The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary

by Robert Hugh Benson

Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.—Ps. cxxix. 1, 2.

XI

The third temptation was so fierce and subtle, that I doubt whether I wholly understood it when Master Richard tried to tell it to me. He did not tell me all, and he could answer but few questions, and I fear that I am not able to tell even all that I heard from him. It was built up like a house, he said, stone by stone, till it fenced him in, but he did not know what was all its nature till he saw my lord cardinal.

A soul such as was Master Richard's must have temptations that seem as nothing to coarser beings such as myself: as a bird that lives in the air has dangers that a crawling beast cannot have. There are perils in the height that are not perils on the earth. A bird may strike a tree or a tower; his wings may fail him; he may fly too near the sun till he faint in its heat; he cannot rest; if he is overtaken by darkness he cannot lie still. [Sir John enumerates at some length other such dangers to bird life.]….

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Now Master Richard described the state into which he fell under a curious name that I cannot altogether understand. He said that there be three nights through which the contemplative soul must pass or ever it come to the dawn. The first two he had gone through during his life in the country; the first is a kind of long-continued dryness, when spiritual things have no savour; the second is an affection of the mind, when not even meditation [This is an exercise distinct from contemplation apparently. I include this passage, in spite of its technicalities, for obvious reasons.] appears possible; the mind is like a restless fly that is at once weary and active. This second is not often attained to by ordinary souls, though all men who serve God have a shadow of it. It is a very terrible state. Master Richard told me that before he suffered it he had not conceived that such conflict was possible to man. It was during this time that the fiend came to him in form of a woman. The imagination that cannot fix itself upon the things of God is wide-awake to all other impressions of sense. [I do not think that Sir John understands what he is writing about, though he does his best to appear as if he did. I have omitted a couple of incoherent paragraphs.]….

Now, these two first nights I think I understand, for he told me that what he suffered during his whipping in the hall and the strife of his mind with the clerk were each a kind of symbol of them. But the third, which he called the Night of the Soul I do not understand at all. [It is remarkable that this phrase frequently occurs in the writings of St. John of the Cross, though he treats it differently. Until I came across it in this MS. I had always thought that the Spanish mystic was the first to use it.] This only can I say of the state itself: that Master Richard said that it was in a manner what our Lord suffered upon the rood when he cried to His Father Eloi, Eloi, etc.

But I can tell you something of the signs of that affliction, as they shewed themselves to Master Richard. Of the interior state of his soul I cannot even think without terror and confusion. Compared with the darkness of it, the other nights, he said, are but as clouds across the sun on a summer's day compared with a moonless midnight in winter. He had suffered a shadow of it before, when he was entering the contemplative state, or the prefect Way of Union. Now it fell upon him. Before I tell you how it came, I must tell you that this night, as he explained it, takes its occasion from some particular thought, and the thought from which it sprang you shall hear presently.

When the clerk had left him, sighing, as I said, as if with a kindly weariness (to encourage the other to call for him, I suppose), Master Richard committed himself again to God and lay still.

A fellow came in soon with his supper (for it was now growing dark), set it by him and went out. Master Richard took a little food, and after a while, as his custom was after repeating the name of Jesu, began to think on God, on the Blessed and Holy Trinity, and on His Attributes, numbering them one by one and giving thanks for each, and marking the colour and place of each in the glory of the throne. He was too weary to say vespers or compline, and presently he fell asleep, but whether it was common sleep or not I do not know.