4.28.2013 MADAM GUYON

the following taken from the first chapter of madam guyon's (b.4.18.1648) autobiography...

my earnest wish is to paint in true colors the goodness of God to me
and the depth of my own ingratitude
-but it is impossible,
as numberless little circumstances have escaped my memory...

sanctification...let me assure you, this is not attained,
save through pain, weariness and labor;
and it will be reached by a path that will wonderfully disappoint
your expectations.
nevertheless, if you are fully convinced
that it is on the nothing in man that God establishes
His greatest works,
-you will be in part guarded against disappointment or surprise.
He destroys that He might build;
for when He is about to rear His sacred temple in us,
He first totally razes that vain and pompous edifice,
which human art and power had erected,
and from its horrible ruins a new structure is formed,
by His power only.

oh, that you could comprehend the depth of this mystery
and learn the secrets of the conduct of God,
revealed to babes,
but hid from the wise and great of this world,
who think themselves the Lord's counselor's,
and capable of investigating His procedures
and suppose they have attained that divine wisdom
hidden from the eyes of all who live in self
and are enveloped in their own words.
who by a lively genius and elevated faculties
mount up to heaven,
and think to comprehend
the height and depth and length and breadth of God.

this divine wisdom is unknown, even to those who pass
in the world for persons of extraordinary illumination and knowledge.
to whom then is she known
and who can tell us any tidings concerning her?
destruction and death assure us,
that they have heard with their ears of her fame and renown.
it is then in dying to all things
and in being truly lost to them,
passing forward into God and existing only in Him.
that we attain to some knowledge of the true wisdom.....

the Lord judgeth not of things as men do,
who call good evil and evil good,
and account that as righteousness which is
abominable in His sight,
and which according to the prophet
He regards as filthy rags.
he will enter into strict judgment with these
self righteous
and they shall, like the pharisees,
be rather subjects of His wrath,
than objects of His love,
or inheritors of His rewards....
who is not pleased to behold himself righteous in his own eyes
and in the eyes of others?
or, who is it doubts that such righteousness is sufficient
to please God?
yet, we see the indignation of our Lord manifested against such.
He who was the perfect pattern of tenderness and meekness,
such as flowed from the depth of the heart,
and not that affected meekness,
which under the form of a dove, hides the hawk's heart.
He appears severe only to these self righteous people,
and He publicly dishonored them.
in what strange colors does He represent them,
while He beholds the poor sinner
with mercy, compassion and love
and declares that for them only He was come,
that it was the sick who needed the physician...

O Thou source of love!
Thou dost indeed seem so jealous of the salvation
Thou has purchased,
that THOU DOST PREFER THE SINNER TO THE RIGHTEOUS!
the poor sinner beholds himself vile and wretched,
is in a manner constrained to detest himself;
and finding his state so horrible,
casts himself in his desperation
into the arms of his saviour,
and plunges into the healing fountain
and comes forth 'white as wool'.
then confounded at the review of his disordered state,
and overflowing with love for Him
who having alone the power,
had also the compassion to save him
-the excess of his love is proportioned to the enormity of his crimes
and the fullness of his gratitude to the extent of the debt remitted.
the self righteous, relying on the many good works
he imagines he has performed,
seems to hold salvation in his own hand
and considers heaven as a just reward of his merits.
in the bitterness of his zeal
he exclaims against all sinners,
and represents the gates of mercy as barred against them
and heaven as a place to which they have no claim.
what need have such self righteous persons of a saviour?
they are already burdened with the load of their own merits.
oh, how long they bear the flattering load,
while sinners divested of everything,
fly rapidly on the wings of faith and love
into their saviour's arms,
who freely bestows on them that which He
has so freely promised!

how full of self love are the self righteous
and how void of the love of God!
they esteem and admire themselves in their works of righteousness,
which they suppose to be a fountain of happiness.
these works are no sooner exposed to the Sun of Righteousness,
than they discover all to be so full
of impurity and baseness,
that it frets them to the heart.
meanwhile the poor sinner, magdalene,
is pardoned because she loves much
and her faith and love are accepted as righteousness...

..God accomplishes His work either in converted sinners,
whose past iniquities serve as a counterpoise to their elevation
or in persons whose self righteousness He destroys,m
by totally overthrowing the proud building
they had reared on a sandy foundation,
instead of the Rock-CHRIST.

the establishment of all these ends,
which He proposed in coming into the world,
is effected by the apparent overthrow of
that very structure which in reality He would erect.
by means which seem to destroy His church,
He establishes it.
how strangely does He found the new dispensation
and give it His sanction!
the legislator Himself is condemned
by the learned and great,
as a malefactor,
and dies an ignominious death.
oh, that we fully understood how very opposite
our self righteousness is to the designs of Go
-it would be a subject for endless humiliation
and we should have an utter distrust in that which at present
constitutes the whole of our dependence.

from a just love of His supreme power
and a righteous jealousy of mankind,
who attribute to each other the gifts
He Himself bestows upon them,
it pleased Him to take one of the most unworthy of the creation
to make known the fact that His graces are
the effects of His will, not the fruits of our merits.
it is the property of His wisdom to destroy what is proudly built
and to build what is destroyed;
to make use of weak things to confound the mighty
and to employ in His service
such as appear vile and contemptible.

this He does in a manner so astonishing,
as to render them the objects of the scorn and contempt of the world.
it is not to draw public approbation upon them,
that He makes them instrumental in the salvation of others;
but to render them the objects of their dislike
and the subjects of their insults....