told him that of a long time he had left off the use of a sword and that after he had commended the business to God by prayer he should follow his inspiration assuring himself that his protection over us is much according to our relying upon him These words were found in one of his Letters to his Director My soul being armed with Confidence Faith and Love fears neither the Devil nor Hell nor all the stratagems of man neither think I at all on Heaven or Earth but onely how to fulfil the will of God in every thing He hath been noted to do very notable things through the strength of this Vertue even at such times when he hath been afflicted with great aridities in his Interiour In our aridities and privation of the sense and feeling of grace saith he in a Letter to a friend is manifested an heroick abnegation of our selves to the will of God when under Hope believing against Hope we shew our selves to be true sons of Abraham Isaac shall not dye though the knife be at his throat and in case the true Isaac should in fine be crucified it is but to make us conformable to the Cross and cut of our ashes to raise us to a true and better life Thus likewise he writ to his Director I have a very clear insight into the great want I have of my Saviour him I behold in his riches and my self in my deep poverty him I look upon invironed iâ— power and my self in weakness whereby my spirit being filled with content by the impression of these words Quid est homo quod memor es ejus What is man that thou art mindeful of him doth rest upon a total abandoning of its self into his bounty These words Longanimiter ferens bearing patiently have dwelt longe upon my spirit though I did not at first remember whence they were taken or what they meant onely this that I must wait with patience for the commands and approach of my Saviour without putting my self forward by my own inquest or endeavours but rest with faith and reverence begging his grace and hope in him But a few days ago taking up the New Testament in opening the Book I did light upon the sixth Chapter to the Hebrews where the Apostle speaks of Faith and Patience whereby we obtain the promises qui fide patientia haereditabit promissiones who by faith and patience shall inheret the promises and to prove this brings in the example of Abraham sic longanimiter ferens adeptus est repromissionem and so waiting patiently obtained the promise This passage touched me to the very heart and relieved my languishing together with another passage of S. James which presented it self to my eye at the same time Patientes igitur estore fratres usque ad adventum Domini ecce agricola expectat preciosum fructum terrae patienter ferens Be patient therefore my brethren till the coming of our Lord behold the husbandman waiteth patiently till he receive the fruit of the earth Hereby I was settled in peace upon the solid foundation of Hope and Abnegation As this incomparable Vertue enricheth the soul that is perfectly stated in it with a profound repose a solid joy a wonderful courage and sets it aloft above all Terrestrial things with a generous contempt of whatsoever the world esteems and desires giving it a taste of the pleasures that are Eternal as it is not difficult for him that hath assured hopes of a glorious Kingdom to set at nought a Pad of straw so did it communicate to this holy man all these excellent treasures and imprinted in his soul all these noble reflections Whereby he was incited with all his strength to encourage others in the pursuit of this Vertue knowing by his own experience the inestimable benefits thereof understanding it to be our Lenitive in all disasters our staff and stay in all weaknesses and our secure haven in all tempests instructing them continually how that God to the end that he might drive us into this Port and cause us to rest in it doth frequently permit us to be assaulted with temptations and tryals the deeplier to engage us to have recourse to him begging his aid and succour and relying upon him with confidence The like instruction he gave to a certain person upon occasion of the Apostles amazement when they beheld our Saviour walking upon the waters and took him for a Chost Think you this was without a special providence that our Saviour suffered his Disciples to go alone into that ship and permitted a contrary winde to arise Who knows not that in the same manner he fashions the souls of the faithful by his absences and by their tryals that he may afterwards manifest his power upon the seas and tempests quickning thereby our Faith and shewing himself to be the Messias and true Deliverer of the world But observe we how many Christians in their sufferings are affrighted with the Apostles seeing our Saviour marching on the waters Every thing makes them afraid the winds the waves yea even Christ himself that is the anxiteies of their spirit their own disputings and also those good coursels that others give them for their establishment upon Christ Jesus before God All this appears but as a Ghost to amaze them unless Christ himself graciously appear yet more unto them to comfort and strengthen them Shall we always want confidence thus to think Christ a Phantasm Shall we not address our selves to him in all our necessities as to our Lord and Deliverer The Jews brought all their sick folks to him and he cured them What is he become a greater Physician of the body than of the soul No no our little Faith our little Love our little Confidence is the cause of our languishings and unfruitful anxieties of spirit Let us go strait to him and all will be cured CHAP. 4. His Love of God SEeing the Love of God is without contradiction the most excellent and perfect of all vertues and that which principally and above all the rest makes a man a Saint we cannot doubt that this holy man was possessed thereof in a very eminent degree and that he loved God with all his heart This Love he founded upon his infinite perfections and favours which may be perceived by what he writ to his Director in the year 1648. concerning this Queen of all Vertues Our Glorious Lord hath from time to time with his resplendent beams shone upon my soul quickning her therewith which have appeared in such several manners and have wrought such great things in a short time as would take up far more to write them which really I am afraid to undertake or begin They all concenter in this one point the love of God through Jesus Christ his communication of himself to us by the Incarnation of his Eternal Word and ours to him through the same Word becoming our brother conversing with us and erecting as it were a mutual society
common exercises for the meanness of which is recompenced with the mortification of our nature which nature very often seeks its self in the extraordinaries and the singularities being much pleased to have something above others and so be thought of and spoken of with the more esteem He kept the same guard upon his speech that he might not in discoursing of spiritual things and the highest mysteries make any use of terms magnifick and pompous or of words new and uncouth and if it fell out that he uttered any such he shewed it was with pain and because he could not express himself otherways insomuch that neither in his actions nor in his words would he have any thing that made appearance of Grandeur or of singularity It was moreover an act of humility and wisdom in him to make esteem and to speak with advantage of other mens carriages for their Interior although they were far below his own saying that we ought most carefully take heed of speaking like the Pharisee I am not as other men And writing to me one day of this subject God forbid said he that I should believe there is any thing singular and extraordinary in me although I ow him extream acknowledgements for his infinite mercies But among all the effects and testimonies of his humility the manner of his carriage towards his Director ought without doubt to have place in the first rank He did nothing were it of never so little consequence that concerned himself without his conduct to him he propounded the thing either by word of mouth if he were present or if absent by writing clearly and punctually desiring his advice his pleasure and benediction upon his resolution These were his terms and that with so much humility respect dependence and submission of his own sense as was admirable and after without return or disputing he followed simply and exactly his order even as much as could be done in a well reformed Religious order by the most resigned and obsequious novice His director having written to him something concerning his perfection he answered him in these terms I beseech you believe that although I am most imperfect and a great sinner if yet you do me the honour and favour to send me a word of what you know to be necessary for me I hope with Gods help I shall profit thereby I pant not after any thing but to finde God and Jesus Christ with as much simplicity as verity I pretend to nothing in this world but this and out of this I desire nothing See what a submission here was although he had which makes the marvel an excellent and most clear spirit and was endued with so high prudence and great insight in each thing that he was consulted by word of mouth and by letters from diverse places by a very great number of persons of every age sex and condition both of Secular and Religious For the practising so highly this submission he fixed his eyes upon our Lord who in each thing was his model and his light in that submission which he rendred to S. Joseph wherewith he was extraordinarily affected Being one day at the Carmelite Nuns of Pontoise praying in their Church and opening himself in this matter to a person to whom with prudence and charity he might do it he thus told him It is true that I have received this morning a grand favour in the weditation on the subjection and dependency which the son of God was pleased to render