Gaston Iean Baptiste de Renty Seig. r de Ciâ—â—â— Baron de â—â—nadâ—â—s Mourut à Paris le 24 d'Avril del'An 1649. 〈◊〉 de sonà ge THE HOLY LIFE OF MON r. DE RENTY A LATE NOBLEMAN OF FRANCE And sometimes COUNCELLOR TO KING LEWIS the 13th Written in French by John Baptist S. Jure And Faithfully translated into English By E. S. Gent. London Printed for John Crook at the Sign of the Ship in S. Pauls Church-yard 1658. TO THE READER Christian Reader SUch nourishment as the reading of vain Romances or the Lives of Secular-Love-Knights though these onely fained supply to the earthly principle in us our carnal lusts and ambitions set upon fading glories and beauties the same do the Histories of Saints and person enamoured of heaven administer to the other celestial principle in us the H. Spirit which more or less inhabites in every one who is more than in name Christian These books it is that set us all on fire and suddenly transform us into the same holy inclinations we read in those Christian Hero's so much would we love so much would we do so much would we suffer and if I may apply the Apostles words spoken of the Lord unto his holy followers We beholding as in a glass the glory of these Saints of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirits of the Lord whilst both the sweet consolations which such have found in Gods service sweeter than honey Psal 19. allure us to a vertuous life and their treading the way before us in the observance of the most difficult precepts of the Gospel and in the enduring all the hardship as our inexperience aâ—counts it of the Christian warfare both shews us it faifible what God commands and invites us to follow their conquering travels Yet notwithstanding the great effects such writings frequently produce many aspersions and exceptions intervene which to many Readers render them fruitless whilst either we question the truth of the relation as when the Historian living some ages perhaps after such holy men and no eye-witnesses of their actions is supposed to compose his relations much what out of some uncertain traditions and hear-says or being contemporary with them yet such pieces having run thorow the hands of some ages not so pure are imagined to be corrupted and many falsities interposed and mingled with truth Or allowing the truth thereof yet they being the Histories of such as lived long ago in times of a quite different complexion and in some as we phansie more holy age when the first fruits of Gods spirit in the early times of the Gospel were more vigorous and his favours in cherishing the infancy of Christianity more eminent and mens piety by mutual examples more inflamed we think them no pattern for us born in the worst and prophanest times Or yet further if they be modern histories of our own days yet they being ordinarily narrations of persons first cloistered and sequestred from the negotiations of secular affairs or also of such whom this world forsook before they applied themselves so intensively to the other in their being born of mean parent age or to small â—r no temporal fortunes we think them no fit pattern at least for our condition of life when born to the management of a fair estate the support of a noble family and engag'd perhaps also in the duties of a conjugal life For these causes deare Reader I have imployed some spare hours to present thee with the most pious and exemplary life of one who was no retired or cloistered person but who practised the rules of perfection in a secular and married condition with the ordinary worldly impediments of wife children and estate dependent on his care remaining all his days surrounded with the ordinary temptations that such a life affords without being engaged therewith walking in the midst of these flames which set on fire so many hearts without being singed at all or touched by them and holding this pitch that cleaves so fast to others fingers in his hands without being defiled one who abandoned secular inveiglements not in the ordinary and easier way by remâ—ving his person from them but only by removing them from his thoughts of whom I may say as the Apostle of himself the words a little inverted That he was possessing much and yet as having nothing well known and yet as unknown not using this world and yet as using it as living in the world and yet dying to it lastly one who had no advantage for this of any felicity of times beyond ourselves who though for eminency of Christian graces and communication of divine favors he may seem to contend with the ancient Saints yet lived but the other day and dyed not nine years ago April 24. 1649. lived in a neighbour Country France spent a good part of his life in the chief City thereof Paris and there no obscure person but by his birth of a very noble family see cap. 1. in it the heir to a flourishing estate and besides this honored with the dignity of being one of the Kings privy Councel so that all his carriage and actions are easily discoverable if any thing related here should be either feigned or amplified and the pen-man thereof a religious man of note is there yet living to bear the shame of publishing such lies who divulged within some years after his death this copy of his life in the same place where he acted it As for his Letters which the Author hath often inserted here to discover to the world the interior of his soul which cannot be known to others but onely from our selves know that in most of these his humility and that upon command disclosed such things onely to his Confessor and that he onely privately whispered in his ear what is now divulged abroad that he relates to his spiritual Father with much transport and ravishment as who can possess such a treasure and say nothing of it the great power of the present Grace of God in him much after the same manner and with the same modesty as one recovered of a great sicknesse for the state of Sin is a great Disease rejoycingly would tell his Physician of the present good Habit and Temper and Health of his body That his otherwares much evidenced Sanctity will sufficiently perswade his veracity in these relations Lastly That they are not his Letters entire but onely some pieces extracted out of them as best suiting to the Authours purpose His Letters doubtless containing also in them the Confessions of his Sins which in his Confessors absence he was necessitated to present for some time onely by Letter and many Complaints of his Infirmities and Defects with consults for a remedy thereof But it became not the secrecie of a Confessor nor the civility of a Friend to discover all these ner yet the Readers benefit to know them Since the Perfections of our Brethren set before us
to the bottom the sense of his words that very great were the Vertues and highly rais'd the perfection of this excellent servant of God and by so much the more ought they to judge so as they may assure themselves that he hath not a jot exceeded in the report of the things which concern him but rather that he hath diminished them being by grace and indeed by nature also extreamly reserved and most considerare in whatsoever he said and especially in speaking of himself SECT 2. The Source from whence these Vertues flowed IF now we will examine the Principal of those Vertues and Perfections and the Well-spring whence they issued we shall finde that it was from the intimate Union which he had with the Lord Jesus Christ whereunto he alwaies above all things gave up himself His sage and illuminated Director the Reverend Father de Condrien knowing that the Union with Jesus Christ is the foundation of our Predestination Justification and Sanctification of all the grace and glory which we can ever have that Jesus Christ being the way whatsoever is out of this way can be nothing else but wandring that he being the Truth whatsoever is nor conformable thereto is nothing but lying that he being the Life whatsoever lives not by this life nor is quickned by the Spirit of Jesus Christ is not alive but of necessitie dead he did therefore that which ought alwaies to be done with great care by all Directors of souls which was to make him to know the importance and the necessity of this Unon to fix him stronglie and constanâ—lie to Jesus Christ for the Government of his Interior and Exterior to put him this Way to binde him to this Truth and to Unite him to this Life Monsieur de Renty followed exactly this conduct and therein made a great progress which he went on in perfecting to his death with marvellous improvements so that as the last touches which the Painter gives to his Picture are far different from those of the first rude draughts or as the Sun hath more of heat and light as he advanceth higher in his carreer and approacheth to Mid-day than when he but newlie riseth In like manner the applications the ties and the unions which this excellent man in his latter years had with Jesus Christ and the actions which he either did for him or received of him were quite