and some were openly Antinomian, teaching that those who are led by
the Spirit can do no wrong. The followers of Amalric of Bena[3]
believed that the Holy Ghost had chosen their sect in which to
become incarnate; His presence among them was a continual guarantee
of sanctity and happiness. The "spiritual Franciscans" had dreams of
a more apocalyptic kind. They adopted the idea of an "eternal
Gospel," as expounded by Joachim of Floris, and believed that the
"third kingdom," that of the Spirit, was about to begin among
themselves. It was to abolish the secular Church and to inaugurate
the reign of true Christianity--i.e. "poverty" and asceticism.

Such are some of the results of what our eighteenth-century
ancestors knew and dreaded as "Enthusiasm"--that ferment of the
spirit which in certain epochs spreads from soul to soul like an
epidemic, breaking all the fetters of authority, despising tradition
and rejecting discipline in its eagerness to get rid of formalism
and unreality; a lawless, turbulent, unmanageable spirit, in which,
notwithstanding, is a potentiality for good far higher than any to
which the lukewarm "religion of all sensible men" can ever attain.
For mysticism is the raw material of all religion; and it is easier
to discipline the enthusiast than to breathe enthusiasm into the
disciplinarian.

Meanwhile, the Church looked with favour upon the orthodox mystical
school, of which Richard and Hugo of St. Victor, Bonaventura, and
Albertus Magnus were among the greatest names. These men were
working out in their own fashion the psychology of the contemplative
life, showing how we may ascend through "cogitation, meditation, and
speculation" to "contemplation," and how we may pass successively
through jubilus, ebrietas spiritus, spiritualis jucunditas, and