Chapter II (2)

The attempt to make mysticism definite and intelligible must always
involve more or less of inconsistency. Nevertheless, the enterprise
has been repeatedly undertaken; and it is a remarkable fact, that
such efforts have almost invariably originated in France. Mysticism
and scholasticism—the spirit of the cloud and the spirit of the
snow—reign as rivals throughout the stormy region of the Middle Age.
The reaction against the extreme of each nourished its antagonist.
Hugo and Richard of St. Victor endeavoured to effect a union, and to
reconcile these contending products of the heart and brain. In that
ascetic abstraction, which hides in darkness all the objects of
sense, they sought to develop, from the dull and arid stem of school
divinity, the most precious blossoms of the feeling; and their
mysticism resembles those plants of the cactus-tribe which unfold,
from their lustreless and horny leaves, gorgeous flowers, that
illumine, with phosphoric radiance, the darkness of the tropical
night. The Victorines were succeeded in the same path by
Bonaventura, a Frenchman by education, if not by birth, more a
schoolman than a mystic; and, in the fifteenth century, by Gerson.
These are mystics who have no tales to tell of inspiration and of
vision—their aim is to legitimize rapture, to define ecstasy, to
explain the higher phenomena of the spirit on the basis of an
elaborate psychology, to separate the delusive from the real in
mysticism, and to ascertain the laws of that mystical experience, of
which they acknowledged themselves to be but very partially the
subjects. With this view, Gerson introduced into mysticism, strange
to say, the principle of induction; and proposed, by a collection
and comparison of recorded examples, to determine its theory, and
decide its practice. In the _Maxims of the Saints_, Fénélon carries
out the idea of Gerson, as far as was requisite for his immediate
purpose. Both are involved in the same difficulty, and fall into the
same contradiction. What Molinos was to Fénélon, Ruysbroek was to
Gerson. Fénélon wished to stop short of the spiritualism condemned
as heretical in Molinos; Gerson, to avoid the pantheism he thought
he saw in Ruysbroek. Both impose checks, which, if inefficacious,
amount to nothing; if effective, are fatal to the very life of
mysticism,—both hold doctrines, to which they dare not give scope;
and both are, to some extent, implicated in the consequences they
repudiate by the principles they admit.

Mysticism in France contrasts strikingly, in this respect, with
mysticism in Germany. Speaking generally, it may be said that
France exhibits the mysticism of sentiment, Germany the mysticism
of thought. The French love to generalize and to classify. An
arrangement which can be expressed by a word, a principle which
can be crystallized into a sparkling maxim, they will applaud. But
with them conventionalism reigns paramount—society is ever present
to the mind of the individual—their sense of the ludicrous is
exquisitely keen. The German loves abstractions for their own
sake. To secure popularity for a visionary error in France, it
must be lucid and elegant as the language—it must be at least an
ingenious and intelligible falsehood; but in Germany, the most
grotesque inversions of thought and of expression will be found no
hindrance to its acceptability, and the most hopeless obscurity
may be pronounced its highest merit. In this respect, German
philosophy sometimes resembles Lycophron, who was so convinced
that unintelligibility was grandeur, as to swear he would hang
himself if a man were found capable of understanding his play of
_Cassandra_. Almost every later German mystic has been a secluded
student—almost every mystic of modern France has been a brilliant
conversationalist. The genius of mysticism rises, in Germany, in
the clouds of the solitary pipe; in France, it is a fashionable
Ariel, who hovers in the drawing-room, and hangs to the pendants
of the glittering chandelier. If Jacob Behmen had appeared in
France, he must have counted disciples by units, where in Germany
he reckoned them by hundreds. If Madame Guyon had been born in
Germany, rigid Lutheranism might have given her some annoyance;
but her earnestness would have redeemed her enthusiasm from
ridicule, and she would have lived and died the honoured precursor
of modern German Pietism. The simplicity and strength of purpose
which characterize so many of the German mystics, appear to much
advantage beside the vanity and affectation which have so
frequently attended the manifestations of mysticism in France. In
Germany, theosophy arose with the Reformation, and was as much a
theology as a science. In France, where the Reformation had been
suppressed, and where superstition had been ridiculed with such
success, the same love of the marvellous was most powerful with
the most irreligious—it filled the antechamber of Cagliostro with
impatient dandies and grandees, trembling, and yet eager to pry
into the future—too enlightened to believe in Christ, yet too
credulous to doubt the powers of a man before whose door fashion
drew, night after night, a line of carriages which filled the
street.

Note to page 245.

A full account of the proceedings against the Quietists will be found in the narrative above referred to and in Arnold’s _Kirchen-und-Ketzer Geschichte_, th. III. cap. xvii.

