The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human NatureJames, William
ReligionComparative
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
James, William
Conversion; Experience (Religion); Philosophy and religion; Psychology, Religious; Religion
their flesh is not laid to their charge, but freely pardoned.
Notwithstanding, in the mean while they fight in spirit against
the flesh, lest they should _fulfill_ the lusts thereof; and
although they feel the flesh to rage and rebel, and themselves
also do fall sometimes into sin through infirmity, yet are they
not discouraged, nor think therefore that their state and kind of
life, and the works which are done according to their calling,
displease God; but they raise up themselves by faith.”(67)
One of the heresies for which the Jesuits got that spiritual genius,
Molinos, the founder of Quietism, so abominably condemned was his healthy‐
minded opinion of repentance:—
“When thou fallest into a fault, in what matter soever it be, do
not trouble nor afflict thyself for it. For they are effects of
our frail Nature, stained by Original Sin. The common enemy will
make thee believe, as soon as thou fallest into any fault, that
thou walkest in error, and therefore art out of God and his favor,
and herewith would he make thee distrust of the divine Grace,
telling thee of thy misery, and making a giant of it; and putting
it into thy head that every day thy soul grows worse instead of
better, whilst it so often repeats these failings. O blessed Soul,
open thine eyes; and shut the gate against these diabolical
suggestions, knowing thy misery, and trusting in the mercy divine.
Would not he be a mere fool who, running at tournament with
others, and falling in the best of the career, should lie weeping
on the ground and afflicting himself with discourses upon his
fall? Man (they would tell him), lose no time, get up and take the
course again, for he that rises again quickly and continues his
race is as if he had never fallen. If thou seest thyself fallen
once and a thousand times, thou oughtest to make use of the remedy
which I have given thee, that is, a loving confidence in the
divine mercy. These are the weapons with which thou must fight and
conquer cowardice and vain thoughts. This is the means thou
oughtest to use—not to lose time, not to disturb thyself, and reap
no good.”(68)
Now in contrast with such healthy‐minded views as these, if we treat them
as a way of deliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite
view, a way of maximizing evil, if you please so to call it, based on the
persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence, and
that the world’s meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to
heart. We have now to address ourselves to this more morbid way of looking
at the situation. But as I closed our last hour with a general
philosophical reflection on the healthy‐minded way of taking life, I
should like at this point to make another philosophical reflection upon it
before turning to that heavier task. You will excuse the brief delay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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