For these three moneths I have not it may be spent three or four hours at my prayers upon my knees together out of the Church and should I perform them at all no otherwise than on this fashion I should but very ill discharge my â—uâ—y It is certain that I have discharged it ill enough yet I understand that God is pleased in the midst of these imployments to which he hath appointed me to make me sensible of his presence and power in uniting my soul to himself by certain intimate ways and that the outward work may be performed by the hand whilst the soul solaceth herself in that real alliance of Sons with their Father by the Spirit of the Son who admitteth us into his communion together with that of the blessed Virgin the Angels and Saints yea and of the whole Heaven if you will Such a wonderful expansion of soul can our Lord give when and how he pleaseth I enjoyed at the same time such a sensible impression of God yet excelling all sense as being acted in the more noble part of the Soul viz. the Spirit that if I had been thrown like a boul I could never have lost the sight of my God All things are here transitory for our Lord turns this boul in a strange manner when it pleaseth him And these dâ—verse turnings are done for the souls advantage whereby she is fashioned for every occasion that she may do nothing for or by herself but all for God and according to him Moreover I evidently see that a person whom God employeth in these low affairs if he follow them with the same fidelity as if they were greater keeping his station by obedâ—ence and self-denial is as acceptable to him as he that is occupied in the noblest functions The work it self making not the difference but the faithful execution of it by submitting to his good pleasure Will nothing please you but to convert a thousand worlds and bring all souls to God you shall be content to carry stones and sometime to sit still and do nothing The Sâ—crifice of Patience is both well pleasing to God and comfortable to our selves And I believe it is without comparison more rare to finde a soul faithful in patience and content to do no more than God would have him than faithful in actions which appear abroad I know well that God doth all in all but this Sacrifice of Patience and of Câ—ssation is more commendable in a heart who hath the love and zeal of his honour and in pursuit hereof is hurried on to action and hath need of greater force to withhold it from doing than to incite it This kinde of Cessation seems to be nothing at all available for the nourishment of such zeal and this hunger and thirst after righteousness which would devour the four quarters of the world is reverberated like the fire pent in which circles and works about until it finde a vent by this consideration that God is all-sufficient in himself and hath no need of us for advancing of his glory that we receive more honour from our imployments than he service being so impure that we blemish every thing we meddle with and rob it of some lustre and prove often not onely unprofitable but endamaging servants I have one word more to tell you that you may direct me in it which is that I am really ashamed and confounded in my self that I do no more for God considering his dignity hâ—s love his gifts and communications by the alliance of Jesus Christ and his Spirit Which indeed together with the sense of my great imbecility for any thing that is good of my sins and miseries would work my extream torment did I not bethink my self of his all-sufficiency in himself and that he doth with us as he pleaseth in keeping us in obedience and profound annihilation Thus far his Letter wherein are many good things to be learnt CHAP. 4. The excellent use he made of all things and his application to the Infancy of our Lord for that purpose IT must needs be that Monsieur Renty made excellen use of all accidents that occurr'd to him and generally of all creatures to attain to such a height of perfection whereof this usage of them as muâ—h as is in man is undonbredly the prinâ—ipal means to which all others are subordinate otherwise and without it unpâ—ofitable and meer hinderâ—nâ—es True it is that God hath placed in the bosom of each thing as in riches poverty honours disgrace health sickness good and evil a secret vertue and moral capâ—city to advantage us in our salvation and to be instruments of perfection even as so many cords to draw and unite us to himself but all this according to our usâ—ge of them For bâ—ing well used they produce good effects but contrarily abused instead of uniting us to God they estrange us further from him rendring us more imperfect and vicious and instead of advantages prove the instruments of our ruine Wherefore he being well instructed in this grand secret of Spiritual life imployed all his care to practise it perfectly Which that we may better understand it will not be amiss to follow it to the Spring-head The holy man had continually in his heart making it the principal conduct of his devotions as we have mentioned and may be easily deduced from the series of this History to unite himself to our Lord Jesus Christ and that upon good grounds Since out of him as saith S. Peter there is no salvation God having chosen him the sole Mediator of Redemption and the repairer of our miseties loving no creature in the world but him with a love of perfect amity Whereupon by S. Paul he is stiled the Son of his love and good pleasure and we alone are accepted in and thâ—ough him who are found beautiful and shining with glory when we are united to him and out of him we appear deformed hideous and most abominable being indeed without him filled with sin and his enemies Wherefore every man is so far dear and amiable to him as he stands united to his Son which is manifested in the Blessed Viâ—gin and his Apostles all our actions pleasing him so far as they are united to him even as each member of our body participates of life according as it is animated by our soul Having therefore perfectly learn'd this fundamental truth of Christianity his study was to unite himself to our Lord Jesus Christ and to copy him forth as his Rule and Law for the regulating of his Exterior and Interior adoring him daily under this notion applying himself with great reslection to his words actions designs and the several mysteries receiving from each of them great enlightnings Thus he writ to me one day upon the mysterie of his Incarnation I have had the grace divers times very intimately to understand that ineffable mysterie hidden with God from all ages and manifested now to the Saints according to S. Paul which is the
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
to the bottom the sense of his words that very great were the Vertues and highly rais'd the perfection of this excellent servant of God and by so much the more ought they to judge so as they may assure themselves that he hath not a jot exceeded in the report of the things which concern him but rather that he hath diminished them being by grace and indeed by nature also extreamly reserved and most considerare in whatsoever he said and especially in speaking of himself SECT 2. The Source from whence these Vertues flowed IF now we will examine the Principal of those Vertues and Perfections and the Well-spring whence they issued we shall finde that it was from the intimate Union which he had with the Lord Jesus Christ whereunto he alwaies above all things gave up himself His sage and illuminated Director the Reverend Father de Condrien knowing that the Union with Jesus Christ is the foundation of our Predestination Justification and Sanctification of all the grace and glory which we can ever have that Jesus Christ being the way whatsoever is out of this way can be nothing else but wandring that he being the Truth whatsoever is nor conformable thereto is nothing but lying that he being the Life whatsoever lives not by this life nor is quickned by the Spirit of Jesus Christ is not alive but of necessitie dead he did therefore that which ought alwaies to be done with great care by all Directors of souls which was to make him to know the importance and the necessity of this Unon to fix him stronglie and constanâ—lie to Jesus Christ for the Government of his Interior and Exterior to put him this Way to binde him to this Truth and to Unite him to this Life Monsieur de Renty followed exactly this conduct and therein made a great progress which he went on in perfecting to his death with marvellous improvements so that as the last touches which the Painter gives to his Picture are far different from those of the first rude draughts or as the Sun hath more of heat and light as he advanceth higher in his carreer and approacheth to Mid-day than when he but newlie riseth In like manner the applications the ties and the unions which this excellent man in his latter years had with Jesus Christ and the actions which he either did for him or received of him were quite other from those at his beginning for he was then wholie consummate in Jesus Christ he had as it were passed into him and he carried him as it were in a livelie manner in his soul in his thoughts in his affections in his desires in his words and in his works Hence it was that he had no other object before his eies but Jesus Christ that he thought not but of him that he loved nothing but him that he spake not but of him that he wrought not but for him and alwaies after his sampler that he read not but the New Testament which he carried alwaies with him and endeavoured by all means possible to engrave the knowledge and love of it in all hearts Wriâ—ing to his Director the year 1646. concerning his dispositions he sent him these words among other To speak to you of my Interior I feel my self not to will but God and in union with our Lord Jesus Christ to yield him all my homages This is the fulness of my heart and I feel this well when I sound it He said this to him in another Letter I am in great necessity of Jesus Christ but I ought to tell you by an acknowledgement of the Mercy of God by a certitude of this truth that I feel that he is more ruling in me than my self I know for all that that of my self I am but sin but withal I experiment my Lord in me who is my streâ—gth my life my peace and my All I beseech him to become our plenitude Moreover in another thus I finde my self said he much troubled what to send you because all things become raz'd out of my minde as soon as passed and I cannot retain within me anything but God and this in a kinde of a hoodowink'd blinded manner with a naked faith which faith making me know the evil bottom which is in my self gives me notwithstanding