mission to the director, and dissuade from self-confidence. They thus give themselves a guide, but in their enthusiastic efforts they hurry their guide away with them: they think they follow him, but they lead him. The director has nothing else to do with them but to sanction their inspiration. *

The originality of Molinos' book is quite the contrary. There, internal activity has actually no longer any existence; no action but what is occasioned by an exterior impulse. The director is the pivot of the whole book; he appears every moment, and even when he disappears, we perceive he is close at hand. He is the guide, or rather the support, without which the powerless soul could not move a step. He is the ever-present physician, who decides whether the sick patient may taste this or that. Sick? Yes; and seriously ill; since it is necessary that another should, every moment, think, feel, and act for her; in a word, live in her place.

* Madame Guyon herself, who developed more than any mystic the theory of death, is, as it were, dead in language, though always lively in heart. Even in that ocean "where the poor torrent is lost," it preserves its own life and the freshness of its streams; so great is its force, so powerful its impetuosity, and so high the mountains whence it falls! The Rhone pierces through all its lake that enormous mass of unfathomable waters, and is still the Rhone at its exit. Occasionally, and at long intervals, we hear the director named. But who directs such an impetuosity? Poor Father La Combe, as we well know, cannot guide his own bark; the torrent in which he was hurried along carried him away—he became mad.

As for the soul, can we say it lives? Is this not rather actual death. The great mystics sought for death, and could not find it; the living activity remained even in the sepulchre. To die, singly, in God, to die with one's own will and energy, this is not dying completely, but slothfully to allow your soul to enter the mad vortex of another soul, and suffer, half asleep, the strange transformation in which your personality is absorbed in his; this is, indeed, real moral death; we need not look for any other.

"To act, is the deed of the novice; to suffer, is immediate gain; to die, is perfection. Let us go forward in darkness, and we shall go well; the horse that goes round blind-folded grinds corn so much the better. Let us neither think nor read. A practical master will tell us, better than any book, what we must do at the very moment. It is a great security to have an experienced guide to govern and direct us, according to his actual intelligence, and prevent our being deceived by the demon or our

Molinos, in leading us gently by this road, seems to me to know very well whither he is conducting us. I judge so by the infinite precautions he takes to re-assure us; by his crying up every where humility, austerity, excessive scrupulousness, and prudence

* Molinos, Guida Spirituale (Venetia, 1685), pp. 86. 161. and passim, Lat. transl. (Lipsiæ, 1687).

carried to a ridiculous extreme. The saints are not so wise. In a very humble preface, he believes that this little book, devoid of ornament and style, and without a protector, cannot have any success: "he will, no doubt, be criticised; every body will find him insipid." In the last page, his humility is still greater, he lays his work prostrate, and submits it to the correction of the Holy Roman Church.*

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He gives us to understand, that the real director directs without any inclination for the task: "He is a man who would gladly dispense with the care of souls, who sighs and pants for solitude. He is, especially, very far from wishing to get the direction of women, they being, generally, too little prepared. He must take especial care not to call his penitent his daughter; the word is too tender, and God is jealous of it. Self-love united with passion, that hydra-headed monster, sometimes assumes the form of gratitude and filial affection for the confessor. He must not visit his penitents at their homes, not even in cases of sickness, unless he be called."+

This is, indeed, an astounding severity: these are excessive precautions, unheard of before the days

* This celebrated book, Molinos' " Guide," is not very original. We find little in it that is not better said in the other Quietists. Read, however, his enthusiastic eulogy on nullity or nothingness; a few passages of which have been translated by Bossuet in his 3d book of "Instruction sur les Etats d'Oraison."

† The Guide, vol. ii. ch. 6.

of Molinos! What holy man have we here? It is true, if the director ought not to go of his own accord to visit the patient, he may, if she call him. And I say, she will call him. With such a direction, is she not always ill, embarrassed, fearful, and too infirm to do any thing of herself! she will wish to have him every hour. Every impulse that is not from him might possibly proceed from the devil; even the pang of remorse, that she occasionally feels within her, may be occasioned by the devil's agency.*

As soon as he is with her, on the contrary, how tranquil she becomes! How he comforts her with one word! How easily he resolves all her scruples ! She is well rewarded for having waited and obeyed, and being ever ready to obey. She now feels that obedience is better than any virtue.

Well! let her only be discreet, and she will be led still further. "She must not, when she sins, be uneasy about it; for should she be grieved at it, it would be a sign that she still possessed a leaven of pride. It is the devil, who, to hinder us in our spiritual path, makes us busy with our backslidings. Would it not be foolish for him who runs to stop when he falls, and weep like a child, instead of pursuing his course? These falls have the excellent effect of preserving us from pride, which is the greatest fall of all. God makes virtues of our vices, and

*The Guide, vol. ii. ch. 17.

these very vices, by which the devil thought to cast us into the pit, become a ladder to mount to heaven."*

This doctrine was well received. Molinos had had the tact to publish, at the same time, another book, that might serve as a passport to this, a treatise on Daily Communion, directed against the Jansenists and Arnaud's great work. The Spiritual Guide, was examined with all the favour that Rome could show to the enemy of her enemies. There was scarcely any religious order that did not approve of it. The Roman Inquisition gave it three approbations by three of its members, a Jesuit, a Carmelite, and the general of the Franciscans. The Spanish Inquisition approved of it twice:-first, by the general examiner of the order of the Capucins; and, secondly, by a Trinitarian, the Archbishop of Reggio. It was prefaced with an enthusiastic and extravagant eulogy by the Archbishop of Palermo.

The Quietists must have been at that time very strong in Rome, since one of them, Cardinal Bona (Malaval's protector), was on the point of being made pope.

The tide turned, contrary to every expectation. The great Gallic tempest of 1682, which, for nearly ten years, interrupted the connection between France and the court of Rome obliged the pope to raise

* "Scala per salire al cielo." Guida, p. 138. lib. ii. ch. 18.