The Autobiography of Madame GuyonGuyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte
Religion
The Autobiography of Madame Guyon
Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte
Catholics -- France -- Biography; Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte, 1648-1717
Being, as I have said, with the Ursulines at Tonon, after having spoken
to the Bishop of Geneva, and seeing how he changed, just as others
turned him, I wrote to him and to Father La Mothe; but all my efforts
were useless. The more I endeavored to accommodate matters, the more
the ecclesiastic tried to confound them, hence I ceased to meddle.
One day I was told that the ecclesiastic had won over the good girl
whom I dearly loved. So strong a desire I had for her perfection that
it had cost me much. I should not have felt the death of a child so
much as her loss; at the same time I was told how to hinder it, but
that human way of acting was repugnant to my inward sense; these words
arose in my heart, "Except the Lord build the house."
And indeed He provided herein Himself, hindering her from yielding to
this deceitful man, after a manner to be admired, and very thwarting to
the designs of him and his associates. As long as I was with her she
still seemed wavering and fearful; but oh, the infinite goodness of
God, to preserve without our aid what without His we should inevitably
lose! I was no sooner separated from her, but she became immovable.
As for me, there scarcely passed a day but they treated me with new
insults; their assaults came on me at unawares. The New Catholics, by
the instigation of the Bishop of Geneva, the ecclesiastic, and the
sisters at Gex, stirred up all the persons of piety against me. I had
but little uneasiness on my own account. If I could have had it at all,
it would have been on account of Father La Combe, whom they vilely
aspersed, though he was absent. They even made use of his absence, to
overset all the good he had done in the country, by his missions and
pious labors, which were inconceivably great. At first I was too ready
to vindicate him, thinking it justice to do it. I did not do it at all
for myself; and our Lord showed me that I must cease doing it for him,
in order to leave him to be more thoroughly annihilated; because from
thence he would draw a greater glory, than ever he had done from his
own reputation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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