The politic Madame de Maintenon watched the gathering storm, and became all caution. At all costs, she must free herself from the faintest suspicion of fellowship with heresy. She questioned, on the opinions of Madame Guyon, Bossuet and Noailles, Bourdaloue, Joly, Tiberge, Brisacier, and Tronson; and the replies of these esteemed divines, uniformly unfavourable, decided her. It would be necessary to disown Madame Guyon: her condemnation would become inevitable. Fénélon must be induced to disown her too, or his career was at a close; and Madame de Maintenon could smile on him no longer.[[347]]
Madame Guyon, alarmed by the growing numbers and vehemence of her adversaries, had recourse to the man who afterwards became her bitterest enemy. She proposed to Bossuet that he should examine her writings. He complied; held several private interviews with her, and expressed himself, on the whole, more favourably than could have been expected. But these conferences, which did not altogether satisfy Bossuet, could do nothing to allay the excitement of the public.[[348]]
VI.
Madame Guyon now requested the appointment of commissioners, who should investigate, and pronounce finally concerning her life and doctrine.[[349]] Three were chosen—Bossuet; Noailles, Bishop of Chalons; and Tronson, Superior of St. Sulpice. Noailles was a sensible, kind-hearted man; Tronson, a worthy creature, in poor health, with little opinion of his own; Bossuet, the accredited champion of the Gallican Church, accustomed to move in an atmosphere of flattery—the august dictator of the ecclesiastical world—was absolute in their conferences. They met, from time to time, during some six months, at the little village of Issy, the country residence of the Superior of St. Sulpice. When Madame Guyon appeared before them, Bossuet alone was harsh and rude; he put the worst construction on her words; he interrupted her; now he silenced her replies, now he burlesqued them; now he affected to be unable to comprehend them; now he held up his hands in contemptuous amazement at her ignorance; he would not suffer to be read the justification which had cost her so much pains; he sent away her friend, the Duke of Chevreuse. This ominous severity confused and frightened her.[[350]] She readily consented to retire to a convent in the town of Meaux, there to be under the surveillance of Bossuet. She undertook this journey in the depth of the most frightful winter which had been known for many years; the coach was buried in the snow, and she narrowly escaped with life. The commissioners remained to draw up, by the fireside, certain propositions, which should determine what was, and what was not, true mysticism. These constitute the celebrated Articles of Issy.
Bossuet repeatedly visited Madame Guyon at Meaux. The great man did not disdain to approach the sick-bed of his victim, as she lay in the last stage of exhaustion, and there endeavour to overreach and terrify her. He demanded a submission, and promised a favourable certificate. The submission he received, the certificate he withheld. He sought to force her, by threats, to sign that she did not believe in the Incarnation. The more timid she appeared, the more boisterous and imperative his tone. One day, he would come with words of kindness, on another, with words of fury; yet, at the very time, this Pilate could say to some of his brethren, that he found no serious fault in her. He declared, on one occasion, that he was actuated by no dislike—he was urged to rigorous measures by others; on another, that the submission of Madame Guyon, and the suppression of Quietism, effected by his skill and energy, would be as good as an archbishopric or a cardinal’s hat to him. Justice and ambition contended within him; for a little while the battle wavered, till presently pride and jealousy brought up to the standard of the latter, reinforcements so overwhelming, that justice was beaten for ever from the field. After six months’ residence at Meaux, Madame Guyon received from Bossuet a certificate attesting her filial submissiveness to the Catholic faith, his satisfaction with her conduct, authorizing her still to participate in the sacrament of the Church, and acquitting her of all implication in the heresy of Molinos.[[351]]
Meanwhile, Fénélon had been added to the number of the commissioners at Issy. He and Bossuet were still on intimate terms; but Bossuet, like all vain men, was a dangerous friend. He knew how to inspire confidence which he did not scruple to betray. Madame Guyon, conscious of the purity of her life, of the orthodoxy of her intention, persuaded that such a man must be superior to the meaner motives of her persecutors, had placed in the hands of Bossuet her most private papers, not excluding the Autobiography, which had not been submitted even to the eye of Fénélon. To Bossuet, Fénélon had, in letters, unfolded his most secret thoughts—the conflicts and aspirations of his spiritual history, so unbounded was his reliance on his honour, so exalted his estimate of the judgment of that powerful mind in matters of religion. The disclosures of both were distorted and abused to crush them; both had to rue the day when they trusted one who could sacrifice truth to glory. At Issy, the deference and the candour of Fénélon were met by a haughty reserve on the part of Bossuet. The meekness of Fénélon and the timidity of Madame Guyon only inflamed his arrogance; to bow to him was to be overborne; to confront him was at once to secure respect, if not fairness. The Articles were already drawn up when the signature of Fénélon was requested. He felt that he should have been allowed his fair share in their construction; as they were, he could not sign them; he proposed modifications; they were acceded to; and the thirty-four Articles of Issy appeared in March, 1695, with the name of Fénélon associated with the other three.[[352]]
VII.
