^^^^^HBJM
FROM-THE- LIBRARY-OP
TR1NITYCOLLEGETORDNTO
STUDIES IN MYSTICAL RELIGION
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
STUDIES
IN
MYSTICAL RELIGION
BY
RUFUS M. JONES, M.A., D.Lirr.
HAVERFORD COLLEGE, U.S. A.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1909
75"
First Edition April 1909
Reprinted September 1909
-; ' * O fi A r\
1 1 8 6 1 8
APR 1 9 1985
PREFACE
No one doubts to-day that one of the main approaches
to the meaning of religion is through the nature of the
soul of man. It would no doubt be a mistake to push
the method of the inner way to the exclusion of all other
methods of studying religion, but it is certain that no
body can tell us what religion is until he has sounded
the deeps within man, and has dealt with the testimony
of personal consciousness.
The mystics have in all ages and in all lands
semper et ubique been intent on finding a direct way to
God. They have been voices, often crying in the wilder
ness, announcing the nearness of God, and calling men
from the folly of seeking Him where, from the nature of
the case, he could not be found. Their message strikes
a note which appeals profoundly to our generation, and
for obvious reasons there has been a revival of interest in
them. I hope these studies of mine will contribute to
this interest, and will throw positive light on the problems
of mystical religion.
I have had before me, in all my labour on this volume,
the desire to make my work advance the plans of my
beloved friend John Wilhelm Rowntree, who is now in
the unseen realm. He had set before himself as part of
vi MYSTICAL RELIGION
a larger purpose the task of writing the history of
Quakerism, treating it as an experiment in spiritual
j religion, and even before I knew of his plans, I had chosen
as my special field a study of the mystics of ancient and
modern times. We each felt that our work was toward
the same end, and we spent many joyous hours telling
each other of our literary dreams, always putting all our
emphasis on the way in which these unborn books of
ours were to minister to the larger spiritual life of our
age. His books, alas, must remain unwritten ! We who
were his friends know, though the world never can, what
power they would have revealed.
" The world which credits what is done
Is dark to all that might have been."
Some of us who loved him are resolved that his work,
so far as possible, shall go on to completion, and I have
made my volume function, in every way I could do so,
toward the fulfilling of his interrupted plans. There is
no sectarian cast or bias in it, but it does prepare the
way for an intelligent comprehension of the appearance
in the English commonwealth of a society of Christians
who seriously undertook to live by the Light within, and
whose story will be told in later volumes.
I am under weighty obligations to many persons who
have read and criticized some of the chapters. I desire
to make particular mention of Professor Robert S.
Franks, Principal T. M. Lindsay, William R. Inge, D.D.,
Professor Hastings Rashdall, Dr. J. Rendel Harris, T.
Edmund Harvey, Joan M. Fry, and William Charles
Braithwaite. I wish to express my debt also to Emily
J. Hart, who assisted me in some of my researches,
PREFACE vii
though she did not live to see the work completed.
My greatest debt is due my dear wife, who has rendered
invaluable help at every stage of my work, particularly
in the sections dealing with German mystics, in the proof
reading, and in the preparation of the Index.
HAVERFORD, PENNSYLVANIA.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PACE
THE NATURE AND VALUE OF FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE IN
RELIGION . xiii
CHAPTER I
THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY . i
CHAPTER II
MINISTRY AND ORGANIZATION IN THE EARLY CHURCH . 20
CHAPTER III
MONTANISM : A RETURN TO PROPHECY .... 37
CHAPTER IV
ROOTS OF MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE . . 57
CHAPTER V
MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS .... 80
CHAPTER VI
DlONYSIUS, "THE AREOPAGITE " 98
x MYSTICAL RELIGION
CHAPTER VII
PAGE
A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES JOHN THE SCOT,
CALLED ERIGENA . . . . . . 1 1 3
CHAPTER VIII
THE WALDENSES, AN ANTI-SACERDOTAL SECT . . .130
CHAPTER IX
ST. FRANCIS AND THE " SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS " . . 150
CHAPTER X
A GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS . . . .178
CHAPTER XI
BROTHERHOOD GROUPS IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY . 196
CHAPTER XII
MEISTER ECKHART 217
CHAPTER XIII
THE FRIENDS OF GOD 242
CHAPTER XIV
THE BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE .... 298
CHAPTER XV
THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND WYCLIF AND THE
LOLLARDS 333
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER XVI
PAGE
THE ANABAPTISTS 369
CHAPTER XVII
ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 396
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FAMILY OF LOVE 428
CHAPTER XIX
THE SEEKERS AND THE RANTERS 449
CHAPTER XX
INDIVIDUAL MYSTICS IN THE PERIOD OF THE ENGLISH
COMMONWEALTH 482
APPENDIX . . .... 501
INDEX . . .507
" THE KINGDOM OF GOD is WITHIN You." l
O world invisible, we view Thee,
O world intangible, we touch Thee,
O world unknowable, we know Thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch Thee !
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of Thee there ?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars !
The drift of pinions, would we harken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places ;
Turn but a stone, and start a wing !
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry ; and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry, clinging Heaven by the hems ;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames.
1 From the Poems of Francis Thompson, with permission of
John Lane Company, Publishers.
xfi
INTRODUCTION
THE NATURE AND VALUE OF FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE
IN RELIGION
Two great tendencies come into prominence in the entire
course of religious history, the tendency, on the one
hand, to regard religion as something permanent and
unchanging, and on the other hand, the equally fundamental
tendency to revivify and reshape religion through fresh
and spontaneous experiences. It is natural that both
tendencies should appear, for religion is both eternal and
temporal it is the child of permanence and change. No
religion can live and be a power in this evolving world
unless it changes and adjusts itself to its environment, and
no religion can minister to the deepest needs of men unless
it reveals permanent and time-transcending Realities.
Religion has many times lost its power because one of
its two essential aspects has been ignored and the other
aspect has been pushed to an absurd extreme. It will not
do to forget or to overlook the advantages of habit, custom,
and system the storage of the gains of the race. The
tendency to value what has worked well furthers order
and stability, and keeps the future organic with the past
The conserving spirit, like an invisible mortar, binds the
ages together and makes possible one humanity. It is the
very basis of our social morality and the ground of all
our corporate activities.
xiii
xiv MYSTICAL RELIGION
But, on the other hand, as soon as religion has closed
up " the east window of divine surprise," and is turned
into a mechanism of habit, custom, and system, it is
killed. Religion thus grown formal and mechanical,
though it may still have a disciplinary function in society,
is no longer religion in the primary sense. The spring
of joy which characterizes true religion has disappeared,
the heightening, propulsive tone has vanished. It may
linger on as a vestigial superstition, or a semi-automatic
performance, but it is live religion only so long as it
I issues from the centre of personal consciousness and has
the throb of personal experience in it
The creative periods in religious progress have come
when the crust of custom, the mechanism of habit, has
been broken up by the impact of persons who were
capable of fresh and original experiences, persons who
have shifted the line of march and brought new energies
into play, because they have gained new visions and new
insights. The Church, it is true, has never in any period
quite sunk to the level of tradition and the automatism of
habit, for it has always had beneath its system of organiza
tion and dogma a current, more or less hidden and
subterranean, of vital, inward, spiritual religion, dependent
for its power of conviction, not on books, councils,
hierarchies or creeds, not upon anything kept in cold
storage, but on the soul's experiences of eternal Realities.
But the main weakness of organized Christianity has been
the tendency to settle into a " sacred " form and system.
Our generation has grown weary of ancient traditions
and accumulated systems. We have discovered new
worlds in all directions by following the sure path of
experience, and we can never again settle down with a
naive and childlike trust in the house which the past has
builded. Our first question in any field is, not What do
the scribes and schoolmen say ? not What is the unbroken
INTRODUCTION
xv
tradition ? but, What are the facts ? What data does ex
perience furnish ? This shifting of centre from " authority "
to " experience " runs through all the pursuits of the
human spirit in the modern world, and, as would be
expected, religion has been profoundly affected by it
In religion as in other fields of inquiry, the questions of
moment have come to be those which deal with life.
We take slender interest in dogmatic constructions ; we
turn from these with impatience, and ask for the testimony
of the soul, for the basis of religion in the nature of man
as man. This profound tendency of the modern world
has brought strongly into prominence a mystical type
of religion, that is to say, a type of religion which is
primarily grounded in experience, 1 and with the tendency
has come a corresponding interest in the mystics of
the past.
Mysticism is a word which cannot properly be used
without careful definition. To many readers it carries
no clear and concrete meaning ; to others it has an
ominous significance and a forbidding sound, as though
the safe and beaten track, which the defenders of the faith
have builded, were being left for will-o'-the-wisps and
wandering lights. I shall use the word mysticism to
express the type of religion which puts the emphasis on
immediate awareness of relation with God, on direct and J
intimate consciousness of the Divine Presence. It is
religion in its most acute, intense, and living stage.
Religion of this mystical type is not confined to
Christianity, but belongs, in some degree, to all forms of
religion, for first-hand experiences of a Divine and Higher
Presence are as old as human personality. Dr Brinton is
undoubtedly right in his contention that "all religions
depend for their origin and continuance directly upon
1 " The mystic is a thorough-going empiricist " (Josiah Royce, The World and
the Individual, vol. i. p. 81).
xvi MYSTICAL RELIGION
inspiration," that is to say, upon direct intercourse. 1 The
men who have made religion a living power for any
people are, as he says, " persons who have been face to
face with God, who have heard His voice and felt His
presence." 2 Dr. Tylor has expressed much the same
view in his account of the origin of religious experience
in the primitive revealers.
" There are times," he says, " when powers and im
pressions out of the course of the mind's normal action
and words that seem spoken by a voice from without,
messages of mysterious knowledge, of counsel or warning,
seem to indicate the intervention, as it were, of a second,
superior soul." 3
This quotation from Dr. Tylor puts the emphasis on
an experience " out of the course of the mind's normal
action," and raises the question whether mysticism is
something normal or abnormal. Both positions have
been strongly defended.
Canon R. C. Moberly says that " Christian mysticism
is the doctrine, or rather the experience, of the Holy Spirit
the realization of human personality as characterized
by and consummated in the indwelling reality of the
Spirit of Christ, which is God." " It is Christ," he says,
" who is the true mystic ; or if the mode of expression
be preferred, it is He who alone has realized all that
mysticism and mystics have aimed at with more, or
with less, whether of disproportion or of success. And
in Him that perfect realization evidently means a harmony,
a sanity, a fitly proportioned completeness. It is an
inward light which makes itself manifest as character ;
a direct communion of love which is also, to the fullest
extent, wholly rational at once and wholly practical ; it
is as much knowledge as love, and love as knowledge ;
1 Brinton's Religions of Primitive People, p. 52. 2 Ibid. p. 58.
8 Dr. E. B. Tylor. Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 182.
INTRODUCTION
it is as truly contemplation as activity, and activity as
contemplation. In being the ideal of mysticism, it is also
the ideal of general, and of practical, and of all, Christian
experience. For the most practical type of Christian
experience misconceives itself, until it conceives itself as
an expression, in action, of a central truth, that truth of
transcendent fact, which practical Christians are too often
content to call ' mystical,' and, so calling it, to banish, or to
try to banish, from the region of practical life." *
In Canon Moberly's conception, mysticism is not a
special, exceptional experience, but, rather, a life con-
summatcd in the practice of the Presence of God. It is
life in its wholeness as over against a partial life, which
is shut up to some narrow compartment of its true being.
This meaning of mysticism is well brought out by President
Henry Churchill King. He says : " The truly mystical
may be summed up as simply a protest in favour of the
whole man the entire personality. It says that men
can experience, and live, and feel, and do much more
than they can formulate, define, explain, or even fully
express. Living is more than thinking." 2
Against this account of mysticism can be put a great
array of testimony to show that it is an abnormal condi- ,
tion a form of disease, a manifestation of hysteria. 3
The reason for this difference of view is easy to find.
The two sets of writers are talking about two different
things, though under the same name. For one group the
real mystic is a person who, by conformity to the goal
of life revealed in Christ, has realized his life upward in
full union with God a way of living which is as normal
as healthy breathing. For the other group, the real
1 Canon R. C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality , pp. 312-16.
8 H. C. King's Theology and Social Consciousness, p. 77.
8 Murisier. Les Maladies du sentiment religieux. Janet, " Une Extatique,"
in Bulletin de I Institut fsyckologique, Paris, 1901. Leuba. "Tendances
fondamen tales des mystiques chre'tiens," in Revue philosophiqite, vol. liv.
xviii MYSTICAL RELIGION
mystic is a person who exhibits a special form of psychical
dissociation. He is " obsessed " with the idea that he is
one with God, or he experiences a trance state, a state of
" second personality," in which he loses the boundaries of
his " primary self," or at least is subject to " incursions "
from beyond the threshold of normal consciousness. Such
experiences, we must admit, are not normal,
There is no question that there are " mystical ex
periences," i.e. experiences in which the subject feels the
Divine Presence and has an assurance of union with God,
which are abnormal and pathological, but there is no more
i reason for narrowing the word " mysticism " to cover this
type alone than there is for using the word " love " for
pathological love alone. Every form of human experience
is capable of an exaggerated, an abnormal state, and there
is always a shadowy borderland where it is extremely
difficult to draw the line between the normal and the
abnormal. This is peculiarly true of religious experience,
and mystical experience may stretch over all the degrees
from the most perfect sanity to utter disorganization of
the self.
I shall first consider mysticism in its normal aspect,
as a type of religion which is characterized by an
immediate consciousness of personal relationship with
the Divine. Something of this sort is familiar to
the sanest and most matter-of-fact person among us.
There is a mystical aspect in our highest moral moments.
We never rise to any high level of moral action without
feeling that the " call " of duty comes from beyond our
isolated self. There is an augustness in conscience which
has made men in all ages name it the voice of God ; but
however it is named, everybody in these high moments of
obedience has an experience which is essentially mystical
an experience which cannot be analysed and reduced
to " explanation " in terms of anything else. The great
INTRODUCTION xix
ethical writers of all schools recognize this. " What is
good," says Paulsen, " will in the last analysis be decided
by immediate incontrovertible feeling, in which the inner
most essence of the being [t.e. the personality] manifests
itself. It is as impossible to force a man by logical
proofs to love and admire an ideal of life as it is to make
his tongue feel the sweetness or bitterness of a particular
fruit" 1 " The idea of the Good," says Hastings Rashdall,
"is something simple, ultimate, and unanalysable." " Moral
obligation is one of those immediate data of consciousness
from which the idea of God may be inferred." 2 Professor
Sidgwick says that, " Right and wrong as peculiar to moral
cognition are unique and unanalysable." 8 " Duty," says
Martineau, " involves the discovery of something higher
than ourselves that has claims upon us." 4
There is likewise a mystical element in prayer when
ever it rises to the level of real communion, or, as Lowell
puts it, when, " stirred below the conscious self," the
soul feels
" That perfect disenthralment which is God." 5
Everybody who prays knows the difference between saying
words and phrases, uttering requests, proffering petitions, '
and coming into vital communion with God. There are
moments of prayer when the soul feels itself face to
face with ultimate Reality and in joyous fellowship with
perfect Personality. This latter experience is as normal
as the lower form of prayer is, but they are worlds
apart in significance and value. It is because prayer
does rise to the height of actual fellowship with a Divine
Companion that men who accept the conclusions of
1 Paulsen, A System, of Ethics, p. 1 1.
* Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, voL ii. pp. 103-106.
* Mind, vol. xxviii. p. 580.
4 Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, voL ii. p. 104.
Lowell. The Cathedral.
xx MYSTICAL RELIGION
modern science go on praying, undisturbed by the
reign of law. They are not concerned about the
superficial question, whether prayers are answered or not ;
for prayer is its own reward, is an end in itself and
carries the person who truly prays into a joyous state
which transcends explanation. As S. T. Coleridge has
well expressed it :
" A sense o'er all my soul impressed
That I am weak, yet not unblessed,
Since in me, round me, everywhere,
Eternal strength and wisdom are."
These mystical experiences in a perfectly sane and
normal fashion often come over whole groups of persons
in times of worship. There are times when, in the hush
i and silence, with no appeal to the senses, and with
nothing outward to stir emotion, low breathings of a
diviner life are clearly felt and the entire group is fused
and baptized into one spirit. There comes the experience
of a great refreshing, a release of energy, as though a
hidden circuit had been closed.
" For a moment on the soul
Falls the rest that maketh whole,
Falls the endless peace." l
These are the times when the soul feels its real powers
and when the possibilities of life are discovered, and they
make the ordinary performances of religious service seem,
in comparison, poor and dry. Such experiences are
beyond explanation, but they are not abnormal.
There is, too, a mystical element of this normal type
in any genuine faith. I am not speaking, of course, of a
faith which consists in believing something on authority,
for that is faith of a lower order. Faith in the primary
sense is a way of corresponding with Realities which
1 F. W. H. Myers' Sunrise.
INTRODUCTION xxi
transcend sense-experience. It is an inward power by
which the soul lives above the seen and temporal, and
"overcomes" the world of the causal, mechanical order.
It is a conviction, arising apparently from the very
rationality of the spirit in us, that there is an inner,
unseen, spiritual universe an eternal moral order. It is
the soul's vision of what ought to be and its confidence
in the reality and permanence of that estimate of worth
" the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of
things not seen." It is no mere product of sense-
experience, but it is the very pinnacle of rationality
and as normal a function as our responses to ocular
vision. 1
It is not an uncommon thing for persons who are
entirely free from abnormality to have an experience in
which the meaning, the significance, the worth, the rich
ness of life, vastly transcends their concepts and descrip
tions when life vastly overflows all that can be said
about it This experience is marked by the emergence
of a sort of undifferentiated consciousness like that well
known to us when we rise to a high appreciation of
the beautiful in nature or art or music. At the highest
moments of appreciation there comes, not a loss of con
sciousness, but the emergence of a new level of conscious
ness in which neither the / nor the object is focused in
perception or thought 2 There is in these experiences an
absence of self-consciousness, and an absence, too, of the
consciousness of any concrete, finite object contemplated, a
1 The question has been raised whether Mystical-religion is higher or lower
than Faith-religion (see article by Dr. Lyman in American Journal of Theology
for July 1904). It is hardly a fair question to raise, since mysticism at every point
involves faith ; and any faith which is really alive and dynamic is rooted and
grounded in first-hand experience.
8 ' The aesthetic object and the consciousness in which it arises are no longer
held apart. The self becomes identified with the object as peculiarly its own."
(Dr. W. D. Furry's Aesthetic Experience: Its Nature and Function in Episte-
mology (Baltimore. 1908), p. 49.)
xxii MYSTICAL RELIGION
penetration into a region more real and all-inclusive than
that of finite " things." l
The poet Coleridge has in many passages called atten
tion to a type of experience which is neither " feeling " nor
"knowledge," but something much richer than either
a l one a n experience which he declares is " the very
groundwork " of knowledge, and which arises " when we
possess ourselves as one with the whole "
" An experience deeper than science, more certain
than demonstration, and from which flows the sap that
circulates through every branch and spray of demonstra
tion and knowledge, an experience which passeth all
understanding." 2
It is now a commonplace of psychology that what we are
and what we experience vastly transcends our " knowledge "
1 Wordsworth has described a personal experience in a beautiful passage :
" Sensation, soul and form
All melted into him ; they swallowed up
His animal being ; in them did he live,
And by them did he live ; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hours
Of visitation from the living God,
.Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request ;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him ; it was blessedness and love.
The Excursion, BOOK I.
There is no better first-hand account of such an unanalysable whole of experience
than Mozart's description of the coming of a symphony into his consciousness.
" When and how my ideas come I know not, nor can I force them. Those that
please me I retain in my memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum
them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn
this or that morsel to account. ... All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not
disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the
whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so
that I can survey it like a fine picture, or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do
I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them as it were all at
once. What a delight this is I cannot express. All this inventing, this producing,
takes place in a pleasing, lively dream. But the actual hearing of the whole
together is after all the best. And this is perhaps the best gift I have my Divine
Master to thank for" (Holmes' Life and Correspondence of M atari (London,
1845), pp. 317-18.)
a S. T. Coleridge's The Friend, Essay XI.
INTRODUCTION xxiii
about it ; reality overflows at every point our categories
of description. Our full self, our real self, radiates out
from a central pulse of consciousness, which is in the
focus of attention, and the part of the self that gets
focalized and reduced to conceptual knowledge is only a
very tiny fragment. As Maeterlinck has declared : " There
is in us, above the reasoning portion of our reason, a
whole region answering to something different, which is .
preparing for the surprises of the future, and which goes
on ahead of our imperfect attainments, and enables us to
live on a level very much superior to that of those attain
ments." *
Now there are times when this underlying total whole
of consciousness comes into power in us in unusual fashion,
when the stored-up gains of a lifetime are at our command,
and we seem to possess ourselves even down to the roots
of our being. In truth, at times, we are aware of a More
than " ourselves " impinging on the skirts of our being.
There is no time in our lives, of course, when we do not
draw upon this wider consciousness which is the matrix
in which our " ideas " and concepts are born. We are all
aware how often we arrive at conclusions and actions
without reasoning or thinking ; how often we deal wisely
with situations, without being able to trace the source of
our wisdom. The supreme issues of life are settled for
us, all the way up and down the scale, by unreasoned
adjustments, by intents rather than contents of conscious
ness, by value-responses, which far overflow any knowledge
explanation which we can give. It may, I think, be said
that all great work, all work which has the touch of genius
on it, comes from persons who in special degrees draw upon
this matrix consciousness. Such persons feel often as
though a Power not themselves were working through
them ; as though, without tension or effort, the creation at
1 Cited in Pratt's Psychology of Belief , p. 27.
C
xxiv MYSTICAL RELIGION
which they are working was " given " to them or " brought "
to them. There are, I repeat, times when in extraordinary
ways the dualistic character of ordinary thought is trans
cended and the soul comes into possession of itself as a
whole, when all we have been, or are, or hope to be,
becomes real ; and not only so, but in these deeper reaches
of experience some higher Power than ourselves seems to
work with us and through us a larger life, continuous
with ourselves, seems to environ us. Our own con
sciousness appears to be only an effective centre in a
vast spiritual environment which acts along with us.
As Matthew Arnold has finely said :
" A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose
And the sea where it goes." l
There are persons seemingly as normal as the sanest
tiller of the soil, who find themselves fused into union
with a wider, diviner life than that of their common,
everyday experiences, who have times when their soul
takes hoilday from doubt and strain and perplexity. A
great refreshing floods them, they are aware of a
heightened energy, as though they had pushed out into
a new compartment of being. It is like the aesthetic
experience, in its lofty levels, only the impulse comes
from within instead of from without. There could be no
better account of this heightened life than Edward
Dowden has given in his Sonnet on Awakening.
" Suddenly, we know not how, a sound
Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned
With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod,
And we awake. O joy and deep amaze,
1 Arnold's Buried Life.
INTRODUCTION xxv
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,
We hear the voices of the morning seas,
And earnest prophesyings in the land,
While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze
The encompassing great cloud of witnesses."
Such lofty aesthetic joy is perhaps unusual, though
some degree of it has probably at some time swept the
lives of the most prosaic of us, and so, too, these floods
of religious refreshing from within, these mystical ex
periences, these times when we seem to possess the whole
of ourselves, may be unusual, but they are not abnormal
experiences, nor are they foreign to our true nature as
men.
I have spoken of various types of experience which
are in some degree mystical, and which yet are well
within the line of normal healthy life. There are other
types of mystical experience which may, and often do,
pass over the border-line of normality and occasionally, '
at least, exhibit pathological phenomena. Among all
peoples that have left any annals there have been
persons of extraordinary powers ; soothsayers, magicians,
wizards, witches, medicine-men, sibyls, clairvoyants, seers,
prophets, persons " possessed " by superhuman spirits.
Such persons, sometimes called " divine," and sometimes
called "demoniac," have played an enormous rdle in
human history. Dr. Pierre Janet has well expressed the
part such men and women have played : " In the develop
ment of every great religion, both in ancient and in
modern times, there have always been strange persons I
who raised the admiration of the crowd because their
nature seemed to be different from human nature. Their
manner of thinking was not the same as that of the others ;
they had extraordinary oblivions or remembrances, they
had visions, they saw or heard what others could not see
or hear. They were illumined by odd convictions ; not
xxvi MYSTICAL RELIGION
only did they think but they also felt in another way
than the bulk of mankind ; they had an extraordinary
delicacy of certain senses joined to extravagant in
sensibilities, which enabled them to bear the most dreadful
tortures with indifference or even with delight. Not only
did they feel, but they also lived otherwise than other
people ; they could do without sleep, or sleep for months
together ; they lived without eating or drinking, without
satisfying their natural needs. Is it not such persons
who have always excited the religious admiration of
peoples, whether sibyls, prophets, pythonesses of Delphi or
Ephesus, or saints of the Middle Ages, or ecstatics, or
illuminates ? Now they were considered as worthy of
admiration and beatified, now they were called witches or
demoniacs and burnt ; but, at the bottom, they always
caused astonishment, and they played a great part in the
development of dogmas and creeds." 1
The literature of mysticism abounds with cases of
ecstasy, of vision of " light," audition of " voices," and there
are well-authenticated instances of automatisms and even
of "stigmata." Again and again there have come to
men and women sudden " incursions " or " invasions "
from beyond the margin of personal consciousness, and
these persons havefe/t themselves environed with God or
even united in one life with Him. 2 Are these unusual
and more or less abnormal experiences instances of
1 Janet, Major Symptoms of Hysteria, New York, 1907, p. 8.
2 It would be quite easy to make an entire volume of selections of instances.
The four instances given below will illustrate the type I am discussing.
Eckhart declares : " I am as certain as that I live that nothing is so near to me
as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself (Meister Eckhart's Mystische
Schriften, by Gustav Landaur, p. 96).
Jacob Boehme says : "In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I
had been many years in a university. I saw and knew the being of all things, the
Byss and Abyss." Jacob Behmen's [Boehme] TAeo. Phil, by Edward Taylor
(London, 1691), p. 425.
Madame Guyon, to whom mystic experiences were almost common occurrences,
gives the following description of one of these : " My spirit disenthralled, became
INTRODUCTION xxvii
pathology, cases of hysteria, or are they evidences of
Divine Influence and Divine Presence ? The mystic
himself believes that he has an experience of God because
(l) these experiences of his come from beyond the
margin of his individual me ; (2) there is something
in the content of his experience which transcends any
thing that normally belongs to him in his finiteness ;
and (3) these experiences possess an impelling, coercive
power, a higher unification of life than he ordinarily
knows. 1
But does this sort of subjective experience furnish
empirical evidence of God ? May not what, in his own
personal vision, the mystic calls " an experience of God "
be only the result of an unconscious " suggestion " and
no more a proof of God than everyday, common experience
is? Recent studies of hysteria and hypnotism have
revolutionized all our ideas of the psychological range and
scope and the subtle power of suggestion. 2 Society
abounds with persons who are hyper-sensitive to
suggestion and over - acute to imitate attitudes and
experiences which occur within their environment, or are
suggested by their reading, and there is no lack of persons
who are swayed by impulses which seem to rise
mysteriously within themselves by unconscious auto
suggestion.
united with and lost in God. And this was so much the case that I seemed to
see and know God only, and not myself. "
James Russell Lowell's "revelation," as he himself calls it, is a very good
instance of this experience : " As I was speaking, the whole system (of the
universe) rose up before me like a vague destiny looming from the Abyss. I
never before so clearly felt the Spirit of God in me and around me. The whole
room seemed to me full of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro with
the presence of something, I knew not what. I spoke with the calmness and
clearness of a prophet" (Letters of Lowell, vol. i. p. 75).
1 See Delacroix, tude d'histoire et de psyc hologie du Mysticisme (Paris, 1908),
pp. 365-66. This is one of the most important books on mysticism that has
appeared in recent years.
* The reader should consult Janet's Major Symptoms of Hysteria, New York,
1907.
xxviii MYSTICAL RELIGION
Some aspects of the experience of mystics un
doubtedly are due to suggestion. There have been
mystics who have possessed abnormal constitutions, who
were subject to strange psychical disturbances. It is
certain that many of the abnormal phenomena reported
in the lives of mystics are in no way distinguishable
from similar phenomena in hysterical cases. Trances,
losses of consciousness, automatisms, vision of lights,
audition of voices, " stigmata," and such-like experiences,
are evidences of hysteria, and they are not in themselves
evidences of Divine Influence or of Divine Presence. In
fact, many mystics have practised methods of asceticism
which were adapted to turn them into abnormal persons
and to produce in them hysterical constitutions. They
have " worked themselves up " to abnormal states. In
the light of these facts it has been contended that even
those striking experiences of expansion, enlargement,
absorption in the Infinite, freedom from all limits, ecstatic
joy, which mystics exhibit, may be instances of auto
suggestion. 1 It is quite possible to be so absorbed in a
single thought that all consciousness of body sensations,
all awareness of an external world, all things of time
and space, shall be unnoticed and be as though they
were not, and when all strain and muscular tension are
absent, peace and joy and fulness of life are the natural
result. It is easy to produce such a state through
hypnotic suggestion, and it seems plainly within the range
of auto-suggestion.
We cannot, therefore, with implicit confidence, leap to
the conclusion that every instance of so-called mystical
experience furnishes us with a sure clue to the God Whom
1 I am dwelling at some length on the place of "suggestion" and "auto
suggestion " because it has been assumed by some recent writers, notably by
Professor Coe, that mystical experiences are only cases of "auto-suggestion"
(see Professor Coe's article on "Sources of the Mystical Revelation" in the
Hibbert Journal for January 1908, pp. 359-72 )
INTRODUCTION xxix
our eager souls seek. To the mystic himself the experience
is evidence enough. It lights his lamp and girds his
loins for action ; it floods him with new power ; it
banishes doubt and despair as the sunrise banishes
darkness. He no more wants arguments now to prove
God's existence than the artist wants arguments to prove
the reality of beauty or the lover does to prove the worth
of love.
But it is useless to claim that mystical experiences
have such ontological bearing that they settle for every
body the reality of God. No subjective experience,
however momentous and significant it may be for the
person who has it, can settle for everybody else the
question : Is there in the universe a God who is personal
and all-loving ? No empirical experience of any sort
can ever answer that question, and to the end of the
world men will be called upon to walk by faith, to make !
their venture in the light of what ought to be true, and
in the light of what seems to them true, and to live by
that faith.
But while these inward mystical experiences cannot
be pushed to the extreme of being turned into com
pelling ontological proofs, they nevertheless do offer
a very weighty ground for believing that there is a More
of Consciousness continuous with our own a co-con
sciousness with which our own is bound up, and that
constructive influences do come into us from beyond our
selves. 1 We must not take fright at the word auto
suggestion. It is only a word, a phrase, which explains
nothing. We have not eliminated God when we conclude,
as we must do, that the physical universe has evolved.
" Evolution " is only a fresh word for describing the
method of making a universe. And when we have
named these great spiritual crises, which carry men up to
1 See James' Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 515.
xxx MYSTICAL RELIGION
new levels of life and power and service, " auto-suggestive
experiences," we have only substituted one word for
another. We called them " new births " ; we call them
" auto-suggestions " ! The/act remains on our hands, and
the fact is a momentous one.
There have been religious geniuses in all ages and in
| all countries, who have had experiences of spiritual
expansion. They have been made aware of a Realm of
Reality on a higher level than that revealed through their
senses. They have sometimes felt invaded by the inrush
of larger Life ; sometimes they have seemed to push
a door inward into a larger range of being, with vastly
heightened energy. The experience is, as we have seen,
always one of joy and rapture ; in fact, it is probably
the highest joy a mortal ever feels. But the significant
fact is not the sense of expansion, or of freedom, or of
joy. It is not something merely subjective. It is that
such experiences minister to life, construct personality
and conduce to the increased power of the race energy
I to live by actually does come to them from somewhere.
The universe backs the experience.
We cannot lightly pass over the spiritual service of
mystics. Far from being the unpractical, dreamy persons
they are too often conceived to have been, they have
weathered storms, endured conflicts, and lived through
water-spouts which would have overwhelmed souls whose
anchor did not reach beyond the veil. They have
discovered an inner refuge, where they enjoy the truce of
God, even amid the din of the world's warfare. They
have led great reforms, championed movements of great
moment to humanity, and they have saved Christianity
- from being submerged under scholastic formalism and
ecclesiastical systems, which were alien to man's essential
nature and need. They have been spiritual leaders, they
are the persons who shifted the levels of life for the
INTRODUCTION xxxi
race. 1 They have been able to render these services because
they felt themselves allied inwardly with a larger personal
Power than themselves, and they have been aware that they
were in immediate correspondence with Some One a Holy
Spirit, a Great Companion who was working with them
and through them. This furtherance of life by incoming
energy, the heightening of power by correspondence with
what seems to be God, is, however, by no means confined
to a few chosen spirits and rare geniuses ; it is a wide
spread fact to be reckoned with everywhere. There are
multitudes of men and women in out-of-the-way places,
in backwoods towns, and on uneventful farms, who are
the salt of the earth and the light of the world in their
communities, because they have had experiences which
revealed to them Realities which their neighbours missed,
and powers to live by which the mere " church-goers " failed
to find.
We have thus much more to account for and explain
than a few rare, subjective experiences, a few cases of
heightened feeling. We are bound to realize that mystic
experiences have a life-value, and validify themselves in
action. Those who are finely sensitive to wider spheres
of Reality impinging on their inner realm, and who corre
spond and co-operate with that More which seems con
tinuous and conterminous with their lives, gain not only in
capacity to correspond and co-operate, but also in power
to overcome difficulties, and to put their lives into con
structive service. We have on our hands experiences
which have opened to individuals and to the race as a
whole wider realms of being, experiences which have
heightened the quality of life and which have given new
energy of survival, and we are compelled to conclude,
either that the personal self is a bottomless affair, carrying
1 Professor Royce has very well treated the social service of the Mystics in his
World and the Individual, vol. i. pp. 85-87.
xxxii MYSTICAL RELIGION
within itself infinite unexplored chambers and undreamed
of energies which sometimes come into play, or that
/ the personal self is bosomed on a larger Realm of
Consciousness from which we draw our being into the
bounds of individuality, and with which we may correspond.
It has been, as we shall see, the contention of mystics in
all ages that God Himself is the ground of the soul, and
that in the deeps of their being all men partake of one
central Divine Life. The facts, at any rate, all point in
this direction.
It is true that the great mystics have often possessed
peculiar psychical constitutions. They have sometimes
exhibited the phenomena of hysteria, and sometimes they
have, beyond question, been pathological, and have experi
enced abnormal states due to an unstable nervous system.
But it is also true that persons possessing such psychical
constitutions have in unusual ways, and in heightened
degree, been able to correspond with an environing
Reality which built up and vitalised their personal lives.
Again and again this "correspondence" has brought
them health and a unified and ordered will. They seem
to find themselves enveloped in a matrix-consciousness of
far wider reach than that of which ordinary persons are
conscious, and they demonstrate that their "correspond
ence " has life- value and a value for the race.
There is thus some co-relation between these inward
experiences and the Eternal Nature of Things. They
have functioned to the enlargement of personal life and to
the expansion of human society. It is just these persons
who have had first-hand experiences of dealing with
inward Reality, that seems to be God, who have been the
master builders of religion. Their testimony to unseen
Realities gives the clue and stimulus to multitudes of
others to gain a like experience, and it is, too, their
testimony that makes God real to the great mass of men
INTRODUCTION xxxiii
who are satisfied to believe on the strength of another's
belief. They have, stage by stage, advanced the realm of /
spiritual life and the appreciation of it, just as great
musicians have enlarged the realm of sound-harmonies
and the appreciation of them.
It is no discredit to inward, mystical religion to show
that social suggestion, or even auto-suggestion, has played
a great part in the development of it. Both have played
a great part in the development of all experiences. Our
language, our moral ideals, our human fashions, are all
what they are because of the conscious or unconscious
influence of group-suggestion, for our lives are, to a greater
extent than most persons realize, conjunct with our
fellows. And " auto-suggestion " may be only another
way of saying that God and man are conjunct, and that
in the deeps of the soul, beyond our power of knowing
how, Divine suggestions come to human consciousness.
The fact is, that enlarging, expanding power, constructive
spiritual energy, comes into certain persons, which makes
them sure that they are allied to a Being who guarantees
the ultimate goodness of the world. They hear
" The bubbling of the springs
That feed the world,"
and they live more dynamic lives because of these
experiences which rise within them
" as mysteriously as cape
Of cloud grown out of invisible air."
But this experience, as soon as it is valued and
appreciated, will, let us grant, show the influence of
unconscious suggestion from the social environment, and
will be found to have a temporal element in it The
actual mystical views of any given period, the symbolism
through which these inward experiences are expressed,
the " revelations " which come to mystical prophets, all
xxxiv MYSTICAL RELIGION
/ bear the mark and colour of their particular age. There
are no " pure experiences," i.e. no experiences which come
wholly from beyond the person who has them :
" For every fiery prophet in old time,
And all the sacred madness of the bard,
When God made music through him
Could but make his music by the framework and the chord." l
The most refined mysticism, the most exalted spiritual
experience is partly a product of the social and intellectual
environment in which the personal life of the mystic has
formed and matured. There are no experiences of any
sort which are independent of preformed expectations or
unaffected by the prevailing beliefs of the time. Every
bit of our inner or outer life, however much it is our own,
is shot through with lines of colour due to social and racial
suggestions. All our ideals of goodness, all our instan
taneous decisions of conscience, our most inward light, and
our most instinctive wisdom, have come to be what they
are because we have been organic with our particular
social group at this identical period of human history.
Mystical experiences will be, perforce, saturated with the
dominant ideas of the group to which the mystic belongs,
and they will reflect the expectations of that group and
that period. 2
It is this conformation of mysticism to the type of
religion out of which it springs, and the fact that it is
always imbedded in the life of a social group that gives
it its sanity and safeguard from vagaries and caprices.
The greatest danger from mysticism, and there are
dangers, is just this of becoming relatively detached
from the experience of the race, the illumination of the
great revealers of the past. Religion and morality are
' the consummate gains of the travail of the ages, and no
1 Tennyson's Holy Grail.
8 This feature of mystical experience is well treated in Delacroix, op. cit.
INTRODUCTION xxxv
person can cut loose from the spiritual group -life in
which he is rooted without entailing serious loss. To
sever one's roots in history and in the slowly-gathered
content of religious faith, " to build all inward " and to
have no light but what comes " pure " by the inward way,
is to suffer shrinkage, and to run the tremendous risk of
ending in moral and spiritual bankruptcy, with only
vagaries and caprices for assets. The sane mystic does
not exalt his own experiences over historical revelation, j
he rather interprets his own openings in the light of
the master-revelations. He does not foolishly conclude,
because he has a vision of his own, that " the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ " is out -dated and
unnecessary, any more than the artist, with a " gift " of
his own, concludes that he has no need of the inspiring
guidance of the old masters ; or than the musician, who
has an original creative power in himself, flies to the con
clusion that he can ignore the men in the past who have
revealed the nature and scope of music. Mystical religion,
instead of making the soul independent of Christ and of
earlier revelations, rather insists that every hint of the Divine
meaning that has come in any age, through any person,
is precious, and that the supreme unveiling of the nature
and character of God, the highest exhibition of the range
and scope of human possibility in the person of Jesus
Christ, is unspeakably important for any one whose main
concern is to be a son of God. This religion of first
hand experience is not a substitute for Christianity ; it is '
Christianity alive and vocal in personal experience and in
individual love.
There has undoubtedly been in many mystical move
ments an over-emphasis on ecstasy and moveless con
templation, and it is easy to see that individual mystics
have, perhaps unconsciously, employed methods now
familiar to us in hypnotic experiments. They have used
xxxvi MYSTICAL RELIGION
short cuts and unspiritual aids to hasten their arrival at a
state of joyous absorption. They have exhibited an over-
fascination for a suspension of all desire and a loss of [the
strain and struggle, which go with that " slow, dead heave
of the will " in the great moral issues of life. They
have, too, sometimes been almost obsessed with the fixed
idea that all the ills of life and the confusions of muta
bility would disappear if only they believed implicitly
enough in the allness of God and the unity of all that is.
This has led them to glorify abstraction and to choose the
via negativa, the negative path ; that is, to win their
peace by refusing to take account of multiplicity and
evil, sin and pain. They have found their line of least
resistance to be withdrawal and negation, which is, at
best, only the backstairs to the Upper Room.
But I prefer to dwell on the tremendous service of the
Mystics. There are imperfections in all human under
takings, and there are blunderers wherever men seriously
gird themselves for high endeavours. We do not scorn
poetry, though there have been poetasters who became
popular ; we do not give up our appreciation of great
music, though there have been poor performers who got
the large gate receipts. We must recognise the limita
tions and the false trails, but we do well to keep in the
goodly fellowship of those who have seen and heard and
handled the Word of Life, and who have found the inner
way home.
There is no attempt in the following chapters to give
a complete history of Christian mysticism, nor are all the
movements herein studied properly called mystical, though
they have all helped to further religion of this inward and
first-hand type. There have been momentous epochs
when vital, dynamic religion has flourished, when men of
creative power have made new discoveries of the soul's
capacities, and have become so initiated into the mysteries
INTRODUCTION xxxvii
of the kingdom of God that they could open for their
fellows new doors into the spiritual life, and thus have '
become centres of spiritual groups. I shall study, in the
following pages, some of these spiritual groups, these
creative movements, and some of the persons who have
been in a peculiar degree prophets of the soul by
virtue of their own direct experience. It is not always
possible to trace a direct historical connection between
these spiritual groups, for the literary data which have
survived are often meagre ; but the following chapters
will make it evident, I think, that there has been a
continuous prophetical procession, a mystical brotherhood /
through the centuries, of those who have lived by the
soul's immediate vision. Again and again, as will appear,
the writings of a mystic, long dead and seemingly
forgotten, with no school of disciples to disseminate his
message, have reached an apt and ready soul, have
kindled him to glowing life, and have made him again
the centre of a new group ; and so the torch has passed
on to a new age.
I have begun with a brief study of the inward, free, and
untrammelled type of religion which prevailed in the early
period of the primitive Church, and I have, in the most
compact way possible, sketched the growth and develop
ment of the ecclesiastical system which was gradually
substituted for the free and organic fellowship of the first
stage of Christianity. The studies of the mystical element
in the Church Fathers and in Greek Philosophy are
necessarily inadequate. I have confined myself to the
task of gathering up the main lines of influence which
reappear in the mystical sects of medieval Europe.
I have included in these studies the Waldensian, the
Wyclifite, and the Anabaptist movements, though they
are mainly unmystical, because of their very great
importance in the general movement of Christianity
xxxviii MYSTICAL RELIGION
toward a more inward and personal form of religion, less
ecclesiastical and sacerdotal, and depending more on the
direct relation of man to God.
I propose, at some later time, to publish a volume on
Jacob Boehme, and I have thought it best not to crowd
his contribution into an inadequate chapter. My studies
come down only to the end of the English Commonwealth,
because this volume is intended to be an introduction to a
series of historical volumes by myself and others devoted
to the development and spiritual environment of a par
ticular branch of modern Christianity The Society of
Friends a religious body which has made a serious
attempt to unite inward, mystical religion with active,
social endeavours, and to maintain a religious fellowship
without a rigid ecclesiastical system, and with large scope
for personal initiative, immediate revelation and individual
responsibility.
CHAPTER I
THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE
CHRISTIANITY
I
THERE has been a persistent feeling, a perennially
recurring faith throughout all centuries of the Christian
Church, that the culminating period of religion was in
the Galilean circle and in the apostolic age. Men have
steadily looked back to that period as the " golden age,"
when the Divine and the human were completely united
in one Life, and were brought into joyous fellowship
in many lives. The supreme aspiration of the spiritual
men and women who have travailed for the regeneration
of humanity, has been for a return, a restoration, of that
golden time. The cry, " Back to Christ," or " Back to
apostolic Christianity," is not at all a new cry. Every
profound movement toward a more spiritual and un
fettered form of Christianity than that embodied in the
dominant historical Church of the period has been
initiated by a rediscovery of Christ, or by a fresh inter
pretation of the Gospel, and in nearly every instance the
leaders of reform have asserted their particular movement
to be a " revival of primitive Christianity."
We are now, however, well aware, through historical
study, that there was in the first period of the Church
no one well defined and fixed type of " apostolic Christi
anity." There were, even in the days of the apostles,
many types and varieties of Christianity, almost as
i B
2 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP
different from each other as our modern types are.
Paul's interpretation was the first to receive literary
expression, and through his dominating personality and
his vast missionary and literary labours Pauline Christi
anity became a widespread form of early faith and
practice. 1 A type very unlike that of Paul's finds ex
pression in the short Epistle of James, and the concep
tion expressed in that Epistle appears to have had many
adherents and to have been "primitive Christianity" for
a large circle of the followers of Christ Johannine
Christianity had many aspects unlike either that of Paul
or that of James. Its perspective of Christ is different,
its points of emphasis are very unlike those of the two
apostolic interpreters already mentioned. The writer of
the " Epistle to the Hebrews " is so unique in his inter
pretation of Christ, that no serious scholar can believe
that Paul wrote this Epistle. The three synoptic writers,
again, have made their particular selection of incidents
and sayings because they have already formed their own
conception of Christ, and because they have in mind the
peculiar needs of the groups of Christians to which they
belonged.
As Harnack has well said, "Jesus sought to kindle
independent religious life, and He did kindle it ; yes, that
is His peculiar greatness, that He led men to God so that
they lived their own life with Him." 2 Primitive Christi
anity was above everything else a way of living, and it
exhibited, as life always does, freedom, variety, personality.
I It is vain to expect to revive i.e. to bring back in its
pristine form, the Christianity of the first century. There
is no possibility, in an evolving world, of bringing back
any age, however golden it may look in retrospect
the course of humanity is always forward. What we do
j want is to penetrate the secret of the power manifested
in bygone times, and to discover, as far as may be, what
1 It should be recognized, of course, that Paul himself had no fixed and un
varying system of doctrine or of practice. One who reads him in the historic
spirit sees that Paul's "Christianity" is, throughout the Epistles, in process of
making. His entire conception of the meaning of Christianity shows great advance
between the writing of i Thessalonians and Philippians.
2 Das Wesen des Christenthums, p. 7.
i ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 3
was the spring of energy, the vital spirit, which possessed
men in ages when great things were done, and when men
lived in joy and triumph.
The great epochs in religion, and particularly this
greatest epoch, which we call the "apostolic age," are
marked off and characterized by a peculiarly rich and i
vivid consciousness of the Divine Presence. They are
times when in new, fresh, and transforming ways
persons have experienced the real presence of God.
Life is always raised to new levels, and receives
a new dynamic quality whenever God becomes real in f
personal and social experience. The battle has raged
long and bitterly over the metaphysical relation of Christ
to God ; great rallying cries have grown out of these
battles, and different communions have gathered about
the various formulations of doctrine upon these and other
difficult metaphysical questions, but the much more im
portant questions are questions of fact ; namely, what
were the significant features of Christ's experience^ what i
gave Him His extraordinary power over those who were '
in fellowship with Him, and what was it that made His
disciples in such effective ways " the salt of the earth, the
light of the world " ? and these questions have hardly been
raised at all. The time is coming, however, when the
emphasis will shift it is already shifting from questions
of systematic theology to questions of religious experience,
from metaphysics to psychology. It is a point of the
first importance that the Gospels have given us little
or no metaphysics ; the language of theology is, too,
quite foreign to them. They have given us instead the
portrait of a Person who had a most extraordinary experi- \
ence of God and of Oneness with Him. We may wish
that we had more of the very words of this Person, and
that our accounts of His life were not coloured by His
reporters ; but we ought rather to be grateful that these
first century biographers have, with unstudied simplicity,
given us so little of themselves, and have opened to us
so many approaches to the real life and even the actual
consciousness of the Person who originated in the world
4 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
this new and intimate fellowship with God which we call
Christianity.
We should be very far from depreciating the impressive
efforts of scholars, ancient and modern, to gather up and
formulate the teaching of Jesus, the original message,
for no one can fail to recognize that He was a Master,
that He taught disciples, and that His teachings, His
dominant ideas, have enormously influenced human
thought, and have formed a large factor in the moral
evolution of the race ; but no summary of Christ's teach
ings, no formulation of His dominant ideas can give us
a full account of " primitive Christianity," for " primitive
Christianity" is supremely this unique Person, Jesus
Christ, with His experience of God, His insight into
the meaning of Life, His consecration to the task of
remaking man, and the extraordinary fellowship which
His Spirit produced.
Christianity in the golden age was essentially a
rich and vivid consciousness of God, rising to a perfect
experience of union wiith God in mind and heart and
will. It was a personal exhibition of the Divine in
the human, the Eternal in the midst of time. When
we get back to the head -waters of our religion we
come ultimately to a Person who felt, and, in childlike
simplicity, said that " No man knows the Father save the
Son," and " I and the Father are one."
The direct impact and power of His life on His
' followers is the most extraordinary thing in the Gospels,
and the continued power of His life over men is the
most marvellous thing in human history. The source
of this power is to be found in the fact that men have
found through Him a direct way to God, that by His
life and death they have been drawn themselves into
a personal experience of God in some degree like His
own. He always taught His disciples to expect this, and
it was their attainment of this experience that made them
the apostles of the new religion. Christianity is thus at
its very heart a mystical religion a religion which lives
and flourishes because its members experience what its
i ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 5
Founder experienced, the actual presence of God as the
formative Spirit of a new creation. 1 As I have said,
every disciple was summoned to expect a direct and
conscious incoming of the Divine Life. "Wherever two
or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the
midst," 2 was the announcement of a mystical fellowship
which has cheered the hearts of little groups of worshippers
in all ages and in all lands where the words of the Gospel
have come. " Lo, I am with you always " 8 was a promise
which fed and watered the faith of men in the hard days
of cross and stake, and in the long, uneventful years when
no "sign" was given that the fellowship of the saints
would finally overcome the world.
The members of this primitive group were taught
in the most impressive way to avoid anxiety and worry,
and, instead, to open their souls to the circulation of ^
Divine forces of life which build up the inward life as
noiselessly and yet as beautifully as the lily's robe is
spun and the cubits are added to the care -free child.*
They were told not to be disturbed about their defence
before judges and authorities in times of strait, but
to trust to the springs of wisdom that would flow into
them from the larger Life of the Holy Spirit in which
they lived. 6 The promise of direct and inward fellowship
with Christ took on wider scope, according to the recently
discovered " saying " of Jesus, " Wherever any man raises
a stone or cleaves wood, there am I " ; for whether this
is a genuine "saying" of Jesus, or an early Christian
reminiscence of an idea which He taught in a more
general way, it undoubtedly expresses in graphic language
one of the deepest truths which pervade the original
teaching, namely that the disciple, whether gathered for
1 The mysticism of the Gospels and so, too, that of the other New Testament
writers is, of course, very far removed from that type of religion historically known
as ' ' mysticism. " Strictly speaking, the New Testament is no more a mystical
Book than it is a theological or metaphysical, or ecclesiastical Book. The
mysticism in it is implicit and unconscious ; it is never subjected to reflection or
made explicit in thought But, nevertheless, we have here throughout religion in
the intense stage, as immediate and first-hand experience of God, which is mysti
cism at its best, and in its truest meaning initiation into the Divine secret.
5 Matt. xviiL 20. * Matt xxviii. 20.
* Matt. vi. 25-34. ' Luke xii. n.
6 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
worship, or defending himself before the "authorities,"
or engaged in simple labour with his hands, is to share
a direct fellowship with Christ, a fellowship which shall
consecrate every spot of the earth and hallow every
occupation. 1
The pictorial description of " the Judgment Day "
identifies God with the least member of the mystical
fellowship. There is no other passage in the New
Testament which announces more positively the solidarity
' of the race and the conjunct life of God and man. He,
the Head of the Fellowship, drinks of the cup put to
the lips of the thirsty child, and the slenderest ministry
performed out of love circulates through the whole, and
touches the Infinite Heart 8 This description ought to
have softened the lurid colours which have so often been
used to paint the Judgment Day supposed to be a dies
irae ; but there is unmistakable evidence that the idea of
the . solidarity of humanity, the announcement that God
identifies Himself with the hungry and naked and per
secutedeven the least the teaching that every man in
the deeps of his soul is bound in with God, which are
expressed in this primitive narrative, have exercised a
marked influence on those groups of Christians who have
gone to the Gospel itself for their illumination.
The entire teaching of the Kingdom of God has its
mystical aspect. It is a society, or fellowship, both in
earth and in heaven, both human and Divine. Its capital
is not in some foreign land, its King is not a distant
, Sovereign, for any member of the Kingdom at any spot
of earth can see Him if his heart is pure. The person
who belongs to the Kingdom is a person in whom God
lives and rules, and through whom the contagion of a love,
caught from above, spreads through the world. The King
dom is the life of God exhibited in human fellowship, the
1 This is Logion 5 of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. It is in full as follows :
"Jesus saith, wherever there are (two), they are not without God, and wherever
there is one alone, I say, I am with him. Raise the stone, and there thou shall
find Me ; cleave the wood, and there am I. " There is a profoundly mystical
saying in the second collection of Oxyrhynchus Papyri, in which Jesus says :
4 ' Verily the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and whoever kncnueth Aimse!fsha.\l
find it." Matt. xxv. 31-46.
i ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 7
heavenly life appearing here in the midst of time, the
sway of God in human hearts ; it is a human society
which grows on and flowers out and ripens its fruit,
because its unseen roots are in God the Life.
Instead of founding a Church in the technical sense,
Christ brought a little group of men and women into
a personal experience of God, similar to His own, and
left them baptized in a consciousness of the Spirit's
presence to form the Church as the conditions and
demands of different epochs and diverse lands should
require. " I give unto you the keys," is said not only to
Peter, but to every disciple who has reached the insight,
not by flesh and blood, but by spiritual perception, that
Christ is the Son of the living God the personal
realization of the life of God in a human life. 1
The Church itself, then, as seen in its simplest con
ception, is a mystical fellowship, formed and gathered not
by the will of man, nor schemes of flesh and blood, but by
direct revelation from God to the soul. The first spiritual
stone in the structure, which is to defy time and death, is
a person who is chosen because by revelation he has dis-
covered the Divine in the human ; and with only one
stone ready, Christ sees the spiritual building of the ages
rising and reaching beyond the power of death. Each
believer is a mystical stone. To each person who lives
by his faith and vision of the Son of God the key is
given. In a word, the authority is within the spiritual
soul, and not external to it Each member is crowned
and mitred. 2
The primitive Church, in its first stage, as it is de
scribed in Acts, was clearly a mystical fellowship, i.e. a
fellowship bound together, not by external organization,
but by the power of the experience of the Divine presence
among the members. It is evident that many were drawn
into the fellowship (icoivwvia, they called it) by their ex
pectation of an imminent return of the Christ who, they
believed, had disappeared for an interval, and would come
1 Matt. xvi. 13-20.
9 See Dante's Purgatorio, canto xxvii. lines 140-43.
8 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
soon " to restore all things " and " to give the Kingdom to
Israel." But it is just as evident that there was at least
a nucleus of persons in the group who were recipients of
I first-hand experiences of an extraordinary sort, and who
lived, not on expectation, but on the actual experience of
unwonted spiritual visitation.
At this stage of Christian consciousness the Holy
Spirit was thought of as a power coming from without
into the person. The Divine incoming was conceived as
an invasion as a mighty rushing wind and the effects
looked for were miraculous, sudden, and temporary. 1 The
little group which gathered from house to house, eating
their bread together in gladness and singleness of heart,
lived in the borderland of ecstasy and exhibited the
extraordinary phenomena which have appeared in some
measure, wherever mystical groups have been formed, as
we shall see in the course of this history. 8 "Speaking
with tongues " was not confined to the one occasion when
the little band felt the inrushing of the mighty wind. It
was common in the primitive Church, and seems to have
appeared wherever the first Christians went Paul treats
it in Corinthians as though it were a regular gtft y which
was to be looked for whenever the Spirit came upon men.
The atmosphere was charged with wonder, and men ex
pected incursions from the unseen world into the sphere
of their daily lives.
There can be no question that these simple and un
studied accounts of the life of the primitive fellowship
have played a great r61e in the history of the Church.
The fellowship itself, with all things in common, the agape
or love feast, the consciousness of Divine invasion, the
expectation of the marvellous, the unconcern about the
affairs of this life, the experiment to form a society
governed from within and guided by ecstatic prophecy,
have been in some degree repeated again and again.
1 This view is perfectly natural. It always seems to persons who experience
what may be called mystical consciousness, that the second self of which they
become aware is a distinct Other Self, beyond the margin of their own personal
life.
8 These phenomena are due to the peculiar functioning of the central nervous
system, and do not of themselves imply lofty inward spiritual experience.
i ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 9
The duration of the primitive fellowship, at least in its
simple and mystical form, was short. The Jerusalem
Church was soon organized under a visible head James,
the brother of the Lord and the whole basis of the
Church life and polity was powerfully affected by the
remarkable missionary activity of Paul, and by the pro
clamation of what he himself called his " Gospel." 1
II
It is possible to find in the writings of the Apostle
Paul almost anything one is looking for. So universal a
man was he, so deeply did he go down to the elemental
springs of human life, that all the fundamental aspects of
world religion are found in him. The person who comes
to him with a well-defined theory can, with a little skill,
generally prove by texts that this was Paul's "central
idea," and the next person with an opposite theory can
as conclusively prove that his own hobby was manifestly
the " central idea of Paul." Whenever an elemental man
appears in history he becomes the spiritual father of many
very diverse children, and each child is apt to claim that
he is the very own and only.
I shall not claim that Paul was exclusively a mystic,
for that claim would be as partial and one-sided as the
claim that has sometimes been made that he was ex
clusively a Rabbinical, scholastic theologian. But I shall
maintain that there was a very marked mystical tendency
in his nature, and that there is a strong mystical element
in his writings. It is no straining of the facts to say that
Paul's "Gospel" was deeply grounded in an immediate,
personal experience of the Divine Being, who impinged
upon him, invaded him, and finally became the inward
principle and spirit of his very self. In a word, we have
here a man whose religion was first-hand. I shall do
little more in this short sketch than bring together the
autobiographical passages, which show that he was subject
to incursions from beyond the circle and margin of his
1 " According to my Gospel," Rom. ii. 16.
io MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
own self, and that he attained a state of life in which he
felt a unity of being with God, which made him " able to
do all things." *
As a young man, fresh from the school of a great
Rabbi, he came in contact with the strange new sect
" those of the way." Its teaching was abhorrent to him,
and made him a persecutor. But the power exhibited
in the lives of its saints, the assurance and triumph of its
adherents whom he persecuted, the ecstatic vision and
shining face of its first martyr, put goads in his soul. 2
He was aware of a dual nature within himself, for the
seventh chapter of Romans has surely come out of his
own actual experience. There was a dim glimmering of
a new self not yet born, rising above an old self not yet
dead, and nowhere could he find any "power of God,"
any dynamic of salvation, that would give him the
victory. In this, the supreme issue of life, he felt him
self defeated " I know that in me dwelleth no good
thing " ; " what I would not that I do," and over
against this continuous defeat stood the steady triumph
of victory of those whom he was dragging to prison and
to death. Through the closed lids of the man whom he
helped to bring to martyrdom had come the vision of
Christ at the right hand of God, and he had heard the
vision announced in a way that burned into his soul.
As he rode toward Damascus the goads became sharp
within him, and suddenly the vision which had come to
Stephen came to him ; he too saw Jesus Christ. That it
was an inward experience with powerful physical effects
(such as often accompany mystical experiences), his
own language makes almost certain. His own earliest
account of it is in Galatians i. 15-16: "It pleased God
to reveal His Son in me" and he is evidently referring to
this great event in 2 Corinthians iv. 6 : " God who said,
' Let light shine out of darkness,' hath shined into our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
1 Phil. iv. 3.
a See his speech before Agrippa : " It is hard for thee to kick against the
goads " (Acts xxvi. 14). It is evident that his better self revolted from his course
as persecutor.
i ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY n
the face of Jesus Christ" l We have, furthermore, his
own testimony that the apprehension of Christ by sense
is a very small matter in comparison with seeing Him
inwardly and spiritually. 2
There are other autobiographical passages which
plainly show that Paul was subject to extraordinary
experiences. Defending his apostleship to the Corin
thians, he writes : " I will come to visions and revelations
of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen
years ago (whether in the body, I cannot tell ; or whether
out of the body, I cannot tell : God knoweth) ; 8 such an
one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such
a man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I
cannot tell : God knoweth) ; how that he was caught
up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which
it is not lawful for a man to utter." 4 That this
" such a man " was himself he forthwith tells us in
verse 7. In his discussion of the relative importance of
" speaking with tongues," he informs us that he possessed
in high degree this extraordinary experience : " I speak
with tongues more than you all" 5 There are other indi
cations in his epistles, strongly supported by definite
passages in Acts, that he was the recipient of immediate
and direct revelations of truths, whose origin he could not
trace to books, or teachers, or to any human communica
tions, and of positive practical guidance, which his own
" wisdom " could not account for.
It requires no wrenching of texts to reach the conclusion
that Paul was psychologically possessed of a constitution
plainly adapted to experiences of an unusual sort We have
not only the extraordinary events of his sudden conversion
with visual and auditory phenomena, we have not only
the ecstatic experience of 2 Corinthians xiL I ff., which
left him with his physical system permanently affected,
but his entire biography is marked with similar events.
1 The passage in i Cor. TV. 8, " Last of all He was seen of me also," is open
to either a subjective or an objective interpretation, but there can be little doubt
that he has his Damascus experience in mind. * 3 Cor. v. 16.
* He would undoubtedly have said the same of his Damascus experience, for
he wavers between the outward and the inward view.
4 a Cor. xii. 1-4. * i Cor. xiv. 18.
12 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
His first journey to Europe is motived by a " vision "
which came at the close of a long strain of uncertainty.
His journey from Antioch to Jerusalem to meet the
apostolic fellowship and settle the basis of his own work
among the Gentiles was the result of " revelation " coming
after a mental tension. His " Gospel " is not a scholastic
and carefully reasoned " system " of theology. It was
" received " in a series of insights. His message surged
up, without any conscious dialectic, from the deeps of
his soul. He was eminently a person of the prophet
type, speaking by inspiration, seeing with photographic
intuition, and therefore never constructing a solid, con
sistent dogma, but producing instead a marvellous, many-
sided ideal and method of life, in which are woven
together all the strands of influence which shaped his
own rich personal faith. Few more composite types
have ever existed, and it is easy for the one-sided theorist
to prove that Paul is always using the forensic con
ceptions of Jewish theology, or the imagery of the
apocalyptic writers, or the animistic speech of popular
usage, or the symbolism of the Greek mysteries, or the
religious philosophy of the Hellenistic schools, or the
pantheistic ideas of the Stoics, for all these elements of
culture are combined in him, and are in evidence in his
epistles. 1
But it is also evident that Paul set slight value on
extraordinary phenomena. His profound mysticism is
not to be sought in glossolalia or in ecstatic vision. His
real claim to be enrolled in the list of mystics is found in
his normal experience. Over against a single experience
of being " caught up into Paradise " in ecstasy, in the first
stages of his Christian period, we can put the steady
experience of living in heavenly places in Christ Jesus
which characterised his mature Christian period. Over
against the inrushing of a foreign power, which made his lips
utter words which did not come from himself, we can put
the calm but mighty transfiguration of personality which was
slowly wrought in him during the fourteen years following
1 See Pfleiderer, Prim, Christ, vol. i. p. 96.
i ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 13
his ecstasy : " With unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror
the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into the
same image, from glory to glory (i.e. gradually) by the
Spirit of the Lord." l
We must be very modest in making assertions about
Paul's " central idea." But it is well on safe ground to
say that his " Gospel " cannot be understood if one loses
sight of this truth : The Christian must re-live Christ's
life, by having Him formed within, as the source and
power of the new life.
The autobiographical passages, to begin with his own
first-hand experience, give the best illustration which
we have of this normal mystical life. The earliest
passage which we have comes out of the great contest
with legalism. His opponents say that salvation comes
through obedience to a divinely mediated and time-
honoured " system " of rites and ordinances. He says :
" Christ lives in me " ; * "I bear in my body the marks
of the Lord Jesus " ; 8 " God hath sent forth the Spirit
of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father." 4 The
Corinthian troubles called out another set of personal
testimonies : " He hath given us the earnest of His Spirit
in our hearts." 6 "We are transformed into the image
of the Lord by the Spirit of the Lord." 6 "God hath
shined into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" r " We
are always bearing about in the body the dying of the
Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus may be seen in
our body." 8 " Our inward self is renewed day by day," 9
" If we have known Christ after the flesh, we know Him
so no more." 10 To the Roman Christians who had not
yet seen his face, he writes : " The law of the Spirit of
Life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of
sin and death." 11 "The Spirit itself beareth witness
with our spirit that we are sons of God." l3
And finally, out of his prison in Rome he tells his
1 a Cor. iii. 18. a Gal. ii. 20. ' Gal. vi. 17.
4 GaL iv. 6. 5 2 Cor. i. 22. 8 2 Cor. iii. 18.
7 2 Cor. iv. 6. 2 Cor. iv. 10. 9 2 Cor. iv. 16.
10 2 Cor. v. 1 6. u Rom. viiL 2. ia Rom. viii 16.
1 4 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Philippian friends : "For me to live is Christ," l and he sets
forth as the supreme attainment, the goal of hope, " to win
Christ," which means, to " know Him (by inward experi
ence) and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship
of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death." 2
The inward experience of a new creation, the actual
formation of Christ, as the resident life within, " worked
mightily " in him* and he called everybody to a similar
experience. Few words have ever borne a more touch
ing appeal than that intimate personal call to his wavering
friends in Galatia : " My little children, I am travailing
in birth pains again for you until Christ be formed in
you" 4 "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ
have put on Christ? 5 To the Roman Christians he says :
" If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he does not
belong to Him " ; " If Christ be in you, the sinful body
is dead " ; " He that raised up Christ from the dead shall
make your mortal bodies alive by His Spirit that dwelleth
in you." e To the Corinthian believers he says : " He
that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit with Him " ; 7
" Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in
you " ; * " You are the body of Christ " ; 9 " By one Spirit
we are all baptized into one body." 10 The Ephesian
prayer carries us almost beyond what can be asked or
thought, that " Christ may dwell in your hearts," and that
" Ye may be filled to all fulness with God." n And the
Colossian letter declares that the riches of the glory of
the divine revelation is this : " Christ in you." 12
It would be easy to multiply texts, but the mystical
aspect of Paul's " Gospel " does not rest on isolated texts.
It is woven into the very structure of his message. He
cares not at all for the shell of religion. The survival of
ceremonial practices are to him " nothing." Circumcision,
which stands in his thought for the whole class of re
ligious performances, " avails nothing." Everything turns
on a " new creation." His aim is always the creation of
1 Phil. i. 21. a Phil. iii. 8-10. 8 Col. i. 29.
4 GaL iv. 19. 6 Gal. iii. 27. 6 Rom. viii. 9-11.
7 i Cor. vi. 17. 8 t cor. vi. 15 and 19. 8 i Cor. xii. 27.
10 i Cor. xii. 13. n Eph. iii. 14-21. 12 Col. i. 27
i ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 15
a " new man," the formation of the " inward man," and
this " inward man " is formed, not by the practice of rite
or ritual, not by the laying on of hands, but by the
actual incorporation of Christ the Divine Life into the
life of the man, in such a way that he w/to is joined to the
Lord is one Spirit. Christ is resident within, and thereby
produces a new spirit a principle of power, a source of
illumination, an earnest of unimagined glory.
The proof of this inwardly formed self is not ecstasy,
tongue, or miracle. It is victory over the lower passions,
the flesh and a steady manifestation of love. There
are ascending stages of " spiritual gifts," *>. of operations,
which flow out from the new central self which Christ has
formed within. Some are striking and spectacular, some
seem extraordinary and " supernatural," but the best gift
of all, the goal of the entire process of the Spirit, is the
manifestation of love. It is " that which is perfect " and
which supersedes knowledge, and tongues, and ecstatic
prophecies which are "in part," and only mirror-reflec
tions. Nobody else has ever expressed in equal perfection
and beauty the fervour and enthusiasm of the initiated
mystic, inspired by union with God, as Paul has expressed
them in his two hymns of love the hymn on the love of
God, 1 and the hymn on the love of men. 2 Love is the
Kingdom of God. It shows that, at length, the body has
become a Temple, and that the human face and hands and
feet, which move to exhibit love, are a visible facade of a
holy place where God dwells. Paul's "Gospel" from
beginning to end, whether his sacred word is " love " or
" faith," presupposes a human person partaking of the
Divine Life, which freely gives itself, and it points away to
a consummation in which the Spirit and law of this Divine
Life become the Spirit and law of " a new creature " a
man in whom Christ is re-lived. His " new man " is a
supernatural inward creation wrought by the Spirit who
is identical with Christ u the Lord is the Spirit " who
enters into the man and becomes in him power, and life,
and spiritualizing energy.
1 Rom. viii. 31 . i Cor. xiii.
16 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP,
III
Johannine Christianity has, by many writers, been
regarded as the main source of Christian mysticism, and
not infrequently the two expressions have been made
synonymous, i.e. Christian mysticism and Johannine
Christianity have been used interchangeably. It must, I
think, be admitted that no other New Testament author
has, to the same extent as John, made the world at large
familiar with the principles of mystical religion, nor has
any other furnished so many expressions which have
become current coin in the mystical groups which
have formed during the history of the Church. The
Christianity of John has generally been taken as the
type of "heart religion," a religion whose emphasis is
upon inward and first-hand experience.
The fact is, however, that the term " mystic " does not
as properly belong to John as to Paul. Paul's Christianity
takes its rise in an inward experience, and from beginning
to end the stress is upon Christ inwardly experienced and
re-lived. John's emphasis is upon the Life and Work of
a historical Person whose teaching and commandments
are dwelt upon and urged as words of life. When he
announces his own first-hand experience, it is objective
experience : " We beheld His glory." * " We have seen
with our eyes, and our hands have handled the manifested
Word of Life." 2 The gaze turns back to a well-known
Figure, and memory is busy with the face and form of
Him who had, for John, been the tabernacle of God.
And yet it is true that in the Fourth Gospel and the first
Epistle of John we have a Christianity which is mystical,
a religion, the central ideas of which are a Divine birth
within, and the permanent presence of the Divine Spirit,
imparting Himself to the human spirit. John's language
is simpler than Paul's. The former puts the profoundest
truth into a parable which may be taken at any height,
according to the spiritual stature of the reader, and his
1 John i. 14. 2
, ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 17
most important terms are themselves parables " Light,"
" bread," " water," " seed " and so, like the winged seeds ,
of nature, his truths have floated across the world and
germinated in multitudes of hearts, while Paul's deepest
message has been missed and the world has got out of
him only what the theologians formulated.
