all pollution from them like as the Sun shineth upon a dunghil without taint or imperfection Simplicity quitted him from all multiplicity engagements reflections upon his own Interest Complacencies Vanity passion of Joy or Sadness from any of his own Performances or Speeches from Praise or Dispraise or from the Vices of the Times Places or Persons he conversed with to receive any pollution from them no otherwise than a new-born childe beholdeth a Pageantry which passeth before it which is forgotten as soon as removed Lastly Purity directed his eye in a straight line to God pretending to nothing but his glory in any thing that man had a hand in And this proceeding of his all ought to imitate if they desire to make progress in Vertue and arrive to perfection and particularly those that treat much with their neighbour in the negotiation of his salvation that they may do it with more advantage to him and with no damage to themselves PART IV. His Vertues whereby he was elevated and united to God CHAP. 1. His Interiour and his Application to the Sacred Trinity ALthough what we have hitherto said of the Heroick Vertues and famous Actions of Monsieur Renty which had respect either to his own perfection or the good of his neighbour is very remarkable Yet the principal and more admirable is that which remains viz. The state of his Interiour and his communication with God So David saith that the Kings-daughter is all glorious within and the Holy Ghost setteth forth in lofty expressions the Spouse in the Canticles for the beauty of her face and of her whole body But it addes that nothing could sufficiently be uttered concerning the hidden graces of her Soul and Interiour which were far more charming and attractive even as the chief excellencies of our B. Saviour consisted not in his Exteriour or in those things he did either for himself or for men but in the intimate union he had with God and those actions he produced in the profundity of his Spirit towards him In like manner our perfection consists not in our good works which appear outwardly nor in the exercises of Charity Humility Poverty and the like Vertues open to the eye but in the application of our spirit to God and our union with him by the acts of vertue and chiefly of the three Theological ones It consisteth I say in honouring and adoring him in the Temple of our souls in performing to him there the Sacrifices of a lively Faith upon the Altar of our Understanding in offering up the Holocausts of perfect Hope and ardent Charity upon the Altar of our Will and in a total subjection of our spirits to his and an union of all our faculties with him whereby we become purified sanctified and deified proportionably as the blessed Saints are in heaven where this perfection is compleated This was Monsieur Renties practice whereby he had a true feeling of S. Pauls words Your life is hid with God through Jesus Christ concerning which he expressed his thoughts thus to a friend There is nothing in this world so separate from the world as God and the greater the Saints are the greater is their retirement into him This our Saviour taught us whilst he lived on earth being in all his visible employments united to God and retired into the bosom of his Father His principal care was incessantly to cultivate and adorn his soul to unite it intimately to God by the operations of his understanding and will to give up himself with all his strength to this hidden and divine life of Faith Hope and Charity of Religion of a mystical Death and entire Abnegation of himself Some years before his death his particular attractive was the contemplation of the B. Trinity being the last end in which all must terminate Whereof he gave this account to his Spiritual Guide in the year 1645. I carry about with me ordinarily an experimental verity and a plenitude of the presence of the Holy Trinity And in another Letter thus All things vanish out of my fancy as soon as they appear nothing is permanent in me but God through a naked faith which causing me to resign my self up to my Saviour affordeth me strength and confidence in God the Trinity in that the operation of the three Divine persons is manifested to me in a distinct manner viz. The love of the Father which reconcileth us by his Son the Father and the Son who give us life through the Holy Spirit the H. Spirit which causeth us to live in in Communion with Jesus Christ which worketh in us a marvellous alliance with the Sacred Trinity and produceth often in our hearts by faith such inward feelings as cannot be expressed He writ also to a confident friend and one that was much devoted to this Sacred Mysterie How that the proper and special effect of Christian grace is to make us know God in the Trinity uniting us to the Son who causeth us to work by his Spirit And to say the truth we are consecrated by our Baptism to the worship of the B. Trinity Therein we are consecrated to his Glory receive its Seal and put on its Badge and Livery to manifest to us and to all the world that we are perfectly and absolutely its own He writ to the same party in the year 1648. on the same subject The Feast of the blessed Trinity giveth me this occasion to write that we may renew our selves in the honour and dependance we have upon this incomparable Mysterie I desire to joyn