DECISIVE MOMENT—VISIONS.
Visions came erelong to confirm Inigo in the conviction at which he had arrived. His own resolves had become a substitute for the grace of the Lord; his own imaginings supplied the place of God's Word. He had looked upon the voice of God in his conscience as the voice of the devil; and accordingly the remainder of his history represents him as given up to the inspirations of the spirit of darkness.
One day Loyola met an old woman, as Luther in the hour of his trial was visited by an old man. But the Spanish woman, instead of proclaiming remission of sins to the penitent of Manresa, predicted visitations from Jesus. Such was the Christianity to which Loyola, like the prophets of Zwickau, had recourse. Inigo did not seek truth in the Holy Scriptures; but imagined in their place immediate communication with the world of spirits. He soon lived entirely in ecstasies and contemplation.
One day, as he was going to the church of St. Paul, outside the city, he walked along the banks of the Llobregat, and sat down absorbed in meditation. His eyes were fixed on the river, which rolled its deep waters silently before him. He was lost in thought. Suddenly he fell into an ecstasy: he saw with his bodily eyes what men can with difficulty understand after much reading, long vigils, and study.[261] He rose, and as he stood on the brink of the river, he appeared to have become another man; he then knelt down at the foot of a cross which was close at hand, prepared to sacrifice his life in the service of that cause whose mysteries had just been revealed to him.
From this time his visions became more frequent. Sitting one day on the steps of St. Dominick's church at Manresa, he was singing a hymn to the Holy Virgin, when on a sudden his soul was wrapt in ecstasy; he remained motionless, absorbed in contemplation; the mystery of the most Holy Trinity was revealed to his sight under magnificent symbols;[262] he shed tears, filled the church with his sobs, and all day long continued speaking of this ineffable vision.
THE TWO PRINCIPLES.
These numerous apparitions had removed all his doubts; he believed, not like Luther because the things of faith were written in the Word of God, but because of the visions he had seen. "Even had there been no Bible," say his apologists, "even had these mysteries never been revealed in Scripture,[263] he would have believed them, for God had appeared to him."[264] Luther, on taking his doctor's degree, had pledged his oath to Holy Scripture,[265] and the only infallible authority of the Word of God had become the fundamental principle of the Reformation. Loyola, at this time, bound himself to dreams and visions; and chimerical apparitions became the principle of his life and of his faith.
Luther's sojourn in the convent of Erfurth and that of Loyola in the convent of Manresa explain to us—the first, the Reformation; the latter, modern Popery. The monk who was to reanimate the exhausted vigour of Rome repaired to Jerusalem after quitting the cloister. We will not follow him on this pilgrimage, as we shall meet with him again in the course of this history.