SANCTA SOPHIA.[14]Thenew and improved edition of Father Cressy’s compendium of the principal treatises of the English Benedictine, Father Baker, entitledSancta Sophia, or Holy Wisdom, which has now appeared, has been long looked for, and we give it a cordial welcome. In compliance with an earnest request of the very reverend and learned prelate under whose careful supervision this new edition has been prepared, we very gladly make use of the opportunity which is thus presented of calling attention to this admirable work, and to some topics of the greatest interest and importance which are intimately connected with its peculiar nature and scope as a book of spiritual instruction. It belongs to a special class of books treating of the higher grades of the spiritual life, and of the more perfect way in which the soul that has passed through the inferior exercises of active meditation is led upward toward the tranquil region of contemplation. It is a remarkable fact, and an indication of the increasing number of those who feel the aspiration after this higher life, that such a demand has made itself felt, within a comparatively recent period, for spiritual treatises of this sort. The most voluminous andpopular modern writer who has ministered to this appetite of souls thirsting for the fountains of pure spiritual doctrine, is the late holy Oratorian, Father Faber. The unparalleled circulation of his works is a matter of common notoriety. The lives of saints and of holy persons who have been led in the highways of mystic illumination and union with God, which have poured forth in such copious abundance from the Catholic press, and have been so eagerly read, are another symptom as well as a cause of this increasing taste for the science and wisdom of the saints. The most choice and elevated spiritual works which have appeared are, however, with few exceptions, republications of books of an older and bygone time. Among these we may mention that quaint treatise so often referred to by Father Baker, calledThe Cloud of the Unknowing, Walter Hilton’sScala Perfectionis, theSpiritual DialoguesofSt.Catherine of Genoa,St.Teresa’s writings, Dom Castaniza’sSpiritual Conflict and Conquest, and above all others that truly magnificent edition in an English version of theWorks ofSt.John of the Cross, for which we are indebted to Mr. Lewis and his Eminence the Cardinal of Westminster. As a manual for common and general use, theSancta Sophiaof Father Baker has an excellence and value peculiarly its own. Canon Dalton, a good authority on subjects of this kind, says that “it is certainly thebest bookwe have in English on prayer.†Bishop Ullathornesays of it: “Nothing is more clear, simple, solid, and profound.†Similar testimonies might be multiplied; and if the suffrages of the thousands of unknown but devout persons in religious communities and in the secular state, who have made use of this book, could be collected, the result would prove that the high esteem in which it has ever been held by the English Benedictines is perfectly well deserved, according to the sense of the most pious among the faithful.The first modern edition ofSancta Sophiawas published in New York in 1857. Before this time it was wholly unknown in this country, so far as we are informed, excepting in the convent of Carmelite Nuns at Baltimore. At the ancient convent on Aisquith Street, where a small community of the daughters ofSt.Teresa had long been strictly practising the rule of their holy mother, an old copy of the first edition ofSancta Sophiawas preserved as their greatest treasure. It was there that Father Walworth became acquainted with the book, and, charmed with its quaint style and rare, old-fashioned excellence, resolved to have a new edition of it published for the benefit of the Catholics of the United States. By permission of the VeryRev.Father Bernard, of holy memory, who was then provincial of the Redemptorists, it was published, under Father Hecker’s supervision, by James B. Kirker (Dunigan & Bro.) of New York. It was reprinted correctly, though in a plain and unattractive form, without any change excepting in the spelling of words and the omission of certain forms of short prayers and aspirations which were added to the treatises in the original. There is no substantial difference, as to the text of the work itself, between thisedition and the new one edited by Dr. Sweeney. He has, however, had it published in a much better and more attractive form, has restored all the parts omitted, and, besides carefully revising the text, has added prefatory matter, notes, and appendices, which make his edition more complete. A portrait of the venerable Father Baker is prefixed. If an index of the contents of the chapters had been added, it would have made the edition as perfect as we could desire. That it will now become once more widely known and appreciated in England we cannot doubt, and we trust that it will also obtain a much wider circulation in this country than it has hitherto enjoyed. There is but one serious obstacle in the way of its becoming a universal favorite with those who have a taste for solid spiritual food. It is food of the most simple, dry, and hard quality, served without sauce or condiments of any kind—pure nutriment, like brown bread, wheaten, grits, farina, or Scotch porridge. It is most wholesome and conducive to spiritual growth, but altogether destitute of the eloquence which we find in Tauler, the deep philosophy and sublime poetry ofSt.John of the Cross, the ecstatic rapture ofSt.Teresa. Whoever studies it will have no stimulus but a pure and simple desire for instruction, improvement, and edification. The keynote to the entire mode and measure of the book is given in the chapter, borrowed from Father Walter Hilton, on the spiritual pilgrimage: “One way he knew, which, if he would diligently pursue according to the directions and marks that he would give him—though, said he, I cannot promise thee a security from many frights, beatings, and other ill-usage andtemptations of all kinds; but if thou canst have courage and patience enough to suffer them without quarrelling or resisting, or troubling thyself, and so pass on, having this only in thy mind, and sometimes on thy tongue,I have naught, I am naught, I desire naught but to be at Jerusalem, my life for thine, thou wilt escape safe with thy life, and in a competent time arrive thither.†Father Baker attempts nothing but to furnish a plain guide-book over this route. For descriptions of the scenery, photographic views of mountains, valleys, lakes, and prospects, one must go elsewhere. A clear, methodical, safe guide-book over the route he will find inSancta Sophia. This is not to say that one should confine himself exclusively to its perusal, or deny himself the pleasure of reading other books in which there is more that pleases the imagination and awakens the affections, or that satisfies the demands of the intellect seeking for the deepest causes of things and the exposition of sublime truths. The most important and practical matter, however, is to find and keep the right road. And certainly many, if not all, of those who are seeking the straightest and safest way to perfection and everlasting beatitude, will value theSancta Sophiaall the more for its very plainness, and the absence of everything except that simple and solid doctrine which they desire and feel the need of amid the trials and perplexities of the journey of life.The doctrine of Father Baker has not, however, lacked opponents from his own day to the present. Since the publication ofSancta Sophiain this country we have repeatedly heard of its use being discountenanced in religiouscommunities and in the case of devout persons in the world. Dr. Sweeney calls attention directly to this fact of opposition to Father Baker’s doctrine, and devotes a considerable part of his own annotations to a refutation of the objections alleged against it. He has pointed out one seemingly plausible ground of these censures which we were not before aware of, and which was unknown to the American editors ofSancta Sophiawhen they republished it in this country. We cannot pass this matter by without some examination; for although on such subjects controversy is disagreeable, and to the unlearned and simple-minded may be vexatious and perplexing, it cannot be avoided where a question of orthodox soundness in doctrine is concerned. The gist of the whole matter is found in chapter the seventh, “On the Prayer of Interior Silence,†to which Dr. Sweeney has appended a long note of explanation. The matter of this chapter is professedly derived from an old Spanish work by Antonio de Rojas, entitledThe Life of the Spirit Approved, which was placed on the Index about fifty years after the death of Father Baker, and two years after the condemnation of Quietism. We have never seen this book, but we are informed by Dr. Sweeney that its language, taken in the most natural and obvious sense, leads to the conclusion that the state of charity which is requisite to perfection excludes all private interest, not only all fear of punishment, but all hope of reward—that is, all desire or consideration of the beatitude of heaven. In order to attain this state of indifference and annihilation of self-love, all express acts are discountenanced, and that kind of silence and passivity inprayer recommended which suppresses the active movements of the soul toward God, such as hope, love toward God as the chief good, petition and supplication, thanksgiving, etc. Now, such a doctrine as this is manifestly tinged with some of the errors of Quietism, and seems to be precisely similar to the semi-Quietism of Madame Guyon and Fénelon which was condemned by InnocentXII.in 1699. The second of the propositions from Fénelon’sMaxims of the Saintscondemned by this pope is as follows: “In the state of contemplative or unitive life every interested motive of fear and hope is lost.