BOURIGNON.

Antoinette Bourignon was one of those devout maids who think themselves directed by particular inspiration; for which reason she was called a fanatic. She published a great many books, full of very singular doctrines, and there was something extraordinary in her mind from her infancy to her old age. She was born at Lisle, the thirteenth of January 1616, so deformed, that it was debated for some days in the family whether she should not be stifled as a monster. Her deformity lessened, and they resolved to let her live. At four years of age, she discovered that Christians did not live according to their principles, and desired to be carried into the country of the Christians; for she did not believe that she was amongst them, since she observed that people did not live agreeably to the law of Jesus Christ. One of the greatest vexations she had in her family was, that they had a mind to marry her, which was not what she desired; a nunnery seemed to her preferable to a husband. She perceived her mother was unhappy in a married state; and besides being endowed with a surprising chastity, she found an extraordinary delight in weaning herself from the objects of the senses, to unite herself to her Creator in a more intimate manner. It is observed, in her Life, that God gave her the gift of chastity and conti-nency from her childhood in so high a degree, that she has often said, she never had in her life-time, not even by temptation or surprise, the least thought which could be unworthy of the chastity arid purity

of the virgin state. St Teresa says of herself, that God had formerly favoured her with the same grace; but Mrs Bourignon possessed it in so abundant a manner, that it redounded, if one may say so, on those that were with her. Her presence and conversation diffused such an odour of continency, as made those who conversed with her forget. the pleasures of the flesh; and I leave it to the experience of those who read her books with application, to judge whether they do not feel some impressions of it, and some inclinations to that virtue which is so pleasing to God. Had I not reason to say that the chastity of this maid was surprising? In school terms it might be called not only immanent but also transitive; since its effects were diffused outwardly, and did not terminate in her person. I think your mystical people rather use the word penetrative than the word transitive; for I remember a Carthusian says, that the Holy Virgin had a penetrative virginity, whereby those who looked upon her, though she was so beautiful, had none but chaste thoughts. He adds that St Joseph had the gift which they call infrigidation, which kept his body and soul free from all sense of impurity. It seems to me that the talent which God had granted to Antoinette Bourignon, ought to be called by that name. That word would admirably represent the effect which she produced on her neighbours. The gift of infrigidation ought to be that which makes those cold who come near us; but since use must determine the force of terms, I will not insist upon it. I shall only say that the clause— “ though she was never so beautiful,” which the Carthusian made use of, is not a needless parenthesis, since it was essential to his subject; for there the wonder lies; nature might very well confer a penetrative virginity without grace, a certain degree of ugliness would be sufficient for that. Wherefore I wish the author of Mrs Bourignon’s Life had inserted by way of parenthesis, that the gift of continency which she diffused outwardly did not proceed from any ugliness or other repulsive qualities. I conclude with a reflection which will be approved by a majority of votes. I believe there are not many young nuns that pray for a penetrative virginity. The most virtuous are contented with the gift of continency, and would be very unwilling to mortify all the desires of the men that look upon them. They would think themselves too much disgraced by nature, did they believe that they need only show themselves to make men chaste; such a thought would not please them. I believe therefore, that the most sublime and rarest degree of chastity, in a woman, is not only to wish to be chaste, but also to make all those chaste that are round about her, and with whom she converses. Generally speaking, women do not desire that this gift should have a great sphere of activity; the gift of continency is not a thing that many persons care for (I speak of those who are not engaged to it by a vow.) St Augustin asks it, and is afraid of being taken at his word; wherefore he desires God not to make too much haste.

