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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
hand_n	father_n	holy_a	lord_n	5,731	5	3.8503	3	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

with patience for I experiment and see clearly that though we labour and wish earnestly to get out of our imperfections our Lord sometimes leaves us there a long while to make us know our weakness and to humble us He desired to be advertised of and reprehended for his faults and we shall see now what he observed therein at the beginning of his call to this high perfection It came to pass that a person which was much below him had order from his Director to advertise him if he saw any thing in him that was contrary to perfection when this person gave him notice of some failing though very light and indeed but of the shadow of a fault he listned thereto with respect and thanks and humbled himself for it as if he had committed some crime and he accused himself when he thought he had made any failing upon his knees saying he was a miserable sinner and that he had committed such a fault which yet often very hardly could one discern to be any This exercise as being most wholesome and efficacious was very useful to him for the making of a great progress for our nature by reason of its feebleness hath need of such props to walk uprightly and not fall If his imperfections and his sins humbled him his excellent qualities and the graces which he received from God did the same also And the same things from which the greatest part of men draw nothing but vanity served him for motives of self-abasement The Spirit of Jesus Christ wherewith he was enlivened extremely estranged him from the Grandeurs of the world making him not onely contemn them but also to be ashamed thereof so that he took occasions of abasements from his own condition because so high in the world and from the secular advantages which it gave him which made him often to groan before the Majestie of God and to say that he was in a condition very low and plebeian according to the Spirit of Jesus Christ and that he had great confusion to see himself in that estate From whence it came that being born a Gentleman of so good rank as we have said he renounced his Nobility and gave it into the hands of our Lord who in return imparted his own to him as he made it known to a holy soul that is to say his love which by its proper force transforming man in God divests him of himself and leaves nothing in him but God alone there living and reigning and by this means raiseth him thus Deified to the highest degree of Nobility that he can mount to Hence it was that he endured with pain that one should call him Monsieur and he said sometimes smilingly among his familiars I am a fine Monsieur it is well for me and in his Letters he complained that they treated him as in that quality And in one of them giving another course or carreer to his humility he said Believe me I pray you it is great pitty of me I take again the Monsieur which I had rejected my pride must have these her Appendixes rather than deceive your Candor which else perhaps make you mistake in me a piece of glittering glass for a Diamond Out of his humility it was that he would not bear the title of Marquess which was due to him as proper to his house in regard the Emperor Charles the fift had erected Renty into a Marquifate and he suffered onely that of Baron of Renty by which he was commonly called For the graces and gifts of God as they were received in a soul well disposed so produced they most excellently their true effect which was to abase and elevate the soul both together to raise it to God and to abase it to it self And first his humility made him hide as much as he could the gifts of God and so hath rob'd us of the knowledge of a thousand brave actions which might have been very serviceable to this History Secondly when he received any favour from God or that one rendred him any honour the light whereby he saw the Nothingness of the creature and the discernment he was endowed with in distinguishing the precious from the vile and that which is done on Gods part in all-good things from that which man bringeth thither of his own was the cause that in those things he assum'd no share at all but referred all to God as to the true Source and so in the management of these great goods which God enriched him withal he had always his hands clean without doing wrong to God or touching that which appertain'd to him and for himself he kept quite out of sight of all vanity which slides most subtilly and most easily into a spirit that abounds in riches of heaven as well as those of the earth if he look not very close unto it Nor would he therefore that any one should consider him in what he said or did but regard God alone therein He wrote thus to one that much desired of him a visit I cannot bear but with pain the account you make of my visits and society Let us look much upon God let us binde our selves strictly to Jesus Christ that we may learn of him a profound annihilation of our selves O my God when will it be that we shall have no more a sight upon our selves when we shall speak no more of our selves and when all vanity shall be destroyed And he wrote to another I beseech you not to regard in me save my infirmities and a depth of wickedness and pride very horrible that is in me that 's it for which I shall have need that all the world talk to and punish me In the third place he esteemed himself most unworthy of the graces and favours of God and beleived there was not one of them how little soever it were but was far above his merits and for the great ones he was so full of they did put him to a Non-plus He wrote to a confident The gifts of God are sometimes so great that they put us as I may so say beyond our selves and if it were possible we could finde the means to recoil our selves further off than beyond Nothingness we should do it You see among men that when one receives a gift that bears some proportion to him he renders thanks and acknowledgement to the giver for it but if a Prince be Liberal to a poor man according to the Grandeur of his own power whether it be a sum of money or a place you shall see this poor man recoil and say Alas my Lord I think you know me not I must not have so much I am unworthy of it In like manner there are blessings that go beyond our expectations capacities and which make us see what we are without daring to lift up our eyes towards them their brightness doth so much dazle and their greatness so much astonish In fine he humbled himself always for the favours of God because he thought