†The doctrinal error here is the notion that the soul’s love of itself, desire and hope for its own beatification in God, and love to God as its own sovereign good, is incompatible with a pure, disinterested, perfect love of God, as the sovereign good in himself. The practical error is the inculcation of direct efforts to suppress every movement of interested love to God in prayer, in order to make way for passive, disinterested love. Father Baker lived so long before the errors of false mysticism had been thoroughly investigated, refuted, and condemned that it was very easy for him to fail of detecting what was unguarded, inaccurately expressed, exaggerated, or of erroneous tendency in a book which was approved by a number of prelates and theologians. He has certainly not borrowed or adopted what was erroneous in the book, but that portion of its teaching which was sound and safe, upon which the error was a mere excrescence. The mere fact of citing a book which has been placed on the Index is a matter of small and only incidental moment. Dr. Sweeney seems to us to havefollowed too timorous a conscience in his way of treating the chapter ofSancta Sophiain which the work of De Rojas is quoted. We cannot agree with him that Father Baker would have suppressed that chapter if the book had been censured during his lifetime. He would have suppressed his commendation of the book, and looked carefully to see what the error was on account of which it had been condemned, as any good Catholic is bound to do in such a case. But we feel confident that he would not have felt himself obliged to make any essential alteration in what he had written on the prayer of silence, though he would probably have explicitly guarded it against any possible misapprehension or perversion. Any one who reads theSancta Sophia, especially with Dr. Sweeney’s annotations, will see at once how absurd is the charge of a tincture of semi-Quietism against so sober and practical a writer as Father Baker, and how remote from anything favoring the illusions of false spirituality are his instructions on prayer. It would be almost as absurd to impute Quietism to Father Baker as rigorism toSt.Alphonsus. We are afraid that Dr. Sweeney’s signal-board of “caution†will scare away simple-minded and devout readers from one of the most useful chapters ofSancta Sophia, one which is really the pivot of the whole book. Father Baker’s special scope and object was not to give instruction in meditation and active exercises, but to lead the soul through and beyond these to contemplation. The instructions on the prayer of interior silence are precisely those which are fitted to enlighten and direct a person in the transition state from the spiritual exercises of discursive meditationto that state of ordinary and acquired contemplation which Scaramelli and all standard writers recognize as both desirable and attainable for those who have devoted a considerable time to the practice of mental prayer. Father Baker’s directions on this head should be judged by what they are intrinsically in themselves, without any regard to anything else. Are they singular, imprudent, or in any respect contrary to the doctrine of the saints and other authors of recognized soundness in doctrine? We cannot see that they are. Whatever perversion of the method of prayer in question may have been contained in the book of De Rojas, sprang from his erroneous doctrine that explicit acts of the understanding and will in prayer should be suppressed in order to eradicate the implicit acts, the habits, and tendencies of the soul, by which its intention and desire are directed toward its own supreme good and felicity in God. But this is no reason against the method itself, apart from a perversion no trace of which is to be found in Father Baker’s own language. The well-known and justly-revered Father Ramière,S.J., in his introduction to a little work by another Jesuit, Father De Caussade, entitledL’Abandon à la Providence Divine, remarks in reference to the doctrine of that book, which is quite similar in its spirit to theSancta Sophia, as follows: “There is no truth so luminous that it does not change into error from the moment when it suffers diminution or exaggeration; and there is no nourishment, however salutary to the soul, which, if imprudently used, may not produce in it the effect of a noxious poison.†It would seem that some are so afraid of the perversion of the luminous truths ofmystical theology, and of the abuse of the salutary nourishment it affords to the soul, that they would desire to avoid the danger by shutting out the light and locking up the food in a closet. They would restrict all persons whatever, in every stage and condition of the spiritual life, to certain methods of prayer and the use of certain books, excellent for the majority of persons while they are beginners or proficients, but unsuitable, or even injurious, to some who are of a peculiar disposition, or who have advanced so far that they need something of a different order. It is a great mistake to suppose that such a course is safe or prudent. There are some who cannot, even in the beginning, make use of discursive meditation. It is a generally-recognized rule that those who can, and actually do, practise this kind of mental prayer, ought, as soon as it ceases to be pleasant and profitable to them, to change it for a simpler method. Even those set methods which are not discursive, if they consist in oft-repeated acts of the understanding, the affections, and the will, become frequently, after the lapse of time, too laborious, wearisome, and insipid to be continued with any fervor. The soul needs and instinctively longs for the cessation of this perpetual activity in a holy repose, in tranquil contemplation, in rest upon the bosom of God. It is for such souls that the chapter on the prayer of interior silence was written.We may now examine a little more closely the passages which Dr. Sweeney seems to have had in view, as requiring to be read with caution because similar to statements made by De Rojas and other writers whose doctrine is tinctured withQuietism. Dr. Sweeney remarks: “When afterwards (in the book of De Rojas) express acts toward God are discountenanced, and it is declared that an advantage of this kind of prayer isself-annihilation, and that resignation then becomes so pure that all private interest is forgotten and ignored, we see the prudence and watchfulness of the Holy See in cautioning her children against a book which, if it does not expressly, distinctly, and advisedly teach it, yet conveys the impression that a state of charity excludes all private interest, such as fear of punishment and hope of reward, and that perfection implies such a state.â€[15]Father Baker says that in the prayer of silence, “with the will she [the soul] frames no particular request nor any express acts toward Godâ€; that “by this exercise we come to the most perfect operation of self-annihilation,†and practise in the most sublime manner “resignation, since the soul forgets all private interestsâ€; and more to the same effect. Nevertheless, the dangerous and erroneous sense which this language might convey, if intended or interpreted to mean that the soul must suppress all hope or desire for its own private good as incompatible with the perfect love of God, is plainly excluded by the immediate context in which it occurs. The soul, says Father Baker, should “continue in his presencein the quality of a petitioner, but such an one as makes no special, direct requests, but contents herself to appear before himwith all her wants and necessities, best, and indeed only, known to him, who therefore needs not her information.†Again, he compares the soul to thesubject of a sovereign who abstains from asking any particular favors from his prince, because he knows that “he is both most wise to judge what favors may become the one to give and the other to receive, and in that that he has a love and magnificence toadvance him beyond his deserts.â€Once more he says that in this prayer the soul exercises in a sublime manner “hope, because the soul, placing herself before Godin the posture of a beggar, confidently expects that he will impart to her both the knowledge of his will and ability to fulfil it.â€It is equally plain that Father Baker’s method of the prayer of interior silence is not liable to the censure which Dr. Sweeney attaches to the one of De Rojas when he remarks that “we can at once see what danger accompanies such an exercise, if that can be called an exercise where all activity ceases and prayer is really excluded.