Letters of Abelard and Heloise · Peter Abelard
ADVERTISEMENT.
That the reader may make a right judgment on the following Letter, it is proper he should be informed of the condition _Abelard_ was in when he wrote it. The Duke of Britany whose subject he was born, jealous of the glory of France, which then engrossed all the most famous scholars of Europe, and being, besides, acquainted with the persecution _Abelard_ had suffered from his enemies, had nominated him to the Abbey of St. Gildas, and, by this benefaction and mark of his esteem, engaged him to past the rest of his days in his dominions. He received this favour with great joy, imagining, that by leaving France he should lose his passion, and gain a new turn of mind upon entering into his new dignity. The Abbey of St. Gildas is seated upon a rock, which the sea beats with its waves. _Abelard_, who had lain on himself the necessity of vanquishing a passion which absence had in a great measure weakened, endeavoured in this solitude to extinguish the remains of it by his tears. But upon his receiving the foregoing letter he could not resist so powerful an attack, but proves as weak and as much to be pitied as _Heloise_. 'Tis not then a master or director that speaks to her, but a man who had loved her, and loves her still: and under this character we are to consider _Abelard_ when he wrote the following Letter. If he seems, by some passages in it, to have begun to feel the motions of divine grace they appear as yet to be only by starts, and without any uniformity.
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