things. An enlarged knowledge of the divine increated God is infused into her; she is penetrated with an exquisitely sweet, but wholly indescribable sensation of his love for her, and her own fervent and humble return of love to him. It seldom happens that the period of unspeakable delight is long; but it leaves in the soul a sovereign contempt and loathing of the world and its vanities, an ardent desire of beholding, in eternity, the author of her happiness, a firm but submissive hope of his blessing, and a painful, but patient, sense of its delay. The fear and love of God increase as she advances to her mortal term; and, in the mean time, she lives with God and for him alone.

"The virtuous man," says Father Nouet, (l'Homme d' oraison, deuxieme Retraite, p. 16.) "who resigns his own will to the will of God, has his mind so enlightened, and his heart so magnanimous and generous, that he despises all which he before admired: all his delight is in heavenly things: God is all his joy, felicity, and happiness; and, in return, God finds in him joy, pleasure, and delight. In beholding him, the Father says, "this is my beloved, in whom I am well pleased:" the Son says, "this is my brother:" the Holy Ghost says, "I am the spouse of his soul." The three divine persons associate him to their throne, and sometimes place the sceptre of almighty power in his hands, to work miracles and command

nature.

All approved writers, who write on these high states of prayer, declare their total inability to define or describe them in adequate terms; or to give even a notion of them, to those to whom prayer is not a familiar employment. After some exposition of them, Cardinal Bona expresses himself in these terms; "Omitto plura, hujus unionis, æquè abdita, et inexpertis incredibilia mysteria, mysticos contemplationis excessus.— Hæc secretioris sapientiæ sacramenta, ignaris relata, fidem amittunt, iisque, duntaxat, perspecta sunt, qui in hujus gradûs summitate, pace fruuntur." All approved writers on this subject, also agree, that though the sublime prayer of contemplation is often the reward of heroic virtue, the basis of which is perfect humility and perfect purity of mind and heart, many persons of the most eminent virtue do not receive it; that, though in some manner it might be regulated, it cannot, in the slightest degree, be acquired, by human precept;-that, generally, it is presumptuous to desire it; and that those who conceive themselves to be favoured with it, should abstain, almost wholly, from making it a subject of conversation, and only mention it on very extraordinary occasions.

In an admirable letter of Father Bourdalouë, published by M. De Bausset, in a note to the first volume of the life of Fene

lon, that eloquent and judicious preacher forbids even to real contemplatives, all discourse on the subject, and intimates that they should seldom mention it to their spiritual director. "Ce que ce serait à souhaiter dans le siècle en nous sommes, serait qu'on parlât peu de ces matières: et que les mêmes qui pourroient être veritablement dans l'oraison de la contemplation, ne s'en expliquassent jamais entre elles, et encore même rarement avec leurs pères spirituels." Father Gonnelieu, in a work we have cited, (Exercises de la Vie intérieure, p. 57.) cautions his readers, against contemplative illusions. "Many," he says, "who think themselves called to it, and content themselves, as they term it, with remaining before God, and reposing themselves gently with thoughts of him, are merely idle, and often, really, fall fast asleep.

VIII. MYSTICISM OF SOME DIVINES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Protestant mysticism appears to advantage in the writings of the celebrated Doctor Jeremy Taylor, Doctor Henry More, and Mr. John Norris, contemplative divines of great eminence in the seventeenth century. They had, however, been preceded by the Effigies amoris, or the picture of love unveiled, the work of Mr. Robert Waryng, a student of Christ-church, Oxford, and a noted cavalier. It was first printed in 1649, and has been frequently reprinted; it is now little known; but the writer can recollect, that, in the time of his youth, it was a popular work, and frequently found exposed for sale on stalls.

A complete system of mysticism is exhibited by Mr. Norris in his Idea of happiness, or a Letter on what is the greatest happiness attainable by Man. An abridgment of it is given by the authors of the Biographia Britannica. Having given in these pages an account of the Roman Catholic mysticism, it may be pleasing to our readers to compare it with Mr. Norris's Protestant mysticism: we shall therefore transcribe, for their perusal, an account given of it in the work which we have mentioned.

