INDEX.

THE END.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

Footnotes

[1]. Die Christliche Mystik. Von Dr. Ludwig Noack. Königsberg.

[2].

How fruitful may the smallest circle grow,

If we the secret of its culture know.

[3]. The writer, who goes by the name of Dionysius Areopagita, teaches that the highest spiritual truth is revealed only to those ‘who have transcended every ascent of every holy height, and have left behind all divine lights and sounds and heavenly discoursings, and have passed into that Darkness where He really is (as saith the Scripture) who is above all things.’—De Mysticâ Theologiâ, cap. i. § 3.

[4]. On the word μύησις Suidas says, Εἴρηται δὲ παρὰ τὸ τὰ μυστήρια καὶ ἀπόρῥητα τελεῖσθαι· ἤ διὰ τὸ μυόντας τὰς αἰσθήσεις καὶ ἐπέκεινα σωματικῆς φαντασίας νενομένους, τὰς θείας εἰσδέχεσθαι ἐλλάμψεις.

Suicer also cites Hesychius: Etym. Mag.—Μύστης, παρὰ τὸ μύω, τὸ καμμύω. μύοντες γὰρ τὰς αἰσθήσεις καὶ ἔξω τῶν σαρκικῶν φροντίδων γινόμενοι, οὕτω τὰς θείας ἀναλάμψεις ἐδέχοντο.

[5]. See Bingham, Antiq. of the Christian Church, vol. ix. pp. 96-105. Clement of Alexandria abounds in examples of the application to Christian doctrine of the phraseology in use concerning the heathen mysteries;—e.g. Protrept. cap. xii. § 120.

[6]. Both Plotinus and Proclus speak of the highest revelation concerning divine things as vouchsafed to the soul which withdraws into itself, and, dead to all that is external, ‘gazes with closed eyes’ (μύσασαν). See Tholuck’s Blüthensammlung aus der Morgenlandischen Mystik; Einleitung, § I, p. 6. Dr. Tholuck is the only German writer I have seen who throws light on the word in question by accurately investigating its etymology and successive meanings; and I readily acknowledge my debt to his suggestions on this point.

[7]. Dionysius thus describes the mystical adept who has reached the summit of union:—‘Then is he delivered from all seeing and being seen, and passes into the truly mystical darkness of ignorance, where he excludes all intellectual apprehensions (τὰς γνωστικὰς ἀντιλήηψεις), and abides in the utterly Impalpable and Invisible; being wholly His who is above all, with no other dependence, either on himself or any other; and is made one, as to his nobler part, with the utterly Unknown, by the cessation of all knowing; and at the same time, in that very knowing nothing, he knows what transcends the mind of man.’—De Mysticâ Theologiâ, cap. i. p. 710. S. Dion. Areop. Opp. Paris, 1644.

So again he exhorts Timothy ‘by assiduous practice in mystical contemplations to abandon the senses and all operations of the intellect; all objects of sense and all objects of thought, all things non-existent and existent (αἰσθητὰ = οὐκ ὄντα, νοητὰ = ὄντα), and ignorantly to strive upwards towards Union as close as possible with Him who is above all essence and knowledge:—inasmuch as by a pure, free, and absolute separation (ἐκστάσει) of himself from all things, he will be exalted (stripped and freed from everything) to the superessential radiance of the divine darkness.’—p. 708.

About the words rendered ‘intellectual apprehensions’ commentators differ. The context, the antithesis, and the parallel passage in the earlier part of the chapter, justify us in understanding them in their strict sense, as conveying the idea of cessation from all mental action whatsoever.

[8]. See [Note], p. [23].

[9]. See Wilkins’ Bagvat-Gita, pp. 63-65. Ward, ii. 180. Also, Asiatic Researches, vol. xvii. pp. 169-313, containing an account of these Yogis, by Horace Hayman Wilson. One sect, we are told, have a way of contemplating Vishnu in miniature, by imagining the god in their heart, about the size of an open hand, and so adoring him from top to toe. In this gross conception of an indwelling deity these Hindoos do indeed exceed St. Theresa, who after swallowing the wafer conceives of Christ as prisoner in her inwards, and, making her heart a doll’s-house, calls it a temple. But beyond her, and beyond the Indians, too, in sensuousness, are the Romanist stories of those saints in whom it is declared that a post-mortem examination has disclosed the figure of Christ, or the insignia of his passion, miraculously modelled in the chambers of the heart.

[10]. Asiatic Researches, loc. cit. The worshipped principle of Hindooism is not love, but power. Certain objects are adored as containing divine energy. The Guru is a representative and vehicle of divine power—a Godful man, and accordingly the most imperious of task-masters. The prodigies of asceticism, so abundant in Indian fable, had commonly for their object the attainment of superhuman powers. Thus Taraki, according to the Siva Puran, stood a hundred years on tip-toe, lived a hundred years on air, a hundred on fire, &c. for this purpose.—Notes to Curse of Kehama, p. 237.

The following passage, cited by Ward, exhibits the subjective idealism of these Hindoos in its most daring absurdity. ‘Let every one meditate upon himself; let him be the worshipper and the worship. Whatever you see is but yourself, and father and mother are nonentities; you are the infant and the old man, the wise man and the fool, the male and the female; it is you who are drowned in the stream—you who pass over; you are the sensualist and the ascetic, the sick man and the strong; in short, whatsoever you see, that is you, as bubbles, surf, and billows are all but water.’

Now, there is an obvious resemblance between this idealism and that of Fichte. The Indian and the German both ignore the notions formed from mere sensible experience; both dwell apart from experience, in a world fashioned for themselves out of ‘pure thought;’ both identify thought and being, subject and object. But here the likeness ends. The points of contrast are obvious. The Hindoo accepts as profoundest wisdom what would be an unfair caricature of the system of Fichte. The idealism of the Oriental is dreamy and passive; it dissolves his individuality; it makes him a particle, wrought now into this, now into that, in the ever-shifting phantasmagoria of the universe; he has been, he may be, he, therefore, in a sense is, anything and everything. Fichte’s philosophy, on the contrary, rests altogether on the intense activity—on the autocracy of the Ego, which posits, or creates, the Non-Ego. He says, ‘The activity and passivity of the Ego are one and the same. For in as far as it does not posit a something in itself, it posits that something in the Non-Ego. Again, the activity and passivity of the Non-Ego are one and the same. In as far as the Non-Ego works upon the Ego, and will absorb a something in it, the Ego posits that very thing in the Non-Ego.’ (Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, § 3. Sämmtliche Werke, v. i. p. 177.) Action is all in all with him. God he calls ‘a pure Action’ (reines Handeln), the life and principle of a supersensuous order of the world—just as I am a pure Action, as a link in that order. (Gerichtliche Verantwortung gegen die Anklage des Atheismus, Werke, v. p. 261.) Charged with denying personality to God, Fichte replies that he only denied him that conditioned personality which belongs to ourselves—a denial, I suppose, in which we should all agree. The only God in his system which is not an uninfluential abstraction is manifestly the Ego—that is dilated to a colossal height, and deified. Pre-eminently anti-mystical as was the natural temperament of Fichte, here he opens a door to the characteristic misconception of mysticism—the investiture of our own notions and our own will with a divine authority or glory. He would say, ‘The man of genius does think divine thoughts. But the man who is unintelligible, who, in the very same province of pure thought as that occupied by the true philosopher, thinks only at random and incoherently; he is mistaken, I grant, in arrogating inspiration—him I call a mystic.’ But of unintelligibility or incoherence what is to be the test,—who is to be the judge? In this anarchy of gods, numerous as thinkers, one deity must have as much divine right as another. There can be no appeal to experience, which all confessedly abandon; no appeal to facts, which each Ego creates after its own fashion for itself.

[11]. Philo gives an account of the Therapeutæ referred to in the letter, in his treatise De Vitâ Contemplativâ.

Passages corresponding with those contained in the letter contributed by Atherton, concerning the enmity of the flesh and the divine nature of the soul, are to be found in the works of Philo, Sacr. Leg. Alleg. lib. iii. p. 101 (ed. Mangey); lib. ii. p. 64; De eo quod det. potiori insid. soleat, pp. 192, 208.

Philo’s interpretation of the scriptural account concerning Babel is contained in the De Confus. Linguarum, p. 424. His exposition of Gen. i. 9, illustrates the same principle, Sacr. Leg. Alleg. lib. i. p. 54; so of Gen. xxxvii. 12; De eo quod pot. p. 192.

Eusebius shows us how Eleazar and Aristobulus must have prepared the way for Philo in this attempt to harmonize Judaism with the letters and philosophy of Greece. Præp. Evang. lib. viii. 9, 10.

[12]. The testimony of Cicero and Iamblichus may be received as indicating truly the similarity of spirit between Pythagoras and Plato,—their common endeavour to escape the sensuous, and to realize in contemplative abstraction that tranquillity, superior to desire and passion, which assimilated men to gods. The principles of both degenerated, in the hands of their latest followers, into the mysteries of a theurgic freemasonry. The scattered Pythagoreans were, many of them, incorporated in the Orphic associations, and their descendants were those itinerant vendors of expiations and of charms—the ἀγύρται of whom Plato speaks (Repub. ii. p. 70)—the Grecian prototypes of Chaucer’s Pardonere. Similarly, in the days of Iamblichus, the charlatans glorified themselves as the offspring of Plato.

[13]. Clement of Alexandria gives a full account of the various stories respecting this idol, Protrept. c. iv. p. 42 (ed. Potter); moreover an etymology and legend to match, Strom. lib. i. p. 383.

Certain sorts of wood and metal were supposed peculiarly appropriate to certain deities. The art of the theurgist consisted partly in ascertaining the virtues of such substances; and it was supposed that statues constructed of a particular combination of materials, correspondent with the tastes and attributes of the deity represented, possessed a mysterious influence attracting the Power in question, and inducing him to take up his residence within the image. Iamblichus lays down this principle of sympathy in the treatise De Mysteriis, v. 23, p. 139 (ed. Gale, 1678). Kircher furnishes a description of this statue of Serapis, Œdip. Ægypt. i. 139.

[14]. See Histoire de l’Ecole d’Alexandrie, par M. Jules Simon, tom. i. p. 99.

[15]. See [Note], p. [82].

[16]. See Jules Simon, ii. pp. 626, &c.

[17]. See [Note] to Chap. III. p. [92].

[18]. The statements made in this and the preceding paragraph, and the reasons adduced by Plotinus in support of them, will be found in the fifth Ennead, lib. v. c. i. He assumes at once that the mind must be, from its very nature, the standard of certitude. He asks (p. 519) Πῶς γὰρ ἄν ἔτι νοῦς, ἀνοηταίνων εἴη· δεῖ ἄρα αὐτὸν ἀεὶ εἰδέναι καὶ· μὴ δ᾽ἂν ἐπιλαθέσθαί πότε. He urges that if Intelligibles were without the mind it could possess but images of them; its knowledge, thus mediate, would be imperfect, p. 521. Truth consists in the harmony of the mind with itself. Καὶ γὰρ αὖ, οὔτως οὐδ᾽ ἀποδείξεως δεῖ, οὐδὲ πίστεως ὅτι οὕτως αὐτὸς γὰρ οὕτως. καὶ ἐναργὴς αὐτὸς αυτῷ. καὶ εἴ τι πρὸ αὐτοῦ, ὅτι ἐξ αὐτοῦ. καὶ εἴ τι μετ᾽ ἐκεῖνο, ὅτι αὐτός. καὶ οὐδεὶς πιστότερος αὐτῷ περὶ αὐτοῦ. καὶ ὅτι, ἐκεῖ τοῦτο, καὶ ὄντως. ὥστε καὶ ἡ ὄντως ἀλήθεια, οὺ συμφωνοῦσα ἄλλῳ, ἄλλ᾽ ἑαυτῆ. καὶ οὐδὲν παρ αὑτὴν ἄλλο λέγει καὶ ἔστι. καὶ ὅ ἔστι τοῦτο καὶ λέγει, p. 522.

[19]. Enn. iii. lib. v. capp. 2 & 7. There the gardens of Jove, and Porus, with his plenty, are said to be allegorical representations of the intellectual food of a soul nourished and delighted by the truths of Reason. Poverty, again, with its sense of need, is the source of intellectual desire. Comp. Plato, Symp. p. 429 (Bekk).

[20]. See [Note 2], p. [82].

[21]. Enn. i. lib. 3, c. 1.

[22]. There is above a light which makes visible the Creator to that creature who finds his peace only in the vision of Him.

[23]. See Schelling’s System des Trancendentalen Idealismus, pp. 19-23 (Tübingen, 1800), and Chalybæus, Hist. Entw. d. Spec. Phil. p. 244.

[24]. Aids to Reflection, pp. 225, 249. The reader is referred to a discriminating criticism of this doctrine in the British Quarterly Review, No. xxxvii.

[25]. See [Note], p. [92].

[26]. J. Simon, i. 154; ii. 173.

[27]. J. Simon, liv. iii. chap. 4.

[28]. See [Note], p. [106].

[29]. Jules Simon, ii. 218.

[30]. All these orders gaze admiring upward, and exert an influence downward (each on that immediately beneath it), so that they all together reciprocally draw and are drawn toward God. Dionysius gave himself with such zeal to the contemplation of them that he named and distinguished them as I have done.

[31]. Athanasii Opp. Vita S. Antonii. The vision alluded to is related p. 498.

[32]. Poiret, Bibliotheca Mysticorum, p. 95. Macarius gives great prominence to the doctrine of Union—describes the streaming in of the Hypostatic Light—how the spiritual nature is all-pervaded by the glory, and even the body is not so gross as to be impenetrable by the divine radiance. Some centuries later we find the monks of Mount Athos professing to discern this supernatural effulgence illuminating their stomachs. Gass, Die Mystik des N. Cabasilas, p. 56.

[33]. In the year 533 the books of Dionysius were cited by the Severians, and their genuineness called in question by the bishop because neither Athanasius nor Cyril had made any allusion to them. Acta Concil. Hard. ii. p. 1159.

[34]. For the passages authenticating this account, see Dion. Areop. Opp. as follows:—

(1.) De Div. Nom. c. iv. § 1; v. 3, 6, 8; vi. 2, 3; i. 1. De Eccl. Hier. i. 3.

(2.) De Cœl. Hier. i. 2, 3; v. 3, 4; vii. De Eccl. Hier. i. 1; x. 3. The resemblance of this whole process to the Pröodos and Epistrophe of Plotinus is sufficiently obvious.

(3.) De Div. Nom. iv. 20, p. 488. The chase after evil runs through sections 24-34. He sums up in one place thus:—‘In a word, good springs from the sole and complete cause, but evil from many and partial defects. God knows the evil as good, and with him the causes of things evil are beneficent powers.’ Proclus seeks escape from the hopeless difficulty in precisely the same way.

