in this estate he had a conformity with the Son of God by a participation and fellowship both in his Beatitude and Sufferings which he endured here below and that by his holy Spirit were accomplished in him the mysteries of the whole Pilgrimage of our Saviour in this world rendring him as a daily sacrifice to the B. Trinity breathing after the Resurrection and his perfect Consummation in Glory Suâ—h was the disposition of this holy man towards the B. Trinity in which he passed his latter years and in which he dyed finishing his sacrifice and was often wont to say That when a man is call'd up hither he must abide there without any changing Being guided this way and treading these pathes he made an admirable progress to the highest pitch of perfection attainable in this life each Person in the sacred Trinity working in his soul wonderful impressions of grace sealing him with their particular characters and sanctifying him in an extraordinary manner The Father kept him alway retired and recollected in his own bosom where he bestowed upon him a large share of his own infinite inclination to communicate himself to others and of this blessed Celestial Fecundity in begetting children not of flesh and blood but of the Spirit enflaming his heart with a paternal and maternal love towards mankinde from whence did flow that unparalell'd charity whereof we have spoken The Son transformed him into a lively image of God through the resemblance of his own perfections bestowing on him a filial spirit to acquit himself towards him in all his endeavors with that singular reverence saith confidence love obedience as is required from a Son to a Father bringing him into such a condition as that God spake to him Interiourly producing in him his word accompanied with such power and strength as was able to touch mens souls and work in them the blessed fruits of salvation The Holy Ghost that infinite pure and reciprocal love of the Father to the Son and of the Son to the Father cleansed him from all the impurities of self-love and self-seeking enflamed him with a perfect love towards God taught him the way of spiritualizing all material things of sanctifying all indifferent things of extracting good out of all evil and finally of leading a life truly spiritual after the grand pattern of our Saviour This he expressed in brief in a Letter to his Director writ in the year 1647. The Divine goodness worketh in me that which I am not able to express I possess even the B. Trinity and finde distinctly in my self the operations of the three Divine Persons CHAP. 2. His Faith THe better to take this Spiritual Life in pieces we will begin with his Faith the prime Theological Vertue which Gulielmus Parisiensis calls the Primum Vivens of the soul and S. Paul the first step we make in our advance towards God This blessed man studied with particular care a solid foundation in this vertue knowing the incredible consequence thereof for a spiritual life and how all other vertues depend on it as on their Root their Rule and Measure O how good a thing saith he in one of his Letters is it to live of Faith I seem to understand this Vertue every day better and better Those that are established in this the life by which the just live according to S. Paul are at length compleated to Perfection and enjoy here the first fruits of glory He possessed this grace in so high a degree that he was more ascertained of the presence of God of the verity of the mysteries of our Faith than of the shining of the Sun He truly lived by Faith this was the path in which he walked working all by the spirit thereof Hereby he looked upon things not onely with his corporal eyes but with those that pierced deeper considering them not according to their present or past condition or the order of nature but their future and eternal according to their relation to grace and glory regarding nothing but as it was or might be a means of â—â—s own or others salvation All his works were performed by the hand of Faith which proves strong and effectual which more willingly handles Ulcers and the loathsome soars of poor people than gallants do Sattins or Velvets The pure and vigorous Faith of the primitive Christians said he caused them to act without those conveniences and necessaries which we stand upon which indeed argue the decay and weakness of Faith such heroick actions as we onely now admire these assuredly lived by Faith without any form and composition of their own proper spirit in great Simplicity Efficacy and Verity Being fortified by this Faith he was wont to say that he felt no difficulty at all when our Saviour sensibly deserted him for a time and sent him great aridities attributing all those inquietudes impatience and anxities which we labour under in this estate of privation to the want of this grace I have taken out of one of his Letters what he writ to this purpose We seldom meet with persons addicted to prayer that can behave themselves prudently under Interior derelictions or that can have patience to wait for some time at the door of sensible consolations and enlightnings without making a forcible entry that do not chafe themselves and cast this way and that way and seek by their own means to procure them seeking for another support than that of Faith which alone should suffice any spiritual man These sensible gusts are but sent as supplements of the littleness and cordials for the faintings of faith But the just should live by faith and upon that foundation rest himself in expectation of our Saviour with patience Our inconveniences arise from hence that we are a people of little faith to discern things by its light although we often pretend to know more than really we do To another he writ concerning this point upon the subject of the Centurions faith thus Where shall we meet with a Faith comparable to that of the Centurion Alas what a shame is this to our Spiritual persons who talk much of Faith but indeed have little more than the sound scarce any thing of the truth and effect thereof how few are there that can bear the afflictions of spirit or body with a naked Faith and such a simplicity as sooketh remedy onely from God and maketh use of patience when comfort doth not appear so soon as expected We all covet to enjoy Jesus Christ sensibly and that he would come to our houses to cure our anxieties And for want of these sensible comforts the Spirit runs and wanders on all hands seeking repose but findes it not because indeed it is not to be found in her action but onely in her sacrifice made in Faith which brings down the Spirit of Christ which is our strength and life in the midst of troubles and of death The Centurien was ashamed and confounded that Christ would come to his house
