349. Her request was made to Madame de Maintenon for commissioners, half clerical, half lay, to examine into the scandals which had been set afloat against her character.—Phelipeaux, liv. i. p. 114. Autobiography, part III. chap. xv.
350. Autobiography, chapp. xvi. xvii. See also her letter to the three commissioners, in Phelipeaux, p. 117. Harlay heard with indignation of this Conference at Issy, to decide upon a heresy which had been unearthed in his diocese. He endeavoured to rouse the suspicions of Louis, but in vain. He determined himself to condemn the writings of Madame Guyon, before the Commissioners could come to a decision. Madame de Maintenon informed Bossuet, who paid a visit without loss of time to his metropolitan, complimented him on the censure he was about to fulminate, gave every explanation, and took his departure with polite assurances that the verdict of Issy would but reiterate the condemnation pronounced by the vigilant Archbishop of Paris. So completely was the cause of Madame Guyon prejudged.—Phelipeaux, p. 125.
351. Autobiography, part III. chapp. xviii. xix. Réponse à la Relation, &c., I. ii. 3. Upham, vol. II. chapp. x. and xi.
352. The articles at first proposed to Fénélon for his signature were thirty in number. The 12th and 13th, the 33rd and 34th, were wanting. He said that he could only sign these thirty articles as they were, ‘par déférence,’ and against his persuasion. Two days afterwards, when the four additional articles were laid before him, he declared himself ready to sign them with his blood. The 34th article is the most important of the four, as bearing directly on the most critical question arising from the doctrine of disinterested love. It allows that doctrine expressly, if words have meaning, and occupies all the ground Fénélon himself was concerned to maintain in its defence. (Entretiens sur la Religion, Fén. Œuvres, tom. i. p. 34.) The article is in substance as follows:—On peut inspirer aux âmes peinées et vraiment humbles un consentement à la volonté de Dieu, quand même, par une supposition très-fausse, au lieu des biens éternels promis aux justes, il les tiendrait dans les tourments éternels, sans néanmoins les priver de sa grâce et de son amour.—Réponse à la Relation, &c., chap. iii. Phelipeaux, liv. i. pp. 131, 135-137.
356. Witness the panegyrics of Bossuet on Theresa and John of the Cross. Compare also their different verdicts on the former. Fénélon says, writing to Madame de Maintenon, ‘Quelque respect et quelque admiration que j’aie pour Sainte Thérèse, je n’aurais jamais voulu donner au public tout ce qu’elle a écrit.’—Correspondance, 31. Bossuet, writing to Madame Guyon, says, ‘Je n’ai jamais hésité un seul moment sur les états de Sainte Thérèse, parceque je n’y ai rien trouvé, que je ne trouvasse aussi dans l’Ecriture,’ &c.—Phelipeaux, liv. i. p. 104. In the Instructions sur les Etats d’Oraison, Bossuet, in speaking of the passive state, had allowed of certain miraculous suspensions (impuissances) from which Fénelon shrinks—which he would have located in some section Faux of his Maxims—and to which Noailles refused his approval.—Réponse à la Relation, xxviii. and lxii.
357. Her letter to Bossuet furnishes a fair justification of this retreat to Paris.—Phelipeaux, liv. i. p. 152. It gratifies our curiosity to learn from this authority what books were seized when Desgrès, the detective, entered the little house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, in the name of the king. There were some plays of Molière, some romances, such as John of Paris and Richard Lion-heart, but these, said Madame Guyon, belonged to the lacqueys of her son, a lieutenant in the guards. But she acknowledged a Griseldis and Don Quixote as her books. It is pleasing to find our fair saint, so far of like passions with ourselves, amused with Sancho, and pitying Griseldis,—herself a patient sufferer at the hands of blinded, pitiless men.
361. Bausset, Hist. de Fénélon, liv. iii. 47. A minute, though very partial account of all the squabbles and intrigues at Rome, from first to last, may be read in Phelipeaux.—See also Memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, xi. 19. Corr. de Fénélon, lettre 108.
