CHAPTER I.

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Widger

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE LIFE

OF

ST. FRANCES OF ROME,

BY

LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON;

OF

BLESSED LUCY OF NARNI,

OF

DOMINICA OF PARADISO

AND OF

ANNE DE MONTMORENCY:

WITH

An Introductory Essay

ON THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF THE SAINTS,

BY J. M. CAPES, ESQ. _N.B. The proprietorship of this Series is secured

in all countries where the Copyright is protected._ The authorities on

which the History of St. Frances of Rome rests are as follows:

Her life by Mattiotti, her Confessor for ten years. Mattiotti enjoined

her, as a matter of obedience, to relate to him from time to time her

visions in the minutest detail. He was a timid and suspicious man,

and for two or three years kept a daily record of all she told him;

afterwards, as his confidence in her sanctity and sanity grew complete,

he contented himself with a more general account of her ecstasies, and

also put together a private history of her life. After her death, he

wrote a regular biography, which is now to be found in the Bollandist

collection (Venice, 1735, vol. ii.).

Early in the seventeenth century, Ursinus, a Jesuit, wrote a life, which

was highly esteemed, but which was never printed, and, except in certain

fragments, is now lost.

In 1641, Fuligato, a Jesuit, wrote the second life, in the Bollandist

collection, which contains particulars of events that happened after

Mattiotti's time.

Other well-written lives have since appeared: especially a recent one by

the Vicomte de Bussière, in which will be found various details too

long to be included in the sketch here presented to the English reader.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF THE SAINTS.

In presenting to the general reader a newly-written Life of so

extraordinary a person as St. Frances of Rome, together with the

biographical sketches contained in the present volume, it may be useful

to introduce them with a few brief remarks on that peculiar feature in

the histories of many Saints, which is least in accordance with the

popular ideas of modern times. A mere translation, or republication of a

foreign or ancient book, does not necessarily imply any degree of assent

to the principles involved in the original writer's statements. The new

version or edition may be nothing more than a work of antiquarian or

literary interest, by no means professing any thing more than a belief

that persons will be found who will, from some motive or other, be glad

to read it.

Not so, however, in the case of a biography which, though not pretending

to present the results of fresh researches, does profess to give an

account new in shape, and adapted to the wants of the day in which

it asks its share of public attention. In this case no person can

honourably write, and no editor can honourably sanction, any statements

but such as are not only possible and probable, but, allowing

for the degree of authenticity in each case claimed, on the whole

historically true. No honest man, who absolutely disbelieves in all

documents in which the original chronicler has mingled accounts of

supernatural events with the record of his own personal knowledge,

could possibly either write or edit such Lives as those included in

the following pages; still less could they be made public by one who

disbelieves in the reality of modern miracles altogether.

In presenting, then, the present and other similar volumes to the

ordinary reader, I anticipate some such questions as these: "Do you

really put these stories into our hands as history? Are these marvellous

tales to be regarded as poetry, romance, superstitious dreaming, or as

historical realities? If you profess to believe in their truth, how do

you reconcile their character with the universal aspect of human life,

as it appears _to us and to our friends?_ And finally, if you claim for

them the assent to which proved facts have a right from every candid

mind, to what extent of detail do you profess to believe in their

authenticity?" To these and similar questions I reply by the following

observations:

The last of these questions may be answered briefly. The lives of Saints

and other remarkable personages, which are here and elsewhere laid in

a popular form before the English public, are not all _equally_ to be

relied on as undoubtedly true in their various minute particulars. They

stand precisely on the same footing as the ordinary events of purely

secular history; and precisely the same degree of assent is claimed

for them that the common reason of humanity accords to the general

chronicles of our race. No man, who writes or edits a history of distant

events, professes to have precisely the same amount of certainty as to

all the many details which he records. Of some his certainty is all but

absolute; of others he can say that he considers them highly probable;

of a third class he only alleges that they are vouched for by

respectable though not numerous authorities., Still, he groups them

together in one complete and continuous story, and gives them to the

world as _history;_ nor does the world impute to him either dishonesty,

ignorance, credulity, or shallowness, because in every single event he

does not specify the exact amount of evidence on which his statement

rests.

Just such is the measure of belief to be conceded to the Life of St.

Frances, and other biographies or sketches of a similar kind. Some

portions, and those the most really important and prominent, are well

ascertained, incontrovertible, and substantially true. Others again, in

all likelihood, took place very much, though not literally, in the way

in which they are recorded. Of others, they were possibly, or even

probably, the mere colouring of the writer, or were originally adopted

on uninvestigated rumour. They are all, however, consistent with known

facts, and the laws on which humanity is governed by Divine Providence;

and therefore, as they may be true, they take their place in that vast

multitude of histories which all candid and well-informed persons agree

in accepting as worthy of credit, though in various degrees.

Supposing, then, that miraculous events may and do occur in the present

state of the world's history, it is obvious that these various degrees

of assent are commanded alike by the supernatural and the natural

events which are here so freely mingled together. Some are undoubtedly

true, others are probably either fictitious or incorrectly recorded.

The substance rests on the genuine documents, originally written by

eye-witnesses and perfectly competent judges; and as such, the whole

stands simply as a result of the gathering together of historical

testimony.

Here, however, the ordinary English reader meets us with the assertion,

that the supernatural portions of such lives are simply _impossible_. He

assumes--for I am not exaggerating when I say that he never tries _to

prove_--that these marvellous interruptions of the laws of nature never

take place. Consequently, in his judgment, it is purely ridiculous to

put forth such stories as history; and writers who issue them are guilty

either of folly, ignorance, superstition, or an unprincipled tampering

with the credulity of unenlightened minds. Of those who thus meet the

question of historical evidence by an assumption of a universal abstract

impossibility, I earnestly beg an unprejudiced attention to the

following considerations:

If it be once admitted that there is a God, and that the soul is not

a mere portion of the body, the existence of miracles becomes at once

probable. Apart from the records of experience, we should in fact have

expected that events which are now termed miraculous would have been

perhaps as common as those which are regulated by what we call the laws

of nature. Let it be only granted that the visible universe is not the

_whole_ universe, and that in reality we are ever in a state of most

intimate _real_ communion with Him who is its Creator; then, I say,

we should have expected to have been as habitually conscious of our

intercourse with that great Being, as of our intercourse with one

another. The true marvel is, that we are not thus habitually conscious

of the Divine Presence, and that God is really out of our sight. If

there is a God, who is ever around us and within us, _why_ does He not

communicate with us through the medium of our senses, as He enables us

to communicate with one another? Our souls hold mutual communion through

the intervention of this corporal frame, with such a distinct and

undeniable reality, that we are as _conscious_ of our intercourse as

of the contact of a material substance with our material bodies. Why,

then,--since it is so infinitely more important to us to hold ceaseless

communication with our Maker,--why is it that our intercourse with Him

is of a totally different nature? Why is it that the material creation

is not the ordinary instrument by which our souls converse with Him? Let

any man seriously ponder upon this awful question, and he must hasten to

the conclusion, that though experience has shown us that the world of

matter is not the _ordinary_ channel of converse between God and man,

there yet remains an overwhelming probability that some such intercourse

takes place _occasionally_ between, the soul and that God through whose

power alone she continues to exist.

In other words, the existence of miracles is probable rather than

otherwise. A miracle is an event in which the laws of nature are

interrupted by the intervention of Divine agency, usually for the

purpose of bringing the soul of man into a conscious contact with the

inhabitants of the invisible world. With more or less exactness of

similitude, a miracle establishes between God and man, or between other

spiritual beings and man, that same kind of intercourse which exists

between different living individuals of the human race. Such a conscious

intercourse is indeed asserted by infidels as well as by atheists,

to be, if not impossible, at least so utterly improbable, that it is

scarcely within the power of proof to make it credible to the unbiased

reason. Yet surely the balance of probability inclines to the very

opposite side. If there _is_ a God, and our souls _are_ in communication

(of some kind) with Him, surely, prior to experience, we should have

expected to be habitually conscious of this communion. And now that we

see that we are not at any rate habitually so, still the burden of proof

rests with those who allege that such conscious intercourse _never_

takes place. Apart from all proof of the reality of any one professed

miracle, the infidel is bound to show _why_ all miracles are improbable

or impossible; in other words, why man should never be conscious of the

presence and will of his ever-present God.