great force and confidence by way of abandoning and Self-Rejection upon our Lord Jesus Christ in God I haue found this morning a possage in S. Paul which I believe our Lord hath put into my hand to express my self by seeing it is the very â—ruth of what I experiment Fiduciam â—urem talem habemus per Christum ad Deum non quod sufficientes simus cogitare aliquid a nobis quasi ex nobis sed sufficientia nostra ex Deo est This boasting we have by Christ to God-wards not as if we were sufficient to think any thing of our selves as of our selves but our sufficiency is of God It is about a fortnight since these words were put upon my spirit without any contribution on my part or of any thing that might renew the Idea's of them quaere venam aquarum viventium seck the vein of living water and just as they were exprest to me my spirit like as when one comes up a River to its Spring-head was to seek Jesus Christ from the beginning of his Pilgrimage to the point of his Glory when set down in his Throne at the right hand of his Father whence he sends his spirit to animate his Church and enliven those that are his I saw that there indeed was the Source whence the springs of living waters do flow to us and that thither we were to make our addresses I could report here more such touches with which his letters to his Director were besprinkled but I believe I have given enough for the present to evidence his disposition towards our Lord and his union with him When he wrote to other persons he always insened something of our Lord to excite them to binde themselves to him and to propose him to themselves in all things as a model of their actions One while he writes thus Let us forget all to think of this faith which makes alliance between God and us through Jesus Christ who is come to publish this truth which he hath sealed with his blood and which he will consummate in his glory at that time when we shall appear to have been faithful in following his Spirit Let us go after and with Jesus Christ to God for he is our way Another while thus 'T is a thing admirable that it hath pleased God to seud us his Son to the end that we may not look on him any more as our Creator onely but also through the alliance that we have with him we may call him Father He is therefore our Father from this time forward and it is certain that he considers us as his children in the person of his Son Incarnate But the thing of importance is a firm
aniting of our selves to this Son contiruing that life of his upon earth within this of ours by the direction of his Spirit Thus also in another Letter Let Jesus Christ be in each of us our bond our soul our life as he is our pattern Le ts take a nearer view of this Holy Original enter into his Principles lay hold on his desires execute his works and let men know that we are Christians Writing to another he spake thus I adore and bless with all my heart our Lord Jesus Christ for that he opens you his heart to possess wholly yours he will make it to dye and will reduce it to a Holy Poverty which shall cause you to taste the true Life and compleat Riches and to avow that it is a great mercy to belong to Jesus Christ I beseech him to bestow on you his most sanctifying graces and that we may beth dye well and live well by his Spirit Let us enter into this Spirit which will give us the Sentiments and the Energie of the Children of God All other presence and application to the Divine Majestie which is not by this union of the Soul to Jesus Christ is onely of the creature towards the Creator which carries indeed respect but gives not the life and approaches of children towards God their Father where being united to the Interior operations of Jesus Christ we finde there the affections of true children which we canâ— not have but by being united to the true Son Let us end with that which a person to whom he unbosom'd himself confidently in this matter reports of him This rare man said he appeared touched with a verie tender and fervent love towards our Lord Jesus Christ I have observed that his Conversations and Discourses did shoot alwaies at this mark to imprint in souls the knowledge and love of our Lord with true soliditie In discourse with him I had often from him these words I avow that I have no gust in any thing where I finde not Jesus Christ and for a soul that speaks not of him or in which we cannot taste any effect of grace flowing from his Spirit which is the principal of operations both inward and outward that are solidly Christians speak not to me at all of such a one Could I as I may so say behold both miracles and wonders there and yet not Jesus Christ nor hear any talk of him I count all but amusement of spirit loss of time and a very dangerous Precipice And at several other times he said Let us love Jesus Christ let us unite our selves to his Spirit and Grace miserable sinner as I am who love him not yet should I be much joy'd at least to see my defects supplied by others that love him fervently but I am too unworthy to obtain a matter so great and wherein my self do bear so small a part Seeing then this faithful servant and follower of Christ Jesus had so strong an application and intimate union with his Divine Lord as 't is easie to gather from what hath been spoken we cannot but ascribe to this application and union all his vertues which we are going now to speak of in several and to look upon them as effects of this cause streams of this Fountain and branches of this Stem PART II. His Vertues in particular and first the Vertues which did perfect him in regard of himself CHAP. 1. His Penances and Austerities AS our flesh and senses are by their nature and more by their corruption very opposite to a Spiritual Life and among the enemies of our weal and perfection none more importunate or more violent than they so God useth when he intends to elevate any to the accomplishment of vertue and to make them Saints to inspire in them at the beginning of their conversion a spirit of Penance and mortification of their bodies Monsieur de Renty being destin'd by God to this glory and quickned by this Spirit encounters his body with rigorous Austerities thereby to reduce it to its duty and hinder it from annoying him in his Interior Exercises He begins therefore to fast every day making but one meal which he continued divers years until he was enjoyned otherwise and to take more nourishment to be the better able to undergo the great labours he undertook for his neighbour Some days in the week he wore an iron Girdle set with a double rank of long prickles and a bracelet of the same on other days he disciplin'd himself rigorously at some times wore haircloath having continually on his breast a brass Crucifix reaching to the bottom of his stomack the nails whereof being very sharp entred into his flesh When he went into the Countrey and was come to his Inn he would go into the Kitchin to eat there if it might be among servants and other mean persons and that for two ends both there to morâ—ifie his body and to speak some good thing to those poor people and when night constrained him to take his chamber he dismissed his servants to lie in other rooms and himself past the night in a chair or cast himself on a bed in his cloathes and boots which was his custom till death Being come to Amiens where I was and a Lady one of the chief of the Town having prepared a stately bed in a brave Chamber for him in honour of his vertue and cuality he was much troubled and would not at all use it but laid him down upon a bench and the day after as being much asham'd complained to me of the Lady for it so that to enjoy the blessing of lodging him at her house she was fain to change his chamber and bed and to accommodate him after his own mode that is to say where he might not be so much at his ease His Mortification in diet was very great eating little and always of the worst as not forgetting that our misery came not but by eating of delicious fruit Dining in company on a Fish-day one of the guests that noted his actions observed that all he eat was some Pears onely and that with so great modesty and recollection that one might easily discern that his minde was on God and not upon his meat When one of his friends a man of piety at Caen entertain'd him one day at dinner with some little ceremony as a person of quality he ate very little became much mortified and ashamed as he declared afterwards that Christians should be Feasters adding that a little would suffice and what a torment it was to him to be where there was so muâ—h chear as a thing quite contrary to the poverty of Christ who notwithstanding should be to us for our rule He would tell his friends that a little bread a little lard and butter was sufficient Hereupon his friends acquainted with this grace of Mortification in him took no more thought concerning his diet knowing his best entertainment to be the meanest fare The perfection
finde experimentally a real union both in light and faith with the party I mentioned which is more than palpable giving me assurance that we are all one Upon this occasion I shall acquaint you in what manner my minde hath been busied these few last days and is yet full of it and to the end my relation may be more intelligible I shall take the matter somewhat higher The operation I have found in my self for these two or three years hath constantly held me fixed in the pursuit of our Saviour Christ to finde in him Eternal-Life before God the Father through the influence of his Spirit of which I have from time to time given you account And now I confess to you that though for that time I also honoured from the bottom of my heart our B. Lady the Saints and Angels and have been desirous to express it upon all occasions yet so it was that their presence and their commerce was obscured in and as it were very remote from my soul I assure you that those thoughts hath frequently run in my minde saying thus within my self I so much honour our Lady and some other Saints and Angels and I know not where they are I lifted up my heart easily towards them but there was no presence of them at all at least such as I now perceive it Some moneths ago I possessed an opening and a light in my soul accompanied with powerful effects concerning love and dear union with God making me to conceive inexplicable things of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost who is perfect Charity not by the reasonings and discourses of the understanding but by a single view most by one touch penetrating the heart with love And I beheld how the Son of God our Saviour came to advance us by his Incarnation into this love uniting himself