Book I. Dialogue III: Bossuet refutes in particular the insidious passages in the books of the new mystics, and lays down the rule for distinguishing between the writings of the false and the true mystics

I

Q. What are these books and these insidious passages ?

A. The chief books are the Moyen Court and the Interpretation du Cantique,

(f. Before beginning this discussion, since Bossuet so often quotes this new-fangled mystic, Mme. Guyon, could you not give me a sketch of her character in a few words ?

A. This is impossible, for she had so many connections, and so many different people were concerned in the goodness or badness of her reputation, that while some made her out to be the Teresa of the last century, others called her a woman of little virtue, and even according to many others of suspect virtue.

(f. But what is the truth about her?

A. That she was neither, for in the first place she was not a saint enlightened extraordinarily by God, because so many errors were found in her works that they were all condemned; in the second place she was not a woman of doubtful virtue, for after the longest and most exacting investigations in all the places where she had ever stayed, she was declared innocent, in spite of public rumours and most atrocious calumnies.

Q. By whom was she declared innocent?

A. By an assembly of all the Bishops at Saint Germain-en-Laye, at which Bossuet was present by the

King’s orders, and which met to report on all the events connected with Quietism.

Q. How was it that the Bishops judged her moral character so favourably ?

A. By the report of the said assembly, and by a certificate from Bossuet himself in which he declared himself satisfied with her conduct, and said that she might be allowed to continue to receive the Sacraments; that he did not find her in any way implicated in the abominations of Molinos or any others who had been condemned elsewhere, and lastly that he had never intended to include her in the mention of these abominations in his Ordinance.

Q. Since everything comes down to her writings, I beg you, give me a general idea of them.

A. This is what our author says about all the little books in question i¹ ‘ Those written by a woman have aroused most curiosity and most dazzled the world; and although she has given sufficient evidence for her own condemnation, we must none the less go through them and raise objections on many passages of which we have heard serious reports.’

Q. The books must be very plausible, then.

A. You may judge by this alone: At the beginning of this business, the lady having handed all her writings of her own accord to Bossuet himself, he read them, and at first said to the Due de Ghevreuse that he found in them an insight and an impressive grace that he had failed to find elsewhere.

Q. How did he come to judge so differently later on ?

A. Because when he had examined them further and taken extracts, he realized better their intention and spirit.

Q. But why were this intention and spirit found to be so evil, when but a short time after the condemnation the Archbishop of Paris told the lady she could keep her views but should modify her expressions ?

A. I believe with the Archbishop that the inner feelings of this lady were good and orthodox, but that her expressions were so bad, and in many places bore so much resemblance to those of Molinos, whose recent condemnation had justly alarmed the world, that she had in the end to withdraw them, that she subscribed to all the condemnations she had received from the Bishops, and that she submitted to anything their prudence and wisdom should decree, having regard to the times and circumstances.

II

Q. Now tell me some of the principal passages in her works, which were quoted by Bossuet as so many false principles tending to suppress every sort of pious act.

A. Here are four of the most remarkable:

(i) That we must support the intention of God,² which is to strip the soul of its own working so as to substitute his own: leave God to act;

(ii) That all our prayers being in our own interest,³ we must be indifferent to all well-being, either of body or soul, temporal or eternal;

(iii) That in order not to will anything but what God wills and has always willed,⁴ we must induce in ourselves a perfect abandonment, which is the most important thing in life and the key of all that is interior;

(iv) She concludes that we must leave the past to be forgotten,⁵ the future to Providence, and give the present to God.

Q. If this lady’s books are of such an apparently pious style throughout, I am not surprised that so many people, in city and court, were deceived by them, as Bossuet just told us. But what errors are to be found under such plausible language, coming as it does from a woman, from whom one would not expect complete exactitude ?

A. The Bishop of Meaux begins by answering your last words, for he put the same objection to himself; he did it in these words⁶⁷⁸

4 It will be said that so much exactitude must not be demanded of a woman: I am willing to concede that, provided that the claim is also abandoned, a claim which has been made since this book appeared—that this new exposition, erroneous in so many places, can only be the fruit of a special aid of the Holy Ghost?

(f. What faults, or rather what errors, did he note in these four passages ? 2

A. This laissez-faire, in this context, means, he says,

Q. I should never have thought that these four

A. Neither you nor the lady’s partisans, who also

Q. Whatever these circumstances, it is important

A. The abuse lies in the fact that this new mysticism

Q. What is the sense of the true mystics?

what he wills, both temporally and eternally, which some have called a kind of indifference to everything, never refers according to the true doctrine, to salvation, because it is of Faith that God both wills it and commands us to will it; it only concerns the means and the time of attaining it, and one’s degrees of merit and glory, according as God pleases.

