nt too much of their precious time, which, by being
otherwise employed, might be rendered more conducive to God's honor. In
1609 he went to Bellay, and consecrated bishop John Peter Camus, one of
the most illustrious prelates of the church of France, and linked to our
saint by the strictest bands of holy friendship. He wrote the book
entitled, The Spirit of St. Francis of Sales, consisting of many of his
ordinary sayings and actions, in which his spirit shines with great
advantage, discovering a perpetual recollection always absorbed in God,
and a constant overflowing of sweetness and divine love. His writings to
this day breathe the same; every word distils that love and meekness
with which his heart was filled. It is this which makes his epistles,
which we have to the number of five hundred and twenty-nine, in seven
books, to be an inestimable treasure of moving instructions, suitable to
all sorts of persons and circumstances.

His incomparable book, the Introduction to a Devout Life, was originally
letters to a lady in the world, which, at the pressing instances of many
friends, he formed into a book and finished, to show that devotion
suited Christians in a secular life, no less than in cloisters. Villars,
the archbishop of Vienna, wrote to him upon it: "Your book charms,
inflames, and puts me in raptures, as often as I open any part of it."
The author received {298} the like applause and commendations from all
parts, and it was immediately translated into all the languages of
Europe. Henry IV. of France was extremely pleased with it; his queen,
Mary of Medicis, sent it richly bound and adorned with jewels to James
I. of England, who was wonderfully taken with it, and asked his bishops
why none of them could write with such feeling and unction.[4] There
was, however, one religious Order in which this book was much censured,
as if it had allowed of gallantry and scurrilous jests, and approved of
balls and comedies, which was very far from the saint's doctrine. A
preacher of that Order had the rashness and presumption to declaim
bitterly against the book in a public sermon, to cut it in pieces, and
bum it in the very pulpit. The saint bore this outrage without the least
resentment; so perfectly was he dead to self-love. This appears more
wonderful to those who know how jealous authors are of their works, as
the offspring of their reason and judgment, of which men are of all
things the fondest. His book of the Love of G