to S. Joseph to whom he was subject and obedient in all things as a childe to his Father Oh what an honour and grace was it to this Saint but Oh what a vertue and self-annihilation in Jesus Christ that the Son of God being equal to his Father should be subject to a creature and submit to a poor Carpenter as if he had not known how to demean himself I am given to understand how by this example of the Son of God we are highly instructed and after a manner worthy such a Master concerning the dependance which the Creatures ought to have upon God and concerning the strict obligation which engageth us to submit to the Soveraign power which he hath over us and to the direction of men in such sort that our heart may not have repose but in this subjection united to that which Christ Jesus renders to a Creature O how profound is this mysterie and how it teacheth me This said he continued a while after without speaking as if he had been wholly taken up with the greatness of this grace and the person to whom he spake having told him that he felt some communication of this grace he fell down on his knees and so did that person also and both of them praying adored Jesus Christ in this estate of dependence and submission to a creature devoting themselves to him for imitation SECT 5. His love of a private and retired life VVE place also as an effect of his humility the love he had to a private and unknown life for he loved it not onely for its affording him more time to attend upon God and communicate more with our Lord who was the dear object of his heart but the more for having thereby the means to fly from the esteem the honour and the praises of men and to be blotted out of their mindes and remain in oblivion to all the world Being pressed with this love he said that if God had not tied him to this state wherein he was he should have gone into some strange and remote Countrey to live there in obscurity the rest of his days that he wished not to be known by any one in the world that it was not expedient that one should know so much as that he was there and that it would have been a singular pleasure to him to be banished from the hearts of all men and unknown by all the creatures whereunto he contributed on his part all that he could not doing any thing that might bring on acquaintance and gain affections and it was noted that the more he advanced in light and graces the more strong grew the Bent he had plant to this hidden life and desire to be unknown as he witnessed five or six moneths before his death He beheld herein our Lord and he example that he gave us of this life not having appeared for the space of thirty years but once onely in the Temple although there was no danger on his part to be frequented by men and one would think also he might thereby have done them much good in cultivating polishing and sanctifying them by his conversation and by his words being indeed come into the world on purpose to teach them He cast also his eyes upon God whom the Prophet calls a Secret God and who effectually hath kept himself hid a whole Eternity within himself and who through all the discoveries that he hath made of himself which is shewed abroad is nothing near
Blessed be that littleness which is held for weakness and yet overthroweth all the Power and Prudence of flesh Treating with some Religious Persons he seemed as it were rapt on a sudden with the consideration of their happy condition speaking to them thus O how happy are you my Sisters After which falling upon a discourse of their Vocation he spake so effectually as wrought in them an ample acknowledgement of their obligation to God and a courage to proceed in well doing This following Letter he writ to a Gentlewoman newly entred into Religion who next under God did owe her calling to him I thank my Saviour with all Reverence for those good dispositions to your Profession signified in your Letter I understand and am sensible of abundant grace wrought in you whereby I assure my self of a noble pregress I am to expect from the bounty of God who is to that soul that gives herself to him Merces magna nimis Her exceeding great reward You have made a leap which puts you in a new world Blessed and adored be God who in the fulness of time out of his wisdom and love to a soul sends his Son unto it to redeem â—t from the Law of Servitude and translates it into the Adoption of his Sons This hath he now wrought in you in a more special manner and the excellentest way that could be You was never united to Jesus Christ as you are now by your holy Profession You had heretofore something to give that was never before engaged and he something to receive that was not formerly in his possession But now all is given and all is received and the mutual donation is accomplished No more Self no more Life no more Inheritance but in Jesus Christ He is all in all things until the time that according to the Apostle he delevering us up all and wholly to his Father his Faâ—her also shall be iâ— Jesus and in all his members all in all for ever Amen Fourthly he had a very great Devotion to all the Saints in Heaven but more partifulatly to S. Joseph and S. Teresa whom in the year 1640. he chose for his Patroness and above all the rest to the Saint of Saints the B. Virgin in testimony whereof he dedicated himself to her Service at Ardilliers then when he designed himself for a Carthusian And in the year 1640. he desired to be admitted into the Society erected to her honour in the house of the professed of the Jesuits of S. Lewis and for many years he wore a seal upon his arm with her Image graven wherewith he sealed all his Letters We have likewise mentioned how he gave to an Image of Nostre-Dame de Grace a heart of Chrystal set in Gold to testifie to that Admirable Mother as he used often to stile her his love and that with this heart he resigned up to her his own Finally this man of God most entirely honoured and loved the Spouse of Christ his Holy Church reverencing every thing that came from her making great account of all her ceremonies saying That he found a certam grace and particular vertue in the prayers and customs of the Church conforming himself most readily to her practises Being present commonly at High-Mass in Paris he would go to the Offering amongst the people and ordinarily with some poor man He assisted at ceremonies where it was rare to finde not onely men of his quality but far meaner persons as the consecrating of the Fonts in the Holy Week at long Processions in all extremities of weather Upon which occasion he writ one day to a friend Our Procession goeth this day into the Suburbs and since our Saviour hath favoured us with this great mercy to be of this little flock we ought to follow his standard and I take it for a signal honour to follow the Cross which way our holy Mother the Church leads us there being nothing in her but what is glorious since she acts in every thing by the Spirit of Religion in the presence of God whereby she unfolds great mysteries to those that are humble and respective From which expressions actions we may infer that he being a man of such quality and taken up with such a multitude of business had a very reverend esteem of all the ceremonies of the Church otherwise he would never have rendred such Obedience and Honour to them And though it be most true that he highly honoured these ceremonies yet he desired likewise that by the Exteriour pomp that appeared to the eyes Christians might be led on to the Interiour and more Spiritual complaining that the outward Magnificence wherewith Churches are adorned do often stay and amuse them and instead of carrying them on to God their chief end diverts them from him To this purpose he writ thus to a friend We should take notice of that simplicity in which the Divine Mysteries were conveyed to us that we may not be held too long with the splendour in which at this day they are celebrated These thoughts came into my minde in hearing the Organs and Church Musick and beholding the rich Ornaments used in the Divine Office we must look thorow this state at that spirit of Simplicity Purity and Humility of their primitive Institution Not but that these are holy and useful but that we should pass thorow it to the Simplicity and Poverty of Bethlehem Nazareth Egypt the Wilderness and the Cross But above all he was singularly devoted to an union of spirit and affection and universal communion of all good things whith all the faithful in all places of the world and to be admitted into the communion of Saints being an Article of our Creed very dear unto him Wherefore he highly valued all of each Nation and Profession without espousing any particular spirit or interest to respect one above others to magnifie one and derogate from another He honoured all Ecclesiasticks Secular and communicated with them concerning all his Exercises of Charity for his Neighbour he gave great respect to all Parish Priests was very serviceable to him of his own Parish he frequented the Societies of the Religious loved and made use of them for direction of his conscience And notwithstanding the great variety and several orders of them in the Church yet was not his heart divided but affected with an equal esteem and approbation and a general affection to all according to their degree being guided herein by one Spirit viz. that of Christ Jesus which enliveneth all the faithful as members of his body in the same manner as out bodily members notwithstanding they be different in sight figure and offices are knit together and all perfectly agree because they are all quickned by the same soul All misintelligence and disagreeing is a sign of two spirits that rule there and division is the principle of death Concerning this communion of Saints he one day suffered some difficulty Whereupon he writ this excellent Letter to his Directoâ— I
