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
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
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
number the time favourable and themselves fresh setting upon men harrass'd out and tired with the pains of a long march Thus God watcheth over them that fear him and for their sakes many others also This lodging might have faln to the lot of some one less deserving such a favour from God and that would not have made use of it so prudently For execution of business he was not at all defective therein having a body strong and robust a spirit active generous and resolute not fearing any danger But for an Additament hereto as it were the soul to the body and light to beauty we finde in him the fear of God Piety and Uprightness without which Nobility hath but a false glister power is destructive and War brings with it mischiefs horrible and without number Monsieur de Renty all the time of his being in the Armies performed constantly his Prayers and other Exercises of Devotion when he came to his quarters if there were a Church there His first care was to visit it and to do his devoir to our Lord if there were any Religious House he took up there his lodging and that he might not incommode them for himself alone when the Army staid any time in a place while many and much elder than he past away their time in Gaming Drinking Rybaldrie Swearing and other Disorders he contain'd himself within the bounds of his usual wisdom avoiding all these base and vitious actions and entertaining himself in Exercises of Vertue and Honour In every place where he had any power he wholly employed it to keep off disorders He forbad peremptorily his men the treating ill of their Hosts that entertain'd them or giving them occasion of complaint and he never took horse but he made come before him them with whom he quartered to tell him themselves if any had done them wrong and if he found that any of his had offended he forthwith saw it remedied and did them right One day being mounted and ready to depart having made this enquiry of his Hostess and she complaining that one of his Servants had stoln a shirt he caused them all forthwith to come before her that she might finde out the Thief which being done and one of them confessing that he had it upon his back he incontinently ordered that he should be stript of it before them all and it restored to the woman notwithstanding many persons of quality thought it very harsh and opposed the business But he always kept himself firm to Justice and said he would by no means endure any Thieves If all that have commands dealt in this sort as they ought people would not stand so much in dread of their Souldiers as of the most cruel of Enemies and God who is the Lord of Hosts would afford more blessing and success to their Arms. But as the passage most dangerous to Nobility of making Shipwrack of their Salvation is falling out and Duels so God was pleased that his Servant should meet with this perilous occasion to teach all Gentlemen and those that wear a Sword how they ought to behave themselves therein Being in the Army he he had a falling out with a punctilious Gentleman which coming to the knowledge of the Chief Officers he made it appear that this Gentleman had no reason at all to be agriev'd at him which thing they judged also to be very true But the other party not acquiescing in this determination appeal'd â—o that judgement which according to the unhappy Maxime of the World his Sword could yield him and challenged Monsieur de Renty to Duel who returned this answer to him that brought the challenge that the Gentleman was in the wrong and that he had given all satisfaction which in Justice he could desire But this not contenting this untoward spirit he persisted in his perilous design to make him meet with his sword to which finding himself much press'd he made an answer vvhich is so much the more considerable in that he vvas so young and had not as yet a reputation but vvas to get it by Arms The ansvver vvas this that he vvas resolv'd not to do it since God and the King had for bidden othervvise he vvould have him knovv that all his satisfactions he had endeavoured to give him came from no fear of him but of God and of his displeasure and that he vvould go every day after his vvonted manner vvhither the necessity of his affairs call'd him and that if he did assault him he vvould make him repent it This quarrelsome man seeing he could not provoke him to an open Duel found one day the means to meet him and so to make him dravv his Svvord vvhere by the just judgement of God this other came very ill off for he and his second being hurt and disarm'd got nothing for their rashness but shame and sorrovv But then this true Christian Gentleman instead of doing them more harm as he might led them to his Tent caused Wine to be given them their vvounds to be drest and their Svvords to be restor'd them And joyning to Charity and Generosity both Humility and Modesty as his greatest ornaments he kept the thing ever after in secret never opening his mouth concerning it to any as some vvould have done out of vain-glory and vvhich is more to be vvondred at he never aftervvards spake vvord thereof to his man vvho vvas present and serv'd him for a second in this Assault to vvhom also before the deed vvhen he savv himself forced to a defence he gave charge by no means to kill This was not the onely difference but he had others also with some of the Neighbours or at least good cause to complain of them to which business he brought all that Prudence Patience and Charity could contribute and always came off most happily and he was wont to say to his Domesticks concerning his own differences or theirs that there was more of courage and generosity to bear any injury for the love of God than to requite it with another and to suffer than to revenge because the thing was far more difficult that Bulls themselves had courage enough but that it was a brutish courage whereas that of ours should be reasonable and Christian CHAP. 3. His entire change and call to a high Perfection MOnsieur de Renty having lived to the age of 27 years it pleased God to touch him now more closely to enlighten him more clearly and to call him to that high Perfection whereunto by the faithful co-operation which he yielded to this call we have seen him to arrive that like a great Torch or Luminary he hath spread his beams far and wide to Paris and in all places where he hath been This came to pass at a Mission made by the Fathers of the Oratory some six or seven Leagues from Paris whither he went on foot and where he made a general Confession with all the care that those take who desire to do it
exactly And so great graces did he receive in this new call of his that he marked this time as the beginning of his intire Conversion to God and perfect Consecration to his Service In pursuit of this change as he knew that what good desire soever one hath to advance towards Perfection the way that leads thither was hard and full of dangers and therefore not to stray out of the way and be lost of necessity one must have a good guide so God out of his singular Providence for his Sanctification provided him one and such a one indeed as his need required and that was the Reverend Father de Condrien General of the Oratory a Personage of profound Science of great Piety and of high capacity for matters Interior who had the conduct of him for some twelve years space to wit as long as this Father lived and that with great care and affection extraordinary as so excellent a subject deserved who made by his means such a notable progress that it caused him to say to a certain person that Monsieur de Renty would one day be a great Saint The way he took in effect was this following not to speak of his Penances and Austeriâ—ies which are the first combats of a person well converted and call'd to great matters of which we shall treat hereafter he withdrew himself altogether from the Court he bad adieu to all employments of Vanity and Ambition to be taken up in those entirely which might glorifie God and help his Neighbour he renounced all visits of pure complement and unprofitable He set his minde to the exercise of Prayer and therefore said every day the Great Office rising even in the night to say Matins and after made an hour of Meditation insomuch that he continued everie night two or three hours in prayer and that in the greatest rigor of winter Every day he made two examens of his conscience with an exact search into his smallest faults one in the morning before dinner and the other at evening He confessed twice a week and communicated three or four times He went one day in a week to visit and instruct the poor sick people of the great Hospital de Dieu Another day those of his own Parish and a third the Prisoners and in the rest he used to meet at Assemblies of Piety But in regard he had more care and zeal for his Children and Domesticks as he was oblig'd and well knew to distniguish Commands from Counsels and Obligations from Voluntary Devotions he ordered that every evening by the sound