Concerning the Via negativa and affirmativa, see De Div. Nom. i. 1, 5, 4; De Cœl. Hier. xv.; and De Myst. Theol. i. 2, 3.

(4.) Ibid. Also, Ep. ad. Dorotheum, De Myst. Theol. iii. pp. 714, 721.

[35]. See Meier, ‘Dionysii Areop. et Mysticorum sæculi xiv. doctrinæ inter se comparantur.’ He remarks justly ‘causæ ad Causatum relationem cum relatione generis ad speciem confudit’, p. 13.

[36]. The hyper and the a privative are in constant requisition with Dionysius. He cannot suffer any ordinary epithet to go alone, and many of his adjectives march pompously, attended by a hyper on one side, and a superlative termination on the other.

[37]. The later Greek theology modified the most objectionable parts of the Dionysian doctrine, while continuing to reverence him as a Father. See Ullmann’s Nicholas von Methone.

[38]. Aristot. Eth. Nic. lib. x. c. 8.—See Note, Page [123].

[39]. See [Note 1], p. [146].

[40]. See [Note 2], p. [146].

[41]. Vita, ii. cap. v.

[42]. See the account of his diet, and of the feebleness and sickness consequent on his austerities, by the same biographer (Alanus), Vita, ii. cap. x., in the Paris reprint of 1839, from the Benedictine edition of Bernard, tom. ii. p. 2426. John Eremita describes the devil’s visit to Bernard, ‘ut ungeret sandalia sua secundum consuetudinem,’ and relates the rebuke of the proud monk who would not wash the scutellæ in the kitchen.—Vita, iv. p. 2508.

[43]. Vita, ii. cap. x. 32.

[44]. Epp. cx., cxi.

[45]. Chronologia Bernardina, Opp. tom. i. p. 83.

[46]. Epist. cxli.

[47]. De Consideratione, IV. iii. 7, and II. vi. 11, pp. 1028 and 1060.

[48]. Epist. ccclxv. to the Archbishop of Mayence, against the fanatic Rudolph.

[49]. He thus distinguishes Faith, Intellection, and Opinion:-Fides est voluntaria quædam et certa prælibatio necdum propalatæ veritatis. Intellectus est rei cujuscumque invisibilis certa et manifesta notitia. Opinio est quasi pro vero habere aliquid; quod falsum esse nescias.... Quid igitur distat (fides) ab intellectu? Nempe quod etsi non habet incertum non magis quam intellectus, habet tamen involucrum, quod non intellectus.... Nil autem malumus scire, quam quæ fide jam scimus. Nil supererit ad beatitudinem, cum quæ jam certa sunt nobis, erunt æque et nuda.—De Consideratione, V. 4, p. 1075.

[50]. See [Note], p. [149].

[51]. See [Note], p. [149].

[52]. See [Note 1], p. [150].

[53]. See [Note 2], p. [150].

[54]. Sane in hoc gradu (tertio) diu statur: et nescio si a quoquam hominum quartus in hac vita perfecte apprehenditur, ut se scilicet diligat homo tantum propter Deum. Asserant hoc si qui experti sunt: mihi, fateor, impossibile videtur.—De diligendo Deo, xv. and Epist. xi. 8. And, again, in the same treatise (vii. 17),—Non enim sine præmio diligitur Deus, etsi absque præmii intuitu diligendus sit.... Verus amor se ipso contentus est. Habet præmium, sed id quod amatur.

[55]. See [Note], p. [151].

[56]. Light and Colour.—Light, thou eternally one, dwell above by the great One Eternal; Colour, thou changeful, in love come to Humanity down!

[57]. Liebner’s Hugo of St. Victor, p. 21.—This account of his early studies is given by Hugo in his Didascalion.

[58]. Schmid, Der Mysticismus des M. A., p. 303.

[59]. Comp. De Sacramentis, lib. v. p. x. c. 4. (tom. iii. p. 411. Garzon’s edition of his works, Cologne, 1617.)

[60]. See Liebner, p. 315.

[61]. De Sacramentis, lib. i. p. i. cap. 12.—Quisquis sic ordinatus est, dignus est lumine solis: ut mente sursum erecta et desiderio in superna defixo lumen summæ veritatis contemplanti irradiet: et jam non per speculum in ænigmate, sed in seipsa ut est veritatem agnoscat et sapiat.

[62]. See [Note], p. [170.]

[63]. Tom. iii. p. 356.—In speaking of the days of creation and of the analogous seasons in the new creation within man, he says that as God first saw the light, that it was good, and then divided it from the darkness, so we must first try the spirit and examine our light with care, ere we part it from what we call darkness, since Satan can assume the garb of an angel of light.

For an elaborate account of his entire theology, the reader is referred to Liebner’s Hugo von St. Victor und die Theologischen Richtungen seiner Zeit; one of the best of the numerous monographs German scholarship has produced.

[64]. Richardi S. Victoris Opp. (Lyons, 1534), De Preparatione animi ad contemplationem, fol. 39.

[65]. Ibid. cap. xli.

[66]. Engelhardt, Richard von St. Victor, p. 6.

[67]. See [Note], p. [171].

[68]. The six degrees of contemplation are as follows (De Contemp. i. 6, fol. 45):

1 In imaginatione secundum solam imaginationem.

2 In imaginatione secundum rationem.

3 In ratione secundum imaginationem.

4 In ratione secundum rationem.

5 Supra rationem sed non præter rationem.

6 Supra rationem videtur esse præter rationem.

The office of Imagination to which the first two belong is Thought (Cogitatio); the office of Reason, Investigation (Meditatio); that of Intelligence, Contemplation (Contemplatio).—Ibid. cap. 3. These three states are distinguished with much care, and his definition of the last is as follows:—Contemplatio est perspicax et liber animi contuitus in res perspiciendas undequaque diffusus.—Ibid. cap. 4. He draws the distinction between intelligibilia and intellectibilia in cap. 7; the former = invisibilia ratione tamen comprehensibilia; the latter = invisibilia et humanæ rationi incomprehensibilia. The four lower kinds are principally occupied, he adds, with created objects, the two last with what is uncreated and divine.—Fol. 45.

[69]. See [Note], p. [171].

[70]. See [Note], p. [172].

[71]. The Heiligenleben of Hermann von Fritslar has been recently edited by Franz Pfeiffer, in his Ausgabe der Deutschen Mystiker (Leipsig, 1845). Hermann says himself repeatedly that he had caused his book to be written (schreiben lassen) and there is every reason to believe that he was, like Rulman Merswin and Nicholas of Basle, his contemporaries, a devout layman,—one of a class among the laity characteristic of that age and neighbourhood, who, without entering into an order, spent the greater part of their time in the exercises of religion, and of their fortune on religious objects. Though he could not write, he could read, and his book is confessedly a compilation from many books and from the sermons and the sayings of learned and godly men. He says, Diz buch ist zu sammene gelesen ûzze vile anderen bucheren und ûzze vile predigâten und ûzze vil lêrêren.—Vorrede.

[72]. Concerning these sects, see Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. ii. pp. 1-18. The fullest account is given of them in a masterly Latin treatise by Mosheim, De Beghardis et Beguinabus. He enters at length into the discussion of their name and origin; details the various charges brought against them, and gives the bulls and acts issued for their suppression. See especially the circular of John Ochsenstein, Bishop of Strasburg, cap. iv. § xi. p. 255.

[73]. Authority for these statements concerning the literature of the period, will be found in Gervinus, Geschichte der poetischen National-Literatur der Deutschen, part vi. §§ 1, 2, 5.

[74]. Johannes Tauler von Strasburg, by Dr. Carl Schmidt, pp. 8-10; and Laguille’s Histoire d’Alsace, liv. xxiv.

[75]. Meister Eghart spricht: wer alle cit allein ist, der ist gottes wirdige; vnt wer alliu cit do heimenen ist, dem ist got gegenwürtig; vnt wer alliu cit stat in einem gegenwürtigen nu, in dem gebirt got der vatter sinen sune an vnderlas.—Sprüche Deutscher Mystiker, in Wackernagel’s Altdeutsches Lesebuch, p. 889.

[76]. Meister Eghart sprach: vnt wem in einem anders ist denne in dem andern, vnt dem got lieber ist in einem denne in dem andern, der mensche ist grobe, vnt noch verre vnt ein kint. Aber dem got gelich ist in allen, der ist ce man worden.—Ibid.

Both this saying and the foregoing are expressions for that total indifference and self-abandonment so strenuously inculcated by the mystics. He who lives weaned from the world, alone with God, without regrets, without anticipations, ‘stands in a present Now,’ and sees the divine love as clearly in his sorrows as in his joys,—does not find ‘one thing other than another.’ There is exaggeration in suppressing, as Eckart would do, the instinct of thanksgiving for special benefaction; but in his strong language lies couched a great truth,—that only in utter self-surrender can man find abiding peace.

[77]. Alles das in der gottheyt ist, das ist ein, vnd davon ist nicht zu sprechen. Got der würcket, die gotheyt nit, sy hat auch nicht zu würckende, in ir ist auch kein werck. Got vnt gotheyt hat underscheyd, an würcken vnd an nit würcken.

Was ist das letst end? Es ist die verborgen finsternusz der ewigen gotheit, vnd ist unbekant, vnd wirt nymmerme bekant. (See a paper on Eckart, by Dr. Carl Schmidt in the Theol. Stud. u. Kritiken, 1839, 3, p. 693.) Comp. the following:—Got ist noch gut noch besser, noch allerbest, vnd ick thue also unrecht, wenn ick Got gut heisse, rechte ase ob ick oder er etwas wiz weiss und ick es schwarz heisse.—Ibid. p. 675. This last assertion was one of the counts of accusation in the bull of 1330.

[78]. Martensen’s Meister Eckart (Hamburg, 1842), p. 22.—The divine communication assumes with Eckart the form of philosophical necessity. The man emptied of Self is infallibly full of Deity, after the fashion of the old principle, ‘Nature abhors a vacuum.’ Yet even this doctrine is not wholly false. It is the misrepresentation of a Christian truth. Its correlative verity is this,—that the kingdom of grace, like the kingdom of nature, has its immutable laws. He who seeks shall find; as we sow we reap, with unerring certainty. Gravitation is not more sure than the announcement, ‘With that man will I dwell who is of a meek and contrite spirit.’

[79]. Martensen, p. 23. Comp. Stud. u. Krit. loc. cit. Alles das denn got yn gegab seinem eingebornen sun, das hat er mir gegeben.... Was got würcket, das ist ein, darumb gebiret er mich seinen sun, on aller underscheyd.—These words exhibit the pantheistic principle on which this assumption is based. All spirit (whether in so called creature or Creator) is substantially one and the same. It cannot be divided; it can have no distinctive operations. Our dividual personal consciousness is, as it were, a temporary accretion on the Universal Soul with which we are in contact. Escaping this consciousness, we merge in—that is, we become—the Universal Soul. We are brought into the Essence,—the calm, unknown oneness beyond all manifestation, above creation, providence, or grace. This is Eckart’s escape from distinction,—lapse into the totality of spirit. This doctrine he teaches, not in opposition to the current Christian doctrine, but as a something above it,—at once its higher interpretation and its climax.

[80]. These statements concerning the ‘füncklin der vernunfft’ are the substance of passages given by Martensen, pp. 26, 27, and Schmidt (Stud. u. Krit. l. c.), pp. 707, 709.—Ich sprich es bey gutter warheit, und bey yemmerwerender warheit, und bey ewiger warheit, das disem liechte nit benüget an dem einfaltigem stilstanden götlichen wesen, von wannen disz wesen harkommet, es will in den einfaltigen grundt in die stillen wüste, das nye underscheyd ingeluget, weder vatter noch sun noch heiliger geist, in dem einichen, da niemant daheim ist, da benüget es im liechte, und da ist es einicher, denn es sey in im selber, wann diser grundt ist ein einfeltig stille die in ir selber unbeweglich ist, und von diser Unbeweglichkeit werdent beweget alle ding, &c. Hermann von Fritslar, in a remarkable passage, enumerates the various and conflicting names given to this organ of mysticism. ‘Und das leben was daz licht der lûte.’ Daz meinet, daz di sêle einen funken in ir hât, der ist in gote êwiclîchen gewest leben und licht. Und dirre funke ist mit der sêle geschaffen in allen menschen und ist ein lûter licht in ime selber und strafet allewege umme sunde und hat ein stête heischen zu der tugende und kriget allewege wider in sînen ursprung.... Dar umme heizen in etlîche meistere einen wechter der sêle. Also sprach Daniêl: ‘der wechter ûf dem turme der rufet gar sêre. Etliche heizen disen funken einen haven der sêle. Etlîche heizen in di worbele (axis, or centre) der sêle. Etelîche heizen in ein gotechen in der sêle. Etelîche heizen in ein antlitze der sêle. Eteliche heizen intellectus, daz ist ein instênde kraft in der sêle. Etlîche heizen in sinderisis. Etliche heizen in daz wô der sêle. Etlîche heizen in daz nirgen der sêle.—Heiligenleben. Di dritte messe, p. 32.

[81]. Martensen, p. 27. Schmidt, loc. cit.

[82]. The passage in Martensen, p. 20.

[83]. Martensen, pp. 19, 29.

[84]. Ibid. p. 29.

[85]. Etlich leut wöllent got mit den ougen ansehn, als sy ein ku ansent unnd wöllent gott liebhan, als sy ein ku liebhaben (die hastu lieb umb die milch, und umb den kätz, und umb dein eigen nutz). Also thund alle die leut die got liebhand, um uszwendigen reichtum, oder umb inwendigen trost, und die hand gott nit recht lieb, sunder sy suchent sich selbs und ir eigen nutz.—Schmidt, p. 712.

[86]. Got ist ein luter guot an ime selben, vnt do von wil er nienen wonen denne in einer lutern sele: in die mag er sich ergiessen vnt genzeclichen in si fliessen. was ist luterkeit? das ist das sich der mensche gekeret habe von allen creaturen, vnt sin herce so gar uf gerichtet habe gen dem lutern guot, das ime kein creature trœstlichen si, vnt ir ouch nit begere denne als vil als si das luter guot, das got ist, darinne begriffen mag. vnt also wenig das liechte ouge icht in ime erliden mag, also wenig mag diu luter sele icht an ir erliden keine vermasung vnt das si vermitlen mag. ir werdent alle creaturen luter ce niessen: wanne si niusset alle creaturen in got vnt got in allen creaturen. Denne si ist also luter, das si sich selben durschowet, denne endarf si got nit verre suochen: si vindet in ir selben, wanne si in ir natiurlichen luterkeit ist geflossen in das übernatiurliche der lutern gotheit. vnt also ist si in got, vnt got in ir; vnt was si tuot, das tuot si in got, vnt tuot es got in ir.—Wackernagel, p. 891.