Protestants, however, and even weak Catholics, regard the record of one

of those mysterious lives, in which the soul of a man or woman has been

repeatedly brought into this species of communion with invisible beings,

as a tale which, though it is just possible that it may be true, is yet,

on the face of it, so flagrant a violation of the laws of nature, as

to be undeserving of positive hearty belief. They confound the laws of

physical nature with the laws of universal nature. They speak of the

nature of this material earth, as if it was identical with the _nature

of things_. And this confusion of thought it is to which I would

especially call attention. Miracles are contrary to the ordinary laws of

physical nature, and therefore are so far improbable, but they are in

the strictest conformity with the nature of things, and therefore _in

themselves_ are probable. If the laws of nature rule God as they control

man, a miracle is almost an impossibility; but if God rules the laws of

nature, then it is wonderful that something miraculous does not befall us

every day of our lives.

Again, it is in a high degree probable that miraculous events will

generally, so to say, take their colour from the special character of

that relation which may exist between God and man at the time when they

come to pass. If, in the inscrutable counsels of the Almighty, man is

placed, during different eras in his history, in different circumstances

towards his Creator and Preserver, it would seem only natural that

the variations in those circumstances should be impressed upon the

extraordinary intercourse between God and His people. Or, to use the

common Christian term, each _dispensation_ will have its peculiar

supernatural aspect, as well as its peculiar spiritual and invisible

relationship. If man was originally in a higher and more perfect state

of being than he is now, it is probable that his communion with God was

singularly, if not totally, unlike what it has been since he fell from

primeval blessedness. If after his fall, two temporary states have been

appointed to him by his God, then the miracles of each epoch will bear

their own special corresponding characteristics. And lastly, if by a

new exercise of regenerating and restoring power it has pleased the

Invisible One to rescue His creatures from the consequences of their

ancient ruin, then again we may expect to recognise the history of that

redemption in the whole course of the miraculous intercourse between

the Redeemer and the redeemed until the end of time. The supernatural

elements in the Paradisiacal, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the

Christian states, may be expected to be in many respects distinct, each

embodying with awful and glorious power the invisible relations which

the God of nature and of grace has thought fit to assume towards His

creatures.

And such, in fact, has been the case. Not only is the ceaseless

existence of a miraculous intercourse between God and man one of the

most completely proved of all historical events, but the miracles of

each dispensation are found in a wonderful degree to correspond with

the relationship of God to man in each of the separate epochs. The same

superhuman consistency is found to pervade all the works of God, both

where nature and grace are separate from one another, and where the

common laws of nature are burst through, and the material universe

is made as it were the bondslave of the unseen. The impiously meant

assertions of unbelief are fulfilled in a sense which unbelievers little

look for; and they who cry out in their hatred of miracles, that all

things are governed by unchanging _law_, may learn that in truth

unchanging laws do rule over all, although those laws have a range and a

unity in the essence and will of God, of which mortal intelligence

never dreamed. The natural and the supernatural, the visible and the

invisible, the ordinary and the miraculous, the rules of the physical

creation and the interruptions of those rules,--all are controlled by

one law, shaped according to one plan, directed by one aim, and bound to

one another by indissoluble ties, even where to human eyes all seem lost

in confusion and thwarted by mutual struggle.

Of what we should now call the miraculous, or supernatural, communion

between God and man in Paradise, we know historically but little. The

records of revelation being for the most part confined to the state of

man as he is, and his actual and future prospects, present but a glimpse

of the conscious communion which was permitted to the first of our race

in their original bliss. It is, however, believed by theologians, that

in Paradise what we should now term miracles did not exist; for this

reason, that what is now extraordinary was then ordinary. God conversed

with man, and man held communion with angels, directly and habitually;

so that in a certain sense man saw God and the world now unseen.

[Footnote: See St. Thomas, Summa, pars prima, quæst. 94. art. 1,2.] For

it is not the mere possession of a body which binds the soul with the

chains of sense; it is the corruption and sinfulness of our present

frames which has converted them into a barrier between the spirit within

and the invisible universe. As Adam came forth all pure and perfect from

the hands of his Creator, a soul dwelling in a body, his whole being

ministered fitly to the purposes of his creation, and with body and soul

together he conversed with his God. It was not till the physical sense

became his instrument of rebellion, that it was dishonoured and made his

prison-house, and laid under a curse which should never be fully removed

until the last great day of the resurrection.

Upon the fall of Adam, a new state was introduced, which lasted

about two thousand five hundred years. During its continuance, the

supernatural intercourse between Almighty God and His degraded creatures

took an entirely different character. What had originally been

continual, and as it were natural, became comparatively rare and

miraculous. Henceforth there _seemed_ to be no God among men, save when

at times the usual laws of the earth and the heavens were suspended

and God spoke in accents which none might refuse to hear. Of these

supernatural manifestations the general aspect was essentially typical

of the future redemption of the lost race by a Saviour. That promise

of deliverance from the consequences of sin, which Almighty God had

vouchsafed to the first sinners, was repeated in a vast variety of

miraculous interventions. Though there may have been many exceptions to

the ordinary character of the Patriarchal miracles, still, on the whole,

they wear a typical aspect of the most striking prominence.

The first miracle recorded after the fall is the token granted to Abel

that his _sacrifice_ was accepted. A deluge destroys all but one family,

who are saved in an ark, the type of the Church of God, and a rainbow is

set in the sky as a type of the covenant between God and man. A child is

miraculously born to Abraham in his old age, who is afterwards offered

to God as a type of the Redeemer, and saved from death by a fresh

supernatural manifestation of the Divine will. The chosen race become

captive in Egypt, as a figure of man's bondage to sin; a series of awful

miracles, wrought by the instrumentality of Moses himself, a type of

Jesus Christ, delivers them from their slavery, terminating with the

institution of the Passover, when the paschal lamb is eaten, and they

are saved by its blood, as mankind is saved by the blood of the Lamb

of God. The ransomed people miraculously pass through the Red Sea,

foreshadowing the Christian's regeneration by baptism; as they wander

afterwards in the desert, manna descends from heaven to feed them, and

water gushes from the rock to quench their thirst, and to prefigure that

sacred food and those streams of grace which are to be the salvation of

all men. Almost every interruption of the laws of nature bespeaks the

advent of the Redeemer, and does homage to Him as the Lord of earth and

heaven.

At length a code of laws is given to the chosen race, to separate them

completely from the rest of men, and a promise of perpetual temporal

prosperity is granted to them by God as the reward of their obedience,

and as a figure of the eternal blessedness of the just. From that time

with, as before, occasional exceptions, the supernatural events which

befall them wear a new aspect. Their peculiarly typical import is

exchanged for one more precisely in conformity with the leading

principle of the new dispensation. The rites and ceremonies of the new

Law prefigure the Sacrifice and Redemption of the Messias; but the

miracles of the next fifteen hundred years are for the most part

directed to uphold that rule of present reward and punishment, which was

the characteristic feature of the Jewish theocracy. The earth opens to

punish the disobedience of Core and his companions. Fiery serpents

smite the murmuring crowd with instant death; while the promised Saviour

is prefigured, not by a miracle, but by the erection of a brazen serpent

by the hands of Moses. The walls of Jericho fall prostrate before the

trumpets of the victorious Israelites; one man, Achan, unlawfully

conceals some of the spoil, and an immediate supernatural panic, struck

into his countrymen, betrays the committal of the sin. Miraculous water

fills the fleece of Gideon, to encourage him to fight for his country's

deliverance. An angel foretells the birth of Samson to set his people

free, when they are again in bondage. Samson himself is endowed with

supernatural strength; exhausted with the slaughter of his foes, he

prays for water to quench his thirst, and a stream bursts forth from the

ass's jawbone with which he had just slain the Philistines. Bound in

chains, blinded, and made a jest by the idolaters, his prayer for a

return of his strength is heard by God, and he destroys a multitude in

his last moments.

