St. Francis de Sales  (1567-1622)
 Bishop, Founder of the Visitation and Doctor of the Church

By St Francis de Sales

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION (cont)

We have only one remark to make on this book. The Abbe Baudry expresses surprise that the Saint when speaking (c. 2) of the increase of charity by good works does not mention its increase by the Sacraments. But he includes them under the name good-works, and in Book IV., c. 4., where he sums up this part of Book III. mentions them explicitly. He does not dwell on them because his object in chapter 2 is to show how easy God has made the increase of charity. He takes therefore as his examples the smallest works, such as the giving a cup of cold water, and he leaves us to draw the conclusion that the faithful and loving reception of God's Sacraments would a fortiori increase love.

Still it is true that neither here nor elsewhere does he treat the Sacraments except quite incidentally, and the explanation of this fact gives us a further insight into the true character and object of the Treatise. He is concerned with the action of grace in general, not with its action by particular means; he is more concerned with the interior movements of man under grace than with the effects worked on him, as it were from outside; and, as he is treating of actual charity, he is more concerned with the good acts for which God gives (whether by Sacraments or in any other way) an increase of grace, than he is concerned with the actual reception of the grace.

We mention this to show that one must not be surprised at not finding a fuller treatment of, for instance, the Blessed Eucharist. We must also remember that this Treatise supposes the "Introduction to a Devout Life" as a foundation. And though he only introduces the Sacraments incidentally, he does not fail to speak of them frequently, and with such magnificent praises as we should expect from the Saint of love. As when he says (ii. 22) that the communication of Christ's body and blood is the very consummation of the charity he is writing of, and the crown of God's love-dealings with us; or as when he says, speaking of the return of the penitent soul to reunite herself, immediately, with her God: "Go and cry God's mercy in the very ear of your confessor" (ix. 7).

Book IV. describes the relations of love and sin. The following five Books treat of the exercise of benevolence in its generic sense -- the sovereign love of God for his own sake.

Book V. treats in general of the double action or manifestation of this love,--in complacency, and in benevolence in its specific sense, that is, desire.

Books VI. and VII. treat of union with God by affection, that is, by prayer; the former treating of meditation, and of contemplation as far as union, the latter of union itself. The various degrees of the prayer of quiet are treated in these books, and Quietists bring forward passages from them, as from other parts of the Saint's works, in support of their extravagant system of annihilation of the powers and of purely passive prayer.

We have said elsewhere 6 as much as we think it necessary to say to overthrow these allegations. But it is important to show that Fenelon was utterly wrong in appealing to the Saint's authority in support of his erroneous doctrine on this point in his " Maximes des Saints." Bossuet has exposed these errors and given a full explanation of the passages cited from S. Francis; particularly in the 8th and 9th Books of his "Instruction pastorale sur les ?ats d'oraison."

The Saint expresses in this as in all things the very teaching of the Church. He rightly teaches that there is, even short of suspension and ecstasy, a kind of prayer in which God takes into his own hands the powers of the soul, and produces in it acts far above the ordinary operations of faith, hope and charity. When God lifts a soul to this prayer, and also to some extent in preparation and expectancy of this elevation, the will acts, by a placing of itself (remise) in the hands of God, and even continues to act, though insensibly: hence the soul is not purely passive, but the action of God is so mighty, and so far beyond all proportion to that of the will, that S. Francis says this is "as it were passive." And as the soul must offer itself to be lifted, and must co-operate with God, therefore also must it help to acquire and preserve that "quiet" which is the condition of God's operation: it must abstain from intrusive acts of reasoning and from other acts of the will, especially from violent ones.

But this prayer, however frequent, long, uninterrupted, absorbing, it may become, is of itself a non-permanent state, and not of the nature of a habit, but is always an act of charity. And far from saying that for perfection it is necessary to be raised to and to keep oneself in this state, the Saint teaches in a hundred places that the soul, however perfect, must exercise itself in all ordinary acts of prayer, faith, hope, petition, which are only put on one side for the time in which God has raised it.

