s the life of a century is long enough to outgrow many things,
curses as well as blessings. For the time being, however, throughout
Europe generally and in certain sections of America, quietism found
adherents.

The new evangel, originally published at Rome, had a woman, Mme. Guyon,
for St. Paul. Its purport Boileau summarized as the enjoyment in paradise
of the pleasures of hell. As is frequently the case with summaries, that
of Boileau was not profound. Diderot called it the true religion of the
tender-hearted. Diderot sometimes nodded. Quietism was not that. A little
before rose-water had been distilled from mud. Quietism reversed the
process. From the lilies of mysticity it extracted dirt. In itself an
etherealized creed of predeterminism, it put fatalism into love. The added
ingredient was demoralizing. Already Maria d'Agreda, a Spanish nun, had
written a tract that made Bossuet blush. The doctrine of Molinos made him
furious. Against it, against Mme. Guyon, against Fenelon who indorsed her,
against all adherents, he waged one of those memorable wars which the
world has entirely forgotten. It had though its justification. Morbid as
everything that came from Spain, quietism held that temptations are the
means that God employs to purge the soul of passion. It taught that they
should not be shunned but welcomed. The argument advanced was to the
effect that, in the omnisapience of the divine, man is saved not merely by
good works but by evil deeds, by sin as well as by virtue.

In the Roman circus, the Christian, once subtracted from life, was
subtracted also from evil. What then happened to his body was a matter of
indifference to him. In quietism that indifference was solicited before
subtraction came. It was disclosed as a means of grace to the living.
Through the exercise of will, or, more exactly through its extinction, the
Christian was told, to separate soul from body. The soul then, asleep in
God, lost to any connection between itself and the flesh, was indifferent,
as the martyr, to whatever happened.

The result is as obvious as it was commodious. The body, artificially
released from all restraint and absolved from any responsibility, was free
to act as it listed.

In discussing the doctrine, Fenelon declared that there are souls so
inflamed with the love of God and so resigned to His will that, if they
believed themselves damned, they would accept eternal punishment with
thanksgiving.

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