"Having laid it down, that happiness consists only in the fruition of God, he proceeds to explain the nature of that fruition; and, asserting the insufficiency of a virtuous life to that purpose, as the word virtue is understood by the Stoicks, Peripatetics, and the generality of other moralists, he takes the word in that highest sense which frequently occurs in the Pythagorean and Platonic writings on contemplation, and the unitive way of religion. This, in contra-distinction to moral virtue, they call divine virtue; the former is a state of proficiency, the latter of perfection: the former is a state of difficulty and contention, the latter of ease and security; the former is employed in mastering the passions and regulating the actions of common life, the latter in divine meditation and the ecstacies of seraphic love. He that has only the former is, like Moses, with much difficulty climbing up

to the Holy Mount; but he that has the latter, is like the same person conversing with God on the serene top of it, and shining with rays of anticipated glory. This is the last stage of human perfection, the utmost height of the ladder whereby we ascend to heaven; one step higher, is glory.

"Here then, continues he, I will build my tabernacle; for, it is good to be here. He then goes on to treat of contemplation, which he takes in a peculiar sense, as it signifies an habitual attentive study, application, and conversion of the spirit to God and his divine perfections. Of this, says he, the masters of mystic theology commonly make fifteen degrees. The first is intention of truth. The second is a retirement of all the vigor and strength of the faculties into the innermost parts of the soul. The third is spiritual silence. The fourth is rest. The fifth is union. The sixth is hearing the still voice of God. The seventh is spiritual slumber. The eighth is ecstasy. The ninth is rapture. The tenth is the corporeal appearance of Christ and the saints. The eleventh is the imaginary appearance of the same. The

twelfth is the intellectual vision of God. The thirteenth is the union of God in obscurity. The fourteenth is an admirable manifestation of God. The fifteenth is a clear and intuitive vision of him, such as St. Austin and Thomas Aquinas attribute to St. Paul when he was wrapt in the third heaven. Others, continues he, reckon only seven degrees; viz. taste, desire, satiety, ebriety, security, tranquillity; but the name of the seventh, they say, is known only to God. However, he does not agree with the several Platonists, who, finding their master to define contemplation λύσις καὶ χώρησις τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματο, a solution and separation of the soul from the body, understood it literally and absolutely; yet, he says, there are exceeding great measures of abstraction in it; so great, that sometimes whether a man be in the body or out of the body, he himself can hardly tell; and consequently, the soul in these preludiums of death, these neighbourhoods of separation, must needs have higher glimpses and beatific ideas of God, than in a state void of these devotions, and consequently must love him with greater ardency. This brings him to consider this love, which he will have to be not only intellectual, but passionate; the motion of the will being accompanied with a sensible commotion of the spirits, and an estuation of the blood: and animadverting on an argument against this opinion, it is not, says he, all the sophistry of the cold logicians that shall work me out of the belief of what I feel and know, and rob me of the sweetest entertainment of my life, the passionate love of God; whatever some men may pretend, who are strangers to all the affectionate hearts of religion, and therefore make, their philosophy a plea for their indevotion, and extinguish all holy orders with a syllogism; yea, I am firmly persuaded, that our love of God may be not only passionate, but exceeding the love of women. He endeavoured to prove this from the use of church music, and maintains, that though the beauty of God be not the same with that which we see in corporeal beings, and as it comes intellectually, cannot directly fall within the sphere of the imagination; yet it is something analogous to it, and that very analogy is enough to excite a passion: he concludes with