†“Since an intellectual soul is all activity,†says Father Baker, “so that it cannot continue a moment without some desires, the soul then rejecting all desires toward created objects, she cannot choose but tend inwardly in her affections to God, for which end only she put herself in such a posture of prayer; her tendence then being much like that of the mounting of an eagle after a precedent vigorous springing motion and extension of her wings, which ceasing,in virtue thereof the flight is continued for a good space with a great swiftness, but withal with great stillness, quietness, and ease, without any waving of the wings at all or the least force used in any member, being in as much ease and stillness as if she were reposing on her nest.†For the further defence of Father Baker’s doctrine from theother parts ofSancta Sophia, and in general from his known method of personal conduct and his direction of others, what his learned Benedictine editor has furnished amply suffices.We are not content, however, with simply showing that Father Baker’s method of conducting souls to perfection by means of contemplative prayer is free from the errors of Quietism and the illusions of false mysticism. TheSancta Sophiais not merely a good book, one among the many English books of devotion and spiritual reading which can be safely and profitably read. We think Canon Dalton’s opinion that it is the best book on prayer we have in the English language is correct. It is a guide for those who will scarcely find another book to fill its place; and we venture to affirm that the very part of it which we have been specially criticising is not only defensible, but positively in accordance, even to its phraseology, with the doctrine of the most approved authors, and of special, practical value and importance.In an appendix which Father Ramière has added to the little book by Father Caussade already once cited in this article, there is a chapter taken from Bossuet, entitled “A Short and Easy Method of making the Prayer of Faith and of the simple presence of God,†from which we quote the following passages: “Meditation is very good in its own time, and very useful at the beginning of the spiritual life; but it is not proper to make it a final stopping-place, for the soul which is faithful in mortification and recollection ordinarily receives a gift of prayer which is purer and more simple, and may be called the prayer ofsimplicity, consisting in asimple view, or fixed, attentive, and loving look directed toward some divine object, whether it be God in himself, or some one of his perfections, or Jesus Christ, or one of the mysteries relating to him, or some other Christian truths. In this attitude the soul leaves off reasoning, and makes use of a quiet contemplation, which keeps it peaceful, attentive, and susceptible to the divine operations and impressions which the Holy Spirit imparts to it; it does little and receives a great deal; its labor is easy, and nevertheless more fruitful than it would otherwise be; and as it approaches very near to the source of all light—grace and virtue—it receives on that account the more of all these. The practice of this prayer ought to begin on first awaking, by an act of faith in the presence of God, who is everywhere, and in Jesus Christ, whose eyes are always upon us, if we were even buried in the centre of the earth. This act is elicited either in the ordinary and sensible manner, as by saying inwardly, ‘I believe that my God is present’; or it is a simple calling to memory of the faith of God’s presence in a more purely spiritual manner. After this, one ought not to produce multifarious and diverse acts and dispositions, but to remain simply attentive to this presence of God, and as it were exposed to view before him, continuing this devout attention and attitude as long as the Lord grants us the grace for doing so, without striving to make other acts than those to which we are inspired, since this kind of prayer is one in which we converse with God alone, and is a union which contains in an eminent mode all other particular dispositions, and disposes the soul to passivity; by which is meant, that God becomes sole master ofits interior, and operates in it in a special manner. The less working done by the creature in this state, the more powerful is the operation of God in it; and since God’s action is at the same time a repose, the soul becomes in a certain way like to him in this kind of prayer, receiving in it wonderful effects; so that as the rays of the sun cause the growth, blossoming, and fruit-bearing of plants, the soul, in like manner, which is attentive and tranquilly basking under the rays of the divine Sun of righteousness, is in the best condition for receiving divine influences which enrich it with all sorts of virtues.â€[16]St.John of the Cross declares that “the soul having attained to the interior union of love,the spiritual faculties of it are no longer active, and still less those of the body; for now that the union of love is actually brought about, the faculties of the soulcease from their exertions, because, now that the goal is reached, all employment of means is at an end.â€[17]Again: “He who truly loves makes shipwreck of himself in all else, that he may gain the more in the object of his love. Thus the soul says that it has lost itself—that is, deliberately, of set purpose. This loss occurs in two ways. The soul loses itself, making no account whatever of itself, but referring all to the Beloved, resigning itself freely into his hands without any selfish views, losing itself deliberately, and seeking nothing for itself. Secondly, it loses itself in all things, making no account of anything save that which concerns the Beloved. This is to lose one’s self—that is, to be willing that othersshould have all things. Such is he that loves God; he seeks neither gain nor reward, but only to lose all, even himself according to God’s will. This is what such an one counts gain.… When a soul has advanced so far on the spiritual road as to be lost to all the natural methods of communing with God; when it seeks him no longer by meditation, images, impressions, nor by any other created ways or representations of sense, but only by rising above them all, in the joyful communion with him by faith and love, then it may be said to have gained God of a truth, because it has truly lost itself as to all that is not God, and also as to its own self.â€[18]In another place the saint explains quite at length the necessity of passing from meditation to contemplation, the reasons for doing so, and the signs which denote that the time for this change has arrived. The state of beginners, he says, is “one of meditation and of acts of reflection.†After a certain stage of progress has been reached, “God begins at once to introduce the soul into the state of contemplation, and that very quickly, especially in the case of religious, because these, having renounced the world, quickly fashion their senses and desires according to God; they have, therefore, to pass at once from meditation to contemplation. This passage, then, takes place when the discursive acts and meditation fail, when sensible sweetness and the first fervors cease, when the soul cannot make reflections as before, nor find any sensible comfort, but is fallen into aridity, because the spiritual life is changed.… It is evident, therefore, that if the soul does not now abandon its previous waysof meditation, it will receive this gift of God in a scanty and imperfect manner.… If the soul will at this time make efforts of its own, and encourage another disposition than that ofpassive, loving attention, most submissive and calm, and if it does notabstain from its previous discursive acts, it will place a complete barrier against those graces which God is about to communicate to it in this loving knowledge.… The soul must be attached to nothing, not even to the subject of its meditation, not to sensible or spiritual sweetness, because God requires a spirit so free, soannihilated, that every act of the soul, even of thought, of liking or disliking, will impede and disturb it, and break thatprofound silence of sense and spiritnecessary for hearing the deep and delicate voice of God, who speaks to the heart in solitude; it is in profound peace and tranquillity that the soul is to listen to God, who will speak peace unto his people. When this takes place, when the soul feels that it is silent and listens, its loving attention must be most pure,without a thought of self, in a manner self-forgotten, so that it shall be wholly intent upon hearing; for thus it is that the soul is free and ready for that which our Lord requires at its hands.