_Vida_, pp. 198, 301, 209, 321. This last communication is not related

by herself: we have it on the authority of Ribadeneira:—Itidem ei

rursus apparens dixit: Cœlum nisi creassem, ob te solam crearem.—_Vita

Teresiæ_, p. 41.

Footnote 279:

Originally:

Mas causa en mi tal passion

Ver à Dios mi prisionero

Que muero porque no muero.

Footnote 280:

_Vida_, cap. xl. p. 324.

Footnote 281:

The biographers of the saints differ both as to the time of her death

(1308, 1299, 1393, are dates assigned), and as to the number and

nature of the miraculous formations discovered within her heart.

Ribadeneira’s account is by no means the most extravagant. He

says:—Aperto ejus corde amplo et concavo, eidem repererunt impressa

Dominicæ passionis insignia, nempe crucifixum cum tribus clavis,

lancea, spongia, et arundine hinc, et illinic flagris, virgis,

columna, corona spinea; atque hæc insignia Dominicæ Passionis, nervis

validis durisque constabant.—_Vida S. Claræ_, p. 161.

Footnote 282:

_Vida_, cap. xxix, p. 213. Speaking of the delicious anguish, she

says:—No es dolor corporal, sino espiritual, aunque no dexa de

participar el cuerpo algo, y aun harto. Es un requiebro tan suave que

passa entre el almo y Dios que suplico yo a su bondad lo dè a gustar a

quien pensare que miento.

Footnote 283:

_Vida_, cap. xxxviii. pp. 300, 301; and xl. 328.

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.

CHAPTER III.

And those that endeavour after so still, so silent, and demure

condition of minde, that they would have the sense of nothing there

but peace and rest, striving to make their whole nature desolate of

all _Animal Figurations_ whatsoever, what do they effect but a clear

Day, shining upon a barren Heath, that feeds neither Cow nor

Horse,—neither Sheep nor Shepherd is to be seen there, but only a

waste, silent Solitude, and one uniform parchednesse and vacuity.

And yet while a man fancies himself thus wholly divine, he is not

aware how he is even then held down by his _Animal Nature_; and that

it is nothing but the stillnesse and fixednesse of _Melancholy_ that

thus abuses him, instead of the true divine Principle.—HENRY MORE.

II. _St. John of the Cross._

Little John of the Cross—a hero, like Tydeus, small in body, but

great in soul—was in the prime of life when Theresa was growing old.

Early distinguished by surpassing austerity and zeal, he was

selected by the Saint as her coadjutor in the great work of

Carmelite reform. The task was no easy one, though sanctioned by the

highest spiritual authority. This troculus service—the picking the

teeth of the gorged ecclesiastical crocodile—has always been a

somewhat delicate and dangerous affair. The great jaws closed with a

horrible crash one day on poor Madame Guyon, as she was working away

with her solitary bill and the best intentions. On John, too, busy

at a little scavenger’s work, those jaws had once almost met, and at

least knocked him fluttering into a hollow tooth,—in other words, a

dark and noisome dungeon at Toledo. But what between St. Theresa’s

intercession and that of the Mother of God, he is let fly again.

Vicar-provincial of Andalusia, he plies his task anew, with

admirable intrepidity and self-devotion; courts hatred and

opprobrium on every side; flourishes his whip; overturns

secularities; and mouses for flaws of regulation. He succeeds in

excavating in every direction spiritual catacombs and mummy-caves,

where, swathed up in long rows, the religious dumb and withered line

the cloister-walls—motionless—satisfactorily dead. Next to Ignatius

Loyola, he was, perhaps, the greatest soul-sexton that ever handled

shovel.

John of the Cross obtained this distinctive name through his love of

crosses. He was consumed by an insatiable love of suffering. It was

his prayer that not a day of his life might pass in which he did not

suffer something. Again and again does he exhort the monk,

saying—‘Whatsoever you find pleasant to soul or body, abandon;

whatsoever is painful, embrace it.’ ‘Take pains,’ he says, ‘to give

your name an ill savour; burrow deep and deeper under heaped

obloquy, and you are safe.’[300] Thus is the odour of sanctity best

secured; and the disguised saint resembles that eastern prince who

concealed himself from his pursuers beneath a heap of onions, lest

the fragrance of his perfumes should betray him. The man who is

truly dead and self-abandoned will not only thus disguise his

virtues before others; he will be unconscious of them himself. The

whole life of John was an attempt towards a practical fulfilment of

such precepts. The party of his enemies gained the upper hand in the

chapter, and the evening of his days was clouded by the disgrace of

which he was covetous. He passed existence in violent extremes, now

gazing with delight on some celestial mirage, swimming in seas of

glory that waft him to the steps of the burning throne,—and anon

hurled down into the abyss, while vampyre wings of fiends ‘darken

his fall, with victory,’ and his heart itself is a seething

hell-cauldron, wherein demon talons are the raking fleshhooks.

The piety of John is altogether of the Romanist type. In his

doctrine of humility, truth is not to be considered, but

expediency,—that is, an edifying display of self-vilification. On

his own principles, John ought to have persuaded himself, and

assured others, that he was a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving

drone,—though perfectly aware of the contrary. St. Paul is content

to bid men think of themselves not more highly than they ought to

think. John of the Cross is not satisfied unless they think worse

than they ought,—unless they think untruly, and labour to put a

pious fraud upon themselves. John disturbs the equilibrium of

Quietism. There is quite as much self-will in going out of the way

of a blessing to seek a misery, as in avoiding a duty for the sake

of ease. Many men will readily endure a score of mortifications of

their own choosing, who would find it hard to display tolerable

patience under a single infliction from a source beyond their

control. This extreme of morbid asceticism is more easy, because

more brilliant in its little world, than the lowly fortitude of

ordinary Christian life. How many women, at this hour, in poverty,

in pain, in sorrow of heart, are far surpassing St. Theresa in their

self-sacrifice and patience, unseen and unpraised of men.

Banished to the little Convent of Pegnuela, he completed among the

crags of the Sierra Morena his great mystical treatises, _The

Obscure Night_, and _The Ascent of Carmel_. He follows in the steps

of the Pseudo-Dionysius. He describes the successive denudations of

the soul as it passes,—the shadow of itself, into the infinite shade

of the Divine Dark.[301] We have seen how instantaneously Theresa

could attain at times this oblivious self-reduction. Her soul falls

prostrate, with the ordinary attire of faculties, but rises,

stripped of all in a moment. Not more dexterously was the fallen

Andrew Fairservice stripped in a twinkling by the Highlanders, so

that he who tumbled down a well-clothed, decent serving-man, stood

up ‘a forked, uncased, bald-pated, beggarly-looking scarecrow.’ John

of the Cross describes with almost scientific method the process of

spiritual unclothing,—preaches a series of sermons on the successive

removal of each integument,—and perorates on the blessed reduction

of the soul to a supernatural state of nature.

The ‘Obscure Night,’ would be the most fitting title for both

treatises; for the night of mysticism is their sole subject, and

Mount Carmel does but figure as a frontispiece, in compliment to the

Order probably. Sundry verses head the works as texts; the first of

these, with its exposition, will sufficiently indicate the character

of the whole.

En una noche escura

Con ansias en amores inflammada

¡O dichosa ventura!

Salí sin ser notada

Estando ya mi casa sosegada.

‘’Twas in a darksome night, inflamed with restless love, O fortune

full of bliss, I ventured forth unmarked, what time my house was

still.’

The Saint interprets his stanza, in substance, as follows:—

Here the soul says, ‘I went out unhindered by sensuality or the

devil. I went out, that is, of myself—out from my own poor and

feeble manner of knowing, loving, and tasting God. I went out,

unassisted by any action of my own powers; while my understanding

was wrapped in darkness; while will and memory were overwhelmed by

affliction. I went out, abandoning myself in pure faith to

darkness—that is, to the night of my spirit and my natural powers.

‘This going forth has crowned me with happiness; for I have been

straightway elevated to operations entirely divine—to most familiar

intercourses with God; in other words, my understanding has passed

from a human to a divine condition. Uniting myself to God by this

purgation, my knowledge is no longer weak and limited as formerly;

but I know by the divine wisdom, to which I am conjoined.

‘My will also has gone out of itself, and become in a sort divine;

for being united to the Divine Love, it does not love any longer by

its own former powers, but by the powers of the Divine Spirit. Thus,

its acts of love towards the Creator are rendered no more in a human

manner.