(iii) This total abandonment to the good pleasure of God alone, which they say is the key to all interior things, does not consist, according to the true mystics, in not striving for one's salvation (God forbid !) but, while striving for it with all our might, in leaving the success of this great venture in the hands of God as the most certain hands, so as to strive with ever more confidence and freedom of spirit, with no trouble or anxiety.

(iv) This oblivion of the past and the future in order to think only of the present, is only advised, by the orthodox doctrine, to those people who, instead of profiting by the present, often merely lose it in a thousand restless journeys back to the past instead of counting on the mercy of God, and in a thousand useless reflections on the future instead of trusting in God’s providence.

Q. But where the mystics, without explaining themselves so clearly, use practically the same expressions as the new mystics, what right have we to give to the same words interpretations so favourable to the one side and so damning to the other?

A. This question is perhaps one of the most important in the whole matter: for it involves finding the solution of this apparent resemblance between true mystics and false.

Ill

Q. What is this solution which is so important, and on what principles is it founded ?

A. It is a plain principle, and gives an infallible rule for distinguishing justly between true mystics and false, even where they resemble each other most.

3 °⁹

Bossuet thus propounds this principle, which he made the constant rule of his various judgements: * We must discovery he says,¹⁰ 4 whither the principles and expressions of a book tendy and what isy in a wordy the system and spirit of the book.' ‘ It is on this rule, 5 he adds, 4 that the Church has always condemned the most plausible heretics, judging their doctrine by the force of their principles and by the totality of their expressions. 5 It is on this basis also that he said he condemned Malaval 5 s book, Pratique facile pour elever d la contemplation, which was dedicated to Cardinal Bona, and admired and appreciated by many other learned men, before the present disputes began, and the whole business was cleared up. Again, it is on this basis that he condemned Mme. Guyon’s two little books, for, he said, it is clear that the whole system, the whole spirit of these two works, and all this modern mystic’s reasonings, tend towards the cessation of all action, of all good desires and of all petitions.

But since in the ancient mystics, and many of the modern ones, the exact opposite is obvious from their style and the spirit and sum of their works, we have here a key for distinguishing the true from the false: thus Bossuet demonstrated that S. John of the Cross, S. Teresa, S. Francis de Sales, Fr. Baltazar Alvarez, Alvarez de Paz, Surin, Blessed Angela, S. Catherine of Siena and S. Catherine of Genoa, John of Avila, S. Peter of Alcantara, and many others both ancient and modern, hold views definitely opposed to those of the new mystics, despite the apparent resemblance of certain words and expressions in their books.

Q. Was Bossuet the only one to follow this rule in this connection?

A. No: the Bishop of Chartres 2 gave this rule and followed it more or less in the same way in his ordin- ance: c If we find in approved writers certain of the expressions which the new spirituals are so manifestly abusing, their views and the foundation of their doctrine are distinctly opposed in the most important parts; and in other points, it is easy to realize by the context and general line of their thought, and the other methods we have for discovering the true meaning of writers, that these expressions, borrowed by false piety to imitate the true, are harmless terms when used by pious writers. 5 Then he adds these words, which are as damning to false mystics as they are favourable to the orthodox:¹¹ It is the duty of pastors to make clear this distinction, and to warn the faithful to avoid being seduced by an apparent resemblance, which lies only in certain words and not in the things or in the meaning. 5¹²

Q. Could you not give me an example of this resemblance of the words in the true and false mystics, so that I can apply this rule to distinguish them ?

A. Besides those general ones of which I have already told you, here is a particular one which our author himself drew from the life of Fr. Baltazar Alvarez, where he says i 1 4 Brother Ximenes, asked by his Provincial whether he wished to go to Heaven, replied:

theology, which is so completely unknown that men parade their ignorance of it with pride. Let us imitate the Bishop of Meaux, let us follow his rule, and before condemning a discourse or a work try to understand its sense; let us not split hairs over one word or expression; let us judge by the intention, by the principles, by the ruling spirit of the work, by the sum of the expressions, by the context and line of thought, as the Bishop of Chartres said; and let us consider with these great prelates that spirituals and above all mystics speak rather from the point of view of sentiment than of dogma, which results in the exaggerations, hyperboles, unjustifiable comparisons, extraordinary and sometimes even false thoughts in those mystics quoted and approved by Bossuet. We have, in fact, here another instance, his great principle of solution with regard to the apparent resemblance between true mystics and false, whose system, intention, and spirit are quite different, whose principles are radically opposed on the most essential points, and whose resemblance in other parts is purely illusory, existing only in the words, and not in the meaning, as the Bishop of Chartres said above.

