ith Teresa and Juan of the Cross,
and who know how little Platonism is to be found in their theology.
But these two militant champions of the counter-Reformation numbered
among their contemporaries mystics of a different type, whose
writings, little known in this country, entitle them to an honourable
place in the roll of Christian Platonists.

We find in them most of the characteristic doctrines of Christian
Neoplatonism: the radiation of all things from God and their return to
God; the immanence of God in all things;[287] the notion of man as a
microcosm, vitally connected with all the different orders of
creation;[288] the Augustinian doctrine of Christ and His members as
"one Christ";[289] insistence upon disinterested love;[290] and
admonitions to close the eye of sense.[291] This last precept, which,
as I have maintained, is neither true Platonism nor true Mysticism,
must be set against others in which the universe is said to be a copy
of the Divine Ideas, "of which Plotinus has spoken divinely," the
creation of Love, which has given form to chaos, and stamped it with
the image of the Divine beauty; and in which we are exhorted to rise
through the contemplation of nature to God.[292] Juan de Angelis, in
his treatise on the spiritual nuptials, quotes freely, not only from
Plato, Plotinus, and Virgil, but from Lucretius, Ovid, Tibullus, and
Martial.

But this kind of humanism was frowned upon by the Church, in Spain as
elsewhere. These were not the weapons with which Lutheranism could be
fought successfully. Juan d'Avila was accused before the Inquisition
in 1534, and one of his books was placed on the Index of 1559; Louis
de Granada had to take refuge in Portugal; Louis de Leon, who had the
courage to say that the Song of Solomon is only a pastoral idyll, was
sent to a dungeon for five years.[293] Even St. Teresa narrowly
escaped imprisonment at Seville; and St. Juan of the Cross passed nine
months in a black hole at Toledo.

Persecution, when applied with sufficient ruthlessness, seldom fails
of its immediate object. It took only about twelve years to destroy
Protestantism in Spain; and the Holy Office was equally successful in
binding Mysticism hand and foot.[294] And so we must not expect to
find in St. Teresa or St. Juan any of the characteristic independence
of Mysticism. The inner light which they sought was not an
illumination of the intellect in its search for truth, but a consuming
fire to burn up all