And thus, through all the history of the Kings and the Prophets, the

power of God is repeatedly put forth to alter the laws of nature for the

purpose of enforcing the great rule of the Mosaic law. The disobedience

of the Jews might, if God had so pleased, have been invariably punished

by the instrumentality of the ordinary course of events, shaped by the

secret hand of Divine Providence so as to execute His will, just as

now we find that certain sins inevitably bring on their own temporal

punishment by the operation of the laws of nature. And so, in the vast

majority of instances in which the Jews were rewarded and punished,

we find that the Divine promises and threats were fulfilled by the

occurrence of events in the natural order of things. But yet frequently

miracles confirmed and aided the work of chastisement and blessing; and

of the numerous wonders which were wrought from the giving of the law

to the coming of Christ, we find that nearly all bore this peculiar

character. For many centuries also a constant miraculous guidance was

granted to the people in the "Urim and Thummim," by which they were

enabled, when they chose to remain faithful, to escape all national

calamities and enjoy the fullest blessings of the promised land.

Under the Christian dispensation, again, a new character is imprinted

upon the supernatural history of the Church, which is, in fact, the

impression of the Cross of Christ. While the characteristics of the

Patriarchal and Jewish miracles are not wholly obliterated, an element,

which if not entirely new, is new in the intensity of its operation, is

introduced into the miraculous life of the children of Christ, which

life is really the prolongation of the supernatural life of Jesus Christ

Himself. It is accompanied also with a partial restoration of that

peculiar power which was possessed by man before he fell, when his

body became a veil to hide the world of spirits from his soul. While

prophecies of future events have not wholly ceased in the Christian

Church, and miracles are frequently wrought for the conferring of some

temporal blessings, yet these other wonderful features distinguish the

supernatural records of Christianity from those of both Patriarchal

and Jewish times. The undying power of the Cross is manifested in the

peculiar sufferings of the Saints, in their mystic communion with

the invisible world, and in that especial sanctity to which alone

miraculous gifts are for the most part accorded under the Gospel. Not

that all these three peculiarities are to be observed in the life of

every Saint under the Gospel. Far from it, indeed. The supernatural

life of the Saints varies with different individuals, according to the

pleasure of that Almighty Spirit, who communicates Himself to His elect

in ten thousand mysterious ways, and manifests Himself according to His

own will alone. Still, at times, they are found united, in conjunction

with those miraculous powers which were possessed under the old

dispensations in one individual. In such cases we behold the Life and

Passion of the King of Saints visibly renewed before our eyes; the

law of _suffering_,--that mysterious power, as life-giving as it is

unfathomable,--is set before us in an intensity of operation, which at

once calls forth the scoffs of the unbeliever, and quickens the faith of

the humble Christian; the privileges of eternity are anticipated, and

the blessings of a lost Paradise are in part restored. Jesus Christ

lives, and is in agony before us; the dread scene of Calvary is renewed,

united with those ineffable communications between the suffering soul

and its God, which accompanied the life and last hours of the Redeemer

of mankind. Our adorable Lord is, as it were, still incarnate amongst

us, displaying to our reverent faith the glories of His Passion in the

persons of those who are, in the highest sense that is possible, His

members, a portion of His humanity, in whom He dwells, who dwell in Him,

and whose life, in a degree incomprehensible even to themselves, is hid

with Christ in God. Such a Saint was St. Frances of Rome, one of those

glorious creations of Divine grace by means of which, at the time when

the Holy City was filled with bloodshed and ravaged with pestilence, and

when the heaviest disasters afflicted the Church, Almighty God set

forth before men the undying life of the Cross, and the reality of that

religion which seemed to be powerless to check the outrages of its

professed followers.

In Paradise, then, as has been said, the whole nature of man ministered

to the fulfilment of the end for which he was created, namely, the

knowledge and love of God. He came forth from his Maker's hands endowed

not only with a natural soul and body untainted with sin, but with such

supernatural gifts, arising from the Divine Presence within him, that

nothing was wanting but perseverance to his final perfection. The

various elements in his nature were not, as now, at war with one

another. His body did not blind the eye of his soul, and agitate it with

the storms of concupiscence; nor did the soul employ the body as its

instrument of rebellion against God. Though not yet admitted to that

glorious vision of the Eternal which was to be the reward of his

obedience, yet he lived in direct commerce with the world of spirits. He

knew and conversed with God and His angels in a way which is now wholly

incomprehensible to the vast majority of his descendants.

When Adam fell, he became, in one word, what we all are now by nature.

Not only was he placed under a curse, but his God was hidden from his

eyes; and that corporeal habitation, which he had abused to his soul's

destruction, became the prison of his soul's captivity. Though

created in the image of God, and retaining, even when fallen, certain

traces of his celestial origin, he became a mere helpless denizen of

earth, and a veil descended and hid his God and all spiritual beings

from his mind. From that time forwards _suffering_ became not merely the

law of his daily life, but the only means by which he could be first

restored to the Divine favour, and finally be taken to a happy eternity.

And inasmuch as he was to be redeemed by the sufferings of One who

was at once man and not man, He was in a certain sense to share those

sufferings, in order to partake in the blessings they purchased for him.

A mystic union was to take place between the Saviour and the fallen

race, of which a community in suffering, as the instrument of

restoration, was to be for ever and in every case established. This

anguish, further, was to be twofold, including all the faculties both of

the body and the soul. Man had sinned in his whole being; in his whole

being, therefore, he was to suffer, both in the person of his Redeemer,

who was to suffer for him, and in himself, who was to suffer with his

Saviour. A "holocaust" was to be offered to the offended Majesty of God;

an offering, not only of his _entire_ nature, but a _burnt_ offering; a

sacrifice which should torture him in the flames of Divine vengeance,

and kill him with its annihilating fierceness.

As, however, it pleased the Divine Wisdom to postpone for forty

centuries the advent and atonement of the Redeemer, so, for the same

period, the race redeemed participated, in a comparatively slight

degree, in those restorative sufferings which derived all their virtue

from the sacrifice upon the Cross. Pangs of body and bitterness of soul

were, in truth, the lot of man from the moment that Adam sinned; but

they were the pangs and bitterness of a criminal under punishment, far

more than the sacrificial pains of the members of Christ crucified.

Asceticism formed but a small portion of the religious worship of the

people of God, until the great atonement was completed upon Calvary. Not

that any degree, even the lowest, of acceptable obedience could ever be

attained without some measure of the crucifixion of the natural man.

Patriarchs and Israelites alike felt the power of the Cross as the

instrument of their sanctification. But still earthly prosperity,

including bodily pleasures, was, as a rule, the reward with which God

recompensed His faithful servants. That which became the rule under the

Gospel, was the exception from Adam till Moses, and from Moses until

Christ. Here and there some great example of Christian asceticism

enforced upon a sensual people the nature of perfect sanctity. Elias

fasted on Mount Carmel, and beheld the skirts of the glory of the Most

High. The Baptist fasted and tamed his natural flesh in the wilderness,

and beheld not only the Incarnate Son of God, but the descent of the

Eternal Spirit upon Him. Yet, for the most part, the favoured servants

of God lived the lives of ordinary men; they possessed houses, riches,

and honours; and married wives, even more than one.

At length the Cross was set up in all its awful power; suffering

received its perfect consecration, and took its ruling place in the

economy of man's redemption. Jesus, in descending from the Cross,

bestowed that Cross upon His children, to be their treasure until the

end of the world. Crucifixion with Him, and through Him, as their Head,

became their portion and their glory. Every soul that was so buried

in His wounds as to receive the full blessings of His sacrifice, was

thereby nailed, in Christ, to the Cross, not to descend from its

hallowed wood until, like Christ, it was dead thereon. Henceforth the

sanctity of God's chosen servants assumes its new character. It is no

longer written, "I will bring you into a land flowing with the milk and

honey of this earth;" but, "Blessed are the poor, and they that suffer

persecution." The lot of Abraham and of David is exchanged for that of

St. Peter and St. Paul. In place of triumph in war with the idolaters,

the Christian is _promised_ persecution; in place of many herds and

flocks, and treasures of gold, God _gives_ him poverty and sickness; the

fast, the vigil, the scourge, take place of the palaces of cedar and

the luxuriant couch; marriage gives way to celibacy; and long life is a

privilege in order that in many years we may suffer much, and not that

we may enjoy much. Such is the ordinary course of the Divine dealings

with the soul since the Cross received its full mysterious saving power.

