referri._

9. Plato's Soul of the World has been taken in this sense by some, but
there is more indication that the Stoics succumbed to that universal soul
which swallows all the rest. Those who are of this opinion might be called
'Monopsychites', since according to them there is in reality only one soul
that subsists. M. Bernier observes that this is an opinion almost
universally accepted amongst scholars in Persia and in the States of the
Grand Mogul; it appears even that it has gained a footing with the
Cabalists and with the mystics. A certain German of Swabian birth,
converted to Judaism some years ago, who taught under the name Moses
Germanus, having adopted the dogmas of Spinoza, believed that Spinoza
revived the ancient Cabala of the Hebrews. And a learned man who confuted
this proselyte Jew appears to be of the same opinion. It is known that
Spinoza recognizes only substance in the world, whereof individual souls
are but transient modifications. Valentin Weigel, Pastor of Zschopau in
Saxony, a man of wit, even of excessive wit, although people would have it
that he was a visionary, was perhaps to some extent of that opinion; as was
also a man known as Johann Angelus Silesius, author of certain quite
pleasing little devotional verses in German, in the form of epigrams, which
have just been reprinted. In general, the mystics' doctrine of deification
was liable to such a sinister interpretation. Gerson already has written
opposing Ruysbroek, a mystical writer, whose intention was evidently good
and whose expressions are excusable. But it would be better to write in a
manner that has no need of excuses: although I confess that oft-times
expressions which are extravagant, and as it were poetical, have greater
force to move and to persuade than correct forms of statement.

10. The annihilation of all that belongs to us in our own right, carried to
great lengths by the Quietists, might equally well be veiled irreligion in
certain minds, as is related, for example, concerning the Quietism of Foe,
originator of a great Chinese sect. After having preached his religion [80]
for forty years, when he felt death was approaching, he declared to his
disciples that he had hidden the truth from them under the veil of
metaphors, and that all reduced itself to Nothingness, which he said was
the first source of all things. That was still worse, so it would seem,
than the opinion of the Averroists. Both of these doctrines are
indefe