‘My memory is filled with images of heavenly glory. All my powers,

in short, and all my affections, are renovated by the Night of the

spirit and the despoliation of the old man, in such sort that their

very nature seems changed, and they can relish only spiritual and

divine delights.’[302]

Thus, the soul is to resemble the wondrous eastern tree of the old

travellers, which by daylight stands leafless and flowerless, but

after sundown puts forth countless white blossoms, shining in the

darkness like the drops of a silver fountain; and when the sun is

risen again, sheds all its beauty, and stands bare and barren as

before. When all our natural powers, slain and buried, lie dead

under the midnight;—then arise, instead of them, certain divine

substitutes, which will, and love, and know, as the Infinite does,

not as men.

The FIRST NIGHT is that of the _Sense_: the long process of vigil

and austerity which, with the caduceus of asceticism, tames and

lulls to slumber the Argus-eyed monster of the flesh.[303] A painful

work, but not without meet recompence. New pleasures, even of the

sense, are supernaturally vouchsafed to the steadfast votary. The

wearied eye and the unvisited ear are regaled by glorious visions

and seraphic melody; yea, the parched tongue, and haggard, bleeding

flesh, are made to know delights of taste and touch, that melt with

most delicious pleasure through the frame, and beggar with their

transport all the joys of banquets or of love.

But rejoice not, O mystic! for even now, lest thou shouldst grow

greedy of these high luxuries, there strides towards thee the

darkness of—

The SECOND NIGHT—the Night of the _Spirit_. Here all caresses are

withdrawn. The deserted soul cannot think, or pray, or praise, as of

old. The great pains are to begin. Pitiless purgation and privation

absolute are about to make the second night not night only, but

midnight. You seem to descend, God-abandoned, alive into hell. Make

no resistance: utter no cry for comfort. Solace is a Tantalus’

bough, which will wave itself away as you stretch forth your hand.

Acquiesce in all: be in your desertion as absolutely passive as in

your rapture. So, from the bright glassy edge and summit of this

awful fall, you shoot down helpless, blind, and dizzy,—down through

the surging cataract, among the giant vapour columns, amid the

eternal roar, to awake at the boiling foot, and find that you yet

live, in your tossing shallop,—or rather, you no longer, for you

yourself are dead—so much mere ballast in the bottom of the boat: a

divine and winged Radiance has taken your place, who animates rather

than steers, guiding, in your stead, by mysterious impulse.[304]

To the higher faculty, then, there are already visible, after the

first horrors, breaking gleams of a super-celestial dawn. Visions

are seen; forms of glory come and go: gifts of subtlest discernment

are vouchsafed: substantial words are spoken within, which make you,

in that moment, all they mean.[305]

But all such particular and special manifestations you are

peremptorily to reject, come they from God or come they from the

Devil;—not even to reflect upon and recall them afterwards, lest

grievous harm ensue. For the philosophy of John is summary. Two

ideas alone have room there—All and Nothing. Whatsoever is created

is finite: whether actual or ideal, it bears no proportion to the

All,—it cannot therefore be helpful to any on their way to the All.

The Something is no link between the opposites of All and Nothing.

Therefore, if any view of a particular divine perfection, any

conception of Deity, or image of saint or angel, be even

supernaturally presented to the mind, reject it. You are aiming at

the highest—at loss in the All. Everything definite and

particular—all finite apprehension, must be so much negation of the

Infinite,—must limit that All. You should pass beyond such things to

blend immediately with the Universal,—to attain that view of God

which is above means—is unconditioned—is, from its illimitable

vastness, an anguish of bliss,—a glory which produces the effect of

darkness.[306]

But why, it will be asked, does God grant these favours of vision to

the saints at all, if it is their duty to disregard them?

John answers, ‘Because some transition stage is unavoidable. But the

higher you attain, the less of such manifestation will you meet

with. This portion of your progress is a grand stair-case hung with

pictures;—hurry up the steps, that you may enter the darkened

chamber above, where divine ignorance and total darkness shall make

you blest. If in doubt about a vision, there is always your

confessor, to whom, if you have not constant resort, woe be to you!

But you are safe, at any rate, in not receiving and cherishing such

inferior bestowments. To reject them will be no sin—no loss. For the

beneficial effects they are designed to produce will be wrought by

God internally, if you only abide passive, and refuse to exert about

such signs those lower faculties which can only hinder your

advance.’[307]

Such a reply is but a fence of words against a serious difficulty.

He should be the last to talk of necessary intermediate steps who

proclaims the rejection of everything mediate,—who will have the

mystic be reduced to the Nothing and rapt to the All, by a single

entrancing touch.[308]

But much higher than any visions of the picture-gallery are certain

manifestations (sometimes granted in this state) of divine truth in

its absolute nakedness. These are glimpses of the _veritas

essentialis nude in se ipsa_, beyond all men, and angels, and

heavenly splendours, which Tauler bids the mystic long for. John

forbids us to seek them—for effort would unseal our slumber. They

come altogether without consent of ours. Though we are not to hold

ourselves so negative towards them as we should towards more

palpable and inferior favours.

The Quietists were charged with excluding all human co-operation in

the mystical progress. John must plead guilty on this count. His

writings abound with reiterated declarations that the soul does

absolutely nothing in its night,—with prohibitions against seeking

any supernatural favour or manifestation whatever.[309]

Urganda the fairy could find no way of raising the paladins she

loved above the common lot of mortals, save that of throwing them

into an enchanted sleep. So Galaor, Amadis, and Esplandian, sink

into the image of death beneath her kindly wand. Such is the device

of John—and so does he lull and ward venturous Understanding,

learned Memory, and fiery Will. Faith is the night which

extinguishes Understanding; Hope, Memory; and Love, Will. The very

desire after supernatural bestowments, (though for no other purpose

has everything natural been doomed to die) would be a stirring in

the torpor—a restless, not a perfect sleep. The serenest Quiet may

be ruffled by no such wish.

This, therefore, is John’s fundamental principle. All faculties and

operations not beyond the limits of our nature must cease, that we

may have no natural knowledge, no natural affection; but find,

magically substituted, divine apprehensions and divine sentiments

quite foreign to ourselves. Then, still farther, we are desired to

ignore even supernatural manifestations, if they represent to us

anything whatever; that we may rise, or sink (it is the same), to

that swooning gaze on the Infinite Ineffable, wherein our dissolving

nature sees, hears, knows, wills, remembers nothing.[310]

The THIRD NIGHT—that of the _Memory_ and the _Will_.[311] Here, not

only do all the ‘trivial fond records’ that may have been inscribed

upon remembrance vanish utterly, but every trace of the divinest

tokens and most devout experience. The soul sinks into profound

oblivion. The flight of time is unmarked, bodily pain unfelt, and

the place of Memory entirely emptied of its stored ‘species and

cognitions,’—of everything particular and distinct. The patient

forgets to eat and drink,—knows not whether he has done or not done,

said or not said, heard or not heard this or that.

‘Strange exaltation this,’ cries the objector, ‘which imbrutes and

makes a blank of man—sinks him below idiotic ignorance of truth and

virtue!’

John is ready with his answer. This torpor, he replies, is but

transitory. The perfect mystic, the adept established in union, has

ceased to suffer this oblivion. Passing through it, he acquires a

new and divine facility for every duty proper to his station. He is

in the supernatural state, and his powers have so passed into God

that the Divine Spirit makes them operate divinely,—all they do is

divine. The Spirit makes such a man constantly ignorant of what he

ought to be ignorant; makes him remember what he ought to remember;

and love what is to be loved—God only. Transformed in God, these

powers are human no more.[312]

In the same way the night of will extinguishes joy,—joy in sensible

good, in moral excellence, in supernatural gifts, that the soul may

soar to a delight above delight, be suspended as in a limitless

expanse of calm, far beyond that lower meteoric sky which is figured

over with wonders and with signs.

Thus John’s desired _contemplatio infusa_ is always, at the same

time, a _contemplatio confusa_.

At his culminating point the mystic is concealed as ‘on the secret

top of Horeb;’ he ascends by a hidden scale, cloaked with darkness

(_por la secreta escala—a escuras y enzelada_).

Mark the advantage of this enclouded state. The Devil, it is said,

can only get at what is passing in our mind by observing the

operations of the mental powers. If, therefore, these are inactive

and absorbed, and a divine communication goes on, in which they have

no part whatever, Satan is baffled. These highest manifestations,

absolutely pure, nude, and immediate he cannot counterfeit or

hinder. The soul is then blissfully incognito and anonymous. This

secrecy preserves the mystic from malign arts, as the concealment of

their real names was thought the safeguard of ancient cities, since

hostile sooth-sayers, ignorant of the true name to conjure by, could

not then entice away their tutelary gods.[313]

Such then is the teaching of the _Mount Carmel_ and the _Obscure

Night_, starred with numerous most irrelevant quotations from the

psalms and the prophecies, as though David and Isaiah were

Quietists, and spent their days in trying to benumb imagination,

banish the sensuous images which made them poets, and tone down all

distinct ideas to a lustreless, formless neutral tint. The Spanish

painters have not more anachronisms than the Spanish mystics; and I

think of Murillo’s ‘Moses striking the Rock,’ where Andalusian

costumes make gay the desert, Andalusian faces stoop to drink, and

Andalusian crockery is held out to catch the dashing streams.