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
the more he may make you grow in the holy use of your suffering to accomplish perfectly in your person what S. Paul saith Absit mihi gloriari nisi in cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi God forbid that I should glory in any thing save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ I assure you it is a great shame to a Christian to pass his days in this world more at ease than Jesus Christ here passed his Ah! had we but a little faith what repose could we take out of the Cross But if all have not this grace how much ought they to whom it is given to cherish it seeing it is a mark of the high degree of glory that they one day shall possess for who doubts but that in proportion as we shall be conformed to the death of the Son of God and to his pain we shall in the same degree be to his glory and receive the recompence thereof in bliss And afterwards teaching him the way of well-suffering he gives him this advice which contains all the secret But the beauty of suffering is in the interior in the holy dispositions of Jesus Christ who is and it is a thing to be well marked and always studied as well the model as the head of all sufferers And to another out of the same thought he said It is a great favour to suffer All the worlds deceiv'd supposing this a common favour it is very rare It is true we may say that many suffer but of them there are very few that suffer in the dispositions of Jesus Christ very few which suffer with a perfect resignment to what God ordains concerning them very few without some inquietude and dwelling in their thoughts upon their pressures few that give up all events to the conduct of God without making reflection thereupon for to employ themselves entirely in his praise and to give way by our acquiescence and submission for him to exercise all his rights and power over us He fortifies and encourageth in this sort a Lady much in pain Few understand the secret of Christianity many call themselves Christians and few have the spirit thereof many in their prayers and ordinary affairs look up to heaven but in their important actions they are children of nature not looking but on the earth whence if they life up their eyes to heaven it is but to complain and pray him to condescend to their desires and not to shew their acceptance of his They give some small things to God but will retain those which their love ties them to and if he separate them from them it is a violence and a dismembring which he must make and to which they cannot consent as though the life of Christians were not a life of sacrifice and an Imitation of Jesus Christ crucified God who knows our wretchedness takes from us for our greater good the cause of our evil a Parent a Childe a Husband that he may by another evil which is affliction draw us to himself and make us see that all these alliances and connexions to whatsoever it be that separates us from him are so many obstacles of so great importance that one day in the face of all the creatures we shall confess that the greatest mercy that he ever did us was to free us of them It is a wormwood-bitter onely to the mouth and taste but wholesome to the heart kills the old Adam to make alive in us Jesus Christ it is a great winter which is the assurance of the beauty of the other seasons But we must beware that what is given us out of favour we take not as a thing by chance or a misfortune for this would be to turn the remedy into poyson and to receive the grace to chase it away Let us enter into the holy and adorable disposition which was always in Jesus Christ to suffer willingly for the honour of his Father and for our salvation Is not this a strange thing that men knowing that the way which Jesus Christ past thorow to glory was ignominy pain and the cross yet they that call themselves his disciples and followers should expect and beg of him for themselves another way to walk in Is the Disciple greater than the Master and if the head willingly passed that way what remains for the members ought not they to follow him Let us therefore go after him and suffer after his model Blessed be sickness the loss of honour of riches of goods and of the nearest things and the separation from all creatures which hold us bowed towards the earth if it set us streight and make us lift up our eyes to heaven and to enter into the designs that God hath over us Blessed be the plague the war and the famine and generally all the scourges of God which produce these effects of grace and salvation in us I conclude in these words which he sent to another person While we live here it is our season of patience where faith and hope would be unprofitable if all were clear and nothing caused us to suffer It is in the obscurity of this desertion and in all the sorts of tryals as well from within as without that those vertues are established in our souls and that they make us hope wall of our salvation SECT 2. His Domestick crosses THe greatest exercise of patience that Monsieur Renty ever had in all his life was that which was given him by the Lady his Mother who whether she were angry that he was so forward in devotion always among Prisons always among Hospitals always employed in actions low and abject in the eyes of the world far beneath as she thought his birth and that she should have been glad to see him in glistering and glorious employments wherein his Ancestors had appeared or were it that she was pushed thereto by some evil counsel or otherways So it was that she gave him and for a long time matter of suffering and one may say that as she contributed much to the making him man so she contributed much to the making him a perfect Christian The case was thus The Lady pretending to great rights in the goods which her deceased husband had bequeathed to her Son did demand the same of him who with great submission and respect gave her all that he believed was her due and over and above but she not content therewith demanded more which her son finding by advice of learned Counsel that it could not be done without wrong to his children did remit the business to Arbitrators and agreed for the satisfaction of his mother that she should chose them all as she pleased persons of ability and honesty of her acquaintance and such as he knew not at all to determine what he might give her without prejudice to his conscience When they were chosen he went to finde them out and prayed them to content the Lady his mother in every thing that might lawfully be done without having