The practice of S. Jane Frances, whose authority was invoked even more speciously than that of her saintly director by the advocates of passive prayer, bears on this. We are told that: "She wrote out and signed with her blood a long prayer which she had composed of petitions, praises, thanksgivings, for general and particular favours, for relations and friends, for the living and the dead, in fine for all intentions to which she considered herself obliged, with the Credo of the Missal, also signed with her blood. She carried this in a little bag night and day round her neck, and she had made a loving covenant with Our Lord that whenever she pressed this to her heart she should be taken to have made all the acts of faith, the thanks and the petitions she had written."(7)

And, at last, prayer is not a character of perfection, but a means to it, and the two following statements of S. Francis in his second Conference absolutely settle the whole question as to his teaching. "It happens often enough that Our Lord gives these quietudes and tranquillities to souls that are far from perfection." . . . . and on the other hand: "There are persons who are very perfect to whom Our Lord has never given such sweetnesses nor such quietudes; who do all with the superior part of the soul, and make their will die in the will of God by main force, and with the supreme point of the reason; and this death is the death of the cross, much more excellent than that other, which should rather be called a slumber than a death."

As in treating affective love Book VII. completes Book VI., so in treating effective love Book VIII., which treats of obedience to the already signified will of God, is completed by Book IX., which treats of indifference, or the state of perfect readiness to accept all that God's good-pleasure may choose to send us.

On the doctrine of indifference we venture again to refer the reader to our Essay(8) just quoted. We add a few words to show how completely Fenelon erred in appealing to this Treatise to support his extravagant and condemned propositions that indifference extends to eternal salvation as our salvation, and to virtuousness as such. The Saint expressly teaches that while God's glory must be our principal end, we may, indeed we must -- our nature so requires -- desire salvation and virtue as good also in themselves. Much less can we acquiesce in a supposed decree of damnation, with that species of absolute act which Fenelon requires as the last test of the disinterestedness of love.(9)

With regard to eternal salvation, we have only to study the sentiments the Saint places in the hearts and mouths of those whose love is refined to its highest point at the moment of death (v. 10, vii. 11, 12). He has a chapter to prove that the preceding desire of heaven increases the enjoyment of it (iii. 10); and he teaches that not only mercenary hope but also servile fear remain in the soul as part of its habit of charity so long as it is in this life (xi. 17).

With regard to virtues he says (xi. 13): "Let us love the particular virtues, but principally because they are agreeable to God;" and: "We must make this heavenly good-pleasure the soul of our actions, loving the goodness and beauty of virtue principally because it is agreeable to God." Here the word "principally" is the key of the whole question.
Bossuet triumphantly vindicates (10) the Saint's doctrine on indifference, but has a very ill-judged criticism on his use of the word. He is quite right in saying that indifference is only a degree of resignation, but he forgets how far ordinary resignation is below indifference. Bossuet gives a full explanation of all the passages alleged by Fenelon from S. Francis, but he was hampered, as Fenelon was totally misled, by Maupas's erroneous account of S. Francis's famous temptation to despair.

Of the remaining three books, Book X. is dedicated entirely to the commandment of loving God above all things; Books XI. and XII. are on the theory and practice of the particular virtues. Indeed it must be remembered that the object of the Treatise, even in its speculative parts, is exclusively practical. And as we have shown that in its theory it is free from error, so we may now be allowed to indicate some of its glorious truths, particularly with regard to the practice of holy living.

It is not a book, like other spiritual books, treating only a section or a single element of the devout life, but it is one by which and on which the whole spiritual life can be formed; it is, with the "Introduction to a Devout Life," a perfect book, a "complete food," containing all the ingredients necessary for spiritual sustenance.

It contains in the first place an immense mass of instruction, dogmatic and moral, on the science of the love of God. It treats not only in broad outline but also in subtle detail of God and the soul, this world and the world to come, grace and free-will, holiness and sin, commandments and counsels, ordinary virtue and perfection, all questions of prayer; it treats the virtues in detail, not only the virtue of charity in all its parts, but also faith, hope and fear, zeal, obedience, resignation.

The direct course of the Treatise takes us through all these, and they are not only treated fully in themselves, but so treated as to bring out in illustrating them a hundred related truths. A whole theology of Mary might be gathered as we pass along; her Immaculate Conception (ii. 3), her graces and privileges (iii. 8.; ix. 14.; vii. 13, 14), her praise of God (v. 11), her heavenly death (vii. 13, 14). A new light is thrown on the sense of Holy Scripture, and on the principles and actions of the Saints.

