have so great a vertue as to cure that disease What then having no better I prayed to God for his blessing upon that if it might be for his glory and the good of the Patient God did it for coming to visit her again I found her well recovered The Prioress asking him if he did thus often he answered Yes when he was desired it for these being poor people have no other help neither have I any better remedies I know my Saviour is not tyed to Medicines we must have faith in him where we can do nothing our selves and that out of his bounty he hath bestowed on me She replyed but this is then a miracle And doth not he work miracles for us every day said he And do you such for the poor said the Prioress To which he answered with great humility and well beseemingness in these words My Lady Prioress calls that a miracle which our Lord hath wrought for my part I have no share in it but onely by bestowing on the poor such as I have make what you please of it all my reflection thereupon is onely to return praise to my Saviour Christ when the cure is done If the Holy Scriptures command us to honour the Physician for our necessity of him Undoubtedly those are much more to be honoured who proceed in their cures not so much according to the method and direction of Galen and Paracelsus as that of God SECT 4. His zeal for the Salvation of his Neighbour THis part of Charity will appear greater and more ardent in Monsieur Renty than the former as being the most sublime and noblest degree of it as saith S. Thomas And the first in regard of its object the Soul which is incomparably more excellent than the body And secondly in regard of the things bestowed in this way of Charity which infinitely surpass those other as much as an eternal possession in the heavens conveyed by the one superlatively exceeds bread silver health supplied by the other Wherefore his holy prudence clearly perceiving a difference was transported with far other affections to the one than to the other And being continually inflamed with the love of God and his Son Jesus Christ uncessantly sought all ways and used all means to make them known and beloved both here and eternally by all men preventing what he could any offence or sinning against them daily pondering with himself the inexplicable goodness and tenderness of God towards the souls of men which have been so dear to him and cost him such an invaluable price He entred into the same affections loving and desiring their salvation according to that Model This zeal of his was admirable having all the qualities to render it perfect Being in the first place universal extended to all in France out of France yea all the world over Insomuch that he said to one of his Familiars that he was ready to serve all men not excepting one and even to lay down his life for any one upon occasion He earnestly desired to convert to enlighten with the knowledge of God to inflame with his love to sanctifie and save the whole world if it had been in his power of which Paris being as it were an Epitome he went through all the quarters and streets of that vast City searching out what he could remove or bring in for the glory of God and salvation of souls And the same Spirit of God that conducted him in this inquiry blessed his endeavours and gave him the favour to rectifie what was out of course to confirm the wayering to strengthen what was in order to root out vice and plant vertue Which he did in so many several ways as a man would think it impossible but what cannot a man do that is zealous disinterested and full of God He performed what possibly he could in his own person not sparing any cost nor losing one minute of time and wherein his power and strength of body or minde falling short of his desires proved deficient he engaged others Whereupon he procured Missions at his own charge in his own Countreys of Normandy and Brie and by joynt contribution of others erected the like in many other Provinces where he had no Land as in Burgundy Picardy Chartrain and elsewhere And here it will not be amiss to take his own words concerning these out of a Letter my self received from him relating to a Mission in his Lordship of Citry in Brte The Mâ—ssion was begun here on Whitsunday a day that bringeth with it an extraordinary benediction the peoples hearts are touched with great sense of repentance which they manifest by abundance of tears Many restitutions and reconciliations are made common and publique prayers are made in Families swearing and cursing are redressed And this Reformation extends it self to three or four leagues round about us Amongst many others there came a young maid whose life had been very vâ—cious who returned home a real Coâ—vert giving an ample testimony of her repentance relinquishing her former acquaintance Whereby I finde that this was the very end for which my Saviour brought me hither and ingaged my abode in this place These operations of grace filled him up with unspeakable joy which often distilled into tears for having to do in that which made for the glory of God and benefit of souls We have it from an eye-witness who hath seen tears stand in his eyes and demanding the cause received from him this answer I profess they proceed from that excessive joy I take to see so many touched with remorse evidencing their conversion by making restitutions by being reconciled to their enemies burning their idle and vain books â—uitting their former occasions of sin commencing a life altogether new We have seen him likewise in the Church of Citry so transported with zeal that he hath swept the Church carried out the dirt himself rung the bell to assemble the people thither In all his Missions he commonly imployed some Secular Priests of his acquaintance living in community and settled at Caen for those employments who have quitted themselves herein with great benediction and notable success He writ divers Letters to their Superiour earnestly entreating and conjuring him to promote this business seriously and heartily giving him account of what Missions were established and what were in a hopeful way what he had done in them himself and to whom else he had spoken with such courses as were to be taken to make them effectual The year he dyed this was written in a Letter to the same person concerning a Mission he had projected in the Town of Drieux of the Diocess of Chartres I have sollicited soveral persons to joyn in setting up a Massion every year and I shall go my self along with it as oft as I can to serve and obey your orders in visiting the sick and giving alms to the needy And for the same design to assemble some companies of people whom God hath wrought upon by your preaching
aniting of our selves to this Son contiruing that life of his upon earth within this of ours by the direction of his Spirit Thus also in another Letter Let Jesus Christ be in each of us our bond our soul our life as he is our pattern Le ts take a nearer view of this Holy Original enter into his Principles lay hold on his desires execute his works and let men know that we are Christians Writing to another he spake thus I adore and bless with all my heart our Lord Jesus Christ for that he opens you his heart to possess wholly yours he will make it to dye and will reduce it to a Holy Poverty which shall cause you to taste the true Life and compleat Riches and to avow that it is a great mercy to belong to Jesus Christ I beseech him to bestow on you his most sanctifying graces and that we may beth dye well and live well by his Spirit Let us enter into this Spirit which will give us the Sentiments and the Energie of the Children of God All other presence and application to the Divine Majestie which is not by this union of the Soul to Jesus Christ is onely of the creature towards the Creator which carries indeed respect but gives not the life and approaches of children towards God their Father where being united to the Interior operations of Jesus Christ we finde there the affections of true children which we canâ— not have but by being united to the true Son Let us end with that which a person to whom he unbosom'd himself confidently in this matter reports of him This rare man said he appeared touched with a verie tender and fervent love towards our Lord Jesus Christ I have observed that his Conversations and Discourses did shoot alwaies at this mark to imprint in souls the knowledge and love of our Lord with true soliditie In discourse with him I had often from him these words I avow that I have no gust in any thing where I finde not Jesus Christ and for a soul that speaks not of him or in which we cannot taste any effect of grace flowing from his Spirit which is the principal of operations both inward and outward that are solidly Christians speak not to me at all of such a one Could I as I may so say behold both miracles and wonders there and yet not Jesus Christ nor hear any talk of him I count all but amusement of spirit loss of time and a very dangerous Precipice And at several other times he said Let us love Jesus Christ let us unite our selves to his Spirit and Grace miserable sinner as I am who love him not yet should I be much joy'd at least to see my defects supplied by others that love him fervently but I am too unworthy to obtain a matter so great and wherein my self do bear so small a part Seeing then this faithful servant and follower of Christ Jesus had so strong an application and intimate union with his Divine Lord as 't is easie to gather from what hath been spoken we cannot but ascribe to this application and union all his vertues which we are going now to speak of in several and to look upon them as effects of this cause streams of this Fountain and branches of this Stem PART II. His Vertues in particular and first the Vertues which did perfect him in regard of himself CHAP. 1. His Penances and Austerities AS our flesh and senses are by their nature and more by their corruption very opposite to a Spiritual Life and among the enemies of our weal and perfection none more importunate or more violent than they so God useth when he intends to elevate any to the accomplishment of vertue and to make them Saints to inspire in them at the beginning of their conversion a spirit of Penance and mortification of their bodies Monsieur de Renty being destin'd by God to this glory and quickned by this Spirit encounters his body with rigorous Austerities thereby to reduce it to its duty and hinder it from annoying him in his Interior Exercises He begins therefore to fast every day making but one meal which he continued divers years until he was enjoyned otherwise and to take more nourishment to be the better able to undergo the great labours he undertook for his neighbour Some days in the week he wore an iron Girdle set with a double rank of long prickles and a bracelet of the same on other days he disciplin'd himself rigorously at some times wore haircloath having continually on his breast a brass Crucifix reaching to the bottom of his stomack the nails whereof being very sharp entred into his flesh When he went into the Countrey and was come to his Inn he would go into the Kitchin to eat there if it might be among servants and other mean persons and that for two ends both there to morâ—ifie his body and to speak some good thing to those poor people and when night constrained him to take his chamber he dismissed his servants to lie in other rooms and himself past the night in a chair or cast himself on a bed in his cloathes and boots which was his custom till death Being come to Amiens where I was and a Lady one of the chief of the Town having prepared a stately bed in a brave Chamber for him in honour of his vertue and cuality he was much troubled and would not at all use it but laid him down upon a bench and the day after as being much asham'd complained to me of the Lady for it so that to enjoy the blessing of lodging him at her house she was fain to change his chamber and bed and to accommodate him after his own mode that is to say where he might not be so much at his ease His Mortification in diet was very great eating little and always of the worst as not forgetting that our misery came not but by eating of delicious fruit Dining in company on a Fish-day one of the guests that noted his actions observed that all he eat was some Pears onely and that with so great modesty and recollection that one might easily discern that his minde was on God and not upon his meat When one of his friends a man of piety at Caen entertain'd him one day at dinner with some little ceremony as a person of quality he ate very little became much mortified and ashamed as he declared afterwards that Christians should be Feasters adding that a little would suffice and what a torment it was to him to be where there was so muâ—h chear as a thing quite contrary to the poverty of Christ who notwithstanding should be to us for our rule He would tell his friends that a little bread a little lard and butter was sufficient Hereupon his friends acquainted with this grace of Mortification in him took no more thought concerning his diet knowing his best entertainment to be the meanest fare The perfection