to us whereby to reduce us all into this intimate and sweet union until he shall have compleated us all in himself to be made all of us one day all in God after he hath delivered up his Kingdom to his Father Ut sit Deus omnia in omnibus That God may be all in all And we enter into this blessed union with the Father Son and Holy Ghost Some ten or twelve days since being in my morning prayers on my knees to pray unto God I perceived in my self that I could findâ— no entrance unto him onely I kept my self there much humbled but the sight of the Father the access to him of the Son with whom I ordinarily converse with as much confidence as if he were yet upon earth and the assistance of the holy Ghost seemed at a strange distance withheld from me and I perceived an unworthiness in my self so great so real and so penetrating that I could no more lift up the eyes of my soul to heaven than these of my body Than was iâ— given me to understand that I had really that unworthiness which I felt But that I must seek my entry to God and to our Saviour in the Communion of Saints Whereupon I was on an instant possessed with a wonderful presence of the respect and love and union of the B. Virgin the Angels and Saints which I am not able to express nor to utter the greatness and solidity of this grace For this union is Life Eternal and the Ecclesiastical Paradise and this union is both for the Saints in Heaven and those on earth which I have almost always in full view and presence From thenceforward I understood that we were not made by God to be alone and separate from others but to be united unto them and to compose with them one divine total Even as a beautiful stone fitted for the head of a column is altogether unprofitable till it be settled in its place and cemented to the body of the building without which it hath neither its preservation its beauty nor its end This meditation left me in the love and in the true and experimental connexion of the communion and communication of Saints yet with a due order of those to whom I am more united which is my Life in God and in Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the contents of that Letter CHAP. 7. His devotion to the Holy Sacrament ONe of the greatest Devotions of this holy man was that to the H. Eucharist considered both as a Sacrifice and as a Sacrament of which he had ever an incredible esteem honouring it with all possible reverence and affecting it with tender love blessing and praising God for its institution and exciting both by his word and pen the whole world to do the same He was accustomed to say that it was instituted to stay and place our Saviour God and Man in the midst of us to obtain for us all the benefits of grace whereof we are capable here and to dispose us for those of glory That the great design of God in the Incarnation the Life Death and Resurrection of his Son was to convey unto us his Spirit to be unto us Life Eternal which Spirit he hath taught us by his Word merited for us by his Death doth more confer upon us from his estate of Glory And the better to convey this unto us to cause us to live thereby and dye in our selves he giveth himself to us in this most Holy Sacrament dead raised up and glorified to produce in us by the operation of his Spirit these two effects of death and life He was not onely present every day at Mass but took it for a great honour to serve the Priest himself He received every day if not hindred by very important business or some pressing occasion of Charity And as the honour we render to this B. Sacrament consists not in often receiving but in communicating well and perfectly he took all care thereof that could be expected from one of so holy life and eminent Piety He spent many hours in prayers upon his knees before the Blessed Sacrament And being once asked by a friend How he could remain there so long He answered That there he recreated his spirit receiving from thence refreshment and new forces and yet sometimes he encountred with some trouble in that Devotion which may be gathered from this Letter to his Director dated the 27 of June in the year 1647. I have been very poor all this moneth I know not whether I was ever so lumpish both in spirit and body as I was upon the Festival day of the Blessed Sacrament I was present at Service at Procession at Mass at Communion heard the Sermon at Vespers and Compline but like a very beast not knowing how to demean my self either kneeling or standing I was in a kinde of restless condition of body and very wandring and distracted in spirit onely I knew well that in the bottom of my soul I had a desire to honour God through his Son Christ Jesus After Compline I found my self so dull and heavy that seeing my self unable to remain
with patience for I experiment and see clearly that though we labour and wish earnestly to get out of our imperfections our Lord sometimes leaves us there a long while to make us know our weakness and to humble us He desired to be advertised of and reprehended for his faults and we shall see now what he observed therein at the beginning of his call to this high perfection It came to pass that a person which was much below him had order from his Director to advertise him if he saw any thing in him that was contrary to perfection when this person gave him notice of some failing though very light and indeed but of the shadow of a fault he listned thereto with respect and thanks and humbled himself for it as if he had committed some crime and he accused himself when he thought he had made any failing upon his knees saying he was a miserable sinner and that he had committed such a fault which yet often very hardly could one discern to be any This exercise as being most wholesome and efficacious was very useful to him for the making of a great progress for our nature by reason of its feebleness hath need of such props to walk uprightly and not fall If his imperfections and his sins humbled him his excellent qualities and the graces which he received from God did the same also And the same things from which the greatest part of men draw nothing but vanity served him for motives of self-abasement The Spirit of Jesus Christ wherewith he was enlivened extremely estranged him from the Grandeurs of the world making him not onely contemn them but also to be ashamed thereof so that he took occasions of abasements from his own condition because so high in the world and from the secular advantages which it gave him which made him often to groan before the Majestie of God and to say that he was in a condition very low and plebeian according to the Spirit of Jesus Christ and that he had great confusion to see himself in that estate From whence it came that being born a Gentleman of so good rank as we have said he renounced his Nobility and gave it into the hands of our Lord who in return imparted his own to him as he made it known to a holy soul that is to say his love which by its proper force transforming man in God divests him of himself and leaves nothing in him but God alone there living and reigning and by this means raiseth him thus Deified to the highest degree of Nobility that he can mount to Hence it was that he endured with pain that one should call him Monsieur and he said sometimes smilingly among his familiars I am a fine Monsieur it is well for me and in his Letters he complained that they treated him as in that quality And in one of them giving another course or carreer to his humility he said Believe me I pray you it is great pitty of me I take again the Monsieur which I had rejected my pride must have these her Appendixes rather than deceive your Candor which else perhaps make you mistake in me a piece of glittering glass for a Diamond Out of his humility it was that he would not bear the title of Marquess which was due to him as proper to his house in regard the Emperor Charles the fift had erected Renty into a Marquifate and he suffered onely that of Baron of Renty by which he was commonly called For the graces and gifts of God as they were received in a soul well disposed so produced they most excellently their true effect which was to abase and elevate the soul both together to raise it to God and to abase it to it self And first his humility made him hide as much as he could the gifts of God and so hath rob'd us of the knowledge of a thousand brave actions which might have been very serviceable to this History Secondly when he received any favour from God or that one rendred him any honour the light whereby he saw the Nothingness of the creature and the discernment he was endowed with in distinguishing the precious from the vile and that which is done on Gods part in all-good things from that which man bringeth thither of his own was the cause that in those things he assum'd no share at all but referred all to God as to the true Source and so in the management of these great goods which God enriched him withal he had always his hands clean without doing wrong to God or touching that which appertain'd to him and for himself he kept quite out of sight of all vanity which slides most subtilly and most easily into a spirit that abounds in riches of heaven as well as those of the earth if he look not very close unto it Nor would he therefore that any one should consider him in what he said or did but regard God alone therein He wrote thus to one that much desired of him a visit I cannot bear but with pain the account you make of my visits and society Let us look much upon God let us binde our selves strictly to Jesus Christ that we may learn of him a profound annihilation of our selves O my God when will it be that we shall have no more a sight upon our selves when we shall speak no more of our selves and when all vanity shall be destroyed And he wrote to another I beseech you not to regard in me save my infirmities and a depth of wickedness and pride very horrible that is in me that 's it for which I shall have need that all the world talk to and punish me In the third place he esteemed himself most unworthy of the graces and favours of God and beleived there was not one of them how little soever it were but was far above his merits and for the great ones he was so full of they did put him to a Non-plus He wrote to a confident The gifts of God are sometimes so great that they put us as I may so say beyond our selves and if it were possible we could finde the means to recoil our selves further off than beyond Nothingness we should do it You see among men that when one receives a gift that bears some proportion to him he renders thanks and acknowledgement to the giver for it but if a Prince be Liberal to a poor man according to the Grandeur of his own power whether it be a sum of money or a place you shall see this poor man recoil and say Alas my Lord I think you know me not I must not have so much I am unworthy of it In like manner there are blessings that go beyond our expectations capacities and which make us see what we are without daring to lift up our eyes towards them their brightness doth so much dazle and their greatness so much astonish In fine he humbled himself always for the favours of God because he thought