And to the full as mysterious is the new character imprinted upon

the miraculous life of Christian sanctity. The phenomena of that new

existence, in which certain souls are brought into mystic communion with

the unseen world, bear the print of the wounds of the Eternal Son in

a manner which fills the ordinary Christian mind with amazement and

trembling. It is by a painful crucifixion of the natural man, both soul

and body, carried to a far more than ordinary perfection, that the soul

is introduced into this miraculous condition. Imprisoned in her fleshly

tabernacle, which, though regenerated, is through sin foul, earthly,

and blinding as ever, the mind can only be admitted to share in the

communion which Jesus Christ unceasingly held with His Father and with

the world invisible, by attaining some portion of that self-mastery

which Adam lost by his fall. The physical nature must be subdued by the

vigorous repetition of those many painful processes by which the animal

portion of our being is rendered the slave of the spiritual, and the

will and the affections are rent away from all creatures, to be fixed on

God alone. Fasting and abstinence are the first elements in this ascetic

course. The natural taste is neglected, thwarted, and tormented, till,

wearied of soliciting its own gratification, it ceases to interfere with

the independent action of the soul. The appetite is further denied

its wonted satisfaction as to quantity of food. By fasts gradually

increasing in severity, new modes of physical existence are introduced;

that which was originally an impossibility becomes a second law of

nature; and the emaciated frame, forgetting its former lusts, obeys

almost spontaneously the dictates of the victorious spirit within.

The hours of sleep are curtailed under judicious control, until that

mysterious sentence which compels us to pass a third of our existence in

unconscious helplessness is in part repealed. The soul, habituated to

incessant and self-collected action, wakes and lives, while ordinary

Christians slumber, and as it were are dead. The infliction of other

severe bodily pains co-operates in the purifying process, and enables

the mind to disregard the dictates of nature to an extent which to

many Catholics seems almost incredible, and to the unbeliever an utter

impossibility. Physical life is supported under conditions which would

crush a constitution not supported by the miraculous aid of almighty

power; and feeble men and women accomplish works of charity and heroic

self-sacrifice from which the most robust and energetic of the human

race, in their highest state of _natural_ perfection, would shrink

back in dismay as hopeless impossibilities. The senses are literally

tyrannised over, scorned, derided, insultingly trampled on. The sight,

the smell, the hearing, the touch, and the taste, are taught to exercise

themselves upon objects revolting to their original inclinations. They

learn to minister to the will without displaying one rebellious symptom.

Matter yields to spirit; the soul is the master of the body; while the

perceptions of the intelligence attain an exquisite sensibility, and the

mind is gifted with faculties absolutely new, the flesh submits, almost

insensible to its condition of servitude, and scarcely murmurs at the

daily death it is compelled to endure.

The process is the same in all that regards the affections and passions

of the mind itself. The heart is denied every thing that it desires,

which is not God. However innocent, however praiseworthy, may be the

indulgence in certain feelings, and the gratification of certain

pursuits in ordinary Christians, in the case of these favoured souls

nature is crushed in _all_ her parts. Her faculties remain, but they are

directed to spiritual things alone. Possessions of all kinds, lands,

houses, books, pictures, gardens, husband, wife, children, friends,

--all share the same tremendous sentence. God establishes Himself

in the soul, not only supreme, but as the _only inhabitant_. Whatsoever

remains to be done in this world is done as a duty, often as a most

obnoxious duty. Love for the souls that Christ has redeemed is the only

human feeling that is left unsubjugated; and wheresoever the emotions of

natural affection and friendship mingle with this Christian love, they

are watched, and restrained with unsparing severity, that the heart may

come at last to love nothing, except _in_ Christ Himself.

All this, indeed, repeatedly takes place in the case of persons in

whom the purely miraculous life of the Christian Saint is never even

commenced. It is that which all monks and nuns are bound to struggle

for, according to the different rules to which they have respectively

received their vocation. And, by the mercy of God, this perfect

detachment from earth, and this marvellous crucifixion of the flesh, is

accomplished in many a devout religious, to whom the _extraordinary_

gifts of the Holy Ghost are as unknown as His extraordinary graces are

familiar. Still, in those exceptional instances where miraculous powers

of any species are bestowed, this bitter death, this personal renewal

(as far as man can renew it) of the agonies of Calvary, is ordinarily

the necessary preparation for admission to the revelations of the Divine

glory, and to the other mysteries of the miraculous life.

The physical nature, then, being thus subdued, and taught to be the

obedient servant of the sanctified will, the history of the Catholic

Church records a long series of instances in which the soul has been

brought into direct communion with God, with angels, and with devils,

more or less through the _sensible_ instrumentality of the bodily

senses, thus spiritualised and exalted to a new office. The ineffable

glories of the _life_ of Christ are renewed in those who have thus

endured the _cross_ of Christ. The death of the body is the life of the

soul; and the Son of God is, as it were, again visibly incarnate in the

world which He has redeemed.

The phenomena of this miraculous state are as various as they are

wonderful. There is scarcely a natural law of our being which is not

found to be frequently suspended. Such is the _odour of sanctity_,

a celestial perfume that exhales from the person of the Saint, in

conditions where any such delicious fragrance could not possibly spring

from natural causes, and where even, as in the case of a dead body,

nature would send forth scents of the most repulsive kind. In such

instances, sometimes in life, sometimes in death, sometimes in health,

sometimes in loathsome diseases, there issues from the physical frame an

odour of unearthly sweetness, perhaps communicating itself to objects

which touch the saintly form.

Or a strange supernatural warmth pervades the entire body, wholly

independent of the condition of the atmosphere, and in circumstances

when by the laws of nature the limbs would be cold; sometimes, while

sickness has reduced the system to such a degree of exhaustion, and

brought on so morbid an action of the functions, that the stomach

rejects, with a sort of abhorrence, every species of food, the most holy

Eucharist is received without difficulty, and seems not only to be thus

received, but to furnish sufficient sustenance for the attenuated frame.

Not unfrequently corruption has no power over a sacred corpse; and

without the employment of any of the common processes for embalming,

centuries pass away, and the body of the Saint remains untouched by

decay, bearing the impress of life in death, and not crumbling to dust,

as in cases of natural preservation, when exposed to the action of the

atmosphere. Add to these, the supernatural flexibility and lightness

with which at times the living body is endowed by Divine power; the

physical accompaniment of ecstasy; the elevation of the entire body from

the ground, and its suspension in the air for a considerable space of

time; and we have sufficient examples of the mysterious ways in which

the bodies of Saints bespeak the purity which dwells within them, and

in a degree anticipate the corporeal perfections of those glorified

habitations in which the souls of the just will dwell after the

resurrection.

By another class of miraculous powers possessed by Christian Saints,

they are enabled to recognise the true nature or presence of purely

spiritual objects by the instrumentality of their natural organs of

sense. Thus, a mere touch at times reveals to them the moral condition

of the person on whom they lay their hands. A singular distaste for

natural food is accompanied by a perception of a celestial sweetness in

the holy Eucharist. Gross sinners appear to the sight in the form of

hideous monsters, demoniacal in their aspect, or as wearing the look of

the most repulsive of the brute creation. The sense of smell, in like

manner, detects the state of the soul, while the ear is opened to

heavenly sounds and voices, and Almighty God speaks to the inner

consciousness in a manner which, inexplicable as it is when defined

in the language of human science, is shown by incontestable proofs to be

a real communication from heaven to the enlightened intelligence.

In certain cases the animal creation are taught to do homage to the

presence of a Saint. As God opened the eyes of Balaam's ass, and it

beheld the messenger of Divine wrath standing with a sword in his hand,

so birds, fishes, insects, sheep, and the wildest beasts of the forests,

have at times saluted the Saints with joy and sweetness, laying aside

their natural timidity or their natural ferocity, and recalling the hour

when Adam dwelt in sinless peace in Eden, surrounded by the creatures

which the hand of God had made. All nature is bid thus to arise to

welcome the elect of the Lord of nature. Flowers spring up beneath their

feet; fruits suddenly ripen, and invite them to gather and eat; storms

cease, and gentle winds refresh the sky. Every where the presence of Him

who lulled the tempest with a word is recognised in the souls in whom He

dwells, and in whom He thus, in a mystic sense, fulfils His own promise,

that the meek shall possess the land.

Thus, again, time and space are in their degree comparatively

annihilated for the sake of some of these favoured servants of the

Eternal and Omnipresent. St. Pius V., while bodily in Rome, was a

witness of the naval victory of the Christians over the Turks; St.