other from those at his beginning for he was then wholie consummate in Jesus Christ he had as it were passed into him and he carried him as it were in a livelie manner in his soul in his thoughts in his affections in his desires in his words and in his works Hence it was that he had no other object before his eies but Jesus Christ that he thought not but of him that he loved nothing but him that he spake not but of him that he wrought not but for him and alwaies after his sampler that he read not but the New Testament which he carried alwaies with him and endeavoured by all means possible to engrave the knowledge and love of it in all hearts Wriâ—ing to his Director the year 1646. concerning his dispositions he sent him these words among other To speak to you of my Interior I feel my self not to will but God and in union with our Lord Jesus Christ to yield him all my homages This is the fulness of my heart and I feel this well when I sound it He said this to him in another Letter I am in great necessity of Jesus Christ but I ought to tell you by an acknowledgement of the Mercy of God by a certitude of this truth that I feel that he is more ruling in me than my self I know for all that that of my self I am but sin but withal I experiment my Lord in me who is my streâ—gth my life my peace and my All I beseech him to become our plenitude Moreover in another thus I finde my self said he much troubled what to send you because all things become raz'd out of my minde as soon as passed and I cannot retain within me anything but God and this in a kinde of a hoodowink'd blinded manner with a naked faith which faith making me know the evil bottom which is in my self gives me notwithstanding great force and confidence by way of abandoning and Self-Rejection upon our Lord Jesus Christ in God I haue found this morning a possage in S. Paul which I believe our Lord hath put into my hand to express my self by seeing it is the very â—ruth of what I experiment Fiduciam â—urem talem habemus per Christum ad Deum non quod sufficientes simus cogitare aliquid a nobis quasi ex nobis sed sufficientia nostra ex Deo est This boasting we have by Christ to God-wards not as if we were sufficient to think any thing of our selves as of our selves but our sufficiency is of God It is about a fortnight since these words were put upon my spirit without any contribution on my part or of any thing that might renew the Idea's of them quaere venam aquarum viventium seck the vein of living water and just as they were exprest to me my spirit like as when one comes up a River to its Spring-head was to seek Jesus Christ from the beginning of his Pilgrimage to the point of his Glory when set down in his Throne at the right hand of his Father whence he sends his spirit to animate his Church and enliven those that are his I saw that there indeed was the Source whence the springs of living waters do flow to us and that thither we were to make our addresses I could report here more such touches with which his letters to his Director were besprinkled but I believe I have given enough for the present to evidence his disposition towards our Lord and his union with him When he wrote to other persons he always insened something of our Lord to excite them to binde themselves to him and to propose him to themselves in all things as a model of their actions One while he writes thus Let us forget all to think of this faith which makes alliance between God and us through Jesus Christ who is come to publish this truth which he hath sealed with his blood and which he will consummate in his glory at that time when we shall appear to have been faithful in following his Spirit Let us go after and with Jesus Christ to God for he is our way Another while thus 'T is a thing admirable that it hath pleased God to seud us his Son to the end that we may not look on him any more as our Creator onely but also through the alliance that we have with him we may call him Father He is therefore our Father from this time forward and it is certain that he considers us as his children in the person of his Son Incarnate But the thing of importance is a firm
For these three moneths I have not it may be spent three or four hours at my prayers upon my knees together out of the Church and should I perform them at all no otherwise than on this fashion I should but very ill discharge my â—uâ—y It is certain that I have discharged it ill enough yet I understand that God is pleased in the midst of these imployments to which he hath appointed me to make me sensible of his presence and power in uniting my soul to himself by certain intimate ways and that the outward work may be performed by the hand whilst the soul solaceth herself in that real alliance of Sons with their Father by the Spirit of the Son who admitteth us into his communion together with that of the blessed Virgin the Angels and Saints yea and of the whole Heaven if you will Such a wonderful expansion of soul can our Lord give when and how he pleaseth I enjoyed at the same time such a sensible impression of God yet excelling all sense as being acted in the more noble part of the Soul viz. the Spirit that if I had been thrown like a boul I could never have lost the sight of my God All things are here transitory for our Lord turns this boul in a strange manner when it pleaseth him And these dâ—verse turnings are done for the souls advantage whereby she is fashioned for every occasion that she may do nothing for or by herself but all for God and according to him Moreover I evidently see that a person whom God employeth in these low affairs if he follow them with the same fidelity as if they were greater keeping his station by obedâ—ence and self-denial is as acceptable to him as he that is occupied in the noblest functions The work it self making not the difference but the faithful execution of it by submitting to his good pleasure Will nothing please you but to convert a thousand worlds and bring all souls to God you shall be content to carry stones and sometime to sit still and do nothing The Sâ—crifice of Patience is both well pleasing to God and comfortable to our selves And I believe it is without comparison more rare to finde a soul faithful in patience and content to do no more than God would have him than faithful in actions which appear abroad I know well that God doth all in all but this Sacrifice of Patience and of Câ—ssation is more commendable in a heart who hath the love and zeal of his honour and in pursuit hereof is hurried on to action and hath need of greater force to withhold it from doing than to incite it This kinde of Cessation seems to be nothing at all available for the nourishment of such zeal and this hunger and thirst after righteousness which would devour the four quarters of the world is reverberated like the fire pent in which circles and works about until it finde a vent by this consideration that God is all-sufficient in himself and hath no need of us for advancing of his glory that we receive more honour from our imployments than he service being so impure that we blemish every thing we meddle with and rob it of some lustre and prove often not onely unprofitable but endamaging servants I have one word more to tell you that you may direct me in it which is that I am really ashamed and confounded in my self that I do no more for God considering his dignity hâ—s love his gifts and communications by the alliance of Jesus Christ and his Spirit Which indeed together with the sense of my great imbecility for any thing that is good of my sins and miseries would work my extream torment did I not bethink my self of his all-sufficiency in himself and that he doth with us as he pleaseth in keeping us in obedience and profound annihilation Thus far his Letter wherein are many good things to be learnt CHAP. 4. The excellent use he made of all things and his application to the Infancy of our Lord for that purpose IT must needs be that Monsieur Renty made excellen use of all accidents that occurr'd to him and generally of all creatures to attain to such a height of perfection whereof this usage of them as muâ—h as is in man is undonbredly the prinâ—ipal means to which all others are subordinate otherwise and without it unpâ—ofitable and meer hinderâ—nâ—es True it is that God hath placed in the bosom of each thing as in riches poverty honours disgrace health sickness good and evil a secret vertue and moral capâ—city to advantage us in our salvation and to be instruments of perfection even as so many cords to draw and unite us to himself but all this according to our usâ—ge of them For bâ—ing well used they produce good effects but contrarily abused instead of uniting us to God they estrange us further from him rendring us more imperfect and vicious and instead of advantages prove the instruments of our ruine Wherefore he being well instructed in this grand secret of Spiritual life imployed all his care to practise it perfectly Which