But, in the second place, we more particularly wish to point out some of his practical principles and rules, the manner of loving and serving God. The most important of these is what may be called the Saint's general idea or philosophy of life. It begins thus: "We know by faith that the divinity is an incomprehensible abyss of all perfection . . . . . And this truth which faith teaches we consider attentively by meditation, regarding this immensity of goods which are in God . . . . . Now when we have made our understanding very attentive to the greatness of the goods which are in this divine object, it is impossible that our will should not be touched with complacency in this good . . . . and especially when we see amidst his perfections that of his infinite love excellently shining" (v. 1, 2.).

The loving soul does not stay in complacency but goes on to benevolence, wishing her God all possible goods; but as she is at the very same time exulting in the thought that nothing is wanting to him, she can at first but spend herself in desiring him what he already has, in desiring to be able to give him something, and in praises, ever rising higher and higher until at last she finds a sort of rest in the sense that her utter inability to desire him anything which he has not, or to praise him fully, is the best proof of the infinity of the goods he has.

This delight in God and these loving desires are an important part of her service, but they would be barren if she did not go further. She turns, then, to her own powers, and finds that exercising them in herself by internal acts of prayer (affective love), and outside herself, amid creatures, by external acts of the virtues (effective love), she can increase the glory of her beloved, not in itself, but in and by herself.

Thus the various interior and exterior acts are brought into one, and the soul's life consists, on the one hand, in "a continual progress in the sweet searching out of motives which may continually urge her" (v. 7), and, on the other hand, in acts of prayer, in obedience, and in submission. She "employs every occasion," "does everything most perfectly," and, by the practice of Intention, Offering, and Ejaculatory Prayer (according to methods minutely described in Book XI. 13, 14, 20, and throughout Book XII.), subordinates and ranges every interior movement and every exterior action to the service of divine love.

This "view" of life, this continual gazing at the beloved Master for whom we work, this regarding the acts of life as a mere series of acts or offerings of love, is the very central point of the ascetic teaching of S. Francis.

It not only gives the nobleness, the intensity, the meritoriousness of charity to every act, but it gives also at the same time a great simplicity and largeness, preserving the soul from formality and from getting lost or wearied in the multitudinous details and minute practices of the spiritual life; it creates a loving detachment and liberty of spirit, with a readiness to follow every slightest indication of God's will.

Finally, it gives order to our various duties. For instance, it puts in their proper place, in serene majesty above the cavils of worldlings, the works of religion and "piety." These are the immediate services of the beloved, the first effects of charity, and therefore charity itself teaches that: "Amongst all virtuous actions we should carefully practise those of religion and reverence to divine things, those of faith, hope and the most holy fear of God; often talking of heavenly things, thinking of and aspiring after eternity, frequenting churches and holy services, reading spiritual books, observing the ceremonies of the Christian religion; for holy love feeds at will amid these exercises, and spreads its graces and properties more abundantly over them than over the simply human virtues" (xi. 3).

Yet there is no fanaticism. The human virtues find their proper place at the proper time, and, inferior in themselves, are raised by love, that is, by the fact that for the time they are the will of God, to the highest rank in the eyes of the loving soul, -- "For in little and low exercises, charity is practised not only more frequently, but also as a rule more humbly, and therefore more profitably and more holily" (xii. 6).

He has two glorious chapters on the truth that legitimate occupations, be they even in court or camp, hinder not the practice of divine love. "Curiosity, ambition, disquiet, together with inadvertence to, or not considering, the end for which we are in this world, are the causes why we have a hundred times more hindrances than affairs; and it is these embarrassments, that is, the silly, vain, superfluous undertakings with which we charge ourselves that turn us from the love of God, and not the true and lawful exercise of our vocations" (xii. 4.).

In the one great principle of doing all for love we have signalized two conditions or negative aspects of the same.