The father of Antoinette, notwithstanding her objections, promised her in marriage to a Frenchman. The time was already appointed for the wedding; and to avoid the performance of it, she was forced to run away, on Easter-day 1636. It was not to throw herself into a cloister; she came to know that the spirit of the Gospel did not reign in convents; but it was to retire into some desart. She dressed herself like a hermit, and fled as fast as she could; but because she was suspected in a village of Hai-nault to be a girl, she was stopped. She never ran so much hazard, as to her virginity, as at that time: falling into the hands of a soldier, who did not let go his hold but by a kind of miracle. The curate of the place delivered her from this danger, and observing

the spirit of God in her, mentioned her to the archbishop of Cambray, who came to examine her, and advising her against a hermit’s life, persuaded her to return to her father. She was soon after troubled again with proposals of marriage, which obliged Her to run away a second time. She went to the same archbishop, and obtained leave of him to form a small commonalty in the country with some other maids of her humour; but he retracted it a little while after, which obliged Antoinette to go into the country of Liege, whence she returned to Flanders, where she spent many years in a retired life and in great simplicity, but not without inspiring a great deal of love in a man, who pretended to devotion that he might have access to her. He proposed to marry her; and not finding her pliable, he tried to supply by personal strength what he wanted in verbal efficacy. His name was John de St Saulieu; he was the son of a peasant; and if all must be believed that is said of him in the Life of our Antoinette, he was a great rogue. He insinuated himself in that maid’s favour by a devout countenance and a most sublime spirituality. “ The first time that he applied himself to her.....he spoke like a prophet, but like a moderate and reserved prophet, who having made an end of his prophecy, retires softly, without explaining any thing, and without insisting to make himself believed. The second time he spoke to her, he pretended, to be a man illuminated, charitable, and familiar with God.” Having well insinuated himself, he declared his passion; Antoinette took it heinously, and the spark seemed to be sorry for it: they fell out, and were reconciled; and at last he attempted force. Hear what the lady says of him: “ Being often in my house, he was so importunate and insolent with me, that I was obliged to give my maids notice to watch him, and to shut the door of my house against him. He came often with a knife in his hand, which he presented to my throat, if I would not yield to his wicked desires; insomuch that I was at last obliged to have recourse to the arm of justice, because he threatened to break the doors and windows of ray house, and to kill me, though he should be hanged for it in the market-place of Lisle. The provost gave me two men to secure me in my house, whilst an information was making of the insolencies that the said St Saulieu had committed against me.” The conclusion was, that the matter was made up between them; he promised never to go to the place where she should be, and retracted his slanders, protesting that he knew her to be a good and virtuous maid. “ Seeing,” says she, “ that he could not marry me by love or force, he kept company with one of my devout maids, who seemed also a mirror of perfection, and got her with child; after which he would not marry her, till after many entreaties and endeavours of the said maid, who at last mollified his heart by her great humility, he married her a little before she was delivered of a child. He lived very unchastely, as well as she.” I do not wonder at it: for the most difficult step is that of the door: as soon as a devout woman has once got over that first step by some gallantry that hath made a noise, her honour is lost: modesty, once turned out of doors, seldom returns again. What the Scripture says in general, that the devil transforms himself into an angel of light, is particularly true of the devil called Asmodeus, who is that of lewdness. The Bigots have invented a thousand arts to make a great many devout women fall into the snare, who had a sincere desire to behave themselves chastely. He who set upon Mrs Bourignon made her believe, “ that he was quite dead to nature; that he had been some years a soldier, and was returned from the war a maid, though several women had inticed him to lewdness, and had even come to bed to him with an ill design; that he had remained firm, because he conversed daily in his spirit with God.” He told her also, “ that he had lost the taste of meats and drinks, by his great abstinences and mortifications; and that he could not discern delightful meats from coarse ones, nor wine from beer or water; that all those things seemed to him to have the same taste; that he loved the one as well as the other, without discerning them.” Hereby we may know that a woman’s honour lies in the centre of a circle, the circumference whereof is blocked up by a thousand sorts of enemies. It is a mark which men try to hit all manner of ways, and even by the appearrances of the most mystical and illuminated theology, as witness Molinos, and the Quietists of Burgundy.