that we may better understand it will not be amiss to follow it to the Spring-head The holy man had continually in his heart making it the principal conduct of his devotions as we have mentioned and may be easily deduced from the series of this History to unite himself to our Lord Jesus Christ and that upon good grounds Since out of him as saith S. Peter there is no salvation God having chosen him the sole Mediator of Redemption and the repairer of our miseties loving no creature in the world but him with a love of perfect amity Whereupon by S. Paul he is stiled the Son of his love and good pleasure and we alone are accepted in and thâ—ough him who are found beautiful and shining with glory when we are united to him and out of him we appear deformed hideous and most abominable being indeed without him filled with sin and his enemies Wherefore every man is so far dear and amiable to him as he stands united to his Son which is manifested in the Blessed Viâ—gin and his Apostles all our actions pleasing him so far as they are united to him even as each member of our body participates of life according as it is animated by our soul Having therefore perfectly learn'd this fundamental truth of Christianity his study was to unite himself to our Lord Jesus Christ and to copy him forth as his Rule and Law for the regulating of his Exterior and Interior adoring him daily under this notion applying himself with great reslection to his words actions designs and the several mysteries receiving from each of them great enlightnings Thus he writ to me one day upon the mysterie of his Incarnation I have had the grace divers times very intimately to understand that ineffable mysterie hidden with God from all ages and manifested now to the Saints according to S. Paul which is the
that did open to him a way to the splendors of the world And as he was naturally resolute firm and constant succoured by the Divine affistance to whose will and pleasure he gave up himself as an absolute Sacrifice after he had duely examined and ordered his design he put himself upon the execution which passed in this manner Being one day upon Nostre-Dame Bridge with the Lady his Mother he desired leave to go forth of the Coach to buy something which being granted he stole presently out of her sight and slipping with cunning and diligence from street to street he gets out of Paris afoot in the moneth of December the year 1630. and takes the way to our Lady of Ardilliers and a few days after this escape advertised his Father thereof by this following Letter SIR I Nothing doubt but this alteration will bring with it some affliction to you the first motions of Passion being not in the power of men and indeed nature also enclining us to bemoan the loss of what she loves But fince that there is something of God in this business I most humbly beseech you to lay aside all passion out of your soul and consider that in it which is on Gods part Thus it is Sir that after I had combated two years with my self and resisted all the enspirations that God had given me during that time I was at last constrained to break off so long a delay in the quitting of the world avowing that I have not strength enough to undertake the working out my salvation in a place where is practised the contrary to what I would effect this is too perilous a matter for afceble person that hath a desire to march on sure ground and therefore I have judged that it would be more to the purpose to strangle the evil in the birth than to stay till it become greater and I not able afterwards to master it For so unlike are the maxims of the world to those of Jesus Christ that I cannot at all believe a soul that fears to offend him can live long in it and especially at the Court but that she shal soon be forced to abandon it when she shall see herself oblig'd to comply with the corruptions of the time which would not beseem me now to talk of since for a good while ago my design hath been rather to hide and bury in oblivion its fooleries than to recal them into my memory I am minded therefore to unwinde my self out of this Labyrinth although I know it will be said that I might well enough enjoy the world and and yet keep my self frow its enormities I confess it but let a man consider what comes after a man must resolve then to be the table talk of the Rabble of our Masters of the Mode that will give out that one 's a Bigot Pecisian a sour Fellow not fit for discourse and company a very burthen to the world with a thousand such like sayings whereof I have had already but too much experience In effect a pleasant thing it would be to see a young man of my inclinations enter the Court and there act the Reformado should you Sir but see it would not you your self in good truth be the first to laugh at me for my labour I therefore humbly beseech you to consider what a grief it would be to a Father to see his Son in the Court and great Meetings there onely to be contemned and set at nought not but that for all this a good Conscience counts it a great honor to suffer all these things for Gods sake but I believe it will make more for your contentment that I retire my self for at the Court a man must live as at the Court and being not able to serve two Masters I conclude with the Gâ—spel that he that serveth God ought to follow and attend on God I have always seen this practis'd in the world that when one hath a quarrel with another that mans friend is so far from offering his service to his adversary that he even shuns his company and conversâ—tion in like manner God and the world being in terms of hostility I should believe it a great offence not to do that for God which I would be sure to do for a friend which is but a mortal man And seeing when we love a thing we go not about to search out just the contrary to it so the means to avoid sin is to fly the occasions of it and shall it be said that for so wretched a thing as to make a little shew and to be talk'd of a man should endanger the loss of his soul No no and they that think so now will be of another minde when they must give an account to God for what is past then it will be that they will know what it is to live well or ill but then it will be too late and therefore leaving the dead to bury their dead according to the small illuminations we have let us labour to reform our life and to do something for the love of God who hath told us so expresly and so often that we must deny our selves for sake all and follow him which thing I believe you would not be willing to gainsay You are the cause of my demurring and retardment and since the time of my dayly praying for this retirement I have had many thoughts of your affliction which yet for all that will soon be mitigated when you shall consider that God doth all for the bâ—st and that it may be he hath sent you this tribulation to produce out of it some good effects I leave this to his secret dispensations and beseech you to believe that I am able to serve you at least as much in this new Profession as in that which you had design'd me to God give me the grace to do it I acquaint you not yet with the place where I am fearing least now at first your passion should cause you to come hither but within a short time when I shall know the state of things a little better I will not fail to gâ—ve you notice In the mean while I shall uncessantly pray him whom I am resolv'd to serve to abide with you and make you know how passionately I am Sir Your most humble Son and most obedient Servant Gaston de Renty Thus you have the Letter he sent to his Father wherein we may read his Spirit his Devotion and the pure and solid Illuminations that already shone in his Understanding His Father extreamly afflicted at his absence sends abroad every way to seek him and God who gave him this desire though not to take effect would so have it that he was found at Amboise although in disguise having chang'd a Gold-lac'd Suit into a poor mans habit He was brought back thence to his Father at Paris who thought it not amiss to carry him along with him to his Castle or Mannor House of Beny where he