To any one who reads these Articles, and the letter written by Fénélon to Madame de la Maisonfort, after signing them, it will be obvious that the Quietism of Fénélon went within a moderate compass. When he comes to explain his meaning, the controversy is very much a dispute about words. He did not, like Madame Guyon, profess to conduct devout minds by a certain method to the attainment of perfect disinterestedness. He only maintained the possibility of realizing a love to God, thus purified from self. He was as fully aware as his opponents, that to evince our love to God by willingness to endure perdition, was the same thing as attesting our devotion to Him by our readiness to hate Him for ever. This is the standing objection against the doctrine of disinterested love. The great Nonconformist divine, John Howe, urges it with force. It is embodied in the thirty-second of the Articles in question. But it does not touch Fénélon’s position. His assertion is, that we should will our own salvation only because God wills it; that, supposing it possible for us to endure hell torments, retaining the grace of God and our consciousness that such suffering was according to His will, and conducive to His glory, the soul, animated by pure love, would embrace even such a doom.[[353]] It is but the supposition of an impossible case,—a supposition, moreover, which involves a very gross and external conception of hell. It could find no place in a mysticism like that of Behmen or Swedenborg, where hell is regarded, much more truly, less as an infliction from without, than as the development of dominant evil from within. The Quietism of Fénélon does not preclude the reflex actions of the mind, or confine the spirit of the adept to the sphere of the immediate. It forbids only the introspection of self-complacency.[[354]] It does not merge distinct acts in a continuous operation, nor discourage effort for self-advancement in holiness, or for the benefit of others—it only teaches us to moderate that impatience which has its origin in self, and declares that our own co-operation becomes, in certain cases, unconscious—is, as it were, lost in a ‘special facility.’[[355]] The indefatigable benevolence of his life abundantly repudiates the slanderous conclusion of his adversaries, that the doctrine of indifference concerning the future, involves indifference likewise to moral good and evil in the present. Bossuet himself is often as mystical as Fénélon, sometimes more so.[[356]] St. Francis de Sales and Madame de Chantal said the very same things,—not to mention the unbridled utterances of the earlier and the mediæval mystics canonized by the Church of Rome. Could the controversy have been confined to the real question, no harm would have been done. It would have resembled the duel, in Ben Jonson’s play, between Fastidious Brisk and Signor Puntarvolo, where the rapiers cut through taffeta and lace, gold embroidery and satin doublets, but nowhere enter the skin. Certain terms and certain syllogisms, a well-starched theory, or an argument trimmed with the pearls of eloquence—might have been transfixed or rent by a dexterous pen, on this side or on that, but the prize of the conqueror would not have been court favour, nor the penalty of the conquered, exile. Theologians might have written, for a few, the learned history of a logical campaign, but the eyes of Europe would never have been turned to a conflict for fame and fortune raging in the Vatican and at Versailles, enlisting every religious party throughout Roman-catholic Christendom, and involving the rise or fall of some of the most illustrious names among the churchmen and nobility of France.
VIII.
The writings of Madame Guyon had now been condemned, though without mention of her name; Bossuet had intimated that he required nothing further from her; she began to hope that the worst might be over, and returned with her friends from Meaux to Paris, to live there as much retired as possible. This flight, which he chose to call dishonourable, irritated Bossuet. She had suffered him to see that she could trust him no longer. He endeavoured to recover the certificate he had given. An order was procured for her arrest. The police observed that a house in the Faubourg St. Antoine was always entered by a pass-key. They made their way in, and found Madame Guyon. They brought away their prisoner, ill as she was, and the king was induced, with much difficulty, to sign an order for her incarceration at Vincennes. The despot thought a convent might suffice,—not so the persecutors.[[357]]