Q. Could you not give me a principle, a solution for the whole of Bossuet’s doctrine and a key to the understanding of it ? For I begin to feel that one might read his Instruction Pastorale more than once without understanding it properly, and without entering as is necessary into his two-fold purpose, which it is essential, it seems to me, not to lose sight of, for fear that by separating his secondary aim from his primary one might fly from one extreme to the other, as has been said.

A. This then is the solution and key, as he gives us it himself; for he continually states, as you have seen and will see more clearly, that in all perfect Prayer, either the passive or the extraordinary, which he always admits in the case of the true mystics, he condemns the false mystics for having outraged and abused every- thing by their refinements of spirituality; not only by excluding from their prayers and from those states what ought always to be present, or at all events ought never to be excluded; but also in making perpetual that which ought to be ephemeral. He proposes to give us new proofs of this, the exposition of which will be simplified and shortened by the solution indicated, if we bear it in mind.

Footnotes

1. Book I, § 10. ↩

2. Book III, § 4. ↩

3. Ibid., § 10. ↩

4. Ibid., § 15. ↩

5. Ibid., § 1G. ↩

6. to do nothing, wish nothing and ask nothing, for one’s own part, and to wait for God to do all.’ To be indifferent to all well-being, temporal or eternal, c is not to wish or to desire salvation, though God has ordered us to do both.’ Abandonment, on the pretext of not willing anything that God does not will, 4 means indifference as to whether one is saved or damned.’ The forgetfulness of the past and the future 4 means acquiescence in damnation, in direct opposition to the care which God instructs us to take for our salvation; this attitude is more fatal,’ he adds, 3 4 than that of the libertines, for they are satisfied with saying, in their hearts: 44 God has decided my destiny, and I need do nothing at all except wait for my destiny to fulfil itself.” This,’ he concludes, 4 is where these plausible words of abandonment and renunciation eventually lead, this whole fine idea of having no other end but the abandonment of oneself to God.’ propositions, or others like them, could contain such gross errors or lead to such terrible conclusions. spoke in this manner, are taking into account the distressing circumstances of the time, of which I have already spoken a little. The Bull of Innocent XI ↩

7. Book II, § 14. ■ Book III, § 4. 8 Ibid., § 17. ↩

8. ONPRAYER against the errors and abominations of Molinos had justly caused alarm throughout Christendom at Italian Quietism: a few years later there appear in France two books written by a devout woman of quality and great virtue, well known at Court; although himself satisfied with her views and the explanations she gave him, Bossuet noted in many parts of her books pro- positions greatly resembling those which had just been condemned, from which the same conclusions could eventually be drawn. Was it not his duty to draw these conclusions himself and develop them, in order to inspire people with greater and greater horror against false doctrine, and in order to discredit two little books which at that time could not be anything but harmful, inclining as they did, or seeming to incline, their readers to the errors of Quietism ? Is it not in this way that the most spiritual heresies are always exposed, heresies which soon degenerate, or may possibly degenerate, into grossness, if only their principles are left unattacked ? There are but too many examples of this to-day. that I should know in what exactly these abuses of the good doctrine consisted, so that I shall not fly from one extreme to the other, as our Bishops say in their Ordin- ances. takes these four propositions, or appears to take them, in a diametrically opposite sense to that of the true mystics. A. (i) ‘ Leave God to act 5 does not mean to the true Mystics: do nothing at all, but merely ordinarily speaking, that every time that God touches us and moves us inwardly in a particular way, we must simply corres- pond, merely following the actual movements of present grace, so as not to hinder the operations of the Holy Ghost. Bossuet himself will explain this much better. (ii) This complete loss of our will in God's, willing only ↩

9. Mgr. Paul des Marais, Bishop of Chartres, a most renowned and pious prelate. ↩

10. Book I, § 28. ↩

11. 4 Father, let us serve God as we ought, and leave him to do the rest, without anxiety on our part 55; and he added that to ask for Heaven might arise from self-love. 5 ↩

12. This passage, 5 says Bossuet, 4 will deceive all those who are unable to consider it carefully, but at the same time it will teach wise readers how easy it is to deceive oneself concerning certain discourses the outside of which alone one sees. 5 A very good lesson, this, for those who in their zeal condemn so rashly certain discourses, certain pious books, on the external evidence of a few words resembling those abused by the false mystics; or the external evidence of a few expressions either inexact or exaggerated, or often misunderstood. Because they are essentially connected with mystical » Book IX, § 10. ↩