is the principal and true one of which alone our Lord gave himself a samplar and of which the two other are but the effects if they be true or otherwise they are but onely shadows and phantasmes of Humility therefore we begin with that of the heart And this we say consists in the humility of the understanding and of the thoughts of the will and of the affections to be well acquainted and know truly what a man is of himself and that he is meer Nothingness and sin and in consequence of this knowledge to take up most mean and low opinions of himself to judge himself unworthy of all esteem and praise to abase himself and love his own abasement A thing most excellently performed by this perfect follower of Jesus Christ He had so low an opinion of himself that it would be a difficult thing to unfold it and although he had most rare qualities natural and supernatural yet he saw nothing in himself but as we have said the Nothingness and the sin And out of a true and sincere perswasion he thought himself the most unworthy of all men assuming that title in some of his Letters but the name which usually he gave himself was Sinner and A great Sinner which he repeated very often and with a spirit truly humbled That which I have noted in him for the space of six years wherein I have had the honour of his acquaintance said a person worthy of belief was a most profound humility which kept him in a perpetual self-abnegation before God and the creatures but after such a manner as I have never seen in any man whatsoever although I have been acquainted with most holy souls The greatness of God humbled him even to an abyss or immeasurable depth And is there said he one day to me any thing great in the presence of that Greatness I see my self there so little so little and nothing And afterwards being elevated to God in this Sentiment of littleness he said A mote in the Sun is very little but yet I am far less in the presence of God for I am not any thing Afterwards humbling himself in another sense he said Alass I am too much I am a sinner and Infidel an Anathema through my crimes And besides he wrote to the same person thus Methinks I break my self in pieces before God as when I stamp an egg in pieces with my foot upon the ground and I be spoken of that I have so much as a name is a strange thing This so exceeding base opinion which he had of himself made him say oftner than once and ready to weep that he was much astonished at the goodness of men in suffering of him and that he could not enough wonder why every where they threw not dirt at him and that all the creatures did not bandy against him This same opinion had perswaded him that it was much boldness in him to speak and that men shewed great mercy toward him in enduring his conversation which he believed was very burthensome I have seen him very often saith a person of piety that well knew him humble himself even to the centre of the earth while he spake to me of God saying it was not for a man of his condition to speak of him but that he ought rather to contain himself in silence And so he spake not of God without some particular inducement that our Lord gave him either for the necessity of his neighbour or for some other good which God would draw thence for his glory keeping a distance from this discourse out of humility as if he had not known how to speak two words of him In a Letter to another he said Let us live as we are in truth what place can we hold before God and his Saints but that of Nothing with amazement that we are endured being a Nothing of all good and a compound of all evil This humility of heart was general in him because he practised it in each thing there being not the least thing that serv'd him not for an abasement He abased himself much in the consideration of the feebleness of our nature whereof he wrote to me one day this sentiment It concerns me to tell you one thing before I end which keeps me in a marvellous disesteem of my self and makes me resent how little confidence there is to be had in man it is this that when S. Peter and the Apostles make the greatest profession of their fidelity to our Lord our Lord then mindes them of the infidelity they would commit saying to S. Peter that he could not follow him whether he went S. Peter answers him Why cannot I follow you now I am ready to give my life for you Thou give thy life for me replies our Lord I tell you in truth the Cock shall not crow but thou shalt deny me thrice S. Peter not understanding these words continues in the protesting of his fidelity and upon occasion of the apprehending of our Lord draws his sword and sheaths it not again till our Lord commands him He follows him and forsakes him not thus apprehended but yet afterward he denies him upon the bare word of a maid servant The apprehensions of these weaknesses which come to me not by search or study but by Divine enlightning and by the impression which they make in me keep me wholly in annihilation without any affiance in my self which I place altogether in God and his Son our Lord This condition would keep me in a marvellous littleness if I were faithful therein I have some instances when methinks my whole body is crush'd bruised annthilated and my interior much more To another person he wrote Pitty it is to see man and his infirmity it is sometime important that he have experience of what he is that he may neither forget himself nor the place which he ought to hold ut non glorietur omnis caro in conspectu ejus That no flesh might glory in his sight that being abased nullified and rendred as a thing that is not at all Jesus Christ may be in him the life of grace and holiness waiting for the time of our redemption that is to say the entry into his glory and as it is written he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord. And to another thus The state of our poverty and the sight of our miseries makes us know the need we have of grace and settles the soul upon the Nothingness of her self and the perswasion of her inability to all good and in this truth that she never hath been nor can be but retardment and diminution to the operations of God in her The knowledge of his faults and sins humbling him strangely as indeed they are the most just and greatest causes a man can have of humiliation made him write one day to me thus I assure you I lack for no matter to make me humble and to labour in good earnest to correct my self although
great pains he took he made answer that our Lord humbled himself and took toilsome pains for the good of souls in a far other manner sure and that he was his pattern Being one day to go see a person of very great quality about a business which much concerned the glory of God he would not use his Coach although he were to traverse in a manner all Paris and that when it pour'd down with rain but go thither on foot one motioned that he would at least let a cloak be carried by a Lackey to take it when he came thither and not present himself before that person in a Cloak altogether wet and speak to him in such unseemliness but he yielded not yet to accommodate his humility with decency he cast that cloak above his own and past through the streets so far in this humble equipage and afterwards in the Noblemans house laid aside the wet cloak and appeared in the other ordinary one of his own But behold here another effect of this humility whereof he wrote to his Director the 20 of December 1646. It behoves me now saith he that I render you an account of a business that passed the other day Madam my Lord Chancellors Lady sent me a packet of letters wherein I found some from the King with all the Seals and formalities wherein I was made Councellor of State but my thoughts were not taken up at all with the business I sent her word that I would assume the honour to see her to thank her for that my Lord Chancellor vouchsafed to think of me that I honoured more than so that which had the mark of the King and which came from their hands than not to receive it with all respect But I most humbly begg'd one thing of her that living in a kinde of plain and vulgar manner as I did she would be pleased to take in good part if with all acknowledgement premised of my exceeding obligations to them I did not accept those letters and that the business might sleep without noise some represented it to me as a thing worth thinking on for that a Committimus might be very necessary for me in some sort of occurrences and that a pension of 2000 livers per ann about 200 l. Sterling would afford me ability for the giving of more alms To the first point I answered that by the goodness of God I had no need of it and that often the Committimusses prove a great vexation to those upon whom they are executed That this should be our work to bear our own little ordinary crosses without laying extraordinary ones upon others And for the second that God having given me more of riches than I had need of I thought I was not obliged to augment them but to keep me in my little way of living you see how we stand as to this business Whereupon let me tell you that this thing cannot be affected so but that I must take upon me also the quality of a Councellor of State and must have a dependence upon the State as a Pensioner of the King Now by the paper that some while ago I sent you you may see that I have given up my worldly Nobility to God and this thing here would derogate much from it and moreover it would be a step to an engaging of me I know not where which now I see not nor will see having other things to six my eyes on My disposition towards affairs of that nature is to have no share at all in them if per-force and without my seeking they come upon me I shall count it a real cross which our Lord will in such a case give me strength to bear To conclude Elegi abjectus esse in domo dei mei absit mihi