362. Bausset, iii. 48-50; Aimé-Martin, Etudes sur la Vie de Fénélon, p. 14.
363. Bausset, 53-4; Mem. of Maintenon, XI. 20; Aimé-Martin, 15.
364. Bausset, 59-61. The means to which Bossuet could stoop—the falsehoods he could coolly repeat, after detection, as though nothing had happened—the misquotation, and misrepresentation—the constant reply to awkwardly pressing arguments by malicious personalities—all these things are exposed in Fénélon’s Lettres en Réponse, and in the Réponse itself. They are bad enough; but the student of controversy is accustomed to this imperturbable lying, to these arts of insinuation. The most detestable feature of all in the part played by Bossuet, lies in that sleek cant and tearful unction with which he calumniates—as though it almost broke his heart to write what he exults in writing. Well might Fénélon request that he would not weep over him so profusely while he tore him in pieces, and desire fewer tears and more fair play! See the Preface to the Réponse; Réponse, 59; and Réponse aux Remarques, § vi.
365. Bausset, iii. 68, 69; Upham, vol. ii. p. 289.
366. Bausset, 77, 78.
367. Upham, vol. ii. ch. 18.
371. See Revelations from the Life of Prince Talleyrand; and compare Eynard, Vie de Madame de Krüdener, chap. xvii. Madame de Genlis writes of her, ‘Me. de Krüdener disait les choses les plus singulières avec un calme qui les rendait persuasives; elle était certainement de très bonne foi; elle me parut être aimable, spirituelle et d’une originalité très piquante.’—P. 30.
372. See the whole story of the pastor Fontaine and Maria Kummerin, in Eynard.
373. Barratier subsequently became minister to the French church in Halle.
375. Barclay’s Apology, propp. v. and vi. § 27, p. 194. Fourth Edition, 1701.
376. Fox’s Journal, pp. 76-83.
377. Fox’s Journal, vol. i. p. 130.
378. Fox’s Journal, vol. i. pp. 109, 129, 232. Vaughan’s Hist. of England under the House of Stuart, p. 539.
379. Journal, vol. i. p. 95.
380. Journal, p. 89. This theopathetic mysticism is emphatically transitive. Every inward manifestation speedily becomes a something to be done, a testimony to be delivered. The Quaker is ‘exercised,’ not that he may deck himself in the glory of saintship, but to fit him for rendering service, as he supposes, to his fellows. The early followers of Fox often caricatured the acted symbolism of the Hebrew prophets with the most profane or ludicrous unseemliness. Yet stark-mad as seemed the fashion of their denunciations, their object was very commonly some intelligible and actual error or abuse.
381. Barclay’s Apology, propp. v. and vi. 16. Sewell’s History, p. 544. (Barclay’s Letter to Paets); also p. 646 (The Christian Doctrine of the People called Quakers, &c., published 1693). Compare J. J. Gurney’s Observations on the Distinguishing Views and Practices of the Society of Friends, chap. i. p. 59.
382. Koran.
383. Let the reader consult his Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, or read his caustic observations upon the Anima Magica Abscondita, and his Second Lash of Alazonomastix. Among the high-flyers of his day, there appear to have been some who spoke of being ‘godded with God,’ and ‘Christed with Christ,’ much after the manner of some of Eckart’s followers.
384. ‘But now seeing the Logos or steady comprehensive wisdom of God, in which all Ideas and their respects are contained, is but universal stable reason, how can there be any pretence of being so highly inspired as to be blown above reason itself, unlesse men will fancy themselves wiser than God, or their understandings above the natures and reasons of things themselves.’—Preface to the Conjectura Cabbalistica.
385. See Norris’s Miscellanies (1699):
An Idea of Happiness: enquiring wherein the greatest happiness attainable by Man in this Life does consist, pp. 326-341.
386. Miscellanies, p. 276 (in a Discourse on Rom. xii. 3), and p. 334.
387. Norris says, in his Hymn to Darkness—
In the writings of Henry More we can see, by a notice here and there, how Quakerism looked in the eyes of a retired scholar, by no means indiscriminately adverse to enthusiasm. The word enthusiasm itself, he always uses more in the classical than the modern sense. ‘To tell you my opinion of that sect which are called Quakers, though I must allow that there may be some amongst them good and sincere-hearted men, and it may be nearer to the purity of Christianity for the life and power of it than many others, yet I am well assured that the generality of them are prodigiously melancholy, and some few perhaps possessed with the devil.’ He thinks their doctrine highly dangerous, as mingling with so many good and wholesome things an abominable ‘slighting of the history of Christ, and making a mere allegory of it,—tending to the utter overthrow of that warrantable though more external frame of Christianity which Scripture itself points out to us.’ Yet he takes wise occasion, from the very existence of such a sect, to bid us all look at home, and see that we do not content ourselves with the mere Tabernacle without the Presence and Power of God therein.—Mastix, his Letter to a Friend, p. 306.
