Another indication of the rising tide of persecution was
that the dominant party ordered all books relating to the inner life to
be brought to them, and publicly burnt in the market-place the few which
were given up.
At length, through the influence of her enemies, Madame Guyon received
from the bishop notice that she must go out of his diocese, and Father
la Combe was similarly warned to depart. All espostulation was in vain,
and leaving Savoy, in which her labours had been so much blessed, she
set out on a wearisome journey into Piedmont, crossing the perilous Mont
Cenis on a mule, and came to Turin.
In spite of many annoyances, she had spent two happy years at Thonon in
work for her Divine Master; and she would have been more than human if
she had not felt, though in a spirit of sweet resignation, the wrench
which these frequent changes of habitation inflicted. No wonder that she
called to mind the pathetic words in Matthew viii. 20: "The foxes have
holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not
where to lay His head." "This," she writes,[1] "I have since experienced
to its full extent, having had no sure abode where I could remain more
than a few months, and every day in uncertainty where I should be on the
morrow, and besides, finding no refuge, either among my friends, who
were ashamed of me and openly renounced me just when there was an outcry
against me, or among my relations, most of whom have declared themselves
my adversaries and been my greatest persecutors, while the others looked
on me with contempt and indignation."
[Footnote 1: _La Vie_, seconde partie, ch. xiv., 1.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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