of a bell they should be assembled to make together their Examens to say the Letanies of our Lady and other Prayers Every Saturday he made them in presence of his Lady a Discourse upon the Gospel of the Sunday following to imprint in them the Principles and Instructions of matters of their Salvation from which they reaped much edification and profit But that which was highly exemplary was the order he kept in his journeys which was thus There was as much regularity therein as in a well reformed Religious House In the morning before setting out they heard Mass as soon as in Coach and beginning to go the first thing done was the saying the Itinerarium which he never omitted how short soever the journey was he made next was the singing of the Letanies of our Lord then followed some Meditation after that he said a part of the Divine Office which being done he entertained the company with some good discourse and such as raised them up sweetly to God Beholding the spacious extent of the Countrey he would speak of the immensity of God upon the presenting of any beautiful object to their eyes as any Summer-house for delight any Meadow enameld with flowers any River winding pleasantly about the land he would discourse of the Beauty of God or of Paradise forming such acts of vertue upon it as toucht the very heart approaching near to the place where they were to dine he made the Examen and being come thither as also where he was to lodge at night as soon as out of Coach and before he entred the Inne would he go to the Church where if the door was shut and no man found to open it he kneeled down at the door to render his devoir to the holy Sacrament afterward he enquired if there were any Hospital in the place to the end he might go thither and exercise his Charity Being in his Irin the first thing of all he did in his chamber was to cast himself on his knees and to worship God to pray with great affection for all persons that entred that place and for pardon of all disorders that had been there commited When he saw any thing written upon the walls or chimney that offended modesty he defac'd it and in place thereof writ words of Instruction in Piety and the way to Happiness and endeavoured always before departure to give some good advice to the servants of the house and to such poor of the place as he could meet with that so by the example of our Lord he might not pass through any place without doing some good in it After dinner when up in Coach again he made some recollection and applied himself to his Interior for some little time then entertained some recreation which was grave and modest afterward with the company sang the Vespers which done he wisht them to refresh themselves a little and use some innocent divertisement in which to render it Christian and Holy he interwove some touches of Piety Often he caused them to sing with him the Articles of our belief in French which to that end he had caused to be set in Musick About four a clock they sung the Compline afterward he made by himself some mental Prayer and being come to his Inn his Exercises were the same with those of the morning and this was the rule he observed in his journey If that saying of the Jews be true that a may man be known in sickness at the table in play and in a journey we may easily judge by what hath been said already how much must needs be the vertue of this great servant of God As the end of Marriage is to have children and of Christian Marriage to render them vertuous in order to Eternal Happiness so he took very great care both by himself and others to make his children such and for that end to engrave deeply in them the fear of God to disaffect them from the esteem of the world to let them know that the Maximes of it are much contrary to the Spirit of Jesus Christ and that true Nobility consists in vertue Behold here his thoughts of this matter as he wrote them to a certain Lady For the Education of Infants God having distinguished their conditions seems to teach us that there ought to be a difference between the nurture of a Peasant and that of a Gentleman who being born to
not its worth from doing this or that but from an exactness in doing that which he requireth of us giving up our selves wholly to his good pleasure I see there is need of a great death to our selves and a great depth of Self-annihilation to follow so purely the conduct of grace and not to be for own forms but those of God In another of the 12. of August thus he saith I daily continue my toiling here which takes up much of my time and almost all but I dare not look aside but onely abase and submit my self to the Divine Ordinance It was a work very gross and mean for Jesus Christ to converse with men who had more of rudeness than these stones I deal with and more of opposition to his purity than they have to my workmens hands And yet he suffered all he bore all and in fine converted but a few I beseech you obtain for me a part in his obedience and his patience to the orders of God his Father And writing to one of his friends he spake to him in this sort I am here in this Countrey in the midst of four or five companies of workmen to repair a Mansion House on the Demesn of my Family which was ready to fall What can our spirit act in this work which following the Spirit of Faith ought to be a Pilgrime and Stranger upon earth without doubt it groans much not at the order of God but after its own Countrey in the midst of its occupations as things opposite to its liberty We must do penance by labouring it is so decreed by God upon the first transgression These were the Meditations which this excellent man had while he was building and which all Christians who are made to settle not on earth but in Heaven in an Eternal Mansion ought to be enlivened with when they are about the like works CHAP. 3. His Humility POverty followed the Austerities and Mortification of the body as having much connexion with them and Humility follows Poverty yet considering withal that according to S. Austine the poverty in spirit spoken of by our Lord in the first Beatitude is nothing else but humility in very deed there is no people in the world more poor in spirit than the truly humble because they account themselves to be nothing to have nothing to be able to do nothing and to be worth nothing to be the refuse and off-scourings of the earth and to have need of every thing not assuming any praise to themselves for any thing whatsoever Monsieur de Renty came to this pitch and possessed this Vertue in a most Eminent degree And in truth if Humility as the all Saints tell us be the foundation of Vertue God having a design to raise up in him a magnificent and sublime Palace for Vertues and Perfection it was necessary the foundation should be laid very low and his humility be very profound He was rooted in this vertue so solidly that it was a thing wonderful and therein performed a number of so remarkable actions that those persons who lived many years with him and singularly well knew him have assured us that it were impossible to relate them all He had in an excessive esteem this important vertue he loved it with all his heart desired it with extream ardor prayed urgently and conjured his friends to beg of God and obtain it for him And as we see the stone descend with violence and the waters fall down impetuously the same motion made he towards Humility as to his centre Out of this Sentiment he wrote thus to one of his Confidents Have pitty on me I am more unfaithful than any creature of the world Upon my knees I beg of you to believe it If our Lord did not shew me what I am Lucifer would not be a little rich but this benign Lord shews me daily through his mercy my Nothingness it is thither his grace leads me To another he wrote thus All my resolution is in these words of David Elegi abjectus esse in domo dei mei I have chosen to be little and abject in the house of God To another also thus I am carried to demand of God a life much humbled suffering and unknown to men I finde a great attraction thither And I have a Paper written with his own hand and all of it with his blood which contain these words I give you my Liberty O my God and beg of you that Nothing which every Christian must arrive at to rise purely towards you Gaston Jean Baptiste Dominus Jesus semetipsum exinanivit usque ad mortem crucis propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum This 3 of December 1644. Amen Our Lord Jesus emptied himself to death even the death of the cross wherefore God also hath exalted him You see here his inclination and attractive and not without good reason for considering first that he had propounded to himself our Lord as a pattern for his life with a determinate resolution to follow him in whatsoever he could And that secondly Humility is the proper Vertue of Jesus Christ as S. Bernard after S. Paul calls it he therefore embraced this Humility with his whole affection gave himself up to it with all his forces and practised it in its urmost latitude as we are going now to see by that which follows But before we behold him in the actions of this Vertue let us listen to