QUICKLIME QUIN. 



779 



dead hedges, but in a stricter sense of the word, is 

 restrained to those planted with hawthorn. 



QUICKLIME. See Lime. 



QUICKSILVER. See Mercury. 



QUIETISM. The ceremonial and hierarchical 

 spirit of some monastic orders, especially of the 

 Jesuits and Dominicans, had in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, almost converted religion, among the Catholics, 

 into a mere mechanical service. The repetition of 

 forms of prayer from the breviary, and on the rosary, 

 fasting, confession, frequent pilgrimages, invocations 

 of the mother of God and of saints, almsgiving, the 

 purchase of indulgences, and, in a word, the minute 

 observation of external forms, came to be viewed 

 as real piety. Pious minds disposed to a more 

 earnest devotion, turned with ardour to mysticism, 

 which afforded refuge and spiritual aliment to the 

 more feeling soul, when all religion seemed to have 

 become petrified in the forms of ritual observances. 

 The Spiritual Guide, (Guida Spirituals^ a work 

 published at Rome, in 1 675, by Michael Molinos, a 

 Spanish priest, answered this want. With an en- 

 thusiasm which soon gained favour to his pious 

 fancies, Molinos spoke of the tranquillity of a soul 

 absorbed in the Deity, which dead to all other 

 thoughts and feelings, and disturbed by no outward 

 events, had perception of nothing but the presence 

 of God. In obedience to his instructions, the devout 

 now sought solely this tranquillity of soul (quies, Latin, 

 rest, whence Quietism and quietists in Greek, He- 

 sychastes ;) and no opposition would have been 

 made to them, but for the danger that the devo- 

 tional exercises enjoined by the church and the 

 monastic orders would appear superfluous. Moli- 

 nos was obliged to abjure his errors, and terminated 

 his life in daily acts of penance in a Dominican con- 

 vent in Rome. (He died in 1696.) But this vio- 

 lence by no means prevented the diffusion of Quiet- 

 ism. The Spiritual Guide was eagerly studied, and 

 produced a number of similar works in Germany and 

 France, where the way had already been prepared 

 for its reception, by the works of Bourignon (q.v.), 

 Poirets, and the Pietists. As early as the fourteenth 

 century, there was a body of monks called Hesy- 

 chastes, (also Umbilianimi,') who spent their whole 

 time in prayer and meditation. (See Hesyc/iastes.) 

 The most celebrated promoter of Quietism in France, 

 was a beautiful and rich widow, a favourite at the 

 court of Louis XIV., Joanna Maria Bouvier de la 

 Mothe Guyon, who under the name of Madame 

 Guyon, is celebrated as an amiable enthusiast, of 

 more imagination than judgment. Her example, her 

 prayers, her works, replete with unction, and the 

 exertions of her confessor Lacombe, gained her ad- 

 herents enough to excite the attention of the clergy. 

 There were, indeed, strong reasons for believing a 

 young woman crazy, who imagined herself the 

 pregnant woman of the Apocalypse, (xii. 2,) and 

 who, in her own account of her life, says that she 

 was often filled with such an overflowing of grace, 

 that she was literally on the point of bursting, and 

 that it became necessary to loosen her clothes ; upon 

 which this fulness of grace was poured out upon 

 those who did her this service. Lacombe was 

 thrown into prison at Paris, and died in confinement, 

 in 1702 ; but Madame Guyon herself, after a short 

 imprisonment, was restored to liberty, and had the 

 honour of being allowed to take part in the prayers 

 of Mad. de Maintenon at St. Cyr. The controversy 

 therefore seemed at an end, when Fenelon (q. v.) 

 thought he discovered in Mad. Guyon a kindred 

 spirit, and became the advocate of her and her 

 writings, in his Explication des Maximes des Saints 

 sur la Vie interieure, (1697.) The accession of so 

 distinguished a man, whose works of devotion had 



been received in France with enthusiasm, gave new 

 weight to Quietism, and an opportunity to Bossuet, 

 the champion of the French theologians, to inflict 

 disgrace on his envied rival. Bossuet obtained, in 

 1699, a papal brief, which condemned twenty-three 

 positions from Fenelon's book as erroneous ; but 

 the humility with which he submitted, and which 

 was admired even in Rome itself, deprived his ene- 

 mies of the fruits of their victory ; and it was the 

 change in the spirit of the times, and not violence 

 though Mad. Guyon (who died 1717) underwent 

 another short imprisonment, that gradually buried 

 Quietism in oblivion. It had never formed a sect ; 

 but for some years it continued to be the subject of 

 works of devotion, and the peculiar opinion of a par- 

 ty among the pious. From Fenelon's book, in which 

 Quietism is most clearly described, we learn that it 

 was a harmless enthusiasm, adapted only to persons 

 of a fanciful and exaggerated turn of thinking. 

 Truth and falsehood are strangely blended in it ; it 

 requires pure love, which, without fear or hope, in- 

 different to heaven or hell, is directed with entire 

 self-denial to God, merely because he wills it. The 

 flesh must be mortified, every worldly feeling ba- 

 nished, all confidence in our own merits by good 

 works abandoned, and the soul be transferred to a 

 passive state in which its own activity ceases, and 

 God alone works in it. This state, which unites the 

 soul essentially with God, is tranquillity, or inces- 

 sant internal prayer, (the permanent direction to- 

 wards God,) in which nothing is desired, nothing 

 asked from God, but, entirely resigned to him, the 

 soul is contented with the pure contemplation of his 

 being. Rarely as these precepts of Quietism can 

 be put in practice, because they comport neither 

 with the wants of human nature nor the demands of 

 our social condition, they have, nevertheless, fre- 

 quently reappeared in the mysticisms of later sects. 

 The term has also been applied to the religious 

 notions of the Indian bramins, whose object is to at- 

 tain a state of holiness, by the destruction of all 

 corporeal and intellectual activity, and thus to be- 

 come incorporated with Brama. (See Mad. Guy- 

 on's Life by herself.) 



QUILLS, for writing. See Pem,Writing. 



QUILTING ; a method of sewing two pieces of 

 silk, linen, or stuff, on each other, with wool or cot- 

 ton between them, by working them all over in the 

 form of chequer or diamond work, or in flowers. 

 The same name is also given to the stuff so worked. 



QUIN, JAMES, an eminent English actor, born in 

 London in 1693, was the son of an Irish barrister, 

 and was educated in Dublin. His father had mar- 

 ried a supposed widow, whose husband, after along 

 absence returned and claimed her ; on which 

 account Quin, who was the offspring of the connex- 

 ion, was deemed illegitimate, and, upon his father's 

 death, in 1710, was left without a fortune. This 

 interruption of his prospects prevented him from 

 being adequately educated for a profession, and he 

 had recourse to the Dublin stage, in 1715, and in a 

 year after secured an engagement at Drury-lane 

 theatre. In 1717 he quitted Drury-lane, for the 

 theatre in Lincoln's-inn-fields, where he remained 

 seventeen years, and gradually acquired celebrity 

 in characters of grave, dignified, and sententious 

 tragedy, as in Cato, Zanga, and Coriolanus, and in 

 those of strong sarcastic comic humour, as Falstaff, 

 Volpone, and Sir John Brute. In 1732, he removed 

 with the same company to Covent-garden, but in 

 1735, was induced to join that of Fleetwood at 

 Drury-lane, on such terms as no actor had previ- 

 ously received ; and he retained the pre-eminence 

 until the appearance of Garrick in 1741. In 1747, 

 he was engaged at Covent-garden with Garrick ; 



