Molinos begins by saying that there are two ways to the knowledge of God—­meditation or discursive thought, and “pure faith” or contemplation.  Contemplation has two stages, active and passive, the latter being the higher.[302] Meditation he also calls the “exterior road”; it is good for beginners, he says, but can never lead to perfection.  The “interior road,” the goal of which is union with God, consists in complete resignation to the will of God, annihilation of all self-will, and an unruffled tranquillity or passivity of soul, until the mystical grace is supernaturally “infused.”  Then “we shall sink and lose ourselves in the immeasurable sea of God’s infinite goodness, and rest there steadfast and immovable.[303]” He gives a list of tokens by which we may know that we are called from meditation to contemplation; and enumerates four means, which lead to perfection and inward peace—­prayer, obedience, frequent communions, and inner mortification.  The best kind of prayer is the prayer of silence;[304] and there are three silences, that of words, that of desires, and that of thought.  In the last and highest the mind is a blank, and God alone speaks to the soul.[305] With the curious passion for subdivision which we find in nearly all Romish mystics, he distinguishes three kinds of “infusa contemplazione”—­(1) satiety, when the soul is filled with God and conceives a hatred for all worldly things; (2) “un mentale eccesso” or elevation of the soul, born of Divine love and its satiety; (3) “security.”  In this state the soul would willingly even go to hell, if it were God’s will.  “Happy is the state of that soul which has slain and annihilated itself.”  It lives no longer in itself, for God lives in it.  “With all truth we may say that it is deified.”

Molinos follows St. Juan of the Cross in disparaging visions, which he says are often snares of the devil.  And, like him, he says much of the “horrible temptations and torments, worse than any which the martyrs of the early Church underwent,” which form part of “purgative contemplation.”  He resembles the Spanish mystics also in his insistence on outward observances, especially “daily communion, when possible,” but thinks frequent confession unnecessary, except for beginners.

“The book was no sooner printed,” says Bishop Burnet, “than it was much read and highly esteemed, both in Italy and Spain.  The acquaintance of the author came to be much desired.  Those who seemed in the greatest credit at Rome seemed to value themselves upon his friendship.  Letters were writ to him from all places, so that a correspondence was settled between him and those who approved of his method, in many different places of Europe.”  “It grew so much to be the vogue in Rome, that all the nuns, except those who had Jesuits to their confessors, began to lay aside their rosaries and other devotions, and to give themselves much to the practice of mental prayer.”