Father Baker explains mystic contemplation as follows: “In the second place, there is a mystic contemplation which is, indeed, truly and properly such, by which a soul, without discoursings and curious speculations, without any _perceptible use_ of the internal senses or sensible images, by a pure, simple, and reposeful operation of the mind, in the obscurity of faith, simply regards God as infinite and incomprehensible verity, and with the whole bent of the will rests in him as (her) infinite, universal, and incomprehensible good.… This is properly the exercise of angels, for their knowledge is not by discourse (discursive), but by one simple intuition all objects are represented to their view at once with all their natures, qualities, relations, dependencies, and effects; but man, that receives all his knowledge first from his senses, can only by effects and outward appearances with the labor of reasoning collect the nature of objects, and this but imperfectly; but his reasoning being ended, then he can at once contemplate all that is known unto him in the object.… This mystic contemplation or union is of two sorts: 1. Active and ordinary.… 2. Passive and extraordinary; the which is not a state, but an actual grace and favor from God.… And it is called passive, not but that therein the soul doth actively contemplate God, but she can neither, when she pleases, dispose herself thereto, nor yet refuse it when that God thinks good to operate after such a manner in the soul, and to represent himself unto her _by a divine particular image, not at all framed by the soul, but supernaturally infused into her_.… As for the former sort, which is active contemplation, we read in mystic authors――Thaulerus, Harphius, etc.――that he that would become spiritual ought to practise the drawing of his external senses inwardly into his internal, there losing and, as it were, annihilating them. Having done this, he must then draw his internal senses into the superior powers of the soul, and there annihilate them likewise; and those powers of the intellectual soul he must draw into that which is called their unity, which is the principle and fountain from whence those powers do flow, and in which they are united. And, lastly, that unity (which alone is capable of perfect union with God) must be applied and firmly fixed on God; and herein, say they, consist the perfect divine contemplation and union of an intellectual soul with God. Now, whether such expressions as these will abide the strict examination of philosophy or no I will not take on me to determine; certain it is that, by a frequent and constant exercise of internal prayer of the will, joined with mortification, the soul comes to operate more and more abstracted from sense, and more elevated above the corporal organs and faculties, so drawing nearer to the resemblance of the operations of an angel or separated spirit. Yet this abstraction and elevation (perhaps) are not to be understood as