[87]. Wann sol der mensch warlich arm sein, so soll er seynes geschaffnen willes also ledig sein, als er was do er noch nit was. Und ich sag euch bey der ewigen warheit, als lang ir willen hand zu erfüllend den willen gottes, vnd icht begerung hand der ewigkeit und gottes, also lang seind ir nitt recht arm, wann das ist ein arm mensch der nicht wil, noch nicht bekennet, noch nicht begeret—Schmidt, p. 716. Here again is the most extravagant expression possible of the doctrine of sainte indifférence, in comparison with which Madame Guyon is moderation itself.

[88]. See Schmidt, p. 724.

[89]. He was charged with denying hell and purgatory, because he defined future punishment as deprivation,—‘Das Nicht in der helle brinnet.’—Schmidt, p. 722.

[90]. The narrative here put into the mouth of Eckart is found in an appendix to Tauler’s Medulla animæ. There is every reason to believe that it is Eckart’s. Martensen gives it, p. 107.

[91]. A literal translation of a curious old hymn in Wackernagel’s collection, p. 896.

[92]. C. Schmidt (Johannes Tauler von Strasburg, p. 42) gives examples of the extravagant display in dress common among the clergy at that time.

[93]. The substance of this dialogue will be found in the works of Heinrich Suso (ed. Melchior Diepenbrock, Regensburg, 1837), Book iii. chap. vii. pp. 310-14. Suso represents himself as holding such a conversation with ‘ein vernunftiges Bilde, das war subtil an seinen Worten und war aber ungeübt an seinen Werken und war ausbrüchig in florirender Reichheit,’ as he sat lost in meditation on a summer’s day. Atherton has ventured to clothe this ideal of the enthusiast of those times in more than a couple of yards of flesh and blood, and supposed Arnstein to have picked up divinity enough in his sermon-hearing to be able to reason with him just as Suso does in his book.

The wandering devotees, who at this time abounded throughout the whole region between the Netherlands and Switzerland, approximated, some of them, to Eckart’s portraiture of a religious teacher, others to Suso’s ideal of the Nameless Wild. In some cases the enthusiasm of the same man may have approached now the nobler and now the baser type.

[94]. See [Note], p. [212].

[95]. Eckart does not make use of his lapse into the Essence to philosophise withal; it is simply his religious ultimatum.

[96]. Louis was indebted for this important victory to the skill of Schweppermann. After the battle the sole supply of the imperial table was found to consist of a basket of eggs, which the emperor distributed among his officers, saying, ‘To each of you one egg—to our gallant Schweppermann two.’—Menzel.

[97]. See Laguille, Histoire d’Alsace, liv. xxiii. p. 271.

[98]. Many passages in his Heiligenleben are altogether in the spirit of Eckart, and have their origin, beyond question, in his sayings, or in those of his disciples.—See pp. 114, 125, 150, 187 (Pfeiffer), and also the extracts in Wackernagel, Altd. Leseb. p. 853.

[99]. See Schmidt’s Tauler, Appendix, p. 172, &c., where such information as can be obtained concerning Henry of Nördlingen is given.

[100]. Compare Petrarch’s account in his letters, cited by Gieseler: ‘Mitto stupra, raptus, incestus, adulteria, qui jam pontificalis lasciviæ ludi sunt: mitto raptarum viros, ne mutire audeant, non tantum avitis laribus, sed finibus patriis exturbatos, quæque contumeliarum gravissima est, et violatas conjuges et externo semine gravidas rursus accipere, et post partum reddere ad alternam satietatem abutentium coactos.’

[101]. Laguille gives an account of this revolution, Hist. d’Alsace, p. 276.

[102]. Schmidt’s Tauler, p. 12.

[103]. Laguille, liv. xxiv. p. 280.

[104]. Schmidt, p. 22.

[105]. Tauler’s Sermon on the Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity contains an exhortation to Christian love, remarkable for beauty and discrimination. Tauler’s Predigten, vol ii. p. 591 (Berlin, 1841).

[106]. Schmidt, p. 14:—

‘do soltent sü ouch fürbas singen

oder aber us der statt springen.’

[107]. Schmidt’s Tauler, Anhang über die Gottesfreunde.

[108]. Passages from two of these mystics, Heinrich von Löwen and Johannes von Sterngasse, are given among the Sprüche Deutscher Mystiker, in Wackernagel, p. 890.

[109]. See Tauler’s Predigten, vol. ii. p. 584; and also, concerning the charge of sectarianism, p. 595; and the services of the Friends of God, vol. i. pred. xxvi. p. 194; pred. xi. p. 85.

[110]. Ibid., vol. ii. pred. lxvi. p. 594.

[111]. The sermon referred to is that on the Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity, vol. ii. p. 598.

While he is careful to warn his hearers against the presumption of attempting at once to contemplate Deity apart from its manifestation in the humanity of Christ, he yet seems to admit that when the soul has been thoroughly exercised in the imitation of Christ,—has become conformed, as far as man can be, to his spirit and his sufferings, then there commences a period of repose and joy in which there is an extraordinary intuition of Deity, which approximates to that perfect vision promised hereafter, when we shall see, not ‘through a glass darkly,’ but face to face.—Vol. ii. p. 609.

[112]. Meiners, Hist. Vergleichung der Sitten, &c., des Mittelalters, vol. ii. p. 117.

[113]. To long and weave a woof of dreams is sweet unto the feeble soul, but nobler is stout-hearted striving, and makes the dream reality.

[114]. This sermon is given entire in the second chapter of the Lebenshistorie des ehrwürdigen Doctors Johann Tauler, prefixed to his sermons. The succeeding incidents are all related by the same authority. The cellarer only and the family affairs of Adolf, appear to be invented by Atherton.

[115]. Atherton defends this word by the usage of Thomas Fuller.

[116]. These letters are preserved in substance in Specklin’s Collectanea, and are inserted, from that source, in the introduction by Görres to Diepenbrock’s edition of Suso’s works; pp. xxxv. &c.

[117]. The substance of the foregoing narrative concerning Tauler and the laymen will be found in the Lebenshistorie des ehrwürdigen Doctors Joh. Tauler. See also C. Schmidt’s account of Nicholas in his monograph on Tauler (p. 28), and a characteristic letter by Nicholas concerning visions of coming judgment given in the Appendix.

[118]. See [Note], p. [254].

[119]. See first [Note], p. [256].

[120]. Serm. on Eleventh Sun. after Trinity, ii. p. 436.

[121]. Serm. on Eleventh Sun. after Trin., ii. pp. 442, 443. Also, Predigten, vol. iii. p. 19, and Schmidt, p. 125.

[122]. Third Serm. on Thirteenth Sun. after Trin., ii. pp. 474-478.

[123]. First Serm. on Thirteenth Sun. after Trin., ii. p. 459.

[124]. See second [Note], p. [256].

[125]. Twenty-first Sun. after Trin., ii. p. 584.

[126]. See [Note], p. [257].

[127]. Preface to Tauler’s Life and Sermons by Susanna Winkworth.

[128]. Nicole, in his Traité de la Prière, describes and criticises this style of devotion. It must always be borne in mind that the warnings of Tauler with regard to the image and the symbol are addressed, not to us sober Protestant folk, but especially to the devotees of the cloister. Those who have some acquaintance with the fantastic excesses he combats, will not think his language too strong.

[129]. See Hecker’s Black Death (trans. by Dr. Babington, 1853).—Hecker gives the documents relating to the trial of the Neustadt Jews in an appendix, from the Chronicle of Jacob of Königshoven. See also pp. 103-127.

[130]. These fanatics were everywhere foremost among the instigators of the cruelties perpetrated on the Jews. Women, and even children, joined their ranks in great numbers, wearing the hats with red crosses, carrying flags, and scourging themselves with the rest. The particulars given are taken from the account in Jacob von Königshoven’s Elsassische u. Strassburgische Chronik, inserted entire in Wackernagel,—(p. 931). The chronicler says:—‘Zuo Strôsburg kam mê denne tûsent manne in ire geselleschaft, und siu teiltent sich zuo Strôsburg: eine parte der geischelaere gieng das lant abe, die ander parte das lant ûf. und kam sô vil volkes in ire bruoderschaft, das es verdrôs den bôbest und den keiser und die phafheit. und der keiser verschreip dem bôbeste das er etwas hie zuo gedaechte: anders die geischeler verkêrtent alle die welt.’ The Flagellants claimed power to confess and give absolution. The thirty-four days’ scourging among them was to make a man as innocent as a babe—the virtue of the lash was above all sacraments. Thus the people took religion into their own hands, blindly and savagely,—no other way was then possible. It was a spasmodic movement of the mass of life beneath, when the social disorder that accompanied the pestilence had loosened the grasp of the power temporal and spiritual which held them down so long.

[131]. See Schmidt’s Tauler, p. 58.

[132]. Laguille’s Histoire d'Alsace, liv. xxv. p. 290.

[133]. Hecker, p. 81.

[134]. Schmidt’s Tauler, p. 59.

[135]. See [Note], p. [336].

[136]. Ruysbroek sent a copy of his book, De ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum, to the Friends of God in the Oberland. He had many friends in Cologne, and it is very likely that the work may have reached Tauler there, either through them or from the author, who must have heard of him.

[137]. See Johannes Ruysbroek, by Engelhardt, p. 168.

[138]. Froissart, book ii. chap. 40.

[139]. Froissart, chapp. 41, 42.

[140]. Ibid., book i. chap. 34.

[141]. Optimum aliena insania frui.

[142]. Engelhardt, p. 326.

[143]. It is certain that Ruysbroek was visited during the many years of his residence in Grünthal, much after the manner described, and also that Tauler was among the visitors, though the exact time of his journey is not known.

[144]. See Engelhardt, pp. 189, 288.—According to Ruysbroek, the Trinitarian process lies at the basis of the kingdoms both of Nature and of Grace. There is a flowing forth and manifestation in the creative Word,—a return and union of love by the Holy Ghost. This process goes on continually in the providential government of the universe, and in the spiritual life of believers. The upholding of the world, and the maintenance of the work of grace in the heart, are both in different ways a perpetual bringing forth of the Son, by whom all things consist, and who is formed in every devout soul. Ruysbroek is careful to state (as a caveat against pantheism) that such process is no necessary development of the divine nature,—it is the good pleasure of the Supreme. (See Vier Schriften von J. Ruysbroek, in niederdeutscher Sprache, by A. v. Arnswaldt; Hanover, 1848.) ‘Wi hebben alle boven onse ghescapenheit een ewich leuen in gode als in onse leuende sake die ons ghemaect ende ghescapen heest van niete, maer wi en sijn niet god noch wi en hebben ons seluen niet ghemaeckt. Wi en sijn ooc niet wt gode ghevloten van naturen, maer want ons god ewelijc ghevoelt heest ende bekent in hem seluen, so heest hi ons ghemaeckt, niet van naturen noch van node, maer van vriheit sijns willen,’—p. 291. (Spiegel der Seligkeit, xvii.)

The bosom of the Father, he says, is our proper ground and origin (der schois des vaders is onse eygen gront ind onse oirsprunck); we have all, therefore, the capacity for receiving God, and His grace enables us to recognise and realise this latent possibility (offenbairt ind brengit vort die verboirgenheit godes in wijsen),—p. 144.

[145]. Engelhardt, pp. 183, 186. Ruysbroek speaks as follows of that fundamental tendency godward of which he supposes prevenient grace (vurloiffende gracie) to lay hold:—‘Ouch hait der mynsche eyn naturlich gront neygen zo gode overmitz den voncken der sielen ind die overste reden die altzijt begert dat goide ind hasset dat quaide. Mit desen punten voirt got alle mynschen na dat sijs behoeven ind ecklichen na sinre noit,’ &c.—Geistl. Hochzeit, cap. 3.

Ruysbroek lays great stress on the exercise of the will. ‘Ye are as holy as ye truly will to be holy,’ said he one day to two ecclesiastics, inquiring concerning growth in grace. It is not difficult to reconcile such active effort with the passivity of mysticism. The mystics all say, ‘We strive towards virtue by a strenuous use of the gifts which God communicates, but when God communicates Himself, then we can be only passive—we repose, we enjoy, but all operation ceases.’

[146]. Engelhardt, pp. 195, 199.

[147]. Engelhardt, pp. 201, 213. In the season of spiritual exaltation, the powers of the soul are, as it were, absorbed in absolute essential enjoyment (staen ledich in een weselic gebrucken). But they are not annihilated, for then we should lose our creatureliness.—Mer si en werden niet te niete, want soe verloeren wy onse gescapenheit. Ende alsoe lange als wy mit geneichden geeste ende mit apen ogen sonder merken ledich staen, alsoe lange moegen wy schouwen ende gebruken. Mer in den seluen ogenblijc dat wy proeven ende merken willen wat dat is dat wy geuoelen, so vallen wy in reden, ende dan vynden wy onderscheit ende anderheit tusschen ons ende gade, ende dan vynden wy gade buten ons in onbegripelicheiden.—Von dem funkelnden Steine, x.

[148]. See first [Note], p. [338].

[149]. See second [Note], p. [338].

[150]. Engelhardt, p. 225. Schmidt’s Tauler, p. 61.—The same doctrine which furnished a sanctuary for the devotion of purer natures supplied also an excuse for the licence of the base. Wilful perversion, or mere ignorance, or some one of the manifold combinations of these two factors, would work the mystical exhortation into some such result as that denounced by Ruysbroek. We may imagine some bewildered man as speaking thus within himself:—‘So we are to covet ignorance, to surmount distinctions, to shun what is clear or vivid as mediate and comparatively carnal, to transcend means and bid farewell to the wisdom of the schools. Wise and devout men forsake all their learning, forget their pious toil and penance, to lose themselves in that ground in which we are united to God,—to sink into vague abstract confusion. But may I not do at first what they do at last? Why take in only to take out? I am empty already. Thank heaven! I haven’t a distinct idea in my head.’

It is so that the popular mind is sure to travesty the ultra-refinements of philosophy.