This pious maid therefore had not always had a good fame, or the talent of inspiring chastity. I say nothing of the design of the officer of horse who seized her in a village when she was disguised like a hermit, being about 20 years of age; soldiers, especially when they are lodged in a village, are very dangerous upon such an occasion, and but little penetrable by penetrative virginity: waving therefore this adventure, I shall only speak of the nephew of the curate of St Andrew’s near Lisle. Antoinette had shut up herself in a solitude in the neighbourhood of that parish. The curate’s nephew fell in love with her. “ He was so smitten with her that he walked continually about the house, and did not cease to discover his passion by words and addresses.” This solitary lady threatened to leave her post, if she was not delivered from that importunate person. The uncle thrust him out of his house. Then the young man “ turned his love into rage, and sometimes discharged his gun through the chamber of the recluse;” and seeing that he gained nothing by it, he gave out that he was to marry her. The thing was noised about all over the town; the devout women were offended at it, and threatened to affront her, if they found her

in the streets. The preachers were obliged to publish that there was nothing in that marriage. I do not think she was sorry to let the public know that she had appeared so lovely to some men, that they passionately desired to marry her. Old maids are pleased with telling such stories.

Antoinette had once resolved to give up her property, but soon changed her mind and resumed it. Three reasons of devotion persuaded her to it; for if she had not retaken it, she would have left it to those it did not belong to, who would have made an ill use of it: therefore to spare the crime of possessing the estate of others, and of employing it to do ill, she thought it her duty to take it from them, and devote it, by God’s order, to good uses. It did not lessen under her direction: on the contrary it increased: two reasons contributed to this increase; for her expences were small, and she gave no alms, that she might convert the superfluous part of her income into stock, which she did not fail to do. Not that she was covetous; she possessed her estate without any affection, and the poverty of spirit did not forsake her in the midst of her riches. What was it then? She would have enough to make greater expenses for the glory of God, when there should be occasion for it. The reason why she spent so little in alms was, because she found nobody that was in a real poverty, and she was afraid people would make an ill use of what she should give away. She herself informs us of those articles of her morals. “ The temporal estate I have,” says she, “ fell to me by succession, or increased by what I did not spend or give, because I could not find enough of people truly poor, or honest persons in necessity: therefore I have been sometimes obliged to increase my stock out of the superfluous part of my income; because sobriety requires no great expenses; and the truly poor are so scarce that they must be sought for in another world. The

assistances which are given in this wretched age serve often to commit more sins; wherefore he who has a greater yearly income than is necessary, is obliged to increase his stock in hopes of finding an occasion to employ it to the greater glory of God.” They, who accuse her of fanaticism, would make a wrong choice of their proofs, if they should allege these. There is nothing here that savours of visionary or of a fanatic; every thing in it shows a subtile wit, and a nice way of arguing.

In 1653 she became governess of an hospital, having taken the order and habit of St Augustin. By a very strange fatality, sorcery proved so general in that hospital, that all the girls who were kept there had contracted with the devil. Ill tongues thence took occasion to give out that the governess of the house was a sorceress. The magistrates of Lisle fell upon Mrs Bourignon, sent sergeants into her cloister, had her before them, and examined her. She answered them pertinently; but believing that her adversaries had as much credit as passion, she did not think it proper to remain exposed to their prosecutions, and therefore she fled to Ghent. This happened in 1662. She was no sooner at Ghent that “God discovered some great secrets to her.” She got a friend at Mechlin who proved always faithful to her. His name was Mr de Cort; it was, if one may say so, her first spiritual child-birth; but it had this singularity, that it gave her the same pains as a childbirth in a proper sense.

