the great recollection and intimate union with God attended with such a marvellous peace and trancuillity of minde that it shined forth in his countenance and begat a kinde of devotion in the beholders This union methought was ever in him without any sign of distraction any levity any word not necessary no complacency in company or any humane respect ever forced him to scatter his spirit or to quit his union with God not but that he was most full of civility but so as to look more within himself than without And indeed this continual presence of God saith the same person did so take him up that no accident object or any thing rare or extraordinary could divert him I never saw him admire those things the world usually doth nor fix his eyes upon any curiosities whatsoever His gate in the streets was in a recollected modest and equal manner without gazing here and there that a man might see Jesus Christ was his way his employment his all and nothing else Being one day importuned by a friend out of curiosity to go see a great Personage esteemed for a Saint and to have the gift of miracles He replied with his wonted sweetness Our Saviour is in all Churches in the B. Sacrament and him we may visit And seeing the business of speech and silence make up a great part in a good or bad conversation let us see how this holy man so zealous of his neighbours salvation behaved himself in both He was very reserved in his speech and that both from nature and grace and indeed he could not have been so prudent a man had he been a much speaker since the Scripture makes it the proper character of prudence to speak little and that in the multitude of words there shall not want sin In the entercourse of visits and all Assemblies of Devotion where it concerned him to speak he did it in his course with a minde and demeanour intent and â—ecollected with words short but material He was never seen forward or eager to speak or
in speaking or to do it with a higher tone than ordinary whatsoever was his haste if he made any report or gave account of business he did it so briefly and in words onely necessary and pertinent that a very hard matter it would be as one said of him to finde one that spake better and yet less than he Things that were vain or unprofitable or the news of the times were never the subject of his discourse but always something good and the Kingdom of God in imitation of our Saviour and where this discourse was diverted to worldly business or trifles he either took leave of the company or stole away without saying any thing And when he talk'd even of good things it was with moderation saying that there was much need of sparingness and sobriety when we speak of God and good things and that it was one of the greatest amusements that troubled him when he was amongst spiritual persons to hear them often spend precious time in talking of vertue at large and without sâ—uit departing from such Conferences with dry empty and dissipated spirits Whereas the secret of Christian vertue consists not in speaking but in doing and that substantial word of God is onely one and this sufficiently efficacious to produce the holy Spirit and in its unity to work marvellous things His conversation moreover was in a true and high manner humble respective affable officious obliging and cordial Patient he was in suffering the ignorances rudenesses imperfections cross humors and other faults of his neighbours prudent in applying himself to their dispositions and passing by many small matters without seeming to take notice of them at all And so profitable and edifying was his demeanour that wherever he came his very looks and modesty his words his silence and all his Exterior comportment cast forth a fragrancy and sweet persume of Vertue Devotion and Piety and made a good impression upon the spirits of others His very presence charmed many into recollection the very sight of him was enough to bridle any and his acquaintance have confest that their knowing that he was in the Church hath wrought more attention in them at their prayers and some of them eight days after their having enjoyed his company have felt in themselves the effects of grace in an extraordinary attraction and devotion towards God Wheresoever he came he was flock'd unto from all parts out of that reverend esteem they had of him and the desire of those consolations they were sensible of in his presence Notwithstanding when he perceived any value set upon himself or any applause of what he did or said he was deeply humbled in spirit testifying by his carriage the discontent of his soul hanging down his head casting down his eyes with deep silence during such commendations with a grave and set demeanor expressing his inward affliction which begot respect and edification in the beholders For conclusion I shall adde one thing very remarkable and which shews how perfect and accomplished he was in his conversation namely this that his extraordinary way and fashion of converse of dealing and treating with others and of his devotion was not check'd blamed or condemned by any but approv'd priz'd and commended so that generally all had him in esteem reverence and love and said of him in proportion as was said of his Master Christ He hath done all things well Such a general approbation as this and in one that dealt in so many and difficult businesses must needs be very rare and argue a most prudent and advised spirit And as these things got approbation so his humility his honesty his respect to each one even the lowest his affability charity patience and other vertues gained him the hearts of all yet as it is a perilous thing to be so much esteemed praised and approved by all so God by a wise and divine counterpois to secure his vertue and keep him from tripping in so slippery a way did permit that from whence he should have received the most esteem approbation and satisfaction to wit from the Lady his Mother he found the quite contrary and that in a way most strange and afflictive to him as we have seen before CHAP. 3. His conduct of his business IT is without contradiction that few men in Paris or in all France were so much imployed as he in the affairs that concerned the service of God For which he was furnished with great strength of body and minde to manage so great and several businesses without difficulty with great tranquility order and content husbanding his time to the best advantage disparching one speedily after another and sometimes many together He hath been seen to do three things together without trouble or mistake And at other times when pressed with many dispatches at once to read Letters give Audience and write Answers to different persons all at the same time of which he hath quitted himself handsomely and well In one of his Letters he wrote thus It is very true that business findes me out from all parts insomuch that I am often inforced to read write and do business all at a time A little assistance would do well though I have many sharers however let not that trouble you for I dispatch as much at present as I can the rest in due time without encombring my self therewith Our Saviour doth gratiously bestow on me a peace of minde in all this so that I am not at all distracted with it His order was seriously to consider of things before any resolution and if after his own sense given to which he was not at all espoused he found anothers reason to be better he quitted his own A thing very necessary to men of business yet rare to be found since if we take not heed we all idolize our own judgement and falling in love with our private light are dsirous to be leading men affecting to see our own opinions crowned Having composed rules for a Society of Pious persons and digested them thorowly he presented them to be examined by some vertuous persons from whom he admitted with great humility some corrections cancelling them with his own hand requesting that they might be put in other terms more proper than his own After he had resolved on any thing he shewed himself prompt firm and constant for the execution not quitting it till he had brought it to the end it should be Not like those who hot at first grow presently cold and begin many things well but finish nothing Sometime when he had brought a thing into a fair way to perfection he committed it to a friend to finish not out of any inconstancy of spirit but to gain time for the undertaking and doing of more And withal that herein he might avoid the honour of it Out of his great humility passing that to another which would exercise his humility in letting another have the praise which redounds more to him that happily ends a good thing
than to him that begins it In all affairs that concerned the service of God he had an unmoveable constancy and undaunted courage never flagging or yielding up himself And besides the force of his words there appeared in his countenance an extraordinary assurance although his ordinary deportment was always sweet and quiet which particularly appeared in all meetings where he manifested so much spirit and God invested him with such a force that those that beheld him felt themselves struck with an awful respect When he spake and gave his opinion his proposals carried so much light in them his judgement so much solidity his reasons so great force he taking every thing in its due place and observing each juncture of time that all were constrained to acquiess in his determination But if any approved not of his advice or disputed his reasons he knew how to inforce them with such arguments especially where he had any authority in the Assembly that at length they yielded But if they chanced to make another reply he gave not one word more but his very silence and the steadiness of his countenance and his other carriage restrained any further dispute And the meeting ended he would go to that party and crave his pardon with great humility Sweetly informing him that what he aimed at was not to make good his own opinion but for the cause of God to which by duty he was obliged But in other things that he was most ready to yield to every one We meet daily with those spirits that are very inconstant in business doing and undoing every hour very indecisive and