Mrs. Atherton. And had large property left her, which excited the cupidity of those Fathers of the Oratory, who gave her such trouble.
Gower. I never heard of her before.
Atherton. Her Quietism was very similar to that of Madame Guyon, but she was not, like her, mixed up with a controversy famous in history. She found, however, a faithful Fénélon in her accomplished disciple, Peter Poiret,[[369]] a liberal and large-minded Quietist, whose mysticism may be said to occupy a position between that of the German Theology and our English Platonists.
Willoughby. I greatly enjoyed reading some parts of his Divine Œconomy. Tennyson’s stanza expresses the spirit of his theology:—
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.
Atherton. Yet his six volumes add one more to our many systems. The vitiating element, in a theology otherwise very fairly balanced, is the extreme to which he carries the doctrine of passivity. In religion, he will have the understanding utterly inert.[[370]]
Willoughby. Yet he uses, very effectively, in his writings, the faculty he calls on us to resign.