With these helps our author sat down to his work. We may suppose him addressing to the saints, whose lives he was about to write, a prayer similar to the beautiful prayer addressed to them by Bollandus at the end of his general preface, and which may be thus abridged: "Hail, ye citizens of heaven! courageous warriors! triumphant over the world! from the blessed scenes of your everlasting glory, look on a low mortal, who searches everywhere for the memorials of your virtues and triumphs. Show your favor to him; give him to discover the valuable monuments of former times; to distinguish the spurious from the legitimate; to digest his work in proper order and method; to explain and illustrate whatever is obscure. Take under your protection all who have patronized or assisted him in his undertakings: obtain for all who read his work, that they imitate the examples of virtue which it places before their eyes; and that they experience how sweet, how useful, and how glorious it is to walk in your steps."
In the preface to the French translation, the work is said to have cost our author the labor of thirty years. It was his practice, when he began to write the life of any saint, to read over and digest the whole of his materials, before he committed any thing to paper. His work evidently shows, that his mind was full of its subject, {030} and that what he wrote was the result of much previous information and reflection. On many occasions he must have written on subjects which were new to him; but, such is the mutual connection and dependence of every branch of literature, that a mind stored like his was already in possession of that kind of knowledge, which would make him apprehend, with great ease, whatever he had to learn; and would instruct him, though the subject were new to him, where he might express himself decisively, and where he should doubt. How extensive and profound his general knowledge was, appears from this, that a person who happens to have made any subject, treated of by him, his particular study, will seldom read what our author has written upon it without finding in it something original, or, at least, so happily expressed or illustrated as to have the merit of originality. In some instances, as in his account of the Manichæns, in the life of St. Augustine, and of the crusades, in the life of St. Lewis, he shows such extent and minuteness of investigation, as could only be required from works confined to those subjects. In other instances, where his materials are scanty, so that he writes chiefly from his own mind, as in the lives of St. Zita or St. Isidore of Pelusium, he pours an unpremeditated stream of piety, which nothing but an intimate acquaintance with the best spiritual writers could produce.
The sameness of a great number of the most edifying actions which our author had to relate, made it difficult for him to avoid a tiresome uniformity of narrative: but he has happily surmounted this difficulty. Another difficulty he met with, was the flat and inanimate style of the generality of the writers from whom his work was composed. Happy he must have been, when the authors he had to consult were St. Jerome, Scipio, Maffei, Bouhours, or Marsollier. But most commonly they were such as might edify but could not delight. He had then to trust to his own resources for that style, that arrangement, those reflections, which were to engage his reader's attention. In this he has certainly succeeded. Few authors on holy subject have possessed, in a higher degree, that indescribable charm of style which rivets the reader's attention to the book, which never places the writer between the book and the reader, but insensibly leads him to the conclusion, sometimes delighted, but always attentive and always pleased.
His style is peculiar to himself; it partakes more of the style of the writers of the last century than of the style of the present age. It possesses great merit, but sometimes is negligent and loose. Mr. Gibbon mentioned it to the editor in warm terms of commendation; and was astonished when he heard how much of our author's life had been spent abroad. Speaking of our author's Lives of the Saints, (vol. iv. 457,) he calls it "a work of merit,—the sense and learning belong to the author—his prejudices are those of his profession." As it is known what prejudice means in Mr. Gibbon's vocabulary, our author's relatives accept the character.
Having lived so long in the schools, he must have had a strong predilection for some of the opinions agitated in them; and frequent opportunities of expressing it occurred in his work. He seems to have cautiously avoided them: a single instance, perhaps, is not to be found, where any thing of the kind is discoverable in any of his writings. He has carefully brought before the reader every circumstance arising from his subject, that could be offered in proof or illustration of the particular tenets of the Roman Catholic church; but he does it without affectation, and rather leaves the reader to draw his own conclusions, than suggests them to him. Those expressions which good manners and good taste reject, are never to be found in his works.
But the chief merit of his works is, that they make virtue and devotion amiable: he preaches penance, but he shows its rewards; he exhorts to compunction, but he shows the sweetness of pious sorrow; he enforces humility, but he shows the blessedness of a humble heart; he recommends solitude, but he shows that God is where the world is not. No one reads his work who does not perceive the happiness, even in this world, of a holy life, or who does not wish to die the death of a saint. Most readers of it will acknowledge that, sometimes at least, when they have read it, every worldly emotion has died within them, and they have felt themselves in a disposition of mind suited to receive the finest impressions of religion.