mutable But he was of another temper quick-sighted to penetrate into a business judicious to determine it and constant not to vary in a resolution well grounded so that his word was his law and was taken by others as current as an obligation When his presence was requested at any consult he would be punctual at the time appointed that none should stay for him Where taking his place and that the lowest if it were possible his demeaner was so modest and composed that all were edified by it Listening to others with great attention and seriousness as if he had no other business And after his opinion given very brief and material his presence being no further useful he would take leave being a great husband of his time since other business for Gods service still attended him else where And notwithstanding the throng of business and though never so important he quitted not for them his Exercises of Piety nor his care of perfection which he preferred before all other his affairs knowing that as wholesome meat taken immoderately doth hurt and instead of strengthening the stomach weakens and suffocates its natural heat So these Exterior employments even the most holy if a man surcharge himself bring much prejudice and extinguish the ardour of Devotion Wherefore he was careful not to over-burthen himself with them being very vigilant that they should not distract and dissipate him nor quench the Interiour motions of the Spirit nor secularize his soul but ferve onely as means to elevate and unite him more to God In the multitude of business he was still recollected and as much alone in great meetings as the Hermites in their solitudes which might be gathered from his modestie and composed countenance evidencing his application to his Interiour and his union to God from whom he drew light and strength for the managing and prudent ordering of these buâ—nesses One day he wrote thus to his Director My recollection hinders no business at all but rather furthers it For without it I should have a solicitous desire of doing all my self whereas I act now in a most serene way in which I have no share for it is our Lord that doth all In another Letter thus Finding my self one day much burthened with divers-business I had a desire to draw off my minde wholly and at the same instant I found it Since which time they create me no trouble and I dispatch them more readily without thinking of them This grace hath been often renewed to me although in several manners which I acknowledge to be very great because it preserves me disingaged even in the multiplicity of business And notwithstanding he never omitted any thing of prudence or industry for the effecting his business yet the success he expected much more from Gods benediction than from his industry or any humane endeavours knowing well that what was undertaken for the service of God and good of his neighbour was to be accomplished by his grace Wherefore in every thing he had a great recourse to prayer instantly commending all his exercises to God and in all imployments and choice of persons which he made use of his eye was more upon grace than nature or any Exterior abilities And knowing that the affairs of God are not without their difficulties but meet with great oppositions even sometimes to be overturned he was armed with patience in the undertaking to suffer with courage not starting at the greatest dangers but still hoping of the success If they miscarried at any time he rested well satisfied after all fair means attempted on his part Thus he writ to a friend It is a great infirmity in our humane nature that she needs applause in matters of grace Wherefore I look at it as a great favour from God when I have the honour of executing any enterprize solidly undertaken and well approved of and acknowledged to proceed from the Spirit of God by those to whom he hath committed in his Church the judgement of such things notwithstanding the accomplishment of it meets with many crosses and contradictions In another thus We may take up good and holy designs and God doth often inspire them yet when he is pleased to permit a contrary event we must adore his secret will which brings with it more of mercy in the crossing of them than if they had succeded to our comfort We should always be jealous over our own spirit that it fix not upon any thing And again thus The sweet Jesus hath his designs which he conducts by such means as we would not at all make choice of and the reason is because he would thwart our wills and abate our dependancies upon earth And therefore often thwarts he our just undertakings being more jeolous of the Sacrifice of our hearts than of any thing else how specious soever But the principal rule which this holy man observed in these affairs was never to look at them in themselves but in the will and design of God and to proceed in view of this Whence it came to pass that he applied himself to business not as appearing glorious pleasant or profitable but as agreeable to the will of God to which he submitted his own making poor and mean imployments equally considerable and sometime preferred before greater Hence he took up things cast aside by others undertook charities out of the road
and not taken notice of applied himself to such poor as were in a forlorn condition believing that herein there was less of nature and more of grace And never thrust himself into a business without the will of God and when it did consist with that he was not hasty or precipitant but let things go on kindly and sweetly according to the pace of his Providence and the course of his good pleasure The like we have of him in Memorials from divers places It was not his way to begin or finish any thing according to the motion of his own will but of the Spirit of God as far as he knew it If after he had undertaken any thing he felt his inward motion to cease he ceased also the pursuit He had no private design or project wherby he steer'd although he knew the things he had to do but attended on the express order from above which he received either by a light in his understanding or by an impression in his will or by some other way that gave him as great a certitude as any can have in the like occurrences wher upon a familiar friend asked him one day whether he would do such a thing at such a time He answered Know you not that to morrow is not mine And at another time he said I see five or six things which of necessity must be done but I cannot tell you which I would dispatch the first nor when nor how for through the mercy of God I am indifferent to all things He writ thus to his Director I hope to be at Paris about the end of September where I shall receive your orders to come to you when I may be lest troublesome Where I shall be ready for what my Saviour shall appoint by you I forecast nothing but onely to obey and follow his conduct by your appointment and in every thing the best I can I finde by experience that when I think to do most in any place there I do nothing at all This hath taught me to go divested of all design and when I think least thereof and abandon my self to God then he doth the more wherefore I will leave the doing to him and to you in him Going one day in the holy Week accompanied with a friend to receive a most royal and liberal sum of money given by the Queen of France in behalf of the Church of Canada and passing by a Church where they were singing the Divine Service Let us saith he dispatch the will of God it would be a great comfort to be present at the Church to hear the praises of God but let us pass on since this is more in concurrence with his holy will The same party reported of him that he had observed several persons wondring at his extraordinary recollection and such an intimate union with God in one man who had so great imployments but he was above them all affixed onely to God and to the execution of his will He gave this counsel to a certain friend who had great designs for the service of God but such as at that time were not seasonable Let us not apply the days business but to the day Your intentions are pious but you must resign the future to God and be willing for the present to love and follow what he makes appear to be his will and to keep your self still before him as a ready Sacrifice together with our Lord Jesus Christ For the conclusion of this Chapter I shall produce a Letter to his Director upon the same subject in the year 1648. full of light I will tell you said he what passed yesterday within me by which you may understand my present condition Hearing the Gospel of the Assumption of our Lady which speaketh of Martha and Mary most of the sentâ—ments I formerly had upon that subject came presently into my minde to wit that prayer and converse with God are much to be preferred before all Exterior exercises though never so holy seeing that Martha bufied about so holy and excellent a service was reprehended for her trouble and Mary commended for her recose This word Turbaris erga plurima Thou art troubled about many things hath besteaded me along time to draw me off from outward things and also from inward though good if not absolutely necessary as visiting and instructing the poor or reading or writing something of devotion and the like And I understood it expedient at that time to quit them the better to betake my self to Interaloperations and arrive at the laying down of our own will and vivacity to attend wholly to the Divine appointment following it in prudent simplicity by the Spirit of Christ which enlivens and lives in those that hearken to it with respect But you must know that for these three or four moneths which I have spent in Low-Normandy I have been as it were continually imployed in Exteriour works as conferring with all sorts of people taking care of the sick that found me out removing from place to place reconciling differences new building a great Church which was to be pluck'd down and enlarged For which I was forced to draw out several platforms and make the very models in which formerly I have had some insight by reason of the want of Architects in that place calling to minde my old notions and busying my self wholly in it Yesterday after my mornings work hearing the same Gospel read and these words in particular Turbaris erga plurima Thou art troubled about many things a certain Interiour light came upon me and it was said unto me Non turbaris erga plurima Thou art not troubled about many things giving me to understand and that in a very evident manner that the things we are employed upon according to the Divine order whatsoever they be do not create us any such trouble and I discovered clearly at least as I thought that Martha was not reproved for doing a good work but for doing it too solicitously Our Saviour intimating to her by these words Turbaris erga plurima that her business was done in trouble and inordinate agitation of spirit though the end was very laudable That the priucipal business consists in hearing the Eternal Word even as his own humanity whether in working or preaching or any other imployment received its motions from the Divinity A me ipso facio nihil sicut audio hoec loquor I do nothing of my self as I hear that I speak said he In like manner ought we to take our directions from Jesus Christ who is the Word of Eternal Life and act nothing with disturbance but all in peace by his Spirit I received hereby a great support in the performance of these petty Exterior offices to which my duty obliged me and made no difficulty at all to yield up my self to this holily-disordered Divine Order In which I perceived that it was Gods will I should perform these petty things which could not be done without me
