nstil into
them serious thoughts of saving their souls by embracing the only saving
faith, and by true repentance.{018} He also procured for them temporal
succor and relief so beneficently, that the duke of Cumberland, then
generalissimo of the British and allied armies, being informed of it,
promised him a special protection whensoever he came over into England.
Scarce any thing affords one a better proof of Mr. Alban's eminent
spirit of piety and great understanding, discretion, and light in
spiritual matters, than his familiarity and friendship with M. Jean
Baptiste de Villers, president of the seminary des Eveques in the
university of Douay, who died October the 7th, 1746, the death of a
saint, after having lived the life of one for seventy-eight years. This
M. de Villers was eminent in all supernatural and moral virtues, but he
concealed them under an amiable simplicity, and a plain unaffected
behavior or exterior, unless charity and zeal for the glory of God and
salvation of souls required their open and full exertion; and,
notwithstanding his great learning, (which he had acquired by an
excellent genius and diligent application to sacred studies,) and his
great and solid fund of piety, he was as docile as an infant; so
timorous and diffident of his own judgment, that he would neither do nor
decide any thing without counsel. With this sentiment of diffidence and
humility, he often visited (says M. Leroy, the faithful imitator and
writer of the history of his life) a young professor, a foreigner, (that
is, Alban Butler,) and passed an hour or two in his company in the
afternoon, once every week, and sometimes twice, several years, until
his edifying death. Their conversation together was solely about various
points of morality; about the direction of souls, and the method of
arriving at perfection in every action and intention; how to teach
devout persons a habit of making continual aspirations to God, by acts
of love, oblation, entire sacrifice of their hearts, of humility, &c. M.
de Villers would not suffer more than half a small fagot to be kindled
for him in the severest weather, saying to Mr. Alban, 'the other part
may serve some poor person.' As to wine, or any other liquor, he never
drank any but at meal-time. I remember to have heard an instance of Mr.
Alban's meekness, for I am not a witness of it. When he was presiding
over one of his students in divinity in the public hall of Douay
college, a disputant, w