I shall set down the whole passage, though it be somewhat long; whereby it will appear that the disciples of our Antoinette were not always upon the high strain, and that they descended sometimes from the sublimity of their devotion to the innocent jests of men of the world. “When God gave him to Mrs Bourignon, it was after a very particular manner, and as the first of her spiritual children, for whom she

felt great bodily pains, and like the pressing pains of child-birth; for it is a certain thing, and known by the experience of all those who have conversed with her (let wicked and impious scoffers say of it what they please) that whenever any persons received so much light and strength, by her words or writings, as to resolve to forsake all, to give themselves to God,—she felt, wherever she was, some pains and throes like those of a woman in labour, as it is said of the woman whom St John saw in the twelfth of the Revelations. She felt them more or less, as the truths which she had delivered had more or less strongly operated in men’s souls; which occasioned an innocent jest of the archdeacon on Mr de Cort: for as both of them were discoursing with Mrs Bourignon of the Christian life, and of their good and new resolution, Mr de Cort having observed that she had felt more pains for him than for the other, when they resolved to be born again according to God,—the archdeacon, considering that Mr de Cort was fat and corpulent, whereas himself was but a little man, and seeing that he valued himself for having cost their spiritual mother dearer than he, told him smiling—It is no wonder that our mother suffered more for you than for me; for you are a very large child, whereas I am but a little one: which repartee made them all laugh.”

Mr de Cort, being twice divinely warned and threatened, if he did not obey that inspiration, had lent almost all his estate to some relations, who were endeavouring to drain an island in the country of Holstein, which the sea had overflowed, and had thereby acquired the tenths, and the direction, and part of that island. He sold a seat there to Mrs Bourignon, who was preparing to retire thither in the year 1668, after she had published at Amsterdam her book “ Of the Light of the World.” She had written many treatises, and letters in Brabant,

and even on the disputes of the Jansenists and Mo-linists, since her persecution at Lisle. Her stay at Amsterdam with her dear proselyte Mr de Cort was longer than she thought; and she was visited there by all sorts of persons, without excepting the imaginary prophets and prophetesses. This made her hope that the reformation which she preached might have some effect; nevertheless few persons took a firm resolution to conform to it. Labadie and his disciples were desirous to have settled with her in Noordstrandt, but would not join with them; and therefore, understanding that Mr de Cort had a mind to carry them there, she said to him, “ you may then go thither without me; because I perceive and know that we can never agree together. Their opinions and the spirit that governs them are altogether contrary to my light, and the spirit that governs me. She had already had some inward sentiments about him from God, and a divine vision, wherein he made her see, in the spirit, a little man very busy with a great pole in his hand to hinder the fall of a great building, or of a church that was falling; and by some conferences that she had with him, wherein she endeavoured, but in vain, to dissuade him from going to brave the synod of Naerden, and to convince them of their wicked doctrine of predestination. She was fully persuaded that he had no other light than what the learned of these times have, reading, study, some barren speculations, and some acts of his own mind; and for a motive of his conduct, only some infatuation and the motions of corrupt passions; without being any ways enlightened by God himself, or directed by the calm motions of his divine inspirations.” This passage will not be useless to those who have a mind to know by what spirit our Antoinette was led. It was a spirit that would not suffer any companion or colleague; wherefore we have seen all sects against that maid, and that maid against all sects. The very Quakers have written against her.

Having had conferences with some Cartesians, she formed a terrible idea of their principles. She composed more books at Amsterdam than she got followers; her conversations with God were very frequent there. She learnt a great many particular things by revelation; and it was then that she had the vision which I have spoken of in the article Adam. Mr de Cort died the 12th of November, 1669, and made her his heiress which exposed her for some time to more persecutions than her doctrine. Many law suits were instituted against her, to hinder her from enjoying the succession of her disciple; and if some were animated with zeal against her errors, there were some whose zeal for her estate was no less daring. This latter zeal heightened the first; for some of Mrs Bourignon’s persecutors cryed out against her doctrine, that they might exclude her from Mr de Cort’s succession. Being moreover sick and ill-attended, she endured many inconveniences, and left Holland in the year 1671, to go to Noordstrandt. She stopt in several places of Holstein, and was obliged to dismiss some disciples, who were come to list themselves under her banner. Perceiving that every body minded his own conveniencies and ease, she conceived that it was not the way to make a flock of new Christians. She provided herself with a printing house; for her pen went as fast as the tongue of others, I mean like a torrent. She had her books printed in French, Dutch, and German; and finding herself very much defamed by some books that were published against her tenets and morals, she vindicated herself by a work which she entitled “ Testimony of Truth,” wherein she mightily inveighed against the clergy. This was not the way to find peace. Two Lutheran ministers sounded the alarm against her, and wrote

