Letter 12 of Saint-Cyran (part 1)

When God created within me the will to give you to Antoine Arnauld, I meditated only about you and your salvation in order to make you reach it by the most noble and the most reliable paths that exist in the church, which are all interior and in the soul, where Saint John claimed he was tracing them when he used to cry out that he had come to prepare the paths to the Lord. But because I knew the difficulty of making it happen in young men who are already somewhat older and who have had instruction elsewhere both in their studies and in their practices of piety ( experiences about which I am well informed having passed through both), that held me back a great deal and I left your conduct to the care of the Holy Spirit and to the prudence of grace. I waited until after meetings which came about by chance with you or with him, I might feel myself obliged to tell you what I had in my heart for your true conduct outside of which I see clearly that whatever path you take, although beautiful in appearance and even covered with those flowers to which people compare the brilliance of exterior virtues, you will only make yourself go astray.

   I can not tell you how this meeting happened, but God knows that for more than a month it compels me to speak to you, and that I would not have been able to undertake it if God had not had a hand in compelling me to speak by movements that he usually gives to those who call to him and who do nothing without him.

   I could have perhaps still put off doing it without the letter that you joined to the one of Antoine Arnauld which determined me to speak to you in a few words since I am not able to do otherwise in this place where I am always watched and in danger of being surprised. The words you wrote make me judge that you wish to believe in me as in a man who has just made a great voyage that you are going to undertake. This gives me a great advantage over you that I am going to now use because it forces you to believe in me and to trust me as a faithful guide.

   You are aware also that those who instruct others as priests are images of Jesus Christ and that they have the right to demand as he faith, belief and trust from those that they wish to instruct and to lead. I assume you have these regarding me since your letters give me evidence that you do.

   I tell you therefore that there are two things that oppose our reaching the virtue that we are working for, first, natural inclinations, second, the habits and customs that we are already involved in. We are in an activity or we are negligent. We are angry or else we are sweet. We have a great desire for material goods or we are moderate and humane. Some have a natural indifference to everything while some are curious about everything. Some go about studies with discipline while some are vague, confused and variable. Some are full of passions and some have none. These are silent and those are always talking. There are those who judge nothing and those who judge everything. Some are worried about what they learn while for some what they learn is nothing having minds after studying something like blank slates.

   I have seen this diversity in people who have come within my purview. It would have astonished me if I had not known early in life the two main causes that give birth to it. What astonishes me more than it and about which I do not know so well the cause, is that in the present time there is in addition to the inclinations and customs of each individual, general customs which get by as being good although they are bad and are approved and practiced by those who can not be condemned without the one who makes the condemnation appearing to be in the public eye of unsound judgement.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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