she bears to God in her own conveniency alas would be guilty of an extream Sacriledge ........ That Soul which loveth God only for her own sake loveth her self as she ought to love God and loveth God as she ought to love her self Which is as much as if one should say the love I bear to my self is the end for which I love God so that the love to God be depending subordinate and inferiour to self-love .... which is an unparallell'd impiety 3. We may love God with a love of hope which love is not intirely selfish for it is mixt with a beginning of love to God for himself only our own interest is the chief and predominant motive S. Francis of Sales love of God Lib. 2. c. 17. Speaks thus of this love I don't say however that it returns so fully upon us as to make us to love God only for our sakes ..... There is a great deal of difference between saying I love God for the good things I expect from him and this expression I love God only for the good things I expect from him This love of God is so call'd because the motive of self-interest is yet predominant in it 'T is a beginning of Conversion to God but not yet the true righteousness of this hopeful love S. Francis of Sales love of God Lib. 2. c. 17. Spoke thus Sovereign love is only in Charity but in hope love is imperfect as not tending into the infinite goodness as it is such to us .... Though in truth none by that love alone can either observe the Commandments of God or have eternal life 4. There is a love of Charity which is yet allayed with some mixture of self-interest but is the true justifying love because the disinteressed motive is over-ruling in it to which S. Francis of Sales Speaks in the last cited place Sovereign love is only in Charity This love seeks after God for himself and prefers him before anything whatsoever without exception By reason only of that preference 〈…〉 capable to justifie us And it prefe 〈…〉 less God and his Glory both to us and our interests than to all other Creatures besides The reason why is this because we are no less vile Creatures and unworthy to compare our selves with God than the rest of created beings God who did not make us for the other Creatures hath not likewise made us for our selves but for himself alone He is no less Jealous of us than of the other external objects which we may love To Speak properly the only thing he is Jealous of in us is our selves for he clearly sees that it is our selves whom we are tempted to love in the enjoyments of all external objects He is not liable to mistakes in his Jealousie and the love of our selves is the centre of all our affections Whatsoever does not proceed from the principle of Charity as S. Austin so often saith is of cupidity And it is the destruction of that very love the root of all vices which is precisely the aim of God's Jealousie While we have yet but a love of hope whereby self-self-love does preponde are against the Glory of God the Soul is not satisfied yet But when disinteressed love or of Charity begins to turn the scale and to prevail against self-interest then a Soul that loves God is truly beloved of him Nevertheless this true Charity is not yet entirely pure that is without any mixture but the love of Charity prevailing over the interessed motive of hope that state is termed a state of Charity The Soul then doth love God for the sake of him and for her self but so as to love chiefly the Glory of God not seeking her own happiness but as a means by her related and subordinated to the ultimate end namely the Glory of her Maker Nor is it necessary that this prefering of God and of his Glory to us and our interests be always explicite in the righteous Soul We are assured by faith that the Glory of God and our felicity are inseparable one from another 't is enough if this so just and necessary preference be real but implicite in the occurrences of life There is no need of its becoming explicite but in the extraordinary occasions of trial from God in order to purifie us from our dross But then he would give us both light and courage proportionate to the trial to carry us through it and to make us sensible in our hearts of that preference Now to dive for it scrupulously at another time in the bottom of our hearts would rather prove prejudicial and dangerous 5. We may love God with a love of pure Charity and without any mixture of the motive of self-interest Then it is that we love God in the midst of troubles and adversities so that we should not love him more even when he fills our Souls with comforts Neither fear of punishments nor desire of rewards have any share in this love God is no more beloved either in regard of the merit or perfection or for the happiness which is found in loving him We would love him as much though by an impossible supposition he should know nothing of his being beloved or would render eternally unhappy those who had loved him Nevertheless we do love him as the supream and infallible happiness of those who are faithful to him we love him as our personal good as our promised reward as our all but no more with that precise motive of our own happiness and recompence Thus much did S. Francis of Sales with the most exactness express love of God Lib. 2. c. 17. in these Words 'T is a very different thing to say I love God for my self and saying I love God for the sake of my self ..... for the one is a holy affection of the Bride ... and the other a downright impiety c. He Speaks again thus in another place The purity of love consists in not willing any thing for ones self in looking on nothing but the good pleasure of God for which one would be ready to prefer eternal torments to glory The Soul disinteressed in pure charity expects desireth hopeth in God as her good her recompence as that which is promised her and is entirely for her self She will have him for her self but not for the love of her self She will have him for her self that she may conform with the good pleasure of God who will have it so for her self But she will not have him for the love of her self because she is no more acted by her own interest This is pure and perfect love which works the same acts as mixt love in all the same virtues with this one difference only that it driveth out fear with all vexatious troubles and is even free of all the solicitude of interessed love Now I declare that to avoid all sort of equivocation in a matter where it is so dangerous to make any and so difficult not to mistake I
would love Impurity as much as Beauty if it were as acceptable to her Spouse she knows nevertheless that Purity and Beauty are the Delight of her Spouse therefore she only loves for his good Pleasure Purity and Beauty and rejects with Horror the Ugliness he rejects When a Soul is truly and actually in pure Love there is no fear but in the actual Confession of her Sin she is in the actual Condemnation of what she hath committed against the Well-beloved and consequently in the most formal most pure and most efficacious Contrition tho' she produces not always sensible Acts of it in an express'd and reflected Form If venial Faults are blotted out in an instant by the simple reciting of the Lord's Prayer as S. Austine assureth us in general of just Men tho' imperfect So much the more are they blotted out likewise in the transformed Souls by the Exercise of the most pure Love 'T is true that one is not oblig'd to make equally always frequent Confessions when the enlightned Director hath Reason to fear least they should cast one into Despair or be turned into a meer Habit or should become an unlading of the Heart and an ease for Self-love more afflicted for not seeing himself entirely perfect than faithful in being willing to do Violence to himself for his Amendment or because these frequent Confessions disturb too much some Souls and employ them too much about their State in some transient Pains or because they don't see in themselves any voluntary Fault committed since their last Confession which may appear to the Confessor a sufficient Matter of Sacramental Absolution after they have cast themselves at his Feet for to lay their Submission in the Power and Judgment of the Church To speak so is to speak a Language conform to the Experiences of Saints and to the Needs of several Souls without offending the Principles of Tradition XXXVIII False COnfession is a Remedy belonging only to imperfect Souls and which advanced Souls ought not to make use of but for outward appearance and for fear of offending the Publick either they never commit any Faults which deserve Absolution or they ought not to be watchful with the peaceable and uninterested Vigilancy of pure and jealous Love to perceive whatever in them may grieve the Holy Spirit neither are they any more oblig'd to Contrition which is nothing else but jealous Love hating with a perfect Hatred whatsoever is contrary to the good Pleasure of the Well-beloved nor should they think themselves guilty of an Infidelity against the Disinterest of Love and perfect Abnegation should they ask both with Heart and Mouth the Remission of their Sins which God however will have them to desire To speak at this rate is to take off from these Souls the true Exercise of that pure Love of the Supreme Good which ought to be on this occasion the actual Condemnation of Evil itself it is to remove Souls both from the Sacraments and Church-Discipline by a rash and scandalous Presumption 'T is to inspire them with Pharisaical Pride 't is at least to teach them to make their Confessions without Vigilancy Attention and Sincerity of Heart when they ask with the Words of their Mouths the Remission of their Faults 'T is to introduce into the Church an Hypocrisie which makes any Illusion uncurable XXXIX ARTICLE True SOuls in the first sensible Attraction which makes them pass to Contemplation have sometimes a Prayet which seems to bear no Proportion with some gross Faults that remain yet in them and this disproportion makes some Directors to judge that they have not got Experience enough that their Prayer is false and full of Illusion as S. Theresa saith it hapned to her The Souls exercised by extraordinary Trials shew sometimes there upon transient Occasions an irregular Spirit weakned by the Excess of Pain and a Patience almost exhausted as Job did appear imperfect and impatient in the Eyes of his Friends God leaves often to even transformed Souls notwithstanding the Purity of their Love certain Imperfections which proceed more from a natural Infirmity than from the Will and which are according to the thought of Pope S. Gregory the contrapoise of their Contemplation as the pricks of the flesh were in the Apostle the messenger of Satan to hinder him from growing Proud of the greatness of his revelations Lastly these imperfections which are not any violation of the Law are left in a Soul to the end that one may see in her the tokens of the great work which Grace hath of necessity made in her These infirmities serve to depress her in her own eyes and to keep the gifts of God under a Veil of infirmity which exerciseth the Faith of that Soul and of the Just persons that know her Sometimes also they serve to draw on her Contempt and Crosses or to make her more Docile to her superiors or to take from her the comfort of being approved and assured in her way as it happened to the Blessed Theresa with incredible pains Finally to keep the secret of the Bride and of the Bridegroom hidden from the wise and prudent of this World To speak so is to speak conformable to the experiences of Saints without any offence to the Evangelical Rule because the Directors who have experience and the Spirit of Grace are not without ability to judge of the Tree by the Fruits which are Sincerity Teachableness and freedom of the Soul upon the chiefest occasions Moreover there will be still other tokens which the Unction of God's Spirit shall give sufficiently to be felt if the state of each Soul be patiently lookt into XXXIX False ONE may reckon a Soul as Contemplative and even as transformed though she is found for some considerable time negligent of her instruction concerning the principles of Religion careless of her duty wandring and unmortified always quick in excusing her own faults unteachable haughty or cunning To speak after this rate is to authorize in the most perfect state the most dangerous imperfections 't is to cover under the cloak of an extraordinary state defects that are most incompatible with true Piety 't is to approve the grossest illusions 't is to invert the rules whereby Spirits ought to be tried to know whither they come from God or no 't is to call evil good and draw upon ones self the woes of Scripture XL. ARTICLE True A Transformed Soul is united to God without the interposition of any medium three sorts of ways 1. When she loves God for himself without any medium of interested motive 2. When she contemplates him without any sensible image or discursive operation 3. When she fulfills his Precepts and Counsels without any set order of forms whereby to give to her self an interested witness To speak thus is to express what holy mystical Men would say by excluding from this state the practices of Virtue and this explication is nothing offensive to Universal Tradition XL. False A Transformed Soul
shall always exactly observe the same names which I will assign to these five kinds of love for a better distinction 1. The love of the carnal Jews for the gifts of God distinguished from him and not for himself may be called meerly servile love But because we shall have no need to speak of it I shall say nothing of it in this work 2. That love wherewith God is beloved as the means and only instrument of felicity which is referr'd absolutely to ones self as to the ultimate end may be termed meer concupiscential love 3. That love in which the motive of our own happiness prevails yet over that of God's Glory is called love of hope or hopeful love 4. That love in which charity is yet mixt with a motive of self-interest related and subordinate to the principal motive and to the ultimate end which is the pure glory of God should be called love of charity mixt But because we shall have occasion to oppose very often this love to that which is called pure or wholly interessed I shall be oblig'd to give to this mixt love the name of interessed love as being indeed yet allayed with a remnant of selfish interest though it be a love of preference of God to ones self 5. The love to God alone considered in it self and without any the least mixture of an interessed motive either of fear or of hope is the pure love or perfect charity ARTICLES 1. ARTICLE True MEER concupiscential or wholly mercenary love whereby nothing should be desired but God God I say for the only interest of ones own happiness and because we should think to find in him the sole instrument of our felicity would be a love unworthy of God For one would then love him as a Miser doth love his Money or as a voluptuous Man his pleasure So that one would referr only God to ones self as a means to its end This overturning of order would be according to S. Francis of Sales love of God Lib. 2. c. 17. a Sacrilegious love and an unparallell'd impiety But this meer concupiscential or wholly mercenary love ought never to be confounded with that love which by Divines is called of preference which is a love of God mixt with ourself-interest and in which the love of our selves is found always subordinate to the principal end which is the glory of God Love meerly mercenary is rather a love of ones self than of God It may indeed prepare one for righteousness in this that it counterpoises our passions and renders us prudent in discerning where our true good does lie But it is against the essential order of a creature and cannot be a real beginning of true internal Justice On the contrary Preferential Love though selfish may justifie a Soul if so be that our own interest be referr'd to it and subordinate to the Predominant love of God and provided his glory be the principal end thereof so that we do not prefer with less sincerity God to our selves as to all other creatures This preference ought not however to be always explicite provided it be real for God who knows the clay whereof we are formed and pitieth his own Children does not require at their hand a distinct and unfolded preference but in those cases wherein he giveth them by his grace the courage to go through those trials in which this preference must needs be explicite Speaking thus we recede in nothing from the Doctrine of the holy Council of Tâ—ent which hath declared against the Protestants that Preferential Love in which the glory of God is the principal motive to which that of our own interest is referr'd and subordinate is not a Sin It condemns Sess 6. Chap. 11. those who affirm that just Men do sin in all their works if besides their principal desire that God be glorified they cast one eye also upon the eternal reward to spur their laziness and incourage themselves in running the race This is to Speak as S. Francis of Sales and the whole School of Mystical Men. I. ARTICLE False ALL interessed love or mixt with any self-interest concerning our eternal happiness though referr'd and subordinate to the principal motive of the glory of God is a love unworthy of him whereof the Soul ought to be purified as of a true spot or sin It is not even lawful to make use of meer concupiscential love or meerly mercenary to prepare sinful Souls to their conversion suspending thereby their passions and ill habits in order to put them in a condition to hearken peaceably to the words of faith To speak after that rate is to contradict the formal decision of the holy Council of Trent declaring that mixt love wherein the glory of God is the predominant motive is no sin This moreover is to contradict the experience of all holy Pastors who see often solid conversions prepared by a Concupiscential love and a fear meerly servile II. ARTICLE True THere are three different degrees or three habitual states of Just Men upon the Earth The first have a Preferential Love for God since they are Just but this love though principal and predominant is yet mixt with fear for their self-interest The second are much more in a Love of preference but this love though chief and over-ruling is yet mixt with Hope for their interest as it is their own Therefore S. Francis of Sales saith love of God Lib. 9. That holy Resignation hath yet selfish desires but subordinate These two loves are included in the fourth which I have called V. pag. 10. an interessed love in my definitions The third incomparably more perfect than the two other sorts of Just Men have a fully disinteressed love which hath been termed pure thereby to intimate that it is without mixture of any other motive than that of loving only in himself and for himself the sovereign beauty of God This all the Ancients have expressed by saying that there are three states The first of Just Men whom fear acted yet by a remnant of a slavish mind The second is of those who hope yet for their own interest by a mixture of a mercenary spirit The third is of those who deserve to be called Sons because they love the Father without any self-ended motive either of hope or of fear This the Writers of the last Ages have precisely express'd the very same under other equivalent names They have divided them into three states The first whereof is Purgative life in which we do combat vices with a love mixt with a motive interessed with fear of eternal torments The second is illuminative life wherein we do acquire fervency of virtues by a love yet mixt with a motive interessed for coelestial happiness Finally the third is contemplative or unitive life in which we do remain united with God by the peaceable exercise of pure love in which last state one never loseth filial fear nor the hope of the Children of God though he hath parted