The motive of Père La Chaise in urging this prosecution appears to have been twofold: partly, to start heretics whom his Most Christian Majesty might magnificently hunt, and still more to weaken the Spanish party and embarrass the Pope, who was suspected of leaning toward the house of Austria. The audacity of the Jesuits—so formidable always, from their numbers, their union, their unscrupulousness, and now emboldened by support so powerful, struck all Rome with terror. A man widely reputed for sanctity, throughout a period of twenty years—an honoured guest within the walls of the Vatican—who had long enjoyed, and not yet forfeited, the warm friendship of the Head of the Church—was suddenly declared the most dangerous enemy to the faith of Christendom. To accomplish the ruin of this victim, a venerable pontiff was threatened with the most grievous insult which infallibility could suffer. Within a month, two hundred persons were thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition,—and many of these were eminent for rank, for learning, or for piety. Only the grossly stupid or the scandalously dissolute could feel themselves secure. To hint a question concerning the justice of a single step in prosecutions remarkable, even at Rome, for the baseness and illegality of their agents and their acts—to live a quiet and retiring life—to appear infrequently at confession or at mass,—these were circumstances sufficient to render any man suspected of Quietism; and if the informer were hungry, or a private enemy alert, from suspicion to conviction was but a step.

But the persecutors were destined to meet with many mortifications in their course. Molinos and his friend Petrucci—a bishop, and afterwards a cardinal—defended themselves, on their first summons, with such skill and intrepidity, that the writings which had been circulated against them were condemned as libellous. The case of Petrucci represents that of the great majority against whom the charge of Quietism was brought. Not an accusation could be substantiated, save this,—that blameless as his life might be, he had grown remiss in some of those outward observances which are the pride of Pharisaic sanctity. Thus defeated at the outset, the Jesuits were reinforced and rendered victorious by the falsehoods of D’Etrees, who refused to hear a word Molinos had to say in defence of his own writings. The Count and Countess Vespiniani were arrested, with other persons, to the number of seventy. They were accused of omitting the exterior practices of religion, and of giving themselves to solitude and prayer. The Countess bravely answered, that she had discovered her manner of devotion only to her confessor; he must have betrayed her; who but idiots would confess, if confession was made the engine of the persecutor—if no secret was sacred—if to confess might be to lie at the mercy of a villain? Henceforward she would confess to God alone. A rank so high must be respected. Words so bold were dangerous. So the Vespiniani were set free. The circular letter sent out against the Quietists was treated with indifference by most of the Italian bishops—not unleavened, many of them, by this obnoxious kind of piety. Nay, worse! for once, an epistle from the Inquisition was published. The unfortunate letter escaped somehow—was translated into Italian—all Rome was reading it. The world looked in on the procedure of the Holy Office, to the shame and bitter vexation of its holy men. It was said that the Inquisition collected some twenty thousand letters, or copies of letters, sent and received by Molinos, and that when he was arrested, twenty crowns’ worth of letters addressed to him were seized at the post-office. So extended was the influence of the heretic—so little likely, therefore, to perish with him. Some ecclesiastics had the candour to admit that most of the Quietists showed themselves better instructed than their accusers, and confronted their judges so ably, with passages, authorities, and arguments, that they could only be silenced by authority and force.

The letter of Cardinal Caraccioli to Innocent, about the Quietists, represents them as persons who attempt passive mental prayer and ‘contemplatio,’ without the previous preparation of the ‘via purgativa.’ Dreadful to relate, some of them had been known to leave their rosaries unfingered, to refuse to make the sign of the cross, to declare crucifixes rather in their way than otherwise! They trusted rather to their inward attraction than to directors. Some, though laymen, and though married, communed daily—an ominous sign—for it betokened the lowering (in their minds, at least) of that high partition wall, which Rome had made so strong, between clergy and laity—between the religious _par excellence_ and the vulgar herd of Christians, who were to be saved only through the former. See _Bausset’s Histoire de Fénélon_, liv. ii.; _Pièces Justificatives_, No. II.

Note to page 259.

Fénélon could with ease bring from the arsenal of tradition even more proofs than he needed for the establishment of his doctrine. No prevarication or sophistry could conceal the fact that Bernard, Albertus Magnus, Francis de Sales, Theresa, Catharine of Genoa, and other saints, had used language concerning pure love, authenticating more than all that Fénélon was solicitous to defend. Thus much was proven,—even subtracting those passages which Fénélon unwittingly cited from an edition of De Sales’ _Entretiens_, said to be full of interpolations. The spiritual history of Friar Laurent and of Francis de Sales furnished actual examples of the most extreme case Fénélon was willing to put. Bossuet’s true answer was the reply he gave on the question to Madame de la Maisonfort,—such rare and extraordinary cases should be left out of our consideration, they should not be drawn within the range of possible experience, even for Christians considerably advanced. (_Phelipeaux_, liv. i. pp. 165-176.) In dispute with Fénélon, instead of admitting the fact, as with La Maisonfort, the polemic gets uppermost, and he tries very dishonestly to explain away the language of De Sales, while he misrepresents and garbles that of Fénélon. See _Cinquième Lettre en Réponse à divers Ecrits_; _Première Lettre en Réponse à celle de M. L’Evêque de Meaux_; _Maximes des Saints_, art. v.