gloriari nisii in cruce domini nostri Jesu Christi I have chosen to be a door-keeper in the house of my God and God forbid that I should rejoyce in any thing save in the Cross of Christ So have you the inclinations I finde in my self This was that he writ to him concluding with these words which carry with them another touch of humility and much wisdom I have been willing the business might be concealed for the avoiding of Ostentation which is found often in the refusal of things that have something of lustre and give occasion of talk And thus he carried himself in that conjuncture but notwithstanding sometime after he was constrained by good advice in consideration of a business that much concerned the glory of God and relief of the poor to accept of these letters and that quality and to make use of it In a paper he wrote to the same person I finde this that follows which makes much to our purpose Walking one day this Lent thorow the streets of Paris much be-dirted and very poor to look at I bore in me the resentment of the Apostle 1 Cor. 4.13 when he saith That he was as the scum and off-scouring of the world I returned in my minde blessing for reviling and the rest of that passage so much as fell under my passive obedience both actually receiving illumination to understand it and strength to execute it I know well how much neatness and new things even to a boot even to a glance and a look do hurt if one take not good heed the simplicity and dignity of this Christian self-vilifying And I saw that it was a great temptation for a man to think to preserve his estate of Grandeur and note in hopes to be thereby more exemplary and have more weight and authority for the service of God This is a pretext that our infirmity makes use of in the beginning but perfection draws off at last to Jesus Christ who was humbled upon the Cross and made the lowest of men What an honour is it to keep company with Jesus Christ so lovely and so little followed in his ignominies and his humiliations it is one of my errours that I have not yet well begun it The great knowledge and marvellous sense that he had of these truths and of the lowliness of Spirit whither ought to tend and come the true children of God and perfect followers of Jesus Christ made him often to say Let us be little and very little Oh this holy littleness it is a great matter From this Spirit it was that he loved low and mean things and shun'd whatsoever it was that outwardly carried splendor with it whither he knew that nature in a secret reflex upon it self is always carried and even in things most spiritual and holy as on the contrary Grace as being the grace of Jesus Christ carries to things of no reputation such as he embraced And he avoided out of the fame thought whatever it was that held of the extraordinary and said that in exercises wherein there appeared even most of perfection as in observing Fasts and other penances more than others there was not in them sometimes so much as in the
by Divine Power in all the Cities Villages Private houses as well Religious as Secular whither the Divine Providence conducted him to enlighten men with the knowledge of God and his Son Christ Jesus To inkindle in their hearts perfect Charity and bring them to a good life In all which he was exceedingly blessed with happy success as shall be shewed hereafter Being one day at Paris in the time of Lent going to a poor mans house to exercise some of his ordinary acts of Charity and hearing a great noise of people singing and dancing in the next house he left his poor man and went in thither and look'd upon them who were so surprized and astonished at his presence that they presently quitted their dancing and singing And he fell into a discourse against those disorders and dissoluteness in that holy time of Lent with such fervour as drew tears from their eyes and wrought so effectually upon some of them that the next day they went to Confession Another time he visited a poor maid who being abused by a young man and gotten with childe was lest in great necessity whom he found plunged in so deep a melancholly that she had resolved to make away herself yet by the grace and power which God gave to his good counsel he comforted her dejected spirits and brought her into such a condition that she went to Confession After this he went to seek out the young man who at the first onset behaved himself very ill contemning his wholesome advice But after several arguments inforced from the danger of his soul and other threatnings of Gods Judgements hanging over his head he melted into tears promising to do whatever he pleased to command him insomuch that by his advice he was reconciled to God by true repentance and to the maid by wedlock and since that time have led a good life together During his abode at Amiens a poor woman had undone herself by selling salt a thing forbidden in France under heavy penalties and being taken in it Who thereupon fell into an excessive sadness and grief retaining also such an hatred against them that had reduced her to this misery that she could not be perswaded upon any terms to forgive them whereby she became uncapable of the Sacraments in the extremity of her sickness Monsieur Renty was brought to her in the company of two or three other persons who talked with her a long time without any success Insomuch that seeing whatever he said prevailed nothing fell upon his knees in the middle of the room inviting the company to do the like and after some few prayers bespake the sick party saying and will not you joyn with us to beg mercy of God To which she yielding he caused her to repeat after him word by word certain acts of repentance and charity by which she found her minde so strangely altered that she appeared quite another woman and openly professed that she did forgive them from her heart And receiving with much meekness all his instructions prepar'd herself to the worthy receiving of the Sacraments Being one day at the great Hospital in Paris instructing the sick how to dispose themselves for a general Confession one of the Religious women intreated him to speak with a person that was newly brought in thither who had been without any cause at all run thorow the body with a sword and was so incensed against the party that he could not indure with patience any should speak of forgiving him But no sooner did Monsieur Renty urge to him the duty of a good Christian in such a case with other speeches to pacifie and sweeten his spirit but he was appeased and said he forgave him with all his heart adding that he was ready both to see and embrace him expressing moreover very much sense of Piety Certain Abbots and other Ecclesiasticks of quality and vertue met at Pontoise to settle a Mission Monsieur Renty who was very intimately acquainted with the most part of them came to visit them where according to his usual custom without speaking thereof to any one he went to the prison and meeting there with a most obstinate sinner who had continued so along time and neither by intreaty nor threatning by fair means nor foul nor by any other means which the Mission could use be brought to Confession The Mission sending for Monsieur Renty to dine with them word was brought after much search for him that they might happily meet with him at the Prison where he was found sitting at the table with the Prisoners for whom he had provided a dinner discoursing lovingly with them comforting and stirring them up to a good life Amongst the rest the foresaid party in particular upon whom he had the greatest design to whom he spake with so much power dealing with him so discreetly or divinely rather that he brought him to his bent working in him a resolution effectually to change his life and make a good confession of all his sins which gave a just occasion to one of the Mission to say That Monsieur Renty had accomplished that in three days which others would have had much ado to have brought about in three years I omit many others of the like kinde concluding with this one which seems very remarkable He was requested to visit a devout woman who was tormented with excessive pains both inward and outward and had great need of comfort and direction who received so great relief from his instructions that within some few days she writ as followeth The effect which I found by the conference I had with this worthy servant of God was such that as soon as I had gotten victory over my self to speak and lay open my heart unto him straightway my blessed Saviour communicated his goodness so powerfully to me that I was even peirced by the effects of his presence I found also a very particular assistance from the blessed Virgin whom this holy man did invoke at the beginning of our discourse And I can assure you of a truth that I was sensible of much comfort and ease of my affliction insomuch that his speeches had so great an influence upon my soul and wrought so effectually that I have continued ever since in a good condition And though my pains are not abated yet I finde such an alteration in my self that I seem to be no more my own but all that is within me breatheth after nothing but the Execution of the will of God and the accomplishment of his good pleasure at any rate And though nature suffers some difficulty in it yet she must now learn to yield to grace and make resistance no longer My torments are not changed and yet I profess to suffer nothing because I am very well content to suffer And although my inferiour sensitive part is much pained yet my superiour part cannot nor indeed is it capable of suffering by reason of its conformity to the will of God All my care during
