Chapter II

Indeed, when persons have been long softened with the continual
droppings of religion, and their spirits made timorous and apt for
impression by the assiduity of prayer, and perpetual alarms of
death, and the continual dyings of mortification,—the fancy, which
is a very great instrument of devotion, is kept continually warm,
and in a disposition and aptitude to take fire, and to flame out in
great ascents; and when they suffer transportations beyond the
burdens and support of reason, they suffer they know not what, and
call it what they please.—JEREMY TAYLOR.

I. _Saint Theresa_—(CONTINUED).

What disinterested love is to the mysticism of Fénelon, that is
supernatural passive prayer to the mysticism of St. Theresa. She
writes to describe her experience in the successive stages of
prayer; to distinguish them, and to lay down directions for those
who are their subjects. She professes no method whereby souls may be
conducted from the lowest to the highest degree. On the contrary,
she warns all against attempting to attain, by their own efforts,
that blissful suspension of the powers which she depicts in colours
so glowing. Unlike Dionysius, she counsels no effort to denude the
soul of thought: she does not, with Tauler, bid the mystic
laboriously sink into the ground of his being. She is emphatically a
Quietist; quite as much so as Molinos, far more so than Fénélon.
Spiritual consolation and spiritual desertion are to be alike
indifferent. By a singular inconsistency, while tracing out the way
of perfection, she forbids the taking of a step in that path.[284]
You will be borne along, she would say, if you wait, as far as is
fitting. Her experience receives its complexion, and some of her
terminology is borrowed from the _Lives of the Saints_. Of the past
career of Mystical Theology she is utterly ignorant. She hears,
indeed, of a certain time-honoured division of the mystical process
into Purgative, Illuminative, and Unitive; but she does not adopt
the scheme. The Platonic and philosophic element is absent
altogether from her mysticism. Her metaphysics are very simple:—the
soul has three powers—Understanding, Memory, and Will. Now one, now
another, now all of these, are whelmed and silenced by the incoming
flood of Divine communication.

In addition to sundry chapters in her _Life_ on the various kinds of
prayer, she has left two treatises, _The Way of Perfection_ (Camino
de Perfecion) and _The Castle of the Soul_ (Castillo
Interior)—verbose, rambling, full of repetitions. For the conventual
mind there is no rotation of crops; and the barrenness which limits
such monotonous reproduction supervenes very soon. From these
sources, then, we proceed to a brief summary of her theopathy.

There are in her scale four degrees of prayer. The first is _Simple
Mental Prayer_,—fervent, inward, self-withdrawn; not exclusive of
some words, nor unaided by what the mystics called discursive acts,
_i.e._, the consideration of facts and doctrines prompting to
devotion. In this species there is nothing extraordinary. No
mysticism, so far.

SECOND DEGREE:—_The Prayer of Quiet_ called also _Pure
Contemplation_. In this state the Will is absorbed, though the
Understanding and Memory may still be active in an ordinary way.
Thus the nun may be occupied for a day or two in the usual religious
services, in embroidering an altar-cloth, or dusting a chapel; yet
without the Will being engaged. That faculty is supposed to be, as
it were, bound and taken up in God. This stage is a supernatural
one. Those who are conscious of it are to beware lest they suffer
the unabsorbed faculties to trouble them. Yet they should not exert
themselves to protract this ‘recollection.’ They should receive the
wondrous sweetness as it comes, and enjoy it while it lasts,
absolutely passive and tranquil. The devotee thus favoured often
dreads to move a limb, lest bodily exertion should mar the
tranquillity of the soul. But happiest are those who, as in the case
just mentioned, can be Marys and Marthas at the same time.[285]

THIRD DEGREE:—_The Prayer of Union_, called also _Perfect
Contemplation_. In this prayer, not the Will only, but the
Understanding and Memory also, are swallowed up in God. These powers
are not absolutely inactive; but we do not work them, nor do we know
how they work. It is a kind of celestial frenzy—‘a sublime madness,’
says Theresa. In such a transport she composed her ecstatic hymn,
without the least exercise of the understanding on her part. At this
stage the contemplatist neither thinks nor feels as a human being.
The understanding is stunned and struck dumb with amazement. The
heart knows neither why it loves, nor what. All the functions of the
mind are suspended. Nothing is seen, heard, or known. And wherefore
this sudden blank? That for a brief space (which seems always
shorter than it really is) the Living God may, as it were, take the
place of the unconscious spirit—that a divine vitality may for a
moment hover above the dead soul, and then vanish without a trace;
restoring the mystic to humanity again, to be heartened and edified,
perhaps for years to come, by the vague memory of that glorious
nothingness.[286]

Some simple nun might ask, ‘How do you know that God did so
plenarily enter into you, if you were conscious of nothing
whatever?’

