Call number
Publication
Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1950, reprinted, 1951.
Physical description
viii, 622 p.; 23 cm
Notes
OPENING WORDS, FROM THE PREFACE, "TO EVELYN WAUGH"
There is a kind of book about which you may say, almost without exaggeration, that it is the whole of a man's literary life, the unique child of his thought. Other writings he may have published, on this or that occasion; please God, the work was not scamped, nor was he indifferent to the praise and the blame of his critics. But it was all beside the mark. The Book was what mattered—he had lived with it all these years, fondled it in his waking thoughts, used it as an escape from anxiety, a solace in long journeys, in tedious conversations. Did he find himself in a library, he made straight for the shelves which promised light on one cherished subject; did he hit upon a telling quotation, a just metaphor, an adroit phrase, it was treasured up, in miser's fashion, for the Book. The Book haunted his day-dreams like a guilty romance."
[Ed.: "scamped : to do (something) in a perfunctory or inadequate way]
CONTENTS:
I. The Nature of Enthusiasm.
II. The Corinthians' Letter to St. Paul.
III. The Montanist Challenge.
IV. Donatist and Circumcellion.
V. The Underworld of the Middle Ages.
• Note on the Descent of the Albigenses.
VI. The Pattern of Medieval Heresy.
VII. The Anabaptists and the Reformation.
VIII. George Fox and Seventeenth-Century Protestantism.
• Note on the Pre-History of Quakerism.
IX, Jansenism : The Setting.
X. Jansenism : Its Genius.
XI. Quietism : The Background.
XII. Quietism : The Doctrine.
XIII. Malaval, Petrucci, Molinos.
XIV. Madam Guyon and the Battle of the Olympians.
• Note on Antoinette Bourignon.
XV. The French Prophets.
XVI. The Convulsionaries of Saint-Médard.
XVII. The Moravian Tradition.
XVIII. A Profile of John Wesley.
There is a kind of book about which you may say, almost without exaggeration, that it is the whole of a man's literary life, the unique child of his thought. Other writings he may have published, on this or that occasion; please God, the work was not scamped, nor was he indifferent to the praise and the blame of his critics. But it was all beside the mark. The Book was what mattered—he had lived with it all these years, fondled it in his waking thoughts, used it as an escape from anxiety, a solace in long journeys, in tedious conversations. Did he find himself in a library, he made straight for the shelves which promised light on one cherished subject; did he hit upon a telling quotation, a just metaphor, an adroit phrase, it was treasured up, in miser's fashion, for the Book. The Book haunted his day-dreams like a guilty romance."
[Ed.: "scamped : to do (something) in a perfunctory or inadequate way]
CONTENTS:
I. The Nature of Enthusiasm.
II. The Corinthians' Letter to St. Paul.
III. The Montanist Challenge.
IV. Donatist and Circumcellion.
V. The Underworld of the Middle Ages.
• Note on the Descent of the Albigenses.
VI. The Pattern of Medieval Heresy.
VII. The Anabaptists and the Reformation.
VIII. George Fox and Seventeenth-Century Protestantism.
• Note on the Pre-History of Quakerism.
IX, Jansenism : The Setting.
X. Jansenism : Its Genius.
XI. Quietism : The Background.
XII. Quietism : The Doctrine.
XIII. Malaval, Petrucci, Molinos.
XIV. Madam Guyon and the Battle of the Olympians.
• Note on Antoinette Bourignon.
XV. The French Prophets.
XVI. The Convulsionaries of Saint-Médard.
XVII. The Moravian Tradition.
XVIII. A Profile of John Wesley.