Madame Guyon

“ Madame Guyon came under the sway of Father La Combe's eloquence. She felt the deep, abiding strength of his character. He was the first genuine man she had ever met, and in degree he filled her ideal. She sought him in confession, and the quality of her confession must surely have made an impression on him. Spirituality and sex are closely akin. Oratory and a well-sexed nature go together.
Father La Combe was a man. Madame Guyon was a woman.
Both were persons of high intellect, great purity of purpose, and sincerity of intent. But neither knew that piety is a by-product of sex. ”

“ We must remember that at this critical time, when she most needed counsel, she had really no one to guide her—no one, that is, who possessed spiritual wisdom and common sense.
Though Madame Guyon was much absorbed in a mystical ecstasy, which she describes as prayer without words or even thoughts, she was no mere visionary. Her love to God, her intense devotion to her Saviour, led her to earnest endeavours to do good to those around her. The poor and the sick, young girls exposed to temptation, all who needed temporal or spiritual help, were the special objects of her care and benevolence. ”

“ The favor that had greeted Madame Guyon wherever she went was very great. Her animation and devout enthusiasm won her entrance into the homes of the great and noble everywhere. She organized societies of women that met for prayer and conversation on exalted themes. The burden of her philosophy was "Quietism"—the absolute submission of the human soul to the will of God. Give up all, lay aside all striving, all reaching out, all unrest, cease penance and lie low in the Lord's hand. He doeth all things well. Make life one continual prayer for holiness—wholeness—harmony ”

“ If we listen to Madame Guyon, our life, after having been crushed, soiled, and destroyed, will revive in God. He who has passed through all the horror of the sepulchre, whose living body has become a corpse, which has held communion with worms, and from rottenness has become ashes and clay—even he will resume his life, and again bloom in the sun.
What can be less credible, or less conformable to nature? She deceives herself and us by equivocal terms. The life she promises us after this death is not our own ”

“ Molinos found many partisans in Italy and in France, where his system was fervently embraced by the celebrated poetess and mystic, Madame Guyon, who conceived herself called from above to quit her home and travel, inculcating everywhere the gospel of quietism. Fenelon, whose sweetness and goodness flung a charm around every opinion he expressed, adopted in part the theories of Molinos, and Madame de Maintenon herself is numbered among Madame Guyon's converts to the Spaniard's novel and dreamy creed. ”

“ In fact, those in authority take the lofty ground that a priest, like a king, can do no wrong, and that sins of the flesh are impossible to one divinely anointed. And as for the woman, she is merely guilty of indiscretion at the worst.
Madame Guyon's indiscretion took the form of religious ecstasy, and she claimed that the innermost living God was guiding her footsteps into a life of "Pure Love," or constant, divine adoration. Charges of "false doctrine" were brought against her, and Father La Combe was duly cautioned to have nothing to do with Madame Guyon in any way. ”

“ It is the greatest possible help to our poor sorrowful nature that these struggles, these strong cryings and bitter tears of our Lord, have been recorded, because it helps us to feel that he was not peaceful because he was passionless—that his joy and peace did not come from the serenity of a nature incapable of sorrow and struggles like ours. There are passages in the experience of such saints as Madame Guyon that seem like the unnatural exaltations of souls exceptionally indifferent to circumstances; nothing makes any difference to them; one thing is just as good as another. ”

“ It is the same philosophy that is being expressed by thousands of prominent men and women today. It embraced all that is vital and best in our so-called "advanced thought"; for in good sooth none of our new "liberal sects" has anything that has not been taught before in olden time.
But Madame Guyon's success was too great. The guardians of a dogmatic religion are ever on the scent for heresy. They are jealous, and fearful, and full of alarm lest their "institution" shall topple. Quietism was making head, and throughout France the name of Madame Guyon was becoming known. ”

“ Madame Guyon admits that she found it necessary jealously to guard humility, to watch and pray—that her state was only of ‘comparative immutability.’ It appears to us that perfection is prescribed as a goal ever to be approached, but ever practically inaccessible. Whatever degree of sanctification any one may have attained, it must always be possible to conceive of a state yet more advanced,—it must always be a duty diligently to labour towards it. ”

“ In love the illicit seems the normal.
Her children are nothing to her, compared to this love, the ratio of a woman's love for her children having a direct relationship to the mother's love for their father. Madame Guyon's regard for her husband is covered by the word "duty," but to deceive the man never occurs to her as a fault. She prides herself on being an honest wife.
MADAME GUYON
Of course her children turn from her, because she has turned from them. ”

“ I met with none but admirers abroad, those that flattered me to my hurt. It were to be feared lest at such a tender age, amid all the strange domestic crosses I had to bear, I might be drawn away. But Thou, by Thy goodness and love, gave it quite another turn. By these redoubled strokes Thou didst draw me to Thyself, and by Thy crosses effected what Thy caresses could not effect. Nay, Thou madest use of my natural pride, to keep me within the limits of my duty. I knew that a woman of honor ought never to give suspicion to her husband. ”

“ These passages convey the substance of the doctrine which, illustrated and expressed in various ways, pervades all the writings of Madame Guyon. This is the principle adorned by the fancy of her Torrents and inculcated in the practical directions of her Short Method of Prayer. Such is the state to which Quietism proposes to conduct its votaries. In some places, she qualifies the strength of her expressions,—she admits that we are not at all times equally conscious of this absolute union of the soul with its centre,—the lower nature may not be always insensible to distress. ”

“ Now, it was the denunciation and wild demonstration of her fearing foes that advertised the labors of Madame Guyon. For strong people are not so much advertised by their loving friends as by their rabid enemies. ”