‘My daughter,’ replies the saint, ‘I know it by an infallible
certainty (_una certidumbre_) that God alone bestows.’[287]

After this nothing remains to be said.

FOURTH DEGREE:—_The Prayer of Rapture, or Ecstasy_. This estate is
the most privileged, because the most unnatural of all. The bodily
as well as mental powers are sunk in a divine stupor. You can make
no resistance, as you may possibly, to some extent, in the Prayer of
Union. On a sudden your breath and strength begin to fail; the eyes
are involuntarily closed, or, if open, cannot distinguish
surrounding objects; the hands are rigid; the whole body cold.

Alas! what shall plain folk do among the rival mystics! Swedenborg
tells us that bodily cold is the consequence of defective faith:
Theresa represents it as the reward of faith’s most lofty exercise.

Were you reading, meditating, or praying, previous to the seizure,
the book, the thought, the prayer, are utterly forgotten. For that
troublesome little gnat, the memory (_esta maraposilla importuna de
la memoria_), has burnt her wings at the glory. You may look on
letters—you cannot read a word; hear speech—you understand nothing.
You cannot utter a syllable, for the strength is gone. With intense
delight, you find that all your senses are absolutely useless—your
spiritual powers inoperative in any human mode. The saint is not
quite certain whether the understanding, in this condition,
understands; but she is sure that, if it does, it understands
without understanding, and that its not understanding cannot be
understood. Time of this beatific vacuum,—very long, if half an
hour; though obviously a difficult point to decide, as you have no
senses to reckon by.

Remarkable were the effects of the rapture on the body of the saint.
An irrepressible lifting force seemed to carry her off her feet
(they preserve the right foot in Rome to this day): it was the swoop
of an eagle; it was the grasp of a giant. In vain, she tells us, did
she resist. Generally the head, sometimes the whole body, was
supernaturally raised into the air! On one occasion, during a sermon
on a high day, in the presence of several ladies of quality, the
reckless rapture took her. For in vain had she prayed that these
favours might not be made public. She cast herself on the ground.
The sisters hastened to hold her down; yet the upward struggling of
the divine potency was manifest to all. Imagine the rush of the
sisterhood, the screams of the ladies of quality, the pious
ejaculations from the congregation,—watching that knot of swaying
forms, wrestling with miracle, and the upturned eyes, or
open-mouthed amazement, of the interrupted preacher![288]

The state of rapture is frequently accompanied by a certain ‘great
pain’ (_gran pena_), a sweet agony and delicious torment, described
by Theresa in language as paradoxical as that which Juliet in her
passion applies to the lover who has slain her cousin—

Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feathered raven! wolfish-ravening lamb!

After some two or three hours’ endurance of this combined spiritual
and corporeal torture, the sisters would find her almost without
pulsation, the bones of the arms standing out (_las canillas muy
abiertas_), her hands stiff and extended: in every joint were the
pains of dislocation: she was apparently at the point of death.[289]

This mysterious ‘pain’ is no new thing in the history of mysticism.
It is one of the trials of mystical initiation. It is the depth
essential to the superhuman height. With St. Theresa, the physical
nature contributes towards it much more largely than usual; and in
her map of the mystic’s progress it is located at a more advanced
period of the journey. St. Francis of Assisi lay sick for two years
under the preparatory miseries. Catharine of Siena bore five years
of privation, and was tormented by devils beside. For five years,
and yet again for more than three times five, Magdalena de Pazzi
endured such ‘aridity,’ that she believed herself forsaken of God.
Balthazar Alvarez suffered for sixteen years before he earned his
extraordinary illumination.[290] Theresa, there can be little doubt,
regarded her fainting-fits, hysteria, cramps, and nervous seizures,
as divine visitations. In their action and reaction, body and soul
were continually injuring each other. The excitement of
hallucination would produce an attack of her disorder, and the
disease again foster the hallucination. Servitude, whether of mind
or body, introduces maladies unknown to freedom. Elephantiasis and
leprosy—the scourge of modern Greece—were unknown to ancient Hellas.
The cloister breeds a family of mental distempers, elsewhere unheard
of.

The mystics generally, from Dionysius downward, inculcate earnest
endeavours to denude the mind of images, to suspend its reflex or
discursive operations. Theresa goes a step farther, and forbids her
pupils to strive towards such a state. If such a favour is to be
theirs, it will be wrought in them as by enchantment. Passivity here
reaches its extreme. On this ground a charge of Quietism might have
been brought against Theresa with more justice than against Fénélon,
or even Molinos. The _Guida Spirituale_ of Molinos was designed to
assist the mystic in attaining that higher contemplation of God
which rises above the separate consideration of particular
attributes. This indistinct and dazzled apprehension of all the
perfections together is the very characteristic of Theresa’s _Prayer
of Rapture_. Molinos cites her very words. The introduction to his
condemned manual contains some very strong expressions. But nothing
of his own is so extravagant as the passages from Dionysius and
Theresa.