do nourish our Humility suppress our Pride and inviteour Imitation But their faults divulged advance our Self-Conceit and breed Security Though for this Honourable Person you may presume no great faults or blemishes could dwell with so great Mortifications so many good Works such excessive Devotions and his Exteriour Holy Practises do sufficiently testifie a great purity of minde Amongst which Practises though perhaps some things may occur that to some Readers may give offence according to mens several Principles and Perswasion in Religion yet I thought it better doing the business onely of a Translator to let them alone than by cutting them out both to give occasion to those who allow such things to blame the omission and to those who disallow such things to suspect them to be more or of worse consequence than they are Especially when these may serve to provoke you whoever think your selves more illuminated to a Pious jealousie Whilst you consider that if he arrived to so high Christian Graces and Perfection supposed by you to be darkned with some Errours how much you ought sooner to attain the same as enjoying more truth and so proceed to employ your self not in scanning and disputing the things here disliked but in imitating those approved Lest perhaps Errour be said to bring forth more Piety than Truth and whilst you say you see your Sinne remain to you more unexcuseable THE AUTHOURS ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER MY dear Reader I am in a word or two to give you notice of three things concerning the Contents of this Book The first is that whereas truth is the principal part of History you may be confident that it is here exactly observed because whatsoever you shall finde here is almost all of it extracted out of the Originals and the rest out of Authentick Copies there where things were attested by such as were eye-witnesses and persons beyond exception The second is that though we often make use of Monsieur de Renty his own Letters as witnesses of what he was yet ought ye not at all therefore to suspect the truth of what they relate Because first his eminent vertue hath rendred him most creditable in every thing he said though it were of himself besides these his Letters are for the most part directed to his spiritual Guide to whom he did with much confidence unbosom the things belonging to his conscience and gave account as he was obliged of each thing that past in the interiour of his soul And God who best knows to chuse the fittest means to bring his ends about having designed the publishing of this life whereby to leave to all faithful men a patern of perfect a Christian did so dispose of things that this his Director dwelling for several years out of Paris he was obliged to acquaint him by Letters with his interiour dispositions they becoming by this means much more perfectly discovered unto us than any otherway they could And lastly we are indeed uncapable of knowing any thing of a mans interiour but by his own declaration and that which we understandin Saints of this nature which yet makes up the principal of their sanctity comes by no other way than their discovering and opening it to some one and he afterwards to the publike And therefore either Monsieur de Renty himself must have manifested the secrets of his heart and revealed what was hidden in his soul or he must have remained for ever lock'd up and unknown to us although assuredly neither thus hath all of him been by himself manifested or related The third thing is that being willing to obey the decree of our holy Father Urban the 8. dated the 1â— of March 1625. and that other in explanation of the former dated June 5. 1631. where it is ordered that those that publish the lives of any person of great vertue do declare and make protestations upon several heads I therefore protest that my intent and design in setting forth this work is that the matter thereof should be no otherwise understood than as grounded upon the testimony and faith of men and not upon the Authority of H. Church and that by the name of Saint which I several times attribute to Monsieur Renty I mean onely that he was endued with vertue far exceeding the common sort and do use this word onely in that sense that S. Paul gives it to all the faithful and not to put him in the number of Saints canonized which to do belongs onely to the Holy Sea A TABLE OF THE CHAPTERS AND SECTIONS PART I. CHAP. 1. HIs Birth Infancy and youth page 1. Chap. 2. His marriage and course of life to the age of 27 years page 10 Chap. 3. His entire change and call to high perfection page 17 Chap. 4. His vertues in general page 24 Chap. 5. The source from whence those vertues flowed page 30 PART II. Chap. 1. HIs Penances and Austerities 37 Chap. 2. His Poverty of spirit 47 Sect. 1. His outward Poverty 48 Chap. 3. His Humility 54 Sect. 1. His Humility of heart 58 Sect. 2. The pursuit of his Humility of heart 67 Sect. 3. His Humility in his words 77 Sect. 4. His Humility in his actions 75 Sect. 5. His love of a private and retired Life 84 Chap. 4. The disesteem he made of the world 88 Chap. 5. His partience 94 Sect. 1. A pursuit of the same subject 100 Sect. 2. His Domestick crosses 107 Chap. 6. His Mortification 112 PART III. Chap. 1. HIs application to our Saviour Jesus Christ in regard of his neighbour 121 Chap. 2. His Charitie to his Neighbours in generall 126 Sect. 1. His charity to the poor 133 Sect. 2. His charity to poor sick men 140 Sect. 3. More concerning the same charity and the success thereof 145 Sect. 4. His zeal for the salvation of his neighbour 150 Sect. 5. More of the same subject 154 Sect. 6. A continuation of the same subject 167 Sect. 7. Certain other qualities of his zeal 173 Sect. 8. Two other qualities of his zeal 179 Sect. 9. The success which God gave to his zeal 186 Sect. 10. His grace in assisting particularly certain choice souls 193 Sect. 11. His great skill in Interiour matters of the soul 199 Chap. 2. His outward behaviour and conversation 209 Chap. 3. The conduct of his business 215 Chap. 4. The excellent use he made of all things and the application he made to the Infancy of our Saviour for that purpose 228 Sect. 1. A pursuit of the same subject 235 PART IV. Chap. 1. HIs Interiour and his application to the Sacred Trinity 244 Chap. 2. His Faith 250 Chap. 3. His Hope 255 Chap. 4. His Love to God 259 Chap. 5. His great reverence and fear of God which wrought in him a wonderful purity of Conscience 271 Chap. 6. His great reverence to Holy things 276 Chap. 7. His Devotion to the Holy Sacrament 267 Chap. 8. His Prayer and Contemplation 292 Chap. 9. The state of his Mystical Death
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
man pollutes and undoes himself He that will conduct souls to Christ and God must of necessity carry them through such ways as lead thither CHAP. 2. His Charity to his Neighbour taken in general HAving a purpose to speak of his Charity which his man of God had towards his Neighbour I shall speak first of it in general and say thus much that it was so great and enlarged that it seemed to have no bounds in that he loved not onely all Christians and faithful people but even all men not excepting any because he beheld motives in all of them of a true charity and sincere love looking upon them as creatures of God and his chief Workmanship for whom our Saviour became man and laid down his life whom he loved and desired to save these all he likewise loved and laboured their good Thy Commandment saith David is exceeding broad the same dimensions he prescribed to his charity loving the present and absent domesticks and strangers good and bad esteeming all according to their degree honoring all speaking well of and doing good to all and ill to none There was not any considerable publique good work done either at Paris and a great way off it wherein he had not a great share There was no undertaking there that rended to the honour of God or good of man of which he was not either the Author or Promoter or Finisher and very often all these together He was one at all the meetings for Piety and in many as the soul and primum mobile he kept correspondence through the whole Kingdom concerning works of charity received from all parts letters desiring his advice in all difficulties that occur'd in the erecting or advancing of Hospitals Seminaries of Religion Places of Devotion Fraternities of Vertuous Persons agreeing to associate together for the better applying themselves to their own and others salvation and for the managing of all sorts of good works One of good report writ thus concerning him from Caen Monsieur Renty was our support and onely refuge in the execution of all our designs which related to the service of God the saving of souls and relief of the poor and distressed To him we wrote continually as well for the settling of our Hospitals and houses for receiving of loose women converted as also for the suppressing the insolence of some Hereticks who shewed contempt of the blessed Sacrament too openly Finally we received counsel and succour from him in all like occasions in which he expressed a great zeal for the glory of God and extirpation of vice Since his death we have not met with any to whom we could have the like recourse about the things of God Another from Dijon wrote thus We cannot but acknowledge the great benefit this Province hath received from Monsieur Renty wherever he came wherein he hath wonderfully advanced all works of Piety We may truly say that his days were filled with the plenitude of God and we believe that he scarce lost one minute of time in which he either spake not or acted not something tending to his service He applied himself to the necessities of the English Irish and captives in Barbary and of the Missions into the Levant he took very great pains for the good of the Hospital at Marcelles for the relief of Galley-slaves and contributed much to the advancing of the affairs of new France in America he had a design likewise to purge all Trades and Manufactures from corruptions