great pains he took he made answer that our Lord humbled himself and took toilsome pains for the good of souls in a far other manner sure and that he was his pattern Being one day to go see a person of very great quality about a business which much concerned the glory of God he would not use his Coach although he were to traverse in a manner all Paris and that when it pour'd down with rain but go thither on foot one motioned that he would at least let a cloak be carried by a Lackey to take it when he came thither and not present himself before that person in a Cloak altogether wet and speak to him in such unseemliness but he yielded not yet to accommodate his humility with decency he cast that cloak above his own and past through the streets so far in this humble equipage and afterwards in the Noblemans house laid aside the wet cloak and appeared in the other ordinary one of his own But behold here another effect of this humility whereof he wrote to his Director the 20 of December 1646. It behoves me now saith he that I render you an account of a business that passed the other day Madam my Lord Chancellors Lady sent me a packet of letters wherein I found some from the King with all the Seals and formalities wherein I was made Councellor of State but my thoughts were not taken up at all with the business I sent her word that I would assume the honour to see her to thank her for that my Lord Chancellor vouchsafed to think of me that I honoured more than so that which had the mark of the King and which came from their hands than not to receive it with all respect But I most humbly begg'd one thing of her that living in a kinde of plain and vulgar manner as I did she would be pleased to take in good part if with all acknowledgement premised of my exceeding obligations to them I did not accept those letters and that the business might sleep without noise some represented it to me as a thing worth thinking on for that a Committimus might be very necessary for me in some sort of occurrences and that a pension of 2000 livers per ann about 200 l. Sterling would afford me ability for the giving of more alms To the first point I answered that by the goodness of God I had no need of it and that often the Committimusses prove a great vexation to those upon whom they are executed That this should be our work to bear our own little ordinary crosses without laying extraordinary ones upon others And for the second that God having given me more of riches than I had need of I thought I was not obliged to augment them but to keep me in my little way of living you see how we stand as to this business Whereupon let me tell you that this thing cannot be affected so but that I must take upon me also the quality of a Councellor of State and must have a dependence upon the State as a Pensioner of the King Now by the paper that some while ago I sent you you may see that I have given up my worldly Nobility to God and this thing here would derogate much from it and moreover it would be a step to an engaging of me I know not where which now I see not nor will see having other things to six my eyes on My disposition towards affairs of that nature is to have no share at all in them if per-force and without my seeking they come upon me I shall count it a real cross which our Lord will in such a case give me strength to bear To conclude Elegi abjectus esse in domo dei mei absit mihi gloriari nisii in cruce domini nostri Jesu Christi I have chosen to be a door-keeper in the house of my God and God forbid that I should rejoyce in any thing save in the Cross of Christ So have you the inclinations I finde in my self This was that he writ to him concluding with these words which carry with them another touch of humility and much wisdom I have been willing the business might be concealed for the avoiding of Ostentation which is found often in the refusal of things that have something of lustre and give occasion of talk And thus he carried himself in that conjuncture but notwithstanding sometime after he was constrained by good advice in consideration of a business that much concerned the glory of God and relief of the poor to accept of these letters and that quality and to make use of it In a paper he wrote to the same person I finde this that follows which makes much to our purpose Walking one day this Lent thorow the streets of Paris much be-dirted and very poor to look at I bore in me the resentment of the Apostle 1 Cor. 4.13 when he saith That he was as the scum and off-scouring of the world I returned in my minde blessing for reviling and the rest of that passage so much as fell under my passive obedience both actually receiving illumination to understand it and strength to execute it I know well how much neatness and new things even to a boot even to a glance and a look do hurt if one take not good heed the simplicity and dignity of this Christian self-vilifying And I saw that it was a great temptation for a man to think to preserve his estate of Grandeur and note in hopes to be thereby more exemplary and have more weight and authority for the service of God This is a pretext that our infirmity makes use of in the beginning but perfection draws off at last to Jesus Christ who was humbled upon the Cross and made the lowest of men What an honour is it to keep company with Jesus Christ so lovely and so little followed in his ignominies and his humiliations it is one of my errours that I have not yet well begun it The great knowledge and marvellous sense that he had of these truths and of the lowliness of Spirit whither ought to tend and come the true children of God and perfect followers of Jesus Christ made him often to say Let us be little and very little Oh this holy littleness it is a great matter From this Spirit it was that he loved low and mean things and shun'd whatsoever it was that outwardly carried splendor with it whither he knew that nature in a secret reflex upon it self is always carried and even in things most spiritual and holy as on the contrary Grace as being the grace of Jesus Christ carries to things of no reputation such as he embraced And he avoided out of the fame thought whatever it was that held of the extraordinary and said that in exercises wherein there appeared even most of perfection as in observing Fasts and other penances more than others there was not in them sometimes so much as in the
hopes always that he will and in the interim beareth all things from him These are the vertues in which he must be particularly exercised that will deal profitably with his Neighbor without which he labors in vain for experience will shew him that after much time and pains he shall profit little for the more any one is filled from God and animated by the Spirit of Jesus Christ the more shall he advance holiness in himself and good in others yea though his words be few and ordinary for that our employments receive not their force from the hands that acts them nor our words from the mouth that utters them as from the disposition of the heart and the Spirit that animates it Now as bare Vertue alone is not sufficient to compleat a man for this design but one must also have a capacity thereunto So this charitable man besides that capacity wherewith God had abundantly furnished him as well of a great wit piercing solid well disposed resolute laborious and constant as of a body well made of a good grace and presence and besides the Sciences and fine knowledge which he had learnt in his youth he had also by his own industry and travel being good at every thing learnt several things not onely for his own use but to teach them to others whereby to help themselves or make some other use of them as to let blood to make medicines for cuting of wounds to compound remedies for several diseases of which he had books writ with his own hand which he communicated abasing himself to learn the meanest skills which might any way be useful to others One day in Paris he carried a friend with him to a poor man who got his living with making hots and wicker baskets in a cave into which he entred and in the presence of his friend finished a hot which he had begun some days before with design having learned the thing to teach it to some poor people in Countrey to help to get their living he left the hot and a peice of money to boot for teaching him with the poor man which indeed deserved to have been reposited in some Cabinet of Rarities or rather in some place of Devotion as a glorious Monument of an Heroick Charity Understanding when he was at Dijon that the Religious Veselines whom he affected very much provided out of Charity Drugs and Medicines for poor people he was much pleased with it and to improve their good work taught the Sisters belonging to the Infirmary to make some excellent Compositions which had very great vertue against several maladies preparing them dispensing and boyling them himself stooping to the meanest and most troublesome labors as much as could be done by any servant holding his head for a long time over the smoak of those medicines which sent forth no pleasant fumes before a great fire not desisting till all in a sweat without any word or sign at all of complaining of what he suffered The Religious desired him to suffer the lay Sisters to help and assist him but his minde was so set upon it that they must let him alone and give place to that fire of Charity which inflamed him all within and which sweetned unto him or rather consumed all the the pains the outward material fire could inflict yea and moreover he urged them out of great prudence to acquaint him with the hours of their devotions and set times of their meetings that he might not divert them from these being a punctual observer of the time they appointed him that he failed not one minute though with much difficulty considering his several other employments to which he stood engaged The like he observed in all other things insomuch