“When the Weaver of wiles failed to cause me utterly to despair, he tried with other arguments of guile to lead me to blaspheme the divine justice, suggesting thoughts, as if condoling with my misery: ‘O most unhappy youth, whose grief no man deigns to consider—but men are not to blame, for they do not know your trouble. God alone knows, and since He can do all things, why does He not aid you in tribulation, when for love of Him you have surrendered the world and now endure this agony? Have done with impossible prayers and foolish grief. The injustice of that Potentate will not permit all to perish.’ These delusions were connected with what I now wish to mention: Often I was awakened by some imaginary signal, and would hasten to the oratory before the time of morning prayer; also, and for a number of years, though I slept at night as a man sound in body, when the hour came to rise, my limbs were numb, and only with uncertain trembling step could I reach the Church.
“One delusion and temptation must be spoken of, which I hardly know how to describe, as I never read or heard of anything like it. By the stress of my many temptations I was driven—though by God’s grace I was never utterly torn from faith and hope of heavenly aid—to doubt as to Holy Scripture and the essence of God himself. In the struggle with the other temptations there was some respite, and a refuge of hope remained. In this I knew no alleviation, and when formerly I had been strengthened by the sacred book and had fought against the darts of death with the arms of faith and hope, now, shut round with doubt and mental blindness, I doubted whether there was truth in Holy Scripture and whether God was omnipotent. This broke over me with such violence as to leave me neither strength of body nor strength of mind, and I could not see or hear. Then sometimes it was as if a voice was whispering close to my ear: ‘Why such vain labourings? Can you not, most foolish of mortals, prove by your own experience that the testimony of Scripture is without sense or reason? Do you not see that what the divine book says is the reverse of what the lives and habits of mankind approve? Those many thousands who neither know nor care to know its doctrine, do you think they err?’ Troubled, I would urge, as if against some one questioning and objecting: ‘How then is there such agreement among all the divinely inspired writings when they speak of God the Founder and of obedience to His commands?’ Then words of this kind would be suggested in reply: ‘Fool, the Scriptures on which you rely for knowledge of God and religion speak double words; for the men who wrote them lived as men live now. You know how all men speak well and piously, and act otherwise, as advantage or frailty prompts. From which you may learn how the authors of the ancient writings wrote good and religious sayings, and did not live accordingly. Understand then, that all the books of the divine law were so written that they have an outer surface of piety and virtue, but quite another inner meaning. All of which is proved by Paul’s saying, The letter killeth; the spirit, that is the meaning, maketh to live. So you see how perilous it is to follow the precepts of these books. Likewise should one think concerning the essence of God. And besides, if there existed any person or power of an omnipotent God there would not be this apparent confusion in everything,—nor would you yourself have had all these doubts which trouble you.’”
The last diabolically insidious suggestion was just the one to bring despair to the unaided reason seeking faith. Othloh’s soul was passing through the depths; but the path now ascends, and rapidly:
“I was assaulted with an incredible number of these delusions, and so strange and unheard of were they that I feared to speak of them to any of the brothers. At last I threw myself upon the ground groaning in bitterness, and, collecting the forces of my mind, I cried with my lips and from my heart: ‘O if thou art some one, Almighty, and if thou art everywhere, as I have read so often in so many books, now, I pray, show me whom thou art and what thou canst do, delivering me quickly from these perils; I can bear this strife no more.’ I did not have to wait; the grace of God scattered the whole cloud of doubt, and such a light of knowledge poured into my heart that I have never since had to endure the darkness of deadly doubt. I began to understand what I had scarcely perceived before. Then the grace of knowledge was so increased that I could no longer hide it. I was urged by ineffable impulse to undertake some work of gratitude for the glory of God, and it seemed that this new ardour should be devoted to composition. So I wrote what I have written concerning those diabolic delusions which sprang from my sins, and then it seemed reasonable to tell of the divine inspiration by which my mind was enabled to repel them; so that he who reads these delusions may at the same time know the workings of the divine aid, and not ascribe to me a victory which was never mine, or, thinking that aid was lacking in my temptation, fear lest it fail in his. I remember how often, especially on rising in the mornings, it was as if there was some one rising with me and walking with me, who mutely warned, or gently persuaded me to amend faults which it may be only the day before I was ignorantly committing and deeming of no consequence.
“When surrounded by such inspirations I would enter the Church and bow down in prayer—God knows that I do not lie—it seemed as if some one besought me with like earnestness of prayer, saying: ‘As that has been granted which you asked of me, it will be precious to me if you will obey my entreaties. Do you not continue in those vices which I have often begged you to abandon? are you not proud and carnal, neglectful of God’s service, hating whom you should not hate, although the Scripture says, Every one who hates his brother is a murderer? Where now is the patience and constancy and that perfection which you promised God, if He would deliver you from perils and make you a monk? God has done as you asked, why do you delay to pay your vow? You have asked Him to set you in a place where you would have a store of books. Lo, you have been heard; you have books—from which you may learn of life eternal. Why do you dissipate your mind in vanities and do not hasten to take the desired gift? You have also asked to be tried, and tried you have been in temptation, and delivered. Yet you are still a man unfit for peace or war, since when the battle is far off you are ready for it, and when it approaches you flee. Which of the holy fathers that you have read of in the Old or New Testament was so dear to me that I did not seek to try him in the furnace of tribulation? Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake. Steep and narrow is the way; no one is crowned who has not striven lawfully. When you have read these, and many more passages of Scripture, why if you desire a crown of life eternal, do you wish to suffer no tribulation for your sins?’”
