“According to one master, many people arrive at specific understanding, at formal, notional knowledge. There are few who get beyond the science and the theory; yet one man whose mind is free from notions and from forms is more dear to God than the hundred thousand who have the habit of discursive, roving reason. God cannot enter in and do his work in them owing to the restlessness of their imagination. If they were free from pictures they could be caught and carried up beyond all rational concepts. As St. Dionysius says, and also have the super-rational light of faith at its starting point, where God finds his rest and peace to dwell and work in as he will and when he will and what he will. God is unhindered in his work in these so he can do in them his most precious work of all, working them up in faith into himself. These people no one can make out; their life is an enigma, and their ways, to all that do not live the same. To this truth and to this blessed life, to this high and perfect consummation no on can attain except in abstract knowledge and pure understanding.
Many a lofty intellect, angels not excepting (for in life and nature an angel is nothing but pure mind), has erred and lapsed eternally from the eternal truth. This may happen also to those who, like the angels, preserve their idiosyncrasy and find satisfaction in the exercise of their own intelligence.”
TimothyOne 