with all interessed motives of hope and fear Fear is brought to perfection by purifying it self it becomes a delicacy of love and a filial reverence in peace And it is then that chast fear which remains for ever and ever Likewise hope far from being lost is perfected by the purity of love and then it is a real desire and a sincere expectation of the fulfilling of the promises not only in general and in an absolute manner but also of the accomplishment of the promises in us and for us according to the good pleasure and will of God nay by the only motive of his good pleasure without any intermixture of our own interest This pure love is not yet satisfied with desiring no other recompence but God himself A slave entirely mercenary who should have a distinct faith of revealed truths might be willing to have no other reward but God alone because he would know him clearly as an infinite good and as being himself his true recompence or the only instrument of his felicity This mercenary Man in the life to come would have nothing but God alone but he would have God as Beatitude objective or the object of his Beatitude to refer it to his formal Beatitude namely to himself whom he would make happy and constitute himself as his ultimate end On the contrary whosoever loveth with a pure love without any mixture of self-interest is acted no more by the motive of his interest He wishes Beatitude to himself only because he knows that God will have it so and will have every one of us to desire it for his own glory If by an impossible supposition by reason of the promises which are meerly free God would annihilate the Souls of Just Men at the moment of their separation from the body or deprive them of the fruition of himself and keep them eternally under the temptations and miseries of this life as S. Austin supposes it or even make them to suffer far from him all the pains of Hell during all eternity as it is suppos'd by S. Chrysostom after S. Clement the Souls of this third state of pure love would not love or serve him with less fidelity Once more 't is true that this supposition is impossible upon the account of the promises because God hath given himself to us as a rewarder We cannot any more separate our happiness from God beloved with final perseverance but those things which cannot be separated in respect of the object may happen really to be so in respect of the motives God cannot fail of being the felicity of the faithful Soul but she may love him with so much impartiality that the enjoyment of a beatifying God increaseth not in the least the love she hath sor him without minding her self and that she would love as much though he were never to be the cause of her happiness Now to say that this abstraction of motives is but a vain subtilty is to be ignorant both of God's jealousie and of that of the Saints against themselves It is to give the name of subtilty to the nicety and perfection of Pure Love which the tradition of all Ages hath put in this abstraction of the motives This way of Speaking is precisely conformable to the whole general tradition of Christianity from the most Ancient Fathers to S. Bernard to all the most famous Scholastick Doctors from S. Thomas to those of our Age lastly to all those Mystical Men who have been Canoniz'd or approved by the whole Church in spight of all the contradictions they have suffered Nothing in the Church is more evident than this tradition and nothing would be more rash than to oppose it or to endeavour to shift it off This supposition of the impossible case here mentioned far from being an indiscreet and dangerous supposition of the Mysticks is on the contrary formally in S. Clement of Alexandria in Cassian in S. Chrysostom in S. Gregory of Nazianzen in S. Anselm and in S. Austin who have been followed by a great number of Saints II. False THere is a love so pure that it rejects that recompence which is God himself so that a Man will not have it any more in himself and for himself though we are taught by faith that God will have it in us and for us and commands us to will it as he doth for his own glory This love doth carry its impartiality so far even as to consent to hate God eternally or to cease from loving of him or else it tends to the destruction of filial fear which is nothing else but the niceness and delicacy of a Jealous love or it aims to the exstinguishing in us all hope forasmuch as the purest hope is a peaceable desire to receive in us and for us the effect of the promises in conformity to the good pleasure of God and for his pure glory without any mixture of self-interest or else it tends to the hating of our selves with a real hatred so that we cease from loving in our selves for God's sake his worth and his image as we love it out of charity in our Neighbour The speaking at this rate is to give with a horrid Blasphemy the name of pure love to a brutish and impious despair and to the hatred of the work of our Creator It is by a monstrous extravagance to affirm That the principle of conformity with God makes us contrary to himself It is a going about by a chimerical love to destroy love it self It is to put Christianity out of the hearts of Men. III. ARTICLE True SOuls must be left in the exercise of love that 4. Love See pag. 8. which is yet mixt with the motive of interest as long as the power of grace shall leave them in it One ought also to reverence these motives scattered through all the Books of holy Scripture in all the most precious monuments of Tradition and in all the Prayers of the Church We ought to make use of these motives to repress passions to consolidate virtues and to disintangle our Souls from all things of this present life However this love though less perfect than that which is fully disinteress'd hath nursed up in all ages a great number of Saints and greatest part of holy Souls do never attain in this life the perfect impartiality of love you disturb and cast them into temptation if you take from them the motives of self-interest which being subordinate to love serve to hold them up and to animate them in dangerous occasions It would be to no purpose and indiscretion to propose them a more elevated love which is out of their reach as having neither internal light nor the power of grace for it Nay those who begin to have some knowledge and foretaste of it are yet very far from having the reality of it Finally those who have attained its imperfect reality are very far yet from having the uniform exercise of it turned into an habitual state What is
to the will of God of saving all Men and the belief we ought to have that he is willing to save every one of us in particular This Soul does not doubt of the good will of God but believeth her own bad because she sees nothing in her self by reflection but the apparent evil which is external and sensible and that the good which is always real and intimate is by God's jealousie continually taken from before her eyes Nothing in this involuntary and invincible trouble can recover her nor reveal to her in the bottom of her self what God is pleased to conceal to her She sees God's Anger swoll'n and hanging over her head as the billows of the Sea ready to drown her then it is that the Soul is divided from her self she expires with Christ upon the Cross saying My God My God why hast thou forsaken me In that unvoluntary impression of despair she makes an absolute Sacrifice of her concern for Eternity because the impossible case in the trouble and darkness she is in seems to her possible and actually real Once more it would profit nothing to argue with her for she is wholly incapable of reasoning all the business lies in a conviction which is not intimate but seeming and invincible A Soul in this condition looseth all hope of things for her own interest but she never looseth in the superiour part of her self that 's to say in her direct and intimate acts that perfect hope which is the disinterested desire of the promises She loves God more purely than ever and is so far from consenting positively to hate him that she does not so much as indirectly consent to cease for one instant from loving him nor to diminish in the least her Love nor to put ever to the increase of that Love any voluntary bounds nor to commit any fault though never so venial A Director may therefore leave this Soul to make a simple condescention to the loss of her own interest and to the just Condemnation she thinks to be under from God which serveth ordinarily but to quiet her and to becalm the Temptation designed only for that effect I mean for the purification of Love But he ought never either to advise or to permit her positively to believe by a free and willful perswasion that she is reprobated and ought no longer to desire the promises by a disinterested motive He ought yet much less to consent she should hate God or cease from loving him or transgress his Law even by the most venial faults To speak thus is to speak according to the Experience of Saints with all the Precaution necessary for the Conservation of the Doctrine of Faith and never to lay open Souls to any Illusion X. False A Soul in Tryals may believe with an intimate free and voluntary Perswasion against the Doctrine of Faith that God hath forsaken her tho' she had not forsaken him or that there is no more Mercy for her tho' she does sincerely desire it or that she may consent to hate God because God will have her to hate him or that she may consent never more to love God because he will no more be beloved by her or that she can voluntarily confine her Love because God will have her to limit it or that she may violate God's Law because God will have her to transgress it In this State a Soul hath no longer any Faith or Hope or disinterested Desire of the Promises nor any real and intimate Love of God nor any even implicite Hatred of Evil which is Sin nor any real Co-operation with Grace But she is without any Action without any Will without any more Interest for God than for herself without either reflex or direct Acts of Vertues To speak at this rate is to blaspheme against what one is ignorant of and to corrupt one's self in what one knows 't is to make Souls to be overcome by Temptation under pretence of purifying them 't is to reduce all Christendom to an impious and dull Despair 't is even grosly to contradict all good Mystical Persons who do assert that Souls in that State shew a very lively Love for God by their Sorrow for having lost him and an infinite Abhorrency of Evil by their Impatience oftentimes towards those who offer both to comfort and reassure them of their good State XI ARTICLE True GOD never forsakes the Just unless he be forsaken by him He is the infinite Good who seeks for nothing but to communicate himself The more one receiveth him the more he gives of himself Our Resistance only is that which restrains or retards his Gifts The essential Difference between the new Law and the old is that the latter did not lead Man to any thing that was perfect that it shewed what was good but gave not a Power wherewithal to do it and Evil without affording Means to avoid it whereas the new is the Law of Grace which gives both the Will and the Deed and which commands only because it gives the true Power to fulfil As the Observers of the old Law were assured that they should never see the diminution of their Temporal Goods Inquirentes autem Dominum non minuentur omni bono Souls that are true to their Grace shall likewise never suffer any dimunition in their Grace which is always preventing and the real Good of the Christian Law Thus each Soul that she may be fully true to God can do nothing solid and meritorious but to follow Grace without need of preventing it To be willing to prevent it is to be willing to give to one's self what it does not give yet 't is to expect something of himself and his own Endeavour or Industry 't is a subtile and unperceptible Remainder of a Semi-Pelagian Zeal at the very time when we long yet for more Grace One ought 't is true to prepare himself for to receive and invite Grace to himself but this ought not to be done without the Co-operation of Grace it self A faithful Co-operation with Grace in the present Moment is a most effectual Preparation for receiving and attracting of Grace the next Moment If the thing be narrowly pried into 't is then evident that all is reduc'd to a faithful Co operation of a full Will and of all the Forces of the Soul with the Grace of every Moment's presenting If all that could be added to this Co-operation were rightly taken in its full extent it would be nothing but a rash and over-hasty Zeal an eager and unquiet Endeavour of a Self-interested Soul an unseasonable Motion that would discompose weaken and retard the Operation of Grace instead of making it both more easie and perfect 'T is even as if one who is led by another whose Impulses he ought to follow should incessantly prevent his Motions and at every Minute turn himself back to measure that Space he had already run This unquiet and ill concerted Motion with the Man that principally moves would
Poyson XVIII False WE ought to conform our selves to all the Wills of God and to his permissions as to all his other Wills We ought therefore to permit Sin in our selves when we know God is about to permit it We ought to love our Sin though contrary to God by reason of its abjection which purifies our love and takes from us all pretence and desert of a reward Lastly the attraction or inspiration of Grace requires from Souls in order to render them more disinterested for the Eternal reward the breaking of the Written Law To Speak at this rate is to Teach Apostacy and to put the Abomination of Desolation in the most holy place it is not the Voice of the Lamb but of the Dragon XIX ARTICLE True VOcal without Mental Prayer that 's to say without the attention of the Mind and the Affection of the Heart is a Superstitious Worship which honoureth God with the Lips while the Heart is far from him Vocal Prayer is not good and meritorious but in as much as it is directed and animated by that of the Heart It is much better to recite but a few Words with great recollection and Love than long Prayers with little or no recollection when they are not Commanded To Pray both without attention and Love is to Pray as the Heathens did who thought to be heard for the Multitude of their Words One Prays no further than one desires and one doth not desire but by how much one loveth at least with an interested Love Nevertheless Vocal Prayer ought to be respected and consulted as being good to awake the Thoughts and the Affections which it expresses as having been taught by the Son of God to his Apostles and practised by the whole Church in all Ages To make light of this Sacrifice of Praises this fruit of the Lips that does confess the Name of the Lord would be an impiety Vocal Prayer may be troublesome for a while to those Contemplative Souls who are yet in the imperfect beginnings of their Contemplation because their Contemplation is more sensible and affecting than pure and quiet It may be also burthensome to Souls who are in the last Tryals because every thing in that state disturbs them But one ought never to give them for a rule to forsake without the permission of the Church and without a true impotency known to be so by their Superiours any Vocal Prayer which is obligatory Vocal Prayer taken with simplicity and without scruple when it is according to the Command may well be troublesome to a Soul in relation to those things we have already noted But it is never contrary to the highest Contemplation Experience even shews that the most Eminent Souls in the midst of their most sublime Communications have familiar Communications with God and that they read or recite with a loud Voice and in a kind of Transport some inflamed Words of the Apostles and Prophets To Speak so is to explain the soundest Doctrine with the most correct Words XIX False VOcal Prayer is nothing but the gross and imperfect Doctrine of beginners It is intirely unprofitable to Contemplative Souls They are by the eminency of their state dispensed with as to the reciting of Vocal Prayers Commanded them by the Church because their Contemplation eminently comprehends what is more edifying in the different parts of Divine Worship To Speak at this rate is to despise the Reading of the Scriptures it is to forget that Christ hath Taught us Vocal Prayer which contains the perfection of the highest Contemplation It is to be ignorant that pure Contemplation is never perpetual in this Life and that in its intervals one may and ought to recite faithfully the Office which is Commanded and which of it self is so apt to nourish in our Souls the Spirit of Contemplation XX. ARTICLE True REading ought not to be done either out of Curiosity or desire of judging of our State or deciding it according to what we Read nor out of a certain relish of what we call Witty and sublime We ought not to read the most holy Books nor even the Scriptures but with dependency upon the Pastors and Directors who are in their stead 'T is they who are to judge whither each faithful Christian is prepared enough if his Heart is sufficiently purified and Docible for each different Reading They ought to distinguish the Food that is agreeable to every one of us in particular Nothing causeth so much illusion in the interiour Life as the indiscreet choosing of Books 'T is best to Read little and make long interruptions by way of recollection that we may let Love more deeply to imprint in us the Christian truths When recollection causeth our Book to drop out of our hands we must let it fall without scruple We shall take it up again time enough afterwards to renew in its turn our recollection Love Teaching by its Unction surpasses all the rational discourse we can make upon Books The most powerful of all perswasions is that of Love Nevertheless we must take in hand again the outward Book when the inward Book ceaseth to be open Otherwise the empty Spirit would fall into a rambling and imaginary Prayer which would be a real and pernicious idleness This would bring a Man to neglect his own instruction about necessary truths and forsake the Word of God and never to lay solid foundations both of the exact understanding of the Law and of revealed Mysteries To Speak thus is to Speak according to Tradition and to the Experience of holy Souls XX. False THe Reading of the most holy Books is unprofitable to those whom God teacheth entirely and immediately by himself 'T is not necessary that such persons as these should have laid the foundation of common instruction They need only to wait for all the light of truth that doth arise from their Prayer As for their Readings when they are moved to any they may choose without consulting with their Superiours such Books which Speak of the most advanced states They may Read the Books that are suspected or censured by their Pastors To Speak at this rate is to destroy instruction which is the food of Faith It is to substitute instead of the pure Word of God an interiour Fanatical inspiration On the other side it is to permit Souls to Poyson themselves with contagious Readings or at least such as are disproportionate to their true needs It is to teach them dissimulation and disobedience XXI ARTICLE True WE ought to distinguish between Meditation and Contemplation Meditation consists in discursive acts that can be easily distinguished the one from the other because they are distinguished by a kind of a noted motion because they are varied by the diversity of Objects they are applied to because they draw a conviction concerning the truth of the conviction of another truth already known because they draw an affection from several Motives methodically assembled Lastly because they are done and reiterated with
for the Tradition of all ages which is continually alledged in the said Book we may learn what that was from St. Francis de Sales alone whom the Author so much insists upon and tho he be the only Authority almost cited by him in his Works yet he quotes him several times to ill purpose and that in relation to very important points whereon the whole foundation of his Book depends which having been shewed in some measure in what has been said before we shall now for brevity sake pass over and defer the same with divers other things to another opportunity as we shall also consider the examination of Vocal Prayer the nature of Contemplation human Acts and Tryals the three Marks whereby Vocation is known from Meditation to Contemplation And lastly several Texts of Scripture which instead of being expounded according to the natural meaning of them have been made to bear a new and unheard of Interpretation Moreover we cannot but wonder seeing this Book treats of the love of such as are perfect that yet it takes no manner of notice of a love of gratitude towards God and Christ our Saviour as if these things were no ways proper to stir up and inflame true Charity or that the same derogated from pure love or that such as are perfect ought to neglect them Neither are we less amazed that in citing the Decree of the Council of Trent that defines hope to be in it self good and agreeable to the state of Saints that this which is contained in the same Decree is omitted viz. That the most holy and most perfect such as David and Moses were were stirred up by this motive as is especially set forth in the same Council which says That eternal life is to be proposed as a Reward to all those that continued in the performance of good Works to the end and put their hope in God and so by consequence to all the Saints and such as are most perfect by which motive they are not at all made mercenary but Children that by the way of Charity are aiming at their Father's Inheritance Hereunto it must be added that the Opinions dispersed up and down in this work tend tho' against the Author's intention to promote that Notion that Vice by the help of direct Acts may subsist with the Virtue that is opposite to it so as that while the Soul thro' an inconsiderate Zeal for the Justice of God doth acquiesce with the whole secret will of God it doth imprudently consent to its own entire and absolute Reprobation and so we shall be brought contrary to the Apostles prohibition to be taken with subtilties and vain bablings Lastly the groans of the Church which is but as a sojourner here below and longs to return to her own Countrey are stifled St. Paul and the other Saints who in their Martyrdom have been helpt up with the hopes they had of Happiness and counted the same to be gain are hereby turned off as mercenary Souls but we having the form of sound words and being desirous to follow the footsteps of the Saints do not measure impossible and absurd things with Christian Piety and Perfection neither do we believe that some extraordinary and unusual Affections which a few Saints have been a little subject to and that by the by ought therefore to be presently turned into Rules and esteemed as a particular state of Life we do not call those Wills or Consents which are conversant about impossibilities true Wills and real Consents but veleities as the Schools also term them These things therefore we have received from our Ancestors these are our Thoughts and our Will is that all the World may know them Given at Paris in the Archiepiscopal Palace in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Six Hundred Ninety Seven on the Sixth day of August Lovis Ant. Archbishop of Paris J. Benigne Bishop of Meaux Paul Bishop of Chartres DECLARATIO Illustriss Reverendiss Ecclesiae Principum Ludovici Antonii de Noailles Archiep. Parisiensis Jacobi Benigni Bossuet Episcopi Meldensis Pauli de Godet des Marais Episcopi Carnotensis Circa Librum cui titulus est Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie Interieure c. JAmdudum in testimonium vocatos respondere tandem nos oportet Illustrissimus Reverendissimus D. D. Archiepiscopus Dux Cameracensis ab ipso libri initio cui titulus Explication des Maximes des Saints c. in ipsa Praefatione seu Commonitione praeviâ duos commemoravit ex Nobis quorum doctrinam ac decreta 34 Articulis comprehensa tantum copiosius exponenda susceperit Tertius verò etiam constitutione publicâ eandem cum illis sententiam promulgavit Idem Illustrissimus ac Reverendissimus Archiepiscopus datis ad S S. D. N. D. Innocentium Papam XII literis iisdem articulis atque Episcoporum adversùs quosdam libellos censuris nititur tres autem tantum sumus qui eosdem libellos eorumve loca quaedam censurâ notandos duxerimus Neque tamen loca quaedam ut idem Auctor asserit sed pleraque omnia ac totos libellos ipsumque adeo eorumdem librorum spiritum elisum voluimus Neque ut in eadem Epistolâ scribitur adversùs mysticos aliquot ante actis saeculis Theologicorum Dogmatum veniali inscitiâ laborantes noster zelus excanduit sed adversùs notissimos nostrae aetatis Quietistas gravissimè lapsos censurae nostrae articulique directi sunt Neque confugimus ad obvium naturalemque sensum tanquam occultior sensus subesset qui tolerari forsitan posset sed venenum libellorum in aperto esse duximus Latet etiam nos ex articulis censurisve nostris aliquos arripuisse occasionem amorem purum contemplationem quasi delirae mentis ineptias deridendi ut est in Epistolâ proditum In eadem Epistolâ rursùs libri summâ expositâ omnia iisdem articulis consona perhibentur Quae cum ita fint cumque praedictus liber nostrâ se sententiâ tueatur quid de eo sentiamus promere cogimur non tamen ad haec extrema dolentes anteà devenimus quam omnia conati experti ut fraternum animum flecteremus Omnino necessitati cedimus ne quisquam in eundem librum consentire nos putet ac quod gravissimum foret ne S S. D. N. Papa quem impensissimè devotissimè colimus cuique ut capiti fide indivulsâ adhaeremus doctrinae quam Romana improbet Ecclesia ullo modo favere nos arbitretur Ac primum quidem eorundem articulorum quos praedictus liber commemorat ea suit ratio Cum apud nos extaret mulier quae edito libello cui titulus Moyen court c. aliis ejusmodi sparsisque MSS. Quietistarum factionis dux esse videretur Ea consultores tres dari sibi postulavit quorum judicio staret His Illustrissimus auctor quartus accessit Itaque animus fuit eam ejus asseclas quibusdam finibus coercere
