And the mischievous causes were a mistake in Psychology and a mistake in Theology. For, as to Psychology, not only was simplicity assumed, (through a mistaken acceptance of the soul’s own feeling, as furnishing the ultimate analysis of its state), to consist, at any one moment, of an act materially and literally one, instead of a great organism of various simultaneous energizings; but this one act was often held to require no kind of repetition. Since the act was one as against any simultaneous multiplicity, so was it one as against any successive multiplicity, even if this latter were taken as a repetition differentiated by number alone. And yet here again energizing _is_ energizing; and though the soul’s acts overlap and interpenetrate each other, and though when, by their number and harmony, they completely fill and pacify the soul, many of them are simultaneously or successively present to the soul in their effects alone: it is nevertheless the renewal, however peaceful and unperceived, of these acts, which keeps the state of soul in existence. For these acts are not simply unowned acts that happen to be present within the soul; they are the soul’s own acts, whether, in addition, the soul is directly conscious of them or not. And, theologically, the idea was often at work that it was more worthy of God to operate alone and, as it were, _in vacuo_; and more creaturely of man to make, or try to make, such a void for Him. Yet this is in direct conflict with the fundamental Christian doctrine, of the Condescension, the Incarnation of God to and in human nature, and of the persistence, and elevation of this humanity, even in the case of Christ Himself. God’s action does not keep outside of, nor does it replace, man’s action; but it is,--Our Lord Himself has told us,--that of yeast working in meal, which manifests its hidden power in proportion to the mass of meal which it penetrates and transforms. 3. _Four Quietistic aberrations._ Now it is certain that the error of Quietism has, in no doubt many cases, not remained confined to such mistakes in psychological analysis and theological doctrine, but that these have joined hands with, and have furnished a defence to, sloth and love of dreamy ease, or to some impatience of the necessary details of life, or to fanatical attachment to some one mood and form of experience; and that they have, thus reinforced, ravaged not a few wills and souls. Four chief Quietistic aberrations can be studied in history.