I. Sixty-eight propositions of Michael de Molinos condemned by Innocent XI, in the Constitution Caelestis Pastor, etc., November 20, 1687

1. It is necessary for a man to annihilate his powers, and this is the internal way.

2. To wish to operate actively is to offend God, who wishes himself alone to be the one acting; and therefore it is necessary to abandon oneself in God wholly and totally, and afterward to remain like a lifeless body.

3. Vows concerning doing something are impeditive of perfection.

4. Natural activity is an enemy of grace, and impedes the operations of God and true perfection, because God wishes to operate in us without us.

5. By doing nothing the soul annihilates itself, and returns to the very principle and to its origin, which is the essence of God, in which, transformed, it remains and is divinized, and God then remains in himself; because then there are no longer two things united, but only one, and in this way God lives and reigns in us, and the soul annihilates itself in operative being.

6. The internal way is that in which neither light, nor love, nor resignation is known, and it is not necessary to know God, and in this way one proceeds rightly.

7. The soul ought to think neither of reward nor of punishment; neither of paradise nor of hell; neither of death nor of eternity.

8. It ought not to wish to know whether it walks with the will of God, or whether it remains resigned with the same will or not; nor is it necessary that it wish to know its state, nor its own nothingness, but it ought to remain as a lifeless body.

9. The soul ought to remember neither itself, nor God, nor anything whatever, and in the internal way every reflection is harmful, even reflection upon its human actions and upon its own defects.

10. If by its own defects it scandalizes others, it is not necessary to reflect, provided the will to scandalize is not present; and not to be able to reflect upon its own defects is the grace of God.

11. It is not necessary to reflect upon the doubts which occur, whether one proceeds rightly or not.

12. He who has given his free will to God ought to have care about no thing, neither about hell nor about paradise; nor ought he to have desire for his own perfection, nor for virtues, nor for his own sanctity, nor for his own salvation, the hope of which he ought to purge away.

13. Once free will has been resigned to God, thought and care concerning every matter of ours must be left to the same God, and one must leave him to do in us, without us, his divine will.

14. It is not fitting that one who is resigned to the divine will should ask anything from God; because to ask is an imperfection, since it is an act of one's own will and choice, and is to wish that the divine will be conformed to ours, and not ours to the divine; and that saying of the Gospel, Ask and you shall receive, was not said by Christ for internal souls, which do not wish to have a will; indeed souls of this kind arrive at this, that they cannot ask anything from God.

15. Just as they ought not to ask anything from God, so neither ought they to give thanks to him for anything, because both is an act of one's own will.

16. It is not fitting to seek indulgences for the punishment owed to one's own sins; because it is better to satisfy divine justice than to seek divine mercy, since the former proceeds from the pure love of God, and the latter from interested love of ourselves, nor is it pleasing to God, nor meritorious, because it is to wish to flee the cross.

17. Once free will has been handed over to God, and the care and thought of our soul left to him, no account of temptations is any longer to be had; nor ought any resistance to be made to them except negative, with no industry applied; and if nature is moved, it is necessary to allow it to be moved, because it is nature.

18. He who in prayer uses images, figures, species, and his own concepts does not adore God in spirit and truth.

19. He who loves God in the mode by which reason argues or the intellect comprehends does not love the true God.

20. To assert that in prayer it is necessary to bring help to oneself by discourse and by thoughts, when God does not speak to the soul, is ignorance. God never speaks; his speech is operation, and he always operates in the soul when this soul does not impede him by its discourses, thoughts, and operations.

21. In prayer it is necessary to remain in obscure and universal Faith, with quiet and forgetfulness of every particular and distinct thought of the attributes of God and of the Trinity, and thus to remain in the presence of God to adore and love him and serve him, but without the production of acts, because God does not take pleasure in these.

22. This knowledge through Faith is not an act produced by the creature, but is knowledge handed over by God to the creature, which the creature does not know that it has, nor afterward knows that it had; and the same is said concerning love.

23. The Mystics, with St. Bernard, on the ladder of cloistered persons distinguish four grades: reading, meditation, prayer, and infused contemplation. He who always stops at the first never passes over to the second. He who always persists in the second never comes to the third, which is our acquired contemplation, in which one must persist through the whole life, provided God does not draw the soul (without its expecting this) to infused contemplation; and when this ceases, the soul ought to go back to the third grade and remain in it, without ever returning again to the second or the first.

24. Whatever thoughts occur in prayer, even impure ones, even against God, the Saints, Faith, and the Sacraments, if they are not voluntarily nourished, nor voluntarily driven away, but are tolerated with indifference and resignation, do not impede the prayer of Faith; indeed they make it more perfect, because the soul then remains more resigned to the divine will.