what he teaches and the light he gives us concerning it Humility said he he is the Basis which carries and upholds the whole work of God in us it makes the creature so naked and so separated from it self that it leaves it not the power to make any cast of an eye upon it self but renders it so taken up in the greatness of God that it becomes lost in reverence of him in self-abasement and annihilation This is the grace of Christians in their Pilgrimage who divested and spoiled of all esteem themselves but a Nothing and very puff of being which haivng nothing but what it received from God hath no instinct or inclination but for God It s a brave humility to see nothing in ones self but Nothingness and he that sees not there nothing sees not there any thing at all So the soul which sees nothing in it self findes nothing in it self to bottom on and by this means always points towards God like a needle touched with a Loadstone that having been encombred with all sorts of trash and trifles and afterward disingaged of them would forthwith turn towards her North and thitherward remain always fixt although the tempest of the sea and winds should turn upside down the Vessel Thus have we his disposition and the aspect of ae soul truly humble beholding nothing in it self and God in his Majestie SECT 1. His Humbleness of Heart HUmility may be divided into three sorts The Humility of the heart of the words and of the works And seeing the humility of the heart
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
that either by his sloth he was not answerable to their extent or that by the sole misery of nature he used them and made them lose some part of their force as it happens to Plants of the Levant which removed into a strange soil do not retain their vertue but degenerate and savour of the earth they are removed to And if the spiritual things of nature are allayed and corrupted in their passage through our senses how much more reason is there to think that the Divine and spiritual things of grace will there become enfeebled and altered These considerations rendred him most humble even in the greatest gifts of God and in things of most sublimity SECT 2. The pursuance of his Humility in heart AS the affections we bear to any thing are always founded upon the esteem we make of it so Monsieur de Renty esteeming himself so low so little and nothing in consequence thereof did extreamly abase and vilipend himself within his heart This he did in every thing and one of his strongest inclinations according to grace which is a great token of the Spirit of God in a soul was to be always condemning of himself He wrote to his Director I have at the same time two apprehensions quite contrary the one to avow to you with thankful acknowledgement to God that he fills me with effects of his goodness and impressions of his Kingdom and the other that I am more disposed to condemn than to regard my self for upon the whole what I do is pittiful Another time after some speech to him of many great enlightnings and excellent sentiments which God had communicated to him he told him I rest not upon all this I told you onely what is past to render you an account not making use of my judgement but to condemn my self for vices suspending it as to other things and committing it to God He wrote to another Confident I know not what will become of our business one must not speak a word in sweetness and patience but I shall lose my credit somewhat if this could be throughly lost it would be great justice Alas if no body endur'd me and all the world condemn'd me my pride perhaps would be humbled Carried on by this Spirit he had an ardent desire though always with his ordinary tranquillity and giving himself up to the orders of God to receive some disgrace If I were to wish any thing it should be to be much humbled and nullified and to be treated as an off-scouring by others This would be my joy but I believe I deserve not so great a favour This desire carried him to such a point that had he not been withheld with the consideration of greater good he had done strange things to be disesteemed and receive confusion Out of this sentiment and abundance of his heart he said thus to one I should have great pleasure if it were permitted me to go naked in my shirt through the streets of Paris to make my self disesteemed and taken for a fool Whence we must observe two things the first that God gives sometimes to holy souls some thoughts affections and desires so raised above the common pitch and humane reason that they may seem extravagant as this here which he gave to Monsieur de Renty and which was before him also in our founder S. Ignatius The second is that we must not at all put in execution such desires till before hand they have been well examined and justly weighed in the ballance of Charity and edification of our Neighbour This burning desire which he had to be diesteemed made him seek for and love his own abjection and when it came to take it not onely with patience but also which is the highest step that one can mount in humility with joy He gave an evident and notable testimony thereof in the first journey he made to Dijon whither a suit that he had with the Lady his Mother and which to him by an extraordinary dispensation of God was one of the greatest exercises of patience and humiliation that he underwent in all his life of which I shall speak more at large in the following Chapter had obliged him to go for thus he wrote to his Director the 24. of July 1643. I am at Dijon now seeing God is so pleased where I have learnt by the prejudicate opinions that were entertained concerning me what it is that God would draw from my journey which is that I lead a life secret and unknown to men in the spirit of penance The bruit which they had spread concerning me was that I was a Bigot and had nothing but artifices and shews of devotion for the colouring of my naughtiness that indeed I have kept my self much private in my closet out of fear to give by coming abroad rather scandal than any example of vertue I have found a generality that sollicited against me though such as from whom I had good cause methinks for divers good reasons to hope for a prop than from any other but have found the quite contrary But so also as God hereby hath done me many favours I have been to see them where I have received humiliation with great joy I have been very wary of opening my self in any thing that might recommend me unto them I have onely done in my business what truth required and for any thing else I made it matter of confusion and humiliation as I ought to do I shall be here I believe as one excommunicate and the Scape-Goat of the old Law chased into the wilderness for my enormous sins for which I am of opinion God would have me do penance not by meer pain onely but by such as withal brings shame and confusion with it I tell you this to render you some account not dwelling on it any longer my sole scope being to love God and to condemn my self SECT 3. His Humility in words THe Humility of heart in which Monsieur de Renty was deeply rooted produced in him the Humility of speech which hindred him ever from speaking any word that savoured of vaunting or that carryed the least tincture of arrogance and esteem of himself or which was uttered in a haughty manner or in a tone imperious or conceited but on the contrary they were all of them tempered with humility and modesty and as he deemed himself to be indeed a sinner lazy ungrateful perfidious ignorant so did he set forth and qualifie himself with these names and titles We have seen hereof already something before whereto we will adde also this which he writ to a certain person I am to speak the truth but an Idiot a poor Layick and a sinner Writing to a Priest he said What do I an unclean one and a Plebeian in grace and in condition in the Church who live in a state that Jesus Christ refused for himself I speak to a Priest and to the anointed of the Lord my God if I should make a reflection
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
