“since nothing but the Infinite can satisfy us,” to accept nothing until our nothingness is filled with the Infinite.  He does not escape from the quietistic attitude of passive expectancy which belongs to this view of life; and it is only by a glaring inconsistency that he attaches any value to the ecclesiastical symbolism, which rests on a very different basis from that of his teaching.  But St. Juan’s Mysticism brought him no intellectual emancipation, either for good or evil.  Faith with him was the antithesis, not to sight, as in the Bible, but to reason.  The sacrifice of reason was part of the crucifixion of the old man.  And so he remained in an attitude of complete subservience to Church tradition and authority, and even to his “director,” an intermediary who is constantly mentioned by these post-Reformation mystics.  Even this unqualified submissiveness did not preserve him from persecution during his lifetime, and suspicion afterwards.  His books were only authorised twenty-seven years after his death, which occurred in 1591; and his beatification was delayed till 1674.  His orthodoxy was defended largely by references to St. Teresa, who had already been canonised.  But it could not be denied that the quietists of the next century might find much support for their controverted doctrines in both writers.

St. Juan’s ideal of saintliness was as much of an anachronism as his scheme of Church reform.  But no one ever climbed the rugged peaks of Mount Carmel with more heroic courage and patience.  His life shows what tremendous moral force is generated by complete self-surrender to God.  And happily neither his failure to read the signs of the times, nor his one-sided and defective grasp of Christian truth, could deprive him of the reward of his life of sacrifice—­the reward, I mean, of feeling his fellowship with Christ in suffering.  He sold “all that he had” to gain the pearl of great price, and the surrender was not made in vain.

The later Roman Catholic mystics, though they include some beautiful and lovable characters, do not develop any further the type which we have found in St. Teresa and St. Juan.  St. Francis de Sales has been a favourite devotional writer with thousands in this country.  He presents the Spanish Mysticism softened and polished into a graceful and winning pietism, such as might refine and elevate the lives of the “honourable women” who consulted him.  The errors of the quietists certainly receive some countenance from parts of his writings, but they are neutralised by maxims of a different tendency, borrowed eclectically from other sources.[301]

A more consistent and less fortunate follower of St. Teresa was Miguel de Molinos, a Spanish priest, who came to Rome about 1670.  His piety and learning won him the favour of Pope Innocent XI., who, according to Bishop Burnet, “lodged him in an apartment of the palace, and put many singular marks of his esteem upon him.”  In 1675 he published in Italian his Spiritual Guide, a mystical treatise of great interest.