would rather never eat meat than Offend the least of his Brethren for whom Christ died How can we then be tied to any expression that gives Offence to a weak Soul Mystical Men therefore should take away all equivocal terms when they know the same are abused in order to corrupt the soundest Doctrine Let those who have spoken after an improper and exaggerated manner and without precaution explain their meaning and suffer nothing to be wanting for the edification of the Church let those who have been erroneous as to main Doctrinals not content themselves with condemning the Errors but let them confess they have believed them and give the Glory to God let them not be ashamed that they have erred as being what is natural to the race of Mankind but let them humbly confess their Errors since they remain to be no longer theirs after they have made an humble Confession of them It s in order to distinguish Truth from Falshood in so nice and important a matter that two great Prelates have Published Thirty-Four Articles that in substance contain all the Doctrine of the internal life and I have no other design in this undertaking than to give a larger Explanation of the same All these Internal ways have a tendency to pure or disinterested Love This pure Love is the highest degree of Christian perfection It is the end or boundary of all the ways known unto the Saints Whoever allows of nothing beyond that contains himself within the bounds of Tradition Whoever exceeds this bound is already out of the way If any one should doubt of the Truth and perfection of this Love I make an offer of shewing an universal and clear Tradition for it from the times of the Apostles to that of St. Francis de Sales without any interruption and I will thereupon publish when I am desired to do it a Collection of all passages out of the Fathers School-Men and holy mysticks who unanimously speak of it It will appear from this Collection that the Ancient Fathers spoke as vigorously to the matter as St. Francis de Sales and that they for the disinterest of Love have made the same Suppositions concerning Salvation that our disdainful Criticks so much laugh at when they meet with them in the Writings of the Saints of the last Age Even S. Augustine himself whom some have taken to be an Opposer of this Doctrine hath taught it as much as any other It 's true indeed the main Thing is to explain this pure Love aright and to mark out the exact Bounds beyond which its Disinterest could never go The Disinterest thereof can never exclude the Will from loving God without Bounds neither in regard to the Degree nor the Duration of that Love This can never exclude a Conformity in us to the good Pleasure of God who not only wills our Salvation but would have us will it with him for his Glory This Disinterested Love is always tied to the written Law performs entirely the same Acts and exercises the same distinct Vertues as Interested Love does with this only Difference that it doth exercise the same in a simple and peaceable Manner and such as is disengaged from every Motive of Self-Interest This holy Indifference that is so much praised by St. Francis de Sales is nothing else but the disinterest of this Love which is always indifferent and without any interested Will for itself but the same is always determined to and positively wills all that God would have us do according to his written Law and that by the Attraction of his Grace In order to the attaining to this State our Love must be purified and all our internal Trials are but the purification of it even Contemplation itself that is of a most passive Nature is nothing else but the peaceable and uniform Exercise of this pure Love We cannot insensibly pass from Meditation wherein we perform methodical and discursive Acts into Contemplation whose Acts are simple and direct but in proportion to our passing from interested to disinterested Love This passive State and Transformation together with the Spiritual Marriages and essential or immediate Vnion are no other than the entire Purity of this Love the Habit whereof without being ever either invariable or exempted from venial Sins very few Souls are endued with I do not speak of all these different Degrees that are so little known to the Generality of the Faithful but because they are Consecrated to us by being made use of by a great many Saints whom the Church hath approved off and have in these Terms explained their Experiences neither do I relate them for any other end than to explain them with the strictest Precaution Finally all these internal Ways tend to pure Love as to their End an habitual State whereof is the highest Degree attainable in the Pilgrimage of this Life it 's the Foundation and the top Stone of the whole Building Nothing can be rasher than to oppose the Purity of this Love that is so worthy of the Perfection of our God to whom all is due and of his Jealousie which is a consuming Fire But again there is nothing can be so rash as to go about to take away from this Love the reality of its Acts in the Practice of distinct Vertues by a Chymerical refining of it Lastly It will be no less dangerous to place the Perfection of the Internal Life in some mysterious State beyond the Bound fixed to it of an habitual State of pure Love It 's in order to prevent all these Inconveniences that I have taken upon me to treat of the whole Matter in the following Articles that are digested according to the various Degrees that have been remarked unto us by Mystical Men in the Spirittal Life Every Article will consist of two parts the first will be the true one which I shall approve of and which shall contain all that is Authorized by the Experiences of the Saints and pursuant to the sound Doctrine of pure Love The second shall be the false part where I shall exactly explain the very Place where the Danger of Illusion lies and as I shall give an Account also of what is exorbitant in every Article I shall qualisie the same and censure it according to the strict Rules of Theology And thus the first part of my Articles will be a Collection of exact Definitions of the Saints Expressions in order to reduce them all to an uncontestable meaning that can neither be liable to any Equivocation nor alarm the most timorous Souls It will be a kind of Dictionary for Definitions in order to know the exact meaning of every Term These Definitions together will make up a plain and compleat System of all the Internal Ways including a perfect Vnity seeing the whole thereof will be clearly reduced to the Exercise of pure Love that has been as vigorously taught by all the Fathers as by the more modern Saints But on the other hand the second part
of my Articles will shew all the Consequence of false Principles that tend to create the most dangerous Illusion against the Rule of Faith and good Manners and that under a shew of Perfection I shall endeavour in each Article to point at the Place where the Equivocation begins and to censure all that is ill without in the least diminishing the Authority of the Saints Experiences If our Mystical Men would give me Ear without prejudice they would quickly apprehend what my Meaning is and that I take their Expressions in a just extent of the true Sence of them I 'll even refer it to their own Judgment if I do not explain their Maxims with much more Exactness than most of them have hitherto done because I have made it my principal Business to give their Expressions clear and exact Ideas and such as are Authorised by Tradition without weakning the Foundations of the Things themselves All good Mystical Men who love nothing but Truth and the Edification of the Church ought to be satisfied with this Plan I could have added hereunto a great many formal Passages out of the Ancient Fathers as well as School-Doctors and Mystical Saints but this Vndertaking would engage me into such Lengths and innumerable Repetitions as frightned me from it for the Reader 's sake this is that which hath caused me to suppress the Collection of those Passages which I had already digested and set in Order I do suppose without any more ado this Tradition to be constant and decisive and I have confined my self to set forth here a clear System and such as is agreeable to Theological Definitions Tho' the Driness of this Method looks like a great Inconvenience yet it is less than that of a tiresome Length I have no more to do than to practise this Plan that I have given an Explanation of I look up unto God and not my self for Strength to do it who is pleased to make use of the vilest and unworthiest Instruments My Doctrine ought not to be mine but that of Christ who sends forth Pastors be it far from me to say any thing of my self may I not prosper if while I am engaged in instructing others I be not my self the most teachable and most submissive Child of the Catholick Apostolick and Roman Church I shall begin my Work with making a plain Exposition of the different Sences that may be given to that we call The Love of God in order to give a clear and distinct Vnderstanding of the State of the Questions belonging to this Matter then will the Reader meet with my Articles which approves of what is true and condemns every thing that is false in each particular relating to the Internal Life The INTRODUCTION WHen I consider the many Differences that have hapned from Time to Time between not only particular Persons of the Roman Communion but even whole Societies particucularly between the Dominicans and Franciscans and the Jesuites and almost all Others about Matters of Faith and other Religious Tenets I cannot but admire at the Boldness of some of those Gentlemen who make their Unity to be a token of their Infallibility and the divided Opinions of the Protestants an evident Mark of the Falsity of their Belief But surely it is now high time they should give over that fantastick Argument since these sort of Dissentions are more rife among themselves than any other Community in the World and they may have Work enough to do to turn their Pens that way especially since Quietism and some other Opinions in Consequence of it hath taken such Root amongst them that even some of those who are reckon'd the Pillars of the Church seem to be as good as open Favourers of it and would draw if it were possible his Holiness himself to be of the same Sentiments and so to turn all at once Heretick But among all those who have more openly espoused these new Opinions is the Lord Arch-Bishop of Cambray a Person of that Learning and Consideration in his Countrey as to have been intrusted by the French King his Master with the Education of the young Princes the Dauphine's Sons But how this Eminent Person came thus to expose himself will be somewhat worthy of our enquiry before we proceed to give an Account of the opposition he hath met with and other consequences that have attended the Publishing of his Book which is now presented to the English Readers View that he may pass his Censure also thereupon There are but a few people that have not heard of Molinos and his Doctrine of Quietism some years since broached at Rome and what industry was used by the holy Fathers Inquisitors to ruine both him and it But how rigorous soever they shewed themselves against the Author they have not yet been able to suppress his Opinions which not only have still a being and considerable Fautors amongst them in Italy but the same or something very like it which we may call Semi-Quietism upon the same account as some Ancient Hereticks were distinguished with the name of Semipelagians hath been able to make its way through the snowy Alps and enter into the Kingdom of France and agreed so well since with the Soyl of that Countrey that it will not be quickly rooted out The Rulers of the Gallican Church began to be sensible pretty early of this supposed growing Evil but the occasion of their taking a more publick notice of it was a certain Womans putting out a Pamphlet called A Short Method c. and dispersing some other Papers savouring very much of Quietism whom to reclaim from her error they took care to appoint three Counsellours to admonish and instruct her and to them the Arch-Bishop of Cambray was added for a fourth But which way things came to pass and what success soever the first three might think they had upon the Woman its likely she brought over the fourth to the Opinion or somewhat that was near it if he were not so before She was accused of being guilty of But this did not appear at present However some of the Clergy thought it high time to bestir themselves in the matter and particularly the Arch-Bishop of Paris the Bishops of Meaux and Chartres did believe the foundation of their Church to have been so far struck at by such proceedings that they framed thirty four Articles on the 16th and 26th of April 1695. wherein they set forth what every Christian ought to believe and act and what to reject as erroneous and noxious to the Souls of Men Hereupon the Arch-Bishop of Cambray led by what fate I know not took upon him to compile this Work Entituled The Maxims of the Saints Explained and therein to give a more full Explication of the said thirty four Articles but did it in such a manner as allarmed the whole body of the French Clergy but more particularly the Authors of the said Articles who with divers others failed not to make Complaints thereof to
the King and at the same time to importune him to commit the said Work to Examination The Arch-Bishops of Rheims and Paris with the Bishop of Meaux an implacable Enemy to Cambray were the persons appointed for it the effect whereof was the putting out of their Declaration upon the same Subject wherein they fully set forth their sentiments in relation to it And as these Prelates distinguished their Zeal in this manner against this Semi-Quietism the Bishop of Noyon about the same time in his Pastoral Letter written in the Form of a Preservative to keep the Clergy and Faithful of his Diocess in the holy Exercise of a solid and real Piety against the pernicions Maxims of Quietism sets himself against Quietism in all the Branches of it But tho' he would have the Quietism he darts his Thunder at to be not that of Molinos but this new sort of Semi-Quietism yet when he comes to a kind of an Explanation of it he confounds the new Quietism with the old seeing that in respect to the Opinions which he looks upon to be most monstrous he imputes what Molinos taught to those against whom he writes of which take this one tast What an Abomination is it says the Bishop to set up Vices in the place of Vertues and to pretend that shameful Falls are the Steps by which to ascend to the Glory of a perfect Union with God Now this is Molinos himself that has occasioned this Exclamation who says in direct Terms That we ought not to afflict or disturb our selves when we fall into any Defect but to rise up and go on and set our selves to Exercises of Piety as if we had never fallen Would you not take him to be a Fool says he who contending for the Prize of a Race and hapning to stumble in the midst of his Carier should lie upon the Ground to no other end than to bewail his Fall You would rather say to him Rise Friend and without loss of time set thy self a running again for he that gets up quickly and pursues his Race is like one that never fell So that it 's manifest from hence in short that the French Prelates do not well understand what they write against but that there is something in it tending to invalidate Penances and put Auricular Confessions out of Fashion which has brought so much Grist to the Romish Mill is what they seem to be very apprehensive of But the Clergy notwithstanding all their ' fore-mention'd Endeavours for the Suppression of this new Doctrine finding it to spread itself more and more among all Ranks and Orders of Men as well Ecclesiasticks as Laicks they thought it high time to transfer the Accusation to the Court of Rome with all the aggravation of the Arch-Bishop's of Cambray's Crime and Heresie imaginable and because they would not fail to make sure work of it they engag'd the French King so far on their side also as to get him to write to the Pope to induce him in Confirmation of the Censures of the Clergy of France to condemn the Arch-Bishop's Book who on his own part also being not ignorant of these Proceedings against him and not to be wanting to his own Defence thought it no less proper to write to his Holiness upon the same Subject But tho' the Bishop has used as much Caution as Submission in that he wrote to the Pope yet you will find in another of his Letters to a Friend that he is the same Man still But how violent soever the Arch-Bishops accusers appear'd against him both in France and Rome the Pope kept a soft pace till such time as having received the Arch-Bishops said Letter he was pleased to appoint seven Commissioners to Examine his Book viz. the Master of the Sacred Pallace His Holiness his Confessor and a Jaccbin Father Marsouiller a French-Man of the same Order the Proctor-General of St. Augustine-Friars Father Gabriel of the Mendicant Order Father Miri a Benedictine Father Grenelli a Franciscan and Father Alfaro Jesuit These were to make their Report to the Congregation of the holy Office in order to their farther proceedings thereupon But whither it were that these Gentlemen could not understand the Bishops Gallimaufry of notional speculations or what shall I call it or what ever else was in the wind they did nothing in it and the matter at last came before old Infallibility himself and his Sacred College of Cardinals But after all this and the continual Sollicitations of the Jesuits and some great Prelates there are some months now elapsed and nothing done in it and by any thing that hitherto has appear'd to the contrary they are so far from coming to a final decision either in favour or against the said Book as when they first began To enter upon an inquiry into the Doctrine and notions contained in this Treatise will not be proper for me in this place that being entirely left to the judgment of every one that has an inclination to peruse it It remains for me therefore to say that as it as stirred up the Curiosity of all sorts of persons abroad to make an inspection into these tenets so it has done mine to engage me in a more particular inquiry into the rise and progress as well as the dislike of and opposition made against them AN EXPLANATION Of the Diverse Loves Which may be had for GOD. 1. WE may love God not for the sake of himself but for some other good things depending on his Almighty power which we hope to obtain from him Such Love as this had the Carnal Jews who observed the Law in hopes only of being recompenc'd with the dew of Heaven and the fertility of the Earth This love is neither Chast nor Filial but meerly Servile or rather to speak properly who loveth so does not love God but his own dear Self and seeks entirely for himself not God but what comes from him 2. We may have Faith and not one degree of Charity with it We know God to be our only happiness that is to say the only Object the sight whereof can render us happy Now should we in this slate love God as the only instrument to be made use of for to work our happiness and because we are not able to find our happiness in any other object should we look upon God as a means of felicity and refer it purely to our selves as to its ultimate end this would be rather a self-love than a love of God at least it would be contrary to order as respecting God as an object or instrument of our felicity both to our selves and our own happiness And though by this love we should seek for no other reward but God alone yet would it prove wholly mercenary and of meer concupiscency That Soul as saith S. Francis of Sales in his Book of the love of God Lib. 2. c. 17. which should love God only out of love to her self by establishing the end of that love