Who then is the Quietist—Molinos or Theresa? Both write books to
mark out the mystic’s pathway. Theresa adds the caution, ‘Sit
still.’ Manifestly, then, the excess of passivity lies with her. The
oars of Molinos are the sails of Theresa,—erected, like the broad
paddles of the Indian, to catch the breeze, and urge onward the
canoe without an effort.[291] But the followers of Molinos were
found guilty of neglecting ceremonial gewgaws for devout
abstraction,—of escaping those vexatious observances so harassing to
patients and so lucrative to priests. So Rome condemned him, and not
Theresa, as the Quietist heretic. For his head the thundercloud; for
hers the halo.[292]

Here the reader may naturally ask, ‘How do these mystics reconcile
such extremes of abstraction and such extremes of sensuousness? If
the state above symbols and above reasoning—above all conscious
mental operations, distinctions, or figures, be so desirable (as
they all admit),—must not crucifixes, images, and pictures of
saints, yea, the very conception of our Saviour’s humanity itself,
be so many hindrances?’

To this Theresa would answer, ‘I thought so once. But I was happily
led to see my error ere long. In the _Prayer of Rapture_, all
recognition of Christ’s humanity—as, indeed, of everything else—is
doubtless obliterated. But, then, _we_ do not effect this. There is
no effort on our part to remove from our minds the conception of
Christ’s person. The universal nescience of Rapture is
supernaturally wrought, without will of ours.’[293] John of the
Cross, who carries his negative, imageless abstraction so far, is
fain (as a good son of the Church) to insert a special chapter in
commendation of images, pictures, and the sensuous aids to devotion
generally. It was unfortunate for the flesh and blood of Molinos
that he failed to do the same.[294]

In the seventeenth century the Quietists were accused of rejecting
the idea of Christ’s humanity, as a corporeal image which would only
mar their supersensuous contemplation of abstract deity. Bossuet
attempted to fasten the charge on Fénélon: it was one of the hottest
points of their controversy. Fénélon completely clears himself. From
the evidence within my reach, I am disposed to acquit Molinos
also.[295]

Theresa relates with peculiar pleasure those passages in the
marvellous history of the soul in which surpassing heights of
knowledge, or of virtue, are supposed to be realized, on the
instant, without processes or media. No transition is too violent
for her faith. She is impatient of all natural growth; will
acknowledge no conditions of development. The sinner turns into a
seraph in the twinkling of an eye. The splendid symmetry of all the
Christian virtues can arise, like the palace of Aladdin, in a single
night. In one particular kind of Rapture—the Flight of the Soul
(_Buelo del Espiritu_), the soul is described by her as, in a
manner, blown up. It is discharged heavenwards by a soundless but
irresistible explosive force from beneath, swift as a bullet (_con
la presteza que sale la pelota de un arcabuz_). Thus transported the
spirit is taught without the medium of words, and understands
mysteries which long years of search could not even have
surmised.[296]

Visions are intellectual or representative. The former is a
consciousness of spiritual proximity, indescribable, unaccompanied
by any appearances. The representative or imaginative vision,
presents some definite form or image.[297]

There is a kind of supernatural tuition, she tells us, in which the
Lord suddenly places in the centre of the soul, what he wishes it to
understand, without words or representation of any kind. This
privilege Theresa compares very truly to an ability to read without
having learnt letters, or to nutriment derived from food without
eating it.[298] In other instances certain efficacious words (the
‘substantial words’ of John), are spoken divinely in the centre of
the soul, and immediately produce there the actual effects proper to
their significance.[299] If something is thus inwardly spoken about
humility, for example, the subject of such words is that moment
completely humble. So the soul is supplied with virtues as the
_tables volantes_ of Louis XV. with viands,—a spring is touched, and
presto! the table sinks and re-appears—spread.

Note to page 168.

Theresa compares the four degrees of prayer to four ways of watering the soul-garden: the first, to drawing water out of a well; the second, to raising it by means of a rope with buckets (less laborious and more plentiful); the third, to the introduction of a rivulet; and the fourth, to a copious shower, whereby God Himself abundantly waters the garden, without any effort of ours.—Cap. xi. p. 67. The second degree is fully described in the fourteenth chapter of her life, and in the thirty-first of the _Camino de Perfecion_.

