ent) which he writes
from his country-house at Germigny (July 10, 1692), and in which he
explains the meaning of the Bride's words, "Support me with flowers,
because I languish for love." This potion, which is to cure passion by
a stronger one, is marvellously calculated to double the evil. What
surprises us much more than this imprudence is, that we find frequently
in the intimate correspondence of this great adversary of Quietism, the
greater part of the sentiments and practical maxims for which the
Quietists were reproached. He takes pleasure in developing their
favourite text, _Expectans, expectavi_. "The Bride ought not to hurry;
she must wait in expectation of what the Bridegroom will do; if, during
the expectation, he caresses the soul, and inclines it to caress him,
she must yield her heart. The means of the union is the union itself.
All the correspondence of the Bride consists in letting the Bridegroom
act."

"Jesus is admirable in the chaste embraces with which He honours His
Bride and makes her fruitful; all the virtues are the fruits of His
chaste embraces" (February 28, 1693),--"A change of life must follow;
_but without the soul even thinking of changing itself_."

This thoroughly Quietist letter is dated May 30 (1696); and eight days
after--sad inconsistency!--he writes these unfeeling words about Madame
Guyon; "They appear to me resolved to shut her up far away in some good
castle," &c.

How is it he does not perceive that in practical questions, far more
important than theory, he differs in nothing from those whom he treats
so badly? The direction, in Bossuet, as in his adversaries, is the
development of the inert and passive part of our nature, _expectans,
expectavi_.

For me it is a strange sight to see them all, even in the midst of the
middle age, crying out against the mystics, and then falling into
mysticism themselves. The declivity must, indeed, be rapid and
insurmountable.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the profound Rusbrock and
the great Gerson imitate precisely those they blame; and in the
seventeenth, the Quietists Bona, Fenelon, even Lacombe, Madame Guyon's
director, speak severely and harshly of the absolute Quietists: they
all point out the abyss, and all fall into it themselves.

No matter who the person may be, there is a logical fatality. The man
who, by his character and genius is the farthest removed from passive
measures, he who in his writings condemns