Book I. Preliminary Dialogue: On the occasion of Bossuet’s publishing his Instruction sur les divers états d’oraison, and the author’s twofold intention

I

Q. Was not this learned Instruction composed as a result of the book on 4 The Maxims of the Saints 5 ?¹

A. Many people thought so, but wrongly, for it is known that this Instruction was written some time before the said book,² and thus before the disputes that occurred between two of the greatest dignitaries of the French Church, of which it would be in no wise suitable for us to treat. Without entering into this subject, I hope that the simple reading of this Instruction will give us opportunity to note with pleasant surprise that as concerns true spirituality these two great prelates were not so divided in spirit as a certain section of the public supposed; a fact which is even more obvious in Bossuet’s posthumous works, and most of all in his letters of direction, which are very similar to those of the most pious and illustrious Archbishop of Cambrai. 2

Q. Why then did Bossuet write this Instruction Pastorale ?

A. It is on the subject of the Quietists, whose name is known to all but their errors to few. And hence arises one of two great difficulties: either by failing to recognize the error we fall into it, or by failing to recognize it well enough, we condemn the truth by confusing it with error.

Q. Why are Quietists called the false mystics?

A. Because many of them tried to hide their errors under the language of the Mystics, ancient and modern.

II

Q. There are mystics, then ?

A. Tradition tells us that since the first centuries of the Church there have been mystics; and there must necessarily always be mystics, because there is a mystical theology; for the Scriptures have almost everywhere a mystical meaning, a meaning, that is, hidden and mysterious, especially in the Canticle of Canticles. Now all those who treat of these matters are called mystics, among whose ranks are numbered many Fathers of the Church, many great scholastic doctors and many illustrious writers of all ages,³ and a remarkable thing is that most of these mystics were regarded in their lives and after their death as saints, for which reason they are often called mystical saints.

Q. Why is this name used nowadays for the most part only in a bad sense ?

A. The same thing has happened to this word as to the word devout, to which the evil prejudices of this century have attached a bad meaning; in the same way prejudice, and almost universal ignorance of the mystical writers and even more of the matters they deal with, have gradually given this name a rather contemptuous meaning to such an extent, says Bossuet,⁴ that ⁵ mystics are usually treated as weak and feeble minded.’⁶

Q. Have not some of these writers given reason for such an attitude ?

A. Yes, no doubt; for as regards those living in the world, it was enough that some talked of raptures and ecstasies, which seemed to them dreams and empty visions; or of transports and excesses of God’s love, which they regarded as extravagances; and for the learned, it was enough that certain mystics, in explaining the wonderful works of the Holy Ghost in human souls, used hyperbolical, unsound, and even sometimes untrue expressions; as if one could expect perfect blamelessness from the mystical writers, when one does not always find it in the Spirituals, though they deal with much less deep matters; nor even among the Scholastics, for though they have to speak with all the rigour of the School, many of them have given just cause for criticism and censure, as much so as the mystics. But this does not justify the blind presumption of those who live in the world, who when talking of spiritual books for the most part mock at them and rail against them, calling these books and their authors any name that comes into their heads; nor does it justify the contempt of certain half-educated people for the mystics, whose works they have never read and whose names and reputations are barely known to them; any more than the impiety of those arrogant souls who, to decry the Council of Trent, dared to say that it was composed of mere Scholastics.

Q. How did the Bishop of Meaux, who is regarded as equally learned in all three parts of theology, the scholastic, moral and mystical, speak of writers in this last class ?

Q. You seem now to be rather prejudiced in favour

A. It was chiefly Bossuet who changed my opinion

Q. What great harm would there have been in that ?

A. Ask some more experienced people, and they

Q. What would you say, then, if you heard as I do

A. I should say, ‘ I cannot believe that you would sublimity of her heavenly doctrine with which souls are nourished.” 51 I should go on: c Read Bossuet, but take care to read him in a better spirit than do certain people, who notice neither his condemnation of false mysticism nor his reproof of the false mystics.’

Q. But if the quality of the mystic is so sacred in its origin and in the person of the holy and illustrious people who bear the title, why profane it by attributing it, in whatever form, to such hypocrites as the Quietists ?

A. Bossuet used it only in order to cut short and avoid disputing on the false quality of the mystic, which many affected at that time, to win honour among the truly learned; further he thought he could do enough in honour of mystical theology and of its sainted writers by the mere addition of the appropriate epithet, true or false. Is it not in this way that all reasonable beings distinguish nowadays between those who are worthy of the glorious title of devout people and those who are unworthy ? Moreover, so as to avow more strongly his respect for the true mystics, Bossuet said one thing which should be quoted: ‘... when I speak thus simply without qualification (of the mystics)... the reader must take it for granted that I always mean the true and orthodox mystics. 5 2 Following this great model I say the same, since the name of mystic, in its true and original meaning, must always be taken in the good sense.