Fénélon draws a subtile distinction between the object of love and the motive of love. That love in God which renders him our eternal blessedness, is among the _objects_ of our love—for God has so revealed himself, but is not the _motive_ of it. (_Max. des Saints_, art. iv.) Do we desire happiness less, he asks, because we desire it from a worthy motive,—_i.e._, as desired by God? Do we extinguish hope by exalting and regulating it? (_Entretiens sur la Religion_; Œuvres, tom. i. p. 35.) If any one of us knew that he should be annihilated at death, ought he less to love the infinitely Good? Is not eternal life a gift which God is free to grant or to withhold? Shall the love of the Christian who is to have eternal life be _less_ than that of him who anticipates annihilation, just because the love of God to him is so much _more_? Shall such a gift serve only to make love interested? (_Sur le Pur Amour_, xix. Compare also _Max. des Saints_, art. 10, 11, 12; _Correspondance_, let. 43.)

Fénélon is very careful to state that disinterested love is put to its most painful proof only in rare and extreme cases,—that the love which is interested is not a sin, only a lower religious stage, and that he who requires that staff is to beware how he throws it aside prematurely, ambitious of a spiritual perfection which may be beyond his reach. Bossuet endeavoured to show that if Fénélon’s doctrine were true, any love except the disinterested was a crime. (_Instructions et Avis_, &c., xx.; _Sur le Pur Amour_, p. 329; _Max. des Saints_, art. iii., and sundry qualifications of importance, concerning self-abandonment in the ‘épreuves extrêmes,’ art. ix.)

Note to page 259.

Such is the explanation in the letter to La Maisonfort. But Fénélon is not always—perhaps, could not possibly be—quite consistent with himself on this most delicate of questions. Beyond a doubt, the attempt practically to apply this doctrine concerning reflex acts constitutes the morbid element in his system—is the one refinement above all others fatally unnatural. There is great truth in Fénélon’s warnings against nervous, impatient introspection. Against an evil so prevalent, and so constantly fostered by the confessional and the directors, it was high time that some one should protest. But, alas! not only does Fénélon himself uphold, most zealously, that very directorship, but this strain after a love perfectly disinterested tempts the aspirant to be continually hunting inwardly after traces of the hated self, which will never quite vanish. Happy, according to Fénélon, is that religionist who can sacrifice, not only himself, but the sacrifice of himself—who burns the burnt offering—who gives up the consciousness of having given himself up—and who has reached, without knowing it, the pinnacle of Christian perfection. The reader will find specimens of his more guarded language in the letter referred to in the _Instructions et Avis_, &c. xx.; _Max. des Saints_, art. xiii.; _Lettres Spirituelles_, xiii. This last, a letter to Sœur Charlotte de St. Cyprien, is of importance, as containing definitions of mystical terms, similar in substance to those given in the _Maximes_, and moreover, highly approved by Bossuet, a year after the conferences at Issy. The strongest expressions are found in the _Instructions et Avis_, xxii. xxiii. He says,—Pour consommer le sacrifice de purification en nous des dons de Dieu, il faut donc achever de détruire l’holocauste; il faut tout perdre, même l’abandon aperçu par lequel on se voit livré à sa perte.—P. 342. Compare the allusion to the unconscious prayer of St. Anthony, _Max. des Saints_, art. xxi.

Note to page 259.

L’activité que les mystiques blâment n’est pas l’action réelle et la co-opération de l’âme à la grâce; c’est seulement une crainte inquiète, ou une ferveur empressée qui recherche les dons de Dieu pour sa propre consolation.—_Lettres Spirituelles_, xiii. So also, in the letter to La Maisonfort, he shows that the state of passivity does not preclude a great number of distinct acts. This is what the mystics call co-operating with God without activity of our own—a subtlety which those may seek to understand who care. Fénélon means to forbid a selfish isolation, which, on pretence of quietude, neglects daily duty. True repose in God calmly discharges such obligations as they come. We have seen an example of this in St. Theresa. Fénélon is not prepared to go the length of John of the Cross, who denies our co-operation altogether.—_Maximes des Saints_, art. xxx. and xxix. Ils ne font plus d’actes empressés et marqués par une secousse inquiète: ils font des actes si paisibles et si uniformes, que ces actes, quoique très-réels, très-successifs, et même interrompus, _leur paraissent_ ou un seul acte sans interruption, ou un repos continuel.

