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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	work_v	world_n	worship_n	61	3	6.5702	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A93143	The holy life of Monr. De Renty, a late nobleman of France and sometimes councellor to King Lewis the 13th. Wrintten [sic] in French by John Baptist S. Jure. And faithfully translated into English, by E.S. Gent.; Vie de Monsieur de Renty. English	Saint-Jure, Jean-Baptiste, 1588-1657.; E. S., Gent.	1657 (1657)	Wing S334; Thomason E1587_2; ESTC R203459	200,696	375

all pollution from them like as the Sun shineth upon a dunghil without taint or imperfection Simplicity quitted him from all multiplicity engagements reflections upon his own Interest Complacencies Vanity passion of Joy or Sadness from any of his own Performances or Speeches from Praise or Dispraise or from the Vices of the Times Places or Persons he conversed with to receive any pollution from them no otherwise than a new-born childe beholdeth a Pageantry which passeth before it which is forgotten as soon as removed Lastly Purity directed his eye in a straight line to God pretending to nothing but his glory in any thing that man had a hand in And this proceeding of his all ought to imitate if they desire to make progress in Vertue and arrive to perfection and particularly those that treat much with their neighbour in the negotiation of his salvation that they may do it with more advantage to him and with no damage to themselves PART IV. His Vertues whereby he was elevated and united to God CHAP. 1. His Interiour and his Application to the Sacred Trinity ALthough what we have hitherto said of the Heroick Vertues and famous Actions of Monsieur Renty which had respect either to his own perfection or the good of his neighbour is very remarkable Yet the principal and more admirable is that which remains viz. The state of his Interiour and his communication with God So David saith that the Kings-daughter is all glorious within and the Holy Ghost setteth forth in lofty expressions the Spouse in the Canticles for the beauty of her face and of her whole body But it addes that nothing could sufficiently be uttered concerning the hidden graces of her Soul and Interiour which were far more charming and attractive even as the chief excellencies of our B. Saviour consisted not in his Exteriour or in those things he did either for himself or for men but in the intimate union he had with God and those actions he produced in the profundity of his Spirit towards him In like manner our perfection consists not in our good works which appear outwardly nor in the exercises of Charity Humility Poverty and the like Vertues open to the eye but in the application of our spirit to God and our union with him by the acts of vertue and chiefly of the three Theological ones It consisteth I say in honouring and adoring him in the Temple of our souls in performing to him there the Sacrifices of a lively Faith upon the Altar of our Understanding in offering up the Holocausts of perfect Hope and ardent Charity upon the Altar of our Will and in a total subjection of our spirits to his and an union of all our faculties with him whereby we become purified sanctified and deified proportionably as the blessed Saints are in heaven where this perfection is compleated This was Monsieur Renties practice whereby he had a true feeling of S. Pauls words Your life is hid with God through Jesus Christ concerning which he expressed his thoughts thus to a friend There is nothing in this world so separate from the world as God and the greater the Saints are the greater is their retirement into him This our Saviour taught us whilst he lived on earth being in all his visible employments united to God and retired into the bosom of his Father His principal care was incessantly to cultivate and adorn his soul to unite it intimately to God by the operations of his understanding and will to give up himself with all his strength to this hidden and divine life of Faith Hope and Charity of Religion of a mystical Death and entire Abnegation of himself Some years before his death his particular attractive was the contemplation of the B. Trinity being the last end in which all must terminate Whereof he gave this account to his Spiritual Guide in the year 1645. I carry about with me ordinarily an experimental verity and a plenitude of the presence of the Holy Trinity And in another Letter thus All things vanish out of my fancy as soon as they appear nothing is permanent in me but God through a naked faith which causing me to resign my self up to my Saviour affordeth me strength and confidence in God the Trinity in that the operation of the three Divine persons is manifested to me in a distinct manner viz. The love of the Father which reconcileth us by his Son the Father and the Son who give us life through the Holy Spirit the H. Spirit which causeth us to live in in Communion with Jesus Christ which worketh in us a marvellous alliance with the Sacred Trinity and produceth often in our hearts by faith such inward feelings as cannot be expressed He writ also to a confident friend and one that was much devoted to this Sacred Mysterie How that the proper and special effect of Christian grace is to make us know God in the Trinity uniting us to the Son who causeth us to work by his Spirit And to say the truth we are consecrated by our Baptism to the worship of the B. Trinity Therein we are consecrated to his Glory receive its Seal and put on its Badge and Livery to manifest to us and to all the world that we are perfectly and absolutely its own He writ to the same party in the year 1648. on the same subject The Feast of the blessed Trinity giveth me this occasion to write that we may renew our selves in the honour and dependance we have upon this incomparable Mysterie I desire to joyn hearts with you to adore that which we are not able to express Let us melt into an acknowledgement thereof and fo●tifie our selves by the grace of Faith through Christ to be perfected in this adorable Mysterie Infinite things might be spoken which my heart resenteth of the latitude of this grace but I cannot utter them I beseech you let us adore God let us adore Jesus Christ let us adore the holy Spirit which Spirit discovereth unto us the operations of love and mercy of these Divine Persons in us and let us make good use thereof The same year he clearly expressed his condition and the manner of wholly applying himself ●o●th Sacred Trinity how that his soul was most entirele united to the three Divine Persons from whence he received illuminations that surpassed all humane understanding how he lived perpetually retired and locked up as it were with the Son of God in the bosom of his Father Where this Son became his Light his Life and Love and the holy Spirit his Guide his Sanctification and Perfection how he did bear within himself the Kingdom of God which he explained by a resemblance of what the Blessed enjoy in heaven by vertue of that view and transcendent knowledge of the sacred Trinity which was communicated to him and that pure Love by which he felt his heart inflamed and as it were transformed into God in whom he possessed a joy and repose beyond all expression That

