I understand the Doctor as teaching three states or conditions wherein man may stand; that of nature, by the unaided light of reason, which in its inmost tends Godward, did not the flesh hinder; that of grace; and a higher stage yet, above grace, where means and medium are as it were superseded, and God works immediately within the transformed soul. For what God doeth that He is. Yet that in this higher state, as in the second, man hath no merit; he is nothing and God all. In the course of this same sermon he described humility as indispensable to such perfectness, since the loftiest trees send their roots down deepest. He said that we should not distress ourselves if we had not detailed to our confessor all the short-coming and sin of our hearts, but confess to God and ask His mercy. No ecclesiastical absolution can help us unless we are contrite for our sin before God. We are not to keep away from the Lord’s body because we feel so deeply our unworthiness to partake of the sacrament, seeing that they who are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.[[121]]
‘There are some who can talk much and eloquently of the incarnation and bitter sufferings of Christ, who do with tears apostrophise him from head to foot as they present him to their imagination. Yet is there often in this more of sense and self-pleasing than of true love to God. They look more to the means than to the end. For my part, I would rather there were less of such excitement and transport, less of mere sweet emotion, so that a man were diligent and right manful in working and in virtue, for in such exercise do we learn best to know ourselves. These raptures are not the highest order of devotion, though would that many a dull heart had more of such sensibility! There are, as St. Bernard hath said, three kinds of love, the sweet, the wise, and the strong. The first is as a gilded image of wood, the second as a gilded image of silver, the third an image of pure gold. One to whom God hath vouchsafed such sweetness should receive it with lowliness and thankfulness, discerning therein his weakness and imperfection, in that God has to allure and entice him as a little child. He should not rest at this point, but press on, through images, above all image and figure; through the outward exercise of the senses to the inward ground of his soul, where properly the kingdom of God is. There are many altogether at home amid sensuous imagery, and having great joy therein, whose inner ground is as fast shut to them as a mountain of iron through which there is no way.’
‘Dionysius writeth how God doth far and superessentially surpass all images, modes, forms, or names that can be applied to Him. The true fulness of divine enlightenment is known herein that it is an essential illumination, not taking place by means of images or in the powers of the soul, but rather in the ground itself of the soul, when a man is utterly sunk in his own Nothing. This I say against the ‘free spirits,’ who persuade themselves that by means of certain appearances and glances of revelation they have discerned the truth, and please themselves with their own exaltation, knowledge, and wisdom; going about in a false emptiness (Ledigkeit) of their own; and speaking to others as though they were not yet advanced beyond the use of forms and images; bringing, with their frivolous presumption, no small dishonour upon God. But know ye, Christians beloved, that no truly pious and God-fearing man gives himself out as having risen above all things, for things in themselves utterly insignificant and mean are yet, in the truth, right and good; and though any one may be in reality elevated above such lesser matters, yet doth he love and honour them not less than heretofore; for the truly pious account themselves less than all things, and boast not that they have surpassed or are lifted above them.’[[122]]
‘O, dear child, in the midst of all these enmities and dangers, sink thou into thy ground and thy Nothingness, and let the tower with all its bells fall on thee, yea, let all the devils in hell storm out upon thee, let heaven and earth with all their creatures assail thee, all shall but marvellously serve thee—sink thou only into thy Nothingness, and the better part is thine!‘[[123]]
‘Yet some will ask what remains after a man hath thus lost himself in God? I answer, nothing but a fathomless annihilation of himself, an absolute ignoring of all reference to himself personally, of all aims of his own in will and heart, in way, in purpose, or in use. For in this self-loss man sinks so deep into the ground that if he could, out of pure love and lowliness, sink himself deeper yet, and become absolutely nothing, he would do so right gladly. For such a self-annihilation hath been brought to pass within him that he thinketh himself unworthy to be a man, unfit to enter God’s house and temple, and to look upon a crucifix painted on the wall; yea, such a man deemeth himself not so good by far as the very worst. Nevertheless, as far as regards the sufferings and death of the Lord—the birth and incarnation of the Son of God—His holy and perfect life that He lived on earth among sinful men, all this such a man did never before so heartily and strongly love as now he doth; yea, now his care is how he may order his life right Christianly, and fashion it anew, and out of fervent love toward his Lord and Saviour, exercise himself without ceasing in all good work and virtue.’[[124]]
‘There are those who thoughtlessly maim and torture their miserable flesh, and yet leave untouched the inclinations which are the root of evil in their hearts. Ah, my friend, what hath thy poor body done to thee, that thou shouldst so torment it? Oh folly! mortify and slay thy sins, not thine own flesh and blood.’[[125]]
Willoughby. My dear Atherton, this is grand doctrine. May I never be farther from the kingdom of heaven than such a mystic. Surely Luther’s praise is just. Compare such theology as this with the common creed and practice of that day. The faults are nearly all those of the time—the excellence his own.
Atherton. It is wonderful to see how little harm his Platonism can do to a man so profoundly reverent, so fervent in his love to Christ. How often he seems to tread the verge of Eckart’s pantheistic abyss, but never falls into it! His heart is true; he walks uprightly, and so, surely. That conception of sin as selfishness—that doctrine of self-abandonment, death in ourselves and life in God—these are convictions with him so deep and blessed—so far beyond all Greek philosophy—so fatal to the intellectual arrogance of pantheism, that they bear him safe through every peril.
Gower. His sermons cannot fail to do one good—read with the heart and imagination. But if you coldly criticise, and can make no allowance for the allegories and metaphors and vehement language of the mystic, you may shut the book at once.
Atherton. And shut out blessing from your soul. It is not difficult to see, however, where Tauler’s danger lies. There is an excess of negation in his divinity. He will ignore, deny, annihilate almost everything you can name,—bid you be knowledgeless, desireless, motionless,—will enjoin submission to the unknown God (when it is our triumph in Christ that we submit to the Revealed and Known)—and, in short, leaves scarcely anything positive save the mysterious lapse of the soul’s Ground, or Spark, into the Perfect, the Essential One. He seems sometimes to make our very personality a sin, as though the limitations of our finite being were an element in our guilt. The separation of a particular faculty or higher power of the soul which unites with God, while the inferior powers are either absorbed or occupied in the lower sphere, this is the great metaphysical mistake which lies at the root of so many forms of mysticism. With Tauler the work of grace consists too much of extremes—it dehumanizes in order to deify.