[151]. Engelhardt, pp. 224-228.—Eckart, like Hegel, would seem to have left behind him a right-hand and a left-hand party,—admirers like Suso and Tauler, who dropped his extreme points and held by such saving clauses as they found; and headstrong spirits, ripe for anarchy, like these New-Lights or High-Fliers, the representatives of mysticism run to seed. Ruysbroek’s classification of them is somewhat artificial; fanaticism does not distribute itself theologically. In the treatise entitled Spiegel der Seligkeit, § 16, he describes them generally as follows:—‘Ander quade duulische menschen vint men, die segghen dat si selue Cristus sijn of dat si god sijn, ende dat haer hant hemel ende erde ghemaect heest, ende dat an haer hant hanghet hemel ende erde ende alle dinc, ende dat si verheuen sijn boven alle die sacramenten der heiligher kerken, ende dat si der niet en behoeuen noch si en willen der ooc niet.’ He represents their claim to identity with God as leading to a total moral indifference (§ 17):—‘Ende sulke wanen god sijn, ende si en achten gheen dinc goet noch quaet, in dien dat si hem ontbeelden connen ende in bloter ledicheit haer eighen wesen vinden ende besitten moghen.’ Their idea of the consummation of all things savours of the Parisian heresy—the offspring of John Scotus, popularised by David of Dinant and his followers. The final restitution is to consist in the resolution of all creatures into the Divine Substance:—‘So spreken si voort dat in den lesten daghe des ordels enghele ende duuele, goede ende quade, dese sullen alle werden een eenvoudighe substancie der godheit ... ende na dan, spreken si voort, en sal god bekennen noch minnen hem seluen noch ghene creature’—(§ 16).

[152]. Engelhardt, pp. 326-336.—Good Ruysbroek was fully entitled to the encomium placed in the mouth of Tauler. He himself, like Bernard, would frequently perform the meanest offices of the cloister. The happy spirit of brotherhood which prevailed among the canons of Grünthal made a deep impression on that laborious practical reformer, Gerard Groot, when, in 1378, he visited the aged prior. What he then saw was not without its influence in the formation of that community with which his name is associated—the Brethren of the Common Life.—See Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. ii.

[153]. Engelhardt, p. 330.—Ruysbroek inveighs with much detail against the vanities of female dress—as to those hair-pads, sticking up like great horns, they are just so many ‘devil’s nests.’

[154]. Ruysbroek expressed himself in these words to Gerard Groot (Engelhardt, p. 168). In his touching description of the ‘desolation’ endured by the soul on its way upward toward the ‘super-essential contemplation,’ he makes the sufferer say,—‘O Lord, since I am thine (want ich din eygen bin), I would as soon be in hell as in heaven, if such should be thy good pleasure; only do thy glorious will with me, O Lord!‘—Geistl. Hochzeit, § 30. Ruysbroek, like Fénelon, abandons himself thus only on the supposition that even in hell he should still retain the divine favour;—so impossible after all is the absolute disinterestedness toward which Quietism aspires. The Flemish mystic distinguishes between the servants of God, the friends, and the sons. Those worshippers who stand in the relation of friends have still something of their own (besitten oer inwendichkeit mit eygenscap) in their love to God. The sons ascend, ‘dying-wise,’ to an absolute emptiness. The friends still set value on divine bestowments and experiences; the sons are utterly dead to self, in bare modeless love (in bloeter, wiseloeser mynnen). Yet, very inconsistently, he represents the sons as more assured of eternal life than the friends. (Von dem funkelnden Steine, § 8.)

[155]. A veritable personage. He died in 1377, and left behind him a book recording the conflicts he underwent and the revelations vouchsafed him. (Engelhardt, p. 326.)

[156]. The lyrics of Muscatblut are characterised by Gervinus (ii. p. 225), and the same authority gives some account, from the Limburg Chronicle, of the famous friar, leper, and poet mentioned by Arnstein.

[157]. Why smite thy breast and lament? why not lift up thy soul? why meditate for ever on the sign? He thou lovest is within thee. Thou seekest Jesus—thou hast him; he is found, and thou perceivest it not. Why these groans, this weeping? The true joy is thine; hidden within thee, though thou knowest it not, lies the solace of thine anguish; thou hast within, thou seekest without, the cure for thy languishing soul.

[158]. I live, but with no life of mine, and long towards a life so high—I die because I do not die.

[159]. The Life of Suso, published in Diepenbrock’s edition of his works, was written by his spiritual daughter, Elsbet Stäglin, according to the account she received at various intervals from his own lips. He sprang from a good family,—his name, originally Heinrich vom Berg. The name of Suso he adopted from his mother, a woman remarkable for her devotion. The secret name of Amandus, concealed till after his death, was supposed to have been conferred by the Everlasting Wisdom himself on his beloved servant.

The incident of the rescue of himself and his book from the floods, by the timely intervention of a knight passing that way, is related in the twenty-ninth chapter of the Life, p. 68.

[160]. Heinrich Suso’s Leben und Schriften, von M. Diepenbrock (1837), pp. 15, 51, 86. Diepenbrock’s book is an edition of the biography by Stäglin, and of the Book of the Everlasting Wisdom, &c., from the oldest manuscripts and editions, and rendered into modern German.

[161]. Leben, cap. 48,—where it is also said that, on one occasion, as ‘the servant was preaching at Cologne, one of his auditors beheld his face luminous with a supernatural effulgence.’ It is known that Tauler possessed a copy of the Horologium Sapientiæ.

See also Schmidt’s Tauler, p. 169. Comp. Leben, cap. xxxi. p. 72, and cap. xlix.

[162]. Leben, cap. iv.

[163]. Leben, cap. xvii.-xx. Suso died in 1385 at Ulm; he was born about the commencement of the century.

[164]. Suso sent a Latin version of the book of the Everlasting Wisdom, under the title Horologium Sapientiæ, to Hugo von Vaucemain, Master of the Order, for his approval. The date of the work is fixed between 1333 and 1342. The prologue contains the account of the ‘inspiratio superna’ under which the work was written.—(Diepenb. Vorbericht, p. 6.) It was translated ere long into French, Dutch, and English, and appears to have been in the fourteenth century almost what the Imitatio Christi became in the fifteenth.—Ibid., p. 15.

[165]. Leben, cap. vi.

[166]. Reverences or prostrations.

[167]. Leben, capp. x. and xiv.

[168]. Leben, cap. xxii. p 5; and xxv.

[169]. This incident is related at length in the twenty-seventh chapter of the Life; and the adventure with the robber, which follows, in the succeeding. The account given in the text follows closely in all essential particulars the narrative in the biography.

[170]. Leben, cap. lvii. Suso speaks to this effect in a dialogue with his spiritual daughter. She describes in another place (p. 74) how she drew Suso on to talk on these high themes, and then wrote down what follows.

[171]. Ibid., cap. xxxiv. p. 80; and comp. Buch. d. E. Weisheit, cap. vii. p. 199.

[172]. Buchlein von d. E. Weisheit, Buch. iii. cap. ii.; and Leben, cap. lvi. p. 168, and p. 302.

[173]. Leben, p. 171.

[174]. Extravagant as are his expressions concerning the absorption in God, Suso has still numerous passages designed to preclude pantheism; declaring that the distinction between the Creator and the creature is nowise infringed by the essential union he extols. The dialogue with the ‘nameless Wild,’ already alluded to, is an example.—Comp. Leben, cap. lvi. pp. 166, 167, and Buch. d. E. W., Buch. iii. cap. vi.

[175]. Leben, cap. liii. p. 148. See Note, p. 357.

[176]. Schröckh’s Kirchengeschichte, vol. xxxiv. pp. 431-450.

[177]. See Die Mystik des Nikolaus Cabasilas vom Leben in Christo, von Dr. W. Gass (1849).—In this work, Dr. Gass publishes, for the first time, the Greek text of the seven books, De Vita in Christo, with an able introduction. The authority for this summary of the theological tendency of Cabasilas will be found, pp. 210-224.

[178]. The Masters speak of two faces the soul hath. The one face is turned towards this world. The other face is turned direct toward God. In this latter face shineth and gloweth God eternally, whether man is ware or unaware thereof.

[179]. Schmidt’s Tauler, pp. 205, &c.—Mosheim gives the passage in Nieder relating the apprehension and death of Nicholas:—‘Acutissimus enim erat (says this authority) et idcirco manus Inquisitorum diu evaserat.’—Mosheim de Beghardis et Beguinabus, cap. iv. § 42, p. 454.

[180]. See Revelationes Selectæ S. Brigittæ (Heuser, 1851).—This is a selection for the edification of good Catholics, and contains accordingly the most Mariolatrous and least important of her writings. Rudelbach gives some specimens of her spirited rebuke of papal iniquity in his Savonarola, pp. 300, &c. In her prophetic capacity she does not hesitate to call the pope a murderer of souls, and to declare him and his greedy prelates forerunners of Antichrist. She says,—‘If a man comes to them with four wounds, he goes away with five.’ Like Savonarola, she placed her sole hope of reform in a general council.

A common mode of self-mortification with her found an imitator in Madame Guyon:—the Swede dropped the wax of lighted tapers on her bare flesh, and carried gentian in her mouth—Vita, p. 6. The Frenchwoman burned herself with hot sealing-wax in the same manner, and chewed a quid of coloquintida.

The Revelationes de Vitâ et Passione Jesu Christi et gloriosæ Virginis, contain a puerile and profane account of the birth, childhood, and death of our Lord, in the style of the apocryphal Gospel of the Infancy, professedly conveyed in conversations with the authoress by the Mother and her Son. The Virgin tells her, in reference to her Son,—‘quomodo neque aliqua immunditia ascendit super eum;’ and that his hair was never in a tangle—(nec perplexitas in capillise jus apparuit).

[181]. ‘Angela de Foligni.’ See Beatæ Angelæ Fulginio Visionum et Instructionum Liber; (recens. J. H. Lammertz; Cologne, 1851.)—The account of the wonderful star is given by Arnold in his Prologue, p. 12. At one time it is promised by the Lord that the ‘whole Trinity shall enter into her,’ (capit. xx.); at another, she is transported into the midst of the Trinity.—(Capit. xxxii.) In chapter after chapter of monotonous inflation, she wearies and disappoints the curious reader by declaring her ‘abysses of delectation and illumination’ altogether unutterable,—such as language profanes rather than expresses—‘inenarrabiles,’ ‘indicibiles,’ &c. So the miraculous taste of the host to her favoured palate was not like bread or flesh, but a ‘sapor sapidissimus,’—like nothing that can be named.—Capit. xl.

The following act of saintship we give in the original, lest in English it should act on delicate readers as an emetic. She speaks of herself and a sister ascetic:—‘Lavimus pedes feminarum ibi existentium pauperum, et manus hominum, et maxime cujusdam leprosi, qui habebat manus valde fœtidas et marcidas et præpeditas et corruptas; et bibimus de illâ loturâ. Tantam autem dulcedinem sensimus in illo potu, quod per totam viam venimus in magnâ suavitate, et videbatur mihi per omnia quod ego gustassem mirabilem dulcedinem, quantum ad suavitatem quam ibi inveni. Et quia quædam squamula illarum plagarum erat interposita in gutture meo, conata sum ad diglutiendum eam, sicut si communicassem, donec deglutivi eam. Unde tantam suavitatem inveni in hoc, quod eam non possum exprimere.’—Capit. l. p. 176.

In her ‘Instructions,’ she lays it down as a rule that none can ever be deceived in the visions and manifestations vouchsafed them who are truly poor in spirit,—who have rendered themselves as ‘dead and putrid’ into the hands of God. (Capp. liv. lv.) She says that when God manifests Himself to the soul, ‘it sees Him, without bodily form, indeed, but more distinctly than one man can see another man, for the eyes of the soul behold a spiritual plenitude, not a corporeal, whereof I can say nothing, since both words and imagination fail here.’ (Capit. lii. p. 192.) Angela died in 1309.

[182]. ‘Catharine of Siena.’ Görres gives a short account of her in his Introduction to Diepenbrock’s edition of Suso, p. 96.

[183]. The theology of this remarkable little book is substantially the same with that already familiar to us in the sermons of Tauler. Luther, writing to Spalatin, and praising Tauler’s theology, sends with his letter what he calls an epitome thereof,—cujus totius velut epitomen ecce hic tibi mitto. (Epp. De Wette, No. xxv.) He refers, there can be little doubt, to his edition of the Deutsche Theologie, which came out that year.

[184]. See, especially, the twelfth chapter of the second book, On the Necessity of bearing the Cross. Compare Michelet’s somewhat overdrawn picture of the effects of the Imitation in his History of France.

The Ignitum cum Deo Soliloquium of Gerlacus Petrus is a contemporary treatise belonging to the same school. (Comp. capp. xxxix. and xxvi.; ed. Strange, 1849.) It is less popular, less impassioned than the Imitation, and more thoroughly impregnated with the spirit of mysticism. Gerlach would seem to have studied Suso: in one place he imitates his language. The cast of his imagery, as well as the prominence given to mystical phraseology, more peculiar to the Germans, shows that he addresses himself to an advanced and comparatively esoteric circle.—Comp. capp. xxii, xxiv, p. 78.

[185]. ‘Gerson.‘—See an article by Liebner (Gerson’s Mystische Theologie) in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken; 1835, ii.

[186]. Malcolm’s Persia, vol. ii., p. 383.

[187]. See Schrader’s Angelus Silesius und seine Mystik; Halle, 1853. This author shows, that the supposition identifying Scheffler with Angelus (copied too readily by one writer from another) may be traced up to a source of very slight authority. Scheffler repudiated mysticism after entering the Romish communion. Furious polemical treatises by Scheffler, and sentimental religious poems by Angelus appeared contemporaneously during a considerable interval. Had Scheffler published anything mystical during his controversy, his Protestant antagonists would not have failed to charge him with it. With Scheffler the Church is everything. In the Wanderer of Angelus the word scarcely occurs. The former lives in externalisms; the latter covets escape from them. The one is an angry bigot; the other, for a Romanist, serenely latitudinarian. Characteristics so opposite, urges Dr. Schrader, could not exist in the same man at the same time.

The epithet ‘Cherubic’ indicates the more speculative character of the book; as contrasted, in the language of the mystics, with the devotion of feeling and passion—seraphic love.

[188]. Cherubinischer Wandersmann, i. 100, 9, 18; Schrader, p. 28.

[189]. And if thy heart know nought of this—‘Die that thou mayest be born;’ then walkest thou the darksome earth a sojourner forlorn.

[190]. Tholuck, Ssufismus, sive Theosophia Persarum pantheistica (Berlin, 1822), pp. 51-54.

[191]. Tholuck, Ssufismus, p. 63. Cherub. Wand., ii. 18.

[192]. Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der Morgenländischen Mystik (Berlin, 1825), p. 114.

[193]. Cherub. Wand., i. 274; v. 81.

[194]. Blüthen., p. 61. Cherub. Wand., iv. 23.