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
Jesus to do whatever pleaseth him in great Innocency Purity and Simplicity without reflection or return upon any thing whatsoever without taking share in any work without having joy or grief from any thing that arrives not looking upon things in themselves but in his will and conduct which we will endeavour to follow by the appearance and presence whiâ—h we shall render his Cratch and to the Divine States of his Infancy I therefore this day lose my own being to become wholly a slave subsisting upon the holy Infant Jesus to the glory of the Father and of the Holy Ghost This I signed into the hands of the most blessed Virgin my Mother my Patroness and my Protectress and in the presence of S. Joseph Gaston Jean Baptist And as he did with an intire heart consecrate himself to this holy Infant so did this bestow himself freely on him revealing it particularly to Sister Margaret of the B. Sacrament that he should from thenceforward be guided and animated by the Spirit of his Infancy and that he was descending to him to be his Master his Light and his Intelligence And shewing her one day his heart he said See here the habitation of my Servant Upon which she wrote to Monsieur Renty how the Infant Jesus had bestowed himself upon him to be a Spiritual and Celestial Ayr for him to breath constantly even as his body breathed this Material Ayr and that his Innocence Purity and Simplicity should subsist in him instead of himself destroying in him what his nature had corrupt and polluted And herein he made so large a progress that she often saw him within a beam of light so penetrated and filled with the grace of this holy Infancy like a spunge in the Ocean even absorpr in that abyss of infinite riches beyond his expression And he himself writ concerning it to a person in these words The Divine King of the Cratch the holy Infant Jesus doth so accumulate his favours upon me that I beseech you to thank him They are inexplicable From this time his custom was every Eve of the 25 day of each Moneth to enter into his Chappel at ten a clock at night and there to remain in pâ—ayer till midnight He adored the precious moment of our Saviours birth and entrance into this world performing certain acts of Devotion before the Image of his Sacred Infancy which further he honoured by inviting a poor childe to dinner entertaining him with wonderful great respect And during all that time that he celebrated the voyage of the Infant Jesus into Egypt and return to Nazareth he had to dinner every day three poor folks for the honour of Jesus Mary and Joseph during which time he would never ride in a Coach though his business often called him to painful and troublesome journeys afar off on foot and at length he quite gave over the use of a Coach After he had ingaged himself in this devout application to the Infancy of our Lord and being filled with his grace and animated by his Spirit had received thereby wonderful impressions and illuminations His Ghostly Father desired of him to write down his conceptions of that Divine Mysterie and wherein chiefly that grace consisted which begat this ensuing Letter in the year 1645. You have laid your commands upon me to set down in writing wherein consists the grace of the Infancy of our Saviour so far as I understand it This Adorable Lord hath renewed in me this morning two Conâ—eptions which he had given me a Moneth since three days one after another by which I shall be able to express what I conceive of it Being at my prayers in the Church about a Moneth ago I fell into some inward inquietude about my Devotion to this Infancy by reason that my Spirit was possessed with this thought That a Christian should regard our Saviour intirely from his Incarnation to his Glory where he sits at the right hand of his Father aâ—d from whence he sends us his Spirit And that we should make our addresses to all these mysteries according to our necessities and therefore to tie our selves to one particular were to send up maimed Devotions and to limit the extent of Verity and Grace After this I went to receive the B. Sacrament abandoning my self wholly to my God according to my usual custom A little while after the Communion I saw by an enlightning our Saviour entire that is all his mysteries from his Incarnation to his state of Glory where he resides at present governing us And in particular the Greatness and Dignity of this mysterie of his Infancy and withal I was instructed that this mysterie is our Port and our Address for to obtain our Consummation in glory That this is it to which we must direct our selves and here stay our thoughts and that it would be temerity to proceed to other mysteries on the same manner I saw it rashness to desire and demand orosses for our selves since it is the work of Gods grace to conduct us to them and uphold us under them I saw it rashnes to desire Mount Thabor that is high illuminations Finally that we ought not presently to address our selves to those other mysteries of our Saviour but onely to this of the Infancy which brings us into the ignorance the separation from and in applacation of things of this life making no further use of them than as they are given us for necessity which keeps us in great silence and produceth a Mortification of the Exteriour man whilst the Interiour is busied in contemplating the most holy Soul of our Saviour continually imploying it self in looking up toward his Father in his Love in zeal of his Glory in the Offering of himself and in the obedience to proceed forward in all innocence and purity and simplicity to all his other estates through which his Father had appointed him to pass I found then that for the happy conducting of our selves through all conditions whether of light or darkness of Thabor or Calvary we must for to receive and improve grace begin at the Infancy which teacheth us our first lesson of Abnegation to be taught of God of silence and innocence without any regard or pretensions to our selves but with the same spirit of submission and obedience that this blessed Babe Christ Jesus there practised and taught us This light and knowledge hath established me more than formerly in this mysterie finding there my bottom abiding there with attention and reverence to do what shall be commanded me afterward For the soul doth not raise it self by it self to any thing but on the contrary doth empty herself resting still in her own littleness with great recognition of what passeth and with the simplicity of a pure resigned aspect O Father how guilty shall I appear before God in answering so little to the greatness of his gifts It is my grief and a great one as he well knoweth Some three days after these words of S. Paul
in this estate he had a conformity with the Son of God by a participation and fellowship both in his Beatitude and Sufferings which he endured here below and that by his holy Spirit were accomplished in him the mysteries of the whole Pilgrimage of our Saviour in this world rendring him as a daily sacrifice to the B. Trinity breathing after the Resurrection and his perfect Consummation in Glory Suâ—h was the disposition of this holy man towards the B. Trinity in which he passed his latter years and in which he dyed finishing his sacrifice and was often wont to say That when a man is call'd up hither he must abide there without any changing Being guided this way and treading these pathes he made an admirable progress to the highest pitch of perfection attainable in this life each Person in the sacred Trinity working in his soul wonderful impressions of grace sealing him with their particular characters and sanctifying him in an extraordinary manner The Father kept him alway retired and recollected in his own bosom where he bestowed upon him a large share of his own infinite inclination to communicate himself to others and of this blessed Celestial Fecundity in begetting children not of flesh and blood but of the Spirit enflaming his heart with a paternal and maternal love towards mankinde from whence did flow that unparalell'd charity whereof we have spoken The Son transformed him into a lively image of God through the resemblance of his own perfections bestowing on him a filial spirit to acquit himself towards him in all his endeavors with that singular reverence saith confidence love obedience as is required from a Son to a Father bringing him into such a condition as that God spake to him Interiourly producing in him his word accompanied with such power and strength as was able to touch mens souls and work in them the blessed fruits of salvation The Holy Ghost that infinite pure and reciprocal love of the Father to the Son and of the Son to the Father cleansed him from all the