IV
A beautiful little anonymous book of this period, containing a similar conception of Christianity to that set forth in the writings of Everard and Randall, must be briefly considered here: The Life and Light of a Man in Christ Jesus (London, 1646). The writer, who was a scholarly man, shows the profound influence of the Theologia Germanica, that universal book of religion which {264} fed so many souls in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and he has evidently found, either at home or abroad, spiritual guides who have brought him to the Day-star in his own heart.
Religion, he says, is wholly a matter of the "operative manifestation of Christ in a man—the divine Spirit living in a man."[88] To miss that experience and to lack that inner life in God is to miss the very heart of religion. "There be many and diverse Religions and Baptisms among many and diverse peoples of the habitable world, but to be baptized as a man in Christ—that is to be baptized into the living, active God, so that the man has his salvation and eternal well-being wrought in him by the Spirit and life of his God—is the only best."[89] Those who lack "this real spiritual business" never attain "the true Sabbath-rest of the soul." They go to meeting on "Sunday, Sabbath or First day [sic] merely to hear such or such a rare divine preach or discourse, or to participate in such or such Ordinances."[90] They have "an artificiall, historicall Divinity [Theology] which they have attained by the eye, that is by reading books, or by the ears, that is, by hearing this or that man, or by gathering up expressions"—their religion rests on "knowledge" and not on Christ experienced within.[91] This external religion is not so much wrong as it is inadequate and immature. "It is," he says, "like unto young children, who with shells and little stones imitate a real building!"[92] The religion which carries a man beyond shadows to true realities and from the cockle-shell house to a permanent and eternal temple for the Spirit is the religion which finds Christ within as the Day-star in the man's own heart.[93]
There is throughout this simple little book a noble appreciation of love as the "supream good" for the soul. "The God of infinite goodness and eternal love" is a kind of refrain which bursts forth in these pages again {265} and again. Love in us is, he thinks, "a sparkle of that immense and infinite Love of the King and Lord of Love."[94] Salvation and eternal well-being consist for him in the formation of a life "consecrated and united unto the true Light and Love of Christ." The man who has this Life within him will always be willing and glad when the time comes "to returne againe into the bosome of his heavenly Father-God."[95] And not only is the man who has the Life of Christ in him harmonized in love upwardly toward God; he is also harmonized outwardly towards his fellows. "He is a member with all other men, with the good as a lowly-minded disciple to them; with those that are not in Christ, as a deare, sympathizing helper, doing his utmost to do them good."[96] He has written his "little Treatise," he says, "as a love-token from the Father" to help lead men out of the "darke pits of the world's darkness" into the full Light of the soul's day-dawn.
The book lacks the robustness and depth that are so clearly in evidence in most of the writings that have been dealt with in this volume, but there is a beauty, a simplicity, a sweetness, a sincerity born of experience, which give this book an unusual flavour and perfume. The writer says that there is "an endless battle between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent," but one feels that he has fought the battle through and won. He says that "a man should be unto God what a house is to a man," i.e. a man should be a habitation of the living God, and the reader feels that this man has made himself a habitation for the divine presence within. He says if you want spiritual help you must go to a "man who has skill in God," and one lays down his slender book feeling assured that, out of the experience of Christ in his own soul, he did have "skill in God," so that he could speak to the condition of others. There was at least one man in England in 1646 who knew that the true source and basis of religion was to be found in the experience of Christ within and not in theological notions of Him.
[1] The Italian titles of these two books are Alfabeto Christiana (1546) and Le Cento et dieci divine Considerationi (1550).
[2] A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist (1648), p. 164.
[3] Ibid. p. 319.
[4] Epistle Dedicatory to Some Gospel Treasures Opened (London, 1653).
[5] Gospel Treas., "To the Reader."
[6] Ibid.
[7] Sometimes "Divers Earls and Lords and other great ones" were in his audience.