[195]. Blüthen., pp. 64, 71, 113, 156.

[196]. Blüthen., p. 167. Emerson’s Essays (1848), p. 35.

[197]. Blüthen., pp. 204-206. Cherub. Wand., i. 24, 92, 140.

[198]. Blüthen., pp. 180, 181. Cherub. Wand., v. 367; ii. 92; i. 91, 39; ii. 152, 59. Emerson, pp. 37, 42.

[199]. Blüthen., pp. 85, 116. Emerson, pp. 141, 143. Cherub. Wand., i. 12. Compare Richard of St. Victor, cited above, vol. i., p. [172], [Note] to p. 163.

[200]. Blüthen., pp. 82, 84.—The truth, of which the licentious doctrine alluded to is the abuse, is well put by Angelus,—

‘Dearer to God the good man’s very sleep

Than prayers and psalms of sinners all night long.’—(v. 334.)

[201]. Blüthen., pp. 266, 260.—Never does this soaring idealism become so definite and apprehensible as when it speaks with the ‘large utterance’ of the Sufis. Angelus has here and there somewhat similar imagery for the same thought. What is with him a dry skeleton acquires flesh and blood among the Orientals.

‘Sit in the centre, and thou seest at once

What is, what was; all here and all in heaven.

‘Is my will dead? Then what I will God must,

And I prescribe his pattern and his end.

‘I must be sun myself, and with my beams

Paint all the hueless ocean of the Godhead.’—(ii. 183; i. 98, 115.)

[202]. Emerson, pp. 154, 156, 196. Cherub. Wand., i. 10, 8, 204.—Angelus has various modes of expressing the way in which God realizes his nature in the salvation of men.

‘I bear God’s image. Would he see himself?

He only can in me, or such as I.

‘Meekness is velvet whereon God takes rest:

Art meek, O man?—God owes to thee his pillow.

‘I see in God both God and man,

He man and God in me;

I quench his thirst, and he, in turn,

Helps my necessity.’—(i. 105, 214, 224.)

[203]. Works, vol. iv., On the Mystical Poetry of the Persians and Hindoos.

[204]. Blüthen., p. 218.

[205]. A reference to Raumer’s History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries will satisfy the reader that this dream ‘was not all a dream.’ Most minute details are given in a letter from the MSS. of Dupuy.

[206]. See [Note], p. [51].

[207]. See the account in Ranke’s History of the Reformation.

[208]. See Carriere, Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationzeit (1847), pp. 196-203.

[209]. Horst’s Zauberbibliothek, vol. iii. p. 21.

[210]. Agrippa’s Vanity of Arts and Sciences, chap. 47.

[211]. See M. B. Lessing, Paracelsus, sein Leben und Denken, p. 60.

[212]. The third and fourth volumes of Horst’s Zauberbibliothek contain a very full account of all these vincula. The vincula of the Intellectual World are principally formulas of invocation; secret names of God, of celestial principalities and spirits; Hebrew, Arabic, and barbarous words; magical figures, signs, diagrams, and circles. Those of the Elementary World consist in the sympathetic influence of certain animals and plants, such as the mole, the white otter, the white dove, the mandrake; of stones and metals, ointments and suffumigations. Those of the Astral or Celestial World depend on the aspects and dispositions of the heavenly bodies, which, under the sway of planetary spirits, infuse their influences into terrestrial objects. This is the astrological department of theurgy. Meinhold’s Sidonia contains a truthful exhibition of this form of theurgic mysticism, as it obtained in Protestant Germany. See Paracelsus, De Spiritibus Planetarum, passim. (Ed. Dorn., 1584.)

[213]. See Carriere (pp. 89-114), to whom I am indebted as regards the character of this and the preceding work, having had access to neither.

[214]. This distressing outbreak on the part of Gower will scarcely seem extravagant to those who remember how intensely poetical were many of the theosophic hypotheses. Analogies which would only occur to imaginative men in their hours of reverie were solidified into principles and enrolled in the code of nature. Nothing could be more opposite to the sifting process of modern investigation than the fanciful combination and impersonation of those days,—more akin, by far, to mythology than to science. Conceits such as the following are those of the poet,—and of the poet as far gone in madness as Plato could wish him.

The waters of this world are mad; it is in their raving that they rush so violently to and fro along the great channels of the earth.

Fire would not have burned, darkness had not been, but for Adam’s fall. There is a hot fire and a cold. Death is a cold fire.—Behmen.

All things—even metals, stones, and meteors—have sense and imagination, and a certain ‘fiducial’ knowledge of God in them.

The arctic pole draws water by its axle-tree, and these waters break forth again at the axle-tree of the antarctic pole.

Earthquakes and thunder are the work of dæmons or angels.

The lightnings without thunder are, as it were, the falling flowers of the ‘æstival’ (or summer) stars.—Paracelsus.

Hail and snow are the fruits of the stars, proceeding from them as flowers and blossoms from herb or tree.—Paracelsus.

Night is, in reality, brought on by the influence of dark stars, which ray out darkness, as the others light.—Paracelsus.

The final fires will transform the earth into crystal. (A summary expression for one of Behmen’s doctrines.)

The moon, planets, and stars are of the same quality with the lustrous precious stones of our earth, and of such a nature, that wandering spirits of the air see in them things to come, as in a magic mirror; and hence their gift of prophecy.

In addition to the terrestrial, man has a sidereal body, which stands in connexion with the stars. When, as in sleep, this sidereal body is more free than usual from the elements, it holds converse with the stars, and may acquire a knowledge of future events.—Paracelsus. See Henry More’s Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, § 44.

[215]. See Lessing’s Paracelsus, p. 18.

[216]. Lessing’s Paracelsus, § 26.

[217]. Language to this effect is cited among the copious extracts given by Godfrey Arnold, Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie, Th. ii. p. 309.

[218]. De Occulta Philosophia, Prologus, p. 30, and p. 58. This is one of the three treatises edited by Gerard Dorn, and published together in a small volume, Basle, 1584. Comp. also Arnold, Th. iv. p. 145.

[219]. Dorn’s Dictionarium Paracelsi (Frankfort, 1583), Art. Microcosmus. Also the Secretum Magicum of Paracelsus, entire in Arnold, p. 150. The implanted image of the Trinity, and the innate tendency in man toward his Divine Origin, are familiar to us as favourite doctrines with the mystics of the fourteenth century.

[220]. De Occ. Phil. cap. iv. p. 45, and cap. xi. p. 78. Also, Dict. Paracels. Art. Magia. Talis influentiarum cœlestium conjunctio vel impressio qua operantur in inferiora corpora cœlestes vires, Gamahea Magis, vel matrimonium virium et proprietatum cœlestium cum elementaribus corporibus, dicta fuit olim.—Paracelsi Aurora Philosophorum, cap. iv. p. 24 (ed. Dorn).

[221]. Aurora Phil. loc. cit.; De Occ. Phil. i. ii.; and xi. p. 79.

[222]. See De Occ. Phil. cap. v. Magical powers are ascribed to images, p. 85. A collection of talismanic figures is appended to the treatise. In the Thesaurus Philosophorum is to be found (p. 145) the arcanum of the Homunculus and the Universal Tincture. The Homunculus is said to be a mannikin, constructed by magic, receiving his life and substance from an artificial principle, and able to communicate to his fabricator all manner of secrets and mysteries of science.

[223]. The three continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa—were said to represent these three constituent principles respectively; the stars contain them, as in so many vials; the Penates (a race of sapient but mortal spirits) employ them for the manufacture of thunder.

[224]. Lessing’s Paracelsus, § 58. This fanciful kind of physiognomy displaces theurgy, among these inquirers. It led, at least, to much accurate observation. It was a sign of health when the chafing-dish and conjuring-book were forsaken for the woods and fields. Cardan, who repudiates the charge of having ever employed incantations or sought intercourse with dæmons, endeavours to establish chiromancy on what were then called astronomical principles. Thus, Mars rules the thumb, wherein lies strength; Jupiter, the forefinger, whence come auguries of fame and honour, &c.

[225]. See Lives of the Alchemistical Philosophers. This book contains a collection of the most celebrated treatises on the theory and practice of the Hermetic Art. The passage from Bernard is in The Book of Eirenæus Philalethes, p. 166.

[226]. Thus, Cardan declared that the law of Moses was from Saturn; that of Christ, from Jupiter and Mercury. Over that of Mahomet presided, in conjunction, Sol and Mars; while Mars and the Moon ruled idolatry. It was thought no impiety—only a legitimate explanation, to attribute the supernatural wisdom and works of our Lord to the divinely-ordained influences of the planetary system.

[227]. This passage is from the Annotations of Weidenfeld on the Green Lion of Paracelsus; Lives of the Alchem. Phil. p. 201. The Thesaurus Thesaurorum contains another choice specimen of the same sort, p. 124.

[228]. The personal appearance of Behmen is thus described by his friend and biographer, Abraham von Franckenberg, in the biography prefixed to his Works, § 27.

[229]. See [Note] on p. [88].

[230]. Lebens-lauff, § 4.

[231]. See his own account of his mental conflict and melancholy, issuing in the rapturous intuition which solved all his doubts, Aurora, cap. xix. §§ 1-13. He acknowledges having read many astrological books. Aurora, cap. xxv. § 43: Ja, lieber, Leser, ich verstehe der Astrologorum Meinung auch wol, ich habe auch ein paar zeilen in ihren Schrifften gelesen, und weiss wol wie sie den Lauf der Sonnen und Sternen schreiben, ich verachte es auch nicht, sondern halte es meisten Theil für gut und recht. Compare also cap. x. § 27: Ich habe viel hoher Meister Schrifften gelesen, in Hoffnung den Grund und die rechte Tieffe darinnen zu finden, aber ich habe nichts funden als einen halb-todten Geist, &c. In a letter to Caspar Lindern he mentions sundry mystical writers concerning whom his correspondent appears to have desired his opinion,—admits that several of them were men of high spiritual gifts, not to be despised, though in many respects capable of amendment,—says that they were of good service in their time, and would probably express themselves otherwise did they write now,—shows where he thinks Schwenkfeld wrong in affirming Christ’s manhood to be no creature, and speaks of Weigel as erring in like manner by denying the Saviour’s true humanity.—Theosoph. Sendbr. §§ 52-60.

[232]. Theosoph. Sendbr. xii. §§ 8-20.

[233]. A full account of the persecution raised by Gregory Richter against Behmen, was drawn up by Cornelius Weissner, a doctor of medicine, and is appended by Franckenberg to his biography. A young man, who had married a relative of Behmen’s, had been so terrified by the threatenings of divine wrath launched at him by Richter, about some trifling money matter, that he fell into a profound melancholy. Behmen comforted the distressed baker, and ventured to remonstrate with the enraged primarius, becoming ever after a marked man. For seven years after the affair of the Aurora, in 1612, Behmen refrained from writing. Everything he published subsequently was produced between the years 1619 and 1624, inclusive.

[234]. Thus he thanks Christian Bernard for a small remittance of money.—Theos. Sendbr. ix. Sept. 12, 1620.

[235]. Apologia wider den Primarium zu Görlitz Gregorium Richter, written in 1624.

[236]. Vide Corn. Weissner’s Wahrhafte Relation, &c., and Franckenberg’s account of his last hours, § 29.

[237]. While regarding as infallibly certain the main features of the doctrine communicated to him, Behmen is quite ready to admit the imperfect character both of his knowledge and his setting forth thereof. Light was communicated to him, he said, by degrees, at uncertain intervals, and never un-mingled with obscurity.—Aurora, cap. vii. § 11; cap. x. § 26, and often elsewhere.

[238]. Aurora, x. §§ 44, 45.

[239]. See Aurora, cap. xix. §§ 26-45; cap. xxiii. § 86.

After speaking of the revolt of Lucifer as the cause of the present imperfection and admixture of natural evil in the world, by corrupting the influence of the Fountain-Spirits throughout our department of the universe, and of the blind and endangered condition of man consequent thereon, he adds,—‘But thou must not suppose that on this account the heavenly light in the Fountain-Spirits of God is utterly extinct. No; it is but a darkness which we, with our corrupt eyesight, cannot apprehend. But when God removes the darkness which thus broods above the light, and thine eyes are opened, then thou seest even on the spot where thou sittest, standest, or dost lie in thy room, the lovely face of God, and all the gates that open upon heaven. Thou needest not first lift thine eyes upwards to heaven, for it is written, ‘The word is near thee, even on thy lips and in thine heart;’ Deut. xxx. 14; Rom. x. 8. So near thee, indeed, is God, that the birth of the Holy Trinity takes place in thine heart also, and there all three persons are born,—Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’—Aurora, cap. x. §§ 57, 58.

[240]. ‘The spirit of man,’ says Behmen, ‘contains a spark from the power and light of God.’ The Holy Ghost is ‘creaturely’ within it when renewed, and it can therefore search into the depths of God and nature, as a child in its father’s house. In God, past, present, and future; breadth, depth, and height; far and near, are apprehended as one, and the holy soul of man sees them in like manner, although (in the present imperfect state) but partially. For the devil sometimes succeeds in smothering the seed of inward light.—Aurora, Vorrede, §§ 96-105.

According to Behmen, Stephen, when he saw the heavens opened, and Christ at the right hand of God, was not spiritually translated into any distant upper region,—‘he had penetrated into the inmost birth—into the heaven which is everywhere.’—Aurora, cap. xix. § 48. Similarly, he declares that he had not ascended into heaven, and seen with the eye of the flesh the creative processes he describes, but that his knowledge comes from the opening within him of the gate to the inner heavenly world, so that the divine sun arose and shone within his heart, giving him infallible inward certainty concerning everything he announces. If an angel from heaven had told him such things, he must have doubted. It might have been Satan in a garb of light: it would have been an external testimony: it would have been beyond his comprehension; but this light and impulse from within precludes all doubt. The holy Soul is one spirit with God, though still a creature; sees as the angels see, and far more, since they discern only heavenly things, but man has experience both of heaven and hell, standing as he does midway between the two.—Aurora, cap. xi. §§ 68-72 and cap. xii. § 117. Comp. also cap. xxv. §§ 46-48.

[241]. The initiate mind saith this and saith that, as it circles around the unspeakable Depth. Thou art the bringer-forth, thou too the offspring; thou the illuminer, thou the illuminate; thou art the manifest, thou art the hidden one,—hid by thy glories. One, and yet all things, one in thyself alone, yet throughout all things!

