When his disciples, amazed at his saying that it was impossible for
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, asked Jesus who then
could be saved, the Master replied that with men it was impossible but
not with God; and then said Peter, "Behold, we have forsaken all and
followed thee; what shall we have therefore?" And the reply of Jesus
was, not that they should be absorbed in the Father, but that they
should sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel
(Matt. xix. 23-26).
It was a Spaniard, and very emphatically a Spaniard, Miguel de Molinos,
who said in his _Guia Espiritual_[49] that "he who would attain to the
mystical science must abandon and be detached from five things: first,
from creatures; second, from temporal things; third, from the very gifts
of the Holy Spirit; fourth, from himself; and fifth, he must be detached
even from God." And he adds that "this last is the completest of all,
because that soul only that knows how to be so detached is that which
attains to being lost in God, and only the soul that attains to being so
lost succeeds in finding itself." Emphatically a true Spaniard, Molinos,
and truly Spanish is this paradoxical expression of quietism or rather
of nihilism--for he himself elsewhere speaks of annihilation--and not
less Spanish, nay, perhaps even more Spanish, were the Jesuits who
attacked him, upholding the prerogatives of the All against the claims
of Nothingness.
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