In John of the Cross we behold the final masterpiece of Romanist

mysticism, and the practice (if here the term be applicable) of

supernatural theopathy is complete. The Art of Sinking in

Religion—the divinity of diving, could go no deeper. The natives of

South America say that the lobo or seal has to swallow great stones

when he wishes to sink to the river-bed—so little natural facility

has he that way. We sinners, too, have no native alacrity for the

mystical descent: our gravitation does not tend towards that depth

of nothing; and huge and hard are the stones (not bread) with which

this mystagogue would lade us to bring us down. And when, in

imagination at least, at the bottom, we are smothered in an obscure

night of mud. What a granite boulder is this to swallow,—to be told

that the faintest film of attachment that links you with any human

being or created thing will frustrate all your aim, and be stout as

a cable to hold back your soul,—that with all your mind, and soul,

and strength, you must seek out and adore the Uncomfortable, for its

own sake—that, drowned and dead, you must lie far down, hidden, not

from the pleasant sunshine only, but from all sweet gladness of

faith and hope and love—awaiting, in obstruction, an abstraction.

This resurrection to a supersensuous serenity, wherein divine powers

supersede your own, is a mere imagination—a change of words; the old

hallucination of the mystic. After going through a certain amount of

suffering, the devotee chooses to term whatever thoughts or feelings

he may have, his own no longer: he fancies them divine. It is the

same man from first to last.

Admitting its great fundamental error—this unnaturalness,—as though

grace came in to make our flesh and blood a senseless puppet pulled

by celestial wires,—it must be conceded that the mysticism of John

takes the very highest ground. It looks almost with contempt upon

the phantoms, the caresses, the theurgic toys of grosser mystics. In

this respect, John is far beyond Theresa. He has a purpose; he

thinks he knows a way to it; and he pursues it, unfaltering, to the

issue. He gazes steadily on the grand impalpability of the

Areopagite, and essays to mount thither with a holy ardour of which

the old Greek gives no sign. And this, too, with the vision-craving

sentimental Theresa at his side, and a coarsely sensuous Romanism

all around him. No wonder that so stern a spiritualism was little to

the taste of some church-dignitaries in soft raiment. It is

impossible not to recognize a certain grandeur in such a man.

Miserably mistaken as he was, he is genuine throughout as mystic and

ascetic. Every bitter cup he would press to the lips of others he

had first drained himself. His eagerness to suffer was no bravado—no

romancing affectation, as with many of his tribe. In his last

illness at Pegnuela he was allowed his choice of removal between two

places. At one of them his deadly enemy was prior. He bade them

carry him thither, for there he would have most to endure. That

infamous prior treated with the utmost barbarity the dying saint, on

whom his implacable hatred had already heaped every wrong within his

power.[314] Let, then, a melancholy admiration be the meed of

John—not because the mere mention of the cross was sufficient,

frequently, to throw him into an ecstasy,—not because his face was

seen more than once radiant with a lambent fire from heaven,—these

are the vulgar glories of the calendar,—but because, believing in

mystical death, he did his best to die it, and displayed in

suffering and in action a self-sacrificing heroism which could only

spring from a devout and a profound conviction. We find in him no

sanctimonious lies, no mean or cruel things done for the honour of

his Church—perhaps he was not thus tempted or commanded as others

have been,—and so, while he must have less merit with Rome as a

monk, let him have the more with us as a man.

Note to page 188.

_Montée du Carmel_, liv. II. ch. ii. and iv.; also _La Nuit Obscure_, I.

viii. and II. ch. v.-ix. This night is far more dark and painful than

the first and third; and while the first is represented as common to

many religious aspirants, the second is attained but by a few.

Si quelqu’un demande pourquoi l’âme donne le nom de nuit obscure à la

lumière divine qui dissipe ses ignorances, je réponds que cette divine

sagesse est non-seulement la nuit de l’âme, mais encore son supplice,

pour deux raisons: la première est, parce que la sublimité de la sagesse

divine surpasse de telle sorte la capacité de l’âme, que ce n’est que

nuit et ténèbres pour elle; la seconde, la bassesse et l’impureté de

l’âme sont telles, que cette sagesse la remplit de peines et

d’obscurités.—P. 593.

Mais le plus grand supplice de l’âme est de croire que Dieu la hait, la

délaisse, et la jette pour cette raison dans les ténèbres.... En effet,

lorsque la contemplation dont Dieu se sert pour purifier l’âme la

mortifie en la dépouillant de tout, l’âme éprouve, avec une vivacité

pénétrante, toute l’horreur que cause la mort, et toutes les douleurs et

tous les gémissements de l’enfer, &c.... On peut dire avec probabilité,

qu’une âme qui a passé par ce purgatoire spirituel, ou n’entrera pas

dans le purgatoire de l’autre monde, ou n’y demeurera pas longtemps.—P.

597.

But the most characteristic passage on this subject is the following: it

contains the essence of his mysticism:—Les affections et les

connaissances de l’esprit purifié et élevé à la perfection sont d’un

rang supérieur aux affections et aux connaissances naturelles, elles

sont surnaturelles et divines; de sorte que, pour en acquérir les actes

ou les habitudes, il est nécessaire que celles _qui ne sortent point des

bornes de la nature_ soient éteintes. C’est pourquoi il est d’une grande

utilité en cette matière que l’esprit perde dans cette nuit obscure ses

connaissances naturelles, pour être revêtu de cette lumière très-subtile

et toute divine, et pour devenir lui-même, en quelque façon, tout divin

dans son union avec la sagesse de Dieu. Cette nuit ou cette obscurité

doit durer autant de temps qu’il en faut pour contracter l’habitude dans

l’usage qu’on fait de cette lumière surnaturelle. On doit dire la même

chose de la volonté: elle est obligée de se défaire de toutes ses

affections qui l’attachent aux objets naturels, pour recevoir les

admirables effets de l’amour qui est extrêmement spirituel, subtil,

délicat, intime, qui surpasse tous les sentiments naturels et toutes les

affections de la volonté, qui est enfin tout divin; et afin qu’elle soit

toute transformée en cette amour par l’union qui lui est accordée dans

la perte de tous ses biens naturels.

Il faut encore que la mémoire soit dénuée des images qui lui forment les

connaissances douces et tranquilles des choses dont elle se souvient,

afin qu’elle les regarde comme des choses étrangères, et que ces choses

lui paraissent d’une manière différente de l’idée qu’elle en avait

auparavant. Par ce moyen, cette nuit obscure retirera l’esprit du

sentiment commun et ordinaire qu’il avait des objets créés, et lui

imprimera _un sentiment tout divin_, qui lui semblera étranger; en sorte

que l’âme vivra comme hors d’elle-même, et élevée au-dessus de la vie

humaine; elle doutera quelquefois si ce qui se passe en elle n’est point

un enchantement, ou une stupidité d’esprit; elle s’étonnera de voir et

d’entendre des choses qui lui semblent fort nouvelles, quoiqu’elles

soient les mêmes que celles qu’elle avait autrefois entre les mains. _La

cause de ce changement est parce que l’âme doit perdre entièrement ses

connaissances et ses sentiments humains, pour prendre des connaissances

et des sentiments divins; ce qui est plus propre de la vie future que de

la vie présente._—P. 601.

Note to page 191.