man pollutes and undoes himself He that will conduct souls to Christ and God must of necessity carry them through such ways as lead thither CHAP. 2. His Charity to his Neighbour taken in general HAving a purpose to speak of his Charity which his man of God had towards his Neighbour I shall speak first of it in general and say thus much that it was so great and enlarged that it seemed to have no bounds in that he loved not onely all Christians and faithful people but even all men not excepting any because he beheld motives in all of them of a true charity and sincere love looking upon them as creatures of God and his chief Workmanship for whom our Saviour became man and laid down his life whom he loved and desired to save these all he likewise loved and laboured their good Thy Commandment saith David is exceeding broad the same dimensions he prescribed to his charity loving the present and absent domesticks and strangers good and bad esteeming all according to their degree honoring all speaking well of and doing good to all and ill to none There was not any considerable publique good work done either at Paris and a great way off it wherein he had not a great share There was no undertaking there that rended to the honour of God or good of man of which he was not either the Author or Promoter or Finisher and very often all these together He was one at all the meetings for Piety and in many as the soul and primum mobile he kept correspondence through the whole Kingdom concerning works of charity received from all parts letters desiring his advice in all difficulties that occur'd in the erecting or advancing of Hospitals Seminaries of Religion Places of Devotion Fraternities of Vertuous Persons agreeing to associate together for the better applying themselves to their own and others salvation and for the managing of all sorts of good works One of good report writ thus concerning him from Caen Monsieur Renty was our support and onely refuge in the execution of all our designs which related to the service of God the saving of souls and relief of the poor and distressed To him we wrote continually as well for the settling of our Hospitals and houses for receiving of loose women converted as also for the suppressing the insolence of some Hereticks who shewed contempt of the blessed Sacrament too openly Finally we received counsel and succour from him in all like occasions in which he expressed a great zeal for the glory of God and extirpation of vice Since his death we have not met with any to whom we could have the like recourse about the things of God Another from Dijon wrote thus We cannot but acknowledge the great benefit this Province hath received from Monsieur Renty wherever he came wherein he hath wonderfully advanced all works of Piety We may truly say that his days were filled with the plenitude of God and we believe that he scarce lost one minute of time in which he either spake not or acted not something tending to his service He applied himself to the necessities of the English Irish and captives in Barbary and of the Missions into the Levant he took very great pains for the good of the Hospital at Marcelles for the relief of Galley-slaves and contributed much to the advancing of the affairs of new France in America he had a design likewise to purge all Trades and Manufactures from corruptions that had grown upon them to rectifie and sanctifie them that men might live upon them like Christians which thing he together with others had happily begun and perfected the same in two of them as shall be shewed hereafter Moreover as one of the great effects of Charity is Concord and Union so had he a wonderful care to conserve encrease and perfect it in himself and others wherefore he lived in perfect amity with all the world with Seculars Ecclesiasticks and Religious esteeming respecting and speaking honorably of them all and when any difference fell out among them he was greatly afflicted for it endeavoring by all means to pacifie and unite their spirits and to accord their divisions knowing that the God whom we worship is a God of peace who would have us live in peace and that never any discord comes from him but from the Devil the sower of Tares that nothing is more opposite to the spirit of Christianity that spirit of Union and Love than Division and Schismes in Charity making us not live like brothers but strangers and enemies that instead of profiting in vertue we multiply and encrease our sins and vices The spirit of the new Law is a spirit of such perfect Charity and intimate Union that as St. Paul saith it makes no distinction as to the heart of Jew nor Gentile of Barbarian nor Scythian of bond nor free but Jesus Christ is all to all to unite and close and oblige them all in himself According to which this true Christian writeth thus in one of his letters The words which we ought chiefly to imprint upon our hearts are those of mutual love which our Saviour bequeathed us in the close of his Testament this love should inspirit all Christians to perfect them in one and cause them to live and converse together as brethren and children yea as one sole childe of God And because this Union with Christ our Saviour to whom we all belong is the best and most necessary disposition in such as are employed about the good of their neighbor to the end that they may receive from him both light and strength to enable them according to his purposes together with his saving Spirit to assist and ground them in all vertues and especially such as qualifie a man for that purpose therefore his utmost endeavour was to unite himself intimately to him and in all things to act by his Spirit and to acquire these vertues and render himself perfect in them These vertues are set down by St. Paul in the first Epistle to the Corinthians upon which he made frequent reflections and long meditations and although he carried always the New Testament in his pocket yet that he might read and consider them often he wrote them down with his own hand carrying it apart about with him The Contents whereof were Charitas patiens est benigna est Charitas non aemulatur non agit perperam Non in flatur non est ambitiosa Non quaerit quae sunt sua non irritatur c. Charity is patient full of sweetness envieth not is not malicious nor hurtful is neither vain nor ambitious seeketh not her own interests is not froward nor cholerick thinks no ill but interprets all to a good sense rejoyceth not at the faults of others but on the contrary takes great content in others well-doing suffereth much believeth all things not out of feebleness of spirit but out of goodness and holy simplicity if its neighbor mend not presently
have so great a vertue as to cure that disease What then having no better I prayed to God for his blessing upon that if it might be for his glory and the good of the Patient God did it for coming to visit her again I found her well recovered The Prioress asking him if he did thus often he answered Yes when he was desired it for these being poor people have no other help neither have I any better remedies I know my Saviour is not tyed to Medicines we must have faith in him where we can do nothing our selves and that out of his bounty he hath bestowed on me She replyed but this is then a miracle And doth not he work miracles for us every day said he And do you such for the poor said the Prioress To which he answered with great humility and well beseemingness in these words My Lady Prioress calls that a miracle which our Lord hath wrought for my part I have no share in it but onely by bestowing on the poor such as I have make what you please of it all my reflection thereupon is onely to return praise to my Saviour Christ when the cure is done If the Holy Scriptures command us to honour the Physician for our necessity of him Undoubtedly those are much more to be honoured who proceed in their cures not so much according to the method and direction of Galen and Paracelsus as that of God SECT 4. His zeal for the Salvation of his Neighbour THis part of Charity will appear greater and more ardent in Monsieur Renty than the former as being the most sublime and noblest degree of it as saith S. Thomas And the first in regard of its object the Soul which is incomparably more excellent than the body And secondly in regard of the things bestowed in this way of Charity which infinitely surpass those other as much as an eternal possession in the heavens conveyed by the one superlatively exceeds bread silver health supplied by the other Wherefore his holy prudence clearly perceiving a difference was transported with far other affections to the one than to the other And being continually inflamed with the love of God and his Son Jesus Christ uncessantly sought all ways and used all means to make them known and beloved both here and eternally by all men preventing what he could any offence or sinning against them daily pondering with himself the inexplicable goodness and tenderness of God towards the souls of men which have been so dear to him and cost him such an invaluable price He entred into the same affections loving and desiring their salvation according to that Model This zeal of his was admirable having all the qualities to render it perfect Being in the first place universal extended to all in France out of France yea all the world over Insomuch that he said to one of his Familiars that he was ready to serve all men not excepting one and even to lay down his life for any one upon occasion He earnestly desired to convert to enlighten with the knowledge of God to inflame with his love to sanctifie and save the whole world if it had been in his power of which Paris being as it were an Epitome he went through all the quarters and streets of that vast City searching out what he could remove or bring in for the glory of God and salvation of souls And the same Spirit of God that conducted him in this inquiry blessed his endeavours and gave him the favour to rectifie what was out of course to confirm the wayering to strengthen what was in order to root out vice and plant vertue Which he did in so many several ways as a man would think it impossible but what cannot a man do that is zealous disinterested