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
Perhaps some will be surprised at my refusing to give the details of
the greatest and strongest crosses of my life, after I have related
those which were less. I thought it proper to tell something of the
crosses of my youth, to show the crucifying conduct which God held over
me. I thought myself obliged to relate certain facts, to manifest their
falsehood, the conduct of those by whom they had passed, and the
authors of those persecutions of which I have been only the accidental
object, as I was only persecuted, in order to involve therein persons
of great merit; whom, being out of their reach by themselves, they,
therefore, could not personally attack, but by confounding their
affairs with mine. I thought I owed this to religion, piety, my
friends, my family, and myself.
While I was prisoner at Vincennes, and Monsieur De La Reine examined
me, I passed my time in great peace, content to pass the rest of my
life there, if such were the will of God. I sang songs of joy, which
the maid who served me learned by heart, as fast as I made them. We
together sang thy praises, O, my God! The stones of my prison looked in
my eyes like rubies; I esteemed them more than all the gaudy
brilliancies of a vain world. My heart was full of that joy which Thou
givest to them who love Thee, in the midst of their greatest crosses.
When things were carried to the greatest extremities, being then in the
Bastile, I said, "O, my God, if thou art pleased to render me a new
spectacle to men and angels, Thy holy will be done!"
DECEMBER, 1709.
Here she left off her narrative, though she lived a retired life above
seven years after this date. What she had written being only done in
obedience to the commands of her director. She died June 9, 1717, at
Blois, in her seventieth year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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