[242]. Von den drei Principien des Göttlichen Wesens, cap. vii. §§ 22, &c., cap. ix. 30, et passim. Aurora, cap. ii. § 41; cap. xxiii. 61-82. Compare Aurora, cap. xx. §§ 49, &c. Drei Princip. cap. vii. 25. Aurora, cap. x. § 58. Also cap. iii. throughout. There he describes the way in which every natural object—wood, stone, or plant, contains three principles,—the image, or impress of the divine Trinity; first, the Power (Krafft) whereby it possesses a body proper to itself; secondly, the sap (Safft) or heart; thirdly, the peculiar virtue, smell, or taste proceeding from it; this is its spirit (§ 47). So, in the soul of man, do Power, and Light, and a Spirit of Understanding—the offspring of both—correspond to the three persons of the Trinity (§ 42).

[243]. See [Note] on p. [120].

[244]. See [Note] on p. [121].

[245]. Here I am much indebted to the masterly discussion of the theory in question, contained in Müller’s Lehre von der Sünde, Buch ii. cap. 4.

[246]. Aurora, cap. ix. § 42; cap. xviii. § 10-15; cap. xxiii. §§ 92, &c. The remarks in the text, concerning Behmen’s position as between theism and pantheism, are only true if the word theism be there understood as equivalent to deism. For theism, understanding by it belief in a personal deity, does not remove God from the universe. Theism ought to represent the true mean between the deism which relegates a divine Mechanician far from the work of his hands, and the pantheism which submerges him beneath it.

[247]. Aurora, cap. iv. §§ 10, 11. Comp. § 15, and also cap. xxi. § 37.

[248]. Aurora, cap. v. § 4; cap. xvii. § 16.

[249]. Aurora., § 27; cap. xiv. § 104; cap. x. §§ 42, 65; xix. § 50.

[250]. For example, in the Drei Principien, cap. xxvi. §§ 13-34, and in the Aurora, cap. xii. § 65.

[251]. See [Note] on p. [121].

[252]. Theos. Sendbr. 46, §§ 51-54. See also [Note] on page [122].

[253]. Behmen supposed the latter day not far distant (Aurora, iv. 2), but his remarks on the vanity of eschatological speculations generally might be read with advantage by some of our modern interpreters of prophecy. See the letters to Paul Kaym, Theos. Send. viii. and xi.

[254]. Theos. Sendbr. x. § 20. See also [Note] on page [123].

[255]. Aurora, cap. xx. § 1; xxii. 26. See also second [Note] on page [123].

[256]. See, concerning the history of this book, and its author, Valentine Andreä, J. G. Buhle, Ueber den Ursprung und die Vornehmsten Schiksale der Orden der Rosenkreuzer und Freymaurer (Göttingen, 1804), chapp. iii. and iv. Arnold gives a full account of the controversy, and extracts, which appear to indicate very fairly the character of the Fama Fraternitatis, Kirchen-und-Ketzergeschichte, Th. ii. Buch xvii. cap. 18.

The derivation of the name Rosicrucian from ros and crux, rather than rosa and crux, to which Brucker alludes (Hist. Phil. Per. III. Pars i. lib. 3, cap. 3), is untenable. By rights, the word, if from rosa, should no doubt be Rosacrucian; but such a malformation, by no means uncommon, cannot outweigh the reasons adduced on behalf of the generally-received etymology. See Buhle, pp. 174, &c.

[257]. Le Comte de Gabalis, ou Entretiens sur les Sciences Secrètes (Metz, an cinq. républicain), pp. 53-56.

The following passage is a sample of those high-sounding promises with which the pretenders to the Rosicrucian science allured the neophyte:—

‘You are about to learn (says the Count to the author) how to command all nature: God alone will be your master; the philosophers alone your equals. The highest intelligences will be ambitious to obey your desire; the demons will not dare to approach the place where you are; your voice will make them tremble in the depths of the abyss, and all the invisible populace of the four elements will deem themselves happy to minister to your pleasures.... Have you the courage and the ambition to serve God alone, and to be lord over all that is not God? Have you understood what it is to be a man? Are you not weary of serving as a slave,—you, who were born for dominion?‘—(p. 27.)

[258]. Comte de Gabalis, p. 185. See the story of Noah’s calamity, and the salamander Oromasis, p. 140.

[259]. See Colin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal, Art. Cabale. Horst furnishes a number of such words, Zauberbibliothek, vol. III. xvi. 2.

[260]. Horst inserts in his Zauberbibliothek the whole of a once famous cabbalistic treatise, entitled Semiphoras et Shemhamphoras Salomonis Regis, a medley of astrological and theurgic doctrine and prescription. The word Shemhamphorash is not the real word of power, but an expression or conventional representative of it. The Rabbis dispute whether the genuine word consisted of twelve, two-and-forty, or two-and seventy-letters. Their Gematria or cabbalistic arithmetic, endeavours partially to reconstruct it. They are agreed that the prayers of Israel avail now so little because this word is lost, and they know not ‘the name of the Lord.’ But a couple of its real letters, inscribed by a potent cabbalist on a tablet, and thrown into the sea, raised the storm which destroyed the fleet of Charles V. in 1542. Write it on the person of a prince (a ticklish business, surely), and you are sure of his abiding favour. Eisenmenger gives a full account of all the legends connected therewith, Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. i. pp. 157, 424, 581, &c. (Ed. 1711).

The rationale of its virtue, if we may so call it, affords a characteristic illustration of the cabbalistic principle. The Divine Being was supposed to have commenced the work of creation by concentrating on certain points the primal universal Light. Within the region of these was the appointed place of our world. Out of the remaining luminous points, or foci, he constructed certain letters—a heavenly alphabet. These characters he again combined into certain creative words, whose secret potency produced the forms of the material world. The word Shemhamphorash contains the sum of these celestial letters, with all their inherent virtue, in its mightiest combination.—Horst, Zauberbibliothek, vol. iv. p. 131.

[261]. See Das transcendentale magie und magische Heilarten im Talmud, von Dr. G. Brecher, p. 52. Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, ii. pp. 445, &c.

The Tractat Berachoth says the devils delight to be about the Rabbis, as a wife desireth her husband, and a thirsty land longeth after water,—because their persons are so agreeable. Not so, rejoins Eisenmenger, but because both hate the gospel and love the works of darkness.—(p. 447.)

[262]. See Horst’s Zauberbibliothek, vol. i. pp. 314-327.

[263]. Alban Butler, July 31.

[264]. Ribadeneira, Flos Sanctorum, Appendix, p. 35 (Ed. 1659).

[265]. Los Libros de la B. M. Teresa de Jesus, Vida, capp. i. iii. This edition of 1615 contains the Camino de la Perfecion, and the Castillo espiritual, with the Life. The Foundations, at which I have only glanced in the French, are devoted to business, not mysticism.

[266]. Vida, cap. v. p. 26.

[267]. Teresa confesses that during the first year of her seizure her disorder was such as sometimes completely to deprive her of her senses:—Tan grave, que casi me privava el sentido siempre, y algunas vezes del todo quedava sin el.—Pp. 17.

[268]. Vida, cap. xxxvi.

[269]. Vida, p. 83.

[270]. Vida, cap. xxvii. p. 196.

[271]. Vida, cap. xxiv. p. 171.

[272]. Vida, cap. xxvi. p. 186. Siempre que el Señor me mandava alguna cosa en la oracion, si el confessor me dezia otra, me tornava el Señor a dezir que le obedeciesse: despues su Magestad le bolvia para que me lo tornasse a mandar. She speaks in the very same page of bad advice given her by one of her confessors.

[273]. See [Note] on p. [164].

[274]. Vida, p. 85; Camino de Perfecion, capp. 4 and 5.

[275]. Vida, cap. xxix., p. 209.

[276]. Vida, cap. xxxii.

[277]. Ibid., cap. xxxi.

[278]. Vida, pp. 198, 301, 209, 321. This last communication is not related by herself: we have it on the authority of Ribadeneira:—Itidem ei rursus apparens dixit: Cœlum nisi creassem, ob te solam crearem.—Vita Teresiæ, p. 41.

[279]. Originally:

Mas causa en mi tal passion

Ver à Dios mi prisionero

Que muero porque no muero.

[280]. Vida, cap. xl. p. 324.

[281]. The biographers of the saints differ both as to the time of her death (1308, 1299, 1393, are dates assigned), and as to the number and nature of the miraculous formations discovered within her heart. Ribadeneira’s account is by no means the most extravagant. He says:—Aperto ejus corde amplo et concavo, eidem repererunt impressa Dominicæ passionis insignia, nempe crucifixum cum tribus clavis, lancea, spongia, et arundine hinc, et illinic flagris, virgis, columna, corona spinea; atque hæc insignia Dominicæ Passionis, nervis validis durisque constabant.—Vida S. Claræ, p. 161.

[282]. Vida, cap. xxix, p. 213. Speaking of the delicious anguish, she says:—No es dolor corporal, sino espiritual, aunque no dexa de participar el cuerpo algo, y aun harto. Es un requiebro tan suave que passa entre el almo y Dios que suplico yo a su bondad lo dè a gustar a quien pensare que miento.

[283]. Vida, cap. xxxviii. pp. 300, 301; and xl. 328.

[284]. Vida, pp. 71 and 75. In the latter passage, Theresa says expressly:—En la mystica Teologia, que comence a dezir, pierde de obrar el entendimiento, porque le suspende Dios, como despues declararè mas, si supiere, y el me diere para el lo su favor. Presumir, ni pensar de suspenderle nosotros, es lo que digo no se haga, ni se dexe de obrar con el, porque nos quedaremos bouos y frios, y ni haremos lo uno ni lo otro. Que quando el Señor le suspende, y haze parar, dale de que se espante, y en que se ocupe, y que sin discurrir entienda mas en un credo que nosotros podemos entendir con todas nuestras diligencias de tierra en muchos años.

[285]. See [Note] on p. [175].

[286]. Vida, cap. xvii. and Castillo Interior, Moradas Quintas, cap. i.

[287]. Castillo Interior, p. 580.

[288]. See second [Note] on p. [175].

[289]. See [Note] on p. [176].

[290]. See [Note] on p. [177].

[291]. See [Note] on p. [178].

[292]. See the account of the proceedings against Molinos and his followers, in Arnold, th. III., c. xvii., and more fully in an Appendix to the English translation of Madame Guyon’s Autobiography.

[293]. Vida, chap. xxii.:—Quando Dios quiere suspender todas las potencias (como en los modos de oracion que quedan dichos hemos visto) claro estâ que aunque no queramos se quita esta presencia.... Mas que nosotros de maña y con cuydado nos acostumbremos a no procurar con todas nuestras fuerças traer delante siempre (y pluguiesse al Señor fuesse siempre) esta sacratissima humanidad esto digo que no me parece bien, y que es andar el alma en ayre, como dizen: porque parece no trae arrimo, por mucho que la parezca anda llena de Dios.—P. 154.

[294]. The words of John are:—Mais il faut remarquer que quand je dis qu’il est à propos d’oublier les espèces et les connaissances des objets matériels, je ne prétends nullement parler de Jésus-Christ ni de son humanité sacrée. Quoique l’âme n’en ait pas quelquefois la mémoire dans sa plus haute contemplation et dans le simple regard de la divinité, parce que Dieu élève l’esprit à cette connaissance confuse et surnaturelle, néanmoins il ne faut jamais négliger exprès la représentation de cette adorable humanité ni en effacer le souvenir ou l’idée, ni en affaiblir la connaissance.—La Montée du Mont Carmel, liv. III. chap. 1. I have used the French translation of his works, edited by the Abbé Migne, in his Bibliothèque Universelle du Clergé. 1845.

The chapter on images is the fourteenth of the same book.

Father Berthier (Lettres sur les Œuvres de S. Jean de la Croix) attempts to show the difference between the mysticism of his author and that of the false mystics. He succeeds only in pointing out a manifest disagreement between the opinions of John and those which he himself believes (or pretends to believe) are those of Quietism—the accusations, in fact, against the Quietists—the exaggerated conclusions drawn by their enemies.

[295]. See [Note] on p. [180].

[296]. Castillo Interior. Morada vi., c. v.

[297]. Ibid., capp. viii., ix., x.

[298]. Vida, cap. xxvii., pp. 191, &c. Here the supernatural illumination without means or mode, longed for by so many mystics, is professedly realised. Molinos puts forward no claim so dangerous as this special revelation. Theresa is confident that this most inexplicable species of communication is beyond the reach of any delusion, and inaccessible altogether to the father of lies. Her language concerning the absolute passivity of those who are its subjects, is as strong as it could be. No Quietist could push it farther. It so happens that the saint, in his chapter, contravenes expressly the three criteria, afterwards laid down by Fénélon, to distinguish the true mysticism from the false. The genuine contemplation according to him is not purely infused, not purely gratuitous (i.e., without correspondence on the part of the soul to the grace vouchsafed), not miraculous. With Theresa this form of passive contemplation is all three. So much more Quietist was the mysticism authorised than the mysticism condemned by Rome. See Maximes des Saints, art. xxix. What Fénélon rejects in the following section as false, answers exactly to the position of Theresa. Fénélon supports his more refined and sober mysticism by the authority of preceding mystics. He finds among them ample credentials, and indeed more than he wants. Their extravagances he tacitly rejects. Not that, as a good Catholic, he could venture openly to impugn their statements, but their fantastic extremes, and choice wonders, find a place with him rather as so much religious tradition, or extraordinary history, than as forming any essential part of the mysticism he himself represents and commends.

[299]. Vida, cap. xxv.

[300]. His exhortations here carry ascetic self-abnegation far beyond the Quietist indifference of Fénélon or Madame Guyon. They were satisfied—he, always, and she throughout her later life—to seek a state of calm, to hail joy or sorrow alike, with the trustful equanimity of perfect resignation. John is too violent—too much enamoured of miseries, to await the will of Providence. His ambition will command events, and make them torments.

‘Au reste, le meilleur moyen, le plus méritoire et le plus propre pour acquérir les vertus; le moyen, dis-je, le plus sûr pour mortifier la joie, l’espérance, la crainte et la douleur, est de se porter toujours aux choses non pas les plus faciles, mais les plus difficiles; non pas les plus savoureuses, mais les plus insipides; non pas les plus agréables, mais les plus désagréables; non pas à celles qui consolent, mais à celles qui causent de la peine; non pas aux plus grandes, mais aux plus petites; non pas aux plus sublimes et aux plus précieuses, mais aux plus basses et aux plus méprisables. Il faut enfin désirer et rechercher ce qu’il y a de pire, et non ce qu’il y a de meilleur, afin de se mettre, pour l’amour de Jésus Christ, dans la privation de toutes les choses du monde, et d’entrer dans l’esprit d’une nudité parfaite....

‘Premièrement, il faut que celui qui veut réprimer cette passion tâche de faire les choses qui tournent à son déshonneur, et il aura soin de se faire mépriser aussi par le prochain.