The difference between the first degree and the three others is simply that generic distinction between Meditation and Contemplation with which the earlier mystics have made us familiar. Theresa’s second, third, and fourth degrees of prayer are her more loose and practical arrangement of the species of contemplation. She identifies Mystical Theology with Prayer, employing the latter term in a very comprehensive sense. So also does St. Francis de Sales:—En somme, l’oraison et théologie mystique n’est autre chose qu’une conversation par laquelle l’âme s’entretient amoureusement avec Dieu de sa très-aimable bonté pour s’unir et joindre à icelle.—_Traité de l’Amour de Dieu_, livre vi. chap. i. He likens the soul in the prayer of Quiet when the will is engaged but the other powers free, to an infant which can see and hear and move its arms, while adhering to the breast. The babe which removes its little mouth from the bosom to see where its feet are, resembles those who are distracted in the prayer of Quiet by self-consciousness, and disturb their repose by curiosity as to what the mind is doing the while.—_Ibid._ chap. x.

Note to page 170.

_Vida_, capp. xviii. xix.:—Estandoassi el alma buscando a Dios, siente con un deleyte grandissimo y suave casi desfallecerse toda con una manera de desmayo, que le va faltando el huelgo, y todas las fuerças corporales, demanera que sino es con mucha pena, no puede aun menear las manos; los ojos se le cierran sin querer, los cerrar, y si los tiene abiertos no vee casi nada; ni si lee, acierta a dezir letra ni casi atina a conocerla bien; vee que ay letra, mas como el entendimiento no ayuda, no sabe leer, aunque quiera. Oye, mas no entiende lo que oye. Assi que de los sentidos no se aprovecha nada, sino es para no la acabar de dexar a su plazer, y assi antes la dañan. Hablar, es por de mas, que no atina a formar palabra; ni ay fuerça ya que atinasse, para poderla pronunciar: porque toda la fuerça exterior se pierde, y se aumenta en las del alma, para mejor poder gozar de su gloria. El deleyte exterior que se siente es grande, y muy conocido.—P. 118.

As to the elevation of the body in the air during rapture, it is common enough in the annals of Romish saintship, and a goodly page might be filled with the mere names of the worthies who are represented as overcoming not only sin, but gravitation. Maria d’Agreda was seen, times without number, poised on nothing in a recumbent attitude, in an equilibrium so delicate, that by blowing, even at a distance, she was made to waft this way or that, like a feather. Dominic of Jesu Maria had the honour of being blown about, while in this soap-bubble condition, by the heretic-slaying breath of Philip II. Görres furnishes a long list of examples, and believes them all; _Die Christliche Mystik_, Buch. v. iv. § 2.

It is curious to see how Francis de Sales, who follows Theresa somewhat closely in his chapter on the Prayer of Quietude, grows wisely cautious as he treats of Rapture, softens down extravagance, avoids theurgy, and keeps to piety, and admirably substitutes practical devotion for the unintelligibility and the materialism of the Spanish saint. He enumerates three kinds of Rapture or ecstasy (ravissement and extase are identical),—that of the intellect, that of the affection, and that of action,—manifested, respectively, by glory, by fervour, and by deed,—realized by admiration, by devotion, and by operation. On the last he dwells most fully; on that he concentrates all his exhortations. To live without profaneness, he says, without falsehood, without robbery, to honour parents, to obey law, to reverence God,—this is to live according to the natural reason of man. But to embrace poverty, to hail reproach and persecution as blessings, and martyrdom as joy, by unceasing self-renunciation, to forsake the world, surmount its opinion, deny its rule,—this is to live, not humanly, but superhumanly;—to live out of ourselves and above ourselves, by supernatural energy,—this is to enjoy the noblest ecstasy, not of a moment, but of a life-time. Many saints have died without enjoying ecstatic trance—all have lived the ecstatic life.—_Traité de l’Amour de Dieu_, livre vii. chapp. iii. and vii.

Note to page 170.

This pain is described by Theresa in the twentieth chapter of the _Life_, and in the _Castillo Interior, Morada_ vi. capp. 1 and 2. In the former place she gives a kind of rationale thereof, in the following words:—Parece me que esta assi el alma, que ni del cielo le viene consuelo, ni esta en el; ni de la tierra le quiere, ni esta en ella; sino como crucificada entre el cielo y la tierra, padeciendo sin venirle socorro di ningun cabo. Porque el que le viene del cielo (que es como he dicho una noticia de Dios tan admirable, muy sobre todo lo que podemos dessear) es para mas tormento, porque acreciento el desseo de manera que a mi parecer la gran pena algunas vezes quita el sentido, sino que dura poco sin el. Parecen unos transitos de la muerte, salvo que trae consigo un tan contento este padecer, que no se yo a que lo comparar.—P. 135.

The _Castillo Interior_ describes the mystic’s progress under the emblem of a Castle, divided into seven apartments; the inmost, where God resides, representing the centre of the soul (termed the _apex_ by some; the _Ground_ by others); and each of these successive abodes, from the outermost to the central, corresponding to the advancing stages of discipline and privilege through which the mystic passes. The liability to the pain in question supervenes at the sixth apartment, prior to the last and most glorious stage attainable on earth.