25. Even if sleep supervenes and one sleeps, nevertheless actual prayer and contemplation occur, because prayer and resignation are the same; and while resignation continues, prayer also continues.

26. Those three ways, the purgative, illuminative, and unitive, are the greatest absurdity that has been said in mysticism, since there is only one way, namely the internal way.

27. He who desires and embraces sensible devotion does not desire nor seek God, but himself; and he acts badly, when he desires it and tries to have it, who walks by the internal way, both in sacred places and on solemn days.

28. Weariness of spiritual things is good, since through it self-love is purged.

29. When the internal soul is disgusted by discourses about God and the virtues, and remains cold, feeling no fervor in itself, it is a good sign.

30. Everything sensible which is expressed in the spiritual life is abominable, foul, and unclean.

31. No meditative person exercises true internal virtues, which ought not to be known by the senses. It is necessary to lose virtues.

32. Neither before nor after Communion is any other preparation or thanksgiving required (for these internal souls) than permanence in the usual passive resignation, because in this is contained love, which in a more perfect mode supplies all acts of virtues which can and do occur in the ordinary way. And if on this occasion of Communion motions of humiliation, petition, or thanksgiving arise, they are to be repressed whenever it is not discerned that they are from a special impulse of God; otherwise they are impulses of nature not yet dead.

33. The soul which proceeds by this internal way acts badly if on solemn days it wishes by some particular effort to excite in itself some devout feeling; because for internal souls all days are equal, all festive. And the same is said of sacred places, because for souls of this kind all places are equal.

34. To give thanks to God with words and tongue is not for internal souls, which ought to remain in silence, placing no impediment to God, so that he may operate in them; and the more they resign themselves to God, they experience that they cannot recite the Lord's Prayer, or Our Father.

35. It is not fitting for souls of this internal way to do operations even virtuous ones from their own choice and activity; otherwise they would not be dead. Nor ought they to elicit acts of love toward the Blessed Virgin, the Saints, or the Humanity of Christ; because, since those objects are sensible, such is the love toward them.

36. No creature, neither the Blessed Virgin nor the Saints, ought to sit in our heart, because God alone wishes to occupy and possess it.

37. On the occasion of temptations, even furious ones, the soul ought not to elicit explicit acts of the opposite virtues, but ought to remain in the above-mentioned love and resignation.

38. The voluntary cross of mortifications is a heavy and fruitless burden, and therefore to be dismissed.

39. The holier works and penances which the Saints performed do not suffice to remove from the soul even one adherence.

40. The Blessed Virgin never performed any exterior work, and nevertheless was holier than all the Saints. Therefore holiness can be attained without exterior work.

41. God permits and wills, for humbling us and leading us to true transformation, that in some perfect souls, even those not possessed, the devil inflict violence upon their bodies and make them commit carnal acts, even while awake and without darkening of the mind, by physically moving their hands and other members against their will. And the same is said with regard to other acts sinful in themselves; in which case they are not sins, because consent is not present to these.

42. There can be a case in which violences of this kind toward carnal acts occur at the same time on the part of two persons, namely a male and a female, and on the part of each an act follows.

43. In past ages God made saints by the ministry of tyrants; but now he makes them saints by the ministry of demons, who by causing in them the aforesaid violences, makes them despise and annihilate themselves more, and resign themselves to God.

44. Job blasphemed, and yet did not sin with his lips, because it was from the violence of a demon.

45. St. Paul suffered violences of this kind from a demon in his body; whence he wrote: The good which I will, I do not do; but the evil which I will not, that I do.

46. Violences of this kind are a means more proportioned to annihilating the soul and leading it to true transformation and union, nor does any other way remain; and this is the easier and safer way.

47. When violences of this kind occur, it is necessary to allow Satan to operate, applying no industry and no effort of one's own, but the man ought to remain in his nothingness; and even if pollutions and obscene acts follow by his own hands, and even worse things, it is not necessary to trouble oneself, but scruples, doubts, and fears must be cast out; because the soul becomes more illuminated, more strengthened, and more candid, and holy liberty is acquired. And before all things it is not necessary to confess these things, and it is done most holily by not confessing, because in this way the devil is overcome, and the treasure of peace is acquired.

48. Satan, who inflicts violences of this kind, afterward persuades that they are grave crimes, so that the soul may trouble itself, lest it progress further in the internal way; hence, to weaken his forces, it is better not to confess them, because they are not sins, not even venial.