that he took upon him all shapes transformed himself into any figure condescended to all accommodations for the good of his neighbor and all these by vertue of this celestial fire which melted and cast him wholy into the mould of Charity his thoughts words actions and each thing in him was charity which made him say one day thus in a letter to one of his great Confidents Methinks my soul is all Charity and I am not able to express with what ardency and strange expansion I finde my heart to be renewed in the Divine life of my new born Saviour burning all in love towards mankinde SECT 1. His Charity to the poor FIrst of all concerning his Charity and affection to the poor I shall say this that Jesus Christ was not onely the fountain from whence this grace did flow but also the motive and object in that he beheld him in them and him chiefly he imagined to assist and serve in their persons so that his thoughts stayed not upon their torn and ragged habit nor upon their vile and despicable outside which naturally displeaseth the eye offendeth the smell and other senses But passing further he beheld within and under these with the eye of faith our Lord Jesus Christ present and dwelling in them whom he esteemed as his native images loved and valued by him And as he burned with an ardent affection toward our Lord so he loved tenderly the poor succoured them with all his might and left nothing unattempted for their sakes With these eyes and not those of nature must each one behold the poor that will love them indeed and have bowels of compassion and a true resolved and constant Charity to towards them In the second place resolving to give you this Charity by retail we will begin with that which he exercised in his house where from the year 1641. he invited to dinner poor men two in number and at first twice every week on Tuesdays and Fridays but five or six years after finding himself much engaged in other services for the honor of God and good of his neighbor he reduced them to one day which ordinarily was Thursday and then invited three which he ordered in this manner willing to joyn his Spiritual Alms with his Corporal an important secret to be learned and practised by all charitable persons each one according to their capacities he sought out such poor as seemed to him to have greatest need of instruction wherefore during his abode at Paris after his morning devotions he went to S. Anthonies gate and there took up such as were newly arrived whom courteously saluting he brought home and if it were winter brought them to the fire always making them sit down and afterwards with a cordial affection which appeared in his countenance and whole deportment and with a marvellous grace he instructed them in what was needful for them to know in the mysteries of the Holy Trinity the Incarnation of our Lord and Holy Sacrament He likewise instructed them how to make Confession and to communicate worthily and in brief how to live vertuously this done he gave them water to wash set them down at table where himself served bareheaded with exceeding great respect and set the dishes before
this time of resignation of my self to sufferings is to make good use of my affliction and endeavour after solid vertue with a perfect abandoning of my self to the will of God Behold here the blessings of God upon his endeavours for the good of his neighbours which working such strong impressions upon their hearts to bring them to God almost always accompanied his labours At which indeed we ought not much to wonder if we consider him as a happy instrument fastened and united to the Lord of hearts and Saviour of souls singly aiming at the glory of God and good of others and sparing nothing he conceived necessary thereunto To which purpose his custom was before he undertook any such business to give himself up to our Lord they are his own words to speak by his Spirit and in his Power And this Lord who desireth infinitely the salvation of man finding him so well disposed and fitted to his hand used him for noble imployments and furnished him with suitable graces and favours even to work wonders Which may serve both for the instruction and shame of such who by their calling are designed for the procuring of the salvation of men and yet through their own fault do it with so little profit I finde moreover that God gave him sometimes beforehand knowledge and foresight into the affairs which he would have him do thereby to prepare him to undertake them without fear and to acquit himself well therein Being at his house in Citry at the latter end of the year 1642. he had a secret intimation from God that at his return to Paris he should finde a new imployment about the poor and should be much taken up therein Which fell out accordingly two days after his arrival there certain persons coming to advice with him about a course to relieve such poor as were ashamed to beg throughout that City intreating him to take it into his care which he did accordingly undertaking for his share to visit the fourth part and distribute there alms according to their necessities which was a sufficient employment for one man to take up his whole time though he had no other business which yet he performed notwithstanding the multitude of his other occupations so that we may say that according to humane reason and without a special assistance from God he could never have been able to have done and suffered such great matters But God who hath given us a limited strength of body and minde can as easily heighten them when and how he pleaseth One day he said to one of his great Confidents with much humility and devotion I have been this night bathed all over in tears by a view which our Lord hath given me At which words making a stand remaining sometime recollected in silence and transported with that grace he had received afterward he went on saying that whilst he was at prayer he understood that there was a great imployment assigned him for new France in the Indies Which afterward fell out and chiefly in the building of a Church in the Island of Mont-real In which noble design other pious persons whom God had chosen thereunto joyning with him He by his cares counsels credit and liberality both of his own and what he begg'd from others was highly serviceable Sometime he received beforehand not so great light of his business but onely a bare knowledge and present impulse of doing something without any further discovery As when he was much pressed in Spirit to go to Pontois without understanding any reason for it having at the same time much employment at Paris yet with obedience to the inspiration without debating he undertaketh the journey where unexpectedly he met with a Nobleman of great quality from a Province far distant who came thither conducted by God to ask of Monsieur Renty and receive from his mouth instructions for his souls health and how to serve God perfectly which he had little known and less practised Which thing Monsieur Renty then taught him professing at his return from thence that he could give no account what afterward became of the party or how he lost him SECT 10. His grace in assisting particularly some choice souls THough this great servant of God had an excellent faculty in assisting all men for the good of their souls yet was he more eminently happy in some particular choice persons to whom our Saviour had assigned him for the curing of their imperfections to make them march on apace and that thorow the narrow way of vertue and perfection But because the greatest number of these are yet living whose modesty I dare not offend I shall speak something onely of some who are dead and chiefly of one person which may serve as a taste of all the rest This was the Countess of Chastres who being deeply in the affections of this world according to the custom of most young Ladies of her quality it pleased God out of his infinite love to her to bring her before her death from those vanities and conduct her by the thorny strait-way to the paths of vertue and high perfection for which great work Monsieur Renty was assigned from God He inspiring the one to request assistance and counsel and the other to afford it and this with so happy success that within less than a years space her advancement herein was so notable that he himself was astonished at it For in that short time she became so perfectly disingaged from all those petty conveniences and accomodations which our Ladies flattering themselves pretend still to have need of that one presenting her with something of that nature wherein she had formetly taken delight she returned this answer which may serve for a good lesson to us all especially if we consider that she was well known to be of a very delicate tender complexion and very sickly how apt we are to multiply necessities I thank God I have quitted this and far more other things for the love of God and yet finde no want at all It is true that nature of her self is dainty and prone to flatter her self upon the pretence of necessities which she is willing to apprehend much greater than truly they are and often maketh them such by her imagination God indued him with great grace and light to discern her proper way and to perswade her to follow it to advance her in the pathes of solid vertue and to teach her by degrees to dye to herfelf to support her in great interior afflictions and to instruct her very effectually in what was most proper for her present condition he being accomplished with all the qualities of a fit Director and she on her part perfectly resigning up herself to believe what he said and force her self to put it in execution A thing very requisite in those that resolve to make use of the conduct of others to good purpose She received his counsel with all the resignation she could imagining our