essential in the direction is to follow only grace step by step with extream patience precaution and niceness We ought to confine our selves to God's working and never speak of pure love but when God by internal unction begins to open the heart to that word so hard to Souls yet selfish and so apt to scandalize them or to cast them into trouble Nay more than that we ought never to substract from a Soul the support of interessed motives when they begin with the power of grace to instruct her in pure love 'T will be enough if upon certain occasions we shew her how amiable God is in himself but never to disswade her from taking hold on the support of mixt love To Speak thus is to Speak as the spirit of grace and the experience of internal ways will always make one Speak 'T is to caution Souls against illusion III. False INteressed love See pag. 8. is mean gross unworthy of God which generous Souls ought to scorn and despise Hast must be made to put them out of conceit with it that they may aspire from the beginning to an intirely Disinteressed Love The motives of the fear of Death of God's Judgments and of Hell belonging only to slaves ought immediately to be banished We ought to take from them the desire of their heavenly countrey and to cut off from them all the interessed motives of hope After having made them to relish the fully disinteressed love we ought to suppose that they have attraction and grace for it they ought to be removed from all practices which are not in the whole perfection of that love entirely pure To Speak at this rate is to be ignorant of the ways of God and of the operations of his grace They will have the spirit to blow where they list whereas it blows where it listeth They confound the degrees of interiour life They inspire Souls with that ambition and spiritual avarice spoken of by the blessed John of the Cross They remove them from the true simplicity of pure love limited to follow grace and never offering to prevent it They turn to slight the foundations of Christian Justice I mean that fear which is the beginning of wisdom and that hope whereby we are saved IV. ARTICLE True HOpe in the habitual state of purest love far from being lost is perfected and keeps its distinction from charity 1. The habit thereof infuses into the Soul and is conformable there to the producible acts of that virtue 2. The exercise of that virtue remains always distinguish'd from that of charity the reason of which is this It is not the diversity of ends that causeth the diversity or specification of virtues All virtues ought to have but one end though they be one from the other distinguished by a true specification S. Austin de moribus Eccl. l. 1. assureth that charity it self is the active principle of all virtues and takes diverse denominations suitable to the objects it is applied to S. Thomas saith that charity is the form of all virtues because it exerciseth and refers them all to its end which is the glory of God S. Francis of Sales who hath excluded so formally and with so many repetitions all interessed motives from all the virtues of perfect Souls hath followed precisely the steps both of S. Austin and of S. Thomas whom he cites They have all followed the universal tradition which constitutes a third degree of Just Men who do exclude all interessed motives from the purity of their love 'T is then certain that one ought not any more to seek in that state for hope exercised by an interessed motive otherwise this would be a pulling down with one hand what hath been raised with the other a making ones sport with so holy a tradition an affirming and denying at the same time one and the same thing and a seeking for the motive of self-interest in an intirely disinteressed love We ought then to remember well that it is not the diversity of the ends or of the motives which makes the distinction or specification of virtues What causeth this distinction is the diversity of formal objects To the end that hope may remain truly distinguished from charity 't is not necessary they should have different ends on the contrary for to be good they ought to refer to one and the same end 'T is enough if only the formal object of hope be not the formal object of charity Now so it is that in the habitual state of the most disinteressed love the two formal objects of these two virtues are very different therefore these two virtues do conserve in that state a distinction and true specification in the strictest Scholastical sense The formal object of charity is the goodness or beauty of God taken simply and absolutely in it self without any Idea relative to us The formal object of hope is the goodness of God as it is good for us and of a difficult acquisition Now it evidently appears that these two objects taken in the most abstracted sense and Formal Conception are very different Therefore the difference of the objects conserve the specifick distinction of these two virtues 'T is certain that God as he is perfect in himself and without any respect to me and God as he is my happiness which I endeavour to acquire are two formal objects very different There is no confusion on the part of the object which specifies these virtues but only on the part of the end and that confusion ought to be there and it alters in nothing the specification of virtues The only difficulty remaining now is to explain how a fully disinteressed Soul can will God as it is her good Is not this will they say a falling from the perfection of ones disinteressment a going back in the way of God a coming again to the motive of self-interest contrary to all that tradition of the Saints of all ages who do exclude from the third state of Just Men all interessed motives It is an easie matter to answer that pure love never hindreth us to will and causeth us even to will positively all that God is willing that we should will God will have me to will God as he is my happiness and reward I will him formally under this Notion but I will him not by that precise motive that he is my good The object and the motive are different the object is my interest but the motive is not interessed since it regards nothing but the good pleasure of God I will that formal object and in this reduplication as speak the School but I will it by pure conformity to the will of God who makes me to will it The formal object is that of the common hope of all Just Men and it is the formal object by which virtues are specified The end is the same with that of charity but we have seen that the unity of end never confoundeth the virtues I may without doubt desire my
supream good as it is my reward and not that of another and desire it in conformity to God who will have me to desire it Then I desire that which is really and which I know is the greatest of all my interests without being determined to it by any interested motive In this state hope remains distinguished from charity and does not alter or diminish the purity or impartiality of her state This is by S. Francis of Sales explained in these words according to Theological strictness Love of God Lib. 2. c. 17. It is a very different thing to say I love God for my self and to say I love God for the sake of my self the one is a holy affection of the Bride the other is an impiety that hath not the like c. To speak so is to conserve the distinction of Theological virtues in the most perfect Estates of the inward Life and consequently to depart in nothing from the Doctrine of the holy Council of Trent 'T is to explain at the same time the tradition of the Fathers of the Doctors of the School and of Mystick Saints who have supposed a third degree of Just Men who are in an habitual state of pure love without any motive of interest IV. False IN this third degree of perfection a Soul wills not any longer her Salvation as her Salvation nor God as her supream good nor reward as reward though God will have her to have this will Whence it is that in this state one is not any more able to do any act of true hope distinguished from Charity that 's to say that one cannot any more desire nor expect the effect of the promises in and for himself even for the glory of God To Speak at that rate is to place our perfection in a formal resistance of the will of God who wills our Salvation and will have us to will the same as our own recompence And this is at the same time to confound the exercise of Theological virtues against the decision of the Council of Trent V. ARTICLE True THere be two different states of righteous Souls The first is that of holy Resignation The resigned Soul will or at least would have several things for her self by the motive of her own interest S. Francis of Sales saith Love of God Lib. 9. That she hath yet selfish desires but that they are subjected She submits and subordinates her interessed desires to the will of God which she prefers before her interest Thereby this Resignation is good and meritorious The second state is that of holy indifference An indifferent Soul wills not any longer any thing for her self-interest She hath no interested desires to submit because she hath no more interrested desire 'T is true that there remains in her still some inclinations and unvoluntary repugnances which she submitteth but she hath no longer any voluntary and deliberate desires for her own interest except in those occasions wherein she does not faithfully cooperate to the fulness of her grace This indifferent Soul when she fulfilleth her grace wills not any thing more but as God makes her to will it by his attractive power She loves it is true several things besides God but she loves them only for the sole love of God and with the love of God himself for it is God that she loves in all whatsoever he causeth her to love Holy indifference is nothing but the impartiality or disinterest of love as holy Resignation is nothing but interessed love which submitteth self-interest to the glory of God Indifference reacheth as far and never farther than the perfect disinterest of love As that indifference is love it self it is a very real and positive principle It is a positive and formal will which causeth us to will or desire really all the will of God known to us It is not a dull unsensibleness an internal unaction or non-willing a general suspension or a perpetual equilibrium of the Soul On the contrary it is a positive and constant determination to will and not to will any thing as Cardinal Bona does express it One wills nothing for himself but every thing for God We desire nothing in order to be perfect or happy for our own interest but we will all perfection and blessedness as far as it pleaseth God to make us desire these things by the impression of his grace according to the written Law which is always our inviolable rule In this state we desire no longer Salvation as our own Salvation as an eternal deliverance as a reward of our merits or as the greatest of our interests But we will it with a full will as the glory and good pleasure of God as a thing which he wills and will have us to will for his sake 'T would be a manifest extravagancy to refuse out of a pure love to desire that good which God will do to us and commands us to desire The most disinterested love ought to will what God wills for us as that which he wills for others The absolute determination to will nothing would be no longer a disinterest but the extinction of love which is a desire and true will it would be no longer holy indifference for indifference is the state of a Soul equally ready to will or will not to will for God all that he wills and never to will for ones self what God does not declare that he wills Whereas that nonsensical determination not to will any thing is an impious reluctancy to all the known will of God and to all the impressions of his grace This equivocation in saying that one does not desire his Salvation is easie to be resolv'd We do desire it fully as the will of God To reject it in this sense would be a horrid Blasphemy and we ought always thereupon to Speak with a great deal of precaution It is true only as we do not will it as it is our recompence our good and our interest In this sense S. Francis os Sales hath said Second Conversation That if there was a little more of God's good pleasure in Hell the Saints would exchange Paradise for it And in other places too Conv. p. 182. The desire of Eternal Life is good but he makes us to desire nothing else but God's will Conv. 368. Could we serve God without Merit we should desire to do it He saith elsewhere Love of God Lib. 9. c. 11. Indifference is above Resignation for it loves nothing but for the will of God So that nothing moves an indifferent heart in presence of God's will An indifferent heart is as a Wax-Ball in the hands of his God in order to receive in like manner all the impressions of his Eternal good pleasure 'T is a heart without choice equally dispos'd to every thing without any other object of his will but the will of his God who does not set his love upon the things which God wills but in the will of God who wideth them In
another place he saith Speaking of S. Paul and of S. Martin Ibid. They see Paradise open for them they see a thousand miseries and labours upon the Earth the one and the other is indifferent to their choice and nothing but the will of God can give the counterpoise to their hearts He saith afterwards Ibid. Should he know that his Damnation were a little more pleasing to God than his Salvation he would leave his Salvation and run to his Damnation He Speaks also thus in another place 3 Discourse It is not only requisite that we should relie upon Divine Providence concerning temporal things but much more for what belongs to our Spiritual life and perfection He saith elsewhere Whither it be in interiour or exteriour things you ought to will nothing but what God shall will for you Lastly He saith in another place I have almost no desires but if I was to be Born again I would have none at all If God should come to me I should go to him also if he would not come to me I should hold still and not go to him The other Saints of the last Ages who are authoriz'd by the whole Church are full of such and the like expressions which are all reduced to this saying that one hath no longer any self and interested desire neither about merit perfection nor eternal happiness Thus to Speak is to leave no equivocation in so nice a matter where none ought to be suffered 't is to prevent all the abuse which can be made of the most precious and most holy thing which is upon the Earth I mean pure love 't is to Speak as all the Fathers all the chiefest Doctors of the Schools and all mystical Saints do V. False HOly indifference is an absolute suspension of the will an entire non-willing an exclusion even of all disinterested desire It goes beyond the perfect disinterest of love It does not desire for us those eternal goods which by the written Law we are taught God will give us and which he wills we should wish to receive in us and for us by the motive of his glory All even the most disinterested desire is imperfect Perfection does consist in not willing any thing more whatsoever in not desiring any more not only God's gifts but also God himself and in leaving him to do in us what he pleases by not intermixing on our side any real or positive will To Speak at this rate is to confound all ideas of humane reason It is to put a chimerical perfection in an absolute extinction of Christianity and even of humanity One cannot find terms odious enough to qualifie so monstruous an extravagance VI. ARTICLE True HOly indifference which is nothing else but the disinterest of love is so far from excluding disinterested desires that it is the real and positive principle of all those disinterested desires which the written Law commands us and also of all those grace does inspire us with After this manner did the Psalmist express himself to God All my desires are set before thine eyes The indifferent Soul not only desires fully her Salvation as it is the good pleasure of God but more than that perseverance the amendment of her faults the increase of love by the means of grace and generally without exception all spiritual and even temporal good that is within the order of providence a preparation of means both for ours and our neighbours Salvation Holy indifference admits not only distinct desires and express demands for the accomplishment of all the will of God known to us but also general desires for all the will of God which we do not know To Speak thus is to Speak conformable to the true principles of holy indifference and to the sentiment of Saints all which expressions if well examin'd both by what precede and what followeth are reduced without difficulty to this explication that is pure and sound according to the faith VI. False HOly indifference admits of no distinct desire nor of any formal request for any good either spiritual or temporal what relation soever it hath either to ours or our Neighbour's Salvation We ought never to admit of any of those pious and edifying desires which may inwardly work upon us To Speak at this rate is to oppose God's will under thepretence of purer conformity to it it is to violate the written Law which commandeth us to desire though it does not command us to form our desires in an interested unquiet manner or such as is always distinct 'T is to extinguish true love by a nonsensical resinement 't is to condemn with Blasphemy both the words of Scripture and the Prayers of the Church that are full of requests and of desires 'T is an excommunicating ones self and putting himself out of a condition of being ever able to pray both with heart and mouth in the congregation of the faithful VII ARTICLE True THere is never a state of indifference or of any other perfection known in the Church that gives to Souls a miraculous or extraordinary inspiration The perfection of interiour ways does consist only in one way of pure love whereby God is beloved without any interest and of pure faith where one walks only in darkness and without other light but that of faith it self which is common to all Christians This obscurity of pure faith admits of extraordinary light 'T is not but God who is the master of his gifts may give Raptures Visions Revelations and internal communications But they do not belong to that way of pure Faith and we are taught by the Saints that then we ought not to stop willfully in those extraordinary lights but to pass them over as saith the Blessed John of the Cross and dwell in the most naked and dark Faith Much more ought we to take heed not to suppose in the ways we have spoken of any miraculous or extraordinary inspiration which indifferent Souls do guide themselves by They have for their rule nothing but the precepts and counsels of the written Law and the actual grace which is ever conformable to the Law As to the precepts they ought always to presuppose without wavering or reasoning that God never forsakes any unless forsaken first and consequently that grace always preventing does inspire them continually to the accomplishment of the precept when it ought to be accomplish'd So it is their work to cooperate with all the power and strength of their will that they may not come short of grace by a transgression of the precept As for those cases in which counsels are not turned into precepts they ought without doing violence to themselves to produce acts either of love in general or of certain distinct virtues in particular according as the internal attraction of grace inclines them to some rather than to others as occasion requires What is very certain is that grace prevents them in respect to every deliberate action that this grace which is the internal breathing of the