hearts with you to adore that which we are not able to express Let us melt into an acknowledgement thereof and foâ—tifie our selves by the grace of Faith through Christ to be perfected in this adorable Mysterie Infinite things might be spoken which my heart resenteth of the latitude of this grace but I cannot utter them I beseech you let us adore God let us adore Jesus Christ let us adore the holy Spirit which Spirit discovereth unto us the operations of love and mercy of these Divine Persons in us and let us make good use thereof The same year he clearly expressed his condition and the manner of wholly applying himself â—oâ—th Sacred Trinity how that his soul was most entirele united to the three Divine Persons from whence he received illuminations that surpassed all humane understanding how he lived perpetually retired and locked up as it were with the Son of God in the bosom of his Father Where this Son became his Light his Life and Love and the holy Spirit his Guide his Sanctification and Perfection how he did bear within himself the Kingdom of God which he explained by a resemblance of what the Blessed enjoy in heaven by vertue of that view and transcendent knowledge of the sacred Trinity which was communicated to him and that pure Love by which he felt his heart inflamed and as it were transformed into God in whom he possessed a joy and repose beyond all expression That
of a Christian life and the fulfilling of Gods will was to him after the example of our Lord as most exquisite and delitious meat and viands and when any gave him opportunity or left him to his liberty to practise this Mortification it pleased him exceedingly Often at Paris when some deed of charity had drawn him far from home that he could not return to dinner he would step in all alone or unknown to a small Victualling-house or some Bakers shop and make his dinner with a piece of bread and a draught of water and so very gay and chearfull go on with his business And what he pracrised for the mortifying of his gust was in like manner done for his other senses the sight the hearing the smell and the touch Being come to Pontois on a very cold day in winter and lodging at the Carmelite Nuns he desired earnestly the Nun that was the Door-keeper to have no fire made nor bed prepared for him and after he had discoursed with some of them he old the last that he must go make some little visits and that was to visit the Prisoners the poor that were ashamed to beg and to employ himself in some other deeds of charity which he never forgot at any time how little soever was his leisure He returned about nine a clock at night when the Nuns went to say Matins and without taking any thing to eat went into the Church to his prayers which he continued till eleven a clock and then retired into his chamber not suffering a fire to be made for him although by his own confession the cold did incommode him very much He constantly kept a vigilant eye over himself in every time place occasion and even in the meanest things for the mortifying of his body daily putting it to some hardship or at least hindring it from sense of pleasure And to that end had found out some very notable and ingenious inventions so bearing continually about him the mortification of the Lord Jesus in his body that the life of Jesus might live and shine forth in it well knowing as the same Apostle elsewhere saith That those that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lust thereof And to say the truth the more a man is full of one thing the less room there is for its contrary the more one sinks into darkness the further off from light and as we said above there is nothing more opposite to the Spirit than the flesh so must we of necessity conclude the more a man pampers his flesh the more doth he indispose and estrange himself from the life of the Spirit Thus this illuminated person dealt with his body as with his enemy out of the design he had to lead a life truly spiritual Whatsoever might content and flatter his senses was insupportable to him whence it happened that one day there slipt from him this word to a confident that God had given him a great hatred of himself and this was advanc'd so far by his fervent and unsatiable desire of mortifying himself that beside the moderation that his Director was obliged to lay upon him a famous person of our days the Carmelite Nun of the Covent of Beaulne Sister Margaret of the Holy Sacrament who lived and dyed in a fragrant odour of Sanctity with whom he was most intimate in the bonds of grace did out of divine light she had in that matter much reprehend him for it and gave him her advice in the business whereunto for the confidence he had in her and that not without good cause being willing to yield he remitted something of his rigour although not without complaint which he testified to a person thus in writing I know not said he why one stould strive to keep in so lazy a beast that stands more in need of the spur than bridle For all he was thus held in he left not off the war which he made with his body in each thing he could but without transgressing the Orders he had received till he thereby came to such a point of perfect Mortification that his body became as it were dead and insenâ—ble in all things which now in a manner made no