upon my self what should I be before my own eyes What am I then before thine and those of thy servants He wrote to another person I thank you for those Devoirs of Devotion which you have tendred these 24 and 25 days last past for a thing so base as my self who deserve no room but among the children of Adam that deceive all the world and who have reason to fear the anger of all the children of God if the prayer of his son upon the cross had not implor'd forgiveness for his persecutors And to another also Seeing I am born with so willingly and that you persevere to desire this of me I beseech my Lord in the hand and disposing of whom I would be wholly that he make use if it please him of this miserable Rush for the giving you some consolation in the life of his children and the ways which may lead you to the inheritance He writ a great number of Letters and it is a wonderful thing that there is not among them so much as one wherein he doth not villifie himself and which carries not with it some touch of humility and he did the same too in all his conversation For although he had a design to annihilat himself the more to do that which generally speaking is conceived to be the best except in occurrences where vertue obligeth us to practice the contrary to speak nothing of himself at all neither good nor ill yet was to him almost impossible to retain himself from it in regard of that exceeding low opinion and disesteem he had of himself whereupon when a Confident of his said one day to him This was not well done to speak so ill of your self he presently smote his breast avowing He did ill It s true that a man may speak ill of himself through pride upon design to skim off to himself by this false humility a little glory and to get some reputation of an humble person but when all is done we finde not that the proud are much subject to this fault at least thus much we shall finde that it is very hard to speak of ones self from so great depth of humility as did this man of God Who indeed spake of himself very ill and in terms of great confusion and very often but yet notwithstanding without molestation or annoying of any one and in such a manner that we might evidently see that he spake from the bottom of his heart and as he thought And that which is yet more wonderful he had such a grace in speaking ill of himself and to his confusion that many have marked and experimented that the words of humility and confusion which he said of himself did imprint the same disposition in them that heard him bringing into their souls the same effects of self-lessening and sentiments of of humility When by the particular motion of the Holy Ghost he spake of such graces and mercies as God had shewed him it was always with an humbled and self-annulling spirit He wrote to a person thus I am no other than a sinner have pitty on me adoring for me the goodness of God and of our Lord who to speak in the tearms of the Gospel turns in sometimes among sinners I can tell some news of that with Zacheus but I am confounded for not producing in all my life that which his love and gratitude made him do in a moment And to another I beseech our Lord to keep me very low before him and before you for I ought to bear the shame of my crimes in all places seeing I am altogether miserable yet so as without ceasing to joyn with you in saying Misericordias Domini in aeternum Cantabo I will sing of the mercies of God for ever When he spake of pious persons joyned with him in exercises of Charity he used often these terms If I may be so bold I pray you salute them from me I esteem my self very happy to be the last of that company I am altogether uncapable and unworthy of it and yet notwithstanding he was the bringer about of it I shall be condemned by you all if you have not pitty on me and redeem me from my miseries SECT 4. His Humility in his actions AFter the humility of the heart and speech comes that of action which Monsieur de Renty practised in an excellent manner We have already seen it in divers passages we shall see it again in many other and particularly when we speak of his patience and of his charity towards the poor and the sick But besides all this I shall not doubt to say that he was continually attentive to all occasions of Humility so that none of them escaped him without being made use of Since his special vocation to the service of God he would not suffer they should carry him any more a cushion to the Church but to be there hid and disregarded he mingled himself among Mechanicks and mean persons where he was often crowded and incommoded as not being known which he endured with great delight He kept himself alway as much as he could with the humble Publican at the lower end of the Church And at Diâ—on in the Church of the Vesulines the Nuns that attend at the grate spied him at prayers at the lower end of the Church with his arms bent in form of a cross when the people were gone that stood there with him yea and often he said his prayers before the door when it was shut that he might not said he put any to the trouble of opening it to a poor sinner When he heard high Mass in his Parish he went always to the Offertory together with some poor man and was seen sometimes with the same to accompany the Holy Sacrament through the streets when no man of note was there but himself onely During the war at Paris he went himself to buy bread for the poor carrying it through the streets and as much of it too as his strength would permit As also at the same time when he did the charity to a Monastery of Nuns as to take in custody their Church plate he pressed them very much to let him carry to his lodging which was almost two miles thence and on foot as he was a piece very great and weighty but as he had the humility to desire it so had they the discretion not to permit it When they desired him at the same Monastery that when he was pleased to do them the favour to visit them he would come in his Coach by reason of the distance and incommodity he received in coming He answered pleasantly that he lov'd not to make use of a Coach because that smelt something of the Monsieur and that he must endeavour to make himself in every thing very little He went therefore thither on foot and returned the shortest days at five or six a clock at night all alone and sometimes in thawing weather when being told of the
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
it self implies as much for we call it The importunity of the poor It was given mee in this instant to understand that if we were well enlightned we should not count our selves importuned or hindred by any person or thing because we should regard the order of God conducting all things to our advantage that as it behoves us to suffer with patience the distractions interior so ought we to endure the exterior and that the vexation unquietness and impatience which these little accidents cause in us come from our ignorance and immortification It is not for all that though but we may shun the occasions of trouble but when they come we must look upon them as ordered by God receive and bear them with all sweetness humility and reverence and so though they come and interrupt us the order of God is not interrupted in us but we follow it and this indeed is the treasure and the great secret of the life spiritual and I may so say a Paradise upon earth True it is that nothing troubles us but through our own fault and all the vexations which we either resent within or vent outwardly when any one crosses hinders or diverts us from doing any thing have no other source but the disorders of our too much engaged spirits And for the better stifling of these passionate risings and keeping our hearts in peace we must mark this well that if one hinders us from doing one good work he thereby gives us the means of practising another A man suppose draws you away from prayer or from reading hinders you from the executing of some good design you had for your neighbour It is true but he puts you withal into a condition of exercising patience which in this conjuncture will be better more acceptable to God and more efficacious to perfectionate you than all those other actions for in them there was found your own will but in these there comes in a Self-abnegation wherein consists your perfection for the fulness of God is not but in the emptiness of the creature SECT I. A pursuit of the same subject THis great patience in Monsieur de Renty did flow from the high esteem he made of sufferings which if well understood are no other than well-springs of life eternal than mines of gold celestial riches than participations of the Cross of our Lord which Cross God hath appointed the cause of our happiness and of all the good that we shall ever possess and consequently whereunto every one must have some ligament or nail to affix him who will be saved To one that suffered he wrote thus God fashions you for himself uniting you here below to Jesus Christs sufferings Ah! what a great favour is it and greater than we are aware of And to another What a blessing is it that God makes you suffer whilst the world laughs if those of the contrary part had as you have their eyes open they would see a ravishing wonder your self to laugh in suffering and themselves to weep for not suffering you have a favour which they contemn because they understand it not and poor miserable men they count themselves happy in what is their misery This great opinion which he had conceived of sufferings made him desire and thirst after them and to say in the ardor of his wish with that holy woman to whom he bore so great devotion either to dye or to suffer He wrote to one thus I see that in a manner every thing is unprofitable in this life but to suffer every consolation every sweetness and joy is an overhasty scisure of the recompence which is not due to Criminals who sojourn not in this world but to be purged and do penance there to which business pleasures and joys bring some allay and hinder without doubt the penance from being so full and the soul from arriving to a higher degree of perfection Not that I deny but that