impurities of self-love and self-seeking enflamed him with a perfect love towards God taught him the way of spiritualizing all material things of sanctifying all indifferent things of extracting good out of all evil and finally of leading a life truly spiritual after the grand pattern of our Saviour This he expressed in brief in a Letter to his Director writ in the year 1647. The Divine goodness worketh in me that which I am not able to express I possess even the B. Trinity and finde distinctly in my self the operations of the three Divine Persons CHAP. 2. His Faith THe better to take this Spiritual Life in pieces we will begin with his Faith the prime Theological Vertue which Gulielmus Parisiensis calls the Primum Vivens of the soul and S. Paul the first step we make in our advance towards God This blessed man studied with particular care a solid foundation in this vertue knowing the incredible consequence thereof for a spiritual life and how all other vertues depend on it as on their Root their Rule and Measure O how good a thing saith he in one of his Letters is it to live of Faith I seem to understand this Vertue every day better and better Those that are established in this the life by which the just live according to S. Paul are at length compleated to Perfection and enjoy here the first fruits of glory He possessed this grace in so high a degree that he was more ascertained of the presence of God of the verity of the mysteries of our Faith than of the shining of the Sun He truly lived by Faith this was the path in which he walked working all by the spirit thereof Hereby he looked upon things not onely with his corporal eyes but with those that pierced deeper considering them not according to their present or past condition or the order of nature but their future and eternal according to their relation to grace and glory regarding nothing but as it was or might be a means of â—â—s own or others salvation All his works were performed by the hand of Faith which proves strong and effectual which more willingly handles Ulcers and the loathsome soars of poor people than gallants do Sattins or Velvets The pure and vigorous Faith of the primitive Christians said he caused them to act without those conveniences and necessaries which we stand upon which indeed argue the decay and weakness of Faith such heroick actions as we onely now admire these assuredly lived by Faith without any form and composition of their own proper spirit in great Simplicity Efficacy and Verity Being fortified by this Faith he was wont to say that he felt no difficulty at all when our Saviour sensibly deserted him for a time and sent him great aridities attributing all those inquietudes impatience and anxities which we labour under in this estate of privation to the want of this grace I have taken out of one of his Letters what he writ to this purpose We seldom meet with persons addicted to prayer that can behave themselves prudently under Interior derelictions or that can have patience to wait for some time at the door of sensible consolations and enlightnings without making a forcible entry that do not chafe themselves and cast this way and that way and seek by their own means to procure them seeking for another support than that of Faith which alone should suffice any spiritual man These sensible gusts are but sent as supplements of the littleness and cordials for the faintings of faith But the just should live by faith and upon that foundation rest himself in expectation of our Saviour with patience Our inconveniences arise from hence that we are a people of little faith to discern things by its light although we often pretend to know more than really we do To another he writ concerning this point upon the subject of the Centurions faith thus Where shall we meet with a Faith comparable to that of the Centurion Alas what a shame is this to our Spiritual persons who talk much of Faith but indeed have little more than the sound scarce any thing of the truth and effect thereof how few are there that can bear the afflictions of spirit or body with a naked Faith and such a simplicity as sooketh remedy onely from God and maketh use of patience when comfort doth not appear so soon as expected We all covet to enjoy Jesus Christ sensibly and that he would come to our houses to cure our anxieties And for want of these sensible comforts the Spirit runs and wanders on all hands seeking repose but findes it not because indeed it is not to be found in her action but onely in her sacrifice made in Faith which brings down the Spirit of Christ which is our strength and life in the midst of troubles and of death The Centurien was ashamed and confounded that Christ would come to his house
his Faith mounting far above these sensible signs Whereupon he is honoured with the name of a true believer and so propounded to us for a pattern Monsieur Renty being animated by this spirit of Faith made no reliance upon any thing that came to him by an extraordinary way resting neither upon Visions Revelations inward Motions or Miracles but soully upon a pure and naked Faith to carry him to God These following lines he writ to his Director touching a business of great importance I send you a Paper which I received three moneths since from a person of great vertue whom you know which she had kept for me not daring to trust it ith any others That which confirmeth me in the opinion I had of her solid vertue is that she never told me any thing to which I did not finde my self predisposed Interiourly This is as a seal to confirm my former resolutions concerning this without building any certainty upon the thing it self for we should be emptied of all reliance upon any thing and of all reflections following in simplicity of Faith without dispute that which our Saviour doth to the soul for the time present be it concerning this or that Going to Beaulne where Sister Margaret of the B. Sacrament resided famous for many miracles which God had wrought in her and a person very worthy to be visited he said That he would neither desire to see her nor speak with her onely if our Saviour should make known unto him that such was his will he would endeavour it otherwise he would not seek any occasion for it Another time being at Dijon when the blessed Sacrament was exposed some friends inviting him to draw near to the Altar he replyed That he had no need of sight for to believe and that his Faith went further than what his eyes could shew him Hereby we may understand the great Faith of this man of God and undoubtedly it was with her eyes that he beheld every thing and by her hands that he accomplished all his actions and ascended to such a perfection of all Vertues from whose example we may learn the directest way to attain thereto which is stedfastly to believe the verities of Christian Religion and be perfectly perswaded thereof As on the contrary the very source of all our sins and vices and generally of all the mischiefs in Christianity is the weakness of Faith whereby we are neither thorowly convinced of those sacred Mysteries nor guided in our affairs by the Rule of Faith It was our Saviours advice Noli timere tantummodo crede Fear not onely believe If thou believest firmly thou shalt be delivered from all evils and be accomplished in all vertue CHAP. 3. His Hope A Strong Faith by a moral necessity produceth a firm Hope and Charity A true belief in God what he is in himself and what he is to us will work in us a strong affiance in him and ardent charity towards him As appeared in Monsieur Renty who being well grounded upon a firm Faith in God had likewise an undaunted confidence in him and an inflamed affection to him This confidence was built upon the knowledge and experience of the Power Goodness Mercy and Bounty of God and of the infinite Merits of our Saviour And being grounded upon these two Pillars he hoped all things and believed that he could accomplish every thing He used to say that when he look'd at himself there was nothing so little wherein he apprehended not difficulty but when he look'd upon God he could think nothing impossible to himself And this distrust of himself was not a disheartned and Lazy Humility but couragious and magnanimous as is requisite in those who undertake things necessary though not conscious of any ability of their own for the performance He writ to a person concerning these two grand points which indeed ought to hold the ballance of all our actions even before God The diffidence you have in your self makes me very intent upon the good of such a condition and upon the sure foundation thereof which the Church desires we should ever conserve placing at the beginning of every hour of the Divine Office this Virsicle Deus in Adjutorium meum intende Domine ad adjuvandum me festina O Lord attend unto my help O Lord make haste to assist me Whereby we learn that the soul is in continual danger of a Precipice if not sustained by that infinite mercy which he is daily to invoke for her preservation from ruine And really we should continually fall if we were not continually supported therefore the Church hath divided her Office for the seaven parts of the day in that the number of seven comprehends all time the world being created under this number to teach us that we should at all times retain this Diffidence of our selves and Confidence in Gods assistance This Hope of his was so great that in all affairs he relyed not upon his own prudence conduct care credit providence or any humane contrivancies but on God alone saying That after we have done our duty with great Diffidence in our selves we ought to attend wholly on him and wait his time without pressing the business or entrenching upon his Prerogative And thus he writ to a friend As for my children I leave them in the hands of the Holy Infant Jesus without determining any thing concerning them not knowing what will befal to morrow He giveth me great confidence in his protection which renders me altogether blinde without wishing any thing but being ready for his will in every thing Guarded with this perfect confidence he feared nothing but remained firm and resolute against all accidents and encounters He walked securely in all places at all times in the streets in the fields by day and night travelling thorow Woods and Forrests that were bruted to be dangerous and frequented by Robbers without fear without other defensive weapons than what his confidence in God did arm him with carrying about him so much goodness he was above all those frights which nature is subject to not moved with sudden alarms or accidents so that we may call him The Christian without fear And to say the truth there is nothing deserves 〈◊〉 fear but sin since nothing else can hurt us all other things prove in fine advantagious if we make good use of them One day a scaffold on which he stood with the workmen erected about his building fell down and hurt some of them with which he was not amazed or moved at all for his own particular His spirit remained unmoveable and in the same constancy being firmly settled upon him that is not subject to a change or alteration A friend told him one day that he was fearful to walk in the evening without a sword in the streets of Paris and that he desired to be quit of that timerousness yet could not satisfie himself to be found unarmed in case of an assault intreating his advice in the business Who
