y.

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
passages 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 circumstances. 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'Assis, 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, a