“God comes into our nature, as the root of each single person. Here He becomes our Jesus, making Himself a new seed; out of this seed He brings forth a new image of Divinity, by which He breaks through the image of the devil and nature, brings forth man out of them, brings them into subjection to this growing beauty. As the fuel is dissolved into smoke, and the smoke again breaks up into flame, so the image of the devil riseth up out of the image of nature, shaking that to dust, as it riseth: the image of God, again, sprouts forth in the midst of the devil’s image, first spoiling, then triumphing over, and in both.
“God through nature, as the root, grows up into single persons, as the branches. Then as the shades of night fly away before the ascending day, so,—as this Divine seed our Jesus sends forth itself in an image of beauty through our souls,—the image of darkness and death sinks down into its own place, and principle.”[511]
To Sterry’s book on The Kingdom of God an introduction is prefixed, written by Jeremy White, who had been chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and who lived in private after the Restoration, preaching but occasionally. White sympathized in the mysticism of Sterry, and, in the following beautiful passage, uttered truths well worth the serious consideration of all spiritually-minded people, especially of those who are disposed to undervalue, perhaps to ridicule, thoughts imbued with mystic elements:—
“Who among us is yet able to comprehend all the distinct ages and growths of good minds; to understand the various improvements, measures, and attainments, the several capacities, languages, and operations which are peculiar to those ages and growths? It is impossible for us to set the bounds to spiritual things, to stint that spirit in ourselves or others which is a fountain of Divine light and life in all regenerated souls, continually sending forth new streams, and running along with a fresh succession of waters without any stop or limit. We are too proud to understand the condescensions, too low to take the height, too shallow to fathom the depth, too narrow to measure the breadth, too short to reach the length of the Divine truth and goodness, and the various communications of themselves to us. We cannot assign the highest or the lowest state of saints whilst they are here below. We cannot say, All above this is fancy, whimsey, dream, and delusion; all below that is common, carnal, formal, and superstitious. As we ought not, then, to despise and contemn that which is below, so let us not censure and condemn that which is above us. Blessed be God, all good souls, in the midst of their greatest distances from one another here below, do all meet in the Divine comprehension above. We are all enfolded in the Divine arms, we are all encircled in the Divine love. That has breadth, and length, and depth, and height enough to reach and hold us all. And if we cannot yet receive and embrace each other in our several ages, growths, measures, and attainments, it is because we have little, low, dark, narrow, and contracted hearts, feel but little of the love of Christ, and are no more filled with that Spirit which is the spring, the centre, the circle, the band to all good spirits in heaven and on earth.”
Jeremy White was a follower of Origen in his views of the ultimate safety and happiness of the whole universe, and he wrote a book,—published after his death,—the title of which sums up his theory: he calls it “The Restoration of all Things, or a vindication of the goodness and grace of God, to be manifested at last, in the recovery of the whole creation out of their fall.”
OTHER MYSTICS.—SIR HENRY VANE.
Sir Henry Vane is numbered amongst English Mystics, but he was more of the mystical philosopher than the mystical theologian, and the same may be said, to some extent, of Henry More; but the profession of the latter, as a clergyman, naturally directed his attention to Divinity properly so called, and how his mystical views influenced his religious life and character, will be shown in a subsequent portion of this volume.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The proofs of Christianity were noticed by Anglican Divines. Embedded in the rich quarry of Jeremy Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium, may be found an able and eloquent summary of the external and internal evidences; and Hammond, in his Reasonableness of Christian Religion, points out the ground upon which men embrace it “in the gross, all of it together,” after which he descends in detail to the survey and vindication of those particular branches of Christianity which appeared to men at that time to be least supported. And it may be mentioned, as an illustration of the changing fashions of scepticism, that the points here considered by Hammond were—objections to God’s disposition of providence, founded on the prosperity of injustice and the calamities of innocence; and the exceptions taken to Christ’s commands because He enjoins the duty of taking up the cross—points which certainly would not engross the attention of Christian advocates in the present day.
PURITAN WORKS ON EVIDENCES.