Victor Gelenius of Treves (writing 1646) has seven degrees, and places this stage of misery and privation in the fourth, as the transition between the human and superhuman kinds of devotion. It is the painful weaning-time, wherein the soul passes (in an agony of strange bewilderment) from a religion which employs the faculties we possess, to that which is operated in us in a manner altogether incomprehensible and divine. Whatever division be adopted, such alone is the legitimate locality for this portion of the mystical experience. Here Gelenius and John of the Cross are perfectly agreed, though their graduation and nomenclature are different.

Note to page 171.

This pain is the ‘pressura interna’ of Tauler: the ‘horribile et indicibile tormentum’ of Catharine of Genoa; the ‘purgatory’ of Thomas à Jesu; the ‘languor infernalis’ of Harphius; the ‘terrible martyrium’ of Maria Vela, the Cistercian; the ‘divisio naturæ ac spiritus’ of Barbanson; the ‘privation worse than hell’ of Angela de Foligni. See Card. Bona’s _Via Compendii ad Deum_, cap. 10. _Angelæ de Fulginio Visiones_, cap. xix.

These sufferings are attributed by the mystics to the surpassing nature of the truths manifested to our finite faculties (as the sun-glare pains the eye),—to the anguish involved in the surrender of every ordinary religious support or enjoyment, when the soul, suspended (as Theresa describes it) between heaven and earth, can derive solace from neither,—to the intensity of the aspirations awakened, rendering those limitations of our condition here which detain us from God an intolerable oppression,—and to the despair by which the soul is tried, being left to believe herself forsaken by the God she loves.

On this subject John of the Cross and Theresa are most extravagant. In contrast with their folly stands the good sense of Fénélon. The middle ground is occupied by the comparative moderation of Francis de Sales. The privation described by John is preparatory to a state of complete de-humanization, in which we shall know, feel, do, nothing in the mortal manner, as our whole nature suffers a divine transformation. The privation of which Fénélon speaks is simply a refining process, to purify our love more thoroughly from self. The causes and the various species of this pain are detailed at length by John of the Cross in the _Nuit Obscure_, liv. ii. chapp. v. vi. vii.

De Sales says speaking of the ‘blessure d’amour:‘—Mais, Theotrine, parlant de l’amour sacré, il y a en la practique d’iceluy une sorte de blesseure que Dieu luy-meme faict quelquesfois pour sa souveraine bonté, comme la pressant et solicitant de l’aymer; et lors elle s’eslance de force comme pour voler plus haut vers son divin object; mais demeurant courte parce qu’elle ne peut pas tant aymer comme elle desire, o Dieu! elle sent une douleur qui n’a point d’esgale.... La voilà donc rudement tourmentée entre la violence de ses eslans et celle de son impuissance.—_Traité de l’Amour de Dieu_, liv. vi. ch. xiii.

Theresa declares that the intensity of this delicious agony is such as frequently to endanger life.—_Castillo Int._ vi. c. xi.

Francis de Sales, in whom the sufferings in question assume a highly sentimental character, adduces instances in which they proved fatal. The soul, springing forward to obey the attraction of the Well-beloved, sooner than be detained by the body amid the miseries of this life, tears herself away, abandons it, and mounts alone, like a lovely little dove, to the bosom of her celestial spouse. St. Theresa herself, he says, made it known, after her departure, that she died of an impetuous assault of love, too violent for nature to sustain.—_Traité de l’Amour de Dieu_, liv. vii. chapp x.-xii.

We may contrast the obscure and feverish utterances of Theresa, and the amorous phraseology of De Sales, on this topic, with the lucid and cautious language of Fénélon.

La sainte indifférence, qui n’est jamais que le désintéressement de l’amour, devient dans les plus extrêmes épreuves ce que les saints mystiques ont nommé abandon, c’est-à-dire, que l’âme désintéressée s’abandonne totalement et sans réserve à Dieu pour tout ce qui regarde son intérêt propre; mais elle ne renonce jamais ni à aucune des choses qui intéressent la gloire et le bon plaisir du bien-aimé.... Cette abnégation de nous-mêmes n’est que pour l’intérêt propre, et ne doit jamais empêcher l’amour désintéressé que nous nous devons à nous-mêmes comme au prochain, pour l’amour de Dieu. Les épreuves extrêmes où cet abandon doit être exercé sont les tentations par lesquelles Dieu jaloux veut purifier l’amour, en ne lui faisant voir aucune ressource ni aucune espérance pour son intérêt même éternel. Ces épreuves sont représentées par un très-grand nombre des saints comme un purgatoire terrible, qui peut exempter du purgatoire de l’autre vie les âmes qui le souffrent avec une entière fidélité.... Ces épreuves ne sont que pour un temps. Plus les âmes y sont fidèles à la grâce pour se laisser purifier de tout intérêt propre par l’amour jaloux, plus ces épreuves sont courtes. C’est d’ordinaire la résistance secrète des âmes à la grâce sous des beaux prétextes, c’est leur effort intéressé et empressé pour retenir les appuis sensibles dont Dieu veut les priver, qui rend leurs épreuves si longues et si douloureuses: car Dieu ne fait point souffrir sa créature pour la faire souffrir sans fruit, ce n’est que pour la purifier et pour vaincre ses résistances.—_Explic. des Maximes des Saints_, Art. VIII.