that had grown upon them to rectifie and sanctifie them that men might live upon them like Christians which thing he together with others had happily begun and perfected the same in two of them as shall be shewed hereafter Moreover as one of the great effects of Charity is Concord and Union so had he a wonderful care to conserve encrease and perfect it in himself and others wherefore he lived in perfect amity with all the world with Seculars Ecclesiasticks and Religious esteeming respecting and speaking honorably of them all and when any difference fell out among them he was greatly afflicted for it endeavoring by all means to pacifie and unite their spirits and to accord their divisions knowing that the God whom we worship is a God of peace who would have us live in peace and that never any discord comes from him but from the Devil the sower of Tares that nothing is more opposite to the spirit of Christianity that spirit of Union and Love than Division and Schismes in Charity making us not live like brothers but strangers and enemies that instead of profiting in vertue we multiply and encrease our sins and vices The spirit of the new Law is a spirit of such perfect Charity and intimate Union that as St. Paul saith it makes no distinction as to the heart of Jew nor Gentile of Barbarian nor Scythian of bond nor free but Jesus Christ is all to all to unite and close and oblige them all in himself According to which this true Christian writeth thus in one of his letters The words which we ought chiefly to imprint upon our hearts are those of mutual love which our Saviour bequeathed us in the close of his Testament this love should inspirit all Christians to perfect them in one and cause them to live and converse together as brethren and children yea as one sole childe of God And because this Union with Christ our Saviour to whom we all belong is the best and most necessary disposition in such as are employed about the good of their neighbor to the end that they may receive from him both light and strength to enable them according to his purposes together with his saving Spirit to assist and ground them in all vertues and especially such as qualifie a man for that purpose therefore his utmost endeavour was to unite himself intimately to him and in all things to act by his Spirit and to acquire these vertues and render himself perfect in them These vertues are set down by St. Paul in the first Epistle to the Corinthians upon which he made frequent reflections and long meditations and although he carried always the New Testament in his pocket yet that he might read and consider them often he wrote them down with his own hand carrying it apart about with him The Contents whereof were Charitas patiens est benigna est Charitas non aemulatur non agit perperam Non in flatur non est ambitiosa Non quaerit quae sunt sua non irritatur c. Charity is patient full of sweetness envieth not is not malicious nor hurtful is neither vain nor ambitious seeketh not her own interests is not froward nor cholerick thinks no ill but interprets all to a good sense rejoyceth not at the faults of others but on the contrary takes great content in others well-doing suffereth much believeth all things not out of feebleness of spirit but out of goodness and holy simplicity if its neighbor mend not presently
deeply affected to see these things and came and fell down at his feet Monsieur Renty did the like to him continuing in that posture for a long time resolving not to rise before the poor man He used to receive them in his arms and embrace them with tender affection These actions proceeding from a person of his birth and quality and produced by the holy Spirit of God wrought wonderful effects And that first in these poor Passengers who astonished at such ardent Charity joyned with suth profound humility were exceedlingy moved thereby insomuch that tears of Devotion were seen flowing from their eyes and themselves falling down at his feet with signs of repentance for their sins and a design of a better life begging his counsel and assistance therein and beginning it with going to Confession and the Sacrament the next day Secondly in those Religious women that belonged to this Hospital who taking fire at his example resolved to do the like in daily serving the poor teaching them their Prayers and Catechism with the ten Commandments which offices they had never done before Together with many other good things conducing to their own attaining to perfection and the better governing of their Hospital which he infused into them and they do still continue with great Devotion he having several times told them that he hoped in time to see God greatly glorified and served among them as we see it is come to pass at this day and may truly affirm that this gallant man hath contributed not a little to so much good done there both within doors and without and doubt not but he hath already received the reward thereof in Heaven But let us further consider some other effects of his zeal Going one day with a friend to visit the holy place of Mont-Matre to which he had great Devotion after his prayers said in the Church he retired into a desolate place of the Mountain near a little spring which as it is said St. Denis made use of where he kneeled down to his prayers which ended made his dinner of a piece of bread and draught of water Grace being said he took out the New Testament which he always carried in his pocket and read a Chapter upon his knees bareheaded with extraordinary reverence In this juncture of time came thither a poor man saying his Chaplet Monsieur Renty rose up to salute him and fell into a discourse with him concerning God and that so powerfully that the good man striking his breast fell down upon the ground to adore that great God making such evident appearances of the great impressions that were wrought upon his Spirit that struck Monsieur Rexty and his friend with much astonishment Immediately after this came a poor Maid to draw water at the well Whom he asked what she was She answered a Servant But do you know saith he that you are a Christian and to what end you were created Whereupon he took occasion to instruct her in what he conceived necessary for her to know and so to the purpose that she confessing her former ignorance told him ingenuously that before that hour she had never thought of her salvation but promised from thence forward to take it into serious consideration and go to Confession Let us still proceed a little higher on the same subject In his return from Dijon after his first journey thither accompanied with two noble pious persons about some four leagues He stopped three or four times by the way to Catechize poor Passengers and one time went far out of his way to do the same to some labourers in the field instructing them how to sanctifie their work they were about A young Maid in Paris having been very cruelly used by her Uncle fell into so great disorder and desperation that all in a fury she accused our blessed Saviour to be the cause of her misery in abondoning her to the barbarous usage of such a man without releiving her In this horrid plight of conscience she went to receive the Sacrament several times in a day at several Churches that she might not be discovered And this upon design to do despite to our Saviour to provoke him to finish her destruction as it was begun letting her to fall into the abyss of misery and hell for ever Monsieur Renty advertised of this sad accident and considering the great offence against God and mischief of this poor creature was transported with zeal speedily to finde her out Which after eight days pursuit from several Churches at length he did meeting with her in the very act of Communicating Taking witnesses he conveyed her to an Hospital for Mad-folks where he took so great care both of her soul and body that she returned to herself and gave ample testimonies of her conversion and repentance for those horrid enormities Neither did his zeal reach onely to those that were near him but such also as were absent and far remote to whom he had no other relation but what was contracted by his alliance to our blessed Saviour and his own Charity Understanding the news that was current some years since of a War the Turk designed against the Knights of Malta and to besiege the Island he so far interested himself in their danger that he recommended it twice by Letter to the prayers of Sister Margaret Carmelite of the B Sacrament at Beaulne whom he deemed to have great power with God His first Letter runs thus I commend to your prayers and of the holy Family the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem which is at this present in great danger and with them the whole Christian World What that common Potent enemy of our faith will do I know not one Our little Jesus who is all love and power knows how to vindicate his own glory please you therefore to commend it to him In the second Letter thus I beseech the Omnipotency of the holy Babe Jesus to preserve his children under the Cross and to purifie them for his own work This is it which I request for our Brethren of the Order of St. John Baptist of Jerusalem SECT 7. Certain other qualities of his zeal THe design of advancing the Salvation of mens souls is attended in this world with much doing and much suffering It is necessary therefore for him that undertakes the task to fortifie himself with courage and patience And both these were most eminently in Monsieur Renty being in the first place full of courage resolute and laborious imploying his body as if he had two more in reserve when that was spent dispatching more business in one half hour than others would have done in many days Very stout he was to undergo any difficulties and withal very quick and decisive A certain Lady of note made him her executor having disposed in her will very much to pious uses He was informed that her friends being persons of eminent power were displeased therewith To which he replyed with a
