‘My friends’ (smiling with a patronizing blandness at the tailor), ‘you are right; the public morals are in danger. Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse. But the Holy Church will protect her children. We have heard pestilent heresy this day. To hear that man talk, you would fancy he thought there was as much divinity in his little finger as in the whole body of the Virgin Mother of God.’
Whereupon up starts a little man whom I knew for one of the brethren of the Free Spirit—takes his place on a stone that lay in the mud of the middle of the street, and begins—‘Good people, did you not hear the doctor say that those who cannot understand his doctrine are to hold by the common faith? Did not Saint Peter say of the Epistles of the blessed Saint Paul that there were some things therein hard to be understood, which the ignorant would wrest to their own destruction? I’ll tell you the ignorance he means and the knowledge he means. Friend Crispin there, whom you carried home drunk in a barrow last night, and Master Secretary here, who transgresses in like wise and worse in a daintier style, and hath, by the way, as much perfumery about him as though the scent thereof, rising towards heaven, were so much incense for the taking away of his many sins—they are a couple of St. Paul’s ignoramuses. The knowledge St. Paul means is the thoughtful love of doing the right thing for the love of Christ. But the Pope himself may be one of these witless ones, if the love of sin be stronger in him than the love of holiness. The preaching of all the twelve Apostles would be turned to mischief and to licence by such as you, you feather-brained, civet-tanned puppet of a man, you adulterous, quill-driving hypocrite.’
‘Seize him,’ shouts my Secretary, and darted forward; but an apprentice put out his foot, and over he rolled into the mire, grievously ruffling and besmutching all his gay feathers, while the little man mingled with the laughing people, and made his escape. I hope he is out of Strasburg, or he may be secluded in a darkness and a solitude anything but divine. He was a trifle free of tongue, assuredly; I suppose that makes a part of the freedom of the Spirit with him. He had right, however, beyond question.
The confusion created by this incident had scarcely ceased, when I saw advancing towards us the stately form of Master Eckart himself. He looked with a calm gravity about upon us, as he paused in the midst—seemed to understand at once of what sort our talk had been, and appeared about to speak. There was a cry for silence—‘Hear the Doctor! hear him!’ Whereon he spoke as follows:—
‘There was once a learned man who longed and prayed full eight years that God would show him some one to teach him the way of truth. And on a time, as he was in a great longing, there came unto him a voice from heaven, and said, “Go to the front of the church, there wilt thou find a man that shall show thee the way to blessedness.”
‘So thither he went, and found there a poor man whose feet were torn, and covered with dust and dirt, and all his apparel scarce three hellers worth. He greeted him, saying, “God give thee good morrow.” Thereat made he answer, “I never had an ill morrow.” Again said he, “God prosper thee.” The other answered, “Never had I aught but prosperity.”
‘“Heaven save thee,” said the scholar, “how answerest thou me so?”
‘“I was never other than saved.”
‘“Explain to me this, for I understand not.”
‘“Willingly,” quoth the poor man. “Thou wishest me good morrow. I never had an ill morrow, for, am I an hungered, I praise God; am I freezing, doth it hail, snow, rain, is it fair weather or foul, I praise God; and therefore had I never ill morrow. Thou didst say, God prosper thee. I have been never unprosperous, for I know how to live with God; I know that what he doth is best, and what God giveth or ordaineth for me, be it pain or pleasure, that I take cheerfully from Him as the best of all, and so I had never adversity. Thou wishest God to bless me. I was never unblessed, for I desire to be only in the will of God, and I have so given up my will to the will of God, that what God willeth I will.”