388. See Swedenborg’s True Christian Religion, chap. iv.
389. See E. Swedenborg, a Biography, by J. G. Wilkinson, p. 99; a succinct and well-written account of the man, and the best introduction to his writings I have met with.
390. Wilkinson, pp. 187, 118.
391. Wilkinson, pp. 79, 130.
392. Heaven and Hell, § 360.
393. True Christian Religion, § 796.
394. See the description of the heavenly palaces, of divine worship in heaven, and of the angelic employments, Heaven and Hell, §§ 183, 221, 387. True Christian Religion, §§ 694, 697. Also concerning marriages in heaven, Heaven and Hell, §§ 366-386.
395. Heaven and Hell, §§ 329-345.
396. True Christian Religion, chap. vi. 6, 7; Heaven and Hell, § 592.
397. True Christian Religion, chap. ii. 1-7. I give here Swedenborg’s idea of the evangelical theology. See especially §§ 132-135, where he represents himself as correcting the false doctrine of certain spirits in the other world concerning the Divine Nature.
398. Goethe:
399. See F. H. Jacobi, Von den Göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung (1811), where the principles of the Faith-Philosophy are expounded, though after a desultory, disjointed manner:—more especially pp. 70-93.
400. To Schleiermacher the theology of his country owes great and lasting obligation for having led the intellectual promise of his time to a momentous crisis of transition. His genius at once kindled the enthusiasm of youth, and allowed a space to its scepticism. As much opposed as Hamann or Jacobi to the contemptuous Rationalism which then held the scorner’s chair, he did not, like them, couch a polemic lance against philosophy. But real and important as was his advance beyond the low and superficial anti-supranaturalism which preceded him, the followers of Schleiermacher found it impossible to rest where he did. From among his pupils have sprung the greatest names in this generation of German divines, and they have admitted, with scarcely an exception, that he conceded so much for the sake of peace as to render his position untenable. Their master led them to an elevation whence they discerned a farther height and surer resting-place than he attained. For a more detailed account of Schleiermacher and his theological position, the reader is referred to an article by the Author in the British Quarterly Review for May, 1849.
401. The principles of the genuine Romanticism (as distinguished from its later and degenerate form) are ably enunciated by Tieck, in a comic drama, entitled Prince Zerbino; or, Travels in Search of Good Taste. One Nestor, a prosaic pedant, who piques himself on understanding everything, and on his freedom from all enthusiasm and imaginative nonsense, is introduced into the wondrous garden of the Goddess of Poesy. There he sees, among others, Dante and Ariosto, Cervantes and Sophocles. He complains of not finding Hagedorn, Gellert, Gesner, Kleist, or Bodmer; and the Goddess then points him out—as a true German bard—stout old Hans Sachs. Dante appears to him a crusty old fogie; Tasso, a well-meaning man, but weak; and Sophocles, whom he was disposed to respect as a classic, when blamed for the obscurity of his choruses, turns upon him like a bear. The conceited impertinence, the knowing air, and the puzzle-headedness of the Philistine, are hit off to admiration. This Garden of Poesy seems to him a lair of savages, an asylum for lunatics, where all his smug conventionalisms are trampled on, and every canon of his criticism suffers flagrant violation. Genii take him away, and give him something substantial to eat—earth to earth. The tables and chairs begin to talk to him. They congratulate themselves on being delivered from their old free life in the woods, and cut out into useful articles of furniture, so fulfilling the purpose of their being. He gets on much better with them than with the poets, and thinks them (himself excepted) the most sensible creatures in the world.
402. See Julian Schmidt, Geschichte der Deutschen National Literatur im 19n Jahrhundert, th. I. c. vi.
403. Schmidt, p. 60.
404. Novalis, Schriften, th. ii. pp. 152, 159, 221.
405. Ibid., p. 158.