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
alliance he hath contracted with us in Jesus Christ This knowledge produceth in me as much astonishment as love And to tell you my sense of it a man possessed with these verities remains no more a man but becomes annihilated and all his desire is to be lost and melted on purpose to change his nature and enter into this Spirit of Jesus to act no less in him than by him I have conceived such great things of our Saviours Humanity united to the Divinity as cannot be uttered How hath this alliance of the Divinity most deeply abased the sacred Humanity into a self-annihilation and a sacrifice of love upon the sight of the greatness of God What an honour is this to the Humane Nature to be thus predestinated and What a glory to us to be chosen and called to an entrance into his favour and a rising to God and the everlasting enjoyment thereof through him It would spend me this whole day to write to you the view that I have had of the wisdom and bounty of God touching this mysterie of Love which he hath opened unto us in his Son And though he was truly devoted to all the mysteries of our Lord yet in a most special manner to that of his Infancy The occasion whereof was thus Being constrained to make a journey to Dâ—jon by reason of a suit of Law beforementioned he heard much talk of Sister Margaret of the blessed Sacrament a Religious Carmeline of the Covent of Beaulne on whom our Saviour had conferred particular favours who led a life very extraordinary grounded upon true and solid vertue And as our Lord hath several ways to sanctifie a soul and fit it for his sacred purposes so he was pleased to exercise this choice woman absoluâ—ely in the mysterie of our Saviours Infancy and through that pipe to convey into her soul a torrent of grace and extraordinary gifts not onely for herself but others as may be seen in her life now in writing by a person most worthy of such a work Monsieur Renty had a desire to go to Beaulne being but seven leagues from Dijon to recommend himself to the prayers of this holy Virgin And though when he came thither he neither spake to her nor saw her she having by a particular conduct of our Saviour been retired for thirteen years from the speech of any secular person yet notwithstanding he received much benefit from his journey as he expressed in a Letter writ back from Dijon to the Prioress of that place I want words to express the mercies I received by my journey to Beaulne Sister Margaret hath marked me out in the holy Infant Jesus such a divesting of my self of all worldly things that it appears to me my rendezouz where I must strip my self naked of all things else The year after he made a second journey where God having altered her resolution for speech and converse with others he had the happiness to discourse with her and contracted at that time a very intimate alliance of grace receiving great gifts by means thereof The chiefest and source of all the rest being that our Saviour engaged him as he had done her in a more particular devotion to the mysterie of his Infancy and imprinted in him the lineaments of the like Graces and Spirit This holy man whose judgement may be highly esteemed by us considering his extraordinary insight into spiritual matters greatly valued this Religious woman approving exceedingly her directions and testifying how great a blessing he reckoned her acquaintance and what benefit he had reaped from her even after her death To which purpose he writ thus to me the eighteenth of June 1648. the year of her death The holy Infant sweet Jesus hath taken to himself our good Sister Margaret whose death was consonant to the dispositions of her life and miraculous graces I have received from her since her death great comfort That grace I reâ—eived according to my present estate and weakness to enter into the Infancy of our Saviour hath since been renewed to me and I have understood it more solidly About a moneth after I received these lines from him I had yesterday by the singular bounty of God a view of his Divine Majestie of S. John Baptist and Sister Margaret of the B. Sacrament so clearly represented to me in my spirit that I cannot suspect the truth of it O what effects were produced by their presence and what love by these sights I am wholly renewed in my respects to that great Saint my Patron and to that glorious servant of God who honoured him very much whilst she was living and from whom without doubt since her death she hath beggâ—d to be my Protector It is mâ—st certain that the work of God in her was one continued prodigie of grace and a master-piece of his hand But let us return to his application made to the Infancy of our Saviour chiefly begun in his second journey to Beaulne Of which we may understand something from this Letter written to a Father of the Oratory Confessor to the Carmelines there I must needs tell you that upon my first journey which I made to you above a year agoâ— I brought back with me a great esteem and devotion to the Infancy of our Saviour but I was not yet well settled in it I attempted it from time to time but could not yet make it my principal food Since which the holy Infant by a supernatural grace hath manifested and opened himself to me and now I finde every thing in him and am remitted thither for all And to the Prioress he writ thus I must acquaint you that the holy Infant Jesus will grant me the favour to apply my self pâ—rticularly to his honour to give my self to him and to his holy dispositâ—ons ordering my life and the sacrifice of my self by the conduct of his Spirit In order hereunto he cousecrated and gave up himself thereto in these terms a copy whereof written with his own hand and in his own blood he sent to Sister Margaret which is kept with great devotion in that Covent And another something more inlarged to his Ghostly Father to which he wrote his name onely in blood in these words To the honour of my King the Holy Infant Jesus I Have consecrated my self this Christmass-Day 1643. to the holy Infant Jesus offering up to him my whole Being my Soul my Body my Free-will my Wife my Children my Family the Estate which he hath given me and finally all that I am concerned in having beseeched him to enter into full Possession Property Jurisdiction of all that I am That I may live no more but in and to him in the quality of a Victim separate from every thing of this world and challenging no more share thereof than according to the applications which he shall give and shall allow me Insomuch that from henceforward I shall look at my self meerly as an instrument in the hand of the holy Infant
it by God and for God In another Letter to him thus I finde for some time that my prayer is no more regular I possess the Sacred Trinity with a plenitude of verity and clearness and this with such an attraction so pure and so vigorous in the superior part of my soul that my outward employment create me no diversion at all And another time he writ thus Jesus Christ worketh the experience of his Kingdom in my heart and I finde him there my Lord and Master and my self wholly his I discover now a greater enlarging of my heart but so simple that I am not able to express it save onely thus that it is a simple but most real sight of the Trinity accompanied with praising blessing and offering up all homage thereto All which is done so silently that it causeth no noise below neither can it be discerned in the higher part of my soul by parcels so as to be expressed except it be by reflexion Whether I utter my self well to you or no I know not This blessed man thus united by contemplation to God the supream verity received abondant light both for himself and others upon all subjects but especially those he had for the understanding of the holy Scriptures and especially the New Testament and therein the mysteries of our Saviour were admirable Thus in a Letter to his Director Upon one word I shall read in the New Testament I shall sometimes discover notions of those truths in so full and piercing a manner that I ever feel my body replenished therewith that is my whole nature penetrated And to one of his friends thus When I read the Sacred Scripture I fortifie my self to enter into those effects they work which is a plenitude of the truth of God