impression upon his senses eating without gust himself saying that all meats were to him alike seeing as it were without sight so that after he had been along time in some Churches most richly adorned with stately ornaments and those before his eyes when one asked if they were not very fine he answered plainly that he had seen nothing By reason of his Mortification he had no pain nor trouble at all from those things which make other men so fret and take on who are alive to themselves and enslav'd to their bodies neither was he onely without pain but which as Arâ—stotle saith is the highest perfection of a vertue he took great pleasure therein which came not to him so much from abundance of sensible consolations which may sweeten Austerities to an unmortified man but from the ground and bottom of vertue intirely acquir'd and possessed CHAP. 2. Of his Poverty SECT 1. Of his Poverty of spirit ONe of the most great and admirable Vertues that shone in Monsieur de Renty was this that in the possession of riches he was utterly disingaged from the love of them and possessed in a most high degree as we shall now declare the first of the Beatitudes which pronounceth Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven of grace in this world and of glory in the other A truth which served him for a powerful attractive to endeavour the gaining of this rich treasure Whereof writing to a person of Pietie he thus said I was the other day touch'd in reading the eight Beatudes and upon this word Beatitude I took notice that in effect there were no other Beatitudes but these for if there had our Lord would have taught them and therefore those ought to be our whole study But what shall I say we ground not our selves upon them nor desire the grace to do it but run after the Beatitudes of the world and our own Concupiscience quitting that which is clear and given us by our head Christ Jesus to be in a state of hurley-burley and confusion and consequently of trouble danger and unhappiness It was not to these kinde of Beatitudes that he ran but to those of the Gospel and in particular to the first concerning which le ts hear what one saith of him a person very credible and of his intimate acquaintance I never sew mâ—n said he in so perfect a poverty of spirit nor in so ardent a desire to feel the effects of it as was he And in the fervour of his desire he said to me Procure by your prayers that we may change this form of life when will you labour with God that this may be this habit and this wealth is to me most painful I have talked since his death
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
that either by his sloth he was not answerable to their extent or that by the sole misery of nature he used them and made them lose some part of their force as it happens to Plants of the Levant which removed into a strange soil do not retain their vertue but degenerate and savour of the earth they are removed to And if the spiritual things of nature are allayed and corrupted in their passage through our senses how much more reason is there to think that the Divine and spiritual things of grace will there become enfeebled and altered These considerations rendred him most humble even in the greatest gifts of God and in things of most sublimity SECT 2. The pursuance of his Humility in heart AS the affections we bear to any thing are always founded upon the esteem we make of it so Monsieur de Renty esteeming himself so low so little and nothing in consequence thereof did extreamly abase and vilipend himself within his heart This he did in every thing and one of his strongest inclinations according to grace which is a great token of the Spirit of God in a soul was to be always condemning of himself He wrote to his Director I have at the same time two apprehensions quite contrary the one to avow to you with thankful acknowledgement to God that he fills me with effects of his goodness and impressions of his Kingdom and the other that I am more disposed to condemn than to regard my self for upon the whole what I do is pittiful Another time after some speech to him of many great enlightnings and excellent sentiments which God had communicated to him he told him I rest not upon all this I told you onely what is past to render you an account not making use of my judgement but to condemn my self for vices suspending it as to other things and committing it to God He wrote to another Confident I know not what will become of our business one must not speak a word in sweetness and patience but I shall lose my credit somewhat if this could be throughly lost it would be great justice Alas if no body endur'd me and all the world condemn'd me my pride perhaps would be humbled Carried on by this Spirit he had an ardent desire though always with his ordinary tranquillity and giving himself up to the orders of God to receive some disgrace If I were to wish any thing it should be to be much humbled and nullified and to be treated as an off-scouring by others This would be my joy but I believe I deserve not so great a favour This desire carried him to such a point that had he not been withheld with the consideration of greater good he had done strange things to be disesteemed and receive confusion Out of this sentiment and abundance of his heart he said thus to