I HAVE another defect, which is that I say things as they occur to me, without knowing whether I speak well or ill: whilst I am saying or writing them, they appear to me clear as day: after that, I see them as things I have never known, far from having written them. Nothing remains in my mind but a void, which is not troublesome. It is a simple void, which is not inconvenienced by the multitude of thoughts or by their dearth. This caused one of my greatest troubles in speaking to the Bishop of Meaux. He ordered me to justify my books. I excused myself as much as I could; because, having submitted them with my whole heart, I did not desire to justify them: but he insisted on it. I first of all protested I only did it through obedience, condemning most sincerely all that was condemned in them. I have always held this language, which was more that of my heart than of my mouth. He still wished me to render a reason for an infinity of things I had put in my writings, which were entirely new and unknown to me. I remember, among others, a passage regarding Eliud—that man who speaks so long to Job, when his friends had ceased speaking to him. I never knew what I had intended to say. The Bishop of Meaux insisted, I said, that all this Eliud says in that long discourse was by the Spirit of God. This did not appear to me so: on the contrary, one sees an astonishing fullness of himself. I will here say, in passing, that if one will give some attention to the rapidity with which God has made me write of so many things, far above my natural grasp, it is easy to conceive that, having had so small a part in it, it is very difficult, not to say impossible, for me, to render a reason for them in dogmatic style. This it is which has always led me to say, I took no part in them, and, having written only through obedience, I was as content to see everything burned as to see it praised and esteemed. There were also faults of the copyists, which rendered the sense unintelligible, and the Bishop of Meaux wanted to make me responsible for the errors, which he insisted were there: and he overwhelmed me by the vivacity of his arguments, which always reduced themselves to belief in the dogma of the Church, that I did not pretend to dispute with him; whereas he might have discussed quietly the experiences of a person, submissive to the Church, who asked only to be set right, if they were not conformable to the rules she prescribes; which was precisely the thing contemplated when this examination was undertaken.
He spoke to me of the woman of the Apocalypse, as if I had pretended to be her myself. I answered, St. John had meant to speak of the Church and of the Holy Virgin: that our Lord was pleased to compare his servants to a thousand things, which properly fit only him; and that there is nothing in the general Church which does not take place in some degree in the particular soul. It is then an application which is made to the soul, and God fulfils that application, as St. Paul says, he filled up what was wanting to the passion of Jesus Christ: again, what is said of Wisdom is applied to the Holy Virgin, but the design of Solomon was merely to express Wisdom; and so with the rest. It is then a comparison, which God nevertheless takes pleasure in fulfilling, where it pleases him. All that has been said of the woman of the Apocalypse, in the sense in which it has pleased God to attribute it to me, those plenitudes, for example, are not in the body, but in the soul, as many persons who will read this have experienced with me. It seems one sends out a torrent of graces. When the subject is disposed, this is received in him. When he is not so, it rebounds upon us. It is what Jesus Christ said to the disciples, “Those who are children of peace will receive the peace: as for those who will not receive it, your peace will return upon you.” It is that to the letter. One explains one’s self in these matters the best one can, and not as one wishes: but “the animal man will not understand” that which it is only given to the spiritual man to understand.
As to that outflow of graces which was another difficulty to the Bishop of Meaux. It has been given me to understand it in connection with those words of our Lord, when the woman had touched him: “A secret virtue is gone out of me.” I have never pretended to render all this credible: I have written in order to obey; and I have related things as they were shown to me. I have always been ready to believe I was deceived, if I was told so. God is my witness, I do not cling to anything. I have always been ready to burn the writings should they be thought capable of doing harm. There is little imagination in what I write; for I often write what I have never thought. What I should have wished of the Bishop of Meaux, was that he would not judge me by his reason, but by his heart. I have never premeditated any answer before seeing him; ingenuous truth alone was my strength, and I was as content my mistakes should be known, as the graces of God. My paltriness may have mingled itself with his pure light: but can the mire tarnish the sun? I hoped the same God who had once made a she-ass speak could make a woman speak; who often knew no more what she said than Balaam’s she-ass. Those were the dispositions of my heart when I had the conference with the Bishop of Meaux, and, thanks to God, I have never had any other.
The objections he made to me sprung, I believe, only from the small knowledge he had of mystic authors, whom he confessed to have never read, and the small experience he had of the interior ways. He had been struck on some occasions by extraordinary things he had seen in certain persons, or that he had read, which made him judge God had special routes by which he made them attain to a great holiness: but this way of simple faith, small, obscure, which produces in souls, according to the designs of God, that variety of special leadings where he leads them in himself, it was a jargon that he regarded as the effect of a crazy imagination, and the terms of which were to him equally unknown and intolerable.