John has many ways of saying that spiritual life is
the result of the incoming of God into human life. In
fact, John's word, " Life," itself means always something i
divinely begotten. It is a type of Life, above the
" natural " human life as that is above the animal, or as
animal is above vegetable. It is Life " of God," or " from
God " ; Life " begotten of God," or " born of the Spirit."
It is eternal Life, exhibited in time, and carrying within
itself inexhaustible possibilities. It circulates out from
God like light from a luminous body, and penetrates every
person who comes into the world, but it becomes the
principle of inward Life only for those who " receive " it
by act of will, i.e. appropriate it by a positive response of
faith. 1 I call this idea mystical because it is a direct and
immediate experience by which the soul partakes of
God.
No word which John uses conveys this truth better
than " seed," a word, however, which he uses only once :
"Whoever is born of God does not commit sin, for His
seed ((rrrepfjia) is in him and he cannot sin because he
is born of God." 2 It is a word which mystics have again
and again adopted to express the implanting of the
Divine Life within the human soul. It means that the
principle by which a man lives unto God and resists the
tendencies of the flesh is a Divine germ, something of
God, " received " into the soul, a new life-principle which
expands and becomes the Life of the person. The same
idea is expressed in figure, by " water " and " bread " ;
" The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well
of water springing up into everlasting life." 8 "I am the
1 John L 9.
1 i John lit 9. The same truth is expressed in i Peter i. 33 : " Being born
again not of corruptible seed itnrep^a) but of incorruptible, by the word of God
which liveth and abideth for ever. " * John iv. 14.
C
1 8 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Bread of Life." l " If any man eat of this bread he shall
live forever." 2 Through both figures "you must drink
me " ; " you must eat me " the profound truth is told
that man enters into Life, or has Life in him, only as he
partakes of God, for Christ is God in a form which man
can grasp and assimilate. We are dealing with a process
by which the believer takes into himself the Divine Life,
and by an inward change makes it his own, so that he
actually has " God abiding in him." This Lord's Supper
1 calls for no visible elements, no consecrated priest. It
calls only for a human heart, conscious of its needs, and
ready to eat the Bread of God on the one momentous
condition, of willing and loving what Christ wills and
loves. It is actual transubstantiation, but it is not bread
and wine changed to literal body and blood of Christ. It
is finite human spirit feeding upon the bread and water of
God that is, upon God expressed to us in terms which
fit our elemental human needs and so being transformed
into that very Divine Life itself : " As the living Father
sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he that
eateth me, he also shall live because of me." Indeed it
is a " hard saying," for it takes us beyond all ordinary
biology, beyond all traditional theology, and brings us to
. a new level of Life altogether human life fed from
within with the Life of God, and this is " Eternal Life." 8
I shall speak of only one more aspect of John's
mysticism, namely that of mystical union. It is now a
well-known fact that " isolated " personality is an abstrac
tion. Nobody can live absolutely unto himself. He who
is to enjoy the privileges of personality must be conjunct
with others. He must be an organic member in a social
group, and share himself with his fellows. Christ shows
that this truth which we know as a human principle is also
1 John vi. 35-63. 2 John vi. 35-63.
* Many modern scholars find in the sixth chapter of John evidence of the late
authorship of the book. They suppose that it was written after the Lord's
Supper had come to be thought of as a mystical Sacrament, an actual partaking
of the Body and Blood of Christ, and they feel that in the light of the developed
practice of the Sacrament the writer has consciously or unconsciously expanded a
simple discourse of Christ into this final form. I am rather disposed to take it as
a genuine saying and to see in it the utterance of a fundamental principle of
spiritual life.
i ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 19
true of the Divine Life. God becomes conjunct with
those who, by faith and love, and the practice of His will,
abide in Him. The Divine-human conjunct Life is illus
trated in the figure of the Vine and its branches. 1 The
branch is a branch because it is in the vine, and
the vine is a vine because it has branches. They
share a common sap, and live by a common circula
tion. It is a parable of an organic union of God and
men, an interrelation by which believers live in God
and God expresses Himself through them the Divine
Life circulating through all who are incorporate with the
Central Stock.
The great prayer of John xvii. drops figures and utters
the naked truth of a Divine-human fellowship a union
of spiritual beings with a spiritual Head,
" Two distincts, division none,
Number there in love is slain."
We are here beyond the competitive basis of self-seeking
individuals. The law is now each for other " all mine
are thine, and thine are mine." The very condition and
basis of such a self-denying fellowship is incorporation in
the Divine Life : " I in them, thou in me, that they may
be made perfect in one." This is the Divine event
towards which all true mystical Christianity moves.
1 John xv.
CHAPTER II
MINISTRY AND ORGANIZATION IN THE EARLY CHURCH
ALL our New Testament sources l make plain the fact that
in the first period " those of the way," to use the earliest
name for the followers of Christ, formed a fellowship
rather than a Church in the modern sense. In fact the
writer of Acts has used this word " fellowship " (/coivwvia)
to describe the group of Jerusalem Christians. The
principle of union or fellowship was devotion to Christ, a
belief in His Messiahship, a vivid expectation of his speedy
return, and a consciousness of the continued presence of
His Spirit. It was primarily fellowship with the Lord,
whose presence, though invisible, made out of separate
individuals one Church : " For in one Spirit were we all
baptized into one body, and were all made to drink of
one Spirit" 2 Christ Himself had promised, in a striking
"saying," that His mystical presence should bind His
believers into a living fellowship : " Where two or three
are gathered together in My name, there am I in the
midst of them." 8
Each local church, in Paul's conception, was a body of
which Christ was the living Soul and governing Head,
while each particular member was " called to be a saint,"
1 The earliest sources for an historical picture of the primitive Church are
Paul's Epistles. The word "Church" is found in two sayings of Jesus, and the
Book of Acts, though written considerably later than Paul's Epistles, throws
much light both upon the character of the Jerusalem Church and upon the
development of the Pauline churches, especially the one at Antioch, where the
name ' ' Christian " originated.
* i Cor. xii. 13. " In the earliest period the basis of Christian fellowship
was a changed life. ... It was the unity of a common relation to a common
ideal and a common hope." Hatch, The Organisation of the Early Christian
Churches, p. 187. 8 Matt, xviii. ao.
20
CH. ii MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 21
an actual habitation of the Spirit 1 Each little society,
thus vivified and dynamized by the streams of Life from
above, was like u a tiny island in a sea of paganism."
The visible bond of fellowship was a common meal
together in the earliest period a social meal, to which
each member contributed his share. It was at first eaten
from house to house and later in some central meeting-
place. It was an occasion of joy and gladness at its
best a veritable love feast, an agape. Even in this
common meal there was more than human fellowship.
It was the Lord's Supper, and the partakers felt in a
simple, mystical way that they were eating with Him
and of Him. 2
One characteristic feature of the Church in the early
apostolic days was the consciousness of the believers that
they were possessed and endowed by the Holy Spirit
The mysterious manifestation of tongues, the miracles
which were worked among them and through them, the
fact that they all felt themselves possessed with powers
beyond their own these things were unmistakable signs
to them that the Spirit of God had come upon them
in an unusual degree.
But an even more convincing proof of the Divine
Presence more convincing, at least, to the highest minds
among them was the directing and controlling power of
the Holy Spirit in the ordinary religious exercises of
the Church. While the high tide of the Pentecostal
enthusiasm lasted, the meetings of the Church were
extraordinary occasions. There was no machinery, no
routine. An organization existed at all only so far as the
life of the Church itself produced it ; it was elastic and
adjustable, and as fluid as the inward life of the Church
itself. 8 Every believer was an organ of the Spirit, and
every form of the manifestation of religious life, at least
in the Pauline circle, was thought of as a direct gift of the
1 For an illustration of the way in which Paul assumed the presence of Christ
in a Church, see i Cor. v. 4.
2 See i Cor. x. 16, 17. " The bread which we break is it not a communion of
the body of Christ."
* The only officials we hear of in the earliest period of the Jerusalem
Church are a committee of seven to distribute the supplies.
22 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP
Divine Spirit. It was a central idea of Paul that " he
that is joined to the Lord is one spirit " and so a partaker
of Divine power and heavenly wisdom. To be of Christ's
way was to become a spiritual organ of some sort, a
person with a gift of some kind and some degree. 1 The
ideal of the Church in the early apostolic days was
unmistakably an organic fellowship of persons who were
mutually helpful because they were all living in a common
Divine Life.
Many of the earliest churches were " house-churches." *
The believers frequently met in the house of some
prominent member, and, until the fellowship grew too
large for it, the meetings were held, and the common
meal was eaten, in the large family room of a private
house. The earliest church-buildings, as excavations are
proving, were even modelled on the plan of the large
audience hall of the wealthy burgher, and the earliest
liturgies direct mothers when to take up their babies. 3
But it is a still more important fact that the Church itself
was to a large degree modelled on the idea of the family
group. The leaders in this primitive Church were not
" officials " in the technical sense ; they were persons who
had influence and authority by reason of their age and
spiritual qualifications, as a father has in his home. The
" differences " of the members were not to be settled in
Roman law courts but rather within the fellowship itself,
as family " differences " were settled. 4
There were of course from the first some who were
peculiarly gifted, and they naturally came to the front.
The apostles were for many reasons pre-eminent in what
ever community they found themselves. They spoke with
the authority which one who has seen and heard and
handled always possesses. But they appear never to
have had any authority beyond that which attached by
right to their spiritual gifts and qualifications. The same
can be said of the prophets and teachers, the evangelists
1 " Unto each one of IK was the grace given according to the measure of the
gift of Christ " (Eph. iv. 7. )
2 See Lindsay's Church and Ministry in the Early Centuries, chap. ii.
8 Lindsay, p. 43. < See i Cor. vi.
ii MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 23
and pastors which appear in Paul's list of " gifts." l They
are not officials they are simply gifted members who
are qualified for the work of " perfecting saints," and who
edify the body, because in a peculiar way they make
themselves channels for the Spirit They are not elected
officers ; they are living personalities. Everywhere in
Paul's writings (exclusive of Timothy and Titus) we find
a Church composed of spiritual priests, a fellowship of
brothers and equals in the faith each person contribut
ing, according to the measure of his gifts, to the life and
power of the whole. Throughout the apostolic period
leadership depended on edifying service, and capacity for
service of every sort was considered a " gift " of the Spirit.
All the names, which in a later time became official titles,
were, at the period of which I am speaking, the names
of " gifts." There was no laity ; there was no clergy,
and if the sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit, which
filled the lives of the first Christians, had lasted, there
never would have been a distinction of clergy and laity.
The most extraordinary of these " gifts," and the one
placed by Paul next after the " apostolic gift," was that
of the prophet The New Testament prophet was a
person gifted with an immediate revelation of the mind
of the Spirit for the congregation. He was first and
foremost a reveater, who uttered, by inspiration, truths
which lay beyond the ken of his listeners, but which came
with a conviction of reality when they were heard. The
prophet's chief qualification was vision, rather than logical
power or learning. He was a person who saw the way
along which the Spirit wished individuals and the Church
to go, but he was not a foreteller of events, or at least
only rarely so. His speaking was apparently unpre
meditated a rapturous utterance, as though a power not
himself were using him as a vehicle of communication.
Wherever Christianity went in the apostolic period
there seems to have been an outbreaking of the spirit
of prophecy. It was not confined to men, though the
prophecy of women was apparently not encouraged. But
1 x Cor. xii. 28-29 I Eph. iv. u.
24 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
there was a height of enthusiasm, a quality of faith, and
a contagion of the Spirit which undoubtedly carried both
men and women beyond their normal powers, and which
resulted, so long as the flood was on, in an uninterrupted
succession of prophecy, and this prophetic ministry was
one of the great creative agencies in the formation and
development of the early Church. Paul himself, from his
own experience, has given us an impressive account of the
power of this type of ministry : " If all prophesy, and if
there come in an unbelieving person, or an unlearned one,
he is convicted by all, he is judged by all ; the secrets of
his heart are made manifest, and so he will fall down on
his face and worship God, declaring that God is among
you." l
There were from the nature of the case dangers in this
prophetic ministry. Enthusiasm always carries men up to
the perilous edge. The difficulty is to unite calm judgment
and balance with this subliminal activity and creative
energy. So long as there was a high degree of spiritual life
in the congregation, the prophet was " kept in his place "
by the controlling power and common wisdom of the
group. The spirit of a prophet was subject to the
prophets. 2 There was a corresponding " gift of discern
ment " in the people, by which the prophet's message was
tested. As this spiritual insight waned, many curious
tests were formulated to "try" the prophets. "The
Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " says : 8 " Not every
one that speaketh in the Spirit is a prophet, but onfy if
he have the behaviour, or ways, of the Lord? 4 which is an
excellent test The "Didache," however, goes on to offer
other tests : " No prophet that orders a table in the Spirit
eats of it (himself) unless he is a false prophet " ; " And
every prophet who teaches the truth, if he does not
practise what he teaches is a false prophet " ; " Whoever
says in the spirit : Give me money or any other thing,
1 i Cor. xiv. 24-25. 2 i Cor. xvi. 32.
8 "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," often called, from the first Greek
word of its title, the Didache, was discovered in Constantinople in 1873. It is
one of the earliest and most valuable documents, outside the New Testament
canon, for a study of the character and organization of the early churches.
4 "Teaching," xi. 8.
ii MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 25
ye shall not listen to him." l It is evident that by this
time the waters of prophecy were beginning to run low.
The best example we have of early prophecy is our
Book of Revelation, or The Apocalypse. The writer of it
was in the Spirit, i.e. in ecstasy, on the Lord's day, and
was granted a series of visions for the Churches. He
does not speak as a man, in his own name or authority.
His human personality is passive and merely transmissive.
The real author is the Spirit, and what comes is a
" revelation." *
While prophecy was at its height there was no fixed
and rigid organization in the Church. It was held
together by inspired personalities and not by officials.
There was at least in the Corinthian circle an un
trammelled liberty, and Paul declares, as a permanent
principle, that " where the Spirit of the Lord is there is
liberty." The one principle of restraint which Paul lays
down is that every gift shall be exercised so as to edify
believers and to construct the Church. 8 A Christian
Church at this period, in so far as it had expanded
beyond the family group, was a self-governing republic.
The influences which came from without the local Church
were suggestive and hortatory, not mandatory. There
was plainly a peripatetic, or itinerant, ministry, which
played a great part in the development of the Churches.
The apostles " planted " and gave the little groups, or
fellowships, their ideals, but under the Spirit, and, with
the advice of the apostolic evangelist, they formed their
own organization and worked out their own destiny.
Before considering the causes which led to the differ
entiation of a class of professional officials, we must consider
first the persons who came the nearest to being officials in
the primitive Church, namely, the bishops, presbyters, and
deacons. Paul never uses any of these terms before the
Philippian epistle. He alludes to the local ministers in
Thessalonians as " those who labour among you," and
1 "Teaching," xi. 9-12.
- See Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, voL i. p. 360.
* That principle would, if applied strictly, soon limit the exercises and work
out a survival of the fittest.
26 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
" those who are over you in the Lord." l The Epistle to
the Romans enumerates many kinds of ministry, but no
technical terms are used to designate settled officials. 2
Philippians, however, makes use of two terms for local
ministers which were destined to have a remarkable history.
The words are, " To the saints in Christ Jesus, which are
at Philippi with the Bishops and Deacons." 8 There is
every reason for concluding that when this epistle was
written these terms were used in a general way for the
persons in the church who were especially gifted in guiding
affairs, i.e. "overseeing" and in "serving" (which is the
root meaning of Siatcovia). The names are not yet titles.
Paul himself nowhere uses the term " presbyters " or
" elders," though in the accounts which the Book of Acts
gives of the founding of the Pauline Churches, Paul is
everywhere represented as ordaining presbyters. 4 The
difference between the accounts in Acts and the state of
things revealed in Paul's own letters has always been felt
to be a real difficulty. But the solution seems fairly easy.
Those who are called " overseers " and " helpers " by Paul,
i.e. those who were marked out as distinctively gifted for
governing and ministering in the new Churches, would for
the most part be those who were literally " elders " the
older members. So that during Paul's lifetime "overseers"
and " elders " were synonymous terms, and " deacon " was
a term used for less important helpers in the affairs of the
Church. But when Acts was written, the word " presbyter"
was already crystallizing into an official title, and is
generally used in this book to designate the governing
officials of the Church, who in chap. xx. 28 are also called
"overseers," as if the two terms meant much the same
thing. 6
The word "pastor" is used in the letter to the
Ephesians, but here again in a general and un technical
1 i Thess. v. la. 2 Rom xii 6 . 8t
3 PhiL i. i.
4 The writer of Acts, looking back from his later standpoint, and viewing the
natural growth and development in the Pauline Churches regarded it all as due to
the direct appointment of Paul.
5 See Hatch, op. tit. Lecture II., and A. V. G. Allen's Christian Institutions,
chaps, iii. and vi.
ii MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 27
sense, suggesting the duty of " feeding the flock," which
had also been emphasized in Paul's farewell to the elders
of Ephesus. 1 This word did not, however, become an
official term in the early Church, because the bishop
rapidly absorbed into himself all the functions which found
expression in Paul's enumeration of gifts, and there was
no place left for the ministry of a separate " pastor."
As soon as we turn to the Pastoral Epistles we are in
another world the entire situation has changed. The
period of free, spontaneous, uprushing, spiritual life has
passed away. The prophet with his message freshly
breathed by the Holy Spirit has wellnigh disappeared,
and the writers of these Epistles are busy with problems
of organization and discipline. The " teacher," who was
a person of importance in the early apostolic churches has
fallen into disrepute (see especially I Tim.). Error,
heresy, " false teaching," are the things which most concern
the writer of First and Second Timothy and Titus. 3 The
way out of these dangers seemed to the builders of the
Church in that age to be the establishment of an authori
tative hierarchy. The bishop here appears as a technical
official, whose business it is to rule the Church and to
teach as a pastor, and above everything he is to preserve
untainted the faith which has been delivered. The Second
and Third Epistles of John reveal a similar situation. In
these Epistles the presbyter is an authoritative person,
and Church organization is pretty well fixed.
We come now to the question why this free, spontane
ous, enthusiastic Christianity, which we have been studying,
changed into an ecclesiastical system ? Why did this
inward, spiritual faith faith which was the immediate
response of the soul to a Person change into a doctrine
which is henceforth called " the faith ? " Why did the
prophet speaking by revelation yield to the bishop ruling
with authority ?
1 " Take heed to all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made you over
seers to feed the Church of the Lord which He purchased with His own blood "
(Acts xx. 28).
1 It is difficult to believe that the " Pastoral Epistles," often ascribed to Paul,
can have been written at least in their entirety in his lifetime.
28 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
It would require an entire volume to write the answer.
I can only roughly outline the reasons in this brief
chapter :
1. There is a fundamental principle of kabit t both in
individuals and in society, which always tends to organize
any movement whatever into a fixed form of expression.
2. Christianity had to work itself out through the
prevailing ideas of the world in which it was planted. It
had to meet the Hellenic spirit and the Roman genius.
It could satisfy the Greek only by developing a thought
system. It could win the Roman only by the exhibition
of an ecclesiastical system, suited to his genius for law and
organization.
3. As time went on, prophecy itself degenerated,
inspiration ran dry. Prophetic ministry grew weak and
poor and "second-hand." The conviction of a direct
fellowship with Christ waned. Little men, claiming
infallible guidance, proved a menace, where men of the
first rank in the preceding period had been creative.
People began to be suspicious that under a claim of Divine
inspiration prophets were uttering their own words and
voicing their own wishes. Many of the prophets, too,
fell below the lofty moral standard which befitted a
prophet. An itinerant ministry of prophets had its
dangers and difficulties. 1
4. The fading away of the glowing expectation
of an imminent return of Christ had much to do with
the change which occurred in the character of the
Church. While that expectation lasted it fused the
Christian members together, and they saw no need of
elaborate organization, but as this faith faded away they
had to prepare for the work of the world.
5. The sacraments became indispensable rites by which
Divine grace was believed to be mysteriously and magically
conveyed, and as this view developed, the importance of
the officials who administered them increased.
6. The early Church, even before it lost its first leaders,
1 The reader will find plenty of confirmation of the above position in "The
Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " and in " The Shepherd of Hennas."
ii MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 29
was forced to meet a drift, or wave, of speculation which
threatened to swamp the ship at the very beginning of its
voyage. 1 The Church saw no way to meet this specula
tion except with a doctrine buttressed by hierarchical
authority.
There are four great documents out of the early post-
apostolic period, i.e. belonging to the first half of the
second century, which show the gradual development of
an official priesthood and the steady waning of the
fundamental idea of the apostolic Church the priesthood
of believers, the ministry of " gifts." These documents are
the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, " The
Didache," or " Teaching of the Apostles," " The Shepherd
of Hermas," and the Epistles of Ignatius. Clement, writing
about the year 100, already makes the Jewish priesthood
the analogy for the Christian, and he already speaks of
the laymen as a class distinct from the ministers or priests.
He declares that the Old Testament gives warrant for the
system of bishops and deacons, and in confirmation he
quotes Isaiah Ix. 17, "I will appoint their bishops in
righteousness and their deacons in faith." 2 His epistle is
written to further the establishment of Church organiza
tion. Already the idea of the Church as a spiritual
fellowship, a congregation of persons inspired by the
invisible Christ, was yielding to the idea of a Church
which was founded by Christ, and left in the care of
vicars, whose authority came by ordination.
" The Shepherd of Hermas" 8 shows that the change was
not effected without struggle. The old contest between
prophet and priest, which ended so tragically in later
Hebrew history, was repeated in the formative period of
the Christian Church, with the same result the suppression
of the prophet. The author of " The Shepherd of
Hermas" belongs to the order of the prophets. He
makes known the will of God for the times, not
1 I refer of course to Gnosticism. a Epistle of Clement, chap. xlii.
* This is an allegory, or religious romance, written probably very early in the
second century. It speaks of all the apostles as already dead (Sim. be. 16), and
it is quoted by Irenaeus (who lived between A.D. 120 and 200) as though it were
Scripture. Harnack dates it between A.D. 140 and 145.
3 o MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
by reasoning or speculation, but by inward revelation.
He has a series of " visions " for the illumination of
the Church. His sympathies are with those who
speak, not because they are appointed to speak, but
because the Holy Ghost wishes to speak through them.
He has discovered that "those who preside over the
Church love the first seats," and even sometimes " plunder
widows and orphans of their livelihood, and gain posses
sions for themselves from the ministry which they have
received." " I speak " (the Church personified as a very
old woman is speaking to him in a vision), " I speak unto
you, the leaders and presidents of the Church, be ye not
like unto sorcerers ; for sorcerers carry their drugs in
boxes, but you carry your drug and your poison in your
hearts ; ye are hardened and will not cleanse your hearts
nor purify your minds in unity of spirit." * But it is clear
through his pages that the prophets are dying out, and
that the ordained priests are gaining the ascendancy.
There is every indication that the " Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles " is a very early document, and that it
comes out of a period, or at least a locality, in which the
ministry was still fluid and the organization not rigidly
formed. 2 The apostle and prophet and inspired teacher
still have a dignified standing, and yet careful provision is
also made for the more professional officials. The prophet's
claim to inspiration is to be carefully sifted. We come
across amusing tests for discerning the false and the true
apostle and prophet, of which the following is a good
example :
" Every apostle who cometh to you, let him be received as the
Lord ; but he shall not remain more than one day ; if, however,
it need be, then the next day ; but if he remains three days, he
is a false prophet. When the apostle departeth let him take
nothing except bread enough till he lodge again ; but if he ask
money he is a false prophet."
" Whoever, in the Spirit, says, ' Give me money, or something
1 Vision II. chap. ix.
* It does not seem probable that the ''Teaching " can have been written later
than A.D. 120. For the reasons for this conclusion see Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles, edited by Hitchcock and Brown (London, 1885), Introduction, pp.
IT MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 31
else,' ye shall not hear him ; but if for others in need he bids you
give, let no one judge him." l
The account goes on to deal with the case of the
prophet who is not itinerant :
" But every true prophet who will settle among you is worthy
of his support ('likewise the true teacher'). Every first fruit,
then, of the products of the winepress or of the threshing floor,
of oxen and of sheep, thou shalt take and give to the prophets ;
for they are your high priests. But if ye have no prophet, give it
to the poor." 2
The condition of the Church out of which this docu
ment came seems to have been such that a free, spontaneous
ministry existed side by side with a system of Church
officials who were to give large place for the prophet if
he proved to be genuinely sent The Church may appoint,
as occasion requires, bishops and deacons, who apparently
are to perform both the functions of governing the Church
and of ministering to it as pastors.
" Now appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of
the Lord, men meek and not avaricious, upright and proved ; for
they too render you the service of the prophets and teachers.
. . . They are to be honoured of you, together with the prophets
and teachers." 8
It should be noted that up to this time there is a
plurality of bishops in each Church, and the single
bishop as head and pastor of the local flock has not
yet appeared, either in practice or as the ideal for the
Church.
When we pass over to the Epistles of Ignatius we
leave prophets and inspired teachers in the dim back
ground, for the entire stress of this impassioned man, who
writes on his way to die in the Roman arena, is upon the
establishment of the single bishop as the authoritative
minister and head of the local Church. 4 Ignatius was
1 "Teaching," chap. si. a Ibid. chap. xiii. 3 Ibid. chap. xv.
4 Ignatius' life and work is, as Westcott says, "enveloped in pitchy darkness."
He was condemned to death in Antioch and sentenced to be exposed to beasts in
the amphitheatre at Rome. The sentence was executed, as Westcott thinks,
about A.D. no. The seven Epistles believed to be genuine are: To the
Ephesians ; To the Magnesians ; To the Trallians ; To the Romans ; To the
Philadelphians ; To the Smyrnaeans ; To Polycarp. They were written on th
journey from Antioch to Rome.
32 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
possessed of a passion to leave behind him an authoritatively
organized Church. He had no faith that a body gathered
together on the loose basis of brotherhood and fellow
ship and obedience to an invisible Head could survive
in the midst of chaotic beliefs and growing heresies.
He puts the bishop who, according to his conception,
is to be the head of the local Church in the place of
Christ He even says, "Your bishop presides in the
place of God." 1 And again : " Ye are subject to the
bishop as to Jesus Christ." 2 Again : " Reverence the
deacons as appointed by Jesus Christ, and the bishop as
Jesus Christ." 8 He writes to the Philadelphians that,
" the Spirit proclaims these words, ' Do nothing without the
bishop.'" 4
It takes little study of Ignatius to see that the thing
which has raised the professional minister i.e. the bishop
to such importance in the mind of Ignatius was the
great importance which he attached to the sacrament of
the Lord's Supper. Already, even as early as the first
quarter of the second century, the sacramental bread is
called " the medicine of immortality " ; 5 baptism is the
medicinal bath of regeneration. It was vain to expect to
maintain a spiritually conceived ministry when the loftiest
figure in the Church had already laid the foundation for
the substitution of an incomprehensible magic in place of
the direct work of the Divine Spirit upon the human soul.
It is a long way from Paul's conception of the believer as
a living temple of the Holy Spirit to the belief that
spiritual life is imparted in a magical way to those who
eat the Lord's Supper at the hands of a divinely appointed
priest who has taken the place of the absent Christ but
all that transformation came in one century. 6 As soon as
the celebration of the Supper became the central point in
worship there was no longer any possibility of maintain
ing the old order of a spiritually -directed community.
1 Magnesians, chap. vi. a Trallians, chap. ii.
8 Trallians, chap. iii. * Phil. chap. vii.
8 Ephesians, chap. xx.
6 It is not' likely that the bishop was yet explicitly thought of as invested
through his ordination with mysterious and miraculous power, as came to be the
case in the third century.
ii MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 33
A visible head was now a necessity. Note the logic of
Ignatius : " There is but one Eucharist. For there is
one flesh, and one cup into the unity of His blood ; one
altar, as there is one bishop." l " Let there be a proper
Eucharist which is administered by the bishop, or by one
to whom he has entrusted it" ..." It is not lawful without
the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love feast" 2
Another influence which counted for almost more than
did this exaggerated importance of the sacrament toward
the complete change of the ministry, and the elevation
of the minister to a priest with Divine authority, was
the necessity which came upon the Church of dealing
authoritatively with false doctrine. This tendency to
formulate a fixed doctrine is already decidedly apparent
in the Pastoral Epistles. Faith was beginning to be
regarded as a definite body of doctrine to be held and
handed on. The original idea of faith as the heart's
attachment, and the obedience of the will, to Christ, was
passing away and giving place to the lower view. Then,
as in every age since, there were men who taught doctrine
which did not ring true to the ears of those who were
fighting the battles of the faith. The second century was
remarkably prolific in speculation. New ideas sprang up
like mushrooms. The air was full of fantastic theories.
While the Church was still in its swaddling clothes it
found itself in a life-and-death struggle with gnosticism.
It was one of the most serious enemies which has ever
confronted Christianity. It was certainly a part of the
intellectual environment when the two Epistles to Timothy
were written, and we hear already of the dangerous " gnosis,
falsely so called." 3 How should this and kindred heresies
1 Philadelphians, chap. iv. * Smyrnaeans, chap. viii.
1 It is difficult to decide when Gnosticism first appeared in the Christian field,
but Christianity is face to face with it in the Pastoral Epistles. For actual origin
it goes back to the amalgamation of the religions of Babylonia and Persia after
the conquests of Alexander. The world of Light, of Persian religion, became the
' ' Pleroma " of the Gnostics, and the planetary gods of the Babylonian religion
became the aeons of the descending emanations down to the lower, material
world, so that it was from the beginning a purely dualistic system. It was an
intellectual construction out of mythologies. There were many phases and types
of Gnostic doctrine, not one consistent and orthodox form of it. It borrowed from
Christianity a colouring and some ideas, but it remained throughout a form of
D
34
MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
be met? was the problem. By the proclamation of the
truth and the power of the light, Christ would have said.
By the demonstration and power of the everliving Spirit,
and by teaching and argument, Paul would have said.
But already faith in the conquering power of the Spirit
was dying out. Christians did not dare to rest their case
on the mere announcement of truth which rested solely
on their heart's conviction of its truth. They fell back to
the basis of official authority and the authority of tradi
tion. " The faith " assumed the importance of a fetish.
It was the sacred thing which had come to the world
from the heavens. Christ had tented among men for a
few brief years, but the tent was folded and He was gone.
But the one communication which God had made through
Him was in the hands of the Church. The possession of
it, they believed, made the Church a Church. Now, how
could it be kept absolutely pure and unchanged in a
world where error and heresy were as thick as thistle
down in the early summer ? A way to accomplish that
must be found.
The authoritative clergy seemed the only way. The
appeal was first made to the authority of the apostles.
But the apostles were mortal, and when they were dead
it was possible to interpret their writings in diverse ways.
There could be no ground of certainty unless there was
somebody still in the Church who could speak with the
same authority that the apostles possessed, and who could
thought. For the most part the Gnostic based his " knowledge " on the literature
of revelation and mythology, which he interpreted by the allegorical method.
The main ideas of the movement may be summarized as follows :
1. God is above all thought, and therefore an unknown and unknowable God,
who is the Pleroma, or fulness.
2. Between this unknowable God and the visible universe there is a chain of
spiritual beings a descending hierarchy called (sons. They are emanations from
the Pleroma. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is only one of these aeons, and
not God Himself.
3. There is an absolute dualism between good and evil. Good has its source
in Spirit ; evil is inherent in matter. This world of matter is the realm of evil, or
Satan's world. Redemption can come only by enlightenment, which comes
down from God by means of the aeons. Christ in some of the systems is one of
these aeons.
4. The basis of their morality was asceticism, escape from evil matter, and
particularly from body. For an exhaustive study of the movement see Bousset's
Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, Gottingen, 1907.
ii MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 35
guarantee that the doctrine of the Church had come down
unchanged. Already in Irenaeus, who died at the end
of the second century, we are told that " truth has come
down by means of the succession of the bishops." When
the Church emerged from its battle with Gnosticism the
bishop was supreme, and the idea of his succession in the
apostolic line was well established, and with it the view
that faith is the deposit of truth received through the
apostles and preserved by the hierarchy of the Church. 1
There was, however, one great uprising during the first
three centuries against the officialism and ecclesiasticism
which was slowly taking the place of the immediate
working of the Holy Spirit, and which was banishing the
prophet and spiritual teacher from the Church. 2 There
is some evidence that, in spite of the remarkable growth
of the power and authority of the hierarchy, there still
was, throughout the second century, a sporadic lay
ministry and groups of persons who held for prophecy
against priesthood. But one sees at once how difficult
it would be for both to live in the same house. What is
to happen if a prophet speaking with the inspiration of
God conflicts with a priest who has the inherited authority
of an apostle? How shall the Church exercises be
orderly if the entire administration of worship may at
any time be interrupted by the voice of a prophet who
has received a message? The Apostolic Constitutions
were apparently written to settle the final authority upon
the clergy. Here is a passage from Book III. chap. x. :
" We do not permit the laity to perform any of the
offices belonging to the priesthood, as, for instance, neither
the sacrifice, nor baptism, nor laying on of hands ... for
no one taketh this honour to himself but he that is called
of God. A person who seizes upon such an office him
self shall undergo the punishment of Uzziah." The
punishment of Korah is also cited.
1 ' ' The conception of a mutilated sacerdotalism, where one part of the Christian
worship is alone thought of as the true sacrifice, and a small portion of the
fellowship, the ministry, is declared to be the priesthood, did not appear until the
time of Cyprian, and was his invention " (Lindsay, p. 37).
9 I shall study this uprising, under the title of Montanism, in the next
chapter.
36 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP, n
It needs but a word in conclusion. The Church
became an ecclesiastic system, an order of priests, because
men lost the experience of and faith in the continued
presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit. So long as
Christians knew that they were living and moving and
having their being in God, they were all possessed of gifts,
and they all had something to share. As soon as the
sense of the Divine presence vanished from men's hearts,
the religion which Christ had initiated underwent a com
plete transformation. Magic and mystery took the place
of the free personal communication. The real presence
of Christ was sought in the bread and wine and in the
bath of regeneration, rather than within the soul itself.
With this change of faith the administration of these rites
became supremely important. Once the " Lord's Supper "
had been a common joyous meal, now it became a
mysterious rite by which immortality was imparted. Once
faith had been the soul's response to a Divine Presence.
Now it became the acceptance of a communication once
delivered to men and passed on through a regularly
ordained line. As faith changed to a deposit of doctrine,
and as the Supper became a magic rite, the authoritative
official became a necessity.
CHAPTER III
MONTANISM : A RETURN TO PROPHECY
WE saw in the last chapter the beginnings of tendencies
which finally formed the imperial system of the Catholic
Church. By gradual, but irresistible, movements
sometimes an unconscious drift, sometimes a purpose
clearly conceived the entire nature of Christianity
underwent transformation. The simple fellowship of
believers, held together by a common trust in Christ, their
living Head, changed into a " sacred " and rigid ecclesi
astical organization, which became the indispensable
mediator of salvation. Faith, which at first was inward
trust and immediate response to Christ, was turned into
" the faith," which became a formulated set of doctrines,
a fixed " deposit " of truth, the dogma of orthodoxy. The
meal of love and fellowship, eaten in joyous memory of
Christ's redeeming love and sacrifice, grew, partly under
pagan influences, into a mysterious magical rite in which
Christ's actual body and blood were believed to be
miraculously reproduced and " sacrificed " on a priestly
altar. The free and spontaneous exercise of spiritual
" gifts " in the church-fellowship gave place to a new
priesthood working under an inflexible system of form
and ritual. Even before the third century opened the
Church had begun to draw a sharp distinction between
the epoch, or dispensation, of revelation, and all later, less
divine epochs. The first period was set apart in an order
all by itself as an unapproachable ideal. That extra
ordinary nearness of God, which the apostles knew, was
regarded as a brief temporal span of excessive light, with
37
38 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
darkness before it and twilight after it. The then present
age was connected with this peculiar epoch of revelation
by the line of bishops, and by holy Scripture, which was
already coming to be thought of as the instrument of
divine communication. 1
But these momentous changes were not effected with
out protest and reaction. Our literary remains from the
second century are too meagre to show conclusively that
there was a continuous, even though slender, stream of
simple, apostolic Christianity carrying steadily on the
ideas and the spirit of the first epoch ; but there are many
internal indications in the literature which we possess that,
at least in some districts, a Christianity something like
that of the early days persisted. There were many, in
districts remote from the large cities, who were " old-
fashioned," and who clung to the freer ways which the
traditions of country localities preserved. There was,
however, no current of primitive faith sufficient to stem
the steadily waxing power of ecclesiastical Christianity.
In the middle of the second century, with the suddenness
almost of a new Pentecost, a movement of reaction was
inaugurated and a return to the supremacy of the prophet
as against the priest attempted. The movement originated
in Phrygia, not far from the region of Paul's Galatian
churches, and it was started by a man named Montanus, 2
who is said to have been a native of Ardaban, in Phrygia,
and who is reported, by those who denounced his
prophecies, to have had an ante- Christian period when he
was a pagan priest possibly, as epithets imply, a priest
of Cybele. The movement spread through Asia Minor
with the rapidity of contagion. There was a sibylline
strain in these simple, naive, rural people which made
them ready for religious fervour and ecstatic visions, and
entire communities received the new prophets with en-
1 The "new prophecy" of Montanism had a decided influence in hastening
the formation of the New Testament canon, as a fixed and final revelation (see
Harnack's History of Dogma, vol. ii. p. 108).
2 Those who took up the " new prophecy " are variously called " Montanists,"
' ' Kataphrygians, " and ' ' Priscillianians. ' ' Eusebius has preserved a contemporary
account by an anonymous but very violent anti-Montanist (Eusebius, Church
History, v. 16).
in MONTANISM : A RETURN TO PROPHECY 39
thusiasm. The movement first came to the attention of
the Western Church in the year 177, when the Roman
Bishop supported the Phrygian authorities in their con
demnation of the new prophecy, 1 and it probably arose
about the opening of that decade. Its spread, however,
was not checked by opposition. It appealed powerfully
to the common people, and it won to its support the
greatest exponent of Christianity of that period, namely
Tertullian (born about 145, died 220), whose writings
give us about the only sympathetic account of the move
ment that has come down to us. It gathered a large
following in North Africa where Tertullian lived, and it
also developed strong centres of influence in Europe.
Some scholars are inclined to make a pretty marked
distinction between earlier and later Montanism, that is
(i) the Montanism of " first-hand " prophecy, and (2) the
Montanism which was content to accept at second-hand
the " oracles " of the Montanist prophets who had spoken
a generation or more earlier. This distinction is, however,
true of all movements of a similar type in the history of
the Church.
Montanism did not introduce new doctrines ; it was
not a new conception of God, nor of the world, nor of
salvation. It was rather an attempt to realise in the
Church the promise of Christ that the Paraclete should
come to lead men into all truth and to enable them to do
greater things than He did. 2 In the spirit of the Hebrew
prophets they raised to a point of intensity the passion
for purity and holiness in the people of God, and with this
passion they joined a vivid expectation of the annihilation
of the wicked pagan world by the miraculous arrival of
the New Jerusalem from heaven.
Montanus was evidently a man subject to trance and
1 The Bishop of Rome was at first on the point of recognizing the Montanists as
in true and full communion with the Church, but he was influenced against them,
according to Tertullian, by the false reports of a certain Praxeas (see Tertullian's
Treatise against Praxeas).
1 The Montanists took this promise in its naked literalness. There is a
passage in a treatise, falsely ascribed to Tertullian, which says : "The Paraclete
has revealed greater things through Montanus than Christ revealed through the
Gospel" (Pxvdo-Tertvllian, 52).
40 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
ecstasy, and it is more than probable that his emphasis
on the importance of ecstatic prophecy had its basis in
personal experience in the discovery, by an immediate
experience, of unusual and extraordinary powers within
himself. The anonymous opponent of the movement
reported in Eusebius says of Montanus : " He became
beside himself, and being suddenly in a sort of frenzy and
ecstasy he raved and began to babble and utter strange
things, propJiesying in a manner contrary to the constant
custom of the Church, handed down by tradition from the
beginning." ] This is evidently written with hostile
animus, but it seems fairly certain that the fact of ecstasy
is not fabricated, as it fits the teaching of Montanus. 2
Among the few brief sayings of Montanus which
have been preserved, there is one which gives his
conception of prophecy so plainly that it is impossible
to miss his meaning. " Man," he says, " is like a lyre,
and I [the Holy Spirit] play on him like a plectrum
[stick with which the lyre is struck]. Man sleeps ; I [the
Holy Spirit] am awake. See ; it is the Lord who takes
men's hearts out of their breasts and gives to men a heart." 8
Montanus asserted that while in this ecstatic con
dition the Divine Spirit took the place of his own
consciousness and spoke with his lips. There are three
fragments to this effect : " Montanus said : ' I am the
Lord God Almighty appearing in man ' " ; again he says,
" Neither as angel or ambassador came I, but the Lord
God, the Father " ; " Montanus said : ' I am the Father
and the Son and the Paraclete.' " 4 These " sayings " of
1 Eusebius' Church History, v. 16.
2 The contemporaries of Montanus seem to have had no idea that ecstatic
prophecy existed in apostolic days. Clement of Alexandria regards ecstasy as the
mark of a "false prophet" (Stromata, i. 17). Renan finds evidence of
Glossolalia among the Montanists (see chapter on Montanists in his Histoiredes
origines du christianisme, tome vii. ).
8 Weinel in Die Wirkungen des Geistes und der Geisfer (1899), p. 92, makes
the following comment on this saying : " It is with a man in this state as if he
slept, or as if his heart, according to oriental ideas the seat of consciousness, was
taken out of his breast and an alien power had put another into its place so long
as this power speak from out him."
4 The ' ' sayings " of Montanus and the prophetesses are preserved by
Epiphanius, whose two chapters, xlviii. and xlix., in Contra Haereses are the
main source of our information.
in MONTANISM : A RETURN TO PROPHECY 41
Montanus are not to be interpreted in too literal a sense.
They are not as blasphemous as they sound in their
isolated nakedness. He does not mean that he,
Montanus, a mere man, is God. He is rather asserting
that the human can fall into the background, or fall off
entirely, and that God can take the man's place and utter
Himself through the lips that formerly were the man's,
and Montanus declares that this substitution of selves has
occurred in him.
He was soon followed in this manifestation of ecstatic
utterance by two women, named Priscilla, or Prisca, and
Maximilla, who became widely reverenced as prophetesses.
These women left their husbands and became " virgins "
in the Montanist Church, in which they gained an authority
little short of infallible. Like their leader they believed
in divine "possession," and absolute self -suppression.
Priscilla had a vivid " vision," much like those which St.
Catherine of Siena experienced later, in which she said
that Christ assumed the form of a woman in bright
apparel, and came to her side and put wisdom into her,
and showed her that the place where she lived (Pepuza)
was holy, and that there Jerusalem would come down
from heaven. Of Maximilla's sayings we have only a few
fragments : " Do not listen to me, listen to Christ " ; " The
Lord sent me l as the adherent in thy persecution and in
the covenant and promise, and as their exponent and
interpreter, and compelled willing and unwilling to learn
the knowledge of God " ; "I am pursued like a wolf
among sheep, but I am no wolf; I am the Word, and
the Spirit and power " ; " After me there shall be no
more prophetess, but the end shall come." *
The few actual sayings of the Montanist prophets
1 The me in this saying refers to the Spirit.
* Bonwetsch, who has given us a very searching and valuable study of
Montanism, holds that ecstatic speaking was probably confined to Montanus and
the two prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla. He thinks that the " revelations "
of later Montanism were received in visions during sleep, and communicated
during waking condition. This position rests on slender evidence, but, even
if it were well founded, it would introduce no new principle of revelation. The
psychological basis is the same in both types, for Montanus and the two
prophetesses were evidently subject to hypnotic or sleep ' ' states " brought on
by auto-suggestion (see Bonwetsch's Montanismus, pp. 67-68).
42 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
which have been preserved are so meagre and frag
mentary that the student is tempted, on the face of the
returns, to dismiss the movement as an aberration, or at
least as of slight significance. Such a conclusion is,
however, too hasty. The movement was widespread. It
swept entire communities into fellowship with the new
prophets, and we must remember that we can study it
only from its fragments and in its cooled-down stage.
It emphasized truths which the age needed. It developed
a new type of Christianity which appealed to some of
the best spirits of the age, notably Tertullian ; it is a
valuable historical illustration of the contagious character
of ecstatic, or charismatic, manifestations ; it grew into a
powerful protest against a secularized Church ; and it
presents, with sharp emphasis, the mixture of truth and
error, of divine illumination and human frailty, which
were bound to appear in all early attempts to exhibit a
religion of the Spirit.
The most striking feature of Montanism the feature
which first demands attention is its revival of prophecy,
the attempt to put the authority of the Christian Church
in a succession of divinely inspired prophets. The
Church was settling down on a basis of officialism. The
sublime truth that God communicated His will directly to
man as man was well-nigh lost. Church leaders were
busy constructing an authoritative system, and were
losing the vision of an unbroken procession of the Holy
Ghost through human temples. Montanism once more
returned to prophecy as the basis of Church fellowship,
and as the method of arriving at fuller truth and purer
life. Its prophets taught essentially the priesthood of
believers, both male and female. They insisted that
ministers are made by God alone, and they undertook to
form a Church of saints a Church which should be in
truth the community of the faithful and holy. Surely a
noble task in any age !
The movement claimed to be the beginning of a
new dispensation the dispensation of the Holy Ghost,
the Paraclete, who was to be now and henceforth the
HI MONTANISM: A RETURN TO PROPHECY 43
Head of the Church, governing, directing, and leading
through divinely chosen prophets. It was now to be
made plain that revelation was not finished but rather
only well begun, and that the " greater things " promised
by Christ were to appear in the dispensation of the
Paraclete.
One of the names given to the movement by the
originators of it themselves was "the Spirituals," or
the " Spiritual people " They insisted on the progressive
character of revelation, and they originated the idea of
well-marked stages in revelation, an idea which comes
up again and again with the rise of mystical societies
in the history of the Church. They assumed three
stages :
(1) In the Old Testament revelation was in its
infancy, and God dealt with men as parents do with
children of feeble insight.
(2) Christ and the apostles advanced revelation to the
stage of youth. The great Master was still unable to
give the complete and final truth. He had many things
to say, for which even His nearest followers were not
ready, and He tempered His message and His commands
to the weakness of flesh.
(3) In Montanus and his prophets, revelation comes
to its culmination and full glory it is the stage of man
hood, and no " provision " is any longer made for the
" flesh."
This progressive character of revelation gets its loftiest
expression in the Passion of Saint Perpetua, a Montanist
book of martyrdom and of prophetic visions, written
early in the third century, possibly by Tertullian himself.
This book describes the noble and heroic constancy of a
little band of saints from the village of Thuburbo, near
Carthage, who died in the arena for their faith. The
narrative is the literary gem of Montanism, and has left
behind an undying fragrance, and has put an indelible
touch of glory on this early effort to realise on earth a
Church of the Holy Spirit. Whatever criticism one may
have in his head for Montanism, he must have a
44 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
sympathetic beat of the heart for these " brave and blessed
martyrs, called and selected to the glory of Christ." l The
little group of Montanist martyrs (for I assume they were
Montanists) from Thuburbo consisted of Saturninus and
Secundus ; 2 Revocatus and Felicitas ; Saturnus and a
noble lady, Vivia Perpetua. They were all young. Two
of them, Perpetua and Felicitas, were women ; and two
of them, Felicitas and Revocatus, were slaves. A child
was born to Felicitas in prison, and Perpetua was already
a mother when she was apprehended.
The " Acts " or, as the narrative is more properly
called, the Passion of Saint Perpetua, was evidently
written by a contemporary Christian, and it supplies
one of the most precious documents now in existence for
the study of Montanism. The writer begins his narrative
by insisting that the revelation of God is still going on,
and that a new addition to this growing revelation has
been made through the " visions " of Perpetua and her
companions. He says :
" Let those look to it who judge of the Holy Spirit according
to the successive ages of time ; whereas they ought to regard
what is new, nay, what is newest, as most full of power, inasmuch
as it participates in that exuberance of grace which is promised
for the latter days. ' And it shall come to pass in the last days
(saith the Lord) that I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh ;
and their sons and their daughters shall prophesy, and upon all
My servants and handmaids will I pour out of My Spirit, and the
young men shall see visions and the old men shall dream dreams.'
And therefore we who acknowledge and honour recent prophecies
and visions as being as much the outcome of God's promise as
the old, and who reckon all the operations of the Holy Spirit as
part of the endowment of the Church for to her was He sent,
to administer all gifts to all members, according as God has
apportioned to each we, I say, of necessity both record these
things and recite them in public to the honour of God ; lest men
1 Dr. Rendel Harris, in his valuable Introduction to the Greek text of The Acts
of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, edited by himself and Dr. Seth K.
Gifford (London, 1890), thinks that the martyrdom occurred in A.D. 203 (see
op. cit. pp. 8-13). Dean J. Armitage Robinson holds that the martyrs here
considered were from the city of Carthage, and not from the village of Thuburbo
(see the Passion of Saint Perpetua, edited with notes, by J. Armitage Robinson
(Cambridge, 1891), pp. 22-26).
a Secundus died in prison before the day of martyrdom arrived.
in MONTANISM : A RETURN TO PROPHECY 45
of weak or pusillanimous faith should suppose that the grace of God
worked only of old either unto constancy in suffering or unto wonder
of revelations \ whereas He worketh always as He promised? '*
Tertullian, too, who is very careful not to impair the
full authority of the New Testament, nevertheless holds
that there are stages of revelation, and he maintains that
the dispensation of the Paraclete the epoch of new
prophecy holds the same relation to the apostles as
Christ does to Moses. He is very bold, and positively
announces that a new Church Order has come the final
stage of revelation, the dispensation of the Paraclete. He
says to those who will follow the new prophecy : " You
will thirst for no instruction no questions will perplex
you."
The Church henceforth is to be " the Church of the
Spirit by means of a spiritual man (i.e. the prophet) ;
not the Church which consists of a number of bishops."
He rises to the insight that the key was conferred upon
Peter only because he was spiritual, and that the true
successor in apostolic authority is the person who has the
Holy Spirit. " The Church in the proper and pre
eminent sense is the Holy Spirit Himself, in whom is the
trinity of the One Divinity Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. . . . And thus from this time onward every
collection of persons who have come together in this
faith is accounted ' a church.' " 2
Cardinal Newman finds overwhelming objection to
the movement in the fact that " the very foundation of
Montanism is development," 3 and there can be no doubt
that this was a central idea. Tertullian, in a remarkable
passage, declares that truth is progressive, and the grace
of God " operates and advances to the end."
" What kind of a supposition is it," he cries out, " that, while
the devil is always operating and adding daily to the ingenuities
of iniquity, the work of God should either have ceased or else
1 Passio S. Perpetvae, i.
* Tertullian, On Modesty, chap. xxi. I have used the translation in the
volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
3 An Essay on Christian Development, pp. 349-50.
46 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
have desisted from advancing"} The reason why the Lord sent
the Paraclete was that since human mediocrity was unable to take
in all things at once, discipline should, little by little, be directed
and ordained, and carried to perfection, by that Vicar of the Lord,
the Holy Ghost. Nothing is without stages, and the Holy Spirit
is ever advancing towards better things." *
The stages of development are well defined. First,
there was a rudimentary stage when men lived under
" a natural fear of God." From that stage the race
"advanced, through the law and the prophets, to
infancy ; from that stage it passed, through the Gospel,
to the fervour of youth ; now through the Paraclete
it is settling into maturity. He will be, after Christ, the
only one to be called and revered as Master. He is the
only prelate, because He alone succeeds Christ. They
who have received Him set truth before custom." 2
According to the Montanist theory, the Holy Spirit
may come upon any person, of any rank, and of either
sex. In this respect it was a return to the freedom of
apostolic days to a priesthood not of flesh and blood,
nor the will of man, but a priesthood of believers.
Firmilian, Bishop of Caesarea, in Cappadocia, in a letter
cites the case of a prophetess who came into his diocese,
and both baptized and consecrated the Eucharist.
Tertullian gives a very interesting account of the
performance of sacerdotal rites by a woman :
" We have now among us a sister whose lot it has been to be
favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in
the Spirit by ecstatic vision amid the sacred rites of the Lord's
day in the church : she converses with angels, and sometimes
even with the Lord ; she both sees and hears mysterious com
munications ; some men's hearts she understands, and to them
who are in need she distributes remedies. Whether it be in the
reading of Scriptures or in the preaching of sermons, or in the
offering up of prayers, in all these religious services matter and
opportunity are afforded to her of seeing visions. . . . For her
witness (of her vision) there was God ; and the apostle most
assuredly foretold that there were to be ' spiritual gifts ' in the
Church." 8
1 On the Veiling of Virgins, chap. i. 2 Ibid. chap. i.
8 Tertullian, Treatise on the Soul, chap. ix.
m MONTANISM : A RETURN TO PROPHECY 47
Epiphanius says that in a Montanist church seven
virgins used to come in, in white raiment, bearing torches ;
that they would then prophesy to the people, and move
them to repentance and to tears by their powerful appeals.
He says, further, that women were priests and even
bishops. The first condition, however, of rising to place
and position in the Montanist Church was the possession
of spiritual power, i.e. ecstatic prophecy. The new Church
was to be, as Tertullian said in the words already quoted,
a Church of the Spirit, manifested through a spiritual
person, who might be any person whom the Spirit
selected.
The Montanist leaders were " possessed " with the
idea that the promises in John xiv.-xvii. were now being
fulfilled in them. The Holy Spirit was now given ; He
had come in wholly unique fashion, and the new prophets
spoke in loftier tone and with higher assumption than
any apostle in the primitive Church had done. The
idea was lofty, the purpose of the movement was right,
and the Montanist leaders were feeling after something
which inherently belongs to the religion of Christ. But
Montanist prophecy was not a return to the New Testa
ment type, and it did not have in it the potentiality of
a developing, conquering Christianity. Its type of pro
phecy was abnormal, and far too narrow. There was, to
be sure, an element of ecstasy in the Apostolic Church,
and the prophet of the first period sometimes received
visions when he was " out of himself"; but in the main the
New Testament prophet was a highly gifted, spiritually
developed person who lived on a lofty level of experience,
practised the truth which he knew, and he saw> by
profound spiritual insight, the divine things which God
had to reveal to his age. Instead of suppressing his
powers and obliterating his reason, instead of sinking
to a passive instrument to be played upon by an outside
Force, he made himself an organ of an inward Spirit
who had become the Life of his life, and who flooded
all his faculties with energy. The prophet was a man
still, using the powers which belonged to him as a man,
48 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
and he was different from other men only in that he
co-operated better than others did with the Divine Spirit,
to Whom his life was consciously allied.
Montanist prophecy, on the other hand, was modelled
on heathen oracles and frenzied soothsaying. In so far
as it was a " return," it was a return to types which
prevailed in most primitive religions " the sacred
madness of the bard," the type out of which Hebrew
prophecy evolved, the type, which Christian prophecy
left far behind. 1
The human recipient is, in the Montanist view, a mere
passive instrument, swept and moved by the incoming
Divine Spirit. Human reason must retire and conscious
ness must be absent before any revelation can come.
The prophet is used as a medium. He imparts nothing
of his own ; he adds nothing. His one service is to take
himself out of the way to sleep and let the Divine
Spirit have his lips to use as the musician uses the
lyre. Reason is thus thoroughly discredited, and is
replaced by supernatural oracles. There is here a sharp
dualism between the human and the divine, the natural
and the supernatural. Every " natural " process, every
mental activity, is undivine, and truth comes best when
man himself has most withdrawn. Personality counts
for nothing. There can be no " revelation " through a
person in his normal activities. Finite nature, personal
characteristics, must be suppressed for the time being,
and then God can work unhindered. All the fragments
preserved from Montanus and his followers support this
view of prophecy as an overpowering of the soul by the
Spirit, attended by a condition of motionless rapture or
ecstasy.
Even in its most beautiful expression, in the visions
of Perpetua, one feels that this is prophecy of the
second, not of the first order. Perpetua's visions are
excellent illustrations of the fact that in ecstatic vision
the mind still uses, though sub-consciously, the material
1 For a somewhat different estimate of Montanist prophecy, see Weinel, op.
cit. p. 95.
in MONTANISM : A RETURN TO PROPHECY 49
of experience, and has by no means shaken off the
human element 1
Montanus and his two prophetesses claimed that the
Holy Spirit had come upon them in wholly unique
fashion. They put themselves, as we have seen, even
above the prophets of the primitive Church. They held
themselves to be the bearers of the last and greatest
revelation of divine truth. They figured as the instru
ments of the dispensation of the Paraclete. But, in fact,
they exhibited a type of prophecy which was of a lower
order than the primitive Christian one, and they pro
posed a basis of leadership no less dangerous than
that which was being formed under the ecclesiastical
system. They proposed a church guided by men and
women, speaking in ecstatic states, whose " oracles " were
to form " a new law," and whose utterances were to have
the infallibility belonging to the last word of the Holy
Spirit. 2 The door for caprice and vagary was wide open.
The prophet suppressed his reason to become a passive
lyre for the Spirit, and whatever might come through his
lips in this state was oracular. His listeners were bound
to suppress their reason, too, for the revelation was by
hypothesis above reason, and they were to take the
" word " without question as the will of the Paraclete.
It was the oracular prophecy of Dodona and Delphi
in a new dress and baptized with a new name. It gave
extraordinary place to those pathological persons who
abound in all ages and countries, and who, in response
1 Perpetua says : ' ' One day my brother said to me, ' Dear lady and sister,
you are now in such high favour (with God) that if you ask for a vision it would
be granted you, whereby you may know whether death or liberty awaits you."'
The beautiful "vision" which was granted her has undoubtedly an "other
worldly " element in it, but it comes in the material and the setting of Perpetua's
dominant ideas. For instance, when she is welcomed to heaven by ' ' the white-
haired man of great stature, in the guise of a shepherd, milking sheep," she is
given "bread and cheese" to eat, which Rendel Harris, quite rightly, I think,
believes is a reference to a simplified form of the Communion meal, which some
of the Montanists wished to introduce ; and " the kiss of peace," which holds an
important place in the "visions," was another dominant idea in Montanist
practice.
* It is quite likely, as Harnack says (Hist, of Dogma, vol. ii. p. 98, . 4),
that the Montanist prophets themselves did not intend their inspired words to
be turned into precise "laws," but that is what actually happened in later
Montanism, and it has, too, been the course in many other religious movements
since !
50 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
to suggestion, and by the influence of imitation, fall into
trance, or ecstasy, and utter words automatically. Not
thus is the dispensation of the Paraclete realized. Not
thus comes the Church of the Spirit to supplant the
ecclesiastical Church.
The inherent weakness of Montanist prophecy lay in
its suppression of personality, in the annihilation of those
very faculties through which a personal God could
reveal Himself. There was left no test of truth, no
criterion of revelation, no principle of continuous expan
sion. 1 It gave no solid basis for historical development
by the orderly unfolding of a steadily maturing plan.
In short, it was non-spiritual, as any movement must be
which undertakes to overleap the barriers of human
nature and attain truth at a bound, instead of winning it
as a possession of conscious personality by making it the
inward spring and power of a transformed will. Ecstatic
prophecy, calling for the annihilation of human reason
and reducing the prophet to a blind instrument, was at
best a dangerous experiment, and it would have been a
feeble substitute for the imperial Church to which it was
opposed.
There was another structural weakness in Montanism.
Instead of receiving the message of its prophets as
spiritual illumination, and as inspiration for free and
continuous personal intercourse with God, the Montanist
fellowship treated the communications as " oracles " to
be obeyed as a new law. These new prophets did not
conceive the Church as a living organism, penetrated
and unified by an inward, formative Spirit, and growing
continuously by conserving in a true spiritual way the
gains of the past, so that the later members would be
capable of higher insight as a result of the insight of
their predecessors. The truth was, rather, to be found
in the " oracle " of an ecstatic prophet, and this " truth "
was to be accepted and practised as the will of the
1 So far as a test was proposed, it was conformity to the revelations which
had been given in the apostolic period, but the fundamental assumption of the
"new prophecy" was that it was an advance upon all that was given in the
past, and consequently the new could not consistently be judged by the old.
m MONTANISM: A RETURN TO PROPHECY 51
Paraclete. The entire collection of " revelations " would
form the ultimate law of Christianity, higher than that
of Sinai, and higher even than that of the Gospel. 1
The radical error lay in the conception of Christianity
as law. It was, of course, a well-nigh universal blunder.
The religion of Christ which called for a new man, and
which asked for a life in Christ Jesus, had already given
place to a substitute religion, which was of a thoroughly
legal character. It was submission to a system which
regulated belief and practice. Montanism did not rise
above this legalism. It only substituted another kind
of legalism. Imperial Christianity was turning the Gospel
and the apostolic teaching into a law- system, complete
and final. Montanism put in the place of that law-system
a " new law," composed of revelations of the Paraclete,
spoken through prophets. It failed to introduce a truly
spiritual religion, grounded in the direct relation of man
as spirit to God as Spirit.
Montanism as a " new law " was a movement toward
much sterner discipline and a very much stricter moral
life. It pushed to the extreme the tendency already
under way toward asceticism and toward severe Church
discipline. The new law, which Montanist prophecy
furnished, was to regulate daily life and purify the Church.
The later writings of Tertullian are full of insistence on
a strict moral life. In fact, it was the puritanic character
of Montanism that attracted Tertullian to it He was
opposed to every pursuit of life which would bring
Christians into contact with heathen idolatry, and he
urged a complete separation from the contamination
of the world. He emphatically declares the incompati
bility of Christianity and war. It is unbecoming for any
man " to range himself under the standard of Christ and
also under that of the devil, to bivouac in the camp
of light and also in the camp of darkness." " The Lord
1 It must, however, be remembered that the ideal of the Montanist leaders
was progressive development, unending revelation. Tertullian at his best, as we
have seen, seems to have had an idea of a growing spiritual body of believers,
but he also treats the ' ' revelations " of prophets and prophetesses as final and
authoritative.
52 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
disarmed Peter, and in doing so unbuckled the sword of
every soldier." l He also opposes the exercise of public
office as being contaminating. It is, he says, impossible
to hold an office without presiding at spectacles, with
out taking an oath, without passing judgment of life or
death. 2 Tertullian also urges that sinners guilty of gross
immorality should not be reinstated in the Church, or,
at least, should be absolved, not by official authority,
but by the decision of the Spirit, speaking through a
prophet.
But the two distinctly new regulations which Montanism
introduced were (i) new laws about marriage, and (2) new
laws about fasts. There is an " oracle " of Priscilla which
says : " Only the holy minister can minister sanctity, for
purity unites (with the Spirit), and they (the pure) see
visions, and, bowing their faces downward, they hear
distinct words spoken." This oracle means, according to
Tertullian, that " purity," or virginity, is the true con
dition for receiving a revelation. Virginity is the highest
stage of life, but, as marriage is permitted by Divine
authority, and is essential to the propagation of the race,
Montanism did not require celibacy. Its new command
was that there should be single marriage. It allowed
second marriage on no condition whatever. This custom
of avoiding second marriage had already prevailed in
the case of bishops ; Montanism, on the basis that all
Christians are under a Divine ordination, widened the
custom into a law for all. The change of attitude worked
in two ways. On the one hand, it raised marriage to a
higher level by making it a union for time and eternity ;
on the other hand, by over-emphasizing the sexual side it
led to the degradation of marriage, and prepared the way
for the monstrosity of a celibate priesthood.
Montanists claimed that no complete system of fasts
was laid down in the primitive Church, because the
Church was then in its infant stage, and man " not able
to bear " the whole system of religious perfection. This
completer change was introduced through their prophets.
1 Tertullian, On Idolatry, chap. xix. z Ibid. chap, xviii.
in MONTANISM: A RETURN TO PROPHECY 53
The revelations of the new prophecy provided that there
should be a new fast of two weeks' duration (called the
" Xerophagy," which means eating dry food). During
this period there was to be abstinence not only from
flesh and wine, and from bathing, but also from all succu
lent food and juicy fruit Furthermore, the regular weekly
"half-fast," which the Church observed only until three
o'clock in the afternoon, was prolonged by the Montanists
until evening. More than this, one finds in the Montanist
movement an undue feeling of the importance of abstin
ence for its own sake. The strict Montanists felt that
those who obeyed the new teaching belonged to a higher
class than that to which the ordinary Christian belonged
they formed, in fact, a " peculiar people." They called
themselves " Spirituals," and set themselves over against
ordinary Christians, who were called " Psychical," or
carnal. One serious outcome of this ascetic spirit was
the tendency to set " this world " over against the King
dom of God as a supernatural world. " That world " is
to be reached only by escaping from "this world." This
attitude led to an excessive zeal for the martyr's death
a zeal which lasted throughout the entire period of
Montanism. Tertullian quotes with approval an " oracle "
of the Paraclete through a Montanist prophet : " Let it
not be your wish to die in your beds in the pains of
childbirth, or in debilitating fever ; but desire to die
as martyrs, that He may be glorified who died for you." l
In his treatise on the soul, Tertullian holds that departed
souls are detained in Hades until the resurrection, but
that the souls of martyrs are received at death directly
into Paradise. He quotes in confirmation of this that
Perpetua saw in a vision only those in Paradise who
had died in martyrdom, and he adds : " The sole key to
unlock Paradise is your own life's blood." 2
Another outcome of their undue emphasis on the
supernatural was their eager expectation of the millennium.
" This world," with its temptations, its imperfections, its
1 Tertullian, On Flight in Persecution, sec. 9 ; and A Treatise on the Soul,
chap. Iv.
1 Id. A Treatise on the Soul, chap. Iv.
54 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
evils, was to end, and the perfect reign of the heavenly
King was to come by miracle it was to come then
and there. Montanus undertook to gather all those of
his faith together into one great community about the
town of Pepuza, in Phrygia. He named the locality
"Jerusalem." The members were to sever their former
connections with the world and society, to form an un
divided Christian Commonwealth, where, living pure, holy
lives, the " spiritual " were to wait for the descent of the new
Jerusalem from above. 1 An oracle of Prisca says : " Christ
came to me and showed me that this place (Pepuza)
is holy, and here Jerusalem will come down from heaven."
Maximilla also said : " After me there shall be no more
prophetess, but an end." This glowing expectation of
the visible coming of the heavenly Jerusalem appears
with unabated vividness in the writings of Tertullian.
Here is his extraordinary account of its imminent
appearing :
" The word of the new prophecy, which is a part of our belief,
attests how it foretold that there would be, for a sign, a picture of
this very city exhibited to view previous to its manifestation.
This prophecy, indeed, has been very lately fulfilled in an
expedition to the East. For it is evident from the testimony
even of heathen witnesses that in Judea there was suspended in
the sky a city, early every morning for forty days. As the day
advanced, the entire figure of the walls would wane, and some
times it would vanish instantly." 2
The movement, as we have already seen, early came
into sharp collision with the Church. Its prophecy was
pronounced not only contrary to that of the apostolic
days, but a delusion of the evil spirit. Its "fasts" and
its stricter discipline were denounced as innovations, and,
when other " argument " failed, the moral character of the
prophets was assailed. Like all contagious movements,
it flourished on persecution, and, as we have seen, martyr
dom grew into a holy passion. In the first stages, when
the movement was borne on by an irresistible enthusiasm,
1 See Eusebius' Church History, chap, xviii. ; see also Harnack's History of
gma, vol. ii. p. 95.
2 Tertullian, Against Marcion, chap. xxv.
in MONTANISM: A RETURN TO PROPHECY 55
the Church made little headway in the effort to crush
it out. But in the later stages, as it settled down into a
system outside the "great Church," the merciless perse
cution which was made against it began to be effective.
One gets in the story of the annihilation of Montanism
startling exhibitions of ecclesiastical hate. An anonymous
writer, quoted in Eusebius, says that when members of the
" great Church " and Montanists were brought together
in prisons, by a common an ti- Christian persecution, the
former refused all intercourse with the latter. Cyril of
Jerusalem shows an excess of ecclesiastical slander. He
reports that one of the rites of the Montanists is the
sacrifice of an infant child, and the eating of his flesh !
Under Constantine, edicts were issued depriving Mon
tanists of their meeting-places and forbidding their form
of worship. The penal laws against them were steadily
increased in severity, and finally, in the reign of Justinian,
the " sect " was practically crushed out of existence.
Procopius has preserved an appalling picture of one of
the last scenes in this spiritual drama. Surrounded
everywhere by the coils of hate and persecution, the last
little remnant of the " spiritual fellowship," in despair,
gathered together- men, women, and children in their
own place of worship, set fire to the house, and so went
to find the New Jerusalem, for which they had waited on
earth in vain.
Montanism, as a movement, " failed " ; its books were
destroyed, its prophets were thrown to the beasts. Both
the world and the " Church " arrayed themselves against
it, and finally stamped it out It would have " failed,"
however, without the stern methods which were used
against it, for it had not within itself the inherent power
of ministering to the condition of the world and the soul
of man. It was, at best, a crude and imperfect type of
the religion of the Spirit, and there were to be weary
centuries of moral and spiritual discipline before the truth
could set men free. But, in another sense, Montanism
did not " fail " the blood of its martyrs revivified faith
in the real presence of the Holy Spirit, and its prophetic
56 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP, m
word about the unending development and progress of
spiritual revelation was too quick and powerful to be
silenced by the beasts of the arena. That word, once
well uttered, was to grow in the hearts of men until a
type of the religion of the Spirit could be born, virile
enough to succeed.
CHAPTER IV
ROOTS OF MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE
I HAVE already pointed out that primitive Christianity
was mystical at its very heart and centre. The highest
revelation which Christ makes is the exhibition of the
fact that God's nature is such, and man's nature is such,
that there can be a true union of God and man in a
personal life. Paul and John set forth a type of religion
grounded in the soul's own experience of God. There
was, too, a strong mystical strain in the writings of the
Church Fathers. Christianity, then, whenever it went
back to its primitive literature for its inspiration, was
almost certain to become mystical. But there were
other powerful influences which largely determined the
type of mysticism which actually appeared. The fact
cannot be too often pressed that historical Christianity
is a product of many movements, a religion woven out
of many strands of faith and thought and practice. The
river of water of life which flowed from Christ was
eventually changed and coloured by streams from all
lands and peoples and religions. What is true of
ecclesiastical Christianity is also true of mystical
Christianity. It has many sources, not one single
source. No origin can ever be found for man's highest
spiritual insights. Behind each apparent beginning
there was an earlier movement ; at the back of every
prophet there was some one whose human hand, however
feebly, passed on the touch to him. Every person's ex
perience, even in the highest reaches of it, is affected by
57
58 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
what some other soul has already experienced, for
human life is profoundly organic.
Platonic philosophy was by far the greatest pre-
Christian influence. In fact it may be said that
Plato is the father of speculative, as distinguished from
simple, implicit, unreflective mysticism. It has fallen
to the lot of few mortals to beget so large a spiritual
progeny as this Greek who left no physical child to
propagate his line, and one does not wonder that the
Greek Christian Fathers put him in the list of the
great prophets of the eternal Word, or that he was called
" the Attic Moses."
