A Reader’s Guide to Jeanne Guyon

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 TIMOTHY 2:15

Madame Guyon wrote a great deal — the collected edition that Pierre Poiret began runs to many volumes — but most readers need only a few of her books, and one of them matters far more than the rest. Her works are in the public domain and widely available in older English translations. The difficulty is not access but judgement: her best book is short and plain, while some of her longer works are intense, personal and easily misread.

Begin here

A Short and Easy Method of Prayer (1685), in the Ochorus library. The source of most of this volume, and the book that made her name. Read it first, slowly, and put it into practice as you go. The chapters on the first degree of prayer, on distractions, on abandonment and the word to preachers are the most useful. Its last chapters, on the soul’s passivity and the way to divine union, are where most of the controversy lay; read them with the cautions of this volume in mind.

Going further

Union with God. A short treatise, often printed with the Short Method in English, on the way the soul is brought to union. It says more concisely what her longer books say at length, and it needs the same care.

Spiritual Torrents. Her picture of souls as streams flowing to the sea of God, and in large part an account of her own long purification presented as a general map. Moving and memorable, but the preface to the Victorian English edition rightly warns that her road is not the only road, nor the usual one.

Her commentaries on Scripture, especially on the Song of Songs. She read the Song as the story of the soul and its Bridegroom. The commentary shows her devotion to the Bible and her gift for tender, searching application; it also shows how far an allegorical reading can wander from the text.

Her own story

Her Life, the autobiography she wrote in parts over many years and which Poiret published after her death. It is candid, vivid and sometimes exhausting. It gives the fullest account of her marriage, her conversion to inward prayer, her travels and her sufferings. Read it for understanding, not as a pattern: she interprets nearly everything that happened to her as a special work of God, and she is not always a reliable judge of herself or of others. John Wesley’s abridgement of 1776 is a useful shorter version, with his own frank preface.

Her poems. William Cowper translated a selection into English verse, published after his death. They are the gentlest way into her spirit.

About her

Thomas C. Upham’s Life and Religious Opinions and Experience of Madame de la Mothe Guyon (1847) is a long, admiring Protestant biography that did much to make her known in America. It is warm and detailed, but it smooths away most of the difficulties. Ronald Knox’s Enthusiasm (1950), a study of religious excess by a Catholic writer, contains chapters on Quietism that are learned, witty and far less sympathetic. Michael de la Bedoyere’s The Archbishop and the Lady (1956) tells the story of her friendship with Fénelon. Read more than one: the admirers and the critics each see things the other misses.

Approach with care

The most intense passages of her Life and of Spiritual Torrents — on inward death, spiritual states and her own sense of special calling — should be read to understand her, not as a guide for your own soul. The same is true of her more extreme statements of pure love. And bear in mind that much of what was written about her in her own lifetime, by friends and enemies alike, was written in the heat of controversy.

Three counsels for reading her

Read the little book first, and let it be the lens for everything else. What the whole church has received from her is there; the rest is commentary.

Read with the Bible open. She quotes Scripture on nearly every page, sometimes profoundly, sometimes by pressing a phrase further than its context allows. Check her texts, and let the Word judge her rather than the other way round.

And read her on your knees, or at least with a heart turned towards God. She did not write to be admired or analysed. She wrote so that people who thought they could not pray would begin. Do what she asks, and you will have understood her better than many of her critics.

The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple. PSALM 119:130