Note to page 172.

See the passage already cited (page 166, note), where Theresa expressly forbids any attempt on our part to suspend the powers of the mind. Effort to produce inaction appears to her a contradiction in terms. Yet such effort Dionysius expressly enjoins; and, indeed, without it, how can the swarming words or images that float about the mind be excluded? The ‘phantasmata irruentia,’ to be barred out, are the images of sensible objects, according to the old theory of perception—the ‘imagines rerum sensibilium et corporearum.’ Bona expresses the spirit of the old Platonist mysticism in the Romish Church, when he says, ‘Hæc omnia abdicanda et extirpanda prorsus sunt, ut Deum inveniamus.’—_Via Compendii ad Deum_, p. 26. Theresa is quite agreed with all the mystics as to the previous heart-discipline, and the ascetic process essential to the higher forms of contemplation.

The mystics generally rank the ‘contemplatio caliginosa’ much above the ‘contemplatio pura:’ the more indistinct our apprehensions, the more divine. John of the Cross comes next, in this respect, after Dionysius. Molinos borrows his doctrine, that as the distance between the Infinite and all our sensuous images, conclusions, and finite conceptions must be infinite after all, such things embarrass rather than aid our contemplation. But even he does not soar into a darkness so absolute as that of Dionysius. He says expressly, in the introduction to his _Spiritual Guide_:—‘In answer to the objection that the will must be inactive where no clear conception is given to the understanding,—that a man cannot love what he can take no cognizance of, my reply is this: Although the understanding does not distinctively recognise certain images and conceptions, by a discursive act or mental conclusion, it apprehends, nevertheless, by a dim and comprehensive faith. And though this knowledge be very cloudy, vague, and general, yet it is far more clear and perfect than any sensuous or scientific apprehensions that man can devise in this life, since all corporeal images must be immeasurably remote from God.’ See Arnold’s _Kirchen-und-Ketzergeschichte_, th. III. ch. xvii., where the Introduction is inserted entire.

Theresa also admits that during the ecstatic pain the soul adores no particular attribute of God, but, as it were, all his perfections collectively. Bien entiende que no quiere sino a su Dios, mas no ama cosa particular del, sino todo junto lo quiere, y no sabe lo que quiere.—_Vida_, cap. xx. p. 135. But it is a sore trial to her when her fancy is limed, and the key to her chamber of vision, for a season, lost.

When we leave Dionysius and John, and come to the French mystics, how great the difference! The soul hangs no longer in a lightless void, trembles no more on the verge of swooning ecstacy. This ‘Visio caliginosa’ becomes, not merely a comprehensible thing, but so clarified, humanized, and we may say Christianized, as to come within the range of every devout consciousness. The ‘indistinct contemplation’ of St. Francis de Sales is a summary and comprehensive view of Divine truth or the Divine Nature,—simple, emotional, jubilant, as distinguished from the detailed and partial views of searching Meditation. As he fancifully expresses it, this simplicity of contemplation does not pluck the rose, the thyme, the jessamine, the orange-flower, inhaling the scent of each separately,—this the flower-gatherer Meditation does;—Contemplation rejoices in the fragrance distilled from them all. An example perfectly explains his meaning. O que bien-heureux sont ceux qui, après avoir discouru (the discursive acts above spoken of) sur la multitude des motifs qu’ils ont d’aymer Dieu, reduisans tous leurs regards en une seule veuë et toutes leurs pensées en une seule conclusion, arrestant leur esprit en l’unité de la contemplation, à l’exemple de S. Augustin ou de S. Bruno, prononçant secrettement en leur ame, par une admiration permanente, ces paroles amoureuses: O bonté! bonté! bonté! tousjours ancienne et tousjours nouvelle!—_Traité de l’Amour de Dieu_, liv. vi. chap. v.

Every religious man must remember times when he was the subject of some such emotion, when the imagination bodied forth no form, the reason performed no conscious process, but, after some train of thought, at the sight of some word, or while gazing on some scene of beauty, an old truth seemed to overwhelm him (as though never seen till then) with all its grandeur or endearment,—times when he felt the poverty of words, and when utterance, if left at all, could only come in the fervid, broken syllables of reiterated ejaculation. In such melting or such tumult of the soul, there is no mysticism. Even Deism, in a susceptible Rousseau, cannot escape this passion. He speaks of a bewildering ecstasy awakened by nature, which would overcome him with such force, that he could but repeat, in almost delirious transport, ‘O Great Being! O Great Being!’ Neither is it mystical to prefer the kindling masterful impulse of a faith which possesses us, rather than we it, to the frigid exactitude of lifeless prescription. The error of the mystics lay in the undue value they attached to such emotions, and their frequent endeavours to excite them for their own sake; in transferring what was peculiar to those seasons to the other provinces of life; and in the constant tendency of their religionism to underrate the balanced exercise of all our faculties, neglecting knowledge and action in a feverish craving for evanescent fervours.