The mysticism of the Platonic movement in reality
goes back behind Plato himself, and had its creative
source in Socrates, and to a lesser extent in Pythagoras
and the Pythagorean school. 1 Socrates belongs to
the order of the prophets. He is in that class of persons,
appearing in all ages, who feel their connection with the
Divine, and who speak and act with an insight far beyond
the range of their own account of it. During his entire
life he was conscious of an inner guide which he called
" the divine something in his breast." Intimations, upon
numerous occasions of his life, came to him with an inward
compelling power, and he had direct revelations of the
suitable course for him to pursue, and these experiences
made him feel that he was in an unusual sense under
divine care and under divine orders. Feelings, sugges
tions, incursions, whose origin he could not trace or
discover, exercised over him irresistible control. There
was, too, as many of his disciples declare, an extra
ordinary gift of personal magnetism in him, due in some
measure to the belief of his contemporaries that he was
in intimate relations with higher powers.
" When I hear him speak," says Alcibiades in the Symposium,
" my heart leaps up far more than the hearts of those who
1 There are many legends which connect Plato with the Far East, and there is
no doubt that such a universal mind as Plato's was would absorb something from
India, Persia, and Egypt, even though the stories of oriental travel are legendary.
But the evidence of direct influence upon him from the religions of these countries
is very slight.
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 59
celebrate the Corybantic mysteries ; my tears are poured out as
he talks a thing I have seen happen to many others besides
myself. ... I stop my ears, therefore, as from the Sirens, and
flee away as fast as possible, that I may not sit down beside him
and grow old listening to his talk."
These inward experiences, however we may account for
them now, were of very great importance to the foremost
disciple of Socrates, Plato, who came to him in his youth
and who, under the spell of his enchanting talk, burned
his poems and turned all his powers to the problems of
the soul. He did not himself possess a psychical constitu
tion of the type of his master's ; that is to say he
was not in the same way subject to incursions and
intimations which broke in upon him, and which seemed
to come to him from a foreign source, but he continued
and carried still farther than his master the belief that
there are germs of truth, dormant within all men, waiting
only to be quickened and started growing to come into
full power within the mind. Socrates had playfully
called himself a mental midwife, whose service a
" divinely ordained service," he says was to help men
bring their own embryonic ideas and truths to full
birth. This doctrine of the soul's native capacity to rise
to truth and beauty and goodness, in short to find the
realm of divine reality, suggested by Socrates, is vastly
expanded by Plato and is one of his greatest religious con
tributions. Nobody has insisted with stronger emphasis
than he on the divine origin of the soul. It is a pre
supposition of his entire philosophy that the soul, even
while an alien in this world, is always within sight of the
real, i.e. the eternal, world because it is unsevered from
its source. He says (through the mouth of Socrates) :
"Those who pass their time with me have never learnt any
thing from me, but have discovered for themselves in their own
minds treasures manifold for their possession. Of this birth I
under heaven am the cause." *
1 Thtattetus, 150. It will be seen as this chapter progresses, that I do not
consider the " two-world " interpretation, so frequently given, a correct under
standing, but rather a misunderstanding of Plato's teaching.
60 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Plato often seems to set the two worlds sharply
against each other the world of truth, of unity, of
permanence yonder ; the world of error, of variety, of
mutability here. There is reality, here is only show ;
there is the pattern, here is only mimic copy ; there the
One, here the many.
As there are two worlds, so, too, there seem to be two
distinct levels of experience. On the level of sense a
person deals only with this show-world. Sense can give
only the transitory, only the contingent, only what is in
endless flux of becoming and decaying.
" We must make a distinction," he says in the Timaeus, " of the
two great forms of being, and ask : what is that which is and has
no becoming, and what is that which is always becoming and never
is? The latter, which is apprehended by opinion through
irrational sensation, is ever coming into being and perishing,
but never really is."
The other level is pure knowledge, or intelligence,
by which the mind reaches the realities of the world
yonder ; the abiding, unchangeable realities which are
freed from everything transitory and contingent As
Plato himself puts it in this same passage of the
Timaeus : " The world apprehended by Reason or Thought
is ever changeless and one with itself."
Plato used the word Ideas not to indicate something
conceived in the mind as we use the word, but to indicate
those permanent realities which stay unchanged in all
the welter of mutation, like, for example, the Idea man
or the universal man, regardless of the changes which
happen to particular men, such as John and Peter and
Henry ; or like the law of gravitation through all the
flux of infinite particles of matter. " Ideas " are in short
types or laws. Sense never gives us these immutable,
permanent realities these " Ideas " which abide ; it gives
only a " this " or a " that," only a contingent something,
nothing which is just itself for ever.
Where then did the mind get these permanent truths ?
It got them, Plato tells us in poetical and mythical
language, from a supersensuous world where before birth
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 61
it lived and dwelt in the presence of pure being, and
where it contemplated every day these ultimate and
unchanging realities. The soul was at home there in
the real world and saw that which ts. In a myth of
exceeding beauty he has told us how the soul fared in
that other realm, and how it fell from that world of
reality to this world of shadows :
" The region above the heavens is the place of true knowledge.
There colourless, formless, and intangible being is visible to the
mind, which is the only lord of the soul. And as the divine
intelligence and that of every other soul which is rightly nourished
is fed upon mind and pure knowledge, such an intelligent soul is
glad at beholding being ; and feeding on the sight of truth is
replenished." l
But whenever a soul is unable to maintain its vision
of truth and fails to nourish its wings with the sight of
pure being, that soul falls to this lower world and lives
here among the shadows. But it never altogether forgets
the realities it has seen in the eternal home. Deep in its
memory it holds those realities it has known and, when it
sees the shadow-image of the real thing, it remembers the
" Idea " which it knew in the other sphere, so that all
true knowledge is reminiscence.
In another figure 2 he has compared this lower life of
sense experience to human beings
" living in an underground cave, with their faces turned toward
the back of the cave; they have been there from their child
hood, and have their legs and necks chained that they cannot
move, and can only see before them ; for the chains are arranged
in such a manner as to prevent them from turning round their
heads. Above and behind them the light of a fire is blazing at
a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a
raised way ; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along
the way . . . over which puppets are shown."
The chained men within never see anything but the
shadows of these puppets. Their world is "just nothing
but the shadows of images."
Here in Plato, taken in a prosaic and literal sense, we
1 Phaedrus, 247. * Republic, opening of Book VII.
62 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
have the beginning of that tendency, which has played
such a mighty part in Western speculation, and which
appears in almost every school of mysticism the
tendency to treat the sense world as unreal, shadowy,
and undivine. The temporal is in sharp antithesis to the
eternal. The latter is the realm of being; the former is
" the other " a cave of shadows. But, even when taken
at its face value and in its superficial meaning, Plato's
doctrine is never consistently dualistic, for he finds it
impossible to treat this world as a stubborn, foreign
"other," unrelated to that which is and to the mind
which perceives it. The soul i.e. the spiritual principle
in man lives in both worlds and can always find a
suggestion of that which is in that which appears. In
the " cave-myth " some of the dwellers in the cave " turn
their necks round " and " go up and lock at the light."
At first " the glare of the light distresses them " and
they are unable to " see the realities of which they have
before been seeing the shadows." But gradually " they
grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world." And
when they remember their " old habitation and the
wisdom of the cave and their fellow -prisoners they
felicitate themselves on the change," and they desire
" to descend again among the prisoners of the cave " to
help them to get liberated and " to see realities."
Plato tells us the entire allegory means that the prison
is the world of sense, and that the ascent and vision of
things above, i.e. realities, is " the upward progress of the
soul into the intellectual world, where it gains beatific
vision " ; for " our argument shows," he adds, " that the
power of knowing reality is already in the soul when the
eye of the soul is turned? Or as he puts it in the Phaedo :
" When the soul returns into itself and reflects, it passes into
another region (than that of the world of sense), the region of
that which is pure and everlasting, immortal and unchangeable ;
and, feeling itself kindred thereto, it dwells there under its own
control, and has rest from its wanderings, and is constant and
one with itself as are the objects with which it deals." x
1 The Phaedo, 79 C.
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 63
This means that the soul has within itself, whether by
reminiscence or otherwise, the power of rising above the
transitory to that which is permanent, and that there is
something in the soul kindred to the Reality which it
contemplates. He repeatedly says in the Republic that
the essential thing in virtue and vice, in goodness and
badness, is the disposition of the soul which they reveal. 1
As Plato's conception developed, he dwelt more and
more upon the one ultimate Reality which binds all
subordinate realities into an organic whole the supreme
unity of all that is. This he called the " Idea of the
Good." Through the " Idea of the Good " all special
spheres of reality are united in One Ultimate Real. This
is the Source and Goal of all things the Alpha and
Omega. Toward l all that is moves. It is the end
and Final Cause in the entire circuit of the universe
" the one far-off divine event to which the whole creation
moves." Whatever comes to any degree or stage of
being does so through the attraction of the Idea of the
Good. The universe in all its parts is realizing an End
which is Good and the end or Goal functions in the
entire process. As the idea of a loved one moves the
lover toward her whom he loves, so the Idea of the Good
moves the many parts of the universe toward Itself, the
One Reality the Absolute Good.
The great question now for the interpreter of Plato is
this : Does Plato seriously mean that the permanent
realities, and above all the One Reality, are actually off in
another world, and that our only knowledge of them is
by Reminiscence, or is the ultimate Reality, the Absolute
Good, immanent in the universe, and immanent, too, in
the mind that knows it ? It is obvious to everybody who
thinks about it, that, if through these Ideas, or permanent
realities, we truly know anything, then there must be
some organic unity between our minds and those things
which we know. If they are apart from the mind in
another world, they are of no use to us, and Plato cannot
possibly have thought that they could have been actually
1 The Republic, 358 B ; 361 K ; 367 K.
64 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
perceived by sense in some earlier world, or in some world
higher up. An Idea to have any value must unify
thought and being and be manifested in both ; it must
be both within and beyond the mind that knows it.
The passages I have already quoted show that Plato
was fully aware of this : " When the mind returns into
itself (from the confusion of sense) it is in the region of
that which is pure and everlasting and is kindred thereto."
The " Cave figure " leads to the same conclusion, namely
that " the power of beholding Reality is already in the
soul," and the ascent to the vision of the One Reality
" the beatific vision," he calls it is always possible to
the dwellers in the cave if they turn the soul's eye. Even
the " Reminiscence myth " of the Phaedrus may have a
much deeper meaning than that which is usually drawn
from it. It may be a pictorial way of saying that the
soul has a native power, or faculty, of apprehending the
Real. The soul does not receive the truth ab extra,
whether in this world or any other. As soon as it rises
above sense and comes up to its real self it finds a per
manent object of thought, that which is, which was always
there, though only implicit or potential. It is called up
from the soul's own deep, for if the soul had not this
inherent capacity of rising to permanent truth, there could
be no knowledge, only the welter of sense. There would
be no gain in going back to a world before birth where
the truth was seen, for this gives us a sense perception
again only on a higher level. The myth suggests not a
regress into the temporal past, but a regress into the
soul's native capacity for truth, and so native kinship and
unity with the Real. 1
Plato very often implies that this world the so-called
shadow-world is a real reflection of the truly Real, and
so is more than a phantom ; is in fact a divine world,
with genuine beauty and goodness in it. In the Timaeus
it is called a " second god " an " only begotten son " of
the first God. It is thus " an image of its Maker," and
1 See Edward Caird's Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers,
vol. i. Lecture VIII.
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 65
" the most beautiful and perfect of all creatures." And
he also implies that there is something in the very nature
of the soul which enables it to find the eternal in the
temporal, and to rise through the sight of the seen to the
Reality, unseen and abiding. This faculty of soul he
calls Love (epa>9), a mystic passion which begins when
the soul catches sight of the world of Reality through an
object of beauty which opens a window into the eternal
realm. The temporal object suggests the eternal, and the
soul in a rapture sees through the transitory and con
templates absolute Beauty and so finds itself at home.
The steps of this divine, mystic passion are given in a
beautiful passage of the Symposium. The lover soon gets
beyond the satisfaction which physical nearness to the
beloved object can give. There is still " an intense
yearning," which "does not appear to be the desire of
intercourse," but " something else which the soul desires
and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and
doubtful presentiment" The soul takes satisfaction in
progeny only because it finds in offspring a visible
image of some everlasting possession. It rises steadily
to ever higher types of progeny lofty thoughts, poems,
statutes, institutions, laws the fair creations of the mind.
But the highest stage of Love comes when the soul sees
Beauty itself which is everlasting, "not growing and
decaying, not waxing and waning." He, who under the
influence of Love rises to see that Beauty, is not far
from the end, " for the true order of going to the things
of Love is to use the beauties of earth as steps along
which one mounts upward for the sake of that other
Beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair
forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair
actions to fair notions until from fair notions he arrives
at the notion of absolute Beauty and at last knows what
the essence of Beauty is." This is the ascent of the soul
from the temporal to the eternal, where it is one with that
which it beholds. The final end toward which the soul
moves is the Good the Ultimate Reality the apex of
Being.
F
66 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
On this interpretation, the Good is the immanent
rational principle which unifies all intelligible, i.e. think
able, things and unites them in a living whole with
the mind which knows them. It is the substance of
all manifestation, the unifying principle of all finite
experience. It is involved in all reality, and equally
involved in all thought. It is never " beyond " except
in the sense in which the life of any organism is
" beyond " any single member of the organism. On this
view the eternal world, the spiritual realm, is not "another
world " to which we ascend by leaving " this world "
behind ; the Eternal world is rather the immanent Reality
which is the ground and explanation of the temporal
world.
Plato did not consistently develop this view, though
it is possible to find it sketched and adumbrated through
out his later works, but there can be no doubt that he
consistently and unvaryingly " keeps the faith " that the
soul has in itself an eye for divine Reality, and that the
mind has a native capacity for beatific vision. This doctrine
has had mighty influence and is of vast import. The
view which Plato's successors and the later mystics found
in his teaching was rather an ultimate Reality " beyond "
the universe, and " above " mind ; " beyond being "
and " above knowledge." It is to be reached only by
a sublime process which negates all finiteness ; all
multiplicity, all particularity. On this basis the Absolute
Reality is nothing knowable or thinkable it is the
Divine Dark to be reached only when the mind has
transcended itself in ecstasy. 1
1 It should be said that Plato does not give in his Dialogues one consistent
and unvarying exposition of a well-settled system. On the contrary his
position constantly shifts, and his doctrine is always in the making, never a fixed
system. He remains throughout a great artistic creator rather than a system-maker.
J. A. Stewart in his Myths of Plato (1905) holds that the mysticism of Plato
is a feeling mysticism. Plato's myths which J. A. Stewart very rightly says are
organic parts of the dialogues in which they appear are, he thinks, told to
produce a state of ' ' Transcendental feeling, ' ' through which the soul comes in
contact with reality, with timeless existence, " that which the soul is and was and
shall be." The myth induces, just as sublime poetry does, a dream-consciousness
a profound feeling state, by which the soul transcends the world of the senses,
and scientific understanding, and has an experience of ultimate reality.
This theory is beautifully worked out in the work cited, and it has an important
nr MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 67
Aristotle also exerted a profound influence on the
types of mysticism which prevailed from the third to
the fifteenth century. It is strange that this cold, analytic,
unmystical philosopher, who would have none of Plato's
myths, and who sought to bring everything in the universe
under exact and scientific description, should have pro
duced a great succession of mystics as his intellectual
progeny, but such is the fact. It seems paradoxical that
the beginner of exact observation of empirical phenomena
should have inspired in his disciples a glowing passion
for contemplation , but such, again, is the historical fact.
Aristotle sharply separates God from the world. God
is the Absolutely Real remote from all that is finite,
mutable, imperfect, and potential. He is not to be found
here. He is wholly yonder, beyond the world, its " un
moved Mover." He is self-contained, one with Himself,
a moveless Energy. He dwells in the peace of His own
completeness. " He thinks His own thoughts." He feels
nothing, needs nothing, seeks nothing, goes never out to
find any " other." All things are drawn upward by His
perfection and their imperfection. But man has one
possible path open to God it is the way of pure con
templation (Bewpia).
By pure contemplation the mind may rise above
the transitory and contingent, may get beyond space
and time and contemplate the Absolute. This attain
ment is possible because man possesses at the " top
of his mind " an active reason, that is to say, " a
pure self-consciousness." In his De Antma, or " Psy
chology," Aristotle distinguishes two levels of reason,
which he calls the active and the passive reason. The
active reason has no finite origin, is not bound up with,
or dependent on, the body. It is "pure," i.e. not mixed
with desire or passion, and does not receive its content
bearing on some types of mysticism, but it does not, I think, fit Plato's teaching.
Plato always treats the feeling experience as a low stage. He puts its seat in the
lower soul and reserves for Intellect alone a direct apprehension of That which is.
Those who make mysticism consist in feeling experience cannot bring Plato into
their category. For him the perception of the Divine is in the Intellect. We
shall see, too, that his greatest interpreter, Plotinus, puts mind above bean in
the ladder of ascent to God.
68 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
through sense. The lower or passive reason is wholly
dependent for its content on the body. It begins with
the body and ends with it. The active reason^ not being
dependent on sense impressions from without, is not
determined by anything outside itself; does not proceed
in its truth from finite aspect to finite aspect, as one
proceeds in ordinary experience, but attains its "object,"
reaches its goal, by a supreme act of vision in which the
mind sees the whole, the unity, without contrast or
difference. It "thinks its own thoughts," like God.
The particular disappears and the mind rises to the un
broken one. Some finite object may be the " occasion "
for this ascent of reason, but sense does not supply the
" object " which the mind beholds. The sense impression
is only the " occasion " for a free activity of reason by
which it mounts to a vision of forms and realities that
are not in space and time, but are one with its own
deepest nature. This " faculty " does not belong to man
as finite man as " mere man," but, as Aristotle says in
his Ethics, it belongs to man only " as there is something
divine within him." l He nowhere explains how there
comes to be " something divine within man," but he
implies that the active reason at the top of mind is one
with that Divine Reason which in beholding beholds
Itself, for in contemplation the mind is at home with
itself and is one with what it beholds in unbroken unity. 2
The following is one of Aristotle's great passages in
praise of contemplation as man's highest function :
" If then reason is divine in comparison with man's whole
nature, the life according to reason must be divine in comparison
with human life. Nor ought we to pay regard to those who
exhort us that, as we are men, we ought to think human things
1 Weldon's Ethics of Aristotle, p. 337.
2 Aristotle himself has nowhere worked out a consistent theory of the relation
between the two types of reason, nor of the relation between the active reason and
the Divine Reason. His great commentator, Alexander of Aphrodisias, who
flourished about A.D. 200, took a very important step which was to have far-
reaching consequences. Alexander explicitly identifies active reason with Divine
Reason. Active reason, he holds, has no finite origin. It is of God and remains
in God, and the ideas which it presents to passive human reason are in reality
Divine Ideas thoughts which God thinks. This interpretation of Aristotle had
a remarkable history and will meet us again.
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 69
and to keep our eyes upon mortality : rather, as far as we may,
we should endeavour to rise to that which is immortal in us and
do everything to live in conformity with what is best for us ; for
if in bulk it is small, yet in power and dignity it far exceeds every
thing else which we possess. Nay, it may even be regarded as
constituting our very individuality, since it is the supreme element,
and that which is best in us. And if so, then it would be absurd
for us to choose any life but that which is properly our own. . . .
Such, therefore, to man is the life according to reason since it is
this that makes him man." 1
From this passage the natural inference is that that which
makes man really man is something divine in him.
Aristotle's influence has always been in the direction
of a negative mysticism, that is a mysticism which mounts
upward towards reality by negativing all finite creatures
and appearances. God is a One beyond the many. The
soul attains its vision only when it leaves behind every
thing by which it could mark off and characterise the
object of its vision. At the end of its ascent the soul
finds that it has no way of distinguishing the All from
the Nothing, because it has risen above all finites all the
marks and names which give character and reality to
our world of experience. // has come home, but with
empty hands. We shall often enough find mystics
travelling such a via negativa.
The influence of Stoic philosophy was far-reaching
during the entire formative period of the Christian Church
and the Christian ideas. Its doctrine of an immanent
Spirit, alike in the world and in man a soul of the
universe could not fail to impress the pillar Christians
of the first centuries who came in contact with the
doctrine.
" A divine force," writes Seneca, " has come down to earth, a
heavenly power, by which the soul, with its splendid powers of
thought, raises itself above all lower things. As the rays of the
sun touch the earth indeed, but have their true home in that place
whence they come forth, so it is with the great and holy Spirit
which is sent down hither in order that we may learn to know the
Deity better." 2
1 Weldon's Ethics of Aristotle, pp. 337-38. * Ep. xli.
70 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Again he says :
" God comes to man, yea, He comes closer, till He enters into
men. No disposition is good apart from God. Seeds of the
divine are planted in human bodies ; if they are well tended, they
germinate and grow up into the likeness of That from whence they
sprang." 1
The teaching that there is a germinative principle
a seed of God in the human soul was a fundamental idea
with the Stoics. This doctrine, interpreted at its best,
offers a basis for mystical religion, and was very suggestive
to the primitive Christians. Stoicism, too, proclaimed the
doctrine that the inner spirit must free itself completely
from everything individual and particular in order to
identify itself with the Universal Reason. The path
to the One and All is a path of surrender one comes
to the universal Spirit only by leaving behind all that
is one's " own."
But the greatest outside influence in mystical directions
was from the school of philosophy generally known as
Neoplatonic. It became for many generations a necessary
part of the intellectual environment of the Grseco-Roman
world, and most of the Christian thinkers knew their
Plato, not directly but through the interpretation of
Neoplatonism. We cannot understand the spiritual
travail of later centuries without first coming to close
quarters with this last great intellectual effort of paganism.
The master mind of the movement was Plotinus. He
was the profoundest thinker between the flowering period
of Greek philosophy and the creators of modern philosophy
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, though
he lacked that peculiar quality of style which carries a
system of truth into the very life-blood of humanity and
makes it the possession of the race for ever, he has a
passion and enthusiasm which makes his difficult book
a live one even after more than fifteen centuries. He was
born, as near as we can fix the date, at Lycopolis in
Egypt in A.D. 205. His biographer Porphyry, a third
century Boswell, has given us much detail and gossip, but
1 Ep. Ixxiii. 14.
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 71
he could not give the date of the birth of Plotinus for the
reason that Plotinus himself refused to have it known.
" He seemed ashamed of his body," and was unwilling
that any one should ever celebrate the event of his birth.
Origen, who was a fellow-student with Plotinus, had a
similar objection to birthdays, and he supports the notion
by pointing out that in the Bible only bad men are
reported as having kept their birthdays ! The teacher
who first " spoke to the condition " of Plotinus was
Ammonius Saccas of Alexandria. When the young
inquirer found him he said, " This is the man I am
seeking." Ammonius was a Christian in his youth, but
turned from his religion to the pursuit of philosophy.
His name " Saccas " means " porter " and tradition repre
sents him as a self-taught man. We know almost nothing
of him, or of his system, except through the effects of his
ten years of teaching on his famous disciple. Plotinus
settled in Rome in 244, where he became the centre of a
group of eager seekers after truth. Porphyry has given
us a human and charming picture of the man, who was
evidently much more than a dry and bloodless meta
physician.
" Many," he says, "of the noblest men and women, when death
drew near, brought to him their boys and girls, and property, and
entrusted all to him as to a holy and divine guardian. His house
was full of boys and maidens, among whom was Polemo, for whose
education he was so careful that he would listen to his schoolboy
verses. He endured even to go through the accounts of his wards'
possessions, and was most accurate and business-like, saying that,
until they became philosophers, their property and revenues
ought to be kept intact and secure."
Popular anecdotes about him give the impression that
he was a man of unusual psychical disposition, which has
important bearing on his teaching that the highest stage
of truth is ecstasy an experience which, Porphyry tells
us, was four times granted to him. He wrote extensive
treatises, which Porphyry collected into six books called
Enneads. He died in the Roman Campagna in 269,
saying to his companion as he passed away : " Now the
72 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
divine in me is struggling to reunite with the divine in
the All."
The attempt has often been made to trace the doctrines
of Plotinus to oriental influences. It is true that he
travelled through the Far East, and it is also true that
Alexandria was a meeting-place for all types of men and
of ideas ; it is, further, true that Gnosticism, which was a
semi-philosophy, partly formed by oriental speculation,
was in the air at the time, as thick as thistledown in the
summer breeze. His interpretation of his great Greek
masters was no doubt coloured by the atmosphere of the
time, but his system is, in the main, a direct development
of classical Greek philosophy. He is the culmination of
the movement whose three greatest exponents were
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, though he brings together,
as every great philosophical genius does, all the converging
lines of thought before him, and, through the creative
work of his own spirit, utters a word which is neither new
nor old. It is not my purpose here to give any technical
exposition of Plotinus. I shall point out, in as unscholastic
language as possible, the mystical features of his system,
and indicate how. these Neoplatonic ideas come over into
the stream of Christian thought
" God is not external to any one." He is " the root
of the Soul," the " centre " of the mind, and the way home
to Him is within every person. This is the heart of the
mysticism of Plotinus. There is in the universe, as he
conceives it, a double movement the way down and the
way up. The way down is the eternal process of the
Divine emanation, or outgoing of God towards the circum
ference. 1 At the centre of all is God, the One, the Good.
The One is a Unity above all difference, an Absolute who
transcends all thought, who is, in fact, even beyond being.
Thought implies a contrast of knower and known ; Being
implies a substance with qualities or characteristics, and
each quality limits the substance. For example redness
necessitates the negation, or absence, of all other colours,
1 These spntial words ''centre" and "circumference" are used only meta
phorically, not literally.
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 73
and so on with all qualities. The Perfect God, then, must
be above all division of known and knower ; beyond all
limitation of qualities, an undivided One, too supreme and
lofty to be expressed by any word, but containing in
Himself All, with no contrasts of here or there, no
oppositions of this and that, no separation into change
and variation. He is divested of every likeness to any
thing in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in
the waters under the earth. He is dependent on nothing,
in need of nothing, and every description of Him must be
an everlasting Nay. From the Perfect One there flows or
radiates out a succession of emanations of decreasing
splendour and reality.
The first emanation from the One is Mind (Nous),
which is the second name in the Trinity of Plotinus.
This first sphere of being is an overflow from God a
"by-product," as it were, which leaves Him as He was
before with no decrease. " Mind " radiates from God as
light does from a luminous body, which floods the dark
ness, but loses none of itself by the outflow ; or like
goodness in a person, which by going out in service to
others does not lessen the original amount of goodness.
This highest circle of being is the world of Ideas the
universal principles, the archetypes and patterns, after
which our world of things is framed. It is the Over-
Mind of the Universe of whom all minds partake and in
whom is everything which is real and intelligible. God,
therefore, as the ground of the world is Intelligence.
Mind, again, overflows into a second sphere of being
the third name in this Trinity Soul. This is Universal
Soul, or Oversoul, and enfolds in itself all individual souls,
so that all souls are both distinct and yet one. Soul is
the outer rim of reality. It pours and streams out, and,
as through myriad rivulets, it floods the world, in fact,
makes the world. Matter by itself is nothing. It is the
limit which Soul comes to, the outer husk or barrier the
dark into which the outflowing divine light rushes, so that
what, in its origin, was one is splashed and broken into
endless multiplicity. Soul has both a higher and a lower
74 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
side, or, as a recent interpreter puts it, Soul is "an
amphibious being who belongs to both worlds, and who,
therefore, can climb to the highest or sink to the lowest"
The lower soul desires a body and lives in the stage of
sense and deals with objects seen partially and temporarily;
in a word, is as far out at the rim of being as it is
possible to go. The higher soul, on the other hand,
transcends the body, " rides upon " it, as the fish is in the
sea or as the plant is in the air. This higher soul never
absolutely leaves its home, its being is not here but
" yonder," or, in the language of Plotinus : " The soul
always leaves something of itself above."
It is possible for every soul to retrace the process of
its descent and return home. The first step on " the way
upward " is for the soul to come to itself. " God is
present," says Plotinus,
" even with those who do not know Him, though they may escape
out of Him, or rather out of themselves, and therefore are not
able to see Him from whom they have exiled themselves. Having
thus lost themselves, how shall they find another being ? A child
who is frenzied and out of his mind will not know his father.
But he who has learnt to know himself will also know the Being
from whom he comes." 1
Again he says :
"' When we carry our views outside the Principle on which we
depend, we lose consciousness of our unity, and become like a
number of faces which are turned outward, though inwardly they
are attached to one head. But if one of us, like one of those
faces, could turn round either by his own effort, or by divine aid,
he would behold at once God, himself and the whole. At first,
indeed, he might be able to see himself as one with the whole,
but soon he would find that there was no boundary he could
fix for his separate self. . . . He would attain to the Absolute
whole, not by going forward to another place, but by abiding in
that Principle on which the whole universe is based." 2
This means that the first stage on the journey home is
for the soul to be completely restored to the unity of the
universal soul, " attaching itself to that centre to which all
souls ought to cling." The quest is furthered whenever
1 Ennead, vi. 9, 7. 2 Ibid. vi. 5, 7.
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 75
one realises that all souls have a common origin and
ground : " When thou reverest the soul in another thou
art revering thyself." But this is only the first stage.
The next step is to rise to Mind (or Nous).
"Since, then," says Plotinus, "soul is so precious and divine
a thing, believing that thou hast a strong helper in thy quest after
God . . . go up to Him who is yonder. And of a truth thou
wilt find Him not far off, for there is not much between. Grasp
then what is diviner than this divine (i.e. diviner than Soul), the
Soul's neighbour above (i.e. Mind), after whom and from whom
the soul is." J
By withdrawal from desires, and from objects of sense
to the contemplation of the true patterns of things, i.e. to
the world of pure thought, one reaches a higher unity than
was possible to the soul. Here in calm contemplation
the highest unity is reached that is possible to a self-
conscious being. It is a unity in which the thinker and
the thought are not foreign to each other, though there
still remains a distinction of subject and object, without
which self-consciousness would cease.
The first manifestation of God is thought the act by
which He thinks the patterns of things and so, too, the
summit of human consciousness is thought, by which man
arrives at the height of thinking God's thoughts. In this
realm of pure thought the self finds its true ground of
unity with the All. Each mind is like an open book to
all other minds ; each spirit is transparent to all the
others.
"They see themselves in others," says Plotinus, "for all things
are transparent, and there is nothing dark or resisting, but every
one is manifest to every one internally. . . . For every one has
all things in himself and again sees all things in another, so that
all things are everywhere, and all is all, and each is all, the glory
is infinite." 2
But this is not the End ; the soul is not yet at home,
but where is the ladder to mount above thought, and so
become one with the One ? The last stage of the journey
1 Ennead, v. I. 3. Ibid. v. 8, 4.
76 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
cannot be told in plain words. It can be divulged, says
our mystic, only to those who are initiated. " Our teaching
reaches only so far as to indicate the way in which the
Soul should go, but the vision itself must be the soul's
own achievement." There is in everybody a centre at
the summit of the mind which is inalienably conjoined
with the One, or, as Plotinus puts it, " God is not external
to any one," so that the last mount is the complete return
to this Divine centre, to a vision in which subject and
object, known and knower, are one. But that is a state
beyond consciousness ; that is, beyond the subject -object
type of consciousness. 1 Plotinus calls it " a mode of
vision which is ecstasy," when the soul, " energising
enthusiastically, becomes established in quiet and solitary
union." It is, as he says, " the flight of the alone to the
Alone," and in this highest experience of actual contact 2
and union with God, when the soul, one with what it loves,
" In undivided being blends,"
self-consciousness is transcended. This state is suggested
rather than described in a great passage in Ennead, vi.
9, 10 :
" But to see and to have seen that vision is reason no longer,
but more than reason, and before reason, and after reason ; as
also is that vision which is seen. And perchance we should not
speak of sight. For that which is seen if we must need speak
of the seer and the seen as twain and not as one that which is
seen is not discerned by the seer nor conceived by him as a
second thing ; but becoming, as it were, other than himself, he of
himself contributeth naught, but, as when one layeth centre upon
centre, he becometh God's and one with God. Wherefore this
vision is hard to tell of. For how can a man tell of that as other
than himself which, when he discerned it, seemed not other, but
one with himself indeed ? " 3
1 We often have such experiences in some degree. All our high moments of
experience of beauty, or of love, or of worship are experiences beyond the subject-
object type of consciousness.
2 He uses the phrase " intellectual contact " (voepa ^jra^ij).
8 It would be an error to suppose, as is often done, that the mind in ecstasy is
necessarily a mental blank. To dispel such a view one needs only to study the
personal experiences recorded by Tennyson where he came upon That which is.
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 77
It is not possible to follow in any detail, in this present
study, the spiritual history of later Neoplatonism. There
was an unbroken succession of teachers, or, as they them
selves called it, " a Hermaic chain," from Plotinus to the
closing of the Athenian school of Philosophy by order of
Justinian in the year 529. The movement was marred
by many vagaries, and it became so intimately allied with
the vain effort to revive the ancient religion of the pagan
world, and by it to conquer the ever-expanding religion
embodied in the Christian Church, that it exposed itself to
the corrupting influences of superstition and magic, and
lost in some degree its lofty primitive mood. The move
ment had its moment of triumph in the person and in
the reign of Julian, nicknamed " the Apostate." Many
attempts were made to construct by myth and imagination
a " philosophic master," who should captivate the imagina
tion of the multitude and become a rival to Christ. 1
There is, however, a noble side to Neoplatonism even
down to its end, and Eunapius, one of its chroniclers in
later times, could say with some truth, " The fire still
burns on the altars of Plotinus." It completely failed in
its chief ambition to maintain the imperial spiritual
supremacy of Rome, and Julian spoke words of truth and
soberness when he said, " Thou hast conquered, Galilean,"
for the blood of youth was in the veins of Christianity,
while Neoplatonism was an attempt to revivify a dead
past. But the successive masters in the long line of
Neoplatonic thought kept burning the torch which Plato
had lighted, and passed it on for the Christian scholars to
take up when they were ready for it.
The last great name in the " Hermaic chain " was
Proclus (b. 410, d. 485), who taught once more in Athens,
where the torch was first lighted. It is said that when he
arrived in Athens, and came late at night to knock for
It is, however, true that no description can be given of anything which transcends
subject-object experience. The rush of memory, by which a drowning man ' ' sees
his whole life," is doubtless a real, though certainly an indescribable, experience.
Plotinus gives a wonderful description of the antecedent conditions of ecstasy in
En. V. i. 2, 3, 4.
1 The two most famous pagan "gospels" are the lives of "Apollonius of
Tyana" and " Pythagoras."
78 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
admission into the school of philosophy, the porter said
to him, "If you had not come, I should have shut the
gates," which indicates that there was already a foreboding
that the school was on the perilous edge of extinction.
Proclus was a man of extraordinary mental powers, and
under happier conditions might have begun an era instead
of ending one.
He follows Plotinus in holding that everything emanates
from the One, the Absolute First Principle, but this
emanation is a much more complicated process than
appears even in the system of Plotinus. Everything
coming forth from the One differentiates into a descending
series of triads, by which the manifestation of the finite is
made. That which comes forth is both like and unlike
its higher cause. In so far as it is like its cause, it
remains in it ; in so far as it is different from it, it goes
out and separates from it ; and can return only by
becoming like that next above itself on the way back
towards the One. The soul can always withdraw from
those things which separate it, and return into its own
inner sanctuary, where it finds an indwelling God. Life
is at its best when it is caught up by the upward sweep
of a holy enthusiasm, which Proclus often calls " faith,"
and sometimes "divine madness."
About forty years after the death of Proclus (in the
year 527) the edict of a Christian emperor closed the
doors of the Academy, and drove the little band of
philosophers out into exile. There were seven of the
band, and they took their beloved books and started out,
from the famous seat of philosophy, to seek a quiet retreat
in Persia the wise men of the West going toward the
East with no star for guide. It is a pathetic end. The
mighty stream of truth seemed at last, after eight hundred
years of luminous flood, to be losing itself in the desert
sand. The Church would brook no rival in the field of
truth, and it proposed to ban all unbaptized teachers, and
to taboo all streams of truth which did not flow from the
canon. The Christian emperor reckoned ill if he thought
he could suppress the contribution of Greek wisdom by
iv MYSTICISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 79
lock and key. He could banish the feeble relic of the
school, and then settle down in the fond belief that the
world was now rid of the philosophic brood. Not so.
Before Justinian was in his grave, this Neoplaton'c
philosophy was, as we shall see, translated into Christian
terms, and was made into the spiritual bee -bread on
which many Christian generations fed.
CHAPTER V
MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS
THE Fathers were not " mystics " in the ordinary sense
of the word. Their type of religion was mainly objective
and historical, rather than subjective and inward. Their
great task was the construction of an authoritative Church,
and the formation of a permanent universal dogma, known
as " the Faith." Some of them were pre-eminently of the
statesman type ; others were of the philosophical type ;
some of them combined both types. They all used the
historical material which lay at their hands, and they
built this material, as best they could, into the great
world-structure, the Church which was always in their
thought. Very few of them have given us powerful
descriptions of their own inward experience Augustine
is the striking exception but there are scattered
passages in the writings of almost all of them, from
the earliest apostolic Fathers down, that express the
kind of direct and inward religious experience which I
have been calling " mystical."
There is a striking passage in the homily known as
II. Clement, chapter xiv., which presents in a profound
way the primacy of the invisible Church :
" Wherefore, brethren, if we do the will of God our Father,
we shall be of the first Church which is spiritual, which was
created before the sun and the moon. ... So, therefore, let us
choose to be of the Church of life, that we may be saved. And
I do not suppose we are ignorant that the living Church is the
body of Christ. . . . And the books of the apostles plainly
declare that the Church existeth not now for the first time, but
80
v MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS 81
hath been from the beginning, for she was spiritual as our Jesus
\vas spiritual"
The writer is contrasting the Church of Christ, thought of
as pre-existing and eternal, with the Jewish Church, which
was a temporal institution.
Irenaeus sets forth a lofty stage of religious experience
above the legal stage and the stage in which the
dominion of the flesh renders the life imperfect an
attainment to the freedom of the spirit, wrought by the
indwelling of the Divine Spirit in the man.
" The Lord," he says, " Who redeems us by His own blood
gives us His soul for our soul, His own flesh for our flesh, and
pours out the Spirit of the Father for the union and communion
of God and man, imparting God to man through the Spirit, and
raising man on the other hand to God." l
This higher life of spiritual religion he everywhere
attributes to the direct "impartation of God," or to the
soul's " participation in God" He says :
" It is impossible to live without life, but the means of life
come from participation in God. But participation in God is to
see God and to enjoy His goodness. . . . The glory of God is a
living man, and the life of man is the vision of God." 2
There is a noble passage in Tertullian which goes
down beneath all the superficial grounds of evidence for
the reality of Christianity, and which announces the soul's
first-hand evidence :
" I call in," he writes, 8 " a new testimony ; yea, one that is
1 Against Heresies, Book V. chap. i. sec. i.
9 Ibid. Book IV. chap. xx. sec. 5-7. It must, however, be said that this
" impartation of God to men " which Irenaeus teaches is not something mystical
or spiritual, in our modern sense. He does not conceive of man, as the mystic
does, as having a native capacity for God and as possessing within himself a
meeting-place with God. He thinks rather of a miraculous impartation made
possible through the Incarnation and mediated through the Eucharist He is
thinking of a way by which the flesh can be immortalized. Harnack sums up
the teaching of Irenaeus as follows. He taught ' ' restoration of the image of
God in man, destruction of death, union of man with God, adoption of men to
the status of sons of God and gods, communication of the spirit, imparting of
knowledge, culminating in the vision of God, imparting of immortal life.
All these goods are only the different sides of one and the same good, which,
since it is of divine character, can only be brought to us by God and implanted
in our nature " (Harnack's Hist, of Dogma, vol. ii. p. 292).
. 8 Tertullian, De Testimonio Animae, chap. i.
G
82 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
better known than all literature, more discussed than all doctrine,
more public than all publications, greater than the whole man
I mean all which is man's. Stand forth, O soul, whether thou
art a divine and eternal substance, or whether thou art the
very opposite of divine, and a mortal thing; whether thou
art received from heaven, or sprung from earth ; whether thine
existence begins with that of the body, or thou art put into it at
a later stage ; from whatever source, and in whatever way, thou
makest man a rational being, in the highest degree capable of
thought and knowledge stand forth and give thy witness."
He goes on to say that it is the soul's testimony in
the " plain man," the ordinary, common man, that he
wants :
" I call thee not as, when fashioned in schools, trained in
libraries, fed up in Attic academies and porticoes, thou belchest
forth thy wisdom. I address thee, simple and rude, uncultured
and untaught, such as they have thee who have thee only ; that
very thing pure and entire, of the road, the street, the workshop.
/ want thy experience. I demand of thee the things thou
bringest with thee into man, which thou knowest either from
thyself, or from thy author, whoever he may be."
And then he draws out, with a flash of real prophetic
fire, the soul's silent, subconscious witness to the God in
whom it lives and moves, and has its being :
" Even with the garland of Ceres on thy brow, or wrapped in
the purple cloak of Saturn, or wearing the white robe of Isis, thou
invokest God as Judge. Standing under the statue of Aesculapius,
adorning the brazen image of Juno, arraying the helmet of
Minerva with dusky figures, thou never thinkest of appealing
to any of these deities. In thine own forum thou appealest
to a God who is elsewhere. . . . Though under the oppressive
bondage of the body, though led astray by depraving customs,
though enervated by lusts and passions, though in slavery to false
gods ; yet, whenever the soul comes to itself, as out of a surfeit, or
a sleep, or a sickness, and attains something of its natural sound
ness, it speaks of God"
And he ends his treatise with the sweeping
declaration :
"There is not a soul of man that does not, from the light
v MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS 83
that is in itself . . . proclaim God, though, O soul, thou dost
not seek to know Him." *
The Greek Fathers were all influenced by the
philosophy of Greece, and from the time of Origen
(A.D. 185-254) there is a strong Neoplatonic flavour in
all their work. The immanence of God is the very warp
and woof of their thinking. " God mingles with
humanity as the salt with the sea, as the perfume with
the flower." God has always been in the world " work
ing it up to better." The unwearied Divine Instructor has
in all ages identified Himself with the growing, struggling
race, and, in the fulness of time, became incarnate in one
Life, and ever since has been the inward Spirit in all men
who would receive Him. This Divine Word is ever
being born anew in the hearts of saints. 2
Clement of Alexandria carries his doctrine of imman
ence into every aspect of his religion. Prayer, he says, is
direct intercourse with God. " Faith is a divine and
human mutual and reciprocal correspondence." Clement's
" harmonized man," the goal of human perfection here on
earth, is a person who has the Divine Life so formed
within that goodness and holiness have become " second
nature " the man is holy even in his dreams ! Clement's
Platonism comes out beautifully in the following passage,
which is a good example of mysticism :
" It is, then, the greatest of all lessons to know oneself. For
if one knows himself he will know God, and knowing God, he
will be made like God." 8
It is possible to pick out such occasional passages
in Clement, Origen, and Athanasius, but they do not
prove that these men were mystics. They were, rather,
profound thinkers, who were interpreting Christianity
to the Greek mind through the historical forms of Greek
thought, and who in high moods hit upon elemental facts
1 I have greatly condensed Tertullian's "testimony," but the substance is
accurately and correctly given.
2 See The Instructor of Clement of Alexandria and the anonymous Epistle to
Diognetus.
* The Instructor, Book III. chap. i.
84 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
of universal religious experience. Here is a famous
passage from Athanasius which shows that, like Elias,
he could be "very bold" as bold as the highest
mystic : " God became man that we might be made
Divine," l but the trend of Athanasius' thought was not
that of a mystic. 2
A somewhat better case can be made out for the
great Cappadocian, Gregory of Nyssa (born about A.D.
335 ; died about 395). His famous brother, Basil,
explained that he made him bishop of an insignificant
place because he wanted Gregory to confer distinction on
the city rather than receive it from the city, and Gregory
fully justified the expectation. He came upon a stormy
scene. Arianism was rending Christendom, and the
Church was on a stormy sea when this lover of quiet
thought was plunged into the tasks of active life. He
was not over-wise in practical wisdom, but he was at
home in the calmer occupation of formulating the truth
for his age. His elaborate system of theology does not,
fortunately, concern us now. 3 We are interested only in
noting the mystical aspect of his Christianity, and the
more so because his influence on later centuries was very
great. Gregory's Christianity is still objective, and he
does not ground it in the inward structure of the soul as
the genuine mystic does, nor does he give any such pro
found analysis of consciousness as is frequent in Augustine.
1 Athanasius, De Incarnatione. Irenaeus also said : " Jesus Christ our Lord,
who, because of His great love, was made what we are, that He might bring us
to be even what He is Himself." Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book V., Preface.
2 I have found it impossible in the limits of this book to include an extended
study of the Greek Fathers. Their doctrine was not Mysticism in the proper
sense of the word, but rather what the German scholars call " mystic-gnostic."
Mysticism and Gnosticism are not in opposition in the Greek fathers, but just as
in Neoplatonism (and the Greek mysteries whence the whole attitude is historically
derived) closely associated. On the one hand we have the knowledge of God
thought of as the highest thing possible to man ; on the other, the feeling that
such knowledge is different from ordinary knowledge and is communicated by
mysterious and transcendent processes. There are differences, of course, among
the Fathers. Clement and Origen are more of gnostics, and lay stress on the
communion of God by the Logos. Athanasius thinks of a real and literal com
munication of God which, as with Irenseus, is mediated through the Eucharist.
This idea is further elaborated by Gregory of Nyssa, whose view I shall briefly
study.
8 Ueberweg, in his History of Philosophy, says that Gregory of Nyssa "was
the first who sought by rational consideration to establish the whole complex of
orthodox doctrines."
v MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS 85
But he does dwell with strong emphasis upon the possi
bility of a union of the Divine and the human, and he
has put forth more forcibly than any other Christian
Father the truth that the entire outward universe is a
visible symbol, or parable, of a real, though invisible,
world.
He holds, though not always clearly and consistently
that a Divine element belongs to the original constitution
of man a mind's eye. This mind's eye, when not
filmed by low passion, gets glimpses of the transcendent
Good " the first Good " though no mortal lips can tell
to other ears what has been beheld within the depths of
consciousness. Gregory says that this is what the " great
David " meant when he said : " All men are liars ! " t.g.
any attempt to tell the ineffable vision is a " lie ! " l In
a noble chapter, 2 in true Platonic spirit, he describes the
spiritual ladder by which one climbs up to the prospect of
Supernal Beauty, mounting into the heavens upon that
" inward likeness to the descending Dove, whose wings
David also longed for." The goal, he says, " is to become
oneself as beautiful as the Beauty which he has touched
and entered, and to be made bright and luminous oneself
in communion with the real Light" " We can," he cries
rapturously, " be changed into something better than our
selves." The eye, purged of all discolouring stain, can
see God, the Archetype of all Beauty and of all Reality.
I will give only one illustration, among many, of the
kindred nature of man and God :
" As every being is capable of attracting its like, and humanity
is, in a way, like God, as bearing within itself some resemblance
to its Prototype, the soul is by a strict necessity attracted to the
kindred Deity. In fact, what belongs to God must, by all means
and at any cost, be preserved for Him." 8
He goes on to tell in a graphic illustration how God
draws and pulls the soul toward Himself.
" The Divine Power, God's very love of man, drags that which
belongs to Him from the ruins of the irrational and material, just
1 On, Virginity, chap. x. * Ibid. chap. xi.
3 The Soul and the Resurrection.
86 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
as after an earthquake bodies are drawn from mounds of rubbish
so God draws that which is His own to Himself." l
The actual deification of man, however, comes in
Gregory's teaching, not by the mystical vision, nor by
the successful drawing of God. It comes in a much more
material way. It is effected, so he teaches, by the sacra
ments. An actual Divine nature is born within by the
mediation of the baptismal water. The first birth is an
allegory of this stupendous change. The first birth is
mediated by moist seed in which no eye can detect the
unborn person, but by Divine power that moisture
becomes a human being. So, too, God uses water in an
equally mysterious and miraculous way to recreate the
" once born " man, and to produce in him Divine nature.
The Divine process begun in baptism is carried on in the
Eucharist. The bread and the wine are Divine body and
blood, and they "nourish" the Divine life, which at
baptism began within the man, so that by " communion
with Deity mankind may be deified," and " by a union
with the immortal may be a sharer in incorruption."
This magical, mystical view of the sacraments finally
came to be, in one form or another, throughout Christen
dom the prevailing view. It was an attempt to satisfy
two tendencies the great material tendency of the age
for something tangible, and the unstilled yearning of the
soul for the "real presence" of God for God within
the personal life. This compromise seems to the modern
mind woefully crude, but it seems much less so to one
who studies it in its historical setting, and this is to
be said for it : it enabled the Church to keep alive in
the minds of multitudes of semi-Christians, who were at
the same time semi -pagans, the ideal of having God
within. This mystical view of Gregory is unquestionably
a serious drop from Paul, or even from Plato, and it led
to a low and perverted mysticism of a second order in
his successors some such degeneration as Neoplatonism
underwent during the same period.
There is, however, a very lofty side to Gregory's
1 On the Soul and Resurrection.
v MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS 87
mysticism, and he must be judged in the light of his
time not in the light of these riper centuries. He is at
his finest and loftiest when he strikes his great theme of
the double universe that which is seen and that which
is not seen the world within the world we see. The
seen is a symbol of the unseen, the material a parable of
the real. The visible world is the garment and drapery
of God. 1
The real father of Catholic mysticism, however, is St
Augustine. 2 He is, of course, the father of many other
things also. He is one of those extraordinary persons
who have dominated the minds of men with a sway which
makes the rule of world conquerors look cheap and puny.
He shows better than almost any other great religious
teacher how impossible it is to separate "religion of
authority " and " religion of the Spirit " into two sharply-
divided groups. He is in both groups, and he is entirely
unaware that they are inconsistent with each other. No
other man has done more to construct an authoritative
Church than he. The architectural plan was already
there when he joined the Church, and he did not " create "
the imperial design, but he saw with the genius of a
statesman-philosopher how to fulfil the beginnings and
the tendencies of the great Latin system. When his
work was done the Roman Catholic Church was organized
for its mighty task of making a new empire on the ruins
of the old one.
While Rome was being sacked by hordes of bar
barians, and the empire was tottering before the
irresistible onset of races of vast potential power,
St Augustine, in his African retreat, was working out
a new imperial system a City of God compared
to which the old empire, even under the greatest
Caesars, was a slender affair. St Augustine's theology
1 See especially On Infants' Early Deaths.
8 Harnack says : "St. Augustine became the father of that mysticism which
was naturalized in the Catholic Church, down to the Council of Trent " (History
of Dogma, vol. v. p. 86). Harnack also speaks of Augustine as the first modern
man and the first real psychologist. It is his psychological analysis that makes
the peculiarity of his mysticism (see a long note in Harnack 's History of Dogma,
voL v. p. 101).
88 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
made the Church the City of God as it now is on
the earth the only door to the City of God as it is
to be in the heavens. To Augustine the theologian, man
as man was a depraved being, corrupt, root and branch
ruined, lost, possessed of nothing of his own which could
minister to his salvation. The Church, with its mysterious
sacraments, was an indispensable channel of Divine
Grace. 1 In a world of sin and ignorance and error, in a
world where no man could find any salvation for himself,
it had pleased God to found and construct a City of
Refuge, through which one might flee into the City of
Eternal Rest.
It seems strange to call him a mystic. More than
any other man he forged the iron system of dogma and
authority. He taught that, since the "fall," the entire
sphere and form of every (once born) man are sin and
depravity. He made Saving Grace depend absolutely
upon external channels. How is he a mystic ? Like
many another great man his life had two compartments.
There were two " selves " within him somewhat incon
sistent with each other, though not recognized by him as
being so. 2 He was first of all a living, throbbing man,
facing life in his own human way. He had first-hand ex
periences of his own, and a wonderful power of penetrating
and describing inward spiritual states. He has given us
" a portrait of the soul," which in a profound and
elemental way fits all generations of men. " I seem to
be reading the history of my own wanderings and not
another's," was Petrarch's penetrating comment as he read
the Confessions.
On the other hand, he was a theologian-statesman, an
architectural genius, whose supreme task was the con
struction of an imperial system a Catholic Church as
the mysterious instrument of Grace in the midst of a
ruined world. His mysticism was primary ; his theology
1 Augustine calls baptism "the water of salvation," and he says in his
Confessions that his own most horrible and deadly sins were remitted in the holy
water.
9 Since writing this I have found the same thing said in Sabatier's Religions of
Authority, "There were in this great doctor two men : the son of Monica and
the orthodox bishop, the man of the Spirit and the man of authority. " P. 4841
v MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS 89
was secondary. I mean by that, that his mysticism
belonged to his very nature as a man, and had no depend
ence upon his particular brand of theology. Theologically
he held that man was depraved ; his own human experience
told him that man and God are kindred, are meant for
each other, and that man has within himself a direct path
way to the living God.
The famous sentence in the opening chapter of the
Confessions announces a universal truth : " Thou hast
made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it
rests in Thee." It is the announcement of a truth which
grounds religion in the very nature of the soul itself, and
annuls at once the depravity doctrine of the theologian.
The positive, inward push of the soul Godward is
frequently asserted in the Confessions, and Augustine
bears steady testimony to an upward pull within himself
which fits badly with the theory that man is a worm of
the dust. Speaking of his life during his pre-Christian
period, he says : " By inward goads Thou didst rouse me,
that I should be ill at ease until Thou wert manifested to
my inward sight" J
" Thou wert," again he says, during the period of
his search, " more inward to me than my most inward
part. I awoke in Thee and saw Thee infinite, and this
sight was not derived from the flesh." 2 Nobody has
more beautifully expressed the double nature of man
with the upward pull and the downward drag than he has
expressed it in the famous sentence : " I tremble and I
burn ; I tremble, feeling that I am unlike Him ; I burn,
feeling that I am like Him." *
No other man before modern times ever studied human
nature with such profound insight as Augustine shows, and
he constantly discovers not only these momentous yearn
ings towards God, but he finds also experiences which, to
him, imply direct intercourse between the soul and God.
He says that his mother could discern God's revela
tions to her by " a certain indescribable savour? 4 He
1 Confessions, p. 121. The page references to the Confessions are to the
edition of it in " Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature."
2 Ibid. p. 126. Ibid. Book VIII. chap. x. Ibid. p. 107
90 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
himself, even before his actual " conversion," beheld
with the eye of his soul the Light Unchangeable the
Light which Love knoweth, the knowledge of which is
eternity. 1 He has thus, in the Confessions, used the sense-
analogy of taste and sight ; in the City of God he has a
great passage in which the sense-analogy of hearing is
used :
"God speaks with a man, not by means of some audible
creature dinning in his ears, so that atmospheric vibrations
connect Him that makes with him that hears the sound; nor
even by means of a spiritual being with the semblance of a body,
such as we see in dreams or similar states ; for even in this case
he speaks as if to the ears of the body, and with the appearance
of a real interval of space. Not by these, then, does God speak,
but by the truth itself, if any one is prepared to hear with the
mind rather than with the body. He speaks to that part of man
which is better than all else in him, and than which God
himself alone is better." 2
More commonly, however, he does not use sense-
analogy. He was too much of a Platonist to put much
emphasis on sense-experience. Consciousness in its very
elemental structure may apprehend God. Sometimes it
is the heart that finds Him " I heard as the heart
heareth, nor was there any room to doubt " sometimes
it is the witt\ sometimes, in true Platonic fashion, it is
the mind. In his Epistles he says : " We cannot go to
God afoot, but by our character " (" heart "). " He (Christ)
departed from our eyes that we might return into our
hearts and there find Him." a " Man is a huge abyss, and
his hairs can be more easily counted than the affections
and stirrings of his heart can be fathomed." 4 One
of the finest of all his sayings is in one of his sermons :
" Our whole work in this life is to heal the eye of the
heart by which we see God," 6 and in a passage which
has a very modern note in it he says : " A good man is
a man of good will." 6
He says, in the City of God, that : God makes holy
1 Confessions, p. 123. - City of God, Book XI. chap. ii.
3 Confessions, p. 61. 4 Ibid. Book IV. chap. xiv.
8 Sermon xviii. , De Verb. Dom. tecundum Matt. chap. xxx.
6 De Gratia, xix.
v MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS 91
souls His friends, and " noiselessly informs them " of His
purpose. 1 It is strange to find the man who forged the
doctrine of election making the will "the momentous
will," to use his own expression the way to God.
"Thither" (toward God), he says, in Confessions, p. 148,
" one journeyeth not in ships, nor in chariots, nor on
foot ; for to journey thither, nay, even to arrive there, is
nothing else but to will to go." There is no keener
psychological analysis in all his writings than the
penetrating study of " the momentous will " in Book
VIII., especially chapters viii. and ix. He takes up the
subject again in the City of God, Book XIV. chap, vi
Like Paul, he recognizes two wills ; one the slave of habit, 2
the other the momentous will, which has the key to
eternal reality. " To will God entirely is to have Him ! "
The general type of his mysticism is, however,
Platonic. The mind itself, or at least that which is
" at the top of the mind," may directly apprehend God.
There are many lofty passages which illustrate this
aspect of Augustine's religion. Throughout the period
of his search for God, Augustine's fundamental error was
the conception of God as a substance which filled space,
i.e. as a finer kind of material being. In one of his most
powerful passages, describing his idea of God at this
stage, he says :
"I set before the sight of my spirit the whole creation,
whatsoever is visible in it, ... and whatsoever in it is invisible.
. . . And this mass I made huge, not as it was, which I could
not know, but as large as I chose, yet bounded on every side
(i.e. finite); but Thee, O Lord, I imagined on every part
surrounding and penetrating it, but in every direction infinite :
as if there were a sea, everywhere and on every side, through
unmeasured space, one only infinite sea; and it contained
within it some sponge, huge but finite ; that sponge must needs,
in all its parts, be filled from that unmeasured sea : So I imagined
Thy finite creation full of Thee, the Infinite." 8
"So did I endeavour," he says in another place, 4 "to
1 City of God, Book XI. chap. iv.
9 " Of a froward will a lust is made ; by lust habit is formed ; and habit not
resisted becomes a necessity" (Confessions, p. 141).
8 Confessions, p. 115. 4 Ibid. p. in.
92 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
conceive of Thee, Life of my life, as vast, through infinite space
on every side penetrating the whole mass of the universe,
and beyond it, through immeasurable boundless spaces;
so that the earth would have Thee, the heavens have Thee,
all things have Thee; they be bounded in Thee, and Thou
bounded nowhere."
But he came to discover that the mind, which forms
images of spatial objects, is itself not a thing of dimen
sions, and not to be conceived in terms of space ; and that
God is a substance of the same nature as mind, or spirit,
" not present in the several portions of the world, piece
meal, large in the large, little in the little not such
art Thou." 1 And little by little he rose to the insight
that God is the Eternal Reality, mirrored and veiled
in the visible, changeable world, but to be found as
He is with the eye of the mind. " In one trembling
glance," he says, speaking of the mind's highest faculty,
" it arrived at That which Is." 2 At this period, which
was before his conversion, he "lacked strength to fix
his gaze thereon," but afterwards he learned "the way
to that beatific country, which is not only to be gazed
upon, but to be dwelt in? 8
The truth that God is the inner Reality, and so one
with the hidden life of man, finds frequent utterance
in his Confessions. He anticipates the great word . of
Pascal : " Thou wouldst not seek Me if thou hadst not
already found Me." He tries to explain why men seek
God and desire the blessed life, and, after a long, acute
psychological analysis, he exclaims : " We could not love
it unless we knew it !" 4
"Thy God is unto thee, O my soul, even the Life of
thy life," is the conclusion which he reaches after he has
searched the universe for God. Here is a fragment of
the noble passage which describes the search :
1 See Confessions, Book VII. chap. i.
2 Ibid. Book VIII. chap. xvii. Compare the rb tanv del of Plotinus.
3 Augustine says in Confessions, Book VIII. chaps, xviii.-xxi., that the new fact
that enabled him to find the way to the blessed country was the Incarnation.
As a natural mystic (Neo-Platonist) he could discern the land of Peace, but not
find the way thither (see especially the close of chap. xxi. ).
* Confessions, Book X. chap. xx.
v MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS 93
"What dp I love when I love Thee? Not beauty of the
body, not harmony of line, nor brilliancy of light, so pleasant to
these eyes, nor sweet melodies of every kind of song, nor the
sweet scent of flowers and perfumes and spices, not manna and
honey, not limbs inviting to fleshly embrace. Not these do I
love when I love my God ; and yet I love a kind of light and
melody and fragrance and food and embrace, when I love my
God the light, melody, food, fragrance, embrace of my inward
man : where there shineth upon my soul what space containeth
not, and where resoundeth what time stealeth not away, where
is fragrance which a breath scattereth not, where there is flavour
that eating lesseneth not, and where there is an embrace that
satiety rendeth not asunder. This I love, when I love my God.
" I asked the earth for God, and it answered me : ' I am not
He ' ; I asked the sea and the depths and the creeping things,
and they answered : ' We are not thy God, seek thou above us ' ;
I asked the breezy gales, and the airy universe, and all its
denizens replied : ' Anaximenes is mistaken. I am not God ' ;
I asked the heaven, sun, moon, stars: 'Neither are we,' say
they, 'the God whom thou seekest.' And I said unto all
things which stand about the gateways of my flesh (the senses) :
'Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He; tell me
something of Him.' And they cried with a loud voice: 'He
made us.' "
And so the search goes on until the "inward self is
questioned, and the answer is, " Thy God is unto thee even
the Life of thy life." 1
There is another passage, even nobler still, in which
St. Augustine describes how he and his mother, Monica,
together climbed up through inner thought, came to their
minds, and passed beyond them to That which Is the
Self-Same. I quote the passage in full. 2
"As now the day drew near, on which she was about to
depart out of this life, which day Thou didst know though we
knew it not, it fell out, as I believe, through Thy Providence,
working in Thy hidden ways, that she and I alone together, were
standing leaning upon a certain window, from which there was a
view of the garden within the house which sheltered us, there at
Ostia, on the Tiber, where apart from the throng, from the
fatigue of our long journey we were recruiting ourselves for
our voyage. Together we, too, held converse very sweet, and
1 Confessions, Book X. chap. vi.
9 Ibid. Book IX. chap. x.
94 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
'forgetting those things which were behind, and reaching forth
unto those things which were before' (Phil. iii. 13), we were
discussing between us in the presence of the truth, which Thou
art, of what kind would be that eternal life of the Saints, which
' eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into
the heart of man' (i Cor. ii. 9). But with the mouth of our
heart we were panting for the heavenly streams of Thy fount, ' the
fountain of life, which is with Thee' (Ps. xxxvi. 9), that be
sprinkled thence according to our capacity we might in some
measure meditate upon so great a matter. And when our
converse drew to such an end, that the utmost delight of the
bodily senses, in the clearest material light, by the side of the
enjoyment of that life seemed unworthy not only of comparison
with it, but even to be named with it ; raising ourselves with a
more glowing emotion towards the ' Self-same ' (Ps. iv. 8, Vulg.),
we wandered step by step through all material things, and
even the very heaven whence sun and moon and stars shed their
light upon the earth. And further still we climbed, in inner
thought and speech, and in wonder of Thy works, and we
reached to our own minds, and passed beyond them, so as to
touch the realm of plenty, never failing, where Thou feedest
Israel for ever in the pasture of the truth, and where life is that
Wisdom, by which all things are made, both those which have
been, and those which shall be ; and Itself is not made, but is
now as it was and ever shall be ; or rather in it is neither ' hath
been ' nor ' shall be,' but only ' is,' since It is eternal. For ' hath
been' and 'shall be' spell not eternity. And while we thus
speak and pant after it, with the whole stress of our hearts
we just for an instant touched it, and we sighed, and left there
bound the 'first fruits of the spirit' (Rom. viii; 23), and then
returned to the broken murmurs of our own mouth, where the
word hath its beginning and its end. And what is like unto Thy
Word, our Lord, Who abideth in Himself, nor groweth old, and
maketh all things new ? We were saying then : If to any one
should grow hushed the tumult of the flesh, hushed the images
of earth, and of the waters, and the air, hushed, too, the poles,
and if the very soul should be hushed to itself, and were by
cessation of thought of self to pass beyond itself ; if all dreams,
and imaginary revelations, every tongue and every token, were
hushed, and whatsoever falls out through change ; if to any, such
should be wholly hushed to silence, since could any hear them,
they all say : ' We made not ourselves, but He made us, who
abideth for ever,' and this said, if now they should cease to speak,
because they had inclined our ears to Him, who made them, and
He Himself by Himself should speak, not through them, but of
v MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS 95
Himself, that so we should hear His Word, not uttered by a
tongue of flesh, nor by a voice of angel, nor by thunders of a
cloud, nor by a parable of comparison, but Himself, whom in
these we love ; if, I say, we should hear Him, without these, as
now we strained ourselves, and in the flight of thought touched
upon the Eternal Wisdom that abideth over all things ; if this were
continued, and other visions of a nature by far inferior were taken
away, and this one alone should ravish, and absorb, and enwrap
the beholder of it amid inward joys, so that life everlasting might
be of such a kind, as was that one moment of comprehension for
which we sighed ; were not this an ' Enter thou into the joy of
thy Lord'? (Matt. xxv. 21). And when shall that be? Shall it
be when ' we all shall rise again, but shall not all be changed ' ? "
(i Cor. xv. 51, Vulg.).
It is clear from this great passage that Augustine
looks for the truly Real above and beyond all that
appears ; a view which finds its plainest utterance in
his well-known words : " God is best adored in silence ;
best known by nescience ; best described by negatives." l
This negative mysticism will meet us again and again,
and can be permanently transcended only by a truer
psychology than that which was possible in the ancient
and medieval world.
The vision of God is, however, not the goal and end
of Augustine's mystical striving. His highest word is
union union of being with the Eternal Reality : I heard,
as the heart heareth, Thy voice, " I am the food of them
that are full grown ; grow and thou shalt feed upon Me,
nor shalt thou transmute Me into thee, as thou didst food
into thy flesh, but thou shalt be transmuted into Me." 2 In
the City of God* he says that " the man Christ Jesus
1 This view of the "self-same," to which the mind may rise as contrasted
with the fleeting things which sense gives, is one of Augustine's inheritances from
Platonic philosophy. He wrote in one of his early Epistles : ' ' We are, I
suppose, agreed that all things with which our bodily senses acquaint us are
incapable of abiding unchanged for a single moment, but, on the contrary, are
moving and in perpetual transition, and have no present reality that is, to
use the language of Latin philosophy, do not exist. Accordingly, the true and
divine philosophy [Platonic philosophy] admonishes us to check and subdue
the love of these things as dangerous and disastrous, in order that the mind,
even while using the body, may be wholly occupied and warmly interested in
those things which are the same for ever, and which owe their attractive power
to no transient charm. " The great passage quoted in the text is plainly influenced
by a passage in Plotinus's Enneads, V. i. 2, 3, 4.
a Confessions, p. 124. * City of God, Book XXI. chap. xvi.
96 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
became a partaker of our own mortality that He might
make us partakers of His divinity." Again he says, com
menting on Psalm xlix. : " He called men gods as being
deified by His grace, not as born of His substance."
It will be noted that Augustine, in his mystical
passages, is decidedly personal and subjective. He
thinks of man as an isolated individual, who may
hold high intercourse with God, and who at the
highest stage of experience may come into a union
of life with God, but he has discovered no social
principle ; he does not rise to the conception of a
mystical corporate life a living group with many
members joined together by one Spirit. " God and
the soul," he cries out in his Soliloquies, "this and this
only ! " 1 And this individualism which is characteristic
of Augustine continues throughout the whole history of
Roman Catholic mysticism, though in both St Paul
and St. John the social and corporate aspect is strongly
marked, and will appear again in the groups treated in
our later chapters.
It would be interesting, and perhaps profitable, to
inquire how far Augustine's doctrine of grace is mystical,
but it would lead us through a large and mazy research.
One fact, at least, is clear in the doctrine, namely, that
something divine comes into man so that he who was
before "without merit" has now within himself God's
bestowed grace which is reckoned as merit. The doc
trine, however, is not the fruit of personal experience, it
is rather a product of historical influence and of logic.
It is on a distinctly lower plane than the personal religion
of St. Augustine, to which this chapter has been largely
devoted. It is, of course, a fact that the man cannot be
separated from the bishop, his religious experience cannot
be sharply divided from his theology, but I believe this
mystical side of the great African saint can be emphasized
without doing any historical injustice to the Church Father.
For the present purpose we may ignore the fact that he
taught that God of His own will determines the destiny
1 See Caird's Evolution of Theology in Greek Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 166.
v MYSTICISM IN THE CHURCH FATHERS 97
of " everything from angel to worm." l Nor are we now
concerned with the fact that he formulated the dogma:
" No salvation outside the Church." 2 What concerns
us is his utterance of the great facts of inward ex
perience, and his personal testimony that the soul is
ever on a divine trail, has direct vision of its supreme
Goal, and may come into immediate contact and ,
union with That Which Is. The man, with his mighty
human experience, is always in evidence. Through the
hard crust of cooled theology the warm religious life
ever and anon breaks out Among the arid blocks of
logic the flowers of the heart again and again appear.
In fact, it is love, not logic, which builds the City of God,
though at times the logic seems overworked. " The two
cities have been formed by two loves : the earthly by |
the love of self, even to the contempt of God ; the
heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of
self." 8
1 Confusions, p. 140. 3 City of God, Book V. chap, rviii.
1 Ibid. Book XIV. chap, xxviii.
II
CHAPTER VI
DIONYSIUS, "THE AREOPAGITE"
AT the end of the chapter on " The Classical Roots of
Mysticism," I said that in spite of the attempt to end the
reign of Neoplatonic philosophy, it was brought over into
the Church and became " spiritual bee-bread " for many
centuries. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine were
profoundly influenced by the philosophy of this school,
as we have seen, and through them many of the loftiest
teachings of Plato and Plotinus were translated into
Christian thought. The mysticism of the school trickled
in through these Fathers, but about a century later it
came full flood through an anonymous, mysterious man,
whose story and message we must now try to spell out
At a Council held at Constantinople, in the year 533, 1
the " Severians," a sect of Christians who held that Christ
had a single nature, produced in support of their views
writings bearing the authorship of Dionysius, who
professed to be the convert of Paul in the Areopagus, the
first Bishop of Athens, the friend and companion of
apostles. The authenticity of the works of the famous
Dionysius was at once challenged by the orthodox party.