(a). The intellect must be kept "very attentive." As the Saint says in the "Introduction to a Devout Life" (v. 17), so here, consideration "is supposed throughout the entire work," the whole edifice is built on it, and therefore the want of it, "inconsid?ation," is the ruin of the whole spiritual life (xi. 7.) This "consideration" need not be called by the alarming name of mental prayer, but whatever it is called it consists in a most serious attention to spiritual truths according to the capacity of the individual: there must be one great esteem, and therefore the energy of the intellect cannot be given primarily to anything else.

So (b) in the will, there must be but one great affection, one aim, one desire -- "One to one." "The desire of exalting God separates from inferior pleasures" (v. 7); and: "to have the desire of sacred love we must cut off other desires" (xii. 3). "Those souls who ever abound in desires, designs and projects never desire holy celestial love as they ought:" "He who aspires to heavenly love must carefully reserve for it his leisure, his spirit, and his affections:" -- words which should be written in letters of flame for the guidance of such as seek the right way to perfection.

We will not stay to give examples of his more particular principles with regard to prayer, but we select a few with regard to the virtues.

The truly loving heart not only observes the commandments, but loves the observance, of them (viii. 5). "Inclination is neither vice nor virtue . . . . . How many by natural disposition are sober, simple, silent, even chaste? All this seems to be virtue, but it is not, until on such natural humours we have grafted free and voluntary consent:"

The whole chapter "On the imperfection of the virtues of the pagans" (xi. 7.) is of the most practical importance at the present day. The general, but surely most constraining, principle of mortification, -- that other pleasures and other desires must be put down for the sake of divine love, -- is applied to the interior in such more particular methods as this: -- irregular affections can be put down either on the principle of curing contraries by contraries, or on the principle of curing likes by likes: the inclination to trust in earthly things may be overcome either by thinking of the vanity of earthly hopes or of the solidity of heavenly hopes; desire of riches or of sensual pleasure may be kept down either by the contempt of them or by the esteem of heavenly goods, "as fire is extinguished either by water or by lightning" (xi. 20).

It is applied to the exterior thus: "It is useless to give orders of abstinence to the palate, but the hands must be ordered to furnish the mouth with meat and drink only in such and such a measure . . . . . If we desire our eyes not to see we must turn them away, or (he has just compared our sensual appetite to a hawk) cover them with their natural hood . . . . it would be folly to command a horse not to wax fat, not to grow, not to kick, to effect all this, stop his corn" (i. 2).

In this connection, and to show how beautiful, how consistent, and how feasible his teaching is, it should be studied with his life, as his life should be explained by his teaching.

That his extraordinary and almost unreasonable meekness sprang from no weakness or ignorance, but was founded on the deepest wisdom and sincere humility, we realize when we study his teaching (x.) on zeal and anger. His extremely affectionate expressions towards his friends find their justification in the truth that "the union to which love aspires is spiritual" (i. 10).

The ground of his missionary spirit and life is found in v. 9, and the whole work is the explanation of his absolute devotion of himself to the loving service of God and his neighbour.

In the third place, the Treatise contains a full exposition of the motives for serving God, the why of a spiritual life. This is all reduced to the one great motive of the infinite perfections -- especially the amiableness, the love, the goodness of God -- brought before us in a hundred ways.

His mere descriptions are enough to bring home this motive to the heart that reads them with attention, but the Saint himself puts them together (xii., 11, 12) with the exact method of applying them. But besides the direct treatment of the motives, the Treatise is pervaded by a heavenly persuasive unction, which ever urges them. This is why S. Vincent calls it "the goad of the slothful and the stimulus of love."

While S. Francis seems only to be making us clearly understand what virtue is, he at the same time makes us esteem and love it; his reasons for loving God and practising virtue are not cold, dry logic, but reach the heart, and command assent; and while he is apparently only fixing our attention on the way to practise virtue he is at the same time gently but effectively touching the springs of the will to make us love and prepare to effect it.