and full of God He performed what possibly he could in his own person not sparing any cost nor losing one minute of time and wherein his power and strength of body or minde falling short of his desires proved deficient he engaged others Whereupon he procured Missions at his own charge in his own Countreys of Normandy and Brie and by joynt contribution of others erected the like in many other Provinces where he had no Land as in Burgundy Picardy Chartrain and elsewhere And here it will not be amiss to take his own words concerning these out of a Letter my self received from him relating to a Mission in his Lordship of Citry in Brte The Mâ—ssion was begun here on Whitsunday a day that bringeth with it an extraordinary benediction the peoples hearts are touched with great sense of repentance which they manifest by abundance of tears Many restitutions and reconciliations are made common and publique prayers are made in Families swearing and cursing are redressed And this Reformation extends it self to three or four leagues round about us Amongst many others there came a young maid whose life had been very vâ—cious who returned home a real Coâ—vert giving an ample testimony of her repentance relinquishing her former acquaintance Whereby I finde that this was the very end for which my Saviour brought me hither and ingaged my abode in this place These operations of grace filled him up with unspeakable joy which often distilled into tears for having to do in that which made for the glory of God and benefit of souls We have it from an eye-witness who hath seen tears stand in his eyes and demanding the cause received from him this answer I profess they proceed from that excessive joy I take to see so many touched with remorse evidencing their conversion by making restitutions by being reconciled to their enemies burning their idle and vain books â—uitting their former occasions of sin commencing a life altogether new We have seen him likewise in the Church of Citry so transported with zeal that he hath swept the Church carried out the dirt himself rung the bell to assemble the people thither In all his Missions he commonly imployed some Secular Priests of his acquaintance living in community and settled at Caen for those employments who have quitted themselves herein with great benediction and notable success He writ divers Letters to their Superiour earnestly entreating and conjuring him to promote this business seriously and heartily giving him account of what Missions were established and what were in a hopeful way what he had done in them himself and to whom else he had spoken with such courses as were to be taken to make them effectual The year he dyed this was written in a Letter to the same person concerning a Mission he had projected in the Town of Drieux of the Diocess of Chartres I have sollicited soveral persons to joyn in setting up a Massion every year and I shall go my self along with it as oft as I can to serve and obey your orders in visiting the sick and giving alms to the needy And for the same design to assemble some companies of people whom God hath wrought upon by your preaching
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
deeply affected to see these things and came and fell down at his feet Monsieur Renty did the like to him continuing in that posture for a long time resolving not to rise before the poor man He used to receive them in his arms and embrace them with tender affection These actions proceeding from a person of his birth and quality and produced by the holy Spirit of God wrought wonderful effects And that first in these poor Passengers who astonished at such ardent Charity joyned with suth profound humility were exceedlingy moved thereby insomuch that tears of Devotion were seen flowing from their eyes and themselves falling down at his feet with signs of repentance for their sins and a design of a better life begging his counsel and assistance therein and beginning it with going to Confession and the Sacrament the next day Secondly in those Religious women that belonged to this Hospital who taking fire at his example resolved to do the like in daily serving the poor teaching them their Prayers and Catechism with the ten Commandments which offices they had never done before Together with many other good things conducing to their own attaining to perfection and the better governing of their Hospital which he infused into them and they do still continue with great Devotion he having several times told them that he hoped in time to see God greatly glorified and served among them as we see it is come to pass at this day and may truly affirm that this gallant man hath contributed not a little to so much good done there both within doors and without and doubt not but he hath already received the reward thereof in Heaven But let us further consider some other effects of his zeal Going one day with a friend to visit the holy place of Mont-Matre to which he had great Devotion after his prayers said in the Church he retired into a desolate place of the Mountain near a little spring which as it is said St. Denis made use of where he kneeled down to his prayers which ended made his dinner of a piece of bread and draught of water Grace being said he took out the New Testament which he always carried in his pocket and read a Chapter upon his knees bareheaded with extraordinary reverence In this juncture of time came thither a poor man saying his Chaplet Monsieur Renty rose up to salute him and fell into a discourse with him concerning God and that so powerfully that the good man striking his breast fell down upon the ground to adore that great God making such evident appearances of the great impressions that were wrought upon his Spirit that struck Monsieur Rexty and his friend with much astonishment Immediately after this came a poor Maid to draw water at the well Whom he asked what she was She answered a Servant But do you know saith he that you are a Christian and to what end you were created Whereupon he took occasion to instruct her in what he conceived necessary for her to know and so to the purpose that she confessing her former ignorance told him ingenuously that before that hour she had never thought of her salvation but promised from thence forward to take it into serious consideration and go to Confession Let us still proceed a little higher on the same subject In his return from Dijon after his first journey thither accompanied with two noble pious persons about some four leagues He stopped three or four times by the way to Catechize poor Passengers and one time went far out of his way to do the same to some labourers in the field instructing them how to sanctifie their work they were about A young Maid in Paris having been very cruelly used by her Uncle fell into so great disorder and desperation that all in a fury she accused our blessed Saviour to be the cause of her misery in abondoning her to the barbarous usage of such a man without releiving her In this horrid plight of conscience she went to receive the Sacrament several times in a day at several Churches that she might not be discovered And this upon design to do despite to our Saviour to provoke him to finish her destruction as it was begun letting her to fall into the abyss of misery and hell for ever Monsieur Renty advertised of this sad accident and considering the great offence against God and mischief of this poor creature was transported with zeal speedily to finde her out Which after eight days pursuit from several Churches at length he did meeting with her in the very act of Communicating Taking witnesses he conveyed her to an Hospital for Mad-folks where he took so great care both of her soul and body that she returned to herself and gave ample testimonies of her conversion and repentance for those horrid enormities Neither did his zeal reach onely to those that were near him but such also as were absent and far remote to whom he had no other relation but what was contracted by his alliance to our blessed Saviour and his own Charity Understanding the news that was current some years since of a War the Turk designed against the Knights of Malta and to besiege the Island he so far interested himself in their danger that he recommended it twice by Letter to the prayers of Sister Margaret Carmelite of the B Sacrament at Beaulne whom he deemed to have great power with God His first Letter runs thus I commend to your prayers and of the holy Family the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem which is at this present in great danger and with them the whole Christian World What that common Potent enemy of our faith will do I know not one Our little Jesus who is all love and power knows how to vindicate his own glory please you therefore to commend it to him In the second Letter thus I beseech the Omnipotency of the holy Babe Jesus to preserve his children under the Cross and to purifie them for his own work This is it which I request for our Brethren of the Order of St. John Baptist of Jerusalem SECT 7. Certain other qualities of his zeal THe design of advancing the Salvation of mens souls is attended in this world with much doing and much suffering It is necessary therefore for him that undertakes the task to fortifie himself with courage and patience And both these were most eminently in Monsieur Renty being in the first place full of courage resolute and laborious imploying his body as if he had two more in reserve when that was spent dispatching more business in one half hour than others would have done in many days Very stout he was to undergo any difficulties and withal very quick and decisive A certain Lady of note made him her executor having disposed in her will very much to pious uses He was informed that her friends being persons of eminent power were displeased therewith To which he replyed with a
