Adams’s Mystics and her Quietists, the followers of Molinos, are the interiority lineage the archive runs forward through Guyon and Fenelon to Ramsay.
In Hannah Adams
In Adams’s own words, from the 1817 Dictionary. Each passage is quoted verbatim under its own entry.
MYSTICS. This is a name not confined to any particular division of Christians; but has bee'' generally given to those, who maintain that the scriptures have a mystical sense, which must be sought after; and who, laying but little stress on outward forms, profess to aspire after a pure and sublime devotion—an infused and passive contemplation, through a silent and inward attention to the operations of the spirit of God upon the mind. They are said to derive their origin from Dionysius, the Areopagite, who was converted to Christianity in the first century, by the preaching of Paul at Athens. To support this idea, they attributed to this great man various treatises, which others ascribe to a Grecian Mystic of much later date, who is supposed to have written under his venerable name.
Mysticism is, however, of a much earlier date, and subsisted both in the East and among the Jews, assuming a variety of forms according to the genius and temper of its disciples. In the Christian church this denomination appeared in the third bo century, increased in the fourth, and in the fifth spread into the easter provinces. Inthe year 824, the supposed works of Dionysius kindled the flame of Mysticism in the western provinces. In the twelfth century, they took the lead in expounding the scriptures; in the thirteenth, they were the most formidable antagonists of the schoolmen; towards the close of the fourteenth, they propagated their sentiments in almost every part of Europe; in the fifteenth and sixteenth, many persons of distinguished merit embraced their tenets; and in the seventeenth, the radical principle of Mysticism was adopted by the Behmenists, Bourignonists, Quietists, and Quakers.
The ancient Mystics were distinguished by their professing pure, sublime, and perfect devotion, with a disinterested love of God; and by their aspiring to a state of passive contemplation.
The first principles of these sentiments have been supposed to proceed from the well known doctrine of the Platonic school, (which was adopted by Origen and his disciples,) that the divine nature was diffused through all human souls, or in other words, that the faculty of reason, from which proceeds the health and vigour of the mind, was an emanation from God into the human soul, and comprehended in it the principles and elements of all truth, human and divine. ‘They denied, that men could by labour or study, excite this celestial flame in their own breast; and therefore disapproved of the attempts of those who, by abstract reasonings, endeavoured to discover the hidden nature of truth. On the contrary, they maintained, that silence, tranquillity, repose, and solitude, accompanied with such acts of mortification as might tend to extenuate and exhaust the body, were: the means by which the hidden and internal word was excited, and of instructing men in the knowledge of divine things. ‘They, who behold with a noble contempt all human affairs, who turn away their eyes from terrestrial vanities, and shut all the avenues. of the outward senses against the contagious influence of an outward world, must necessarily return to God, when the spirit is thus disengaged from the impediments which prevent this happy union; and in this blessed frame they not only enjoy inexpressible -raptures from their communion with the supreme Being, but also are invested with the inestimable privilege of contemplating truth undisguised, in its native purity, while others behold it in a vitiated and delusive form. The apostle iells us, that ¢* the spirit makes intercession for us. Now if the Spirit pray in us, we must resign ourselves to its impulses, by remaining in a state of mere inaction.” As the late Rev. William Law, who was born in 1687, makes a distinguished figure among the modern Mystics, a brief account of the outlines of his system may be acceptable.— He supposed that the material world was the region which originally belonged to the fallen angels. At length the light and spirit of God entered into the chaos, and turned the angels’ ruined kingdom into a paradise on earth. God then created man, and placed him there. He was made in the image of the triune God,* a living mirror of the divine nature, formed to enjoy communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and to live on earth as the angels do in heaven. He was endowed with immortality, so that the elements of this outward world could not have any power ofacting on his body: but by his fall he changed the light, life, and spirit of God, for the light, life, and spirit of the world. He died the very day of his transgression to all the influences and operations of the Spirit of God upon him, as we die to the influences of this world when the soul leaves the body; and all the influences and operations of the elements of this life were open in him, as they are in any animal, at his birth into this world: he became an earthly creature, subject to the domin- * Nature (says Mr. Law) is the m: une life of fre, light, and spirit.” ¢ p.2 ion of this outward world, and stood only in the highest rank of animals. But the goodness of God would not leave man in this condition: redemption from it was immediately granted; and the bruiser of the serpent brought the life, light, and spriit of heaven, once more into the human nature. All men, in Consequence of the redemption of Christ, have in them the first spark, or seed, ofthe divine life, as a treasure hid in the centre of our souls, to bring forth, by degrees, a new birth of that life which was lost in paradise. No son of Adam can be lost, except by turning away from the Saviour within him. The only religion, which can save us, must be that which can raise the light, life, and spirit of God in our souls. Nothing can enter into the vegetable kingdom, till it have the vegetable life in it, or be a member of the animal kingdom, till it have the animal life. Thus all naturejoins with the gospel in affirming, that no man can enter into the kingdom of heaven, till the heavenly life is born in him. Nothing can be our righteousness or recovery, but the divine nature of Jesus Christ derived from our souls.+ The excellent Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray, held an eminent rank among the Mystics. See Quietists.