deeply affected to see these things and came and fell down at his feet Monsieur Renty did the like to him continuing in that posture for a long time resolving not to rise before the poor man He used to receive them in his arms and embrace them with tender affection These actions proceeding from a person of his birth and quality and produced by the holy Spirit of God wrought wonderful effects And that first in these poor Passengers who astonished at such ardent Charity joyned with suth profound humility were exceedlingy moved thereby insomuch that tears of Devotion were seen flowing from their eyes and themselves falling down at his feet with signs of repentance for their sins and a design of a better life begging his counsel and assistance therein and beginning it with going to Confession and the Sacrament the next day Secondly in those Religious women that belonged to this Hospital who taking fire at his example resolved to do the like in daily serving the poor teaching them their Prayers and Catechism with the ten Commandments which offices they had never done before Together with many other good things conducing to their own attaining to perfection and the better governing of their Hospital which he infused into them and they do still continue with great Devotion he having several times told them that he hoped in time to see God greatly glorified and served among them as we see it is come to pass at this day and may truly affirm that this gallant man hath contributed not a little to so much good done there both within doors and without and doubt not but he hath already received the reward thereof in Heaven But let us further consider some other effects of his zeal Going one day with a friend to visit the holy place of Mont-Matre to which he had great Devotion after his prayers said in the Church he retired into a desolate place of the Mountain near a little spring which as it is said St. Denis made use of where he kneeled down to his prayers which ended made his dinner of a piece of bread and draught of water Grace being said he took out the New Testament which he always carried in his pocket and read a Chapter upon his knees bareheaded with extraordinary reverence In this juncture of time came thither a poor man saying his Chaplet Monsieur Renty rose up to salute him and fell into a discourse with him concerning God and that so powerfully that the good man striking his breast fell down upon the ground to adore that great God making such evident appearances of the great impressions that were wrought upon his Spirit that struck Monsieur Rexty and his friend with much astonishment Immediately after this came a poor Maid to draw water at the well Whom he asked what she was She answered a Servant But do you know saith he that you are a Christian and to what end you were created Whereupon he took occasion to instruct her in what he conceived necessary for her to know and so to the purpose that she confessing her former ignorance told him ingenuously that before that hour she had never thought of her salvation but promised from thence forward to take it into serious consideration and go to Confession Let us still proceed a little higher on the same subject In his return from Dijon after his first journey thither accompanied with two noble pious persons about some four leagues He stopped three or four times by the way to Catechize poor Passengers and one time went far out of his way to do the same to some labourers in the field instructing them how to sanctifie their work they were about A young Maid in Paris having been very cruelly used by her Uncle fell into so great disorder and desperation that all in a fury she accused our blessed Saviour to be the cause of her misery in abondoning her to the barbarous usage of such a man without releiving her In this horrid plight of conscience she went to receive the Sacrament several times in a day at several Churches that she might not be discovered And this upon design to do despite to our Saviour to provoke him to finish her destruction as it was begun letting her to fall into the abyss of misery and hell for ever Monsieur Renty advertised of this sad accident and considering the great offence against God and mischief of this poor creature was transported with zeal speedily to finde her out Which after eight days pursuit from several Churches at length he did meeting with her in the very act of Communicating Taking witnesses he conveyed her to an Hospital for Mad-folks where he took so great care both of her soul and body that she returned to herself and gave ample testimonies of her conversion and repentance for those horrid enormities Neither did his zeal reach onely to those that were near him but such also as were absent and far remote to whom he had no other relation but what was contracted by his alliance to our blessed Saviour and his own Charity Understanding the news that was current some years since of a War the Turk designed against the Knights of Malta and to besiege the Island he so far interested himself in their danger that he recommended it twice by Letter to the prayers of Sister Margaret Carmelite of the B Sacrament at Beaulne whom he deemed to have great power with God His first Letter runs thus I commend to your prayers and of the holy Family the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem which is at this present in great danger and with them the whole Christian World What that common Potent enemy of our faith will do I know not one Our little Jesus who is all love and power knows how to vindicate his own glory please you therefore to commend it to him In the second Letter thus I beseech the Omnipotency of the holy Babe Jesus to preserve his children under the Cross and to purifie them for his own work This is it which I request for our Brethren of the Order of St. John Baptist of Jerusalem SECT 7. Certain other qualities of his zeal THe design of advancing the Salvation of mens souls is attended in this world with much doing and much suffering It is necessary therefore for him that undertakes the task to fortifie himself with courage and patience And both these were most eminently in Monsieur Renty being in the first place full of courage resolute and laborious imploying his body as if he had two more in reserve when that was spent dispatching more business in one half hour than others would have done in many days Very stout he was to undergo any difficulties and withal very quick and decisive A certain Lady of note made him her executor having disposed in her will very much to pious uses He was informed that her friends being persons of eminent power were displeased therewith To which he replyed with a
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