Joseph of Cupertino read letters addressed to him while their authors

were writing them far away; St. Dominic foresaw the war of the

Albigenses, and the death of Peter of Arragon; and St. Ignatius beheld

his successor in the Duke of Gandia. A similar mysterious faculty

enables its possessor to discern the presence of relics and other sacred

objects, more especially of the adorable Eucharistic species; or even to

behold Jesus Christ Himself in His glorified human form, in place of the

usual appearance of bread and wine; while in some instances the Host

has darted, unborne by mortal hand, into the mouth of a Saint about to

communicate at the foot of the altar.

On those species of miracles which are in no way peculiar to the

Christian dispensation I need not linger. Such is the gift of healing,

whether by the Saint's will and touch while alive, or by his relics and

intercession when dead. Such is the gift of prophecy, which abounded, as

we might have expected, far more in the Saints before the advent of

the Redeemer than since His coming, and which, indeed, was not rigidly

confined to men of religious character. Such are those supernatural

powers by which our present temporal blessings, in addition to the

cure of diseases, are conferred upon individuals or communities by the

instrumentality of holy men and women. I confine myself to those more

peculiarly Christian privileges, which, though they were not wholly

unknown to the Patriarchal and Mosaic Saints, are yet eminently

characteristic of those times in which the glorification of the humanity

of Jesus appears to have shed a measure of glories upon the bodies of

those who most intensely share the sufferings of His cross.

Some of these tokens of the perpetual death of the Son of God in

His Saints were, indeed, for several centuries either unknown, or

extraordinarily rare in the Christian Church herself. Such is that most

awful of the displays of the undying power of the Cross, in which the

actual wounds and tortures of the crucified Jesus are visibly renewed,

by a miraculous agency, in the persons of His chosen ones. This most

terrible of the gifts of the great God is generally preceded by some

supernatural occurrence foreshadowing the visible representation of the

scene on Calvary about to be set up before the eyes of men. At one time

it is a species of bloody sweat, like that of Jesus Christ in the garden

of Gethsemani; at another, a visible print of the cross is impressed

upon the shoulders; or angels present a mystic cup of suffering to

the hands of the self-sacrificing Saint. Then follows what is termed

_stigmatisation_, or the renewal of the actual wounds of the Crucified,

accompanied with the bloody marks of the crown of thorns upon the

sufferer's head; for the most part one by one, until the whole awful

commemoration is complete, the skin and flesh are rent on the forehead

and round the head, in the hands, in the feet, and in the side; a stream

of gore pours forth, at times trickling down in slow drops, at times (as

on Fridays) in a fuller tide, accompanied with agonising pangs of body,

and except in the fiercest moments of spiritual conflict, with interior

consolations of ravishing sweetness. The wounds pierce deep down into

the flesh, running even through the hands and the feet.

The state of _ecstasy_ is another of the most wonderful of the elements

of the miraculous life of the Saints. Under the Divine influence the

physical frame undergoes a change in many respects similar to that which

is supposed (whether truly or falsely) to result from the operation of

magnetism or somnambulism. Many features, at the same time, distinguish

the Christian ecstatic condition from that which is produced by purely

physical or (it may be) diabolical causes, on which we cannot at present

enter in detail. It is sufficient to say, that the results of the true

ecstasy are in the strictest conformity with the doctrines of the

Christian revelation, and in perfect harmony with the perfections and

rules of the _moral_ world.

The soul in this state becomes, as it were, independent of the power of

the body, or she uses her physical senses in an absolute subordination

to her own illumined will. Visions, such as are recorded in the Old

Testament in the case of the prophets, are presented to her faculties.

She is introduced into the courts of heaven, and beholds and converses

with Saints in glory, with the Mother of God, with Jesus Christ

Himself. Or the whole mystery of the Passion is re-enacted before her

spiritualised sight, the evangelical history being filled up with all

those actual but minuter details which are omitted in the written

records of the Gospels. In certain cases, the body itself is lifted up

from the ground, and so remains for a while in the presence of a crowd

of bystanders. In others, the soul, while in ecstasy, is the medium of

communication between Almighty God and other persons then present, and

the Saint's voice repeats the revelations to those for whom they are

designed. Or, again, an unearthly flame shining around the head or whole

person of the ecstatic, like the cloven tongues upon the Apostles at

Pentecost, attests the presence of the Invisible, and symbolises the

message sent forth from His throne to men.

A more purely intellectual vision or revelation is another of the works

of the Holy Ghost in His Saints. By such revelations, for the most part,

the truths of holy Scripture were communicated to its writers. God, who

created the human soul with all its faculties, and who is able to make

known His will in any way that He pleases to the intelligence, has His

own mysterious but not less accurate tests, by which He enables the

favoured spirit to discern a revelation from a mere product of the

human imagination, and to distinguish between the voice of God and the

suggestions of Satan. Nor was this mode of intercourse between the

soul and her God confined exclusively to the elder dispensations or

to apostolic ages. Many a Christian Saint has been privileged to

contemplate God Himself, in a certain sense, in His essence; beholding

the depths of such mysteries as those of the Holy Trinity, the

Incarnation, the Eucharistic Presence, or the true nature of sin, with a

directness of vision, and comprehending them to an extent, which passes

the powers of human language to define.

Lastly, all that we read in the Bible respecting the visible and

tangible intercourse between man and the angelic and diabolic host is

continued in the times of Christianity. The reality of the ministration

of angels and of the assaults of demons, in the case of all Christians,

is believed by every Catholic; but in very many cases the Saints have

become as conscious of the presence and actions of their unseen friends

and foes as of the presence and actions of mortal men. To some Saints,

our blessed Lord Himself has appeared in human form, perhaps in that of

the most despised and miserable of the poor and sick; to others, their

guardian-angels or other pure spirits have presented themselves,

sometimes in the guise of ordinary men, and sometimes in a manifestly

supernatural shape. Often, too, the enlightened soul has beheld Satan

and his accursed spirits, either working it some bodily injury, or

assaulting it with some subtle temptation, or seeking to scare it by

assuming some hideous loathsome shape, or assuming the garb of an angel

of light for the purpose of accomplishing his hellish ends. Of all these

supernatural phenomena, however, illustrations will readily occur to

those who are familiar with the lives of Saints, or, indeed, to those

who have studied the Bible only, and who read the inspired writings as

really _true_, remembering that the miraculous events there recorded did

not cease the moment that the canon of Scripture was closed, but that

such as was the relation between God and man and angels and devils for

more than four thousand years, such it has been until this very hour.

Such, then, are the doctrines and opinions which are implied in what

may be termed the miraculous life of Catholic Saints, and of which the

history of Frances of Rome presents one of the most remarkable examples.

They are here but briefly sketched: but I trust that enough has been

said to indicate the general character of the principles involved in

these wonderful histories; and I now pass on to offer a few remarks on

the self-contradictions into which those persons fall who refuse to

investigate this species of subject on the ordinary rules of historical

evidence.

I need hardly remind the reader that an immense number of persons,

both infidels and Protestants, especially in sober-minded England and

Scotland, treat every professed Catholic miracle as a portion of the

vast gigantic system of deliberate fraud and villany which they conceive

to be the very life of Catholicism. From the Pope to the humblest priest

who says Mass and hears confessions in an ugly little chapel in the

shabbiest street of a country town, all are regarded as leagued in

one wide-spreading imposture. Pius IX., for instance, it is imagined,

_knows_ the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood to be a trick of the

Neapolitan clergy; but he keeps up the falsehood for the sake of gain

and power. In like manner, he has an extensive Roman laboratory ever at

work for the manufacture of all the instruments of delusion which his

emissaries propagate throughout Christendom. There he makes false

relics, from portions of the true cross downwards; there he sells

pardons and indulgences; and there he has a _corps_ of writers employed

in the invention of fictitious miraculous tales, saints' lives, and the

like. All over the world he has "agents" for the sale of these goods,

the Catholic Bishops in England being his "English Correspondents," who

doubtless receive a handsome percentage on the profits realised. The

staff of underlings is also complete, energetic, and well paid. Thus,

the Oratorian Fathers are busily employed in scattering "Saints' Lives"

throughout this country, greatly to their own profit. Thus, too, I am

myself engaged in a similar work, either laughing in my sleeve at the

credulity on which I practise, or submitting from sheer intellectual

incompetence to be the tool of some wily Jesuit who enjoins the

unhallowed task. Such, when drawn out into details, and stripped of the

pompous declamation of the platform, is, in serious truth, the idea

which innumerable persons imagine to be the Catholic system of

propagandism and deceit; and every Catholic miracle is thus accounted

for by the supposed wickedness of all Catholics, except a few blinded

ignorant devotees.