Then the Spirit of God, with many admonishings, shows Othloh how easy had been his lot and how needful to him were his temptations, even the very carnal temptations of the flesh, which Othloh suffered in common with all monks. And he is bid to consider their reason and order:
“First you were tried with lighter trials, that gradually you might gain strength for the weightier; as you progressed you ascribed to your own strength what was wrought by my grace. Wherefore I subjected you to the final temptation, from which you will emerge the more certain of my grace the less you trust in your merits.”
The “warring opposites” of Othloh’s spiritual struggle were, on the one side, evil thoughts and delusions from the devil, and, on the other, the strength and enlightenment imparted by the grace of God. The nearer the crisis comes, the clearer are the devil’s whisperings and the warnings of the instructing voice. Othloh’s part in it was his choice and acceptance of the divine counsellor. This conflict never faded from his mind. He has much to say of the visions[404] in which parts of his enlightenment had come. Once reading Lucan in the monastery, he swooned, and in his swoon was beaten with many stripes by a man of terrible and threatening countenance. By this he was led to abandon profane reading and other worldly vanities. These visionary floggings left him feeble and ill in body. They were the approaches to his great spiritual conflict. His “fourth vision” is in and of the crisis. This monk, immersed in spiritual struggles, had also his opinions regarding the government of the monastery, and for a time refused obedience to the abbot’s irregular rulings, and spoke harshly of him:
“For this I did penance before the abbot but not before God, against whom I had greatly sinned; and after a few days I fell sick. This sickness was from God, since I have always begged of His mercy, that for any sin committed I might suffer sickness or tribulation, and so it has come to me. On this occasion, when weakness had for some days kept me in the infirmary, one evening as it was growing dark I thought I should feel better if I rose and sat by my cot. Immediately the house appeared to be filled with flame and smoke. Horror-stricken, my wonted trust in God all scattered, I started, tottering, towards the cot of the lay brother in charge, but, ashamed, I turned back and went to the cot of a brother who was sick; he was asleep. Then I sank exhausted on my cot, thinking how to escape the horror of that vision of smoke. I had no doubt that the smoke was the work of evil spirits, who, from its midst, would try to torment me. As I gradually saw that it was not physical, but of the spirit, and that there was no one to help me, as all were asleep, I began to sing certain psalms, and, singing, went out and entered the nearest church, of St. Gallus, and fell down before the altar. At once, for my sins, strength of mind and body left me, and I perceived that my lips were held together by evil spirits, so that I could not move them, to sing a psalm. I tried till I was weary to open them with my hands.
“Leaving that church, crawling rather than walking I gained the great church of St. Emmeram, where I hoped for some alleviation of my agony. But it was as before; I could barely utter a few words of prayer. So I painfully made my way back to my bed, hoping, from sheer weariness, to get some sleep. But none came, and, turn as I would, still I saw the vision of smoke. Suddenly—was I asleep or awake?—I seemed to be in a field well known to me, surrounded by a crowd of demons mocking me with shrieks of laughter. The louder they laughed, the sadder I was, seeing them gathered to destroy me. When they saw that I would not laugh, they became enraged, crying, ‘So! you won’t laugh and be merry with us! Since you choose melancholy you shall have enough.’ Then flying about me, with blows from all sides, they whirled me round and round with them over vast spaces of earth, till I thought to die. Suffering unspeakably, I was at length set down on the top of a peak which scarcely held me; no eye could fathom its abyss. Vainly I looked for a descent, and the demons kept flying about me, saying: ‘Where now is your hope in God! And where is that God of yours! Don’t you know that neither God is, as men say, nor is there any power in Him which can prevail against us? One proof of this is that you have no help, and there is no one who can deliver you from our hands. Choose now; for unless you join with us you shall be cast into the abyss.’ In this strait, scarcely consenting or resisting, I faintly remembered that I had once believed and read that God was everywhere, and so I looked around to see whether He would not send some aid. Now when the demons kept insisting that I should choose, and when I was well-nigh put to it to promise what they wished, a man suddenly appeared, and, standing by me, said: ‘Do not do it; all that these cheats say is false. Abide firm in that faith which you had in God. He knows all that you suffer, and permits it for your good.’ Then he vanished, and the demons returned, flying about me, and saying: ‘Miserable man, would you trust one who came to deceive you? Why, he dared not wait till we came! Come now, yield yourself to our power.’