Gower. No. There came over me a kind of blank bewilderment, and all was changed. The sides of the church had become mountains. I was in a winding rocky glen, and the moon was rising over the black fantastic peaks that shut in the valley. I saw what made me think of Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones. Along the hollow of the gorge, and in the great furrows of the heights on each side, where should have been mountain streams and pebbles, were the glistening bones; and on the rock-ledges where the moonlight fell I could see them strewn; and on every boulder, skeleton-heaps; and at the mouth of every cavern, like icicles hanging from the stony jaws. I heard a rising wind sweep up the pass,—another blast, and another; and then, coming nearer and nearer, a sound as though withered boughs of innumerable trees were snapping in a tempest. All was whirling, darting motion among the white rattling fragments, above, beneath, around; till every clanking bone had been locked to its fellow, and a skeleton sat on every crag and lay in every hollow. The sinews and the flesh then came up upon them; after that, the breath; and they arose, an exceeding great army. I heard a muttering near me, and turning, I saw one gazing on the multitude, having in his hand a torch. His wild, eager look startled me. Now I thought he was Carlstadt, and then he changed into Thomas Münzer. Then again I was sure I recognized Spenser’s Phantastes. He flung his torch into a cleft, whence it breathed out its last sparks into the windy night, and bowing his head, turned slowly away. I heard him say, ‘Dead Church! Dead Church! How shalt thou live? I have learnt it. Flesh and blood first—then breath. Truth for a body, then Love for a soul. The spirit must have a form—must quicken a letter. First a fact for motive; then let the young life work. The soul must have its sinews; the spirit its instrument, its means, its words. Lie there, fire that destroyest; come hither, fire that warmest,—that warmest to good, and that warnest from evil.’ Then I saw that he had a new book in his hand,—the last part then published of Luther’s German New Testament. He vanished. The hills rolled away in smoke, and I awoke with a start.
Atherton. I wish Phantastes and his kindred had really learnt the lesson of your dream. But such hot-brained enthusiasts cannot be taught, not even by sore stripes of adversity in the school of fools.
CHAPTER II.
He that misbelieves and lays aside clear and cautious reason in things that fall under the discussion of Reason, upon the pretence of hankering after some higher principle, (which, a thousand to one, proves but the infatuation of Melancholy and a superstitious hallucination), is as ridiculous as if he would not use his natural eyes about their proper object till the presence of some supernatural light, or till he had got a pair of Spectacles made of the Crystalline Heaven, or of the Cœlum Empyreum, to hang upon his nose for him to look through.—Henry More.
Atherton. I ought to acknowledge, I suppose, that I have by me a rough draught, made some time since, representing the first strife between Mysticism and Reformation. But, as to reading it, I scarcely think——
Willoughby. You will not do so, I beg.
Atherton. Willoughby, you shall suffer for that. I’ll begin.
Willoughby. Pelt away. I thought I should get a cocoa-nut for my stone. (Atherton reads.)
Luther and the Mystics.
The estimate to be formed of the mystics who lived before the Reformation differs very widely from that which is due to those who appeared after it. Previous to the Reformation, there was a far larger amount of truth with the mystics than with any other party in the Romish Church. They were, in reality, men of progress, and belonged to the onward element in their day and generation. For reform of some sort many of them laboured—all of them sighed. They protested against the corruptions of religion. Many an Augean stable would they have cleansed, could they but have found their Hercules. In France, Briconnet, Gerard, and Roussel were men of this class—not so outspoken as Luther and his followers, but led by mysticism to sympathy with reforming views, and enabled by that very mysticism to retain their connexion with Rome, regarding externals as indifferent.