Jesus to do whatever pleaseth him in great Innocency Purity and Simplicity without reflection or return upon any thing whatsoever without taking share in any work without having joy or grief from any thing that arrives not looking upon things in themselves but in his will and conduct which we will endeavour to follow by the appearance and presence whi●h we shall render his Cratch and to the Divine States of his Infancy I therefore this day lose my own being to become wholly a slave subsisting upon the holy Infant Jesus to the glory of the Father and of the Holy Ghost This I signed into the hands of the most blessed Virgin my Mother my Patroness and my Protectress and in the presence of S. Joseph Gaston Jean Baptist And as he did with an intire heart consecrate himself to this holy Infant so did this bestow himself freely on him revealing it particularly to Sister Margaret of the B. Sacrament that he should from thenceforward be guided and animated by the Spirit of his Infancy and that he was descending to him to be his Master his Light and his Intelligence And shewing her one day his heart he said See here the habitation of my Servant Upon which she wrote to Monsieur Renty how the Infant Jesus had bestowed himself upon him to be a Spiritual and Celestial Ayr for him to breath constantly even as his body breathed this Material Ayr and that his Innocence Purity and Simplicity should subsist in him instead of himself destroying in him what his nature had corrupt and polluted And herein he made so large a progress that she often saw him within a beam of light so penetrated and filled with the grace of this holy Infancy like a spunge in the Ocean even absorpr in that abyss of infinite riches beyond his expression And he himself writ concerning it to a person in these words The Divine King of the Cratch the holy Infant Jesus doth so accumulate his favours upon me that I beseech you to thank him They are inexplicable From this time his custom was every Eve of the 25 day of each Moneth to enter into his Chappel at ten a clock at night and there to remain in p●ayer till midnight He adored the precious moment of our Saviours birth and entrance into this world performing certain acts of Devotion before the Image of his Sacred Infancy which further he honoured by inviting a poor childe to dinner entertaining him with wonderful great respect And during all that time that he celebrated the voyage of the Infant Jesus into Egypt and return to Nazareth he had to dinner every day three poor folks for the honour of Jesus Mary and Joseph during which time he would never ride in a Coach though his business often called him to painful and troublesome journeys afar off on foot and at length he quite gave over the use of a Coach After he had ingaged himself in this devout application to the Infancy of our Lord and being filled with his grace and animated by his Spirit had received thereby wonderful impressions and illuminations His Ghostly Father desired of him to write down his conceptions of that Divine Mysterie and wherein chiefly that grace consisted which begat this ensuing Letter in the year 1645. You have laid your commands upon me to set down in writing wherein consists the grace of the Infancy of our Saviour so far as I understand it This Adorable Lord hath renewed in me this morning two Con●eptions which he had given me a Moneth since three days one after another by which I shall be able to express what I conceive of it Being at my prayers in the Church about a Moneth ago I fell into some inward inquietude about my Devotion to this Infancy by reason that my Spirit was possessed with this thought That a Christian should regard our Saviour intirely from his Incarnation to his Glory where he sits at the right hand of his Father a●d from whence he sends us his Spirit And that we should make our addresses to all these mysteries according to our necessities and therefore to tie our selves to one particular were to send up maimed Devotions and to limit the extent of Verity and Grace After this I went to receive the B. Sacrament abandoning my self wholly to my God according to my usual custom A little while after the Communion I saw by an enlightning our Saviour entire that is all his mysteries from his Incarnation to his state of Glory where he resides at present governing us And in particular the Greatness and Dignity of this mysterie of his Infancy and withal I was instructed that this mysterie is our Port and our Address for to obtain our Consummation in glory That this is it to which we must direct our selves and here stay our thoughts and that it would be temerity to proceed to other mysteries on the same manner I saw it rashness to desire and demand orosses for our selves since it is the work of Gods grace to conduct us to them and uphold us under them I saw it rashnes to desire Mount Thabor that is high illuminations Finally that we ought not presently to address our selves to those other mysteries of our Saviour but onely to this of the Infancy which brings us into the ignorance the separation from and in applacation of things of this life making no further use of them than as they are given us for necessity which keeps us in great silence and produceth a Mortification of the Exteriour man whilst the Interiour is busied in contemplating the most holy Soul of our Saviour continually imploying it self in looking up toward his Father in his Love in zeal of his Glory in the Offering of himself and in the obedience to proceed forward in all innocence and purity and simplicity to all his other estates through which his Father had appointed him to pass I found then that for the happy conducting of our selves through all conditions whether of light or darkness of Thabor or Calvary we must for to receive and improve grace begin at the Infancy which teacheth us our first lesson of Abnegation to be taught of God of silence and innocence without any regard or pretensions to our selves but with the same spirit of submission and obedience that this blessed Babe Christ Jesus there practised and taught us This light and knowledge hath established me more than formerly in this mysterie finding there my bottom abiding there with attention and reverence to do what shall be commanded me afterward For the soul doth not raise it self by it self to any thing but on the contrary doth empty herself resting still in her own littleness with great recognition of what passeth and with the simplicity of a pure resigned aspect O Father how guilty shall I appear before God in answering so little to the greatness of his gifts It is my grief and a great one as he well knoweth Some three days after these words of S. Paul

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 insid● 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