all pollution from them like as the Sun shineth upon a dunghil without taint or imperfection Simplicity quitted him from all multiplicity engagements reflections upon his own Interest Complacencies Vanity passion of Joy or Sadness from any of his own Performances or Speeches from Praise or Dispraise or from the Vices of the Times Places or Persons he conversed with to receive any pollution from them no otherwise than a new-born childe beholdeth a Pageantry which passeth before it which is forgotten as soon as removed Lastly Purity directed his eye in a straight line to God pretending to nothing but his glory in any thing that man had a hand in And this proceeding of his all ought to imitate if they desire to make progress in Vertue and arrive to perfection and particularly those that treat much with their neighbour in the negotiation of his salvation that they may do it with more advantage to him and with no damage to themselves PART IV. His Vertues whereby he was elevated and united to God CHAP. 1. His Interiour and his Application to the Sacred Trinity ALthough what we have hitherto said of the Heroick Vertues and famous Actions of Monsieur Renty which had respect either to his own perfection or the good of his neighbour is very remarkable Yet the principal and more admirable is that which remains viz. The state of his Interiour and his communication with God So David saith that the Kings-daughter is all glorious within and the Holy Ghost setteth forth in lofty expressions the Spouse in the Canticles for the beauty of her face and of her whole body But it addes that nothing could sufficiently be uttered concerning the hidden graces of her Soul and Interiour which were far more charming and attractive even as the chief excellencies of our B. Saviour consisted not in his Exteriour or in those things he did either for himself or for men but in the intimate union he had with God and those actions he produced in the profundity of his Spirit towards him In like manner our perfection consists not in our good works which appear outwardly nor in the exercises of Charity Humility Poverty and the like Vertues open to the eye but in the application of our spirit to God and our union with him by the acts of vertue and chiefly of the three Theological ones It consisteth I say in honouring and adoring him in the Temple of our souls in performing to him there the Sacrifices of a lively Faith upon the Altar of our Understanding in offering up the Holocausts of perfect Hope and ardent Charity upon the Altar of our Will and in a total subjection of our spirits to his and an union of all our faculties with him whereby we become purified sanctified and deified proportionably as the blessed Saints are in heaven where this perfection is compleated This was Monsieur Renties practice whereby he had a true feeling of S. Pauls words Your life is hid with God through Jesus Christ concerning which he expressed his thoughts thus to a friend There is nothing in this world so separate from the world as God and the greater the Saints are the greater is their retirement into him This our Saviour taught us whilst he lived on earth being in all his visible employments united to God and retired into the bosom of his Father His principal care was incessantly to cultivate and adorn his soul to unite it intimately to God by the operations of his understanding and will to give up himself with all his strength to this hidden and divine life of Faith Hope and Charity of Religion of a mystical Death and entire Abnegation of himself Some years before his death his particular attractive was the contemplation of the B. Trinity being the last end in which all must terminate Whereof he gave this account to his Spiritual Guide in the year 1645. I carry about with me ordinarily an experimental verity and a plenitude of the presence of the Holy Trinity And in another Letter thus All things vanish out of my fancy as soon as they appear nothing is permanent in me but God through a naked faith which causing me to resign my self up to my Saviour affordeth me strength and confidence in God the Trinity in that the operation of the three Divine persons is manifested to me in a distinct manner viz. The love of the Father which reconcileth us by his Son the Father and the Son who give us life through the Holy Spirit the H. Spirit which causeth us to live in in Communion with Jesus Christ which worketh in us a marvellous alliance with the Sacred Trinity and produceth often in our hearts by faith such inward feelings as cannot be expressed He writ also to a confident friend and one that was much devoted to this Sacred Mysterie How that the proper and special effect of Christian grace is to make us know God in the Trinity uniting us to the Son who causeth us to work by his Spirit And to say the truth we are consecrated by our Baptism to the worship of the B. Trinity Therein we are consecrated to his Glory receive its Seal and put on its Badge and Livery to manifest to us and to all the world that we are perfectly and absolutely its own He writ to the same party in the year 1648. on the same subject The Feast of the blessed Trinity giveth me this occasion to write that we may renew our selves in the honour and dependance we have upon this incomparable Mysterie I desire to joyn hearts with you to adore that which we are not able to express Let us melt into an acknowledgement thereof and foâ—tifie our selves by the grace of Faith through Christ to be perfected in this adorable Mysterie Infinite things might be spoken which my heart resenteth of the latitude of this grace but I cannot utter them I beseech you let us adore God let us adore Jesus Christ let us adore the holy Spirit which Spirit discovereth unto us the operations of love and mercy of these Divine Persons in us and let us make good use thereof The same year he clearly expressed his condition and the manner of wholly applying himself â—oâ—th Sacred Trinity how that his soul was most entirele united to the three Divine Persons from whence he received illuminations that surpassed all humane understanding how he lived perpetually retired and locked up as it were with the Son of God in the bosom of his Father Where this Son became his Light his Life and Love and the holy Spirit his Guide his Sanctification and Perfection how he did bear within himself the Kingdom of God which he explained by a resemblance of what the Blessed enjoy in heaven by vertue of that view and transcendent knowledge of the sacred Trinity which was communicated to him and that pure Love by which he felt his heart inflamed and as it were transformed into God in whom he possessed a joy and repose beyond all expression That
that we may be all one in him and experimentally feel what the love of God is toward us In all that I read in the Scripture I neither understand nor find any thing else but this Love and perceive clearly that the very design and end of Christianity is nothing but it Finis autem praecepti est charitas de corde puro The end of the Law is love out of a sincere heart And this is acquired by Faith in Christ Jesus as the Apostle saith in the following words Fide non ficta by faith unfeigned Which uniteth and bindeth us to him whereby we sacrifice unto the Divinity our souls and our bodies through his Spirit which conducteth us to the compleat end of the Law to deliver us up to God and bring down him to us in charity and a gracious inexplicable union to whom be praise for ever Amen My heart was this morâ—ing enlightned with a great Charity upon these words That we are set in this world to know and love and serve God Which gave me to understand that the true effect of the knowledge of God is to annihilate our selves before him for this knowledge coming to discover unto us that infinite Majestie the soul abaseth and emptieth it self through the deep sense of fear and reverence according to the measure of this discovery And this is the first step of the soul in this estate Next he love of God manifested to us in the giving us his Son begins to affect us with love And as the former view of his greatness contracted us in fear so this his love in Christ Jesus enlargeth and elevateth us to love God in him and to conceive some good desires according as his spirit breathes in us And this is the second step The third is to serve him that is by putting this love into practice by good works For these desires are but blossoms and these good works the fruit I could say much on this subject if I could express my own feeling of it For here we finde all in all that is God revealed by Jesus Christ loved and served by his Spirit This Divine Lord sets up a blessed Society and a Kingdom in our souls wherein he rules and reigns there by love unspeakable and eternal Writing to another person he expresseth himself thus I give thanks to our Lord for that he hath disposed you to a perfect Abnegation of your self This is done to lead you into the pure estate of love which without that cannot be pure in that our love to God consisteth not in receiving gifts and graces from him but in renouncing all things for him in an Oblivion of our selvee in suffering constantly and couragiously for him Thus did he express the nature of Love not to consist in taking but giving and the more and greater matters we give the more we manifest our Love This Love carries up the Lover according to the measure of its flame continually to think upon his Beloved to will what may please him to study his interest to procure his glory to do every thing that may work his contentment and to be extreamly apprehensive of any thing that may offend him Accordingly he being all on fire with the love of God was perfectly sinsible of these effects All his thoughts words and works were the productions of this love for notwithstanding he practised other vertues yet they drew their original from this Furnace of Charity which