Fénélon, speaking of the negative character of pure and direct contemplation, teaches a doctrine widely different from that of Dionysius, even while referring with reverence to his name. He is careful to state that the attributes of God do not, at such times, cease to be present to the mind, though no sensible image be there, no discursive act performed; that the essence, without the attributes, would be the essence no longer; that, in the highest contemplation, the truths of revelation do not cease to be admissible to the mind; that the humanity of Christ, and all his mysteries, may then be distinctly present,—seen simply, lovingly, as faith presents them, only that there is no systematic effort to impress the several details on the imagination, or to draw conclusions from them.—_Explic. des Maximes des Saints_, art. xxvii.

Note to page 173.

See the clear and guarded language of the twenty-eighth article in the _Maximes des Saints_, and the _Troisième Lettre en réponse à divers Ecrits, Seconde Partie_.

The language of Molinos on this point is as follows:—‘Although the humanity of Christ is the most perfect and most holy mean of access to God, the highest mean of our salvation, yea the channel through which alone we receive every blessing for which we hope, yet is the humanity not the supreme good, for that consists in the contemplation of God. But as Jesus Christ is what he is more through his divine nature than his human, so that man contemplates Christ continually and thinks of Him, who thinks on God, and hath regard constantly to Him. And this is the case more especially with the contemplative man, who possesses a faith more purified, clear, and experimental.’—_Arnold_, _loc. cit._, p. 183.

Such a passage proves merely thus much, that Molinos shared in the general tendency of the authorised mediæval mysticism,—a tendency leading the contemplatist to see Christ in God, rather than God in Christ, and placing him in danger of resolving Redemption into self-loss in the abstract Godhead. Similar expressions are frequent in Tauler, in Ruysbroek, in Suso, in the German theology. Now we know by what these same men say at other times, that it was not their intention to disparage or discard the humanity of Christ. Similar allowance must be made for Molinos—quite as far from such practical Docetism as they were. The words just quoted should be compared with the title of the sixteenth chapter in his first book: ‘How in the inward recollection, or drawing in of our powers, we may enter into the internal Ground, _through the most holy Humanity of Jesus Christ_.’ A gross and materialised apprehension of the bodily sufferings of the Saviour had become general in the Romish Church. They were dramatized in imagination and in fact, into a harrowing spectacle of physical anguish. The end was lost sight of in the means. To such sensible representations—such excesses of over-wrought sentiment, Molinos was doubtless unfriendly; and so, also, the more refined and elevated mysticism of that communion has generally been. Molinos is nearer to the spiritual Tauler than to the sensuous Theresa. Where he speaks of passivity and acquiescence in desertion (§ 5), of contemplation (§§ 17, 18), of self-abandonment (§ 30), of the divine vocation and elevation necessary to the attainment of the contemplative heights, where he says that we must not, without the direction of an experienced adviser, seek to raise ourselves from one stage to a higher (§ 24), he does but repeat what the most orthodox mystics had said before him. Holy indifference to spiritual enjoyments and manifestations, and complete passivity, are not more earnestly enjoined by John of the Cross than by Molinos. Yet one main charge against the Quietists was, that they made mysticism a human method, and proposed to raise to mystical perfection all who were ready to go through their process. The accusations brought against Quietism by Berthier in his _Discours sur le Non-Quiétisme de S. Theresa_, and in his tenth letter on the works of John of the Cross, are self-destructive. In one place he finds the Quietists guilty of making ‘their pretended spiritual man’ an insensible kind of being, who remains always apathetic—dans une inaltération et une inaction entiere en la présence de Dieu. In another, he represents them as offering to teach contemplation to all (irrespective of the director’s consent, he fears) by reducing it to a method. Either way the unhappy Quietists cannot escape: they must always do too much or too little. It was against the artificial methods of devotion, so much in vogue, that Molinos protested, when he called his readers away from the puerile manuals and bead-counting of the day, to direct and solitary communion with God. Several of the articles of condemnation are such as would have been drawn out against a man suspected of Protestantism. On the question of the humanity of Christ, the proposition professedly deduced from the doctrines of Molinos, and censured accordingly, runs thus—‘We must do no good works of our own motion, and render no homage to Our Lady, the Saints, or Christ’s humanity,’ &c.—Art. xxxv.