nifestation of the holy trinity in a trie 22, 223. Dictionary of Arts and Scii
QUIETISTS, the followers of Michael de Molinus, a Spanish priest, who flourished in the seventeenth century. They were so called, from a kind of absolute mi and inaction, which the soul is supposed to be in, when arrived at that state of perfection, which they call the unitive life.
The principles maintained by this denomination, are as follow: That the whole of religion consists in the perfect calm and tranquillity of a mind removed from all external and finite things, and centered in God, and in such a pure love of the supreme Being, as is independent on all prospect of interest or reward.
For, say they, the primitive disciples of Christ were all of them inward and spiritual; and when Jesus Christ said to them, It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not arc ay, the Comforter will not come unto you; he intended thereby, to draw them off from that, which was sensible, though very holy, and to prepare their hearts to receive the fulness of the holy spirit, which he looked upon, as the one thing necessary.
To prove, that our love to the Deity must be disinterested, they allege, that the Lord hath made all things for himself, as saith the scripture; and it is for his glory, that he wills our happiness. Our happiness is only a subordinate end, which he has made relative to the last and great end, which is his glory. To conform, therefore, to the great end of our creation, we must prefer God to ourselves, and not desire our own happiness, but for his glory; otherwise we shall go contrary to his order. As the perfections of the Deity are intrinsically amiable, it is our glory and perfection to go out of ourselves, to be lost and absorbed in the pure love of infinite beauty. See Mystics.
Madam Guion, a woman of fashion in France, born (1648) was a warm advocate of these principles. She asserted that the means of arriving at this perfect love, are prayer and the self-denial enjoined in the gospel. Prayer she defines to be the entire bent of the soul towards its divine origin. Fenelon, the excellent archbishop of Cambray, also favoured these sentiments in a celebrated publication, entitled, « The Maxims of the Saints.” Hence arose a controversy between him and Bossuet, bishop of Meaux. The tenets objected by Bossuet to Fenelon may be reduced to two: 1. That a person may attain an habitual state of divine love, in which he loves God purely for his own sake, and without the slightest regard to his own interest, even in respect of his eternal happiness: 2. That in such a state it is lawful, and may even be considered as an heroic effort of conformity to the divine will, to consent to eternal reprobation, if God should require such a sacrifice; the party which makes such an act, conceiving at the moment, that such a sacrifice is possible.
It was objected to Fenelon, that liis doctrine elevated charity beyond human power, at the expense of the fear of God, and the hope of divine favour. On the habitual state of disinterested divine love, the attainment of which was said to he inculcated in Fenelon’s writings, Fenelon himself uniformly declared his opinion that a permanent state of divine love, without hope, and without fear, was above the lot of man; and Bossuet himself allowed that there might be moments, when a soul, dedicated to the love of God, would be lost in heavenly contemplation, and love, and adore without being influenced cither by hope or fear, or being sensible of either.
The controversy* between *Rabbinists, those Jewish doctors, who admit the Cabbala, or traditions of the Elthese great men was referred to the decision of the Roman Catholic church; and in 1699, the pope issued a brief, by which twenty three propositions, reducible to the two above mentioned, were extracted from Fenelon’s “Maxims of the saints” and condemned. Fenelon submitted to the decision of the church. But his enemies were mortified by a bon mot of the pope, “that Fenelon was in fault for too great love of God; and his enemies equally in fault, for too little love of their neighbour.”
Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations, 4th ed. (Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, 1817), entries “Mystics” (pp. 188–191), “Quietists” (pp. 240–241).