some books wherein they said, that some persons had been burnt and beheaded, whose opinions were more tolerable than those of Mrs Bourignon.

The Labadists wrote also against her; and having been restricted from the use of her press, she retired to Flensburg in the month of December 1673. Her enemies, coming to know it, stirred the people so violently against her, calling her a witch and Circe, that she was very fortunate to be able to retire privately.

Persecuted from town to town, she was at last obliged to leave Holstein, and she retired to Hamburg in the year 1676. She was safe there as long as they knew nothing of her arrival; but as soon as they had notice of it, they endeavoured to secure her; God knows how they would have disposed of her, if she had been taken. She hid herself for some days, and went afterwards to East Friesland, where the baron of Lutzburg granted her his protection. She had the direction of an hospital there, and consecrated her cares and industry to the good of that house, but not her purse. I have already spoken of the reasons whereon her sparing was grounded. What I am going to say shall be a supplement to it. When she accepted the care of that hospital, she declared that “ she consented to contribute her industry as well for the building, as for the distribution of the money and inspection of the poor, but without engaging any part of her estate.” She alleged two reasons for it; one was that she had already consecrated her estate to God, for those who sincerely endeavour to become true Christians. The other was, that mankind and all human things are inconstant, so that it might happen that those, in whose favour she might part from her estate, might make themselves afterwards unworthy of it. This was an admirable reason, never to part with any thing, and to put off all manner of gifts till she should make

her will. The lady found by experience that she was not rashly diffident of the inconstancy of men; she was so far from finding any body in East-Friesland that deserved to have her estate, that she could not so much as find any upon whom she might bestow part of her revenue, meeting with none but poor, who had nothing less at heart than to think of a Christian life, who made use of what was given them to cheat, guzzle, and live in idleness; nevertheless, she and one of her friends distributed to them for some months certain revenues of that place, which were annexed to that hospital by the founder; but when she was asked whether she would not contribute something of her own, she answered in writing, “ that because those poor lived like beasts who had no souls to save, and abused the gifts of God instead of giving him thanks for them, she and her friends would rather choose to throw their estates, which were consecrated to God, into the sea, than to leave any part of them there. She and her friends have also in all their transactions carefully reserved to themselves the restitution of the money they should get to the day wherein they would retire from that place. Other countries were not better provided with persons that deserved her charity, and I have found none that are truly poor, and so have been forced to keep my estate to this time. I wish I had an opportunity of laying it to the glory of God, and then I would not keep it so much as one day; but I have found none hitherto; there are many who would receive it, but would not bestow it to the glory of God, as I intended to do.” So that this head of expense did not cost her much. It seems to me that the children of this age are not much more prudent in their generation, than such children of light. Neither was it her humour to spare those who stole any thing from her; and she took it very ill that her friends had not indicted some thieves who had robbed her.