that we may be all one in him and experimentally feel what the love of God is toward us In all that I read in the Scripture I neither understand nor find any thing else but this Love and perceive clearly that the very design and end of Christianity is nothing but it Finis autem praecepti est charitas de corde puro The end of the Law is love out of a sincere heart And this is acquired by Faith in Christ Jesus as the Apostle saith in the following words Fide non ficta by faith unfeigned Which uniteth and bindeth us to him whereby we sacrifice unto the Divinity our souls and our bodies through his Spirit which conducteth us to the compleat end of the Law to deliver us up to God and bring down him to us in charity and a gracious inexplicable union to whom be praise for ever Amen My heart was this morâ—ing enlightned with a great Charity upon these words That we are set in this world to know and love and serve God Which gave me to understand that the true effect of the knowledge of God is to annihilate our selves before him for this knowledge coming to discover unto us that infinite Majestie the soul abaseth and emptieth it self through the deep sense of fear and reverence according to the measure of this discovery And this is the first step of the soul in this estate Next he love of God manifested to us in the giving us his Son begins to affect us with love And as the former view of his greatness contracted us in fear so this his love in Christ Jesus enlargeth and elevateth us to love God in him and to conceive some good desires according as his spirit breathes in us And this is the second step The third is to serve him that is by putting this love into practice by good works For these desires are but blossoms and these good works the fruit I could say much on this subject if I could express my own feeling of it For here we finde all in all that is God revealed by Jesus Christ loved and served by his Spirit This Divine Lord sets up a blessed Society and a Kingdom in our souls wherein he rules and reigns there by love unspeakable and eternal Writing to another person he expresseth himself thus I give thanks to our Lord for that he hath disposed you to a perfect Abnegation of your self This is done to lead you into the pure estate of love which without that cannot be pure in that our love to God consisteth not in receiving gifts and graces from him but in renouncing all things for him in an Oblivion of our selvee in suffering constantly and couragiously for him Thus did he express the nature of Love not to consist in taking but giving and the more and greater matters we give the more we manifest our Love This Love carries up the Lover according to the measure of its flame continually to think upon his Beloved to will what may please him to study his interest to procure his glory to do every thing that may work his contentment and to be extreamly apprehensive of any thing that may offend him Accordingly he being all on fire with the love of God was perfectly sinsible of these effects All his thoughts words and works were the productions of this love for notwithstanding he practised other vertues yet they drew their original from this Furnace of Charity which in him was the beginning and motive and end of all which he testified to his Confidents frequently and in words so enkindled with it as were sufficient to warm the most frozen hearts I have observed saith one of his Confidents this Divine fire so ardent in his blessed soul that the flames thereof have burst forth into his Exteriour and he hath told me that when ever he proncunced the name of God he tasted such a sweetness upon his lips as could not be expressed and that he was even pierced thorow with a hâ—avenly suavity To another he write about 9. or 10. years agoe that he could nor conceal from him how he felt a fire in his heart which burnt and consumed without ceasing Another of them assures that he hath often seen him enflamed with this Love of God that he appeared even like one besides himself and how he told him when these transportings were upon him that he was ready to cast himself into thefire to testifie his Love to God and in one of his Letters to a friend he concludes thus I must now hold my peace yet when I cease to speak the fire within that consumes me will not let me rest Let us burn then and burn wholly and in every part for God since we have no being but by him why then do we not live to him I speak it aloud and it would be my crown of glory to seal it with my blood and this I utter to you with great freedom In a Letter to another thus I know not what your intent was to put into your Letter these words Deus meus omnia my God and my all Onely you invite thereby to return the same to you and to all creatures My God and my all my God and my all my God and my all If perhaps you take this for your motto and use it to express how full your heart is of it think you it possible I should be silent upon such an invitation and not express my sense thereof Likewise be it known to you therefore that he is my God and my all And if you doubt of it I shall speak it a hundred times over I shall adde no more for any thing else is superfluous to him that is truly penetrated with my God and my all I leave you therefore in this happy state of Jubilation and conjure you to beg for me of God the solid sense of these words Being transported with this Love of God it wrought in him an incredible zeal of his honour which he procured and advanced a thousand ways Which may be understood partly by what we have already writ and several other which are unknown because either they were wholly spiritual or concealed by him even from his most intimate friends The 12 of March in the year 1645. he writ thus to his Director upon this subject One day being transported with an earnest desire to be all to God and all consumed for him I offered up to him all I could yea and all that I could not I would willingly have made a Deed of Gift to him of Heaven and Earth if they had been mine And in another way I would willingly have been the underling of all mankinde and in the basest estate possible yea and if supported by his grace I could have been content to have suffered eternal pains with the damned if any glory might have accrew'd to him thereby In this disposition of a calm zeal there is no sort of Martyrdome no degree of greatness or littleness of
honour or disgrace that passed not through my spirit and which my soul would not readily have embraced for the advancement of his glory Here a man would be content to be a King to govern all or the meanest Beggar or most miserable Wretch to suffer all for him and this without reason through an excess of reason It is an impossible thing to understand how in so short time the soul should wish such different things and a large discourse would be too narrow to declare one circumstance thereto belonging All I could do in this condition was to give up my liberty to God writing the Deed in paper and signing it with my own blood See here the zeal of a man all on fire with the love of God where likewise his conformity to his will an infallible mark of this love is very observeable Those persons who knew him perfectly report that this intimate union of his will to Gods will was one of his singular graces and himself declared that he was constantly in this blessed frame to which he had applied himself more particularly for several years in which he made it evidently appear that the object and end of all his actions was the Divine will into which his own was wholly absorpt He writ thus to one concerning the sickness and death of the Countess of Castres to whom he had as we have formerly mentioned a very near relation founded upon grace I must tell you that during my absence from the Countess of Castres my heart was tenderly sensible of her pain knowing that she suffered very much But my desire submits to the Order of God and when that is signified to me he gives me grace to obey Coming to Paris I received the news of her death when I resigned my self wholly to God attending his good pleasure for what would follow Another time he writ thus to his Director I have been held these three weeks with a seavour together with a defluxion and an exceeding great weakness and my frame of spirit during this condition hath been a simple prosecution of and adherence to the will and pleasure of God I discover nothing in particular worth writing to you saving that I have a heart ready to receive any afflictions that can befall me I desire whatever is decreed from above and beg it with all my heart We have set down before how that in the year 1641. one of his children whom he dearly loved departed this life When the news was brought him he spake not one word nor shewed the least disturbance but absolutely submitted to the order of God corresponding thereunto in a perfect reconciliation of his own affection to the childe and his great loss of him At the end of the year 1643. his Lady fell desperately sick even to death being left of all her Physicians