IT was at this time that Labadie made the acquaintance of the true servant of God, and victim of the Jesuits, S. Cyran, imprisoned at Vincennes for heresy. He had denied that an impenitent sinner receives remission of sins by absolution, or that a priest can do more than declare the forgiveness of God in the case of those who look to Him, repenting of their sins.
S. Cyran insisted much upon the reading of Scripture. He had been for some years the director of the convent of Port Royal, where he had taught much truth, and where meetings were held for reading the Bible, called conferences, or " conventicles." Labadie's conventicler at Amiens were on the same plan. But in Holland, and perhaps elsewhere, such meetings existed during the earlier part of the century amongst reformed Christians.
Their chief promoter in Holland was an earnest preacher of the name of Teelinck, who died in the year 1629. After this they gradually came almost into disuse in the Dutch provinces, though we find traces of them at Utrecht, where Dr. Voet, in spite of his strict adherence to rubrics and canons, encouraged them amongst his people, and where Father Lodensteyn took an active part in them. S. Cyran was released from his prison in 1642, and died in the following year.
Labadie had found amongst the Port Royalists many kindred spirits. Whilst he was a boy at Bordeaux, dreaming of the reformation of the Church, Angelique Arnauld, the girl-abbess of Port -Royal, was not only dreaming it, but carrying it out to the best of her light and knowledge within the walls of her convent.
But, like the reformation of which Labadie dreamt, it was a restoration to love and holiness which the Mere Angelique desired. Neither the one nor the other had any thought of becoming Protestants. They had not discovered that the Spirit, who roused and kindled their hearts, could not teach them otherwise than He taught the Protestant saints. And in some important respects, little as they realized it, they and the Protestants believed alike.
The Port Royalists and Labadie believed much bes1des, taught them by man, not by God. But as to this belief in man, which is not peculiar to Romanists, let us see to ourselves that the last shred of it is cast off by each one of us, and that we are ready to own with John the Baptist, "a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven." For all else is nothing.
M. de S. Cyran was charged amongst other things with having taught, that to abstain from outward sin from the dread of the wrath of God, was by no means a proof of conversion. He said that the sorrow for sin, which is the work of the Spirit, arises from the love of God shed abroad in the heart.
The Jesuits observed that this was a heresy of the deepest dye. Love to God, several of them taught, was entirely unnecessary. We remember how one of them had decreed that to love God on Sundays was sufficient. Another, that once a year was enough. A third, that once in five years might be considered needful.
Placed between the Port Royalists and the Jesuits, we need not be surprised that Labadie held to the one, and despised the other. He was cordially hated by the Jesuits in return.
But much as he loved S. Cyran, and felt himself drawn to the Port Royalists, he hung back from joining himself to them, as they would have desired. He said that God had taught him in answer to prayer, and that He might yet teach him more than the Port Royalists had learnt. He would bind himself to none, but follow the leading of the Lord alone.
Meanwhile tidings reached the prisoner at Vincennes that the truths for which he was persecuted were "proclaimed on the house-tops of Amiens, and there were none there to hinder."
In the year 1642 Cardinal Richelieu died. His successor, Cardinal Mazarin, was more ready to lend an ear to the Jesuits, who desired him to stop Labadie's preaching at Amiens. Labadie was summoned before him to answer for his strange practices. The conventicles were a dangerous novelty to Mazarin, all the more so, as they savoured of Port Royal. This was in the year 1645, the fifth year of his labours at Amiens.
He was forbidden to preach, on the ground that his sermons caused excitement, and disturbed the peace of the town. In the following year he returned to Guyenne. Many of his brotherhood followed him.
Labadie had a marvellous power of winning the hearts of men. He was strangely attractive. It would seem that it was not only for the love of the doctrines he taught, but from attachment to his person, that he was continually surrounded by some of his select few. On arriving in the south of France, he preached continually, travelling from town to town, though still forbidden to do so.
Up to this time he was known as a Catholic priest. The Bishop of Bazas said of him, " he was a most remarkable labourer in the Lord's vineyard, and a dauntless confessor of Jesus Christ, an enlightened semi-martyr, and a truly apostolical man." That he was but a semi-martyr was not the fault of the Jesuits. They pursued him from place to place, aided by soldiers furnished to them by Queen Anne of Austria.
In the Castle of Donjat, near Toulouse, he had a narrow escape. The lady of the house shut him up in a coffer, just as the soldiers arrived to search the castle. Various delays were made in opening this coffer, and meanwhile a moment was found for letting him escape, whilst the soldiers were searching in other nooks and corners.
For a time he retired with his " brethren " to a Carmelite convent at Graville, in the diocese of Bazas. There, without taking the vows, they wore for about six months the monks' dress.
But the Bishop who had called him a semi-martyr died. The new Bishop desired to find favour with the court by persecuting those who were friends of Port Royal. For four years, therefore, until the year 1650, Labadie lived a wandering life, concealing himself in the castles of many nobles who were friendly to him.
He still had no thought of leaving the Church of Rome. All he desired was to reform her. He would be a second S. Francis, a second S. Bernard He would stand alone, if needs be, face to face with the apostate Church, and lay down his life, if so it might be, to bring her back to the old faith and love she had lost so long.
He did not know what Protestants believed. He regarded them as heretics, though at times the thought came to him, whether after all they could be the people he had long sought, and so often sought in vain, who loved God, and despised the world. He did not read their books. He looked to God to teach him. And when at last he found that the truths he had been taught were those for which the despised Huguenots had suffered persecution and death, it was a strange surprise to him.
The time was come when he should have a nearer view of them.