[8] Gospel Treas., "To the Reader."
[9] Sig. Dd. xii. p. 68.
[10] Fourth series, i. p. 597.
[11] Denck's name is used in its Latin form John Denqui, and he is called magnus theologus.
[12] Hermes Trismegistus was published in Everard's lifetime. Large extracts from his manuscript translations are given in the Gospel Treasures Opened (1653). The Vision of God was edited and published in full by Giles Randall in 1646, and it is very probable that Everard and Randall did this work together.
[13] Gospel Treasures Opened, p. 393.
[14] Sermon on "The Starre in the East," Gospel Treas. pp. 52-54. See also pp. 586-587. Compare the famous lines of Angelus Silesius:
"Had Christ a thousand times
Been born in Bethlehem
But not in thee, thy sin
Would still thy soul condemn."
Angelus Silesius, edited by Paul Carus (Chicago, 1909), p. 103.
[15] Gospel Treas. pp. 59, 72, and 98.
[16] Ibid. pp. 270-271.
[17] Ibid. p. 282.
[18] Ibid. p. 92.
[19] Ibid. p. 280
[20] Gospel Treas. pp. 310-311.
[21] Ibid. p. 286.
[22] Ibid. p. 468.
[23] Ibid. p. 343.
[24] Ibid. p. 344.
[25] Ibid. p. 341.
[27] Ibid. p. 344.
[27] Gospel Treas. p. 81.
[28] Ibid. p. 630.
[29] Ibid. pp. 637 and 658.
[30] Gospel Treas. p. 411.
[31] Ibid. 2nd ed. ii. p. 345.
[32] Gospel Treas. p. 753.
[33] Ibid. p. 418.
[34] Ibid. pp. 423-425.
[35] Ibid. p. 230.
[36] Ibid. p. 600.
[37] Ibid. p. 308.
[38] Gospel Treas. p. 142.
[39] Ibid. p. 648.
[40] Ibid. p. 642.
[41] Ibid. pp. 99 and 250. Everard's greater contemporary, Pascal, also held the view that what happened to Christ should take place in every Christian. He wrote to his sister, Madame Perier, Oct. 17, 1651, on the death of their father: "We know that what has been accomplished in Jesus Christ should be accomplished also in all His members."
[42] Ibid. pp. 555-556.
[43] Gospel Treas. p. 315.
[44] Ibid. p. 558.
[45] Ibid. pp. 561-562.
[46] Ibid. pp. 563-565.
[47] Gospel Treas. pp. 310-315.
[48] Ibid. p. 361.
[49] Ibid. p. 365.
[50] Ibid. p. 736.
[51] Ibid. p. 552.
[52] It is not possible to tell whether the sermons of John Everard were generally known to the early Quakers or not. He held similar views to theirs on many points, and he reiterates, with as much vigour as does Fox, the inadequacy of University learning as a preparation for spiritual ministry. One Quaker at least of the early time read Everard and appreciated him. That was John Bellers. In his "Epistle to the Quarterly Meeting of London and Middlesex," written in 1718, Bellers quotes "the substance of an excellent Discourse of a poor man in Germany, above 300 years ago, then writ by John Taulerus, and since printed in John Everard's Works, who was a religious dissenter in King James the First's time." He thereupon gives the "Dialogue between a Learned Divine and a Beggar" (which Everard ascribed to Tauler) to add force to his own presentation of "the duty of propagating piety, charity, and industry among men."
[53] Foster's Alumni Oxonienses (1500-1714), vol. iii. Early Series, p. 1231.
[54] 57, Savile, Probate Court of Canterbury, Somerset House.
[55] Calendar of State Papers, Dom. Ser. Charles I.
[56] Robert Baillie's Anabaptisme, the true Fountains of Independency (1646), p. 102,
[57] Thomas Gataker's God's Eye on His Israel (1645), Preface.
[58] Journal of Commons, August 9, 1644, pp. 584-585.