Fénélon is at any time ready to endorse all the counsels of John of the Cross, as to the duty of leaving behind (_outre-passer_) all apparitions, sounds, tastes, everything visionary, sensuous, or theurgic. With the grosser forms of mysticism he has no sympathy. He even endeavours to represent St. Theresa as an advocate of the purer and more refined mysticism, adducing the scarce-attainable seventh _Morada_, and overlooking the sensuous character of the preceding six. Theresa might, in the abstract, rate the visionless altitude above the valley of vision; but she preferred, for herself, unquestionably, the valley to the mountain. (_Max. des Saints_, xix.; _Lettres Spirituelles_, xiv. xvi. xvii.) In a letter on extraordinary gifts, he repeats the precept of John—‘Aller toujours par le non-voir;’ and ‘outre-passer les grands dons, et marcher dans la pure foi comme si on ne les avait pas reçus.’ He consigns the soul, in like manner, to a blank abstraction—to what Luther would have called ‘a void tedium.’ Tout ce qui est goût et ferveur sensible, image créée, lumière distincte et aperçue, donne une fausse confiance, et fait une impression trop vive; on les reçoit avec joie, et on les quitte avec peine. Au contraire, dans la nudité de la pure foi, on ne doit rien voir; on n’a plus en soi ni pensée ni volonté; on trouve tout dans cette simplicité générale, sans s’arrêter à rien de distinct; on ne possède rien, mais on est possédé.—_Lettre_ xxiii. The very acts of which Contemplation is made up, are, says Fénélon—‘Si simples, si directs, si paisibles, si uniformes, qu’ils n’ont rien de marqué par où l’âme puisse les distinguer.’—_Max. des Saints_, art. xxi. What such acts can be, must remain for ever a mystery unfathomable. It is for these inexplicable ‘_actes distincts_’ that the convenient ‘_facilité spéciale_’ is provided. (_Correspondance_, lettre 43; comp. _Lettres Spirituelles_, xiii. 448.)

Fénélon is also careful to guard his mysticism against the pretences of special revelation and any troublesome insubordination on the part of the ‘inner light,’ or l’attrait intérieur. The said ‘attrait,’ he justly observes, ‘n’est point une inspiration miraculeuse et prophétique, qui rende l’âme infaillible, ni impeccable, ni indépendante, de la direction des pasteurs; ce n’est que la grâce, qui est sans cesse prévenante dans tous les justes, et qui est plus spéciale dans les âmes élevées par l’amour désintéressé,’ &c.—_Loc. cit._ p. 450; _Max. des Saints_, art. xxix. and vii.

Note to page 262.

Fénélon gives his reasons for refusing to affix his approval to Bossuet’s book, in letters to Tronson and Madame de Maintenon, and in the _Réponse_. (_Correspondance_, lettres 52, 53, 57; _Réponse à la Relation_, chap, v.) It was a strong point for Fénélon against Bossuet that the latter had administered to Madame Guyon the sacraments, and granted her a favourable certificate, after reading the very books in which he professed afterwards to discover the most flagitious designs. In thinking better, therefore, of her intentions than of her language, Fénélon was no more her partisan or defender than Bossuet himself had been, up to that point. The act of submission Bossuet made her sign was not a retractation of error, but simply a declaration that she had never held any of the errors condemned in the pastoral letter,—that she always meant to write in a sense altogether orthodox, and had no conception that any dangerous interpretation could be put upon the terms which, in her ignorance, she had employed. (_Réponse à la Relation_, chap. i.) Phelipeaux sees in everything Fénélon wrote—the notes for the _Maxims_—the memoranda he sent to Bossuet, only one purpose—an insane resolve to defend Madame Guyon at all costs. He chooses to imagine that every step taken by her was secretly dictated by Fénélon. In fact, however, from the time the first suspicions arose, Fénélon began to withdraw from Madame Guyon his former intimacy. Nothing could exceed his caution in the avoidance of all implication with one whose language was susceptible of such fatal misconstruction. He could probably have taken no better course. He endeavoured to retain the controversy about the real question, that she might be forgotten. But it soon became evident that he himself was the party attacked, and with a virulence for which the scandals attributed to Madame Guyon furnished an instrument too tempting to be neglected. The charges against Madame Guyon increased in magnitude—not with her resistance, for she made none—but with that of Fénélon. (_Réponse_, xxiii. lxxxiv. lx.)

Note to page 264.