these things may sometimes be necessary in regard of our infirmity which hath need to be upheld for the better enduring its mortifications The year 1647. thâ— 30 of April he wrote thus to his Director I have always before my eyes my feebleness and that little which I render to God for his favours which keeps me in abnegation but yet with great affiance which carries me to love to docility and to obedience but love and obedience that inflames me more to suffer with our Lord This is my greatest longing and attractive because in every other thing we are receivers from God but in this here although we receive the grace to suffer yet the suffering is that which we can properly give to God and is the greatest gage and proof of our love But it is not for all this reasoning aforesaid that I should chuse and bring sufferings upon me but I feel my self inwardly inclined towards it and stay there It is about a fortnight since that I had such a kinde of acknowledgement and such a love to our Lord suffering and offering himself to God his Father and knitting us to himself to be but one and the same sacrifice that I felt my self in an instant and during that instant glued to the Cross by such an alliance of love as is inexplicable and whereof the vertve continues with me to this present In a Memorial that he gave him the year 1648. in Lent concerning his dispositions he said It is come into my minde that the way to make me keep a hard Lent would be to set me at a good Table and oblige me to make good chear to cast me among the brave companions of the world to prattle and laugh and to lead me into walks and meetings of young gallantry for this would be to me a little hell yea without speaking of the sin that might be there the very thought of it makes me tremble for it is true that Solitude fastings and other things which are called Penances are my attractives or allurements And afterward he very wisely addes Although I have this feeling I cease not to know what I am and in all my inclinations and desires I take heed not to beg to suffer the least thing and when I happen to do it of my self I revoke it afterwards as having done foolishly I have too much experienc of my weakness I give my self onely to my God for every thing he desires of me from the top of heaven even to the bottom of hell by his order I will all with him I can do all and that which is ordered by him is always accompanied with his grace This great servant of God inlightned and touched with these illuminations and contemplations stirred up to patience all those that he dealt with and perswaded them to knit and unite themselves intimately to our Lord suffering and crucified He wrote thus to one afflicted I beseech our Lord to fortifie you more and more with his graces and that the more he imprints in you the characters of his passion
the delicious fruits that are produced from this mysterious grain of wheat when it is dead PART III. CHAP. 1. His application to our Lord Jesus Christ in regard of his Neighbour WE have observed in the first part of this History that the grand exercise of Monsieur Renty was to apply and unite himself to our Saviour and from that union and his example to derive all his vertues and good works This was the general course he held in them all to mould himself after him for the composition of his Exterior and Interior never taking his eye off this Divine Copy but endeavouring to draw each line exactly and pensil his true lineaments making him his native and perfect Original This was the scope of all his designs and cares and particularly of his charity to his neighbour for which he propounded our Saviour as his grand Exemplar marking what he had done and what he had suffered for men weighing those affections and tendernesses he bore towards them how he sought after and conversed with them how he instructed comforted and encouraged them sometimes reproving otherwhiles bearing with their infirmities and at all times carrying them in his most dear embraces and most intimate inclosure of his heart He pondered what he had delivered concerning this vertue of charity that it was it that he had established as the ground and perfection of his new Law having left us this one command more expresly which with special propriety he had termed his own and the execution whereof he had inforced above all other he much thought upon it how that this Master had charged us to love our neighbour according to the model measure and fashion that he had loved us And finally that he had made this vertue and no other the distinctive character betwixt such as possessed his Spirit in truth and those that had it onely in appearance Wherefore having well-weighed these actions and doctrines of our Saviour and resolved to do his utmost to render himself a good Christian and his perfect Imitator he determined as far as he could both to embrace this doctrine and follow his actions and to love his neighbour with the bent and spirit of of such a divine Master Writing to Sister Margeret a Carmelite of Beaulne he said I sigh after my Saviour Jesus desiring to imitate and follow him whither he pleaseth I beseech you by your prayers obtain for me his Spirit to be my life my whole life sigh and groan for me after my God that I may be wholly for him in his Son that I may follow him and not live but by his Spirit And to another person he writ thus I have so great a view of the love and of all the effects of the love of the most Holy Soul of our Lord that this Interior so full of clemency bounty and charity makes me conceive far otherwise than ever how that we ought to live of this Divine love even in our deportment towards men and how in effect it is in him that the whole Law is accomplished in its perfection Furthermore to the same party thus Since God hath manifested himself to us by his Son and hath admitted us through him into his grace and made us partakers of all his actions both towards God and man how can we ever quit this his dear Son He that hath Jesus Christ hath a key which opens many doors it discovers unto us large prospects it enricheth us with vast treasures and breaks open the prison of mans heart as being too strait for his Immensities And to the same thus also Ah how good is that desart when after Baptism we are conducted thither with our Lord by the Spirit of God Thence it was that our Saviour came out to converse with men to teach them and work their salvation Since therefore we together with him make up but one Jesus Christ as having the honour to be his members we should live his life take on us his Spirit and walk in his steps This was the ground that made this perfect Disciple apply himself with all his power to this admirable Charity which we are now coming to speak of at large endeavouring in all the commerce he had with men to unite himself most intimately to our Saviour rendring himself up as an instrument to be guided by his hand in the helping of others beseeching him to breath upon him this Spirit of Charity recommended so much to us in his word but more in his actions and to inflame him with this divine fire which he hath kindled in the midst of his Church to be wholly burnt and consumed with it he consulted him in all his doubts concerning it begging of him to inspire what and how and when he should speak and act for the good of his neighbour and that in him and by him these might all be done He look'd upon men not according to their natural qualities their beauty nobility riches dignities and wordly honors but according to their more noble relations and those common to all viz. as creatures divine the lively images of God created to praise and love him to all eternity as dyed and purpled in the blood of Jesus brothers and co-heirs with him his purchase and inheritance bought with the price of his life and a thousand dolours and who therefore must be infinitely dear unto him and most passionately beloved of him In this capacity it was that he beheld men loving and applying himself to their necessities and he arrived by the purity of this conduct to so far perfection that as on the one side he was extreamly useful to his neighbour and received therein wonderful blessings from God so on the other this communication with them did not distract nor bring any prejudice to himself but very much good There are that advise them who have to do with others in the matter of their salvation especially with such from whose converse any danger may arise to consider them as bodies without souls or as souls without bodies and as pure spirits The counsel is good and some make profitable use of it but Monsieur Renties view was to look upon God and Jesus Christ in every man and to consider that it was they that demanded succour of him and prepared his thoughts to talk to them and perform what was necessary for their souls and bodies believing truly that it was to God and Christ that he rendred these assistances and service And this same thought is much to be made use of that we may do good and take no hurt from others otherwise we shall hazard ourselves and do little good for when we proceed upon the inclination and motives of nature the effects have a relish of their cause proving no more but natural or vicious or at most indifferent viz. loss of time light discourses amusements engagement of affections which carry in them much of sense and degenerate afterwards into something worse whereby instead of purifying one another a
