Note 42 — Chapter V · MYSTICISM.[1]

Salazar de Mendoza, Vida de Carranza, cap. xxxiii.

The first of these undoubtedly is found in the Comentarios (P. III, Obra iii, cap. 3), but it was perfectly admissible doctrine at the period. Aspilcueta, who was no mystic, tells us, in 1577, that prayer is worthless unless uttered in lively faith and ardent charity; innumerable priests are consigned to purgatory or to hell on account of their prayers, each one of which is at least a venial sin.—De Oratione, cap. viii.

It illustrates the progress of the movement against mysticism that the Index of Zapata, in 1632 (p. 980) orders a passage in Don Quixote to be borrado in which this is expressed much less offensively—“Las obras de Charidad que se hasen tibia y floxamente no tienen merito ni valen nada.”