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AND THEIR REFUTATION. 343
fruit received in contemplation, by reading, reflecting, offering up
pious affections, and performing similar acts of devotion, because,
as St. Augustin confesses, he always felt himself, after being
exalted to some unusual union with God, drawn back again as it
were by a weight, to the miseries of this life, so that he felt
obliged again to assist himself by acts of the will and the under
"
Aliquando, intro-
standing, to an union with God. He says :
mittis me in affectum inusitatum sed recido in haec SDrumnosis
ponderibus, et resorbeor solitis" (2).
4. We have now to examine the pernicious propositions of
Molinos, of which I will merely quote the principal ones, which
will
clearly show the impiety of his system. In his first propo
sition he : says
"
Oportet hominem suas potentias annihilare, et
"
haac est via interna in the second : Velle ;" operari active, est
Deum offendere, qui vult esse Ipse solus agens ; et ideo opus est
seipsum in Deo totum, et totaliter delinquere, et postea permanere
velut corpus exanime." Thus he wished, that, abandoning
all to God, man should do nothing, but remain like a dead body,
and that the wish to perform any good act of the intellect or the
will was an offence against God, who wishes to do every thing by
himself ; this, he said, was the annihilation of the powers of the
soul, which renders it divine, and transfuses it in God, as he said
in his fifth :
proposition
" Mhil operando Anima se annihilat, et
ad suum principium redit, et ad suam originem, qua? est essentia
Dei, in quern trasformata remanet, ac divinizata et tune non
sunt amplius dua3 res unitse, sed una tantum." See what a
number of errors in few words.
5. Hence, also, he prohibited his disciples from having any
care about, or even taking any heed of, their salvation, for the
perfect soul, said he, should think neither of hell or paradise :
"
Qui suum liberum arbitrium Deo Donavit, de nulla re debet
curam habere, nee de Inferno, nee de Paradiso ; nee desiderium
propriaB perfectionis, nee proprise salutis, cujus spem purgare debet."
"
Remark the words spem purgare." To hope for our
to meditate on
salvation, then, or make acts of hope, is a defect ;
death and judgment, hell and heaven, shows a want of perfection,
although our Lord says that the meditation on them is the greatest
(2) St. Aug. Conf. /. 10, c. 40.