Any argument, therefore, addressed to prejudgments of this class must

merge in the general argument, which shows that, whether the Catholic

religion be true or false, it is beyond the limits of credibility that

its ruling principle can be one of intentional deception. I insist,

then, that it would not merely be a miracle,--if is an _impossibility_

that such an imposture should remain undetected to this day, and that

men and women of all ranks, ages, and countries, the ablest and the most

simple, including uncounted fathers and mothers of families, should

persist in submitting to and upholding the authority of a few thousand

priests, who are really no better than incarnate devils. Whether the

Catholic system be an error or not, it must have fallen to pieces a

hundred times over, if its chief ruler and his subordinates were mere

tricksters, playing upon the credulity of a fanatical and besotted

world. By this same test, then, its miraculous histories must be judged,

like the general characters of its supporters. They who propagate these

stories believe them to be true. They do not, of course, assert that

_every_ supernatural story is what it professes to be. They may even

admit that many are the mere creations of well-meaning but ill-informed

report. Nor is every Catholic priest, monk, or layman to be accounted a

sincere and honest man. There are betrayers of their Lord, from Judas

Iscariot to the last wretched apostates, who remain for years in the

Church, deceiving others without deceiving themselves. But on the whole,

and viewed as a body, the Catholic Church is as honest and truthful,

when she asserts that many wonderful miracles are incessantly taking

place within her, as the most scrupulous of moralists can desire.

"But she is herself deceived," exclaims the more candid separatist

or sceptic, taking up the argument declined by his scoffing brother.

Catholics, it is supposed, are under the dominion of so abject a

superstition, that the moment the subject of their religion is

introduced, they cease to exert their ordinary common sense and powers

of criticism, and believe any thing and every thing that seems to be

marvellous. Granting them to be sincere, the charitable Protestant is

of opinion that they are intellectually incapable of testing the

pretensions of these wonders to be real and true miracles. If, in plain

words, Catholics are not knaves, they _must be_ fools. Now, let me ask

any candid person who thus accounts for our belief in modern miracles,

to furnish me with an intelligible answer on two points. First, let him

explain how it comes to pass that an innumerable multitude of persons,

many of them distinguished for the highest intellectual powers, and

proving by their lives and their deaths that they are ready to make

every sacrifice for the sake of religion, should suffer themselves to be

imposed upon in so momentous a subject, should willingly accept as true

a series of absurd fabrications, whose falsehood they might detect by

the exercise of any ordinary acuteness, and should risk their reputation

with the world by professing to believe these fictions. If we _are_

sincere in our faith, it is impossible to suppose us so willing to be

imposed upon. The hollowness of these supernatural pretensions must

have betrayed itself to _some_ amongst us. The bubble must have burst

_somewhere_. If not at Rome, where Protestants imagine Catholic

intellect to be at its lowest ebb, at least in England, or France,

or Belgium, or Germany, _some_ of our great Catholic philosophers,

historians, politicians, and men of science, must have unveiled the

truth. [Footnote: It is a remarkable fact, that the most celebrated

work on the supernatural gifts accorded by God to Christians, is the

production of one of the greatest intellects, and by far the most

influential political writer, that modern Europe has seen. Görres, the

author of the _Christliche Mystik_, was the Wellington of literature

during the last European war. The influence which he exercised over

the whole German mind by his _Rhenish Mercury_ is altogether without

parallel in the history of journalism. It was, indeed, regarded as

so formidable by Napoleon himself, that he styled Görres a _fourth

continental power_. Yet this first of publicists devoted his whole life

to the investigation of the wonders of Catholic mysticism, and believed

with undoubting conviction in their reality.]

And, secondly, I desire to be told _who_ are the deceivers. If our

numerous miracles are all errors, there must be gross deception in a

host of instances _somewhere_. _Where_ is it, then? I ask; which are the

dupes, and which the rogues? Do the clergy cheat the laity? Or do the

laity (who have quite as much to do with these miracles) cheat the

clergy? Do the Jesuits entrap the Pope? Or does the Pope mystify the

Jesuits? When missionaries shed their blood in hundreds in heathen

lands, are we to believe that _they_ are the fabricators of the

wonderful tales which they have been in the habit of sending home to

Christendom? Or did they leave Europe with the intention of becoming

martyrs, without troubling themselves to ascertain whether they were

not the dupes of delusions already surrounding them in a Christian land?

Again I say, if Catholic miracles are all false, there must be boundless

trickery _somewhere_, and I demand to know _where_ it is. In an English

court of justice a charge of conspiracy cannot be entertained unless

the accuser can point out certain parties on whom to fasten his charge.

Judge and jury would laugh at a plaintiff who came into court crying out

that he was victimised by some invisible, indescribable, and unknown,

but yet very numerous band of foes. So it is with this popular theory

about Catholic miracles. We are told that we are deceived. We are all

cheated together. The bishops are victims; the priests are victims;

monks and nuns are victims; the laity are victims; the old Catholics in

England are victims; the converts are victims; the best of us all are

victims; the most learned, the most pious, the most able, the most

self-denying,--all _these_ are dupes. If there are deceivers, they are

the few, the ignorant, the cunning, and the vile. The Roman Church, as a

Church, is supposed to be under the dominion of a band of conspirators,

who have blinded her eyes without her having found it out, and who

are now using her for their own godless purposes. Does not such

a supposition confute itself? Is it worth admitting, even as an

hypothesis? Would such a statement be endured for a moment by a judge

and twelve men in a jury-box? I say, therefore, before moving a step to

overthrow the Protestant accusation, "Make a distinct and intelligible

charge of certain definite crimes against certain definite individuals.

When that is done, the proof still remains with you. Show us both who

are the deceivers, and how they deceive us; or admit that there is

no credulity so open-mouthed as that of Protestants when they attack

Catholics; no superstition so base as that which worships this visible

order of nature as an eternal rule which not even God Himself can ever

interrupt."

The fact is, however, that no Protestant ever attempts any thing like a

profound investigation of the Catholic miracles. A calm, critical, and

judicial inquiry into the worth of the Roman process of canonisation has

never been risked. Here is an enormous catalogue of incidents, whose

supernatural character is vouched for by the decrees of a long series

of Popes, professedly based upon the most prolonged and anxious legal

examination. For centuries a tribunal has been declaring that one series

of miracles after another has come before it; that it has weighed them

all with the utmost care; that it has heard every thing that could be

urged against them; that it has rejected, as not proved, a very large

number; and that, after the most searching inquiry, it _has_ found such

and such supernatural incidents to be established by every law of

human evidence. [Footnote: For the steps followed in the processes of

canonisation, see Faber's _Essay on Beatification, Canonisation, and

the Processes of the Congregation of Rites_.] No man can look at the

processes of the canonisation of Catholic Saints without admitting that

very few of those secular events which we unhesitatingly believe are

supported by so overwhelming a weight of proof. Men's fortunes and lives

are incessantly taken away by law at our very doors on lower degrees of

evidence, and no one exclaims. And yet the decisions of this Catholic

tribunal are set aside without hesitation. People think them not even

worthy of listening to. The whole affair they count a childish trifling;

and with a shrug or a sneer they pass it by.