his labour and vertue which had made this blessed work in him and had changed his nature for they that knew his youth report that naturally he was of a swelling hasty haughty and jeering disposition which he had so corrected or to say better annihilated that in truth it was admirable insomuch that he was become moderate staid patient humble and respectful in a degree of consummate perfection So that if we consider him well a man may say that he was of a disposition quite contrary and diametrically opposite to that which he brought from his mothers womb teaching us by an example so assured and illustrious that a man may prevail much over himself if he endeavour it sincerely and that whatever vice he hath he may at last rid himself of it if he force himself according to those words of our Lord The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force And therefore he recommended in a special manner this holy courage and the necessity of self-enforcement as being that by which we may measure what profit we have made in true vertue and a means also absolutely necessary for the gaining of perfection He wrote to a person that practised devotion thus O how much to be feared is it that we cheat our selves with the name and the appearances of devotion relying much on our exercises of piety which it may be are barely performed and in speculation onely never coming to the practise nor to the conquest over our selves In the morning we worship Jesus Christ as our Master and Director and yet our life all the day following is not directed by him we look upon him as our pattern and imitate him not we take him for our rule and guide of our affections and yet we do not sacrifice to him our appetites we make him the model of our conversation which yet is never the more holy we promise him to labour and get above our selves but it s no more than in imagination The truth is that if we know not our devotion rather by the violence and enforcement we make upon our selves and the amendment of our manners than by the multiplication and simple usage of spiritual exercises it is to be feared they will be rather practises of Condemnation than of Sanctification For after all to what purpose all this if the work follow not if we change not our selves and destroy not that which is vitious in our nature It is no otherwise but as if a builder should pile together many materials towards making of a brave Edifice and yet never begin it And yet we see the work of Jesus Christ is almost reduced to this pass amongst the spiritual persons of these times He said to another that the love which a Christian soul was obliged to bear to he vertues which Jesus Christ hath taught us ought not to end in the simple sentiments of esteem and respect toward them whereby souls of the common sort are easily perswaded that they have done their duty but therein they deceive themselves for that our Lords will is undoubtedly that they make a further entry into the solidity of his Divine practises specially in Mortification Patience Poverty and Renouncement of our selves and that is the cause why there are so few souls truly Christian and solidly spiritual yea even sometimes amongst the Religious was this that men contented themselves to make a stand at this first step I will end this Chapter and this Second Part with a Letter which he writ to his Director who had thought it fit for him to visit a person that had great need of succour and instruction for some spiritual dispositions which he performed with much success and benediction This Letter dated the 14 of May in the year 1647. will make us well see the great disengagement that he had from himself and his perfect Mortification attended with gifts inestimable and his great light whereby he clears and explicates matters of great subtilty The tenour is as followeth For the person whom you know and the visit I made him it is God and your direction that hath done all I am so much afraid to mingle therein any thing of mine that going to the place where he is yet I perceive I shall not visit him without a new order from you or that he much desire it I have not since that time so much as sent any commendations to him considering with my self that we must keep the man reserved and in great sobriety And I thought it fit to cast all this upon you as my guide in the business Ha Father the great imperfection of souls is the not waiting enough on God the natural disposition strugling and not brought into subjection comes in with fine pretexts and thinks to do wonders and in the mean while it is that which sullies the purity of the Soul that which troubles its silence and turns aside its sight from Faith from Affiance and from Love whence it hapneth that the Father of Lights expresseth not in us his Eternall Word nor produceth in us his Spirit of Love The Incarnation hath merited all not onely for the abolition of our faults but also for all the dispositions of grace whereunto Jesus Christ is minded to ●ssociate us of which this is the principal and was in him so far as he was man to do nothing our selves but to speak and act according as we receive knowing that we alone are not to do the work but that the holy Spirit which is the Spirit of Jesus and which governed him in all his ways is within us which would stamp upon us his impressions and give us the life the life real and experimental of our faith if ballasted and held back by patience we would but wait his operation This is it in which I feel my infirmity and yet whither I finde a great attractive I see that which I cannot utter for I possess that which I cannot express And the cause Father why I am so brief comes both from the imperfection of my natural disposition and from ignorance as also from a great largeness of the Divine goodness which works in me that which I cannot utter The effect of this is a fulness and a satiating of the truth and clearness of the magnificence of God of the greatness of Jesus Christ and of the riches which we have in him of the most Holy Virgin and of the Saints one sees here all praise and adoration and comtemplates them within I tell you here of many things me seems and yet all this is done with one draught so simple and so strong in the superiour part of the Spirit that I am nothing diverted from it by any exteriour employments I see all I understand all and I do though it be ill all that I have to do This is that I present you with to receive therein from you instruction and correction Thus we see the admirable benefits that come from perfect Mortification and

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 it● own proper actions And I perceived that we must come like little Infants simple and innocent separated