By the turn of the eighteenth century the stage was set for the emergence of the term ‘mysticism’ to mean an enthusiastic and melancholy practice, one which was extravagant, deluded and fantastical. In a stark contrast to earlier periods of Western Christianity, mystical experience was no longer viewed as having any possible role to play in the formation of doctrine. It was now viewed with a mixture of both suspicion and pity, for those who believed in mysticism were either of a ‘lively fancy’ or ‘gloomy mind’ and were likely suffering from some form of medically explainable bodily imbalance. Semantically, the evolution of ‘theologia mystica’ in early Christianity into ‘mystical theology’ in the early modern period, and finally into ‘mysticism’ in the 1730s, reveals the slow decline and marginalization of what was once vital to the nexus of early Christian beliefs. We can also view this through snapshots of opinion on figures who held enormous spiritual authority in the medieval period. Bridget of Sweden, for example, has been described as ‘one of the most charismatic figures in the late medieval mystical tradition’. Yet this positive reputation soon declined; we see arguments against her mysticism in the early fifteenth-century works of Jean Gerson, in Martin Luther's condemnation of her as ‘mad Bridget’ in the sixteenth century, and in Edward Stillingfleet's denunciation of her as a promulgator of ‘illusions and fancies’ in the late seventeenth century.

This book has explored how this transformation took place across the early modern period in England, tracing how mysticism came under attack from mistrusting critics of sectarianism, radicalism, enthusiasm, pagano-papism and Catholicism. The positive engagements with mysticism we discussed in the first two chapters of this book were largely negated by the scholarly criticisms we explored in Chapters 3 and 4. As we saw in our final chapter, this decline made it almost impossible for groups such as the Philadelphians to survive long in the public sphere in the face of the immense criticism and scepticism placed on the concept of mysticism. Yet this process was not only taking place in England. The condemnation of Quietism and the doctrines of the Spanish mystic Miguel de Molinos by the papacy in 1687 ensured that mysticism had already ‘had its day in France’.