‘Pour répondre à cette objection, je dis que plus la mémoire est unie à

Dieu, plus elle perd ses connaissances distinctes et particulières,

jusqu’à ce qu’elle les oublie entièrement: ce qui arrive lorsque l’âme

est établie dans l’union parfaite. C’est pourquoi elle tombe d’abord

dans un grand oubli, puisque le souvenir des espèces et des

connaíssances s’évanouit en elle. Ensuite elle se comporte à l’égard des

choses extérieures avec une négligence si notable et un si grand mépris

d’elle-même, qu’étant toute abîmée en Dieu, elle oublie le boire et le

manger, et elle ne sait si elle a fait quelque chose ou non, si elle a

vu ou non; si on lui a parlé ou non. Mais lorsqu’elle est affermie dans

l’habitude de l’union, qui est son souverain bien, elle ne souffre plus

ces oubliances dans les choses raisonnables, dans les choses morales, ni

dans les choses naturelles: au contraire, elle est plus parfaite dans

les opérations convenables à son état, quoiqu’elle les produise par le

ministère des images et des connaissances que Dieu excite d’une façon

particulière dans la mémoire. Car lorsque l’habitude de l’union, qui est

un état surnaturel, est formée, la mémoire et les autres puissances

quittent leurs opérations naturelles et passent jusqu’à Dieu, qui est à

leur égard un terme surnaturel. En sorte que la mémoire étant toute

transformée en Dieu, ses opérations ne lui sont plus imprimées, et ne

demeurent plus attachées à elle. La mémoire et les autres facultés de

l’âme sont occupées de Dieu avec un empire si absolu, qu’elles semblent

être toutes divines, et que c’est lui-même qui les meut par son esprit

et par sa volonté divine, et qui les fait opérer en quelque façon

divinement: “Puisque celui,” dit l’Apôtre, “qui s’unit au Seigneur,

devient un même esprit avec lui” (1 Cor. vi. 17). Il est donc véritable

que les opérations de l’âme, étant unies totalement à Dieu, sont toutes

divines.’—_Montée du Carmel_, liv. III. ch. i.

Note to page 192.

_La Nuit Obscure_, liv. II. ch. xvii. xviii.:—‘L’esprit malin ne peut

connaître ce qui se passe dans la volonté que par les opérations de ces

puissances. Ainsi, plus les communications de Dieu son spirituelles,

intérieures, et éloignées des sens, moins il peut découvrir et les

pénétrer’.—P. 621.

Evil angels may counterfeit those supernatural communications which are

vouchsafed through the agency of the good. But the infused passive

contemplation, in which neither the understanding, the imagination, nor

the sense, exercise their representative office, is secret and safe.

‘Quand Dieu la (l’âme) comble immédiatement par lui-même de ses grâces

spirituelles, elle se dérobe entièrement à la vue de son adversaire,

parce que Dieu, qui est son souverain Seigneur, demeure en elle, et ni

les bons ni les mauvais anges ne peuvent y avoir entrée, ni découvrir

les communications intimes et secrètes qui se font entre Dieu et l’âme.

Elles sont toutes divines, elles sont infiniment élevées, elles sont en

quelque sorte les sacrés attouchements des deux extrémités qui se

trouvent entre Dieu et l’âme dans leur union: et c’est là où l’âme

reçoit plus de biens spirituels qu’en tous les autres degrés de la

contemplation (_Cant._ I. 1). C’est aussi ce que l’épouse demandait,

quand elle priait l’Epoux divin de lui donner un saint baiser de sa

bouche’.—Chap. xxiii. p. 623.

Thus, this culminating point of negation is at least, to some extent, a

safeguard. The extinction of knowledge, by confining ourselves to the

incomprehensible (_Lettres Spirituelles_, p. 724), and of joy, by

renouncing spiritual delights, the refusal to entertain any

extraordinary manifestations that assume a definite form or purport,

does at the same time shut out all that region of visionary

hallucination in which many mystics have passed their days. It is

indisputably true that the more the mystic avoids, rather than craves,

the excitements of imagination, sentiment, and miracle, the safer must

he be from the delusions to which he is exposed, if not by the juggle of

lying spirits, by the fever of his own distempered brain. No one who

obeys John’s great maxim, ‘Il ne faut pas voyager pour voir, mais pour

ne pas voir,’ will trouble the holy darkness of his church by any

erratic novelties of light. Indeed, against such danger careful

provision is made by that law which is with him the _sine quâ non_ of

mystical progress,—Ne regardez jamais votre supérieur, quel qu’il soit,

que comme Dieu même, puisqu’il vous est donné comme lieutenant de

Dieu.’—_Précautions Spirituelles_, p. 734.

Footnote 300:

His exhortations here carry ascetic self-abnegation far beyond the

Quietist indifference of Fénélon or Madame Guyon. They were

satisfied—he, always, and she throughout her later life—to seek a

state of calm, to hail joy or sorrow alike, with the trustful

equanimity of perfect resignation. John is too violent—too much

enamoured of miseries, to await the will of Providence. His ambition

will command events, and make them torments.

‘Au reste, le meilleur moyen, le plus méritoire et le plus propre pour

acquérir les vertus; le moyen, dis-je, le plus sûr pour mortifier la

joie, l’espérance, la crainte et la douleur, est de se porter toujours

aux choses non pas les plus faciles, mais les plus difficiles; non pas

les plus savoureuses, mais les plus insipides; non pas les plus

agréables, mais les plus désagréables; non pas à celles qui consolent,

mais à celles qui causent de la peine; non pas aux plus grandes, mais

aux plus petites; non pas aux plus sublimes et aux plus précieuses,

mais aux plus basses et aux plus méprisables. Il faut enfin désirer et

rechercher ce qu’il y a de pire, et non ce qu’il y a de meilleur, afin

de se mettre, pour l’amour de Jésus Christ, dans la privation de

toutes les choses du monde, et d’entrer dans l’esprit d’une nudité

parfaite....

‘Premièrement, il faut que celui qui veut réprimer cette passion tâche

de faire les choses qui tournent à son déshonneur, et il aura soin de

se faire mépriser aussi par le prochain.

‘Secondement, il dira lui-même et fera dire aux autres les choses qui

lui attirent du mépris.’—_Montée du Carmel_, liv. II. ch. xiii.

Footnote 301:

Dionysius is very clearly followed into his darkness in _La Montée du

Carmel_, liv. II. chap. viii.; and his Hierarchies reappear in _La

Nuit Obscure_, liv. II. ch. xii.

Footnote 302:

_La Nuit Obscure_, liv. II. ch. iv.; _et passim_.

Footnote 303:

This first Night is treated of at length in the first book of the

_Montée du Carmel_, and in the first of the _Nuit Obscure_. The

supernatural sensuous enjoyments, alluded to, are described in the

_Montée du Carmel_, liv. II. ch. xi. They are placed in the second

Night,—the compensation not taking place immediately; and their

recipient is on no account to rely on them, or desire their

continuance (p. 444). By ‘sense,’ John understands, not the body

merely, but the least disorder of the passions, and all those

imperfections so common to beginners which arise from an undue

eagerness for religious enjoyments, such, for example, as what he

calls spiritual avarice, spiritual luxury, spiritual _gourmandise_,

&c.

Footnote 304:

See Note on p. 195.

Footnote 305:

_Montée du Carmel_, liv. II. ch. xxv.-xxxii.

Footnote 306:

_Ibid._ ch. viii. and vi.

Footnote 307:

_Ibid._ ch. xvii. and liv. III. ch. xii.

Footnote 308:

What a scope for the indignant eloquence of Bossuet, had Fénélon

proclaimed as possible such a sudden equipment with all imaginable

virtues as this:—Quelques-unes de ces connaissances et de ces touches

intérieures que Dieu répand dans l’âme l’enrichissent de telle sorte

qu’une seule suffit, non-seulement pour la délivrer tout d’un coup des

imperfections qu’elle n’avait pu vaincre durant tout le cours de sa

vie, mais aussi pour l’orner des vertus chrétiennes et des dons

divins.—_Montée du Carmel_, liv. II. ch. xxvi. p. 484.

Footnote 309:

In the chapter just cited, John says expressly, ‘Elle ne saurait

cependant s’élever à ces connaissances et à ces touches divines par sa

co-opération,’ and describes these gifts as coming from God,

‘subitement et sans attendre le consentement de la volonté.’—P. 485.

So again, quite as strongly, liv. II. chap. xi. p. 445. He

discountenances the attempt to seek perfection by the ‘voies

surnaturelles,’ yet his books are an introduction to the mystical

evening, and a guide through the mystical midnight.

Footnote 310:

_La Nuit Obscure_, liv. II. ch. ix.; especially the passage cited in

note on p. 195.

Footnote 311:

This night occupies the third book of the _Montée du Carmel_.

Footnote 312:

See Note on p. 196.

Footnote 313:

See second Note on p. 196.

Footnote 314:

See the life of the saint in Alban Butler, Nov. 24.

BOOK THE TENTH

QUIETISM.

CHAPTER I.

Love! if thy destined sacrifice am I,

Come, slay thy victim, and prepare thy fires;

Plunged in thy depths of mercy let me die

The death which every soul that lives desires!

MADAME GUYON.

‘Do you remember,’ said Atherton to Willoughby, when he had called to

see him one morning, ‘the hunt we once had after that passage in Jeremy

Taylor, about Bishop Ivo’s adventure? Coleridge relates the story

without saying exactly where it is, and his daughter states in a note

that she had been unable to find the place in Taylor.’