Q. But since to-day, either through prejudice or through ignorance, this name is evil-sounding to the common ear, why, in a book which must pass through the hands of everybody; why do you not substitute the word spiritual, which is gentler and better-known, and which could have the same effect in Bossuet’s Instruction Pastorale, where the true Spirituals could be opposed to the false, and the false spirituality of one side combatted by the true spirituality of the other ?

1 Book IX, § 3.

a Book VII, § 4.

A. The Bishop of Meaux did this often, but not always: because, we are told, he knew too well the difference between the spirituals and the mystics with whom he had to deal; the latter treat of the ways of God much more profoundly, they penetrate to the most intimate depths of the soul where God has graven his image, where the Devil sees nothing,⁷ and where the impressions of grace that are the deepest and the most detached from the senses are made; they learn to know themselves, to make themselves watchful and faithful; in a word, the mystics are much more truly interior than the most interior of the spirituals, and learn more easily how to become so.⁸⁹

Ill

Q. What was Bossuet’s purpose in this long work? Was there no other besides that of combatting the errors of his time on the subject of prayer ?

A. He had a double purpose, as the title of his book shows, that is, to teach us concerning the various states of prayer by showing us the true and the false: The false, or rather the abuse of the true, in order to condemn it in the innovators, and the true to preserve its belief and practice. He explains it thus in his Preface: 2 3

This was his double intention, which it is important not to forget; and such the success he promised for himself with all those good souls who love Prayer.

Q. Plow is it, then, that the exact opposite has happened; for people were never so afraid to yield to the attraction of God in Prayer because they never saw so well the abuse and illusion of Prayer ?

A. In the first place, this is because great numbers of people have never read the Instruction, which through its very merit has become rare; thus, knowing as they must that many things have been condemned in the matter of Prayer, and not knowing what they are, these people are on guard against everything, even fearing the most divine inward attractions in Prayer, and not daring to yield themselves for fear of falling into some error, abuse or illusion, without knowing it. In the second place, among those who have read this work, with the long and close application it requires because of the profundity of the things there treated, there are many who have paid hardly any attention to any but those abuses of Prayer which are mentioned, and now fear and hate both the one and the other, that is both the abuses and the Prayer they have abused.

Q. How can that be, at any rate among those who are capable of attention and have all the penetration necessary for such reading?

A. That, we learn, is because the more outrageous these abuses the more normal it is, especially among good people, to conceive a dislike of the very things which have occasioned the abuses, and which seem to have been identified with them; especially when reading a work in which, in order to meet the circumstances of the time, despite the double intention of the author, it is less necessary to insist on truths already accepted than to refute errors which adopt them as a specious disguise; and thus many people, struck by the falsehood in its blackest colours, and insufficiently touched by the bare and simple truth, which remained tarnished by it, detested the abuses as they deserved without knowing or realising the value of the things that were thus abused. Numbers of people have absorbed from the learned Instruction nothing but strengthened prejudices against holy Prayer and the true mystics: because in the false mystics they discovered grave abuses and the arrant falsity of their pretended Prayer demonstrated with all the zeal, all the eloquence, that was so natural to Bossuet.

Q. How shall we avoid these difficulties in the resume we are going to make ?

A. Since the circumstances and needs of the times have considerably altered, it is necessary to insist a great deal less on past abuses, and rather more on the truths which were formerly abused, and are not so nowadays except on account of these ancient abuses; thus we must cut out most of those quotations and lengthy reasonings, which ceased to be necessary after the condemnation of the errors or abuses. Also, as the simple method of the Catechisms, by questions and answers, greatly facilitates the understanding of the most abstruse questions and helps and relieves the reader, we have grounds for hoping that in this new abridged form Bossuet’s learned work can be read and understood, not only by every director and all persons given to Prayer, but also by those who aspire to become so, without fear of illusion or abuse; and that both parties will be able to see clearly on the one hand a sound but short summary of the errors condemned, and on the other a simple but full explanation of the received truths, the whole drawn accurately from the great work which is to form the matter of the first Book of these Dialogues.

