Book I. Dialogue XIII: On the impossible suppositions by which S. Francis de Sales and several other saints have from the beginning of the Church expressed the excess of love
I
Q. What are the impossible suppositions of S. Francis de Sales ?
A. He says in his treatise On the Love of God, Book IX, Ch. IV, that a p^r§ci_^uLA:.(mld^pr.eJGsr Hell with God’s will t o Heave n without it. More, that it would even prefer Hell to Heaven, if, were it possible to imagine it, it knew that God would be more pleased by its damnation; and he said many similar things.
Q. What does Bossuet think of these suppositions ?
A. He says: x i I cannot condemn the pious expressions of the holy Bishop, who is full of these impossible suppositions 5; and later he adds that it is impossible to reject the acts of loving resignation which are founded on these impossible suppositions, without at the same time condemning all that is greatest and most holy in the Church.
Q. How can Bossuet be so favourable to acts founded on impossible suppositions ? Did he not know that there are scholars who despise and blame them as pious extravagances, or at any rate as weak-minded devotions into which the moderns have degenerated from the gravity of early centuries ?
II
A. c Truth, 5 he replies, 2 ( forbids me to consent to such remarks, for in the early days of Christianity
1 Book IX, §§ 1 and 2. * Ibid., § 3.
Clement of Alexandria made similar suppositions ’; as when he says that the perfect spiritual does not seek this state of perfection because he wishes to be saved; and that if (an impossible supposition) perfection could be separated from eternal salvation he would unhesitatingly prefer perfection as something which surpassing faith by charity is in itself desirable; from which he concludes that the first good work of the perfect man is to act without thought of any recompense from either man or God.
Q. Does not Bossuet adduce other proofs on a point so delicate and so widely contested ?
A. He quotes S. Chrysostom on this passage of S. Paul: I wished myself to be anathema from Christ for my brethren, he continues: x ‘I hold by this outstanding fact that S. Chrysostom established by this passage that we must love God not only when we receive from him no reward except that of loving him, but when instead of the good things he promised us he should send us, if that were possible, Hell and eternal flames, while retaining his love.
Q. Was S. Chrysostom followed on this point ?
A. It is a sufficiently established fact, continues the Bishop of Meaux, that the whole learned school of S. Chrysostom shared this view, as is shown by S. Isidore of Pelusium (Book II, Epistle 58), and Theodore ( Vols. Ill and IV, on The Epistle to the Romans). There is substantially the same interpretation in Theophylact and Photius; on the same subject S. Thomas repeats and approves the exposition of S. Chrysostom; many of the interpreters of S. Paul embrace it positively, convinced not only by authority but by the reasoning of S. Chrysostom and by this Father's sound replies to all objections.
Q. Are the scholastics of the same opinion ?
A. Duns Scotus and all his School 2 held that charity tends to its object considered in itself; even if (which is impossible) the object were separated from the utility or the interest gained from it; that is, in his language, * Book IX, § 3. 2 Ibid.
eternal felicity; these suppositions per impossibile are renowned throughout the School. There is no need to quote the Mystics, in whose works they occur frequently; after that, is it surprising that they are so often found in the teachings of the holy Bishop of Geneva ?
Q. All this concerns pure speculation and is not for practice ?
A. Not at all: nothing is more real in practice, as S. Francis de Sales shows. After he had for long borne in his soul a violent impression of reprobation, at last, in the greatest pains of such a cruel torment he came, says Bossuet, 1 to this terrible resolution: that since in the other life he would be forbidden for ever to see and love a God so worthy to be loved he wished at least, while he lived on the earth, to try to love him with all the strength of his soul: a supposition truly impossible, but it was the cause of a heroic act in which the saint found his deliverance; for the devil was vanquished by an act of such disinterested love, and yielded him the victory.
His holy daughter, Mother de Chantal, imitated him in this, says Bossuet, when she so often said to Our Lord that if it pleased him to mark out her place and dwelling in Hell, provided it was to his eternal glory, she would be content, and that he would always be her God.
Q. Why did God permit that such holy souls should be given up to such temptations and to such terrible impressions of reprobation ?
A. So that there should be born in them the desire to love God for his goodness alone, even when, if this were possible, there remained to those who love him no hope of possessing him.
Ill
Q. When these souls performed these acts did they lose the hope or desire of possessing God ?
Book IX, § 3.
A. No, Bossuet replies with S. Francis de Sales, for these sentiments remained unshakable in the highest part of the soul for the duration of these states, while by this tender and pious supposition the soul exercises a perfect love.
Q. How comes it then that these souls, as far as I can gather, thought themselves without hope ?
A. Because the disturbance and trouble caused by the temptation in the lower part of the soul made it impossible to realize clearly what was passing in the upper.
Q. But when the temptation and trouble had passed what did they think ?
A. Most of them said that there remained to them a certain feeling which persuaded them that, so far from being abandoned themselves to despair, they had been, contrariwise, abandoned to God, through an excess of confidence, the perception of which God had hidden from them at the time of temptation only to give rise to those heroic acts he willed and to which they had felt themselves interiorly urged for some time past. Others said that so far from renouncing their salvation by these acts of abandonment they felt that they were assuring it more by leaving it to God, and that nothing inspired them with so much confidence as to feel the great grace which God granted them of giving themselves thus into his hands.
Q. But if it is true that God urges certain souls to acts of such abandonment, could not this be told them at these times ?
