‘Which things I think very worthy of noting, that no man’s writings may be a snare to any one’s mind; that none may be puzzled in making that true which of itself is certainly false; nor yet contemn the hearty and powerful exhortations of a zealous soul to the indispensable duties of a Christian, by any supposed deviations from the truth in speculations that are not so material nor indispensable. Nay, though something should fall from him in an enthusiastic hurricane that seems neither suitable to what he writes elsewhere, nor to some grand theory that all men in their wits hitherto have allowed for truth, yet it were to be imputed rather to that pardonable disease that his natural complexion is obnoxious to, than to any diabolical design in the writer; which rash and unchristian reproach is as far from the truth, if not further, as I conceive, than the credulity of those that think him in everything infallibly inspired.—Mastix, his Letter to a private Friend, appended to the Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, &c., p. 294 (1656).
It will be sufficient to enumerate the mere names of several minor mystics, whose fancies are of little moment in the history of mystical doctrine. In the sixteenth century appeared David Joris, a Dutchman, who had almost fatal ecstasies and visions, and wrote and exhorted men, in mystical language, to purity and self-abandonment. Also Postel, a Frenchman, more mad than the former, who believed in a female devotee, named Johanna, as the second Eve, through whom humanity was to be regenerated. Guthmann, Lautensack, and Conrad Sperber, were theosophists who mingled, in hopeless confusion, religious doctrine and alchemic process, physics and scripture, tradition, vision, fancy, fact. During the first half of the seventeenth century, Brunswick was agitated by one Engelbrecht, a sickly hypochondriacal weaver, who imagined himself translated to heaven and hell, and commissioned to expound and preach incessantly. During the latter part of the same century, the madman Kuhlmann roved and raved about Europe, summoning sovereigns to his bar: Conrad Dippel improvised a medley of Paracelsus, Schwenkfeld, and Behmen; and John George Gichtel, a fanatical Quietist, bathed his soul in imaginary flames, believed himself destined to illumine all mankind, founded the sect of the Angel-Brethren, and seems to have ended in sheer madness. An account of these and other mystics, even less notable, will be found in Arnold’s Kirchen-undKetzergeschichte, Th. iii.
CHAPTER IX.
O sola, mica, rama lamahi,
Volase, cala, maja, mira, salame,
Viemisa molasola, Rama, Afasala.
Mirahel, Zorabeli, Assaja!
Citation for all Spirits, from the Black Raven.
A strict regard for historical accuracy compels me to state that the following conversation took place in the drawing-room, and not in the library. By such an arrangement, that bright feminine presence was secured which, according to Gower, deprived mysticism itself of half its obscurity.
‘Did Jacob Behmen frighten you away?’ asked Willoughby of Mrs. Atherton, somewhat remorsefully. ‘I think Atherton and Gower will bear me out in saying that it was not easy to render the worthy shoemaker entertaining.’