THE LIFE OF LADY GUION, WRITTEN IN FRENCH, BY HERSELF, NOW ABRIDGED, AND TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH. EXHIBITING Her eminent Piety, Charity, Meekness, Resignation, THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. THE reader will view, in the course of this trans lation, the progress of a holy pilgrim, not fictitious but real; a life of no common sort; from its birth upward attended with remarkable events, assaulted with troubles and inured to oppositions, a soul filled with the love of God; from him deriving, and instrumentally diffusing, a happiness undefiled, incorruptible, unhurt by ftorms, and growing firmer in persecutions; ensuring on high its everlasting duration, in a state of boundless perfection and purity. Of the sundry other species of biography, is there any worthy to be put in the balance against this ? What are all the adventures of the curious, or acquisitions of the covetous, but the trivial blaze of a moment, when compared with eternity? What the splendour of military atchievements, but the detestable havock of the destroyers of mankind? What the dark intrigues of rivals, or profound politicks of statesmen, however successful? Are they not generally incompatible with our Lord's golden rule, of doing unto all men as we would desire them to do unto us 2 What the inventions of art, effusions of wit, or elaborate productions of human industry? They have their reward: But in a narrow limit. Their encomiums may spread around this globe, and that is their widest circle. What the highest elevations on earth, but tottering, or slippery, pinnacles? SUCH are the subjects, and the lives, which en B gross the greedy attention of a great part of mankind. Passing by the principal point unregarded, as it presents no pleasing entertainment to a vitiated taste, they therefore prefer lying vanities, though at the constant hazard of being fatally deluded, and drawn down by them to the habitations of their miserable victims. No attainment is safe and happy, but that of the soul which, through every obstacle, arises to the obedience of the laws and dictates of its Creator, to be fitted thereby for endless communion with him, and with all that are his, in his blissful and glorious kingdom. THE following narrative affords a fhining instance of one who attained it. Though her lot, in a dark and arbitrary country, subjected her to many great disadvantages; yet, through faithfulness to what it pleased God to discover to her, she appears at length, in purity of heart, to have surmounted them. This gives room to hope that her memoirs may prove of valuable service to many, an instructor to the ignorant, a monitor to the negligent, a confirmation to the pious, and a consolation to the afflicted. ESPECIALLY such as, either in a single or a married state, meet with heavy crosses and disappointments, may be likely to relieve their dejection, and receive fresh encouragement, of the best kind, by tracing her steps in life; wherein they will see, that fhe wisely applied her whole heart to * lay aside every weight, and the sins which had easily beset her, to run with patience the race set before her, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of her faith; who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shameĮ and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. *Heb. 12. 1, 2. |