Footnote 284:

_Vida_, pp. 71 and 75. In the latter passage, Theresa says
expressly:—En la mystica Teologia, que comence a dezir, pierde de
obrar el entendimiento, porque le suspende Dios, como despues
declararè mas, si supiere, y el me diere para el lo su favor.
Presumir, ni pensar de suspenderle nosotros, es lo que digo no se
haga, ni se dexe de obrar con el, porque nos quedaremos bouos y frios,
y ni haremos lo uno ni lo otro. Que quando el Señor le suspende, y
haze parar, dale de que se espante, y en que se ocupe, y que sin
discurrir entienda mas en un credo que nosotros podemos entendir con
todas nuestras diligencias de tierra en muchos años.

Footnote 285:

See Note on p. 175.

Footnote 286:

_Vida_, cap. xvii. and _Castillo Interior, Moradas Quintas_, cap. i.

Footnote 287:

_Castillo Interior_, p. 580.

Footnote 288:

See second Note on p. 175.

Footnote 289:

See Note on p. 176.

Footnote 290:

See Note on p. 177.

Footnote 291:

See Note on p. 178.

Footnote 292:

See the account of the proceedings against Molinos and his followers,
in Arnold, th. III., c. xvii., and more fully in an Appendix to the
English translation of Madame Guyon’s Autobiography.

Footnote 293:

_Vida_, chap. xxii.:—Quando Dios quiere suspender todas las potencias
(como en los modos de oracion que quedan dichos hemos visto) claro
estâ que aunque no queramos se quita esta presencia.... Mas que
nosotros de maña y con cuydado nos acostumbremos a no procurar con
todas nuestras fuerças traer delante siempre (y pluguiesse al Señor
fuesse siempre) esta sacratissima humanidad esto digo que no me parece
bien, y que es andar el alma en ayre, como dizen: porque parece no
trae arrimo, por mucho que la parezca anda llena de Dios.—P. 154.

Footnote 294:

The words of John are:—Mais il faut remarquer que quand je dis qu’il
est à propos d’oublier les espèces et les connaissances des objets
matériels, je ne prétends nullement parler de Jésus-Christ ni de son
humanité sacrée. Quoique l’âme n’en ait pas quelquefois la mémoire
dans sa plus haute contemplation et dans le simple regard de la
divinité, parce que Dieu élève l’esprit à cette connaissance confuse
et surnaturelle, néanmoins il ne faut jamais négliger exprès la
représentation de cette adorable humanité ni en effacer le souvenir ou
l’idée, ni en affaiblir la connaissance.—_La Montée du Mont Carmel_,
liv. III. chap. 1. I have used the French translation of his works,
edited by the Abbé Migne, in his _Bibliothèque Universelle du Clergé_.
1845.

The chapter on images is the fourteenth of the same book.

Father Berthier (_Lettres sur les Œuvres de S. Jean de la Croix_)
attempts to show the difference between the mysticism of his author
and that of the false mystics. He succeeds only in pointing out a
manifest disagreement between the opinions of John and those which he
himself believes (or pretends to believe) are those of Quietism—the
accusations, in fact, against the Quietists—the exaggerated
conclusions drawn by their enemies.

Footnote 295:

See Note on p. 180.

Footnote 296:

_Castillo Interior. Morada_ vi., c. v.

Footnote 297:

_Ibid._, capp. viii., ix., x.

Footnote 298:

_Vida_, cap. xxvii., pp. 191, &c. Here the supernatural illumination
without means or mode, longed for by so many mystics, is professedly
realised. Molinos puts forward no claim so dangerous as this special
revelation. Theresa is confident that this most inexplicable species
of communication is beyond the reach of any delusion, and inaccessible
altogether to the father of lies. Her language concerning the absolute
passivity of those who are its subjects, is as strong as it could be.
No Quietist could push it farther. It so happens that the saint, in
his chapter, contravenes expressly the three criteria, afterwards laid
down by Fénélon, to distinguish the true mysticism from the false. The
genuine contemplation according to him is not purely infused, not
purely gratuitous (_i.e._, without correspondence on the part of the
soul to the grace vouchsafed), not miraculous. With Theresa this form
of passive contemplation _is_ all three. So much more Quietist was the
mysticism authorised than the mysticism condemned by Rome. See
_Maximes des Saints_, art. xxix. What Fénélon rejects in the following
section as false, answers exactly to the position of Theresa. Fénélon
supports his more refined and sober mysticism by the authority of
preceding mystics. He finds among them ample credentials, and indeed
more than he wants. Their extravagances he tacitly rejects. Not that,
as a good Catholic, he could venture openly to impugn their
statements, but their fantastic extremes, and choice wonders, find a
place with him rather as so much religious tradition, or extraordinary
history, than as forming any essential part of the mysticism he
himself represents and commends.

Footnote 299:

_Vida_, cap. xxv.