Atherton. As for the mass of the people, they will be enslaved for ever by such teaching, trying to assure themselves by plenty of sacraments, believing these the causes of grace, and hanging for their spiritual all on the dispensers thereof.
Willoughby. Then, to apply the result of your question, Gower, to Eckart,—as he has in him nothing servile, and nothing visionary, he resolves to grasp certainty with his own hand—wraps about him relics of the old Greek pallium, and retires to his extreme of majestic isolation.
Gower. Pity that he could not find the scriptural Via Media—that common truth which, while it meets the deepest wants of the individual, yet links him in wholesome fellowship with others—that pure outer light which nurtures and directs the inner.
Willoughby. No easy way to find in days when Plato was installed high priest, and the whole biblical region a jungle of luxuriant allegoric conceits or thorny scholastic formulas.
Gower. This daring Eckart reminds me of that heroic leader in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Bonduca. I think I hear him cry with Caratach,
Cease your fretful prayers,
Your whinings, and your tame petitions;
The gods love courage armed with confidence,
And prayers fit to pull them down: weak tears
And troubled hearts, the dull twins of cold spirits,