Another thing he reproached me with, is having written somewhere, that I had no graces for certain souls, nor for my self. When I have spoken of having no longer grace for myself, I have not meant to speak of sanctifying grace, which one always needs, but of the gratuitous, sensible, distinct, and perceived graces, which are experienced in the commencement of the spiritual life. I meant to say I did not contribute to the reign of God by anything striking, but in gaining some souls by disgrace, ignominy, and confusion. He attributed to the sensible what was purely spiritual, as what I have written in my Life of an impression I had when with a lady, one of my friends. It is certain my state has never been to have extraordinary things which react upon the body: and I believe that usually this only happens in the sensible, not in the purely spiritual love. But on that occasion where they had read a passage of Holy Scripture, on which a very profound light was given to me, the persons who were present explained it in the opposite sense. I dared not speak, and there took place in me a contrast between what I knew was true, and what they said, which could not be borne. The inability to speak, not daring it, the necessity of hearing others speak, produced an effect upon me that I have only that time felt, which overflowed on my body and made me ill. It is true I have felt in the heart, when God gave me some souls, intolerable and inexplicable pains. It was a keen impression in the depth of my soul which I cannot better explain than by this which is given me, that Jesus Christ, in having his side opened upon the cross, had given birth to the predestinated. He caused his heart to be opened, as if to show they came forth from his heart. He suffered in the Garden of Olives the pain of the separation of the lost, who would not profit by the blood he was about to shed for them. This pain was in him excessive, and such that it needed the strength of a God to bear it. I have explained that in the Gospel of St. Matthew.
The Bishop of Meaux raised great objections to what I had said, in my Life, of the Apostolic state. What I have meant to say is, that persons, who, by their state and conditions (as, for instance, laics and women) are not called upon to aid souls, ought not to intrude into it of themselves: but when God wished to make use of them by his authority, it was necessary they should be put into the state of which I have written. What had given occasion for it is, that numbers of good souls who feel the first fruits of the unction of grace—that unction of which St. John speaks, which teaches all truth, —when, I say, they commence to feel this unction, they are so charmed with it, that they would wish to share their grace with all the world. But as they are not yet in the source, and this unction is given them for themselves and not for others, in spreading themselves abroad they gradually lose the sacred oil, as the foolish virgins, while the wise ones preserved their oil for themselves, until they were introduced into the chamber of the Bridegroom: then they may give of their oil, because the Lamb is the lamp who illumines them. That this state is possible, we have only to open the histories of all times to show, that God has made use of laics and women without learning to instruct, edify, conduct, and bring souls to a very high perfection. I believe one of the reasons why God has willed to make use of them in this way, is in order that the glory should not be stolen from him. “He has chosen weak things to confound the strong.” It seems that God, jealous that what is only due to him should be attributed to men, has willed to make a paradox of these persons, who are not in a state to take from him his glory. As to what regards me, I am ready to believe that my imaginations are mixed up as shadows with the divine truth, which may indeed conceal it, but cannot injure it. I pray God with all my heart to crush me by the most terrible means, rather than I should rob him of the least of his glory. I am only a mere nothing. My God is all powerful, who is pleased to exercise his power upon the nothing.
The first time I wrote my Life, it was very short. I had put there in detail my sins, and had only spoken very little of the graces of God. I was made to burn it; and I was commanded absolutely to omit nothing, and to write, regardless of myself, all that should come to me. I did it. If there is anything too much like pride, I am capable only of what is worthless; but I have thought it was more suitable to obey without self-regard than to disobey and conceal the mercies of God through a humility born of the selfhood. God may have had his designs in this. It is ill to publish the secret of one’s King, but it is well done to declare the graces of the Lord our God, and to enhance his bounties by the baseness of the subject on whom he exhibits them. If I have failed, the fire will purify all. I can very well believe I may have been mistaken; but I cannot complain, nor be afflicted at it. When I gave myself to our Lord, it was without reserve and without exception; and as I have written only through obedience, I am as content to write extravagances as good things. My consolation is, God is neither less great, nor less perfect, nor less happy for all my errors. When things are once written down, nothing remains in my head. I have no idea of them. When I am able to reflect, it appears to me I am below all creatures, and a veritable nothing.
When I have spoken of binding and loosing, the words should not be taken in the sense in which it is said of the Church. It was a certain authority, which God seemed to give me, to withdraw souls from their troubles and to replunge them therein, God permitting that it was verified in the souls: not that I have supposed that I was the better, nor that it took place in a manner reflected upon me, which God has never permitted; but, while writing simply and without self-regard, I have put things as they were shown to me.