finde experimentally a real union both in light and faith with the party I mentioned which is more than palpable giving me assurance that we are all one Upon this occasion I shall acquaint you in what manner my minde hath been busied these few last days and is yet full of it and to the end my relation may be more intelligible I shall take the matter somewhat higher The operation I have found in my self for these two or three years hath constantly held me fixed in the pursuit of our Saviour Christ to finde in him Eternal-Life before God the Father through the influence of his Spirit of which I have from time to time given you account And now I confess to you that though for that time I also honoured from the bottom of my heart our B. Lady the Saints and Angels and have been desirous to express it upon all occasions yet so it was that their presence and their commerce was obscured in and as it were very remote from my soul I assure you that those thoughts hath frequently run in my minde saying thus within my self I so much honour our Lady and some other Saints and Angels and I know not where they are I lifted up my heart easily towards them but there was no presence of them at all at least such as I now perceive it Some moneths ago I possessed an opening and a light in my soul accompanied with powerful effects concerning love and dear union with God making me to conceive inexplicable things of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost who is perfect Charity not by the reasonings and discourses of the understanding but by a single view most by one touch penetrating the heart with love And I beheld how the Son of God our Saviour came to advance us by his Incarnation into this love uniting himself to us whereby to reduce us all into this intimate and sweet union until he shall have compleated us all in himself to be made all of us one day all in God after he hath delivered up his Kingdom to his Father Ut sit Deus omnia in omnibus That God may be all in all And we enter into this blessed union with the Father Son and Holy Ghost Some ten or twelve days since being in my morning prayers on my knees to pray unto God I perceived in my self that I could findâ— no entrance unto him onely I kept my self there much humbled but the sight of the Father the access to him of the Son with whom I ordinarily converse with as much confidence as if he were yet upon earth and the assistance of the holy Ghost seemed at a strange distance withheld from me and I perceived an unworthiness in my self so great so real and so penetrating that I could no more lift up the eyes of my soul to heaven than these of my body Than was iâ— given me to understand that I had really that unworthiness which I felt But that I must seek my entry to God and to our Saviour in the Communion of Saints Whereupon I was on an instant possessed with a wonderful presence of the respect and love and union of the B. Virgin the Angels and Saints which I am not able to express nor to utter the greatness and solidity of this grace For this union is Life Eternal and the Ecclesiastical Paradise and this union is both for the Saints in Heaven and those on earth which I have almost always in full view and presence From thenceforward I understood that we were not made by God to be alone and separate from others but to be united unto them and to compose with them one divine total Even as a beautiful stone fitted for the head of a column is altogether unprofitable till it be settled in its place and cemented to the body of the building without which it hath neither its preservation its beauty nor its end This meditation left me in the love and in the true and experimental connexion of the communion and communication of Saints yet with a due order of those to whom I am more united which is my Life in God and in Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the contents of that Letter CHAP. 7. His devotion to the Holy Sacrament ONe of the greatest Devotions of this holy man was that to the H. Eucharist considered both as a Sacrifice and as a Sacrament of which he had ever an incredible esteem honouring it with all possible reverence and affecting it with tender love blessing and praising God for its institution and exciting both by his word and pen the whole world to do the same He was accustomed to say that it was instituted to stay and place our Saviour God and Man in the midst of us to obtain for us all the benefits of grace whereof we are capable here and to dispose us for those of glory That the great design of God in the Incarnation the Life Death and Resurrection of his Son was to convey unto us his Spirit to be unto us Life Eternal which Spirit he hath taught us by his Word merited for us by his Death doth more confer upon us from his estate of Glory And the better to convey this unto us to cause us to live thereby and dye in our selves he giveth himself to us in this most Holy Sacrament dead raised up and glorified to produce in us by the operation of his Spirit these two effects of death and life He was not onely present every day at Mass but took it for a great honour to serve the Priest himself He received every day if not hindred by very important business or some pressing occasion of Charity And as the honour we render to this B. Sacrament consists not in often receiving but in communicating well and perfectly he took all care thereof that could be expected from one of so holy life and eminent Piety He spent many hours in prayers upon his knees before the Blessed Sacrament And being once asked by a friend How he could remain there so long He answered That there he recreated his spirit receiving from thence refreshment and new forces and yet sometimes he encountred with some trouble in that Devotion which may be gathered from this Letter to his Director dated the 27 of June in the year 1647. I have been very poor all this moneth I know not whether I was ever so lumpish both in spirit and body as I was upon the Festival day of the Blessed Sacrament I was present at Service at Procession at Mass at Communion heard the Sermon at Vespers and Compline but like a very beast not knowing how to demean my self either kneeling or standing I was in a kinde of restless condition of body and very wandring and distracted in spirit onely I knew well that in the bottom of my soul I had a desire to honour God through his Son Christ Jesus After Compline I found my self so dull and heavy that seeing my self unable to remain
Gaston Iean Baptiste de Renty Seig. r de Ciâ—â—â— Baron de â—â—nadâ—â—s Mourut à Paris le 24 d'Avril del'An 1649. 〈◊〉 de sonà ge THE HOLY LIFE OF MON r. DE RENTY A LATE NOBLEMAN OF FRANCE And sometimes COUNCELLOR TO KING LEWIS the 13th Written in French by John Baptist S. Jure And Faithfully translated into English By E. S. Gent. London Printed for John Crook at the Sign of the Ship in S. Pauls Church-yard 1658. TO THE READER Christian Reader SUch nourishment as the reading of vain Romances or the Lives of Secular-Love-Knights though these onely fained supply to the earthly principle in us our carnal lusts and ambitions set upon fading glories and beauties the same do the Histories of Saints and person enamoured of heaven administer to the other celestial principle in us the H. Spirit which more or less inhabites in every one who is more than in name Christian These books it is that set us all on fire and suddenly transform us into the same holy inclinations we read in those Christian Hero's so much would we love so much would we do so much would we suffer and if I may apply the Apostles words spoken of the Lord unto his holy followers We beholding as in a glass the glory of these Saints of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirits of the Lord whilst both the sweet consolations which such have found in Gods service sweeter than honey Psal 19. allure us to a vertuous life and their treading the way before us in the observance of the most difficult precepts of the Gospel and in the enduring all the hardship as our inexperience aâ—counts it of the Christian warfare both shews us it faifible what God commands and invites us to follow their conquering travels Yet notwithstanding the great effects such writings frequently produce many aspersions and exceptions intervene which to many Readers render them fruitless whilst either we question the truth of the relation as when the Historian living some ages perhaps after such holy men and no eye-witnesses of their actions is supposed to compose his relations much what out of some uncertain traditions and hear-says or being contemporary with them yet such pieces having run thorow the hands of some ages not so pure are imagined to be corrupted and many falsities interposed and mingled with truth Or allowing the truth thereof yet they being the Histories of such as lived long ago in times of a quite different complexion and in some as we phansie more holy age when the first fruits of Gods spirit in the early times of the Gospel were more vigorous and his favours in cherishing the infancy of Christianity more eminent and mens piety by mutual examples more inflamed we think them no pattern for us born in the worst and prophanest times Or yet further if they be modern histories of our own days yet they being ordinarily narrations of persons first cloistered and sequestred from the negotiations of secular affairs or also of such whom this world forsook before they applied themselves so intensively to the other in their being born of mean parent age or to small â—r no temporal fortunes we think them no fit pattern at least for our condition of life when born to the management of a fair estate the support of a noble family and engag'd perhaps also in the duties of a conjugal life For these causes deare Reader I have imployed some spare hours to present thee with the most pious and exemplary life of one who was no retired or cloistered person but who practised the rules of perfection in a secular and married condition with the ordinary worldly impediments of wife children and estate dependent on his care remaining all his days surrounded with the ordinary temptations that such a life affords without being engaged therewith walking in the midst of these flames which set on fire so many hearts without being singed at all or touched by them and holding this pitch that cleaves so fast to others fingers in his hands without being defiled one who abandoned secular inveiglements not in the ordinary and easier way by remâ—ving his person from them but only by removing them from his thoughts of whom I may say as the Apostle of himself the words a little inverted That he was possessing much and yet as having nothing well known and yet as unknown not using this world and yet as using it as living in the world and yet dying to it lastly one who had no advantage for this of any felicity of times beyond ourselves who though for eminency of Christian graces and communication of divine favors he may seem to contend with the ancient Saints yet lived but the other day and dyed not nine years ago April 24. 1649. lived in a neighbour Country France spent a good part of his life in the chief City thereof Paris and there no obscure person but by his birth of a very noble family see cap. 1. in it the heir to a flourishing estate and besides this honored with the dignity of being one of the Kings privy Councel so that all his carriage and actions are easily discoverable if any thing related here should be either feigned or amplified and the pen-man thereof a religious man of note is there yet living to bear the shame of publishing such lies who divulged within some years after his death this copy of his life in the same place where he acted it As for his Letters which the Author hath often inserted here to discover to the world the interior of his soul which cannot be known to others but onely from our selves know that in most of these his humility and that upon command disclosed such things onely to his Confessor and that he onely privately whispered in his ear what is now divulged abroad that he relates to his spiritual Father with much transport and ravishment as who can possess such a treasure and say nothing of it the great power of the present Grace of God in him much after the same manner and with the same modesty as one recovered of a great sicknesse for the state of Sin is a great Disease rejoycingly would tell his Physician of the present good Habit and Temper and Health of his body That his otherwares much evidenced Sanctity will sufficiently perswade his veracity in these relations Lastly That they are not his Letters entire but onely some pieces extracted out of them as best suiting to the Authours purpose His Letters doubtless containing also in them the Confessions of his Sins which in his Confessors absence he was necessitated to present for some time onely by Letter and many Complaints of his Infirmities and Defects with consults for a remedy thereof But it became not the secrecie of a Confessor nor the civility of a Friend to discover all these ner yet the Readers benefit to know them Since the Perfections of our Brethren set before us
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
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
