Treatise on the Love of God

Writers are often treated too harshly: the censures that are passed on them are given hastily, and very often with more incorrectness than they committed imprudence in hastening to publish their writings. Precipitation of judgment greatly puts in danger the conscience of the judge, and the innocence of the accused. Many write amiss and many censure foolishly. The kindness of the reader makes his reading sweet and profitable. And, my dear reader, to have you more favourable, I will here give you an explanation of some points which might peradventure otherwise put you out of humour.

Some perhaps will think that I have said too much, and that it was not requisite to go so deep down into the roots of the subject, but I am of opinion that heavenly love is a plant like to that which we call Angelica, whose root is no less odoriferous and wholesome than the stalk and the branches. The four first books and some chapters of the rest might without doubt have been omitted, without disadvantage to such souls as only seek the practice of holy love, yet all of it will be profitable unto them if they behold it with a devout eye: while others also might have been disappointed not to have had the whole of what belongs to the treatise of divine love. I have taken into consideration as I should do, the state of the minds of this age: it much imports to remember in what age we are writing.

I cite Scripture sometimes in other terms than those of the ordinary edition (the Vulgate). For God's sake, my dear reader do me not therefore the wrong to think that I wish to depart from that edition. Ah no! For I know the Holy Ghost has authorized it by the sacred Council of Trent, and that therefore all of us ought to keep to it: on the contrary I only use the other versions for the service of this, when they explain and confirm its true sense. For example what the heavenly spouse says to his spouse: Thou hast wounded my heart:¹⁹ is greatly illustrated by the other version: Thou hast taken away my heart, or, Thou hast snatched away and ravished my heart. That which our Saviour said: Blessed are the poor in spirit: is much amplified and cleared by the Greek: Blessed are the beggars in spirit: and so with others.

I have often cited the sacred Psalmist in verse, and this to recreate your mind and on account of the ease with which I could do it, by the beautiful translation of Phillip des Portes, Abbot of Tiron. This however I have sometimes departed from; not of course thinking I could improve the verses of this famous poet (for I should be too impertinent if never having so much as thought of this kind o£ writing, I should pretend to be happy in it in an age and condition of life which would oblige me to retire from it in case I had ever been engaged therein), but in some places where the sense might be variously taken, I have not followed his verse, because I would not follow his sense, as in Psalm cxxxii., where he has taken a certain Latin word for the fringe of the garment which I thought ought to be taken for the collar, wherefore I have translated it to my own mind.

I have said nothing which I have not learned of others, yet it is impossible for me to remember whence I had everything in particular, but believe me, if I had taken any lengthy and remarkable passages out of any author, I would make it a matter of conscience not to let him have the deserved honour of it, and to remove a suspicion which you may conceive against my sincerity in this matter, I warn you that the 13th chapter of Book VII. is extracted from a sermon which I delivered at Paris at S. John's en Grève upon the feast of the Assumption of our Blessed Lady, 1602.

I have not always expressed the sequence of the chapters, but if you notice you will easily find the links of their connection. In that and several other things I had a care to spare my own leisure and your patience. After I had caused the Introduction to a Devout Life to be printed, my Lord Archbishop of Vienne, Peter de Villars, did me the favour of writing his opinion of it in terms so advantageous to that little book and to me, that I should never dare to rehearse them: and exhorting me to apply the most of my leisure to the like works, amongst many rare counsels he favoured me with, one was that as far as the matter would permit I should always be short in the chapters. For as, said he, travellers knowing that there is a fair garden some twenty or twenty-five paces out of their way, readily turn aside so short a distance to go see it, which they would not do if it were further distant; even so those who know that there is but little distance between the beginning and end of a chapter do willingly undertake to read it, which they would not do though the subject were never so delightful, if a long time were required for the reading of it. And therefore I had good reason to follow my own inclination in this respect since it was agreeable to this great personage who was one of the most saintly prelates and learned doctors that the Church has had in our age, and who at the time that he honoured me with his letter was the most ancient of all the doctors of the faculty of Paris.

A great servant of God informed me not long ago that by addressing my speech to Philothea in the Introduction to a Devout Life, I hindered many men from profiting by it: because they did not esteem advice given to a woman, to be worthy of a man. I marvelled that there were men who, to be thought men, showed themselves in effect so little men, for I leave it to your consideration, my dear reader, whether devotion be not as well for men as for women, and whether we are not to read with as great attention and reverence the second Epistle of S. John which was addressed to the holy lady Electa, as the third which he directs to Caius, and whether a thousand thousand Epistles and excellent Treatises of the ancient fathers of the Church ought to be held unprofitable to men, because they are addressed to holy women of those times. But, besides, it is the soul which aspires to devotion that I call Philothea, and men have souls as well as women.

Nevertheless, to imitate the great Apostle in this occasion, who esteemed himself a debtor to every one, I have changed my address in this treatise and speak to Theotimus, but if perchance there should be any woman (and such an unreasonableness would be more tolerable in them) who would not read the instructions which are given to men, I beg them to know that Theotimus to whom I speak is the human spirit desirous of making progress in holy love, which spirit is equally in women as in men.

This Treatise then is made for a soul already devout that she may be able to advance in her design, and hence I have been forced to say many things somewhat unknown to the generality, and which will therefore appear more obscure than they are. The depths of science are always somewhat hard to sound, and there are few divers who care and are able to descend and gather the pearls and other precious stones which are in the womb of the ocean. But if you have the courage fairly to penetrate these words which I have written, it will truly be with you as with the divers, who, says Pliny, see clearly in the deepest caves of the sea the light of the sun: for you will find in the hardest parts of this discourse a good and fair light. Moreover, as I do not follow them that despise books treating of a certain supereminently perfect life, so for my part, I do not speak of such a supereminence; for I can neither censure the authors, nor authorize the censors of a doctrine which I do not understand.

I have touched on a number of theological questions, proposing simply, not so much what I anciently learnt in disputations, as what attention to the service of souls, and my twenty-four years spent in holy preaching have made me think most conducive to the glory of the Gospel and of the Church.

19. Cant. iv. 9.