Hypatius, Bishop of Ephesus, pointed out that, if genuine,
these works could not have escaped the notice of Cyril
and Athanasius, and he declared that no one of the
ancients had ever quoted them. 2 But almost from the
first these works of Dionysius had a remarkable vogue in
1 Harnack says that Severus quoted the Dionysian writings at a Council at
Tyre, about the year 513, and he is inclined to push their authorship back to a
period previous to A.D. 400 (see Hist. Dog. vol. iv. p. 282).
2 This is based on an extant letter written by Innocentius, Bishop of Maronia.
98
CH. vi DIONYSIUS, "THE AREOPAGITE" 99
the East. The great Aristotelian physician, Sergius, made
a Syriac version of them early in the sixth century, and
there were frequent commentaries made upon them by
Syrian scholars in the sixth and seventh centuries. They
found a great admirer in Maximus " the Confessor "
(580-662), who edited them with brief notes and gave
them the stamp of his approval. With here and there
a notable exception, the writings of Dionysius were, from
the time of Maximus, accepted in the Eastern Church as
genuine, and their influence became very great, partly
because their readers felt through them the genius of a
master mind, and partly because they found in them
cogent arguments and proofs in favour of existing Church
institutions and ecclesiastical authority. 1
The first extant reference to them in the West is a
casual one made by Gregory the Great (in his Homily on
Luke xv. i-io), about the year 600. They are first
quoted in a letter of Pope Adrian I., written to
Charlemagne.
In 827 a set of the Dionysian writings was sent to
Louis I., son of Charlemagne, who turned them over to
the Abbey of St Denis, near Paris. By a confusion,
either unconscious or designed, Dionysius the Areopagite
was identified with St. Dionysius, or St. Denis, the martyr
and patron saint of Paris. This created a great interest
in the books, which were not very readable in their
peculiarly difficult Greek. Then to cap the climax the
arrival of the books was marked by striking miracles
nineteen invalids were suddenly cured of various maladies !
This aroused the Abbot, Hilduin, to the duty of preparing
a version of the Greek text of the writings, but his
scholarship proved too slight for the task.
During the reign of Charles the Bald (843-76), the
great Irish scholar, John Scotus Erigena, received a royal
command to translate the works of Dionysius into Latin.
He not only made the Latin version (which was published,
contrary to custom, without the Pope's sanction), but he
also wrote an original work which was permeated with
1 See Frothingham's Stephen Bar Sudaili, Leyden, 1886, p. 3.
ioo MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Dionysian views and which was destined to have a great
influence on later generations.
Nearly every great medieval scholar made use of these
writings, and the authority of the ancient and venerable
convert on Mars Hill came to be almost final, A
modern writer says that even the Summa Theologiae of
Thomas Aquinas the angelic doctor is but "a hive
in whose varied cells he duly stored the honey which he
gathered " from the writings of Dionysius, and he became,
as we have said, the bee -bread on which all the great
mystics fed, 1 Dulac says (CEuvres de S. Denys
PArfopagitJ) : " If the works of Dionysius had been lost,
they could be almost reconstructed from the works of
Aquinas."
Where did these writings originate? Who was
"Dionysius"? Modern scholarship has settled the fact
that Dionysius the Areopagite has no historical connection
with St. Dionysius of Paris, notwithstanding the miracles
worked by the arrival of his books ! It has, too, settled
the fact that these writings did not come into existence
until centuries after Paul's Athenian convert slept the long
sleep. The theology and the ecclesiastical system pre
supposed throughout the writings are unmistakably not
of the first or even second century. They are the product
of long historical development. The writer in one passage
refers to Ignatius, and quotes the words of his epistle :
"My own love is crucified." 2 He refers to "Clement
the philosopher " (evidently Clement of Alexandria, who
died A.D. 22O). 3 There is an unmistakable stamp of
late Neoplatonic thought everywhere apparent in the
Dionysian writings. In fact, it is almost certain that the
writer was either a pupil of Proclus or, as is more
probable, of Damascius, the second in succession from
Proclus, and the last teacher of the Athenian school. It
was natural that, when he became a Christian writer, he
should assume a name which had sacred memories of
1 The following is a complete list of the extant Dionysian writings : I. On the
Celestial Hierarchy ; II. On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy \ III. On. the Divine
Names ; IV. On Mystical Theology ; and V. Ten Letters.
2 Divine Names, iv. 12. 8 Ibid. v. 9.
vi DIONYSIUS, "THE AREOPAGITE" 101
Athenian faith, and which was also a link with Greek
culture. It is impossible to say whether he intended to
deceive his readers, or whether the name was a guileless
pseudonym. His letters and books have a slender thread
of historical fiction woven into them. They are addressed
to " my fellow presbyter Timothy," to " Titus," to
" Polycarp," to " John the divine, apostle and evangelist,
exiled in Patmos," etc. In the letters to Polycarp, he
asks him to remind Apollophanes, a violent opponent of
the Christian faith, how when they were fellow students
together at Heliopolis, they had beheld the total darkness
which covered the world at the time of the crucifixion.
In any case, there was as yet no social conscience formed
against the assumption of a famous name by an author.
In the book on the Divine Names, Dionysius relates
how he " with James, the brother of the Lord, and Peter,
the chief and noblest head of the inspired apostles," gazed
upon the dead body of " her who was the beginning of
life and the recipient of God," i.e. the Virgin Mary.
There are numerous references in the writings to his
great mystic master and inspired guide, " Hierotheus."
He says that the works of " Hierotheus " were to him
" a second Bible." He says in Divine Names that his
great master, "Hierotheus," has already unfolded the truth,
having learned it by an experience in divine things, " and
by being made perfect in mystical union." This " Hiero
theus " may possibly give us a clue to the locality
and date of the Dionysian writings. " Hierotheus " is
apparently an assumed name under which a famous
Eastern mystic of Edessa named Stephen Bar Sudaili,
a scribe and monk, wrote near the close of the fifth
century. 1 This Stephen Bar Sudaili held that all
Nature is consubstantial with the Divine Essence,
1 Gregory Bar 'Ebraia, monophysite patriarch of the twelfth century,
declared that the work of Stephen Bar Sudaili was entitled the Book of Hiero
theus, and he supports his assertion on the statement of Kyriakos, patriarch of
Antioch (793-817), who says that " the book entitled Book of Hierotheus is not by
him, but probably by the heretic, Stephen Bar Sudaili." John, Bishop of Dara,
a noted mystic, who lived in the eighth and ninth centuries, says positively that
the Book of Hierotheus was written by Stephen Bar Sudaili, and there was a steady
Syriac tradition to this effect (Frothingham, op. cit. pp. 63-66).
102 MYSTICAL
RELIGIOfr
CHAP.
and that in a final consummation God will become
all in all, and all things will be one nature with
God. Contemporary accounts connect him with
Egyptian influence, where extreme mystical views
prevailed among many of the monks. Bar Sudaili
claimed for himself direct divine revelations, and believed
himself to be an inspired man. He declares that more
than once he has attained the highest stage of mystical
union with the One " the Arch-Good," as he calls Him,
the goal of all ascent. Already in this Book of Hierotheus
there appears an account of the mystical ladder by which
the soul makes its glorious homeward ascent (i) The
soul must unite the spark of Good Nature (i.e. the Divine
Principle) which belongs to it with the Universal Essence
from which it has sprung, by purifying itself of every
opposing principle, and by being absorbed in its spiritual
goal ; then it becomes like a new-born child which passes
from darkness into light. (2) It reaches the holy place
of the Cross, where it endures a passion and suffers a
crucifixion in the same manner that Christ suffered, for
unless the soul undergoes all that Christ underwent it
cannot be perfected. (3) At a higher stage it receives
a baptism of the Spirit and of fire, without which there is
no life, and thereupon it enters into complete Sonship.
(4) There remains a yet higher experience when the soul
is utterly and wholly absorbed into its luminous Essence
and gets beyond the distinction of self and Other this
is the Ultima Thule of mystical experience. In this
stage there is a mysterious silence, a mystical quiet when
the soul understands without knowledge and without
words.
It is not improbable that this "Hierotheus" is the mystic
master of our author, and if so, it is likely that these
Dionysian writings first saw the light between A.D. 475
and 525, so that perhaps the ripe seeds of Greek
philosophy were being planted in the soil of the Church
almost exactly at the time Justinian was banishing the
last cultivators of the garden of the Academe.
It has long been the custom of critics to belabour this
vi DIONYSIUS, "THE AREOPAGITE " 103
monk-philosopher for his "turgid" style, for his hierarchies
of " bloodless abstractions," and for his " inscrutable anony
mous God," but, after all, there is something genuinely
human in him, and he was doing his best to " utter him
self" in the terms of thought which were the current stock
of his time. There is a real throb of heart even under
these " turgid " sentences.
There is a fine passage in the eighth Letter which
reveals a generous, sympathetic spirit, and which indicates
that, however he might soar into realms of abstraction,
he still knew the tender, loving Christ of the Gospel
records. The Letter relates how Dionysius had felt it
his duty to rebuke a monk for his lack of mercy, and
he tells an incident to carry conviction to the stern and
unforgiving monk. " I will recount," he says, " a divine
vision of a certain holy man, and it is a true story." l
" When I was once in Crete, the holy Carpus entertained me
a man, of all others, most fitted, on account of great purity of
mind, for Divine Vision. Now, on a certain occasion, an un
believer had grieved him by leading a Christian astray to
Godlessness. And when he ought to have prayed for both,
he allowed rancorous enmity and bitterness to sink into his
heart. In this evil condition he went to sleep, for it was evening,
and at midnight (for he was accustomed at that appointed hour
to rise, on his own accord, for the Divine melodies) he arose,
not having enjoyed, undisturbed, his slumbers, which were
continually broken ; and when he stood collected for the Divine
Converse, he was guiltily vexed and displeased, saying, that it
was not just that godless men, who prevent the straight ways of
the Lord, should live. And, whilst saying this, he besought
Almighty God, by some stroke of lightning, suddenly, without
mercy, to cut short the lives of them both. But, whilst saying
this, he declared that he seemed to see suddenly the house in
which he stood, first torn asunder, and from the roof divided into
two in the midst, a sort of gleaming fire before his eyes (for the
place seemed now under the open sky), borne down from the
heavenly region close to him ; and, the heaven itself given way,
and upon the back of the heaven, Jesus, with innumerable angels,
in the form of men, standing around Him. This, indeed, he
saw above, and himself marvelled ; but below, when Carpus
had bent down, he affirmed that he saw the very foundation
1 I have here used the translation of John Parker, London, 1897.
104 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
ripped in two, to a sort of yawning and dark chasm, and those
very men, upon whom he had invoked a curse, standing before
his eyes, within the mouth of the chasm, trembling, pitiful, only
just not yet carried down by the mere slipping of their feet ; and
from below the chasm, serpents creeping up and gliding from
underneath around their feet, now contriving to drag them
away, and weighing them down and lifting them up, and again
inflaming or irritating them with their teeth or their tails, and all
the time endeavouring to pull them down into the yawning gulf;
and that certain men also were in the midst, co-operating with
the serpents against these men, at once tearing and pushing and
beating them down. And they seemed to be on the point of
falling, partly against their will, partly by their will ; almost over
come by the calamity, and at the same time resigned. And
Carpus said that he himself was glad, whilst looking below, and
that he was forgetful of the things above ; further, that he was
vexed and made light of it, because they had not already fallen,
and that he had often attempted to accomplish the fact, and that,
when he did not succeed, he was irritated, and cursed. And,
when with difficulty he raised himself, he saw the heaven again,
as he saw it before, and Jesus, moved with pity at what was
taking place, standing up from His supercelestial throne, and
descending to them, and stretching a helping hand, and the
angels, co-operating with Him, taking hold of the two men, one
from one place and another from another, and the Lord Jesus
said to Carpus, whilst His hand was yet extended : ' Strike
against Me in future, for I am ready, even again, to suffer for
the salvation of men ; and this is pleasing to Me, provided that
other men do not commit sin. But see whether it is well for
thee to exchange the dwelling in the chasm, and with serpents,
for that with God, and the good and loving angels.' These are
the things which I heard myself, and believe to be true."
It is a bold undertaking to endeavour to put into
plain English the difficult mystical system of this Greek
monk-philosopher, who speaks in a language quite foreign
and unknown to the Protestant Christian of the twentieth
century. Peradventure, however, there is enough of the
Pentecost spirit in his words for us to hear something
in our own tongue. The central point of the whole
system is the point common to all classical mysticism,
namely, that the Godhead is a Unity, a One, beyond all
difference, above all qualities or characters. He is (if
a hybrid word may be allowed) " super-everything " which
vi DIONYSIUS, "THE AREOPAGITE " 105
can be named or conceived. The Godhead Himself, from
whom the revelation comes, is beyond all revelations that
are made or can be made of Him. Beyond all effects
there is the Cause of causes, above all that originates
there is a "super -original Origin," behind the created
there is an Uncreated or Hidden Deity. To say it
finally in Dionysius' most " turgid " fashion : " He is
the all-super-Deity ! "
This unrevealed Godhead, the Hidden Dark, is not
only " above things manifest " ; He is also above thought,
since thought can deal only with what is differentiated
and related. 1
But though He cannot be known, He can, nevertheless,
be reached and experienced. There are two ways which
lead " yonder " the affirmative way and the negative
way. By the affirmative way the seeker follows after the
"beneficent progression of God," and gathers up what
light he can from the revelations and manifestations, as
God unveils Himself by going out of His Hiddenness.
The Book on the Heavenly Hierarchy tells us of this
" progression," down through the ninefold ranks of angelic
beings, and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy continues the
stages of Divine revelation through the ninefold order
of sacred symbols and ministers. " The way down " from
the Godhead is a Divine progression. " The way up "
is a celestial ladder which leads back to God. This
1 Tennyson has beautifully expressed this idea of the Nameless Deity, the
Hidden Dark, in his poem The Ancient Sage :
" If thou wouldst hear the Nameless, and wilt dive
Into the Temple-cave of thine own self,
There, brooding by the central altar, thou
Mayst haply learn the Nameless hath a voice.
By which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise,
As if thou knewest, tho' thou canst not know;
For knowledge is the swallow on the lake
That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there,
But never yet hath dipt into the abysm,
The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath, within
The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth,
And in the million-millionth of a grain
Which cleft and cleft again for evermore,
And ever vanishing, never vanishes,
To me, my son, more mystic than myself,
Or even than the Nameless is to me.
And when thou sendest thy free soul thro' heaven,
Nor understands bound or boundlessness,
Thou seest the Nameless of the hundred names,
And if the Nameless should withdraw from all
Thy frailty counts most real, all thy world
Might vanish like thy shadow in the dark."
106 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
progression is an unveiling of the glory and goodness of
God, and shows the steps of return to Him, for salvation
is nothing short of being made divine. " To be made
divine," he says, in Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, i. 3, " is to be
made like God, as far as may be, and to be made one
with Him."
The first stage of progression from the hiddenness
to the light is made through the " Great Intelligences "
which are nearest God, namely, the Seraphim, who,
though not wholly " like Him " (no being can be like
Him), are completely turned toward His Oneness, receive
directly His illuminations, imitate Him, and so reflect
the Divine Glory. 1 These beings have first-hand illu
minations, they " participate in the One Himself, and
have the feast of the beatific vision, which makes divine
all who strain aloft to behold it " ; and the Divine energy
which " bubbles forth " from the Godhead is passed
on by them to the next rank, and so on down, until
" every existing thing participates in the Beautiful," i.e. in
the Godhead.
The order of ranks of the celestial revealers is as
follows: (i) Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones ; (2) Domi
nations, Virtues, Powers ; (3) Principalities, Archangels,
Angels. The highest are at "the vestibule of the God
head," they have " the unsullied fixity of Godlike identity,"
and they ray forth the highest manifestation of the God
head which those below are capable of contemplating. 2
" It is never lawful," says our author, " to cast to swine
the bright, unsullied, beautifying comeliness of intelligible
pearls ! " or, as he says again, " it is impossible that the
beams of the Divine Source can shine upon us, unless
they are shrouded in the manifold texture of sacred veils."
Though this descending line of Divine Intelligences
is not original with Dionysius, it was his formulation
1 Heavenly Hierarchy, xii. 3.
2 The Book of Hierotheus already contains nine orders of celestial essences
which have in graded being emanated from the All-Comprehensive One, so that
Dionysius seems not to be the originator of this famous conception. The hierarchy
of Great Intelligences, arranged in three triads, is plainly constructed after the
triads of Proclus and his followers, though Dionysius has renamed them from
Scripture.
vi DIONYSIUS, "THE AREOPAGITE " 107
of the celestial order which fed the imagination of the
Middle Ages, and it was his " taper's radiance " which
furnished Dante with " the nature and the ministry
angelical." It was here, too, that Spenser got those
" trinal triplicities " which
"About Him wait and on His will depend."
And we get an echo of our monk-philosopher in Tenny
son's lines :
"The Great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state."
The ninefold order of the heavenly hierarchy came to
be as much a necessary part of human thought as the
pictorial facts of the Gospel were. Nobody presumed to
question the reality of this descending chain of heavenly
revealers, so that not only the poets and theologians made
general use of this Dionysian order of progression from
God, but it was, as well, taken up everywhere by the
popular mind. The " celestial ladder " leading back to
God became, too, the common property of all later mystics,
and there is hardly a single mystical writer who does not
have somewhere in his book a description of " the upward
steps " by which the soul flees from the world and the
flesh to an inexpressible union with the One Reality who
is above knowledge.
The ninefold order of the ecclesiastical hierarchy
continues the transmission of Divine Light downward.
Here the " mirrors " are no longer Godlike " Intelli
gences," but signs and symbols which lead the soul
to Christ, Who is at the head of this series, as the God
head is at the summit of the celestial series. He (Christ),
by His incarnation, wrought out a unifying fellowship
between us, having supremely united our lowly nature
with His most divine nature, in order that we might
come into spotless and divine life. He calls the race of
man to participation in Himself by union with His divine
life, so that we shall truly have fellowship with God. 1
1 This is a free interpretation of sections 12 and 13 of the third division of
chapter iii. of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.
108 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP,
The long treatise on the Divine Names carries out
further the idea that God in His inmost nature is hidden
and nameless, but that there are partial revelations, through
veils and symbols and illuminating names, which manifest
Him. The discovery of the truth through manifestations
is, as I have said, the affirmative way. It consists in
gathering up the holy crumbs which fall from the Divine
table. There is a super -abundance of the Godhead,
an excess of substance, an overflow of being, and in
the outgoing of God we can discover the attributes
which in the Godhead "at home" are swallowed up in
the unity of His perfect self. " He goes forth," says
Dionysius, " in an unlessened stream into all things that
are, though in things divided He remains undivided." 1
The Scriptures (the " Divine Oracles " he calls them)
have given us many names for the " Nameless who is
above every name," and each name reveals some truth,
some aspect of "the super -essential One," the Deity
above attributes. But by this method Dionysius thinks
that we are at best in the condition of the person who
knows his friend only by the shadow he casts, or by the
distant echo of his voice. The affirmative way never
carries the seeker beyond " reflections " of the ultimate
reality.
The affirmative truths of Christianity, the doctrines of
the Church, the faiths of the creeds, are, for Dionysius,
on a lower level than mystical experience, through which
the soul rises into union with the unknowable God. They
all give only relative knowledge. To arrive at the real
goal, " knowledge " must be transcended.
" We ought to know that our mind has the power for thought,
through which it views things intellectual, but that the union
through which it is brought into contact with things beyond itself
surpasses the nature of the mind. We must, then, contemplate
things Divine by union, not in ourselves, but by going out of
ourselves entirely and becoming wholly of God." 2
He, therefore, prefers the negative way, which he
1 Divine Names, ii. u. 2 Hid, chap. vii. sec. i.
vi DIONYSIUS, "THE AREOPAGITE" 109
skilfully illustrates by the figure of a sculptor : The
Godhead is reached by the negation of all existing
things,
"just as those who make a lifelike statue chip off all the
encumbrances, cut away all superfluous material, and bring to
light the Beauty hidden within. So we abstract (negate) every
thing in order that without veils we may know that Unknown
which is concealed by all the light in existing things." l
In another figure he compares mystical theology to
"that ladder on which the angels of God ascended and
descended." The descending angels stand for the affirmative
way, and the ascending angels for the negative way, which
takes the soul up to God. That God, who is super-every-
thing, " dwells in the super-luminous gloom of silence," and
must be found with " the eyeless mind."
There is an illuminative passage in Dionysius' address
to " dear Timothy," in the opening of Mystical Theology,
which furnishes the method of mystical progress up into
the Divine Dark dark with excess of Light :
" O dear Timothy, by thy persistent commerce with mystic
visions, leave behind sensible perceptions and intellectual efforts,
and all objects of sense and of intelligence, and all things being
and not being, and be raised aloft above knowledge to union, as
far as is attainable, with Him who is above every essence [or
attribute] and knowledge. For by a resistless and absolute ecstasy
from thyself and everything, thou wilt be carried up to the super-
essential ray of the Divine Dark when thou hast cast away all
and become free from all." 2
" By laying aside all mental energies," and " by all-pure
contemplation," the soul participates " with unimpassioned
and immaterial mind " in w that super-essential Light, in
which all knowledge pre-exists," and enters into a union
above thought, above states of consciousness, above know
ledge. 3 This is ecstasy, which is the final refuge of all
negation mysticism. He describes it thus in Mystical
Theology : " By ecstasy thou wilt be carried to the
1 Mystical Theology, chap. ii. i. J Ibid, chap. i. i.
1 See Divine Names, chap. i. 4.
no MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
super -essential Ray of divine darkness"; and again,
" By the inactivity of all knowledge one is united, in his
better part, to the altogether Unknown, and by knowing
nothing, knows above mind" l
In one of the most beautiful passages of his writings,
Dionysius tells how " pure prayer " draws the soul toward
that Divine Union which is the mystic goal. Our prayers
elevate us to " the high ascent,"
"as if a luminous chain were suspended from the celestial heights,
and we, by ever clutching this, first with one hand and then
with the other, seem to draw it down, but in reality we are our
selves carried upwards to the high splendours of the luminous
rays. Or as if, after we have embarked on a ship and are holding
on to the cable reaching to some rock, we do not draw the
rock to us, but draw, in fact, ourselves and the ship to the
rock." 2
This short, untechnical sketch presents the main
features of the famous system of the anonymous Greek.
It is far removed from the simplicity of the primitive
message. It has few marks of the apostolic word. It is
a religion of ripe speculation, and, spite of the abundance
of Bible texts throughout the writings, it is, in fact, Neo-
platonic philosophy slightly sprinkled with baptismal water
from a Christian font. But whatever its origin, it early
became the form and type of mystical religion within the
Church, and its influence is discernible in every mystical
sect of Christendom. We already have in these writings
the Christianity of the Cloister. The path upward is a
solitary path which the soul travels by itself alone. The
goal is beatific gazing, absorption in the Godhead. The
world, with its tasks and calls, is left behind and forgotten.
Salvation is thoroughly individualistic. We hear enough
of " love," but it is no longer the love which fills the
primitive message. The " love " of this monk is not a
word which means self- sharing and self -giving. It is
rather an emotional, sensuous thrill, an exhilaration, in
toxication even, which the person experiences from Divine
1 Mystical Theology, chap. i. i and 3.
2 Divine Names, iii. i. This is almost certainly a memory of the beautiful
passage in Clement of Alexandria.
vi DIONYSIUS, "THE AREOPAGITE" in
contact and it descends easily to unwholesome dreams
and pathological states. His first great interpreter in the
West, John Scotus Erigena, seized the pantheistical aspect
of the system and brought to full emphasis the doctrine of
the " progression of God " into all things, and the return
of all things into God a doctrine which brought forth
strange fruit when the times were ripe. Even in the
system of Dionysius there is no place for genuine evil.
" All things that exist, so far as they exist, are good ; so
far as they are deprived of the good, they are not existent" 1
Everything that is, radiates out from God, and there
fore evil is nothing but a defect, a negation. The ground
of the mysticism is in the faith that the soul itself is
Divine, is an outflow of God, and therefore needs only " to
come wholly to itself," to come wholly to Him.
One sees at once that we are here far away from the
simplicity and concreteness of the Gospels. We are
dealing not with the Father whom Christ has revealed,
but with the " Absolute One " of metaphysics who is
beyond all revelations. We have, too, passed from the
Pauline conception of an immanent God in whom men
live and move and are, to a mysticism, based on emana
tions from a hidden centre. The mischief of turning
away from the concrete to the abstract, from the God
who is known to an unknowable Deity, is fully committed
in these writings, and the groping of centuries after a God
who hides is the pitiful result.
But in many ways this anonymous monk, who was to
teach the foremost Christians for ten centuries to come,
served the truth. He kindled in multitudes of souls a
pure passion for God, and taught very dark ages that the
one thing worth seeking with the entire being is God. He
iterated and reiterated that God Himself is the ground of
the soul, and that there is an inward way to Him open to
all men. He insisted on personal experience as the
primary thing in religion, and so became the father of a
great family of devout and saintly mystics, who advanced
true religion in spite of errors of conception. And he
1 Divine Names, iv. 20.
H2 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP, vi
did well in maintaining that there is an experience of
Reality which transcends mere head-knowledge a find
ing of God in which the whole being, heart, will, and
mind, are expanded and satisfied, even though language
cannot formulate what is being experienced.
CHAPTER VII
A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES
JOHN THE SCOT, CALLED ERIGENA
"THERE are as many unveilings of God (Theophanies} as
there are saintly souls." Thus wrote John the Scot, often
called " Erigena," in the ninth century. 1 It is a great
saying. It takes us far away from the formulation of
" false decretals," which were stirring the world in those
days, and far from the contentions of ecclesiastics, and
fixes our thought on the truth that every person may
become a revealing place for God, or, as a present-day
writer has well put it, " A saintly life makes a man an
auditory nerve of the Eternal." 2
There have been few more luminous illustrations of
the truth of his saying than John the Scot himself.
Prophets do not come in any age by observation, nor is
there any astronomy which can calculate the curve of the
prophet's movements, but John the Scot is in an unusual
degree a surprise. He bad to do his work in that gloomy
period when European civilization was hard beset by the
ravages of the Norsemen, when both England and France
were forced to meet that last great inroad of barbarian
invaders. Certainly an inauspicious age for philosophy.
His coming and his course are as incalculable as the
appearance of a meteor. He is a fulfilment of the word,
" The Spirit bloweth where He listeth." It is no wonder
that his generation did not understand him, or that the
1 De Divisione Naturae, iv. 7.
9 Brierley in Ourselves and the Universe, p. 233.
"3 I
H4 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
guardians of orthodoxy failed to find the shibboleth in his
message, for he was a spiritual alien in the Latin Church
of the ninth century fighting the battles of truth with
strange weapons, and using the spiritual coinage of other
realms and other dates. It is quite worth our while to
get acquainted with him, for he is one of the torch-bearers
in the long line of teachers of mystical religion.
The material for the story of his life is very scanty,
and the authorities are conflicting. He is variously reputed
to have been born in England, Ireland, Scotland, and
Wales. It is now, however, fairly well settled that he
was a native of Ireland. He was known to his con
temporaries as Joannes Scotus, or John the Scot. The
term " Scot " at this period would mark him as a native
either of Scotland or of Ireland, which was the original
Scotland. He designates himself, in his translation of
Dionysius, as John lerugena. This name alternates in
early manuscripts with Eriugena, 1 and considerably later
becomes fixed as Erigena. It seems to mean " Erin-born,"
and one of his contemporary opponents, Prudentius of
Troyes, says that Hibernia produced him, and speaks of
his "Celtic eloquence." Since the sixteenth century he
has been generally called John Scotus Erigena, and the
unwary have often confused him with the great schoolman
of the thirteenth century, John Duns Scotus.
I have called Erigena a surprise, and I have said that
he came upon his age like a meteor, but, as happens in
every case, on close analysis we find that even he was a
part of a movement, and when we come to examine his
religious environment during the formative years of his life,
he turns out to be less meteoric than we first supposed.
Irish Christianity has a history apart from the main
lines of the Roman Church, and it has unique and distinct
characteristics of its own. The planting of Christianity in
Ireland is a beautiful story of missionary effort, even when
the halo of legend is removed. Celtic pirates from Ireland
1 The old name for Ireland was Eriu, of which Erin, the name that has come
down to us, is a dative case, and should be spelled Erinn. See article on
"Joannes Scotus Erigena," by William Larminie, in Contemporary Review, vol.
Ixxi. p. 559.
vii A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 115
carried away with them, from a raid on the coast of Gaul,
a boy of sixteen named Patricius, or, in modern form,
Patrick. 1 For ten years he was a slave, a keeper of kine,
but during these years of servitude he came into possession
of a great spiritual experience, which had already begun
to dawn in his boyhood home in Gaul. He writes in his
Confessions that, even in those days of slavery, amidst
the frost and snow, he felt no ill, " nor," says he, " was
there any sloth within me, because the Spirit was burning
within me." After ten years among the flocks he fled
from his slavery, and wandered back to his native land,
but now there came upon him a call to a service of another
sort In a beautiful passage of the Confessions he says :
" In the dead of night, I saw a man coming to me as if from
Ireland, whose name was Victorinus, and who bore countless
letters. And he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning
of it, which contained the words : ' The voice of the Irish.' And
while I was repeating the words of this beginning, I thought I
heard the voice of those who were near the wood Foclut, which
is nigh to the western sea ; and they cried thus : ' We pray thee,
holy youth, to come and live among us henceforth.' And I was
greatly pricked in heart and could read no more."
The actual facts of his missionary labours are pretty well
shrouded in the " dim magnificence of legend," but out of
the consecrated work of his life there sprang a very noble
form of Christianity, and the missionary passion of its
founder was a striking characteristic of the leaders of Irish
Christianity.
The Irish Church from the first was organized on a
different basis from that of the Roman Catholic Church.
The organization of the former was of a primitive and
tribal type, suited to a rural and somewhat crude society. 2
It was monastic rather than episcopal, and its emphasis
was upon right living rather than upon elaborate theology.
An old chronicler of the seventh century says that " Ireland
was full of saints." The Irish monastery was in reality a
1 There was undoubtedly a planting of Christianity in Ireland even before the
coming of St. Patrick.
2 See fpr details, Hodgkin's Political History of England, chap. ix. ; and
Green's Making of England, pp. 278-81.
n6 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Christian colony, " a holy experiment " for the practice of
brotherhood. It had its stern and fanatical aspect, but it
had also a very human and practical side. Under the
leadership of the noblest of her missionaries, Columba, 1
one of these " Christian colonies " sprang up on the little
island of Hy, afterwards called lona, off the coast of
Scotland, and from this centre Celtic Christianity spread
across the British Island, transforming the rude inhabitants
of Mercia and Northumbria, and producing, in Aidan and
Oswald, beautiful flowers of sainthood.
But the missionary zeal of these Celtic Christians was
not limited to their group of islands. It has been said
that " the Celt yielded not to the Northman in his passion
for travel." 2 It was, however, not passion for travel so
much as passion for human souls that drove these men
from their quiet monasteries to face dangers and difficulties
incident to the task of planting Christianity in the neglected
spots of the Continent. Three of these Irish travellers,
Saint Columban, Saint Gall, and Saint Kilian, stand forth
among the most devoted missionaries in the long history
of Christian activity. They founded their colonies in the
strongholds of barbarism, and made the slender beginnings
of a new civilization, a new art, and a new learning. 3 Their
passion for learning was as absorbing as their missionary
zeal. In fact, it was in the Celtic schools that classical
learning was preserved through the Dark Ages. When the
narrow spirit of a dogmatic Church was decrying "the
idle vanities of secular learning," 4 and Europe was sinking
1 Dr. Hodgkin, op. cit. p. 150, says of Columba : "A man of somewhat hot
temper in his youth, softened and controlled in later life, with a stately beauty of
features which seemed to correspond with his princely descent, and with a kind
of magnetic power of attracting to himself the devotion of his followers ; a lover of
animals and beloved by them." " A great open-air preacher, an organizer and a
poet, he might perhaps not unfittingly be called the Wesley of the sixth century."
2 Poole's Illustrations of the History of Mediaval Thought (London, 1884), p. 10.
8 Haddan says (Remains, p. 265) : " Between the latter years of the sixth and
the early ones of the eighth centuries, the missionary work of the Scot stretched
along the border of then existing Christendom, from the Orkneys to the Thames,
and from the sources of the Rhine and the Danube downwards to the shores of
the Channel, from Seine to Scheldt, while at Bobbio, near the River Trebia in
Italy, was planted a Catholic Irish colony in the midst of Arian Lombards ; and
unknown but not less zealous missionaries bore the Gospel northwards, over
stormy and icy seas, even to the Faroe Islands and the shores of Iceland."
4 Letter of Pope Gregory the Great to the Bishop of Vienne.
vii A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 117
into ignorance of the very language in which the world's
noblest literature was written, Celtic Christians in the
monasteries of Ireland were the guardians of classical
culture, and they remained untouched by the invasion of
barbarism, which well-nigh swamped the rest of Europe.
They continued to learn and to teach the Greek language,
and to cherish their Greek manuscripts of the New
Testament, and they kept aflame a passion for classical
literature. 1
Bede describes a plague which occurred in Ireland in
664, and he says that
"many of the nobility and of the lower ranks of the English
nation were there at the time, who in the days of th? Bishops
Finan and Colman, forsaking their native island retired thither,
either for the sake of divine studies, or of a more continent
life. Some of them devoted themselves to a monastical life,
others chose rather to apply themselves to study, going about
from one master's cell to another. The Scots [i.e. the Irish]
willingly received them all, and took care to supply them with
food, as also to furnish them with books to read and their
teaching gratis." 2 Bede also tells of the missionary undertakings
in Friesland of Wicberht, who was " famous for his contempt of
the world and for his knowledge, for he had lived many years a
stranger in Ireland."*
Wherever these Irish missionaries went their learning
went with them, and their centres of culture sprang up
like oases in the desert. A monkish chronicler, writing
from a cell in the monastery of St Gall, has left a semi-
legendary account of the way in which Irish learning
invaded the realm of Charlemagne, and, though not to be
taken at its face value, the kernel of the story is historically
correct. The chronicler says :
"When the illustrious Charles had begun to reign alone in
the western parts of the world, and the study of letters was
everywhere well-nigh forgotten, in such sort that the worship of
the true God declined, it chanced that two Scots from Ireland
lighted with the British merchants on the coast of Gaul, men
1 See A. W. Haddan's Remains (Oxford and London, 1876), pp. 271-73 ;
and Poole's Illustrations of Mediaeval History, pp. 1 1 seq. and p. 57.
2 Giles' edition of Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England (London, 1840),
p. 185. * Bede, p. 285.
n8 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
learned without compare as well in secular as in sacred writings 5
who, since they showed nothing for sale, kept crying to the
crowd that gathered to buy : ' If any man is desirous of wisdom,
let him come to us and receive it ; for we have it to sell.' Their
reason for saying that they had it for saie was that, seeing them
inclined to deal in saleable articles and not to take anything
gratuitously, they might by this means either rouse them to
purchase wisdom like other goods or, as the events following
show, turn them by such declaration to wonder and astonishment.
At length their cry, being long continued, was brought by certain
that wondered at them or deemed them mad, to the ears of
Charles the King, who was always a lover and most desirous
of wisdom ; who, when he had called them with all haste into
his presence, inquired if, as he understood by report, they had
wisdom verily with them. ' Yea,' said they, ' we have it, and are
ready to impart to any that rightly seek it in the name of the
Lord.' When, therefore, he had inquired what they would have
in return for it, they answered : ' Only proper places and noble
souls and such things as we cannot travel without, food and
wherewith to clothe ourselves.' " l
So great was the invasion of Irish scholars that a writer
in the reign of Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne,
declares that " almost all Ireland, regardless of the barrier
of the sea, is flocking to our shores with a troop of
philosophers." Of these bearers of learning and devotees
of philosophy, John the Scot was easily foremost in original
power and in learning. We are in the dark in reference
to his early life. We simply find him in the court of
Charles the Bald, about 847, 2 without knowing how he
came to be there.
His first publication was a tract on " Predestination,"
written in 851. It was occasioned by the teaching of
the monk Gottschalk, who had pushed the Augustinian
doctrine of Predestination to such an extreme that there
was practically no function left for the Church. The
1 This account is found in the opening chapter of Gesta Karoli Magni. It is
published in Pertz' Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vol. ii. pp. 731 seq.
8 Prudentius, who was Bishop of Troyes, by the year 847 speaks of a former
intimate friendship for John the Scot, a friendship formed in the palace of Charles.
In his dedication to the treatise on Predestination, Erigena says : "Amid the
waves of the sail-covered sea of the dominion of our lord, the most glorious
Charles, even though we have gained the calm of his haven, yet scarce have we
been allowed the shortest interval to gaze upon the traces of wisdom," which
seems to imply only a short residence in France.
vii A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 119
destiny of every individual, by the teaching of Gottschalk,
was settled by divine decree a predestination in two
kinds : on the one hand to eternal joy, on the other to
eternal woe. There was in the Church no power to
change the outcome of these infinite decrees. The monk
was declared a heretic at the Council of Chiersey, in 849,
and his doctrine was condemned, but the condemnation
did not settle the vexing question which had been raised ;
and Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, bethought himself
of the Irish scholar in the royal court, and appealed to
the philosopher to see if reason could not settle the
problem, which would not disappear even before dread
anathemas. The Archbishop soon discovered that the
man to whom he had appealed was more dangerous than
the original heretic. Instead of a plain answer which
silenced the advocates of extreme predestination and built
up the breach which the enemy had opened, John the
Scot started a train of argument with which no church
men of the period could cope, and dragged into the
fold of the Western Church the long-forgotten specula
tions of the Greek thinkers. If ever a cuckoo's egg was
hatched in the theological nest, here certainly was one.
In the front of his tract Erigena announced that true
philosophy and true religion are identical, and he asserted
that the presentation of the truth is the proper method
of combating heresy. His central position is the
absolute unity of God, which implies a unity both of will
and knowledge. Now, if God predestined to evil, He
would of necessity know (i.e. foreknow) evil, and that
would mean that His nature is a duality of good and evil,
and not a unity. Therefore, from His very nature God
could not predestinate to evil. " The truth is," says this
bold follower of Plato, " evil is merely a negation, and lies
entirely outside the knowledge of God, who only knows
and wills the good." Neither sin nor punishment can
thus have any ground in the will of God. If evil were
predestinated it would mean that there was some power,
or fate, above God, determining His will. The conclusion
is that evil has no ground except in the free choice of
120 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
human will. Sin is simply perverted individual will. It
is always due to absence of God that is to say, to
ignorance of the truth. It is, too, its own damnation, its
own Nemesis. God does not punish the sinner punishes
himself. Sin, then, being due to the apparent separation
of the individual from God, must vanish when "that
which is in part" comes home into the one unity God.
For God, who is the source of all Reality, evil is not. It
has meaning only in the sphere of time. God is not in
time, and evil therefore has no place in the eternal order.
This tract on Predestination was twice condemned by
Church Councils at Valence in 855 and at Langres in
859. John was, of course, refuted by the theologians
of the day. One attack on his tract finds seventy-seven
heresies in it, and a later polemic raises the count to one
hundred and six ! His old friend, Prudentius, Bishop of
Troyes, calls his argument the product of a "poison-
infected mind " and a " barbarous barking."
John's part in the great contemporary controversy on
Transubstantiation is not so easily made out, because no
tract at least none proved to be from his pen has come
down to us. It had long been held that some mystic
change was wrought, by priestly consecration, in the
" sacred elements." But the specific nature of the change
had been left vague. No dogma on this subject had yet
been established, and there was no teaching which
prevailed semper et ubique. The sacred word " Transub
stantiation " was not yet adopted. The famous controversy,
which finally led to the settlement of the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, was opened by the monk Radbertus,
who, in the year 844, dedicated to Charles the Bald an
edition of his book on the Sacrament of the Body and
Blood of Christ. Radbertus presented the extreme view
that at consecration the Bread is completely transformed
into the very Body that was born of the Virgin Mary,
and the Wine into the actual Blood of that Body. This
view, of course, exalted the priest, and carried with it the
necessity for a hierarchy. It was a position which at
once found favour with the clergy. It was, however, a
vii A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 121
view which carried the Church over to a crude materialism,
and it was therefore an issue that called for a re-affirmation
of the spiritual aspect of religion. The times needed a
champion of idealism. There seems little doubt that our
Irish philosopher went into the contest on the idealistic
side of the issue. In 1050 a book dealing with this
subject, and bearing his name, was condemned by the
Church. 1 A book was also written by Adrevalt against the
errors of John the Scot on the Body and Blood of Christ,
and John's name is persistently associated with the anti-
materialistic side of this controversy.
Though no special treatise from John the Scot on this
subject has survived, we know what he thought of
" matter " in general, and he has not left us in doubt as
to what position he took in reference to sacraments.
He says : " There is nothing in the visible and material
world which does not signify something immaterial and
reasonable," 2 so that everything is a symbol, and has a
sacramental significance. Matter is only a concourse of
accidents or qualities, no real being? It is wholly
dependent on thought for its existence, and therefore it
would be absurd to say that the " material " Bread and
Wine are more than symbols. The value of a sacrament
for John could only be an inward and spiritual value a
value for faith. There is a striking passage in his
Exposition of the Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius in
which he expresses the view, now so familiar among
English Protestants, that the sacrament of the bread and
wine is an outward and visible sign of an inward and
spiritual grace, which grace is a direct participation in
spirit with Christ, Whom we taste with our minds and
Whom we receive in the inner man for our salvation and
spiritual increase, until we come through His presence
to an unspeakable deification ; this idea of deification
being, of course, an inheritance from his Greek masters. 4
1 It is now generally held, though the point is not proved, that this particular
book was written by Ratraranus.
* De Divisione Naturae, v. 3. * Ibid. \. 62.
4 The passage reads in the original as follows: " Sequitur et /esu partiei-
pationis ipsam divinissimae eucharistae asfumptionem [italics in the text]. Intuere,
122 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
This position that a sacrament is only an outward sign qf
an inward event, plainly comes out in what he says on
Baptism : " When any faithful persons receive the sacra
ment of baptism, what happens but the conception and
birth in their hearts of God the word, of and through the
Holy Ghost '? Thus every day Christ is conceived in the
womb of faith as in that of a pure mother, and is born
and nourished." * He says elsewhere : " We who do
believe in Him (the Christ), do in our spirits sacrifice
Him and in our minds not with our teeth eat of
Him" " The pious mind tastes inwardly the body of
Christ, the stream of sacred blood, and the ransom price
of the world." 2
We may safely conclude that though his arguments
were powerless to beat back the set of materialistic
tendencies, which fastened Transubstantiation on the
Church, bringing with it the blight of moral character and
the supremacy of the priestly order, there was at least a
champion there of the other view of religion. There was
the hostility of officialdom to John shows it a voice
crying in the wilderness that the seat of religion is in the
soul of man.
John continued in a very positive way the idea of a
progressive revelation, already taught by the Montanists.
He marked out in his Commentary on the Gospel of John
three stages of priesthood. The first stage that of the
priesthood of the Old Testament was transitory, and it
saw the truth only through the thick veils of mysterious
types. The second priesthood, that of the New Testament,
had a greater light of truth, but still obscured by symbols.
The third priesthood, that which is to come, will see God
quam pulchre, quam expresse asserit visibilem hanc eucharistiam ; quam quotidie
sacerdotes ecclesiae in altari conficiunt ex sensibili materia panis et vini, quam-
que confectam et sanctificatam corporaliter accipiunt, typicam esse similitudinem
spirituals participationis Jesu, quern fideliter solo intellectu gustamus, hoc est,
intelligimus inque nostrae naturae interiora viscera sumimus, ad nostram salutem,
et spirituale incrementum, et ineffabilem deificationem " (Migne, vol. cxxii.
p. 140 B).
1 De Divisions Naturae, ii. 33.
* The last two quotations are taken from Alice Gardner's valuable book, Studies
in John the Scot, p. 84. Compare this last quotation with George Fox's
testimony : "I saw the blood of Christ how it came into the heart."
vn A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 123
face to face. To the first corresponds the law of condem
nation, to the second the law of Grace ; the third will
be the kingdom of God. The first assisted human nature,
which was corrupted by sin ; the second ennobled it by
faith ; the third will illumine it with direct contemplation.
The Church of the present will be swallowed up by the
light of the Church of the future, when souls will actually
possess God by direct communion with Him by the Spirit
The Church of the New Testament is only a symbolic
image of this Church of the Spirit the eternal Church,
which is to come into existence when the revelation of
the Spirit has fully come. 1
It is for us the most interesting fact in the story
of John's life that he made a translation of the writings
of Dionysius the Areopagite, a translation which
became the great book of devotion for mystical souls
for many generations. He undertook the work at the
command of Charles the Bald. The translation was a
somewhat slavish Latin parallel of the Greek rather than
a free translation, but it served its purpose and enabled the
Middle Ages to read these mystical books. The Roman
Librarian, Anastasius, expressed his amazement at " that
barbarian from the ends of the earth having the intellect
to grasp and the skill to render such things into another
tongue." The Pope, however, was not so well pleased
over the triumph of learning. He complained to the
King that a copy of the work had not been sent to him
for his approval, and he adds significantly that " this
Johannes was formerly reported not to have shown true
wisdom in some matters." He also translated another
profoundly mystical work Selections from the writings
of the Confessor Maximus?
It was on this mystical literature that John fed
his soul, and out of it he constructed his own
world-view ; and we must now turn to the book into
1 Joannii Scoti Comment, in Evang. sec. Joan, in Migne's Patrologiae Cursia
Completes, vol. cxxii. pp. 308-309.
* Maximus (580-662), monk and martyr in the Eastern Church ; a disciple
of Dionysius and of Gregory of Nyssa ; author of a commentary OB the writings of
Dionysius Areopagita, and of the Mystagogia. Opera (Paris Edition). 1675.
124 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
which John's life went, the book which marks a philo
sophical epoch, and which, together with the Dionysian
literature, turned the stream of Greek Mysticism into
Christian Scholasticism the book On the Division of
Nature} The work, composed of five " books," is
written in the Platonic dialogue style, the dialogue being
between a Master and a Learner. I shall not undertake
to give the " system " of Erigena in full. For that I will
refer my readers to the valuable essay by Thomas
Whittaker in his volume Apollonius of Tyana, and other
essays. I shall select the aspects of his teaching which
have special bearing on subsequent mystical movements.
For Erigena the univere is a divine procession. In fact,
he traces the very word for God (#609) to the Greek verb
#eo>, which means to run or flow, i.e. to go out. God
is both the Alpha and Omega, the cause and the end, the
source and the goal, of everything that is. In the
procession there are four stages, or " types," which are the
four " divisions of nature " " nature " meaning here every
thing that is. The first type, or stage, is, " That which
creates and is not created " ; the second is, " That which
is created and creates " ; the third is, " That which is
created and does not create " ; the fourth is, " That which
neither creates nor is created." The first type is God as
the ground and principle of all things the primal,
undifferentiated Unity. This takes us back to God
before He "goes out" of Himself, and reveals Himself.
What God the Alpha God in Himself may be, mind
can never grasp. In the presence of this mystery
intellect is dumb. At this height (or in this depth) there
are no attributes, for " attributes " appear only when God
" goes out " to reveal Himself only when He proceeds
out of unity into differentiation. God as Principle is
" above " all contrasts and distinctions. He is " beyond "
all that we can say about Him. Every utterance of
ultimate truth about Him must be an " everlasting nay,"
every road a via negativa. God is not any finite thing,
1 It was written in Greek with the title IIe/>l 0tf<rewj fj.epifffj.ov. The title of the
Latin translation is De Divisione Naturae. The Oxford edition of 1681 was
edited by Thomas Gale.
vii A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 125
no matter how long the catalogue ; nor is He completely
known by any finite thing or quality. 1
But there is a divine "procession" by which God
reveals Himself in an unfolding universe. He cannot
be " seen " in Himself ; He can be " seen " in His
creation. The second of the four " divisions " that
which is created and creates is the immaterial world
of Ideas, of prototypes. These perfect patterns of things
have their origin in God, they are His thoughts. " God,"
so Erigena says, " does not know things because they are
they are because He knows (i.e. thinks} them" 2 That
which is real in any object, what is called the essence of
the object, is the Divine Idea, which the object manifests,
and this Idea, or pattern, creates the object, so that our
visible world is all only a " copy " of a perfect Divine
pattern. These patterns are themselves dynamic they
are Divine wills, as well as Divine thoughts ; that is to
say, when God thinks, things are.
The third M division " that which is created and does
not create is the visible universe, the world of time and
space. This is only an " appearance," or shadow, of the
real world of changeless patterns. Creation for Erigena,
means only a local and temporal exhibition of eternal
essences. The visible world is nothing but the appearance
of invisible primordial Causes. Take away from any
object in this visible world all that can be thought about
it, ije. its Idea, which constitutes its " primordial cause,"
and nothing is left In the last analysis everything
turns out to be immaterial. " Matter," so-called, is
no real being ; it is only an aggregation of " qualities."
Remove the " qualities " which thought can seize,
and nothing remains. So that even now, and not
1 Note how a modern poet has expressed this view :
" O Thou that in our bosom's shrine
Dost dwell unknown because divine ;
I will not frame one thought of what
Thou mayest either be or not ;
I will not prate of thus or so,
Nor be profane with yes or no ;
Enough that in our soul and heart
Thou, whatsoe'er Thou mayest be, art."
ARTHUR HCGH C LOUGH.
1 De Divisione Naturae, ii. 28, page 84 of Gale's edition.
126 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
merely in some remote consummation, the Divine
Ideas are all that is. The whole creation is thus a
revelation of God. The real nature of things is God,
and there is nothing " outside " the nature of things
God is all and in all. Time and space, which change
eternal realities to local and temporal appearances, are
conditions only of our finite minds. As soon, however,
as mind rises from sense to pure thought it finds within
itself the eternal prototypes. It leaves behind the world
of " broken parts," and sees the immutable whole, " the
perfect round " of reality. He gives one curious instance
of the way in which the " broken parts " are divinely
united. Man was originally a " sexless unity " ; by the
" fall," i.e. by temporal creation, he was divided into two
sexes, but in Jesus Christ, by whom God is revealed in a
supreme theophany, the unity is restored, for in Him is
" neither male nor female " ! l
The fourth " division " that which is not created and
does not create is God, the Omega, the goal of all that
is. When John comes to treat of the consummation, or
return, of all things into God, he says that the difficulty
of telling it is so great that in comparison all that has
gone before is " like plain sailing in an open sea." In
reality the primal and the ultimate are identical God
the source and God the goal are one. The temporal
process, the vast evolutionary scheme, is only a theophany
or revelation of God. The web of unity seems to be
unravelled, but only that its separate threads may be
discovered, and then again the threads are woven back
into the total seamless piece. As we have seen, the
reality of all things even in this visible world is God, and
thus the final issue must be upward, until everything ends
in Him as it began in Him. "This is the end of all
things visible and invisible, when all visible things pass
into the intellectual, and the intellectual into God, by a
marvellous and unspeakable union." u Everything that is
shall return into God as air into light. For God shall be
all things in all things, when there shall be nothing but
1 De Divisione Naturae, iv. 20.
vii A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 127
God alone." l As evil is a negation, an unreality, it has
no place or being in the final consummation. Evil will
prove to have been nothing but the buffer to try the
soul's strength the stage-setting for the spiritual drama.
When the denouement comes, both stage and stage
scenery fall away. But it is important to note that John
does not teach the re-absorption of the soul into the
Absolute. He holds to the permanence of the spiritual
self as he puts it, " without any confusion or destruction
of essence? " The air," he says, " is still air, though it
appears to be absorbed into the light of the sun and to
be aH light. The voice of man, or of pipe, or of lyre,
loses not its quality when several by just proportion
make one harmony in unity among themselves." * He is
not in the proper sense of the word a pantheist He
never surrenders personal individuality, and he does not
teach that God is merely the totality of things. We
know God, he would say, only through the procession of
the universe, which is a theophany or Divine revelation ;
but God, as He truly is, is above all revelation and know
ledge, and not to be confused with things that appear.
His mysticism appears especially in his root conception
of man's soul. There is an ultimate ground of truth in
the depth of personal consciousness. Man is an epitome
of the universe, a meeting-place of the above and the
below, a point of union for the heavenly and the
sensuous. We understand the world only because the
forms or patterns of it the Ideas which it expresses
are in our own minds. So that a mind which wholly
fathomed itself would thereby fathom everything, and we
can rise to Divine contemplation because God is the ground
and reality of our soul's being. In very truth the soul is
always in God, and by contemplation it may rise above the
mutable and become that which it beholds. In a remark
able passage in the Fourth Book, 8 he says :
"Whoever rises to pure understanding becomes that which
he understands. We, while we discuss together, in turn become
1 De Division* Naturae, v. 8. 2 Ibid. v. 8. * Ibid. iv. 9.
128 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
one another. For, if I understand what you understand, I
become your understanding, and in a certain unspeakable way
I am made into you. And also when you entirely understand
what I clearly understand you become my understanding, and
from two understandings there arises one."
Man, at the depth (or height) of contemplation, finds
God, because in this state God is finding Himself in man.
Like knows like, and the soul is what it sees. God is
found in the deeps of the soul, because the soul at bottom
is of God. It is just because of his central faith that the
soul is a revelation of God, that he uttered the words
with which this chapter began : " There are as many
theophanies of God as there are souls of the faithful."
This strange book ends with a beautiful envoi to the
reader.
" Nothing else," he says, " is to be desired except the joy that
comes from truth ; nothing is to be shunned except its absence.
Take from me Christ : no good will remain to me, and no
further torment can affright me. I commit my work to God.
Hereafter, when these words of mine come into the hands of
those who are truly seeking wisdom, with glad mind they will
kiss them as if they were their own kinsmen coming back to
them. But if they should fall among those who blame rather
than sympathize, I should not much contend with them. Let
every one tfse the light he has until that Light comes which will
make darkness ojjt of the light of those who philosophize
unworthily, and which will turn the darkness of those who
welcome It into light." 1
The speculations of this bold thinker of the Dark Ages
made little stir in the busy world in which he lived.
There was a strong current setting in toward materialism
in religion, and this Irish scholar was a voice crying in
the wilderness. There came another age, however, to
which this voice spoke, and it awoke movements of vast
significance. There can be no question that John's
message verged on dangerous ground. He had a mighty
vision for unity and for the oneness of all Reality, but he
dealt feebly with the great facts of sin and evil, change
1 Taken, with omissions, from the end of the "Division of Nature." De
Division* Naturae, v. 40.
vii A GREAT LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 129
and multiplicity. He blurred over the unescapable
chasm between the good and the bad, the light and the
darkness, and he hurried too easily into a crude monism
which was bound to breed, as it did, a crop of pantheistic
errors. But there was in him a loftiness of spirit, a bold
ness of vision, a virile idealism, which were sure to be an
inspiration to many noble minds in later ages who were,
as he was, consecrated to the service of the Invisible
Church.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WALDENSES, AN ANTI-SACERDOTAL SECT
THE Roman Church achieved its world supremacy only
to find itself incapable of satisfying the inner, spiritual
hunger of vast multitudes of people within its wide fold.
The twelfth century, which marked the culmination of the
apparent power of the Church, also marks the beginning
of a revolt against its supremacy which finally ended in
the Protestant Reformation four centuries later. The
ecclesiastical hierarchy claiming its authority from Christ
Who said : " He that would be first shall be servant of all "
had become the most centralized organization in the
world. Every earthly power had to bow before its
authority, and every member of its own complex body
had to be submissively obedient to the papal head or be
ruthlessly cut off. Every member of its mighty priest
hood wielded more than royal power, for by his ordination
he was believed to be possessed of extraordinary super
natural powers. He could open or shut the celestial gates
to the laity. He could work the miracle of the Mass
and give or withhold the body and blood of Christ. But
the Church had won its apparent supremacy at too great
a sacrifice of moral and spiritual power.
Gradually the gap between clergy and laity had
become a wide chasm. They used different courts of
justice and different standards of ethics. The celibacy
of those who were ordained had become, after a long,
hard struggle, a settled fact. They neither married nor
were given in marriage, but were supposed to be like
the angels in heaven. They, however, were not. The
130
CHAP, vin THE WALDENSES 131
immorality of the clergy, from the highest rank to the
lowest order, was universally recognised. So general was
vice and so widespread the scandal that a man making
confession to a priest of an illicit amour was forbidden to
name the partner of his guilt for fear the priest might be
tempted by a knowledge of the woman's frailty. 1 The
Church was honeycombed with Simony, which is the
ecclesiastical name for what we now call " graft." There
were thousands of positions within the gift of the Church
which appealed to selfish ambition, and these positions
were bought and sold. Men sat in the Bishop's seat and
wore the Cardinal's hat not because they bore the marks
of the Lord Jesus, but because they had wealth and
influence. As fast as Simony spread it ate out the heart
and life of the Church, and as worldliness came in,
spiritual power went out. " Thou seest," said the Pope
to Dominic, as he showed him the papal treasures, " thou
seest that the time is past when Peter can say, ' Silver
and gold have I none.' " " Yes," said the bold saint,
" and the time has gone, too, when Peter can say to the
lame man ' rise up and walk.' " The steady growth of
supernaturalism had left little place in the Church for
moral and rational appeal. Preaching had become well-
nigh a lost art, a forgotten function. The priest was not
a preacher. He was a mediator between God and man,
possessed of supernatural power. He brought cure to
sin-sick souls not by revealing the source of spiritual
power, but by the exercise of magic rites. He professed
to be able to produce before his flock the literal body and
blood of the Saviour and to perform anew a sacrifice for
their sins. He claimed the power to shorten the period
of purgatory by his prayers. He could say, through the
magic gift of his ordination, " Son, thy sins are forgiven
thee."
It was most natural that such awful claims should be
abused. It would have needed Seraphim and Cherubim
to exercise such power without abuse, and priests were, in
spite of supernatural claims, only frail men. It is no
1 See Lea's History of the Inquisition, vol. i. p. 31.
132 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
marvel that the enormous system of salvation by barter
crept in. The line of least resistance led straight to the
sale of indulgences. The Church had at its disposal all
the merits accumulated by Christ's sacrifice and by the
extra-merit, the superfluous goodness of the long line of
saints. The Church was the sole hydrant through which
the stored-up waters of salvation could flow out to
humanity, and it could fix at will the conditions upon
which this supply of Grace should be applied to individual
need. In an evil moment it took the false step and
decided that indulgences for sin could be granted in
return for money-payments or in return for unusual works
and services rendered to the Church in her times of need.
For example, the promise of plenary indulgence was
made in the first crusade to all who should fall in the
service of the Church, and as time went on this extra
ordinary power was used in capricious ways. Honorius
III., at the request of Francis of Assisi, granted a sweep
ing indulgence which promised to all persons who visited
the church of Santa Maria de Portiuncula, between the
vespers of August 1st and August 2nd of any year,
complete remission of all sins committed since their
baptism. The popularity of the indulgence may be
judged from the vision which was granted to one of the
faithful in which it was revealed to him that this in
dulgence was depopulating hell.
It could not but work havoc and disaster to put the
issues of the soul on such an unethical basis, and by an
eternal principle the Institution which thus took the risk
of sowing to the wind was bound sooner or later to reap
the whirlwind. The prophetic spirits of the time all felt
that the Church had largely lost its vision and was unable
to minister to the deepest needs of the soul. St. Bernard,
the most loyal churchman of the century, cries out in
sadness : " Whom can you show me among the prelates
who does not seek rather to empty the pockets of his
flock than to subdue their vices ? " Gilbert of Gamblours
says : " The prelates enter the Church not by election,
but by the use of money and the favour of princes ; not
vin THE WALDENSES 133
to feed, but to be fed ; not to minister, but to be ministered
to ; not to sow, but to reap ; not to labour, but to rest ;
not to guard the sheep from wolves, but, fiercer than
wolves, to tear the sheep." l
As soon as the pulsations of the deeper life of
humanity became clearer and stronger, there was sure to
be a mighty issue between this system and the prophets
of the race who voiced the aspirations of the human
heart The rank and file of the hierarchy might settle
down at peace with a system which filled their bellies,
satisfied their worldly ambitions and gave them magic
control of invisible powers, but the Church had sooner
or later to reckon with that unstilled hunger and thirst
of man for a reality which satisfies his deeper self.
Prophets and apostles of the soul's inalienable right to
God were sure to come and they were certain to refuse
the stone offered for bread, the scorpion for the fish.
The gigantic system of mediating supernatural supplies
of Grace was hardly organized in its completeness
when the hand on the wall began to write " mene."
Just when the clouds of superstition seemed covering
the sky, the red fingers of a new dawn ran up in
the east
In the twelfth century the church began a battle with
" heresy," which has not ended yet. These " heresies,"
even in their earlier stages, were many-sided, hard to
describe in any fixed and general form. They took a
variety of shapes according to their local habitat and the
peculiar influences of their local leaders, and went under
many names and often with strange battle-cries. The
spirit of a new age was confronting an old system, and
man was slowly winning his right to think and his power
to be his own priest The Waldensian movement was
one of the most significant of the many revolts against
the worldliness of the Church and one of the most
genuine attempts to revive apostolic Christianity.
It was for a long time supposed that the Waldenses,
or Vaudois, had an unbroken history down from apostolic
1 Quoted from Lea's History of the Inquisition, voL i. p. 53.
134 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
days. It has often been claimed that in the quiet
retreats of their Alpine valleys they preserved the original
Gospel uncontaminated and uncorrupted. There are other
traditions which hold that there was a band of Christians
who protested against the action of Pope Sylvester in
receiving temporal possessions from Constantine in the
fourth century, and that this band of purer spirits formed
an independent sect, withdrew to the Vaudois valleys,
and continued, in isolation from Rome, to cherish a
Christianity free from secular corruptions. These are,
however, only traditions which have had their birth in the
common tendency of peoples to push back their origin,
and, if possible, to connect it with a sacred person or a
momentous event. The belief that they are connected
in origin in some way with a " new faith " of the twelfth
century, often called Catharism, which had come from the
East and had slowly permeated the West, is much more
solidly grounded because the Waldensian movement
undoubtedly did spread rapidly in sections of Europe
where Catharism had flourished.
Catharism was a revised form of Manichaeism. 1 It
first showed its appearance in Bulgaria about the middle
of the ninth century, where the Eastern and Western
Churches were both struggling for converts. It seems to
have come into Bulgaria from Armenia, where sects of
Paulicians 2 held similar views.
Cathari (the word means " pure men " or " puritans ")
were certainly widespread in Europe by the middle of
the eleventh century, and there were many complaints of
1 Manichaeism (named from its founder Manes, born about A.D. 216) was
a dualistic system with two co-ordinate principles of good and evil, light and
darkness, God and Satan, eternally at war with each other, both in the world
and within man. It was a union of Mazdean and Gnostic ideas with a
sprinkling of ideas from the doctrines of Christianity. St. Augustine was in his
younger period a Manichaean.
2 The Paulicians, probably named from Paul of Samosata, as a separate sect
date from the middle of the seventh century. The birthplace of the sect seems
to have been Samosata, not far from the ancient " Ur of the Chaldees. " The
patriarch of the sect was a certain Constantine, who had come under Gnostic
and Manichaean influences. He was given a copy of St. Paul's Epistles in which
he thought he found his own Gnostical ideas. By allegorical interpretation he
harmonized Paul's Christianity with Oriental theosophy and the product was
" Paulicianism " in the East and later became " Catharism " in the West.
vni THE WALDENSES 135
the prevalence of the " heresy " both from Germany and
Italy before the end of the century. It did not appeal
much to the subtle minds of the Church. It was seized
upon rather by the humble poor folk those who laboured
and were heavy laden and who felt that the Church did
not " speak to their condition." They were feeling, how
ever blunderingly, after a reformed and purified Church.
The Cathari held, in varying degrees according to locality,
that there are two ground principles in the universe a
good God who is the creator of the spiritual world, and
an evil god (Satan) who is the creator of the material
world. Between these two beings, and between these two
worlds, there is truceless antagonism. The battle has been
carried even into heaven, and some of the celestial host
have been won over to the side of the evil being. This
visible world is the sphere of the activity of his forces.
The aim of the Cathari was to get deliverance from the
power of this evil being, and so from everything belonging
to the material world which is his world. They were
therefore naturally extremely ascetic. They required
abstinence from sexual intercourse, from all meats, eggs,
cheese, and, in a word, from everything that involves
sexual intercourse among animals. They stoutly opposed
oaths. They condemned war, and they held that punish
ment by death was wicked. They contended not only
against infant baptism, but against water baptism
altogether, even asserting that this rite was introduced by
Satan who used John the Baptist as his instrument. 1
They pointed out that in apostolic times those who had
received water baptism were still imperfect until they
received the Holy Ghost (Acts viii. 15, 16). They
carried their opposition to external things to the point
of holding that God dwells not in houses made with
hands. A house of stone is not a church ; a company of
good persons only is the Church.
They were divided into two groups a larger and a
smaller, called respectively " believers " and " perfects."
The " perfects " were initiated, by the sacrament of laying
1 SeeNeander's History of the Christian Religion, voL iv. p. 575.
136 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
on of hands (the consolamentum), into the circle of those
who were the elect of the Holy Ghost, the group of the
" pure." To those " initiated " heaven was assured.
There is no question that the Cathari, both in their early
stages and in their later period when, especially in
France, they are called " Albigenses," l held beliefs which
were crude and far removed from the teaching of the
Gospel. Their dualism led them to a belief in Satan as
only a less powerful being than God a belief not yet
wholly outgrown and suppressed. Their asceticism was
largely due to their wild and unsound philosophy, and
while revolting from some of the superstitions which
prevailed in the Church, they were themselves a prey to
other superstitions which made it impossible for their
movement to bring a real spiritual deliverance to Europe.
They did, however, teach with powerful emphasis the
importance of pure, moral living and a severely simple life.
They formed rallying-points, wherever they flourished, for
those who were grieved over the immorality of the clergy,
and who were hostile to the sacerdotalism and secularity
of the Church. 2
It is worth our while to pause for a moment and ask
why it was that this formulation of Manichaean doctrines
has so persistently appealed to human interest and to
human need. What was it in Manichaeism, Paulicianism,
Catharism, and Albigensianism that so fascinated the
people of so many countries and of so many epochs, and
made them, in the strength of these faiths, go bravely
to dungeon and to death? It is not quite safe to raise
such questions or to try to answer them, for the outside view
at this safe distance is wholly unlike the inside view by
which these men lived and died, and the spiritual attitude
of those who form a religious movement is so rich and
complex as to defy analysis. But the central principle
1 So named from Albi in France where they flourished.
2 The Waldanses did not directly spring out of Catharism. It is not possible
to trace the origin of Waldensianism to the teaching of the Cathari. In fact
the Waldenses considered the Cathari to be heretics. But nevertheless there was
much in common in the two movements, and it is extremely probable that the
anti-sacerdotal spirit and the moral standards of the earlier movement had a
weighty influence on the later one.
vm THE WALDENSES 137
of this vast movement, which under many names has
dominated men, seems to be its simple solution of the
mystery of good and evil, which is the mystery that
weighs heaviest upon the spirit of man. Manichaeism, in
its constantly appearing varieties, seems to us doubtless
a crude solution of the mystery, but to multitudes of men
it has seemed the last word of revelation. Evil is foreign
to God it is the work of an enemy who has stolen a
march and is making terrible havoc, but God our God
is incessantly at war with this monster enemy and in the
long run will outwit him, and bring His loyal subjects into
the fruits of His own victory. It is the exact opposite
of the view which appealed so mightily to the mind of
the mystic. The latter found his mystery solved and his
spirit delivered in the faith that everything is Divine.
Evil is only a finite illusion, only a temporal dream.
Return into God, and the illusion vanishes as the dream
does at waking. Both of these views, though diametrically
opposed to each other, made their way because they were
so transparently simple and adequate to the minds that
adopted them. They came as a welcome release to the
strain and tension of the perplexed and groping mind.
" God is all there is," said the mystic, " enter His allness
and be at rest." " God is at war with His enemy and
ours, and when He wins the victory and chains the
monster of darkness, we shall live in the light, let us
join in this battle of Armageddon," said the Cathari.
They both felt that they had found a clue to the mystery,
that they had a principle by which they could conquer
world, flesh, and devil, and in this organizing faith lay
their power.
The Waldenses as a separate sect owe their origin to
Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, who about 1173
experienced a religious crisis which radically transformed
him, and set him forth on a unique spiritual experiment
Waldo, like Melchizedec, is without traceable earthly
lineage. His origin and ancestry are unknown. He had
come to Lyons about 1155 to make his way in life, and,
according to an early chronicle had amassed great wealth
138 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
as a money-lender, and was everywhere recognized as a
successful and prosperous man. The story which has
come down to us to account for his spiritual crisis is as
follows : l He was a man living in the enjoyment of his
prosperity and good fortune, when suddenly one day a
dear friend fell dead before his eyes. This experience
produced a profound impression on him, and this
impression was deepened by another experience which
followed hard upon the first one. Coming home one day
from mass he heard a minstrel singing to a crowd and
reciting the story of St. Alexis a sad tale ending with
a complaint of the condition of the Church and the
degeneracy of the present compared with the good old
times. Waldo took the minstrel home with him, and was
so moved by the impression his visitor made upon him
that he went next morning, not to his business, but
instead to consult a spiritual guide "a Master of
Theology" whom he knew in the city. He told his
guide that he was eager to find the true way to heaven.
The guide told him that the surest way was to obey the
words of the Master : " If thou wilt be perfect, sell all
thou hast and give to the poor and come and follow me."
The words struck home, and Waldo took them literally.
He settled up all his business affairs, provided for his
daughters, and placed them in the Abbey of Fontevraud,
fixed a proper share of his worldly goods on his wife,
and began at once to use his own part of the property to
feed the poor and to spread the truth. Like St Francis,
whom he precedes by a generation, he went to living as
the birds do, with no care or anxiety, and going about
from house to house, visiting the sick, helping the poor,
and reading the Gospels to them. 2 He met with little
groups in workshops and at street corners, and showed
1 There are two early accounts of Waldo's Conversion ; one in Anecdotes
historiques, Ugendes et apologues, tire's du recueil intdit d! fctienne de Bourbon,
dominicain du XIII* siecle, public's pour la Soctete' de 1'Histoire de France par A.
Lecoy de la Marche, Paris, 1877, pp. 290 seq. ; and the other in the Chronicon
anonymi Canonici Laudunensis in Bouquet's Recueil, tome xiii. pp. 680-82.