[59] Gangraena (1646), part iii. p. 25.
[60] A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist (1647), chap. xi. p. 143.
[61] A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist, chap. lxxvi. pp. 162-163.
[62] A Brief Discovery, etc. (1645), pp. 1-5.
[63] Contemporary writers held that the Giles Randall who preached in "the Spital" was the translator. Robert Baillie, Principal of Glasgow University, in his work on Anabaptisme, pp. 102-103, speaks of Randall who preached in "the Spital," and refers to his increasing temerity as shown by the fact that "he hath lately printed two very dangerous books and set his Preface before each of them, composed as he professes long ago by Popish Priests, the one by a Dutch Frier and the other by an English Capuchine." Baillie further refers to the "deadly poison" of these books as shown in Benjamin Bourne's Description and Confutation of Mysticall Antichrist, the Familists (1646), where "the dangerous books" are named, as Theologia Germanica, the Bright Star, Divinity and Philosophy Dissected. Edward's Gangraena also identifies Randall the preacher with the translator of "Popish Books written by Priests and Friers," citing as an example "The Vision of God by Cardinall Cusanus," op. cit. (1646), part iii.
[64] Preface.
[65] Bourne's Description and Confutation and Baillie's Anabaptisme. It seems likely that there was an earlier edition of the Theologia than this of 1648, as the chapters and pages quoted by Bourne do not correspond with those of the 1648 edition, whose title-page has this clause: "Also a Treatise of the Soul and other additions not before printed."
[66] Gangraena, part iii.
[67] Goodwin's Cretensis (1646). The book, entitled Divinity and Philosophy Dissected, and attributed by implication to Randall, was published in Amsterdam in 1644, with the following title-page:
"Divinity & Philosophy Dissected, & set forth by a mad man.
"The first Book divided into 3 Chapters.
"Chap. I. The description of the World in man's heart with the
Articles of the Christian Faith.
"Chap. II. A description of one Spirit acting in all, which some
affirme is God.
"Chap. III. A description of the Scripture according to the
history and mystery thereof.
"Amsterdam, 1644."
[68] Survey, etc., part ii. chap. xlvii. p. 53.
[69] The only copy of Randall's Bright Starre which I have been able to locate is in the Lambeth Palace Library. A copy of it formerly belonged to the learned Quaker, Benjamin Furly, and was sold with his remarkable collection of books in 1714.
[70] This term, "Children of the Light," was the name by which Friends, or Quakers, first called themselves. It was plainly a term current at the time for a Christian who put the emphasis on inward life and personal experience.
[71] Preface to Theologia.
[72] Preface to The Vision of God.
[73] Ibid.
[74] Nicholas' Preface to De visione Dei.
[75] The Vision of God, p. 11.
[76] Ibid. p. 13.
[77] Ibid. p. 19. Compare this passage with Pascal's saying: "Thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst not already found me."
[78] Ibid. p. 37.
[79] Ibid. p. 130.
[80] Ibid. p. 138.
[81] Ibid. pp. 151-152.
[82] Ibid. pp. 170-176.
[83] There is no author's name or initial in the book, only the statement that it is "put forth" by a "mad man," who "desires to be in my wits and right minde to God, although a fool and madman to the world."
[84] Divinity and Philosophy Dissected, pp. 39-40.
[85] Divinity and Philosophy Dissected, p. 17.
[86] Ibid. p. 62.
[87] A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist, chap. xiv. p. 163.
[88] Life and Light, p. 3.
[89] Ibid. pp. 99 and 101 quoted freely.
[90] Ibid. p. 19. It should be noted that this use of "First-day" for Sunday antedates the Quaker practice.
[91] Ibid. pp. 26-27.
[92] Ibid. p. 35.
[93] See ibid. p. 36.
[94] Life and Light, p. 11.
[95] Ibid. p. 38.
[96] Ibid. p. 34.
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