But besides this continual stimulation he has direct exhortations; he stops, as it were, in his course to preach. One chapter is headed: "An exhortation to the amorous submission which we owe to the decrees of divine Providence" (iv. 8). Another is his exposition of S. Paul's, -- "The charity of Christ presseth us." Another -- "An exhortation to the sacrifice we ought to make to God of our free-will" (xii. 10). And other chapters, though not precisely in the form of exhortations, contain the virtue of them. Such are the chapters "On condolence and complacency in the Passion of Our Lord" (v. 5); on the "Marvellous history of a gentleman who died of love on Mount Olivet" (vii. 12); and the last chapter of all: "That Mount Calvary is the true academy of love."

But, in the fourth place, this Treatise is not only a manual and a guide to perfection, but it is also a meditation-book, and a prayer-book.

In such chapters as those just mentioned the devout soul will find all the materials of most excellent meditations; -- not only deep pregnant thoughts, but also a very fountain of affections and ejaculations, most pressing movements of the will, and most effective resolutions. The summing up of motives, and method of using them is already in the very form of meditation.

But almost every chapter could be used as such. For instance, if one wished to strengthen the groundwork of love -- the realization of the perfections of God -- after thinking out Book v. cc. 1. 2., he could add Book i. cc. 15, 18, Book ii. cc. 1, 2, 8, 15, 22, and Book iii. cc. 11, 12, 13. This Book III. furnishes grand meditations on heaven, and every Book is full of the excellences of charity, than which no consideration could be more touching or more practical.

Then, the Treatise is a prayer-book. Very frequently the Saint ends his chapter with an exquisite prayer, himself giving the expression of the ardours with which he has filled our hearts. All Book V. is a prayer; -- for instance, c. 5 on the Passion, c. 6 on Desires. Profound dogma, having permeated the intellect, exhales itself, as it were, to God on the apex of the spirit in such burning words as his -- "Ah! then I am not made for this world, &c." (i. 15), or -- "Ah! Jesus, who will give me grace to be one single spirit with thee, &c!" (vii. 3.)

*** *** ***

We have now to speak of our text and rendering. We have followed the text of Vive's edition of the "(Euvres Complees," which, with a little improvement from subsequent editions, is a reproduction of the original work, published at Lyons by Rigaud in 1616. We therefore follow in our quotations the spelling and accentuation of the old French. We have of course used the ordinary Catholic translation of the Bible, except where the Saint leaves the Vulgate for the Septuagint or the Hebrew, which he occasionally does, not, as he says, to get the true sense, but "to explain and confirm the true sense." We have consulted the originals for the citations from the Fathers, but the Saint himself quotes them with a certain freedom, and we have not thought it necessary to give the exact references, as the student can easily find them in Vive or Migne. It has been decided to omit or modify in this popular edition a few sentences in which the Saint refers to certain delicate matters -- in particular to certain Bible narratives which to his original readers were matters of familiar knowledge -- with the happy simplicity of his day. As he says in his Preface, "it is of extreme importance to remember the age in which one writes," and there can be no doubt that if he had been writing for this age he would have consulted its requirements, and would have conformed to the universal practice of modern spiritual writers by forbearing reference to these subjects. He only introduces them incidentally and merely for the purpose of illustrating his main argument. The omissions or alterations taken altogether would not amount to more than two pages. (11)

We are acquainted with only two English versions of the Treatise.

The first was made by Father Car, from the eighteenth French edition,(12) and we had at first intended to take this as the basis of ours; but when we came to actually test it by the original, we determined to make our translation completely independent of it, and in many parts we did not refer to it at all. As to the substance of the work it is satisfactory; though there are many slight omissions, and a few somewhat serious mistakes. As to style, taken by itself, it is a good and a very interesting specimen of the racy, vigorous English of that day; but taken as a translation, the rendering is unwarrantably free, and Father Car's manner is far too rugged to represent that of the Saint, which is always graceful and flowing, even when the thought is closest and the passion strongest. Father Car gives the structure correctly, but his manipulation of conjunctions and adverbs, particularly in the more argumentative parts, is painfully cumbrous. We should expect his diction to be archaic, but some of his words are
quite obsolete(13). He is occasionally mistaken in his use of words, as when he translates bonte, "bounty," instead of "goodness;" he makes curious mistakes in words which are spelt nearly alike.(14) We have laboured to preserve his delightful air of antiqueness, which is singularly appropriate to the Saint's work.