this time of resignation of my self to sufferings is to make good use of my affliction and endeavour after solid vertue with a perfect abandoning of my self to the will of God Behold here the blessings of God upon his endeavours for the good of his neighbours which working such strong impressions upon their hearts to bring them to God almost always accompanied his labours At which indeed we ought not much to wonder if we consider him as a happy instrument fastened and united to the Lord of hearts and Saviour of souls singly aiming at the glory of God and good of others and sparing nothing he conceived necessary thereunto To which purpose his custom was before he undertook any such business to give himself up to our Lord they are his own words to speak by his Spirit and in his Power And this Lord who desireth infinitely the salvation of man finding him so well disposed and fitted to his hand used him for noble imployments and furnished him with suitable graces and favours even to work wonders Which may serve both for the instruction and shame of such who by their calling are designed for the procuring of the salvation of men and yet through their own fault do it with so little profit I finde moreover that God gave him sometimes beforehand knowledge and foresight into the affairs which he would have him do thereby to prepare him to undertake them without fear and to acquit himself well therein Being at his house in Citry at the latter end of the year 1642. he had a secret intimation from God that at his return to Paris he should finde a new imployment about the poor and should be much taken up therein Which fell out accordingly two days after his arrival there certain persons coming to advice with him about a course to relieve such poor as were ashamed to beg throughout that City intreating him to take it into his care which he did accordingly undertaking for his share to visit the fourth part and distribute there alms according to their necessities which was a sufficient employment for one man to take up his whole time though he had no other business which yet he performed notwithstanding the multitude of his other occupations so that we may say that according to humane reason and without a special assistance from God he could never have been able to have done and suffered such great matters But God who hath given us a limited strength of body and minde can as easily heighten them when and how he pleaseth One day he said to one of his great Confidents with much humility and devotion I have been this night bathed all over in tears by a view which our Lord hath given me At which words making a stand remaining sometime recollected in silence and transported with that grace he had received afterward he went on saying that whilst he was at prayer he understood that there was a great imployment assigned him for new France in the Indies Which afterward fell out and chiefly in the building of a Church in the Island of Mont-real In which noble design other pious persons whom God had chosen thereunto joyning with him He by his cares counsels credit and liberality both of his own and what he begg'd from others was highly serviceable Sometime he received beforehand not so great light of his business but onely a bare knowledge and present impulse of doing something without any further discovery As when he was much pressed in Spirit to go to Pontois without understanding any reason for it having at the same time much employment at Paris yet with obedience to the inspiration without debating he undertaketh the journey where unexpectedly he met with a Nobleman of great quality from a Province far distant who came thither conducted by God to ask of Monsieur Renty and receive from his mouth instructions for his souls health and how to serve God perfectly which he had little known and less practised Which thing Monsieur Renty then taught him professing at his return from thence that he could give no account what afterward became of the party or how he lost him SECT 10. His grace in assisting particularly some choice souls THough this great servant of God had an excellent faculty in assisting all men for the good of their souls yet was he more eminently happy in some particular choice persons to whom our Saviour had assigned him for the curing of their imperfections to make them march on apace and that thorow the narrow way of vertue and perfection But because the greatest number of these are yet living whose modesty I dare not offend I shall speak something onely of some who are dead and chiefly of one person which may serve as a taste of all the rest This was the Countess of Chastres who being deeply in the affections of this world according to the custom of most young Ladies of her quality it pleased God out of his infinite love to her to bring her before her death from those vanities and conduct her by the thorny strait-way to the paths of vertue and high perfection for which great work Monsieur Renty was assigned from God He inspiring the one to request assistance and counsel and the other to afford it and this with so happy success that within less than a years space her advancement herein was so notable that he himself was astonished at it For in that short time she became so perfectly disingaged from all those petty conveniences and accomodations which our Ladies flattering themselves pretend still to have need of that one presenting her with something of that nature wherein she had formetly taken delight she returned this answer which may serve for a good lesson to us all especially if we consider that she was well known to be of a very delicate tender complexion and very sickly how apt we are to multiply necessities I thank God I have quitted this and far more other things for the love of God and yet finde no want at all It is true that nature of her self is dainty and prone to flatter her self upon the pretence of necessities which she is willing to apprehend much greater than truly they are and often maketh them such by her imagination God indued him with great grace and light to discern her proper way and to perswade her to follow it to advance her in the pathes of solid vertue and to teach her by degrees to dye to herfelf to support her in great interior afflictions and to instruct her very effectually in what was most proper for her present condition he being accomplished with all the qualities of a fit Director and she on her part perfectly resigning up herself to believe what he said and force her self to put it in execution A thing very requisite in those that resolve to make use of the conduct of others to good purpose She received his counsel with all the resignation she could imagining our
alliance he hath contracted with us in Jesus Christ This knowledge produceth in me as much astonishment as love And to tell you my sense of it a man possessed with these verities remains no more a man but becomes annihilated and all his desire is to be lost and melted on purpose to change his nature and enter into this Spirit of Jesus to act no less in him than by him I have conceived such great things of our Saviours Humanity united to the Divinity as cannot be uttered How hath this alliance of the Divinity most deeply abased the sacred Humanity into a self-annihilation and a sacrifice of love upon the sight of the greatness of God What an honour is this to the Humane Nature to be thus predestinated and What a glory to us to be chosen and called to an entrance into his favour and a rising to God and the everlasting enjoyment thereof through him It would spend me this whole day to write to you the view that I have had of the wisdom and bounty of God touching this mysterie of Love which he hath opened unto us in his Son And though he was truly devoted to all the mysteries of our Lord yet in a most special manner to that of his Infancy The occasion whereof was thus Being constrained to make a journey to Dâ—jon by reason of a suit of Law beforementioned he heard much talk of Sister Margaret of the blessed Sacrament a Religious Carmeline of the Covent of Beaulne on whom our Saviour had conferred particular favours who led a life very extraordinary grounded upon true and solid vertue And as our Lord hath several ways to sanctifie a soul and fit it for his sacred purposes so he was pleased to exercise this choice woman absoluâ—ely in the mysterie of our Saviours Infancy and through that pipe to convey into her soul a torrent of grace and extraordinary gifts not onely for herself but others as may be seen in her life now in writing by a person most worthy of such a work Monsieur Renty had a desire to go to Beaulne being but seven leagues from Dijon to recommend himself to the prayers of this holy Virgin And though when he came thither he neither spake to her nor saw her she having by a particular conduct of our Saviour been retired for thirteen years from the speech of any secular person yet notwithstanding he received much benefit from his journey as he expressed in a Letter writ back from Dijon to the Prioress of that place I want words to express the mercies I received by my journey to Beaulne Sister Margaret hath marked me out in the holy Infant Jesus such a divesting of my self of all worldly things that it appears to me my rendezouz where I must strip my self naked of all things else The year after he made a second journey where God having altered her resolution for speech and converse with others he had the happiness to discourse with her and contracted at that time a very intimate alliance of grace receiving great gifts by means thereof The chiefest and source of all the rest being that our Saviour engaged him as he had done her in a more particular devotion to the mysterie of his Infancy and imprinted in him the lineaments of the like Graces and Spirit This holy man whose judgement may be highly esteemed by us considering his extraordinary insight into spiritual matters greatly valued this Religious woman approving exceedingly her directions and testifying how great a blessing he reckoned her acquaintance and what benefit he had reaped from her even after her death To which purpose he writ thus to me the eighteenth of June 1648. the year of her death The holy Infant sweet Jesus hath taken to himself our good Sister Margaret whose death was consonant to the dispositions of her life and miraculous graces I have received from her since her death great comfort That grace I reâ—eived according to my present estate and weakness to enter into the Infancy of our Saviour hath since been renewed to me and I have understood it more solidly About a moneth after I received these lines from him I had yesterday by the singular bounty of God a view of his Divine Majestie of S. John Baptist and Sister Margaret of the B. Sacrament so clearly represented to me in my spirit that I cannot suspect the truth of it O what effects were produced by their presence and what love by these sights I am wholly renewed in my respects to that great Saint my Patron and to that glorious servant of God who honoured him very much whilst she was living and from whom without doubt since her death she hath beggâ—d to be my Protector It is mâ—st certain that the work of God in her was one continued prodigie of grace and a master-piece of his hand But let us return to his application made to the Infancy of our Saviour chiefly begun in his second journey to Beaulne Of which we may understand something from this Letter written to a Father of the Oratory Confessor to the Carmelines there I must needs tell you that upon my first journey which I made to you above a year agoâ— I brought back with me a great esteem and devotion to the Infancy of our Saviour but I was not yet well settled in it I attempted it from time to time but could not yet make it my principal food Since which the holy Infant by a supernatural grace hath manifested and opened himself to me and now I finde every thing in him and am remitted thither for all And to the Prioress he writ thus I must acquaint you that the holy Infant Jesus will grant me the favour to apply my self pâ—rticularly to his honour to give my self to him and to his holy dispositâ—ons ordering my life and the sacrifice of my self by the conduct of his Spirit In order hereunto he cousecrated and gave up himself thereto in these terms a copy whereof written with his own hand and in his own blood he sent to Sister Margaret which is kept with great devotion in that Covent And another something more inlarged to his Ghostly Father to which he wrote his name onely in blood in these words To the honour of my King the Holy Infant Jesus I Have consecrated my self this Christmass-Day 1643. to the holy Infant Jesus offering up to him my whole Being my Soul my Body my Free-will my Wife my Children my Family the Estate which he hath given me and finally all that I am concerned in having beseeched him to enter into full Possession Property Jurisdiction of all that I am That I may live no more but in and to him in the quality of a Victim separate from every thing of this world and challenging no more share thereof than according to the applications which he shall give and shall allow me Insomuch that from henceforward I shall look at my self meerly as an instrument in the hand of the holy Infant