‘Secondement, il dira lui-même et fera dire aux autres les choses qui lui attirent du mépris.’—Montée du Carmel, liv. II. ch. xiii.

[301]. Dionysius is very clearly followed into his darkness in La Montée du Carmel, liv. II. chap. viii.; and his Hierarchies reappear in La Nuit Obscure, liv. II. ch. xii.

[302]. La Nuit Obscure, liv. II. ch. iv.; et passim.

[303]. This first Night is treated of at length in the first book of the Montée du Carmel, and in the first of the Nuit Obscure. The supernatural sensuous enjoyments, alluded to, are described in the Montée du Carmel, liv. II. ch. xi. They are placed in the second Night,—the compensation not taking place immediately; and their recipient is on no account to rely on them, or desire their continuance (p. 444). By ‘sense,’ John understands, not the body merely, but the least disorder of the passions, and all those imperfections so common to beginners which arise from an undue eagerness for religious enjoyments, such, for example, as what he calls spiritual avarice, spiritual luxury, spiritual gourmandise, &c.

[304]. See [Note] on p. [195].

[305]. Montée du Carmel, liv. II. ch. xxv.-xxxii.

[306]. Ibid. ch. viii. and vi.

[307]. Ibid. ch. xvii. and liv. III. ch. xii.

[308]. What a scope for the indignant eloquence of Bossuet, had Fénélon proclaimed as possible such a sudden equipment with all imaginable virtues as this:—Quelques-unes de ces connaissances et de ces touches intérieures que Dieu répand dans l’âme l’enrichissent de telle sorte qu’une seule suffit, non-seulement pour la délivrer tout d’un coup des imperfections qu’elle n’avait pu vaincre durant tout le cours de sa vie, mais aussi pour l’orner des vertus chrétiennes et des dons divins.—Montée du Carmel, liv. II. ch. xxvi. p. 484.

[309]. In the chapter just cited, John says expressly, ‘Elle ne saurait cependant s’élever à ces connaissances et à ces touches divines par sa co-opération,’ and describes these gifts as coming from God, ‘subitement et sans attendre le consentement de la volonté.’—P. 485. So again, quite as strongly, liv. II. chap. xi. p. 445. He discountenances the attempt to seek perfection by the ‘voies surnaturelles,’ yet his books are an introduction to the mystical evening, and a guide through the mystical midnight.

[310]. La Nuit Obscure, liv. II. ch. ix.; especially the passage cited in note on p. [195].

[311]. This night occupies the third book of the Montée du Carmel.

[312]. See [Note] on p. [196].

[313]. See second [Note] on p. [196].

[314]. See the life of the saint in Alban Butler, Nov. 24.

[315]. See the first six chapters of her Autobiography. This life was published posthumously at Cologne, in 1720. I have used an anonymous English translation, published at Bristol, in 1772.

[316]. See [Note] on p. [238].

[317]. Autobiography, chap. x.

[318]. Autobiography, chap. xii. p. 87.

[319]. See second [Note] on p. [238].

[320]. Görres, Die Christliche Mystik, b. IV. c. i.

[321]. Görres, Die Christliche Mystik, pp. 70-73.

[322]. Specimens of the language may be seen in Görres, p. 152.

[323]. Görres, Die Christliche Mystik, pp. 465, &c.

[324]. Ibid. pp. 532, &c.

[325]. See [Note] on p. [239].

[326]. Autobiography, part I. c. xv.

[327]. See [Note] on p. [240].

[328]. Autobiography, part I. c. xxviii. p. 163.

[329]. This spontaneity she likens to a fountain, as compared with a pump; love in the heart prompts every issue of life: outward occasions and stimulants are no longer awaited; and a glad inward readiness gives facility in every duty, patience under every trial. Such also is the teaching of Fénélon here—the genuine doctrine of spiritual life. But the enemies of Quietism were not slow to represent this ‘practising the virtues no longer as virtues,’ as a dangerous pretence for evading the obligations of virtue altogether.

[330]. Upham, vol. I. pp. 262, 263.

[331]. This Prayer of Silence became hers at an early period in her religious career, not as the result of direct effort in pursuance of a theory, but simply as the consequence of overpowering emotion. She says, ‘I had a secret desire given me from that time to be wholly devoted to the disposal of my God, let it be what it would. I said, ‘What couldst Thou demand of me, that I would not willingly sacrifice or offer Thee? Oh, spare me not.’ I could scarce hear speak of God, or our Lord Jesus Christ, without being almost ravished out of myself. What surprised me the most, was the great difficulty I had to say the vocal prayers I had been used to say. As soon as I opened my lips to pronounce them, the love of God seized me so strongly that I was swallowed up in a profound silence, and a peace not to be expressed. I made fresh essays, but still in vain. I began, but could not go on. And as I had never before heard of such a state, I knew not what to do. My inability therein still increased, because my love to God was still growing more strong, more violent, and more overpowering. There was made in me, without the sound of words, a continual prayer, which seemed to me to be the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself; a prayer of the Word, which is made by the Spirit, which, according to St. Paul, ‘asketh for us that which is good, perfect, and conformable to the will of God.’—Autobiography, part I. c. xiii.

Here we find genuine devout fervour, emancipating itself, very naturally in private, from allotted forms of prayer; but no mysticism, till we come to the last sentence—even that, admitting a favourable explanation.

[332]. Autobiography, part II. c. xvii. ‘God supplied me,’ she adds, ‘with what was pertinent and satisfactory to them all, after a wonderful manner, without any share of my study or meditation therein. Nothing was hid from me of their interior state, and of what passed within them. Here, O my God! thou madest an infinite number of conquests, known to Thyself only. They were instantly furnished with a wonderful facility of prayer. God conferred on them His grace plentifully, and wrought marvellous changes in them. The most advanced of these souls found, when with me, in silence, a grace communicated to them, which they could neither comprehend nor cease to admire. The others found an unction in my words, and that they operated in them what I said to them. They said they had never experienced anything like it. Friars of different orders, and priests of merit, came to see me, to whom our Lord granted very great favours, as indeed he did to all without exception, who came in sincerity. One thing was surprising, and that was, that I had not a word to say to such as came only to watch my words and to criticise them. Even when I thought to try to speak to them, I felt that I could not, and that God would not have me do it.... I felt that what I spoke flowed from the fountain, and that I was only the instrument of Him who made me speak.’—P. 86.

[333]. The little book to which she gave the name of The Torrents, was written, she tells us, at the suggestion of La Combe. When she took up her pen she knew not what she was to say, but soon came thoughts and words abundantly—as, indeed, they were sure to do. She compares the different kinds of spiritual progress to the mountain streams she had seen hurrying down the sides of the Alps. She describes the varieties in the gravitation of devout souls toward God—the ocean which they seek. Some proceed slowly, by means of meditations, austerities, and works of charity,—dependent mostly on outward appliances,—deficient in spontaneity and ardour,—little exercised by inward experience. Another class flow in a fuller stream,—grow into laden rivers—haste with more strength and speed; but these are apt to dwell, with too much complacence, on those rich gifts for which they are conspicuous. A third order (and to these she herself belonged) dash out from the poverty of the rocks, impetuous, leaping over every obstacle, unburdened by wealthy freightage, inglorious in the eyes of men, but simple, naked, self-emptied, with resistless eagerness foaming up out of abysmal chasms that seemed to swallow them, and finding, soonest of all, that Sea divine, wherein all rivers rest.

Her commentaries on Scripture were written with extraordinary rapidity. The fact that she consulted no book except the Bible in their composition must doubtless have contributed to their speed: certainly not, as she fancied, to their excellence. No writers are so diffuse as the mystics, because no others have written so fast, imagining headlong haste an attribute of inspiration. The transcriber could not copy in five days what she had written in one night. We may conjecture that the man must have been paid by the day. The commentary on the Canticles was written in a day and a half, and several visits received beside.—Autobiography, part II. c. xxi.

[334]. O man, wouldst thou be grafted, and to the heavenly soil transplanted? then must thou first thy branches wild hew quite away, that kindly fruits may come forth in God’s image.

[335]. As far as his doctrine differs from that of Madame Guyon, it is for the worse, because he approaches more nearly the extreme language of some of the orthodox mystics in his communion.

[336]. This Dialogue of Malaval’s, which goes much beyond the mysticism of Molinos, was approved by the Sorbonne, and found so conformable to the teachings of St. Theresa, that the translation of it was dedicated to the bare-footed Carmelites. The unobtrusive and not unqualified mysticism of Molinos was stigmatised by the new epithet of Quietism, and condemned as deadly error. The extravagant and wonder-working mysticism of Theresa was extolled as the angelic life. See the Account of Molinos and the Quietists, appended to the Autobiography of Madame Guyon: translated, I believe, from a French work, entitled, Recueil de Diverses Pièces concernant le Quiétisme et les Quiétistes.

[337]. Michelet, Priests, Women, and Families, p. 74.

[338]. See [Note] on p. [276].

[339]. Upham, vol. ii. pp. 3, &c. We find among these persons of rank a religion of some vitality—no court-fashion merely. It was to the Introduction à la Vie Dévote (1608) of St. Francis de Sales that Romanism was indebted for such hold as it really had on the upper classes. None of the great ecclesiastical writers of France—not even that darling of the fifteenth century, the Imitatio Christi, could win the ears of people of the world. In the Introduction, however, religion appeared neither ruthlessly stern, nor hopelessly fantastical. It was not, on the one side, scowling, unkempt, sordid, morose; it was not, on the other, impalpable, supersensuous, utterly unintelligible, as well as undesirable, to worldly common sense. Fashion and devotion met; piety and politeness embraced each other. The Introduction leaves to others the pains and raptures of the mystic. It is written for the Marthas, not the Marys. Its readers, personified in Philothea, are not supposed to be covetous of any extraordinary gifts. De Sales possessed a lively fancy, and the tender religious sentiment of his book, graced and lightened by its rainbow illustrations, was a bright-winged Psyche, welcome everywhere. These illustrations are drawn, sometimes from the farms, the flower-valleys, and the snow-peaks of his native Savoy; sometimes from fabulous natural history, from classic story, from the legends of the Church, or the forms and usages of the world,—oftenest of all, from the ways of infants and children, and from the love of mothers. St. Beuve happily characterises the work, as ‘un livre qui, sur la table d’une femme comme il faut ou d’un gentilhomme poli de ce temps-là, ne chassait pas absolument le volume de Montaigne, et, attendait, sans le fuir, le volume d’Urfé.’—Causeries du Lundi, tom. vii. p. 216.

[340]. This Harlay had owed his archbishopric to his libertinism in the days of Madame de Montespan. His sun was now setting, ingloriously enough, under the decent régime of the Maintenon, and there was nothing for it but to atone for the scandals of his life and diocese by exemplary rigour in matters of doctrine. The letters sent, and the documents shown him, were the fabrication of La Mothe and his creature the scrivener Gautier. They forged a letter from Marseilles, pretending that La Combe had slept in the same chamber with Madame Guyon—and also eaten meat in Lent. La Combe was further accused of having embraced and taught the heresy of Molinos.

The real letters which followed Madame Guyon from the scenes of her former activity breathe no suspicion of her character or motives. The Bishop of Geneva, in a letter quoted by Fénélon, declared that his only complaint against her was the indiscreet zeal with which she everywhere propagated truths which she believed serviceable to the Church. With that exception, ‘he esteemed her infinitely, and entertained for her the highest imaginable regard.’ This was in 1683. In 1688 he prohibited her books. But even in 1695, the same bishop repeats his praise of her piety and morals, and declares that his conscience never would have suffered him to speak of her in other than respectful language.—See Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon (London, 1757), vol. III. bk. xi. c. 2. Autobiography, part III. chapp. i. ii. iii. Fénélon’s Réponse à la Relation sur le Quiétisme, chap. i.

[341]. Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon, bk. ix. Madame Guyon’s doctrine entered St. Cyr while the absolute vows were yet under discussion.

[342]. Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon, bk. xi. chap. v.

[343]. Autobiography, part III. chap. ix. Fénélon declares that her explanations at these interviews were such as to satisfy him of the harmlessness and orthodoxy of her intention. She appeared to him often extravagant or questionable in expression, from her ignorance; but so favoured of God, that the most learned divine might gather spiritual wisdom from her lips. She told him of certain instantaneous supernatural communications, which came and vanished, she knew not how. Yet, like John of the Cross, she did not rest on these, but passed on into the obscure path of pure faith. For this he praised her, and believed that though these experiences were illusory, a spirit so lowly and so obedient had been faithful to grace throughout, such involuntary deception notwithstanding.—Réponse à la Relation sur le Quiétisme, chap. i. 10-13.

[344]. She still speaks, however, of the ‘sense’ vouchsafed her of the state of the souls given to her, even when they were at a distance; and of communication in God with those to whom the Lord united her by the tie of spiritual maternity. Autobiography, part III. ch. viii. Nothing was more likely to open her eyes to the questionable character of some of her experiences, and to the unguarded nature of many of her expressions, than the kindly yet searching inquiries of a man like Fénélon, qualified by temperament to enter into her feelings, and a master in mystical theology. Mr. Upham seems to me greatly to overrate the influence of Madame Guyon on Fénélon. To her fancy, her imagination might at times depict him as a spiritual son: he was, in fact, a friendly judge.

[345]. When called to separate the true mysticism from the false in the writings of Madame Guyon, Bossuet was not only ignorant of Tauler, Ruysbroek, Harphius, and others; he had not even read Francis de Sales or John of the Cross. Fénélon, at his request, sent him a collection of passages from Suso, Harphius, Ruysbroek, Tauler, Catharine of Genoa, St. Theresa, John of the Cross, Alvarez, De Sales, and Madame de Chantal. With just indignation does Fénélon expose the artifice by which Bossuet afterwards attempted to turn this confidence against him.—Réponse à la Relation sur le Quiétisme, chap. ii. 18-27.

[346]. History of Madame de Maintenon, bk. XI. chap. vii.

[347]. History of Madame de Maintenon, bk. XI. chap. vii. Bausset, Histoire de Fénélon, liv. ii. p. 295. The high opinion entertained of Fénélon by Madame de Maintenon was, as yet, unshaken. She knew that though the friend of Madame Guyon, he was not her advocate. But she was called to side with the man of charity or the man of zeal—the liberal man or the bigot; and the issue could not long be doubtful. Fénélon early saw the signs of danger. We find him striving to moderate the enthusiasm of Madame de la Maisonfort—to reconcile her to the regulations of Godet—to repress her indiscreet zeal in behalf of her cousin, Madame Guyon.—Correspondance de Fénélon, Lettres 24, 26, 29, 30.