describing the nature and force of seraphic love, which is to love God with the utmost capacity of a mortal creature in this life; when a man, after having many degrees of abstraction from the animal life, manya profound and steady meditation upon the excellencies of God, sees such a vast ocean of beauty and perfection, that he loves him to the utmost stretch of his power. When he sits under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit is sweet to his taste. (Canticles, ii. iii.) When he consecrates and devotes himself wholly to him, and has no passion for inferior objects. When he is ravished with delights of his service, and breathes out some of his soul to him in every prayer. When he is delighted with the anthems of praise and adoration more than marrow or fatness, (Psalm cxix.) and feasts upon hallelujahs. When he melts into a calenture of devotion, and his soul breatheth out with fervent desires. When the one thing he delights in, is to converse with God in the beauty of holiness, and the one thing he de→ sires, is to see him in heaven. This is seraphic love; and this, with contemplation, makes up that which the mystic divines style the unitive way of religion. By union, he does not understand that which is local, nor that of grace, nor yet that of charity; these two last being common to all men who, indeed, love God, but want the excellency of contemplative and mystic union: the union which these speak of, is between the faculty and the object, consisting of some habitude or operation of one towards the other. The faculties are the understanding and will, and the object God; and the operations, contemplation and love; the result of which two, in the mystic union, is thus admirably presented by Bishop Taylor in his work entitled, The Great Examination. It is,' says he, a prayer of quietness and silence, and a meditation extraordinary, a discourse without variety, a vision and intuition of divine excellencies, an immediate entry into an orb of light, and a resolution of all our faculties into sweetness, affections, and gazings upon the divine beauty; and is carried on to ecstacies, raptures, suspensions, elevations, abstractions, and apprehensions beatifical.'"

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IX.

The opinion of Platonists, that "there is concealed in the minds of all men a spark of the same wisdom that exists in the Supreme Being," is said by Mosheim, (Cent. xxii. § 2. part 2.) to be the fundamental doctrine of Quakerism." All, according to their tenets, who seek to arrive at true felicity and eternal salvation, should endeavour by self-converse, contemplation, and perpetual efforts, to subdue their sensual affections, and draw forth this divine hidden flame; and those by whom this mysterious operation is accomplished, feel a divine glow of light and warmth, and hear an inward and divine voice which, at once, leads them to truth and assures them of their union with the Divine Being. This spiritual in-dwelling energy they call a ray of eternal wisdom; in general, they receive its impressions and commune with it in silence; but it sometimes

urges them to impart its holy truths to neighbours. The spirit, then, in their language, moveth them to speak.

The mysticism of the Methodists is described no where so well as in the sermon of Mr. John Wesley, entitled The Witness of the Spirit. He takes for his text the verse, (Rom. viii. 16.) "The spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." The doctrine which he professes to deduce from these words, he announces to be important. He observes, that "it the more nearly concerns the Methodists, so called, clearly to understand, explain, and defend it; because it is one grand part of the testimony which God has given them to bear to all mankind. It is by his peculiar blessing upon them in searching the scriptures, confirmed by the experience of his children, that the great evangelical truth has been recovered, which had been for many years well nigh forgotten.' He then proceeds to unfold the great evangelical truth. The spirit which he first mentioned in his text is, according to the explanation which he gives of it, the spirit of God; the other spirit mentioned in it, is the testimony of one's own conscience.

"By the former, I mean," says Mr. Wesley, "an inward impression on my soul; whereby the spirit of God immediately and directly witnesseth to my spirit that I am a child of God. That Jesus Christ has loved me; has given himself for me; that all my sins are blotted out; and I, even I, am reconciled to God. But I do not," continues Mr. Wesley," mean hereby that the spirit of God testifies this by any outward voice: no, nor always by an inward voice, although he may do this sometimes. Neither do I suppose that he always applies to the heart (though he often may) one or more texts of the scriptures: but he so works upon the soul by his immediate influence, and by strong, though inexplicable, operation, that the stormy wind and troubled waves subside, and there is a sweet calm: the heart resting as in the arms of Jesus, and the sinner being already satisfied, that God is reconciled, that all his iniquities are forgiven, and his sins covered." This inward conviction, or, in the language of the Methodists, this experience of the soul, that she is an object of divine favor, is not the result of reasoning, it is the voice of the spirit announcing its feelings antecedently to any reasoning whatsoever. "But let none," says Mr. Wesley, "presume to rest on any supposed testimony of the spirit, which is separate from the truth of it; love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, temperance. On the other hand, let none rest on any supposed trust of the spirit without the witness." What, then, is this great evangelical truth which Mr. Wesley seems to claim exclusively for himself and his followers? In what does it differ from the general belief of all Christians, that he who loves God and keeps his com