The Bishop of Meaux insisted on saying I stifled distinct acts, as believing them imperfect. I have never done so; and when I have been interiorly placed in a powerlessness to do them, and my powers were as though bound, I defended myself with all my strength, and only through weakness did I yield to the strong and powerful God. It seems to me that even this powerlessness to do conscious acts did not deprive me of the reality of the act; on the contrary, I found my faith, my confidence, my self-surrender were never more living, nor my love more ardent. This made me understand that there was a kind of act direct and without reflection; and I knew it by a continued exercise of love and faith, which, rendering the soul submissive to all the events of providence, leads her to a veritable hatred of self and a love of only crosses, ignominy, and disgrace. It seems to me that all the Christian and Evangelic characteristics are given to her. It is true her confidence is full of repose, free from anxiety and inquietude; she can do nothing but love and repose in her love. She is like a person drunk, who is incapable of anything but his drunkenness. The difference between these persons and the others is, that the others eat the food, masticating it carefully to nourish themselves, and these swallow the substance without reflecting on it. I am so far from wishing to stifle distinct acts, as being imperfect, that if anyone will take the trouble to read my writings, he will remark in many places expressions which are very distinct acts. It would be easy to show that they then flow from the source, and the reason why one, at that time, expresses his love, his faith, his self-surrender, in a very distinct manner; that one does the same in hymns or spiritual songs, and that one cannot do it in prayer unless God impels.
I should remark that acts must be according to the state of the soul. If she is multiplex, the acts must be multiplex; if she is simple, simple: in short, either direct or from reflection. Patience is an act. He who receives, does an act, though less marked than he who gives. The flowing of the soul into God is an act. He who is moved and acted upon has acts; they are not his own acts in truth, and the souls then are not the principle of their acts. It is an act to obey the hand which pushes. The agent moves his subject; the subject moved acts by its principle of movement. All these are acts, but not acts regulated and methodic, nor of which the soul is the principle, but God. Now, the acts God causes to be done are more noble and more perfect, although more insensible. “Those who are moved by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” He who is moved does an act, which is not properly an act of his, but an act of letting himself move without resistance. He who does not admit these secondary acts, destroys all the operations of grace as a first principle, and makes God only secondary, doing nothing but accompanying our action; which is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.
I can say the same thing of specific requests; for it is on specific requests the Bishop of Meaux has tormented me most, not only in this first conference, but in those I had with him at the end of that same year, of which I shall speak hereafter. I collect together here, as well as I can remember, all that relates to this examination, not to refer to it a second time. The Bishop of Meaux would have me make requests; but what can I ask for? God gives me more blessings than I wish for; what should I ask of him? He forestalls my requests and my desires. He makes me forget myself, that I may think of him. He forgets himself for me: how should I not forget myself for him? He, to whom love leaves sufficient liberty to think of himself, hardly loves; or at least, might love more. He, who does not think of himself, can neither ask, nor pray for himself; his love is his prayer and his request. O Divine Charity, you are every prayer, every request, every thanksgiving, and yet you are none of this! You are a substantial prayer, which, in an eminent degree, includes every distinct and detailed prayer. O Love, you are that sacred fire, who render pure and innocent your victims, without their thinking of their purity. They speak of themselves outside themselves in you as of you, without distinction. I am not astonished, O David, that you spoke of yourself as Christ, of whom you were the figure. You were so become identical with him that in the same passages you speak of yourself and of him, without changing style or person. In short, it appears to me, the exercise of charity contains every request and every prayer; and as there is a love without reflection, there is a prayer without reflection: and that which has this substantial prayer is the equivalent of all prayers, since it contains them all. It does not detail them, owing to its simplicity. The heart, which ceaselessly watches on God, attracts the watchfulness of God over it. There are two kinds of souls: the one to which God leaves liberty to think of themselves, the others whom God invites to give themselves to him by such an entire forgetfulness of themselves that he reproaches them for the least self-regards. These souls are like little children who let their mothers carry them, and have no care for what concerns them. This does not condemn those who act. They both follow their attraction according to the spirit of grace and the advice of an enlightened director. Open the book on the Love of God by St. Francis de Sales; he says the same thing in numberless places. I say, then, there are spiritual as well as corporal inabilities. I do not condemn acts or good practices. God forbid! When I have written of these things, I have not pretended to give remedies to those who walk and have a facility for those practices, but I have done it for numerous persons who are unable to perform these acts. It is said these remedies are dangerous and may be abused. It is only necessary to remove the abuse. It is what I have laboured to do with all my power.
The Bishop of Meaux maintained there are only four or five persons in the whole world who have this manner of prayer, and who are in this difficulty of performing acts. There are more than a hundred thousand in the world: therefore one has written for those, who are in this state. I have endeavoured to remove an abuse, which is, that souls who commence to feel certain inabilities (which is very common) think they are at the summit of perfection; and I have wished, while exalting this last state, to make them understand their distance. As to what regards the root of doctrine, I avow my ignorance. I believed my director would remove faulty terms, and that he would correct what he should not think good. I would rather die a thousand times than wander from the sentiments of the Church, and I have always been ready to disavow and condemn whatever I might have said, or written, which could be contrary to them.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 