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
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
told him that of a long time he had left off the use of a sword and that after he had commended the business to God by prayer he should follow his inspiration assuring himself that his protection over us is much according to our relying upon him These words were found in one of his Letters to his Director My soul being armed with Confidence Faith and Love fears neither the Devil nor Hell nor all the stratagems of man neither think I at all on Heaven or Earth but onely how to fulfil the will of God in every thing He hath been noted to do very notable things through the strength of this Vertue even at such times when he hath been afflicted with great aridities in his Interiour In our aridities and privation of the sense and feeling of grace saith he in a Letter to a friend is manifested an heroick abnegation of our selves to the will of God when under Hope believing against Hope we shew our selves to be true sons of Abraham Isaac shall not dye though the knife be at his throat and in case the true Isaac should in fine be crucified it is but to make us conformable to the Cross and cut of our ashes to raise us to a true and better life Thus likewise he writ to his Director I have a very clear insight into the great want I have of my Saviour him I behold in his riches and my self in my deep poverty him I look upon invironed iâ— power and my self in weakness whereby my spirit being filled with content by the impression of these words Quid est homo quod memor es ejus What is man that thou art mindeful of him doth rest upon a total abandoning of its self into his bounty These words Longanimiter ferens bearing patiently have dwelt longe upon my spirit though I did not at first remember whence they were taken or what they meant onely this that I must wait with patience for the commands and approach of my Saviour without putting my self forward by my own inquest or endeavours but rest with faith and reverence begging his grace and hope in him But a few days ago taking up the New Testament in opening the Book I did light upon the sixth Chapter to the Hebrews where the Apostle speaks of Faith and Patience whereby we obtain the promises qui fide patientia haereditabit promissiones who by faith and patience shall inheret the promises and to prove this brings in the example of Abraham sic longanimiter ferens adeptus est repromissionem and so waiting patiently obtained the promise This passage touched me to the very heart and relieved my languishing together with another passage of S. James which presented it self to my eye at the same time Patientes igitur estore fratres usque ad adventum Domini ecce agricola expectat preciosum fructum terrae patienter ferens Be patient therefore my brethren till the coming of our Lord behold the husbandman waiteth patiently till he receive the fruit of the earth Hereby I was settled in peace upon the solid foundation of Hope and Abnegation As this incomparable Vertue enricheth the soul that is perfectly stated in it with a profound repose a solid joy a wonderful courage and sets it aloft above all Terrestrial things with a generous contempt of whatsoever the world esteems and desires giving it a taste of the pleasures that are Eternal as it is not difficult for him that hath assured hopes of a glorious Kingdom to set at nought a Pad of straw so did it communicate to this holy man all these excellent treasures and imprinted in his soul all these noble reflections Whereby he was incited with all his strength to encourage others in the pursuit of this Vertue knowing by his own experience the inestimable benefits thereof understanding it to be our Lenitive in all disasters our staff and stay in all weaknesses and our secure haven in all tempests instructing them continually how that God to the end that he might drive us into this Port and cause us to rest in it doth frequently permit us to be assaulted with temptations and tryals the deeplier to engage us to have recourse to him begging his aid and succour and relying upon him with confidence The like instruction he gave to a certain person upon occasion of the Apostles amazement when they beheld our Saviour walking upon the waters and took him for a Chost Think you this was without a special providence that our Saviour suffered his Disciples to go alone into that ship and permitted a contrary winde to arise Who knows not that in the same manner he fashions the souls of the faithful by his absences and by their tryals that he may afterwards manifest his power upon the seas and tempests quickning thereby our Faith and shewing himself to be the Messias and true Deliverer of the world But observe we how many Christians in their sufferings are affrighted with the Apostles seeing our Saviour marching on the waters Every thing makes them afraid the winds the waves yea even Christ himself that is the anxiteies of their spirit their own disputings and also those good coursels that others give them for their establishment upon Christ Jesus before God All this appears but as a Ghost to amaze them unless Christ himself graciously appear yet more unto them to comfort and strengthen them Shall we always want confidence thus to think Christ a Phantasm Shall we not address our selves to him in all our necessities as to our Lord and Deliverer The Jews brought all their sick folks to him and he cured them What is he become a greater Physician of the body than of the soul No no our little Faith our little Love our little Confidence is the cause of our languishings and unfruitful anxieties of spirit Let us go strait to him and all will be cured CHAP. 4. His Love of God SEeing the Love of God is without contradiction the most excellent and perfect of all vertues and that which principally and above all the rest makes a man a Saint we cannot doubt that this holy man was possessed thereof in a very eminent degree and that he loved God with all his heart This Love he founded upon his infinite perfections and favours which may be perceived by what he writ to his Director in the year 1648. concerning this Queen of all Vertues Our Glorious Lord hath from time to time with his resplendent beams shone upon my soul quickning her therewith which have appeared in such several manners and have wrought such great things in a short time as would take up far more to write them which really I am afraid to undertake or begin They all concenter in this one point the love of God through Jesus Christ his communication of himself to us by the Incarnation of his Eternal Word and ours to him through the same Word becoming our brother conversing with us and erecting as it were a mutual society
Blessed be that littleness which is held for weakness and yet overthroweth all the Power and Prudence of flesh Treating with some Religious Persons he seemed as it were rapt on a sudden with the consideration of their happy condition speaking to them thus O how happy are you my Sisters After which falling upon a discourse of their Vocation he spake so effectually as wrought in them an ample acknowledgement of their obligation to God and a courage to proceed in well doing This following Letter he writ to a Gentlewoman newly entred into Religion who next under God did owe her calling to him I thank my Saviour with all Reverence for those good dispositions to your Profession signified in your Letter I understand and am sensible of abundant grace wrought in you whereby I assure my self of a noble pregress I am to expect from the bounty of God who is to that soul that gives herself to him Merces magna nimis Her exceeding great reward You have made a leap which puts you in a new world Blessed and adored be God who in the fulness of time out of his wisdom and love to a soul sends his Son unto it to redeem â—t from the Law of Servitude and translates it into the Adoption of his Sons This hath he now wrought in you in a more special manner and the excellentest way that could be You was never united to Jesus Christ as you are now by your holy Profession You had heretofore something to give that was never before engaged and he something to receive that was not formerly in his possession But now all is given and all is received and the mutual donation is accomplished No more Self no more Life no more Inheritance but in Jesus Christ He is all