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
than to him that begins it In all affairs that concerned the service of God he had an unmoveable constancy and undaunted courage never flagging or yielding up himself And besides the force of his words there appeared in his countenance an extraordinary assurance although his ordinary deportment was always sweet and quiet which particularly appeared in all meetings where he manifested so much spirit and God invested him with such a force that those that beheld him felt themselves struck with an awful respect When he spake and gave his opinion his proposals carried so much light in them his judgement so much solidity his reasons so great force he taking every thing in its due place and observing each juncture of time that all were constrained to acquiess in his determination But if any approved not of his advice or disputed his reasons he knew how to inforce them with such arguments especially where he had any authority in the Assembly that at length they yielded But if they chanced to make another reply he gave not one word more but his very silence and the steadiness of his countenance and his other carriage restrained any further dispute And the meeting ended he would go to that party and crave his pardon with great humility Sweetly informing him that what he aimed at was not to make good his own opinion but for the cause of God to which by duty he was obliged But in other things that he was most ready to yield to every one We meet daily with those spirits that are very inconstant in business doing and undoing every hour very indecisive and mutable But he was of another temper quick-sighted to penetrate into a business judicious to determine it and constant not to vary in a resolution well grounded so that his word was his law and was taken by others as current as an obligation When his presence was requested at any consult he would be punctual at the time appointed that none should stay for him Where taking his place and that the lowest if it were possible his demeaner was so modest and composed that all were edified by it Listening to others with great attention and seriousness as if he had no other business And after his opinion given very brief and material his presence being no further useful he would take leave being a great husband of his time since other business for Gods service still attended him else where And notwithstanding the throng of business and though never so important he quitted not for them his Exercises of Piety nor his care of perfection which he preferred before all other his affairs knowing that as wholesome meat taken immoderately doth hurt and instead of strengthening the stomach weakens and suffocates its natural heat So these Exterior employments even the most holy if a man surcharge himself bring much prejudice and extinguish the ardour of Devotion Wherefore he was careful not to over-burthen himself with them being very vigilant that they should not distract and dissipate him nor quench the Interiour motions of the Spirit nor secularize his soul but ferve onely as means to elevate and unite him more to God In the multitude of business he was still recollected and as much alone in great meetings as the Hermites in their solitudes which might be gathered from his modestie and composed countenance evidencing his application to his Interiour and his union to God from whom he drew light and strength for the managing and prudent ordering of these buâ—nesses One day he wrote thus to his Director My recollection hinders no business at all but rather furthers it For without it I should have a solicitous desire of doing all my self whereas I act now in a most serene way in which I have no share for it is our Lord that doth all In another Letter thus Finding my self one day much burthened with divers-business I had a desire to draw off my minde wholly and at the same instant I found it Since which time they create me no trouble and I dispatch them more readily without thinking of them This grace hath been often renewed to me although in several manners which I acknowledge to be very great because it preserves me disingaged even in the multiplicity of business And notwithstanding he never omitted any thing of prudence or industry for the effecting his business yet the success he expected much more from Gods benediction than from his industry or any humane endeavours knowing well that what was undertaken for the service of God and good of his neighbour was to be accomplished by his grace Wherefore in every thing he had a great recourse to prayer instantly commending all his exercises to God and in all imployments and choice of persons which he made use of his eye was more upon grace than nature or any Exterior abilities And knowing that the affairs of God are not without their difficulties but meet with great oppositions even sometimes to be overturned he was armed with patience in the undertaking to suffer with courage not starting at the greatest dangers but still hoping of the success If they miscarried at any time he rested well satisfied after all fair means attempted on his part Thus he writ to a friend It is a great infirmity in our humane nature that she needs applause in matters of grace Wherefore I look at it as a great favour from God when I have the honour of executing any enterprize solidly undertaken and well approved of and acknowledged to proceed from the Spirit of God by those to whom he hath committed in his Church the judgement of such things notwithstanding the accomplishment of it meets with many crosses and contradictions In another thus We may take up good and holy designs and God doth often inspire them yet when he is pleased to permit a contrary event we must adore his secret will which brings with it more of mercy in the crossing of them than if they had succeded to our comfort We should always be jealous over our own spirit that it fix not upon any thing And again thus The sweet Jesus hath his designs which he conducts by such means as we would not at all make choice of and the reason is because he would thwart our wills and abate our dependancies upon earth And therefore often thwarts he our just undertakings being more jeolous of the Sacrifice of our hearts than of any thing else how specious soever But the principal rule which this holy man observed in these affairs was never to look at them in themselves but in the will and design of God and to proceed in view of this Whence it came to pass that he applied himself to business not as appearing glorious pleasant or profitable but as agreeable to the will of God to which he submitted his own making poor and mean imployments equally considerable and sometime preferred before greater Hence he took up things cast aside by others undertook charities out of the road
and not taken notice of applied himself to such poor as were in a forlorn condition believing that herein there was less of nature and more of grace And never thrust himself into a business without the will of God and when it did consist with that he was not hasty or precipitant but let things go on kindly and sweetly according to the pace of his Providence and the course of his good pleasure The like we have of him in Memorials from divers places It was not his way to begin or finish any thing according to the motion of his own will but of the Spirit of God as far as he knew it If after he had undertaken any thing he felt his inward motion to cease he ceased also the pursuit He had no private design or project wherby he steer'd although he knew the things he had to do but attended on the express order from above which he received either by a light in his understanding or by an impression in his will or by some other way that gave him as great a certitude as any can have in the like occurrences wher upon a familiar friend asked him one day whether he would do such a thing at such a time He answered Know you not that to morrow is not mine And at another time he said I see five or six things which of necessity must be done but I cannot tell you which I would dispatch the first nor when nor how for through the mercy of God I am indifferent to all things He writ thus to his Director I hope to be at Paris about the end of September where I shall receive your orders to come to you when I may be lest troublesome Where I shall be ready for what my Saviour shall appoint by you I forecast nothing but onely to obey and follow his conduct by your appointment and in every thing the best I can I finde by experience that when I think to do most in any place there I do nothing at all This hath taught me to go divested of all design and when I think least thereof and abandon my self to God then he doth the more wherefore I will leave the doing to him and to you in him Going one day in the holy Week accompanied with a friend to receive a most royal and liberal sum of money given by the Queen of France in behalf of the Church of Canada and passing by a Church where they were singing the Divine Service Let us saith he dispatch the will of God it would be a great comfort to be present at the Church to hear the praises of God but let us pass on since this is more in concurrence with his holy will The same party reported of him that he had observed several persons wondring at his extraordinary recollection and such an intimate union with God in one man who had so great imployments but he was above them all affixed onely to God and to the execution of his will He gave this counsel to a certain friend who had great designs for the service of God but such as at that time were not seasonable Let us not apply the days business but to the day Your intentions are pious but you must resign the future to God and be willing for the present to love and follow what he makes appear to be his will and to keep your self still before him as a ready Sacrifice together with our Lord Jesus Christ For the conclusion of this Chapter I shall produce a Letter to his Director upon the same subject in the year 1648. full of light I will tell you said he what passed yesterday within me by which you may understand my present condition Hearing the Gospel of the Assumption of our Lady which speaketh of Martha and Mary most of the sentâ—ments I formerly had upon that subject came presently into my minde to wit that prayer and converse with God are much to be preferred before all Exterior exercises though never so holy seeing that Martha bufied about so holy and excellent a service was reprehended for her trouble and Mary commended for her recose This word Turbaris erga plurima Thou art troubled about many things hath besteaded me along time to draw me off from outward things and also from inward though good if not absolutely necessary as visiting and instructing the poor or reading or writing something of devotion and the like And I understood it expedient at that time to quit them the better to betake my self to Interaloperations and arrive at the laying down of our own will and vivacity to attend wholly to the Divine appointment following it in prudent simplicity by the Spirit of Christ which enlivens and lives in those that hearken to it with respect But you must know that for these three or four moneths which I have spent in Low-Normandy I have been as it were continually imployed in Exteriour works as conferring with all sorts of people taking care of the sick that found me out removing from place to place reconciling differences new building a great Church which was to be pluck'd down and enlarged