Atherton. Certainly not. It would be strange if the Creator, in whom we live and move, should have no direct access to the spirits of his own creatures.
Gower. Does not your admission indicate the line between the true and the false in that aspiration after immediate knowledge, intercourse, or intuition, so common among the mystics? It is true that the divine influence is exerted upon us directly. But it is not true that such influence dispenses with rather than demands—suspends rather than quickens, the desires and faculties of our nature. So it appears to me at least.
Atherton. And to me also.
Willoughby. And again (to continue your negatives, Gower) it is not true, as some of the mystics tell us, that we can transcend with advantage the figurative language of Scripture; or gaze directly on the Divine Subsistence,—that we can know without knowledge, believe without a promise or a fact, and so dispense, in religious matters, with modes and media.
Atherton. Agreed. For ourselves, I believe we shall always find it true that the letter and the spirit do reciprocally set forth and consummate each other,—
‘Like as the wind doth beautify a sail,
And as a sail becomes the unseen wind.’
We see truth in proportion as we are true. The outward written word in our hands directs us to the unseen Word so high above us, yet so near. The story of Christ’s life and death is our soul’s food. We find that we may—we must, sit in spirit at his feet, who so spake, so lived, so died. And, having been with him, we find a new power and attraction in the words; we are led by the Spirit of Christ in the keeping of those commandments, concerning which he said, ‘The words I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.’
Willoughby. So Plotinus is right, in a sense, after all;—like only can know like. Our likeness to Christ is our true knowledge of him.
Atherton. Yes. But we become partakers of the unseen life and light of God only through the manifestation of that life and light, Christ Jesus. It is on this point that the theology of Fox is so defective.