The motives with which Fénélon wrote and published the _Maxims_ are fully stated by himself. It was not to defend Madame Guyon, but to rescue the doctrine of pure love, threatened with destruction by the growing prejudice against the religion of the ‘inward way.’ It was not to excuse the Quietists, but to preserve, by due distinctions, souls attached to the true mysticism, from the illusions of the false. It was to give their full and legitimate scope to those venerable principles which a heretical Quietism was said to have abused. Mysticism was not to be extinguished by denying the truth it contained. Let, then, the true be separated from the false. The _Maxims_ were believed by Fénélon to contain no position contrary to the articles of Issy. The passages which cannot be reconciled with the limitations imposed by those articles are not his own, but quotations from De Sales and others. The Andalusian Illuminati had rendered the greatest saints suspected. Theresa, Alvarez, John of the Cross, stood in need of defenders. Ruysbroek, whom Bellarmine called the great contemplatist; Tauler, the Apostle of Germany, had required and had found champions, the one in Dionysius the Carthusian, the other in Blosius. The Cardinal Berulle felt compelled to enter the lists on behalf of St. Francis de Sales, for suspicions had been cast upon the wisdom of that eminent saint. Such examples might well alarm all those whose religion was embued with mysticism,—all those to whom a faith of that type was a necessity. Let it be openly declared where the path of safety lies, and where the dangers commence. The _Maxims_ were to furnish a _via media_ between the extreme of those who repudiated mystical theology altogether, and the excesses of the false mystics. The doctrines stigmatized as false throughout the _Maxims_, are what Fénélon supposed to be the tenets of Molinos, judging from the sixty-eight propositions condemned at Rome. The _Faux_, therefore, which opposes to the _Vrai_ is, for the most part, a mere chimera—made up of doctrines really believed by scarcely any one,—only taught, perhaps, now and then, by designing priests to women, for the purposes of seduction. See the ‘Avertissement’ to the _Maxims_; _Première Lettre en Réponse_, &c. p. 111; _Correspondance_, lettre 59; and the letter on the _Maxims_, to the Pope, _Phelipeaux_, p. 239.

Note to page 265.

Among the expelled was the brilliant, unmanageable Madame de la Maisonfort—the last woman in the world to have been shut up in the small monotony of St. Cyr. The history of mysticism at St. Cyr is a miniature of its history at large. The question by which it is tried is simply practical. Will it subordinate itself? If so, let it flourish. If not, root it out. Jean d’Avila, in his _Audi, Filia, et Vide_, has a section entitled _Des Fausses Révélations_. The whole question turns on this point. Is the visionary obedient to director, superior, &c.? If so, the visions are of God. If not, the visions are of the Devil. (_Œuvres du B. Jean D’Avila, Audi, Filia, et Vide_, chapp. 50-55.)

Madame Guyon, in becoming a religious instructress, as she did, only followed examples honoured by the Romish Church. Angela de Foligni, the two Catharines of Siena and of Genoa, St. Theresa, and others, had become the spiritual guides of numbers, both men and women, lay and ecclesiastic. At another juncture the kind of revival introduced by Madame Guyon might have met with encouragement. But her tendency was precisely that of which the times were least tolerant, and her disposition to follow her inward attraction rather than the counsels of prelates was magnified to proportions so portentous as to exclude all hope. The mysticism of Fénélon, judged by the test of obedience, should certainly have been spared. With an anxiety almost nervous, he inculcates wherever he can, those precepts of abject servility towards the director which are so agreeable to his Church. Wherever the director is in question, we lose sight of Fénélon, we see only the priest. But neither his own sincere professions of submission, nor his constant effort to place every one else under the feet of some ecclesiastic or other, could save him from a condemnation pronounced, not on religious, but political grounds.

In this respect Fénélon was anything but the _esprit fort_ which the scepticism of a later age so fervently admired. His letters on religious subjects abound in directions for absolute obedience, and in warnings against the exercise of thought and judgment on our own account. Though Madame de la Maisonfort knew herself utterly unfit for the religious vocation which Madame de Maintenon wished her to embrace, Fénélon could tell her that her repugnance, her anguish, her tears, were nothing, opposed to the decision of five courtly ecclesiastics, affirming that she had the vocation. He writes to say, La vocation ne se manifeste pas moins par la décision d’autrui que par notre propre attrait.—_Correspondance_, lettre 19. See also _Lettres Spirituelles_, 18, 19, 169. The inward attraction presents some perplexity. In one instance it is only another word for taste (_Ibid._ 35), and in another place the attraction of grace is equivalent to an act of observation and judgment (_Ibid._ 176). Here, with so many mystics, Fénélon can only follow the ‘_moi_,’ from which he fancies he escapes (441). The knot of these interior difficulties is cut by the directorship.

If Fénélon speaks uncertainly as to what is the inward attraction, and what is not, much more would the majority of mystics be sorely perplexed in their own case. The mystic, bewildered and wearied with intense self-scrutiny, sees all swim before his eyes. He can be sure of nothing. Whatever alternative he chooses, he has no sooner acted on the choice than he finds self in the act, and fancies the other road the right one. He is distressed by finding inclination and inward attraction changing, while he gazes, into each other, and back again, times without number. He is afraid to do what he likes—this may be self-pleasing. He is afraid to do what he does not like—for this may be perverseness—some culpable self-will, at least. The life of a devotee, so conscientious and so unfortunate, is rendered tolerable only by the director. The man who can put an end to this inward strife about trifles—which are anything but trifles to the sufferer—is welcomed as an angel from heaven. Casuistry, the creature of the confessional, renders its parent a necessity. Fénélon laments the abuses of the system, but he will rather believe that miracles will be continually wrought, to rescue the faithful from such mischiefs, than question (as bolder mystics, like Harphius had done) the institution itself. Even the mistakes and bad passions of superiors will be wrought into blessings for the obedient. (_Sur la Direction_, pp. 677, 678.)

