Part 61 (2/2)

[689] Et vidi angelum descendentem de coelo habentem clavem abyssi et catenam magnam in manu sua; et appehendit draconem, serpentem, antiquum, qui est Diabolus et Satanas, et ligavit eum per annos mille.--_Apoc._ xx. 1.

[690] Et c.u.m consummati fuerint mille anni, solvetur Satanas de carcere suo.--_Apoc._ v. 7.

[691] Cujus est adventus secundum operationem Satanae in omni virtute et signis et prodigiis mendacibus.--2 Thess. ii. 9.

[692] Joseph. Antiq. lib. viii. c. 2.

[693] Acts viii. 6.

[694] Mittet siquidem Dominus in iram et furorem suum per angelos pessimos. Hier. ad Eph. i. 7. p. 574.

[695] Vid. de Beatif. lib. iv. p. i. c. 3.

[696] Pp. 67, 75.

[697] P. 243.

[698] Lib. ii. p. 364.

[699] In pecunia divinabunt.--Mich. iii. 11.

[700] P. 127.

[701] Now well known as the evening primrose.

[702] Numquid daemonium potest coecorum oculos asperire? Joan. ix, 21.

LETTER

_From the_ REVEREND FATHER DOM. AUGUSTINE CALMET, _Abbot of Senones, to_ M. DE BURE SENIOR, _Librarian at Paris._

SIR--I have received The Historical and Dogmatical Treatise on Apparitions, Visions, and particular Revelations, with Observations on the Dissertations of the Reverend Father Dom. Calmet, Abbot of Senones, on Apparitions and Ghosts. At Avignon, 1751. By the Abbe Lenglet du Frenoy.

I have looked over this work with pleasure. M. du Frenoy wished to turn to account therein what he wrote fifty-five years ago, as he says himself, on the subject of visions, and the life of Maria d'Agreda, of whom they spoke then, and of whom they still speak even now in so undecided a manner. M. du Frenoy had undertaken at that time to examine the affair thoroughly and to show the illusions of it; there is yet time for him to give his opinion upon it, since the Church has not declared herself upon the work, on the life and visions of that famous Spanish abbess.

It is only accidentally that he composed his remarks on my Dissertations on Apparitions and Vampires. I have no reason to complain of him; he has observed towards me the rules of politeness and good breeding, and I shall try to imitate him in what I say in my own defence. But if he had read the second edition of my work, printed at Einsidlen in Switzerland, in 1749; the third, printed in Germany at Augsburg, in 1750; and the fourth, on which you are now actually engaged; he might have spared himself the trouble of censuring several pa.s.sages which I have corrected, reformed, suppressed, or explained myself.

If I had wished to swell my work, I could have added to it some rules, remarks, and reflections, with a vast number of circ.u.mstances. But by that means I should have fallen into the same error which he seems to have acknowledged himself, when he says that he has perhaps placed in his works too many such rules and remarks: and I am persuaded that it is, in fact, the part that will be least read and least used.[703]

People will be much more struck with stories squeamishly extracted from Thomas de Cantimpre and Cesarius, whose works are everywhere decried, and that one dare no longer cite openly without exposing them to mockery. They will read, with only too much pleasure, what he relates of the apparitions of Jesus Christ to St. Francis d'a.s.sis, on the Indulgence of the Partionculus, and the particularities of the establishment of the Carmelite Fathers, and of the Brotherhood of the Scapulary, by Simon Stock, to whom the Holy Virgin herself gave the Scapulary of the order. It will be seen in his work that there are few religious establishments or societies which are not founded on some vision or revelation. It seemed even as if it was necessary for the propagation of certain orders and certain congregations; _so that these kind of revelations were, as it were, taken by storm_; and there seems to have been a compet.i.tion as to who should produce the greatest number of them, and the most extraordinary, to have them believed. I could not persuade myself that he related seriously the pretended apparition of St. Francis to Erasmus. It is easy to comprehend that it was a joke of Erasmus, who wished to divert himself at the expense of the Cordeliers. But one cannot help being pained at the way in which he treats several fathers of the church, as St. Gregory the Great, St.

Gregory of Tours, St. Sulpicius Severus, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Clugny, St. Anselm, Cardinal Pierre Damien, St. Athanasius even, and St. Ambrose,[704] in regard to their credulity, and the account they have given us of several apparitions and visions, which are little thought of at this day. I say the same of what he relates of the visions of St. Elizabeth of Schonau, of St. Hildegrade, of St.

Gertrude, of St. Mecthelda, of St. Bridget, of St. Catherine of Sienna, and hardly does he show any favor to those of St. Theresa.

Would it not have been better to leave the world in this respect as it is,[705] rather than disturb the ashes of so many holy personages and saintly nuns, whose lives are held blessed by the church, and whose writings and revelations have so little influence over the salvation and the morals of the faithful in general. What service does it render the church to speak disparagingly of the works of the contemplatives, of the Thaulers, the Rushbrooks, the Bartholomews of Pisa, of St.

Vincent Ferrier, of St. Bernardine of Sienna, of Henry Harphius, of Pierre de Natalibus, of Bernardine de Bustis, of Ludolf the Chartreux, and other authors of that kind, whose writings are so little read and so little known, whose sectaries are so few in number, and have so little weight in the world, and even in the church?

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