Footnotes

1. See especially Bossuet’s short work entitled Manierc Courte ct Facile de Faire VOraison, which is appended to this work, and the correspondence of Fenelon and Mme. de Maisonfort, a religious of Saint-Cyr. ↩

2. The order to print the 4 Etats d’Oraison ’ was dated April 16, 1695, while the declaration of the Bishops of Paris, Meaux and Chartres on F6nelon’s book, Explications dcs Maximes cles Saints, was dated August 6, 1697. Moreover F6nelon had taken part in the Conference of Issy, which lasted eight months, the thirty-four articles of which were signed on March 10, 1695, by Bossuet, by de Noailles, Bishop of Chalons and afterwards Archbishop of Paris, by M. Tronson, a Sulpician, and by F6n61on, who had been Archbishop of Cambrai since the previous February. ↩

3. To mention only a few mystical writers, we may cite S. Dionysius the Areopagite, who has been so abused by certain false mystics of the seventeenth century: his book on Divine Names is a mystical work; S. Augustine’s City of God is also a mj'stical work, likewise the De Virginibus of S. Ambrose. S. Bernard, S. Bonaventure, S. Thomas in his Exposition of the Song of Songs, etc., arc mystical writers. ↩

4. Book I, § 12. * Ibid., § 7. PRELIM INARY DIALOGUE ^ read his book again more carefully, and studied and absorbed it better, I felt as if forced to share all his esteem and respect for the true holy mystics, who taught so much of the interior life and did it so much honour by their rare virtues; had this not happened I should possibly have retained all my life the vulgar ideas and errors with regard to everything going by the name of mystical. will tell you that since these unhappy prejudices have discouraged people from reading the true mystics of recent times, even in the cloister one no longer sees so many interior souls detached from everything and dead to the world and to themselves. They will tell you that in all those communities which have remained devoted to the works of S. John of the Gross, S. Teresa, S. Francis de Sales, Fr. Lallemant, and his two dis- ciples, Frs. Rigoleuc and Surin, so admired by Bossuet, one sees also a proportionally greater interior spirit, more self-abnegation, more humility and evangelical simplicity; they will tell you too that by their taste and love for such reading they can often recognize the interior spirit of the religious people who address themselves to them, just as one recognizes the piety of the faithful in everyday life by their taste for other holy reading. in what terms men of all professions talk of the works of S. John of the Cross and S. Teresa, from the titles of their works alone, for that is all they know of them ? prefer your knowledge and your feelings to those of the great Bishop of Meaux; but know that in his work he continually quotes those holy mystics as S. Thomas is quoted in the School; and in quoting his holy daughter, he uses these words: “This saint whom the Church almost ranked with the Doctors, as it celebrates the D ↩

5. Preface, § 10. ↩

6. ONPRAYER A. He had so much esteem for their doctrine that he usually used it to combat those errors which he attacked; for he not only invoked the authority of the holy Bishop of Geneva, boasting everywhere that he was of his opinion, but he even declared at the beginning of his book that he wished to take as his authority the views of two simple religious, such as S. John of the Gross and Fr. Baltazar Alvarez I will even say the views of women, who learn the divine science of mysticism in the school of the Holy Ghost alone, such as S. Teresa, S. Catherine of Genoa, and many others whom he quoted in the course of his work. Moreover, with what moderation, or rather with what respect, did he talk of certain ancient mystics, even of those parts of their works which were obviously unsound; saying, when speaking of these parts, that their intentions were better than their expression; 2 and even treating the most false and extravagant notions as mere exaggeration, when he was forced to quote them in order to reveal the errors of the modern mystics, who, so far from toning down those exaggerations which these holy people of old time had let slip, merely outdid their most far-fetched expressions and went on to errors which no interpretation could justify, and which were not to be borne. Such words and deeds were well calculated to confound the half-educated in their arrogant ignorance, when they hoped to glorify them- selves in some way by their wicked scorn of the mystics, and confusing the false with the true presumed to call everything by one name. of the mystics; why is this ? in this respect. True, my first readings of his Instructions merely filled me with horror for the false mystics, who have perhaps done more harm to true spirituality than false devotees have done to true devotion; but when I ↩

7. 1 will try, 5 he says, ‘ to prevent the abuses of the false mystics from causing the truth to fall out of repute; errors will be revealed; those who are at fault less through evil than through thoughtlessness will have the happiness of being set right. Simple but infirm souls will be drawn to Prayer, and those who have already some experience will be less afraid to give themselves up to the divine attraction.’ ↩

8. Where the Devil sees nothing: this is the view of S. Thomas and S. Bona venture, and of Suarez who followed them. Cognoscere cogitationes cordium est proprium Dei secundum illud Jerem. 17. Pravum est cor hominis et inscrutabile. Ego Dominus scrutans. ... Sic solus Deus cogitationes cordium et affectiones voluntatum cognoscere potest. Pars la. Quest. 57, Art. 4. ↩

9. Book VII, § 9. ↩