These devots, or victims of love, were self-sacrificed people, who affected a sort of inward annihilation, and who lived henceforth only in God. Hence they could do no harm. The soul, said this prophet, having become a nonentity, cannot consent; so that whatever it may do, inasmuch as it has not consented, it has not sinned. It no longer thinks at all, either of what it has done, or of what it has not done; for it has done nothing at all. God being all in us, does all, and suffers all; the devil can no longer find the creature, either in itself or in its acts, for it acts no longer. By an entire dissolution of ourselves, the virtue of the Holy Ghost flows into us, and we become wholly God, by a miraculous deiformity. If there be still anything jarring in the grosser part, the purer part knows nothing of it; but both these parts, being subtilised and rarefied, change at last into God; "God then abides with the emotions of sensuality, all of which are sanctified."[[2]]
Desmarets did not confine himself to printing this doctrine with the privilege of the king and the approbation of the archbishop. Strongly supported by the Jesuits, he ran from convent to convent preaching to the nuns. Layman as he was, he had made himself a director of female youth. He related to them his dreams of devout gallantry, and inquired about their carnal temptations. It seemed that a man so perfectly self-annihilated might write fearlessly the strangest things—the following letter for instance:—"I embrace you, my very dear love, in your nonentity, being a perfect nullity myself, each of us being all in our All, by our amiable Jesus," &c.
What progress is here made in a few years, since the "Provincial Letters!" What has become of the casuists? Those simple people who took and effaced transgressions one by one, giving themselves immense trouble. They are all scattered to the winds.
Casuistry was an art that had its masters, doctors, and cunning men. But now, what need of doctors? Every spiritual man, every devout person, every Jesuit in a short robe can speak as well as he in the long one the soft language of pious tenderness. The Jesuits have fallen, but Jesuitism has gained ground. It is no longer requisite to direct the attention every day, for every distinct case, by special equivocations. Love that mingles and confounds everything is the sovereign, most gentle, and powerful equivocation. Lull the will to sleep and there is no longer any intention, "The soul, losing its nonentity in its infinity," will be gently annihilated in the bosom of love.
[[1]] By two cardinals and librarians of the Vatican, Bellarmin and Baronius, one of whom was the confessor of the pope.
[[2]] Desmarets de St. Sorlin's Delight of the Spirit, 29th journée, p. 170.
CHAPTER VI.
CONTINUATION OF MORAL REACTION.—TARTUFFE, 1664-1669.—REAL TARTUFFES.—WHY TARTUFFE IS NOT YET A QUIETIST.
The devotee caught in the fact by the man of the world, the churchman excommunicated by the comedian—this is the meaning and aim of the Tartuffe.