But if Protestantism has had its Mystics, Romanism hfis not been altogether wanting in these religious en- thusiasts. In France, in the Kith century, appeared St, Francis de Sales, and in Spain, St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross; all of them making their mystical doc- trines subservient to tlie interests of the IMother Church. " Nowhere," says IVIr. Vauglian, •■ is the duty of implicit self-surrender to tlie director or confessor more constant- ly inculcated than in the writings of Tlieresa and John of the Cross, and nowhere are the inade(iuacy and mis- chief of the principle more apparent. .)ohn warns tlie Mystic that his oidy safeguard against delusion lies in perpetual and unreserved appeal to his director. The- resa tells us that whenever our I^)rd commanded her in prayer to do anything, and her confessor ordered the opposite, the divine guide enjoined obedience to the human, and would influence the mind of the confessor
afterwards, so that he was moved to counsel what he had before forbidden ! Of course ; for who knows what might come of it if enthusiasts were to have visions and revelations on their own account? The director must draw after him these fiery and dangerous natures, as the lion-leaders of an Indian pageantrj- conduct their charge, holding a chain and administering opiates. The question between the orthodox and the heterodox mys- ticism of the 14th century was really one of theological doctrine. The same question in the 16th and 17th was simply one of ecclesiastical interests." According to the mystical doctrine of St. Theresa, there are four degrees of prayer: (1) simple mental prayer; (2) the prayer of quiet, called also pure contemplation; (3) the prayer of union, called also perfect contemplation; (4) the prayer of rapture or ecstasy. The raptures and visions of this female saint of Komanism have gained for her a high name. But the mysticism of John of the Cross wore a different aspect. He delight- ed not in ecstatic prayer like Theresa, but in intense suffering. His earnest prayer was that not a day might pass in which he should not suffer something.
In the history of mysticism the 17th contnn,' was chiefly distinguished by the (Juietist controversy. The most remarkable exliibition of (Quietism is to be found in the w'ritings of Madame Guyon. Thus, when describing her experience, she observes, " The soul passing out of itself by dying to itself necessarily passes into its di- vine object. This is the law of its transition. When it passes out of self, which is limited, and therefore is not God, and consequently is evil, it necessarily passes into the unlimited and universal, which is God, and there- fore is the true good. My own experience seemed to me to be a verification of this. ^ly spirit, disenthralled from selfishness, became united with and lost in God, its Sovereign, who attracted it more and more to him- self. And this was so much the case that I could seem to see and know God only, and not myself. ... It was thus that my soul was lost in God, who communicated to it his qualities, having drawn it out of all that it had of its own. . . . O happy poverty, happy loss, happy nothing, which gives no less than God himself in his own immensity — no more circumscribed to tlie limited manner of the creation, but always drawing it out of that to plunge it wholly into his Divine ICssence. Then the soul knows that all the states of self-pleasing vis- ions, of intellectual illuminations, of ecstacics and rapt- ures, of whatever value they miglit have been, are now rather obstacles than advancements, and that they are not of service in the state of experience which is far above them, because the state which has props or sup- ports, which is the case with the merely illuminated and ecstatic state, rests in them to some degree, and is pained to lose them. But the soul cannot arrive at the state of which I am now speaking without the loss of all such supports and helps. , . , The soul is then so submissive, and perhaps we may say so passive— that is to say, is so disposed equally to receive from the hand of God either good or evil — as is truly astonishing. It receives both the one and the other without any selfish emotions, letting them flow and be lost as they came," This quotation contains the substance of the doctrine which pervades the mystical writings of Madame Guy- on. The whole may be summed up in two words, "dis- interested love," which she regarded as the perfection of holiness in the heart of man. A similar, if not whol- ly identical, doctrine was inculcated at the same periml by IMolinos in Italy, in a book entitled The Spiritual duiilc. Quietist opinions were then evidently on the advance in the dilTerent countries of Kun.pe, anil among their supporters were some of the most illustrious men of the tlay, of whom it is sufficient to name Fenelon, archbishop of Cambr.i}-. But the high character for piety and worth of the leading (Juietisis made them all the more obnoxious to the Jesuits. Nor w.as the hos- tile spirit which was manifested towards the t^uictists limited to the Jesuits alone; the celebrated Bossuct,