â€[19]We have sufficiently proved, we trust, that there is no reason to be disquieted by a certain verbal and merely apparent likeness between some parts of Father Baker’s spiritual doctrine and the errors of a false mysticism. We may, perhaps, return to this subject on a future occasion, and point out more distinctly and at length the true philosophical and theological basis ofCatholic mystical doctrine, in contrast with the travesties and perversions of its counterfeits in the extravagant, absurd, and revolting systems of infidel and heretical visionaries. At present a few words may suffice to sum up and succinctly define the difference between the true and the false doctrine in respect to the case in hand. That doctrine which is false, dangerous, and condemned by the unerring judgment of the holy church teaches that the love and pursuit of our own good and happiness, even in God, is sinful, or at least low and imperfect. It inculcates, as a means for suppressing and eradicating our natural tendency towards the attainment of the good as an end, and annihilating our self-activity, the cessation of all operation of the natural faculties of understanding and volition, at least in reference to God as our own supreme and desirable good. It inculcates a fixed, otiose quietude and indifference toward our own happiness or misery. Its effect is therefore to quench the life of the soul, to extinguish its light, and to reduce it to a state of torpor and apathy resembling that of a stoical Diogenes or an Indian fakir. Its pretence of disinterestedness and pure love to God for himself alone is wholly illusory and founded on a false view of God as the intrinsically sovereign good and the object of supreme love to the intelligent creature. The goodness of God as the first object of the love of complacency cannot be separated from the same goodness as the object of desire. The extrinsic glory of God as the chief end of creatures is identified with the exaltation and happiness of those intellectual and rational beings whom he has createdand elevated to a supernatural end. Hope, desire, and effort for the attainment of the good intended for and promised to man is a duty and obligation imposed by the law of God. It is impossible to love God and be conformed to his will without loving our neighbors, and our own soul as our nearest neighbor. Moreover, we are not saved merely by the action of God upon us passively received, but also by a concurrence of our understanding and will, a co-operation of our own active efforts with the working of God in us, or, as it is commonly expressed, by a diligent and faithful correspondence to grace. Not to desire our own true happiness is therefore a suicidal, idiotic folly. Not to work for it is presumption, ingratitude, and the deadly sin of sloth. Moreover, to attempt to fly with unfledged wings; to soar aloft in the sky among the saints when we ought to be walking on the earth, to undertake while yet weak beginners the heroic works of the perfect; to anticipate by self-will the time and call which God appoints, and pervert the orderly course of his providence; to strive by our own natural powers to accomplish what requires the special gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, is imprudent, contrary to humility, and full of peril. The dupe of false spirituality may, therefore, either take an entirely wrong road or attempt to travel the right road in a wrong manner; in either case sure to fail of reaching his intended goal, if he persists in his error.The sound and orthodox doctrine of Catholic mystical theology presents God as he is in his own intrinsic essence, as the object of his own beatific contemplation, and of the contemplation of the blessed who have received thefaculty of intuitive vision by the light of glory. The nearest approach to this beatific state, as well as the most perfect and immediate preparation for it, is the state of quiet, tranquil contemplation of God by the obscure light of faith. The excellence and blessedness of this state consists in the pure love of God. It is of the nature of love and the intention of the mind toward the sovereign good, by which the will is directed in its motion toward the good which it loves and in the fruition of which it finds its repose, that the consideration of the object precede the consideration and desire of the fruition of the object. Liberatore, who is a good expositor of the doctrine ofSt.Thomas and all sound Catholic philosophers on this head, proposes and proves this statement in the clearest terms. The object is first apprehended and loved for its intrinsic goodness. Reflection on the enjoyment which is received and delight in this enjoyment, though a necessary consequence of the possession of the chief good, is the second but not the first act.St.John of the Cross teaches the same truth: “As the end of all is love, which inheres in the will, the characteristic of which is to give and not to receive, to the soul inebriated with love the first object that presents itself is not the essential glory which God will bestow upon it, but the entire surrender of itself to him in true love, without any regard to its own advantage. The second object is included in the first.â€[20]Father Mazzella,S.J., of Woodstock College, in his admirable work on the infused virtues, makes a lengthened exposition of the distinction between that love of benevolenceand complacency toward God which is the principle of perfect contrition, and by itself takes away sin and unites the soul with God, and the love of desire which terminates on the good received from God. The first considers God as the sovereign good in himself; the second considers him directly and explicitly as the source and giver of good to us. It manifests itself as an efficacious desire for the rewards of everlasting life, accompanied by a fear of the punishment of sin in the future state, and is the principle of imperfect contrition or attrition, which of itself does not suffice for justification, though it is a sufficient condition for receiving grace through the appointed sacraments. The Catholic teachers of mystical theology direct the soul principally and as their chief purpose toward the higher and more perfect love. The second object is included in this first object, and taken for granted. It is not excluded, but comparatively neglected, because it follows of itself from the first, and is sought for by the natural, necessary law of our being, without any need of direct, explicit efforts. The resignation, forgetfulness of private interests, self-annihilation, so strongly recommended, do not denote any suppression or destruction of our natural beatific impulses, but only of our own personal notions, wishes, and interests in respect to such things as are merely means to the attainment of an end, a conformity of our will to the will of God, and an abandonment of solicitude respecting our own future happiness, founded on filial confidence in the wisdom and goodness of God.It follows from this doctrine of sound, mystical writers that the quietude of the state of contemplation and union with God is totallyopposite to a condition of apathy and sloth. It is a state of more tranquil activity, of more steady and therefore more imperceptible yet more rapid movement. Previously the soul was like a boat propelled by oars against wind and tide. Now it is like a yacht sailing with a press of canvas under a strong and fair breeze.So far as the imprudent misuse of mystical theology is concerned, we need not waste words on a truism of spiritual direction, that beginners and unlearned, inexperienced persons must follow the counsel of a guide, if they can have it. If not, they must direct themselves as well as they can by good books, which will instruct them gradually and soberly in the first principles of solid virtue and piety, and afterwards lead them on to perfection. They cannot have a better guide thanSancta Sophia. It is a book that will last for years, and even for a lifetime; for it is a guide along the whole way, from the gate at the entrance to the river of death, for such as are really and earnestly seeking to attain perfection by prayer, and desire to lead an interior life amid the external occupations, duties, and trials of their state in life, or even in the most strict cloistral seclusion. The exterior persecutions to which the church is subject, the disorders of the times, and the multifarious troubles of every kind, both outward and inward, to which great numbers of the best-disposed and most virtuous people are subjected, have an effect to throw thoughtful persons on the interior life as a refuge and solace. PiusIX., whose long experience and great sanctity, as well as his divine office, make him as a prophet of God to all devout Catholics, has told us that thechurch is now going through the exercises of the purgative way as a preparation for receiving great gifts from the Holy Spirit, which will accompany a new and glorious triumph of the kingdom of Jesus Christ on the earth. Whatever external splendor the reign of Christ over this world may exhibit, it is in the hearts of men that his spiritual royalty has its seat. There is nothing on earth for which, so to speak, he really cares, except the growth of the souls of men. The world and the church were made for this purpose. The wisdom of the ancients was an adumbration of the truth, and that doctrine which teaches the full and complete form of it alone deserves to be called in the highest sense wisdom, and to win the love and admiration of all men for its celestial beauty.[14]Sancta Sophia; or, Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, etc.Extracted out of more than forty treatises written by the late Father Augustin Baker, a monk of the English Congregation of the Holy Order ofSt.Benedict; and methodically digested by R. F. Serenus Cressy. Doway,A.D.1657. Now edited by the VeryRev.Dom Norbert Sweeney,D.D., of the same order and congregation. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.[15]P.492, note.[16]L’Abandon à la Providence Divine,pp.164-167.[17]Complete Works, Lewis’Trans.,vol. ii. p.75.[18]Ib.pp.158, 159.[19]Complete Works, etc.,vol. ii.pp.267-270.[20]Complete Works,vol. ii.pp.198, 199.