in all things until the time that according to the Apostle he delevering us up all and wholly to his Father his Faâ—her also shall be iâ— Jesus and in all his members all in all for ever Amen Fourthly he had a very great Devotion to all the Saints in Heaven but more partifulatly to S. Joseph and S. Teresa whom in the year 1640. he chose for his Patroness and above all the rest to the Saint of Saints the B. Virgin in testimony whereof he dedicated himself to her Service at Ardilliers then when he designed himself for a Carthusian And in the year 1640. he desired to be admitted into the Society erected to her honour in the house of the professed of the Jesuits of S. Lewis and for many years he wore a seal upon his arm with her Image graven wherewith he sealed all his Letters We have likewise mentioned how he gave to an Image of Nostre-Dame de Grace a heart of Chrystal set in Gold to testifie to that Admirable Mother as he used often to stile her his love and that with this heart he resigned up to her his own Finally this man of God most entirely honoured and loved the Spouse of Christ his Holy Church reverencing every thing that came from her making great account of all her ceremonies saying That he found a certam grace and particular vertue in the prayers and customs of the Church conforming himself most readily to her practises Being present commonly at High-Mass in Paris he would go to the Offering amongst the people and ordinarily with some poor man He assisted at ceremonies where it was rare to finde not onely men of his quality but far meaner persons as the consecrating of the Fonts in the Holy Week at long Processions in all extremities of weather Upon which occasion he writ one day to a friend Our Procession goeth this day into the Suburbs and since our Saviour hath favoured us with this great mercy to be of this little flock we ought to follow his standard and I take it for a signal honour to follow the Cross which way our holy Mother the Church leads us there being nothing in her but what is glorious since she acts in every thing by the Spirit of Religion in the presence of God whereby she unfolds great mysteries to those that are humble and respective From which expressions actions we may infer that he being a man of such quality and taken up with such a multitude of business had a very reverend esteem of all the ceremonies of the Church otherwise he would never have rendred such Obedience and Honour to them And though it be most true that he highly honoured these ceremonies yet he desired likewise that by the Exteriour pomp that appeared to the eyes Christians might be led on to the Interiour and more Spiritual complaining that the outward Magnificence wherewith Churches are adorned do often stay and amuse them and instead of carrying them on to God their chief end diverts them from him To this purpose he writ thus to a friend We should take notice of that simplicity in which the Divine Mysteries were conveyed to us that we may not be held too long with the splendour in which at this day they are celebrated These thoughts came into my minde in hearing the Organs and Church Musick and beholding the rich Ornaments used in the Divine Office we must look thorow this state at that spirit of Simplicity Purity and Humility of their primitive Institution Not but that these are holy and useful but that we should pass thorow it to the Simplicity and Poverty of Bethlehem Nazareth Egypt the Wilderness and the Cross But above all he was singularly devoted to an union of spirit and affection and universal communion of all good things whith all the faithful in all places of the world and to be admitted into the communion of Saints being an Article of our Creed very dear unto him Wherefore he highly valued all of each Nation and Profession without espousing any particular spirit or interest to respect one above others to magnifie one and derogate from another He honoured all Ecclesiasticks Secular and communicated with them concerning all his Exercises of Charity for his Neighbour he gave great respect to all Parish Priests was very serviceable to him of his own Parish he frequented the Societies of the Religious loved and made use of them for direction of his conscience And notwithstanding the great variety and several orders of them in the Church yet was not his heart divided but affected with an equal esteem and approbation and a general affection to all according to their degree being guided herein by one Spirit viz. that of Christ Jesus which enliveneth all the faithful as members of his body in the same manner as out bodily members notwithstanding they be different in sight figure and offices are knit together and all perfectly agree because they are all quickned by the same soul All misintelligence and disagreeing is a sign of two spirits that rule there and division is the principle of death Concerning this communion of Saints he one day suffered some difficulty Whereupon he writ this excellent Letter to his Directoâ— I
so powerfully supported in it and it made so easie to her by that Divine assistance and fall upon another that is likely to prove difficult for want of the same assistance Whence we may conclude that we ought not to change our exercise of Piety so long as God supplies us with sufficient grace to attend it The second is that we should reiterate many actof the same vertue as of Faith Hope Love or which is better continue and hold on the same act thus to acquire a rooting and establishment of these vertues which is not gotten but by vigoâ—ous and effectual reiteration of their acts as a nail is not driven up to the head with one blow but must be strucken hard and often And so it is with vertues whose force and sound profit consists in their having a well-rooted and grounded possession of the soul whereas they are worth little or nothing till they are habituated therein even as the tree brings forth neither leaves nor fruits until it hath taken deep rooting The same thing is to be done for any moral conclusions which are drawn from these acts that is to double and redouble them till they be fixed and made effectual as for example after some repeated acts of Faith that God is your first Principle and that of your self you are nothing and that all your hope is in him and our Saviour say with your self once twice and twenty times over with affection and a quiet but vigorous application if I believe this great truth of God and my self why do I attribute any thing to my self why do I not humble and abase my self under him why do I not love him upon whom all my good depends why do I not look upon my self and all creatures in the world as nothing If I hope in God and my Saviour why then do I fear any thing else is not here ground enough to live with confidence and joy what is he that can molest or trouble me Live then O my soul in tranquillity and repose as this same hope doth oblige thee These acts thus redoubled and repeated with constancy and vigour will without doubt produce great effects in the soul which is the fruit that this Prayer of Affection should bring forth Herein did Monsieur Renty exercise himself for many years reaping thereby an inestimable treasure of spiritual riches This Prayer saith he in one of his Papers is not by discourse and reasoning but by a loyal love tending always to give more than to receive The obscurity of Faith is of greater evidence to the soul than all the illuminations she can procureâ— which faith she ought to use with Reverence and Thanksgiving not with Complacency or Affectation Here needs no stretch of the Spirit this Prayer never offends the brain this is a state of modest deportment in which the soul keeps herself in the presence of God expecting what his spirit shall please to infuse into us which we receive in simplicity and in considence as if himself spake to us The ordinary dispositions with which he entred into this Prayer were first A profound Reverence and an abasing of himself in Gods presence whose infinite Majeste held him in a deep sense of his own meanness saying that we ought to consider our selves before it as little and less than the smallest Atomes Secondly A strong and absolute Confidence in his Infinite Goodness and Mercy which bearing up his Humility and the sense he had of his own vileness made him still hope all things He exhorted all of his acquaintance that were capable of it to use this kinde of Prayer as the most excellent profitable and easie of all others since it puts not a man to the labor to consider nor penetrate into or discourse of any subject but is easie for all sorts but chiefly for the unlearned who herein have need of no more but a simple belief applying themselves thereto with Affection He counselled men to give themselves more to the operations of the will than the speculations of the understanding and that place of S Paul to Titus where he exhorts us to live in sobriety he expounded of the sobriety of the senses and chiefly of that of the Spirit to cut off in our prayers multiplicity of notions and discourse and to proceed therein by Faith In effect the mysterie of faith is incomparably