, that is to say,
in a good and holy man, thoroughly sanctified in spirit, soul, and
body.'[472]

Believing thus with all his heart both in the excellence of reason and
in a true inspiration of the spirit granted to the pure in heart, but
never dissociating the latter from the former; well convinced that
'Christian religion is rational throughout,' and that the suggestions of
the Holy Spirit are in all cases agreeable to reason--More wrote with
much force and beauty of argument his 'Exorcism of Enthusiasm.' He
showed that to abandon reason for fancy is to lay aside the solid
supports of religion, to trust faith to the mere ebb and flow of
'melancholy,' and so to confirm the sceptic in his doubts and the
atheist in his unbelief. He dwelt upon the unruly power of imagination,
its deceptive character, its intimate connection with varying states of
physical temperament--upon the variety of emotional causes which can
produce quakings and tremblings and other convulsive forms of
excitement--upon the delusiveness of visions, and revelations, and
ecstasies, and their near resemblance to waking dreams--upon the sore
temptations which are apt to lead into sin those who so closely link
spirituality with bodily feelings, making religion sensual. He warned
his readers against that sort of intoxication of the understanding, when
the imagination is suffered to run wild in allegorical interpretations
of Scripture, in fanciful allusions, in theories of mystic influences
and properties which carry away the mind into wild superstitions and
Pagan pantheism. He spoke of the self-conceit of many fanatics, their
turbulence, their heat and narrow scrupulosity, and asked how these
things could be the fruits of heavenly illumination. He suggested as the
proper remedies against enthusiasm, temperance (by which he meant
temperate diet, moderate exercise, fresh air, a due and discreet use of
devotion), humility, and the sound tests of reason--practical piety, and
service to the Church of God. Such is the general scope of his treatise;
but the most interesting and characteristic portion is towards the close
and in the Scholia appended to it, in which he speaks of 'that true and
warrantable enthusiasm of devout and holy souls,' that 'delicious sense
of the Divine life'[473] which the spirit of man is capable of
receiving. If space allowed, one or two fine passages might be quoted in
which he describes these genuine emotions. He has also some good rem