Thenew and improved edition of Father Cressy’s compendium of the principal treatises of the English Benedictine, Father Baker, entitledSancta Sophia, or Holy Wisdom, which has now appeared, has been long looked for, and we give it a cordial welcome. In compliance with an earnest request of the very reverend and learned prelate under whose careful supervision this new edition has been prepared, we very gladly make use of the opportunity which is thus presented of calling attention to this admirable work, and to some topics of the greatest interest and importance which are intimately connected with its peculiar nature and scope as a book of spiritual instruction. It belongs to a special class of books treating of the higher grades of the spiritual life, and of the more perfect way in which the soul that has passed through the inferior exercises of active meditation is led upward toward the tranquil region of contemplation. It is a remarkable fact, and an indication of the increasing number of those who feel the aspiration after this higher life, that such a demand has made itself felt, within a comparatively recent period, for spiritual treatises of this sort. The most voluminous andpopular modern writer who has ministered to this appetite of souls thirsting for the fountains of pure spiritual doctrine, is the late holy Oratorian, Father Faber. The unparalleled circulation of his works is a matter of common notoriety. The lives of saints and of holy persons who have been led in the highways of mystic illumination and union with God, which have poured forth in such copious abundance from the Catholic press, and have been so eagerly read, are another symptom as well as a cause of this increasing taste for the science and wisdom of the saints. The most choice and elevated spiritual works which have appeared are, however, with few exceptions, republications of books of an older and bygone time. Among these we may mention that quaint treatise so often referred to by Father Baker, calledThe Cloud of the Unknowing, Walter Hilton’sScala Perfectionis, theSpiritual DialoguesofSt.Catherine of Genoa,St.Teresa’s writings, Dom Castaniza’sSpiritual Conflict and Conquest, and above all others that truly magnificent edition in an English version of theWorks ofSt.John of the Cross, for which we are indebted to Mr. Lewis and his Eminence the Cardinal of Westminster. As a manual for common and general use, theSancta Sophiaof Father Baker has an excellence and value peculiarly its own. Canon Dalton, a good authority on subjects of this kind, says that “it is certainly thebest bookwe have in English on prayer.†Bishop Ullathornesays of it: “Nothing is more clear, simple, solid, and profound.†Similar testimonies might be multiplied; and if the suffrages of the thousands of unknown but devout persons in religious communities and in the secular state, who have made use of this book, could be collected, the result would prove that the high esteem in which it has ever been held by the English Benedictines is perfectly well deserved, according to the sense of the most pious among the faithful.
The first modern edition ofSancta Sophiawas published in New York in 1857. Before this time it was wholly unknown in this country, so far as we are informed, excepting in the convent of Carmelite Nuns at Baltimore. At the ancient convent on Aisquith Street, where a small community of the daughters ofSt.Teresa had long been strictly practising the rule of their holy mother, an old copy of the first edition ofSancta Sophiawas preserved as their greatest treasure. It was there that Father Walworth became acquainted with the book, and, charmed with its quaint style and rare, old-fashioned excellence, resolved to have a new edition of it published for the benefit of the Catholics of the United States. By permission of the VeryRev.Father Bernard, of holy memory, who was then provincial of the Redemptorists, it was published, under Father Hecker’s supervision, by James B. Kirker (Dunigan & Bro.) of New York. It was reprinted correctly, though in a plain and unattractive form, without any change excepting in the spelling of words and the omission of certain forms of short prayers and aspirations which were added to the treatises in the original. There is no substantial difference, as to the text of the work itself, between thisedition and the new one edited by Dr. Sweeney. He has, however, had it published in a much better and more attractive form, has restored all the parts omitted, and, besides carefully revising the text, has added prefatory matter, notes, and appendices, which make his edition more complete. A portrait of the venerable Father Baker is prefixed. If an index of the contents of the chapters had been added, it would have made the edition as perfect as we could desire. That it will now become once more widely known and appreciated in England we cannot doubt, and we trust that it will also obtain a much wider circulation in this country than it has hitherto enjoyed. There is but one serious obstacle in the way of its becoming a universal favorite with those who have a taste for solid spiritual food. It is food of the most simple, dry, and hard quality, served without sauce or condiments of any kind—pure nutriment, like brown bread, wheaten, grits, farina, or Scotch porridge. It is most wholesome and conducive to spiritual growth, but altogether destitute of the eloquence which we find in Tauler, the deep philosophy and sublime poetry ofSt.John of the Cross, the ecstatic rapture ofSt.Teresa. Whoever studies it will have no stimulus but a pure and simple desire for instruction, improvement, and edification. The keynote to the entire mode and measure of the book is given in the chapter, borrowed from Father Walter Hilton, on the spiritual pilgrimage: “One way he knew, which, if he would diligently pursue according to the directions and marks that he would give him—though, said he, I cannot promise thee a security from many frights, beatings, and other ill-usage andtemptations of all kinds; but if thou canst have courage and patience enough to suffer them without quarrelling or resisting, or troubling thyself, and so pass on, having this only in thy mind, and sometimes on thy tongue,I have naught, I am naught, I desire naught but to be at Jerusalem, my life for thine, thou wilt escape safe with thy life, and in a competent time arrive thither.†Father Baker attempts nothing but to furnish a plain guide-book over this route. For descriptions of the scenery, photographic views of mountains, valleys, lakes, and prospects, one must go elsewhere. A clear, methodical, safe guide-book over the route he will find inSancta Sophia. This is not to say that one should confine himself exclusively to its perusal, or deny himself the pleasure of reading other books in which there is more that pleases the imagination and awakens the affections, or that satisfies the demands of the intellect seeking for the deepest causes of things and the exposition of sublime truths. The most important and practical matter, however, is to find and keep the right road. And certainly many, if not all, of those who are seeking the straightest and safest way to perfection and everlasting beatitude, will value theSancta Sophiaall the more for its very plainness, and the absence of everything except that simple and solid doctrine which they desire and feel the need of amid the trials and perplexities of the journey of life.
