mystiques de visionnaires seraient fort étonnés de voir quel peu de
cas ils font des visions en elles-mémes." And St. Bonaventura says of
visions, "Nec faciunt sanctum nec ostendunt: alioquin Balaam sanctus
esset, _et asina_, quæ vidit Angelum."]

[Footnote 27: The following passage from St. Francis de Sales is much
to the same effect as those referred to in the text: "Les philosophes
mesmes ont recogneu certaines espèces d'extases naturelles faictes par
la véhémente application de l'esprit à la considération des choses
relevées. Une marque de la bonne et sainete extase est qu'elle ne se
prend ny attache jamais tant à l'entendement qu'à la volonté, laquelle
elle esmeut, eschauffe, et remplit d'une puissante affection envers
Dieu; de manière que si l'extase est plus belle que bonne, plus
lumineuse qu'affective, elle est grandement douteuse et digne de
soupçon."]

[Footnote 28: Some of my readers may find satisfaction in the
following passage of Jeremy Taylor: "Indeed, when persons have long
been softened with the continual droppings of religion, and their
spirits made timorous and apt for impression by the assiduity of
prayer, and the continual dyings of mortification--the fancy, which is
a very great instrument of devotion, is kept continually warm, and in
a disposition and aptitude to take fire, and to flame out in great
ascents; and when they suffer transportations beyond the burdens and
support of reason, they suffer they know not what, and call it what
they please." Henry More, too, says that those who would "make their
whole nature desolate of all animal figurations whatever," find only
"a waste, silent solitude, and one uniform parchedness and vacuity.
And yet, while a man fancies himself thus wholly Divine, he is not
aware how he is even then held down by his animal nature; and that it