PART I.

ON DIRECTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

[CHAPTER I.]

Religious Re-action in 1600—Influence of the Jesuits over Women and Children—Savoy; the Vaudois; Violence and Gentleness—St. François de Sales

[CHAPTER II.]

St. François de Sales and Madame de Chantal—Visitation—Quietism—Results of Religious Direction

[CHAPTER III.]

Loneliness of Woman—Easy Devotion—Worldly Theology of the Jesuits—Women and Children advantageously made use of—Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648—Gallant Devotion—Religious Novels—Casuists

[CHAPTER IV.]

Convents—Convents in Paris—Convents contrasted; the Director—Dispute about the Direction of the Nuns—The Jesuits Triumph through Calumny

Re-action of Morality—Arnaud, 1643; Pascal, 1657—The Jesuits lose Ground—They gain over the King and the Pope—Discouragement of the Jesuits; their Corruption—They Protect the Quietists—Desmarets—Morin burnt, 1663—Immorality of Quietism

[CHAPTER VI.]

Continuation of Moral Re-action—Tartuffe, 1664—Real Tartuffes—Why Tartuffe is not a Quietist

[CHAPTER VII.]

Apparition of Molinos, 1675—His Success at Rome—French Quietists—Madame Guyon and her Director—"The Torrents"—Mystic Death—Do we return from it?

[CHAPTER VIII.]

Fenelon as Director—His Quietism—"Maxims of Saints," 1697—Fenelon and Madame de la Maisonfort

[CHAPTER IX.]

Bossuet as Director—Bossuet and Sister Cornuau—Bossuet's Imprudence—He is a Quietist in Practice—Devout Direction inclines to Quietism—Moral Paralysis

[CHAPTER X.]

Molinos' "Guide"—Part Played in it by the Director; Hypocritical Austerity—Immoral Doctrine; Approved by Rome, 1675—Molinos Condemned at Rome, 1687—His Morals—His Morals Conformable to his Doctrine—Spanish Molinosists—Mother Agueda

[CHAPTER XI.]

No more Systems: an Emblem—The Heart—Sex—The Immaculate—The Sacred Heart—Mario Alacoque—The Seventeenth Century is the Age of Equivocation—Chimerical Politics of the Jesuits—Father Colombière—England—Papist Conspiracy—First Altar of the Sacred Heart—The Ruin of the Galileans, Quietists, and Port-Royal—Theology annihilated in the Eighteenth Century—Materiality of the Sacred Heart—Jesuitical Art