Spirit of God does inspire them thus upon every occasion that this inspiration is nothing but that which is common to all Just Souls and which never exempts them in the least from the whole extent of the written Law that this inspiration is only stronger and more special in Souls elevated to pure love than in those who are acted only by interested love because God communicates himself more to the perfect than to the imperfect So when some mystical Saints have admitted into holy indifference inspired desires and rejected the others we must take heed not to think that they would exclude the desires and the other acts commanded by the written Law and admit none but those that are extraordinarily inspired This would be a Blasphemy against the Law and raise above it a Phantastical inspiration The desires and other inspired acts mentioned by those Mysticks are either those commanded by the Law or those approved by the Counsels and which are formed in an indifferent and disinterested Soul by the inspiration of ever preventing grace without the mixture of any interested eagerness to prevent grace So that all is reduced to the letter of the Law and to the preventing grace of pure love to which the Soul does co-operate without preventing it To Speak thus is to explain the true sense of good mystical persons 't is to take away all equivocations which may seduce the one and offend the other 't is to precaution Souls against whatsoever is suspected to be illusive it is to keep up the form of Sound Words as S. Paul does recommend it 2 Tim. C. I. V. 13. VII False SOuls dwelling in an holy indifference have no regard for any though a disinterested desire which the written Law obliges them to form They ought to desire nothing more but those things which a miraculous or extraordinary inspiration moveth them to wish without any dependency from the Law they are acted and moved by God and taught by him in every thing so that God alone desireth in them and for them and they are in no need to co-operate with it by their free will Their holy indifference eminently containing all desires dispenseth with them from forming ever any Their inspiration is their only rule To Speak at this rate is to elude all Counsels under pretence of fulfilling them in a most eminent manner it is to establish in the Church a sect of impious Fanaticks 't is to forget that Christ Jesus came upon the Earth not to dispense with the Law or to lessen the authority of it but on the contrary to fullfill and perfect it so that Heaven and Earth shall pass away before the Words of our Saviour pronounced for the confirmation of the Law shall pass Finally it is to contradict grosly all the best mystical Writers and pull down from top to bottom their whole system of pure Faith manifestly incompatible with all miraculous or extraordinary inspiration which a Soul would voluntarily follow as her rule and support for dispensing with the fulfilling the Law VIII ARTICLE True HOly indifference which is never any other but the disinterest of love becometh in the most extream tryals what the holy Misticks have called abandoning or giving one self up that is to say that the disinterested soul gives her self up totally and without any the least reserve to God in all her own interest but she never renounceth either love nor any of those things wherein the Glory and good pleasure of her beloved are concern'd This abandoning is nothing else but that abnegation or renounciation of ones self which Jesus Christ requires of us in the Gospel after we have forsaken all outward things This abnegation of our selves is only pointed against our self-interest and ought never to hinder that disinterested love which we owe in our selves as to our Neighbour for God's sake The extream tryals wherein this abandoning is to be exercis'd are the temptations whereby our Jealous God will purify love in hiding from it all hope for its interest even eternal These Tryals are represented by a very great number of Saints as a terrible Purgatory which may exempt from the Purgatory of the other world those Souls who suffer it with entire Fidelity Only mad and wicked Men saith Cardinal Bona will deny their belief of those sublime and secret things and despise them as False though not clear when they are attested by Men of a most venerable Virtue who speak by their own experience of God's Operations in their hearts These tryals are but for a while and the more true souls are in them to Grace by leaving themselves to be purify'd from all self-interest by Jealous love so much the shorter are these tryals 'T is ordinarily the secret resistance of the Souls to grace under specious pretences 't is their interested and eager endeavour for retaining these sensible supports wherefrom God is willing to deprive them which render their tryals both so long and so painful for God never makes his Creature suffer to make him suffer without fruit It is with a design only to purifie the Soul and to overcome her resistances Those Temptations whereby love is purify'd from all self-interest are in nothing like to other common Temptations Experienced Directors can discern them by certain tokens but nothing is more dangerous than to take the common Temptations of beginners for trials tending to the entire purification of love in the most eminent Souls This is the source of all illusion This causeth deceived Souls to fall into hideous and dreadful Vices These bitter trials are not to be suppos'd to be but in a very small number of pure and mortified Souls in whom Flesh hath been a long while already entirely brought under the Spirit and who have solidly practised all the Evangelical Virtues They ought to be docile so as never willfully to strain at any of those hard and abject things which may be commanded them They ought not to fall in love with any comfort or freedom they should be taken off from all things whatsoever and also from the way that teacheth them this freedom they should be ready for all the practises that are laid upon them they are to stick neither to their kind of Prayer nor to their Experiences nor to their Readings nor to those persons they have consulted formerly with trust and reliance One ought to have had the Experiment that their Temptations are of a different nature from the common Temptations in this that the true means to still them is not to be willing to find a known Prop to Self-interest To speak thus is word for word to repeat the Experiences of Saints as they have related them themselves 'T is at the same time to prevent those very dangerous Inconveniences one might fall into by Credulity should one admit too easily in matter of Practice these Tryals which happen but very seldom by reason that few Souls have attained that Perfection where nothing remains to be purified but some
Remnants of Interest mixed with Divine Love VIII False INternal Tryals take away for ever both sensible and visible Graces They suppress for ever the distinct Acts both of Love and Vertue they put a Soul into a real and absolute Impotency to discover herself to her Superiors or to obey them in the essential Practice of the Gospel they cannot be discern'd from common Temptations 'T is lawful in that State to abscond from Superiors to substract one's self from the Yoke of Obedience and to seek both by Books and Persons of no Authority the Helps and Lights one stands in needs of even notwithstanding the Prohibition of our Superiors A Director may suppose one to be in these Tryals without having tried before the bottom of the Soul upon her Sincerity Docility Mortifications and Humility He may immediately put that Soul upon purging her Love from all Dross of Interest in the Temptation without causing her to do any interested Act to resist the Vehemency of pressing Temptation To speak at this rate is to poyson our Souls it is to take from them the Arms of Faith necessary to resist the Enemy of our Salvation 't is to confound all the Ways of God 't is to teach Rebellion and Hypocrisie to the Children of the Church IX ARTICLE True A Soul who in these extream Tryals gives herself up to God is never forsaken by him When she asks in the Transport of her Grief to be delivered God does not deny to hear her but because he is willing to perfect her Strength in Infirmity and that his Grace is sufficient to her for it She loseth in that State neither the real and compleat Power within the Line of Power for to fulfil really the Precepts nor that of following the most perfect Counsels according to her Calling and present Degree of Perfection nor the real and internal Acts of her Free-will for that accomplishment She looseth neither preventing Grace nor explicite Faith nor Hope as it is a disinterested Desire of the Promises nor the Love of God nor the infinite Hatred of Sin not so much as venial nor that inward and momentous certainty that is necessary for the Rectitude of the Conscience She loseth nothing but the sensible Relish of Good but the comfortable and affecting Fervency but the eager and interested Acts of Vertues but the After-certainty that comes by an interested reflection bearing to itself a comfortable Witness of its Fidelity These direct Acts and such as escape the Reflections of the Soul but which are yet very real and do conserve in her all the Vertues without spot are as I have already said that Operation called by S. Francis of Sales the Edge of the Spirit or the Top of the Soul This State of Trouble and Gloominess which is only for a while is not even in its own Duration without peaceable Intervals in which some Glimpses of very sensible Graces appear like Lightning in a dark stormy Night which leave no sign of themselves behind To speak thus is to speak equally conformable both to the Catholick Doctrine and to the Experiences of Mystical Saints IX False IN these extream Tryals a Soul without having been before unfaithful to Grace loseth the true and full Power of persevering in her State She falls into a real Impotency to fulfil the Precepts in those Cases where Precepts are urging She ceaseth to have an explicite Faith in Cases where Faith ought to act explicitely She ceaseth to hope that 's to say to expect and to desire even in a disinterested manner the Effect of the Promises in herself She hath no longer the Love of God perceptible or imperceptible She hath no more a Hatred to Sin She loseth not only the sensible and reflective Horror of it but also the most direct and intimate Horror of the same She hath no more that intimate and momentous Certainty which can preserve the Rectitude of her Conscience in the very Moment of her Action All the Acts of those Vertues essential to the internal Life ceases even in their most direct and less reflected Operation which is according to the Language of Mystical Saints the Edge of the Spirit and the Top of the Soul To speak at this rate is to annihilate Christian Piety under pretence of perfecting it It is to make the Tryals designed to purifie Love an universal Shipwreck of Faith and of all Christian Vertues 'T is to say that the Faithful nourished with the Words of Faith ought never to hear without stopping their Ears X. ARTICLE True THE Promises of Eternal Life are meerly free Grace is never due to us or else it would not be Grace God never oweth to us in a strick Sence either Perseverance to the Death nor Eternal Life after the Death of the Body He is not so much as indebted to our Soul to give her Existence after this Life he might let her drop into her Nothing again as it were by her own Weight Otherwise he should not be free in respect to the Duration of his Creature and it would become a necessary Being But altho' God never owes any thing to us in a strict Sence he hath been pleased to give us Rights grounded on his Promises meerly free By his Promises he hath given himself as a Supream Blessedness to a Soul faithful to him and persevere to be so It is then true in this sense that any supposition tending to the believing ones being excluded from Eternal life by Loving God is impossible because God is faithful in his promises He wills not the Death of the Sinner but rather that he may live and be Converted Thereby it is certain that all the Sacrifices which the most Disinterested Souls make usually concerning their Eternal Blessedness are conditional They say my God if by an impossibility thou wouldst condemn me to the Eternal Torments of Hell without losing thy Love I should not Love thee the less for it But this Sacrifice cannot be absolute in an ordinary state In no other case but of the last trials this Sacrifice becometh in a manner absolute Then a Soul may be invincibly perswaded with a reflex perswasion and which is not the intimate bottom of Conscience that she is justly reprobated by God In this state did S. Francis of Sales find himself in the Church of of S. Stephen des Grez A Soul in this trouble finds herself contrary to God in respect to her former infidelities and by her present obduration She takes her bad inclinations for a deliberate will and sees not the real acts of her Love and of her Virtues which by reason of their simplicity do escape her reflections She becomes in her own eyes covered with the leprōsie of Sin though it is only in appearance and not real She can not bear with her self She is offended with those who are willing to quiet her and take away from her that kind of perswasion It matters nothing to tell her of the precise Doctrine of Faith in regard
XIV ARTICLE True IN the last Tryals for the purification of Love a separation is made of the superior part of the Soul from the inferiour in that the senses and imagination have no part of the peace and of the communications of Grace which God makes often enough both to the understanding and to the will in a simple and direct manner which escapeth all reflection After this manner Christ Jesus our perfect pattern hath been happy upon the Cross so that in the superior part of his Soul he enjoyed Coelestial Glory while in the inferiour he was actually a Man of Grief with a sensible impression upon him of his being forsaken by his Father The inferiour part did not impart to the superiour her involuntary trouble nor her painful swoundings The superiour communicated to the inferiour neither her peace nor her blessedness This separation is made by the difference of the real but simple and direct acts of the understanding and of the will who leaving behind them no sensible sign and of the reflex Acts which leaving a sensible mark behind them are communicated to the imagination and to the senses which are called the inferiour part for to distinguish them from that direct and intimate operation of the understanding and of the will called the superiour part The acts of the inferiour part in this separation consist of an entirely blind and unvoluntary trouble because all that is intellectual and voluntary belongs to the superiour part But although this separation taken in this sense cannot be absolutely denied the Directors nevertheless ought to take great care never to suffer in the inferiour part any of those Disorders which are in a natural course to be always deemed voluntary and for which the superiour part ought consequently to be accountable This precaution ought always to be found in the way of pure Faith which is the only one we can Speak of and in which nothing contrary to the order of nature is admitted 'T is needless for this Reason to Speak here of diabolical possessions obsessions or other extraordinary things One cannot absolutely reject them since both the Scripture and the Church have acknowledged them But in particular cases the greatest caution ought to be used for to avoid being deceived Moreover this matter that is common to all internal ways hath no particular difficulty to be cleared in it by the way of pure Faith and of pure Love On the contrary it may be asserted that this way of pure Love and of pure Faith is that wherein fewer of these extraordinary things are to be seen Nothing diminisheth them so much as not minding them and carrying always the Souls to a Conduct that is simple in the disinterest of Love and in the obscurity of Faith To Speak so is to Speak in conformity to Christian Doctrine and to give the greatest preservatives against illusion XIV False IN Tryals a total separation is made of the superiour from the inferiour part The superiour is united to God by an union whereof no sensible and distinct sign appears at any time either for Faith Hope Love or any other virtues The inferiour part becometh in that separation wholly Animal and whatever passeth in it against the rule of manners is deemed neither voluntary nor demeritorious nor contrary to the purity of the superiour part To Speak at this rate is to annihilate the Law and the Prophets It is to Speak the Language of the Devils XV. ARTICLE True THE persons who are in those rigorous Tryals ought never to neglect that universal sobriety so often spoken of by the Apostles and which consists in a sober use of all the things that are round about us This Sobriety reacheth to all the operations of sense of the imagination and even of the Spirit It makes our Wisdom Sober and Temperate It reduceth all to a simple use of necessary things This Sobriety implies a continual privation of all the enjoyments that are only for satisfaction and pleasure This Mortification or rather this Death tends to cut off not only all the voluntary motions of nature corrupted and revolted through the voluptuousness of the Flesh and the pride of the Spirit but also all the most innocent Consolations which interested Love does seek with so much eagerness This Mortification is practised with peace and simplicity without discomposure of mind and sourness against ones self without method suitable to ones occasions and needs but in a real manner and without intermission 'T is true that some persons oppressed by excessive Tryals are ordinarily oblig'd by their Obedience to an Experienced Director to forbear or lessen certain Corporal Austerities they have been much addicted to This Temperature is necessary for the Relief of their Body sinking under the Rigor of internal Pains which is the most terrible of all Penances It happens also often that these Souls have been too much in love with these Austerities and the Repugnancy they felt at first to obey in leaving them off in this State of Oppression shews that they stuck a little too fast to them But it is their Personal Imperfection and not that of the Austerities that deserves the blame Austerities answerable to their Institution are profitable and often necessary Christ hath given us the Pattern of them which all Saints have followed They bring our revolted Flesh under they tend to the Amendment of committed Faults and do preserve from Temptations 'T is true indeed that they don't serve to destroy the Bottom of Self-love or Cupidity but by so much as they are animated by the Spirit of Recollection Love and Prayer For want of which they would quench the grosser Passions and contrary to their Institution make a Man full of himself this would be nothing else but a Justifying of the Flesh It is moreover to be observed that the Persons that are in this State being deprived of all sensible Graces and from the fervent Exercise of all discernible Vertues have no longer any relish nor sensible fervency nor noted attraction for all the Austerities they had practised before with so much Ardor Then it is that their Penance is reduc'd to bear in a very bitter Peace the Anger of God which they look for every Moment and their manifest Despair There is no Austerity or Torment which they would not suffer with Joy and Ease in the room of this inward Pain all their inmost Attractiveness is to bear their Agony in which they say upon the Cross with Christ My God my God why hast thou forsaken me To speak thus is to acknowledge the perpetual necessity of Mortification It is to Authorise Corporal Austerities which by their Institution are very wholesome 'T is to be willing that the most perfect Souls should do Penance proportionable to the Strength Graces and Tryals of their State XV. False COrporal Austerities serve for nothing but to provoke Concupiscence and inspire the Practiser of them with a Pharisaical Complacency they are not necessary either to
