commanding it to his children upon his last blessing. I shall conclude this chapter of retired, aged, and dying persons, with some collections I have made out of the life of a person of great piety and quality of the French nation. XXXVII. Du Renti, a young nobleman of France, of admirable parts, as well as great birth, touched with a sense of the vanity of the world, and the sweetness of a retired and religious life, notwithstanding the honours and employments that waited for him, abandons the pride and pomp of the world, to enjoy a life of more communion with God: do but hear him: "I avow," saith he, "that I have no gust in anything where I find not Jesus Christ; and for a soul that speaks not of Him, or in which we cannot taste any effect of grace flowing from his Spirit, (which is the principle of operations, both inward and outward, that are solidly Christian,) speak not to me at all of such an one: could I, as I may say, behold both miracles and wonders there, and yet not Jesus Christ, nor hear any talk of Him, I count all but amusement of spirit, loss of time, and a very dangerous precipice. Let us encourage ourselves to lead this life unknown, and wholly hid from men, but most known to and intimate with God; divesting ourselves, and chasing out of our minds all those many superfluities, and those many amusements, which bring with them so great a damage, that they take up our mind, instead of God. So that when I consider that which thwarts and cuts into so many pieces this holy, this sweet, and amiable union, which we should have continually with God, it appears, that it is only a monsieur, a madame, a compliment, and chatting, indeed a mere foolery; which notwithstanding doth ravish and wrest from us the time that is so precious, and the fellowship that is so holy, and so desirable. Let us quit this, I pray you, and learn to court it with our own Master; let us well understand our part, our own world, as we here phrase it, not that world I mean, which we do renounce, but that wherein the children of God do their duties to their Father. There is nothing in this world so separate from the world, as God; and the greater the saints are, the greater is their retirement into Him. This our Saviour taught us whilst He lived on earth, being in all his visible employments united to God, and retired into the bosom of his Father. Since the time that I gave up my liberty to God, as I told you, I was given to understand to what a state of annihilation the soul must be brought, to render it capable of union with Him: I saw my soul reduced into a small point, contracted and shrunk up to nothing: and at the same time I beheld myself, as if encompassed with whatsoever the world loves and possesseth; and, as it were, a hand removing all this far from me, throwing it into the ocean of annihilation.