For which I was forced to draw out several platforms and make the very models in which formerly I have had some insight by reason of the want of Architects in that place calling to minde my old notions and busying my self wholly in it Yesterday after my mornings work hearing the same Gospel read and these words in particular Turbaris erga plurima Thou art troubled about many things a certain Interiour light came upon me and it was said unto me Non turbaris erga plurima Thou art not troubled about many things giving me to understand and that in a very evident manner that the things we are employed upon according to the Divine order whatsoever they be do not create us any such trouble and I discovered clearly at least as I thought that Martha was not reproved for doing a good work but for doing it too solicitously Our Saviour intimating to her by these words Turbaris erga plurima that her business was done in trouble and inordinate agitation of spirit though the end was very laudable That the priucipal business consists in hearing the Eternal Word even as his own humanity whether in working or preaching or any other imployment received its motions from the Divinity A me ipso facio nihil sicut audio hoec loquor I do nothing of my self as I hear that I speak said he In like manner ought we to take our directions from Jesus Christ who is the Word of Eternal Life and act nothing with disturbance but all in peace by his Spirit I received hereby a great support in the performance of these petty Exterior offices to which my duty obliged me and made no difficulty at all to yield up my self to this holily-disordered Divine Order In which I perceived that it was Gods will I should perform these petty things which could not be done without me
alliance he hath contracted with us in Jesus Christ This knowledge produceth in me as much astonishment as love And to tell you my sense of it a man possessed with these verities remains no more a man but becomes annihilated and all his desire is to be lost and melted on purpose to change his nature and enter into this Spirit of Jesus to act no less in him than by him I have conceived such great things of our Saviours Humanity united to the Divinity as cannot be uttered How hath this alliance of the Divinity most deeply abased the sacred Humanity into a self-annihilation and a sacrifice of love upon the sight of the greatness of God What an honour is this to the Humane Nature to be thus predestinated and What a glory to us to be chosen and called to an entrance into his favour and a rising to God and the everlasting enjoyment thereof through him It would spend me this whole day to write to you the view that I have had of the wisdom and bounty of God touching this mysterie of Love which he hath opened unto us in his Son And though he was truly devoted to all the mysteries of our Lord yet in a most special manner to that of his Infancy The occasion whereof was thus Being constrained to make a journey to Dâ—jon by reason of a suit of Law beforementioned he heard much talk of Sister Margaret of the blessed Sacrament a Religious Carmeline of the Covent of Beaulne on whom our Saviour had conferred particular favours who led a life very extraordinary grounded upon true and solid vertue And as our Lord hath several ways to sanctifie a soul and fit it for his sacred purposes so he was pleased to exercise this choice woman absoluâ—ely in the mysterie of our Saviours Infancy and through that pipe to convey into her soul a torrent of grace and extraordinary gifts not onely for herself but others as may be seen in her life now in writing by a person most worthy of such a work Monsieur Renty had a desire to go to Beaulne being but seven leagues from Dijon to recommend himself to the prayers of this holy Virgin And though when he came thither he neither spake to her nor saw her she having by a particular conduct of our Saviour been retired for thirteen years from the speech of any secular person yet notwithstanding he received much benefit from his journey as he expressed in a Letter writ back from Dijon to the Prioress of that place I want words to express the mercies I received by my journey to Beaulne Sister Margaret hath marked me out in the holy Infant Jesus such a divesting of my self of all worldly things that it appears to me my rendezouz where I must strip my self naked of all things else The year after he made a second journey where God having altered her resolution for speech and converse with others he had the happiness to discourse with her and contracted at that time a very intimate alliance of grace receiving great gifts by means thereof The chiefest and source of all the rest being that our Saviour engaged him as he had done her in a more particular devotion to the mysterie of his Infancy and imprinted in him the lineaments of the like Graces and Spirit This holy man whose judgement may be highly esteemed by us considering his extraordinary insight into spiritual matters greatly valued this Religious woman approving exceedingly her directions and testifying how great a blessing he reckoned her acquaintance and what benefit he had reaped from her even after her death To which purpose he writ thus to me the eighteenth of June 1648. the year of her death The holy Infant sweet Jesus hath taken to himself our good Sister Margaret whose death was consonant to the dispositions of her life and miraculous graces I have received from her since her death great comfort That grace I reâ—eived according to my present estate and weakness to enter into the Infancy of our Saviour hath since been renewed to me and I have understood it more solidly About a moneth after I received these lines from him I had yesterday by the singular bounty of God a view of his Divine Majestie of S. John Baptist and Sister Margaret of the B. Sacrament so clearly represented to me in my spirit that I cannot suspect the truth of it O what effects were produced by their presence and what love by these sights I am wholly renewed in my respects to that great Saint my Patron and to that glorious servant of God who honoured him very much whilst she was living and from whom without doubt since her death she hath beggâ—d to be my Protector It is mâ—st certain that the work of God in her was one continued prodigie of grace and a master-piece of his hand But let us return to his application made to the Infancy of our Saviour chiefly begun in his second journey to Beaulne Of which we may understand something from this Letter written to a Father of the Oratory Confessor to the Carmelines there I must needs tell you that upon my first journey which I made to you above a year agoâ— I brought back with me a great esteem and devotion to the Infancy of our Saviour but I was not yet well settled in it I attempted it from time to time but could not yet make it my principal food Since which the holy Infant by a supernatural grace hath manifested and opened himself to me and now I finde every thing in him and am remitted thither for all And to the Prioress he writ thus I must acquaint you that the holy Infant Jesus will grant me the favour to apply my self pâ—rticularly to his honour to give my self to him and to his holy dispositâ—ons ordering my life and the sacrifice of my self by the conduct of his Spirit In order hereunto he cousecrated and gave up himself thereto in these terms a copy whereof written with his own hand and in his own blood he sent to Sister Margaret which is kept with great devotion in that Covent And another something more inlarged to his Ghostly Father to which he wrote his name onely in blood in these words To the honour of my King the Holy Infant Jesus I Have consecrated my self this Christmass-Day 1643. to the holy Infant Jesus offering up to him my whole Being my Soul my Body my Free-will my Wife my Children my Family the Estate which he hath given me and finally all that I am concerned in having beseeched him to enter into full Possession Property Jurisdiction of all that I am That I may live no more but in and to him in the quality of a Victim separate from every thing of this world and challenging no more share thereof than according to the applications which he shall give and shall allow me Insomuch that from henceforward I shall look at my self meerly as an instrument in the hand of the holy Infant
herself may arrive Seeing a Gentleman of his birth and age in a Secular life and the throng of so great employments attained hereto onely if we use the like diligence and be faithful to the Spirit of God the onely means to attain to this perfection CHAP. 6. His great Reverence to Holy Things MOnsieur Renty did not onely carry a great Reverence to God but likewise to all things belonging to his Service and to all Holy things which sprang from that sense of Vertue and Religion imprinted in his soul producing the like fruits Exteriourly In the first place he had a singular respect to all Holy places and it will be very hard to recoâ—n with what Respect and Devotion he behâ—ved himself in Churches At his entrance his demeanour was exceeding modest and religiously grave He never sare down there nor put on his hat not so muâ—h as in Sermon time he would abide there as long as possibly he could and hath been observed upon great Festivals to remain there upon his knees for seven or eight hours He was very silent in the Church and if any person of any condition spoke to him his answer was short and in case the business required longer time he would carry him forth or some other way free himself thereof Secondly he used great veneration to all Ecclesiastical persons even to the meanest but the Reverence he gave to Priests was wonderful He would never take the upper hand of them without extream violence as appears by that passage in the former Chapter Whensoever he met them he saluted them with profound humility and in his travel would light off his horse to do it and render them all honour possible When they came to visit him he entertained them cordially with exceeding great respect at their departure waiting on them to the gate and if any dined at his table gave them the upper place which civility he observed to his own Chaplain When any Mission was in any of his Lordships he entertained the Missioners apart where they were served in plate when other Gentlemen and persons of quality that visited him were onely in pewter waving herein all humane respects A Nobleman and his Lady came one day to him upon a visit accompanied with a Priest that was Tutor to their children After he had received them observing the Priest at the lower end of his Hall with some of their Retinue quitting civilly the Nobleman and his Lady he went down to the Priest shewing great respect to him as to the most honoatable person of the company In fine his opinion of the Priesthood was so venerable looking upon it as the most potent means for procuring the glory of God that he said to a friend That he had a design to enter into that Order if God should ever bring him into a condition capable of it And as he had this singular Reverence toward them so likewise had he an earnest desire that they and generally all Ecclesiastical persons should understand the excellency of the condition to whiâ—h God had call'd them leading a life agreeable to their Dignity He writ to his Director in the year 1645. upon occasion of several Ecclesiasticks of his acquaintance who correspond not to their Profession and Obligation that his heart melted into sorrow for them and that he prostrated himself before his Saviour