about to purifie themselves by the Practice of Impurity itself as we learn it from S. Clement of Alexandria XVII ARTICLE True THere is but a small Number of Souls who are in these last Trials wherein they make an end of purifying themselves from all Self-interest All other Souls without undergoing these Trials do yet arrive at several Degrees of Holiness that is very real and pleasing to God Otherwise one would reduce interested Love to a Judaical Worship or such as is unsufficient to eternal Life against the Decision of the holy Council of Trent The Director ought not to be easily induced to suppose that those Temptations in which he finds the Soul to be are extraordinary Temptations One cannot be too mistrustful of an heated Imagination and that exaggerates all that she feels or thinks to feel One ought to distrust a subtile and almost unperceptible Pride which tends always to flatter one self with being a Soul extraordinarily led Lastly we ought to distrust illusion which creeps in and makes one that after having begun by the Spirit with a Sincere Fervency to end in the Flesh His chief concern therefore should be to suppose at the very first that the Temptations of a Soul are nothing else but common Temptations the Remedy whereof is both internal and external Mortification with all the acts of fear and the practising of all interested Love One ought even to stand fast in admitting nothing beyond this without an entire conviction that these Remedies are absolutely unprofitable and that the sole exercise both simple and peaceable of pure Love does better quell the Temptation Upon this occasion it is that illusion and the danger of wandrings are in the extream When an unexperienced or too credulous Director supposeth a common Temptation to be an extraordinary one for the purifying of Love he is the ruine of a Soul he fills her with her self and casteth her into an incurable and unavoidable indolency of Vice To leave inrerested Motives when we have need of them it is to take from a Child the Milk of his Nurse and to deprive him cruelly of his Life by weaning him out of Season Souls who are very imperfect yet and full of themselves do often fancy upon indiscreet readings and such as are disagreeable to their circumstances that they are in the most rigorous Tryals of pure Love while they are yet only in such Temptations as are very natural which they draw on themselves by a lazy wandering and sensual Life The Tryals we Speak of here are only the Portion of Souls already perfected both in outward and inward Mortification who have learn'd nothing by premature Readings but by the sole Experience of Gods Conduct towards them who breath nothing but Candor and Docility who are always ready to think that they are deceived and ought to enter upon the common way again These Souls do not recover their peace in the midst of their Temptations by any of the ordinary helps at least while they are held with the Grace of pure Love Nothing but a faithful co-operation with the Grace of this pure Love can becalm their Temptations and thereby their Tryals are distinguished from the common ones The Souls that are not in this state shall infallibly fall into horrid excesses if you go about to blame them contrary to their necessities in the simple acts of pure Love and those who were under the Attractive Power of pure Love shall never be pacified by the ordinary practices of interested Love Whoever resisted God and had Peace But to make a true Judgment of Souls that are so nice and under such important circumstances Spirits ought to be tried to know whither they come from God or no. To Speak thus is to Speak with all the necessary precaution in a matter where our care cannot be too great and it is at the same time to admit all the Maxims of the Saints XVII False THe Simple Peaceable and uniform exercise of pure love is the only remedy that one ought to employ against the Temptations incident to every condition One may suppose that all Tryals do tend to the same end and have need of the same Remedy All the practices of interested love and all the acts excited by this motive are good for nothing but to fill Man with Self-love and to add to the Temptation To Speak at this rate is to confound all that which the Saints have so carefully separated It is to love seduction and run after it it is to jogg Souls into a precipice by taking from them all the springs of their present grace XVIII ARTICLE True THe Will of God is always our only rule and Love is wholly reduced to a Will willing of nothing else but what God himself Wills and makes the Soul to Will But there are several sorts of Wills in God viz. his positive and written Will which commands what is good and Prohibits what is evil This is the only invariable rule of our Wills and of all our voluntary Actions There is the Will of God which is manifested to us by the inspiration or attraction of that Grace which is in all Just Men. This Will of God must always be suppos'd to be entirely conformable to the written Will and it is not lawful to believe that it can exact of us any other thing but the faithful accomplishing of the Precepts and Counsels comprehended in the Law The Third Will of God is a Will of simple permission and is that which suffers Sin without approving of it The same Will which permitteth it condemns it It does not positively permit it but only by giving way to the Commission of it and not hindring it This permissive Will is never our Rule It would be an impiety to will our Sin under pretence that God willeth it permissively 1. It is false that God willeth it 'T is true only that he hath not a positive Will to hinder it 2. At the same time that he hath not a positive Will to hinder it he hath an actual and positive Will to condemn and to punish it as being essentially contrary to his immutable holiness to which he oweth all 3. One ought never to suppose God's allowance of Sin but that after it is unfortunately committed and when it cannot be help'd that what is done should be not done Then we ought to conform our selves at one and the same time to the two Wills of God According to the one we are to condemn and punish that which he condemns and would punish and according to the other we ought to will the confusion and abjection of our selves which is not a Sin but rather a Penance and remedy of Sin it self because this wholsome confusion and this abjection which carries in it self all the bitterness of a potion is a real good which God hath been positively willing to draw from Sin though he never positively willeth Sin it self This is to love the Remedy that is drawn from Poyson without loving
a reflection that leaves behind it distinct Footsteps in the Brain This Composition of discursive and reflex acts is proper for the exercise of interested Love by reason that this imperfect Love which does not drive out fear hath need of two things One is to recall often all the interested Motives of fear and hope The other to make ones self sure of its operation by acts well marked and well reflected So discursive Meditation is an exercise agreeable to this Love that is mixt with interest Fearful and interested Love could never be satisfied with forming simple acts in Prayer without any variety of interested Motives It could never be satisfied with doing acts whereof it should never render any witness to it self On the contrary Contemplation is according to all the most Celebrated Divines and the most Experienced Contemplative Saints the exercise of perfect Love It consists in acts so simple so direct so peaceable so uniform that they have no characters whereby a Soul may distinguish them It is the perfect Prayer whereof S. Anthony spoke and which is not perceived by the solitary himself who makes it Contemplation is equally authoriz'd by the Ancient Fathers the School Doctors and by holy mystical Men It is termed a simple and amorous Sight to distinguish it from Meditation which is full of methodical and discursive Acts. When the Habit of Faith is strong when it is perfected by pure Love the Soul who does love God no more but for himself hath no further need to seek for nor to gather interested Motives upon each Vertue for her own Interest Rational Discourse instead of helping her is but Trouble and Labour to her she is all for Love and finds the Motive of all Vertues in it there being no more for her to do but one necessary thing 'T is in this pure Contemplation that one may say with S. Francis of Sales Love must needs be very powerful since it stands by itself without the Support of any Pleasure or of any Pretension Love of God L. 9. C. 21. Affecting and discursive Meditation tho' less perfect than pure and direct Contemplation is nevertheless an Exercise very acceptable to God and very necessary to the greatest part of good Souls It is the ordinary Foundation of the Interior Life and the Exercise of Love for all just Men who are not arrived yet at what we call perfect Disinterest It hath made at all times a great number of Saints 'T would be a scandalous Rashness to take Souls off from it under pretence of introducing them into Contemplation There is even often in the most discursive Meditation and much more in affectionate Prayer certain peaceable and direct Acts which are a mixture of imperfect Contemplation To speak so is to speak conformable to the Spirit of Tradition and to the Maxims of Saints that are most free from Innovation and Illusion XXI False MEditation is but a dry and barren Study its discursive and reflex Acts are but a Labour in vain which tires the Soul instead of nourishing it it s interested Motives bring forth nothing but an Exercise of Self-love There is no going forward that way good Souls with all speed must be taken off from it to make them pass into Contemplation where Acts are quite out of Season To speak at this rate is to discourage Souls from God's Gift 't is to turn into a slight the very Foundations of the inward Life 't is to go about to take away what God gives and to persuade one to reckon rashly upon that which he is not pleased to give 't is to snatch away the Suckling Child from the Breast before he can digest solid Food XXII ARTICLE True A Soul may leave discursive Meditation and enter into Contemplation when she hath the three following Marks 1. When she draws no longer from the Meditation that interiour Food which she found in it before but on the contrary a meer distraction driness and languor in her attraction 2. When she finds no facility no occupation and inward nourishment but in a simple and purely amorous Presence of God whereby she is renewed in all the Vertues agreeable to her State 3. When she hath neither relish nor inclination but for recollection so that her Director who makes a Trial of her finds her humble sincere teachable taken off from the whole World and from herself A Soul may by Obedience that is endued with these three Marks of Vocation enter into a contemplative Prayer without tempting God To speak so is to follow the ancient Fathers such as be S. Clement of Alexandria S. Gregory Nazianzen S. Augustine Pope S. Gregory Cassian and all the Ascets S. Bernard S. Thomas and all the School-men 'T is to speak as the most holy mystical Men have done who are most opposite to Illusion XXII False ONE may lead a Soul into Contemplation without these three foregoing Marks 'T is enough that Contemplation is perfecter than Meditation to prefer it before the other 'T is to amuse Souls and to make them languish in an unfruitful Method if you don't put them at the very first into the Liberty of pure Love To speak at this rate is to overturn the Church-Discipline 't is to slight the Spirituality of the Holy Fathers 't is to give the Lye to all the Maxims of most mystical Saints 't is to precipitate Souls into Error XXIII ARTICLE True DIscursive Meditation is not convenient for those Souls whom God draws actually into Contemplation by the three Tokens above related and who would not return to the discursive Acts but out of a scrupulous Temper and with a desire to seek their own Interest against the actual attraction of their Grace To speak thus is to speak as the blessed John of the Cross in the lively Flame of Love Cant. 3. who only in these strict Circumstances calls Meditation a low Means and dirty Means 'T is to speak as all mystical Saints have done that have been Canonis'd or Approved by the whole Church after the most rigorous Examination XXIII False AS soon as one hath begun Contemplation he ought never more to return to Meditation This would be a falling back and to decay 'T is better to expose one self to all sorts of Temptations and to interior Idleness than to re-assume discursive Acts again To speak at this rate is to be ignorant that the passage from Meditation to Contemplation is that of interested Love to pure Love that this passage is ordinarily long unperceptible and mix'd with these two States as the Shades in matter of Colours are an insensible passage from one Colour to another in which both of them are mix'd 'T is to contradict all good mystical Men who say with Father Balthazar Alvarez that one ought to take the Oar of Meditation when the Wind of Contemplation does not strike into the Sails 't is often to deprive Souls from the only Food God leaves them XXIV ARTICLE True THere is a State of Contemplation so
than in pure Contemplation it self God whom they in supream simplicity do possess is enough for them They ought not to concern themselves either about the Divine Persons or the Attributes of the Divine Nature To speak at this rate is to take away the corner Stone It is to snatch from the Faithful Eternal life which consists wholly in knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ his Son whom he hath sent 'T is to be that Antichrist who rejects the Word made Flesh It is to deserve the Anathema pronounced by the Apostle against those who shall not love the Lord Jesus XXIX ARTICLE True IT may be said that positive Contemplation is infused because it prevents the Souls with a sweetness and Peace greater yet than do the other graces which prevent the common sort of Just Men. It is a grace more freely given than all the others given for Merit because it worketh in Souls the most pure and perfect Love But passive Contemplation is neither purely infused since it is free and meritorious nor meerly free since the Soul co-operates with Grace in it It is not miraculous since according to the Testimony of all the Saints it consists only in an Amorous knowledge and that Grace without a Miracle is sufficient for the most lively Faith and the most purified Love Lastly this Contemplation cannot be Miraculous since it is supposed to consist in a state of pure and dark Faith in which the faithful is not led by any other light but that of simple revelation and of the Authority of the Church common to all Just Men. 'T is true that several Mystical Writers have supposed this Contemplation to be Miraculous because in it is Contemplated a Truth that hath not been received in by the senses and through the imagination This true also that these Writers have acknowledged a bottom of the Soul which did work in this Contemplation without any distinct Operation of the faculties But these two things had only their Origin from Scholastick Philosophy whereof these Mystical Men were preconceited All this great Mystery vanisheth away assoon as one supposes with S. Augustine that we have without Miracle intellectual Ideas which have not passed through the senses and when it is supposed on the other side that the bottom of the Soul is not really distinguished from her powers Then all passive Contemplation is reduced to some thing very simple and which hath nothing miraculous 'T is a chain-work of Acts of Faith and of Love so simple so direct so peaceable and so uniform that they don't seem to do more than one only Act or even that they don't seem to do any Act at all but a repose of pure Union This is the reason why S. Francis of Sales won't have it called Union for fear of expressing a motion or action towards uniting but a simple and pure unity Hence it comes that some as S. Francis of Assisium in his great Song have said that they were able no longer to perform any acts and that others as Gregory Lopez have said that they did a continual Act during their whole life Both the one and the other by expressions seemingly opposite mean the same thing They do no more any eager acts and marked by an unquiet motion They produce Acts so peaceable and so uniform that these Acts though very successive and even interrupted do seem to them one only Act without interruption or a continual rest Hence it is that this Contemplation hath been call'd silent or quiet Prayer Hence it is Finally that it hath been called passive God forbid it should ever be called so to exclude from it the real positive and meritorious Action of the Free-Will or the real and successive Acts which ought to be reiterated every moment It is called Passive only to exclude the Activity or interested eagerness of Souls when they will yet agitate themselves in order to feel and see their operation which should be less mark'd were it both more simple and more united Passive Contemplation is nothing else but pure Contemplation The Active is that which is mixt with forward and discursive Acts. So when Contemplation hath yet a mixture of interested forwardness which is called Activity it is yet Active When it hath further remains of this Activity it is entirely Passive that 's to say Peaceable and uninterested in its Acts. In fine the more the Soul is Passive towards God the more Active is she in that which she ought to do That is to say that the more she is supple and pliant to the Divine impulse the more efficatious is her motion though without self agitation For it is always equally true that the more the Soul receiveth from God the more ought she to restore to him of what she hath from him This ebbing and flowing makes up all the order of Grace and all the fidelity of the Creature To speak so is to prevent all illusion 't is to explain the bottom of Passive Contemplation which cannot be denied without a notorious rashness and cannot be carried further without extremity of danger 'T is to disintricate whatever the Saints have said in terms which by the subtilty of some Divines have been somewhat darkned XXIX False PAssive Contemplation is purely Passive so that the Free-Will co-operates no more therein with Grace by any real and transient Act. It is purely infused and entirely a free gift and without Merit on the part of the Soul It is miraculous and draws while it lasts a Soul from the state of pure and dark Faith It is a possession and a supernatural rapture which prevents the Soul It is an extraordinary inspiration that puts the Soul out of the common rules It is an absolute binding or evacuation of the powers so that both the understanding and the will are then in an absolute impotency to any thing which without doubt is a miraculous and extatick suspension To speak at this rate is to overturn the System of pure Faith which is that of all good mystical Men and especially of the Blessed John of the Cross 'T is to confound Passive Contemplation which is free and meritorious with gifts meerly free and extraordinary and which as we are advised by the Saints ought never voluntarily to possess us It is to contradict all Authors who place this Contemplation in a free amorous and meritorious look and consequently in the real but simple Acts of these two Powers 'T is to contradict S. Theresa herself who assures us that the Seventh mansion hath none of the raptures which do suspend against the order of nature the operations of the understanding and of the will 'T is to oppose all the Eminent Spiritual Persons who have said that these suspensions of natural operations are so far from being a perfect state that on the contrary they are a sign that nature is not yet enough purified and that such effects as these do cease by how much the more the Soul is purified and grown
to abandon one self so far as never to watch over one self with a simple and peaceable Vigilancy and not to let fall the eager Motions of Nature to receive only those of Grace To speak at this rate is to believe that Reason which is the first of God's Gifts in the Order of Nature is an Evil and consequently to renew the foolish impious Error of the Manicheans it is to be willing to change Perfection into a continual Fanaticism and to tempt God every Minute of one's Life XXXII ARTICLE True THere is in the passive State a Liberty of the Children of God which hath no relation to the unbridled License of the Children of this World These simple Souls are no more tormented by the Scruples of those who fear and hope for their own Interest Pure Love gives them a respectful Familiarity with God as that of a Bride with the Bridegroom they have a Peace and Joy full of Innocency they take with simplicity and without hesitation the needful Refreshments of Mind and Body as they would perswade their Neighbours to the same they speak of themselves without any positive Judgment but out of meer Obedience and real Necessity as Things appear to them at that moment they speak then of them either as good or bad as they would speak of another without any Headiness in what they think or any Love for the good Opinion which their most simple and modest Words might create in them of themselves and acknowledging always with an humble Joy that if there is any Good in them it comes from God alone To speak thus is to relate the Experiences of Saints without offending the Rule of Evangelical Manners XXXII False THE Liberty of passive Souls is grounded upon an Innocency of Disappropriation which makes pure in them whatsoever they are prompted to do tho' never so irregular and inexcusable in others They have no longer any Law because the Law is not established for the Righteous provided he does appropriate nothing to himself and acts nothing for himself To speak at this rate is to forget that it is said That if the written Law is not for the Righteous it is because an inward Law of Love prevents always the outward Precept and that the great Commandment of Love containeth all the others 'T is to turn Christianity into an Abomination and to make the Gentiles to blaspheme the Name of God 'T is to give up Souls to a Spirit of Falshood and of Giddiness XXXIII ARTICLE True THere is in the passive State a Re-union of all the Vertues in Love which never excludeth the distinct Exercise of each Vertue 'T is Charity as saith S. Thomas after S. Augustine which is the Form and Principle of all Vertues That which distinguisheth or specifieth them is the particular Object which Love does embrace The Love which abstains from impure Pleasures is Chastity and this very same Love when it bears Evils takes the Name of Patience This Love without going out of its Simplicity becometh by Turns all different Vertues but it admits of none as being a Vertue that 's to say either Fortitude Greatness Beauty Regularity or Perfection A disinterested Soul as S. Francis of Sales 12. Discourse of Simplicity hath observed it loves no longer the Vertues either because they are handsome and pure nor because they are worthy to be beloved or as beautifying and perfecting those that do practise them or because they are meritorious and prepare Men for an