wherewith the soul is solidly and experimentally satisfied And he made notes upon all the Lent-Gospels full of piety and those great illuminations with which his spirit was replenished This is a short account of the Prayer of this great servant of God so far as we could discover it for the chief part thereof is that which passed within the Sanctuary of his own Soul where his union and converse with God was so wonderful that after he had spent seven or eight hours therein he found himself in the end as if he had onely then begun it except onely that he had then yet more desire to continue it and at length arrived to that height that he never ended it at all being wholly and constantly in recollection and application to God Whereupon he professed to an intimate friend that he need neither particular place nor time for prayer since in all places times and business he continued it CHAP. 9. The state of his Mystical Death and Annilation WE are now come to the highest degree of Vertue and the ultimate disposition of soul to render her capable of a most intimate union with God wherein her perfection consists She must dye first before she can live this new life and must be annihilated to become truly something This death and annihilation stands not in the destruction of mans naturals to deprive him of understanding memory will and affections much less of his senses but in the ruine of the old man which is wholly corrupt and infected with sin in such sort that the understanding and other faculties spiritual and corporal be cleansed and animated by the Spirit of Christ Jesus to work no more according to nature corrupted nor yet nature pure but nature elevated by grace and sanctified by Jesus Christ Now as the corruption and malignity of the old man holds an entire possession of our nature and the poyson of sin is spread all over body and soul so that from the crown of the head to the soul of the foot as saith the Prophet there is no sound part in us So all these parts must be healed this corruption purged out and the malignity perfectly mortified and destroyed When I say perfectly I mean so much as this can be done here on earth for it is onely in heaven in the estate of glory where this happiness is compleatly perfected but in this world there will still remain something to be purged This holy man writing to one concerning this state of death and annihilation tells him how that singing in the Church with others the Magnificat he was illuminated upon these words Deposuit potentes de sede c. He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble which represented to him a soul full of it self compleat in the power and riches of its parts and natural endowments in its life of Exterior and Interiour sense undertaking to see and understand every thing full of it self and quite empty of God Then he addes Now our Saviour gave me to understand in this verse that he divesteth this soul of her own proper arrogant spirit rich in nothing but iniquity that he humbles and empties and annihilates her and so exalteth the lowly advancing her at length to a wonderful condition where I saw her reduced to an happy and rich annihilation emptied of herself and dispoiled of what she possessed of sense and man divested not onely of the old man but of the gifts of God that are in her to be presented before him in nakedness and simple obedience I understood that in this estate the soul being affected with great humility and affiance likewise God did in her that which he pleased and that she was throughly enlightned and that she discovered afar off the least things as we usually do a little bush in the midst of a mown field He writ this following Letter to his Director upon the same subject Since the time that I gave up my liberty to God signed with my blood as I told you I was given to understand to what a state of annihilation the soul must be brought to render it capable of union with him I saw my soul reduced into a small point contracted and shrunk up to nothing And at the same time I beheld my self as if encompassed with whatsoever the world loves and possesseth and as it were a hand removing all this far from me throwing it into the occan of Annihilation In the first place I saw removed all Exterior things Kingdoms great Offices stately Buildings rich Houshold-stuff Gold and Silver Recreations Pleasures all which are great encombrances to the souls passing on to God of which therefore his pleasure is that she be stripped that she may arrive at the point of nakedness and death which will bring her into possession of solid riches and real life Secondly all Interior things which are more delicate and precious as Acquired Sciences skill and sublime Learning operations of the Memory and strength of Vnderstanding humane Reason experience of Sense of which the soul must likewise be purged and dye to itâ— own proper actions And I perceived that we must come like little Infants simple and innocent separated
answerable to what is still undiscovered within him These were the models after which this servant of God and illuminated soul fashioned himself In a Memorial written the fifth of March 1645. which he gave to his Director to render him an account of that which passed in his Interior he said One time being in the street where coaches passed to and fro and not knowing whether I ought or no look on them that were in them because it was in a place of my acquaintance and whether this would not give some occasion of talk to see that I went in that manner on not looking at all aside I had on a sudden upon my spirit but after a manner that I cannot doubt but it was of God Trouble not thy self about being known and Stand not upon knowing These two words gave me so great light and force that I dwelt more than eight upon this Contemplation That herein consists the greatest aids of the life spiritual and I have it daily for a ground It is certain that since the greatest part of our evils and imperfections come from a desire to be seen and to see this amusement must have in it great venome against the advancement of a soul although she often perceives not the damage nor feels the hurt that comes from it That which defiles our actions of Piety is that self-love makes one glad when they are known and observed men shew always the most fair and hide the foul and insidâ— and all the outside is so composed that the minde is often more taken up about that than about God And very few there are that have not a great part in this vain eying and regard passive and active of the creatures O how these words wrought in me a great separation from the world what purgation and and what purity is it to be upon the earth and there see nought but God! O how undoubtedly such a one would live as if he were not known without caring what the world says or thinks without desire of taking or receiving any part there of knowing or being known of any neither by name livery or visage but according as our Lord did How one would march naked pure and free of spirit I was then in t he midst of the streets and of noise among crouding and justling in such tranquillity so united to God and so much taken up by him as if I had been in a desart and since that time I go thus through the streets yet with liberty to look upon what I should see but without being fixt to it And these words are again sent into my spirit in necessary occurrences and they keep and conserve me in God I am for all that very unfaithful to this Grace but the centre and the ground of it is not blotted out of me and this renders me more culpable Thus we have what was in his Memorial Let us end with what he wrote to a Lady 1643. upon this business of a life that is secret and retired from communion with the creatures to whom he said Let us encourage our selves to lead this life unknown and wholy hid from men but most known to intimate with God divesting our selves chasing out of our mind all those many superfluities and those many amusements which bring with them so great a damage that they take up our mindes instead of God so that when I consider that which thwarts and cuts into so many pieces this holy this sweet and amiable union which we should have continually with God it appears that it is onely a Monsieur a Madam a complement and talking indeed a meer foolery which notwithstanding doth ravish and wrest from us the time that is so precious and the fellowship that is so holy and so desireable Let us quit this I pray you and learn to court it with our own Master let us well understand our part our own world as we here phrase it not that world I mean which we do renounce but that wherein the children of God do their duties to their Father CHAP. 4. Of the disesteem he made of the world THat great affection which he bore to an obscure life was an evident mark of his disesteem of the world for if he had esteemed it he would not have desired to quit it Now to say to what height he mounted in the disesteem of it is a thing very