speechless and without sense but he notwithstanding the deep resentment of such a heavy loss and a business that touched him to the quick manifested such an absolute conformity to the will of God as brake forth into these words I cannot deny but my nature is deeply affected with the sense of so great a loss yet my spirit is filled with so wonderful a joy to see my self in such a state as to give up and sacrifice to my God a thing so near and dear to me that if civility did not forbid it I would make appear outwardly and give some publique testimony of my readiness thereunto By this heroick deportment he evidenced that the will of God was so absolutely his that he not onely will'd that which he will'd though never so difficult but that he willed it as God doth that is with much pleasure and content for so God doth not simply will and act things but wills and acts them with infinite it delight being in himself most infinitely happy But pleased God to restore his Lady to her health with respect as we may piously imagine to this heroical carriage of his faithful servant as likewise to avow he made to our blessed Lady for the obtaining thereof Neither did his conformity onely go thus far but advanced further yet even to things of a higher consideration referring to his perfection and salvation for notwithstanding that he earnestly aspired to Holiness and endeavoured thereafter with an unspeakable courage fervour and diligence yet all this was with an entire resignation of himself to the designs of God concerning himself For opening his case to this Director upon this point he writ thus My present condition consists in an adherence of my will to whatsoever God is pleasad concerning me and this I am sensible of from the bottom of my soul I have of late undergone very great aridities of spirit except some few intervals where all is said open and my soul resigneth herself to God in an inexplicable manner from which she remains full of certainty and of truths which will not easily vanish though they cannot without difficulty be unfolded Having writ and signed with his own blood a Deed of Gift of his Liberty as we have mentioned before he writ thus to the same person concerning it From that instant God hath bestowed upon me such a conformity to his will that as I acknowledge all things to be guided by his hand so likewise I receive every thing from it And to another intimate friend he writ thus The party meaning himself hath since that time felt such a wonderful great conformity to the will of God that he can will nothing but what God willeth neither can he understand how any man should will any thing else this makes every thing pass smoothly and currently This disposition of spirit made him look upon things not in themselves but as contain'd in the will of God and this he gave as a chief advice to attain to perfection It behoveth a soul saith he to give up it self to God walking on in simplicity in all its operations applying it self to every thing not for the thing it self but in order to the will of God not engaged at all to it but to God obeying and honouring him in every thing And from this perfect subordination to the will of God sprung his admirable Tranquillity of minde and from this fountain flowed those rivers of peace and profound repose which he possessed in so great perfection that from the most sudden surprizals his spirit was not altered one jot neither were his inferiour faculties of body put into any disorder as himself acknowledgeth For thus he writ to me one day I comprehend not that thing you call Mortification If one lives in this estate of Conformity for such finding no resistance in his spirit is not capable of it Who so willeth whatever God willeth is daily content let what will happen CHAP. 5. His great Reverence and Fear of God which produceth in him a most admirable purity of Conscience ONe of the most excellent dispositions of the soul in her Interiour life is that of great Reverence
in the presence of God as the Scriptures mention that the Angels continually abase and cast down themselves with Reverence before his Sacred Majestie And Monsieur Renty was deeply affected with this noble part of Devotion speaking to God with so great Reverence as it proceeded into trembling And this unspeakable respect unto Gods Greatness caused him often to walk in the fields bareheaded in the heat of the Sun or any other unseasonable weather And being asked by a near friend what it was that kept him in such a constant awfulness and how he attained to that wonderful Reverence he bore to God in all places in all employments and at all times He answered The sight of his glorious Majestie which continually seems present by me produceth in me this effect keeping me in exceeding great awe with a deep sense of his greatness and my own vileness and nothingness in comparison of him A mote in the Sun you will say is little but I am far less than that before God being indeed nothing Writing to his Director June 1. 1647. he saith I have been busied all this last moneth in studying my own baseness I am seized with great confusion accompanied with exceeding Reverence before God as one that hath his eyes cast down before the Throne of his Majestie not daring to look up And to another person he writ thus Let us behave our selves in the presence of God as the men of the world do before their Prince who not withstanding they be men of spirit and have their heads full of weighty business yet stand bare in his presence and with modest and humble behaviour forbear to speak not listening to any thing but what he speaks forgetting all other business And all this they are obliged to by civil respect and pay this duty to one perhaps inferiour to themselves in natural parts How much more should the Holiness the Majestie the Infinite Greatness of God ravish us from our selves and work in us a most profound Reverence Behold here what wonderful deep sense of his own vileness this holy man bore in the presence of God which indeed well becometh not onely sinners but the holiest men upon earth He that beholds the Sun from a valley when it riseth and appears upon the point of a high mountain thinks him that stands above to be near it and that he is able almost to reach it with his hand when the same man notwithstanding beholds it at a vast distance above his head and though in reallity he is nearer it than the other in the valley yet within such a small proportion as scarce deserves to be named in respect of the total distance In like manner God in his Greatness his Majestie and all his Infinite Perfections is so far above not onely us that are most imperfect but even all those that are arrived to the top of the greatest perfection that all of us must debase and cast down our selves with a most profound annihilation in his presence This great respect he bore to the presence of God together with his ardent love toward him of which we have spoken in the former Chapter imprinted in him a horrible aversion to the Teast thing that might offend him as likewise a wonderful purity of Conscience His Confessors report that he excelled herein even to astonishment and that the Prince of Darkness had very little in him He told a familiar friend one day that it much afflicted him when he was to confess to any others besides his ordinary Confessor because they not understanding his condition could not so well apprehend him and that he was often troubled to finde something to confess to them And this purity will be best known to us by its contrary viz. his sins which he was accustomed to send monethly to his Director a Letter who lived a great distance from him and these were sent by common messengers signed with his one hand which were subject to be intercepted an evidence of an heroick humility in a person of his quality Take here what he writ November 27. 1646. I purpose if you allow of it to put my self into a regular course to give you an account of my state the 25 day of every moneth And then coming to his faults he saith For my faults I give you here a few which I can remember of those many I have committed Vpon two several occasions I spake two words passionately to my servants I omitted twice to recite the prayer Angelus Domini through forgetfulness In another Letter to him he writ thus I am as blinde or rather more in espying my faults as in other things Onely in general I have a deep sense of my misery and I can say that I am not ignorant of my unworthyness and that lamentable corruption which sin hath wrought in me the sad effects whereof have been these this moneth Speaking with one about a deed of Charity which was to dispose of some Orphans for their education in the true Religion I named inconsiderately two Gentlemen their Kinsmen who had refused to be employed therein I mentioned the fauls of a certain person to another that knew of them before upon design to make him understand that he was in a better condition But my Conscience presently reproached me that it had been sufficient to have spoken of the good conditions of this party without mentioning the evil of the other In which I confess I meddled too much in that affair In sum I am a sâ—ragler from God and a ground over-run with thorns In another My fauls are as one great heap which I feel in my self obstructing the light from God I am strangely remiss and ungrateful I assure you I finde much in my self to confound and humble me Having been employed a whole day in taking up a business and in the evening seeing one come intr the room who was reputed by the company to have maintained an untruth I said inconsiderately and for want of care Behold the man that maintained that falsity In another I am sensible of my fault in mentioning a trifle not without some vanity viz. that I had been the means of placing a servant in such a great family I had a motion within me not to have spoken it and yet it escaped from me of which I am exceeding sensible because I should have been faithful to the spirit of God Also I took place at the table of a Priest I made great difficulty of it at first but I knew not how I â—ielded not to the Priest but to a person of quality present that pressed me to it Lo here some faults of this servant of God which questionless discover the great purity of his Conscience which was so bright as to shew these failings which in some manner might pass for perfections or much like those spots which curious eyes discover in the stars And truly these may demonstrate to what height of Purity and Innocency a soul that is watchful over