The modern English translation, which was made, we believe, early in the present century by an Irish lady, and which has been reprinted by various publishers, is not worth criticizing. It is not so much a translation as a very bad adaptation. A good deal of the substance of the book is left out, and the translator, who was not properly acquainted either with the Saint's language or her own, substitutes her style for his. We have no hesitation in saying that there is not a page without important errors on commission or omission.

We may add a few words on our own work. It is sometimes said that a translation should read as if it were composed in the language in which it appears, and, again, that a translator must not attend immediately to the words of his text, but must, in the first place, aim at producing the same impression on the minds of his readers as the author would produce on the minds of those for whom he originally wrote. We cannot but consider both these rules or principles to be fallacious. A Frenchman, for instance, is different from an Englishman, and there are many words which necessarily make a very different impression, according as they fall on a French or on an English mind.

So, again, the French tongue has national peculiarities and differences which an English translator may not ignore, but which he cannot represent in strict accordance with the genius of his own tongue. S. Francis's work would have been totally different, both in itself and in its effect, if he had been an Englishman writing for his countrymen in their native language. The most that a translator can do is to put the foreign reader in as good a position as he would be in if he had a familiar knowledge of the original.

When an Englishman having a familiar knowledge of French reads a book written in that language, he does not indeed usually advert to the expression therein of the national characteristics -- vivacity, use of gesture, frequent expression of emotion, strong sense of personality -- because he has for the time put on his French form of mind, but there is certainly a latent sense of foreignness, of which he becomes conscious when these peculiarities are exaggerated, as in such a writer as Victor Hugo.

We say this in explanation of the general structure of the work, which could not be altered without being revolutionized, but as regards particular words and phrases, we have tried our best to spare our readers the disagreeable jar which is caused by the introduction of a foreign idiom. In this matter the Treatise presents less difficulty than is found in the more colloquial writings, because its argument is very substantial, and its text largely consists of quotations from the Holy Scriptures, the Fathers, and philosophers.

The difficulty lies deeper, and one must be extremely careful, in obliterating Gallicisms, not to injure or destroy what belongs to the very texture of the style. S. Francis's work cannot be made to read as easily as do the empty, superficial writings of the day, or to appear in a spick-and-span modern English dress. He is a classic, he is a master of thought, having his individual characteristics, who wrote scientifically on profoundest religious truths three ages back.

His style is old-world, antique. Words with him have more of their fresh native simplicity than they now retain after having done service for three hundred years. Some of them he was the first to bring out of their classic use into modern circulation. Hence, we make no difficulty in using such words as "contemplation," "sensible," "civil," in their original and more proper sense, as English religious writers of his age -- Hooker, Taylor or Milton -- used them.
 
Again, he is scientific -- theological and philosophical. He writes a Treatise. The world, which is only interested in its own matters, will not admit the rights of the scientific writer on religion. Catholics of the English-speaking race are placed at a double disadvantage, on account of the small proportion their numbers bear to the mass of their countrymen. But surely we are not to acquiesce in allowing terms to be prohibited which are necessary or useful for properly and safely expressing the distinctive truths of our religion: there is an interest at stake not merely literary, but religious, and also patriotic. We claim, therefore, the right to use, for instance, the words "religion," "religious," "professed," in our technical Catholic sense, for the state and the persons of those who have bound themselves to the service of God by vow.

S. Francis also had his special characteristics, which, therefore, are not French but Salesian. He was slightly old-fashioned, even in his own time. He was a patriarch of French literature, and devoted, in language as in other things, to the old times, though so glorious a pioneer of the new. He is simple in expression amongst the simple. But each word is charged with thought and reflection, and sometimes an exclamation which one might at first be tempted to suppress as a French superfluity, turns out to be a "word," and welded into the substance of the phrase. He was a Saint, also, and what would be an exclamation in others is an ejaculation in him.

But, after all, our object is devotional and not literary; we are far from wishing to indulge any literary fancies or crotchets and have no intention of straining our principles of translation. Our one aim is to make the true teachings of S. Francis de Sales accessible, profitable, and attractive to English readers, and so to contribute our poor efforts to advance the divine Art of Holy Loving.

Weobley,
Feast of our most holy Father S. Benedict, 1884.