L. Twenty-three propositions concerning the most pure love toward God, condemned by Innocent XI, by the Brief Cum alias, etc., March 12, 1699

1. There is a habitual state of the love of God, which is pure charity and without any admixture of a motive of one's own interest. Neither fear of punishments nor desire of reward has any further part in it. God is no longer loved on account of merit, nor on account of perfection, nor on account of happiness to be found in loving.

2. In the state of contemplative or unitive life every interested motive of fear and hope is lost.

3. That which is essential in the direction of a soul is to do nothing other than to follow grace step by step, with infinite patience, precaution, and subtlety. It is necessary to contain oneself within these limits, so that God may be allowed to act, and never to lead to pure love except when God, by interior unction, begins to open the heart to this word, which is so hard for souls still fixed upon themselves, and therefore can scandalize them or cast them into disturbance.

4. In the state of holy indifference the soul no longer has voluntary and deliberate desires on account of its own interest, except on those occasions in which it does not faithfully cooperate with all its grace.

5. In the same state of holy indifference we will nothing for ourselves, all things for God. We do not will anything in order that we may be perfect and blessed on account of our own interest; but we will all perfection and beatitude insofar as it pleases God to bring it about that we will these things by the impression of his grace.

6. In this state of holy indifference we no longer will salvation as our own salvation, as eternal liberation, as the reward of our merits, as our greatest interest of all; but we will it with a full will, as the glory and good pleasure of God, as a thing which he wills, and which he wills us to will on account of himself.

7. Dereliction is nothing but abnegation, or renunciation of oneself, which Jesus Christ requires from us in the Gospel after we have left all external things. That abnegation of ourselves is only with regard to our own interest... The extreme trials in which this abnegation or dereliction of oneself must be exercised are temptations, by which the jealous God wishes to purge love, showing it no refuge, nor any hope with regard to its own interest, even eternal.

8. All sacrifices which are usually made by souls as much as possible disinterested concerning their eternal beatitude are conditional... But this sacrifice cannot be absolute in the ordinary state. In one case of extreme trials this sacrifice becomes in some manner absolute.

9. In extreme trials it can be invincibly persuaded to the soul by a reflex persuasion, and one which is not the inmost foundation of conscience, that it is justly reprobated by God.

10. Then the soul, divided from itself, expires with Christ on the cross, saying: God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? In this involuntary impression of despair it completes the absolute sacrifice of its own interest with regard to eternity.

11. In this state the soul loses every hope of its own interest; but it never loses in the superior part, that is, in its direct and intimate acts, perfect hope, which is the disinterested desire of the promises.

12. The director then can permit this soul simply to acquiesce in the loss of its own interest, and in the just condemnation which it believes has been decreed to it by God.

13. The inferior part of Christ on the cross did not communicate its involuntary disturbances to the superior part.

14. In extreme trials for the purification of love there occurs a certain separation of the superior part of the soul from the inferior... In that separation the acts of the inferior part flow from an altogether blind and involuntary disturbance; for everything that is voluntary and intellectual belongs to the superior part.

15. Meditation consists of discursive acts, which are easily distinguished from one another... That composition of discursive and reflex acts is the proper exercise of interested love.

16. There is a state of contemplation so sublime and so perfect that it becomes habitual, so that whenever the soul actually prays, its prayer is contemplative, not discursive. Then it no longer needs to return to meditation and its methodical acts.

17. Contemplative souls are deprived of the distinct, sensible, and reflex view of Jesus Christ at two different times. First, in the rising fervor of their contemplation. Secondly, the soul loses the view of Jesus Christ in extreme trials.

18. In the passive state all distinct virtues are exercised, without thinking that they are virtues. At any moment one thinks nothing other than to do what God wills; and jealous love at the same time brings it about that one no longer wills virtue for oneself, nor ever is so endowed with virtue as when one is no longer attached to virtue.

19. It can be said in this sense that the passive and disinterested soul no longer wills even love itself, insofar as it is its perfection and its happiness, but only insofar as it is that which God wills from us.

20. In confessing, transformed souls ought to detest their sins, and condemn themselves, and desire the remission of their sins, not as their own purification and liberation, but as a thing which God wills and wills us to will on account of his glory.

21. The holy mystics excluded from the state of transformed souls the exercises of virtues.

22. Although this doctrine (concerning pure love) were pure and simple evangelical perfection designated in the whole tradition, the ancient pastors did not everywhere propose to the multitude of the just except exercises of interested love proportioned to their grace.

23. Pure love alone by itself constitutes the whole interior life, and then it becomes the one principle and the one motive of all acts which are deliberate and meritorious.

Condemned and reprobated, whether in the obvious sense of their words, or with attention paid to the connection of the sentences, as rash, scandalous, ill-sounding, offensive to pious ears, pernicious in practice, and also respectively erroneous.