“ She followed him to his home in Gex, and then to Geneva. She entered a convent and worked as a menial so as to be near him. The Bishop made Father La Combe her official adviser, so as to lend authority to their relationship.
All would have been well, had not the ardor and intensity of Madame Guyon's nature attracted the attention and then the jealousy of various monks and nuns. A woman of Madame Guyon's nature is content with nothing less than ownership and complete possession. She even went so far as to announce herself as mother-by-grace to Father La Combe. ”

“ The details of the poor girl's sufferings in her new home are painful to read; but as Madame Guyon relates these early trials, she devoutly regards them as the means employed by her Heavenly Father to wean her affections from the world and turn them towards Himself. ”

“ The same all-wise Providence preserved it from destruction. We have not a shadow of doubt that it is destined to accomplish tenfold more in the future than it has accomplished in the past. Indeed, the Christian world is only beginning to understand and appreciate it, and the hope and prayer of the publisher is, that thousands may, through its instrumentality, be brought into the same intimate communion and fellowship with God, that was so richly enjoyed by Madame Guyon. ”

“ After dividing most of their little store among the poor, and selling their cottage as too large, Madame de Marsay can know no rest from her fears till the greater part of the money received has been also given away,—that the command may be obeyed, ‘Sell all that thou hast.’ Yet, through all self-made troubles, the genuineness of their religion shines out. He is ever humble, thankful, trustful. The reading of Madame Guyon weans him still farther from ‘sensible religious delights;’ he enters calmly into the state of ‘dark faith;’ begins to attach less importance to austerities ”

“ Of the experience of Madame Guyon, it should be borne in mind, that though the glorious heights of communion with God to which she attained may be scaled by the feeblest of God’s chosen ones, yet it is by no means necessary that they should be reached by the same apparently arduous and protracted path along which she was led. ”

“ It is an account of a remarkable woman, carefully following the statements contained in her own autobiography, and written in a style of sweet serenity, in which the very spirit of Madame Guyon seems mirrored. No one can read the book without having his knowledge of the higher and subtler phenomena of the mind extended. It exhibits a human soul in that state of religious exaltation, where every thing is viewed in its relation to God, and all the evils of life taken as proofs of God’s love. ”

“ One night in a dream our Lord showed me, that He would also purify the maid whom He had given me, make her truly enter into death to herself. I freely resolved to suffer for her, as I did for Father La Combe. As she resisted God much more than he, and was much more under the power of self-love, she had more to be purified from. What I could not tolerate in her was her regard for herself. I saw clearly that the devil cannot hurt us only so far as we retain some fondness for this corrupt self. ”

“ A single example will suffice. The person confined in the Bastille a few days before the Iron Mask is, according to Dujonca, the famous Madame Guyon, and a letter from Count de Pontchartrain to Saint-Mars, of November 3, 1698, says: “As for Madame Guyon, it is not necessary to do anything with reference to her except by the advice of the Archbishop:”—Imperial Archives, Registers of the Secretary’s office of the King’s Household. ”

“ F. La Combe—It is for that reason, my lord, that one ought to be very cautious in the commands which they lay on her. Can I induce a foreign lady, who, for all her subsistence, has nothing but a small pittance she has reserved to herself, to give that up in favor of a house which is not yet established, and perhaps never will be? If the house should happen to fail, or be no longer of use, what shall that lady live on? Shall she go to the hospital? And indeed this house will not long be of any use, since there are no Protestants in any part of France near it. ”

“ My husband enjoying some intermission of his almost continual ailments, had a mind to go to Orleans, and then into Touraine. In this journey my vanity made its last blaze. I received abundance of visits and applauses. But how clearly did I see the folly of men who are so taken with vain beauty! I disliked the disposition, yet not that which caused it, though I sometimes ardently desired to be delivered from it. The continual combat of nature and grace cost me no small affliction. Nature was pleased with public applause ”

“ There was in that town a poor laundress who had five children, and a husband paralytic, lame in the right arm, and yet worse distempered in mind than in body. He had little strength left for anything else than to beat her. This poor woman bore it with all the meekness and patience of an angel, while she by her labor supported him and his five children. She had a wonderful gift of prayer, and amid her great suffering and extreme poverty, preserved the presence of God, and tranquility of mind. ”

“ I had no consolation from the creatures. She who had the care of my daughter behaved roughly to me. Such are the persons who regulate themselves only by their gifts and emotions. When they do not see things succeed, and as they regard them only by their success, and are not willing to have the affront of their pretensions being though uncertain, and liable to mistake, they seek without for supports. As for me who pretended to nothing, I thought all succeeded well, inasmuch as all tended to self-annihilation. On another side, the maid I had brought, and who stayed with me, grew tired out. ”

“ He returned to Versailles, where he had apartments at Conde’s house. Apoplexy carried him off in a quarter of an hour on the 11th of May, 1696,” leaving behind him an incomparable book, wherein, according to his own maxim, the excellent writer shows himself to be an excellent painter; and four dialogues against Quietism, still unfinished, full of lively and good-humored hostility to the doctrines of Madame Guyon. ”

“ But those good souls instead of being staggered by persecutions, grew the stronger by it. The Superior, and the master of the novices of the house in which this doctor was declared against me, without knowing me. They were grievously chagrined that a woman, as they said, should be so much flocked to, and so much sought after. Looking at things as they were in themselves, and not as they were in the Lord, who does whatever pleases Him, they had contempt for the gift which was lodged in so mean an instrument, instead of esteeming the Lord and His grace. ”