2 Waldo's wife, when she heard that he was living on the charity of the
neighbours, went, with tears, to the Archbishop and claimed her right to feed her
husband, and the Archbishop ordered that he should eat with her when he was in
Lyons. A quite similar story was related of Raimund Lull, who was born in the
vin THE WALDENSES 139
them through the Scriptures the simplicity of the Gospel
message and the character of the primitive Church. He
employed a translator at his own expense, who put the
Gospels and other parts of the Bible into the vernacular
Provencal, and he made a collection of extracts from the
Fathers, known as " Sentences." l The idea which pos
sessed Waldo was the necessity of literally following
Christ, and the main basis of his movement was the " new
law " of Christ which he found in the Gospels. Those
who formed the nucleus of his followers were obscure
men, mechanics, people " of whom the Church took little
count, except to tax when they were orthodox, and burn
when heretic." They called themselves " the poor of
Christ " or " the poor men of Lyons." 2 They were brave,
obedient to their light, and, like the early Franciscans,
naive and childlike. They preached the Gospel in the
streets, in the fields, and in market-places, and they went
from house to house telling their message to everybody
in the city. Their simple lay -preaching, backed up by
their pure lives and their spirit of kindness, appealed to
the people, but it brought them into collision with the
officials of the Church. The Archbishop ordered Peter
to stop casting his pearls before swine, and to cease
usurping the office of preacher which belonged only to
the ordained. Waldo appealed to the Gospel for his
authority, but made no impression on the Archbishop.
The " poor men " thus found themselves forced to choose
whether they would obey their clergy or their precious
Gospel. In this dilemma Waldo took the apostolic words
as his own, and announced as his decision : " We must
obey God rather than men." The Archbishop thereupon
expelled Waldo and his followers to the number of some
thousands from the city, and in doing so expanded the
movement from a local affair to continental dimensions.
At the Lateran Council, held in 1 1 79, the " poor men "
island of Majorca in the year 1236. He had, however, come under Franciscan
influence, and was undoubtedly taking St. Francis as his model.
1 According to the other account that of Etienne de Bourbon the work of
translating the Scriptures was under way before the Alexis incident occurred.
* They were sometimes called Insabbatati, which means "the Shoed," from
the fact that they wore peculiar sandals in imitation of the Apostles.
140 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
in person presented a petition to have their vow of
poverty confirmed, which was granted. They presented
also their translations of the Scriptures, and tried to
secure permission to preach as laymen. This per
mission was granted with a proviso which nullified it,
namely that they must first secure the permission of their
local clergy, and be under the oversight of a local Bishop.
At this Lateran Council, 1 Walter Mapes, the famous
Englishman from the court of Henry II., was called in to
question the "poor men," and to examine their transla
tions. He found great sport in confusing them with his
fine-spun arguments, and he made much fun of their
naivete and simplicity.
The anathema of the Church fell upon them with
force at the Council of Verona in 1184. The anathema
includes the Cathari, the Paterines, those falsely called
"the humble," or "the Poor at Lyons," the Passagians,
Josephites, Arnaldists " these are," the decision reads,
" eternally anathema, and we include in the same perpetual
anathema all who shall have presumed to preach, either
publicly or privately, either being forbidden or not sent, or
not having the authority of the Apostolic See or of the
Bis/top of the diocese" 2 This decree further says that
" heresies have begun in these modern times to break
forth in most parts of the world, so that the power
of the Church ought to be aroused." Henceforth the
Waldenses were compelled to give up all hope of re
forming the Church from within, and to face the hazard
of forming a Church separate from " the Church." 3
About the year 1190 the Waldenses held a public
disputation in the Cathedral of Narbonne, and the
subjects discussed at this disputation give a very definite
idea of their views at this period. The most important
points to be combated are the following :
1 The Lateran Council of 1179 condemned the Cathari and put them under
an anathema.
a Decree of Pope Lucius III., in the Council of 1184 (Maitland's Facts and
Documents, p. 177).
8 There were, however, many members of the Waldensian group who still
retained a nominal membership in the Church. It took a whole century of
persistent persecution to shake their loyalty and to drive them into ' ' separation; "
mi THE WALDENSES 141
1. They refuse obedience to the Pope and prelates.
2. Everybody, even laymen^ can preach.
3. That according to the Apostles, God is to be
obeyed rather than man.
4. That women may preach.
5. That masses, prayers, and alms for the dead are of
no avail ; while some deny that there is any
purgatory.
6. That prayer in bed, or even in a stable, is as
efficacious as in a church. 1
Bernard of Fontcaud, who gives us these points under
discussion at Narbonne, makes much of the fact that
these " poor men " allowed all their members, regardless
of age or position, to preach, and, as we have seen,
extended the privilege to women.
One of the earliest references to the apostolic preach
ing of the Waldenses is found in the Edict of King
Alfonso of Aragon dated 1192, in which his subjects are
forbidden to harbour or shelter Waldenses, Insabbatati
(" sandled men "), or Poor Men of Lyons, and they are
warned against hearing them preach, giving them food, or
showing them any kindness. 2
Further light on their views and practices is shed by
a Tract prepared not far from this date at the request of
the pope, by Alain de 1'Isle, who was called the "universal
Doctor." The great doctor finds them a dangerous people,
because they hold dangerous doctrines and are determined
to practise their teachings, and carry them out in daily
life. He says that they preach without permission,
assuming themselves to be successors of the apostles ;
that they take women about with them and allow them
to preach in public assemblies, and that they support
themselves by the work of their hands. He complains
that they teach that only ministers who live godly,
apostolic lives have the power to loose and bind, that
spiritual power is dependent, not on ordination, but
on inward life and character, and that the ministration
1 These points are given in a Tract by Bernard, Abbot of Fontcaud, written
about the year taoo.
a Muller, Die Waldenstr (Gotha, 1886), p. 12.
142 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
of sinful priests is invalid, teachings which would
woefully cripple the power of the Church. He also
finds that they strike another blow at the Church by
claiming that confession to a good layman is just as
availing as confession to a priest. And finally they
reject, as devoid of any efficacy, the whole system of
indulgences, a system against which Luther aimed his
first blow three centuries later. 1
There is a steady testimony, from all our reliable
sources, to the purity of the life and the strict moral
character of the Waldenses, both in their earlier and in
their later periods. They took the Gospel literally, and
made a very serious attempt to live it as the law of their
daily life. They practised apostolic simplicity, even to
the wearing of sandals to be like the apostles. They
refused to swear, and the stricter members of the group
" the faithful " or " perfect " would accept death before
they would take an oath. Lea reports the case of an
old woman who was given the chance to escape the
sentence of death as a heretic if she would take an oath.
She refused to save herself on that condition. They
opposed war and even judicial homicide, standing literally
by the command, " Thou shalt not kill." The passwords
of the sect were, " Saint Paul says, ' Lie not ' ; Saint James
says, ' Swear not ' ; Saint Peter says, ' Do not render evil
for evil.'" When one of their members was being
" examined " before the Inquisition of Toulouse, he was
asked what his religion had taught him. His noble
answer was that it had taught him "that he should
neither speak nor do evil ; that he should do nothing
to others that he would not have done to himself; and
that he should not lie or swear."
An interesting account of the errors of the Waldenses
is given by a contemporary monk of Citeaux, Peter of
Vaux-Sernai. He says that :
" Their errors consisted chiefly in four things, viz. in wearing
sandals after the manner of the Apostles ; in saying that it is not
1 See Miiller, op. cit. p. 14 ; Lea, op. cit. p. 79 ; Alain de I 1 Isle died 1202.
vin THE WALDENSES 143
lawful on any account to swear ; or to kill ; and moreover in this
that they asserted that any individual of the sect, in case of
necessity, if he only had on sandals, without having received
orders from a bishop, could make the body of Christ [perform
the miracle of transubstantiation].
When any one went over to the heretics, he who received
him said, ' Friend, if you wish to be one of us, it behoves you
to renounce the whole faith that is held by the Roman Church,'
and he must answer, ' I renounce ' ; ' Then receive the Holy
Spirit from good men ' and he breathes seven times in his face.
Also he says to him, 'You must renounce the cross made on
you in baptism, on your breast, and on your shoulders, and on
your head, with oil and chrism.' He must answer, ' I renounce
it.' ' Do you believe that water could work your salvation ? '
He answers, ' I do not believe it.' " l
It was not an uncommon thing for persons in the
twelfth century to be suspected of heresy when they
were discovered to be living lives of extraordinary purity
and simplicity. In fact a "heresy hunter" of the period
who knew the marks of heresy says :
" Heretics are recognizable by their customs and speech, for
they are modest and well regulated. They take no pride in
their garments, which are neither costly nor vile. They do not
engage in trade, to avoid lies, and oaths, and frauds, but live by
their labours as mechanics their teachers are cobblers. They
do not accumulate wealth, but are content with necessaries. They
are chaste, and temperate in meat and drink. They do not
frequent taverns or dances or other vanities. They restrain
themselves from anger. They are always at work; they teach
and learn and consequently pray but little. They are to be
known by their modesty and precision of speech, avoiding
scurrility and detraction, light words, lies, and oaths. They do
not even say vere or certe, regarding them as oaths." 2
One of the most beautiful monuments of the high
ethical spirit of the Waldenses is the old Provencal
poem, entitled, " La Nobla Leyczon," the Noble Lesson.
It was long supposed to be a production of about the year
1 1 oo, as the poem itself declares that eleven centuries
have passed since it was said : " We live in the last
1 Quoted from Maitland's Facts and Documents, pp. 395-96.
2 Quoted in Lea, op. cit. vol. i. p. 85.
I 4 4 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
times." But scholars are now agreed that these lines
have been tampered with and that the poem was written
probably by a Waldensian "master" not far from the
year 1400. The poem is permeated with the spirit of
evangelical Christianity and with the ethical ideas of the
Sermon on the Mount. It makes religion consist in
following Christ, and in the maintenance of a pure, clean
life ; and it complains that if a person is found who neither
curses, swears, lies, commits adultery, murders, possesses
himself of another's goods, nor revenges himself on his
enemies, the false shepherds say, " He is a Waldensian." *
Their form of organization was very simple and as
apostolic as they could make it. They made the smallest
possible distinction between clergy and laity. There was
a certain number of the members who renounced all
property, who devoted all their time to religious teaching
and the propagation of the Gospel : these persons were
called " majorales " or sometimes the " perfected," and in
later times " barbes." They supported themselves by
some menial occupation such as cobbling, tinkering, or
peddling. 2 Where they devoted their entire time to
the Gospel they lived in a simple way on voluntary
contributions. Many of the Waldenses, especially their
ministers and missionaries, were skilful leeches. They
were always ready to use their skill in medicine and
surgery to open the door for applying their remedy for
the cure of souls. They refused all payment for such
service, and silently taught the lesson that "It is more
blessed to give than to receive."
They seem not to have had any settled teaching, at
least in the earlier stages of the movement, on the
doctrine of transubstantiation. At first they took the
position that the bread and wine became the Body and
Blood of Christ only in the hands of spiritual priests, but
they gradually came to question, and frequently they
1 Trench has pointed out in his Mediceval Church History, pp. 247 ff. , that
there is a thinness of quality in all the literature of the Waldenses. He notes too
the fact that in the five hundred lines of the Noble Lesson only one line refers to
redemption by Christ. It has also often been noted that their Christianity is of
the type of St. James rather than of the type of St. Paul.
8 See Whittier's poem, "The Vaudois Teacher."
VIII
THE WALDENSES 145
even denied, the reality of transubstantiation. There is
evidence that some of the inquisitors used transubstantia
tion as a decisive test when examining those suspected of
being Waldenses, and it clearly appears that very often
laymen, especially the heads of the families, administered
in simple form the communion supper. 1
In the early part of the fourteenth century we get a
fairly full account of the Waldenses of that period from
their great persecutor, Bernard Gui, who was inquisitor at
Toulouse. This account by the great inquisitor shows
that the Waldenses had kept straight on their original
lines throughout the century and a half of persecution.
He says that they form a society or brotherhood, that
they maintain evangelical simplicity and poverty. Those
who preach have no property of their own, but go from
place to place and are fed and sheltered by those who
form the society. They teach that transubstantiation is
effected only when the ministrant is a pure and holy
person. Supernatural powers are not conferred by
ordination, but all spiritual powers come directly from
Christ to the individual. Transubstantiation may be
worked, and absolution may be given by any spiritual
person, either man or woman. 2
Persecution steadily drove them into sharper opposition
to the Church, and forced them to realize that the Church
could not be reformed from within, so that they finally
came to think of themselves as " the true Church," and of
the great Church as apostate, or, as they put it, a " house
of lies." They organized schools of their own in which
their peculiar doctrines and practices were taught They
had their cemeteries set apart for their own dead, and
they had a vigorous band of missionaries whose zeal and
courage knew no bounds.
1 See the account from Peter of Vaux-Sernai, quoted above. There was, even
in the lifetime of Waldo, a breach between the " poor of Lyons " and the " poor
of Lombardy." The latter were much more sharply anti-church in their attitude
than the former. The " poor of Lyons " put the great stress on the necessity for
those who exercise apostolic functions to live like the Apostles. While on the
other hand it was the tendency for the Lombard branch of the ' ' poor " to
denounce the Roman Church as the whore and to reject its Sacraments.
8 Gui, Practica inyuiritionis, public* par Douai (Paris, 1885).
L
146 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
The Waldensian missionary who swam the Ipsis River
on a winter night to carry a Gospel message to a Catholic
on the mere chance of converting him is only one instance
of the spirit which made these " poor men " such an
evangelical force in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
and each new convert became at once a missionary to
others.
The records of the Inquisition show that they existed
in large numbers throughout France and Germany
especially Southern Germany. We get a telling proof of
their great numbers in Lorraine, even in the twelfth
century, for in the year 1 192 the Bishop of Toul ordered
all Waldensians in his bishopric to be captured and
brought to him. His promises to the " hunters " indicate
that the " heretics " were numerous. He promises re
mission of sins to all who perform this service, and he
further promises, that if any are driven from their homes
because they engage in this service , he will provide them
with food and clothes. The document now generally
known as the Narrative of the " Anonymous of Passau,"
written about 1260, gives conclusive evidence that in the
vast diocese of Passau, the Waldenses existed in great
numbers, and they seem almost to have captured the
rural districts from the Church. They are here shown to
be mostly peasants and simple mechanics, but they are
thoroughly familiar with the Scriptures and possess a
passion for making converts.
They were not mystics like most of the sects studied
in this volume. They were unspeculative, simple
Christians, sternly hostile to the corruption and sacer
dotalism of the Church, concerned for a return to Gospel
simplicity and consecrated to the proclamation of an
evangel which the poorest and most illiterate could under
stand. The most wholesome characteristic of the move
ment is its social aspect. It had no social propaganda^
such as characterised many of the later religious uprisings,
but it was marked throughout by a genuine feeling of
human love and brotherhood. The Waldenses often called
themselves " Friends," and better still they exhibited
vm THE WALDENSES 147
the traits of friendship. The spirit of Waldo himself,
who sold all he had in order to turn his possessions
into channels of love and service, is typical of the entire
movement. The Waldensian ministers, under whatever
name they are called, were moved by sympathy and love
for the poor and the burdened. They would take no
salary ; they worked for men out of love for them and for
Christ. They studied healing arts to relieve pain and
suffering, and they resisted successfully the temptation to
make their " gifts " a means to wealth and promotion. It
was one of their counts against the Church that the Clergy
used the terrors of superstition to force money from those
who were already poor and hungry. They denounced
pilgrimages and the sale of indulgences, because of their
moral and social effects. They declared purgatory to be
an invention, and they taught the people that prayers and
offerings to saints were of no avail. In the place of these
expensive superstitions they called for lives of love and
service, and they set the standard themselves by follow
ing the Master in going about doing good. It is possible,
as Harnack suggests, 1 that if the movement had come a
generation later, it might have been taken up into the
Church and incorporated with it, as the Franciscan move
ment actually was. There is no question that Waldo and
his Lyonese followers wished to be an organic part of the
Catholic Church, and only sought the privilege of living
like the apostles. The inherent difficulty was that the
Church of the twelfth century had no provision in its
system, and no place in its fold, for those who practised
Gospel simplicity and lived like the apostles. The Church
had not yet awakened to its social duties, and it was deaf
to the half articulate cry of its submerged masses. Then
further, it had no place in its elaborate machinery for lay
ministry. It could not utilize the gifts of the unordained,
even though they had discovered how to heal the broken
hearted, and to give the oil of joy for mourning. Still
less could it tolerate those who joined to their unusual
activities teachings which threatened the entire sacerdotal
1 History of Dogma, vol. vi. p. 92.
148 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
structure. The very existence of the Church was staked
on the theory that transubstantiation and absolution of
sins were supernaturally effected, not by the holiness of
the ministrant, but by the magical power conferred
through ordination. The priest was a supernatural instru
ment, a channel of divine power, and the miracles of
Grace were wrought through him independently of the
manner of his life. This position the Waldenses boldly
challenged and, in doing so, entered upon an irreconcilable
contention with the historic Church.
But it would be a mistake to conclude that Europe
was at this period ripe for a Reformation, or that the
Waldenses had attained to an insight or embodied
principles which qualified them to be the bringers of a
genuine Reformation. The Great Head of the Church is
"the God of all patience," and His world was not yet
ready for the larger freedom which the Reformation
brought, nor could these " poor men " have led the world
into a type of spiritual Christianity such as would have
been the fulfilment of the long travail of the ages. In
spite of the fact that they represent a movement toward a
more ethical type of religion, it cannot be overlooked that
we still have in them morality in an infant, negative stage.
They did not, and their age probably could not, get
beyond a more or less refined legalism. Christianity for
them was still a new law, and not yet a new life, lived by
the inspiration and power of an inward, divine Person.
We may well adopt the words of Sir James Stephen,
used by him in reference to the defeat of the Albigenses :
" The mind of man has not as yet passed through the indis
pensable preliminary education. The scholastic philosophy,
extravagant as it may have been in some of its premises and
some of its purposes, had yet a great task to accomplish the
task of training the instructors of the Church in the athletic use
of all their mental faculties. Philology, and criticism, and
ecclesiastical antiquity were still uncultivated. The Holy
Scriptures, in their original tongues, were almost a sealed volume
to the scholars of the West. The vernacular languages of
Europe were unformed. The arts of printing and paper-making
were undiscovered. Such an age could neither have produced
vm THE WALDENSES 149
nor appreciated a Wyclif or a Hus ; still less could Melancthon,
or Luther, or Calvin, or Beza have borne their fruit in such
times, if such men had been living. Above all, the world, as it
then was, could no more have fostered minds like those of
Cranmer, or Ridley, of Jewell or Hooker, than it could have
trained up chemists to rival Cavendish, or mechanists to
anticipate Watt. If they had succeeded in their designs, if
they had reclaimed the nations from the errors of Rome, they
must infallibly have substituted for her despotism, an anarchy
breaking loose from all restraints, divine and human, an anarchy
far exceeding, in presumptuous ignorance and audacious self-
will, the wildest of the sects which perplexed and disgraced the
Reformation of the sixteenth century." l
1 James Stephen's Lectures on the History of France (London, 1867), voL i.
p. 252.
CHAPTER IX
ST. FRANCIS AND THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS"
" ALL religions must be again and again rejuvenated by a return
to their original principle. Christianity would have become en
tirely extinct had not St. Francis and St. Dominic renewed its life
and kindled it afresh in the hearts of men by their imitation of
Jesus Christ. They saved religion, but they destroyed the Church?
Thus wrote the Florentine Machiavelli in his Discourse
on Livy.
The attempt to rejuvenate Christianity by a return to
its original principle has been made more or less seriously
by many Christian prophets through the centuries. All
these rejuvenators of Christianity have seized some partial
aspect and set it out of balance and proportion with the
other equally essential aspects of primitive Christianity.
They have all borne unmistakably the temporal quality
the mark of a particular age while Christ's religion is in
a unique sense eternal. But I believe that nobody has
come so near gaining the feeling, the attitude, the abandon
to the Divine Father, the spirit of human love and fellow
ship which characterised the Galilean circle as has Francis
of Assisi. Among the prominent reformers of the Church
his life is as near an approach to the Divine Model as the
world has seen since the apostolic days. Once more there
came an apostle who knew nothing save Jesus Christ and
Him crucified, and whose great prayer was that he might
fill up in his body what was lacking of the sufferings of
Christ. "O Lord my Saviour," he prayed at Alverna,
" I ask two favours before I die. Let me feel in my soul,
in my body even, all the bitter pains which Thou hast felt
150
CHAP, ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 151
A nd in my heart let me feel that immeasurable love which
made Thee, Son of God, endure such sufferings for us, poor
sinners." *
There is an account of a night spent in prayer which
lets us almost see behind the veil and witness a child face
to face with his Father. If one wants an example of the
loftiest type of mysticism, he has it here :
"St. Francis . . . rose up from his bed and set himself to
pray, lifting up his hands and eyes unto heaven, and with
exceeding great devotion and fervour said, ' My God, my God ! '
and thus saying and sorely weeping, he abode till morning,
always repeating, ' My God, my God ' and naught beside." 2
" He saved religion, he destroyed the Church,"
Machiavelli tells us. The statement is, of course, an
exaggeration, but it aims at a truth. He did carry
religion once again into the hearts of the peoplei He,
more than any other medieval prophet, made Christianity
once again a lay religion. The Church and the world
had lost all hope of heaven, except by works and by
purchase. The only key which could open the door to
the Kingdom of God was in the hands of the priest
Francis made a fresh discovery of the universal love and
Fatherhood of God. He felt again, as men had felt in the
days of apostolic faith, that the veil was rent, and that
there was free access for even the poorest, meanest soul
to go direct to the Father. One day he heard a tender
voice, which said : " Francis, there is not a single sinner
in the world whom God will not pardon if he comes
to Him."
He restored the joy of religion. He prayed out of
sheer joy, and not because prayer was enjoined as a
duty. In the first rules of his order he put as much
emphasis on joy as on chastity and obedience. In an
age burdened with its load of gloomy superstitions, an
age in which the heavens seemed as brass and the
earth as bars of iron, an age when the main hope lay
in an apocalyptic catastrophe which should bring a
new heaven and a new earth by miracle, Francis came
1 Little Flowers, chap. liv. a Ibid. p. 4,
152 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
as a holy optimist, throbbing with joyous enthusiasm
and with unlimited faith in man and in God. He once
said to a novice : " Before me and before thy brothers
here, always show a face shining with holy joy. It is not
fitting, when one is in God's service, to have a gloomy face
or a chilling look."
In no other trait did he come so near the primitive
attitude as in his spontaneous uncalculating love for men.
He did not in the least have the theologian's attitude,
which views man in the abstract as an offspring of
Adam, the inheritor of sin, with a soul to be speculated
about he loved concrete men and gave them his love,
shared himself with them in a way that is unparalleled,
except in the Galilean. When Francis ate with the leper
and kissed him out of pure love for a suffering human
fellow, he had discovered the true way to rejuvenate
Christianity. It was the beginning of the Reformation,
because it was a genuine recognition of a new centre.
The Church was no longer the pivot man himself, with
his human hopes and his human needs, was the centre,
and religion here began again in earnest to be life a
way of living. Francis' first and deepest interest was not
in popes or priests, nor in the Church as an entity, it was
an elemental interest in man in common men. One
day some robbers broke into one of the retreats of the
order, and were forcibly driven away by the guardian
of the place. Francis heard of it, and immediately sent
to the robbers the bread and wine which had been pre
pared for his own meal, with such gentle words of kind
ness that they came and fell down at his feet and asked
to be taken into the Order. 1 He reversed the traditional
idea that the Church alone could save men's souls, by
acting on the belief that the Church itself was to be saved
by the faith and work of the common people.
It is a bold, and possibly a rash, undertaking to write
a chapter on the Franciscan movement. The story has
been told from almost every point of view, it has been
a theme which has attracted many noble spirits in our
1 Little Flowers, chap. xxvi.
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 153
times, and it is withal a subject which demands an inter
preter who has not only mastered the historical facts, but
who has so saturated himself with the atmosphere of
thirteenth century Italy, and so relived the Franciscan
gospel of love and poverty, that it has all become as real
to him as the colours of the sky and hills which he sees
out of his window. All the material with which the
historian of Francis must work is crowded with legend.
No man now, be he ever so gifted with critical acumen,
can find where to draw the line between cold historical
fact and warm poetical imagination. Francis belongs
as much to art and poetry as he does to religion, and
they have vied with each other in weaving such a veil of
fancy about him that the naked personality cannot be
discovered, and the only thing to do is to submit and
accept the man as art and poetry and religion have trans
mitted him to us. 1
Francis, the son of Pietro Bernadone, a rich cloth
merchant of Assisi, was born in 1182. "He was," the
Three Companions say, " merrier than his father and more
generous, given unto jests and songs, going around the
city of Assisi day and night in company with his like,
most free-handed in spending. Even in his clothes he
was beyond measure sumptuous. Yet was he by nature
courteous, never speaking a harmful or shameful word of
any." 2 There was much of the troubadour in him, not
only in his youth, but even throughout his life. His
friends call him " God's jongleur " as well as " God's little
1 Sabatier thinks that The Mirror of Perfection was written by Brother Leo
in 1227. If so, this is the earliest collection of Franciscan stories. Thomas of
Celano wrote the earliest life of him. This was written by order of the Pope,
three years after the death of Francis in 1229. Later, after the fall of Brother
Elias, a second life (from an entirely different standpoint) was written by Thomas
of Celano, and later still a supplement was added to it. In 1247, three of
Francis' companions Leo, Rufino, and Angelo wrote a memorabilia, or
Legends of The Three Companions, which is singularly free from the miraculous.
In 1263, Bonaventura made a collection of legends, gathered up from the last
survivors of the first generation of Franciscans. This was a compromise biography
written, deliberately written, to be the official biography, and all other biographies
were ordered to be destroyed.
In the fourteenth century the book of Little Flowers was anonymously pro
duced. It is a popular, naive, and unrestrained collection of stories about the
Franciscan ' ' apostolic age. "
2 The Three Companions, chap. i.
154 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
poor man," and the former epithet fits him as well as the
latter. He possessed in a peculiar degree the tempera
ment of a poet, and it is more than probable that the
songs of the wandering troubadours or jongleurs exercised
a powerful and refining influence upon him.
The gaiety of his youth was interrupted by a year of
captivity as a prisoner of war in Perugia, but even this
captivity did not break his jubilant spirit, for he was
living on bright dreams of a great future. " You will see
one day," he frequently said to his companions, " that
I shall be adored by the whole world." 1
After his return to Assisi, at twenty- two, he plunged
again into the gay life of the city. This time his dis
sipation was interrupted by a serious illness, which left him
strangely altered. As he gradually came back to health
he found himself met, as so many before him and since
have found themselves met, with shifted values of life.
Nature no longer gladdened him, there was no appeal
in companionship, the emptiness of life oppressed him.
The mystery of himself broke in upon him. The inex
haustible resources of his life seemed suddenly shut away
and the key lost.
Italy was an eternal battlefield, and Francis joined
in an expedition then on foot in the hope that the excite
ment of battle, under a captain of renown, would give him
back his old sense of radiant joy. It was not to be.
Something had risen in him which spoiled all his pleasures
and made them illusory. All accounts of this period in
his life are meagre. There are hints at illness and
allusions to dreams and visions ; and, acquainted with
Francis' psychic nature, as we now are, through the events
of his later life, we have no doubt that he was at the time
undergoing profound physical and mental disturbances,
which made him a puzzle to himself and to everybody
else. He suddenly gave up the campaign, tried to resume
his old life, but would fall into solitary meditation even
in the midst of gaiety. " Francis, what art thou thinking
of? Art thou thinking of taking a wife ? " his companions
1 The Three Companions, chap. i.
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 155
questioned. " In truth I am," he answered, " I am think
ing of taking a bride, richer and nobler and fairer than ye
have ever seen."
His biographers say that this was his " Lady Poverty,"
but this interpretation is perhaps too restricted. The
bride for whom his perplexed heart yearned was an ideal
bride, not yet shaped into concrete form in his mind
something which would unify the life of this dreamy,
chivalrous youth, and furnish a powerful motive for his
restless will.
It was in the little church of St. Damian, near Assisi,
that he had a first revelation of the higher companionship
which he was vaguely feeling after. He was praying
before the crucifix on the poor little altar, when suddenly
he found that he could not take his eyes away from those
of Jesus. The holy figure on the cross was, too, becoming
alive, and was speaking in the silence with a voice which
reached the inmost depth of his being. And this Jesus,
who had suddenly become alive again, was asking for
his life! 1
This story must not be dismissed as a mere legend.
It undoubtedly tells us of an experience which was real
and momentous for Francis. He was in a psychic con
dition in which such an experience could happen without
any improbability, and some such crisis seems necessary
to account for the new and triumphant Francis who comes
before us from this time on. We are dealing here with
a person of the most extraordinary mystical nature, with a
body capable of being swept from within as a musician
sweeps the strings of his instrument, and our psychological
laboratories have given us evidence enough that persons
of this type may overpass the normal and the ordinary
without any necessity of calling in miracle. There are
within reach of us all reservoirs of energy if we only knew
how to tap them ! There are vast stores of power for
the higher uses of life if we could only find the key !
Happy are those persons who at the crisis of their lives
suddenly break through some mysterious wall and find
1 Bonaventura, chap. i.
i $6 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
the storehouse of energy ! The release of energy often
comes as the result of a great surrender, for not seldom
the surrender seems to melt away a middle wall of
partition within, which was dividing the life in sunder,
and lets the whole of one's power go out in a single
direction.
There were many distinct stages in the march of
Francis' spirit toward his great surrender, but the final
crisis, when all the moorings with the old life were cut,
came on the memorable day of his " choice of Father."
He had already, in a moment of impulse of human love,
kissed a leper. 1 He had made trial of poverty by donning
a ragged garb in Rome and standing all day in a line of
beggars. He had been chased by the rabble of Assisi
and hooted at as a madman. The final test came when
his father, whose love had now turned to wrath, demanded
that Francis should surrender all claim to inheritance.
The " case " was brought before the bishop, and the public
of Assisi had come to hear the disinheritance pronounced.
Suddenly Francis appeared absolutely naked, with his
clothes rolled in a little bundle and with what little money
still remained to him ; and with words which must have
sent a thrill through the throng of listeners, he said :
" Until to-day I have called Pietro Bernadone my father,
but from henceforth I desire to say nothing else than ' Our
Father who art in heaven.' " 2
It was still somewhat later, while he was at work as a
labourer repairing the little church of the Portiuncula
(" Church of the little portion ") that he received the vision
of his career. At the celebration of the Mass on a certain
day in the church of St. Nicholas, near the market-place
of Assisi, the priest read the passage : " Wherever ye go,
preach, saying ' the kingdom of God is at hand.' Heal
the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils. Freely ye
1 Bonaventura tells this incident as follows: "There came in his way a
certaine leper : upon whose sodaine aspect, he conceived in mind an especial
horror and loathing. But returning to his already resolved purpose of perfection,
and considering that he ought of necessity first to overcome himself, if he would
become a soldier of Christ, he presently alighted down from his horse and went
to kisse him."
8 The Three Companions, chap. vi.
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 157
have received, freely give. Provide neither silver nor gold
nor brass in your purses, neither scrip, nor two coats, nor
shoes, nor staff, for the labourer is worthy of his meat."
The words seemed to him to come, not from the priest,
nor from the book, but with Divine authority from that
Christ Who had fastened His eyes on him and asked for
his whole life in the chapel of St. Damian. With him to
see a truth was to practise it, and from this time he took
the gospel-call literally and went about the world preach
ing, as his friend Thomas of Celano says, " in words like
fire, penetrating the heart."
There never was a more gentle revolutionist. He did
not come with the fire and sword of heresy. He did not
flourish the scourge of the ascetic. He did not flay men's
sins like the fanatical reformer. He told in powerful
words of the Father's love. He asked men to follow the
Divine Saviour, and he practised the love and tenderness
which were the warp and woof of his message. St
Bonaventura says that it seemed as though the Spirit of i
God was speaking through his mouth. His intimate
experience of the heart's need, his manifest sympathy
with the poor, his simple, popular language, full of
anecdote and parable, his mastery of the springs of,
laughter and tears, his spontaneous gesture, his absolute
conviction, made his preaching effective to an extraordinary
degree. It was in sharp contrast to the formal, barren
services in the churches, where preaching had become a
lost art It is no wonder that legends abound which tell
how the multitudes flocked to hear him when he came to
hamlet, village, or city, so that vineyards, and fields, and
public squares, under the bright Italian skies, were crowded
with eager, enthusiastic listeners, who tried to get near
enough to touch his rough garments, or to carry away
some little relic from the man they loved. 1 It was some
thing new to hear an optimistic gospel in that dark century,
and to find that religion was a radiantly joyous affair !
1 A legend preserves a vision that St. Francis had of crowds coming to his
banner : "I saw," he says, "a multitude coming, and lo, the sound of their foot
steps still echoes in my ears. 1 saw them coming from every direction, filling all
the roads."
158 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
There is a charming story which tells how one Christmas
night he invited all the peasants and shepherds of the
neighbourhood to come to a stable, and there in the
manger, while all knelt, Francis read the story of
the Nativity according to Luke, and then preached to
his peasant listeners of the Saviour and His Gospel to the
poor. No wonder that some of the moved listeners
believed that they saw the image of the Child in the
manger come to life and open His arms ! It was, indeed,
something like a real revival of the primitive Gospel.
His directions to the band of missionaries whom he
sent out show how completely he had gained the spirit of
brotherhood. Even the rich are to be treated as brothers.
Note, too, the important discovery that it is a great part
of a man's business to carry blessing to others rather than
to save his own soul : " Go, teach. God in His goodness
has called us not alone for our own salvation, but for the
salvation of the people. Do not judge nor despise the
rich who live at ease and who wear fine clothes, for God
is their Saviour as well as ours. We ought to honour
them as our brothers, for we all have the same Creator.
Go, preach peace to men, and preach repentance for the
remission of sins. Some will receive you with joy and
will gladly hear you; others, evil-minded and full of
pride, will denounce you and oppose you. But in little
time many nobles and wise men will join you. Be patient
in tribulation, fervent in prayer, courageous in labours,
modest in speech, grave in demeanour, and grateful for
the blessings which come to you. The kingdom of heaven
will be your reward."
The little band of men who joined him, at first one by
one, steadily grew in numbers, and the plan of the Order
of poor little brothers slowly shaped itself in Francis'
mind after the model of the Gospels. About 1210, the
simple plan, or rule, was allowed by Pope Innocent III.,
to whom Francis with his companions had submitted it
They simply asked the privilege of leading the apostolic
life. The boon was granted, with the reservation that
the Church was to be their supreme authority. For the
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 159
moment, Francis saw in this condition no bond or shackle,
and he returned from Rome to his mission with a spirit of
joy, which the perilous journey, the fever that laid him
low, his half-starved condition, and the rudeness of the
lazar barrack which served for his dwelling, could not
dampen.
In 1 2 1 2 the second Order the Poor Clares, or Clarisses
was founded. Like everything else in the early Franciscan
movement, the founding of an Order for women was spon
taneous and unplanned. It is an event full of the romantic
and the unusual. Francis' preaching had come as a revela
tion to Clara, the daughter of a prominent citizen of Assisi,
when as a girl at the age of sixteen she first heard him in
the Cathedral of Assisi. His message and his personality
penetrated the depths of her inner being. The transforma
tion wrought in her was like that wrought in Galahad by
the pale nun in the " Holy Grail " :
" She sent the deathless passion in her eyes
Thro' him, and made him hers, and laid her mind
On him, and he believed in her belief."
The idle, empty, trivial life of a rich lady became
henceforth impossible for her. A love had come into
her life so wonderful and strange that we almost need a
new word to name it It was a mystical love whose
roots were in the invisible and eternal, and which drew
both lives not so much to each other as to the one
Fountain of love and to their common tasks of love.
According to the later legends, only once did Francis
and Clara break bread together, and the story, which
throws a mystical cover over the event, must be given :
" When St. Francis was at Assisi, oftentimes he visited SL Clara
and gave her holy admonishments. And she, having exceeding
great desire once to break bread with him, oft-times besought him
thereto ; but he was never willing to grant her this consolation :
wherefore his companions, beholding the desire of St Clara, said
to St. Francis, 'Father, it doth appear to us that this severity
accordeth not with heavenly charity, since thou givest no ear to
Sister Clara, a virgin so saintly, so beloved of God who through
thy preaching abandoned the riches and pomps of the world.
160 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
And of a truth, had she asked of thee a greater boon than this,
thou oughtest so to do unto thy spiritual plant.'
Then spake St. Francis, 'Since it seems good to you, it
seems so likewise to me. But that she may be the more consoled,
I will that this breaking of bread take place in St. Mary of the
Angels, for she has been so long shut up in St. Damian that it
will rejoice her to see again the house of St. Mary, where her
hair was shorn away and she became the bride of Jesus Christ,
and there let us eat together in the name of God.'
When came the day ordained by him, and the hour of break
ing bread being come, they sat down together, St. Francis and
St Clara, and one of the companions of St. Francis with the
companion of St. Clara, and all the other companions took each
his place at the table with all humility. And at the first dish
St. Francis began to speak of God so sweetly, so sublimely, and
so wondrously, that the fulness of Divine grace came down on
them, and they all were rapt in God. And as they were thus
rapt, with eyes and hands uplift to heaven, the folk of Assisi and
the country round about saw that St. Mary of the Angels, and
all the house, and the wood that was hard by the house, were
burning brightly, and it seemed as it were a great fire that filled
the church and the house and the whole wood together. For
which cause the people of Assisi ran thither in great haste to
quench the flames but coming close up to the house and find
ing no fire at all, they entered within and found St. Francis and
St. Clara and all their company in contemplation rapt in God and
sitting around that humble board. Whereby of a truth they
understood that this had been a heavenly flame, and no earthly
one at all, which God had let appear miraculously, for to show
and to signify the fire of love divine with which the souls of those
holy brothers and holy nuns were all aflame ; therefore they got
them gone with great consolation in their hearts and with holy
edifying." *
The later Franciscan chroniclers, with rigid views of
asceticism, tried to make their founder an ascetic like
themselves, and this legend shows that influence. But
whenever we get back to the real person behind the
later pictures we find a man dependent upon human
sympathy, thriving only in an atmosphere of affection,
and enjoying to the full everything in God's world which
enlarged his true life, everything which he could use
without lessening another's share. The earliest accounts
1 Little Flowers, chap. xv.
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 161
tell how the brothers and sisters shared their meals to
gether, and there is no doubt that the refining influence
of Clara upon Francis was one of the most wholesome
forces which came into his life.
A still more important step was the formation of a
third Order for those who wanted to lead a distinctly
religious life at home. The members of this Order were
called Tertiaries, or Brethren of Penitence. It was an
attempt to carry this practical gospel of love and devotion
into the home. It was the mission of Francis, as Werner
has well said in his Duns Scotus, " to awaken in Christian
souls everywhere a striving after holiness and perfection ;
to keep the example of a direct following of Christ before
the eyes of the world as a continuous living spectacle ; to
comfort all the wretched with the consolation of Christian
mercy ; and, by self-sacrificing devotion, to become all
things to the spiritually abandoned and physically
destitute." *
The third Order, like the second, was forced upon
Francis by the situation. It was formed to meet the
need of the multitudes which flocked to him as soon as
the extraordinary power of his preaching made itself felt.
Whole villages crowded about him, and all the inhabitants
men, women, and children begged to be taken into
his Order of Little Brothers. The very crowd of appli
cants threatened to defeat his purpose. He wanted his
Order to be a band of apostolic men, living and preaching
in the world as the Galilean band had done before, and
he never meditated turning the entire world into an
Order of Little Brothers. He had no desire to invade
the home and despoil it ; he wanted rather to penetrate
it with a fragrant spirit of love, and to make all Christian
hearts channels of love and happiness.
The Order of the Tertiaries was formed to meet the
need of the eager multitude ; it was a religious brother
hood, open to the devout of both sexes. The members
were not asked to give up houses or lands, home or family.
It is not possible to decide when the Order actually came
1 Quoted from Harnack's History of Dogma, vol. vi. p. 88.
M
162 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
into being, though Sabatier holds that it was an essential
part of the original apostolic mission of Francis. 1
The rules of the Order were gradually made more
ascetic under Roman influence, and the Tertiaries of
later history can hardly be called the creation of Francis'
genius. The movement, however, grew into a powerful
social force. In fact, the founding of this Order has been
called "one of the greatest events in the Middle Ages." 2
It brought to Europe a new truce of God ; for the
members of it were forbidden to bear arms in offensive
warfare, and until the rule was altered by Pope
Nicholas V., they might not bear arms at all ; and they
were allowed, though vassals, to refuse military service
to their suzerains. The most important feature of the
movement was the cultivation of a group spirit and the
formation of a system of organization among the artizans
and working-men, which developed into one of the powerful
forces that finally led to the disintegration of the feudal
system.
There is a charming legend in the Little Flowers
which catches the beauty of this group spirit, and which
shows how the invisible bonds of brotherhood bound
together members, separated most widely by station, into
one spirit of fellowship. The story says that once
St. Louis, clad as a poor pilgrim, knocked at the door
of a Franciscan convent, and asked for brother Giles.
A hint from the keeper of the convent, or, as other
accounts say, a Divine revelation, gave Giles the secret
that his visitor was no less a person than the King of
France. Giles ran to meet his guest. They embraced
and knelt together in perfect silence. Then, without
having broken the silence, Louis arose from his knees
and went on his journey. When Giles came back to
his cell, all the brothers reproached him for not having
said anything to his royal visitor. With fine simplicity
Giles answered : " I read his heart, and he read mine." 8
The real tragedy of Francis' life was his awakening
1 Sabatier, Life of St. Francis, p. 155 and p. 265.
2 Avede Barine, in the Revue des deux Mondes for 1891, p. 782.
3 Little Flowers, chap, xxxiv.
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 163
to the fact that his beautiful creation, the child of his
soul, his family of brothers was being transformed, and
in measure destroyed, at the hands of those whose
thoughts centred in the institution and in outward
means and influence rather than in the ideal and its
inward transforming power. Ideals of simplicity and
poverty were graven on his heart. He had seen his
attempt to imitate Christ spread by contagion. He had
perfect faith that the inward life and joy which bubbled
up so freshly and spontaneously in the first years of the
movement would continue for ever. He was a poet, a
holy child, a fool in the wisdom of the world. And he
had to submit to the authority of cool organizers who
looked before and after. He saw visions and dreamed
dreams, and far-sighted men with scheming minds wove
the visions and dreams into sails for the rigging of the
ecclesiastical ship. In his first period, in the days of
inspiration, he girded himself and went whither he would ;
in his later period others girded him and carried him and
his movement whither he would not Francis himself
had an instinctive fear of rigid organization, and he had
a horror of any system which could occasion a scramble
for place or position, or which could give scope for selfish
ambition in any direction. He did not want to found
an " Order " like the monastic Orders ; he wanted to
bring back the apostolic spirit, and to have it propagate
itself unhampered and unrestrained. His ideal was as
impossible in the actual world of the thirteenth century
as Christ's was impossible in the actual Jerusalem of the
year 30. It was an ideal which, with the given environ
ment, involved tragedy, as Christ's involved tragedy
twelve hundred years earlier. The Church would not
permit a movement which could not be drawn into its
scheme, and as the Franciscan brotherhood expanded,
the ecclesiastical authorities went cautiously to work to
fit it into the architectural plan of the papal Church. It
was done with velvet gloves, but Francis felt the cold
steel beneath the gloves. The man who changed his
simple ideal into an Order of Friars, with a system of
1 64 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
fixed rules, was Cardinal Ugolini, afterwards Pope
Gregory IX. He was Francis' friend and protector,
and he used most gentle methods to transform the
Franciscan ideals, so gentle that the simple-minded
Francis hardly knew that he was losing his ideal until
it was gone.
When the poor saint awoke to the fact that his
brotherhood was to be forged into an organization under
the rule and direction of the papal chair, he retired to
pray, and seemed to hear God say to him : " Poor little
man ! I govern the universe ; thinkest thou that I cannot
overrule the concerns of thy little Order ? "
There can, however, be no doubt that while he adopted
as his own u rule " the principle : " He that would save
his own life must lose it," and though he was ready to
practise his own precept, that "when an inferior sees
things that would be better and more useful to his soul
than that which his superior commands him, the inferior
should offer the sacrifice of his will as to God " still the
sacrifice which he was called upon to make involved an
agony which reached the very citadel of his being, and
together with profound physical difficulties under which
he suffered, prepared the way for his experience of the
Stigmata in 1224. This is the simple story: For weeks
he had been going over in his thoughts the memories of
Calvary. His Bible opened of itself to the story of
Christ's passion. The love and suffering of Jesus had
burned themselves into his heart. He had, too, been
fasting for weeks, and the thought of the approaching
feast of the Exaltation of the Cross was constantly
before his mind. He had spent the entire night
September I4th in prayer, when a vision came to him
with the rising sun.
" A seraph with outspread wings flew towards him from the
edge of the horizon, and bathed his soul in raptures unutterable.
In the centre of the vision appeared a cross, and the seraph was
nailed upon it. When the vision disappeared, he felt sharp
sufferings mingled with ecstasy in the first moments. Stirred to
the very depths of his being, he was anxiously asking the meaning
>x THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 165
of it all, when he perceived upon his body the Stigmata of the
Crucified." l
The entire biography of Francis is full of incidents
and accounts, artlessly and naively told, which convince
a careful student of them that he was possessed of an
extraordinary psychic nature. He was swept by powerful
emotions, which sometimes caused automatisms and
hallucinations. He possessed telepathic powers, and his
influence over others was of a sort which implies hypnotic
suggestion and contagion. He also exercised undoubted
power over certain forms of disease. They are all traits
which are familiar to any one who has worked in a modern
psychological laboratory or who has read the literature
of psychical research.
Under the power of suggestion, at the opening of his
mission, Francis had seen the figure on the crucifix take
life, and had felt Christ's piercing gaze upon him and
had heard Him speak. It is only another step in the
same direction when under the power of auto-suggestion
which may just as well be called a Divine suggestion
under an inward ground-swell of love and sacrifice which
swept him as the wind sweeps the aeolian strings, his
body received the marks of crucifixion. 2
The modern interpreter, however, unlike the medieval
disciple, finds this event, if it is admitted, a point of
weakness rather than a point of strength. Instead of
proving to be the marks of a saint, the Stigmata are
the marks of emotional and physical abnormality. The
"wonder" which moves us in him is the fresh and
living fountain of joy and love which Christ opened
through him for that age of gloom and superstition ;
not that he had motor automatisms of this extra
ordinary sort.
He knew himself where the real miracle lay, as one
of the most beautiful of the legends shows : Brother
1 The Three Companions, chap. xvii. ; Little Flowers, chap. liv. ; Bonaventura,
chap. xiii. For a discussion of the historical evidence Sabatier, St. Francis of
Assisi, pp. 433-43.
* Those who wish to read an account of a modern case of stigmatization,
should read the case of Louise Lateau. It may be found in Myers' Personality :
Human and Divine, vol. i. pp. 492-3.
166 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Masseo came to him one day with a half-jesting
question : " Why after thee ? Why after thee ? Thou
art not a man comely of form, thou art not of much
wisdom, thou art not of noble birth. Whence comes
it, then, that it is after thee that the whole world
doth run ? "
" Hearing this," says the chronicle, " St. Francis, all over
joyed in spirit, knelt him down and rendered thanks and praises
unto God ; and then with great fervour of spirit turned him to
Brother Masseo and said : ' Thou wishest to know why it is I
whom men follow? Thou wishest to know? It is because the
eyes of the Most High that continually watch the good and the
wicked have not found among sinners any smaller man, nor any
more insufficient and more sinful, therefore He has chosen me
to accomplish His marvellous work. He chose me because
He could find no one more worthless, and He wished by me
to confound the nobility and grandeur, the strength and beauty
and the learning of the world.' " l
The finest of all the Little Flowers is the conversa
tion with Brother Leo on " perfect joy." They were
travelling in the spring, to St. Mary of the Angels, and
the day was bitterly cold. For full two miles Francis
insisted vehemently that though the Brothers Minor
should give sight to the blind, and cast out devils, and
make the deaf to hear, and even raise the dead ; though
they should know all tongues, all sciences, all scriptures,
and reveal things to come ; though they should speak
with the tongues of angels, and preach so as to win all
infidels to the faith of Christ in none of these achieve
ments would there be " perfect joy." And Brother Leo,
having given heed to these sayings, asked, naturally
enough, wherein " perfect joy " did consist. And St.
Francis thus made answer :
" When we come to St. Mary of the Angels, all soaked as we
are with rain and numbed with cold and besmeared with mud
and tormented with hunger, and the porter comes in anger and
says, 'Who are ye?' and we say, 'We are two of your brethren,'
and he says, ' Ye be no true men ; nay, ye be two rogues that
gad about deceiving the world and robbing the alms of the poor ;
1 Little Flowers, chap. x.
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 167
get ye gone,' and thereat he shuts the door, and makes us stand
without in the snow and the rain, cold and hungered, till night
fall ; if there withal we patiently endure such wrong and such
cruelty, without being disquieted, and with patience and charity
Oh, Brother Leo, write that herein is perfect joy. And if we,
still constrained by hunger, cold, and night, knock yet again
and pray him with much weeping for the love of God that he
will open and let us in, and he yet more enraged should say :
'These be importunate knaves, I will pay them well as they
deserve,' and should rush out with a knotty stick and throw us
upon the ground, and beat us with all the knots of that stick,
if with patience and gladness we suffer all these things, thinking
on the pains of the blessed Christ Oh, Brother Leo, write that
herein is perfect joy ! Above all graces and gifts that Christ
giveth to His beloved, is the grace and gift willingly for His love
to endure pains and insults and shame and want ; insomuch as
in all other gifts of God we may not glory, since they are not
ours but God's, but in the cross of tribulation and affliction we
may boast since this is ours ; and therefore saith the apostle, I
would not that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ." 1
Here we come in sight of the " secret " of Francis'
life and power. He discovered again the meaning of
love, and he made his life a continuous exhibition of
it. " Art thou Brother Francis of Assisi ? " said a
peasant to the saint one day. "Yes," replied Francis.
" Then, try to be as good as all people think thee to
be, because many have faith in thee, and therefore I
admonish thee to be nothing less than people hope
of thee." Francis immediately kneeled and thanked
the peasant. 2 What an inimitable story ! It perfectly
fits the life of this childlike lover of men. In him we
have once again religion of the first-hand type. Fellow
ship with God, the imitation of Christ, enthusiasm and
love and joy springing out of the life because God has
come into it these things take the place of rites and
ceremonies, which drop to a place of subordinate
importance.
But the beautiful Franciscan ideal was short-lived
It had to take its chances in a very harsh and stubborn
1 Little Flowers, chap. viiL 8 Ibid, chap. liv.
1 68 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
world. One glimpse into the kind of world which existed
in the second half of the thirteenth century will suffice.
It is from the powerful pen of Brother Salimbene, a
Franciscan friar of the next generation after Francis : l
" Near the towns armed soldiers guarded the labourers all day
long ; this was necessary on account of the bandits, who had
increased beyond measure. For they would take men and carry
them off to their dungeons ; and those who did not redeem
themselves with money, them they would hang up by their feet
or by the hands, or pull out their teeth. For they were more
cruel than devils ; and he that went by the way would as lief
meet the devil as meet his fellow-man. For one ever had
suspicion of another, lest he might purpose to carry him off to
prison ; and the land became a desert, wherein was neither
husbandman nor wayfarer. And evil was multiplied upon the
earth ; and the birds and the beasts of the field increased beyond
measure, for they found no household beasts in the villages to
eat according to their wont, since the villages were altogether
burnt. Wherefore wolves came thronging thick together round
the city moats, howling horribly for intolerable anguish of hunger ;
and they crept by night into the cities, and ate men, women, or
children that slept under the porticoes or in wagons; nay, at
times they even broke through the walls of houses and throttled
babes in their very cradles. No man could believe, but if he
had seen it with his own eyes, as I did, the terrible deeds that
were done at that time, both by men and by divers kinds of
beasts."
This fearful picture of social conditions is hardly more
sombre than the dark pictures of the moral condition of the
clergy, high and low, which are found everywhere in this
chronicle, that covers a period of more than seventy
years. 2 Francis was hardly in his grave before the
powerful influences of a society like that and the influences
of a degenerate Church began to work degeneration in
the Order. One does not need to go to Chaucer or Lang-
land or Erasmus for evidence of the decay of the Order
and of the corruption of the friars. It appears already
in the writings of those who loved the Order as they did
1 Brother Salimbene di Adamo was born of a noble family of Parma in
1221.
2 It has been condensed and edited by G. G. Coulton, under the title From
St. Francis to Dante. The above quotation is taken from this book, p. 56.
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 169
their very lives. St Bonaventura, himself minister-general
of the Order and official biographer of St Francis, tells
how the friars have already, by the year 1260, become
" legacy hunters " ; extravagant alike in public buildings
and in private expenses ; " contemptible in divers parts
of the world " on account of their familiarity with women,
and feared by the wayfarer, as armed robbers were feared.
He cries out : " I would willingly be ground to powder, if
so the brethren might come to the purity of St Francis
and his companions, and to that which he prescribed
for his Order." " Francis himself," he says, " cries aloud
for reform."
Matthew Paris, a witness from the same period, gives
the same testimony. He says :
"It is horrible, it is an awful presage, that in three or four
hundred years, even in more, the old monastic Orders have not
so entirely degenerated as these fraternities. The friars, who
have been founded hardly twenty-four years, have built, even in
the present day in England, residences as lofty as the palaces of
our kings. These are they who, enlarging day by day their
sumptuous edifices, encircling them with lofty walls, lay up
within them incalculable treasures, imprudently transgressing the
bounds of poverty, and violating, according to the prophecy of
the German Hildegard, the very fundamental rules of their pro
fession. These are they who, impelled by the love of gain, force
themselves upon the last hours of the lords, and of the rich whom
they know to be overflowing with wealth, and these, despising all
rights, supplanting the ordinary pastors, extort confessions and
secret testaments, boasting of themselves and of their Order, and
asserting their vast superiority over all others. So that no one of
the faithful now believes that he can be saved unless guided and
directed by the preachers or Minor Friars. Eager to obtain
certain privileges, they dwell in the courts of kings and nobles,
as counsellors, chamberlains, treasurers, bridesmen, or notaries
of marriages ; they are the executioners of the papal extortions." l
There was, however, an unbroken succession of
spiritual sons of St Francis who fought manfully to
stem the degeneracy of the Order and to preserve the
1 Matthew Paris' Chronicle from the Years i2js to 1273. Translated from
the Latin by the Rev. J. A. Giles, London, 1852, vol. i. p. 475. There
are many other passages in the Chronicle which show the imperfections of
the Friars.
1 70 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
ideal of the founder. The Church had begun, even
before Francis' death, as we have seen, to remould the
Order to fit ecclesiastical schemes, and, as soon as he
was in his grave, it went to work to construct a
traditional, conventional " St. Francis." By a decree
of 1266, all the early legends of St. Francis, which did
not fit the portrait of him made by Bonaventura in 1263,
were suppressed as far as possible, and everything was
done to embarrass and defeat the " spiritual Franciscans,"
who clung tenaciously to the simple life and the ideal
of poverty. Two parties appeared in the Order, even
from the time of Francis' death. One party admitted
that the Franciscan ideal was beyond the reach of mortal
powers, and would require superhuman beings to realise
it. This party favoured loose construction of the Rule
of Francis, or the softening of it by papal dispensation.
The head of this party and the master-mind in its
councils in the first period after Francis' death was
Brother Elias of Cortona. The other party, which finally
developed into open schism under various names, believed
that the ideal of poverty was a new revelation of God,
a new stage in the spiritual life of the race. In their
thought Francis was a divinely endowed being, the
founder of a new epoch, whose rule was at least of equal
authority with the Gospel. Brother Leo was the head of
this party, which came later to be known as the party of
the " Spirituals." This party, whose members stood for
the strict observance of the rule of poverty and simplicity,
always endeavoured to show that they were the true,
" original " Franciscans, and that there was no break in
the spiritual succession between them and their founder.
The Mirror of Perfection was written to show this
spiritual succession. 1 The " Spirituals " had a short
period of triumph under the minister-generalate of John
of Parma from 1247 to 1257. He was sincerely devoted
to the task of " restoring " the Order to its primal purity
1 Sabatier, in the face of much opposition, has made a very strong case for
the view that the Mirror of Perfection was written in 1227, probably by Brother
Leo. Speculum Perfectionis seu S. Francisci Assisiensis Legenda Antiquissima,
Auctore Fratre Leone, edited by Paul Sabatier, Paris, 1898.
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 171
and simplicity. Salimbene, who knew him like a brother,
says that " his face was as an angel's face, gracious and
ever bright of cheer. . . . He was full of power and
wisdom, and God's grace was with him. . . . He was a
mirror and an example to all that beheld him, for his
whole life was full of honour and saintliness, and good
and perfect manners, gracious both to God and man." *
The old friends of Francis were full of joy over the
election of John of Parma. " It is well," cried Brother
Egidis ; " thy coming is happy, but thou comest very
late." He was, however, forced from office in 1257.
From that time on the " Spirituals " became more and
more a party of opposition, pushed evermore in the
direction of separation and revolt from the dominant and
governing part of the Order, and were subjected to a
steadily increasing persecution. " It was," writes D. S.
Muzzey, in his illuminating monograph, 2 "a prolonged
moral struggle for supremacy between the party of
accommodation to prevailing ecclesiastical standards and
the party of uncompromising fidelity to the lofty ideal of
self-abandonment and self-emptying which was set up by
the Poverello. The party of accommodation won when
they overthrew John of Parma."
It was during the generalate of John of Parma that a
movement of extraordinary interest and significance broke
forth under the name of " the Eternal Gospel," and which
played an important r61e in the history of the " Spiritual
Franciscans." " The Eternal Gospel " was the creation of
a little group of " Spirituals " who held to the ideal of
Francis. The book itself, in which the new Gospel is
set forth, came to the light in 1254, and in its final form
was the work of a young friar named Gerard de Borgo
San Donnino, but the ideas embodied in it had a long
history of development, and for their real origin go back
to a predecessor of Francis Joachim of Floris. Joachim
was the founder of a new Order of monks, stricter and
more ascetic even than the Cistercians, living in strict
chastity and extreme poverty. The mother-house of the
1 Op. cit. p. loi. a The Spiritual Franciscans, New York, 1907, p. 14.
172 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Order, an Order never very widespread, was at Fieri,
or Floris, in Calabria, and there Joachim died about
1 202.
As a child he had been of a solitary and meditative
type ; as a young man he journeyed through the East
and visited the scenes in the life of the Saviour, dreaming
even then of a revived and transformed Christianity. As
he grew to manhood he felt a prophetic mission laid upon
him. He devoted himself to the study of the Scriptures
and gradually drew from them his message of relief a
vision of a new Church and a new age. He profoundly
felt that his times were out of joint, and that the Church
was being wrecked by worldliness. He took refuge from
the hard present in the apocalyptic visions of the Old
and New Testament, and he left behind him three books
in Latin : l ( I ) A Harmony of the Old and New Testament,
(2) A Commentary on the Apocalypse, and (3) The Psaltery
of Ten Strings. He was always on the watch for parallel
isms between the " old dispensation " and the " new," and
by a strained exegesis he hit upon a scheme of " three
ages " two already past, and the third, or age of the
Holy Ghost, just about to dawn. The first age is the
age of the Father, beginning with Adam, coming to its
clarescence in Abraham, and ending with Zacharias. The
second stage, the Church of the Son, dawned before the
first age ended, had its clarescence in Christ, and was now
about to end, and the third stage, that of the Holy Spirit,
to begin. The Church of the Father was a stage of law.
The Church of the Son is still an imperfect stage, with
priests and sacraments, a stage typified by Hagar, who
neglects her children ! The third stage is typified by
Sarah, the true mother, an era without priests or sacra
ments, without altar or sacrifice, an era of direct con
templation or perfect liberty. The first age was the age
of slaves, the second of sons, the third will be of friends ;
1 There is a legend that, while in the Holy Land, Joachim was overcome with
thirst in a trackless desert. In his dire strait, he had a vision of a man standing
by a river of oil, and saying to him : ' ' Drink of this stream. " At once he drank
to his full satisfaction, and when he awoke he found that he had a complete
knowledge of Scripture, though previously he had been illiterate !
,x THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 173
the first period was an age of fear, the second of faith,
the third will be one of love. The first was an age of
starlight, the second of dawn, the third will be full day.
The first was winter, the second spring, the third will be
glorious summer. The first bore nettles, the second
roses, the third will bear lilies ! It will be a time of
peace and truth over the whole earth.
The new era, which Joachim calculated would begin
in I26O, 1 would, he believed, witness a sudden spiritual
expansion there would come a new order of men who
would possess a mystical consciousness and know within
themselves the mind and will of the Spirit. They would
be no longer slaves to the letter of Scripture, because
they would see face to face, and have unbroken com
munion with God. The machinery of the Church would
be unnecessary, for all men " from sea to sea " would then
have direct access to God by the Spirit. This new religion
of liberty, of contemplation, of direct revelation, Joachim
called the " spiritual Gospel of Christ," or sometimes the
" Gospel of the kingdom," and, in a famous passage
commenting on the Apocalypse, he uses the phrase,
which was later revived with far-reaching significance, the
" Eternal Gospel."
" I saw the angel of God, who flew into the middle of heaven,
having the eternal Gospel. This gospel is called eternal by
John because that which Christ and the apostles have given us
is temporal and transitory so far as concerns the form of the
sacraments, but eternal in respect to the truths which these
signify." *
Still more important than the books he wrote was the
little group of disciples whom he left behind him. They
believed that their abbot had been a supernaturally
inspired prophet, they piously cherished his ideals of
simplicity and holiness, they produced a number of pro
phetical books, written in the style and spirit of their
master and in his name, and which contained vivid
1 He counted between Adam and Christ forty-two generations of thirty years
each, which gave him 1260 years, and he assumed that the age of the Son would
be of the same length.
2 Gebhart's L Italic mystique (fifth ed., Paris, 1906), p. 72.
174 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
descriptions of events then transpiring, as though foreseen
and foretold by Joachim. In 1240 an old abbot of
Floris, fearing that his convent would be pillaged by the
soldiers of Frederick II., who was regarded as the arch
enemy of the Church, carried away to Pisa the Joachim
writings of his convent, and begged the Friars of Pisa to
guard them safely. The Friars of Pisa began to read
these precious books, and lo, they found in them exact
and striking " prophecies " of events which were happen
ing before their eyes. 1 The astonished readers, supposing
that they were all genuine books by Joachim, believed
that he was a prophet of the first order the beginner of
a new epoch. Under his inspiration, or rather under the
inspiration of the " Joachim writings," there sprang up
a small " school of prophets " within the Franciscan
circle. They carried the idea of the three ages to its full
development, and gave vivid and concrete pictures of the
glory of the new age, just breaking. Joachim had drawn
a parallel between Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with his
twelve sons, and Zachariah, John the Baptist, and Christ
with His twelve disciples. The Joachimite prophets of
the thirteenth century carried this idea farther, and
pictured the third and final stage the dispensation of
the " Eternal Gospel," or religion of the Spirit with
Joachim, Dominic, and Francis, and with the twelve
apostles of Francis as the divine initiators of it.
This system was fully developed and given to the
world by Gerard of San Donnino, who was studying in
the University of Paris, and had gathered about him
a Joachimite circle, in which apocalyptic ideas and
expectations flourished, and in 1254 he put forth the
famous book on the " Eternal Gospel." It was a
composite work, made up of extracts from the genuine
works of Joachim, with an Introduction (which contained
the " Eternal Gospel " proper) and Notes on the collected
extracts from Joachim, both the Introduction and Notes
1 The "Joachim Writings" include commentaries on Jeremiah, on Isaiah,
on Ezekie], Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. All these are spurious, i.e. they
were written after Joachim's death, and the exact "prophecies" of events were
in fact written after the events had transpired.
ix THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 175
being by Gerard. 1 The Introduction and Notes show
intense hostility to the papacy, a similar hostility to the
corrupt and wealthy clergy, a loss of faith in the existing
Church, and a vivid expectation of the end of the age in
1260, which was to usher in the new age of the Eternal
Gospel. The " new age " is to be far superior to all ages
that have preceded it The New Testament is to be
superseded as the Old Testament had been. Monks who
are saintly and go barefooted are to take the place of
easy -living priests ; the entire sacerdotal system of the
imperfect Church is to be swept away and the religion of
the Spirit will take its place.
Few more startling books have ever appeared to
disturb the peace of an infallible Church, and a papal
commission consisting of three Cardinals was summoned
to deal with it The commission sat at Anagni, in 1255,
and condemned the Eternal Gospel as "heretical," and
ordered it burned. John of Parma was forced from office,
and the Joachimites were everywhere suspected and
pursued with persecution, though the idea of a new age
and a coming religion of the Spirit was never killed out
Whenever the " Spirituals " were pushed to the verge of
despair by the fury of their persecutors they continually
revived these " visions of relief," these apocalyptic hopes,
and as the issue grew sharper between the " Spirituals "
and the party of accommodation, the former came to
regard the Church as apostate, and to consider themselves
as the Divine " Remnant," the only true Church.
There formed, in succession, out of this " left wing "
of the Franciscans, a host of tiny sects, which, like an
army of gnats, continually annoyed and disturbed the
peace of the Church. As the gap widened between
themselves and the persecuting Church, these groups
more and more came to claim direct revelation, and to
believe themselves special organs of the Spirit They
came to assume that they were the only true followers
of Christ and imitators of St. Francis, who for many
1 See Renan's valuable monograph, Joachim tU Flore et Ffvangile tternel.
The same conclusion is reached by Denifle in Archivfiir Literatur vnd Kirchen-
gesckichie, vol. i. 1885.
176 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
of these " Spirituals " was on a level with Christ
Himself. 1
The most important of the many groups of Zealots
were those who received the name of " Fraticelli," or
" Little Brothers." The name was first used in an
opprobrious sense for the " Spirituals " of Tuscany, who,
separated entirely from the larger Franciscan community,
elected their own officers, as the true Franciscan
" Remnant," and practically defied the Church. The
term, however, was soon extended to cover any Italian
groups of " Spiritual " Franciscans in revolt from the
authority of the Church. 2 Like the Beghards and
Beguines of Germany, with whom they had many points
in common, they practised poverty outside the convent,
and became more or less infected with the popular
mysticism of the time a widespread belief in man as an
incarnation of the Holy Spirit. 8
Like many other spiritual revivals, the Franciscan
movement both succeeded and failed. It failed to
produce an organization which adequately embodied the
ideal of the saint of Assisi. He himself was incapable of
organizing a permanent society. He was a mystic, a
poet, a prophet ; he could inspire, kindle, quicken.
He could fuse men into a spiritual group by the personal
power of his own vision and ideal, and send them into
1 Angela Clareno writes : ' ' The blessed Francis was in the world under the
form of Christ crucified. He humiliated himself, therefore Christ has exalted
him." Brother Angelo Clareno, who died at an advanced age in 1337, and who
had endured sixty years of persecution, was one of the great leaders of the
" spiritual group "; and he developed in his Histoiy of the Seven Tribulations
of the Church, and in his extraordinary Epistles, the view that the true followers of
St. Francis form the Church within the Church " the only true Church." He
did not hesitate to put the papal Church on a lower level than this Church of
the Spiritual Franciscans. "Seek," he writes to the spiritual flock, " the things
above ; desire spiritual things ; scorn earthly things ; follow those things which
are before ; forget those things which are behind. It is our vow to imitate
Christ, the pledge of our immortality ; to observe the rule [of St. Francis]
perfectly, against which neither law nor decree can prevail, and to which every
authority and power should give way. . . . If a king or a pope orders us to do
anything contrary to this faith, we must obey God rather than men. " ' ' Let us
pray from repentant hearts that Grace may cleanse us of our sins, and we shall
have a remission and inward absolution greater than those who would absolve us
could understand. All fear will be expelled from our hearts, and we shall have
the witness of the Spirit within us" (LItalie mystique, pp. 189 and 191).
2 See Muzzey, op. tit. pp. 41-47.
* See chapter xi. on Brotherhood Groups in the Thirteenth Century.
IX THE "SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS" 177
world -wide missionary activity. But he could not
construct a system. The Franciscan Order, as we know
it in history, is not his creation. It is a mongrel offspring.
It is the bungling attempt of the Church to catch and
use for its purposes the extraordinary energy developed
by this band of men who rediscovered the apostolic idea.
The " Order " was, from the nature of things, doomed to
failure, and it failed.
The movement itself, however, was a mighty spiritual
force, which influenced thousands of lives, and has not
spent itself yet. Its supreme saint bore, in a very dark
age, a real likeness to his Divine Master. He entered
deeply into the meaning of redeeming love, felt its
unparalleled power, and was himself melted into radiant
love by its warmth. He exhibited religion with selfish
ness washed out of it, and he revealed, by its contrast
with his own pure life, the spiritual poverty and naked
ness of the Church. The inspiration of his life and
holiness produced a literature of sainthood which is
unsurpassed, and it produced an influence on art second
only to that of the inspiration of Christ Himself. Again
and again kindred souls have gone back to this " little
poor man " of Assisi for their model ; they have caught
again from his story the passion of humanity ; they have
"believed in his belief," have seen his vision, and have
felt the same fountain of love open in their hearts and
so he has succeeded.
K
CHAPTER X
A GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 1
WE have seen how John Scotus Erigena brought to light
in the ninth century a conception of God and of man,
based upon the philosophy of the Platonic School and the
mystical teaching of Dionysius, a conception which fitted
very badly with the dominant theology of the Western
Church. The Church authorities were puzzled over his
profound expositions, but the Church of that century had
forged no weapons for fighting such daring speculations.
Their attempted refutations of the solitary scholar are
ridiculous. There was, however, little need of refuting
him. The age which followed him could not understand
him, and his works fell into an innocuous oblivion. A
dim halo of fame hung about his name, and legend made
him the founder of two universities the University of
Paris and that of Oxford, associated him with the great
Alfred, and wove a tragic tale of his death in the school
of Malmesbury, where he is said to have been stabbed by
the pens of his scholars. For three centuries he appears
to have been well-nigh forgotten. The battles which he
fought seemed all settled, and settled adversely to his
positions. An occasional theologian or schoolman cites
his writings, 2 but he was in no sense an influence to be
reckoned with.
1 I am indebted in the preparation of this chapter to Haureau's De la philo
sophic scolastique ; Jourdain's Mtmoire sur les sources philosophiques des
hfrtsiu d Amaury de Chartres et de David de Dinan ; Delacroix' Essai sur le
mysticisme sptculatif en Allemagne au xiv. siecle\ and Jundt's Histoire du pan-
thtisme populaire.
2 Wibald, the abbot of the Monastery of Corvey, writing to Manegold of
Paderborn about the middle of the twelfth century, speaks of Erigena as closing
I 7 8
x GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 179
Suddenly, toward the end of the twelfth century, this
submerged influence broke out in a widespread popular
movement which startled the ecclesiastical authorities.
The first sign of trouble was the discovery that a cele
brated master in the University of Paris was teaching
"that every man ought to believe, as an article of his
faith without which there is no salvation, that each one
of us is a member of the Christ" ] To the theologians
of the day that " article of faith " had a dangerous ring
to it it was " new theology " to them, and they set
vigorously to work to silence the teaching.