And it is the same with those miracles which have not been brought

before any such high tribunal, but which rest on undeniable private

evidence. Those who are not Catholics put them aside simply as

incredible. They assume that they cannot be true, and therefore that

they are not true. Press them in argument, and they will shirk your most

stringent proofs. You can make no impression upon their _wills_. They

will believe any thing but that God has interrupted the course of nature

in favour of any one but themselves. In short, if we wish to see

human reason in its most irrational mood, we have but to enter into

conversation with a Protestant who asserts and thinks that he believes

the Bible miracles to be true, and urge upon him the proofs of such

modern miracles as are recorded of St. Frances of Rome. You will

perceive first, that though he has made up his mind on the subject with

unhesitating dogmatism, he has never investigated its bearings or facts,

even in outline. Nevertheless, to your surprise, you will find him

perfectly ready to start some random theory, at a moment's notice,

unconscious of the momentous, the awful nature of the matter he is

handling. You see, perhaps, that his mind is powerfully influenced

by the singular character of many Catholic miracles. He thinks them

strange, unnecessary, unaccountable, absurd, disgusting, degrading. His

nervous sensibilities are shocked by an account of the fearful pangs

accompanying the _stigmata_. In the phenomena of ecstasy he can see

nothing more than the ravings of delirium, or (if he believes in

mesmerism) than the tales of a clairvoyante, and the rigidity of

catalepsy. His physical frame, accustomed to its routine of breakfast,

luncheon, and dinner, its sofas and easy-chairs, and its luxurious bed,

shudders at the thought of the self-inflicted penances of the Saints,

and at the idea of God's bestowing a miraculous power of enduring such

horrors. He would be as much surprised to be told that Smithfield was

literally the abode of incarnate demons, as to hear that demons have

often assumed the shapes of beasts and monsters in their conflicts with

the elect. The notion that an angel might visibly appear to a pious

traveller on the Great Western or Birmingham railroad, and protect him

from death in a frightful collision of trains, makes him open his eyes

and contemplate you as scarcely sane to hint at such a thing. That "the

Virgin," as he calls her, should come down from heaven and enter a

church or a room, and hold a conversation with living men, women, or

children in the nineteenth century, and give them a trumpery medal, or

tell them to wear a piece of cloth round their neck, or cure them of

some disease, he regards about as likely and rational as that the

stories in the _Arabian Nights_ and the _Fairy Tales_ should turn out to

be true histories. Be as serious as you please, he simply laughs in his

sleeve, thinking to himself, "Well, who would have believed that the

intellect of an educated Englishman should submit itself to such

drivelling as this?"

Perceiving that this is the state of his mind, you open the Bible, which

lies, handsomely bound, upon his table, and running rapidly through

the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, point out to him a long

series of supernatural events there recorded; and show him that in

their nature they are precisely the same as those modern miracles which

provoke his disgust or contempt. You remind him, first of all, that our

Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, and that all His people

are made _like Him_, in His life and His sufferings, as well as in His

glory; and then proceed to your summary. He accounts the penances of

Saints needless and impossible; you remind him of our blessed Lord's

fast of forty days and forty nights. He is horror-struck at the details

of the sufferings of those in whom the Passion of Christ has been

visibly renewed; you beg him to attempt to realise the bloody sweat

in the Garden of Olives. He speaks of mesmerism and clairvoyance, and

derides the thought of a Saint's being illuminated with radiant light,

or exhaling a fragrant odour; you ask him how he explains away the

transfiguration of Jesus. He says that it is physically impossible that

a man's body can be (as he expresses it) in two places at once; you

desire him to say by what law of nature our Lord entered the room where

the disciples were when the doors were shut; how St. Peter was delivered

from chains and imprisonment by the angel; how St. Paul was rapt into

the third heaven, _whether in the body or out of the body, he could not

tell_. He says that when a Saint has thought himself attacked by devils

in hideous shapes, his brain has been diseased; you entreat him to

beware of throwing a doubt on the temptation of Jesus Christ by Satan in

the wilderness. He pities you for believing that the Mother of God has

appeared for such needless purposes to excited devotees; you ask him why

the Son of God appeared long after His death and ascension to St. Paul,

and told him what he might have learnt in a natural way from the other

Apostles. He calls your miraculous relics childish trumpery; you ask

whether the handkerchiefs and aprons which cured the sick, after having

touched St. Paul's body, were trumpery also; and whether St. Luke is

countenancing superstition when he relates how the people crowded near

St. Peter to be healed by his very shadow passing over them. Then, as he

feels the overwhelming force of your rebukes, he insinuates that there

is something divine, something evidently touching, pure, and strict in

morality in the Bible narratives, which is wanting in these lives of

Catholic Saints; and you refer him to such biographies as that of St.

Frances of Rome, and compelling him to read the narratives of her

revelations, ask him if all that she says when in a state of ecstasy

does not wear, even in his judgment, the impress of a Divine origin, and

seem to be dictated by the God of all purity, humility, and love.

At length your opponent, after brief pondering, changes his ground, and

asserts that you are yourself deceived; that the real defect in Catholic

miraculous stories is the want of evidence. He tells you that he would

believe, if he could; but that you have not proved your point. You next

call his attention to the distinct promise made by our blessed Lord to

the Church, that miracles should always continue with her; and ask him

how, on his theory, he accounts for the non-fulfilment of this promise.

You desire him to lay his finger on the epoch when its fulfilment

ceased; and not only to assert that it then ceased, but to prove his

assertion. He says nothing, for he has nothing to say which he can even

attempt to prove; and you proceed to furnish a few examples of miracles,

from patristic, mediæval, or modern times, or perhaps of the present

day, which are supported by at least as cogent an amount of evidence

as the historical proof of the Scripture miracles. You insist upon his

_disproving_ these. He cannot. He resorts to some new hypothesis. He

says that there is deception _somewhere_, though he cannot tell where;

and probably by this time is showing symptoms of a wish to end the

discussion. You urge him again, and press him to give an intelligible

reason for supposing that there _must_ be deception any where. He thinks

a while; and when at length you are looking for a rational conclusion,

he starts backwards to his old assumption that the Catholic miracles

_cannot_ be true. He begs the whole question, and says that they are in

favour of Catholicism, and that Catholicism is false. You too recur to

your old reference to the Bible, and so on. And thus you run again the

same round; and you may run it a thousand times over, till you perceive

that there is but one reason why your opponent is not convinced; which

is, that he _will not_ be convinced. And thus it was in the days when

those very miracles were wrought which Protestants profess to believe.

The Jews _would not_ believe our Lord's words and doctrines. He then

bade them believe Him because of His miracles; and they instantly

imputed them to the power of the devil. He showed them that this theory

was impossible; but, so far from being convinced and converted, they

went their ways, and plotted His death. Now, our controversialists

cannot, or do not wish, to take away our lives; but when not a word is

left them in the way of argument, they go their ways, and protest

to their fellows, that we are obstinate, unfair, superstitious,

and insolent; and too often encourage one another in the bitterest

persecution of those who are convinced by our reasonings, and submit to

the Church.

I now turn to the objections which are at times felt by Catholics

themselves to the publication of Saints' Lives, abounding in

supernatural incidents. Such persons are, indeed, not numerous; and

their number is rapidly diminishing. Still it can scarcely be doubted

that conscientious Catholics _are_ to be found who take the view I am

speaking of, from ideas which, though erroneous (as I believe), are yet

so truly founded in sincerity, as to demand respect and explanation from

those who differ from them.

The objections they raise are twofold. First, they allege that such

books scandalise Protestants and drive them from the Church; and

secondly, they do not see _how_ incidents, wholly unlike our ordinary

daily experience, _can_ practically serve us in our private Christian

lives.

To the idea that non-Catholics are thus needlessly prejudiced against

the faith, I reply, that this assertion is wholly unproved. That they

do, as a matter of fact, laugh and attack such biographies, I fully

admit; but they laugh at them on grounds which we cannot admit without

giving up the Christian revelation itself. They scoff at them, not

because they think them not supported by credible testimony, but because

they are not what they call dignified, refined, and just such as they

should have supposed all things to be that come from God. That such a

temper of mind is indicative of pure Deism, it needs no words to prove.

A man who derides a miraculous event merely as _trifling_, thereby

asserts that he himself is the judge of what is great and what is little

in the sight of God. He lays down laws for the guidance of the Almighty.

He is adopting the identical reasoning of professed infidels, who on

this very ground reject Christianity itself. And it is obvious that

nothing can be more perilous than the encouragement of so fatal a

principle of judgment. Once let the acute and logical Protestant

perceive that you move one step backwards in deference to this

objection, and he will press you with fresh consequences of the very

same admission until he lands you in undisguised scepticism, if not in

the blackest Atheism.

