Part 1 (1/2)
The Life of St Frances of Roiana Fullerton
An Introductory Essay
ON THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF THE SAINTS,
BY J M CAPES, ESQ _NB The proprietorshi+p of this Series is secured in all countries where the Copyright is protected_ The authorities on which the History of St Frances of Rome rests are as follows:
Her life by Mattiotti, her Confessor for ten years Mattiotti enjoined her, as a matter of obedience, to relate to him from time to time her visions in the minutest detail He was a timid and suspicious man, and for two or three years kept a daily record of all she told him; afterwards, as his confidence in her sanctity and sanity grew coeneral account of her ecstasies, and also put together a private history of her life After her death, he wrote a regular biography, which is now to be found in the Bollandist collection (Venice, 1735, vol ii)
Early in the seventeenth century, Ursinus, a Jesuit, wrote a life, which was highly esteeato, a Jesuit, wrote the second life, in the Bollandist collection, which contains particulars of events that happened after Mattiotti's time
Other ritten lives have since appeared: especially a recent one by the Vicomte de Bussiere, in which will be found various details too long to be included in the sketch here presented to the English reader
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF THE SAINTS
In presenting to the general reader a neritten Life of so extraordinary a person as St Frances of Roraphical sketches contained in the present volume, it may be useful to introduce them with a few brief remarks on that peculiar feature in the histories of many Saints, which is least in accordance with the popular ideas of n or ancient book, does not necessarily iree of assent to the principles involved in the original writer's state more than a work of antiquarian or literary interest, by nomore than a belief that persons will be found ill, frolad to read it
Not so, however, in the case of a biography which, though not pretending to present the results of fresh researches, does profess to give an account new in shape, and adapted to the wants of the day in which it asks its share of public attention In this case no person can honourably write, and no editor can honourably sanction, any statements but such as are not only possible and probable, but, allowing for the degree of authenticity in each case claimed, on the whole historically true No honest man, who absolutely disbelieves in all doculed accounts of supernatural events with the record of his own personal knowledge, could possibly either write or edit such Lives as those included in the following pages; still less could they be made public by one who disbelieves in the reality of , then, the present and other similar volumes to the ordinary reader, I anticipate some such questions as these: ”Do you really put these stories into our hands as history? Are these arded as poetry, ro, or as historical realities? If you profess to believe in their truth, how do you reconcile their character with the universal aspect of human life, as it appears _to us and to our friends?_ And finally, if you claiht from every candid mind, to what extent of detail do you profess to believe in their authenticity?” To these and si observations:
The last of these questions may be answered briefly The lives of Saints and other rees, which are here and elsewhere laid in a popular forlish public, are not all _equally_ to be relied on as undoubtedly true in their variousas the ordinary events of purely secular history; and precisely the saree of assent is claimed for theeneral chronicles of our race No man, rites or edits a history of distant events, professes to have precisely the same amount of certainty as to all the many details which he records Of some his certainty is all but absolute; of others he can say that he considers thees that they are vouched for by respectable though not nuether in one coives them to the world as _history;_ nor does the world inorance, credulity, or shallowness, because in every single event he does not specify the exact amount of evidence on which his statement rests
Just such is the measure of belief to be conceded to the Life of St
Frances, and other biographies or sketches of a similar kind Some portions, and those the most really important and prominent, are well ascertained, incontrovertible, and substantially true Others again, in all likelihood, took place very h not literally, in the way in which they are recorded Of others, they were possibly, or even probably, the inally adopted on uninvestigated rumour They are all, however, consistent with known facts, and the laws on which huoverned by Divine Providence; and therefore, as they may be true, they take their place in that vast multitude of histories which all candid and well-inforh in various degrees
Supposing, then, that miraculous events may and do occur in the present state of the world's history, it is obvious that these various degrees of assent are commanded alike by the supernatural and the natural events which are here so freely ether Some are undoubtedly true, others are probably either fictitious or incorrectly recorded
The substance rests on the genuine docuinally written by eye-witnesses and perfectly coes; and as such, the whole stands siether of historical testilish reader meets us with the assertion, that the supernatural portions of such lives are si when I say that he never tries _to prove_--that these marvellous interruptions of the laws of nature never take place Consequently, in his judgment, it is purely ridiculous to put forth such stories as history; and writers who issue thenorance, superstition, or an unprincipled tahtened minds Of those who thus meet the question of historical evidence by an assu an unprejudiced attention to the following considerations:
If it be once admitted that there is a God, and that the soul is not a mere portion of the body, the existence of miracles becomes at once probable Apart from the records of experience, we should in fact have expected that events which are now termed miraculous would have been perhaps as coulated by e call the laws of nature Let it be only granted that the visible universe is not the _whole_ universe, and that in reality we are ever in a state of most intimate _real_ communion with Him who is its Creator; then, I say, we should have expected to have been as habitually conscious of our intercourse with that great Being, as of our intercourse with one another The true marvel is, that we are not thus habitually conscious of the Divine Presence, and that God is really out of our sight If there is a God, who is ever around us and within us, _why_ does He not coh the medium of our senses, as He enables us to communicate with one another? Our souls hold h the intervention of this corporal frame, with such a distinct and undeniable reality, that we are as _conscious_ of our intercourse as of the contact of a material substance with our material bodies Why, then,--since it is so infinitely more important to us to hold ceaseless communication with our Maker,--why is it that our intercourse with Him is of a totally different nature? Why is it that the material creation is not the ordinary instrument by which our souls converse with Him? Let any man seriously ponder upon this awful question, and he h experience has shown us that the world of matter is not the _ordinary_ channel of converse between God andprobability that some such intercourse takes place _occasionally_ between, the soul and that God through whose power alone she continues to exist