and begged with tears for some Apostolike Spirits to be sent amongst us our poor Fishermen Give us O Lord our poor Fishermen I often repeated I meant the Apostles But this word ran much in my minde not being able to use any other and my spirit wronght much upon these words Pescheurs Pecheurs Fishermen and Sinners I look upon these men simple indeed in their Exteriour but great Princes in their Interiour whose life and outward appearance vile in the eyes of men and estranged from the pomp of the world converted souls by their Sanctity by their Prayers by their Vâ—gilance and restless Labours And herein I discover a great mistake ordinary in the world which believes that outward greatness and pomp is the way to keep up ones credit and render him more capable to do good to his neigbours But we are foully mistaken for it is grace that hath power upon souls and an holy and humble life that gaineth hearts With the same spirit he bewailed much the hasty and irreverent reciting of their Office in many places Being this day present at Divine Service saith he in a Letter to me many words therein put me in minde of the holiness thereof and yet I could not without much grief take notice of some chanting it hastily without devotion or spirit and others hearing it accordingly Good God what pitty is this where is our faith My eyes were ready to run over with tears but I forced my self to refrain them In the third place he had a great respect and love to Religious Persons and all such as dedicated themselves to the Service of God encouraging and assisting them with all his might This Letter he writ to one that was assaulted with great combats I must needs let you know the tender resentment I have of those tempests and present storms that you endure I know no reason why men should alarum you thus nor that you have done any thing against the Gospel which is the onely thing they should condemn you for I believe it will be very hard for them to gather a just cause of reproach from your design For my own part I do not wonder at these crosses its sufficient to know that you belong to Jesus Christ and do desire to follow him reckoning contradiction to be your portion in these days of your flesh Be you onely firm in your confidence upon our Lord suffering no storms from without to trouble you or obscure that light that hath guided and pressed you to this business I pray God deliver you from the reasonings of flesh and blood which often multiply upon us in such matters assuring you that if you give not car to them God will manifest himself unto you that is he will comfort and fortifie you in faith and in experience of the gifts of his Holy Spirit To another he writ thus Blessed for ever be the Blessed Infant Jesus for the happy entrance of those two devout souls into Religion which you mention I shall rejoyce exceedingly in their perseverance the best argument of their effectual calling If the other party you know of had a little more confidence and courage to break her fetters it would be a great step for her And surâ—ly there is not need of so much prudence and deliberation to give up our selves to him who to the Gentiles is foolishness and to the Jews a stumbling block This world is a strange cheat and amusement insinuating into and infecting every thing God hath no need of our good parts nor of our rare qualities who commonly confounds the wisdom of the wise by little things which he chuseth
Apostle sets our Saviour for our pattern of whom he said in the former part Exinanivir seipsum He emptied himself If you ask how long and to what degree I answer even from the instant of his conception to his death Behold this is our Rule our Patron and our general Rendezvouz from all sides And to a third If we understood truly how the real divesting our selves of all rendred us capable of union with God we would incessâ—ntly beg this grace offering great violence to our selves to arrive at this state of Death and Abnegation to which every Christian must endeavour that aims at union with God and ascend to perfection I received some years since great illumination upon this verity giving me to understand that the treasure hidden in the field mentioned in the Gospel is no other but this estate of Death and Annihilation taking away from us our selves to give us to God emptying us of all creatures to be replenished with the Creator the Fountain of all good Our Saviour tells us there that he that found it went and sold all to buy it If we understood the true value of this precious treasure we would freely part with our liberty with all we are and all we have to purchase it Really this should work in us great confusion that such precious things and such forcible motives obliging us to tend to this Abnegation we arrive at it so slowly and most men so seldom O how few truly annihilated persons are to be found few that do not live according to the corrupted life of the old man producing actions accordingly when ever occasions of honour or profit or pleasure are presented Few that attain to lose and renounce themselves in such points as tend to their perfection Let us therefore employ all our forces to arrive at this happy estate O the spirits that are thus dead what an admirable life do they live I and hereby become rare instruments in the hands of God capable to act great matters tending to his glory These are intimately united to him wholly transformed and annihilated in God and by this gainful loss and happy annihilation arrive t the height of perfection they enjoy a setled peace a pure and solid contentment incomparably surpassing all sensuall pleasures These are so far advanced above all earthly greatness above that Idol-Honour which the world so much admireth that these are become their contempt and scorn They make no difference betwixt the pomps of Emperors and Spiders-webs they value Diamonds and Precious Stones equal with common Pibbles they neither take health for happiness nor sickness for misery they think that poverty should not be termed a misfortune nor poor men be deemed miserable they weigh not Beatitude in silver scales nor measure it by the ell of Pleasure but repute that all these things do much resemble running waters which in their courve wash the roots of trees and plants as they pass but make no stay with any of them flowing continually towards the end and place appointed them Of these illustrious dead men and most divinely annihilated souls the Angel speaks in the Apocalypse Write blessed are they that dye in the Lord from henceforward for they rest from their labours And indeed this verity should be writ in Letters of Gold in Characters of Saphyrs and Rubies Blessed are the dead who dye thus to themselves and to all created things to live onely to their Redeemer The Holy Ghost hath said it and assured them that at the instant of this precious death they finde rest from all their labours because their former pains and troubles of spirit now have an end for that they have now rooted out the causes of them and dried up the fountain which according to S. James are our lusts and concupiscences Monsieur de Renty had arrived to this pitch as may be seen in what we have mentioned deserving to be put in the list of those truly happy I mean those happy ones of the state of grace and possessors as of the Paradise of this life CHAP. 10. Of his Corporal death MOnsieur de Renty having now finished his mystical death must now also look for to enter into the way of Glory to receive that recompence of the reward which God had prepared for him in the Heavens necessarily dye the death of the body and so he diâ—â— 't is this day that I writ this two years ago which fell out in that manner as I shall now relate One the 11 of Aprl 1649. he found himself very ill and having concealed his sickness for five days was constrained immediately after a journey he had taken about some acts of Charity to keep his bed where he endured great pains all over his body with which his spirit likewise was so much affected that he professed his fancy to be so much disturbed with absurd and raving imaginations that if Gods grace had not assisted him to undestand the ground of them and preserved him under them he should have spoken more extravagancies than any mad man that there was much therefore in such an evil to desert and humble him but it was the duty of a sinner to honour God in all conditions in which he should put him During these great pains and torments both of body and minde and during the whole course of his sickness his ordinary employment consisted in affectionate elevations of his minde to God in thoughts and words of blessing praise and submission to whatsoever was laid upon him of meekness and perfect obedience to all that attended and had the care of of him with such a humble and contented spirit that he thought all well done though sometimes it was otherwise He exprest a wonderful patience which ever gave a check to any complaint still saying that he suffered nothing although his pains were extraordinary And when his keeper which was a Sister of the Hospital of Charity with whom he had visited so many poor and sick solks did importune him to declare his grief O Sister said he how doth the love of God wipe away all pain The Servants of God-fuffer nothing Another friend demanding of him if his pain was not great He answered No. The other replied That he thought it was It s true saith he that I am much clogged with my disease but I feel it not because I do not think of it Being urged by their sister to take some sweet things he refused saying These conduce little either for life or death and are not at all needfull Yet he refused not Physick though it was very bitter which he took with a chearfull countenance and swallowed it with great difficulty without leaving any The day before his death one told him of an excellent medicine which had done great cures He answer'd Patience is a soveraign remedy intimating his unwillingness to try it yet when it was brought he took it without any reluctancy or once asking what it was evidencing his mystical death to any thing
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
