‘It will be objected, it may be, to what has been said, that this second condition required here of the intellect that means to be enlightened by Faith, is a state of idleness—time lost; and that it is an absurd thing not to make use of the understanding and faculties God has given us, nor so much as endeavour to excite in our minds good and bright thoughts. Here are several things tacked together, and most of them beside the purpose. For at present I am not treating of the means by which one may be introduced, or rather brought, as it were, to the threshold of faith, as I may say; nor of that imperfect and beginning faith, by me styled active. Nor yet do I say, that when one has been enlightened by the light of God, one is not to fix one’s mind to the consideration of the lights held out by God: but what I say is this: I suppose a man has already had some glimpse of the divine light by the call of preventing grace, and that he has actively co-operated with it, by turning his understanding towards it, with particular desires of such and such lights; and, moreover, that, to confirm himself therein, he has deduced in his reason and his other inferior faculties, notions, ratiocinations, images, and words, and other particular exercises wherein he has been exercised long enough to be capable of ascending to the state of pure and altogether divine faith. Upon this supposition, the question is, whether one whose faith has as yet been but weak, and the small light he has had clouded and mixed with great darkness, prejudices, and errors, designing to clear the principles of the fight he has from the aforesaid mixture, and desiring to see this divine light in its purity and more fully,—whether, I say, to this end he ought to apply thereto the activity of his understanding, of his meditations, reflections, and reasonings; or else, whether, all this apart, he ought to offer his understanding in vacuity and silence to the Son of God, the Sun of Righteousness, and the true Light of Souls? And this last is what we affirm, and against which the objections alleged are of no force.’—P. 100.
‘Thus have I shown what God requires of the intellect in matters of faith—viz. a fund of mind wherein neither reason nor imagination do at all act, but where God only may be, and act brightly as He pleases, the soul meanwhile not adhering to the particular manners of God’s acting, but merely because it is God acting, and God infinite and incomprehensible, who can dispose of His infinite ways above our understanding.’—P. 104.
Antoinette Bourignon found in Poiret a learned and philosophical disciple. He was to her, in some respects, what Robert Barclay was to George Fox. But her writings appear also to have awakened a response, of a more practical kind, in many devout minds of whom the world knew nothing. Throughout Germany and Holland, France and Switzerland, and in England also, were scattered little groups of friends who nourished a hidden devotion by the study of pietist or mystical writers. Arndt and Spener, Bourignon and Guyon, Labadie and Yvon, Thomas à Kempis, De Sales, or translations from the Spanish mystics, furnished the oil for their inward flame. Some withdrew altogether from the more active duties of life; others were separatists from the religion established around them. In some cases they held meetings for worship among themselves; in others, the struggles of a soul towards the higher life were only revealed to one or two chosen intimates. Whenever we can penetrate behind the public events which figure in history at the close of the seventeenth and the opening of the eighteenth century, indications are discernible which make it certain that a religious vitality of this description was far more widely diffused than is commonly supposed. A single example will be sufficiently suggestive. One M. de Marsay, who threw up his ensign’s commission in the French army, and retired, with two friends, into seclusion, after the manner recommended by Antoinette Bourignon, left behind him an unpublished Autobiography. A copy from a translation of this curious narrative, in the possession of Mr. Tindall Harris, has been kindly placed at my disposal by that gentleman. The copy was executed in 1773, by some one who had known De Marsay personally.
M. de Marsay was born at Paris, in 1688, of Protestant parents. A taste for devotional reading was fostered, in early youth, by the piety of his mother. Jurieu’s well-known work on Divine Love found its place among such studies; but none of the mystical writers. When he had entered the army, sometimes half the day, and often half the night also, was devoted to reading, meditation, and prayer. At one time he maintained an inward prayer for three or four days without intermission, though the regiment was on the march, and the troops under arms day and night. He fondly imagined that such a state would continue all his life. When the reaction came, his efforts to overcome the natural exhaustion and regain his spiritual joy were so strenuous and painful that his delicate frame gave way, and symptoms of consumption appeared. His distress at this time was similar to that of Madame Guyon, and of many others, at the earlier period of their entrance on the ‘inward way.’ Thomas à Kempis was in his hand; but he could not yet understand the lesson which the more experienced mystics so earnestly inculcate,—that spiritual pleasures may be sought too greedily,—that we should persevere and trust, whether in sensible delight or obscuration, whether in fulness or ‘aridity.’ He lay sick at Lisle for three months, calmly looking for death, and then, to the surprise of all, recovered.