‘I recollect it perfectly; and we discovered it, I think, in the first

part of his sermon _On the Mercy of the Divine Judgments_. Ivo, going on

an embassy for St. Louis, meets by the way a grave, sad woman, doesn’t

he?—with fire in one hand, and water in the other; and when he inquires

what these symbols may mean, she answers, “My purpose is with fire to

burn Paradise, and with my water to quench the flames of hell, that men

may serve God without the incentives of hope and fear, and purely for

the love of God.”

‘Well, Gower has painted her portrait for us,—Queen Quietude, he calls

her: and it is to be hung up here over my chimney-piece, by the next

evening we meet together.’

* * * * *

The evening came. Atherton was to read a paper on ‘Madame Guyon and the

Quietist Controversy,’ and Gower was to exhibit and explain his

allegorical picture.

This painting represented a female figure, simply clad in sombre

garments, sitting on a fragment of rock at the summit of a high hill. On

her head hung a garland, half untwined, from neglect, which had been

fantastically woven of cypress, bound about with heart’s-ease. Many

flowers of the heart’s-ease had dropped off, withered; some were lying

unheeded in her lap. Her face was bent downward; its expression

perfectly calm, and the cast of sadness it wore rather recorded a past,

than betrayed a present sorrow. Her eyes were fixed pensively, and

without seeming to see them, on the thin hands which lay folded on her

knees. No anxious effort of thought contracted that placid brow; no

eager aspiration lifted those meekly-drooping eyelids.

At her feet lay, on her right, the little brazier in which she had

carried her fire, still emitting its grey curls of smoke; and, on her

left, the overturned water-urn—a Fortunatus-purse of water,—from whose

silver hollow an inexhaustible stream welled out, and leaping down, was

lost to sight among the rocks.

Behind her lay two wastes, stretching from east to west. The vast

tracts, visible from her far-seeing mountain, were faintly presented in

the distance of the picture. But they were never looked upon; her back

was toward them; they belonged to a past never remembered. In the east

stretched level lands, covered far as the eye could reach with cold grey

inundation. Here and there coal-black ridges and dots indicated the

highest grounds still imperfectly submerged; and in some places clouds

of steam, water-spouts, and jets of stones and mire,—even boulders of

rock, hurled streaming out of the waters into the air,—betrayed the last

struggles of the Fire-Kingdom with the invasion of those illimitable

tides. So have her enchantments slain the Giant of Fire, and laid him to

rest under a water-pall. The place of dolours and of endless burning—so

populous with Sorrows—is to be a place of great waters, where the slow

vacant waves of the far-glittering reaches will come and go among the

channels and the pools, and not even the bittern shall be there, with

his foot to print the ooze, with his wing to shadow the sleeping

shallows, with his cry to declare it all a desolation.

In the western background, the saintly art of Queen Quietude has made a

whole burnt-offering of the cedar shades, and flowery labyrinths, and

angel-builded crystal domes of Paradise. Most fragrant holocaust that

ever breathed against the sky! Those volumes of cloud along the west,

through which the sun is going down with dimmed and doubtful lustre (as

though his had been the hand which put the torch to such a burning)—they

are heavy with spicy odours. Such sweet wonders of the Eden woodlands

cannot but give out sweetness in their dying. The heavens grow dusk and

slumbrous with so much incense. A dreamy faintness from the laden air

weighs down the sense. It seems time to sleep—for us, for all nature, to

sleep, weary of terrestrial grossness and of mortal limitation,—to

sleep, that all may awake, made new; and so, transformed divinely to the

first ideal, have divine existence only, and God be all and in all. For

God is love, and when hope and fear are dead, then love is all.

Somewhat thus did Gower describe his picture; whereon, in truth, he had

expended no little art,—such a haze of repose, and likewise of

unreality, had he contrived to throw over this work of fancy; and such a

tone had he given, both to the work of the fire on the one side, and to

that of the water on the other. The fire did not seem a cruel fire, nor

the water an inhospitable water. Golden lines of light from the sun, and

rose-red reflections from clouds whose breasts were feathered with fire,

rested on the heads of the waves, where the great flood lay rocking. The

very ruins of Paradise,—those charred tree-trunks—those dusty

river-beds—that shrivelled boskage and white grass,—did not look utterly

forlorn. Some of the glassy walls still stood, shining like rubies in

the sunset, and glittering at their basements and their gateways with

solid falls and pools of gold and silver, where their rich adornment had

run down molten to their feet. The Destroyer was the Purifier; and the

waiting sigh for renewal was full of trust.

‘A better frontispiece,’ said Atherton, ‘I could not have for my poor

paper. I might have been raised to a less prosaic strain, and omitted

some less relevant matter, had I been able to place your picture

before me while writing. For upon this question of disinterested love,

and so of quietude, our mysticism now mainly turns. With Fénélon and

Madame Guyon, mysticism hovers no longer on the confines of pantheism.

It deals less with mere abstractions. It is less eager to have

everything which is in part done away, that the perfect may come, even

while we are here. It is more patient and lowly, and will oftener use

common means. Its inner light is not arrogant—for submissive love is

that light; and it flames forth with no pretension to special

revelations and novel gospels; neither does it construct any inspired

system of philosophy. It is less feverishly ecstatic, less grossly

theurgic, than in the lower forms of its earlier history. Comparative

health is indicated by the fact that it aspires chiefly to a state of

continuous resignation,—covets less starts of transport and

instantaneous transformations. It seeks, rather, a long and even reach

of trustful calm, which shall welcome joy and sorrow with equal

mind,—shall live in the present, moment by moment, passive and

dependent on the will of the Well-Beloved.

WILLOUGHBY. With Madame Guyon, too, I think the point of the old

antithesis about which the mystics have so much to say is shifted;—I

mean that the contrast lies, with her, not between Finite and

Infinite—the finite Affirmation, the infinite Negation,—between sign and

thing signified—between mode and modelessness—mediate and immediate,—but

simply between God and Self.

ATHERTON. And so mysticism grows somewhat more clear, and reduces itself

to narrower compass.

GOWER. And, just as it does so, is condemned by Rome.

ATHERTON. No doubt the attempt to reach an unattainable

disinterestedness was less dangerous and less unwholesome than the

strain after superhuman knowledge and miraculous vision.

MRS. ATHERTON. I have just opened on one of her verses in Cowper here,

which exactly expresses what Mr. Willoughby was suggesting:—

The love of Thee flows just as much

As that of ebbing self subsides;

Our hearts, their scantiness is such,

Bear not the conflict of two rival tides.

Stay; here is one I marked, which goes farther still. It is an

allegorical poem. Love has bidden her embark, and then withdraws the

vessel,—leaves her floating on the rushes and water-flowers, and spreads

his wings for flight, heedless of her cries and prayers. At last she

says,—

Be not angry; I resign

Henceforth all my will to thine:

I consent that thou depart,

Though thine absence breaks my heart;

Go then, and for ever too;

All is right that thou wilt do.

This was just what Love intended,

He was now no more offended;

Soon as I became a child,

Love returned to me and smiled:

Never strife shall more betide

’Twixt the bridegroom and his bride.

ATHERTON. Yes, this is the pure love, the holy indifference of Quietism.

WILLOUGHBY. May not this imaginary surrender of eternal happiness—or, at

least, the refusal to cherish ardent anticipations of heaven, really

invigorate our spiritual nature, by concentrating our religion on a

_present_ salvation from sin?

ATHERTON. I think it possibly may, where contemplation of heaven is the

resource of spiritual indolence or weariness in well-doing,—where the

mind is prone to look forward to the better world, too much as a place

of escape from the painstaking, and difficulty, and discipline of time.

But where the hope of heaven is of the true sort—to put it out of sight

is grievously to weaken, instead of strengthening, our position. I think

we should all find, if we tried, or were unhappily forced to try, the

experiment of sustaining ourselves in a religion that ignored the

future, that we were lamentably enfeebled in two ways. First of all, by

the loss of a support—that heart and courage which the prospect of final

victory gives to every combatant; and then, secondly, by the immense

drain of mental energy involved in the struggle necessary to reconcile

ourselves to that loss. There can be no struggle so exhaustive as this,

for it is against our nature,—not as sin has marred (so Madame Guyon

thought), but as God has made it. Fearful must be the wear and tear of

our religious being, in its vital functions,—and this, not to win, but

to abandon an advantage. ‘He that hath this hope purifieth himself.’ So

far from being able to dispense with it, we find in the hope of

salvation, the helmet of our Christian armour. It is no height of

Christian heroism, but presumption rather, to encounter, bare-headed,

the onslaughts of sin and sorrow—even though the sword of the Spirit may

shine naked in our right hand. But we should, at the same time, remember

that our celestial citizenship is realised by _present_

heavenly-mindedness:—a height and purity of temper, however, which grows

most within as we have the habit of humbly regarding that kingdom as a

place prepared for us. We should not limit our foretastes of heaven to

intervals of calm. We may often be growing most heavenly amid scenes

most unlike heaven.