in him was the beginning and motive and end of all which he testified to his Confidents frequently and in words so enkindled with it as were sufficient to warm the most frozen hearts I have observed saith one of his Confidents this Divine fire so ardent in his blessed soul that the flames thereof have burst forth into his Exteriour and he hath told me that when ever he proncunced the name of God he tasted such a sweetness upon his lips as could not be expressed and that he was even pierced thorow with a hâ—avenly suavity To another he write about 9. or 10. years agoe that he could nor conceal from him how he felt a fire in his heart which burnt and consumed without ceasing Another of them assures that he hath often seen him enflamed with this Love of God that he appeared even like one besides himself and how he told him when these transportings were upon him that he was ready to cast himself into thefire to testifie his Love to God and in one of his Letters to a friend he concludes thus I must now hold my peace yet when I cease to speak the fire within that consumes me will not let me rest Let us burn then and burn wholly and in every part for God since we have no being but by him why then do we not live to him I speak it aloud and it would be my crown of glory to seal it with my blood and this I utter to you with great freedom In a Letter to another thus I know not what your intent was to put into your Letter these words Deus meus omnia my God and my all Onely you invite thereby to return the same to you and to all creatures My God and my all my God and my all my God and my all If perhaps you take this for your motto and use it to express how full your heart is of it think you it possible I should be silent upon such an invitation and not express my sense thereof Likewise be it known to you therefore that he is my God and my all And if you doubt of it I shall speak it a hundred times over I shall adde no more for any thing else is superfluous to him that is truly penetrated with my God and my all I leave you therefore in this happy state of Jubilation and conjure you to beg for me of God the solid sense of these words Being transported with this Love of God it wrought in him an incredible zeal of his honour which he procured and advanced a thousand ways Which may be understood partly by what we have already writ and several other which are unknown because either they were wholly spiritual or concealed by him even from his most intimate friends The 12 of March in the year 1645. he writ thus to his Director upon this subject One day being transported with an earnest desire to be all to God and all consumed for him I offered up to him all I could yea and all that I could not I would willingly have made a Deed of Gift to him of Heaven and Earth if they had been mine And in another way I would willingly have been the underling of all mankinde and in the basest estate possible yea and if supported by his grace I could have been content to have suffered eternal pains with the damned if any glory might have accrew'd to him thereby In this disposition of a calm zeal there is no sort of Martyrdome no degree of greatness or littleness of
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
beams and treading in their steps gave himself to this exercise with such care and diâ—igence that we may aver this to have been his ordinary employment and his whole life a trade of praying I mean not here his vocal Prayers having spoken of them before I affirm that his affection was exceeding great to mental Prayer understanding well the necessity thereof as that whereby we come more intimately to know and reap the benefit of all Christian verities which until they be known are not at all beneficial and the utility thereof to learn a man what he is and enable him to exercise the real acts of vertue in the inward life and spirit of them elevating the soul to a familiar conference with God an honour more incomparably glorious though but for one quarter of an hour than is the most intimate communication with the greatest Monarchs for whole years together like as we esteem it a greater honour to discourse freely and familiarly with a King the space of one hour than many years with a Peasant Moreover he well understood the different manners of this Prayer and how it ascends by four steps The first is Prayer of Reasoning and Discourse The second that of the Will and Affections The third that of Union or Contemplation which divides it selfe into two branches viz. in Contemplation active or acquisite and Contemplation passive or infused which passive Contemplation is the fourth and highest round of this ladder of Prayer Prayer of the Understanding and of Discourse or Meditation is an application of the Spirit to understand some vertues of his salvation which he apprehended not before reasoning and discoursing thereon within himself ruminating upon its causes effects and circumstances of time place manner and persons belonging to it to draw from thence arguments of good life going from one circumstance and point to another from the causes to their effects and so backward which is called reasoning and because our minde is quick and ready in this operation not onely nimble to go but run in it therefore it is termed also discourse He began at this step and made some stay upon it where indeed every one ought to begin and rest until he is called by God to another because the most proper and naturall way that God hath given men to come to understand and affect any thing is that of Consideration and Reasoning wherefore each one must serve himself herewith till he be advanced higher The ordinary subject which he took for these meditations were the Life Passion and Death of our Saviour Which without all contradiction is the most profitable of all others since he is set before us for our pattern in the imitation and expression whereof consists our perfection and life eternal After some time having been faithful in this first stage he passed to the second that of will and affection being called with an Amice ascende superius Friend fit up higher Not unlike a Scholar who becoming a good proficient is set up to a higher class of deeper learning For he spent not all his days in Grammar but studied to proceed from one Science to another till he arrived to perfection This Prayer of Affection is a familiar and passionate treaty betwixt Christ and the Soul wherein very little or no discourse is used or a sincere communication with God as present and resident within us in which the soul quitteth all reasonings and disputes and by a simple direct contemplation and thinking upon God is carried on to him and enflamed with the desires of praising blessing adorning and glorifying him with several elevated acts of grace oblation petition and above all of Love the Queen of other Vertues most acceptable to and most glorious in the sight of God most advantagious to our selves enabling us with power to surmount all difficulties to practice all good works and uniting us more intimately to God This I say the Soul performs without discourse in regard that the understanding being sufficiently furnished with light from her former meditations hath no need to study new arguments or motives to produce love and other necessary affections but may serve herself of the former store The way to practise this is first of all to retire into the secret cabinet of our heart applying our selves to God who resideth there not by reason and discourse but by faith stedfastly believing his Divine presence with all his perfections And in order to this firm assurance to present our selves before him with profound reverence and adoration abasing our selves out of respect to his infinite greatness and the sense of our own vileness in the light of those words of David Domine quis similis tibi Quid est homo quod memor es ejus Lord who is like unto thee What is man that thou art mindeful of him or that he should dare to appear before thee Keep your self before him with these affections of Reverence and Humility and remain there for some considerable time the better to imprint them upon your soul for such time will be very well spent and continuâ— it yet longer if you finde your heart dilated and melted with these affections After this shutting out all ruminating and reflection upon the subject you desire to be employed upon as for example suppose it be this that God is all in all and your self are less than nothing that he is your Soveraign Lord and ultimate end that he hath a particular care of every thing that concerns you that our Saviour dyed for you and the like employ your self hereon by faith in a most simple naked manner reiterating acts of a lively faith of such a truth which the Church hath taught you and after this an act of Hope or of Praise or Thanksgiving or Contrition for your sins or of any other passion the soul shall be more disposed to but especially of love taking care that these affections have an influence upon your will and manners to produce in them a happy alteration These are the directions we are to observe in this second degree of Prayer which therefore is called Prayer of Gods presence and of Fâ—ith and of Affection Wherein also two things are carefully to be marked First that it is not requisite in this prayer to exercise at the same time several passions but rather one as Hope Love or any other well-grounded and prosecuted is sufficient And the rea on is plain because so long as God gives to the soul the grace to produce acts of any one vertue in such a manner as that she findes herself disposed and pressed thereto and to exercise the same with ease this is an evident token that it is his will that she should serve and honour him should sanctifie and perfect herself by the same and that she ought to continue therein so long as she findes that succour graciously assisting her Moreover on the souls part it would argue want of discretion to quit so good and profitable an exercise
