Part IV, Chapter I

That We Must Disregard the Censures of Worldlings

Containing necessary advices against the most ordinary temptations.

As soon as the children of this world perceive that you desire to follow a devout life they will discharge arrows of mockery and detraction against you without number. The most malicious will attribute your change to hypocrisy, bigotry, and artifice. They will say that, being frowned upon and rejected by the world, you fly for refuge to God. Your friends will make a thousand remonstrances, which they imagine to be very wise and charitable. They will tell you that you will fall into some melancholy humor; that you will lose your credit in the world, and make yourself insupportable; you will grow old before your time; your domestic affairs will suffer; you must live in the world like one in the world; salvation may be had without so many mysteries; and a thousand similar impertinencies.

Dear Philothea! what is all this but foolish and empty babbling? These people are not interested in your health or affairs. “If you had been of the world,” says our blessed Saviour, “the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” (John 15:19) We have seen gentlemen and ladies pass the whole night, nay, many nights, together at chess or cards; and can there be any attention more absurd, stupid, or gloomy, than that of gamesters? And yet worldlings say not a word, nor do friends ever trouble themselves about them; but should they spend an hour in meditation, or rise in the morning a little earlier than ordinary to prepare themselves for communion, every one would run to the physician to cure them of hypochondriacal humors and vapors. These persons can pass thirty nights in dancing without experiencing any inconvenience; but for watching only one Christmas night every one coughs, and complains that he is sick the next morning. Who sees not that the world is an unjust judge, gracious and favorable to its own children, but harsh and rigorous towards the children of God?

We can never please the world unless we lose ourselves together with the world; it is so whimsical that it is impossible to satisfy it. “John came neither eating nor drinking,” says our Saviour, “and you say he hath a devil. The Son of Man is come eating and drinking, and you say: Behold a man that is a glutton, and a drinker of wine.” (Luke 7:33) It is true, Philothea, that if, through condescension, we consent to laugh, play, or dance with the world, the world will be scandalized at us; and if we do not it will accuse us of hypocrisy or melancholy. If we dress gayly, the world will say that we do so for some evil end; if we neglect our dress, it will impute it either to meanness or avarice. Our mirth will be termed dissoluteness, and our mortification sullenness; and as the world thus looks upon us with an evil eye, we can never be agreeable to it. It aggravates our imperfections, publishing them as sins; it makes our venial sins mortal, and our frailties sins of malice. Charity is benevolent and kind, says St. Paul, but the world is malicious; charity thinks no evil, whereas, the world, on the contrary, always thinks evil, and when it cannot condemn our actions it will accuse our intentions. So that whether the sheep have horns or not, whether they be white or black, the wolf will not hesitate to devour them, if he can.

Whatever we do, the world will wage war against us. If we remain long at confession, it will wonder how we can have so much to say; if we stay but a short time, it will say, we have not confessed all our sins. It will observe all our motions, and for one word of anger that we utter it will protest that our temper is insupportable; the care of our affairs will be called covetousness, and our meekness, folly. But as for the children of the world, their anger is called generosity; their avarice, economy; their familiarities, honor-able entertainments: spiders always soil the work of the bees.

Let us turn a deaf ear to this blind world, Philothea; let it cry as long as it pleases, like an owl, to disturb the birds of the day. Let us be constant in our designs, and invariable in our resolutions. Our perseverance will demonstrate whether we have, in good earnest, sacrificed ourselves to God and dedicated ourselves to a devout life. Comets and planets appear to be almost of an equal light; but as comets are only certain fiery exhalations which pass away, and after a short time disappear, whereas planets remain in perpetual brightness; so hypocrisy and true virtue have a great resemblance in their external appearance, but they are easily distinguished from each other; because hypocrisy cannot long subsist, but is quickly dissipated like smoke, whereas true virtue is always firm and constant.

It contributes highly to the security of devotion, at the beginning, to suffer reproaches and calumny on its account, since we thus avoid the dangers of pride and vanity, which may be compared to the midwives of Egypt, who had been ordered by the cruel Pharaoh to kill the male children of the Israelites on the very day of their birth. As we are crucified to the world, the world ought to be crucified to us; since worldlings look upon us as foolish, let us regard them in the same light.

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