WILLOUGHBY. In persecution, for example.

ATHERTON. We should not think that we catch its glory only in happy

moments of contemplation, though such musing may well have its permitted

place. Let us say also that every victory over love of ease, over

discontent, over the sluggish coldness of the heart, over reluctance to

duty, over unkindly tempers, is in fact to us an earnest and foretaste

of that heaven, where we shall actively obey with glad alacrity, where

we shall be pleased in all things with all that pleases God, where

glorious powers shall be gloriously developed, undeadened by any

lethargy, unhindered by any painful limitation; and where that Love,

which here has to contend for very life, and to do battle for its

rightful enjoyments, shall possess us wholly, and rejoice and reign

among all the fellowships of the blest throughout the everlasting day.

GOWER. But all this while we have been very rude. Here is Madame Guyon

come to tell us her story, and we have kept her, I don’t know how long,

standing at the door.

KATE. Yes, let us hear your paper first, Mr. Atherton: we can talk

afterwards, you know.

So Atherton began to read.

_QUIETISM._

_Part I.—Madame Guyon._

I.

Jeanne Marie Bouvières de la Mothe was born on Easter-eve, April

13th, 1648, at Montargis. Her sickly childhood was distinguished by

precocious imitations of that religious life which was held in

honour by every one around her. She loved to be dressed in the habit

of a little nun. When little more than four years old, she longed

for martyrdom. Her school-fellows placed her on her knees on a white

cloth, flourished a sabre over her head, and told her to prepare for

the stroke. A shout of triumphant laughter followed the failure of

the child’s courage. She was neglected by her mother, and knocked

about by a spoiled brother. When not at school, she was the pet or

the victim of servants. She began to grow irritable from

ill-treatment, and insincere from fear. When ten years old, she

found a Bible in her sick room, and read it, she says, from morning

to night, committing to memory the historical parts. Some of the

writings of St. Francis de Sales, and the Life of Madame de Chantal,

fell in her way. The latter work proved a powerful stimulant. There

she read of humiliations and austerities numberless, of charities

lavished with a princely munificence, of visions enjoyed and

miracles wrought in honour of those saintly virtues, and of the

intrepidity with which the famous enthusiast wrote with a red-hot

iron on her bosom, the characters of the holy name Jesus. The girl

of twelve years old was bent on copying these achievements on her

little scale. She relieved, taught, and waited on the poor; and, for

lack of the red-hot iron or the courage, sewed on to her breast with

a large needle a piece of paper containing the name of Christ. She

even forged a letter to secure her admission to a conventual

establishment as a nun. The deceit was immediately detected; but the

attempt shows how much more favourable was the religious atmosphere

in which she grew up, to the prosperity of convents than to the

inculcation of truth.

With ripening years, religion gave place to vanity. Her handsome

person and brilliant conversational powers fitted her to shine in

society. She began to love dress, and feel jealous of rival

beauties. Like St. Theresa, at the same age, she sat up far into the

night, devouring romances. Her autobiography records her experience

of the mischievous effects of those tales of chivalry and passion.

When nearly sixteen, it was arranged that she should marry the

wealthy M. Guyon. This gentleman, whom she had seen but three days

before her marriage, was twenty-two years older than herself.

The faults she had were of no very grave description, but her

husband’s house was destined to prove for several years a pitiless

school for their correction. He lived with his mother, a vulgar

and hard-hearted woman. Her low and penurious habits were

unaffected by their wealth; and in the midst of riches, she was

happiest scolding in the kitchen about some farthing matter. She

appears to have hated Madame Guyon with all the strength of her

narrow mind. M. Guyon loved his wife after his selfish sort. If

she was ill, he was inconsolable; if any one spoke against her, he

flew into a passion; yet, at the instigation of his mother, he was

continually treating her with harshness. An artful servant girl,

who tended his gouty leg, was permitted daily to mortify and

insult his wife. Madame Guyon had been accustomed at home to

elegance and refinement,—beneath her husband’s roof she found

politeness contemned and rebuked as pride. When she spoke, she had

been listened to with attention,—now she could not open her mouth

without contradiction. She was charged with presuming to show them

how to talk, reproved for disputatious forwardness, and rudely

silenced. She could never go to see her parents without having

bitter speeches to bear on her return. They, on their part,

reproached her with unnatural indifference towards her own family

for the sake of her new connexions. The ingenious malignity of her

mother-in-law filled every day with fresh vexations. The high

spirit of the young girl was completely broken. She had already

gained a reputation for cleverness and wit—now she sat nightmared

in company, nervous, stiff, and silent, the picture of stupidity.

At every assemblage of their friends she was marked out for some

affront, and every visitor at the house was instructed in the

catalogue of her offences. Sad thoughts would come—how different

might all this have been had she been suffered to select some

other suitor! But it was too late. The brief romance of her life

was gone indeed. There was no friend into whose heart she could

pour her sorrows. Meanwhile, she was indefatigable in the

discharge of every duty,—she endeavoured by kindness, by cheerful

forbearance, by returning good for evil, to secure some kinder

treatment—she was ready to cut out her tongue that she might make

no passionate reply—she reproached herself bitterly for the tears

she could not hide. But these coarse, hard natures were not so to

be won. Her magnanimity surprised, but did not soften minds to

which it was utterly incomprehensible.[315]

Her best course would have been self-assertion and war to the very

utmost. She would have been justified in demanding her right to be

mistress in her own house—in declaring it incompatible with the

obligations binding upon either side, that a third party should be

permitted to sow dissension between a husband and his wife—in

putting her husband, finally, to the choice between his wife and his

mother. M. Guyon is the type of a large class of men. They stand

high in the eye of the world—and not altogether undeservedly—as men

of principle. But their domestic circle is the scene of cruel wrongs

from want of reflection, from a selfish, passionate

inconsiderateness. They would be shocked at the charge of an act of

barbarity towards a stranger, but they will inflict years of mental

distress on those most near to them, for want of decision,

self-control, and some conscientious estimate of what their home

duties truly involve. Had the obligations he neglected, the

wretchedness of which he was indirectly the author, been brought

fairly before the mind of M. Guyon, he would probably have

determined on the side of justice, and a domestic revolution would

have been the consequence. But Madame Guyon conceived herself bound

to suffer in silence. Looking back on those miserable days, she

traced a father’s care in the discipline she endured. Providence had

transplanted Self from a garden where it expanded under love and

praise, to a highway where every passing foot might trample it in

the dust.

A severe illness brought her more than once to the brink of the

grave. She heard of her danger with indifference, for life had no

attraction. Heavy losses befel the family—she could feel no concern.

To end her days in a hospital was even an agreeable anticipation.

Poverty and disgrace could bring no change which would not be more

tolerable than her present suffering. She laboured, with little

success, to find comfort in religious exercises. She examined

herself rigidly, confessed with frequency, strove to subdue all care

about her personal appearance, and while her maid arranged her

hair—how, she cared not—was lost in the study of Thomas à Kempis. At

length she consulted a Franciscan, a holy man, who had just emerged

from a five years’ solitude. ‘Madame,’ said he, ‘you are

disappointed and perplexed because you seek without what you have

within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and you will

find Him.’

II.

These words of the old Franciscan embody the response which has been

uttered in every age by the oracle of mysticism. It has its truth

and its falsehood, as men understand it. There is a legend of an

artist, who was about to carve from a piece of costly sandal-wood an

image of the Madonna; but the material was intractable—his hand

seemed to have lost its skill—he could not approach his ideal. When

about to relinquish his efforts in despair, a voice in a dream bade

him shape the figure from the oak-block which was about to feed his

hearth. He obeyed, and produced a masterpiece. This story represents

the truth which mysticism upholds when it appears as the antagonist

of superstitious externalism. The materials of religious happiness

lie, as it were, near at hand—among affections and desires which are

homely, common, and of the fireside. Let the right direction, the

heavenly influence, be received from without; and heaven is regarded

with the love of home, and home sanctified by the hope of heaven.

The far-fetched costliness of outward works—the restless, selfish

bargaining with asceticism and with priestcraft for a priceless

heaven, can never redeem and renew a soul to peace. But mysticism

has not stopped here; it takes a step farther, and that step is

false. It would seclude the soul too much from the external; and, to

free it from a snare, removes a necessary help. Like some

overshadowing tree, it hides the rising plant from the force of

storms, but it also intercepts the appointed sunshine—it protects,

but it deprives—and beneath its boughs hardy weeds have grown more

vigorously than precious grain. Removing, more or less, the

counterpoise of the letter, in its zeal for the spirit, it promotes

an intense and morbid self-consciousness. Roger North tells us that

when he and his brother stood on the top of the Monument, it was

difficult for them to persuade themselves that their weight would

not throw down the building. The dizzy elevation of the mystic

produces sometimes a similar overweaning sense of personality.

