Publisher's Synopsis
From the introductory ADVERTISEMENT.
THIS little work, by the celebrated Archdeacon of Evreux, was selected by the late Father Faber to form one of the volumes of a series of Translations for Spiritual Reading which a zealous Catholic layman purposed undertaking some years ago, but of which only one volume, "The Spiritual Doctrine of Father Louis Lallemant," was actually issued.
The translator has been encouraged to venture on its publication by learning that M. Boudon's works were especial favourites with Mother Margaret, whose Life, just given to the world by her religious children, is sure, not only to engage much attention, but to leave its impress on the Catholic mind in this country. That holy woman had drunk deeply of the spirit of his teaching, and his writings exercised no little influence on her interior life; his book entitled Dieu Seul having "suggested" (as her biographers tell us) "the motto into which her whole spiritual system was compressed."
Boudon's works continue to be much read and highly appreciated in France. In some of them the keen eye of the theologian would detect certain inaccuracies of expression, which to the ordinary reader might not be perceptible, but which the author would certainly have corrected had he lived posterior to the condemnation of Quietism. From any such inadvertencies, however, the present treatise is perfectly exempt; and the divine who was appointed to examine it, previous to its publication in the year 1673, not only declared that it contained nothing in any way opposed to faith and morals, but pronounced the following high panegyric on its merits: -Its "holy teachings," he says, "will serve to perfect those Christians who shall either peruse them with attention or listen to them with devotion; to confound the insolent presumption of the sinner, who offends God before His eyes, in His presence, nay in His very essence; and to subdue the pride and vanity of men, who are enamoured only of the grandeur and applauses of earth, be their state, rank, or condition what it may, clerics or laics, when they read therein of the Hidden Life of Jesus, Son of the Eternal Father, Co-equal and Consubstantial with Him; when they behold the hidden life of Mary, His holy Mother, the descendant of a line of kings; of Joseph, her chaste and virginal spouse, of the same royal lineage; of St. John Baptist, also of high extraction, who was sanctified in his mother's womb and, declared the greatest of men by the sacred mouth of Truth Itself: all these holy personages having passed half of their life unknown to the world, that they might be known only to God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the blessed angels." The writings of this venerable man are remarkable for their simplicity and plainness: indeed, it may be inferred from what he says, that he purposely avoided all mere ornament of style and language lest he should divert the reader's attention from the subject and attract it to himself. His desire was ever to hide himself, to disappear from view, to be buried out of sight in the theme of which he wrote; if it were not rather that he was so entirely engrossed therewith that he gave never a thought to the words he used or to the mode in which he expressed himself....