one I should have great pleasure if it were permitted me to go naked in my shirt through the streets of Paris to make my self disesteemed and taken for a fool Whence we must observe two things the first that God gives sometimes to holy souls some thoughts affections and desires so raised above the common pitch and humane reason that they may seem extravagant as this here which he gave to Monsieur de Renty and which was before him also in our founder S. Ignatius The second is that we must not at all put in execution such desires till before hand they have been well examined and justly weighed in the ballance of Charity and edification of our Neighbour This burning desire which he had to be diesteemed made him seek for and love his own abjection and when it came to take it not onely with patience but also which is the highest step that one can mount in humility with joy He gave an evident and notable testimony thereof in the first journey he made to Dijon whither a suit that he had with the Lady his Mother and which to him by an extraordinary dispensation of God was one of the greatest exercises of patience and humiliation that he underwent in all his life of which I shall speak more at large in the following Chapter had obliged him to go for thus he wrote to his Director the 24. of July 1643. I am at Dijon now seeing God is so pleased where I have learnt by the prejudicate opinions that were entertained concerning me what it is that God would draw from my journey which is that I lead a life secret and unknown to men in the spirit of penance The bruit which they had spread concerning me was that I was a Bigot and had nothing but artifices and shews of devotion for the colouring of my naughtiness that indeed I have kept my self much private in my closet out of fear to give by coming abroad rather scandal than any example of vertue I have found a generality that sollicited against me though such as from whom I had good cause methinks for divers good reasons to hope for a prop than from any other but have found the quite contrary But so also as God hereby hath done me many favours I have been to see them where I have received humiliation with great joy I have been very wary of opening my self in any thing that might recommend me unto them I have onely done in my business what truth required and for any thing else I made it matter of confusion and humiliation as I ought to do I shall be here I believe as one excommunicate and the Scape-Goat of the old Law chased into the wilderness for my enormous sins for which I am of opinion God would have me do penance not by meer pain onely but by such as withal brings shame and confusion with it I tell you this to render you some account not dwelling on it any longer my sole scope being to love God and to condemn my self SECT 3. His Humility in words THe Humility of heart in which Monsieur de Renty was deeply rooted produced in him the Humility of speech which hindred him ever from speaking any word that savoured of vaunting or that carryed the least tincture of arrogance and esteem of himself or which was uttered in a haughty manner or in a tone imperious or conceited but on the contrary they were all of them tempered with humility and modesty and as he deemed himself to be indeed a sinner lazy ungrateful perfidious ignorant so did he set forth and qualifie himself with these names and titles We have seen hereof already something before whereto we will adde also this which he writ to a certain person I am to speak the truth but an Idiot a poor Layick and a sinner Writing to a Priest he said What do I an unclean one and a Plebeian in grace and in condition in the Church who live in a state that Jesus Christ refused for himself I speak to a Priest and to the anointed of the Lord my God if I should make a reflection
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 â—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
honour or disgrace that passed not through my spirit and which my soul would not readily have embraced for the advancement of his glory Here a man would be content to be a King to govern all or the meanest Beggar or most miserable Wretch to suffer all for him and this without reason through an excess of reason It is an impossible thing to understand how in so short time the soul should wish such different things and a large discourse would be too narrow to declare one circumstance thereto belonging All I could do in this condition was to give up my liberty to God writing the Deed in paper and signing it with my own blood See here the zeal of a man all on fire with the love of God where likewise his conformity to his will an infallible mark of this love is very observeable Those persons who knew him perfectly report that this intimate union of his will to Gods will was one of his singular graces and himself declared that he was constantly in this blessed frame to which he had applied himself more particularly for several years in which he made it evidently appear that the object and end of all his actions was the Divine will into which his own was wholly absorpt He writ thus to one concerning the sickness and death of the Countess of Castres to whom he had as we have formerly mentioned a very near relation founded upon grace I must tell you that during my absence