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
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
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 to attend sufficiently to God the natural faculties being too busie and not subjecting themselves to him upon specious pretences thinking to do wonders whereby indeed they hinder him from working in the soul whilst he findes it in a state of agitation and inquietude whereas it should be in tranquillity and silence to receive his operations But some may say to me that he conceives this cutting off Discourse and this using of a naked Faith and so great simplicity of operation can do little but rather loseth time To whom I reply that it is quite the contrary and time very well spent for whilst we quit the operations of sense and discourse we dismiss that which keep us at a distance from God who is infinitely above all discourse and much more above sense but going on by faith and the affections of the will we approach neer to him Monsieur Renty cleareth this doubt in one of his papers saying Some will say often there occurs nothing to me in such prayers and I fear to spend my time in idleness But know that you lose no time at all when by losing your self you are sound in a state of Reverence and Affiance in the presence of God to make your course towards him nor can he dislike such a behaviour Another will say but I have had many distractions and finde my self afflicted with great aridities and many other inconveniences I answer persevere still notwithstanding all these difficulties in your view of Faith and Reverence and in your Affections as much as you can and keep your self shut up in the cabinet of your heart Suffer the noise of all these tempests without without heeding them after the example of Noah who in the midst of his Ark was quiet as his very name imports whilst winds and waves beat upon him on every side Those things are but necessary and serve to purge and dispose the soul for the operation of God upon it even as green wood puffs and sweats out its humidity before it can burn So let these distractions and all sorts of imaginations assault us as it pleaseth God but let them not trouble or hinder us from this holy exercise onely let us diverting our minde from these miseries when we perceive any continue peaceably and without noise this our Sacrifice with assurance that we shall not wait long before our Lord come unto us And himself when finding himself in such sterile condition would cry to God out aloud when he was alone I am yours O my God in despite of all these distractions and aridities I am yours and will continue so without reserve you have created me and I will love you for ever Sometime he would write with his finger upon the ground and sometime upom his breast saying I am content with every thing that proceeds from the will of God and with what he appoints for me I ask nothing else I will never trouble my self to procure consolation or to be freed from aridities my resolution is to bless God at all times To this purpose he writ to his Director I am now and then an hour or two at prayer and nothing occurs to me Sometime I am troubled with distractions aridities and lassitude but however it comes to pass I never end but with a desire to begin again and often this lassitude of body is relieved and vanisheth by an inward strength which is given me and which disposeth me to continue my Devotion out of the time and place of prayer even in the midst of converse and business and I tell you sincerely that notwithstanding I perform every thing so ill yet I finde little difference of times for prayer being recollected continually To another intimate friend he writ thus I was the other day three or four hours in the Church with great aridities nothing occurring whereon to fix my self Behinde me I over-heard a good servant of God saying his prayers with the Gloria Patri I presently offered up to God that which I heard him say whereupon of a sudden it was discovered to me that when the soul is alone in the desart where she hath no creature to rest upon God casteth down from heaven his line of love to draw her up towards him and something to that effect I felt in my self and though nothing did occur to me yet when I end prayer I could willingly begin it afresh And thus much for active and acquisite Contemplation As for the passive and infused as it depends absolutely on God so hath it no other rule but his will and good pleasure to communicate himself to a soul illuminating the uderstanding with transcendent light and replenishing the will with strong affections especially that of love Even as Moses that perfect pattern of all Contemplation to make himself fit to ascend Mount Sinai there to converse with God quitted his heards and flocks his people both great and small his brother Aaron and even Joshua his servant who was continually with him and then went up alone to the point of the hill where he entred into the dark cloud in which God was as the Scripture saith and abode there fourty days in Contemplation and intimate converse with his Sacred Majestie So must we quit sense reasonings all sensible and intellectual things to be admitted into true Contemplation which is transacted within the clouds of faith where certainly God is and by faith in our illuminations and affections And here is to be noted that all these sublime contemplations and favours must terminate in a ready disposition of the soul to the will of God to render it carefully observant of his commandments even as all those of Moses were for the receiving of the Tables of the Law and the putting them into his hands which yet were afterwards broken to teach us by a figure that the soul notwithstanding all those dispositions and helps to sanctitie is subject to failings so feeble and neer to precipice are we with all these illuminations unless God sustain us The Spouse in the Canticles inviteth souls in these amorous words Comedite amici bibite inebriamini charissimi Eat and drink my friends and be inebriated you that are dearest to me Where by eating which breaketh and cheweth the food is meant meditation by drinking which swalloweth liquid things prayer of affection and by drunkenness active contemplation or rather passive which produceth the same effect in the soul as drunkenness in the body viz. loss of reason oblivion of all things and mirth Monsieur Renty was drawn up thither by God and elevated with Moses to the top of the Mountain of infused contemplation Thus he writ to his Director in the year 1645. I have not had this long time any use neither at prayer nor almost at other times of the understanding nor of memory I neither see nor feel any thing have neither gust nor disgust of any thing onely finde my will lively and ready for every thing that shall be shewed
the spirit which is never so compleat as when it is alone Giving notice to a friend of the death of the Countess of Castres for whose spiritual good and perfection he had taken very much pains He writeth thus I was not in Paris but at Citry when she departed I was sent for post the day of her death which was Saturday but came two hours too late Entring the Town I understood the news from them that spake openly of it in the streets Presently I fixed my self to the will of God whereupon I found no more alteration in my soul than if she had been alive I see his order in this that I assisted her not at her death and make no doubt but that he permitted it for her advantage To a friend that had lost his Spiritual Director he writ thus Touching the remove of your Ghostly Father it would without question prove a great loss to you and all the Countrey from whence he went if the providence of God herein did not rather sanctifie and establish than destroy and if oftentimes by removing these petty visible and sensible supports he did not make way to settle us more firmly in our progress to which he designs us which is to dwell and to hold our selves in God together with Christ Jesus where we finde all truth and all power and who is so neer to us that he is even in the midst of â— and proportionably as our dependence upon creatures faileth through his providence he makes it appear aâ—d we experimentally finde that we are not left destitute thereby but that supply is made either by his Spirit that resideth continually in us for our relief or by the conduct of his Ministers which the fewer they are the more is that grace dilated and multiplied which we receive by them So great is the providence of our Heavenly Father as to take care of the meanest necessities of all his children who to him behave themselves as children Neither indeed ought we to be further engaged to those persons who assist us in our Spiritual conduct than as to Gods instruments whose help it is his will we should make use of but no longer than he pleaseth and when his will is either by death or otherwise to take them from us we ought not to be afflicted nor lose our courage but with submission and gratitude resign all to him which will be a good means to move him to provide others who perhaps with more advantage to us may understand the pulse of our souls In fine he was dead to all love of himself which he had so perfectly subdued that