The doctrine of Father Baker has not, however, lacked opponents from his own day to the present. Since the publication ofSancta Sophiain this country we have repeatedly heard of its use being discountenanced in religiouscommunities and in the case of devout persons in the world. Dr. Sweeney calls attention directly to this fact of opposition to Father Baker’s doctrine, and devotes a considerable part of his own annotations to a refutation of the objections alleged against it. He has pointed out one seemingly plausible ground of these censures which we were not before aware of, and which was unknown to the American editors ofSancta Sophiawhen they republished it in this country. We cannot pass this matter by without some examination; for although on such subjects controversy is disagreeable, and to the unlearned and simple-minded may be vexatious and perplexing, it cannot be avoided where a question of orthodox soundness in doctrine is concerned. The gist of the whole matter is found in chapter the seventh, “On the Prayer of Interior Silence,†to which Dr. Sweeney has appended a long note of explanation. The matter of this chapter is professedly derived from an old Spanish work by Antonio de Rojas, entitledThe Life of the Spirit Approved, which was placed on the Index about fifty years after the death of Father Baker, and two years after the condemnation of Quietism. We have never seen this book, but we are informed by Dr. Sweeney that its language, taken in the most natural and obvious sense, leads to the conclusion that the state of charity which is requisite to perfection excludes all private interest, not only all fear of punishment, but all hope of reward—that is, all desire or consideration of the beatitude of heaven. In order to attain this state of indifference and annihilation of self-love, all express acts are discountenanced, and that kind of silence and passivity inprayer recommended which suppresses the active movements of the soul toward God, such as hope, love toward God as the chief good, petition and supplication, thanksgiving, etc. Now, such a doctrine as this is manifestly tinged with some of the errors of Quietism, and seems to be precisely similar to the semi-Quietism of Madame Guyon and Fénelon which was condemned by InnocentXII.in 1699. The second of the propositions from Fénelon’sMaxims of the Saintscondemned by this pope is as follows: “In the state of contemplative or unitive life every interested motive of fear and hope is lost.†The doctrinal error here is the notion that the soul’s love of itself, desire and hope for its own beatification in God, and love to God as its own sovereign good, is incompatible with a pure, disinterested, perfect love of God, as the sovereign good in himself. The practical error is the inculcation of direct efforts to suppress every movement of interested love to God in prayer, in order to make way for passive, disinterested love. Father Baker lived so long before the errors of false mysticism had been thoroughly investigated, refuted, and condemned that it was very easy for him to fail of detecting what was unguarded, inaccurately expressed, exaggerated, or of erroneous tendency in a book which was approved by a number of prelates and theologians. He has certainly not borrowed or adopted what was erroneous in the book, but that portion of its teaching which was sound and safe, upon which the error was a mere excrescence. The mere fact of citing a book which has been placed on the Index is a matter of small and only incidental moment. Dr. Sweeney seems to us to havefollowed too timorous a conscience in his way of treating the chapter ofSancta Sophiain which the work of De Rojas is quoted. We cannot agree with him that Father Baker would have suppressed that chapter if the book had been censured during his lifetime. He would have suppressed his commendation of the book, and looked carefully to see what the error was on account of which it had been condemned, as any good Catholic is bound to do in such a case. But we feel confident that he would not have felt himself obliged to make any essential alteration in what he had written on the prayer of silence, though he would probably have explicitly guarded it against any possible misapprehension or perversion. Any one who reads theSancta Sophia, especially with Dr. Sweeney’s annotations, will see at once how absurd is the charge of a tincture of semi-Quietism against so sober and practical a writer as Father Baker, and how remote from anything favoring the illusions of false spirituality are his instructions on prayer. It would be almost as absurd to impute Quietism to Father Baker as rigorism toSt.Alphonsus. We are afraid that Dr. Sweeney’s signal-board of “caution†will scare away simple-minded and devout readers from one of the most useful chapters ofSancta Sophia, one which is really the pivot of the whole book. Father Baker’s special scope and object was not to give instruction in meditation and active exercises, but to lead the soul through and beyond these to contemplation. The instructions on the prayer of interior silence are precisely those which are fitted to enlighten and direct a person in the transition state from the spiritual exercises of discursive meditationto that state of ordinary and acquired contemplation which Scaramelli and all standard writers recognize as both desirable and attainable for those who have devoted a considerable time to the practice of mental prayer. Father Baker’s directions on this head should be judged by what they are intrinsically in themselves, without any regard to anything else. Are they singular, imprudent, or in any respect contrary to the doctrine of the saints and other authors of recognized soundness in doctrine? We cannot see that they are. Whatever perversion of the method of prayer in question may have been contained in the book of De Rojas, sprang from his erroneous doctrine that explicit acts of the understanding and will in prayer should be suppressed in order to eradicate the implicit acts, the habits, and tendencies of the soul, by which its intention and desire are directed toward its own supreme good and felicity in God. But this is no reason against the method itself, apart from a perversion no trace of which is to be found in Father Baker’s own language. The well-known and justly-revered Father Ramière,S.J., in his introduction to a little work by another Jesuit, Father De Caussade, entitledL’Abandon à la Providence Divine, remarks in reference to the doctrine of that book, which is quite similar in its spirit to theSancta Sophia, as follows: “There is no truth so luminous that it does not change into error from the moment when it suffers diminution or exaggeration; and there is no nourishment, however salutary to the soul, which, if imprudently used, may not produce in it the effect of a noxious poison.†It would seem that some are so afraid of the perversion of the luminous truths ofmystical theology, and of the abuse of the salutary nourishment it affords to the soul, that they would desire to avoid the danger by shutting out the light and locking up the food in a closet. They would restrict all persons whatever, in every stage and condition of the spiritual life, to certain methods of prayer and the use of certain books, excellent for the majority of persons while they are beginners or proficients, but unsuitable, or even injurious, to some who are of a peculiar disposition, or who have advanced so far that they need something of a different order. It is a great mistake to suppose that such a course is safe or prudent. There are some who cannot, even in the beginning, make use of discursive meditation. It is a generally-recognized rule that those who can, and actually do, practise this kind of mental prayer, ought, as soon as it ceases to be pleasant and profitable to them, to change it for a simpler method. Even those set methods which are not discursive, if they consist in oft-repeated acts of the understanding, the affections, and the will, become frequently, after the lapse of time, too laborious, wearisome, and insipid to be continued with any fervor. The soul needs and instinctively longs for the cessation of this perpetual activity in a holy repose, in tranquil contemplation, in rest upon the bosom of God. It is for such souls that the chapter on the prayer of interior silence was written.
We may now examine a little more closely the passages which Dr. Sweeney seems to have had in view, as requiring to be read with caution because similar to statements made by De Rojas and other writers whose doctrine is tinctured withQuietism. Dr. Sweeney remarks: “When afterwards (in the book of De Rojas) express acts toward God are discountenanced, and it is declared that an advantage of this kind of prayer isself-annihilation, and that resignation then becomes so pure that all private interest is forgotten and ignored, we see the prudence and watchfulness of the Holy See in cautioning her children against a book which, if it does not expressly, distinctly, and advisedly teach it, yet conveys the impression that a state of charity excludes all private interest, such as fear of punishment and hope of reward, and that perfection implies such a state.â€[15]
Father Baker says that in the prayer of silence, “with the will she [the soul] frames no particular request nor any express acts toward Godâ€; that “by this exercise we come to the most perfect operation of self-annihilation,†and practise in the most sublime manner “resignation, since the soul forgets all private interestsâ€; and more to the same effect. Nevertheless, the dangerous and erroneous sense which this language might convey, if intended or interpreted to mean that the soul must suppress all hope or desire for its own private good as incompatible with the perfect love of God, is plainly excluded by the immediate context in which it occurs. The soul, says Father Baker, should “continue in his presencein the quality of a petitioner, but such an one as makes no special, direct requests, but contents herself to appear before himwith all her wants and necessities, best, and indeed only, known to him, who therefore needs not her information.†Again, he compares the soul to thesubject of a sovereign who abstains from asking any particular favors from his prince, because he knows that “he is both most wise to judge what favors may become the one to give and the other to receive, and in that that he has a love and magnificence toadvance him beyond his deserts.â€
Once more he says that in this prayer the soul exercises in a sublime manner “hope, because the soul, placing herself before Godin the posture of a beggar, confidently expects that he will impart to her both the knowledge of his will and ability to fulfil it.â€
It is equally plain that Father Baker’s method of the prayer of interior silence is not liable to the censure which Dr. Sweeney attaches to the one of De Rojas when he remarks that “we can at once see what danger accompanies such an exercise, if that can be called an exercise where all activity ceases and prayer is really excluded.†“Since an intellectual soul is all activity,†says Father Baker, “so that it cannot continue a moment without some desires, the soul then rejecting all desires toward created objects, she cannot choose but tend inwardly in her affections to God, for which end only she put herself in such a posture of prayer; her tendence then being much like that of the mounting of an eagle after a precedent vigorous springing motion and extension of her wings, which ceasing,in virtue thereof the flight is continued for a good space with a great swiftness, but withal with great stillness, quietness, and ease, without any waving of the wings at all or the least force used in any member, being in as much ease and stillness as if she were reposing on her nest.†For the further defence of Father Baker’s doctrine from theother parts ofSancta Sophia, and in general from his known method of personal conduct and his direction of others, what his learned Benedictine editor has furnished amply suffices.