from the Countess of Castres my heart was tenderly sensible of her pain knowing that she suffered very much But my desire submits to the Order of God and when that is signified to me he gives me grace to obey Coming to Paris I received the news of her death when I resigned my self wholly to God attending his good pleasure for what would follow Another time he writ thus to his Director I have been held these three weeks with a seavour together with a defluxion and an exceeding great weakness and my frame of spirit during this condition hath been a simple prosecution of and adherence to the will and pleasure of God I discover nothing in particular worth writing to you saving that I have a heart ready to receive any afflictions that can befall me I desire whatever is decreed from above and beg it with all my heart We have set down before how that in the year 1641. one of his children whom he dearly loved departed this life When the news was brought him he spake not one word nor shewed the least disturbance but absolutely submitted to the order of God corresponding thereunto in a perfect reconciliation of his own affection to the childe and his great loss of him At the end of the year 1643. his Lady fell desperately sick even to death being left of all her Physicians speechless and without sense but he notwithstanding the deep resentment of such a heavy loss and a business that touched him to the quick manifested such an absolute conformity to the will of God as brake forth into these words I cannot deny but my nature is deeply affected with the sense of so great a loss yet my spirit is filled with so wonderful a joy to see my self in such a state as to give up and sacrifice to my God a thing so near and dear to me that if civility did not forbid it I would make appear outwardly and give some publique testimony of my readiness thereunto By this heroick deportment he evidenced that the will of God was so absolutely his that he not onely will'd that which he will'd though never so difficult but that he willed it as God doth that is with much pleasure and content for so God doth not simply will and act things but wills and acts them with infinite it delight being in himself most infinitely happy But pleased God to restore his Lady to her health with respect as we may piously imagine to this heroical carriage of his faithful servant as likewise to avow he made to our blessed Lady for the obtaining thereof Neither did his conformity onely go thus far but advanced further yet even to things of a higher consideration referring to his perfection and salvation for notwithstanding that he earnestly aspired to Holiness and endeavoured thereafter with an unspeakable courage fervour and diligence yet all this was with an entire resignation of himself to the designs of God concerning himself For opening his case to this Director upon this point he writ thus My present condition consists in an adherence of my will to whatsoever God is pleasad concerning me and this I am sensible of from the bottom of my soul I have of late undergone very great aridities of spirit except some few intervals where all is said open and my soul resigneth herself to God in an inexplicable manner from which she remains full of certainty and of truths which will not easily vanish though they cannot without difficulty be unfolded Having writ and signed with his own blood a Deed of Gift of his Liberty as we have mentioned before he writ thus to the same person concerning it From that instant God hath bestowed upon me such a conformity to his will that as I acknowledge all things to be guided by his hand so likewise I receive every thing from it And to another intimate friend he writ thus The party meaning himself hath since that time felt such a wonderful great conformity to the will of God that he can will nothing but what God willeth neither can he understand how any man should will any thing else this makes every thing pass smoothly and currently This disposition of spirit made him look upon things not in themselves but as contain'd in the will of God and this he gave as a chief advice to attain to perfection It behoveth a soul saith he to give up it self to God walking on in simplicity in all its operations applying it self to every thing not for the thing it self but in order to the will of God not engaged at all to it but to God obeying and honouring him in every thing And from this perfect subordination to the will of God sprung his admirable Tranquillity of minde and from this fountain flowed those rivers of peace and profound repose which he possessed in so great perfection that from the most sudden surprizals his spirit was not altered one jot neither were his inferiour faculties of body put into any disorder as himself acknowledgeth For thus he writ to me one day I comprehend not that thing you call Mortification If one lives in this estate of Conformity for such finding no resistance in his spirit is not capable of it Who so willeth whatever God willeth is daily content let what will happen CHAP. 5. His great Reverence and Fear of God which produceth in him a most admirable purity of Conscience ONe of the most excellent dispositions of the soul in her Interiour life is that of great Reverence
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