difficult 'T is enough for us to know that he had it in extream contempt by observing as abovesaid how he renounced as far as in him lay all that the world could promise and could give him and wherewith it useth to enslave and captivate men how he degraded himself of his Nobility how he yielded up his goods and stript himself of their property as no otherwise to use them than in quality of a poor man withdrew himself from pleasures rejected the honors dignities to which his birth and excellent perfection gave him very great overtures how he floured all its allurements trampled under foot all its glories He beheld for this end our Lord as his pattern who from his entry into the world and birth made an open profession of an absolute contempt of the world because as he said he was not of the world I finde written by his own hand in a Memorial which he gave to his Director this rare and solid illumination som our Lord in this matter Being saith he in the moneth of November 1644. in a Chappel richly Wainscoted and adorned with very excellent Sculpture and with Imagery I beheld it with some attention having had some skill in these things and saw the bundels of flowers diluces and of flowers in form of borders and of very curious workmanship it was on a sudden put into my minde The original of what thou seest would not detain thee at all in seeing it And I perceived that indeed all these and those flowers themselves and not in picture would not have taken me up and all the ornaments which Architecture and Art inventeth are but things most mean and low running in a manner onely upon Flowers Fruits Branches Harpies and Chymaera's part whereof are in their very being but things common and vile and part of them meerly imaginary and yet man who croucheth to every thing renders himself amorous and a slave of them no otherwise than as if a good workman should stand to copy out and counterfeit some trifles and sopperies I considered by this sight how poor man was to be cheated amused and diverted from his Soveraign good And since that time I could make no more stand to consider any of these things and if I did it I should reproach my self for it as no sooner seeing them in Churches or elsewhere but this is presently put upon my spirit The original is nothing the copy and the image is yet less each thing is vain except the employment of our selves about God alone And in truth a Christian who is nurtured and elevated for
so great things as the possession of God and Eternal glory ought to undervalue all that which is is here below yea how resplendent soever with much more reason than a great King will reject a boot of hay-ropes to which hay indeed the Prophet compares all worldly glories in comparison of his Crown and Kingdom This was the cause that employed this servant of God to animate a Lady to the vilifying of the world by writing to her in this manner I shall tell you that seeing we are not Christians but by the tie the dependence and the life we have of Jesus Christ I wonder how it comes about that a thing so little as man drawn out of nothing in his first original infected with his first Parents sin and the addition of his own raised to so high a degree of honour as the alliance of Christianity gives him in being one onely Christ with the Son of God in being his brother and a co-heir with him in the life to come I wonder I say how after such admirable Prerogatives man can esteem the world and make any account of its vanities Shall he have his heart here and be a man of this world after these considerations The things of the earth whereof death also will quite strip us and for ever shall they fill our hearts in that little time we have to be here to work out our salvation to obtain the treasures prepared for us and to render thanks to God for his mercies should we not make appear to God and men a faith that is altogether lively in quitting freely the things of this world its honours false or at least not profitable its establishments perishable its opinions extravagant and all that which will pass away like a dream even as we see our great Grandfathers are gone and there is no more memory of them their risings and settings their contentments and displeasures which did stick so close to their hearts and which they had so much pain to accommodate to the Law of Jesus Christ and to the genius of their times all this is vanished away Is it not true that we have cause to think them to have been out of their wits if they considered any other thing but God in their ways The same thing will happen to us each thing will pass away and God alone will abide O how good it is to be fastned to him alone He encourageth the same Lady in another Letter thus Courage all is well we must dye to the world and search out the obstacles that it brings to our perfections to condemn them and to live in the world in the Apostles sense as not living there at all possessing it as not possessing it all Let us drive stoutly out of our mindes the complacence and affection to our brave houses let us ruine the delights of our gardens let us burn our Groves let us banish these vain images which we have of our children hiding secretly in the love of them that which is but indeed our own self-love though we seem dead to it and it makes us desire esteem and approve in their persons that which we condemn in our selves to wit the luster and glittering of the world I know there is a difference of conditions but all ought to reject these entailments as men account them upon great birth and noble blood I mean these principles of aspiring to the highest and entertaining no sufferings such principles as these our children carry from that birth we give them but it behoveth that the second birth which we procure them from Jesus Christ do repair these disorders Let us take from them this vanity of minde all these stately demeanors and the examples of these Grandees in story whose punishments are as eminent in hell as their presumption hath been glittering on the earth for otherwise it will be found we shall conduct them to no better end In another Letter he explains to her what he had said concerning her Houses and Gardens and which without this Explication would seem to be very harsh My design said he was not that you should demolish your walls and let run into a rude wilderness your gardens to be more at liberty for God I understand my speech of the disingagements and the ruines which must be made in our mindes and not be executed on things insensible and which have no worth in them but in form When I say we must set all on fire my thoughts were of following that admirable spirit of the Apostle who would that we have poverty among our riches and divestment in the midst of our possessions he means that our spirits be truly purified and separated from the creatures which we really make our solace because a Christian that tends to perfection doth himself great wrong in dwelling upon these amusements and entertaining in his heart other inclinations than those of Jesus Christ who saw all the world without destroying it but withal without applying himself to it the business of his Father and his glory was his life the windings of rivers and the ornaments of fields were to him but things of feeble consideration and not matters of imployment Hither it is that I would have one come and desire no more It is in effect thus That we must contemn the world whereunto God carries us and to bring us thither more efficaciously he permits by turns and often that we receive therein disgraces and meet with pain and trouble as when a man sets thorns in a way to make men take another The which Monsieur de Renty knowing very well see what he writes thereof to a certain person God hath his ends through all these contrarieties which is that those that are his should be yet more his in affiance in recumbency in life and in all The bruite of the world and its turning upside down are advantageous to make known its spirit its confusion its vanity to them that are not of it and who being in the spirit of death wait for nothing more there than for death bringing forth in the mean while the effects of life eternal which is a kinde of advancement out of mortality whilst we are in it CHAP. 5. Of his Patience QUestionless the humble man is patient because he esteems himself worthy of the evil he suffers and of much more also And if we will search into the true cause of our impatiences and drive up to the spring head we shall finde it to be our pride and the esteem of our selves Monsieur de Renty being most humble as we have seen was also by consequence most patient as this Chapter is going to relate And now at first when I am thinking of it there comes into my minde the description that Tertullian makes of patience representing her with a visage sweet and calm a forehead serene without all shew of frowning or sadness a carriage always equal few words and a contenance such as one sees in persons innocent and assured