upon my self what should I be before my own eyes What am I then before thine and those of thy servants He wrote to another person I thank you for those Devoirs of Devotion which you have tendred these 24 and 25 days last past for a thing so base as my self who deserve no room but among the children of Adam that deceive all the world and who have reason to fear the anger of all the children of God if the prayer of his son upon the cross had not implor'd forgiveness for his persecutors And to another also Seeing I am born with so willingly and that you persevere to desire this of me I beseech my Lord in the hand and disposing of whom I would be wholly that he make use if it please him of this miserable Rush for the giving you some consolation in the life of his children and the ways which may lead you to the inheritance He writ a great number of Letters and it is a wonderful thing that there is not among them so much as one wherein he doth not villifie himself and which carries not with it some touch of humility and he did the same too in all his conversation For although he had a design to annihilat himself the more to do that which generally speaking is conceived to be the best except in occurrences where vertue obligeth us to practice the contrary to speak nothing of himself at all neither good nor ill yet was to him almost impossible to retain himself from it in regard of that exceeding low opinion and disesteem he had of himself whereupon when a Confident of his said one day to him This was not well done to speak so ill of your self he presently smote his breast avowing He did ill It s true that a man may speak ill of himself through pride upon design to skim off to himself by this false humility a little glory and to get some reputation of an humble person but when all is done we finde not that the proud are much subject to this fault at least thus much we shall finde that it is very hard to speak of ones self from so great depth of humility as did this man of God Who indeed spake of himself very ill and in terms of great confusion and very often but yet notwithstanding without molestation or annoying of any one and in such a manner that we might evidently see that he spake from the bottom of his heart and as he thought And that which is yet more wonderful he had such a grace in speaking ill of himself and to his confusion that many have marked and experimented that the words of humility and confusion which he said of himself did imprint the same disposition in them that heard him bringing into their souls the same effects of self-lessening and sentiments of of humility When by the particular motion of the Holy Ghost he spake of such graces and mercies as God had shewed him it was always with an humbled and self-annulling spirit He wrote to a person thus I am no other than a sinner have pitty on me adoring for me the goodness of God and of our Lord who to speak in the tearms of the Gospel turns in sometimes among sinners I can tell some news of that with Zacheus but I am confounded for not producing in all my life that which his love and gratitude made him do in a moment And to another I beseech our Lord to keep me very low before him and before you for I ought to bear the shame of my crimes in all places seeing I am altogether miserable yet so as without ceasing to joyn with you in saying Misericordias Domini in aeternum Cantabo I will sing of the mercies of God for ever When he spake of pious persons joyned with him in exercises of Charity he used often these terms If I may be so bold I pray you salute them from me I esteem my self very happy to be the last of that company I am altogether uncapable and unworthy of it and yet notwithstanding he was the bringer about of it I shall be condemned by you all if you have not pitty on me and redeem me from my miseries SECT 4. His Humility in his actions AFter the humility of the heart and speech comes that of action which Monsieur de Renty practised in an excellent manner We have already seen it in divers passages we shall see it again in many other and particularly when we speak of his patience and of his charity towards the poor and the sick But besides all this I shall not doubt to say that he was continually attentive to all occasions of Humility so that none of them escaped him without being made use of Since his special vocation to the service of God he would not suffer they should carry him any more a cushion to the Church but to be there hid and disregarded he mingled himself among Mechanicks and mean persons where he was often crowded and incommoded as not being known which he endured with great delight He kept himself alway as much as he could with the humble Publican at the lower end of the Church And at Diâ—on in the Church of the Vesulines the Nuns that attend at the grate spied him at prayers at the lower end of the Church with his arms bent in form of a cross when the people were gone that stood there with him yea and often he said his prayers before the door when it was shut that he might not said he put any to the trouble of opening it to a poor sinner When he heard high Mass in his Parish he went always to the Offertory together with some poor man and was seen sometimes with the same to accompany the Holy Sacrament through the streets when no man of note was there but himself onely During the war at Paris he went himself to buy bread for the poor carrying it through the streets and as much of it too as his strength would permit As also at the same time when he did the charity to a Monastery of Nuns as to take in custody their Church plate he pressed them very much to let him carry to his lodging which was almost two miles thence and on foot as he was a piece very great and weighty but as he had the humility to desire it so had they the discretion not to permit it When they desired him at the same Monastery that when he was pleased to do them the favour to visit them he would come in his Coach by reason of the distance and incommodity he received in coming He answered pleasantly that he lov'd not to make use of a Coach because that smelt something of the Monsieur and that he must endeavour to make himself in every thing very little He went therefore thither on foot and returned the shortest days at five or six a clock at night all alone and sometimes in thawing weather when being told of the
it self implies as much for we call it The importunity of the poor It was given mee in this instant to understand that if we were well enlightned we should not count our selves importuned or hindred by any person or thing because we should regard the order of God conducting all things to our advantage that as it behoves us to suffer with patience the distractions interior so ought we to endure the exterior and that the vexation unquietness and impatience which these little accidents cause in us come from our ignorance and immortification It is not for all that though but we may shun the occasions of trouble but when they come we must look upon them as ordered by God receive and bear them with all sweetness humility and reverence and so though they come and interrupt us the order of God is not interrupted in us but we follow it and this indeed is the treasure and the great secret of the life spiritual and I may so say a Paradise upon earth True it is that nothing troubles us but through our own fault and all the vexations which we either resent within or vent outwardly when any one crosses hinders or diverts us from doing any thing have no other source but the disorders of our too much engaged spirits And for the better stifling of these passionate risings and keeping our hearts in peace we must mark this well that if one hinders us from doing one good work he thereby gives us the means of practising another A man suppose draws you away from prayer or from reading hinders you from the executing of some good design you had for your neighbour It is true but he puts you withal into a condition of exercising patience which in this conjuncture will be better more acceptable to God and more efficacious to perfectionate you than all those other actions for in them there was found your own will but in these there comes in a Self-abnegation wherein consists your perfection for the fulness of God is not but in the emptiness of the creature SECT I. A pursuit of the same subject THis great patience in Monsieur de Renty did flow from the high esteem he made of sufferings which if well understood are no other than well-springs of life eternal than mines of gold celestial riches than participations of the Cross of our Lord which Cross God hath appointed the cause of our happiness and of all the good that we shall ever possess and consequently whereunto every one must have some ligament or nail to affix him who will be saved To one that suffered he wrote thus God fashions you for himself uniting you here below to Jesus Christs sufferings Ah! what a great favour is it and greater than we are aware of And to another What a blessing is it that God makes you suffer whilst the world laughs if those of the contrary part had as you have their eyes open they would see a ravishing wonder your self to laugh in suffering and themselves to weep for not suffering you have a favour which they contemn because they understand it not and poor miserable men they count themselves happy in what is their misery This great opinion which he had conceived of sufferings made him desire and thirst after them and to say in the ardor of his wish with that holy woman to whom he bore so great devotion either to dye or to suffer He wrote to one thus I see that in a manner every thing is unprofitable in this life but to suffer every consolation every sweetness and joy is an overhasty scisure of the recompence which is not due to Criminals who sojourn not in this world but to be purged and do penance there to which business pleasures and joys bring some allay and hinder without doubt the penance from being so full and the soul from arriving to a higher degree of perfection Not that I deny but that these things may sometimes be necessary in regard of our infirmity which hath need to be upheld for the better enduring its mortifications The year 1647. thâ— 30 of April he wrote thus to his Director I have always before my eyes my feebleness and that little which I render to God for his favours which keeps me in abnegation but yet with great affiance which carries me to love to docility and to obedience but love and obedience that inflames me more to suffer with our Lord This is my greatest longing and attractive because in every other thing we are receivers from God but in this here although we receive the grace to suffer yet the suffering is that which we can properly give to God and is the greatest gage and proof of our love But it is not for all this reasoning aforesaid that I should chuse and bring sufferings upon me but I feel my self inwardly inclined towards it and stay there It is about a fortnight since that I had such a kinde of acknowledgement and such a love to our Lord suffering and offering himself to God his Father and knitting us to himself to be but one and the same sacrifice that I felt my self in an instant and during that instant glued to the Cross by such an alliance of love as is inexplicable and whereof the vertve continues with me to this present In a Memorial that he gave him the year 1648. in Lent concerning his dispositions he said It is come into my minde that the way to make me keep a hard Lent would be to set me at a good Table and oblige me to make good chear to cast me among the brave companions of the world to prattle and laugh and to lead me into walks and meetings of young gallantry for this would be to me a little hell yea without speaking of the sin that might be there the very thought of it makes me tremble for it is true that Solitude fastings and other things which are called Penances are my attractives or allurements And afterward he very wisely addes Although I have this feeling I cease not to know what I am and in all my inclinations and desires I take heed not to beg to suffer the least thing and when I happen to do it of my self I revoke it afterwards as having done foolishly I have too much experienc of my weakness I give my self onely to my God for every thing he desires of me from the top of heaven even to the bottom of hell by his order I will all with him I can do all and that which is ordered by him is always accompanied with his grace This great servant of God inlightned and touched with these illuminations and contemplations stirred up to patience all those that he dealt with and perswaded them to knit and unite themselves intimately to our Lord suffering and crucified He wrote thus to one afflicted I beseech our Lord to fortifie you more and more with his graces and that the more he imprints in you the characters of his passion
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