transcendent above all the Science and Discourse of the most quaint and sublime wits for as every thing is but visible by his own light a Torch by his and the Sun by the Sun things of glory by the light of glory so those of grace by the light of grace whereof the most perfect without doubt is that of Faith Reason is bestowed upon us for the discovery of natuâ—al things and Faith for Supernatural and Divine With men we discourse by Reason and with God by Faith and since God is at an infinite distance above man and Grace above Nature we may well conclude that Humane discourse of the finest thâ—ed is too heavy for that high pitch which can soar no further than natural Reason can conduct it Moreover whatsoever notions we have in this world of God and things spiritual they are in some degree deceitful and false not representing things as they are really since our spirit conceives nothing here below but what hath passed thorow the senses where spiritual things are refracted and receive much earth and come to us distorted and disguised But it is Faith alone that represents them in their real entities There are but two indubitable lights on which we may relie and which surpass all others in excellency which sanctifie and deifie our understanding elevating it to its first principle and oâ—iginal of all verity which is the Divine Intellect that is to say the light of Faith here and the light of glory hereafter These two being participations of that knowledge which God himself hath which demonstrates the dignity and perfection of Affective Prayer which quitting Discourse proceeds by Faith Neither did he make long stay upon the former way of Prayer but passed on further ascending to that of Union and Contemplation which was bestowed upon him in a very high degree Holy men speaking of this Contemplation the sublimest degree of Prayer here upon earth make thereof two sorts Acquisite and Infused The latter is that which God alone produceth in the soul to which she contributes nothing but a simple consent to receive his operation which is also called Contemplation Passive The former is that which man assisted by Gods grace may acquire by his own labour and exercise by his own industry and is therefore called Active The Infused hath so absolute a dependence upon God that it s given when and to whom he pleaseth who also takes it away which we cannot hinder no more than all the men in the world with all their strength put together can stay the Sun from rising and setting But all are in some measure capable of
that he neither desired noâ— feared any thing in this world And in fine enjoyed such a sweet tranquillity of spirit and repose which nothing could disturb or alter that from thence arose a wonderful and invariable equality shining forth in his Exterior at all times in all places upon all occasions One of his intimate friends desirous to try one day whether he had an affection to any thing questioned with him about every thing he could think of to put him to the rest and among other things asked him whether he desired not that these works which he had undertaken for the glory of God might succeed and take effect To whom â—he replied that he had no other aim in all his actions and enterprizes than the accomplishing of the will of God and that although he used his utmost endeavour that such things might succeed yet notwithstanding he was perfectly resigned in all things to his Majesties good pleasure adding many other expressions testifying his Mortification to all desires and a perfect transformation of his will into that of Gods This discourse was not quite finished but there hapned an occasion to put it to the tryal for one came running in crying that all the Heaven was on fire which news usually very frightful made no alteration in him at all who most calmly and composedly looking up to the heavens said the fire is here in Paris without any further distance though he understood presently that it was so violent that the street he lived in was in danger to be burnt down and his neighbours said it was necessary to quite forsake their quatters by reason that the fire was not far off and was likely in a very short space to reach them In this publique fright he keeping his ordinary equality and referring all to the will of God went into his Chappel where he continued long time in prayer offering up himself in sacrifice to God and resigning up his own will unto him some persons looking upon him with great admiration in this posture whilst so many hundreds were at their wits end and preparing for a speedy flight He professed to another secret and familiar friend that he felt himself through the mercy of God in such an absolute state of death to every thing that neither Angels nor men the loss of all he had the subversion of his family nor any other accident could remove him from his settled tranquillity And this he said not hyperbolically or by way of ostentation but out of a solid experimental establishment in that fortitude common with him to all great Saints Such was the mystical death and annihilation of this man of God by which his soul was enriched with a vast treasure of spiritual wealth causing him to lead a most perfect life and uniting him most intimately to God to which this death is absolutely necessary because no being can arrive to that which it was not formerly without ceasing first to be what it was as wood cannot pass into the nature of fire as long as it keeps its former nature this must be quitted and the matter be divested of all the form of wood both in substance and accidents and reduced into a state of privation to be made capable of the fires unitement to it And this is a general rule in nature admitting no exception that each subject must be predisposed to receive a new form and so much more as this form is more noble and this disposition consists in the privation of the subject and loss of other forms to gain a new one So also to make a spiritual man he must no more live according to nature but that he may be capable to be united to God must necessarily dye and be annihilated to himself And if fire require this total privation in the matter to communicate it self thereto with greater reason doth God who is altogether a spirit infinitely pure the first and soveraign entity require of a man this universal nakedness and privation this death and annihilation to himself and all created beings before he give and unite himself with him for in giving himself he giveth also the fruition of himself of his beauty goodness wisdom and his other perfections and by this union renders the receiver happy Hence also may be gathered what admirable purity is requisite in a soul for this union with God in Heaven in the state of glory that for this we must either conserve our Baptismal Innocence or if that hath been lost or fullied we must be purged here or in Purgatory by severe penances notwithstanding our other good works and the high degrees of sanctity to which we have attained And the same in proportion may be averred of the soul here in this estate of grace where it must be very pure to prepare it well for its union with God here in this life And seeing her pollution ariseth from her love to the creature and to herself and from the life of the first Adam according to the lusts and appetites of our own spirit it must dye to all these creatures and likewise to its self just as the body to be made perfect and to partake the true life of immortality and bliss must necessarily dye first so likewise must our souls if we will have them arrive to perfection consisting in this union with God to lead a holy and Divine life which alone can truly be called life To this purpose he writ thus to his Director I see clearly that the onely way to a Divine Union is to be perfectly divested of every thing that is not God and dead to our selves and every creature O that I well understood the importance of this nakedness and death and what is it that hinders the bonds of this Celestial love and union with his Divine Majestie and that Soveraign Beauty but a certain shew of and light adherence to some creature and shall we suffer that a thing so small and so unworthy should possess in the room of God and that Holy Spirit which is an all-consuming fire of love invirancing us on all sides should not have the power to work upon us the same effect which this elementary fire worketh upon wood Why should not I vicious and discontented creature in the midst of these my wretched plenitudes acquire happiness in the possession of God which I may do by his grace in separating my self gently from the creature by a single and affectionate application to the Creator To another person he writ thus When S. Paul saith You are dead and your life is hid with God in Christ Jesus He layeth death as the necessary foundation of a Christian whereby to remove from him all affection and inclination to the creature As we see that a dead man hath no more any motion or sense of any thing for though we are frequently sensible of the rebellious motions of corrupted nature yet they onely spring to be choaked and stifled in their birth To this purpose the