Often instead of rising above the infirmities of our nature, and the

common laws of life, the mystic becomes the sport of the idlest

phantasy, the victim of the most humiliating reaction. The excited

and overwrought temperament mistakes every vibration of the fevered

nerves for a manifestation from without; as in the solitude, the

silence, and the glare of a great desert, travellers have seemed to

hear distinctly the church bells of their native village. In such

cases an extreme susceptibility of the organ, induced by

peculiarities of climate, gives to a mere conception or memory the

power of an actual sound; and, in a similar way, the mystic has

often both tempted and enraptured himself—his own breath has made

both the ‘airs from heaven,’ and the ‘blasts from hell;’ and the

attempt to annihilate Self has ended at last in leaving nothing but

Self behind. When the tide of enthusiasm has ebbed, and the channel

has become dry, simply because humanity cannot long endure a strain

so excessive, then that magician and master of legerdemain, the

Fancy, is summoned to recal, to eke out, or to interpret the

mystical experience; then that fantastic acrobat, Affectation, is

admitted to play its tricks—just as, when the waters of the Nile are

withdrawn, the canals of Cairo are made the stage on which the

jugglers exhibit their feats of skill to the crowds on either bank.

III.

To return to Madame Guyon. From the hour of that interview with the

Franciscan she was a mystic. The secret of the interior life flashed

upon her in a moment. She had been starving in the midst of fulness;

God was near, not far off; the kingdom of heaven was within her. The

love of God took possession of her soul with an inexpressible

happiness. Beyond question, her heart apprehended, in that joy, the

great truth that God is love—that He is more ready to forgive, than

we to ask forgiveness—that He is not an austere being whose regard

is to be purchased by rich gifts, tears, and penance. This

emancipating, sanctifying belief became the foundation of her

religion. She raised on this basis of true spirituality a mystical

superstructure, in which there was some hay and stubble, but the

corner stone had first been rightly laid, never to be removed from

its place.

Prayer, which had before been so difficult, was now delightful and

indispensable; hours passed away like moments—she could scarcely

cease from praying. Her trials seemed great no longer; her inward

joy consumed, like a fire, the reluctance, the murmur, and the

sorrow, which had their birth in self. A spirit of confiding peace,

a sense of rejoicing possession, pervaded all her days. God was

continually present with her, and she seemed completely yielded up

to God. She appeared to feel herself, and to behold all creatures,

as immersed in the gracious omnipresence of the Most High. In her

adoring contemplation of the Divine presence, she found herself

frequently unable to employ any words, or to pray for any particular

blessings.[316] She was then little more than twenty years of age.

The ardour of her devotion would not suffer her to rest even here.

It appeared to her that self was not yet sufficiently suppressed.

There were some things she chose as pleasant, other things she

avoided as painful. She was possessed with the notion that every

choice which can be referred to self is selfish, and therefore

criminal.

On this principle, Æsop’s traveller, who gathered his cloak about

him in the storm, and relinquished it in the sunshine, should be

stigmatized as a selfish man, because he thought only of his own

comfort, and did not remember at the moment his family, his country,

or his Maker. It is not regard for self which makes us selfish, but

regard for self to the exclusion of due regard for others. But the

zeal of Madame Guyon blinded her to distinctions such as these. She

became filled with an insatiable desire of suffering.[317] She

resolved to force herself to what she disliked, and deny herself

what was gratifying, that the mortified senses might at last have no

choice whatever. She displayed the most extraordinary power of will

in her efforts to annihilate her will. Every day she took the

discipline with scourges pointed with iron. She tore her flesh with

brambles, thorns, and nettles. Her rest was almost destroyed by the

pain she endured. She was in very delicate health, continually

falling ill, and could eat scarcely anything. Yet she forced herself

to eat what was most nauseous to her; she often kept wormwood in her

mouth, and put coloquintida in her food, and when she walked she

placed stones in her shoes. If a tooth ached she would bear it

without seeking a remedy; when it ached no longer, she would go and

have it extracted. She imitated Madame Chantal in dressing the sores

of the poor, and ministering to the wants of the sick. On one

occasion she found that she could not seek the indulgence offered by

her Church for remitting some of the pains of purgatory. At that

time she felt no doubt concerning the power of the priest to grant

such absolution, but she thought it wrong to desire to escape any

suffering. She was afraid of resembling those mercenary souls, who

are afraid not so much of displeasing God, as of the penalties

attached to sin. She was too much in earnest for visionary

sentimentalism. Her efforts manifest a serious practical endeavour

after that absolute disinterestedness which she erroneously thought

both attainable and enjoined. She was far from attaching any

expiatory value to these acts of voluntary mortification, they were

a means to an end. When she believed that end attained, in the

entire death of self, she relinquished them.

IV.

Situated as Madame Guyon was now, her mind had no resource but to

collapse upon itself, and the feelings so painfully pent up became

proportionately vehement. She found a friend in one Mère Granger;

but her she could see seldom, mostly by stealth. An ignorant

confessor joined her mother-in-law and husband in the attempt to

hinder her from prayer and religious exercises. She endeavoured in

everything to please her husband, but he complained that she loved

God so much she had no love left for him. She was watched day and

night; she dared not stir from her mother-in-law’s chamber or her

husband’s bedside. If she took her work apart to the window, they

followed her there, to see that she was not in prayer. When her

husband went abroad, he forbade her to pray in his absence. The

affections even of her child were taken from her, and the boy was

taught to disobey and insult his mother. Thus utterly alone, Madame

Guyon, while apparently engaged in ordinary matters, was constantly

in a state of abstraction; her mind was elsewhere, rapt in devout

contemplation. She was in company without hearing a word that was

said. She went out into the garden to look at the flowers, and could

bring back no account of them, the eye of her reverie could mark

nothing actually visible. When playing at piquet, to oblige her

husband, this ‘interior attraction’ was often more powerfully felt

than even when at church. In her _Autobiography_ she describes her

experience as follows:—

‘The spirit of prayer was nourished and increased from their

contrivances and endeavours to disallow me any time for practising

it. I loved without motive or reason for loving; for nothing passed

in my head, but much in the innermost of my soul. I thought not

about any recompence, gift, or favour, or anything which regards the

lover. The Well-beloved was the only object which attracted my heart

wholly to Himself. I could not contemplate His attributes. I knew

nothing else but to _love_ and to _suffer_. Oh, ignorance more truly

learned than any science of the Doctors, since it so well taught me

Jesus Christ crucified, and brought me to be in love with His holy

cross! In its beginning I was attracted with so much force, that it

seemed as if my head was going to join my heart. I found that

insensibly my body bent in spite of me. I did not then comprehend

from whence it came; but have learned since, that as all passed in

the will, which is the sovereign of the powers, _that_ attracted the

others after it, and reunited them in God, their divine centre and

sovereign happiness. And as these powers were then unaccustomed to

be united, it required the more violence to effect that union.

Wherefore it was the more perceived. Afterwards it became so

strongly riveted as to seem to be quite natural. This was so strong

that I could have wished to die, in order to be inseparably united

without any interstice to Him who so powerfully attracted my heart.

As all passed in the will, the imagination and the understanding

being absorbed in it, in a union of enjoyment, I knew not what to

say, having never read or heard of such a state as I experienced;

for, before this, I had known nothing of the operations of God in

souls. I had only read _Philothea_ (written by St. Francis de

Sales), with the _Imitation of Christ_ (by Thomas à Kempis), and the

Holy Scriptures; also the _Spiritual Combat_, which mentions none of

these things.’[318]

In this extract she describes strange physical sensations as

accompanying her inward emotion. The intense excitement of the soul

assumes, in her over-strained and secluded imagination, the

character of a corporeal seizure. The sickly frame, so morbidly

sensitive, appears to participate in the supernatural influences

communicated to the spirit. On a subsequent occasion, she speaks of

herself as so oppressed by the fulness of the Divine manifestations

imparted to her, as to be compelled to loosen her dress. More than

once some of those who sat next her imagined that they perceived a

certain marvellous efflux of grace proceeding from her to

themselves. She believed that many persons, for whom she was

interceding with great fervour, were sensible at the time of an

extraordinary gracious influence instantaneously vouchsafed, and

that her spirit communicated mysteriously, ‘in the Lord,’ with the

spirits of those dear to her when far away. She traced a special

intervention of Providence in the fact, that she repeatedly ‘felt a

strong draught to the door’ just when it was necessary to go out to

receive a secret letter from her friend, Mère Granger; that the rain

should have held up precisely when she was on her road to or from

mass; and that at the very intervals when she was able to steal out

to hear it, some priest was always found performing, or ready to

perform the service, though at a most unusual hour.[319]

V.