The man who thus drew the suspicious attention of
the Church upon himself was Amaury (often given in its
Latin form, Amalrich). He was a native of Bene, a small
village in the diocese of Chartres. He had studied theo
logy in Paris, and at length became a master in the uni
versity and a person of wide and commanding influence.
At about the opening of the thirteenth century his methods
and his views came under the suspicion of the University
authorities, and he was by them condemned in 1204.
He appealed, however, to the Pope, Innocent III., who
also condemned his teaching in 1205. He died soon
after this decision, his death being hastened by his grief
over his condemnation. But like many another teacher
he had scattered far and wide the seeds of his doctrine,
and these seeds went on germinating in spite of the
master's condemnation and death. A few years after his
voice was hushed the Archbishop of Paris got a clue,
which led to the revelation that there was in and about
Paris a vigorous " society " propagating the views of the
dead master, and threatening the very foundations of
orthodoxy. The central idea which this " society "
expressed was the actual reign of the Holy Spirit now in
the hearts of men. Those who formed the group of new
disciples apparently following the teaching of Amaury
the line of great masters which began with Venerable Bede " Men," he says,
" most learned, who by writing and reasoning left in the Church of God illus
trious monuments of their genius " (see Poole, op. rit. p. 78).
1 Gesta Philippi Augusti by Guillaume le Breton in Bouquet's Recueil del
historiens, tome xvii. p. 83.
i8o MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
insisted that God is not far off in the sky, but lives and
moves and has His real being in the lives of those who
open themselves to Him. And as soon as He becomes
a present life within any person that person is at once
raised above rules and forms and rites, which have a use
only for those who are on a lower spiritual level. The
supreme attainment in religious experience, they held, is
the joy of finding oneself free in God, and of feeling His
life palpitate within one's own being. In order to arrive
at this culminating experience the members of this
society encouraged silence and cultivated the appreciation
of the inward Presence. This is the way the sect was
discovered : l
A certain William, a goldsmith one of the leaders of
the new society, called in the Chronicle one of their
prophets went to Raoul of Namours and told him that
he had been sent by God to instruct him, and then
revealed to him the views of his society, which were as
follows: "That God the Father had acted in Old
Testament times under forms of law, that God the
Son had worked through certain forms, such as the
sacrament of the altar and baptism, but that as the
coming of the Son had ended the legal system, so, too,
all the forms through which Christ had worked were now
to cease and the Person of the Holy Spirit was to
manifest Himself in those in whom He was incarnating
Himself," namely in the members of the new society.
Raoul was quick to scent the heresy lurking in what he
heard, but he was cool-headed enough to see the
importance of gathering within his net as many of the
dangerous group as possible. He therefore made use of
a stratagem too often used to save the Ark. He said to
the unsuspicious William, " I have been informed by the
Holy Ghost that a certain priest and I ought to preach
this new doctrine," and he asked to be taken into the
group. As soon as he had left William, he ran at once
to the ecclesiastical authorities and told them of his
1 The following account is taken from the Chronicle of Caesar of Heisterbach.
(Illustrium miraculorum et hist, memor. a Caesario Heisterbachensi (1591),
Book V. chap. xxii. )
x GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 181
discovery. They planned an elaborate scheme for captur
ing the entire group. Raoul and his companion-priest
joined themselves with the members of the " society," and
lived among them for three months, going through all the
four dioceses where there were members of the sect.
Raoul proved an adept at deceiving the " elect." He
would pretend to fall into ecstasy, with his rapt face
turned toward heaven, and then, recovering consciousness,
would impart to the group the visions which had been
granted to him, which means, of course, that the new
" society " was trying to revive a prophetic type of
ministry.
When Raoul had gathered all the information needed,
he returned to Paris and helped the Bishop cast his
ecclesiastical net over the leaders of the movement
They were seized, thrown into the episcopal prison, and
put through a rigorous examination, a provincial council
having been called for the purpose. They were found
guilty of heresy, were stripped of their clerical robes
before the multitude, and, in due time, those who
remained " obstinate " were put to the stake, " without
showing any sign of repentance." The chronicler's
account of the execution is such a characteristic picture
of the times that I give it here :
" When the victims were led to their punishment, a furious
wind arose, provoked, no doubt, by the spirits of hell who, being
the authors of the error of these men, were also the authors of
their tragic end. And, during the following night, the leader of
the heretical group came, and knocked at the cell of a recluse,
and bitterly confessed his error, saying that he had been received
in hell as a person of importance and was condemned to the
eternal fires."
A peculiarly interesting item comes out in the ancient
chronicle from which I am quoting, namely that many of
the members of the little society of these disciples of the
Holy Spirit were prominent persons in the Church. It
was not a group of the Paris rabble, but a serious
company of highly-trained and enlightened men, un
doubtedly with a large nucleus of university students.
1 82 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Some are called in the report " naive and credulous."
There were also some women members seized, but they
were pardoned on the ground that they had been led
astray by their simple credulity.
The Council, which was held in Paris in 1209, was
not content with burning the living alone. They ordered
the bones of Amaury of Bene to be dug up and thrown
into unconsecrated ground, or even burned as some
accounts would have it, and then they struck at those
longer dead who were believed to be the source of the
new and dangerous thought. The Council condemned
the works of Aristotle On Physics and the commentaries
upon them, forbidding the reading of those works, and,
according to the Chrpnicle of Martin of Pologne, it
condemned a book called Periphysion (Greek for De
Natura). This last-named work is evidently the book on
the Division of Nature by our philosopher, John the Scot.
This old chronicler, Martin of Pologne, did not know
apparently who wrote the " wicked book," Periphysion,
but his account, written in shocking Latin, shows what
was thought of the sect in 1271. He is reporting the
papal condemnation :
" We condemn Amaury who has declared that the ideas which
are in the Divine Mind create and are created. He has declared
also that God is called the End of all things, because all things
are to return into Him and to remain unchangeable in Him.
Just as the nature of Abraham is not different from the nature of
Isaac, but the same nature is common to both, so, according to
Amaury, all beings are at bottom one being and all beings are
God. He holds that God is the essence of every creature, and
the ultimate reality of everything that is. He also teaches that
as the light cannot be perceived in itself, but in and by means of
the air, so God cannot be seen in Himself, either by angel or by
man. He can be seen only in His creatures. It is further one
of the views of Amaury that, if it had not been for sin, there
would have been no distinction of sexes, but men would have
multiplied without the process of generation, after the manner of
the angels ; and that after the resurrection, the two sexes will be
reunited, as they were at creation." 1
1 Chronicle of Martinus Polonus (Antwerp, 1574), p. 393.
x GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 183
Every one of these views is distinctly and definitely
taught by John the Scot. Cardinal Henry of Ostia in
his account carries the " heresy " back to its true source.
He says : " The doctrine of the wicked Amaury is com
prised in the book of the Master John the Scot, which is
called Periphysion, which the said Amaury followed," * and
he repeats the charges already made.
It would seem that Amaury, in the pursuit of his
philosophical studies, had unearthed a forgotten book, and
had interpreted it to his university classes with oral com
ment, as other scholars were doing with Aristotle. The
passages selected for condemnation, as noted above, are
evidently not so much the views of Amaury as passages
which he had selected from De Divisione Naturae for
comment in his classes. It is doubtful whether he would
have been disturbed in his teaching if no one had drawn
any practical conclusions from the doctrine. But the
moment these ideas came down from the realm of pure
metaphysics, and began to receive practical application, as
they did in the spiritual "society" discovered in Paris,
the storm broke. A few years later, in 1225, the pope,
Honorius III., issued a bull of final condemnation on the
writings of John the Scot, having heard from the Arch
bishop of Paris that "the worms of this abominable heresy"
had wriggled out of the said Periphysion.
One reason that the authorities of the Church showed
such vigour in their attack on the author of the Division
of Nature apparently is to be found in the fact that
numerous copies of his book were found among the
Albigenses in the south of France, who at this particular
epoch were occupying the focal point in the attention of
the Church.
" Since as we have heard," the bull runs, " that this book is
to be found in various monasteries, and other places, and several
monastic and scholastic persons, being unduly attracted by novelty,
give themselves eagerly to the study of the said book, thinking it
1 This is found in Lectura rive apparatus domini Hostiemis super quinque
libris decretalium. I have taken this citation from Preger's Geschichte det
deutschen Mystik, voL i. p. 166.
1 84 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
a fine thing to utter strange opinions though the apostle warns us
to avoid profane novelties we, in accordance with our pastoral
duty, endeavouring to oppose the power of corruption which a
book of this kind might exercise, command you all and several,
straightly enjoining you in the Holy Ghost, that you make diligent
search for that book, and wherever you succeed in finding the
same, or any portion thereof, that you send it, if it may be done
with safety, without delay to us to be solemnly burned ; or if this
is impossible that you do yourselves publicly burn the same." x
Before entering upon our study of the character and
significance of the sect which sprang from Amaury's
teaching, and which seemed so dangerous to the officials
in the thirteenth century, we must say a few words in
reference to the strange condemnation of the works of
Aristotle coupled with this condemnation of Amaury and
John the Scot. There is no indication that Amaury had
sucked any poison from Aristotle. But a certain David
of Dinant, of equal fame with Amaury, was denounced by
this same Council of 1209, and his books burned.
According to Albert the Great, who was a contemporary,
"David of Dinant held that God, intelligence, and matter are
identical in essence, and unite in a single substance, that con
sequently everything in nature is one that consequently individual
qualities which distinguish beings are only appearances due to an
illusion of sense."
Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was a disciple of Albert
the Great, gives this further account of David's doctrine :
" David of Dinant divided the beings of the universe into three
classes bodies, souls, and eternal substances. He said that
matter is the first and indivisible element which constitutes bodies,
that intelligence (nous) is the first and indivisible element which
constitutes souls, and that God is the first and indivisible element
which constitutes eternal substances ; and finally that these three
God, intelligence, and matter are a single thing, one and the
same. From which it follows that everything in the universe is
essentially one."
Here, then, was another teacher of extreme pantheism,
who also had a following. He, too, as we know, had been
reading John the Scot, but he had also been reading the
1 Quoted from Alice Gardner's Studies in John the Scot, pp. 139-40.
x GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 185
works of Aristotle, which had just freshly come to light
in Europe. Until the middle of the twelfth century
Europe possessed of Aristotle's writings only a part of
the Logic, in a Latin translation ascribed to Boethius.
The other works of the great Greek master came first to
the knowledge of the Christian scholars through the
Arabians, who for more than three centuries had produced
a succession of interpreters and commentators of his
writings. The earliest collection of Aristotle's physical
and metaphysical works which came into the hands of
Christian readers, was a Latin translation made from
Arabic. Bound up with this collection there were also
books and commentaries by the foremost Arabian
philosophers, and some of these commentaries were at
first believed to be works by Aristotle himself. There
was a very strong tinge of Neoplatonic mysticism in the
Arabian interpretation, and it is well-nigh certain that in
this Aristotelian collection there was some particular book
on physics which gave a basis for David's doctrine. 1 It
is probable that one of the sources of the teaching both of
David and Amaury, and through them of the mysticism
which followed, was the writings of Alexander of
Aphrodisias, the great commentator of Aristotle in the
second century. Alexander taught that the active reason
in man is Divine, and all the ideas which are the proto
types of the universe have their origin in this "active
reason," and thus have their origin in God, so that
everything real is Divine. Caesar of Heisterbach, in
his account, says that the Council of 1 209 forbade the
reading of Aristotle for three years. But it is certain
that the Lateran Council, held in 1215, repeated the ban
on the Aristotelian books, and Pope Gregory the Ninth,
in a bull of the year 1231, declared that the books of
Aristotle On Nature, " the reading of which has already
been forbidden by a provincial Council, shall not be read
until they have been examined and purged of every
suspicion of error." This interdict on the physical
1 For an extended discussion of the subject the reader is referred to Haureau,
Philosophic scolastique, and Jourdain, Excursions historiques et philosophiques.
1 86 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
writings of the great philosopher fell quickly into oblivion,
for as soon as the leading scholars of the time succeeded
in discovering the real Aristotle, purged of Arabian
colouring, he was found to be the greatest buttress of the
faith of the Church ; and before the end of the thirteenth
century he was settled in his place as the " official
philosopher," whose ipse dixit could not be contradicted
without accusation of heresy.
The facts warrant us in concluding that as the first
effect of the revival of the teaching of John the Scot,
coupled with the study of the Aristotle of the Arabs,
there appeared in Paris two powerful teachers who had
arrived at the conviction that everything in the universe,
in the last analysis, is God. The point in common in
their teaching is the negation of any principle of dis
tinction everything is one because everything is God. It
is easy now to see why the authorities found so much
danger in the words of Amaury, words that sound to us
so apostolic : " Every man ought to believe as an article
of his faith that each one of us is a member of the Christ,"
for he evidently used the words in a pantheistical sense.
The teaching found ready listeners, and could not be
suppressed by papal bulls, -by martyr fires, or by pious
stories relating how the chief heretics were faring in hell.
This type of religious thought has a fascination for many
minds, primarily because there is an elemental tendency
in us to arrive at an all-embracing Unity, and it has
played a mighty rdle in man's spiritual history. It cannot
be dismissed by the easy method of tagging the oppro
brious nickname of " pantheism " upon it. We have here
the outbreaking of a mystical movement which had
momentous possibilities for good and for evil, and which
can give us much instruction as to where the danger in
mysticism lies, and where its safeguards are to be sought.
There was already by 1209 a widespread "society" in
and about Paris, evidently loosely held together, and yet
showing some indications of internal organization. We
learn of specific ministry through " prophets," and we find
an important stress put upon ecstasy and inspirationa-1
x GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 187
speaking. The members of the sect rejected, as suited
only to the condition of the ignorant and unspiritual, the
traditional formulae, rites, and ceremonies of the Church.
They denounced as superstition the worship of saints and
the veneration of relics. Goodwill and spiritual insight,
they held, are more efficacious than the sacraments.
"They denied," says the Chronicler Caesar of Heisterbach, 1
" the resurrection of the body. They taught that there is neither
heaven nor hell, as places, but that he who knows God possesses
heaven, and he who commits a mortal sin carries hell within
himself just as a man carries a decayed tooth in his mouth.
They treated as idolatry the custom of setting up statues to
saints, and of burning incense to images. They laughed at those
who kissed the bones of martyrs."
The movement was marked by a bold freedom of spirit
toward traditional religion. In fact, the disciples of
Amaury believed that they were inaugurating a new era
of spiritual experience and a new epoch of revelation.
They taught, as we have already seen, that there are three
distinct dispensations. In the earliest the Father worked
alone, without the Son and without the Holy Spirit, until
the incarnation of the Son. The Father, they taught, was
incarnated in Abraham ; the Son in the child of Mary's
womb ; and the Holy Spirit has become incarnated in them?'
The dispensation of the Son lasted until the time then
present, and the dispensation of the Holy Spirit was
beginning then. The reign of the Father was a reign of
law, and was stern and severe. The reign of the Son was
milder and gentler, for he was born of a woman. He
abolished the law, destroyed the temple, and gathered
about Himself those of goodwill. But the " new law " of
the Son was also a burden to be borne, and it had its
limitations. The reign of the Holy Spirit frees humanity
1 Book V. chap. xxii. p. 386.
* There is in these teachings an unmistakable likeness to the prophetic ideal of
Joachim of Floris, and there was possibly a direct influence of the Calabrian prophet
on the followers of Amaury, though such a conclusion is not necessary. The
idea of three ' ' dispensations " was very ancient, certainly as old as the Montanists,
and there are furthermore very marked differences between the two conceptions
of the " Dispensation of the Holy Spirit," as held respectively by Joachim and by
the followers of Amaury.
1 88 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
from all burdens and servitude. In Him all laws and
commandments are at an end. There is no more need of
confession, of baptism, of the eucharist. There is no place
for sacrifices to win over God, and there is no need of a
mediator between God and man. The direct inward work
of the Holy Spirit brings salvation^ without any exterior act
or ceremony. They believed that every man is a temporal
manifestation of Divinity, that there is something in man
which the fall and sin have not destroyed ; that the Spirit
is everywhere and in everything, but that He is especially
incarnate in the members of their sect. Their faith in the
eternal and indestructible Divine Life within themselves
made them scorn persecution and misery. One of the
members even declared that he could not be burnt, because
there was something of God in him. They held that
children born of parents belonging to the sect had no need
of baptism, for there was no original sin in such a child.
Already the spring flowers of the kingdom of the Holy
Spirit were appearing, and of the increase of holiness and
goodness there was to be no end. Tlie final achievement
of God is the manifestation of Himself in the hearts of men,
and the highest achievement of man is the inner consciousness
of God. 1
Gerson (1363-1429), who was Chancellor of the
University of Paris and himself a mystic, reports that
Amaury taught that " the creature is changed into God,
and that each person finds in Him his own peculiar being
and ideal." He says that Amaury's disciples believed
with him that " the soul, when it has risen to God by
means of love, sloughs off its own particular nature, and
finds in God its eternal and immutable essence. Such a
soul loses its own being, and receives the being of God, so
that it is no longer a ' creature,' it no longer sees and loves
God (as a foreign object), but it becomes God Himself, the
object of all contemplation and love." 2
These doctrines that the universe is a Divine
1 The data on the views of the sect are : Martene et Durand, Thesaurus Novus
Anecdotorum Caesar of Heisterbach, Hist. Memor.; Guillaume le Breton, De
Gestis Phil. Aug.
2 Quoted from Jundt's Histoire du panthtisme populaire, pp. 25-26.
x GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 189
Emanation, that God is being incarnated in man, that each
person may rise to a substantial union with God, that
external law is abolished and ceremonial practices out
dated, that the final revelation of God is being made
through man himself these doctrines are loaded with
dangerous possibilities as soon as they receive popular
interpretation.
It is wellnigh certain that Amaury, and David as well,
were led on by purely philosophical interests, and there
are no reliable charges against them except charges of
error in doctrine. The case is not so plain in reference
to their disciples. There is no lack of charges of im
morality in our original accounts of the sect. On this point
Caesar of Heisterbach reports : " They said that if any one
possessing the Holy Spirit commits the sin of fornication,
or defiles himself in any other manner, his act is not
imputed to him as sin, because he has written within him
the Holy Spirit who is God, and because everything in us
is done by the Holy Spirit" J In the same line Guillaume
le Breton says : " They used the virtue of charity in such
a broad sense that they claimed that an act usually
considered sin was no longer sin if done in the virtue of
charity. Thus in the name of charity they committed the
grossest sins. They held out to those who did sin com
plete forgiveness on the ground that God is goodness and
not justice." 2 We must remember, however, that this is
hostile testimony, written by men who have a horror of
heresy, and who easily catch up any damaging charge
that happens to be afloat.
It is true that the principles enunciated by this sect are
open to an immoral practical application. If the law is
abolished, if the believer holds that God does through him
whatever he does, if he has lost all standards of distinction,
so that he asserts that " God spoke through Ovid as much
as through Augustine," as one chronicler says they taught,
the step down into an immoral life is very easy. But
there is no proof that the disciples of Amaury actually
1 Caesar of Heisterbach, op. rit. p. 386.
9 Guillaume le Breton, op. cit. p. 83.
MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
took this step. There is no such charge in the earliest
account of the sect, and the charges increase in virulence
as the writers are more remote in time from the facts
which they record. In the first stage of the movement
the lofty, serious purpose of the sect would keep the
members from drawing practical consequences, into which
a lower type of members might easily fall in the second
and third generation. The doctrine of spiritual freedom
and of Divine Immanence does not necessarily involve the
reign of caprice and immorality, 1 and we need more proof
before we conclude that the members of this mystical
group turned their freedom into licence and used their
new faith in the presence and goodness of God as an
excuse for taking the path of least resistance. The aim
and purpose of Amaury seem to have been to raise men
to such a spiritual height that sin would no longer be
possible to them.
The martyrdom of the leaders in 1209 did not stop
the movement, which had already spread through four
dioceses about Paris. Persecution that made it difficult
for the members of the society to live in Paris drove them
abroad into regions where the authorities were less on
their guard. Two years later, in 1211, one of the leaders
of the sect of Amaurians named Godin, was found in
Amiens, and was burned at the stake there. A heretic
was burned at Troyes in 1220 on the charge that he
claimed to be an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, and St.
Thomas Aquinas speaks of a knight of this period who,
when asked to do penance for his sins, replied : " If St.
Peter was saved I shall be, for the same Spirit dwells in
me that dwelt in him." 2 Before this period there is little
trace of mystical sects in Strasbourg and the cities of the
Rhine. From this time on they are continually in evidence,
and they all bear the family marks which are characteristic
of this Paris " society " founded by Amaury. There is no
documentary evidence which indisputably fixes a direct
connection between Amaury and the mystical sects of
1 See for a good statement of this position Delacroix, Essai sur le mysticisme.
sptculatif, p. 37. a Jundt, op. cit. p. 31.
x GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 191
Strasbourg and the Rhine countries, or the similar groups
in Southern France and Italy, but there is an overwhelm
ing probability that, however submerged the stream of
influence, there was a connection. We get a graphic
account from a famous inquisitor Stephen of Borbone
of a sect in Lyons which looks like a union of the disciples
of Amaury with the Waldenses. The sect exhibits the
strict morality of the latter, and the pantheistic metaphysics
of the former. Stephen of Borbone made his investigation
between 1223 and 1235. He describes the sect as follows :
" They absolutely refuse obedience to the Roman Church, which
they call the unholy Babylon of the Apocalypse. They hold that
all good persons, according to some, even women, are priests,
having received direct ordination from God, while ecclesiastics
receive it only from men. All good persons, even women, can
pronounce absolution, and can consecrate the bread. They
teach that it is sufficient to confess sins to God, and that God
alone is able to excommunicate."
Then follows an account of moral and anti-sacerdotal
teaching characteristic of the Waldenses, 1 and the account
continues with a description of an extreme form of
mysticism :
"They pretend that every man is a Son of God in the same
manner that Christ was. Christ had God or the Holy Spirit for
soul, and they say that other men also have. They believe in
the incarnation, the birth, the passion, and the resurrection of
Christ, but they mean by it the Spiritual conception, Spiritual
birth, Spiritual resurrection of the perfect man. For them the
true passion of Jesus is the martyrdom of a holy man, and the
true sacrament is the conversion of a man, for in such a conversion
the body of Christ is formed. In the doctrine of the Trinity,
the Father is he who converts a stranger to their doctrine. The
Son is he who is converted, and the Holy Spirit is the truth by
means of which the conversion is accomplished. This is what
they mean when they say that they believe in the Father and the
Son and the Holy Ghost They declare that the soul of all men
since Adam is the Holy Spirit. ... It is because God thus
dwells in them that all good men are priests. It is God who
works through them and gives them power to loose and bind." *
1 See chapter on the Waldenses.
3 Jundt, Histoin du panthtisme popvlaire, pp. 31-32.
192 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP
Only a few years after the death of Amaury a powerful
sect came to light, with mystical and pantheistical ideas
which seem like a propagation and expansion of the views
of this group that we have been studying. It was called
in its earlier stages the " Sect of the New Spirit," though
this name was soon superseded by the name Brethren of
the Free Spirit. The sect appears to have sprung up in
the city of Strasbourg, and to have owed its origin to
a man named Ortlieb, who was almost certainly an
Amaurian. Among the eighty " heretics " burned at
Strasbourg in 1215 there were a few who held the views
of the Amaurian sect, and a Swiss chronicler of the time
says that this heresy already had advocates both in Alsace
and in Switzerland. 1 About all we know of Ortlieb is
the fact that he lived in Strasbourg, and was condemned
by Pope Innocent III. for having taught that "A man
ought to give up all externals and follow the leadings of the
Spirit within himself" ' There are various spellings of
the name, such as " Ordevus," " Orclenus," " Ortlevus," and
" Ortlibus," but the manuscript of Mayence (see note)
gives the name " Ortlibus," i.e. Ortlieb, and says definitely
that he was the founder of the " Sect of the New Spirit.'
The sect is often mentioned under the name Ortlibenses
or Ordibarii, i.e. " Ortliebiens," though the founder's name
was soon forgotten. The document by the " Anonymous
of Passau " contains ninety-seven propositions setting forth
the docrines of the Sect of the New Spirit. 8 These pro
positions indicate that there were grades and degrees of
perfection, and that the teaching of the sect was tempered
to fit the degree of spiritual illumination attained by the
members. The newly initiated were not expected to
1 Nauclerus' Chronica, p. 912 (cited in Jundt, op. cit. p. 40).
z The main document for the study of this movement is a compilation of the
history of the religious sects of the period. It is by an unknown author. It was
formerly supposed to have been written by Reiner Sacchoni, who wrote Summa
de Catharis et Leonistis, and who died in 1259. The writer of it is now generally
called the Anonymous of Passau. There are two MSS. of it in the Library of
Munich, and also a MS. in the Library of Mayence. Preger publishes this com
pilation in his Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter, vol. i. pp. 461-71.
8 These ninety-seven propositions have been traced back to Albert the Great,
and were evidently in their earliest form drawn up by him. See Preger, op. cit.
vol. L pp. 168-73, anc * Delacroix, op. cit. pp. 55-57.
x GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 193
break at once with the traditions and customs of their
former religion as members of the Roman Church. They
were rather led by slow steps into a life of freedom, in
which they could finally dispense entirely with the practices
of the Church. Like most of the sects of a similar
character they had a lower and a higher state a religion
for the ignorant and a vastly higher type for the perfect.
For the former, traditions, sacraments, symbols, and forms
had a place. For the perfect, these things had no place at
all. They evidently had books and tracts in the language
of the people through which the doctrines of " the New
Spirit " were propagated ; but these popular books, if they
ever existed, are all lost, and we are forced to form our
notions as best we can from the reports of their bitter
enemies and persecutors.
According to the propositions preserved by the
Anonymous of Passau, they pushed the doctine of Divine
Immanence to its limits. Every man is of the same sub
stance as God, and therefore every man is capable of
becoming Divine. There is nothing that can hinder a
person' from rising to union with God if he puts forth the
will to rise. As soon as he reaches this state of union he
attains a glorious freedom. He may then reject all
externals, and follow the promptings of the Spirit within
himself. Rules and commandments drop away. Sup
plications, fasts, sacrifices of every sort are seen to be use
less. It is possible even to pass in holiness all who have
been counted saints in earlier dispensations, not excepting
her who by the Church has been called the Mother of
God. Nay, even he who acts like Christ can become
equal to Him. Man in his own nature man as man
is capable of becoming Divine. But at whatever height
he reaches he is still man, for God works in him in
human form. Man can take on the Divine quality with
out in the least losing his humanity. They denied the
doctrine of the resurrection as the Church taught it,
because they said that the free man who possesses the
Spirit has already experienced the resurrection. In this
state of perfection there is no law. What the vulgar call
O
194 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
sin is now impossible. The Holy Spirit circulates within
and carries holiness through the life so that there can
be no sin. Sin is the will to offend God, and he whose
will has become God's will cannot offend God. His will
is God's will, and God's will is his will. A man may
become so completely Divine that his very body is
sanctified, and then what it does is a Divine act. In
this state the instincts and impulses of the body take on
a holy significance. In fact a powerful instinct, an in
satiable energy, was believed, for the very reason that it
was irresistible, to be of spontaneous, Divine origin.
These views would easily lead to a scandalous life as
soon as they were carried out in practice by persons of weak
moral power. The members of the sect were charged
though the charge has the look of a hostile inference from
their central principle with holding that, as the earth is
the Lord's, any man who has the Spirit of the Lord in him
may take anything he wants, wherever he finds it. The
charges of immoral practice, which run through these pro
positions, must be taken with much caution. They are
probably hostile inferences from the principles rather than
actual reports of practices, 1 though it would not be long
before persons of looser life and weaker control would
seize upon the principles as a cover for vice. Even this
hostile report implies that they allowed nothing which in
its results would have bad social effects.
In the primitive stage of the movement in the life
time of Ortlieb at least it was almost certainly not a
religion of licence, but a serious effort to reach a religion
of the Spirit. The real offence was that the members of
the sect put their inward experience of God in the place
of all the so-called external means of grace which the
Church supplied. It seems probable from the scanty
data at hand that the general movement which we are
here studying pantheistical mysticism in the thirteenth
century gradually divided into two wings ; on the one
hand a wing with marked ascetic tendencies ; on the
1 The earliest accounts of the sect do not contain definite charges of immoral
practice.
x GROUP OF PANTHEISTICAL MYSTICS 195
other hand a wing with a dangerous tendency toward
licence. Wherever groups of these mystics came under
Waldensian influence they would feel the stricter, moraliz
ing influences of that sect, and where the seeds of the
doctrine fell into bad soil they produced a corresponding
crop of weeds. The principles of the doctrine are capable
of being put to the highest conceivable moral ends, as
they are unfortunately capable of being dragged down to
serve as an excuse for a life which is at the mercy of
natural instincts. The principles undoubtedly developed
in both directions, and we shall see when we come back,
in a later chapter, to study the Brethren of the Free
Spirit in their maturer stage, that there was a harvest of
weeds as well as of wheat My conclusion, however, is that
the Amaurians in Paris and the Ortliebiens in Alsace in
the early half of the thirteenth century were children of
the Spirit. They were endeavouring, with the dim light
at their command, to find the spiritual trail to the Father's
house. " Every man ought to be a member of the Christ,"
is the gospel of the leader, Amaury. " Every man ought
to follow the Divine Spirit within himself" is the gospel
of the disciple, Ortlieb. For both, the true earthly life
is a personal manifestation in the flesh of the Divine life
a finite personalization of God. They, and the groups
that gathered about them, undervalued the external, the
historic, the social embodiments of truth and of Divine
revelation. They were excessively individual, gave too
much chance for caprice, and launched, without sufficient
store of charts and compasses, on the dangerous sea of
Spiritual Freedom. But they do not deserve to be
forgotten, for they belong to the brave list of those who
have grandly trusted the soul and who have helped, even
at great risk and cost, to set it free.
CHAPTER XI
BROTHERHOOD GROUPS IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
WITH the thirteenth century there came a strange period
of incubation. Europe had not yet come to full self-
consciousness, but already the long period of infancy and
of instinct was drawing to a close. Man was beginning
to discover himself and to assert himself. In every phase
of life during this century there are signs of the coming
of a new epoch. The spirit of democracy is apparent in
almost all the movements of the time. The people are no
longer dumb and obedient ; they are restless, and on
occasion clamorous for rights and privileges. There is
at work, at first silently and then vocally, a spirit of
revolt from authority and a growing consciousness that
the personal soul ought to work out its own salvation.
A hidden leaven seems to be fermenting beneath the
surface, for there break out, almost simultaneously in
widely sundered places, movements which are strangely
alike. Once more the Pentecost Spirit is abroad, and the
Rhine dweller, the Italian peasant, the French weaver all
speak the same spiritual tongue.
The most characteristic religious note of the popular
movement was the call to follow Christ. It occurred to
multitudes, as it did to St. Francis, that traditional
Christianity had lost the way the Master made for it, and
was on a bypath. Throughout all Christendom pro
phetic spirits were striving to restore apostolic and
evangelical piety and to discover how to bring religion
vitally into the lives of the people. It was a time of
vast upheaval and ferment, like that which appeared four
196
CHAP, xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 197
centuries later in the English commonwealth, and the
swarms of sectaries which fill the period is, to say the
least, confusing. Cathari and Waldenses are already
numerous. The Franciscan and Dominican movements
are the most powerful expressions of the profound desire
for a return to the religion of the Galilean. Simultaneously
with the rise of these two great popular orders, there
sprung up another type of religious society hardly less
remarkable, or less influential historically, than the
Franciscan movement itself, the sisterhoods of Beguines
and brotherhoods of Beghards.
The sisterhoods came first in the order of time. The
Crusades, and incessant wars, had left the women of
Europe in pitiable plight There were orphans and
widows everywhere, who had no protectors, and who had
no means of livelihood. There was no choice for these
women except between beggary and shame or the
convent. The result was that every city had its hordes
f ra &g e d women who thronged the market-place and
uttered their mournful cry : " Bread, for God's sake "
(Brod durch Gott) ; " Give us bread." This serious social
and economic situation gave rise to the new type of sister
hood, quite unlike that of the convent
The man whose insight first formulated the plan and
put it into operation was a certain pious priest of Flanders,
of the city of Lige, named Lambert 1 An annal of the
year 1 1 80, quoted by Du Cange, 2 says : " God stirred up
the spirit of a certain holy priest, a man of religion, who
was called Lambert le Begue (because he was a
'stammerer') of St Christopher in Lige, from whose
surname women and girls, who propose to live chastely,
are called Beguines, because he was the first to arise and
preach to them by word and example the reward of
chastity."
1 Lea in his History of the Inquisition, voL ii. p. 351, says that there is a
charter extant for a convent of the Beguine type at Vilvorde near Brussels that
dates from 1065. Very much has been made of this document, especially by the
adherents of St. Begga (daughter of Pepin von Landen), who wish to regard her
as the foundress of the Beguines. But the Vilvorde document is almost certainly
spurious.
2 Du Cange, Glossariitm mediae et infimae Latinitatis , under the word
' ' Beguine. " This annal is given also in Gieseler's Ecc. Hist. vol. iii. p. 264.
198 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
The names " Beguine " and " Beghard " have given
rise to much discussion, and lively etymological battles
have been waged over them The view maintained by
Mosheim and Jundt that these names were derived from
a Flemish verb beggen to beg, has been repeated with
approval by many writers. Some have construed the
begging literally, others metaphorically, and one is often
told that the Beghards were so named because they
were powerfully prevailing in prayer, they were men who
" begged hard " of God. 1 This view is, however, entirely
constructed out of imagination. The overwhelming ob
jection to it is the fact that no such Flemish verb as
beggen ever existed. It is much more likely that the
verb " to beg " is derived from " Beguine " than that
" Beguine " is derived from some continental word mean
ing to beg. 2 It is in fact now established, practically
beyond dispute, that the name " Beguine " is derived from
Lambert's nickname " le Begue " which means " the
stammerer." Beghard is only a masculine variant from
Beguine. What Lambert did was to gather the needy
but pious women of his region, both virgins and widows,
into an association, half religious, half secular a society of
demi-nuns and to settle them in a common living-place
under religious oversight The common living-place was
in Lambert's day an ordinary house, somewhat enlarged and
adapted. But as the movement grew, the living-place
expanded into a B/guinage, which was a sort of present-day
" model village." It consisted of a group of little houses
built around a church. Generally there would be, too,
near the centre of the " village " a hospital for the sick
and aged, and near by a little cemetery where the sisters
laid away their dead.
They had all the advantages of the monastery without
1 Mosheim says Beghard ' ' signifies to beg for anything earnestly and heartily.
The syllable 'hard,' which is a frequent termination of German words, sub
joined to the verb beggen, produces the name Beggehard which denotes a person
who begs often and importunely" (Mosheim, Ecc. Hist. p. 461). Mosheim in
his monograph on the Beghards and Beguines (De Beghardis et Beguinabus Com-
mentarius, Leipzig, 1790), which is one of the most valuable sources in existence,
discusses the origin of the word, pp. 96-98.
* For a detailed etymological discussion see the Oxford Dictionary.
xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 199
its disadvantages. They had protection and support ;
they had leisure for meditation and prayer ; they had
great opportunities for society and fellowship, the heighten
ing of their religious experience through the group-feeling ;
and they had common tasks and occupations provided for
them. On the other hand they were not actually cut off
from the world. They did not renounce all property ;
they could leave the Beguinage if they wished, and go
back to their old life again ; they were not asked to take
a vow against marriage. They were, in short, groups of
pious, virtuous women, who devoted themselves to charity
and religion, and divided their time between religious
practices, works of industry, and deeds of mercy.
This movement, thus inaugurated in 1 1 80, spread, as
so many other things did in this century, like contagion.
Matthew Paris, a half century later, says that the rapid
progress of the movement is one of the wonders of his
age. By the middle of the thirteenth century there were
societies of Beguines in almost every large city, and already
the example set by the women was everywhere being
imitated by the men.
The Beghards, who were often called " apostolic men,"
sometimes also " poor men," were first organized in Louvain
in I22O. 1 They were bands, or brotherhoods, of pious
laymen who, without entering monasteries, devoted them
selves to religion. They went about the country perform
ing deeds of mercy, preaching in the vulgar tongue, and
performing any kind of service which their hands found
to do. In Frankfort, for instance, they took care of the
sick without pay, they carried the dead to their graves,
and they administered spiritual comfort to condemned
persons who were to be executed. 8 In some cities they
took care of the insane. They lived on charity, and formed
an order of religious individuals who were sort of half
monks. They were distinctly more secular than the
friars, as they might at any time marry and take up
the secular life, and, even while they were living as
1 Gieseler, Ecc. Hist. vol. iii. p. 266.
a Delacroix, Essai svr le mysticisme sptcvlatif en Allemagne, p. 83.
200 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP,
Beghards, they often spent part of their time in secular
occupations. Then, furthermore, these associations, both
of brothers and sisters, in their early stages, were not
under rigid ecclesiastical rule and control as the orders
of friars were. Both the Beguines and Beghards lived
partly by labour and partly by begging.
Delacroix 1 has pointed out that there were three well-
defined classes of Beguines. There was ( I ) a class of rich
women who went into the Beguinage to live the simple
life, i.e. to get free from the cares and burdens of the
world. These women did not beg, but contributed of
their means to the support of the Beguinage to which they
belonged. Then (2) there were Beguinages founded and
maintained by rich patrons, which were homes for poor
women who, like the first class, lived without begging.
There was everywhere in Europe at this period an extra
ordinary cult of poverty. Those who did not actually prac
tise poverty were eager to assist those who did practise it.
There was an almost hypnotic spell on men's minds as to
the peculiar merits of poverty, and many a rich man
quieted his conscience, and hoped he was smoothing the
road to heaven by contributing liberally to homes for
sisterhoods. The Counts of Flanders were lavish in their
gifts to maintain Beguinages in their region, and seemed
never weary of putting money into this charity. 2 The
Beguinage of the thirteenth century appealed to the
sympathies of the pious rich much as the colleges and
universities of the twentieth century appeal to the charit
able instincts of present-day money kings.
There was finally (3) a third class of Beguinages
which were retreats for poor women who lived solely by
work and begging, with the emphasis on the latter
occupation. These women came from the great lower
class women who did not " take up " poverty as a cult,
but who had it thrust upon them. Even they suddenly
found that there was a religious career open for them.
They had very simple rules, and they lived a somewhat
free and unrestrained life. During the early period while
1 Op. cit. pp. 81-82. 2 See Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. ii. p. 352.
xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 201
poverty and begging were in high favour, and Beguinism
had not yet developed any heretical tendencies, the move
ment seemed to have solved one of the most difficult
social problems of the age. Instead of hordes of ragged
women, crying up and down the streets, " For the love of
God give us bread," each city now had its band of well-
housed sisters, dressed in " simple smock and great veil-like
mantle," living in an atmosphere of religion, doing the
pastoral work of the neighbourhood, and taking up the
tasks which were unsuitable for the priests. When they
begged they begged in an orderly fashion, which suited
the dignity of their sisterhood, and their poverty took on
a sacramental touch. 1
But these fellowships of men and women, organized for
the cultivation of personal piety and for the practice of
social religion, soon degenerated. In the first place it
was extremely difficult, in that age of loose morals, to
guard the purity of the life of the Beguines. They were
exposed in numerous ways to temptations, and the moral
dangers which beset the lives of these women were not
sufficiently foreseen and forestalled when the system was
framed. We find the authorities busy in almost every
section devising rules to meet this moral situation. Even
as early as 1244 the Archbishop of Mayence forbade any
Beguine association to admit a woman under forty years
of age. Before the end of the thirteenth century the
ecclesiastical authorities were everywhere at work bringing
these associations under the care of the Franciscans or the
Dominicans. The Council of Vienne in 1311 discovered
that the Beguines were following the religious life without
having promised obedience, and without having adopted
any approved rule. They had a special garb, and they
had self-chosen superiors. They were actually preaching
on such subjects as the Trinity and Divine Guidance, and
the report adds that they were endangering the faith of
many, and hazarding their eternal salvation. These
associations naturally provoked clerical hostility and
1 This was the ideal, and was not always realized, and in most communities
begging soon became a public nuisance. In Mayence the Beguines were forbiddeD
to beg by Act of Council in 1310.
202 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
jealousy. They cut into the Orders of Friars both in
membership and donations, because being less strict they
were extremely popular. They were a disadvantage to
the local clergy in their neighbourhoods, because the
burials and masses of the Beguines were conducted
independently of the local priest, and he missed the fees.
They were thus almost ceaselessly worried, harried, and
persecuted, so that even in 1261 Pope Urban IV. wrote
to an authority in Louvain to protect the Beguines against
" rash persons who afflict them," and he urges him " not to
allow any one to injure them, either in person or in goods." l
And, secondly, the associations were rapidly permeated
by the " new thought " of that age, which quickly made
them centres of " heresy " and brought them under general
suspicion. What I have here called " new thought " was
really the popular product of the speculations, studied in
earlier chapters of this book. The somewhat abstract
doctrines of Dionysius, Erigena, and Amaury had now
filtered down into the common mind, and were being
changed from academic truths to practical truths. They
began to be translated from their safe place in books into
the dangerous stuff of human life. So long as the teach
ing of the Allness of God and the possibility of every
person being an expression of His nature was wrapped
away in the difficult verbiage of a philosophical treatise,
matters went on as though the book had never been
written, but the situation was mightily altered when those
views spread through the world and became a popular
doctrine, as they now did. Amaury and Ortlieb began
the dangerous business of making these views popular,
but the movement begun on this small scale gathered
volume, and soon became the spirit of the epoch. It
worked like leaven through every rank of society, and
affected every sect and party. The movement had many
aspects and variations as it ran its course, and no simple
phrase covers all its forms ; but I shall for the present deal
with the spread of the doctrine among groups of men and
women who were called the " Brethren of the Free Spirit."
1 Mosheim, De Beghardis et Beguinabus, p. 141.
xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 203
The societies of Beguines and Beghards offered splendid
opportunity for the spread of the leaven of " Free Spirit,"
as the popular doctrines evolved from the teachings of
Amaury and Ortlieb were called. There were among
these Beghard and Beguine groups many persons of in
telligence, who devoted much time to reading and thought,
and they became influential instructors of the rest. There
was always in these societies a spirit of independence ;
they were not under strict watch and guard ; there was
much leisure for meditation ; the group spirit was attained
to a high degree, so that any powerful movement which
affected the leaders was sure to become contagious.
Pantheism and mysticism had been brought, as I have
said, from abstruse treatises into popular books and
sermons. Such ideas admirably fitted the psychological
temper and climate of the age. Here was a situation
which was most favourable to the spread of the leaven,
and before the authorities were aware of it, the societies
of Beghards and Beguines were being transformed into
" Brethren of the Free Spirit" The Church suddenly
awoke to the danger it was facing, and by the opening of
the fourteenth century the authorities use the words
" pest " and "heresy" with great frequency as a description
of these brotherhood movements.
Unfortunately we are compelled to study the doctrine
of the " Free Spirit " wholly through the reports of its
enemies. It was an anti-ecclesiastical movement ; it was
a popular uprising for larger liberty ; it was a powerful
exhibition of lay religion, and from the nature of the case
we cannot look for a calm, impartial, judicial account of
the " pest " from the ecclesiastics who investigated it
The lurid colours in these descriptions must be taken with
much caution.
Albert the Great had already, in 1250, written such
dreadful details of the beliefs and doings of " heretical "
Beghards that a later author, who has Albert's Manual
before him, declines to write out the description. 1 But it
was not until the early years of the fourteenth century
1 Jundt, Panthfisnu popvlaire, p. 48.
204 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
that this " pestiferous liberty of spirit " was discovered to
be widespread, and to have permeated the brotherhoods
and sisterhoods. In 1306 the Archbishop of Cologne,
Henry of Virnebourg, issued an edict against " heretical "
Beghards and Beguines. He describes them as "people
practising a new kind of life under the pretext of poverty " ;
they " beg instead of working," to the injury of " Christi
anity," i.e. to the detriment of the begging friars ; they
" preach publicly though they are only lay-people " ; they
" wear long tabards, tunics, and cowls," and they teach the
following " heresies " : " Those who are led by the Spirit
of God are no longer under law, for the law is not imposed
on the good, on those who live without sin " ; " He who
follows me (i.e. becomes a member of this sect), they say,
can be saved, for I do not commit sin " ; " These truths
have been given to them, they say, by divine revelation." 1
The threats of excommunication and persecution which
the Archbishop levelled against them did not accomplish
anything. On the contrary they grew in numbers and
power to such an extent that the regular " Orders "
materially decreased, and it was decided to see what
argument and persuasion would do. The greatest theo
logian of the age, Duns Scotus, was brought to Cologne
to confound them, but his untimely death in 1308 removed
the great schoolman from his difficult task, leaving it
unaccomplished. We hear a little later that " almost the
entire city is infected with heresy." The Council of Treves
in 1310 gives an interesting picture of the Beghards,
though it throws little or no light on the prevailing ideas
of the movement :
" In the diocese of Treves there are a number of lay-
people called Beghards. They appear in public clothed in long
tunics and with cowls, and they avoid all manual labour. At
certain times they hold meetings, in which they give, in the presence
of their believing members, the appearance of being profound inter
preters of Holy Scripture. We disapprove of their society as
foreign to every type of congregation recognized by the Church." ^
1 See Jundt, op. cit. p. 49, and Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. ii. pp.
367-68.
z Mosheim, De Beghardis et Beguinabus, p. 235.
xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 205
The " heresy of the Free Spirit " was the absorbing
question before the Council of Vienne in 1311. Pope
Clement IV. had become greatly disturbed over the spread
of the Free Spirit, and under his direction the famous
Council of Vienne set itself to the task of finding out the
character of the " heresy " and of exterminating it. The
decrees of this Council are called Clementines, and they
give us a very full description of the " errors."
"We have learned," says the first Clementine decree, "that
there are many Beguines, smitten apparently with madness, who
give discussions and sermons on the Trinity and on the Divine
Essence, and who are heterodox on the articles of faith and the
sacraments of the Church. They lead many simple, credulous
persons into error, and under the veil of sanctity they do many
things which endanger the soul." *
All this is indefinite enough, but the second decree is
more precise. We read that " these perverted men and
faithless women, vulgarly called Beghards and Beguines,"
hold the following views :
" This is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, a dispensation
of liberty for one to do whatever he pleases. . . . Man can arrive
here in the present life to the fulness of divine blessedness. . . .
Every intellectual being possesses within himself by his very
nature perfect blessedness. . . . The soul has no need of Divine
Light (i.e. beyond what he has within himself) to rise to a con
templation of God. . . . Man can attain in this life such a degree
of perfection that he will become incapable of sinning, and that
he can make no further progress in divine grace, for if he were
able to progress further he might attain a greater perfection than
that of Jesus Christ. . . . When a person has attained the highest
degree of perfection there is no more need of fasting or praying,
for the senses are now so completely subject to reason that the
body may be given absolute liberty. . . . Those who live in this
state of perfection, and are moved by the Spirit of God, are no
longer under any law or ecclesiastical regulation, for where the
Spirit of God is there is liberty. ... He who must still practise
virtues is an imperfect person. The perfect soul has got beyond
virtues. . . . When the body of Christ is presented in divine
service it is not necessary to rise or to show any respect for the
host, for it would be a sign of imperfection to come down from
1 Mosheim, p. 245.
206 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
the heights of pure contemplation to dwell on thoughts of the
sacrament or the passion of the Saviour." l
The metaphysics of this movement are quite plain and
simple, for every time we get a glimpse of the doctrine
the central idea is the same. God is all. He goes out
of His unity into plurality and differentiation. In this
universe of multiplicity everything real is divine. The
end of all things is a return to the divine unity. Man
has within himself the possibility of return he can
become like Christ, like God. He can even become God.
In man's state of perfection God does all in him that he
does. The Church therefore is unnecessary. Man him
self is a revelation of God. Heaven and hell are allegories.
God is in man and in all things as much as in the conse
crated bread and wine. 2
The question of the moral outcome of the doctrine
and its extravagancies will be discussed later. The
urgent issue to the Church was its own supremacy. This
doctrine made the Church unnecessary, made ecclesiastical
supremacy a mere assumption. It was a life and death
issue on which there could be no compromise. The
Council of Vienne called for the entire suppression of the
Beguinages. It decreed the abolition of the " Orders " of
Beghards and Beguines. These decrees, however, though
passed in 1311, were not actually published until 1317,
under the new Pope John XXII. The reason for the
delay apparently was that many of the groups of Beghards
and Beguines were free from taint of heresy, and were
orthodox and loyal Catholics. It seemed a shame to
smite all alike, while on the other hand it was a hopeless
task to separate the sheep from the goats. It was easy
to describe the " heresy " on paper ; it was extremely diffi
cult to mark the distinction of orthodox and heterodox in
dealing with persons.
Wherever the edicts of Vienne were actually executed
the results were pitiable. The Beghards, being men,
could shift for themselves, and flee from persecution to
some safer part of the world. The women, who were
1 Jundt, op. cit. pp. 50-51- a See Jundt, op. cit. p. 55.
xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 207
deprived of their Beguinage and turned adrift without
means of support, and forbidden to beg, were compelled
to die of want, or to find husbands, or to sink to a life of
prostitution. The tragedy of this situation deeply im
pressed the popular mind, and it became current report
that on his death-bed Pope Clement had bitterly repented
of his attack on the Beguines. 1
The most precious document for gaining a knowledge
of the principles of the " Free Spirit " is a letter written
in 1317 by the Bishop of Strasbourg, and addressed to
his subordinates. His facts were gathered through an
inquisitorial commission which had carried its investiga
tion through the diocese. 2 The letter reads :
"There are found in this city and in this diocese many
sectaries who are popularly called ' Beghards ' and ' begging
sisters ' (Schwestrones Brod durch Gott), and who call themselves
' the Sect of the Free Spirit,' and ' brothers and sisters of poverty.'
Among their number, we are sorry to say, there are monks and
priests, and many married persons. We condemn all the doctrines
and ceremonies of the sect. We order that these heretics be driven
from their abodes, and that the houses used for their meeting-
places be sold for the benefit of the Church. The books which
contain their doctrines are to be turned over to the priests within
fifteen days and burnt. 3 All who do not repent and give up
their garb within three days will be excommunicated, and those
who give them charity will be dealt with likewise. Exception
will be made of Beghards who accept the Third Order of the
Franciscan rule, or who come under some Order approved by
the Church. Exception is also made of Beguines who lead a
pure and pious life."
Here follows the statement of doctrine :
"God is in form everything that is. 4 They claim to be
divine by nature, and they make no distinction between God and
themselves. Man can be so united to God that man's will,
power, activity, become God's will, power, and activity. Every
1 It was, however, as we have seen, under John XXII. that the edicts were
published and executed.
* Mosheim and Jundt say that this letter was written by John of Ochsenstein,
who, they suppose, was Bishop of Strasbourg. It has, however, been settled
that John of Durbheim was bishop at the time and author of this letter (see
Delacroix, op. cit. p. 92). Mosheim gives the text of the letter, pp. 253-61.
8 Not a copy has escaped, more's the pity.
4 This means that the essence or idea in everything is a thought of God's.
208 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
man, they say, can by virtue of his nature become as perfect as
Christ, and can acquire even greater merit than Christ. Many
of them say that they are more perfect in the three virtues than
St. Paul or the Virgin. All divine perfections are joined in them ;
they claim that they have eternity in the depths of their own
souls, and are living in eternity here below. The Catholic
Church is folly and vanity. The perfect man is under no obliga
tion to obey commandments, not even that which imposes
respect for parents. In virtue of their liberty they nullify the
teaching of the clergy and the statutes of the Church. They
show no respect for the body of Christ in the sacrament, and say
blasphemously that the body of the Saviour is found equally in all
bread as in the consecrated wafer. They say that any pure layman
can consecrate the elements as well as the priest, that it is not
necessary for salvation to confess to priests, that the acceptance of
a consecrated wafer from the hands of a layman brings deliver
ance to a departed soul as much as priestly mass does. 1 There
is neither hell nor purgatory as a place. There is no last
judgment ; man is judged at the moment of death. The Spirit
will then return to God and become so completely united with
Him that He alone will remain as He was from eternity.
Nobody will be lost, not even Jews or Saracens, because their
spirits will return to God. Scripture contains many poetical
passages which are not to be taken as literal truth. If all the
books of the Catholic Faith were destroyed, the members of this
sect could compose better ones. For this reason more faith
should be given to the things which come from the human heart
than to the gospels ; the soul's Inward Voice is safer than the
truths preached in the Church. Many among them have attained
such a degree of perfection they say that they cannot sin. They
pretend that all things are the common property of all, and that
any one may take what he likes. They say that one should have
no creaturely desires, not even the desire for the kingdom of
heaven. They hold themselves immovable on the summit of the
ninth rock, 2 and neither rejoice nor lament ; and if they could by
a single word banish all mortal woes, they would not speak the
word."
The most impartial testimony which we have of the
views, teaching, and practices of those who professed these
1 This is in every respect like the teaching of the Waldenses. No sharp line
can be drawn between these various sects.
2 This is a mystical symbol for the highest degree of union with God, of which
union there were nine stages. The Book of the Nine Rocks will be discussed
in the chapter on the "Friends of God." There seem to have been other
books besides this famous one, and evidently the conception of the "Nine
Rocks " was gradually developed by the mystics of the time.
xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 209
extreme principles of " divine unity " and " freedom " is
from the great mystic preacher, John Tauler. In one of
his sermons he contrasts spurious spiritual freedom with
sound spiritual freedom, and gives a description of the
type of " Free Spirit " which we are studying. He
says :
" They stand exempt from all subjection, without any activity
upward or downward, just as a tool is passive and waits until its
master wishes to use it, for it seems to them that if they do any
thing then God will be hindered in His work; therefore they
count themselves above all virtues. They wish to be so free
that they do not think, nor praise God, nor have anything, nor
know anything, nor love nor ask nor desire anything ; for all that
they might wish to ask they have (according to their notion).
And they also think that they are poor in spirit because they are
without any will of their own and have renounced all possessions.
They also wish to be free of all practice of virtue, obedient to no
one, whether pope, or bishop, or priest. They wish to be free of
everything with which the Church has to do. They say publicly
that so long as a man strives after virtues, so long is he imperfect
and knows nothing of spiritual poverty, nor of this spiritual
freedom.
They consider themselves to be higher than the Angels and
above the stage of human merit and human faith, so that they
cannot increase in virtue nor yet commit sin. Whatever nature
desires, according to their notion, they can do freely without sin
because they have reached the highest innocence, and no law or
commandment is put upon them. Whenever their nature urges
them in any direction they follow the impulse, so that the freedom
of the spirit may be unhindered." x
As time went on the rigours of persecution steadily
increased, and the Church resolved on the annihilation of
all begging sects not affiliated with the established Orders,
and on the extermination of all pantheistical heresies.
The final blow of extermination of these associations,
which fell early in the fifteenth century, was largely due,
as the persecution throughout had been, to the influence
of the established Orders especially the Dominican
Order. All the powers of the Inquisition had for a half
century been let loose on these suspected religious sects,
1 Preger, Geschichtt der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter, voL iii. p. 133.
P
210 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
and the wonder is that they existed at all through
the pitiless storm of persecution. In many places the
" houses " of the Beghards were turned into prisons for
" heretics," and, by a shameful stretch of persecuting
fanaticism, the inquisitors were authorized in 1369, both
by the Emperor Charles IV. and Pope Gregory XL, to
burn all books, tracts, and sermons written in the vulgar
tongue. This outrageous edict swept away a precious mass
of popular literature. Anything popular was apparently
dangerous.
Among the many Beghard martyrs there is one name
which has had a great place in the history of "the Friends of
God " that of Nicholas of Basle. He was long believed
to be " the Friend of God from the Oberland," who is in
history intimately associated with the life of John Tauler.
This belief is wholly without historical foundation. Nicholas
of Basle was a prominent Beghard, who travelled widely as
a missionary, and propagated the teachings of the sect.
For many years he succeeded in escaping the Inquisition,
though he was vigorously sought after. He was finally
seized in Vienna about 1397, and was there burned at
the stake with two of his " disciples," John and James.
We now come to the difficult task of estimating the
significance and value of this movement. The societies
of Beghards and Beguines, in their primitive stage, were
an expression of the spirit of the epoch, a form of that
hypnotic spell which carried men and women in all
Christian lands into an unreasoned exaltation of poverty,
an obsession of renunciation. The peculiarity which
marks off these associations from the other groups which
practised the cult of poverty is the tendency toward pan
theistical ideas and mystical views which prevailed among
them. 1 There were throughout their history many " ortho-
1 It is true, as we have implied throughout this chapter, that it is often diffi
cult to distinguish Beghards from Waldenses. They mutually influenced each
other, and with our scanty historical material are easily confused. For example,
the inquisitor Garin, who, with the Bishop of Metz, " investigated " the Beghards
in 1334, has given a description which reveals many Waldensian traits. He
says : "These impious men call themselves brothers of poverty, and they claim
that they imitate Christ and follow the gospel. They say that they do not even
own their clothes and the other things which they use, but that God is the Master
of all their goods." He says that their meetings are held at the moving of the
xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 211
dox " Beghards and many societies even which continued
to be " untainted " by the doctrine of " Free Spirit," but
there was a very great element in the groups, throughout
the fourteenth century, which held a pantheistical form of
mysticism. The doctrine was based, as I have already
said, on the fundamental idea that God is all, and that
man may become a revelation of Him. These popular
mystics differed from Dionysius and Erigena only in their
crudeness and in the boldness of the application of their
doctrine.
The fatal weakness of this entire mystical movement,
all the way back from its popular form in the fourteenth
century to its lofty formulation in Plotinus and Plato,
is the negative and abstract feature of it God, the
Divine Reality, is reached by a process of negation. He
is everything that finite things are not. He is Absolute
but without any qualities or characteristics by which we
can know Him. He is an indeterminate Absolute. He
is an abstract Universal in which all finite particulars are
swallowed up and lost, not a self-revealing Spirit who
explains all finite particulars. All roads lead to Him,
but no one comes back with any light which explains the
finite, or which gives illumination for the daily tasks of a
concrete life. When the " Beghard," with the " Free
Spirit " ideas, believed that he was " Divine," he had no
way of thinking out what it meant to be " Divine." God
was an indefinite All, which had swallowed him up and
merged him into His Allness. He had no will of his
own any more. He, too, like God, became indeterminate,
with his finite likes and dislikes, his particular choices,
Holy Spirit. They claim a state of perfection which puts them above the pope
and the clergy and above excommunication. He does not charge them with
impure life, but says that they deny the right to any one to inflict capital punish
ment, and they refuse to swear. He says they refuse to " confess," claiming that
they have not committed sin. Even in the death hour they refuse to call upon
the Virgin or the saints, "which proves that they continue in their malicious
errors" (see Delacroix, op. cit. pp. 115-16). Wasmod of Hamburg, Inquisitor
of Mayence, in his tract written at the very end of the fourteenth century, gives
similar traits. He says the Beghards reduce the Church to their own circle :
they say that the clergy have no power to pardon sins, because they are in a state
of sin themselves ; they say that the priest, who is in a state of mortal sin, cannot
consecrate the sacrament, and that one may perform priestly functions without
consecration.
212 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
desires, and volitions annulled. He would now do nothing
except what the Allness did through him. But how could
he know what a God of this Absolute sort would do ?
Eckhart, in one of his sermons, has a keen analysis of
this negative freedom which comes from making God
indeterminate.
" There are persons who say, ' I have God and His love, I
can do what I wish.' This view shows an ignorance of true
liberty. When thou wishest to do a thing contrary to the will of
God and His law, thou hast not the love of God, even though
thou endeavourest to make the world believe that thou hast.
That man who has established himself in the will of God and in
the love of God does what God loves and leaves undone what
He forbids. It is as impossible for him to do what God does
not will as it is not to do what He wills. The man whose feet
are bound cannot walk, and the man who lives in the will of
God cannot sin." 1
With no positive vision of the Divine Character, with
a conception of liberty which meant freedom to do any
thing, the mystic of the " Free Spirit " type was at the
mercy of his strongest impulses. Whatever pressed upon
him urgently and powerfully would be taken as the lead
ing of the Absolute with which he was united. He believed
himself absolutely free, because he believed that his will
had become God's will, but when he came to select a
particular thing to do, the selection would always be due
to some prepotent, some dominating impulse or idea.
By surrendering his will to an indeterminate Absolute he
thus opened wide the door for caprice and vagary.
There were two quite distinct tendencies which flowed
out of this abstract pantheism, this negative mysticism,
both of them the natural outcome of the psychological
situation just outlined. They were (i) a tendency to
asceticism and (2) a tendency to libertinism. We find
among these brotherhood and sisterhood associations
groups of both types. It is a natural inference from the
Allness of God to conclude that the finite is vain and
illusory. On this inference the " perfect man " will with-
1 Pfeiffer, Meister Eckhart, p. 232.
xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 213
draw as far as he can from all finite satisfactions and
from all dependence on illusory joys. He will mortify
his body, and kill out his vain desires. He will
approximate to his ideal of a life unmoved and un
disturbed a passive, indeterminate life in which will is
annulled. Where the Brethren of the " Free Spirit " came
under Waldensian influences they swung toward this
ascetic extreme. Ruysbroek has given a good account
of this extreme Asceticism of one branch of the Brethren
of the Free Spirit :
" We are," they say, " sent into the world to live the con
templative life, which is superior to the active life of Christ By
withdrawing into ourselves, and by separating ourselves from all
forms, all images, all particular qualities, we feel within ourselves
the eternal wisdom of God. If the Saviour had lived longer
He would have reached the same height of the contemplative
life to which we have attained." *
The other easy inference from this central doctrine
was the conclusion that any urgent impulse was Divine.
This led to Libertinism. The only basis of right and of
truth, they held, is the immediate revelation within.
Whenever an impulse to act surges up within, it is a
revelation of the Divine will. God, they believed, is no
more revealed in the moral system of Sinai than in the
present prompting of man's heart, for this, too, is Divine.
God is no more revealed in the teachings of the Mountain
Sermon than in a present urgent impulse which springs
out of man's nature, for this, too, is Divine. This view,
when pushed to its extreme consequences, left no moral
standards and no moral distinctions. Right and wrong,
high and low, were blurred. Whatever a person in his
" perfect state " wanted to do was as right as anything
else.
It is by no means certain that the members of these
societies actually carried out their dangerous doctrines
into their practical consequences, though the testimony
pointing toward immorality is too steady and universal to
1 Quoted from Jundt, op. cit. p. 99.
214 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
be ignored. 1 There would at any rate be some persons
who would take advantage of views which gave carte
blanche to the weakness of the flesh, while the religious
emotions which go with this highly -wrought type of
religion would tend, as we now know, to produce a lax
control over sexual passioa The moral standards of the
period were, too, extremely low. Some of the most
famous churchmen of the time were living lives of shock
ing immorality, and it is more than likely that there were
orgies of immorality in some groups which were affected
with " Free Spirit " ideas. The particular stories,
however, which the inquisitors tell are decidedly open to
suspicion, and it is a noteworthy fact that the Beghards
and Beguines generally had the sympathy and support of
the common people.
The stories which tell how the members of these sects,
both men and women, met by night in a cave called
" Paradise," and gave rein to their passions, are thoroughly
unreliable. They are without local details, and they are
built on the traditional model which has been used in
every epoch when men wished to besmirch and disgrace
a hated religious sect. The famous " confession " of John
de Brunn is wholly worthless as evidence against the
moral character of the Beghards. This John claimed
that he had lived the Beghard life for twenty-eight years.
At first he was put through a very stern training, under
strict discipline, until he attained "the liberty of the
Spirit," when " God was totally formed in him, and all his
movements became Divine." He now gave himself up to
" a practice of liberty " of the most disgusting sort. At the
end of twenty-eight years he was smitten with repentance,
and joined the Dominican Friars. They imposed as a
penance upon him that he should tell all the secrets
of the association to which he had belonged. His " con
fession," which is collaborated by the Inquisitor, is lurid
with revelations of depravity. The " confession " bears
1 The most damaging testimony to the erratic character and the lax life of
these sectaries is found scattered through the pages of Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, and
Ruysbroek, who were themselves profoundly mystical, but who were solidly
anchored in the reality of moral distinctions.
xi BROTHERHOOD GROUPS 215
all the marks of being the work of a " degenerate." It is
no more reliable than the testimony of a condemned witch
to the existence of witchcraft in the community. There
is a strange fascination for such persons in telling a morbid
tale, and this John knew 1 that his own standing with the
Dominicans would be improved by his ability to make out
a powerfully damaging case against their enemies the
Beghards. 1 The very methods by which the "perfect
state" was to be attained tended to produce the de
generate type, and the " revelations " which, under pressure,
were drawn out of this man of abnormal traits, seem to
me of no more value than the account of a highly wrought
man who has been to a stance. The specific incidents
which the Inquisition furnishes are not convincing, but
our study of the movement itself leaves us with a serious
impression of its moral dangers.
There is perhaps no greater religious task to be
worked out in the history of the race than the achieve
ment of true spiritual liberty. It is manifestly not enough
to destroy tradition and law and authority. Be they ever
so heavy a weight on the spirit, they are better than sheer
liberty, which is not grounded in the vision of a concrete
moral goal. " Love God and then do what thou wilt," is
St. Augustine's famous declaration of spiritual emancipa
tion. It is sound and wise, if only one puts enough
meaning into the two words " love God," but just there is
the crux. If God is for thought only an Infinite-Nothing-
in-particular, if He is as much one thing as another thing,
if He is vague, empty, and characterless, " love for Him "
will easily focus into " love for what I myself like," and
" liberty " will degenerate into meaning " liberty to do
what I with my impulses please." The great achievements
of the soul do not come along the easy negative paths.
The spirit of man is never free until the man himself is a
good man, and the supreme task of spiritual religion is
this positive task of discovering how a man like one of us
can go up into a vision of God and come back with
1 The Confession will be found in Wattenbach, " Ueber die Sekte der Briider
vom freien Geiste " (Besittungsberuhte der k. Akademie *u Berlin, 1887), pp.
S23-37-
2l6
MYSTICAL RELIGION
CHAP. XI
power for the transformation of his human desires, his
finite will, and his daily activities. The true freedom
that goes with complete love of God is a freedom that
has been won through the discipline of the spirit by
habitual conformity to the will of God, as revealed in
Christ ; in the moral message of the Scriptures ; and in
the socially tested morality of the race. It is no empty
will-lessness that is to be sought, no capricious freedom
" to do anything we like," but the " liberty of the sons of
God," who have been made free by tJte perfect Son " Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
CHAPTER XII
MEISTER ECKHART
ONE soon finds that he cannot even touch the surface
of fourteenth century mysticism in Germany without
making up accounts with Eckhart He is one of those
great watershed personalities, to be found in epoch
periods, who gathers up into himself the influences of
preceding centuries, and gives new direction to the
spiritual currents of succeeding generations. By tempera
ment and by intellectual training he was able to absorb
the mystical teaching of his great predecessors, Augustine,
Dionysius, Erigena, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas
Aquinas, and by his real endowment of genius and his
fertility of mind he was able to become the interpreter of
this mystical message to the people. He is a remarkable
example of the union of a profoundly speculative mind
and a simple childlike spirit No mystic has ever dropped
his plummet deeper into the mysteries of the Godhead,
nor has there ever been a bolder interpreter of those
mysteries in the language of the common people. He
was at the storm centre of heretical mysticism the
mysticism of the " Free Spirit " ; he pushed his specu
lations up to the perilous edge, "beyond the flaming
bounds of time and space," and for an entire generation,
with the boldest of freedom, he preached to the multitudes
in the German tongue on topics bristling with difficulties
for the orthodox faith.
The wonder is, not that the Church, after he was dead,
found twenty-eight questionable " items " in his sermons,
but rather that he was allowed all those years to preach
217
2i8 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
unhindered ; and even greater still is the wonder that the
common people of Germany in the fourteenth century
should have crowded to hear these sermons of Eckhart
sermons which would be beyond the depth of the vast
majority of those who go to hear sermons to-day ! There
has in recent years been much excellent work done on
Eckhart, especially by German and French scholars. 1
These scholarly researches have helped to rediscover this
great mystical teacher, and though they present a variety
of possible interpretations, as is bound to be the case with
a message like Eckhart's, they have brought him out of
the dark 2 and have made him once more a living person
ality, shaping the spiritual attitude of his contemporaries.
Even yet, however, we are compelled to use the words
" probably " and " about " quite frequently in telling the
story of his life.
Heinrich Eckhart was born probably at Hochheim in
Thuringia, somewhat before the year I26o. 8 He entered,
not earlier than his fifteenth year, a Dominican convent,
most likely in Erfurt. The course of studies for a
Dominican priest was arranged in ascending order, with
dogmatics at the top, and required at least nine years.
Eckhart's earlier studies were pursued at Erfurt, his higher
studies were probably carried on in the " High School "
at Cologne, where Albert the Great (1193-1280) had
1 The best of the works referred to are : Lasson, Meister Eckhart, der
Mystiker, Berlin, 1868 ; Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter,
vol. i., Leipzig, 1874; Pfeiffer, Meister Eckhart, Leipzig, 1857; Denifle,
Archiv fur Literatur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, Berlin, 1885. It
was Denifle who made the discovery of Eckhart's Latin writings, which were
practically unknown until 1880. Buttner, Meister Eckeharts Schriften und
Predigten, aus dem Mittelhochdeutschen iibersetgt und herausgegeben, erster
Band (Leipzig, 1903). Jundt, Essai sur le mysticisme sptculatif de Maitre
Eckhart, Strasbourg, 1871 ; and Panthiisme populaire by the same author,
Paris, 1875 ; Delacroix, Essai sur le mysticisme spteulatif, Paris, 1900. In
English the best contributions are those by Karl Pearson, " Meister Eckhart the
Mystic," in Mind, vol. xi. p. 20; and by Josiaji Royce, " Meister Eckhart," in
Studies of Good and Evil, New York, 1898.
a As late as 1829 Gorres, in his Introduction to the works of Suso, calls
Eckhart ' ' a wonderful figure, half veiled in the mist, and almost mythical. "
8 The questions of date and birthplace are argued at length in Jundt, Preger,
and Delacroix. Jundt strenuously holds to the position that Eckhart was born in
Strasbourg. Delacroix presents the most recently discovered data, and decides,
rightly, I think, for Hochheim. Denifle discovered a sermon in Latin preached in
Paris, which ends with this note, also in Latin: "This sermon was reported
from the lips of Eckhart of Hochheim. "
xii MEISTER ECKHART 219
just before this period been the most renowned teacher of
the age, where his influence was still paramount, and
where his great pupil Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), by
his writings, was beginning his rule over the minds of
men. Albertus, the one scholar of the Middle Ages
who received the title " Magnus," generally reserved for
great warriors, was himself a mystic and a prolific
fountain of mysticism in the generation following. He
begins his treatise De Adhaerendo Deo with these
words :
" When St. John says that God is a Spirit, and that He must
be worshipped in spirit, he means that the mind must be cleared
of all images. When thou prayest, shut thy door that is, the
doors of thy senses. Keep them barred and bolted against all
phantasms and images. Nothing pleases God more than a mind
free from all occupations and distractions. Such a mind is in a
manner transformed into God, for it can think of nothing, and
love nothing, except God ; other creatures and itself it only sees
in God. He who penetrates into himself, and so transcends
himself, ascends truly to God. He whom I love and desire is
above all that is sensible, and all that is intelligible ; sense and
imagination cannot bring us to Him, but only the desire of a
pure heart. This brings us unto the darkness of the mind,
whereby we can ascend to the contemplation even of the mystery
of the Trinity. Do not think about the world, nor about thy
friends, nor about the past, present, or future; but consider
thyself to be outside of the world and alone with God, as if thy
soul were already separated from the body and had no longer
any interest in peace or war, or the state of the world. Leave
thy body and fix thy gaze on the uncreated Light Let nothing
come between thee and God, The soul in contemplation views
the world from afar off, just as, when we proceed to God by the
way of abstraction, we deny to Him, first of all, bodily and
sensible attributes, then intelligible qualities, and, lastly, that
being (esse) which would keep Him among created things."