Leaving East Friesland, she went into Holland in the year 1680, and died at Franeker in the province of Friesland, the thirteenth of October the same year. It would be a very difficult matter to give an account of her system. No coherency must be expected from a person who ascribes every thing to immediate inspiration. It cannot be denied that it is a strange error to pretend, as it is said she did, that the true church was extinguished, and that the liturgical exercises of religion ought to be laid aside. She had this in common with most devotees, that she was of a choleric and morose humour, and notwithstanding her peevishness, and all the fatigues and crosses of her life, “ one would not have thought her to be much above forty years of age, when she was above sixty.” She had never made use of spectacles. The most remarkable periods of her life, as her birth, her coming to be an author, and her death, were signified by comets. The author of her Life was not aware, that by saying this he gave occasion to think, according to the common hypothesis, that this maid was as a scourge of providence, and not a holy prophetess. The vanity and the danger she found in having her picture drawn, hindered her from suffering it to be done. She had a very singular opinion concerning Antichrist, which seemed to be taken from the hypothesis of many doctors concerning incubi. She believed he would be a devil incarnate. When she was asked, whether it was possible that man should be born by the operation of the devil, she answered, “ Yes: not that the devil can do this alone without the co-operation of man; but having power over lascivious men, It is unnecessary to state the manner in which, according to the rank imagination of Antoinette, this incarnation will he effected. Nothing is possibly more disgusting than the spirituality of devotees of the class, Antoinette Bourignon being more especially “ of the earth, earthy.”—Ed. ⁶⁵

that the devil will incarnate himself in that manner.” She believed that the reign of Antichrist ought to be understood two ways, the one sensually and the other spiritually. In the first sense, it will be the visible reign of a devil incarnate, and that is to come. In the second sense, it is the corruption and the disorders which appear in all Christian societies; and on this head she gives herself a full scope, and rails most bitterly against all those societies, and spares the Protestants no more than the Roman Catholics. As to the true and sensual Antichrist, viz. a devil incarnate, according to her principles, she had known him so well in a night vision ratified, that she gave a description of him, whereby one might see what complexion, stature, and hair, he should have. The verses which contained that description have been suppressed; for she even wrote verses. “ She learnt every thing from God, even the art of making verses, which she does in such a manner that it is manifest she never learned it of any master.” I must explain in a few words what is meant by a ratified vision. Antoinette little valued the visions “ which are made by the interposition of the imagination.” If she had any of that kind, she suspected them, ' till having recommended them to God in a profound recollection, and disentangled from all images, she learned from God what she ought to think of them, and God ratified the truth of them to her in so pure, so intimate, and so private a manner, in the recess of a soul so disengaged and so given over to God, that there could be no mixture of human thoughts or diabolical illusions. In that manner God ratified to her the truth of the vision of Antichrist.”

If this singular woman were predestinated to be the instrument of some revolution of religion, that lot was not assigned to her person, nor to the ministry of her voice. It will rather be an effect of her writings; for during her life she had but a very

small number of followers, and after her death this decreased every day in the countries where she was most admired, and wanted but little of being reduced to a single individual. But it is not the same thing in certain countries that were never honoured with her presence. I have read that the followers of Antoinette Bourignon are more numerous in Scotland than in any other part of the world. Some Scotch laymen and clergymen have embraced that sect, because, having been too fond of abstract speculations, they suffered themselves to be dazzled by the subtilties of Mr Poiret’s divine economy; others because, not being satisfied with the present state of things, they were easily charmed by the magnificent promises of Antoinette. The first thing that made a noise was the publishing an English translation of one of the most considerable pieces of our Antoinette in the year 1696. A very long preface was added to it, wherein the translator maintained that she ought at least to be looked upon as an extraordinary prophetess. Charles Lesley, a man of great merit and learning, is the first who wrote against the errors of Mrs Bourignon in Great Britain; and he and several other persons charged doctor Cockbum to refute them more fully. That doctor acquitted himself very well by publishing a book entitled “Bourignianism Detected, sive Detectio Bouignianismi.” This was followed by a second narrative printed in London, wherein, having represented all the magnificent things that Mrs Bourignon attributed to herself, he shews that if they were true, she ought not only to be preferred before the prophets and the apostles, but also before Jesus Christ. At length the fanaticism abated; but so great a root had it taken in Scotland that a declaration against it was for a long time demanded from any new-made minister. The history of this unamiable enthusiast has now dwindled into a mere subject for curious speculation on the part of those who delight in a study of the infinite varieties of the human mind.

Art.Bourignon.