so powerfully supported in it and it made so easie to her by that Divine assistance and fall upon another that is likely to prove difficult for want of the same assistance Whence we may conclude that we ought not to change our exercise of Piety so long as God supplies us with sufficient grace to attend it The second is that we should reiterate many actof the same vertue as of Faith Hope Love or which is better continue and hold on the same act thus to acquire a rooting and establishment of these vertues which is not gotten but by vigoâ—ous and effectual reiteration of their acts as a nail is not driven up to the head with one blow but must be strucken hard and often And so it is with vertues whose force and sound profit consists in their having a well-rooted and grounded possession of the soul whereas they are worth little or nothing till they are habituated therein even as the tree brings forth neither leaves nor fruits until it hath taken deep rooting The same thing is to be done for any moral conclusions which are drawn from these acts that is to double and redouble them till they be fixed and made effectual as for example after some repeated acts of Faith that God is your first Principle and that of your self you are nothing and that all your hope is in him and our Saviour say with your self once twice and twenty times over with affection and a quiet but vigorous application if I believe this great truth of God and my self why do I attribute any thing to my self why do I not humble and abase my self under him why do I not love him upon whom all my good depends why do I not look upon my self and all creatures in the world as nothing If I hope in God and my Saviour why then do I fear any thing else is not here ground enough to live with confidence and joy what is he that can molest or trouble me Live then O my soul in tranquillity and repose as this same hope doth oblige thee These acts thus redoubled and repeated with constancy and vigour will without doubt produce great effects in the soul which is the fruit that this Prayer of Affection should bring forth Herein did Monsieur Renty exercise himself for many years reaping thereby an inestimable treasure of spiritual riches This Prayer saith he in one of his Papers is not by discourse and reasoning but by a loyal love tending always to give more than to receive The obscurity of Faith is of greater evidence to the soul than all the illuminations she can procureâ— which faith she ought to use with Reverence and Thanksgiving not with Complacency or Affectation Here needs no stretch of the Spirit this Prayer never offends the brain this is a state of modest deportment in which the soul keeps herself in the presence of God expecting what his spirit shall please to infuse into us which we receive in simplicity and in considence as if himself spake to us The ordinary dispositions with which he entred into this Prayer were first A profound Reverence and an abasing of himself in Gods presence whose infinite Majeste held him in a deep sense of his own meanness saying that we ought to consider our selves before it as little and less than the smallest Atomes Secondly A strong and absolute Confidence in his Infinite Goodness and Mercy which bearing up his Humility and the sense he had of his own vileness made him still hope all things He exhorted all of his acquaintance that were capable of it to use this kinde of Prayer as the most excellent profitable and easie of all others since it puts not a man to the labor to consider nor penetrate into or discourse of any subject but is easie for all sorts but chiefly for the unlearned who herein have need of no more but a simple belief applying themselves thereto with Affection He counselled men to give themselves more to the operations of the will than the speculations of the understanding and that place of S Paul to Titus where he exhorts us to live in sobriety he expounded of the sobriety of the senses and chiefly of that of the Spirit to cut off in our prayers multiplicity of notions and discourse and to proceed therein by Faith In effect the mysterie of faith is incomparably transcendent above all the Science and Discourse of the most quaint and sublime wits for as every thing is but visible by his own light a Torch by his and the Sun by the Sun things of glory by the light of glory so those of grace by the light of grace whereof the most perfect without doubt is that of Faith Reason is bestowed upon us for the discovery of natuâ—al things and Faith for Supernatural and Divine With men we discourse by Reason and with God by Faith and since God is at an infinite distance above man and Grace above Nature we may well conclude that Humane discourse of the finest thâ—ed is too heavy for that high pitch which can soar no further than natural Reason can conduct it Moreover whatsoever notions we have in this world of God and things spiritual they are in some degree deceitful and false not representing things as they are really since our spirit conceives nothing here below but what hath passed thorow the senses where spiritual things are refracted and receive much earth and come to us distorted and disguised But it is Faith alone that represents them in their real entities There are but two indubitable lights on which we may relie and which surpass all others in excellency which sanctifie and deifie our understanding elevating it to its first principle and oâ—iginal of all verity which is the Divine Intellect that is to say the light of Faith here and the light of glory hereafter These two being participations of that knowledge which God himself hath which demonstrates the dignity and perfection of Affective Prayer which quitting Discourse proceeds by Faith Neither did he make long stay upon the former way of Prayer but passed on further ascending to that of Union and Contemplation which was bestowed upon him in a very high degree Holy men speaking of this Contemplation the sublimest degree of Prayer here upon earth make thereof two sorts Acquisite and Infused The latter is that which God alone produceth in the soul to which she contributes nothing but a simple consent to receive his operation which is also called Contemplation Passive The former is that which man assisted by Gods grace may acquire by his own labour and exercise by his own industry and is therefore called Active The Infused hath so absolute a dependence upon God that it s given when and to whom he pleaseth who also takes it away which we cannot hinder no more than all the men in the world with all their strength put together can stay the Sun from rising and setting But all are in some measure capable of
the other and it is a single contemplation of God or any other subject without discourse sweetly moving the will with holy affections and particularly with that of Love It is a quiet pleasant operation of the soul setting her in full view of her object a silent prospect of Faith accompanied with Reverence Esteem Gratitude Confidence and chiefly with Love When you visit a sick friend beholding him in bed suffering extreamly tossing and turning tormented and groaning and this fight of such a loving friend toucheth you deeply with the sense of compassion with an earnest desire to comfort him and a sympathizing in his suffering this is Contemplation for you behold all this without reasoning with one direct view which affects you and makes these impressions upon you So when you behold our Saviour praying in the Garden with his face to the earth all over in a bloody sweat or bound at the Pillar covered with stripes or nailed on the Cross dying betwixt the extremities of pain and infamy and this serious but simple attention without any formal discourse affects you with compassion and admiration with compunction for your sins with hope and love This is Contemplation Again when Mary Magdalene sits at our Saviours feet listening to his blessed words with the ear of faith or looking up to him upon the Cross and believes this to be the Son of God her Redeemer who pardoned her sins obliged her with so many favours testified so great good will to her and now suffereth so much for her and when from this spring there flows from her a torrent of tears out of the bowels of Love Gratitude and Contrition This is Contemplation The use then of this Contemplation Active and Acquisite consists in entring into the bortom of our souls and there in the presence of God quitting all sense and discourse applying our selves by faith and affections of the will to some one of the Divine perfections or some mysterie of our Saviour viewing it with attention and the eyes of Faith of Reverence Affiance and Love without reasoning and also without multiplying a quantity of different affections at one time fixing our selves upon this attentive and affectionate regard which also ought to be so naked and abstracted from all solicitude and reflexion upon any things else as wholly to forget them as much as is possible to be taken up wholly and busied in listening to our Saviour with Mary Magdalene who sitting at his feet spake not one word and though blamed by her sister answered nothing thinking onely upon hearing and attending on our Saviour The soul in Contemplation must be silent to all creatures and speak onely with God The soul useth to speak to the creatures four ways by her Undestanding in thinking of them by her Will in affecting them by her Imagination in forming images of them by her Passions in desiring them and all this she doth without language or the help of her Exteriour senses So that the words she utters are thoughts which she placeth upon them and affections which she conceiveth and Idaea's which she formeth and desires which she produceth towards them On the contrary the soul is silent and speaks not a word when she ceaseth to apply herself to them by these faculties and when she is not busied about them by those operations but ceaseth from