This is mysticism of the extreme negative type, and it
was teaching which profoundly influenced Eckhart and
his group of followers.
Eckhart was certainly a student in the great school of
theology in Paris in I3O2. 1 But already, before the
1 He is enrolled as ' ' Brother Aychardus, a German " (Teutonicus).
220
period of study in Paris, he had been elected Prior of the
Dominican convent at Erfurt and Vicar for the district of
Thuringia. It is believed by many that his famous
Treatise on Distinction was written during the Erfurt
period. If so, it is the earliest work we have from him,
and the first glimpse we get of his inner life. It deals
with the distinctions between the essential and the
unessential. The treatise lays great emphasis on the
fact that the essential thing which characterises a man's
will is the spirit of it rather than the overt deed which
the man does. There is no virtue in the mere act of
fasting nor in the fact that one has a heavenly rapture.
" Even if," he says, " one were in a rapture, like Paul's,
and there were a sick man who needed help, I think it
would be far better to come out of the rapture and show
love by serving the needy one." There is already here
in this early venture of his spirit that " sincere tone of
personal experience " which characterises him to the end
of his life, joined with that profound penetration of mind
which is so evident in the work of his mature years.
The years of study in Paris brought him the title, by
which he has ever since been called, " Meister," but he
does not appear to have been at all impressed with
the art of threshing theological straw, in which too
many schoolmen indulged, or with the value of mere
head learning. There are scanty references in the
sermons to events in his own life, but there are at
least three passages that give a clue to his estimates of
scholastic learning. He says in one place : " I was asked
in the school at Paris how one can completely fulfil the
Scripture, then I answered, ' He who would fulfil the
Scriptures must see to it that he does not miss God in
his own soul.' " l And again in another sermon, which
was almost certainly an early one, he says : " There are
many masters among us who have used the Bible for
thirty years or more and who understand it now in its
unity as little as a cow or a horse would." 2 There is a
third passage preserved among the " sayings " of Eckhart,
1 Pfeiffer, op. cit. p. 352, line 27. 2 Preger, op. cit. p. 335.
xii MEISTER ECKHART 221
which runs : " If I were looking for a master of the
Scriptures, I should seek him in Paris in the schools, but
if I wished to learn about the perfect life, he could not
teach me about that." 1 On leaving Paris, probably in
1303, he was chosen Provincial-Prior of the Dominican
Order for Saxony. His territory stretched from Thuringia
to the North Sea, and from Utrecht to Dorpat in Livonia,
and included fifty-one monasteries and nine nunneries.
In 1307 he was chosen Vicar-General for Bohemia, and
also re-elected Provincial-Prior for Saxony. In 1311 he
returned to his studies in Paris, and now, with his fully
developed powers, he seems to have devoted himself to
mastering the men of earlier times who were kindred in
spirit to him. At least when he left Paris for his great
career as a preacher in Strasbourg, he certainly carried
away with him as a part of himself the mystical world-
view of Dionysius and Erigena which he was to translate
in scores of sermons to the people of Strasbourg. This
city was at this period the foremost religious centre in
Germany. Every type of Christian society and every
form of piety was to be found in Strasbourg. There
were seven Dominican convents in the city. Scholars had
gathered there, and so, too, had the heretical sects which
were disturbing the peace of the Church. It was a rule
of the Dominican Order that the intellectual and spiritual
training of the sisters of the Order should be in the care of
" highly learned brothers," and it is probable that Eckhart
would be one of these " highly learned brothers " who
would teach and instruct and counsel the " sisters " of the
Strasbourg convents. There is a curious poem, written
by a Dominican nun of this period, which tells how " wise
Master Eckhart speaks to us about Nothingness. He
who does not understand that, in him has never shone
the light Divine." 2 This poem is only one indication
among many that Eckhart preached much to the convent
women of the city, and we know that there was at this
period a predisposition in the convents for mystical teach
ing, which would make Eckhart a favourite preacher.
1 Pfeiffer, p. 599. * Preger, voL ii. p. 138.
222 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
There is a very famous account of " Swester Katrei "
Sister Katharine called in the narrative " Eckhart's
Strasbourg Daughter." This narrative is published by
Pfeiffer (p. 448) among Eckhart's writings. It is an
extreme example of morbid quietistic mysticism, running
over the line of safety into pathological states. This
spiritual " daughter," who is instructed by her confessor
in the difficult mystical path to perfection, finally outstrips
the confessor himself, attains to the goal of perfection,
and then in her turn becomes instructor to her former
spiritual " father." She makes the attainment of spiritual
indifference the mark of perfection. She says that " not
even desire of heaven should tempt a good man toward
activity." On one occasion she became cataleptic, and
was being carried to burial for dead. Her confessor,
just in time, discovered that it was trance instead of
death, and awoke her. Katharine exclaimed : " Now I
am satisfied, for I have been dead all through."
It seems, however, improbable that " Sister Katharine "
is a real person, or that this account is to be taken for
biographical history. The " story," is most likely one of
many similar pieces of " tendency " fiction, written to
show how the priest or confessor needs to learn perfection
from a spiritual lay-person. This was a favourite idea
with the " Friends of God," as we shall see, and they
produced many stories of this type. It is probably
written later than Eckhart's time, though it is possible
that there was some actual experience in Eckhart's life
which furnished the nucleus of the story, and it may throw
some light on his convent work, but it must not be taken
as an exposition of his mystical teaching. 1
The Beghards and Beguines of Strasbourg were at
this time " suspected," and under the watch and guard of
the officials of the Church. It would be extremely
interesting to know what attitude Eckhart took toward
his fellow mystics, but unfortunately we are largely in the
dark on the subject. Karl Schmidt has endeavoured
to show that the great mystical preacher had close
1 See Delacroix, op. cit. p. 145.
xii MEISTER ECKHART 223
relations with the Beghards, but there are few historical
facts to support his claim. 1 The assertions made by
Preger to prove that Eckhart's sympathy with these
mystical heretics brought upon him the stern displeasure
of the bishop are equally without foundation. 2 It is
quite possible that Eckhart's views underwent a change
as his experience enlarged and as he saw the moral
danger involved in the teaching of the sects, and that, as
he matured, he pushed down to a more solid moral
foundation. There is a passage in one of his Strasbourg
sermons 8 which is in hearty sympathy with some
religious people, who seem to have views much like the
Brethren of the Free Spirit. It is as follows :
" That person who has renounced all visible creatures and in
whom God performs His will completely that person is both
God and man. His body is so completely penetrated with
Divine light and with the soul essence which is of God that he
can properly be called a Divine man. For this reason, my
children, be kind to these men, for they are strangers and aliens
in the world. Those who wish to come to God have only to
model their lives after these men ; no one can know them unless
he has within him the same light, the light of truth. Those
who are on the way to the same God and have not yet arrived
will do well to become acquainted with these people who have
attained."
In a later sermon, however, we have this beautiful
passage which shows that Eckhart has grasped the
distinction between false liberty and true liberty :
"The perfect spirit cannot will anything except what God
wills, and that is not slavery but true freedom. There are
people who say, if I have God and His love, I may do what I
like. That is a false idea of liberty. When thou wishest a
thing contrary to God and His law thou hast not the love of
God in thee." *
He says again :
" There are those who do not consider sin as sin, who do
not practise Christian virtues, who do not know Christ in the
1 See Schmidt. Theol. Stvdien und Kritiken, pp. 666-738.
a Preger has confounded our Meister with another brother Eckhart (see
Delacroix, op. cit. p. 140).
* Pfeiffer, p. 127, line 38 ff. * Ibid. p. 232, line 25 ff.
224 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
nobility of His nature, and who prate of intimate life in the
bosom of God although in fact that life is foreign to them." l
Here is a splendid passage which has the right moral
ring, and in which Eckhart shows himself to be wholly
out of the bog of Antinomianism :
"It is necessary to be on the guard against false wisdom,
against believing that one can sin without any fear of con
sequences. One is never free of consequences until he is free of
sin. When one is free of sin, then only do the consequences
of sin disappear. As long as one is able to sin, the distinction
of right and wrong must be scrupulously maintained." 2
Eckhart had a second great period of influence in
Cologne, whither he went, perhaps, about 1320. The
immediate intellectual and spiritual stimulus of his
teaching in Cologne was very marked. There gathered
about him here a group of disciples who caught his spirit,
and who taught in his " manner " to such an extent that
we cannot always be sure, with a given sermon, whether
it is from the Master himself or from one of his disciples.
I shall speak of Eckhart's final collision with the guardians
of orthodoxy and of the close of his life after I have
presented an outline of his teaching.
One of the old scribes has given us a couplet which
reads :
" This is Meister Eckhart
From whom God kept nothing hid."
He was the profoundest of all German mystics, and is
much the most difficult to interpret, but we shall find
him in the main following the lines of thought which are
now familiar to us in the great systems of Plotinus,
Dionysius, and Erigena. In his profoundly original style
of speech we shall hear again of the undifferentiated
Godhead, the Divine Procession, and of the soul's return
home.
The first point which must be grasped is the dis
tinction between " God " and the " Godhead." There is
and this is the core of Eckhart's entire doctrine
1 Jundt, op. cit. (Appendix, Eckhart's Sermons, p. 255).
2 Pfeiffer, p. 664, line 6.
xii MEISTER ECKHART 225
there is a central mystery which for ever lies beyond the
range of knowledge. He whom we call " God " is the
Divine Nature manifested and revealed in personal
character, but behind this Revelation there must be a
Revealer One who makes the revelation and is the
Ground of it, just as behind ourself-as-known there must
be a self-as-knower a deeper ego which knows the me
and its processes. Now the Ground out of which the
revelation proceeds is the central mystery is the
Godhead. It cannot be revealed because it is the
Ground of every revelation, just as the self-as-knower
cannot be known because it is precisely that which does
the knowing, and this cannot itself be caught as object.
This unrevealable Godhead is the Source and Fount
of all that is, and at the same time the consummation of
all reality, but it is above all contrasts and distinctions.
It is neither this nor that, for, says Eckhart, in the
Godhead, " all things are one thing " all the fulness of
the creatures (i.e. created things) can as little express the
Godhead as a drop of water can express the sea. 1
" All that is in the Godhead is one. Therefore we can say
nothing. He is above all names, above all nature. God works ;
so doth not the Godhead. Therein they are distinguished in
working and not working. The end of all things is the hidden
Darkness of the eternal Godhead, unknown and never to be
known."
Nobody has gone farther than Eckhart in the direction
of removing all anthropomorphic traits from God, ije.
the Godhead, but the result is that He is left with no
thinkable characteristics. He is not an " object " for
human understanding. He utterly transcends knowledge,
and everything one says of Him is untrue. " Be still,"
he says in a sermon, 2 " and prate not of God (i.e. the
Godhead), for whatever you prate in words about Him is
a lie and is sinful." " If I say God is good, it is not true ;
for what is good can grow better ; what can grow better
1 Pfeiffer, p. 173. This shows that Eckhart is not properly called a pantheist,
for he never holds that the sum of all things is God ; in fact in the above passage
he says precisely the opposite of that.
2 Pfeiffer, p. 319.
Q
226 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
can grow best. Now these three things (good, better,
best) are far from God, for He is above all," i.e. all
such distinctions. No word that voices distinctions or
characteristics, then, may be spoken of the Godhead.
Eckhart's favourite names are : " the Wordless Godhead " ;
" the Nameless Nothing " ; " the Naked Godhead " ; " the
Immovable Rest " ; " the Still Wilderness, where no one
is at home." All mystics have insisted that God in His
essence is beyond " knowledge," for " knowledge " must
deal with a finite " this," or a finite " that," while God in
His absolute reality must be above any " this " or any
" that." Eckhart's " nameless Nothing " is only a bold
way of saying that the Godhead must be above everything
that limits or defines above everything that can be
" thought," or envisaged. As he himself says : " In the
Naked Godhead there is never form nor idea," i.e. there
is nothing thought can seize. " He is an absolute, pure,
clear One " " the impenetrable Darkness of the eternal
Godhead." The unoriginated Being, the Ground of
all that is, is the central mystery, and he who would
fathom this mystery must transcend knowledge, must
have recourse to some other form of experience than
that which defines and differentiates as the knowing
process does.
The reader who finds himself somewhat dazed in this
height of speculation would run up into the same difficulty
himself, if he should undertake strenuously to think out
what is involved in the word Infinite which he, without
giving it much thought, applies to God. He supposes
that he glorifies God by calling Him "infinite" or
" absolute," but in doing it he has, whether he realizes it
or not, raised Him above " knowledge " and has " reduced "
Him to an empty indeterminate abstraction which for
thought is as truly " nothing " as it is " everything."
" Infinite Being " is the emptiest of all conceptions. It is,
however, a method of thought by no means confined to
ancient mystics. Few of us, like Eckhart, have either
the desire or the intellectual power to think our tJioughts
through to the bottom. We avoid many difficulties because
xii MEISTER ECKHART 227
we do not feel the necessity of universalizing our concepts.
We rest satisfied with the bare words, and save ourselves
a deal of trouble by not asking the further questions
which are involved in our words about God !
To return to Eckhart, God the personal God is the
self realization, or revelation, of the Godhead, the forth
coming of the Godhead into personalization and mani
festation. The Godhead is the " unnatured Nature" i.e.
the unoriginated Reality, the Ground of all revelation ;
God is the " natured Nature" i.e. the Divine expressed in
Personal Form. The Godhead is the Wordless One ;
God is the uttered Word. The procession of God, in
Eckhart's system, is by no means the same thing as the
Divine Emanations in the system of Plotinus and his
followers. For Eckhart there is no mere " overflow " of
the Godhead his idea is much subtler than that The
forthcoming of God is in this wise. The Godhead, " the
unnatured Nature," in an " Eternal Now," beholds
Himself, i.e. becomes an object of consciousness to
Himself, and thus He becomes revealed to Himself. This
is the beginning of the process of revelation. This is
called " the begetting of the Son," the uttering of the
Divine " Word." When God becomes conscious of Him
self, there is differentiation into subject and object, or, as
Eckhart says, into Father and Son. But we must not
suppose that it happened at a temporal moment, before
which the Son was unborn and God was not yet God.
That view is too crude. Eckhart insists that the Son is
eternally begotten ; " He beholds himself in an Eternal
Now " ; " God is ever working in one Eternal Now, and
His working is a giving birth to His Son. He bears
Him at every instant." 1
The divine differentiation into personality and self-
expression is thus no accident, no capricious overflow.
It belongs to the very constitution of the Godhead to
become self-conscious, *>. to be a Father with a Son. 2
This is the genesis of the personal God, for there can be
1 Pfeiffer. p. 254.
a It is only another way of saying that God is Love, for if He is Love He
must eternally beget a Son there must be a real "Other " for Love to be real.
228 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
no personality until there is differentiation into subject
and object, until there is a sundering into "Self" and
" Other." Instead of " the Wilderness, where no one is at
home," we now have Father and Son united in the bond
of love, which is personalized as the Holy Spirit. The
Trinity is thus the eternal process of the Divine Self-
consciousness. So also is the World an eternal process.
Creation is not a temporal act any more than the procession
of the Trinity is. As soon as God beholds Himself in that
Eternal Now, He beholds within Himself the forms or
Ideas of the entire universe all that has essential
reality in the universe. In fact for Eckhart, the Son, the
Word, stands for the total unity of the Divine Thought,
the forthcoming of God into expression, the utterance of
Himself, so that he often calls God's thinking the
archetypal forms, or Ideas, " the begetting of the Son."
These archetypal forms, the expressions of God's thought,
are " the natured Nature," and these forms, projected into
space and time, are our world of nature the " world of
creatures." God is like a perfect architect who thinks
his structure and it is done. There are no stages in it,
no before and after. God thinks and Creation is. The
world which is thus uttered into being has two faces,
one turned out toward differentiation and multiplicity
and the other turned in toward God and unity in very
fact all reality is in God, and " if God drew back His own
into Himself, all the creatures would become nothing at
all." J The real world is the world of archetypes divine
Ideas and that world is not created, it always is.
" God," he says, " creates the world and all things in an
ever-present now " (Got schopfet die welt und elliu Dine
in eine gegenwurtigen Nun). So that by a temporal
regress we should never get back to a time when God
existed alone as a naked Godhead, for without the Word,
i.e. without the Son, without the expression of Himself,
God would not be God. This Divine procession is
therefore not an " event " in time, and this temporal
world, characterized by multiplicity and change, this world,
1 Pfeiffer, p. 51.
xii MEISTER ECKHART 229
in sundered heres and nows, is only a show world, a shadow
of the Real the Real read through the goggles of space
and time. 1 " In the Godhead," he says, " there is no
number for He is One, but in time and space there are
divisions parts. If my face were eternal, and I held
it before a time-mirror, it would be received by the
mirror in time, yet it would in itself be eternal." So,
too, the real world is an eternal unity in God ; the
temporal world is a show or reflection, but a reflection
of an eternal reality.
We have found that Eckhart starts out with the
assumption of an unnatured Nature in God His Ground
and Essence. So also, when he turns from God to man,
he starts out with the assumption that there is in us an
unnatured nature the essence and ground of the soul.
" There is in the soul something which is above the soul,
divine, simple, rather unnamed than named." This
unoriginated essence Eckhart calls by various names,
though he insists that names are of little value. He
calls it "Fiinklein," i.e. "Spark"; " Kleine Ganster,"
or " Little Glimmer of the Soul " ; " The Soul's Eye " ;
" The Inmost Man " ; " the Ground of the Soul " ;
" Synteresis" i.e. Moral Conscience, and " Active Reason."
But, as Eckhart tells us, names help us very little ; we
must try to grasp what he has to teach us of the
real nature of the soul, for it is Eckhart's main contri
bution to mysticism. In his lower consciousness (t.e.
passive reason) man is dependent on the experience of
the senses. His knowledge is mediated by images, and
is always marked by a here and a now. It is necessarily
" in part," in " sundered portions, and in divers manners." If
one thought is present, any other thought must stay out
and wait its turn. This lower consciousness is able to deal
only with the particular and finite its sphere is the
show world, where experience never gets beyond the this
and that. It is this lower consciousness of ours which ties
us down to a stage of mutability, a welter and flux of
1 Karl Pearson has pointed out that there are many points in which Eckhart's
system resembles Kant's. For both, the real world is not in time or space, the
world of appearance is a show world.
230 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
" images." The life in this lower stage is always restless
and unsatisfied, for it is endeavouring to anchor upon
fleeting, vanishing things. " If I had everything that I
could desire, and my finger ached, I should not have
everything, for I should have a pain in my finger and,
as long as that remained, I should not enjoy full
comfort. Bread is comfortable for men when they are
hungry ; but when they are thirsty they find no more
comfort in bread than a stone. So it is with clothes ;
they are welcome to men when they are cold, but when
they are too hot clothes give them no comfort. And so
it is with all the creatures (i.e. things in the show world).
The comfort which they promise is only on the surface,
like froth, and it always carries with it a want." 1
The " way " to peace, to reality, to God is complete
renunciation of this world of finite objects, this temporal
experience through images of the now and here. The
soul must die to " creature knowledge " before it can be
born to the blessedness of mystical contemplation.
Nobody ever took the beatitude of " the poor in spirit "
more seriously than Eckhart.
"A man shall become as truly poor," he says, "and as free
from his creature will as he was when he was born. And I say
to you, by the eternal truth, that as long as ye desire to fulfil the
will of God, and have any desire after eternity and God, so long
are ye not truly poor. He alone hath true spiritual poverty who
wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing."
The soul must withdraw not only from possessions and
" works," but it must also withdraw from all sense
experience, from everything in time and space, from every
image of memory, every idea of the understanding into an
experience above this lower form of consciousness an
experience in which "all things are present in one unified
now and here." 2
Such an experience is possible, he believes, because the
soul possesses inalienably a faculty of higher consciousness.
1 Pfeiffer, p. 300. I have used the translation made by W. R. Inge, in Light,
Life, and Love.
a Alle miteinander in eime Blicke und in eime Punte " (Pfeiffer, p. 20).
xii MEISTER ECKHART 231
This higher consciousness is the Active or Creative Reason.
There are running through Eckhart's writings two views
which are never quite reconciled by him. Sometimes the
Divine " Spark," by which the soul rises to " new birth "
and to contemplation, in " an Eternal Now," is thought
of as the unoriginated essence, or ground, of the soul.
It remains in the Godhead, it has never " come out "
from God ; it is the point in common between the soul
and its Divine Ground. Eckhart says in a bold passage :
" The eye with which I see God is the same eye with
which He sees me." At other times he speaks as though
the soul's "Spark" were a created faculty, above all the
other faculties of man. It has come from God, to be
sure, but it is not the identical essence of God it is the
centre of a separate personality, and will remain separate
for ever. In a famous sermon, which he says he must
have preached, even though nobody had been present, and
he had had only a stick for hearer, he uses a fine
illustration of the reflection of a mirror to show how " God
goes out of Himself into Himself." He says :
" I take a vessel of water and put a mirror in it and place it
in the sunlight. The sun sends out its light without losing any
of its substance, and the reflection of the mirror sends back sun
light. Sun and reflection are the same thing. So it is with
God. God with His own nature, His essence, His Godhead is
in the soul, and yet He is not the soul (i.e. He is infinitely more
than the soul). The soul sends back a divine reflection to God,
so that they both are the same light. The Word or expression
of God becomes God." x
He apparently taught in his earlier period that the
Active Reason, or Soul's Eye, is a God-given Light, a
spark which has come from God, and by which the soul
can return to God, a faculty which brings man face to face
with God. It is so near to God that it makes with Him
" an inseparably unified one." At this period of his
teaching the "Spark" is still Reason, it is that in the
soul into which God shines and which reflects Him back
to Himself. In his later teaching the " Spark " is a
1 Pfeiffer, p. 180-81.
232 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
hidden higher Ground of the soul, above Reason (for
Reason knows before and after). It is thought of as an
unoriginated essence, beyond all distinctions of before
and after, a naked, nameless entity, stripped of change,
bare of qualities, freed of all desire, transcending Reason
and will. " It is," he says, " higher than knowledge,
higher than love, higher than grace, for in all these there
is distinction." This peak of the soul is one with the
Godhead, and would remain unlost, even if the soul were
in hell. We need not, however, make much of the
difference between the earlier and the later teaching. In
any case Eckhart holds that at bottom (or at top) the
soul and God belong together. " The Father," he says,
"knows no difference between thee and Himself" "The
Father makes me Himself and Himself me." l The
return of the soul to its Divine centre, to its " Spark," is
blessedness is salvation. Eckhart calls it " the begetting
of the Son " in man. 2 It is the process by which the soul
gets free of sense and lower consciousness and rises to an
immediate experience of God. This experience comes
as soon as the soul withdraws into its Ground, for there
God and the soul are one. He who would enter into
the inmost essence of the Godhead, and come into union
with That which is above changes and determinations, must
of necessity rise above " knowledge." So long as the
soul dwells at the level of finite distinctions it has not
come into its own highest region nor to the point where
it could find the undifferentiated nameless Godhead. But
by a Divine birth the soul may rise to a mystical insight,
which is above knowledge and which is union an
experience beyond subject-object So only does the soul
escape from the show-and-shadow world. He only can
arrive at reality who can rise to the Ever-present Now in
which all things are together. "All the truth which any
master ever taught with his own reason and understanding,
1 Pfeiffer, pp. 291 and 205.
2 There is a double "begetting of the Son" in Eckhart. He uses the
expression for the process by which God goes out of Himself into a natured nature,
and for the process by which the soul rises into union with God. It is thus a
circular process.
xii MEISTER ECKHART 233
or ever can teach to the last day, will not in the least
explain this knowledge" 1
Again and again he says that, when the soul rises into
its own Ground, it becomes one with the Godhead in an
Eternal Now. The twain become a single One. He even
says that then in this union God brings to birth His
Son in Himself and in me \ " I am so one with Him that
He makes me as though I were not parted from Himself,
and the Holy Ghost takes his origin from me as from
God since I am in God. If He did not take His birth
from me, He would not take it from God, for God makes
me as though in no wise separate from Him." 2 In
another sermon he says : " When I attain this blessedness
of union, then all things are in me and in God, and where
I am there God is, and where God is there am I." s But
he still does not go over into sheer pantheism the soul's
identity is not lost in God. " I might ask," he says, " how
it stands with the soul that is lost in God ? Does the
soul find itself or not ? To this I will answer as it appears
to me, that the soul finds itself at the point where every
rational being understands himself with himself. Although
he sinks and sinks in the eternity of the Divine essence,
yet he can never reach the ground (i.e. bottom). There
fore God has left a little point wherein the soul turns
back upon itself and knows itself to be a creature." 4
It is true, as various critics have pointed out, that
Eckhart does not clear himself sufficiently from the charge
of pantheism, but he does not quite fall into pantheism.
He makes personality inherent in the very nature of God,
and equally inherent in the nature of man it belongs
to the very nature of the soul " to reflect itself and to call
itself a Person." 6 Eckhart says that when Paul was
caught up into the third heaven all his " faculties " were
absorbed and abolished, so that he knew God with the
essence of his soul, i.e. with his inmost nature, or spark of
being " it was not a temporal consciousness." When he
came back to the world again nothing was forgotten, but
1 Pfeiffer, p. 10. 8 Ibid. p. 55. * Ibid. p. 32.
4 Ibid. p. 387. ' See Preger. pp. 419-20.
234 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
the entire experience was so deep within the ground of
the soul that reason, or the " faculties," could not reach it
and draw it forth. To get it he had to retire back into
himself, but the experience had eternally become a part of
himself, therefore he says neither death nor any other
thing can separate me from what I have experienced in
myself} Personality is real from all eternity, and even
at the highest point of the soul's " union " with God,
personality remains unlost "the soul still finds itself."
This is not fairly called pantheism. 2
His treatment of sin, in similar fashion, is up near the
perilous edge of pantheism, but he still keeps on the
hither side of it. There are passages in his Sermons in
which distinctions are lost, and God is in everything
" from angel to spider," and yet there are other passages
which imply that sin is a positive fact. In his positive
view sin is self-will. It is the setting of the individual
will against the Divine will. The " disease of sin," " the
blindness of sin," he says, comes from " self-love " ; " all
love of the world springs out of self-love." Sin is not
merely an affair of the flesh ; it is an attitude of will, for
even Lucifer, who was pure spirit, fell and is eternally
fallen. Everything turns on the attitude of the will.
Here are some of the scattered sayings : " If your will is
right, you cannot go wrong " ; " With the will I can do
everything " ; " There is nothing evil but the evil will " ;
" Love resides in the will the more will, the more love." 8
This attitude of the will, which is the ground of sin, has
its origin in the lower consciousness, but it may spread
and become the death of the soul by separating the soul
from God. 4 The reality of moral distinction persists
1 Pfeiffer, p. 8 (see also Preger, p. 421).
2 It must, however, be said that Eckhart saves himself from pantheism by
shying away from the logic of his system. There are many passages which go
fearlessly on to the conclusion that everything in the universe is a differentiation
of the Godhead and has no reality "out of" the Godhead, but he occasionally
tempers his doctrine and introduces distinctions which are not involved in his
premises. There are throughout his system two strands which are never quite
woven together. His intellect carries him straight on to a monistic system in
which God is all ; his heart keeps him in sympathy with the beliefs of the
Christian Church.
3 Quoted from Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 161. 4 Pfeiffer, p. 215.
xii MEISTER ECKHART 235
eternally. There is a "last judgment," though it is not
as people imagine it : " Every man pronounces his own
sentence, as he shows himself here in his essence so will
he remain everlastingly." l Sin, he says, strips away from
the soul all its graces, so that when a deadly sin takes
place '* a man becomes bare of all grace." I have already
quoted a passage in which Eckhart insists that there is
no freedom possible for the soul so long as sin is there
" One never becomes free until he is free from sin, for as
long as one is capable of sinning the distinction between
good and evil must be rigorously maintained." !
Like all mystics of this type, Eckhart does not find it
easy to make the historical plan of salvation fit organically
into the mystical process, by which the soul comes into
immediate union with God by " bringing forth the Son "
within itself. He, however, insists on the reality of the
incarnation, and declares that the expression of God in
the Son was an eternal necessity of the Divine Nature,
and this self-revelation of God would have been made
even if Adam had never sinned. This view, so far, fits
his whole conception of the procession of God. When,
however, he comes to deal with the atonement he " adopts "
the language of evangelical theology, but does not try to
square it with his mystical process. One of his great
atonement passages will be found in his sermon on John
vi. 44 : " No one can come unto Me except My Father
draw him." 3 He says Christ speaks to God and says :
" Heart-dear Father, when Thou couldst not forgive the sin of
the world through the sacrifices that were offered to Thee under
the old covenant, then said I, ' My Father, I, the only begotten
Son of Thy heart, who in all things am like Thee in Godhead,
in whom Thou hast hid all the treasures and riches of Divine
love, I go to the cross, in order that I may become a living
sacrifice in Thy Divine sight, that Thou mayst turn the eyes of
Thy fatherly pity, and see me, Thy only begotten Son, and
behold my Blood flowing from my wounds, and sheathe that
fiery sword by which in the hand of the Cherubim Thou hast
closed the way to Paradise, so that all who repent and make
1 Pfeiffer, p. 471. a Ibid. p. 664 (see Jundt, op. cit. p. 96).
* Ibid. pp. 216-20 (see especially p. 219).
236 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
atonement for their sins in me may go in there in perfect
freedom.' "
Eckhart also speaks of Christ and this view fits well
in with his mysticism as the representative of Collective
humanity the ideal Man, in Whom all men have their
unity and reality, so that when a person rises to the
ground and reality of his essential being he partakes of
Christ and becomes one with Him and so one with God :
" All creatures that have flowed out from God must
become united into one Man, who comes again into the
unity Adam was in before he fell. This is accomplished
in Christ. According to this truth all creatures are One
Man, and this Adam is God (Christ the Son of God)." l
However profound and complicated Eckhart's metaphysics
may appear, his practical religion is as simple and straight
forward as that of the popular saints. One would expect,
as he toils through the tangled passages which tell about
the " nameless Nothing " of the Godhead, and which call
for an Abgeschiedenheit or separation of soul from every
thing sensible, imaginable, or conceivable, that the outcome
would be a quietism amounting to absolute self-death ;
one would suppose, as he follows the great mystic in his
cry of " vanity " toward all things temporal and mutable
until not a rag of human merit is left in heart, mind, or
will, so that nothing " good " can come in man unless God
becomes the centre of his being, and wills through him,
in place of his own will, that this finite life would be
rendered wholly abortive in " a fascinated gazing " toward
the blank of Reality " yonder." Quite the contrary is the
fact. Eckhart was a highly practical man, who did his
day's work with fidelity and with telling effect. He
eminently preserved his balance, and he kept his spiritual
perspective healthy. While insisting that no temporal
thing may be put in the place of the soul's own goal, he
does not neglect to make proper use of the things that
are now and here. The world of " creatures " is, after all,
a Divine expression of the Word of God, but we need to
remember that God " has given every gift, which He has
1 Preger, vol. i. p. 427.
xii MEISTER ECKHART 237
given in heaven or in earth, in order that He may be
able to give us the one gift Himself." l
He attaches little importance to forms, rites, or cere
monies. There is only one way to a spiritual height to
a spiritual victory the soul itself must rise to it and
achieve it. Nobody has more strongly insisted that
spiritual results come by spiritual processes not by
magic, not by easy requests : " I will never pray to God
to give Himself to me. I will pray Him to make me
purer. If I were purer, God must give Himself to me of
His own nature and sink into me." 8
"Some people," he says, "are for seeing God with their
eyes, as they can see a cow (which thou lovest for the milk, and
for the cheese, and for thine own profit). Thus do all those
who love God for the sake of outward riches or of inward
comfort ; they do not love aright, but seek only themselves and
their own advantage."
The whole value of the sacrament depends not on the
use of bread and wine but on the attitude of the soul.
The partaking of something physical can effect nothing.
If a spiritual condition is to be attained the soul must go
beyond the sacrament : " When I rise above the sacrament
I experience God, and become actually changed into that
which I experience." a Even the historical Christ is
thought of only as a symbol of the divine humanity to
which our souls should rise : " When the soul brings
forth the Son, it is happier than Mary." 4
But the very fact that events in time and space are
symbolic, and point the soul toward the reality which
they symbolize, keeps Eckhart from being over-ascetic.
He will not stop short of God in His absolute wholeness,
but he will use " broken manifestations " of Him as far as
they will carry him. The goal is union in the Godhead,
but everything on the way may be made a help toward the
final attainment. He has a human interest in the people
about him ; he feels their sorrows and needs, and is active
in his sympathies. He lays down a noble principle,
1 Pfeiffer, p. 569. * Ibid. p. 290.
* Ibid. p. 592. * Ibid. p. 290.
238 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
which he himself also practised : " What a man takes in
by contemplation he must pour out in love." In the
same practical fashion he puts Martha above Mary, i.e.
activity above contemplation. " Mary hath chosen the
good part, that is, she is striving to be as holy as her
sister. Mary is still at school : Martha hath learnt her
lesson. It is better to feed the hungry than to see even
such visions as St. Paul saw." 1 The same practical
truth is set forth in a fragment of a sermon in Pfeiffer's
collection (p. 553):
" If a man were in rapture such as Paul experienced, and if
he knew of a person who needed something of him, I think it
would be far better out of love to leave the rapture and serve the
needy man."
He puts great value on the discipline of sorrow, and
finds in suffering a revelation of Divine reality :
" I say that after God there was never anything that is nobler
than sorrow, then surely the Father from heaven would have
granted that nobler gift to His Son Jesus Christ. But we find
that, except for His humanity, there was nothing of which Christ
had so much as sorrow. . . . Yes, I say, were there anything
nobler than sorrow, then therewith would God have redeemed
man. . . . But we do not find that Christ was ever an hour
upon earth without sorrow; therefore sorrow must be above
all things." z
The true victory of the soul is not won by withdrawal
from the struggles incident to life, but by the cultivation
of patience and endurance in the struggle an overcoming
of the world by living through it :
" That a man has a restful and peaceful life in God is good.
That a man endures a painful life in patience, that is better ; but
that a man has his rest in the midst of a painful life, that is best
of all." 3
He urges his friends not to divide life into two com
partments the sacred and the secular but to maintain
the same disposition in the crowd, amid the unrest and
1 Quoted from Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 161.
8 Pfeiffer, p. 357 ; Royce's translation in Studies of Good and Evil, p. 286.
8 Pfeiffer, p. 221.
xii MEISTER ECKHART 239
manifoldness of the world, which they have in church or
in their cells, 1 and to realize that it is just as important
to practise faithfully a small duty as one which the
people call great Those among his hearers who missed
the meaning of his lofty flights of speculation must have
listened with their heart as he told them that God was
not only Father but Mother too, and as he repeated in
fourteenth century language the gospel of Christ to the
poor:
" Look you, the most ignorant and the lowest of you all can
obtain God's grace, in ever richer fulness, till he comes to
perfection he can obtain it before he leaves this church, yea,
before I finish this sermon 5 as sure as God lives and I am
a man." *
In a tumultuous age, revolting from dry formalism and
empty orthodoxy, it was a great thing to have a man tell
his hearers that the God Whom they missed in the Church
they could find in their own souls.
The doctrines which he preached in German to the
common people he also taught in Latin to scholars and
theologians, and it seems extraordinary that he should
have taught so many years unmolested. It indicates
that there was a freedom of thought allowed in the
fourteenth century which many historians of the Church
have hardly suspected. There is no indication that
Eckhart's " soundness " came under suspicion before the
year 1326.* The first complaint against him was brought
by the Archbishop of Cologne in the year just given.
The complaint was taken up by Nicholas of Strasbourg,
who was friendly to Eckhart. Nicholas was Vicar-
General to the Dominican Order and "Visitor" for his
province, having been entrusted by the Pope in 1323
with the oversight of the convents of Germany. Early
in 1327 he took up the complaint against Eckhart,
deciding that the archbishop had no jurisdiction over
Dominican preachers, and carrying the whole matter by
1 Pieiffer, p. 547. * Ibid. p. 187.
8 The "brother Eckhart," Prior of Frankfort, suspected of heresy in 1306,
cannot be identified with our Meister Eckhart
240 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
appeal to the papal chair. Eckhart, in his own name,
took a similar course, denying the right of the archbishop
to interfere with his teaching, and asking for a papal
decision. On the 1 3th of February of the same year
he preached to the people of Cologne, affirming in his
sermon the purity and soundness of his faith, express
ing his horror of all heresy and immorality and offering
to retract everything he had ever said that conflicted
with the doctrine of the Church. We learn from this
sermon that the two charges formulated against him
were: (i) that "his little finger has created every
thing," and (2) that " there is something uncreated in
the soul." The first statement in its literal meaning
is of course absurd and paradoxical, but Eckhart did
make free use of such paradoxical language, and it
is an over-bold and vigorous way of stating the unity
of God and man in creative activity which in many
passages he affirms. The truth of the second charge
is proved by scores of passages in Eckhart's writings.
His sermon is a lame attempt to explain away the
difficulty by putting an allegorical meaning on the words
and by endeavouring to show how they square with
popular orthodoxy. He reveals at this crisis a very
submissive, almost naive, spirit. But I see no reason
for calling him cowardly, or for supposing that he had
no convictions. He never explicitly realized that there
was inconsistency between his mysticism and Church
doctrine, and he had not remotely conceived it a part
of his mission to set himself against the authority of the
Church. We may regret that Eckhart did not show the
heroic spirit of a reformer and stand unflinchingly for the
right to think freely, but it is unhistorical to expect it of
him. He must be judged in the light of his age. There
had always been an evangelical and popular side to his
teaching, and now in his defence he simply goes further
than the case would warrant in showing that his
pantheistical utterances were open to a harmless in
terpretation. I am inclined to think that he is here
naive rather than disingenuous.
xii MEISTER ECKHART 241
Before his case was settled at the papal court Eckhart
had finished the term of his life dying in this very year
1327. By a papal Bull of 1329, twenty-eight proposi
tions, found in Eckhart's writings, were condemned
seventeen were pronounced heretical, and the rest were
called rash and suspect. " He has wished to know more
than he should ! " is the curious verdict of the Pope.
Yes, it is true that he " wished to know " things about
which the Church could give him no light ; that he
fearlessly pushed his speculation into realms which were
uncharted in the books of dogma. " We are transformed
totally into God, even as in the sacrament the bread
is converted into the body of Christ," is one of the
twenty-eight "items," and one of the seventeen proposi
tions found "heretical." It is a fair statement of
Eckhart's teaching, and well sums up his message Man
through the Divine Spark within his soul may rise into
union with the Godhead in an Eternal Now. It has " an ill
sound " and is " very rash," says the Pope's Bull. Such
teaching if it were found that experience verified it
would surely make popes unnecessary, and would render
the elaborate Church machinery of the fourteenth century
as useless as medieval armour is to a citizen of the
modern world. The Pope's Bull unfortunately neglects
to settle for us the question whether Eckhart's message
of Divine Union fits the eternal nature of things or not,
it only decides that it does not fit dogma.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FRIENDS OF GOD
I
ONE of the most important and remarkable expressions
of mystical religion in the history of the Christian Church
is that which flowered out in Germany in the fourteenth
century, and whose exponents are known under the name
of " Friends of God." The title does not cover a sect,
nor even a " Society," in the strict sense of the word. It,
rather, names a fairly definite type of Christianity, which
found its best expression in persons 'of the prophet-class in
that century, both men and women, who powerfully moved
large groups of Christians by their preaching, their writings,
and their extraordinary lives. All the leaders of the move
ment were profoundly influenced by the teaching of that
luminous figure of German mysticism, Meister Eckhart, but
they were hardly less definitely influenced by the apoca
lyptic writings of the great German " prophetesses " of the
two preceding centuries St. Hildegarde, St. Elizabeth of
Schoenau, and St. Matilda of Magdeburg. The writings
of these famous women are full of incidents, phrases, and
images which formed " suggestion material " for the ex
periences and ideas of the Friends of God. In fact, they
have very similar conceptions of the Church and the
world, and of the impending catastrophes that are about
to break upon both the world and the Church. I shall
give illustrations of this influence later.
The period covered by the movement which we are
now studying was one of the most troublous epochs in
242
CHAP, xiii THE FRIENDS OF GOD 243
medieval history. Woes and disasters came thickly one
after the other, and they produced a " psychological
climate," which partly accounts for the morbid features
which characterize the movement, and which partly ex
plains the abnormal occurrences in the lives of many of
the " Friends of God." Every sensitive person was over
wrought and strained. There was a widespread expecta
tion that apocalyptic prophecies were soon to be fulfilled ;
this visible world was believed to be the sport of super
natural powers, both good and bad, and men and women
everywhere were in " hair-trigger condition " of response
to any captivating suggestion, as the terrible outbreak of
flagellation which swept many of the Rhine cities plainly
indicates. A few of the events which helped to produce
this " mental climate " may be mentioned here. From
1309 to 1377 occurred the so-called "Babylonish Cap- A
tivity " of the Church, when the papal seat was changed
to Avignon, and when the popes were more or less puppets
of France. To many of the faithful this " captivity "
was a supreme woe the reward and result of sin and
apostasy. A still greater misfortune followed hard after
the period of " captivity." Upon the death of Gregory XL,
in 1378, there occurred a double election, resulting in two '
rival popes, and during the next forty years the Church
was torn and almost wrecked by what is known as the
"Great Schism," which lasted from 1378 to 1417.
More important for our distinct period, and carrying
with it more serious practical consequences for the common
people of the German cities, was the " Great Civil War," !
which resulted from a double election of emperors. Louis
of Bavaria was chosen Emperor in 1 3 1 4, by one party of
electors, and Frederick of Austria by another party. The
Pope took sides against Louis, excommunicated him, and
laid an interdict upon all cities which supported him. By
the interdict, all public religious services were prohibited,
and all consolation of religion suspended, through the
section of the country covered by the interdict Infants
were unbaptized, the Mass was not celebrated, the sacred
offices for the dead ceased. In many cities of Germany
244 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
where the citizens were loyal to Louis, the priests were
forced to go on with their religious functions in spite of
the interdict, or to go into banishment
While Europe was thus suffering through the wrath
of man, a veritable scourge, which in that age seemed
traceable directly to the wrath of God, fell upon the
. German cities. It was a pestilence known in history as
the " Black Death." It first struck the west of Europe in
1347, and raged for two years, returning again in less
virulent form in 1358 and in 1363. In some places the
mortality was so great that it is estimated that only
one-tenth of the population survived. There were, too,
many earthquakes through the Rhine valley about the
middle of trie century, one of which, " the great earth
quake," left the city of Basle a heap of ruins, and wrought
similar havoc in many small towns.
The Friends of God formed small groups, or local
societies, gathered about some spiritual leader or coun
sellor. There was little or no organization. The type of
each particular group was largely determined by the
personality of the " leader," while the whole movement
was unified and moulded by the work of itinerant
" prophets," and by the production of a very remarkable
literature. These mystic circles, or groups, were wide-
f spread, and were formed in far-sundered places, stretching
from Bavaria, possibly from Bohemia, to the low countries,
with the most important groups in Strasbourg, Cologne,-
and Basle. 2
There was a voluminous exchange of letters among
the leaders, and frequent personal visits. The visits and
the itinerant missions were generally prompted by some
1 Speaking of the "society" in Cologne, Henry of Nordlingen says in a
sermon : " I do not know in the whole universe, from one end to another, any
place where the word of God has spread so widely, and has manifested itself so
richly and purely, during the last sixty years, or where it is announced to-day
by so many illuminated doctors, or so many Friends of God as in the city of
Cologne."
a Lady Frick, a close friend of Henry of Nordlingen, on her return to Basle
after an absence, writes that she is ' ' filled with joy to be again in the holy and
spiritual society at Basle," which she says is " large," and she feels as though she
had come from purgatory to paradise. She declares that she would not change
her home in Basle for any other, unless it were for one in Medingen, in Bavaria,
where there was a group of Friends of God, with Margaret Ebner as its head.
xni THE FRIENDS OF GOD 245
direct revelation. In fact, the whole plan and direction
of the movement, as well as the preparation of the most
important pieces of their religious literature, are ascribed
to direct revelation granted to the leaders.
Some of the societies had retreats in which the mem
bers lived " quiet nests " Tauler calls them. They were
" brotherhood houses," modelled on the plan of the Beg-
hards. In many respects the Friends of God were like
the Beghards there is no sharp line of differentiation
between them, though the former are always radically
opposed to the loose and antinomian tendencies which
affected many groups of Beghards and Beguines. The
Friends of God were inclined, rather, to err in the opposite
direction. Their failing lies in the direction of extrgme ,
asceticism and self-renunciation. All the leading Friends
of God, both in sermons and in writings, speak vigorously
against the negative freedom and licence of the " Brethren
of Free Spirit."
The leading figures of the group are Rulman Merswin
of Strasbourg ; his friend and secretary, Nikolaus von
Lowen ; John Tauler ; Henry Suso ; Jan Ruysbroek ;
Margaret and Christina Ebner ; Henry of Nb'rdlingen,
and the great unknown, who wrote the little book called
German Theology. The most important literature for the
purposes of this study are the writings attributed to
Rulman Merswin and to " The Friend of God of the
Oberland " ; the sermons of Tauler ; the writings of Suso
and Ruysbroek ; the German Theology, and the correspond
ence between Margaret Ebner and her friends. 1
As I shall often refer in this chapter to Rulman
Merswin and his a double," the so-called " Friend of God
from the Oberland," it will be well to consider here who
they were. There is no more difficult problem in the
history and literature of mysticism than that of the
identity and personality of this " Friend of God " every
where treated as a somewhat supernatural " character "
who figures so prominently in the great collection of
1 The letters are published in Heumann's Opuscvla (Nurnberg, 1747),
PP- 33I-404-
246 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
mystical literature ascribed to him and to Rulman
Merswin. 1
It was assumed in the fifteenth century that this
mysterious " Friend of God from the Oberland " was a
certain Nicholas of Basle, 2 and this tradition came down
with little challenge until recent times. It was adopted
and given wide currency by the valuable publications of
1 The great religious books, or treatises, which have been in part or in whole
ascribed to ' ' The Friend of God from the Oberland "or to Rulman Merswin,
are as follows : First a collection of sixteen treatises which are preserved in the
"Great German Memorial" (Das grosse deutsche Memorial). They are :
(1) Two Fifteen-year-old Boys,
(2) The Imprisoned Knight.
(3) The Story of Ursula and Adelaide,
(4) Two Holy Nuns in Bavaria.
(5) The Spiritual Stairway.
(6) The Spiritual Ladder.
(7) The Spark (Funklein) in the Soul.
(8) A Lesson for a Young Brother of the Order.
(9) Story of a Man Endowed with Worldly Wisdom.
(10) A Revelation given to " the Friend of God " on Christmas Night.
( 1 1 ) A Young Man of the World.
(12) Warnings which " the Friend of God" sent to the People.
(13) The Book of the Banner of Christ.
(14) The Three Halting-places (Durchbriiche).
(15) The Seven Works of Mercy.
(16) Book on Prevenient Grace.
The MS. of Das grosse deutsche Memorial is in the Universitats- und Landes-
bibliothek at Strasbourg. The Treatises numbered i, 2, 10, and 12 have been
published in Karl Schmidt's Nikolaus von Basel (Wien, 1866). Those numbered
5 and 6 have been printed in Jundt's Rulman Merswin (Paris, 1890). In the
collection known as Pflegermemorial the following Treatises are preserved :
The Book of the First Four Years of Rulman Merswin' s New Life, and the Book
of the Five Men, which is the story of " the Friend of God " and his companions.
There is a fifteenth-century manuscript of this in the Bezirksarchiv of Strasbourg.
" The Book of the Five Men " is published in Schmidt's Nikolaus von Basel.
Besides these the most important Treatises for the Religious ideas of the
Friends of God are the Book of the Master of Holy Scripture, the Book of the
Two Men, and the Book of the Nine Rocks. " The Book of the Two Men" is
published in Schmidt's Nikolaus von Basel, and it has also been edited and
published by Lauchert, Des Gottesfreundes in Oberland [= Rulman Merswin],
Buch von den Zwei Mannen (Bonn, 1896).
There is an autograph MS. of the Nine Rocks in the Universitats- und Landes-
bibliothek at Strasbourg [L. germ 665 ; Neun Felsen : Rulmanni Merschwin,
Fundatoris domus St. Johannis de 9 Rupibus autographus]. This was edited
and published by Schmidt, Das Buch von den Neun Felsen (Leipzig, 1859). Das
Meisterbuch [Book of the Master of Holy Scripture] is in the collection known as
Das erste iibriggebliebene Lateinbuch. It has been published by Schmidt under
the title : Nikolaus von Basel, Bericht von der Bekehrung Taulers (Strasbourg,
1875)-
There is also an important collection of Letters (Briefbuch) professing to be
Letters to and from the " Friend of God." There is a MS. of this Briefbuch
in the Bezirksarchiv [H 2185]. The Letters are printed in Karl Schmidt's
Nikolaus von Basel.
a This Nicholas of Basle was a Beghard, and was burned at the stake in
Vienna, as a heretic.
xiii THE FRIENDS OF GOD 247
the famous Strasbourg historian, Karl Schmidt. It is a
view, however, now everywhere discredited by scholars.
Preger believes that he was a great unknown who lived in
or near the city of Chur (Coire), in Switzerland, and Jundt
held this view when he wrote his valuable book, Les A mis
de Dieu (1879). But since Denifle's important studies in
the mystical literature of the fourteenth century, the belief
has been growing that the " Friend of God of the Ober-
land " is not an historical personage at all. 1 All his
movements are wrapped in profound mystery. There is
no historical evidence of his existence outside the evidence
furnished by this collection of literature, ascribed to him
and Merswin. The accounts of his life say that sometime
about 1343 he was forbidden to reveal his identity to
any one whatever, except to Rulman Merswin. In the
correspondence, supposedly between the " Friend of God "
and John of Schaftholsheim, a prominent Church official
at Strasbourg, the latter, writing about 1363, urges his
unknown correspondent to reveal himself to him. The
answer comes back that he cannot do it : "I should like
to grant your request, but it is impossible. Cease to ask
it, for the love of God. More than twenty years ago God
forbade me to reveal myself to any man except one."
Every effort is made to destroy all traces of his personal
identity, and there is an evident purpose, both in the
correspondence and the books ascribed to him, to leave
the impression that whatever he does is done by the Holy <
Spirit. The human medium is, for this very purpose, [
made as mysterious and shadowy as possible. This entire
collection of writings betrays the marks of a single hand.
There is a striking similarity in the experiences which
occur both to Merswin and the " Friend of God," though
there is a boldness of tone and a sureness of direction in
the utterances ascribed to the latter which are missing in
the former. The same expressions and the same phrases
appear and reappear in the writings ascribed to both
Before, however, undertaking to account for his
1 See especially Denifle's Der Gotttsfreund im Oberlande und Nikolavs von Basel
(1870).
248 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
mysterious " double," we must endeavour from the literature
at hand to get some biographical details concerning
Rulman Merswin. He was born in Strasbourg in 1307.
As a young man he became a banker, and amassed a large
fortune. He was " a man of watchful conscience and of
great fear of God," and he belonged to a very important
family of the city. When he was forty years of age he
gave up business, " took leave of the world," and devoted
himself entirely to divine things, after the manner of
the Franciscan Tertiaries, or the Waldensian brothers.
He, however, did not give away his money ; he kept it
" to use for God," as He might direct from time to time.
His wife, Gertrude of Bietenheim, though a pious woman,
had not yet attained what the Friends of God call " the
light of grace." With Waldensian rigour he resolved to
live henceforth as celibate.
His first experience of ecstasy came to him at the
time of his resolve to devote all his money to the
service of God as the first step in his "new life."
Suddenly he felt himself raised from the earth and
carried through the air all about the garden. At the same
time he felt unutterable joy and spiritual illumination un
known before. He passed through the usual "stages of
spiritual experience " that were expected at this epoch.
He had terrible inward temptations and struggles ; he
endeavoured to conquer his evil nature and his " hated
body " by extreme ascetic practices. John Tauler became
his confessor in 1348, and he wisely told him to stop his
macerations. Merswin was next called to pass through
an absolutely joyless period when he felt himself destined
to burn in hell for ever ; then, at length, all sufferings left
him, and he came into "the joy and peace of the Holy
Spirit." l
The Story of the First Four Years of a New Life,
1 During the years of his "commencement," as they termed the period of
preparation, he underwent, according to the accounts, almost unbelievable trans
formations and psychic experiences. For example, whenever he saw blood, as,
for instance, when he was bled by the physicians, the thought of the sacrifice of
Christ would so fill his mind that he would swoon away into an ecstasy. He was
the frequent recipient of "Divine voices," and many important situations were
revealed to him.
xni THE FRIENDS OF GOD 249
which is a remarkable piece of biographical literature, was,
according to Merswin's friend, Nikolaus von Lowen, found
after his death in a sealed cupboard. This document
gives an account of the first appearance of the mysterious
" Friend of God." Merswin says :
" Of all the wonderful works which God had wrought in me I
was not allowed to tell a single word to anybody until the time
when it should please God to reveal to a man in the Oberland to
come to me. When he came to me, God gave me the power to
tell him everything. He became my intimate friend; I submitted
myself to him in the place of God, and I told him all the secrets
of those four years as God inspired me to do. Then he said :
1 My dear, beloved friend, take this book ; * thou wilt find in it
the story of the five years of my conversion, and now give me in
writing the story of thy four years of conversion.' "
Merswin stoutly resisted the request to write his ex
periences, but finally the unnamed friend " commanded
me to write, in the name of the obedience which I had
promised him, and I was compelled to submit He
knew very well that my refusal came entirely from my
humility."
The sentence above in italics, which intimates that
Merswin had a subjective idea of the " Friend of God "
sometime before he had ever seen him or even heard of
him, is certainly suspicious, and would, on the face of it,
make us inclined to question the historicity of the narrative.
Even more suspicious is the account given of the most
important event in Merswin's life the purchase of Griinen-
worth, or the " Convent of the Green Isle." This was
purchased, according to the narrative, by Merswin , and
fitted up as a quiet retreat "a mystic nest" for the
Strasbourg circle of the Friends of God, a sort of " school
of prophets " for which the most important books of this
mystical collection were written. Merswin himself is
supposed to be the author of the account of the founding
of the retreat He brings in his mysterious " Friend,"
and gives the entire transaction a miraculous colouring.
He says that during the night of October 9, 1364,
1 The Book of the Two Men, containing the story of the conversion of the
" Friend of God."
250 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
the " Friend of God," in his Oberland home " six days'
journey " from Strasbourg dreamed that he was ordered
by God to go to his friend Rulman Merswin, and help
him to found a " nest " in Strasbourg for the Friends of
God. The same night, in a dream, Rulman Merswin
himself had a revelation that he ought to found such a
retreat in Strasbourg !
Both men were opposed to the idea of founding such
a retreat, and they refused to follow the suggestion made
in their dreams. The night of the following Christmas
they both simultaneously in their respective homes fell
seriously ill at midnight ; the illness increased until they
were at the point of death ; suddenly, at precisely the
same time, they were told in indescribable visions to found
the retreat ! The " joint " illness lasted for nearly two
years, when a general paralysis of their limbs rendered
them both helpless ! They were now told that this con
dition would last until they followed the will of God. At
length they yielded, and immediately they were both
restored to health ! Confirmed by such miraculous signs,
the two friends now set to work to carry out the plan
which had been revealed to them. 1
The later accounts, which describe the last years of
Merswin and the " Friend of God," throw even more
suspicion on the historicity of the narratives, and force
us to question the existence of this mysterious " Friend
of God." Shortly before his death, which occurred in
1382, Merswin and the "Friend of God," with eleven
other Friends of God, met miraculously for a " divine
diet" to intercede for Christianity. On Good Friday,
1380, as they were praying, a letter fell from the sky in
1 Merswin bought the Isle with its ruined convent in the autumn of 1366, and
put it in complete condition for a retreat of peace and calm, suited to the mystical
life. As the result of another "joint revelation," the retreat was turned over to
the Order of Saint John in 1371. The important documents for the story of
Merswin's connection with Griinenworth, or "the Convent of the Green Isle,"
are the collections known as Das grosse deutsche Memorial, Erstes latcinische
Memorial und Pflegermemorial, and Johanniter Chronik, all of which are in the
Universitats- und Landesbibliothek ; and the collection known as Das Pfleger-
memorial and Erweitertes Pjlegermemorial and Das Briefbuch. in the Bezirksarchiv.
The reader who wishes to study the actual history of Griinenworth, freed from the
colouring of fiction, should read Karl Rieder's Der Gottesfreund vom Oberland
(Innsbruck, 1905).
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 251
their midst, and an angel told them that God had granted
to Christianity a reprieve of Judgment for three years, on
condition that they these thirteen Friends of God
would, according to the contents of the Divine letter,
become " the captives of the Lord," i.e. die absolutely to
self and the world, giving their lives " as a continual sacri
fice for the salvation of Christianity" and so they did !
The last word that came from the " Friend of God," now
grown even more mysterious than ever, was an instruction
on how to begin and end the day with prayer, during the
pestilence of 1381, and Rulman Merswin, still "the captive
of the Lord," died in 1382.
Everybody who has worked over this collection of
Friends of God literature has been impressed with the
difficulties of the problems involved in it. It seems well-
nigh certain that " the Friend of God from the Oberland "
was not a historical person, but, if not, who " created "
him ?
It has been assumed, especially by Denifle, that " the
Friend of God " is a literary creation of Rulman Merswin.
This entire collection of mystical treatises, it is assumed,
was written by Merswin, with the assistance, perhaps, of
a school of prophets, and it is all tendency-literature, com
posed to express and develop the ideals of the great
religious movement to which Merswin's life was devoted.
The " great unknown " from the Oberland is the ideal
character the "Christian" of a fourteenth -century Pil
grim's Progress who illustrates how God does His work
for the world and for the Church through a divinely-trained
and spiritually-illuminated layman. On this hypothesis
Rulman Merswin as the creator of this ideal Christian of
the fourteenth century, as the author of this remarkable
autobiographical literature, and as the writer of the great
Book of the Nine Rocks, would take rank as a genius of
uncommon order and as one of the foremost exponents
of mysticism in any age, though, as Denifle points out,
he would have to be regarded as an arch-deceiver who
wilfully misled all his associates and befooled all his
readers for four centuries.
252 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
In order to clear Merswin from the charge of deceit,
Auguste Jundt has proposed a very bold and ingenious
hypothesis to solve the mystery. He suggests that
Rulman Merswin was a " double personality," of a patho
logical type now well known to all students of psychology. 1
In his primary state he wrote the books ascribed to him
and experienced the events recorded in his autobiography ;
while in his secondary state he became the person known
as " the Friend of God from the Oberland," and in this
state he wrote the books, treatises, and letters ascribed
to " the Friend of God." This view, if proved sound,
would surely make Rulman Merswin one of the most
interesting psychological " subjects " in the entire range
of history.
There is a third hypothesis which rests on solider
ground than either of the two preceding views. It is
presented with sound learning and minute and accurate
scholarship by Karl Rieder. 2 He holds that Rulman
Merswin is neither a deceiver nor " a double personality,"
and, with the iconoclasm characteristic of modern German
scholarship, he concludes that Merswin is not the author
of any of these mystical treatises, and that none of them
furnish reliable biographical facts bearing on Merswin's
life.
What he finds is that this entire collection of literature
has gone through the hands of Nikolaus of Lowen and
been transformed by him. Nikolaus was a friend and
trusted secretary of Rulman Merswin, his associate in the
foundation and development of the Religious House of
Griinenworth, afterwards the House of St. John, and the
first local head of the House of St. John during the life
time and after the death of Merswin.
There came into the hands of Nikolaus, possibly as
part of the library of Griinenworth, a rich collection of
mystical treatises, the creation of different members of the
group of Friends of God, but with no definite authorship
1 A. Jundt, Rulman Merswin et T Ami de Dieu (Paris, 1890). It is a very
interesting piece of work, and the theory is ably presented.
2 Der Gottesfreund vom Oberland : eine Erfindung des Strassburger Johan-
niterbruders Nikolaus von Lowen, von Karl Rieder (Innsbruck, 1905).
xiii THE FRIENDS OF GOD 253
attached to them or ascribed to them. 1 In order to glorify
the Religious House to which he belonged, and to give a
weighty influence and authority to its founder, Nikolaus
attached Merswin's name to some of these anonymous
treatises, and finally created out of his own imagination
the mysterious and somewhat supernatural adviser, " the
Friend of God from the Oberland," to whom he ascribed
the origin of most of the remaining mystical treatises.
As the plan grew, Nikolaus expanded the anonymous
narratives relating extraordinary experiences, and inserted
the names of Merswin and " the Friend of God," and
passed them off as autobiographical, inventing a concrete
setting for narratives which in their original form had
been purely fictitious, and written to illustrate principles
which were dear to the Friends of God. The arch-
deceiver, therefore, was Nikolaus von Lowen, and his was
the genius that created " the Friend of God from the
Oberland."
Rieder's main contention that this mystical literature
has received a transformation and a local setting at the
hands of Nikolaus von Lowen, and that he has woven in
much fictitious material to glorify the House of St. John,
and its founder, Merswin, seems to me sound ; but I see,
however, no good reason for the conclusion that Rulman
Merswin is not the author of any of these mystical
treatises. It now becomes difficult, if not impossible, to
prove that he wrote, for example, TJie Banner of Christ
and The Book of the Nine Rocks, but if he were known
to Nikolaus and to others of the religious circle to be the
actual author of some of these important treatises, it
makes it much easier to understand how Nikolaus could
have conceived his bold scheme of enlarging the scope
of his friend's activity, and how he was able to deceive so
successfully his contemporaries.
We shall, however, in any case be compelled to give
up using any of this collection of mystical literature as
genuine biographical and historical material. It is all
1 This modesty of authorship appears to be a characteristic of many writers
among the Friends of God.
254 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
tendency-literature, full of fictitious situations, and, until
more light is thrown upon it, it must be treated as
anonymous. It does, nevertheless, furnish us material
for discovering the prevailing ideas and ideals of these
mystical groups of the period, known to us as Friends
of God, and I shall now endeavour to gather up the trend
and characteristics of the movement.
Their religion was extremely simple and practical.
They humbly claim that they " have drunk at the heavenly
fountain," and have had their " inner eyes opened." They
were not primarily speculative, like Eckhart, but were
rather concerned with the concrete matters of actual life,
though they evidently put undue emphasis on " ex
periences " and on visions, and they shared the tendency
of the times to drift into exuberant apocalyptic fancies.
But, however deep and intense their piety was, it always
conformed to the medieval type rather than to the spirit
of the Reformation period. Some writers have tried to
find in these Friends of God Protestants before the Refor
mation, but a careful historical study gives little ground
for such a view. Even the most spiritual of them were
scrupulous in their obedience to the rules of the Church ;
they were the children of their age, and they were loyal
to Roman Catholic ideals. Even during the terrible
period of the interdict there is little indication of a revolt,
though some of the Friends of God rose to the discovery
that it is possible to have spiritual life without the
mediation of the Church.
It was distinctly a laymen's movement, and there is
an evident purpose in the literature of the Friends of God
to exalt the ordinary lay Christian, and to show how the
Church can be saved and the ministry purified by un-
ordained persons ; but these men do not show any spirit
of revolt from the ancient system, they have not gained
the Protestant temper, and they never dreamed of dis
pensing with the mediation of the Church, though they
occasionally admit that spiritual life is possible without
such mediation. The nearest approach to a religion
purely of the Spirit is found in The Book of the Nine
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 255
Rocks, where it is said that even Jews and pious pagans,
who are hampered only by ignorance, will be saved at the
moment of death by ways known only to the Holy
Spirit Here is the passage :
" If a Jew or Mohammedan fears God from the depth of his
heart, and leads a good and simple life ; if he does not know any
better religion than the one in which he was born ; if he is ready
to obey God in case He reveals to him a better faith than his
own, why should not such a man be dearer to God than wicked
and impious ' Christians ' who, though having received baptism,
wilfully disobey the commands of God ? When God finds a good
Jew or Mohammedan of pure life He feels a thrill of love and
infinite pity for him, no matter in what part of the earth he lives,
and God will find some way of saving him unknown to us \ " " If
baptism cannot be conferred upon him, though he has a desire
for it, God can baptize him in the holy desire of his will, and there
are in the eternal world many good pagans who have been
received in this way." 1
One of the utterances which sounds most like a spirit
of revolt came from Christina Ebner, who, beholding the
miseries of the unshepherded people, cried out : " The
actions of the Pope toward the clergy make groans and
cries rise to heaven."
It is not possible to decide whether Tauler obeyed the
interdict or not, but it is at least certain that he said in
one of his powerful sermons : " While the Holy Church
is able to take from us the external Sacrament, no one
can take from us the spiritual joy which comes from union
with God, i.e. inward joy from the free partaking of the
body and blood of Christ." 2
During the period of the interdict and the " Black
Death," when the religious services were suspended in
Strasbourg, a plan of life, ascribed to Rulman Merswin,
was drawn up by which a Christian layman could dispense
with the services of the priest. This proved so valuable
that it was copied and spread broadcast, not only through
out the city of Strasbourg, but far beyond its limits. This
" Advice " well illustrates the simple, practical, spiritual
religion of the " Society." It reads as follows :
1 Book of the Nine Rocks. * Tauler, Sermon No. LXXI.
256 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
"All those in whom the love of God, or the terror created by
the terrible calamities of the present, arouses a desire to begin a
new and spiritual life, will find great profit in a withdrawal into
themselves every morning when they rise, to consider what they
will undertake during the day. If they find in themselves any
evil thought, any intention contrary to the Divine will, let them
renounce it for the glory of God. Likewise, in the evening, on
going to bed, let them collect themselves and consider how they
have spent the day ; what acts they have done, and in what spirit
they have done them. If they find that they have done any
good, let them thank God and give Him the glory. If they find
they have committed any sin, let them attribute the fault of it to
themselves, and to nobody else, and let them show to God a deep
repentance, saying to Him :
' Oh ! Lord, be merciful to me poor, unworthy sinner, and
forgive me all the sins of this day, for I seriously repent, and I
have a firm purpose henceforth with Thy help to avoid sinning.' "
But, notwithstanding the fact that they often caught a
glimpse of a spiritual religion far in advance of the
prevailing ideals of their time, they shared for the most
part the theology of their age, and in some instances
they were grossly superstitious, like their unmystical
countrymen.
They had not yet outgrown a naive faith in the
efficacy of "holy relics." Henry of Nb'rdlingen is one
of the leading " experts " of his time in the efficacious
values of different relics, and we frequently hear of him
in some remote region, searching for the holy bone of a
saint which is to work wonders among the faithful. He
carries his superstitious worship to such an extreme that
he even believes that there is a supernatural power in
objects which have touched the body of his saintly friend,
Margaret Ebner, the Friend of God, who was head of
the " circle " at Medingen in Bavaria.
There is, too, an excessive love of supernatural
manifestations apparent in all the literature of the
movement. In the earlier stages of what they called
their " commencement," the Friends of God subjected
themselves to terrible bodily tortures, self-inflicted, often
of the most ingenious sort, and they generally emerged
from this aberration with enfeebled constitutions and
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 257
wrecked nervous systems. Certain typical " experiences "
were expected, and sooner or later they generally occurred.
The stress and strain of the troublous epoch produced
a mental type of person easily affected by suggestion, and
thus the ideas and experiences of the leaders spread in
this responsive material. We find in the literature of the
movement accounts of almost every known form of psychic
experience. There are accounts of hallucinations of every
sense sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing. I give one
instance from the Imprisoned Knight. This knight had
been taken prisoner, and was thrust into a dungeon
under a tower, where, loaded with chains, he had passed
six months. Feeling himself about to die, he wished to
take communion, but his request was harshly denied. At
midnight he saw a " radiant light," and heard a voice
saying that the mother of God had come to his aid.
" She has prayed her Son," the voice continued, " to
divide between the chaplain of the castle and thee the
wafer which will be used to-morrow in the consecration
of the Mass. The wafer will be divided into two parts,
but the Lord will be entirely present without division in
both parts." The next morning the knight saw, sur
rounded with a dazzling light, a half wafer enter his
prison ! It went directly into his mouth, and at once
revived his strength, so that for the entire day he took
none of the food which was brought to him. This
miracle was repeated for six consecutive days, and after
the first day the jailer also saw both the light and the
wafer. 1 Reports of collective hallucination are frequent
in the literature of the " Society." Christina Ebner, head
of the circle at Engelthal, in Bavaria, many times heard
the Divine Voice say that Tauler was of all men the
one whom God most loved. She also was told that there
were two names written in heaven those of John Tauler
and Henry of Nordlingen. The voice said that God
dwelt in Tauler like melodious music. The members
1 It is true that this narration is fictitious, but the writer is not creating mere
fiction. He is writing for edification, and he gives what he believes la possible
experience for the group.
S
258 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
of the group were telepathic and often felt what was
happening to some other Friend of God far away.
They all looked upon the state of ecstasy as a supreme
divine favour. In these moments of " unspeakable ecstasy "
they believed that God was talking with them face to face,
and the uprushes of intimation which came at such times
were counted as veritable " revelations " from the Holy
Spirit. These revelations were considered by them as
authoritative as the Holy Scriptures. Henry of Nord-
lingen calls the revelations which come through Margaret
Ebner "a holy scripture." He allows the Friends of God
in Basle to have communion during the interdict, and he
explains in a letter that he granted the privilege to the
spiritual circle on the strength of a personal revelation
given to Margaret Ebner. In an ecstasy, Margaret was
called into the presence of the Saviour Himself, and in
tender love He invited her to take His holy body, and
Henry adds : " I dare not oppose myself to Thee." In
the Book of the Master of Holy Scripture, " the Friend of
God," speaking as an oracle of the Holy Spirit, says to
the Master : " If you are to receive the words I speak as
though they come from me, I shall say no more to you."