Can any single instance, in fact, be named in which a mind that was

apparently determined to seek salvation at all costs, has been actually

deterred from entering the Catholic Church by meeting with these

extraordinary histories? Are they not a butt for determined and

obstinate Protestants, and for such Protestants only? Ask any convert

whether, on looking back, he can say that the knowledge of these

peculiarities in Catholic hagiology ever practically held him back for

four-and-twenty hours in his journey towards the Church. That the world

is angry, and that the world vents its spleen and its contempt in bitter

jests, is true enough; but _pious souls are not made to sin, or kept

away from their Saviour_, by any thing of the kind. And that the rage

and mocking of man afford not the slightest reason for inducing the

Church to turn out of her natural path, I shall not dishonour my readers

by attempting to prove to them.

That it _is_ her natural course to make these histories public, for

the practical edification of her children, is clear from one fact

alone,--they are precisely parallel to the life of our blessed Lord, as

narrated in the four Gospels. The whole question resolves itself into

this: If such lives as that of St. Frances, and many others, recently

published in England, are not edifying to the ordinary Christian, then

the life of Jesus Christ is not edifying. The Gospels, as well as the

Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, must be rigorously expurgated and

cut down to the type of the common domestic life of the present day.

Nothing can be further removed from the circumstances of most men than

the records of our Lord's miracles and supernatural acts in general.

What has the temptation, the transfiguration, the driving the devils

into the swine, the turning the water into wine at what we should now

call a "wedding-breakfast," and, in fact, almost every _act_ in our

blessed Lord's life, in common with our amusement, our business, our

society, our whole experience? Yet, to say that a devout soul can

meditate on these transcendently mysterious events, and not derive from

them practical instruction to enable her to fulfil her little trivial

earthly duties with Christian perfection, is nothing short of blasphemy.

The Son of God incarnate, all glorious, all awful, all unfathomable as

He was even in the days of His sojourning on earth, was yet our example,

our model, our embodied series of precepts. The eye of the simplest

regenerate child cannot be turned for an instant upon His Divine glories

and ineffable sufferings without drawing light therefrom to guide it

even in its play with its fellows, or in the most trivial of the duties

towards its parents and teachers.

And such, I am convinced, is the experience of Catholics of all ranks,

of every age and every degree of intellectual cultivation, who study

religiously the miraculous lives of the Saints, believing them to be, on

the whole, correct histories. It is not needful that they should regard

them to be literally true in all their details, as the Bible is true. We

have but to regard them as we regard other authentic human narratives,

with the addition of that veneration and confidence which is due to such

portions of them as have been formally sanctioned by the Church, to

derive from them unceasing spiritual comfort and instruction. Doubtless,

if we are so ignorant as to fancy that all Saints' histories are to

be alike in details, and that therefore we ought to wish that the

circumstances of our lives were the same as theirs, we shall be doing

ourselves great mischief. But let us study them with a true knowledge of

the mere elements of the Christian faith, and they will be to us what

St. Paul desires his disciples to seek for in _his_ life, namely, a

continuation, as it were, of the life of Jesus Christ, carried on

through all the successive ages of His Church on earth. They will

impress upon our minds with an intensity peculiarly their own, the

reality of the invisible world and the ensnaring tendencies of every

thing that we possess. Weak and ignorant as is the imaginative and

sensitive portion of our nature, it needs every possible help that it

can find to counteract the paralysing effects of the worldliness of the

world, of the lukewarmness of Christians, and of the enthralling

nature of the universe of sight and sense. Our courage is wonderfully

strengthened, and our love for things invisible is inflamed, by every

thing that forces us, as it were, to _see_ that this visible creation

_is not_ the only thing that is real, mighty, and present. The general

precepts and the dogmatic statements of religion acquire a singular

and living force when we perceive them carried out and realised in the

actual affairs of life in a degree to which our personal experience is a

stranger. Influenced as human nature is by example, these unpretending

narratives, whose whole strength lies in the facts which they record,

and not in the art of the biographer, undeniably _strike_ the mind with

an almost supernatural force. They enchain the attention; they compel us

to say, Are these things true? Are these things possible? Is religion,

after all, so terribly near to us? Are this life and this world so

literally vain and worthless, so absolutely nothing worth? Are suffering

and awful bodily anguish blessings to be _really_ coveted? Are the

maxims which I daily hear around me so hopelessly bad and accursed? Are

angels and devils so near, so very near, to us all? Is purgatory so

terrible and so inevitable to all but the perfect, that these fearful

visions of its pains are in substance what I myself shall endure? And

if I fall from grace and die in sin before one of the innumerable

temptations that hourly beset me, is it true that nothing less than

an eternity of such torments, the very reading of which even thus

represented makes me shudder with horror, will be my _inevitable_

lot? And is the bliss of the Saints and the joy of loving God so

inexpressibly sweet to any souls here on earth? Is it possible that any

one should escape from a state of coldness, deadness, worldliness, and

unwilling performance of his religious duties, and positively come to

lose all taste for bodily and mere intellectual pleasures through the

absorbing of his whole being into the love of Jesus and of Mary, and

through a burning thirst for the beatific vision of the Eternal Trinity?

And who will venture to say that it is not good _for us all_ to have

such thoughts frequently pressed upon our attention? If there is any

meaning in the command that we are to aim at being perfect, whatever be

the state of life _in which_ we are called to seek perfection, surely

it is no ordinary advantage thus to have the essentially supernatural

character of our religious life forced again and again upon our

attention. For, be it never forgotten, this very _supernaturalness_ is

one of its essential features. There are innumerable varieties in our

vocations. The earthly circumstances in which we are to serve God are

almost innumerable in their variety; but the supernatural element

appertains to them all alike. Our actual relationship to the awful and

glorious realities of the unseen world is precisely the same in kind as

that of the most miraculously endowed Saints. The only difference is

this, that in their case that relationship was perceived and visibly

manifested in a peculiar mode, to which we are strangers. Heaven,

purgatory, and hell are as near to us as if we beheld the visions of St.

Frances. The cross is as literally our portion, in its essential nature,

as if the five sacred wounds were renewed physically in our agonising

frame. Our angel-guardian is as incessantly by our side, as if our eyes

were opened to behold his effulgent radiance. Satan strikes the same

blows at our souls, whether he shows himself to our sight or not. The

relics of Saints, which we carefully look at or criticise, _may be_

at any moment the vehicles of the same miraculous powers as the

handkerchiefs from the body of St. Paul. Who would say to a blind man,

"Forget the tangible realities of this life, because you cannot see

them"? Who would not rather say, "Bear constantly in mind what is the

experience of those who _can_ see, that you may practically remember

their ceaseless nearness to you"? And just such is the experience of the

Saints, in whose histories faith has partly merged into sight, and the

veil which blinds our eyes has been partially and at certain seasons

withdrawn. It tells us, as few things else can tell, of the _reality_ of

the objects of our faith.

I add a word or two on the question, how far the actual conduct of the

extraordinary persons whose lives are here related is to serve as

a model for practical imitation by ordinary Christians. To the

well-instructed Catholic, it would be an impertinence in me to suggest

that they are not in every detail thus to be followed. It is the duty

of a Christian to follow the rules for daily life which it has pleased

Almighty God to lay down in the Gospel, and not to imagine that those

exceptional cases of conduct to which He has supernaturally prompted

certain individuals are to be imitated by those who have only the

ordinary graces of the Holy Spirit.

The general reader, however, may be reminded that Catholics believe,

that as the Creator of the universe occasionally interrupts the order of

the laws of nature, so He at times interrupts the relative order of the

laws of duty; not, of course, the essential laws of morality, but those

positive laws which are obligatory simply because they are enacted by

competent authority. No person, indeed, can be justified in acting on

such an idea in his own case, unless guided by supernatural light,

beyond the usual spiritual illumination given to all Christians. This

supernatural light is rarely vouchsafed, and it is accordingly in the

highest degree presumptuous in any person to overstep the ordinary

routine of distinctly ordered duty, under the idea that he is called by

God to break the rules given for the guidance of mankind in general. In

all such supposed cases, the Catholic Church has the proper tests to

apply, by which the soul can learn whether she is led by a Divine

afflatus, or betrayed by her own disordered imagination, or the deceits

of an invisible tempter.

J.M.C.

[Illustration] CONTENTS.

I.

ST. FRANCES OF ROME.

CHAPTER I.

General character of the Saint's life--Her childhood and early piety