Imaginary as all this may have been, the Church of Rome, at least,

had no right to brand with the stigma of extravagance any such

transference of the spiritual to the sensuous, of the metaphysical

to the physical. The fancies of Madame Guyon in this respect are

innocent enough in comparison with the monstrosities devised by

Romish marvel-mongers to exalt her saints withal. St. Philip Neri

was so inflamed with love to God as to be insensible to all cold,

and burned with such a fire of devotion that his body, divinely

feverish, could not be cooled by exposure to the wildest winter

night. For two-and-fifty years he was the subject of a supernatural

palpitation, which kept his bed and chair, and everything moveable

about him, in a perpetual tremble. For that space of time his breast

was miraculously swollen to the thickness of a fist above his heart.

On a post-mortem examination of the holy corpse, it was found that

two of the ribs had been broken, to allow the sacred ardour of his

heart more room to play! The doctors swore solemnly that the

phenomenon could be nothing less than a miracle. A divine hand had

thus literally ‘enlarged the heart’ of the devotee.[320] St. Philip

enjoyed, with many other saints, the privilege of being miraculously

elevated into the air by the fervour of his heavenward aspirations.

The _Acta Sanctorum_ relates how Ida of Louvain—seized with an

overwhelming desire to present her gifts with the Wise Men to the

child Jesus—received, on the eve of the Three Kings, the

distinguished favour of being permitted to swell to a terrific size,

and then gradually to return to her original dimensions. On another

occasion, she was gratified by being thrown down in the street in an

ecstacy, and enlarging so that her horror-stricken attendant had to

embrace her with all her might to keep her from bursting. The noses

of eminent saints have been endowed with so subtile a sense that

they have detected the stench of concealed sins, and enjoyed, as a

literal fragrance, the well-known odour of sanctity. St. Philip Neri

was frequently obliged to hold his nose and turn away his head when

confessing very wicked people. In walking the streets of some

depraved Italian town, the poor man must have endured all the pains

of Coleridge in Cologne, where, he says,

‘I counted two-and-seventy stenches,

All well-defined, and several stinks!’

Maria of Oignys received what theurgic mysticism calls the gift of

jubilation. For three days and nights upon the point of death, she

sang without remission her ecstatic swan-song, at the top of a voice

whose hoarseness was miraculously healed. She felt as though the

wing of an angel were spread upon her breast, thrilling her heart

with the rapture, and pouring from her lips the praises, of the

heavenly world. With the melodious modulation of an inspired

recitative, she descanted on the mysteries of the Trinity and the

incarnation—improvised profound expositions of the Scripture—invoked

the saints, and interceded for her friends.[321] A nun who visited

Catharina Ricci in her ecstasy, saw with amazement her face

transformed into the likeness of the Redeemer’s countenance. St.

Hildegard, in the enjoyment and description of her visions, and in

the utterance of her prophecies, was inspired with a complete

theological terminology hitherto unknown to mortals. A glossary of

the divine tongue was long preserved among her manuscripts at

Wiesbaden.[322] It is recorded in the life of St. Veronica of

Binasco, that she received the miraculous gift of tears in a measure

so copious, that the spot where she knelt appeared as though a jug

of water had been overset there. She was obliged to have an earthen

vessel ready in her cell to receive the supernatural efflux, which

filled it frequently to the weight of several Milan pounds! Ida of

Nivelles, when in an ecstasy one day, had it revealed to her that a

dear friend was at the same moment in the same condition. The friend

also was simultaneously made aware that Ida was immersed in the same

abyss of divine light with herself. Thenceforward they were as one

soul in the Lord, and the Virgin Mary appeared to make a third in

the saintly fellowship. Ida was frequently enabled to communicate

with spiritual personages, without words, after the manner of

angelic natures. On one occasion, when at a distance from a priest

to whom she was much attached, both she and the holy man were

entranced at the same time; and, when wrapt to heaven, he beheld her

in the presence of Christ, at whose command she communicated to him,

by a spiritual kiss, a portion of the grace with which she herself

had been so richly endowed. To Clara of Montfaucon allusion has

already been made. In the right side of her heart was found,

completely formed, a little figure of Christ upon the cross, about

the size of a thumb. On the left, under what resembled the bloody

cloth, lay the instruments of the passion—the crown of thorns, the

nails, &c. So sharp was the miniature lance, that the Vicar-General

Berengarius, commissioned to assist at the examination by the Bishop

of Spoleto, pricked therewith his reverend finger. This marvel was

surpassed in the eighteenth century by a miracle more piquant still.

Veronica Giuliani caused a drawing to be made of the many forms and

letters which she declared had been supernaturally modelled within

her heart. To the exultation of the faithful—and the everlasting

confusion of all Jews, Protestants, and Turks—a post-mortem

examination disclosed the accuracy of her description, to the

minutest point. There were the sacred initials in a large and

distinct Roman character, the crown of thorns, two flames, seven

swords, the spear, the reed, &c.—all arranged just as in the diagram

she had furnished.[323] The diocese of Liège was edified, in the

twelfth century, by seeing, in the person of the celebrated

Christina Mirabilis, how completely the upward tendency of

protracted devotion might vanquish the law of gravitation. So

strongly was she drawn away from this gross earth, that the

difficulty was to keep her on the ground. She was continually flying

up to the tops of lonely towers and trees, there to enjoy a rapture

with the angels, and a roost with the birds. In the frequency, the

elevation, and the duration of her ascents into the air, she

surpassed even the high-flown devotion of St. Peter of Alcantara,

who was often seen suspended high above the fig-trees which

overshadowed his hermitage at Badajos—his eyes upturned, his arms

outspread—while the servant sent to summon him to dinner, gazed with

open mouth, and sublunary cabbage cooled below. The limbs of

Christina lost the rigidity, as her body lost the grossness, common

to vulgar humanity. In her ecstasies she was contracted into the

spherical form—her head was drawn inward and downward towards her

breast, and she rolled up like a hedgehog. When her relatives wished

to take and secure her, they had to employ a man to hunt her like a

bird. Having started his game, he had a long run across country

before he brought her down, in a very unsportsmanlike manner, by a

stroke with his bludgeon which broke her shin. When a few miracles

had been wrought to vindicate her aërostatic mission, she was

allowed to fly about in peace.[324] She has occupied, ever since,

the first place in the ornithology of Roman-catholic saintship. Such

are a few of the specimens which might be collected in multitudes

from Romanist records, showing how that communion has bestowed its

highest favour on the most coarse and materialised apprehensions of

spiritual truth. Extravagant inventions such as these—monstrous as

the adventures of Baron Münchausen, without their wit—have been

invested with the sanction and defended by the thunder of the Papal

chair. Yet this very Church of Rome incarcerated Molinos and Madame

Guyon as dangerous enthusiasts.

VI.

Madame Guyon had still some lessons to learn. On a visit to Paris,

the glittering equipages of the park, and the gaieties of St. Cloud,

revived the old love of seeing and being seen. During a tour in the

provinces with her husband, flattering visits and graceful

compliments everywhere followed such beauty, such accomplishments,

and such virtue, with a delicate and intoxicating applause.

Vanity—dormant, but not dead—awoke within her for the last time. She

acknowledged, with bitter self-reproach, the power of the world, the

weakness of her own resolves. In the spiritual desertion which

ensued, she recognised the displeasure of her Lord, and was

wretched. She applied to confessors—they were miserable comforters,

all of them. They praised her while she herself was filled with

self-loathing. She estimated the magnitude of her sins by the

greatness of the favour which had been shown her. The bland

worldliness of her religious advisers could not blind so true a

heart, or pacify so wakeful a conscience. She found relief only in a

repentant renewal of her self-dedication to the Saviour, in

renouncing for ever the last remnant of confidence in any strength

of her own.

It was about this period that she had a remarkable conversation with

a beggar, whom she found upon a bridge, as, followed by her footman,

she was walking one day to church. This singular mendicant refused

her offered alms—spoke to her of God and divine things—and then of

her own state, her devotion, her trials, and her faults. He declared

that God required of her not merely to labour as others did to

secure their salvation, that they might escape the pains of hell,

but to aim at such perfection and purity in this life, as to escape

those of purgatory. She asked him who he was. He replied, that he

had formerly been a beggar, but now was such no more;—mingled with

the stream of people, and she never saw him afterwards.[325]