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
beams and treading in their steps gave himself to this exercise with such care and diâ—igence that we may aver this to have been his ordinary employment and his whole life a trade of praying I mean not here his vocal Prayers having spoken of them before I affirm that his affection was exceeding great to mental Prayer understanding well the necessity thereof as that whereby we come more intimately to know and reap the benefit of all Christian verities which until they be known are not at all beneficial and the utility thereof to learn a man what he is and enable him to exercise the real acts of vertue in the inward life and spirit of them elevating the soul to a familiar conference with God an honour more incomparably glorious though but for one quarter of an hour than is the most intimate communication with the greatest Monarchs for whole years together like as we esteem it a greater honour to discourse freely and familiarly with a King the space of one hour than many years with a Peasant Moreover he well understood the different manners of this Prayer and how it ascends by four steps The first is Prayer of Reasoning and Discourse The second that of the Will and Affections The third that of Union or Contemplation which divides it selfe into two branches viz. in Contemplation active or acquisite and Contemplation passive or infused which passive Contemplation is the fourth and highest round of this ladder of Prayer Prayer of the Understanding and of Discourse or Meditation is an application of the Spirit to understand some vertues of his salvation which he apprehended not before reasoning and discoursing thereon within himself ruminating upon its causes effects and circumstances of time place manner and persons belonging to it to draw from thence arguments of good life going from one circumstance and point to another from the causes to their effects and so backward which is called reasoning and because our minde is quick and ready in this operation not onely nimble to go but run in it therefore it is termed also discourse He began at this step and made some stay upon it where indeed every one ought to begin and rest until he is called by God to another because the most proper and naturall way that God hath given men to come to understand and affect any thing is that of Consideration and Reasoning wherefore each one must serve himself herewith till he be advanced higher The ordinary subject which he took for these meditations were the Life Passion and Death of our Saviour Which without all contradiction is the most profitable of all others since he is set before us for our pattern in the imitation and expression whereof consists our perfection and life eternal After some time having been faithful in this first stage he passed to the second that of will and affection being called with an Amice ascende superius Friend fit up higher Not unlike a Scholar who becoming a good proficient is set up to a higher class of deeper learning For he spent not all his days in Grammar but studied to proceed from one Science to another till he arrived to perfection This Prayer of Affection is a familiar and passionate treaty betwixt Christ and the Soul wherein very little or no discourse is used or a sincere communication with God as present and resident within us in which the soul quitteth all reasonings and disputes and by a simple direct contemplation and thinking upon God is carried on to him and enflamed with the desires of praising blessing adorning and glorifying him with several elevated acts of grace oblation petition and above all of Love the Queen of other Vertues most acceptable to and most glorious in the sight of God most advantagious to our selves enabling us with power to surmount all difficulties to practice all good works and uniting us more intimately to God This I say the Soul performs without discourse in regard that the understanding being sufficiently furnished with light from her former meditations hath no need to study new arguments or motives to produce love and other necessary affections but may serve herself of the former store The way to practise this is first of all to retire into the secret cabinet of our heart applying our selves to God who resideth there not by reason and discourse but by faith stedfastly believing his Divine presence with all his perfections And in order to this firm assurance to present our selves before him with profound reverence and adoration abasing our selves out of respect to his infinite greatness and the sense of our own vileness in the light of those words of David Domine quis similis tibi Quid est homo quod memor es ejus Lord who is like unto thee What is man that thou art mindeful of him or that he should dare to appear before thee Keep your self before him with these affections of Reverence and Humility and remain there for some considerable time the better to imprint them upon your soul for such time will be very well spent and continuâ— it yet longer if you finde your heart dilated and melted with these affections After this shutting out all ruminating and reflection upon the subject you desire to be employed upon as for example suppose it be this that God is all in all and your self are less than nothing that he is your Soveraign Lord and ultimate end that he hath a particular care of every thing that concerns you that our Saviour dyed for you and the like employ your self hereon by faith in a most simple naked manner reiterating acts of a lively faith of such a truth which the Church hath taught you and after this an act of Hope or of Praise or Thanksgiving or Contrition for your sins or of any other passion the soul shall be more disposed to but especially of love taking care that these affections have an influence upon your will and manners to produce in them a happy alteration These are the directions we are to observe in this second degree of Prayer which therefore is called Prayer of Gods presence and of Fâ—ith and of Affection Wherein also two things are carefully to be marked First that it is not requisite in this prayer to exercise at the same time several passions but rather one as Hope Love or any other well-grounded and prosecuted is sufficient And the rea on is plain because so long as God gives to the soul the grace to produce acts of any one vertue in such a manner as that she findes herself disposed and pressed thereto and to exercise the same with ease this is an evident token that it is his will that she should serve and honour him should sanctifie and perfect herself by the same and that she ought to continue therein so long as she findes that succour graciously assisting her Moreover on the souls part it would argue want of discretion to quit so good and profitable an exercise
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
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
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
Apostle sets our Saviour for our pattern of whom he said in the former part Exinanivir seipsum He emptied himself If you ask how long and to what degree I answer even from the instant of his conception to his death Behold this is our Rule our Patron and our general Rendezvouz from all sides And to a third If we understood truly how the real divesting our selves of all rendred us capable of union with God we would incessâ—ntly beg this grace offering great violence to our selves to arrive at this state of Death and Abnegation to which every Christian must endeavour that aims at union with God and ascend to perfection I received some years since great illumination upon this verity giving me to understand that the treasure hidden in the field mentioned in the Gospel is no other but this estate of Death and Annihilation taking away from us our selves to give us to God emptying us of all creatures to be replenished with the Creator the Fountain of all good Our Saviour tells us there that he that found it went and sold all to buy it If we understood the true value of this precious treasure we would freely part with our liberty with all we are and all we have to purchase it Really this should work in us great confusion that such precious things and such forcible motives obliging us to tend to this Abnegation we arrive at it so slowly and most men so seldom O how few truly annihilated persons are to be found few that do not live according to the corrupted life of the old man producing actions accordingly when ever occasions of honour or profit or pleasure are presented Few that attain to lose and renounce themselves in such points as tend to their perfection Let us therefore employ all our forces to arrive at this happy estate O the spirits that are thus dead what an admirable life do they live I and hereby become rare instruments in the hands of God capable to act great matters tending to his glory These are intimately united to him wholly transformed and annihilated in God and by this gainful loss and happy annihilation arrive t the height of perfection they enjoy a setled peace a pure and solid contentment incomparably surpassing all sensuall pleasures These are so far advanced above all earthly greatness above that Idol-Honour which the world so much admireth that these are become their contempt and scorn They make no difference betwixt the pomps of Emperors and Spiders-webs they value Diamonds and Precious Stones equal with common Pibbles they neither take health for happiness nor sickness for misery they think that poverty should not be termed a misfortune nor poor men be deemed miserable they weigh not Beatitude in silver scales nor measure it by the ell of Pleasure but repute that all these things do much resemble running waters which in their courve wash the roots of trees and plants as they pass but make no stay with any of them flowing continually towards the end and place appointed them Of