Ramsay ’ s Spiritual Entourage in France
where he would have many religious debates with him , become his secretary and eventually , after his death , the editor of his works . 10 The bishop had fallen from grace because he had dared to defend Jeanne-Marie Guyon , who was accused of reviving , through her mystical experiences and writings , the Quietist heresy of the Spanish mystic Miguel de Molinos . As a result , Fénelon was exiled from the court to his Cambrai diocese . He was attacked by Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet who in 1699 , after the Issy conferences , succeeded in obtaining papal condemnation of L ’ explication des maximes des Saints ( known in English simply as Maxims of the Saints ), the treatise in which Fénelon sought to defend Madame Guyon .
Ramsay came from Aberdeen ’ s mystic milieu , and he sought out Fénelon , after staying in Amsterdam with Pierre Poiret ( who could be described as the man who published the Catholic mystics for Protestants ) 11 precisely because he wanted to better understand the doctrine of Pure Love . What was this doctrine ? In simple terms , charity — the bedrock of the Christian religion — means to love God . However , Madame Guyon claimed to love Him without expecting anything in return , not even her health or the well-being that comes with virtue . She went even further , completely annihilating herself in this love , mortifying herself , trying to suppress her own identity in order to give way entirely to God . In this state of ecstasy , she wrote some charming poems , Les Torrents , but claimed that it was God who had written them . 12 She only discovered them by reading them after the event . In brief , she was a mystic .
For Bossuet , certainly not a mystic himself , this was worrying . 13 Such pure love could well result in dangerous excesses , and even lead astray those who were not capable of loving God . Everyone should love God in the same way , with the help of the Church . It was out of the question to have some people loving God on their own , better than others .
For Ramsay , meanwhile , these debates were not simply a matter of theory . In the work that became his legacy , The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion — to which we will return later — he describes wanting to “ show wherein true practical religion consists . This is the great end and scope of this essay , and without this all the rest are but dry , superfluous , barren
10 For Ramsay as Fénelon ’ s editor , see Albert Chérel , Fénelon au xviiie siècle en France ( 1715 – 1820 ) ( Geneva : Slatkine , 1970 ), pp . 31 ff .
11 Marjolaine Chevallier , Pierre Poiret ( 1646-1719 ): du protestantisme à la mystique ( Paris : Labor & Fides , 1994 ) and her article “ Deux réactions protestantes à la condamnation de Fénelon : Pierre Jurieu et Pierre Poiret ” in Fénelon , Mystique et Politique ( 1699 – 1999 ) ( Paris : H . Champion , 2004 ), pp . 148-161 .
12 “... cela coulait comme du fond et ne passait point par ma tête .” [ ... it flowed as though from the depths without passing through my head at all ]. Cited in Jeanne-Marie Guyon , Les Torrents , edited by Claude Morali ( Grenoble : J . Millon , 1992 ), p . 21 .
13 Louis Cognet , Crépuscule des mystiques : Bossuet-Fénelon , edited and introduced by Jean-Robert Armogathe ( Paris : Desclée , 1991 ).
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