Eternal Reward but only because they are the Will of God A disinterested Soul as this great Saint said of Mother Chantal Life of Mad. of Chantal p. 246. does not wash away her Faults for to be pure and does not adorn herself with Vertues for to be beautiful but for to please her Spouse to whom if Ugliness had been as acceptable she would have loved it as much as Beauty Then it is that we do practise all distinct Vertues without thinking that they are Vertues then we think on nothing every Moment but to do the Will of God and jealous Love causeth at the same time that we desire no more to be vertuous seeing that we are never more vertuous than when we are no more pleased to be so It may be said in this Sence that passive and uninterested Love will no more even Love itself as being her Perfection and Happiness but only as it is that which God does require of us Therefore S. Francis of Sales saith that we return into our selves loving that Love instead of the well Beloved Love of God l. 9. c. 9. This Saint in another place saith that we ought not so much as to desire the Love of God as it is our good Lastly to give to this Truth all the strictness that is necessary this Saint saith that we ought to endeavour to seek in God nothing but the Love of his Beauty and not the pleasure which is felt in the Beauty of his Love This distinction will appear subtile to those whom unction hath not yet taught but it is confirmed by the Tradition of all Saints from the beginning of Christianity and it ought not to be despised without making light of the Saints who have placed the perfection of a Soul in this so nice a jealousie of Love To speak thus is to repeat what holy mystical Men have said after both S. Clement and the Ascetes upon the Cessation of Virtues and which ought to be explained with infinite precaution XXXIII False IN the Passive slate the distinct practice of Virtues is out of season because pure Love which contains them all in its quietude dispenseth absolutely with Souls in this exercise To speak at this rate is to contradict the Gospel It is to lay a stone of scandal in the way of the Children of the Church It is to give them the name of the Living while they are Dead XXXIV ARTICLE True SPiritual Death whereof so many mystical Saints have spoken after the Apostle who saith to the Faithful ye are Dead is nothing but the entire purification and disinterest of Love so that the unquietness and frowardness which do proceed from an interested Motive do not weaken the operation of Grace and that Grace doth work in a manner entirely free Spiritual resurrection is nothing else but the habitual state of pure Love which we do ordinarily attain to after the tryals designed for its purification To speak so is to speak as the greatest Saints and most cautious mystical Men have done XXXIV False SPiritual Death is an entire extinguishing of the Old-Man and of the last sparks of Concupiscency Then one hath no more need even of the peaceable and disinterested resistency to natural motions nor of co-operation to any medicinal Grace of Jesus Christ Spiritual Resurrection is the entire consummation of the New-Man in the Age and plenitude of the perfect Man as in Heaven To speak at this rate is to fall into an Heresie and impiety which is to the ruine of all
Christian manners XXXV ARTICLE True THE state of transformation whereof so many both Ancient and modern Saints have so often spoken is nothing but the most Passive state that 's to say the most free of all Activity or interested unquietness The Soul being peaceable and equally pliant to all the subtilest impulses of Grace is like a Globe upon a ground-plot that hath no more any proper and natural Situation but goes equally all sorts of ways and the most insensible impulses is enough for to move it In this state a Soul hath but one only Love and knows nothing else but to Love Love is her Life it is as it were her being and substance for it is the sole principle of all her Affections As this Soul gives to her self not any froward motion does nothing unseasonably in the hand of God her own disposer so she feels no more but one motion viz. that which is imprinted in her even so as a Man carried by another feels no other impulse but this if so be that he does not discompose it by a contrary agitation Then the Soul saith with S. Paul I live but it is not I but Christ Jesus who lives in me Christ does manifest himself in his Mortal Flesh as the Apostle will have him to manifest himself in us all Then the image of God darkned and almost blotted out in us by Sin is imprinted again and yields a new similitude which is called transformation Then when this Soul speaks of herself by a simple Conscience she saith with S. Catherine of Genoa I find no more of my self there is no other self in me but God If on the contrary she seeks herself by reflection she hateth herself as being something without God that 's to say she condemns the my self as it is separated from the pure impression of the Spirit of Grace as this same Saintess did with horror This state is neither fixed nor invariable 'T is true only that one ought not to believe that the Soul does fall from it without any infidelity because the gifts of God are without Repentance and Souls faithful to their Grace shall suffer no diminution of them But in short the least hesitation or the most subtile complaisance may render a Soul unworthy of so eminent a Grace To speak so is to admit of the terms consecrated both by Scripture and Tradition 'T is to follow divers Ancient Fathers who have said that the Soul was transformed and deified It is to explain the expressions of the most authorized Saints It is to keep up the Doctrine of Faith in its integrity XXXV False TRansformation is a deification of the Soul real and by nature or an hypostatick Union or a conformity unto God which is unalterable and dispenses with the Soul from watching over Herself under pretence that there is no more in her of any other Self but God To speak at this rate is to utter horrid Blasphemies 't is to be willing to transform Satan into an Angel of light XXXVI ARTICLE True TRansformed Souls have ordinarily no need of certain orderly Dispositions either for times or for places nor express forms nor methodically set practices for their interiour exercises The great habit of their familiar Union with God gives them an easiness and simplicity of amorous Union which is incomprehensible to the Souls of an inferiour state and this example would be very Pernicious to all the other less advanced Soul which have need yet of regular practices to support themselves Transformed Souls ought always though without any troublesome rule one while produce with simplicity indistinct Acts of quietude or pure Contemplation and another while distinct but peaceable and disinterested Acts of all Virtues suitable to their state To speak so is correctly to explain the expressions of good mystical Men. XXXVI False TRansformed Souls have no more need to exercise virtues in the abstracted cases either of Precept or of Counsel except at those times they may be in an absolute emptiness and internal unaction They need only follow their Palate their inclinations and first natural motions Concupiscency is extinguished in them or in a suspension so insensible that we ought not to think any more that it may ever be awakened on a sudden To speak at this rate is to lead Souls into Temptation 't is to fill them with a fatal Pride 't is to teach the Doctrine of Devils 't is to forget that Concupiscence is always either acting or relented or suspended but ready to awake on a sudden in our Body which is that of Sin XXXVII ARTICLE True THE most transformed Souls have still their free Will whereby they are in a Capacity of committing Sin as well as the first Angel or the first Man Moreover they have the bottom of their Concupiscence tho' the sensible Effects thereof may remain relented or suspended by Medicinal Grace These Souls may sin mortally and go astray in a terrible manner They commit even Venial Sins for which they say unanimously with the whole Church Forgive us our trespasses c. The least Hesitation in Faith or the least interested Return upon Themselves might drain up their Grace They ought in Answer to the Jealousie of pure Love to shun the smallest Faults as all just Men usually do avoid the greatest Sins Their Vigilancy tho' simple and peaceable ought to be by so much the more piercing as pure Love in its Jealousie is more clear-sighted than interested Love with all its Commotions and Troubles These Souls ought never either to judge or to excuse themselves unless it be out of Obedience and to remove some Scandal nor justifie themselves by a deliberated and reflected Testimony tho' the intimate bottom of their Conscience reproaches them with nothing They ought to be contented to be judged by their Superiours and obey blindly in every Point To speak so is to speak according to the true Principles of all Mystical Saints and without Offence to Tradition XXXVII False TRansformed Souls are not any more free for to Sin they have no more any Concupiscence all that in them is is Motion of Grace and extraordinary Inspiration They can no more pray with the Church saying every Day Forgive us our Offences c. To speak at this rate is to fall into the Error of the false Gnosticks renewed by the Beggards condemned at the Council of Vienna and by the Illuminated of Andalousia condemned in the last Age. XXXVIII ARTICLE True TRansformed Souls may profitably and ought even in the present Discipline to confess the venial Faults they are aware of in themselves They ought in Confession to detest their Faults condemn Themselves and desire the Remission of their Sins not for their own Cleansing and Deliverance but as a thing which God does will and which he will have us to will for his Glory Tho' a disinterested Soul does not wash her self from her Faults now for to be pure as we have seen it in S. Francis of Sales but that she
is united to God without any medium either by the Veil of Faith or the infirmity of the Flesh since the fall of Adam nor by the medicinal Grace of Jesus Christ by whom alone one may in every state go to the Father To speak at this rate is to renew the Heresie of the Beggards Condemned by the Council of Vienna XLI ARTICLE True THE Spiritual Wedding uniteth immediately the Bride to the Bridegroom essence to essence substance to substance that 's to say will to will by that entirely pure Love so often mentioned Then God and the Soul make no more but one and the same Spirit as the Bride and the Bridegroom in Marriage are made but one Flesh He who adheres to God is made one and the same Spirit with him by an intire conformity of the will which is the work of Grace The Soul is then fully satiated and in a Joy of the Holy Ghost which is the bud of Coelestial happiness She is in an entire purity that 's to say without any defilement of Sin except those daily Sins which the exercise of Love can immediately blot out and consequently she may without Purgatory be admitted into Heaven which no unclean thing can enter into for Concupiscence which remains always in this life is not incompatible with this entire purity since it is neither Sin nor a spot in the Soul But this Soul hath not her Original integrity being not exempt either from daily faults or from Concupiscency which are incompatible with their integrity To speak so is to speak with the Salt of Wisdom wherewith all our Words ought to be seasoned XLI False THE Soul in this state hath her Original integrity she sees God face to face she does enjoy him as fully as the Blessed To speak at this rate is to fall into the Heresie of the Beggards XLII ARTICLE True THE Union called by mystical Men essential and substantial consisteth in a simple and disinterested Love which fills all the affections of the whole Soul and which is exercised by Acts so peaceable and so uniform that they seem to be but one though they be several really distinguished Acts. Several mystical Writers have termed these Acts essential or substantial to distinguish them from Acts that are froward unequal and made as it were by the out-goings of a Love which is yet mixt and interested To speak so is to explain the true sense of mystical Writers XLII False THis Union becomes really essential between God and the Soul so that nothing is capable either to break or to alter it any more This substantial Act is permanent and indivisible as the substance of the Soul it self To speak at this rate is to teach an extravagancy as much contrary to all Philosophy as to Faith and to the true practice of Piety XLIII ARTICLE True GOD who conceals himself from the Wise and great ones reveals and communicates himself to the little ones and to the simple The transformed Soul is the Spiritual Man S. Paul speaks of that 's to say a Man acted and led by the Spirit of Grace in the way of pure Faith This Soul hath often both by Grace and by experience for all things of simple practise in the tryals and exercise of pure Love a knowledge which the Learned who have more science and humane Wisdom than experience and pure Grace have not She ought nevertheless to submit with heart as well as mouth not only to all the decisions of the Church but also to the Conduct of her Pastors as having a special Grace without exception to lead the Sheep of the flock XLIII False THE transformed Soul is the Spiritual Man of S. Paul so that she may judge of all the truths of Religion and be judged by no body She is the Seed of God that cannot Sin Unction teacheth her all so that she hath no need of being instructed by any body nor to submit to superiours To speak at this rate is to abuse the passages of Scripture and turn them to ones ruine 'T is to be ignorant that Unction which teacheth all teacheth nothing so much as obedience and suggesteth all truth of Faith and of practice only by inspiring the Ministers of the Church with an humble Docility In a word 't is to establish in the midst of the Church a Damnable Sect of Fanaticks and Independents XLIV ARTICLE True THE Pastors and Saints of all Ages have used a kind of an Oeconomy and secret in not speaking of the rigorous trials and of the most sublime exercise of pure Love but to those Souls to whom God had given already both attraction and light to it Though this Doctrine was the pure and simple perfection of the Gospel noted throughout the whole body of Tradition the Ancient Pastors proposed usually to the generality of Just Men no other than the practise of interested Love in proportion to their Grace and thus gave Milk to Infants while they distributed Bread to strong Souls To speak thus is to say what S. Clement Cassian and divers other Holy Authors both Ancient and Modern do constantly affirm XLIV False THere has been in all Ages among those that live Contemplative Lives a secret Tradition and such as has been unknown even to the body of the Church her self This Tradition would include secret Opinions beyond the truths of universal Tradition or these Opinions at least would be contrary to those of the common Faith and would exempt Souls from exercising all those Acts of an explicite Faith and dislimited Vertue which are no less essential to the ways of pure Love than to that which is interested To speak thus is to annihilate Tradition instead of multiplying it It is the way to make a sect of secret Hypocrites in the Bosome of the Church without her being ever able to discover them or to free her self from them Hereby the impious secret of the Gnosticks and Manicheans will be revived and all the Traditions of our Faith and Morals undermined ART XLV True ALL the Internal ways that are most eminent are so far from being above an habitual state of pure love that they are but the way to arrive at that bound of all perfection all inferiour degrees do not come up to this true estate The last degree which Mystick Writers call by the name of Transformation or Essential Union without any Medium is no more than a simple reality of this love without a peculiar interest This when true is the most safe state because it is the most voluntary and meritorious of all the states of Christian Justice and because 't is that which referrs all to God and leaves nothing to the Creature But on the contrary when 't is false and imaginary it is the heighth of illusion The Traveller after many Fatigues Dangers and Sufferings arriving at length upon the top of a Mountain from thence discerns at a distance his Native City and the end of his Journey and all his toils he is presently
overjoy'd at it believes himself to be already at the very gates of that City and that there is nothing now remaining but a little way and that very good for him but as he moves forwards the lengths and difficulties which he had not foreseen at first sight do proportionably increase he must be obliged to descend by Precipices into deep Vallies where he loses the sight of that City which he thought he could almost touch He must be forc'd oftentimes to creep up over sharp Rocks and 't is not without great trouble and dangers that he arrives at last at that City which he thought at first to have been so near him and so easie to come at It 's the very same thing with that Love which is entirely disinterested the first cast of the Eye discovers it in a wonderful perspective one thinks he has hold of it he supposes with himself that he is already confirmed therein or at least that there is between him and it but a short and even space but the more he advances towards it the more tedious and painful he finds the way There is nothing so dangerous for a Man as to flatter himself with this pretty Idea or Conceit and to believe that he lives in the practice of the same when it is not really so He that makes this Love to be speculative would fret himself to a Skeleton if God should put him to prove how this Love doth purifie and realize it self in the Soul In short he must have a care of believing that he hath the same in reality when he only has a view of it and is charmed with it That Soul which dares presume by a decisive reflection that he is arrived to it shews by his presumption how remote he is from it the small number of those that have reached it do not know whether they are really so and as often as they do reflect upon themselves in relation to it they are ready to believe it is not so with them when their Superiours declare the same unto them They speak of themselves as of another person in a dis-interested manner and without reflection and act with simplicity by a pure obedience according to true necessity without ever voluntarily judging or reasoning concerning their state In short tho' it be true to say that no man can set exact bounds to the operations of God in the Soul and that there is none but the Spirit of God that can sound the depths of this same Spirit yet it is also true to say that no internal perfection can allow a Christian to dispence with those real acts that are essential to the accomplishment of the whole Law and that all perfection reduces it self to this habitual state of sole and pure love which effects in these Souls with a dis-interested Peace all that which a mixt love does in others with some remains of an interested eagerness In a word there is nothing but a peculiar interest that cannot and which ought not at all to be found in the exercise of dis-interested Love but all the rest is there still in a more abundant manner than ordinarily in just Persons For us to speak with this precaution is to confine our selves within the bounds set us by our Fathers this is a Religious observance of Tradition and hereby is a relation given without any mixture of innovation of the Experiences of the Saints and the Language they have used in speaking sometimes of themselves with simplicity and pure Obedience XLV False TRansformed Souls are capable of judging themselves and others or to be assured of their internal Gifts without any dependance upon the Ministers of the Church or else direct themselves without any Character without an extraordinary Call and even with marks of an extraordinary Vocation against the express Authority of Pastors To talk in this manner is to teach an innovated Doctrine full of Prophaneness and to attack one of the most essential Articles of the Catholick Faith which is that of an entire subordination of Believers to the Body of Pastors to whom Jesus Christ said he that heareth you heareth me The Conclusion of all these Articles HOly indifference is nothing else but disinterested Love Tryals are nothing else but the Purification of it the abandoning of the same is but its exercise in Tryals The disappropriating of Vertue is nothing besides the laying aside of all Complaisance all Consolation and all Self-Interest in the exercise of Vertue by pure Love The retrenching of all activity implies no more than the retrenching of all inquietude and interested eagerness for pure Love Contemplation is but the plain Exercise of this Love reduced to one simple Motive Passive Contemplation is but pure Contemplation without activity or eagerness A Passive state whether it be in a time bounded with pure and decent Contemplation or in those Intervals wherein a Man does not at all Contemplate doth exclude neither the real Action nor the successive Acts of the Will nor the specifick distinction of Vertue as they relate to their proper Subjects but only simple activity or interested inquietude it 's a peaceable Exercise of Prayer and Vertue by pure Love Transformation and the most essential or immediate Union is nothing but the Habit of that pure Love which of it self makes up all the internal Life and then becomes the only Principle and Motive of all the deliberate aâ—â— meritorious Acts but this habitual State is never fixt unvariable nor unliable to be lost The true love of that which is right saith Leo carries in it self Apostolick Authorities and Canonical Sanctions THE Lord Archbishop of Cambray 's LETTER TO THE POPE Most Holy Father I have resolved with utmost expedition as well as with all manner of submission and respect to your Holiness to send the Book that I wrote some time since concerning the Maxims of the Saints in relation to an internal Life It 's a duty which I am obliged to pay not only to the Supream Authority with which you preside over all the Churches but also to those Favours you have been pleased to heap upon me But to the end that nothing may be omitted in a matter of such importance and concerning which Mens Minds are so tossed about and agitated and for removing any Equivocations that might arise from the diversity of Languages I have undertaken to make a Latin Version of my whole Work to which I apply my self wholly and will very quickly send this Translation to be laid down at your Holiness his Feet I would to God most Holy Father I could my self in person bring you my Book with a zealous and submissive heart and then receive your Apostolical Benediction but the Affairs of the Diocess of Cambray during the misfortune of the War and the instruction of the young Princes which the King has done me the honour to intrust me with will not allow me room to hope for this Consolation And now most Holy Father I come to give the
