Stafford Henry Northcote

“ Luther had already broken through one link in this chain, when he taught the Protestant world to come directly to Jesus, without troubling about the Church; but Luther still assumed that God could only be reached through the intermediacy of Jesus. Molinos wished to find a royal road to God without any intermediaries at all. The Reformation maintained that the Church, so far from being a help, was a hindrance, to union with Jesus; whereas Molinos welcomed both Church and Jesus as helps to union with God, always provided that the believer treated both as means to an end beyond themselves. ”

“ Beginners gave themselves wholly to the Church. At the second step came devotion to Jesus. At the third and highest stage both Church and Jesus were left behind as deiformes, sed non Deus, and God remained alone.
But how could a finite being bring himself into direct relation with Infinity? Following very ancient precedents, Molinos fell back. on those phenomena of our consciousness which seem least within our own power. The less sense of proprietorship we had in a thought or action—the less it was the fruit of our deliberate will—the more certain might we be that it was divinely inspired. ”

“ Why it is unfitted to be a test of sanctity in general has been explained at length by Bossuet in a remarkable Instruction sur les états d’oraison, published while the Quietist controversy was at its height. ”