Footnote 334:

O man, wouldst thou be grafted, and to the heavenly soil transplanted?
then must thou first thy branches wild hew quite away, that kindly
fruits may come forth in God’s image.

Footnote 335:

As far as his doctrine differs from that of Madame Guyon, it is for
the worse, because he approaches more nearly the extreme language of
some of the orthodox mystics in his communion.

Footnote 336:

This Dialogue of Malaval’s, which goes much beyond the mysticism of
Molinos, was approved by the Sorbonne, and found so conformable to the
teachings of St. Theresa, that the translation of it was dedicated to
the bare-footed Carmelites. The unobtrusive and not unqualified
mysticism of Molinos was stigmatised by the new epithet of Quietism,
and condemned as deadly error. The extravagant and wonder-working
mysticism of Theresa was extolled as the angelic life. See the
_Account of Molinos and the Quietists_, appended to the
_Autobiography_ of Madame Guyon: translated, I believe, from a French
work, entitled, _Recueil de Diverses Pièces concernant le Quiétisme et
les Quiétistes_.

Footnote 337:

Michelet, _Priests, Women, and Families_, p. 74.

Footnote 338:

See Note on p. 276.

Footnote 339:

_Upham_, vol. ii. pp. 3, &c. We find among these persons of rank a
religion of some vitality—no court-fashion merely. It was to the
_Introduction à la Vie Dévote_ (1608) of St. Francis de Sales that
Romanism was indebted for such hold as it really had on the upper
classes. None of the great ecclesiastical writers of France—not even
that darling of the fifteenth century, the _Imitatio Christi_, could
win the ears of people of the world. In the _Introduction_, however,
religion appeared neither ruthlessly stern, nor hopelessly
fantastical. It was not, on the one side, scowling, unkempt, sordid,
morose; it was not, on the other, impalpable, supersensuous, utterly
unintelligible, as well as undesirable, to worldly common sense.
Fashion and devotion met; piety and politeness embraced each other.
The _Introduction_ leaves to others the pains and raptures of the
mystic. It is written for the Marthas, not the Marys. Its readers,
personified in Philothea, are not supposed to be covetous of any
extraordinary gifts. De Sales possessed a lively fancy, and the tender
religious sentiment of his book, graced and lightened by its rainbow
illustrations, was a bright-winged Psyche, welcome everywhere. These
illustrations are drawn, sometimes from the farms, the flower-valleys,
and the snow-peaks of his native Savoy; sometimes from fabulous
natural history, from classic story, from the legends of the Church,
or the forms and usages of the world,—oftenest of all, from the ways
of infants and children, and from the love of mothers. St. Beuve
happily characterises the work, as ‘un livre qui, sur la table d’une
femme comme il faut ou d’un gentilhomme poli de ce temps-là, ne
chassait pas absolument le volume de Montaigne, et, attendait, sans le
fuir, le volume d’Urfé.’—_Causeries du Lundi_, tom. vii. p. 216.

Footnote 340:

This Harlay had owed his archbishopric to his libertinism in the days
of Madame de Montespan. His sun was now setting, ingloriously enough,
under the decent régime of the Maintenon, and there was nothing for it
but to atone for the scandals of his life and diocese by exemplary
rigour in matters of doctrine. The letters sent, and the documents
shown him, were the fabrication of La Mothe and his creature the
scrivener Gautier. They forged a letter from Marseilles, pretending
that La Combe had slept in the same chamber with Madame Guyon—and also
eaten meat in Lent. La Combe was further accused of having embraced
and taught the heresy of Molinos.

The real letters which followed Madame Guyon from the scenes of her
former activity breathe no suspicion of her character or motives. The
Bishop of Geneva, in a letter quoted by Fénélon, declared that his
only complaint against her was the indiscreet zeal with which she
everywhere propagated truths which she believed serviceable to the
Church. With that exception, ‘he esteemed her infinitely, and
entertained for her the highest imaginable regard.’ This was in 1683.
In 1688 he prohibited her books. But even in 1695, the same bishop
repeats his praise of her piety and morals, and declares that his
conscience never would have suffered him to speak of her in other than
respectful language.—See _Memoirs for the History of Madame de
Maintenon_ (London, 1757), vol. III. bk. xi. c. 2. _Autobiography_,
part III. chapp. i. ii. iii. Fénélon’s _Réponse à la Relation sur le
Quiétisme_, chap. i.

Footnote 341:

_Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon_, bk. ix. Madame
Guyon’s doctrine entered St. Cyr while the absolute vows were yet
under discussion.

Footnote 342:

_Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon_, bk. xi. chap. v.

Footnote 343:

_Autobiography_, part III. chap. ix. Fénélon declares that her
explanations at these interviews were such as to satisfy him of the
harmlessness and orthodoxy of her intention. She appeared to him often
extravagant or questionable in expression, from her ignorance; but so
favoured of God, that the most learned divine might gather spiritual
wisdom from her lips. She told him of certain instantaneous
supernatural communications, which came and vanished, she knew not
how. Yet, like John of the Cross, she did not rest on these, but
passed on into the obscure path of pure faith. For this he praised
her, and believed that though these experiences were illusory, a
spirit so lowly and so obedient had been faithful to grace throughout,
such involuntary deception notwithstanding.—_Réponse à la Relation sur
le Quiétisme_, chap. i. 10-13.

