always at work: the men were employed in a garden of ten acres, to provide vegetables and fruit, on

of Miss Calonges' relation, not that I think such behaviour has never been practised by a mystic, for there is a lady now living, who was debauched by a masspriest, while he was instructing her how to be perfect in the interior life and abstraction. He first made a con

raise her to the tip

vert of her to popery, and then to top saints, consolidated her soul to an impenetrable centre, and taught her to pray in silence in the inward sanctuary, without any regard to what was outward; the more insensible, the more perfect. This continued for some time, and the confessor told her she was in a fair way to the highest degree of perfection; a little more absence from the body, and she was quite glorious. In short, from touching the tip of her ear, as she sat like one inanimate, he proceeded to the most illicit liberties. She thought him an angel of a man, and was undone by the uncommon sanctity he wore, and the strong desire she had to be a perfect mystic.

But as to Labadie, if he was the man Miss Calonges reported him, is it to be thought Mrs. Schurman would have made him her nearest friend, and first minister in the management of her house and religionists, and have travelled with him wherever he went. Beside, Mrs. Bourignon did not make this an objection against joining him and Mrs. Schurman. Among the many books written by Labadie, and by him published, there are

which they chiefly lived; or in cutting down old trees, and fitting them for their fire: and the women

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some of them moral, and extremely pious: and more than this, Yvon was his principal disciple, and all I think allow he was one of the most pious of mortals, though a thorough visionary. He founded a society at Wiewert, which was another la Trappe. Espéce d'Abbaye de la Trap dans le parti protestant, tres éloignée de l'esprit de mondanité, reformez dans leurs mœurs et dans leurs dogmes, says Bayle in his Nouvelles for November 1685. And the Marriage Chrétien of Yvon, published immediately after the death of Labadie, is a piece of sanctification too severe I think for mortals. I imagine then, that in contempt of those mystics and visionaries, there may be some things overtold, and some stories received, that would bear mitigation, if all the circumstances relating to them were known. It is bad enough that there are mystics and visionaries in the world: and therefore, if I could, I had rather discover virtue amidst their intellectual immoralities, than have an opportunity of displaying imperfections in any of their hearts. As to Labadie, supposing the worst, and that as Henry Basnage, says, he began to feel the breasts of Miss Calonges, might not the attitude of the charming image, and the privacy of the place, be too much for the poor man, as they say she was a prodigious fine girl, and tempt him to commit an indiscretion he might be very sorry for after? He was at that time a huge, strong, healthy he

were knitting, spinning, or twisting what they had spun into thread, which they sold for three shillings

mystic, and perhaps had a bottle of generous in his stomach.

Madame Bourignon, whom I have mentioned, was separated from her earthly tabernacle the 20th of October, 1680, St. Vet. anno; having lived sixty-four years, nine months and fourteen days. She died at Franeker, in West Friesland, and had suffered greatly in many persecutions. She had an extraordinary fine understanding, and would have been a valuable and useful creature, if she had not gone in to vision. There are however many admirable things in her works, which she published herself at several times, and to that purpose, had a printing house of her own, in the island of Nord-Strand in Holstein; which island she purchased from Monsieur Cort, one of the fathers of the oratory. Her works were afterwards printed at Amsterdam, 1686, in nineteen volumes in 8vo. A presiding good sense appears every now and then in her writings, which kept her from sinking into the profundities, unions, and annihilations, of Labadie, whom she despised, though Mrs. Schurman was so fond of him. Labadie wanted her to come and live with him and Mrs. Schurman, and be one of the perfectionists in their retreat. He pressed her to it but she would have no connection with them. She told them their plan and economy were weak, and they had not the operation of the spirit in

a pound: they were all together in a large, handsome room: they sat quite silent, kept their eyes on

what they schemed and did. The two best books in this lady's works are, The Light of the World, and Solid Virtue. They have been translated into English; but are not now to be found.

Madame Guion, another illustrious visionary died the 9th of June, 1717, at Blois, in the seventieth year of her age. Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray's troubles were all owing to this lady. She debauched his understanding with her splendid visions and notions of perfection and quiet, and to his last moment he had the most singular veneration for her, and thought her to be what our grand visionary, the reverend William Law, calls her in one of his pieces against Dr. Trapp, the "enlight'ned Guion. Notwithstanding the prelate made a public recantation, through fear, of his maxims of the saints, yet he was to his extreme unction, a thorough Guionist; that is, by associating and concentering with the divinity, as Madame directed, he was all light, all eye, all spirit, all joy, all rest, all gladness, all love; pure love. These are their terms. They rest in quietness, and are absorbed in silent spiritual pleasure, and inexpressible sweetness. Filled with a rapt'rous stillness, they sit the hours away at a royal banquet, and enjoy a divine repose in the sweet fellowship of the bridegroom. They even become sometimes like angels without bodies, so exceeding light and easy do they feel themselves with the

their work, and seemed more attentive to some inward meditations, than to any thing that appeared,

body. Wretched delusion. It is all a wild, senseless fancy. It wants the beams of eternal and unalterable reason, and therefore can never be that useful, glorious piety, called Christianity; can never be that heavenly religion which was promulgated by Jesus; which consists in offering prayers with our lips, praising and giving thanks to the one true God the Father, at proper seasons; and in reducing the principles of the gospel to practice; by a righteousness of mind, and an active universal benevolence.

Madame Guion's works are twenty volumes of Explications and Reflections on the Old and New Testament, concerning the Interior Life. Five volumes of Spirituel Cantiques and Emblems on Pure Love. Two volumes of religious discourses. Four volumes of Letters. Her Life in three volumes. Three volumes of Justifications in defence of herself against her persecutors. And two volumes entitled Opuscules.

As to Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray, he was a great and beautiful genius, and his Telemaque cannot be enough admired: but that bright genius he laid at the foot of mystery: His noble reason he would not use in religion, and therefore, in this article, was as poor a creature as any of the people. His maxims of the saints declare the weak visionary; and his submitting them afterwards to the censure of the man of sin, called