these illustrious dead men and most divinely annihilated souls the Angel speaks in the Apocalypse Write blessed are they that dye in the Lord from henceforward for they rest from their labours And indeed this verity should be writ in Letters of Gold in Characters of Saphyrs and Rubies Blessed are the dead who dye thus to themselves and to all created things to live onely to their Redeemer The Holy Ghost hath said it and assured them that at the instant of this precious death they finde rest from all their labours because their former pains and troubles of spirit now have an end for that they have now rooted out the causes of them and dried up the fountain which according to S. James are our lusts and concupiscences Monsieur de Renty had arrived to this pitch as may be seen in what we have mentioned deserving to be put in the list of those truly happy I mean those happy ones of the state of grace and possessors as of the Paradise of this life CHAP. 10. Of his Corporal death MOnsieur de Renty having now finished his mystical death must now also look for to enter into the way of Glory to receive that recompence of the reward which God had prepared for him in the Heavens necessarily dye the death of the body and so he diâ—â— 't is this day that I writ this two years ago which fell out in that manner as I shall now relate One the 11 of Aprl 1649. he found himself very ill and having concealed his sickness for five days was constrained immediately after a journey he had taken about some acts of Charity to keep his bed where he endured great pains all over his body with which his spirit likewise was so much affected that he professed his fancy to be so much disturbed with absurd and raving imaginations that if Gods grace had not assisted him to undestand the ground of them and preserved him under them he should have spoken more extravagancies than any mad man that there was much therefore in such an evil to desert and humble him but it was the duty of a sinner to honour God in all conditions in which he should put him During these great pains and torments both of body and minde and during the whole course of his sickness his ordinary employment consisted in affectionate elevations of his minde to God in thoughts and words of blessing praise and submission to whatsoever was laid upon him of meekness and perfect obedience to all that attended and had the care of of him with such a humble and contented spirit that he thought all well done though sometimes it was otherwise He exprest a wonderful patience which ever gave a check to any complaint still saying that he suffered nothing although his pains were extraordinary And when his keeper which was a Sister of the Hospital of Charity with whom he had visited so many poor and sick solks did importune him to declare his grief O Sister said he how doth the love of God wipe away all pain The Servants of God-fuffer nothing Another friend demanding of him if his pain was not great He answered No. The other replied That he thought it was It s true saith he that I am much clogged with my disease but I feel it not because I do not think of it Being urged by their sister to take some sweet things he refused saying These conduce little either for life or death and are not at all needfull Yet he refused not Physick though it was very bitter which he took with a chearfull countenance and swallowed it with great difficulty without leaving any The day before his death one told him of an excellent medicine which had done great cures He answer'd Patience is a soveraign remedy intimating his unwillingness to try it yet when it was brought he took it without any reluctancy or once asking what it was evidencing his mystical death to any thing
that concerned him His sickness encreasing and afflicting him very sore yet he never call'd for any thing to refresh or relieve him and when they had forced lean sheets upon his bed and a pillow which he had formerly refused with great confusion and humility he said Lo here lies a Gentleman at his ease Feeling some natural affection of joy arise in him upon the sight of a person of his acquaintance with whom he had held a strict correspondence in spiritual matters who came out of the Countrey of purpose to visit him he straightway supprest it repeating these words three times over with great fervour I desire nothing more but God which demonstrated clearly his perfect disengagement from all created things He commended to this parties care the missions entreating him to labour eranestly in that business as an employment by which God was much glorified and the most profitable to the Church of any he knew in these words Promise me Sir that you will take pains therein and promote them with all pessible diligence O Sir it is a service well pleasing to God Reflecting upon the poor for whom he had always a most tender care he said to his Lady I recommend the poor to you will not you have a great care of them you will perform it better than I Fear nothing what you give to them will not lessen the rest Most part of the first week and some time also of the second that he lay sick were spent by him in works of mercy appointing several Alms and giving order for letters to be writ into several Provinces about businesses of Charity with which he stood charged and whereof he gave an exact account Many persons of quality came to visit him whom he received with much civility but not without some trouble by reason that most of those visits drew on discourse of worldly things and complements of which he complained saying They come hither to talk their Philosophy of which I have no need And another time his expression was A Christian should talk little A Lady of great worth and piety coming to visit him said Sir I would with all my heart lay down my life to save yours To whom he replied with a chearful look and his eyes lifted up to heaven To dye is not to be lost our conversation and union will hereafter be more near and intimate But Sir said she if God would restore your health and continue you longer with us do not you desire it St. Martin desired to live upon these terms He answered with much confusion O Madam there is no comparison betwixt a Saint and a sinner the will of God be done The third day of his sickness he desired that his Ghostly Father might be sent for Whereupon they took occasion to demand of him if he found himself much worse He answered No but that in a business of that consequence and where the memory and judgement were so subject to decay it were not safe to defer for fear of a surprisal and that it were very fitting to do that which he had so often advised others unto in the same condition The day after he made his Confession and then called for his Reliquary that he might enter more particularly into a communion with all the Saints The day after he confest again and almost every day till his death The Pastor of his Parish came to give him the Communion and observing him after receiving in a great silence not speaking one word but onely with profound humility saying My God my God pardon me I am a great sinner He asked him the reason why he spake so little and did not apply himself to those that stood by and were well pleased to hear him It is not fitting saith he to speak in the presence of the Word Incarnate which I have received nor take up any room in those hearts which ought not to be filled onely with God But he added besides That his spirit was then applied to that joy which a creature ought to have to see it self upon the point of being re-united to his first Principle and to its last end The same day after dinner one told him it was fit to use some diversion from his serious thoughts the Physicians judging his disease to have much of melancholly in it To whom he replied I never had any joy comparable to that I have felt this day He ask'd him upon what cause To think saith he that I am going to be united with my God repeating the words of the Apostle Cupio dissolvi esse cum Christo I destre to be dissoved and be with Christ and those also of the beloved Disciple The Spirit and the Bride say Come and let him that heareth say Come and he that thirsteth let him come Behold I come quickly Amen Come Lord Jesus Yet resigning himself as well for life as death unto the will of God One day about noon he desired that his Chamber window might be set open that he might behold the brightness of the day which being done he cryed out O bright day of Eternity how this Sun-shine chears me helping me to meditate on that day which shall never have night The more his sickness and pain encreased the more he strove to unite himself to God by prayer imitating his heavenly Master who in the strength of his Agony prayed the more earnestly And when the violence of his disease oppressed him more and he had need of greater straining to think upon God he cryed out Courage courage Eternity is at hand With many such like speeches uttered with incredible fervour but which could not be distinctly pronounced by reason of the extream dryness of his throat caused through the feavour till at last stopping his speech all on a sudden he fixed his eyes stedfastly on heaven for a quarter of an hour together with a smiling look and full of reverence as if he saw some extraordinary sight After which mustering up all his forces he sate up in his bed took off his cap and holding it in his hand he said as it were ravished and overwhelmed with this Contemplation with great straining and words half stifled in his throat as well by the ardency of his spirit as the weakness of his body I adore you I adore you The Curate having administred to him Extream Unction at the time appointed which he received with great devotion answering to each prayer and attending to what he said and repeating them a good while after He asked him if he would give his blessing to his children He answered How so good Sir shall I presume to give a blessing in your presence I should be happy to receive one from you But being urged thereunto and told that the Church allowed that laudable custom he lifted his hands and eyes up to heaven saying I pray God give it to you and may it please him to bless you and to preserve you by his grace from the malignity of the