We are not content, however, with simply showing that Father Baker’s method of conducting souls to perfection by means of contemplative prayer is free from the errors of Quietism and the illusions of false mysticism. TheSancta Sophiais not merely a good book, one among the many English books of devotion and spiritual reading which can be safely and profitably read. We think Canon Dalton’s opinion that it is the best book on prayer we have in the English language is correct. It is a guide for those who will scarcely find another book to fill its place; and we venture to affirm that the very part of it which we have been specially criticising is not only defensible, but positively in accordance, even to its phraseology, with the doctrine of the most approved authors, and of special, practical value and importance.
In an appendix which Father Ramière has added to the little book by Father Caussade already once cited in this article, there is a chapter taken from Bossuet, entitled “A Short and Easy Method of making the Prayer of Faith and of the simple presence of God,†from which we quote the following passages: “Meditation is very good in its own time, and very useful at the beginning of the spiritual life; but it is not proper to make it a final stopping-place, for the soul which is faithful in mortification and recollection ordinarily receives a gift of prayer which is purer and more simple, and may be called the prayer ofsimplicity, consisting in asimple view, or fixed, attentive, and loving look directed toward some divine object, whether it be God in himself, or some one of his perfections, or Jesus Christ, or one of the mysteries relating to him, or some other Christian truths. In this attitude the soul leaves off reasoning, and makes use of a quiet contemplation, which keeps it peaceful, attentive, and susceptible to the divine operations and impressions which the Holy Spirit imparts to it; it does little and receives a great deal; its labor is easy, and nevertheless more fruitful than it would otherwise be; and as it approaches very near to the source of all light—grace and virtue—it receives on that account the more of all these. The practice of this prayer ought to begin on first awaking, by an act of faith in the presence of God, who is everywhere, and in Jesus Christ, whose eyes are always upon us, if we were even buried in the centre of the earth. This act is elicited either in the ordinary and sensible manner, as by saying inwardly, ‘I believe that my God is present’; or it is a simple calling to memory of the faith of God’s presence in a more purely spiritual manner. After this, one ought not to produce multifarious and diverse acts and dispositions, but to remain simply attentive to this presence of God, and as it were exposed to view before him, continuing this devout attention and attitude as long as the Lord grants us the grace for doing so, without striving to make other acts than those to which we are inspired, since this kind of prayer is one in which we converse with God alone, and is a union which contains in an eminent mode all other particular dispositions, and disposes the soul to passivity; by which is meant, that God becomes sole master ofits interior, and operates in it in a special manner. The less working done by the creature in this state, the more powerful is the operation of God in it; and since God’s action is at the same time a repose, the soul becomes in a certain way like to him in this kind of prayer, receiving in it wonderful effects; so that as the rays of the sun cause the growth, blossoming, and fruit-bearing of plants, the soul, in like manner, which is attentive and tranquilly basking under the rays of the divine Sun of righteousness, is in the best condition for receiving divine influences which enrich it with all sorts of virtues.â€[16]
St.John of the Cross declares that “the soul having attained to the interior union of love,the spiritual faculties of it are no longer active, and still less those of the body; for now that the union of love is actually brought about, the faculties of the soulcease from their exertions, because, now that the goal is reached, all employment of means is at an end.â€[17]
Again: “He who truly loves makes shipwreck of himself in all else, that he may gain the more in the object of his love. Thus the soul says that it has lost itself—that is, deliberately, of set purpose. This loss occurs in two ways. The soul loses itself, making no account whatever of itself, but referring all to the Beloved, resigning itself freely into his hands without any selfish views, losing itself deliberately, and seeking nothing for itself. Secondly, it loses itself in all things, making no account of anything save that which concerns the Beloved. This is to lose one’s self—that is, to be willing that othersshould have all things. Such is he that loves God; he seeks neither gain nor reward, but only to lose all, even himself according to God’s will. This is what such an one counts gain.… When a soul has advanced so far on the spiritual road as to be lost to all the natural methods of communing with God; when it seeks him no longer by meditation, images, impressions, nor by any other created ways or representations of sense, but only by rising above them all, in the joyful communion with him by faith and love, then it may be said to have gained God of a truth, because it has truly lost itself as to all that is not God, and also as to its own self.â€[18]
In another place the saint explains quite at length the necessity of passing from meditation to contemplation, the reasons for doing so, and the signs which denote that the time for this change has arrived. The state of beginners, he says, is “one of meditation and of acts of reflection.†After a certain stage of progress has been reached, “God begins at once to introduce the soul into the state of contemplation, and that very quickly, especially in the case of religious, because these, having renounced the world, quickly fashion their senses and desires according to God; they have, therefore, to pass at once from meditation to contemplation. This passage, then, takes place when the discursive acts and meditation fail, when sensible sweetness and the first fervors cease, when the soul cannot make reflections as before, nor find any sensible comfort, but is fallen into aridity, because the spiritual life is changed.… It is evident, therefore, that if the soul does not now abandon its previous waysof meditation, it will receive this gift of God in a scanty and imperfect manner.… If the soul will at this time make efforts of its own, and encourage another disposition than that ofpassive, loving attention, most submissive and calm, and if it does notabstain from its previous discursive acts, it will place a complete barrier against those graces which God is about to communicate to it in this loving knowledge.… The soul must be attached to nothing, not even to the subject of its meditation, not to sensible or spiritual sweetness, because God requires a spirit so free, soannihilated, that every act of the soul, even of thought, of liking or disliking, will impede and disturb it, and break thatprofound silence of sense and spiritnecessary for hearing the deep and delicate voice of God, who speaks to the heart in solitude; it is in profound peace and tranquillity that the soul is to listen to God, who will speak peace unto his people. When this takes place, when the soul feels that it is silent and listens, its loving attention must be most pure,without a thought of self, in a manner self-forgotten, so that it shall be wholly intent upon hearing; for thus it is that the soul is free and ready for that which our Lord requires at its hands.â€[19]
We have sufficiently proved, we trust, that there is no reason to be disquieted by a certain verbal and merely apparent likeness between some parts of Father Baker’s spiritual doctrine and the errors of a false mysticism. We may, perhaps, return to this subject on a future occasion, and point out more distinctly and at length the true philosophical and theological basis ofCatholic mystical doctrine, in contrast with the travesties and perversions of its counterfeits in the extravagant, absurd, and revolting systems of infidel and heretical visionaries. At present a few words may suffice to sum up and succinctly define the difference between the true and the false doctrine in respect to the case in hand. That doctrine which is false, dangerous, and condemned by the unerring judgment of the holy church teaches that the love and pursuit of our own good and happiness, even in God, is sinful, or at least low and imperfect. It inculcates, as a means for suppressing and eradicating our natural tendency towards the attainment of the good as an end, and annihilating our self-activity, the cessation of all operation of the natural faculties of understanding and volition, at least in reference to God as our own supreme and desirable good. It inculcates a fixed, otiose quietude and indifference toward our own happiness or misery. Its effect is therefore to quench the life of the soul, to extinguish its light, and to reduce it to a state of torpor and apathy resembling that of a stoical Diogenes or an Indian fakir. Its pretence of disinterestedness and pure love to God for himself alone is wholly illusory and founded on a false view of God as the intrinsically sovereign good and the object of supreme love to the intelligent creature. The goodness of God as the first object of the love of complacency cannot be separated from the same goodness as the object of desire. The extrinsic glory of God as the chief end of creatures is identified with the exaltation and happiness of those intellectual and rational beings whom he has createdand elevated to a supernatural end. Hope, desire, and effort for the attainment of the good intended for and promised to man is a duty and obligation imposed by the law of God. It is impossible to love God and be conformed to his will without loving our neighbors, and our own soul as our nearest neighbor. Moreover, we are not saved merely by the action of God upon us passively received, but also by a concurrence of our understanding and will, a co-operation of our own active efforts with the working of God in us, or, as it is commonly expressed, by a diligent and faithful correspondence to grace. Not to desire our own true happiness is therefore a suicidal, idiotic folly. Not to work for it is presumption, ingratitude, and the deadly sin of sloth. Moreover, to attempt to fly with unfledged wings; to soar aloft in the sky among the saints when we ought to be walking on the earth, to undertake while yet weak beginners the heroic works of the perfect; to anticipate by self-will the time and call which God appoints, and pervert the orderly course of his providence; to strive by our own natural powers to accomplish what requires the special gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, is imprudent, contrary to humility, and full of peril. The dupe of false spirituality may, therefore, either take an entirely wrong road or attempt to travel the right road in a wrong manner; in either case sure to fail of reaching his intended goal, if he persists in his error.
