This passage, and others like it, gave rise to the charge of pantheism brought by Gerson against Ruysbroek in the following century. The prior of Grünthal found a defender in Schönhoven, who pointed with justice to numerous expressions in the writings of the accused, altogether incompatible with the heresy alleged. Quite inconsistent with any confusion of the divine and human is Ruysbroek’s fine description of the insatiable hunger of the soul—growing by that it feeds on,—the consciousness that all possessed is but a drop to the illimitable undeemed Perfection yet beyond. (‘Wi leren in waerheit sijns aenschijns dat al dat wi gesmaken tegen dat ons ontblijft dat en is niet een draep tegen al die zee, dit verstormt onsen geest in hetten ende in ongeduer van mynnen.’—Von dem funkelnden Steine, x. p. 194.) So again he says, ‘Want wy enmogen te mael niet got werden ende onse gescapenheit verliesen, dat is onmoegelic’—p. 190; and similarly that we become one with God in love, not in nature, (‘ouerformet ende een mit hem in sijnre minnen, niet in sijnre naturen.’)—Spiegel der Seligkeit, xxiv.
Note to page 329.
Ruysbroek expressed to Gerard Groot, in these very words, his belief in the special guidance of the Holy Spirit vouchsafed for the composition of his books on these ‘deep things’ of the kingdom. (Engelhardt, p. 168.)
The doctrine of Ruysbroek is substantially the same with that of his friend and brother-mystic, Tauler. Whether speaking the high German of the upper Rhine or the low German of the Netherlands, mysticism gives utterance to the same complaint and the same aspiration. Ruysbroek is individually less speculative than Eckart, less practical than Tauler. The Flemish mystic is a more submissive son of the Church than the stout-hearted Dominican of Strasburg, and lays proportionally more stress on what is outward and institutional. He is fond of handling his topics analytically. His numerous divisions and subdivisions remind us of the scholastic Richard of St. Victor, but Ruysbroek, less methodical by nature, and less disciplined, more frequently loses sight of his own distinctions. The subject itself, indeed, where it possesses the writer, repudiates every artificial treatment. While he specifies with minuteness the stages of the mystical ascent, Ruysbroek does not contend that the experience of every adept in the contemplative life must follow the precise order he lays down. (Geistl. Hochzeit, ii. § 30, p. 71.) He loves to ally the distinctions he enumerates in the world of nature, in the operations of grace, in the heavenly state, and in the Divine Being, by a relationship of correspondence. Thus the seven planets and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit answer to each other. The Empyrean in the external world corresponds to Pure Being in the divine nature, to the Spark of the soul in man, and to the Contemplative stage of his spiritual experience. This scheme of analogies, incidental in Ruysbroek and the earlier mystics, makes up almost the whole system of mystics like Behmen and Swedenborg. His elaborate comparison of the operations of grace to a fountain with three streams (one of which refreshes the memory, another clarifies the understanding, while a third invigorates the will), resembles strikingly the fanciful method of Madame Guyon in her Torrents, and of St. Theresa in her Degrees of Prayer. (Geistl. Hochzeit, xvii. § 36, p. 80.) The mysticism of Ruysbroek is less sensuous than that of the poetical Suso. Beyond question the higher elevation of the contemplative life must have been a welcome refuge to many devout minds wearied with vain ritual, penance, and routine. As acknowledged contemplatists, they could escape without scandal from contact with the grosser machinery of their religion. Accordingly, to claim superiority to means and modes was by no means always the arrogant pretension it may seem to us. Tauler’s ‘state above grace’ was the ark of an unconscious Protestantism. Where the means were made the end, wisdom forsook them, and rejoiced to find that the name of mystic could shelter spirituality from the dangers of the suspected heretic. Ruysbroek, however, felt the want of such a protection for freer thought, much less than did Tauler and some of his more active followers.
CHAPTER VIII.
Unde planctus et lamentum?
Quid mentem non erigis?
Quid revolvis monumentum?
Tecum est quem diligis;
Jesum quæris, et inventum