Fénelon: The Mystic

by James Mudge

“No evil is permitted to befall thee but what may be made productive of a much greater good. Receive all with thankfulness, as from the hand of God, and esteem it great gain.”

“For all that befalleth me I will thank the Love that prompts the gift, and reverence the Hand that confers it.”

“O Lord God, holy Father, be Thou blessed now and forever! For whatever Thou willest is done, and all that Thou willest is good.”

“The righteous should never be moved by whatever befalls him, knowing that it comes from the hands of God, and is to promote the important business of our redemption. Without God, nothing is done upon the face of the earth.”

“Perfection consists in offering up thyself, with thy whole heart, to the will of God; never seeking thine own will either in small or great respects; but with an equal mind weighing all events in the balance of the sanctuary, and receiving both prosperity and adversity with equal thanksgiving.”

“All is vanity but the love of God and a life devoted to His will.”

Passing over St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross[6]—particulars about whom may be found in Vaughan—and denying ourselves, through limitations of space, all quotations from Rodriguez and Scupoli,[7] who flourished in the sixteenth century, and wrote divinely about Divine things, leaving the world heroic examples of holiness,—we come to St. Francis of Sales and Molinos, both of whom had close connection with Fénelon, although in different ways. Francis—born in 1567 and departing to glory in 1622, who has been called “the noblest, tenderest and most devoted Mystic of the Catholic Church after the Reformation”—more than any other, was Fénelon’s teacher in matters pertaining to the inner life, even as Scupoli had been the teacher of Francis. Fénelon never wearies of recommending to the correspondents whom he is instructing in spiritual things the perusal of the works of this delightful and inspiring writer. He says to one: “You can read nothing better than St. Francis of Sales. Everything he writes is full of comfort and love; although his whole tone is that of self-mortification, it is all deep experience, simple precautions, high feeling, and the light of grace. You will have made a great step when you are familiar with such mental food.” Upon another he urges “a half hour spent in meditative reading of the Gospels in the morning, and an evening portion of St. Francis de Sales.” To the Elector of Cologne, when about to receive episcopal consecration, he says, “Read the Life and Works of St. Francis de Sales.” We do not wonder at these counsels. The two men, the two Francises, were entirely congenial, marvelously alike in heart and head, with similar vivacity, urbanity, and grace of manner, polish of style, profundity of insight into the soul, and practical knowledge of the world. Both had high rank in State and Church, strong intellects, intense devotion to God, and ability to express truth in a simple, lucid, attractive way. They were alike in that the profound piety they taught was not, as in the previous age, reserved for the cloister, but was quite compatible with mingling in the world, requiring no great change of habits, but an entire change of motive. Even the life at court might be continued and graced with cheerful obedience to the whole will of God; all the actions of the day could be sanctified by a perpetual prayer offered up in their midst and by a sincere intention to please God; the humble every-day virtues were extolled, and no austerities recommended. Thus religion was made commensurate with the whole of life, and the saint could join in all that others did, except sin. No difference can be found in their doctrines, or even their forms of expression, and it seems like an irony of fate that the Bishop of Geneva should be canonized in 1665 by the same Church which condemned, in 1699, the Archbishop of Cambrai. The fictitious and factitious reasons that led to the latter will be detailed a little later.

Part of the reason is connected with the history and fate of Miguel de Molinos, commonly esteemed to be the founder of the Quietists. He was a Spanish theologian, born of noble parentage near Saragossa, December 21, 1627. He acquired a great reputation at Rome and elsewhere for purity of life and vigor of intellect, but steadily refused all ecclesiastical preferment. In 1675 he published his “Spiritual Guide,” which in a few years passed through twenty editions in different languages, and was warmly hailed by people of marked piety in many lands. But it was soon bitterly attacked, especially by the Jesuits, who quickly perceived that Molinos’ system tacitly accused the Romish Church of a departure from the true religion, and that his whole doctrine would militate against the power of the priesthood and the importance of ceremonialism. Although he had a vast number of friends, some of them eminent for learning and piety, and even high in worldly rank, and though the pontiff himself, Innocent XI, was partial to him, he was, in 1685, cited before the Inquisition and subjected to close examination as well as rigid imprisonment. It is said that as many as twenty thousand letters were found in his house, which, if true, shows the degree to which the movement he headed had spread, and the hunger of great multitudes for spiritual food. His trial lasted two years, and in 1687 sixty-eight propositions, purporting to be extracted from his book, were condemned, and he was declared to have taught false and dangerous dogmas contrary to the doctrine of the Church. He was compelled to pass the remainder of his life in the dungeons of the Inquisition, where he died, after many years of close confinement, in which he exhibited the greatest humility and peace of mind.

The principles of his book have been much misunderstood and misrepresented. The following statement is believed to be substantially correct. He taught that Christian perfection consists in the peace of the soul, springing from a complete self-surrender into the hands of God, in the renouncement of all external, temporal things, and in the pure love of God free from all considerations of interest or hope of reward. A soul which desires the supreme good must renounce all sensual and material things, silence every impulse, and concentrate itself on God. In a state of perfect contemplation the soul desires absolutely nothing, not even its own salvation; it fears nothing, not even hell; the one only feeling of which it is conscious is utter abandonment to God’s good will and pleasure; it is indifferent to all else; and nothing which does not reach the will, where alone virtue resides, can really pollute the soul. The system was termed Quietism, because it laid so much stress upon inward quiet, passive contemplation, and silent prayer; also upon freedom from hope and fear, the great agitators of the human mind.

It is a very vulgar error to suppose that the Mystics taught abstention from good works, or outward inactivity; for none were busier in blessing their fellow-men, as the twenty thousand letters above mentioned might indicate, as well as the ceaseless endeavors in this direction put forth by Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and the rest. Mystics are not impracticable dreamers; they have been in a very marked degree energetic and influential. Their passivity simply meant a calm yet glad acceptance of all God’s dispensations. They were also abundantly active in the highest sense, since the old faculties were transformed and uplifted and no longer shackled by the cramping chains of sin, but enabled to do far more for the good of mankind and the glory of God in their happy, healthy working than they ever had done before. They laid great stress upon faith, rather than rites or austerities, as a means of justification and sanctification, a peculiarity which seems at the bottom of the remark of the Romish ecclesiastic who wrote, under date of July 10, 1685, “I am informed that a Jesuit named Molinos has been put into the Inquisition at Rome, accused of wishing to become chief of a new sect called Quietists, whose principles are somewhat similar to those of the Puritans in England.” There is sufficient similarity between the Quietism of the seventeenth century and the Pietism and Methodism of Germany and England in the eighteenth century to give us a friendly feeling toward it. That the former was not so well guarded as the latter; was less directed to practical ends; was not in control of such cool, sensible minds; ran very easily into abuses; had stronger pantheistic leanings; was more open to the objection that it taught a strained, impossible perfection utterly out of reach of all but the few, and attainable by those few perhaps only under very favorable conditions,—may be freely granted. But it does not, and need not, prevent our sympathies going out strongly toward those who, in that earlier day and amid much difficulty, struck out the high path on lines not essentially at variance with those who, in easier times of greater enlightenment, came after them. The Mystics, with all their extravagances, possessed more of the truth of God than could be found elsewhere within the wide domains of the Roman Church. The Reformers recognized this, and sympathized far more deeply with them than with the schoolmen.