ortance attached to the "prayer of quiet" can only be
understood when we remember how much mechanical recitation of forms of
prayer was enjoined by Romish "directors." It is, of course, possible
for the soul to commune with God without words, perhaps even without
thoughts;[313] but the recorded prayers of our Blessed Lord will not
allow us to regard these ecstatic states as better than vocal prayer,
when the latter is offered "with the spirit, and with the
understanding also."

The quietistic controversy in France was carried on in an atmosphere
of political intrigues and private jealousies, which in no way concern
us. But the great fact which stands out above the turmoil of calumny
and misrepresentation is that the Roman Church, which in sore straits
had called in the help of quietistic Mysticism to stem the flood of
Protestantism, at length found the alliance too dangerous, and
disbanded her irregular troops in spite of their promises to submit to
discipline. In Fenelon, Mysticism had a champion eloquent and learned,
and not too logical to repudiate with honest conviction consequences
which some of his authorities had found it necessary to accept. He
remained a loyal and submissive son of the Church, as did Molinos; and
was, in fact, more guarded in his statements than Bossuet, who in his
ignorance of mystical theology often blundered into dangerous
admissions[314]. But the Jesuits saw with their usual acumen that
Mysticism, even in the most submissive guise, is an independent and
turbulent spirit; and by condemning Fenelon as well as Molinos, they
crushed it out as a religious movement in the Latin countries.

To us it seems that the Mysticism of the counter-Reformation was bound
to fail, because it was the revival of a perverted, or at best a
one-sided type. The most consistent quietists were perhaps those who
brought the doctrine of quietism into most discredit, such as the
hesychasts of Mount Athos. For at bottom it rests upon that dualistic
or rather acosmistic view of life which prevailed from the decay of
the Roman Empire till the Renaissance and Reformation. Its cosmology
is one which leaves this world out of account except as a training
ground for souls; its theory of knowledge draws a hard and fast line
between natural and supernatural truths, and then tries to bring them
together by intercalating "supernatural phenomena" in the order of
nature; and in ethics it paralyses morality by teaching with St.
Thom