Footnote 344:

She still speaks, however, of the ‘_sense_’ vouchsafed her of the
state of the souls given to her, even when they were at a distance;
and of communication in God with those to whom the Lord united her by
the tie of spiritual maternity. _Autobiography_, part III. ch. viii.
Nothing was more likely to open her eyes to the questionable character
of some of her experiences, and to the unguarded nature of many of her
expressions, than the kindly yet searching inquiries of a man like
Fénélon, qualified by temperament to enter into her feelings, and a
master in mystical theology. Mr. Upham seems to me greatly to overrate
the influence of Madame Guyon on Fénélon. To her fancy, her
imagination might at times depict him as a spiritual son: he was, in
fact, a friendly judge.

Footnote 345:

When called to separate the true mysticism from the false in the
writings of Madame Guyon, Bossuet was not only ignorant of Tauler,
Ruysbroek, Harphius, and others; he had not even read Francis de Sales
or John of the Cross. Fénélon, at his request, sent him a collection
of passages from Suso, Harphius, Ruysbroek, Tauler, Catharine of
Genoa, St. Theresa, John of the Cross, Alvarez, De Sales, and Madame
de Chantal. With just indignation does Fénélon expose the artifice by
which Bossuet afterwards attempted to turn this confidence against
him.—_Réponse à la Relation sur le Quiétisme_, chap. ii. 18-27.

Footnote 346:

_History of Madame de Maintenon_, bk. XI. chap. vii.

Footnote 347:

_History of Madame de Maintenon_, bk. XI. chap. vii. Bausset,
_Histoire de Fénélon_, liv. ii. p. 295. The high opinion entertained
of Fénélon by Madame de Maintenon was, as yet, unshaken. She knew that
though the friend of Madame Guyon, he was not her advocate. But she
was called to side with the man of charity or the man of zeal—the
liberal man or the bigot; and the issue could not long be doubtful.
Fénélon early saw the signs of danger. We find him striving to
moderate the enthusiasm of Madame de la Maisonfort—to reconcile her to
the regulations of Godet—to repress her indiscreet zeal in behalf of
her cousin, Madame Guyon.—_Correspondance de Fénélon_, Lettres 24, 26,
29, 30.

Footnote 348:

_Autobiography_, part III. chap. xiii. Phelipeaux gives in full the
correspondence on both sides, _Relation de l’Origine, du Progrès et de
la Condamnation du Quiétisme répandu en France_ (1732), liv. i. pp.
73, &c. His account abounds in misrepresentations, and does little
more, in the first part, than echo the _Relation sur le Quiétisme_ of
Bossuet, to whom the abbé was devoted. But his minuteness of detail,
and the copious insertion of important letters and documents on either
side, give to the heavy narrative considerable value. In a subsequent
interview between Bossuet and Madame Guyon, she declared herself
unable to pray for any particular thing—the forgiveness of her sins,
for instance. To do so was to fail in absolute abandonment and
disinterestedness. Bossuet was shocked. Madame Guyon promised and
meant, to be all submission; but conscience would be unmanageable at
times. Bossuet writes her long, sensible, hard-headed letters, in
which, without much difficulty, he exposes her error, and leaves her
no ground to stand on. She, however, must still humbly suggest that
the exercise of love embraces all petitions, and that as there is a
love without reflexion, so there may be a prayer without reflexion—a
substantial prayer, comprehending all others.—_Phelipeaux_, p. 111.

Footnote 349:

Her request was made to Madame de Maintenon for commissioners, half
clerical, half lay, to examine into the scandals which had been set
afloat against her character.—_Phelipeaux_, liv. i. p. 114.
_Autobiography_, part III. chap. xv.

Footnote 350:

_Autobiography_, chapp. xvi. xvii. See also her letter to the three
commissioners, in _Phelipeaux_, p. 117. Harlay heard with indignation
of this Conference at Issy, to decide upon a heresy which had been
unearthed in his diocese. He endeavoured to rouse the suspicions of
Louis, but in vain. He determined himself to condemn the writings of
Madame Guyon, before the Commissioners could come to a decision.
Madame de Maintenon informed Bossuet, who paid a visit without loss of
time to his metropolitan, complimented him on the censure he was about
to fulminate, gave every explanation, and took his departure with
polite assurances that the verdict of Issy would but reiterate the
condemnation pronounced by the vigilant Archbishop of Paris. So
completely was the cause of Madame Guyon prejudged.—_Phelipeaux_, p.
125.

Footnote 351:

_Autobiography_, part III. chapp. xviii. xix. _Réponse à la Relation_,
&c., I. ii. 3. _Upham_, vol. II. chapp. x. and xi.