The sound and orthodox doctrine of Catholic mystical theology presents God as he is in his own intrinsic essence, as the object of his own beatific contemplation, and of the contemplation of the blessed who have received thefaculty of intuitive vision by the light of glory. The nearest approach to this beatific state, as well as the most perfect and immediate preparation for it, is the state of quiet, tranquil contemplation of God by the obscure light of faith. The excellence and blessedness of this state consists in the pure love of God. It is of the nature of love and the intention of the mind toward the sovereign good, by which the will is directed in its motion toward the good which it loves and in the fruition of which it finds its repose, that the consideration of the object precede the consideration and desire of the fruition of the object. Liberatore, who is a good expositor of the doctrine ofSt.Thomas and all sound Catholic philosophers on this head, proposes and proves this statement in the clearest terms. The object is first apprehended and loved for its intrinsic goodness. Reflection on the enjoyment which is received and delight in this enjoyment, though a necessary consequence of the possession of the chief good, is the second but not the first act.St.John of the Cross teaches the same truth: “As the end of all is love, which inheres in the will, the characteristic of which is to give and not to receive, to the soul inebriated with love the first object that presents itself is not the essential glory which God will bestow upon it, but the entire surrender of itself to him in true love, without any regard to its own advantage. The second object is included in the first.â€[20]Father Mazzella,S.J., of Woodstock College, in his admirable work on the infused virtues, makes a lengthened exposition of the distinction between that love of benevolenceand complacency toward God which is the principle of perfect contrition, and by itself takes away sin and unites the soul with God, and the love of desire which terminates on the good received from God. The first considers God as the sovereign good in himself; the second considers him directly and explicitly as the source and giver of good to us. It manifests itself as an efficacious desire for the rewards of everlasting life, accompanied by a fear of the punishment of sin in the future state, and is the principle of imperfect contrition or attrition, which of itself does not suffice for justification, though it is a sufficient condition for receiving grace through the appointed sacraments. The Catholic teachers of mystical theology direct the soul principally and as their chief purpose toward the higher and more perfect love. The second object is included in this first object, and taken for granted. It is not excluded, but comparatively neglected, because it follows of itself from the first, and is sought for by the natural, necessary law of our being, without any need of direct, explicit efforts. The resignation, forgetfulness of private interests, self-annihilation, so strongly recommended, do not denote any suppression or destruction of our natural beatific impulses, but only of our own personal notions, wishes, and interests in respect to such things as are merely means to the attainment of an end, a conformity of our will to the will of God, and an abandonment of solicitude respecting our own future happiness, founded on filial confidence in the wisdom and goodness of God.
It follows from this doctrine of sound, mystical writers that the quietude of the state of contemplation and union with God is totallyopposite to a condition of apathy and sloth. It is a state of more tranquil activity, of more steady and therefore more imperceptible yet more rapid movement. Previously the soul was like a boat propelled by oars against wind and tide. Now it is like a yacht sailing with a press of canvas under a strong and fair breeze.
So far as the imprudent misuse of mystical theology is concerned, we need not waste words on a truism of spiritual direction, that beginners and unlearned, inexperienced persons must follow the counsel of a guide, if they can have it. If not, they must direct themselves as well as they can by good books, which will instruct them gradually and soberly in the first principles of solid virtue and piety, and afterwards lead them on to perfection. They cannot have a better guide thanSancta Sophia. It is a book that will last for years, and even for a lifetime; for it is a guide along the whole way, from the gate at the entrance to the river of death, for such as are really and earnestly seeking to attain perfection by prayer, and desire to lead an interior life amid the external occupations, duties, and trials of their state in life, or even in the most strict cloistral seclusion. The exterior persecutions to which the church is subject, the disorders of the times, and the multifarious troubles of every kind, both outward and inward, to which great numbers of the best-disposed and most virtuous people are subjected, have an effect to throw thoughtful persons on the interior life as a refuge and solace. PiusIX., whose long experience and great sanctity, as well as his divine office, make him as a prophet of God to all devout Catholics, has told us that thechurch is now going through the exercises of the purgative way as a preparation for receiving great gifts from the Holy Spirit, which will accompany a new and glorious triumph of the kingdom of Jesus Christ on the earth. Whatever external splendor the reign of Christ over this world may exhibit, it is in the hearts of men that his spiritual royalty has its seat. There is nothing on earth for which, so to speak, he really cares, except the growth of the souls of men. The world and the church were made for this purpose. The wisdom of the ancients was an adumbration of the truth, and that doctrine which teaches the full and complete form of it alone deserves to be called in the highest sense wisdom, and to win the love and admiration of all men for its celestial beauty.
[14]Sancta Sophia; or, Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, etc.Extracted out of more than forty treatises written by the late Father Augustin Baker, a monk of the English Congregation of the Holy Order ofSt.Benedict; and methodically digested by R. F. Serenus Cressy. Doway,A.D.1657. Now edited by the VeryRev.Dom Norbert Sweeney,D.D., of the same order and congregation. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
[15]P.492, note.
[16]L’Abandon à la Providence Divine,pp.164-167.
[17]Complete Works, Lewis’Trans.,vol. ii. p.75.
[18]Ib.pp.158, 159.
[19]Complete Works, etc.,vol. ii.pp.267-270.
[20]Complete Works,vol. ii.pp.198, 199.