Meanwhile his friend, Lieutenant Cordier, has been reading Bourignon’s Lux in Tenebris, in the camp before Bethune. He writes to De Marsay, saying that he was now convinced the devotion they had hitherto practised together was as nothing; that he had resolved to quit the army and retire to some desert, there to live a life of poverty and devotion. M. Barratier, the chaplain of their regiment, was of like mind; if De Marsay would read Madame Bourignon, he would probably arrive at the conclusion, and join them. So indeed it proved. De Marsay bought her nineteen volumes, and determined to live her ‘poor and evangelical life.’
After many delays, he succeeded in obtaining his discharge (diligently reading, meanwhile, Theresa’s Life, and John of the Cross); and at last, behold the three friends, in the spring of 1711, settled in a solitude such as they desired, at Schwartzenau, on the estate of the Countess Witgenstein. They rise at four, and begin the day by reading a chapter in the Bible. Cordier and De Marsay work in the field, and Barratier has breakfast ready for them at seven o’clock,—dry bread, of their own baking, and cold water. Till noon they spin, card, or knit wool; Cordier goes out on some errand; or De Marsay collects leaves, instead of straw, for their beds. At noon they dine, and Barratier (the cook and housekeeper) boils them the same food all the week through. One week it is pease, with bread; another week, barley; next, wheat, groats, or oatmeal pap; and for drink sometimes, ‘as a special treat,’ boiled groats, in milk. After dinner one of them reads aloud from Bourignon’s writings. Work again till four, and in the field till seven, when they sit down to supper, before a dish of pulse or salad, groats or turnips. Work again, in-doors, till nine, and then to bed. It was a rule that they should only speak to each other when it was absolutely necessary. They had no regular hours for prayer, but endeavoured (as Bourignon counsels) to do everything in a spirit of prayer, by living consciously in the presence of God, and referring all ceaselessly to Him.
Yet in this Paradise of asceticism De Marsay is not happy. The endeavour to retain constantly a general sense of the divine presence was far less unnatural and arduous than those protracted prayers and meditations at which he used to labour. But he has little enjoyment, and the clamorous demands of a large appetite sorely disturb his pious thoughts. See him, one day, sitting on the stump of a tree—the picture of despair. His soul is in the abyss. God seems to have abandoned him to himself. What has he done? He has eaten a potato between meals! Only by the most ample confession, the most contrite self-abasement, can he recover peace. Terrible tyranny of the misguided conscience over the feeble judgment! Here was a moral power that might have made a hero; and it only drives a slave.
But the revulsion must come; and simultaneously the three anchorites remit their silence and their introversion, and (the spell once broken) chatter incessantly; now one, and now another, bursting into fits of unmeaning, involuntary laughter. Yet, through all such mortifying discouragement, all terror and temptation, De Marsay makes his way. He does but yield himself, in his helplessness, the more absolutely to God, to be delivered from his spiritual adversaries, if He wills, or to be abandoned to the countless possibilities of evil, within him and about him. Bourignon brought him to this point. So far she essays to guide souls in the ‘interior way;’ after that, the Divine Conductor leads them each as He will.
With poor Cordier it fared not so well. They had relaxed their rule, he said: he would leave them, and live entirely alone. So he was carried from extreme to extreme, till he reached a spurious resignation—a passivity which did not resist evil—a self-forgetfulness which ceased to recognise in himself his most dangerous enemy. From the height of spiritual pride he was precipitated into licence. A woman living near, with great affectation of sanctity, beguiled him into marriage. This female Tartuffe stood afterwards revealed in her real iniquity; and Cordier eventually returned to the world and a godless libertinism.
The Countess Witgenstein gave shelter, about this time, to a Lady Clara de Callenberg, who had suffered much domestic unhappiness on account of her pietism. This lady, considerably his senior, De Marsay saw, wooed, and won. Our pair of ascetics resolved to live a life of absolute continence, and De Marsay renders hearty thanks that (in spite of many temptations) they received grace to adhere to their determination. The good man’s manner of reasoning is curious. The first thought of a change of life occurred to him one day, when sitting, ‘in great calmness of mind,’ under a tree, with his knitting-tackle. ‘It was shown to me,—if it was true that I was willing to be the property of God without exception, it was his will that I should give Him the first proof thereof, in marrying the Lady Clara de Callenberg.’ Barratier married them, and so the original association was finally dissolved.[[373]] The marriage was a very happy one, their principal outward trial arising from the frequent indisposition of his wife, who ruined her constitution by the miserable austerity of her diet. They were all but penniless; yet in this they rejoiced, as so much exercise of faith; and, indeed, such moderate means as they required were generally found forthcoming from one quarter or another.