the mesmerical collection of
_pieces justificatives_. The first compiler of the authorities on which it
rests is Ughelli. The story is told in modern language by Mosheim, by
Fleury, and by Gibbon at the years 1341-51. In taking the version of it by
the last (Decline and Fall, c. 63,) we shall run least risk of being
imposed on by over-credulity.

"The Fakirs of India and the monks of the Oriental Church," says the
complacent philosopher of Lausanne, "were alike persuaded that in total
abstraction of the mind and body, the purer spirit may ascend to the
enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinions and practices of the
monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an
abbot who flourished in the eleventh century. 'When thou art alone in thy
cell,' says the ascetic teacher, 'shut thy door and seat thyself in a
corner: raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy
beard and chin on thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thoughts towards the
middle of thy belly, the region of the naval; and search the place of the
heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless;
but if you persevere day and night you will feel an ineffable joy; and no
sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved
in a mystic and etherial light.' This light, the production of a
distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain,
was adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God
himself; and as long as the folly was confined to Mount Athos, the simple
solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence could be a
_material_ substance, or how an _immaterial_ substance could be perceived
by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus these
monasteries were visited by Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, who was equally
skilled in philosophy and theology. The indiscretion of an ascetic
revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer, and
Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists who placed
the soul in the naval; of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and
blasphemy. His attack compelled the more learned to renounce or dissemble
the simple devotion of their brethren; and Gregory Palamas introduced a
scholastic distinction between the essence and operation of God."

Gregory illustrated his argument by a reference to the celestial light
manifested in the transfiguration of our Lord on