A. This was also the view of the Bishops in the Thirty-third Article of Issy, which says i1 ‘One may also inspire afflicted and truly humble souls with submission and consent to the will of God, even if by a very false supposition, instead of giving them the good things which he had promised to upright souls, he held them for his good pleasure in eternal torment, without, how- ever, depriving them of his grace and his love, which is an act of perfect abandonment and pure love, practised by the Saints, and which could usefully be practised with a very particular grace of God. 5
Q. In order to authenticate these views the more does not the Bishop of Meaux quote other fine examples of this perfect abandonment and pure love?
A. I can find three of them, well worthy of note and thoroughly edifying. 1 The first is that of Blessed Angela of Foligno: she thought herself sometimes so plunged in evil that she saw in her actions only corruption and hypocrisy; she would exclaim then with great pleasure: ‘ Lord, though I am damned, I will not cease to be penitent and to divest myself of all for the love of thee, in order to serve thee. 3 Her love, says Bossuet, deceived her, and through loving him whom she found so lovable she thought that she would love him even in Hell. That is why on another occasion, calling death to her aid, she said to God: c Lord, if thou must cast me into Hell, do not delay longer; hasten. And since thou hast abandoned me once, go on and plunge me into this abyss 3 One may feel in these words, says Bossuet, the transport of love which carried her away, though it was founded on one of those fictions of which we speak.
Q. What is the second example ?
A. It is that of S. Catherine of Genoa, who said:
‘ Though it were possible to feel all the pains of the devils and the damned souls, I could never call them pains, so much would pure love find happiness in them, for in pure love God takes away all power and means of seeing or feeling anything but himself 3
Q. What is the third example ?
A. It is that of S. Teresa, when she said: 2 ‘ Such souls would fain find a way to consume themselves in Him, and were there need that, for the sake of God’s greater glory, they should be annihilated for ever,
Book IX, § 3.
Ibid., The Interior Castle, Sixth Mansions, Ch. IX.
they would count it great gain.’ These souls, says Bossuet, would regard themselves, if it were possible, as an ardent lamp burning to waste before God, in his homage and for his sovereign greatness. This saint also goes on to say that in the prayer of union, the best thing a soul can do is to abandon itself entirely to God; that if he wills to raise it to Heaven it should go there, that if he wills to take it to Hell, it should be resolved without agitation, since it merely follows him and he is all its happiness; a noble way of speaking, Bossuet concludes,2 in which the possible and the impossible are mingled, in order to show that no limits must be set to submission and love, and that there is no cause for anxiety as to what will become of one with a lover who can do all things.3
Q. What is the effect of these suppositions in holy souls ?
A. It explains as well as possible the meaning of those words in the Canticle of Canticles, love is strong as death and jealousy (for the love of God) is hard as Hell, and yields not to its sufferings.
Q. But what do the divine transports of these souls do for us ?
A. They make us see the infinite and incomprehensible dignity of this first Being, for whom it were better to endure a thousand tortures, even eternally, than offend him by the least fault. But without seeking for reasons for these acts, it is clear that they cannot be regarded as products of the devotion of the last few centuries, nor accused of feebleness, since their theory and practice are to be seen in the very first centuries of the Church, and the most celebrated fathers of that time praised them as practised by S. Paul; ‘ we cannot reject them, 5 Bossuet concludes, ‘ without condemning all that is greatest and most holy in the Church. 5 2
(f. Do these acts of resignation produce in the soul the cessation of desires and indifference to salvation?
A. Not at all; l they are not absolute acts of will, for one could not will absolutely that which one knew to be impossible, such as to love God with all one’s heart and to serve him faithfully, and then to be reprobated for it. They are then mere velleities, which do not prevent that absolute will, fixed and perfect, which we have for eternal well being and the possession of God; as when S. Paul says: I wished myself to he an anathema separated from Christ for my brethren; words which, following the excellent words of Photius, do not at all express an absolute will. We see too that S. Paul and all the other authorities quoted, having made their greatest act of resignation, returned always to their habitual desires, prayers and requests regarding the entire possession of God.
(f. Whence comes it, then, that there have always been holy souls who were heard to say sometimes that they wished for nothing, that they understood nothing and had nothing to desire ?
A. This is because in certain moments when they were filled with God they did not feel their own indigence, though they had in their hearts an insatiable desire to possess him more fully. 2
Q. Whence comes in others that mysterious contradiction in certain states, of which S. Teresa speaks, in which souls seem on the one hand to have lost all desire and on the other never to have felt it so ardently ?
A. This comes, says Bossuet,4 from the fact that they are placed by the grace of a special presence of God between privation and enjoyment, so that sometimes they rest as if tranquil, and sometimes they are given up to a violent desire to possess God, but always submissive as to the time of that possession.
Q. As the false mystics are only so because they exaggerate and abuse everything, I should like to know what was their abuse of these impossible suppositions
Book IX, § 4.
a Ibid,, § 5.
and tender expressions common to the holy mystics of all time ?
A. It lies in founding thereon indifference to salvation.
Q. But perhaps in desiring it with all their hearts, they make these suppositions and acts only in the excess of love and submission; thus their holy follies, as S. Teresa says, or their loving extravagances, as others put it, should be left to them.
A. With all my heart, says Bossuet,5 if they did not make bad use of them; but on this pretended indifference of the saints to salvation they build very real practices, for they think it a sign of self-interest, and beneath them, and in any case incompatible with perfection, to desire for themselves or ask God for eternal glory, though it is merely the coming of his kingdom as it is understood in the Pater noster; you will see that in these practices there are always the same errors, though they are drawn from different principles.
Footnotes
Chapter 17 of 31