[148]. See first [Note], p. [338].
[149]. See second [Note], p. [338].
[150]. Engelhardt, p. 225. Schmidt’s Tauler, p. 61.—The same doctrine which furnished a sanctuary for the devotion of purer natures supplied also an excuse for the licence of the base. Wilful perversion, or mere ignorance, or some one of the manifold combinations of these two factors, would work the mystical exhortation into some such result as that denounced by Ruysbroek. We may imagine some bewildered man as speaking thus within himself:—‘So we are to covet ignorance, to surmount distinctions, to shun what is clear or vivid as mediate and comparatively carnal, to transcend means and bid farewell to the wisdom of the schools. Wise and devout men forsake all their learning, forget their pious toil and penance, to lose themselves in that ground in which we are united to God,—to sink into vague abstract confusion. But may I not do at first what they do at last? Why take in only to take out? I am empty already. Thank heaven! I haven’t a distinct idea in my head.’
It is so that the popular mind is sure to travesty the ultra-refinements of philosophy.
[151]. Engelhardt, pp. 224-228.—Eckart, like Hegel, would seem to have left behind him a right-hand and a left-hand party,—admirers like Suso and Tauler, who dropped his extreme points and held by such saving clauses as they found; and headstrong spirits, ripe for anarchy, like these New-Lights or High-Fliers, the representatives of mysticism run to seed. Ruysbroek’s classification of them is somewhat artificial; fanaticism does not distribute itself theologically. In the treatise entitled Spiegel der Seligkeit, § 16, he describes them generally as follows:—‘Ander quade duulische menschen vint men, die segghen dat si selue Cristus sijn of dat si god sijn, ende dat haer hant hemel ende erde ghemaect heest, ende dat an haer hant hanghet hemel ende erde ende alle dinc, ende dat si verheuen sijn boven alle die sacramenten der heiligher kerken, ende dat si der niet en behoeuen noch si en willen der ooc niet.’ He represents their claim to identity with God as leading to a total moral indifference (§ 17):—‘Ende sulke wanen god sijn, ende si en achten gheen dinc goet noch quaet, in dien dat si hem ontbeelden connen ende in bloter ledicheit haer eighen wesen vinden ende besitten moghen.’ Their idea of the consummation of all things savours of the Parisian heresy—the offspring of John Scotus, popularised by David of Dinant and his followers. The final restitution is to consist in the resolution of all creatures into the Divine Substance:—‘So spreken si voort dat in den lesten daghe des ordels enghele ende duuele, goede ende quade, dese sullen alle werden een eenvoudighe substancie der godheit ... ende na dan, spreken si voort, en sal god bekennen noch minnen hem seluen noch ghene creature’—(§ 16).
[152]. Engelhardt, pp. 326-336.—Good Ruysbroek was fully entitled to the encomium placed in the mouth of Tauler. He himself, like Bernard, would frequently perform the meanest offices of the cloister. The happy spirit of brotherhood which prevailed among the canons of Grünthal made a deep impression on that laborious practical reformer, Gerard Groot, when, in 1378, he visited the aged prior. What he then saw was not without its influence in the formation of that community with which his name is associated—the Brethren of the Common Life.—See Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. ii.
[153]. Engelhardt, p. 330.—Ruysbroek inveighs with much detail against the vanities of female dress—as to those hair-pads, sticking up like great horns, they are just so many ‘devil’s nests.’
[154]. Ruysbroek expressed himself in these words to Gerard Groot (Engelhardt, p. 168). In his touching description of the ‘desolation’ endured by the soul on its way upward toward the ‘super-essential contemplation,’ he makes the sufferer say,—‘O Lord, since I am thine (want ich din eygen bin), I would as soon be in hell as in heaven, if such should be thy good pleasure; only do thy glorious will with me, O Lord!‘—Geistl. Hochzeit, § 30. Ruysbroek, like Fénelon, abandons himself thus only on the supposition that even in hell he should still retain the divine favour;—so impossible after all is the absolute disinterestedness toward which Quietism aspires. The Flemish mystic distinguishes between the servants of God, the friends, and the sons. Those worshippers who stand in the relation of friends have still something of their own (besitten oer inwendichkeit mit eygenscap) in their love to God. The sons ascend, ‘dying-wise,’ to an absolute emptiness. The friends still set value on divine bestowments and experiences; the sons are utterly dead to self, in bare modeless love (in bloeter, wiseloeser mynnen). Yet, very inconsistently, he represents the sons as more assured of eternal life than the friends. (Von dem funkelnden Steine, § 8.)
[155]. A veritable personage. He died in 1377, and left behind him a book recording the conflicts he underwent and the revelations vouchsafed him. (Engelhardt, p. 326.)
[156]. The lyrics of Muscatblut are characterised by Gervinus (ii. p. 225), and the same authority gives some account, from the Limburg Chronicle, of the famous friar, leper, and poet mentioned by Arnstein.