At the finishing of his work he gave a very edifying instance of humility. The manuscript of the first volume having been submitted to Mr. Challoner, the vicar-apostolic of the London district, he recommended the omission of all the notes, not {031} excepting that beautiful note which gave an account of the writings of St. John Chrysostom. His motive was, that, by being made less bulky, the work might be made less expensive, and, consequently, more generally useful. It is easy to suppose what it must have cost our author to consign to oblivion the fruit of so much labor and so many vigils. He obeyed, however, and to this circumstance it is owing that, in the first edition, the notes in question were omitted.
XI.
XI. 1. It has been objected to our author's work on the Lives of the Saints, that the system of devotion which is recommended by it, is, at best, suited to the cloister. But no work has ever appeared, in which the difference between the duties of a man of the world and the duties of a religious is more strongly pointed out. Whenever the author has occasion to mention any action of any saint, which is extraordinary or singular in its nature he always observes, that it is of a kind rather to be admired than imitated.
XI. 2. It has been objected, that the piety which it inculcates is of the ascetic kind, and that the spirit of penance, voluntary mortification, and contempt of the world, which it breathes everywhere, is neither required nor recommended by the gospel. But no difference can be found between the spirit of piety inculcated by our author, and that inculcated by the most approved authors of the Roman Catholic church. Less of penance, of voluntary mortification, or of contempt of the world, is not recommended by Rodriguez, by Thomas of Kempis, by St. Francis of Sales, by Bourdaloue, or Massillon, than is recommended by our author. Speaking of those "who confound nature with grace, and who look on the cross of Jesus Christ as an object foreign to faith and piety;—It was not thus," says Massillon, in his sermon on the Incarnation, "it was not thus that the apostles announced the gospel to our ancestors. The spirit of the gospel is a holy eagerness of suffering, an incessant attention to mortify self-love, to do violence to the will, to restrain the desires, to deprive the senses of useless gratifications; this is the essence of Christianity, the soul of piety. If you have not this spirit, you belong not, says the apostle, to Jesus Christ; it is of no consequence that you are not of the number of the impure or sacrilegious of whom the apostle speaks, and who will not be admitted into the kingdom of Christ. You are equally strangers to him; your sentiments are not his; you still live according to nature; you belong not to the grace of our Saviour; you will therefore perish, for it is on him alone, says the apostle, that the Father has placed our salvation. A complaint is sometimes made that we render piety disgusting and impracticable, by prohibiting many pleasures which the world authorizes. But, my brethren, what is it we tell you? allow yourselves all the pleasures which Christ would have allowed himself; faith allows you no other; mix with your piety all the gratifications which Jesus Christ would have mixed in his; the gospel allows no greater indulgence—O my God, how the decisions of the world will one day be strangely reversed! when worldly probity and worldly regularity, which, by a false appearance of virtue, give a deceitful confidence to so many souls, will be placed by the side of the crucified Jesus, and will be judged by that model! To be always renouncing yourselves, rejecting what pleases, regulating the most innocent wishes of the heart by the rigorous rules of the spirit of the gospel, is difficult, is a state of violence. But if the pleasures of the senses leave the soul sorrowful, empty, and uneasy, the rigors of the cross make her happy. Penance heals the wounds made by herself; like the mysterious bush in the scripture, while man sees only its thorns and briers, the glory of the Lord is within it, and the soul that possesses him possesses all. Sweet tears of penance! divine secret of grace! O that you were better known to the sinner!" "The pretended esprits forts," says Bourdaloue, in his sermon on the scandal of the cross, and the humiliations of Jesus Christ, the noblest of all his sermons, in the opinion of the cardinal de Maury, "do not relish the rigorous doctrines announced by the Son of God in his gospel; self-hatred, self-denial, severity to one's self. But when Christ established a religion for men, who were to acknowledge themselves sinners and criminals, ought he, as St. Jerome asks, to have published other laws? What is so proper for sin as penance? what is more of the nature of penance, than the sinner's harshness and severity to himself? Is there any thing in this contrary to reason? They are astonished at his ranking poverty among the beatitudes; that he held up the cross as an attraction to his disciples to follow him; that he declared a love of {032} contempt was preferable to the honors of the world. In all this I see the depth of his divine counsels." Such is the language of Bourdaloue and Massillon, preaching before a luxurious court, to the best-informed and most polished audience in the Christian world. It is apprehended that no other language is found in our author's Lives of the Saints.