Footnote 352:

The articles at first proposed to Fénélon for his signature were
thirty in number. The 12th and 13th, the 33rd and 34th, were wanting.
He said that he could only sign these thirty articles _as they were_,
‘_par déférence_,’ and against his persuasion. Two days afterwards,
when the four additional articles were laid before him, he declared
himself ready to sign them with his blood. The 34th article is the
most important of the four, as bearing directly on the most critical
question arising from the doctrine of disinterested love. It allows
that doctrine expressly, if words have meaning, and occupies all the
ground Fénélon himself was concerned to maintain in its defence.
(_Entretiens sur la Religion_, Fén. Œuvres, tom. i. p. 34.) The
article is in substance as follows:—On peut inspirer aux âmes peinées
et vraiment humbles un consentement à la volonté de Dieu, quand même,
par une supposition très-fausse, au lieu des biens éternels promis aux
justes, il les tiendrait dans les tourments éternels, sans néanmoins
les priver de sa grâce et de son amour.—_Réponse à la Relation_, &c.,
chap. iii. _Phelipeaux_, liv. i. pp. 131, 135-137.

Footnote 353:

See Note on p. 278.

Footnote 354:

See second Note on p. 278.

Footnote 355:

See Note on p. 279.

Footnote 356:

Witness the panegyrics of Bossuet on Theresa and John of the Cross.
Compare also their different verdicts on the former. Fénélon says,
writing to Madame de Maintenon, ‘Quelque respect et quelque admiration
que j’aie pour Sainte Thérèse, je n’aurais jamais voulu donner au
public tout ce qu’elle a écrit.’—_Correspondance_, 31. Bossuet,
writing to Madame Guyon, says, ‘Je n’ai jamais hésité un seul moment
sur les états de Sainte Thérèse, parceque je n’y ai rien trouvé, que
je ne trouvasse aussi dans l’Ecriture,’ &c.—_Phelipeaux_, liv. i. p.
104. In the _Instructions sur les Etats d’Oraison_, Bossuet, in
speaking of the passive state, had allowed of certain miraculous
suspensions (impuissances) from which Fénelon shrinks—which he would
have located in some section _Faux_ of his _Maxims_—and to which
Noailles refused his approval.—_Réponse à la Relation_, xxviii. and
lxii.

Footnote 357:

Her letter to Bossuet furnishes a fair justification of this retreat
to Paris.—_Phelipeaux_, liv. i. p. 152. It gratifies our curiosity to
learn from this authority what books were seized when Desgrès, the
detective, entered the little house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, in
the name of the king. There were some plays of Molière, some romances,
such as _John of Paris_ and _Richard Lion-heart_, but these, said
Madame Guyon, belonged to the lacqueys of her son, a lieutenant in the
guards. But she acknowledged a _Griseldis_ and _Don Quixote_ as her
books. It is pleasing to find our fair saint, so far of like passions
with ourselves, amused with Sancho, and pitying Griseldis,—herself a
patient sufferer at the hands of blinded, pitiless men.

Footnote 358:

See Note on p. 280.

Footnote 359:

See second Note on p. 280.

Footnote 360:

Bausset, _Histoire de Fénélon_, liv. iii. p. 45. See also Note on p.
281.

Footnote 361:

Bausset, _Hist. de Fénélon_, liv. iii. 47. A minute, though very
partial account of all the squabbles and intrigues at Rome, from first
to last, may be read in _Phelipeaux_.—See also _Memoirs of Madame de
Maintenon_, xi. 19. _Corr. de Fénélon_, lettre 108.

Footnote 362:

Bausset, iii. 48-50; Aimé-Martin, _Etudes sur la Vie de Fénélon_, p.
14.

Footnote 363:

Bausset, 53-4; _Mem. of Maintenon_, XI. 20; Aimé-Martin, 15.

Footnote 364:

Bausset, 59-61. The means to which Bossuet could stoop—the falsehoods
he could coolly repeat, after detection, as though nothing had
happened—the misquotation, and misrepresentation—the constant reply to
awkwardly pressing arguments by malicious personalities—all these
things are exposed in Fénélon’s _Lettres en Réponse_, and in the
_Réponse_ itself. They are bad enough; but the student of controversy
is accustomed to this imperturbable lying, to these arts of
insinuation. The most detestable feature of all in the part played by
Bossuet, lies in that sleek cant and tearful unction with which he
calumniates—as though it almost broke his heart to write what he
exults in writing. Well might Fénélon request that he would not weep
over him so profusely while he tore him in pieces, and desire fewer
tears and more fair play! See the Preface to the _Réponse_; _Réponse_,
59; and _Réponse aux Remarques_, § vi.

Footnote 365:

Bausset, iii. 68, 69; Upham, vol. ii. p. 289.

Footnote 366:

Bausset, 77, 78.

Footnote 367:

Upham, vol. ii. ch. 18.