Though that which I suppose myself to have read should appear to me clearer than that two and two make four, I should consider it still less clear than my obligation to mistrust all my lights, and to prefer before them those of a bishop such as you.

You have only to give me my lesson in writing; provided that you wrote me precisely what is the doctrine of the church, and what are the articles in which I have slipped, I would tie myself down inviolably to that rule." Bossuet required more; he wanted Fenelon, recently promoted to the Archbishopric of Cambrai, to approve of the book he was preparing on _Etats d'Oraison_ (States of Orison), and explicitly to condemn the works of Madame Guyon.

Fenelon refused with generous indignation.

"So it is to secure my own reputation," he writes to Madame de Maintenon, in 1696, "that I am wanted to subscribe that a lady, my friend, would plainly deserve to be burned with all her writings, for an execrable form of spirituality, which is the only bond of our friendship?
I tell you, madame, I would burn my friend with my own hands, and I would burn myself joyfully, rather than let the church be imperilled.

But here is a poor captive woman, overwhelmed with sorrows; there is none to defend her, none to excuse her; they are always afraid to do so.