49. Job, from the violence of a demon, polluted himself with his own hands at the same time when he had pure prayers to God (thus interpreting the place from chapter XVI of Job).

50. David, Jeremiah, and many of the holy prophets suffered violences of this kind of these impure external operations.

51. In sacred Scripture there are many examples of violences toward external sinful acts: such as that concerning Samson, who by violence killed himself with the Philistines, entered marriage with a foreign woman, and fornicated with the harlot Delilah, which things otherwise were prohibited and would have been sins; concerning Judith, who lied to Holofernes; concerning Elisha, who cursed the boys; concerning Elijah, who burned the captains with the troops of king Ahab. But whether the violence was carried out immediately by God, or by the ministry of demons, as happens in other souls, is left in doubt.

52. When violences of this kind, even impure ones, occur without darkening of the mind, then the soul can be united to God, and in fact is always more united.

53. For knowing in practice whether some operation in other persons was violent, the rule which I have concerning this is not merely the protestations of those souls which protest that they did not consent to the said violences, or that they cannot swear that they consented to them, and to see that they are souls which are progressing in the internal way; but I would take the rule from a certain actual light superior to human and theological knowledge, which makes me know with certainty, with internal certainty, that such an operation is violent; and I am certain that this light proceeds from God, because it comes to me joined with certainty that it comes from God, and leaves me not even a shadow of doubt to the contrary; in the way in which it sometimes happens that God, by revealing something, at the same time renders the soul certain that he himself is the one who reveals, and the soul cannot doubt to the contrary.

54. Spiritual persons of the ordinary life at the hour of death will find themselves deceived and confused, and with all passions to be purged in the other world.

55. By this internal way one comes, although with much suffering, to purging and extinguishing all passions, so that nothing further is felt, nothing, nothing; nor is any disquiet felt, like a dead body, nor does the soul any longer permit itself to be moved.

56. The two laws and two cupidities (one of the soul and the other of self-love) endure as long as self-love endures; whence when this has been purged and is dead, as happens through the internal way, those two laws and two cupidities are no longer present, nor is any further fall incurred, nor is anything felt any longer, not even venial sin.

57. Through acquired contemplation one comes to the state of no longer committing sins, neither mortal nor venial.

58. One comes to a state of this kind by no longer reflecting upon one's own operations, because defects arise from reflection.

59. The internal way is separated from Confession, from confessors, and from cases of conscience, from theology, and from philosophy.

60. For advanced souls, which begin to die to reflections and come even to this, that they are dead, God sometimes makes Confession impossible and himself supplies with such preserving grace as they would receive in the sacrament; and therefore for souls of this kind in such a case it is not good to approach the Sacrament of Penance, because this is impossible in them.

61. When the soul comes to mystical death, it can no longer will anything other than what God wills, because it no longer has a will, and God has taken it away from it.

62. Through the internal way one comes to a continuous immobile state in imperturbable peace.

63. Through the internal way one comes also to the death of the senses; indeed a sign that someone remains in the state of nothingness, that is, of mystical death, is if the exterior senses no longer represent sensible things, whence they are as if they were not, because they do not arrive at making the intellect apply itself to them.

64. The theologian has a lesser disposition than an unlearned man for the state of a contemplative: first, because he does not have Faith so pure; secondly, because he is not so humble; thirdly, because he does not care so much for his own salvation; fourthly, because he has his head filled with phantasms, species, opinions, and speculations, and the true light cannot enter into it.

65. Superiors must be obeyed in the exterior, and the breadth of the vow of obedience of religious extends only to the exterior. But in the interior the matter is otherwise, where God alone and the director enter.

66. A certain new doctrine in the Church of God is worthy of laughter, namely that the soul as to the internal ought to be governed by the Bishop, and that if the Bishop is not capable, the soul should go to him with its director. I call it a new doctrine, because neither sacred Scripture, nor Councils, nor Canons, nor Bulls, nor the Saints, nor Authors ever handed it down, nor can they hand it down, because the Church does not judge concerning hidden things, and the soul has the right of choosing whomever seems good to it.

67. To say that the internal must be manifested to the exterior tribunal of superiors, and that it is a sin not to do this, is a manifest deception; because the Church does not judge concerning hidden things, and by these deceptions and simulations they prejudice their own souls.

68. In the world there is no faculty nor jurisdiction for commanding that the letters of the director concerning the internal of the soul be manifested; and therefore it is necessary to notice that this is an insult of Satan, etc.

Condemned respectively as heretical, suspect, erroneous, scandalous, blasphemous, offensive to pious ears, rash, relaxing and overturning Christian discipline, and seditious.