Life of St John Vianney.pdf - the Catholic Kingdom!

"""THE PERPLEXITY OF HIS MIND. 199** If you did but know," said he one day to a pilgrim,who vouches for the accuracy of the words, ifyou didbut know how this chills and tortures my heart Oh, I!can bear it no longer!My God, deliver me ! When I canshake off the doubt, I am light as a bird I ! fly, I fly !But the devil casts me into my doubt again, and then itis as if I were being dragged over flints and thorns."This trial lasted for eight years. At last a day camewhen it was given out that the uncertainty and fluctuations of the holy priest had come to an end. This statement was not at first believed ;but the testimony was toostrong to be long considered doubtful. In the month ofOctober 1858, M. Toccanier, the missionary then assisting M. Vianney at Ars, wrote thus to a member of thebar at Marseilles, well known as the author of severalworks upon La Salette :Since my last letter I have received from M. le Curea fuller explanation of his return to his primitive faith inLa Salette, of which he had been deprived by the unhappyretractation of Maximin. These are the details ;whichwill, I know, give you pleasure :M. le Cure told me that he had prayed to be deliveredfrom the doubt which, out of reverence for episcopal authority,!^ smothered within his breast. For a fortnight past,he added, I had been suffering under great distress of mind,which ceased not till I said Credo. I wished for an opportunity of manifesting my faith to some person from thediocese of Grenoble ;and the next day, behold ! a priestwhom I did not know came to the sacristy, and said to me,May we, and ought we, to believe in La Salette ? I answered, Yes ; I have asked a temporal blessing from Godby the mediation of the Blessed Virgin, invoked under thetitle of Our Lady of La Salette. I have obtained it. In