being naturally quick and hasty as we have formerly hinted he became so staid and equal in all his demeanor as caused admiration in those that knew him being naturally of a high spirit he had acquired a most profound humility of heart whereof he produced most evident actions exteriourly at all times and in all places And though his genius inclined him to wit and scoffing yet he so corrected it that none was more respectful and courteous to all even the meanest As for his passions those were so perfectly subdued and regulated that they never broke loose upon any occasion so that you might say he had none at all He had arrived to a perfect death in the superiour faculties of his soul his memory so emptied of all worldly things that it never presented any Idea's sufficient to distract his Devotions He made not any imperfection upon what was past as we have observed and our Saviour had endowed him with this singular grace not to be busied in his thoughts about those actions in which he was conversant which after they were done were obliterated wholly as to any care for them and quite blotted out of his memory that they might be no hindrance to what was in hand This Letter was writ to a familiar friend relating hereunto It is some while ago that finding my self in the midst of a world of people my spirit was enlightned and affected neither to desire to know any body nor to be known to any This hath wrought in me a wonderful separation from every thing and methinks herein consisteâ—h one of the chiefest points of a Spiritual Life which requires great purity of spirit wonderful estrangement and distance from the creature and which placeth the soul in this world as if it were no part of it in a state of perfect oblivion and ignorance of things which do not concern her that is no longer able to endure but onely what is necessary He was dead to his spirit reason and judgement living onely the life of Faith which is a Christians proper death It may be gathered from what hath been mentioned already that he acted nothing by this faculty of its self no more than if he had had no such power but wrought all by the moving of Christ Jesus who lived in him and operated by him Lastly he was annihilated and dead to his own will which we have placed after all as being the most important faculty in relation to Moral actions This therefore he had entirely resigned in conformity to Gods will not desiting absolutely any thing but in order thereto I adore saith he in one of his Letters so affectionately the will of God in whatsoever he pleaseth to make out for me that Hell it self should be my Paradise if he decreed me thither And in another thus Far be it from me to act in this business by my own spirit I would have it wholly annihilated that it might know no other language but Nothing and continually Nothing to follow in all the footsteps of the Divine will according to its measure and manner And to a third thus My Saviour hath graciously brought me into such a state of indifferency for every thing that I could be very well cortent all my life to be fixed to my bed a Paralytique not able to stir without making any reflection upon any service I might render to my neighbour or that I could render him no more all things according to the will of God being equal to me And in a fourth thus Of late I have been busied in such occasions both Exteriourly and Interiourly as were sufficient to have gravel'd such a weak mean spirit as mine had it not been absolutely resigned to the will of God It is upon him alone by this way of Abnegation that I bottom my self adoring with you and by your instruction the decrees of his Sacred and Divine Will who holdeth all things in his own hands to keep us subyect unto him by his justice and to sanctifie us also by love If the effects thereof upon us do evidence us to have the hearts of children that is 〈◊〉 Spirit of Christ Jesus to sigh after our heavenly Father and cry Abbâ— Peter SECT 2. Continuation of the same subject MOnsieur Renty was so absolutely resigned to God having quite lost and annihilated his own will into thâ—â— of God
world that you may have no part therein And above all my children that you may live in the fear and love of God and yield due obedience to your Mother On Saturday which was the day of his death about half an hour past ten in the forenoon being newly recovered out of a violent fit of a Convulsion which had like to have carried him away looking attentively on those that were present he made signs with his hands head and eyes with a pleasant countenance for a person of quality and his intimate friend to come neer him Which being done he spake thus to him Sir I have one word to say to you before I dye then pausing a little to recover his strength he testified his affection to him but in words that could not distinctly be understood at length raising his voyce and speaking more articulately and plainly he proceeded The perfection of Christian life is to be united unto God in the faith of the Church We ought not to entangle our selves in novelties let us adore his conduct over 〈◊〉 and continue faithful to him unto the end let us adhere to that one God crucified for our salvation let us unite all our actions and all that is in us to his merits hoping that if we continue faithful to him by his grace we shall be partakers of the glory of his Father I hope we shall there see one another one day which shall never have end The party ready to reply and give him thanks Monsieur Renty stopped his mouth saying Adieu this is all I have to say to you Pray for me Some time after this and a little before his death fixing his eyes stedfastly upon heaven as if he had discovered something extraordinary he said The Holy Infant Jesus where is he Thereupon they brought him his Picture which he kissed devoutly and asking for his Crucifix took it in his hands and kissed it most affectionately Then turning himself towards death presently entred into his last agony which held not above a quarter of an hour of which he spent the most part in pronouncing the Holy name of Jesus making as well as he could acts of Resignation and commending his spirit to God after which he expired sweetly and his holy soul as we have good cause to believe departed to its place of rest Thus lived and dyed Monsieur de Renty one of the most glorious lights that God hath bestowed upon his Church in this age and one of the greatest ornaments of true devotion that hath appeared this long time He died at Paris the 27 year of his age the 24 of April 1649. about noon neer the time of our Saviours elevation on the Cross of which a certain person having a particular knowledge in his prayers applied the merits of this passion to him at the instant of his death in such sort that this application together with his own acts of resignation and annihilation which he had made and with which he both honoured and embraced the Cross are piously believed to have perfectly purged his soul and put it into a condition of entring into its beatitude and enjoyment of God at the instant of its dissolution There are reports of several Revelations and Visions concerning his state of glory and how at the instant of his death a Globe of light was seen ascending from earth to heaven Certain miraâ—ulous cure are also related to be done by his intercessions and spiritual relief supernaturally afforded to several devout persons by his admonitions which things will not seem incredible when we consider his holy life and heroick vertues rendring him one of the miracles of our age Yet since I have not the like assurance of these as of what I have already written and that true Sanctity and Châ—istian perfection consists not in suâ—h things which are not at all imitable I shall not insist upon them I onely adde by way of conclusion that we have great reason to admire the secret counsels of God in taking out of the world a man so useful who being in his full strength and flower of his age and in such an eminent degree of credit reputation and capacity might wonderfully have advanced the honour of God and good of his neighbour But when I say it was the hand of God all things are therein concluded And hereby he is pleased to let us know that he hath no need of us for the advancing of his glory the execution of his designs which he can bring about without us and when he is pleased to make use of us his instruments therein we are to behave our selves with great humility in his presence He hath translated him to another place where he glorifies his Majestie with greater perfection to a place and state that truly deserves the name of glory and that not onely in consideration of what the Saints receive but of what they render to the King of glory Moreover we may affirm that these holy men great pillars of the Church and comforts of the faiâ—hful are frequently taken away before their time as a just punishment upon us for the little use and benefit we make of their conversation and example And truly when first I heard the news of his sickness and the danger that he was in I could not but make this reflection that considering so solid and compleat a vertue notwithstanding that great need the world had of him and the exceeding great good he might still have done in it it was very likely he might dye as being a fruit ripe for heaven even as fruit in its maturity is ready to be gathered and takes hurt by being plucked too soon or too late Thus did God gather this good man in the maturity of his graces and perfection of his vertues as a man perfect and compleated to place him in heaven there to receive his just reward where he waits for us to adore and glorifie and love together with him in all perfection God the Father the Son and H. Ghost to whom be Honour Praise Benediction and all sorts of Adoration and Service now and for ever Amen THE CONCLUTION OF THE WORK How we ought to read the Lives of Saints TO conclude this work and render it more useful to the Reader I think it will not be amiss to afford him some instructions how to read the Lives of Saints and Histories of persons eminent in vertue to the end that that fruit may be reaped by them for which they were compiled These eminent souls then are to be considered two several ways 1. As they have relation to God 2. As to our selves For the first as they relate to God it is certain that these Saints and Persons famous for Piety are the greatest Master-pieces the richest Ornaments the most precious Jewels the choicest Works and the greatest Instruments of Gods Glory that are upon earth For if the meanest righteous man is incomparably more noble and honourable than all sinners put together since