Reasons that have induced me to write concerning the internal Life and Contemplation I have observed That some Persons abusing the Maxims of the Saints that have been so often approved of by the Holy See thought by little and little to insinuate pernicious Errors thereby and that others who knew nothing of spiritual things turned the same into a Ridicule The abominable Doctrine of the Quietists under the appearance of Perfection glided secretly into divers parts of France and even into our Low Countries Several Writings whereof some were too Uncorrect as others might be justly suspected of Errors stirred up the indifferent Curiofity of the Faithful against them Some Ages ago diverse mystical Writers arraigning the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience had favoured the same yet not knowing the Error concealed under it this they did out of an excess of warm Piety want of precaution in the choice of Terms made use of by them and a pardonable ignorance of the Principles of Theology This is that which has inflamed that ardent Zeal of divers illustrious Bishops and this gave them an occasion to Compose Thirty Four Articles which they were pleased to draw up and lodge with me This also has brought them to Censure certain little Books some Passages of which being taken in the sense that doth naturally arise from them have deserved to be condemned But most Holy Father Men have not removed far from one Extream without falling into another some persons have taken occasion against our intention to Ridicule as an extravagant Chimera the pure love of a Contemplative Life For my own part I thought by taking diligent heed to an exact medium it was the way to separate Truth from Error and that which is Ancient and Stanch from what is new and dangerous this is that which I have endeavoured to do according to my weak Abilities but to know whether I have succeeded therein or no is left most Holy Father to your Judgment and 't is my business respectfully to give ear to St. Peter as living and speaking in you whose Faith shall never fail I have chiefly applyed my self to make this Work concise and therein have followed the Advice of very knowing Persons who have desired that a ready and an easy remedy should be found out not only against the Illusion which is Contagious but also against the scoffing of prophane Persons Great regard then was to be had for those Souls that are full of Candour who being more simple in that which is good than precaution'd against Evil could not discern that horrible Serpent that was hid under the Flowers regard also must have been had to the Contempt of Criticks who would not separate the Ascetick or studious Traditions and precious Maxims of the Saints from the vile Doctrine of Hypocrites Wherefore it has been thought necessary to make a kind of a Dictionary of Mystical Theology in order to prevent good Souls from passing beyond those Bounds set unto us by our Fathers I have therefore in as short a Style as possibly I could comprized the Desinitions of those Terms which the Practice of the Saints have Authorized I have also imploy'd the weight and authority of a Censure to endeavour to crush down a Heresy so full of Impudence it appeared to me most Holy Father as some sort of undecency that a Bishop should expose those Monstrous Errours to the Publick without testifying at the same time the indignation and horror which the Zeal of God's Cause had inspir'd him with against it Nevertheless I pray God that I may not have lost the sight of my own weaknesses and spoken any thing presumptuously The supream Authority of the Holy See hath abundantly supplyed all my Defects the Soveraign Pontiffs upon a scrupulous examination of all the Writings of the Saints which have been Canoniz'd have upon all occasions approv'd of the true Maxims of the Ascetick or studious Life and contemplative Love Wherefore having kept close to that immutable Rule I hope I have without any danger of going out of the way fitted up the Articles which I have asserted as true ones As to those false ones which I have Condemned I have been led thereunto as it were by the Hand for I have in every thing taken the Solemn Decrees by which the Holy See hath Condemned the Sixty Eight Propositions of Molino's for my Model therein And so having such an Oracle for my Foundation I have endeavoured to lift up my Voice to speak In the first place I have Condemned the permanent Act which has never any occasion to be reitterated as being a Poisoned Spring of Idleness and inward Lethargy In the next place I have Established the indispensible necessity of a distinct Exercise of every Virtue Thirdly I have resisted a perpetual and uninterrupted Contemplation which would exclude Venial Sins the distinction of Virtue and unvoluntary distractions as being incompatible with the Condition of a Traveller Fourthly I have rejected passive Prayer which would exclude the real Cooperation of Free-will for the formation of Meritorious Actions Fifthly I have allowed of no other Rest neither in Prayer nor in other Exercise of the Internal Life save that peace of the Holy Ghost whereby the most pure Souls frame their Actions in so uniform a manner that they appear to Persons without Knowledge not as distinct Acts but a simple and permanent Unity with God Sixthly For fear that the Doctrine of pure Love so much Authorized by so many Fathers of the Church and other Saints might serve as an Azilum or Refuge to the Quietists I have set my self chiefly to shew that in what degree of Perfection soever it may be and how great the Purity of Love wherewith one is filled may arrive to yet he must always retain in his Heart the Hope wherewith we are saved in pursuance to what the Apostle saith concerning Faith Hope and Charity Now these three things Faith Hope and Charity remain but Charity is the greatest We must therefore always hope for desire and pray for our Salvation since 't is God's will it should be so and that he requires that we should will it for his glory thus Hope preserves it self in its proper Exercise not only by the means of the infused Habit but also by its own proper Acts which being commanded and enobled by Charity as the Schools phrase it they are most absolutely carried to the sublime end of the same Charity which is nothing else but the pure glory of God Seventhly This state of pure Charity is not to be found but in a very few perfect Souls and that 't is there only in an habitual manner When I say habitual God forbid that an unamissible state or such as is exempted from any variation should be meant If this estate be still subject to daily Sins with how much more reason is the same compatible with Acts performed from time to time which cease not to be good and meritorious tho' they may be
a little less pure and disinterested It 's enough for this State that the Acts of Vertue are performed therein very frequently with that perfection that Charity diffuses there and with which the same are animated All these things are agreeable to our thirty four Articles I shall joyn to the Book which I have published most Holy Father a Collection in Manuscript of the Sentiments of the Fathers and Saints of the last Age concerning the Pure Love of Contemplatives to the end that that which is but plainly set out in the First Book may be proved in the Second by the Testimonies and Opinions of the Saints of all Ages I entirely submit Most Holy Father both the one and the other Pieces to the Judgement of the Holy Roman Catholick Church who is the Mother Church of all and has taught all the rest I devote all that is mine and my self to your Holiness as a Son ought to do that is full of Zeal and Respect towards you But if my Book in French hath been already brought unto your Holiness I most humbly intreat you most Holy Father to decide nothing concerning it 'till such time as you have seen my Latin Version that will be dispatched away with all speed There is nothing now remaining for me save to wish a long Pontificate to the chief of Pastors who Rules the Kingdom of Christ with so disinterested an Heart and who says with so much applause from all the Roman Catholick Nations to his Illustrious Family I know you not In doing thus daily I think I seek the Glory and Consolation of the Church the Re-establishment of its Discipline the propagation of the Faith the Extirpation of Schisms and Heresies and lastly an abundant Harvest in the Field of the Soveraign Father of the Family I shall for ever c. The Lord Arch-Bishop of Cambray 's Letter of August the 3d 1697. SIR BE not concerned for me the business of my Book is gone to Rome if I am under a mistake the Authority of the Holy See will undeceive me and this is that I wait for with a gentle and lowly Mind if I have illy exprest my self they will reform my expressions If the matter appears to require a more large explication that I will readily do by way of Additions If my Book contains nothing in it but what is pure Doctrine I shall have the consolation to know exactly what a Man ought to believe and what to reject I shall not in this Case fail to make all those Additions which without weakning the truth will be conducive to enlighten and edifie such Readers as are most subject to take the allarm But Sir in short if the Pope condemns my Book I shall be the first God willing that will condemn it and put out a Mandate to forbid the reading of it in the Diocess of Cambray I shall only intreat the Pope to do me the favour exactly to note those passages he condemns and the sense whereon he grounds his Condemnation to the end that I may subscribe thereunto without restriction and that I may never run the risque of defending excusing or tolerating the sense it s condemned in Being thus disposed thro' the blessing of God I am at rest and have nothing to do but to wait the disposition of my Superiour in whom I acknowledge the Authority of Jesus Christ to be lodged disinterested Love must not be defended but with a sincere disinterest We have not to do herein with a point of Honour nor with the Opinion of the World nor yet with that profound humiliation wherein Nature may fear to meet with ill success I think I act with integrity I am as much afraid of being presumptuous and possessed with a base shame as to be feeble politick and fearful in the defence of truth If the Pope condemns me I shall be thereby undeceived and the vanquished shall reap all the real fruits of the Victory Victoria scedet victis saith St. Augustine But if on the other side the Pope does not condemn my Doctrine I shall endeavour both by my silence and respect to pacifie those of my Fraternity whose Zeal has animated them against me by laying a sort of Doctrine to my charge which I abhor and always did as much as they do Perhaps they will do me justice when they see my sincerity There are but two things that my Doctrine was intended to comprehend the first whereof is that Charity is a love to God sor his own sake distinct from that motive of blessedness that we find in him Secondly that Charity in the life of the most perfect Souls is that which precedes all other Vertues which animates them and commands the acts so as to make them bear to its end insomuch that the Just thus qualified do then ordinarily exercise hope and all other Vertues with all the disinterest of Charity it self because this same state of the Soul is not without its exception being no other than an habitual one and not immutable God knows I have never intended to teach any thing else that exceeded these limitations And hence it is that I have said in my speaking concerning pure Love which is Charity so far as it animates and commands all other distinct Vertues Whoever allows of nothing beyond that is within the confines of Tradition whoever passeth those bounds is already out of the way I do not think there is any danger that the Holy See should condemn a Doctrine so well grounded upon the Authority of the Fathers of the Schools and of so many great Saints that the Church of Rome has Canoniz'd As for the manner of Expressions contained in my Book if they should be any ways prejudicial to truth for want of being correct I consign them to the judgement of my Superiour and I should be very sorry to trouble the repose of the Church were there no more in it than the interest of my Person and of my Book These are my thoughts of the matter Sir I go for Cambray having Sacrificed unto God with my whole heart all that I could Sacrifice to him thereupon permit me to exhort you to be of the same mind I have introduced nothing that related to Humane Affairs and Temporals into the Doctrine which I was convinced of the truth of neither have I forbore to let the Pope know any of those Reasons that could support this Doctrine This is enough let God do the rest if it be his Cause that I have vindicated let us not be concerned at the intentions of Men or their proceedings it is God alone that is to be looked to in all this let us be the Children of Peace and Peace will rest upon us it will be bitter but the same will be so much the more pure Let us not spoil good intentions by an humour by any Heat by any Humane Industry by any Natural Impression for the justifying of our selves Let us plainly give an account of our Faith let us
suffer our selves to be Corrected if there be need of it and let us endure Correction when we do not even deserve the same As for you Sir you ought to have no other portion therein than Silence Submission and Prayer Pray for me that am under such pressing difficulty pray for the Church that undergoes these Scandals pray for those who rise up against me to the end that they may be endued with the Spirit of Grace in order to undeceive me if I 'am in the wrong or to do me justice if I am otherwise Lastly pray for the interest of Prayer it self which is in danger and stands in need of being justified Perfection is become very suspicious they are not for removing it so far from lazy Christians and such as are full of self Disinterested Love would appear to be the Spring of Illusions and abominable Wickedness they have accustomed Christians under pretence of safety and precaution to seek after God no other way than by the motive of their blessedness and advantage to themselves Those Souls that have made most proficiency are forbid to serve God by the pure motive whereby hitherto it hath been wished that Sinners themselves would return from their Errors I mean the goodness of the infinitely amiable God I know that pure Love and abandoning ones self is abused I know that Hypocrites overthrow the Gospel under such good names but pure Love is no less a perfection of Christianity and 't is the worst of all Remedies to go about to abolish those things that are perfect to prevent being abused therewith God knows how to make better provision therein than Men. Let us be humble let us hold our peace instead of reasoning concerning Prayer let us be engaged in it in so doing we shall defend our selves our strength will consist in our silence I am c. Paris Aug. 3d 1697. THE DECLARATION Of the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Prelates Lewis Antony de Noailles Arch-Bishop of Paris James Benigne Bossuet Bishop of Meaux and Paul Godet Desmarais Bishop of Chartres upon the subject Matter of a Book Intituled An Explication of the Maxims of the Saints concerning the Internal Life AS we have been long since called to bear Witness it 's time at last we should make answer The most Illustrious and most Reverend Arch-bishop of Cambray as well in the very beginning as Preface of his Book called An Explication of the Maxims of the Saints c. hath made mention of two of our number whose Doctrine and Decisions contained in the Thirty Four Articles he hath only taken upon him more fully to explicate and which the third of us by a publick Act hath agreed to and Subscribed The same most Illustrious and most Reverend Arch-bishop hath in the Letter he wrote to our Holy Father the Pope Innocent XII grounded what he says upon the same Articles and Censures of the Bishops against some Books that have been written And we were the only three who have thought it our Duty to Censure those Books or rather according to the Author's words certain places in the said Book Nevertheless they are not some places as the same Author says that we have taken upon us to censure but the greatest part of them nay and we would have the whole Books condemned and the Spirit that runs quite thro' them But as the same Epistle takes notice our Zeal is not raised against certain Mystick Persons in former Ages who laboured under a pardonable ignorance of Theological Dogma's but our Censures and Articles are level'd at the Quietists of our own time who are well known amongst us Neither have we recourse to the obvious and natural sense of things as if there were some more occult meaning couched under them which perhaps might at the same time be tolerated but we have thought it necessary to expose the Poison lying hid in those Books We know nothing of any bodies taking occasion from our Articles and Censures to deride pure Love and Contemplation as the Illusions of a troubled Brain as the said Letter intimates It 's also said in the same Letter That the principal Points which have been treated on in the Book having been anew Explained are found to be conformable to the said Articles This Conclusion and the intention we find there is to have what is contained in the said Book to be thought agreeable to our Sentiments we are necessitated to explain our selves upon this Head tho' it is not without trouble of mind that we are brought to this Extremity having before used all sorts of means to gain the Judgment of our Brother herein 't is pure necessity that constrains us hereunto to the end we may prevent the Belief of our approving this Work and above all out of the Fear we are in lest our Holy Father the Pope whom we perfectly honour and to whom as to our Head we are inviolably united should be perswaded that we favour a Doctrine which the Church condemns We shall begin by shewing the Reasons that occasion'd the Articles which the Book Entituled An Exposition of the Maxims of the Saints c. makes mention of There was a certain Woman living amongst us who having put out a Pamphlet called a Short Method c. and some others also and spread up and down certain Manuscripts of the Quietists seemed to us to be a leader of that Sect she desired she might be allowed three Counsellors with whose Advice she might acquiesce the most illustrious Author of this book was added for a Fourth the design was to consine her and those of her Party within some bounds to remove all the subterfuges they had and to shew them from the undoubted Articles of our Faith the Lord's Prayer the Doctrine of the Holy Scripture Holy Tradition and Saints that their Tenets were condemned to all intents and purposes either from their own Nature or by Councils and the Apostolick See this was the end of the Articles that contained our decisions and Censures our business now is to see whether the said Book did explain and open the same or overthrow them In the first place Theological or Divine Hope is taken away in that Book as well out of the state of Grace as within it among the perfect And when it is said that without the state of Grace before Justification one may love God with the love of Hope in such a manner that self-love that is the love of our own Interest and Happiness be the principal Motive of the said love of Hope and prevalent above the other motive of love to God's Glory it from thence follows that Hope which depends upon a created good and self interest is no Divine or Theological Virtue but a Vice and thence it is that that Axiom of St. Augustine is applyed tho' in a wrong sense That which proceeds not from a principle of Charity proceeds from Concupiscence and from that love which is the root of all Vices and which the Jealous