In other words, the existence of miracles is probable rather than otherwise A miracle is an event in which the laws of nature are interrupted by the intervention of Divine agency, usually for the purpose of bringing the soul of man into a conscious contact with the inhabitants of the invisible world With more or less exactness of similitude, a miracle establishes between God and s and man, that sa individuals of the human race Such a conscious intercourse is indeed asserted by infidels as well as by atheists, to be, if not impossible, at least so utterly improbable, that it is scarcely within the power of proof to make it credible to the unbiased reason Yet surely the balance of probability inclines to the very opposite side If there _is_ a God, and our souls _are_ in communication (of some kind) with Him, surely, prior to experience, we should have expected to be habitually conscious of this communion And now that we see that we are not at any rate habitually so, still the burden of proof rests with those who allege that such conscious intercourse _never_ takes place Apart from all proof of the reality of any one professed miracle, the infidel is bound to shohy_ all miracles are improbable or impossible; in other words, why man should never be conscious of the presence and will of his ever-present God
Protestants, however, and even weak Catholics, regard the record of one of those mysterious lives, in which the soul of a ht into this species of coh it is just possible that it rant a violation of the laws of nature, as to be undeserving of positive hearty belief They confound the laws of physical nature with the laws of universal nature They speak of the nature of this material earth, as if it was identical with the _nature of things_ And this confusion of thought it is to which I would especially call attention Miracles are contrary to the ordinary laws of physical nature, and therefore are so far improbable, but they are in the strictest confors, and therefore _in themselves_ are probable If the laws of nature rule God as they control man, a miracle is almost an impossibility; but if God rules the laws of nature, then it is wonderful that so ain, it is in a high degree probable that enerally, so to say, take their colour from the special character of that relation which may exist between God and man at the time when they cohty,different eras in his history, in different circumstances towards his Creator and Preserver, it would seem only natural that the variations in those circumstances should be impressed upon the extraordinary intercourse between God and His people Or, to use the common Christian term, each _dispensation_ will have its peculiar supernatural aspect, as well as its peculiar spiritual and invisible relationshi+p Ifthan he is now, it is probable that his coularly, if not totally, unlike what it has been since he fell from primeval blessedness If after his fall, two temporary states have been appointed to him by his God, then the miracles of each epoch will bear their own special corresponding characteristics And lastly, if by a new exercise of regenerating and restoring power it has pleased the Invisible One to rescue His creatures froain we nise the history of that redemption in the whole course of the miraculous intercourse between the Redeemer and the redeemed until the end of time The supernatural elements in the Paradisiacal, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian states, may be expected to be in lorious power the invisible relations which the God of nature and of grace has thought fit to assume towards His creatures
And such, in fact, has been the case Not only is the ceaseless existence of a miraculous intercourse between God and man one of the most completely proved of all historical events, but the ree to correspond with the relationshi+p of God to man in each of the separate epochs The same superhuman consistency is found to pervade all the works of God, both where nature and grace are separate from one another, and where the coh, and the material universe is made as it were the bondslave of the unseen The impiously meant assertions of unbelief are fulfilled in a sense which unbelievers little look for; and they who cry out in their hatred of_law_,laws do rule over all, although those laws have a range and a unity in the essence and will of God, of which ence never dreamed The natural and the supernatural, the visible and the invisible, the ordinary and the miraculous, the rules of the physical creation and the interruptions of those rules,--all are controlled by one law, shaped according to one plan, directed by one aim, and bound to one another by indissoluble ties, even where to human eyes all seele
Of e should now call the miraculous, or supernatural, communion between God and man in Paradise, we know historically but little The records of revelation being for the most part confined to the state of man as he is, and his actual and future prospects, present but a glimpse of the conscious communion which was perinal bliss It is, however, believed by theologians, that in Paradise e should now term miracles did not exist; for this reason, that what is now extraordinary was then ordinary God conversed with els, directly and habitually; so that in a certain sense man saw God and the world now unseen
[Footnote: See St Thomas, Summa, pars prima, quaest 94 art 1,2] For it is not the mere possession of a body which binds the soul with the chains of sense; it is the corruption and sinfulness of our present frames which has converted them into a barrier between the spirit within and the invisible universe As Adam came forth all pure and perfect fro in a body, his whole being ministered fitly to the purposes of his creation, and with body and soul together he conversed with his God It was not till the physical sense became his instrument of rebellion, that it was dishonoured and made his prison-house, and laid under a curse which should never be fully rereat day of the resurrection