all acts that relate to them insomuch that having no commerce with them she remains in such a state as if there were nothing else in the world but God and she to whom alone she speaketh in this mystical silence of which S. John is understood when he speaks of a silence in heaven that is in the soul when she converseth with God by her understanding and by her will producing acts of Faith Hope Love Adoration Blessing Glorifying Thanksgiving Union and the like And she is yet further silent from time to time neither speaking at all to him no not after this noble way and with this Divine language but is listening and attending to his speeches which sometime may be articulate but these intelligibly onely to herself but more frequently are illuminations by which he enlightneth her understanding and certain impressions and motions with which he teacheth her will saying with David andiam quid loquatur in me Dominus Deus will hearken what the Lord saith within me and praying with Samuel Loquere Domine quia audit servus tuus Speak Lord for thy servaut heareth Our Saviour teaching his Disciples to pray told them and us in their persons Orantes nolite multum loqui when you pray use not many words which he meant not onely of the words of the mouth but likewise of understanding and other faculties Speak not much but hearken diligently He likewise calls himself Verbum the Word because he must be listened unto and that deservedly wherefore he saith to the soul Audi Filia Hearken O my Daughter And Father Avila who hath writ an excellent Treatise upon those words gives this for a weighty advice that we should go to prayer to hear rather than to speak who also told Lewis of Granada that writ his Life how that when he went to his holy Exercise he used to binde and tye up his understanding like a fool to the end that it might not talk much We have certain souls which in their prayers talk all as conceiving that the mysterie consists in talking much to God and employing still their faculties in working without considering that what God shall speak to them will be far better and more profitable than what they can speak to him even as in our converse with other men we use not to talk continually but after a few words hearken to what they speak So in our prayers to our Saviour let us after our speaking to him attend with silence to what he shall say to us This is the course of active Contemplation and prayer of Union where we must mark its difference from prayer of Discourse and prayer of Affection in that these two faculties of the soul the Understanding and Will acting all these three sorts of prayer The Understanding acts more than the Will in prayer of Discourse the Will more in prayer of Affection where is to be noted that those who begin this prayer are not in the entrance thereof ordinarily without son discourse but yet such as goe on diminishing 〈◊〉 little and little till at last it quite ceaseth and no◠also that in the beginning they have great variety 〈◊〉 affectionate acts but toward the end but few In th◠prayer of Contemplation or Union the Will hath th◠mastery over the Understanding but with more sim plicity than in the prayer of Affection Besides i◠this God acts more and man less therefore the operation here is more spiritual more pure and divine therefore he ought to attend in peace and affiance the action of God without disturbing it Whereupon Monsieur Renty used to say That it was the great imperfection of many souls
not onely from evil but even from our ordinary way and manner of doing that which is good undertaking what the Divine Providence presents to us by making our way by God to them and not by them to God which is a course more naked unengaged and abstracted which sees nothing but God And not so much if I may so say as the things she doth of which nothing stays in her neither choice nor joy nor sorrow for their greatness or for their littleness for good or bad success but onely the good pleasure and order of God which ruleth in all things and which in all things sufficiently contenteth the soul which adheres to him and not to the vicissitude of affairs whereupon she is constantly even equal and always the same in the midst of all changes In another he writ thus to the same purpose An absolute abnegation will be necessary to all things to follow in simplicity without reserve or reflection what our Saviour shall work in us or appoint for us let it be this or that This way was shewed me in which I ought to walk towards him and hence it is that all things to me ordinarily are without any gust or delight Moreover in another thus I apprehend great matters concerning the verity and simplicity of the annihilation I ought to have and I had for the twinkling of an eye the sight how simple this should be that the soul it self cannot take notice of it This is the state of Death and Annihilation without regard to any thing save our being wholly to God by Sequestration Faith and Affiance Lastly to another Assure your self there is no security in any estate but this of Dying and Annihilation which is to be baptized into Christs death that we may live the life of Mortification not that other ways may not be good but not secure especially any thing we do of our selves Our best way is therefore to divest our selves of all that the Holy Infant Jesus govern all He used the word All because this death must be universal thorow every part of old Adam even as a dead body is not onely dead in an eye or ear or hand but in every sense and member so much we dye to riches and poverty to pleasure and pain honour and dishonour praise and dispraise being affected with none of these because we are dead to all Moreover the spirit must be dead not onely to one faculty as the Understanding or Will but to all and to every thing onely the difference is this that the body being once deprived of her life cannot naturally recover it again but the Spirit will easily live again and the malignity of the old Adam return upon us if great heed be not taken because we are not able by this death to reach the very centre of nature Just as in your Garden you may either suffer a noysom weed to grow if you meddle not with it but give it liberty to spread its leaves and encrease or if you would not have it appear you may cut it or pluck it up by the roots but after all is done you cannot prevent that the earth should not produce the like if it be thereto disposed naturally Even so it is in your power to permit unruly affections to live in your soul producing therein disorders and exercising their tyranny or you may mortifie them so that they get not head although the root remains or further may root them up as heroick spirits do changing their nature and turning the course thereof introducing contrary inclinations from evil to good from vice to vertue yet although these generous spirits arrive to this height yet will their nature continue still rotten at bottom ready to bear the same cursed weeds without our daily vigilancy SECT 1. Of the same subject TO decypher particularly the mystical death of this renowned person we may aver That in the first place he was dead to riches and all the wealth of this world in which he so absolutely divested himself both of any affection to them in his heart and of the real possession of them that he quitted as we have formerly mentioned all property to them using them no otherwise than in the quality of a very poor man with an ardent desire that he might also be deprived of the very use of them I acknowledge before God saith he in a Letter to his Director his great mercy to me through his Son in freeing me from the things of this world and my constant thoughts are that if his order did not oblige me otherwise in that condition he hath set me to give away and quit all I have This is my earnest desire after which I long exceedingly not out of presumption of my own strength but in the power of Jesus Christ in imitation of his life And to another person he writ All that can be imagined in this lower world is of small concernment though it were the losing of all our goods and the death of all the men in it This poor Antchill is not worthy of a serious thought had we but a little faith and a little love how happy should we esteem our selves in giving away all to attend no more save on God alone and to say Deus meus omnia My God and my all In his suit of Law at Dijon he acted with so little shew of interest and so like a mortified man to gain or loss that he could not be perswaded not onely to solicite the Judges but not so much as to commend his case to them himself not out of any faulty supine indifferency or neglecting what he thought absolutely necessary but because by an heroick vertue he had lost the sense of all these earthly things entirely committing the success thereof to God and knowing that these things succeed better by our prayers to and affiance in him than with our addresses to men through the multitude of solicitings many times fruitless Secondly he was dead and crucified to all recreations and pleasures of this life having renounced them at the beginning of his Conversion remaining constantly in the condition of a sacrifice of body and soul no God which was his great exercise and his usual phrase making no further use of his senses and their objects than what was of absolute necessity following herein the pattern of our Saviour He was so wholly taken up with God as we have said before in his soul that when he had very grievous pains in his body and was very sick he scarce thought upon them but accounted it a trouble to speak or complain thereof as appeared notably in his last sickness Thirdly he was annihilated and dead to honour his great birth and nobility wherefrom he solemnly degraded himself in the arms of our Saviour to render himself the more humble He was dead also to all esteem and praise of men and to disgrace likewise of which he gave a notable testimony to a familiar friend who told him