includes, “as distinct objects,” all the attributes of God—­“as the Trinity, the humanity of Christ, and all His mysteries.”  “To deny this is to annihilate Christianity under pretence of purifying it, and to confound God with neant.  It is to form a kind of deism which at once falls into atheism, wherein all real idea of God as distinguished from His creatures is rejected.”  Lastly, it is to advance two impieties—­(i.) To suppose that there is or may be on the earth a contemplative who is no longer a traveller, and who no longer needs the way, since he has reached his destination. (ii.) To ignore that Jesus Christ is the way as well as the truth and the life, the finisher as well as the author of our faith.

This criticism of the formless vision is excellent, but there is a palpable inconsistency between the definition of “negative contemplation” and the inclusion in it of “all the attributes of God as distinct objects.”  Contradictions of this sort abound in Fenelon, and destroy the value of his writings as contributions to religious philosophy, though in his case, as in many others, we may speak of “noble inconsistencies” which do more credit to his heart than discredit to his intellect.  We may perhaps see here the dying spasm of the “negative method,” which has crossed our path so often in this survey.

The image of Jesus Christ, Fenelon continues, is not clearly seen by contemplatives at first, and may be withdrawn while the soul passes through the last furnace of trial; but we can never cease to need Him, “though it is true that the most eminent saints are accustomed to regard Him less as an exterior object than as the interior principle of their lives.”  They are in error who speak of possessing God in His supreme simplicity, and of no more knowing Christ after the flesh.  Contemplation is called passive because it excludes the interested activity of the soul, not because it excludes real action. (Here again Fenelon is rather explaining away than explaining his authorities.) The culmination of the “passive state” is “transformation,” in which love is the life of the soul, as it is its being and substance.  “Catherine of Genoa said, I find no more me; there is no longer any other I but God.”  “But it is false to say that transformation is a deification of the real and natural soul, or a hypostatic union, or an unalterable conformity with God.[310]” In the passive state we are still liable to mortal sin. (It is characteristic of Fenelon that he contradicts, without rejecting, the substitution-doctrine plainly stated in the sentence from Catherine of Genoa.)

In his letter to the Pope, which accompanies the “Explanation of the Maxims,” Fenelon thus sums up his distinctions between true and false Mysticism:—­

1.  The “permanent act” (i.e. an indefectible state of union with God) is to be condemned as “a poisoned source of idleness and internal lethargy.”

2.  There is an indispensable necessity of the distinct exercise of each virtue.