[348]. Autobiography, part III. chap. xiii. Phelipeaux gives in full the correspondence on both sides, Relation de l’Origine, du Progrès et de la Condamnation du Quiétisme répandu en France (1732), liv. i. pp. 73, &c. His account abounds in misrepresentations, and does little more, in the first part, than echo the Relation sur le Quiétisme of Bossuet, to whom the abbé was devoted. But his minuteness of detail, and the copious insertion of important letters and documents on either side, give to the heavy narrative considerable value. In a subsequent interview between Bossuet and Madame Guyon, she declared herself unable to pray for any particular thing—the forgiveness of her sins, for instance. To do so was to fail in absolute abandonment and disinterestedness. Bossuet was shocked. Madame Guyon promised and meant, to be all submission; but conscience would be unmanageable at times. Bossuet writes her long, sensible, hard-headed letters, in which, without much difficulty, he exposes her error, and leaves her no ground to stand on. She, however, must still humbly suggest that the exercise of love embraces all petitions, and that as there is a love without reflexion, so there may be a prayer without reflexion—a substantial prayer, comprehending all others.—Phelipeaux, p. 111.

[349]. Her request was made to Madame de Maintenon for commissioners, half clerical, half lay, to examine into the scandals which had been set afloat against her character.—Phelipeaux, liv. i. p. 114. Autobiography, part III. chap. xv.

[350]. Autobiography, chapp. xvi. xvii. See also her letter to the three commissioners, in Phelipeaux, p. 117. Harlay heard with indignation of this Conference at Issy, to decide upon a heresy which had been unearthed in his diocese. He endeavoured to rouse the suspicions of Louis, but in vain. He determined himself to condemn the writings of Madame Guyon, before the Commissioners could come to a decision. Madame de Maintenon informed Bossuet, who paid a visit without loss of time to his metropolitan, complimented him on the censure he was about to fulminate, gave every explanation, and took his departure with polite assurances that the verdict of Issy would but reiterate the condemnation pronounced by the vigilant Archbishop of Paris. So completely was the cause of Madame Guyon prejudged.—Phelipeaux, p. 125.

[351]. Autobiography, part III. chapp. xviii. xix. Réponse à la Relation, &c., I. ii. 3. Upham, vol. II. chapp. x. and xi.

[352]. The articles at first proposed to Fénélon for his signature were thirty in number. The 12th and 13th, the 33rd and 34th, were wanting. He said that he could only sign these thirty articles as they were, ‘par déférence,’ and against his persuasion. Two days afterwards, when the four additional articles were laid before him, he declared himself ready to sign them with his blood. The 34th article is the most important of the four, as bearing directly on the most critical question arising from the doctrine of disinterested love. It allows that doctrine expressly, if words have meaning, and occupies all the ground Fénélon himself was concerned to maintain in its defence. (Entretiens sur la Religion, Fén. Œuvres, tom. i. p. 34.) The article is in substance as follows:—On peut inspirer aux âmes peinées et vraiment humbles un consentement à la volonté de Dieu, quand même, par une supposition très-fausse, au lieu des biens éternels promis aux justes, il les tiendrait dans les tourments éternels, sans néanmoins les priver de sa grâce et de son amour.—Réponse à la Relation, &c., chap. iii. Phelipeaux, liv. i. pp. 131, 135-137.

[353]. See [Note] on p. [278].

[354]. See second [Note] on p. [278].

[355]. See [Note] on p. [279].

[356]. Witness the panegyrics of Bossuet on Theresa and John of the Cross. Compare also their different verdicts on the former. Fénélon says, writing to Madame de Maintenon, ‘Quelque respect et quelque admiration que j’aie pour Sainte Thérèse, je n’aurais jamais voulu donner au public tout ce qu’elle a écrit.’—Correspondance, 31. Bossuet, writing to Madame Guyon, says, ‘Je n’ai jamais hésité un seul moment sur les états de Sainte Thérèse, parceque je n’y ai rien trouvé, que je ne trouvasse aussi dans l’Ecriture,’ &c.—Phelipeaux, liv. i. p. 104. In the Instructions sur les Etats d’Oraison, Bossuet, in speaking of the passive state, had allowed of certain miraculous suspensions (impuissances) from which Fénelon shrinks—which he would have located in some section Faux of his Maxims—and to which Noailles refused his approval.—Réponse à la Relation, xxviii. and lxii.

[357]. Her letter to Bossuet furnishes a fair justification of this retreat to Paris.—Phelipeaux, liv. i. p. 152. It gratifies our curiosity to learn from this authority what books were seized when Desgrès, the detective, entered the little house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, in the name of the king. There were some plays of Molière, some romances, such as John of Paris and Richard Lion-heart, but these, said Madame Guyon, belonged to the lacqueys of her son, a lieutenant in the guards. But she acknowledged a Griseldis and Don Quixote as her books. It is pleasing to find our fair saint, so far of like passions with ourselves, amused with Sancho, and pitying Griseldis,—herself a patient sufferer at the hands of blinded, pitiless men.

[358]. See [Note] on p. [280].

[359]. See second [Note] on p. [280].

[360]. Bausset, Histoire de Fénélon, liv. iii. p. 45. See also [Note] on p. [281].

[361]. Bausset, Hist. de Fénélon, liv. iii. 47. A minute, though very partial account of all the squabbles and intrigues at Rome, from first to last, may be read in Phelipeaux.—See also Memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, xi. 19. Corr. de Fénélon, lettre 108.

[362]. Bausset, iii. 48-50; Aimé-Martin, Etudes sur la Vie de Fénélon, p. 14.

[363]. Bausset, 53-4; Mem. of Maintenon, XI. 20; Aimé-Martin, 15.

[364]. Bausset, 59-61. The means to which Bossuet could stoop—the falsehoods he could coolly repeat, after detection, as though nothing had happened—the misquotation, and misrepresentation—the constant reply to awkwardly pressing arguments by malicious personalities—all these things are exposed in Fénélon’s Lettres en Réponse, and in the Réponse itself. They are bad enough; but the student of controversy is accustomed to this imperturbable lying, to these arts of insinuation. The most detestable feature of all in the part played by Bossuet, lies in that sleek cant and tearful unction with which he calumniates—as though it almost broke his heart to write what he exults in writing. Well might Fénélon request that he would not weep over him so profusely while he tore him in pieces, and desire fewer tears and more fair play! See the Preface to the Réponse; Réponse, 59; and Réponse aux Remarques, § vi.

[365]. Bausset, iii. 68, 69; Upham, vol. ii. p. 289.

[366]. Bausset, 77, 78.

[367]. Upham, vol. ii. ch. 18.

[368]. See [Note] on p. [289].

[369]. See [Note] on p. [290].

[370]. See Second [Note] on p. [290].

[371]. See Revelations from the Life of Prince Talleyrand; and compare Eynard, Vie de Madame de Krüdener, chap. xvii. Madame de Genlis writes of her, ‘Me. de Krüdener disait les choses les plus singulières avec un calme qui les rendait persuasives; elle était certainement de très bonne foi; elle me parut être aimable, spirituelle et d’une originalité très piquante.’—P. 30.

[372]. See the whole story of the pastor Fontaine and Maria Kummerin, in Eynard.

[373]. Barratier subsequently became minister to the French church in Halle.

[374]. See [Note] on p. [310].

[375]. Barclay’s Apology, propp. v. and vi. § 27, p. 194. Fourth Edition, 1701.

[376]. Fox’s Journal, pp. 76-83.

[377]. Fox’s Journal, vol. i. p. 130.

[378]. Fox’s Journal, vol. i. pp. 109, 129, 232. Vaughan’s Hist. of England under the House of Stuart, p. 539.

[379]. Journal, vol. i. p. 95.

[380]. Journal, p. 89. This theopathetic mysticism is emphatically transitive. Every inward manifestation speedily becomes a something to be done, a testimony to be delivered. The Quaker is ‘exercised,’ not that he may deck himself in the glory of saintship, but to fit him for rendering service, as he supposes, to his fellows. The early followers of Fox often caricatured the acted symbolism of the Hebrew prophets with the most profane or ludicrous unseemliness. Yet stark-mad as seemed the fashion of their denunciations, their object was very commonly some intelligible and actual error or abuse.

[381]. Barclay’s Apology, propp. v. and vi. 16. Sewell’s History, p. 544. (Barclay’s Letter to Paets); also p. 646 (The Christian Doctrine of the People called Quakers, &c., published 1693). Compare J. J. Gurney’s Observations on the Distinguishing Views and Practices of the Society of Friends, chap. i. p. 59.

[382]. Koran.

[383]. Let the reader consult his Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, or read his caustic observations upon the Anima Magica Abscondita, and his Second Lash of Alazonomastix. Among the high-flyers of his day, there appear to have been some who spoke of being ‘godded with God,’ and ‘Christed with Christ,’ much after the manner of some of Eckart’s followers.

[384]. ‘But now seeing the Logos or steady comprehensive wisdom of God, in which all Ideas and their respects are contained, is but universal stable reason, how can there be any pretence of being so highly inspired as to be blown above reason itself, unlesse men will fancy themselves wiser than God, or their understandings above the natures and reasons of things themselves.’—Preface to the Conjectura Cabbalistica.

[385]. See Norris’s Miscellanies (1699):

An Idea of Happiness: enquiring wherein the greatest happiness attainable by Man in this Life does consist, pp. 326-341.

[386]. Miscellanies, p. 276 (in a Discourse on Rom. xii. 3), and p. 334.

[387]. Norris says, in his Hymn to Darkness—

‘The blest above do thy sweet umbrage prize,

When cloyed with light, they veil their eyes.

The vision of the Deity is made

More sweet and beatific by thy shade.

But we poor tenants of this orb below

Don’t here thy excellencies know,

Till death our understandings does improve,

And then our wiser ghosts thy silent night-walks love.’

In the writings of Henry More we can see, by a notice here and there, how Quakerism looked in the eyes of a retired scholar, by no means indiscriminately adverse to enthusiasm. The word enthusiasm itself, he always uses more in the classical than the modern sense. ‘To tell you my opinion of that sect which are called Quakers, though I must allow that there may be some amongst them good and sincere-hearted men, and it may be nearer to the purity of Christianity for the life and power of it than many others, yet I am well assured that the generality of them are prodigiously melancholy, and some few perhaps possessed with the devil.’ He thinks their doctrine highly dangerous, as mingling with so many good and wholesome things an abominable ‘slighting of the history of Christ, and making a mere allegory of it,—tending to the utter overthrow of that warrantable though more external frame of Christianity which Scripture itself points out to us.’ Yet he takes wise occasion, from the very existence of such a sect, to bid us all look at home, and see that we do not content ourselves with the mere Tabernacle without the Presence and Power of God therein.—Mastix, his Letter to a Friend, p. 306.

[388]. See Swedenborg’s True Christian Religion, chap. iv.

[389]. See E. Swedenborg, a Biography, by J. G. Wilkinson, p. 99; a succinct and well-written account of the man, and the best introduction to his writings I have met with.

[390]. Wilkinson, pp. 187, 118.

[391]. Wilkinson, pp. 79, 130.

[392]. Heaven and Hell, § 360.

[393]. True Christian Religion, § 796.

[394]. See the description of the heavenly palaces, of divine worship in heaven, and of the angelic employments, Heaven and Hell, §§ 183, 221, 387. True Christian Religion, §§ 694, 697. Also concerning marriages in heaven, Heaven and Hell, §§ 366-386.

[395]. Heaven and Hell, §§ 329-345.

[396]. True Christian Religion, chap. vi. 6, 7; Heaven and Hell, § 592.

[397]. True Christian Religion, chap. ii. 1-7. I give here Swedenborg’s idea of the evangelical theology. See especially §§ 132-135, where he represents himself as correcting the false doctrine of certain spirits in the other world concerning the Divine Nature.

[398]. Goethe:

Held our eyes no sunny sheen,

How could sunshine e’er be seen?

Dwelt no power divine within us,

How could God’s divineness win us?

[399]. See F. H. Jacobi, Von den Göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung (1811), where the principles of the Faith-Philosophy are expounded, though after a desultory, disjointed manner:—more especially pp. 70-93.

[400]. To Schleiermacher the theology of his country owes great and lasting obligation for having led the intellectual promise of his time to a momentous crisis of transition. His genius at once kindled the enthusiasm of youth, and allowed a space to its scepticism. As much opposed as Hamann or Jacobi to the contemptuous Rationalism which then held the scorner’s chair, he did not, like them, couch a polemic lance against philosophy. But real and important as was his advance beyond the low and superficial anti-supranaturalism which preceded him, the followers of Schleiermacher found it impossible to rest where he did. From among his pupils have sprung the greatest names in this generation of German divines, and they have admitted, with scarcely an exception, that he conceded so much for the sake of peace as to render his position untenable. Their master led them to an elevation whence they discerned a farther height and surer resting-place than he attained. For a more detailed account of Schleiermacher and his theological position, the reader is referred to an article by the Author in the British Quarterly Review for May, 1849.

[401]. The principles of the genuine Romanticism (as distinguished from its later and degenerate form) are ably enunciated by Tieck, in a comic drama, entitled Prince Zerbino; or, Travels in Search of Good Taste. One Nestor, a prosaic pedant, who piques himself on understanding everything, and on his freedom from all enthusiasm and imaginative nonsense, is introduced into the wondrous garden of the Goddess of Poesy. There he sees, among others, Dante and Ariosto, Cervantes and Sophocles. He complains of not finding Hagedorn, Gellert, Gesner, Kleist, or Bodmer; and the Goddess then points him out—as a true German bard—stout old Hans Sachs. Dante appears to him a crusty old fogie; Tasso, a well-meaning man, but weak; and Sophocles, whom he was disposed to respect as a classic, when blamed for the obscurity of his choruses, turns upon him like a bear. The conceited impertinence, the knowing air, and the puzzle-headedness of the Philistine, are hit off to admiration. This Garden of Poesy seems to him a lair of savages, an asylum for lunatics, where all his smug conventionalisms are trampled on, and every canon of his criticism suffers flagrant violation. Genii take him away, and give him something substantial to eat—earth to earth. The tables and chairs begin to talk to him. They congratulate themselves on being delivered from their old free life in the woods, and cut out into useful articles of furniture, so fulfilling the purpose of their being. He gets on much better with them than with the poets, and thinks them (himself excepted) the most sensible creatures in the world.

[402]. See Julian Schmidt, Geschichte der Deutschen National Literatur im 19n Jahrhundert, th. I. c. vi.

[403]. Schmidt, p. 60.

[404]. Novalis, Schriften, th. ii. pp. 152, 159, 221.

[405]. Ibid., p. 158.