Their writings everywhere imply or assert that God
speaks through them in the same way that He spoke
through " His Friends in the Old and New Testament " ;
in both dispensations the " counsel " of a Friend of God
is " the counsel of God Himself."
They never question the authority of the Scriptures,
nor undervalue their teaching ; in fact, they were in no
other respect so like the Protestants of the sixteenth
century as in their devotion to the Bible but at the
same time they insisted on the reality of present in
spiration and continuous revelation. Those who receive
" the luminous grace of the Holy Spirit " are granted
immediate revelations bearing upon both inner experience
and outer events. They talk of two stages of truth.
To the lower stage belong the interpretations of Scripture
which the learned doctors of the Church give. It is
their function to tell what has been revealed in past ages.
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 259
The higher stage is the truth of immediate revelation.
" God has a few whom He whispers in the ear ! " They
have the privilege of being the bearers of a first-hand
word from Him. " They hear," as one of them says, " in
their own souls what they are to speak." This stage
they call " the upper school of the Holy Spirit." This
distinction between the " lower school " of those who have
only " knowledge about " and the " higher school " of
those who have also " knowledge of experience " is well
illustrated by a passage from the Book of the Two Men.
" If two men gave thee a description of the city of Rome, one
by mere hearsay, and the other by experience after he had been
there, thou wouldst give thy attention mainly to the second. So
also, if a man who has been touched inwardly by divine grace
hears the preaching of a doctor who still loves himself, he feels
that the preaching of such a doctor does not come from pure and
unadulterated love of God. The soul that is filled with divine
love is not touched by such a sermon. Such a preacher is
speaking only by hearsay of the heavenly Rome, and of the
roads which lead to it. He knows only what he has learned
from Scripture. But if the same man hears the preaching of a
master who knows both from Scripture and through his own
spiritual experience, a master who has renounced all self-love
and self-advantage, who knows the heavenly Rome, not only by
hearsay, but because he has travelled the road to it, and because
he has seen the form of its buildings, he rejoices to hear his
message, because it proceeds from the Divine Love itself."
Those who have had this first-hand experience, and
belong to this " upper school of the Holy Spirit," are the
true teachers and guides of the rest 1 For this reason the
Friends of God insisted, as a matter of first importance,
that all who were in the stage of " preparation " should
submit themselves entirely to the counsel and direction
of some holy man of the " Society."
By far the most famous account of submission and
direction is that recorded in the Book of the Master.
This book relates that in 1346 there was "a great doctor,
a master of Holy Scripture," who preached in a certain
city, and multitudes flocked to hear him M his preaching
1 This phrase, "upper school of the Holy Spirit," had already been used by
Matilda of Magdeburg.
260 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
was talked about for miles around." " A certain layman^
a man full of divine grace, the beloved Friend of God
from the Oberland, came by command of God " ten days'
journey, and heard five sermons by the master. He
perceived that the " master," though " a man of good
heart," was " still in the dark and without the full light
of grace." At the end of the fifth sermon the " Friend of
God " asked " the doctor " if he would preach a sermon
on " The way to attain the highest degree of spiritual
life." The preacher demurred for a time on the ground
that the layman could not understand it if he should
preach it, as it would be beyond his experience and com
prehension. He, however, finally assented and preached
the sermon. In this sermon the great preacher pointed
out, in mystical fashion, that the highest state of spiritual
life is found in an experience beyond " intellectual com
prehension," beyond ideas and images. Quoting from
Dionysius, he says that the light of faith takes man above
the sphere of intellectual conceptions. The perfect man
must rise above everything sensible and intellectual, must
empty himself of all content, and then God will come in
and dwell in him. He must absolutely renounce self,
self-will, self-love, and the pursuit of all personal advantage
either in this world or in the next.
After a day of consideration the " Friend of God "
came back to the preacher and passed severe criticism
on the sermon and on the preacher himself. He told
him that he was preaching what he had not yet ex
perienced, and even went to the length of calling " the
doctor " a Pharisee, and an imitator of the work of the
Pharisees. The preacher showed great offence at this
freedom on the part of a mere layman, but as the layman
went on to reveal the height and depth of his own spiritual
experience, the master of Holy Scripture perceived that
he was in the presence of one who had attained something
which he himself had not at all reached, and in great
humility he asked the layman how he had gained such a
degree of spiritual experience. The layman answered
that God had brought him into complete humility and
xin THE FRIENDS OF GOD 261
abandonment of self, and so had taught him directly by
the Holy Spirit " The Holy Spirit," he says, " has the
same power to-day as ever. He is as able to speak
through me, a poor sinner, as He did through the mouth
of the sinner Caiaphas. In truth, if you think that these
words which I speak come through me, I will not speak
another word to you."
Under this criticism and instruction, the preacher,
seeing his own inner poverty revealed, asks how he can
begin for himself a new course of life so as to attain to
the highest degree of spiritual life, saying that even if he
must die for it he will follow " the counsel." Thereupon,
the layman gives him first of all the A B C of religion
to study, which was a series of twenty-three sentences
bearing upon the rudiments of religious experience. At
the end of six weeks he set before " the great doctor " the
conditions upon which he can advance to a higher life.
He is to go into his cell, and separate himself from all
his old life and occupations. He is to say Mass every
day, and spend the rest of the day in solitary meditation,
comparing his life with that of the Saviour, and thinking
of what he has lost by self-love, until he shall arrive to
complete humility. He is told that he will be called a
fool, will lose his best friends, and will be the laughing
stock of all his companions, but this will be to him a
blessing, for it will bring him to the point of having con
fidence in none but God Himself.
For two years " the doctor " underwent a life of this
rigid regime, exposed to ridicule and scorn, and then
there came upon him a wonderful experience. He lost
all consciousness, and was carried he knew not whither.
When at last he awoke and came to himself, he felt new
forces throughout his whole being, and immeasurable joy
filled him, such as he had never known before. His
mind was illuminated with a light from above.
On hearing of this experience the layman said to him :
" Thou hast been touched by God with spiritual know
ledge, in the very highest part of thy soul, and now,"
he adds, " thou wilt have the Holy Spirit added to thy
262 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
knowledge of Scripture, and one of thy sermons will do
more good than a hundred of thy former discourses did."
Before leaving him the " Friend of God " told him that
henceforth he must live in the Spirit, and not in the
letter which kills. Instead of wasting his time in the
study of the letter of holy books and writings of great
doctors, he should penetrate to the spirit and the wisdom
which the books contain. Many of the passages, he says,
which formerly seemed obscure and contradictory, will
now become clear. " You will discover that all Scripture
is one, and now you may commence again to preach and
instruct your fellows ; henceforth your words will come
from a pure vessel, and will be received with joy by all
who love the Lord. I shall give you no more instruction.
It is now for you to instruct me, and I shall stay until
I have heard many of your sermons. As much as you
have been scorned, so much you will now be esteemed
by those about you. Continue in humility, and do not
lose what you have gained."
The master announced that in three days he would
preach to the people. A crowd gathered, and he began
his sermon, but was overcome with emotion, and found
it impossible to speak. The news spread rapidly that
the master had failed to meet their expectation, and more
than ever he was the laughing-stock of the people, and
it was even believed that he had lost his mind. Once
again he gained permission to attempt a sermon, and this
time he preached with great power on the text, " Behold
the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him." With
extraordinary power he worked out the allegory of the
Lord coming to meet His bride. Suddenly one of the
listeners cried : " It is true," and fell to the ground in a
swoon. When the sermon was over, fully forty persons
lay on the floor incapable of movement. From this time
to his death, nine years later, " the master " increased in
power and reputation. He fearlessly attacked the evils
and corruptions of the Church, leaving no class of the
clergy untouched by his vigorous criticism, and though
the offended monks made a strenuous effort to stop him
xin THE FRIENDS OF GOD 263
from preaching, the common people of the city implicitly
trusted him and obeyed him, so that he enjoyed almost
unlimited influence, and was consulted on all the affairs
of Church and city.
This book has for centuries been taken as actual
history, and " the master of Holy Scripture " has generally
been identified with John Tauler. The identification with
Tauler, however, rests wholly on tradition. In his search
ing critical study of this episode, Denifle first showed
what slender historical basis there is for the Tauler tradi
tion. 1 The question has been hotly debated since the
appearance of Denifle's investigation, and good scholars
like Karl Schmidt and Preger and Jundt continued to
stand by the historicity of the Book of the Master of Holy
Scripture, and to see in it an important chapter in the life
of the famous Strasbourg preacher. 2 The historical view
has, however, lost ground, and is untenable.
The Book of the Master of Holy Scripture is in the
main fictitious a piece of tendency-literature, written to
set forth a special religious truth. The central idea
embodied in the book is the extraordinary influence of
a holy layman when he has been illuminated by the
Divine Spirit. He is able to become the infallible coun
sellor to the greatest preacher in the country, and his
instruction is sufficient to bring " the master " from his
stage of mere head-knowledge to the stage of first-hand
spiritual experience, so that he can rise to a wholly new
level of power. It is a telling, concrete illustration of the
ruling idea of the Friends of God that a divinely-instructed
layman, who has attained the highest stage of mystical
experience, "speaks in the place of God," and has an
apostolic authority which puts him above any priest or
doctor who has only the authority of ordination or of
scholarship. For a comprehension of the views of the
Friends of God this book is most important, but it must
not be treated as furnishing the account of an historical
event in the life of Tauler.
1 Denifle, Taulers Bekehrung, Strasbourg, 1879.
* See Preger, Gexhickte der deutschen Myslik (Leipzig, 1893), voL iii. pp.
116-139. Jundt, Les Amis de Dieu.
264 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
II
There is a powerful apocalyptic strain in all the litera
ture of the Friends of God. In this particular they show
a close affiliation and relationship with the German
prophetesses, St. Hildegarde, St. Elizabeth of. Schoenau,
and St. Matilda of Magdeburg, who were granted "visions"
of the corrupt condition of Christianity and of the speedy
judgments of God.
" The Church has lost its state of purity," cries St. Hildegarde ;
"its crown is tarnished by schism and heresy. Its servants, its
priests, who ought to make its face shine like the morning and
its garment like the light, have by their simony, their avarice,
their dissolute morals, covered its face with dirt and soiled and
rent its garments. Their wickedness is as habitual as if it were
commanded ; they enjoy sin as the worm does earth. Deaf and
dumb, they no longer hear the Scriptures, and they no longer
teach others. All classes of Christianity are corrupt. The Church
no longer has any staff to sustain it. All its commandments are
ready to disappear ; each one takes his own will for rule."
St. Elizabeth of Schoenau speaks with the boldness of
a Hebrew prophet :
" Cry with a loud voice ! cry to all the nations ! Woe, for the
whole world is covered with darkness. The vineyard of the Lord
has perished ; there is no one to cultivate it. The Lord has sent
labourers into it, but they have all proved idle. The head of the
Church is sick, and its members are dead. Each one wishes to
govern himself, and to live according to his own caprice. Very
rare are those in the Church who follow the commands of the
Lord. But I swear by My right hand and by My throne, says
the Eternal One, this condition shall not continue. To all you
who are in authority on the earth kings, princes, bishops, abbots,
priests I order you to purify My Church, otherwise you will be
smitten with the sword of My mouth. Miserable hypocrites, you
appear religious and innocent in the eyes of men, but inwardly
you are full of the spirit of wickedness. Shepherds of My Church,
you are asleep, but I will wake you."
In similar strain, Matilda of Magdeburg takes up her
prophecy :
" Oh, holy Christianity, glorious crown, how thy splendour has
vanished ! Thy precious stones are fallen, thy gold is tarnished
xin THE FRIENDS OF GOD 265
by impurities. Oh, bride of God, thy face once so pure and
chaste is blackened by the fire of guilty passions ; on thy lips are
lies and hypocrisy ; the flowers of thy virtues are faded ! Oh,
holy clergy, shining crown, how thy glory is dimmed ; thy beauty
is gone ; thy strength is weakened ; thy ruin comes on ! He
who is ignorant of the road to hell has only to watch the
debauched and corrupted clergy ! The road they follow leads
straight into it ! Therefore God has decided to humiliate them.
His vengeance will break upon them in a day when they do not
expect it." l
The fallen condition of Christianity is constantly on
the lips of the prophets of the movement we are now
studying, and they paint its future in very sombre colours.
The apocalyptic element is not wild and excessive, but
they all announce that the Church is far out of the way,
that Christianity is sadly sunk in the ways of the
world, and that Divine judgment is fast approaching.
As the woes and disturbances of the period increased,
especially in the middle decade of the fourteenth century,
the sombre tone of apocalyptic prophecy increased in the
writings of the Friends of God. They have " revelations '*
that the evil condition is to go on from bad to worse,
until God will be compelled to chastise Christendom with
pestilence, earthquake, famine, divisions, wars, and heresies,
and that many will lose both body and soul in this time
of testing.
In 1356 a catastrophic earthquake, already mentioned,
occurred throughout the Rhine valley, with its most dis
astrous central point at Basle ; the city was turned into a
heap of ruins, and a terrible fear struck all hearts, the echo
of which appears in all the mystical writings of the time.
The mystical prophets saw in this awful catastrophe
warning signs of the approaching end of the world, and of
a reconstruction of the universe. 2 " God," they say, " is
about to winnow the whole of Christendom, and those
only who bear the seal of God on their foreheads will be
preserved through these calamities."
1 These passages are translated from Jundt, Rulman Mernrin, pp. 4-6.
* The " Black Death," it will be remembered, fell upon Germany in 1347, and
returned again in 1358 and in 1363.
1 These "sealed ones " are evidently the Friends of God.
266 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Through the tribulations of the present age they see
signs of the coming of new heavens and new earth, and
they declare that out of the " saints of the earth " God
will select for blessedness an equal number with that of
the fallen angels, so that the population of the new heaven
will be the same as the population of the primitive celestial
city before there was a fall !
Even Tauler, in the sermons of this period, occasionally
speaks in apocalyptic imagery. In one of his sermons
he says :
" It is written in the Apocalypse that calamities, hardly less
terrible than the last judgment, will come upon the earth. The
time which, according to the prophecy, is to pass before these
calamities, is now fulfilled. We expect their appearance every
year, every day, every moment, and nobody who is not sealed
with the Divine seal can come through them and endure."
The writings ascribed to Rulman Merswin and to " the
Friend of God from the Oberland " tell how they, after
having passed through terrible suffering and temptations
in the various stages of their conversion, are promised that
henceforth they will have " no other trials to pass through,
except to see the evil state of Christianity that will be their
cross'' In the book entitled Revelation Addressed to the
Friend of God from the Oberland during Christmas Night,
at the time when great and terrible earthquakes occurred^
the writer sees the end drawing near, and he tells how he
experiences in his own body the sufferings which are due
for the sins of the Church. He hears Divine Mercy tell
Divine Wisdom to forbid the Friends of God to intercede
any longer for the wicked world, and thereupon he
addresses a last warning. As has happened so often
before and since, the event miscarried, and the Divine
judgment was postponed ! But, as new " signs " appeared
(desolations of war in 1375 ; the papal schism in 1378 ;
Christianity divided into hostile camps), again the fatal
moment seemed near, and there were new prophecies of
1 This book contains the famous ' ' Epistle to Christianity " ; or " The Lament
of a German Layman of the Fourteenth Century on the Decline of Christianity, "
printed by Karl Schmidt, in his Nikolaus von Basel.
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 267
impending doom uttered. The Friends of God, under
the inspiration of Merswin, again intercede for the world,
and as " God could not remain deaf to the prayers of His
Friends," a " suspension " of judgment was granted. This
extraordinary spiritual drama, with God, on the one hand,
holding the doom of the world in His hand, and the
Friends of God keeping back the phials of wrath by their
prayers, goes on for years, until there comes a final
command to pray no more for Christianity. 1
One of the greatest mystical apocalypses of the middle
ages is the Book of the Nine Rocks and it may, I think, be
called the greatest literary creation of the Friends of God.
It is the best illustration there is of the ideas current
among these mystical Christians on the state of Christianity
and on the expected " tempest of God," and it is also the
best account we have of the " stages " of spiritual experi
ence by which the soul rises to its goal. The book con
tains a series of " visions " which the author of it saw
about 1351. He was commanded to write them down.
He long resisted the command, saying : " Are there not
books enough by great doctors, who can write much better
than I can ? " and protesting that his book " will carry no
conviction, because it is not proved by the Scriptures."
The Divine Voice answered : " Without doubt the Scrip
tures came from the Holy Spirit, but why cannot God
still write such a book ? Thou art not the first person
through whom the waters of Divine Grace have come.
Is not the power of God the same as in Scripture times ?
Whoever does not believe that God can work His wonderful
works through His ' Friends ' to-day, as He did in the
times of the Old and New Testament, that man is not a
Christian, for he does not believe that the Divine power
remains the same throughout the centuries" " I will
obey," cries the author ; " thou hast uttered the truth
1 There is a curious account which relates how, in the year 1379, eight Friends
of God from different countries met in a " Divine Diet," on a mountain top, to
pray God to postpone His judgment. On the eighth day they were surrounded
by darkness, assailed by demons, and heard groans coming from the forest.
Suddenly the darkness disappeared, a radiant light broke forth, and an angel
stood before them and announced \\\?A judgment was delayed for one year, but they
must not pray for any further postponement, for Christianity must be chastised.
268 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
through Caiaphas ; speak as thou wilt through me, poor
sinner." ]
The theme of the early part of the book is the terrible
decadence of Christianity as compared with the pristine
glory of the primitive Church. In a series of stern judg
ments the various orders of Christianity are passed in
review and condemned. For example, here is the " vision "
of the state of the papacy :
" Open thy eyes and see how popes live to-day ! All respect
for the commandments of religion is extinct in them. They are
ambitious for worldly goods ; more zealous for their own honour
than for that of God ; they think only of places for their relatives
and friends. Once popes chose awful deaths before they would
swerve for an instant from the will of God. Now no pope for a
long time has been sainted."
After seeing doleful " visions " of the ecclesiastics of
the Church from the top down, he is told that " God has
now conferred His grace on other men [these are, of course,
Friends of God], whom He has richly endowed with
spiritual gifts. These men are, alas ! few in number, but
if they wholly disappeared from the world, Christianity
would utterly come to an end." 2
In the second part of the book is described the vision
of the nine rocks. The writer sees an immense net which
covers the entire earth, except one mountain in which
nine great platforms in ascending stages are cut in rock.
These nine platform-ledges rise like the stages of Dante's
Purgatory from the level plain, where stands a terrible
figure, stretching his net over men and catching them
in it The seer opens his eyes and sees men running
away from the net and beginning to climb the mountain.
Those on the first rock receive the colour of health, and,
by sincere confession, are delivered from the mortal sins
with which their hearts were stained. But, unfortunately,
persons keep falling off this rock back into the net again.
On the second rock are those who have made a solid
1 This resistance against the command to put revelations into writing is almost
universal with mystics. It appears in quite similar form in the writings of
Hildegarde, Elizabeth of Schoenau, and Matilda of Magdeburg
2 They thus devoutly believed that they were the true Church.
xin THE FRIENDS OF GOD 269
resolution to give up their own will, and to submit to an
illuminated Friend of God, who shall be their guide and
counsellor in the place of God. The third rock is the
abode of those who are practising severe mortifications of
the body, and are doing it for the purpose of gaining heaven.
They are still in the state of a religion of self-interest.
Those on the fourth rock are still practising self-mortification,
but have the purpose of doing it solely to please and glorify
God. Unfortunately, they are still animated by self-will,
and have themselves chosen mortification without discover
ing the Divine will for them. The dwellers on the fifth
rock have entered upon the sacrifice of their own will,
though they have not yet attained to a complete and final
death to self-will and self-pleasing. Those on the sixth
rock have completed the sacrifice begun on the rock below.
They have burned their bridges, and have entirely aban
doned themselves to their Lord. Their only imperfection
is that they desire the supernatural revelations which they
see others enjoy. Those who have reached the seventh
rock have got beyond this desire for supernatural revela
tions, but they take an excessive joy in such revelations
when they are granted to them. Those on the eiglith
rock have nearly conquered the enjoyment of anything
that concerns self. They have renounced earthly posses
sions except to use them for God ; they have given up
counting on heaven. They are ready to accept what God
gives them, both in time and in eternity. Their only
imperfection is that they have not attained the state where
they can have perfect peace, even when God hides His
face from them and leaves them no tokens of His grace.
The ninth rock is the top of the mountain. The
number of the denizens on each rock decreases as the
stages go up, until finally on this summit there are only
three dwellers to be seen. In them, all personal desire
is destroyed. They are crucified to the world, and the
world to them. They enjoy whatever God does. They
have attained an absolutely disinterested state. They seek
no " signs " ; they wish for no " manifestations." They
have lost all fear. They have arrived at the full stature
270 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
of a man, and they love all men in God with an equal
love. Here on the top is granted the supreme experience,
dimly felt sometimes on the lower levels, the experience of
beholding the Divine Origin. " The man," the voice says,
" who beholds the Divine Origin, loses his own name and
no longer bears an earthly name. He has now become
God by grace, as God is God by nature ! "
There comes at last to the writer of the book himself
this supreme vision of the Divine Origin, and when the
indescribable glory passes he hears a voice saying : " Thou
hast been in the upper school where the Holy Spirit
teaches directly within the man himself. This august
Master of the school has taken thy soul and filled it
with such an overflowing love that it has flooded even
thy body and transfigured it." " My beloved ! " cries the
man in a transport of Divine love, " thou hast become so
dear to me that with all thy power thou couldst not do
anything that would be disagreeable to me. Do toward
me whatever thou wilt ; whatever thou givest, whatever
thou takest away, I shall rejoice in it."
Here we have drawn for us by a leader of the move
ment the ideal Friend of God.
It has already become apparent that the Friends of
God put a heavy stress on renunciation. They often
pushed it to the extreme of annihilation of will altogether.
" The true Christian who wishes to follow the mystical
life," says the " Friend of God," in the Book of the Two
Men, " must renounce all self-pleasure and all self-will ;
he must destroy all will that aims at anything for self;
he must give up all selfish joys and all self-imposed suffer
ings. He must be wholly directed by God, ready to
receive from Him with equal submission either pain or
joy, temptation or ecstasy, sickness or health."
There is an extraordinary case of a Friend of God
who got to the indifference-point to such a degree that
he, "through the power of love, became without love,"
and in this state of perfect surrender, he heard a voice
say to him : " Permit Me, My beloved child, to share
in thee and with thee all the riches of My divinity ;
XIH THE FRIENDS OF GOD 271
all the passionate love of My humanity ; all the joys of
the Holy Spirit," and the " Friend of God " replied : " Yes,
Lord, I permit Thee, on condition that Thou alone shalt
enjoy it, and not I ! "
There is also the case of Ellina of Crevelsheim, called
the " Holy child of God," who, in an ecstasy of the
marvellous love of God, remains seven years without
uttering a word, and at the end of this period God
touched her with His hand, so that she fell into an
ecstasy which lasted five days, and in this ecstasy the
pure truth was revealed to her, and she was given the
privilege of entering the holy interior of the Father's
heart. She was raised to an experience of God and
the Supreme Unity ; she was bound with the chains
of love ; enveloped in light ; filled with peace and joy ;
her soul carried above all earthly sufferings ; and she
attained a complete submission to the will of Christ,
whatever it might be. 1
Throughout this literature the ideal Friend of God
endeavours to hide his life, to be anonymous, to efface
himself by becoming " a captive of the Lord," " a hidden
child of God." There was in this tendency much that
was morbid and misdirected. It was often a waste of
noble powers, and often a mock humility. The strained
introspection of inward spiritual states ; the constant
analysis of themselves to see whether they had "a dis
interested love of God " ; whether they were " ready to go
through the eternal sufferings and pains of hell for the
love of God " ; whether they had reached a complete
annihilation of will all this is unhealthy enough, as we
now know. But we must judge men in the light of
their age, and when we do that we must pronounce these
Friends of God the noblest representatives of popular
mystical religion in the middle ages. The best of them
attained to an unconscious holiness, "shining within like
angels of light, without knowing that they were shining"
" Dost thou not know," says the heavenly voice to one
of these Friends of God, u that thy earthly marrow and
1 Jundt, Les Amis de Dieu, p. 59.
272 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
blood have been consumed, and that thou hast received
a new blood of perfect purity ? " " No, I know nothing
of it," answers the unconscious saint. " That is precisely
it," replied the heavenly voice ; " thou hast forgotten it,
and it is just this forgetfulness of self that makes the
willing, glowing, Divine love come to birth in thee and
possess thee ! " l
Then, when we remember that these men bore their
sufferings and strove to annihilate self-will, and even
accepted the hiding of all self " as captives of God," in
order to be vicarious offerings on behalf of the corrupt
Christianity of their time, we find a touch of real sublimity
in their saintly lives which does much to atone for their
errors of judgment.
Tauler gives this touching incident in one of his
sermons :
" One day the Lord offered to kiss a Friend of God with a
kiss of divine love. The Friend replied : ' I do not want to have
it, for the joy of it would flood my heart so that I should lose
consciousness, and then I could no longer serve thee ! ' " 2
They succeeded as well as any mystics have done
in avoiding the pitfalls of perfectionism. They taught,
no doubt, that a man may attain even here below to a
life with God, may even become through grace what God
is by nature, may achieve perfect peace, may come into
the very presence of the Divine Origin. Tauler says that
" the Divine and heavenly man enters by God's grace
even in this present life into life eternal. He already has
one foot in Heaven. He lives attached to his Origin,
and God can no more abandon him than He can abandon
Himself. The heavenly life has begun in such a man,
and will go on for ever." But they held that, with all
his attainments, it always remains possible for a man to
fall away into sin. Until the end he may never intermit
his vigils and watchfulness. Tauler says that the evil
basis of our human nature is never completely annihilated
in this earthly life. To the very end on the highest
1 Book of the Nine Rocks. 2 Sermon XXXIV. (Frankfort edition, 1825).
XIII
THE FRIENDS OF GOD 273
heights of spiritual experience these Friends of God are
examples of humility ; they still speak of themselves as
" poor sinners " " poor unworthy creatures." The "Friend
of God from the Oberland " teaches his friends these
prayers, which are good for all stages and steps of the
spiritual ladder :
" In the morning say, ' Oh Lord, I wish, for the love of Thee,
to keep from all sin to-day. Help me this day to do all I do to
Thy glory and according to Thy dear will, whether my nature
likes it or not ' ; and in the evening say, ' Oh Lord, I am a great
sinner, a poor and unworthy creature. Be merciful to me and
forgive me to-day all my sins, for I repent of them, and sincerely
wish by Thy help to commit no more.' "
They do not teach a fixed and final state of perfection.
There is no " Olympian calm " where progress ends. To
stop on the " road of perfection " is to go back, as one of
their wise men says. The " spiritual ladder " in reality
has no last round on which the completed saint may sit
in moveless felicity ! The Book of the Five Men urges its
readers to expect no gifts of grace from the Holy Spirit
if they are living in the "holy inactivity" of absolute
quietism.
There can be no question that these Friends of God
took themselves very seriously, and thought themselves to
be the spiritual M remnant " that was to save Christianity
from the utter wreck into which they believed it to be
drifting they were in their own estimation the true
Church of God within the visible Church. " If a Friend
of God," says the Book of the Nine Rocks, " were put at
the head of Christianity, he could transform it, because he
would have the counsel of the Holy Spirit If any city
in the world would submit to the direction of a holy
Friend of God, it would be saved from the woes and
plagues that are falling on the world." John Tauler fully
shared this view, and in many of his sermons he puts the
highest estimate on their spiritual service. Here are a
few examples :
" Those whom God has drawn into the unity of the Godhead
are the persons on whom the Church rests. They are divine,
T
274 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
supernatural men, and they hold up the world and the pillars of
it : If they were not in Christendom it would not last an hour" x
" Without the help of the Friends of God, God could give no
blessing to sinners, for His justice demands satisfaction, and here
is precisely the service of the Friends of God they intercede in
favour of Christendom, and their prayer is heard." 2
"In case of need, these men (the Friends of God) could
govern the country, by the help of the Divine gift and the light
of eternal wisdom with which their souls are filled." 3
" Get the Friends of God to help you return into the Divine
Origin, where the true light shines. Attach yourself to those
who are attached to God for they can take you with them to
Him." 4
" If it were not for the Friends of God who are in the world
we should indeed be badly off." 6
III
I have already referred often to John Tauler, and have
frequently quoted from his sermons to illustrate principles
and tendencies of the Friends of God. I must now bring
together the most important characteristics of his teaching,
for he was one of the purest and noblest leaders of this
religious movement, and, with all his imperfections, one of
the best exponents of spiritual religion in his century.
He was undoubtedly regarded by the Friends of God
themselves as their greatest man, and he was best loved
by the people because his sermons helped them most to
find the door of hope and comfort and joy. Tauler " is
passing through deep suffering," writes Henry of Nord-
lingen in 1347, "because he is teaching the whole truth
as nobody else teaches it, and furthermore his whole life
conforms to it."*
There is very little to tell of his outward life. He
was born in Strasbourg, about 1300. In his early youth
he entered a Dominican convent, and after the proper
steps of training he was ordained a priest in that Order.
He had already come under the powerful influence of
Meister Eckhart, and was deeply versed in the writings of
Sermon LXI. 2 Sermon XXXIV.
3 Sermon LXIX. 4 Sermon XLIV.
B Sermon XLIII 6 Jundt, Les Amis de Dieu, p. 53.
xiii THE FRIENDS OF GOD 275
the great Christian mystics, who were always his most
intimate outward guides. In 1338-39 he was in the city
of Basle, where he was the central figure of a mystical
group of Friends of God. His friend, Henry of Nord-
lingen, writes that " God is daily working a great and
marvellous work, through Tauler, in the hearts of men at
Basle."
It is a much-debated question whether Tauler obeyed
the interdict, or whether he continued in defiance of it to
perform religious services for the people. It has been the
delight of Protestant writers to show Tauler as a fearless
reformer before the Reformation, defying the Pope,
claiming a direct authority from the Holy Spirit, and to
represent him as speaking words which have the ring of
Luther's spirit in them. 1 There are, however, no well-
authenticated facts to support this position. It is more
than probable that he obeyed the interdict. These words,
from one of his sermons, at least do not indicate that he
would be likely to lead a revolt from the authority of his
Church :
" I received the privilege of belonging to my Order from
the grace of God and from the holy Church. It is from
both that I have this hat, this coat, my dignity as priest, my right
to preach and to hear confession. If the Pope and the holy
Church, from whom I have received these privileges, wish to take
them from me, I ought to obey them without reply ; to put on
another coat if I have one ; leave the convent ; cease to be a
priest, and stop preaching and hearing confession. I should have
no right to ask the wherefore of such a decision. ... If the
holy Church wishes to deprive us of the external sacrament, we
must submit. But nobody can take from us the privilege of taking
the sacrament spiritually (Aber geistlich zuo nemende, das mag uns
nieman genemmcri), although everything which the Church has
given us it can take from us, and we ought to obey without a
murmur." *
1 There is no historical evidence to establish as genuine the following words,
frequently quoted as though spoken by Tauler : ' ' Those who hold the true
Christian faith and sin only against the person of the Pope, are no heretics.
Those, rather, are real heretics who refuse to repent and forsake their sins ; for
let a man have been what he may, ii be will do so, he cannot be cast out of the
Church."
* Tauler, Sermon No. LXX1.
276 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
If he did obey the order of the Pope as a faithful
churchman of his time, he rose far above a merely external
religion which could be given or taken away at the caprice
of a pope, and he found the secret of eternal religion in
a direct spiritual intercourse with the Saviour ; and, moved
with tender sympathy for the common people, he tried to
turn them to spiritual religion. The importance of this
inwardness and directness of religion comes out again in
another sermon, where he says : " Great doctors of Paris
read ponderous books and turn over many pages. The
Friends of God read the living Book where everything is
life " * ; and he tells us that one of the greatest Friends of
God he had ever known was a simple day labourer, a
cobbler, who had no magic of ordination and no wisdom
of scholarship.
I have already discussed the question of the historicity
of the narrative which records the conversion and discip
line of " the master of Holy Scripture," by " the Friend of
God from the Oberland." I am convinced that this cannot
be used as material for the life of Tauler. This conclusion
takes away a most dramatic incident from his biography,
and we are left with very little material indeed with which
to draw the figure of the popular preacher of Strasbourg,
who did a great work there six hundred years ago. We
only know that from 1340, until his death in 1361, he
comforted multitudes of souls with as pure an evangel as
his century heard, and he showed many devout spirits the
inward, secret way to the Father of Light and Love.
Tauler, like all true mystics, insists on the fact of an
inner Light the master light of all the soul's seeing. He
says that the Friends of God have " an inward, divine
knowledge, a Divine Light which illuminates them and
raises them into union with God." " God illumines His
true Friends," again he says, " and shines within them
with power, purity, and truth, so that such men become
divine and supernatural persons." * Again : " This Light
gives man all truth (alle warheif) a wonderful discern
ment, more perfect than can be gained in any other
1 Sermon LIX. * Sermon VII.
mi THE FRIENDS OF GOD 277
manner here below." " These divine men " [the Friends
of God], Tauler says in another sermon, " enjoy an
enlightened understanding." l When they have been dis
ciplined by temptations, they possess the gift of discerning
spirits ; by merely looking at their neighbour they can
tell his inward state ; they know whether he belongs to
God or not, and what hinders him from spiritual progress. 2
" The vision of the eternal Light makes their souls so
luminous that they could teach all men if the occasion
for it came." 8 " They become endowed [by this Divine
Light] with a perfect conscience in respect to what they
ought to do and what leave undone." 4 " They gain [from
their inner illumination] an inward peace and joy in the
Holy Spirit" 6 " The Divine illumination gives a man a
marvellous discernment, more perfect than he is able to
acquire on earth in any other manner." fl In his sermon
" On the Feast of St Mary Magdalene," he says : " In
one short hour you can learn more from the inward voice
than you could learn from man in a thousand years."
None of these passages indicate that Tauler believed
that this illumination belonged to man as man he is here
speaking of the " gifts " which belong to a special class of
men, whom he calls " divine and supernatural men." 7 He
does, however, sometimes speak in his sermons of " the un
created ground of the soul " ; " the apex of the soul " ; " the
kingdom of God in the innermost recesses of the spirit " ;
" the unseen depths of the spirit, where lies the image of
God," as though there were something of God in the very
structure of the soul, unlost by the fall, or the sin, or the
stupidity of man. This is vigorously said in a striking
sentence from Tauler : " As a sculptor is said to have
exclaimed on seeing a rude block of marble, 'What a
godlike beauty thou hidest ! ' so God looks upon man in
whom His own image is hidden." But this " Divine soul
1 Sermon XLVI. Sermon XLVIH.
Sermon LXXXI. 4 Sermon LXXXIV.
Sermon LI I. Sermon XV.
1 In his sermon "On the Conception of Our Lady," he says: "There ifi
nothing so near the inmost heart as God. He who will seek there shall find Him.
Thus, every day we find Him in the Blessed Sacrament and in all tkt Friends of
God."
278 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
centre " does not become an operative power, a dynamic
possession, until " the outward man is converted into this
inward, reasonable [intelligible] man, and the two are
gathered up into the very centre of the man's being the
unseen depths of his spirit, where the image of God
dwelleth and thus he flings himself into the Divine
Abyss in which he dwelt eternally before he was created ;
then when God finds the man thus solidly grounded and
turned towards Him, the Godhead bends and nakedly
descends into the depths of the pure, waiting soul, drawing
it up into the uncreated essence, so that the spirit becomes
one with Him." l
He is much less speculative than his master, Eckhart.
In the language of simple experience he tells his listeners
that " there is nothing so near the inmost heart of man
as God," but he can also on occasion use the language of
speculation, and talk with his great mystical teacher of
" the Hidden God " " the calm waste of the Godhead " ;
" the necessity of withdrawing into the bosom of the
Divine Dark." There are passages in his sermons where,
by the road of negation, he takes us up to the same empty
abstraction which we have so often found in speculative
mysticism.
" God is," he says in his Third Instruction, " a pure Being
[that is, a Being with no attributes], a waste of calm seclusion
as Isaiah says, He is a hidden God He is much nearer than
anything is to itself in the depth of the heart, but He is hidden
from all our senses. He is far above every outward thing and
every thought, and is found only where thou hidest thyself in the
secret place of thy heart, in the quiet solitude where no word is
spoken, where is neither creature nor image nor fancy. This is
the quiet Desert of the Godhead, the Divine Darkness dark
from His own surpassing brightness, as the shining of the sun is
darkness to weak eyes, for in the presence of its brightness our
eyes are like the eyes of the swallow in the bright sunlight this
Abyss is our salvation ! "
In harmony with this conception of a God above all
attributes and distinctions, he makes much of the negative
1 Tauler's "Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity," Mutton's The
Inner Way, being Tauler's Sermons for Festivals.
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 279
road to Him, i.e. the way of self-dying and renunciation.
There are three stages of self-dying. 1
The first stage is found in those who practise acts of
self-denial through fear of hell and for the hope of heaven.
At this " half-way stage " they believe that what is painful
to the flesh is highly prized by God. The person at this
stage is self-centred, unloving, harsh in judgment ; what he
does is from constraint of fear rather than from love.
The second stage of self-death is found in the person
who endures insult, contempt, and such-like depths ; who
learns in humility and patience to pass through spiritual
destitution, and to be bereft even of the gracious sense of
the Divine Presence. These " barren seasons " are for
discipline to bring the man by inward poverty to a dis
satisfaction with himself and to carry him to a state where
he shall cease to be occupied with himself. The third
stage is one of perfect union of the human will with the
Divine will entire resignation and perfect denial of self
and self-love. All delight in having one's own will is
overmastered and quenched, because the Holy Spirit has
supplanted the man's will and love, and he wills nothing
on his own account though he cannot fathom the Abyss
of God, he feels perfect joy in the experience of God.
In another sermon, 2 Tauler says that those who wish
to be Friends of God must rid themselves of all tfiat
pertains to the " creature " ; must especially free themselves
from all that is called " necessary " ; must avoid being
blinded by " transitory things," and look alone to the
source and Origin. " Divine Love can brook no rival,"
therefore all unnecessary conversation, all outward delight
in human beings, all images external and internal that
merely please the natural man, must be cut off so that
God can work His work freely even external works of
love may blind us and prevent us from perceiving the
Divine Voice. " We shall never find God anywhere so
perfectly, so fruitfully, and so truly as in retirement and in
the wilderness." In a beautiful sermon on the temple
1 See Sermon IV., " On the Feast of St. Stephen," The Inner Way.
* Sermon XV., " On the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene." The Inner Way.
280 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
within man, 1 he points out that as man is meant to be a
temple " a clean, pure house of prayer " he must first
drive out all " traders," i.e. all human fancies and imagina
tions ; all delight in the creature and all self-willing
thoughts of pleasure, aims at self-gratification, ideas of
temporal things. These are the " traders " that keep God
out of His house.
But Tauler does not stop with negations, and he does
not make the attainment of a state of " barren wilderness "
his spiritual terminus. In this same sermon he goes on
to say that after the inner mind has become " free of
traders," there must come a positive devotion of spirit, an
inner consecration of self toward the attainment of union
and communion of the man with God ; and finally there
comes the experience again a positive experience that
the soul in its inmost deeps actually is a temple where
God eternally reveals " His Father Heart " and begets
His Son, " a temple where is the true, pure presence of
God, in whom all things live and move, and where all
suffering is done away ! " But even this life in the inner
temple is not wholly an end in itself. We cannot expect
a devout Catholic of the fourteenth century to enter fully
into the spirit of service, which is the very breath of our
best modern Christianity, but Tauler often rises to an
insight which carries him far beyond contemplation and
joy in inward states, however exalted. " Works of love,"
he says, " are more acceptable than contemplation " ;
" spiritual enjoyments are the food of the soul, but they
are to be taken only for nourishment and support to help
us in our active work " ; " sloth often makes men eager to
get free from work and set to contemplation, but no
virtue is to be trusted until it has been put into practice" 2
One of the finest passages in his sermons in fact, one
of the finest words that any mystic has given us is the
well-known and often-quoted passage, which has the true
note of social service :
1 Sermon XXXVI., "Second Sermon at the Dedication of a Church," The
Inner Way.
2 Those three passages are taken from Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 188
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 281
" One man can spin, another can make shoes, and all these are
gifts of the Hofy Ghost. I tell you, if I were not a priest, I
should esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and
I would try to make them so well as to be a pattern to all."
The most important feature of Tauler's teaching a
feature which allies him with all the great prophets of
the soul is his constant insistence on a religion of
experience. There are long passages in his sermons
which are too scholastic to be of any permanent value ;
there are other passages which are too much bound up
with the conceptions of the medieval Church to touch
our lives to-day ; there are still other passages even
whole sermons which are commonplace and devoid of
inspiration, but again and again the reader finds in the
writings of this pre- Reformation prophet words which
are laden with a living message, good for all men, and
quick and powerful for any century. " The man who
truly experiences the pure presence of God in his own
soul," he tells his "dear children," 1 "knows well that
there can be no doubt about it " by " devout prayer and
the uplifting of the mind to God " there is " an entrance
into union of the created spirit with the uncreated Spirit
of God," so that all the human is " poured forth into God
and becomes one spirit with Him." But this knowledge
is not something to be learned from "the Masters of
Paris " ; it can come only through experience of " entering
in and dwelling in the Inner Kingdom of God, where
pure truth and the sweetness of God are found." " What
this is and how it comes to pass is easier to experience
than to describe. All that I have said of it is as poor and
unlike it as a point of a needle is to the heavens above us! "
IV
The other member of this spiritual society whom I
shall consider in this chapter is Henry Suso, for I shall
postpone the treatment of John Ruysbroek to the next
chapter. Suso was plainly a disciple of the great mystic,
1 Sermon XXXVI., " Second Sermon at the Dedication of a Church. '
282 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Eckhart. In one of the most important spiritual crises of
his life he went to Eckhart for comfort, and he tells us
that the latter " set him free from a hell which he had
long been enduring." He also refers to Eckhart with
deep veneration, and, though utterly different from him in
temperament and in style, he holds the same fundamental
conceptions as his master.
He has all the characteristic marks of the other well-
known " Friends of God." He is subject to spiritual
visions ; he passes through great soul-crises ; he practises
austerities ; he experiences ecstasies, and he is profoundly
conscious of the immediate presence of God.
He was born about 1300, of a noble Swabian family.
The influences of his home were of a very mixed sort.
His father was " full of the world," unconcerned about
things of the Spirit, and through this unconcern he
caused Suso's mother much suffering. The mother was
a woman " full of God, and one who would fain live in a
godly manner." She was deeply concerned to bring her
boy into this " godly manner of life." l
While he was still a boy at school in Cologne, his
mother died, but at the hour of death she appeared to
him, bade him love God, told him that though gone from
the world she was not really dead ; she then " kissed him
on the mouth, blessed him, and vanished." This is the
first of Suso's recorded psychic experiences, and it is
interesting as indicating his peculiar constitution and
temperament.
At the age of thirteen he entered the Dominican
monastery at Constance, where he spent five years in
study. Through this period he frequently experienced
" spiritual visions," though he had not yet gone through
a " conversion-experience." At about the age of eighteen
he underwent a great spiritual awakening a time of
marked crisis, and under what he calls " the direct Divine
work upon his soul," he experienced his " commencement."
He says that " the hidden drawing of God turned him
1 The data for Suso's life and experiences are found in bis autobiography,
The Life of the Blessed Henry Suso, by himself.
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 283
away from creatures and called him to the inward hidden
life." " I turned wholly from things"
In this period, like the great mystic of the Common
wealth, George Fox, he went through a period of extreme
loneliness, when he tried, all in vain, through human
friendship and earthly love, " to lighten his spirit." The
more he endeavoured to lighten his heart, the sadder
he grew. In this condition of inward loneliness and of
spiritual suffering, he was the recipient of many marvellous
visions, and " whether in the body or out of the body,"
he often had " the powers of his soul filled with the sweet
taste of heaven."
I give his account of one of these ecstatic ex
periences :
" He was alone after his midday meal, undergoing a severe
suffering. Of a sudden he saw and heard what no tongue can
express. What he saw was without definite form or shape, and
yet had in itself the beauty of all forms and all shapes. It was
at once the climax of his desires and the realisation of his hopes,
in a forgetfulness of everything and of self in a blessed state.
He felt the sweetness of eternal life in calm and silence. This
experience lasted an hour or less, and when he came to himself
again he felt that he had come back from another world, and he
was still full of divine joy, and felt himself as light as if he were
soaring in the air."
In this early stage of his experience, in order to help
him turn away wholly from " creatures," he decided to
mark out for himself, in thought, three circles, within
which he shut himself up as in " a spiritual entrenchment"
" The first circle was his cell, his chapel, and the choir.
When he was within this circle he seemed to himself in complete
security. The second circle was the whole monastery, as far as
the outer gate. The third and outermost circle was the gate
itself, and here it was necessary for him to stand well upon his
guard. When he went outside these circles it seemed to him
that he was in the plight of some wild animal which is outside
its hole and surrounded by the hunt, and therefore in need of
all its cunning and watchfulness." l
1 Life of the Blessed Henry Suso, by himself, translated by T. F. Knox,
London, 1865, p. 168.
284 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
He came into a dangerously morbid condition, and
began the practice of such awful austerities, that his case
stands almost in a class by itself in mystical literature. 1
He gives two reasons for the practice of these
austerities :
(1) That "he might conquer the lively nature of his
youth " !
(2) His great love for Jesus Christ, Whose suffering he
wished to imitate.
The following passage, describing his self-tortures, is
taken from his Autobiography, which is written in the
third person :
" He was in his youth of a temperament full of fire and life,
and when this began to make itself felt, it was very grievous to
him, and he sought in many devices how he might bring his
body into subjection. He wore for a long time a hair shirt and
an iron chain, until the blood ran from him, so that he was
obliged to leave them off. He secretly caused an under-garment
to be made for him, and in the under-garment he had strips of
leather fixed, into which a hundred and fifty brass nails, pointed
and filed sharp, were driven, and the points of the nails were
always turned towards the flesh. He had this garment made
very tight, and so arranged to go round him and fasten in front,
in order that it might fit closer to his body, and the pointed nails
might be driven into his flesh ; and it was high enough to reach
upwards to his navel. In this he used to sleep at night.
Now in summer, when it was hot, and he was very tired
and ill from his journeyings, or when he held the office of
lecturer, he would sometimes, as he lay thus in bonds, and
oppressed with toil, and tormented also by noxious insects, cry
aloud and give way to fretfulness, and twist round and round in
agony, as a worm does when run through with a pointed needle.
It often seemed to him as if he were lying upon an ant-hill, from
the torture caused by the insects ; for if he wished to sleep, or
when he had fallen asleep, they vied with one another. Some
times he cried to Almighty God in the fulness of his heart :
Alas ! Gentle God, what a dying is this ! When a man is killed
1 This extraordinary practice of asceticism is baffling to the ordinary healthy
person who revels in the joy of living, but there must be in asceticism a powerful
psychological effect which accounts for the great r61e it has played in man's
spiritual history. It was felt by the mystic, no doubt, to minister toward the
supreme end in view, namely beatific vision, and there almost certainly came to
those who practised asceticism states of intoxication, or swoon, in which there was
a sense of the fulness of life.
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 285
by murderers or strong beasts of prey it is soon over ; but I lie
dying here under the cruel insects, and yet cannot die. The
nights in winter were never so long, nor was the summer so hot,
as to make him leave off this exercise. OR the contrary, he
devised something further two leathern hoops into which he
put his hands, and fastened one on each side of his throat, and
made the fastenings so secure that even if his cell had been on
fire about him, he could not have helped himself. This he con
tinued until his hands and arms had become almost tremulous
with the strain, and then he devised something else : two leather
gloves, and he caused a brazier to fit them all over with sharp-
pointed brass tacks, and he used to put them on at night, in
order that if he should try while asleep to throw off the hair
under-garment, or relieve himself from the gnawings of the vile
insects, the tacks might then stick into his body. And so it
came to pass. If ever he sought to help himself with his hands
in his sleep, he drove the sharp tacks into his breast, and tore
himself, so that his flesh festered. When, after many weeks, the
wounds had healed, he tore himself again and made fresh wounds.
He continued this tormenting exercise for about sixteen
years. At the end of this time, when his blood was now chilled
and the fire of his temperament destroyed, there appeared to
him in a vision on Whit-Sunday, a messenger from heaven, who
told him that God required this of him no longer. Whereupon
he discontinued it, and threw all these things away into a running
stream."
Unfortunately, he had not yet learned his lesson, and
he next tells how, to emulate the sorrows of his crucified
Lord, he made himself a cross with thirty protruding iron
needles and nails. This he bore on his back between his
shoulders day and night
"The first time that he stretched out this cross upon his
back his tender frame was struck with terror at it, and he blunted
the sharp nails slightly against a stone. But soon, repenting of
this womanly cowardice, he pointed them all again with a file,
and placed once more the cross upon him. It made his back,
where the bones are, bloody and seared. Whenever he sat
down or stood up, it was as if a hedgehog skin were on him. If
any one touched him unawares, or pushed against his clothes, it
tore him."
Suso next tells of his penitences by means of striking
this cross and forcing the nails deeper into the flesh, and
286 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
likewise of his self-scourgings a dreadful story and
then goes on as follows :
" At this same period, the Servitor l procured an old cast-away
door, and he used to lie upon it at night without any bedclothes
to make him comfortable, except that he took off his shoes and
wrapped a thick cloak round him. He thus secured for himself
a most miserable bed ; for hard pea-stalks lay in humps under
his head, the cross with the sharp nails stuck into his back, his
arms were locked fast in bonds, the horse-hair under-garment
was round his loins, and the cloak, too, was heavy and the door
hard. Thus he lay in wretchedness, afraid to stir, just like a
log, and he would send up many a sigh to God.
In winter he suffered very much from the frost If he
stretched out his feet they lay bare on the floor and froze ; if
he gathered them up the blood became all on fire in his legs,
and this was great pain. His feet were full of sores, his legs
dropsical, his knees bloody and seared, his loins covered with
scars from the horsehair, his body wasted, his mouth parched
with intense thirst, and his hands tremulous from weakness.
Amid these torments he spent his nights and days ; and he
endured them all out of the greatness of the love which he bore
in his heart to the Divine and Eternal Wisdom, our Lord Jesus
Christ, whose agonising sufferings he sought to imitate. After a
time he gave up this penitential exercise of the door, and instead
of it he took up his abode in a very small cell, and used the
bench, which was so narrow and short that he could not stretch
himself upon it, as his bed. In this hole, or upon the door, he
lay at night in his usual bonds, for about eight years. It was
also his custom, during the space of twenty-five years, provided
he was staying in the convent, never to go after compline in
winter into any warm room, or to the convent stove to warm
himself, no matter how cold it might be, unless he was obliged
to do so for other reasons. Throughout all these years he never
took a bath, either a water or a sweating bath ; and this he did
in order to mortify his comfort -seeking body. He practised
during a long time such rigid poverty that he would neither
receive nor touch a penny, either with leave or without it. For
a considerable time he strove to attain such a high degree of
purity that he would neither scratch nor touch any part of his
body, save only his hands and feet." At length " God made
him sure that the time was come when he might be released
from these sufferings." 2
1 He calls himself " the Servitor " of " Eternal Wisdom."
8 The Life of the Blessed Henry Suso, pp. 56-80, abridged.
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 287
He was subject, not only during this long period of
austerities, but throughout his life, to "visions." His
world was no longer this world of sense-objects, it was
a world beyond time and space a world of celestial
denizens, angels, saints, the Virgin, with their scenery and
circumstance. He saw the scenes of this other world as
vividly, and with as much sense of their objectivity, as
we see the things of space and time. He was a person
of extraordinary visualizing power, and could actually see
anything which he had heard described. His "other
world sights n were plainly formed out of " suggestion-
material," and they came to him often when he was
exhausted by the chastisements of his body, and when the
control and guidance of the will were weak, so that they
correspond to the vivid flights of the mind in the border
land state between sleeping and waking.
In one of these visions he was granted a sight of " how
God dwells in the soul."
" He was told to look into himself, and there he saw as
through a crystal in the midst of his heart the Eternal Wisdom
in lovely form, and beside Him his own soul leaning lovingly to
God's side, and embraced in His arms and pressed to His Divine
heart, and lying entranced and drowned in the arms of the God
he loved."
One of his most striking visions was the one granted
to him at another spiritual crisis in his life, when he gave
himself in spiritual espousal to Eternal Wisdom as his
heavenly bride.
" It happened to him often," he tells us, " as when a mother
has her sucking child pressed in her arms lying on her bosom,
and the child lifts itself with its head and with the movement of
its body towards its tender mother, and by its lovely bearing
shows forth its joy of heart, so often did his heart within his body,
turning towards the presence of the Eternal Wisdom, overflow
with tenderness."
Once the Virgin granted him the privilege of holding
the Holy Child.
" He contemplated its beautiful little eyes, he kissed its tender
little mouth, and gazed again and again at the infant members
288 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
of the heavenly treasure. Then, lifting up his eyes, he uttered a
cry of amazement that He who bears up the heavens is so small,
so beautiful in heaven, and so childlike on earth ! "
We get another vivid picture of his power of visual
imagination when he tells us that "the food which he did
not like he dipped in the wounded heart of his Beloved,"
and then ate it with joy. And in a beautiful poetical
passage, which seems like Walt Whitman baptized with
spiritual fervour, he tells us how he sees the whole world
praising God :
" I set before the eyes of my soul myself, all that I am, with
body, soul, and all my powers, and set around me all creatures
which God ever created in heaven, in earth, and in all the
elements, each with its name, were it birds of the air, beasts of
the forest, fish of the waters, leaf and grass of the earth, and all
the unnumbered sand of the sea, and therewith all the little
motes which shine in the sunbeam, and all the little drops of
water, of dew, and snow, and rain, which ever fell or have fallen,
and wished that each of them had a sweet instrument of music
made ready out of my heart's innermost chords, and thus forth-
sounding from first to last, should bring to the beloved, tender
God new and glorious praise."
After years of self-inflicted pain, and experiences which
one would have thought would have shattered his sanity,
he came upon the discovery that what he had been
enduring had been prompted by his own reason ; that
thus far he had been only " in the lower school," and that
he was still far from " the highest knowledge."
At this stage he experienced, as did most of the other
mystics of his group, a time of deep inward testing. He
passed through the desolation of feeling utterly forsaken
by God. " It seemed to him that his soul would never
be saved, but would be eternally damned, whatever he
might do or suffer " ; and at the same time he found him
self separated from his closest friends, misunderstood and
falsely accused, charged with heresy, taken for a charlatan,
and called " a fool always gaping towards heaven."
During these hard years altogether nine years
" with crying heart and weeping eyes " he passed through
xni THE FRIENDS OF GOD 289
dark perplexities over questions of faith, but he came
through into the light and found the God he sought.
As a relief to this morbid occupation with his own
troubled spirit, there is a touching story of the way he
rescued his sister, a nun, who had fallen into mortal sin,
and had run away from the convent. When Suso heard
of her sin, straight he became " like a stone for sorrow,
and his heart died," and the resolve rose up in him to
" spring after her into the deep pit and lift her out" After
a long, desperate search, being himself half-dead from a
fall into the river, he hit upon the little hut where his
sister was hiding. He fell fainting and helpless on the
bench at her side, clasped her in his arms, and cried :
" Alas ! my sister, what have I endured for thee ! " and
fainted. " Then his sister rose and fell at his feet with
great bitter tears, and said mournfully : ' Ah, Lord and
Father, what a sad day was that which brought me into
the world, for I have lost God and have given to thee
such paia' " At length he had the great joy of seeing
his sister restored and " brought back in his own arms to
the kind God."
Not only in this touching incident, but in all his teach
ing, he insists on the value of practical love, and, though
he is excessively concerned with his own inward states,
and lays down the maxim : " Live as if there were no
creature in the world but thyself," he shares with Eckhart,
and his other fellow-mystics, in the practice of love in the
ordinary duties of life.
The ultimate reality for Suso, as for Eckhart, is " the
eternal, uncreated truth." " Here in this eternal, uncreated
truth," he says, " all things have their Source and Eternal
Beginning." " Here the devout man has his beginning
and his end." Whatever flows out from this Source, the
Godhead, can turn back again into its Source, and so
come to reality and to bliss, and even while he is living
on the earth " a man may be in eternity."
There is "an image of God in the soul" which can rise
to the Divine Essence, or Source, and which, " unhindered
by the clouds and veils of created things, may contemplate,
U
290 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
in silent darkness, in absolute repose, the marvels of
Divinity." Suso pushes quite too far his " silent darkness
and absolute repose," and though his religious instincts carry
him out into a life of loving and unselfish service, his
speculations too often carry him into barren wildernesses
where " something and nothing are the same." His account
of " union with God " outdoes even Eckhart, and may be
taken as the extreme doctrine of ultimate Divine and
human oneness. This highest state of union, he teaches,
is an indescribable experience in which all idea of images
and forms and differences has vanished. All conscious
ness of self and of all things has gone, and the soul is
plunged into the abyss of the Godhead, and the spirit has
become one with God, as in the experience of Paul when
he said : " I live, yet no longer I ; it is Christ that liveth
in me." In this highest state God becomes the inner
essence, the life and activity within, so that whatever the
person does, it does as an instrument.
"Like a being," he says, "which loses itself in an indescribable
intoxication, the [human] spirit ceases to be itself, divests itself
of itself, passes into God, and becomes wholly one with Him, as
a drop of water mingled with a cask of wine. As the drop of
water loses its identity, and takes on the taste and colour of the
wine, so it is with those who are in full possession of bliss; human
desires influence them no longer ; divested of self they are ab
sorbed in the Divine Will, mingle with the Divine Nature, and
become one with it." x
Poor soul ! was it to gain such annihilation of identity
and personality that he suffered the terrible tortures of
those sixteen years ? was it for this he wore the crucifix
with its lacerating nails in his flesh ? We must not, how
ever, make too much of his over-emphasis of a line of
teaching, and of pathological experiences, which had by
this time become second nature in all mystical circles.
The spirit of kindly love, the passion for the redemption
1 As an orthodox Christian, Suso tries to save himself from the logical outcome
of this complete absorption. He says that there is no temporal moment when
the identification of the human with the Divine is complete. The personal / is
never destroyed, though, while the theopathic state lasts, there is no personal con
sciousness of it. This theopathic state is set forth in his Book of the Truth.
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 291
of sinners, the utter loss of selfish interest, the sweet con
sciousness of Divine love, and the complete obedience of
will to the heavenly leading which mark this Friend of
God, must cover for us the blindness and error which
were mainly due to his intellectual environment and to
the subtle influences of suggestion.
The literary gem of this religious movement is a
little book which bears the name TJieologica Gcrmanica.
It lacks the robustness of The Nine Rocks, but its
beauty of style and its depth of inner experience give it
the right to be entered among the classic books of mystical
literature. Inge goes so far in praise of it as to say that
" in some ways it is superior to the famous treatise of
a Kempis on the Imitation of Christ? It was put by
Luther in the highest company : " Next to the Bible and
St Augustine," he says, " no book hath ever come into
my hands from which I have learned more of what God
and Christ and man and all things are ! "
Its author is unknown, for the very reason that he
strictly practised what he taught namely, the hiding of
the " creature," that no glory might accrue to him who
held the pen. The unknown author's great prayer : " I
would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand
is to a man " is beautifully fulfilled in this book. The
passive writer " lent his hand " to the Eternal Goodness,
and he had no concern to sign his human name at the
end of his book. The preface, which appears in the
earliest extant MS., says : 2
" This little book hath the Almighty and Eternal God spoken
by the mouth of a wise, understanding, faithful, righteous man,
His Friend, who aforetime was of the Teutonic Order, a priest
and a warden in the house of the Teutonic Order in Frank
fort ; and it giveth much precious insight into divine truth, and
1 The quotations will be made from Susanna Winkworth's translation,
London, 1874. This quotation is from p. 30.
* This MS. was found in the library of Wurzburg University in 1850. It
dates from 1497. It has been published verbatim by Pfeiffer.
292 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
especially teacheth how and whereby we may discern the true
and upright Friends of God from those unrighteous and false
free-thinkers, who are most hurtful to the holy Church."
The writer is plainly influenced by Eckhart, and shows
the " family characteristics " of the Friends of God. He
quotes from Tauler, and he holds much the same ideas
which appear and reappear in Tauler's sermons.
The fundamental conception of the writer is the view,
made familiar enough in these studies, that the finite, the
temporal everything which can be called " the creature,"
everything which can be conceived as severed from the
wholeness of God must be transcended before the soul
can come upon Divine Reality. The supreme error, there
fore, in the mind of this unknown mystic is having a will
which aims at getting some particular thing for self. " So
long," he says, "as a man taketh account of anything
which is this or that, whether it be himself or any other
creature ; or doeth anything ; or frameth a purpose for
the sake of his own likings, or desires, or opinions, or
ends ; he cometh not unto the life of Christ." l " So long
as a man seeketh his own will and his own highest good,
because it is his and for his own sake, he will never find
it. For so long as he doeth this, he is seeking himself
and dreameth that he is himself the highest Good. But
whoever seeketh, loveth, and pursueth Goodness (i.e. the
Good per se), and for the sake of Goodness, and maketh
that his end, for nothing but the love of Goodness : not
for the love of I, me, mine, self, and the like, he will find
the highest Good, for he seeketh it aright." 2 The very
mark and brand of the " natural man," as distinguished
from " the divine and spiritual man," is found here in the
aim of the will: "To the creature the self according to
Nature it belongeth to be somewhat to be this or that
and not simply what is good without any wherefore \ "
But " he who is made a partaker of the Divine nature
neither willeth nor desireth nor seeketh anything save
Goodness as Goodness for the sake of Goodness." 3 Nay,
more, in this aim of the will is manifested the very " secret "
1 P. 61. a P. 168. 3 P. 135.
xm THE FRIENDS OF GOD 293
of heaven and hell : " No thing burneth in hell but self-
will [the aim at some particular thing for self], and there
fore it hath been said, put off thine own will and there
will be no hell ! " 1 " Were there no self-will there would
be no ownership, and in heaven there is no ownership. If
any one in heaven took upon himself to call anything his
own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell. If
there were any person in hell who should get quit of his
self-will, and call nothing his own, he would come out of
hell into heaven." * Again : "If there were no self-will
there would be no devil and no hell ; and by self-will we
mean willing otherwise than as the One and Eternal Will
of God willeth." a He tells us over and over what he
means by the way in which " the One and Eternal Will
of God willeth " : " With God there is no willing, nor
working, nor desiring " ; " It is the property of God to be
without this and that, without self and me." 4 The result
of this view is a corresponding emphasis on renunciation,
self-abandonment, and annihilation of will. God cannot
come in until the man goes out : " Whenever a man
forsaketh and cometh out of himself, then God entereth." 8
It is a view which is gloriously true in one aspect, and
pitiably false in another aspect. In the negative aspect
in which our unknown mystic uses it, it leads to emptiness
and quietism. Its goal is a person who wills nothing
which is a blank contradiction, for the central feature of
personality is will-activity. A being " taking no account
of anything which is this or that," a being that " neither
willeth nor worketh nor desireth," is not a person in fact,
is in the very lowest scale of life, not in the highest. The
root of the difficulty lies in the false conception, common
to all medieval speculation, that the One, the Perfect, is
a Being without attributes or distinction. As our author
puts it : " To God, as Godhead, appertains neither will,
nor knowledge, nor manifestation, nor anything that we
can name, or say, or conceive" He is an Infinite beyond
all that is finite, an Absolute beyond all that is relative,
a Perfect beyond all that is imperfect, an abstract Being
1 P. 115. 8 Pp. 192-93. 3 P. 180. 4 Pp. 77 and 90. P. 78.
294 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
beyond all that is concrete and particular ; and therefore
to rise to Him and become joined to Him involves the
negating of everything that is " this " or " that " ; in short,
the annihilation of will to the extent that " something and
nothing have become alike." l
The time was not yet ripe, when our author lived and
wrote, for the truer, positive view of immanence, the view
which finds the Infinite in the finite, the Absolute in the
relative, the Perfect in the imperfect, the Universal in the
particular ; and so, too, the time was not ripe for the truer
view of self- surrender, the view that all genuine self-
surrender is the affirmation of a higher self, that all
genuine self-sacrifice is consecration to the realization of
a wider self. There must be annihilation of aims that
end in the isolated self, " the I, me, and mine," but that
does not mean annihilation of will, or the destruction of
desire it only means that desire is to be heightened by
a vision of service to God and man, and that our will is
to become consecrated to the tasks which God is working
out in the world of which we are a part. But to the end,
however far one may travel on the path of holiness, the
aim must be concrete, and it must be motived by a concrete
motive, for a desireless, will-less man can be called neither
good nor bad. A person is not good until his own will
wills the good deed, because he sees that it is good, and
chooses to put his life into it.
Some hints of this affirmative spirituality appear here
and there in this little book, and even where the funda
mental conception of it seems to us wrong, there is a
constant feeling that the writer's heart is right. He did
his thinking, as we all do, in the terms and ideas of his
time, but he attained a religious mood, a spiritual attitude,
which has a timeless aspect about it. What noble words
these are :
" A true lover of God loveth Him alike in having or in not
having, in sweetness or in bitterness, in good report or in evil
report. And therefore he standeth alike unshaken in all things,
at all seasons." ' 2
1 P. 173- 2 P- 32-
xiii THE FRIENDS OF GOD 295
And where can one find a finer note of positive con
secration to service than in those words already quoted ?
" I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his own
hand is to a man." His words on the union of the human
and Divine are well balanced, and are as favourable to a
practical life as to a life of quietism :
" God and man should be wholly united, so that it can be
said of a truth that God and man are one. This cometh to pass
on this wise : where the truth always reigneth, so that true perfect
God and true perfect man are at one, and man so giveth place to
God, that God Himself is there, and this same unity worketh con
tinually, and doeth or leaveth undone, without any I or me or
mine behold there is Christ, and nowhere else."
His view of Christ's suffering over sin is very modern,
and has no mark of the traditional or dogmatic temper.
It shows how penetrating a spirit he was, and how pro
foundly he was influenced by experience. Wherever God
reveals Himself personally or to use the author's own
words, " wherever God is made man or dwelleth in a truly
godlike man " He always reveals His sorrow over sin.
Christ is the supreme instance of the Perfect God flowing
forth into a person and bringing forth His Son in a person.
As a man rises in the spiritual scale and partakes of God
he grows more sensitive to sin, and his sorrow over it
increases ; and this sorrow over sin comes from the fact
that God is in the man, for it is the nature of God Him
self to grieve over sin, and such grief is always a sign of
God's presence. This is the cause of that unutterable
anguish and grief of Christ, who is God made man in
fullest measure. He has shown to us that sin is so
hateful to God and grieves Him so sore that He would
willingly suffer agony and death, if even one man's sins
might be washed out thereby ; and wherever God finds
this grief for sin, He loveth and esteemeth it more than
aught else. 1
Like all the other members of this group, our author
1 See especially chap, xxxvii. It is interesting in this connection to note
that the author's great test of an act or an attitude is whether such act or attitude
would be seemly for God if He were made man (pp. 196-97).
296 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
makes much of first-hand experience, and much less of
" knowledge-about." He says :
" Although it be good and profitable that we should ask and
learn and know what good and holy men have wrought and
suffered, and how God hath dealt with them, and what He hath
done in and through them, yet it is a thousand times better that
we should in ourselves learn and perceive and understand who we
are, how and what our life is, what God is and is doing in us,
what He will have from us, and to what ends He will or will not
use us." x
In another fine passage he asks " in what Blessedness
lieth," and he answers that it is not in anything whatever
outside us " not in any works or wonders that God hath
wrought, or ever shall work, so far as these things exist
or are done outside." " These things can make me blessed
only in so far as they exist or are done and loved, known^
tasted, and felt within me" z In this connection it is in
teresting to note that this Friend of God in the fourteenth
century used the term " Light " almost precisely as the
Friends of the seventeenth century did. There is, he
says, a true Light within the soul which gives us our
sense of sin ; it leads us to frame and build our lives after
His life. In a single golden sentence he says : " The
true Light is God's seed, and it bringeth forth the fruits
of God." 3 There are two persons who have no sense of
sin Christ and Satan, and the sense of sin in a man
decreases as he moves up or down toward either of these
divergent goals. Those who are losing their sense of sin
by following the Light toward Christ have always this
sign and seal, that they are " inflamed and consumed with
love " : " The Light is worth nothing without love " ; " to
be a partaker of the Divine Nature, that is, to be a God
like man, means to be illuminated by the Divine Light,
and to be inflamed and consumed with Divine Love." 4
In spite of his dread of being tangled in the finite and
temporal, and his tendency to reduce all that is seen to
1 P. 26. 2 Pp. 28-29.
8 This is iterated and re-iterated throughout the writings of Isaac Penington
( Works, London, 1681).
* See especially chapters xl. and xli.
xin THE FRIENDS OF GOD 297
zero in order to exalt the unseen and eternal to infinity,
he nevertheless calls the world that now is " an outer court
of the Eternal," and he says that temporal things " mani
fest and remind us of God," so that things which are
made " creatures " are " a guide and a path unto God
and Eternity." l And the supreme thing about an earthly
life is that it can become a revealing place for God :
" Thanks be unto the man, and everlasting reward and bless
ing, who is fit and ready to be a tabernacle of the Eternal Good
ness and Godhead, wherein God may exert His power and will,
and work without hindrance." ~
It remains to point out that our author, like the other
members of his group, has " a spiritual ladder " for the
soul's upward path. His ladder has three stages, each of
which has three sub-stages. The first upward step of the
soul is " Purification." The first degree of Purification is
(a) sorrow for sin ; the second (), full confession of sin ;
and the third is (c) hearty amendment of life. The second
stage of the soul is " Enlightenment," with its three degrees
of advance : (a) Eschewal of sin, () practice of virtue and
good works, and (c) endurance of trial and temptation.
The third stage is " Union," which ends upward in the
perfect life. Its three degrees are (a) pureness and single
ness of heart, () love, and (c} contemplation of God. 8
But at every stage on the spiritual ladder, the soul that is
progressing toward the Light and Love and Vision of
God " must live by God as the body liveth by the soul." 4
1 P. 181. 2 P. 57. 3 See chap. xiv. 4 P. an.
CHAPTER XIV
THE BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE
THE mysticism of all these societies and groups in the
fourteenth century, which we have so far studied, was
weakened by its heavy load of scholastic speculation.
There was at the heart of it a deep, sincere craving for
God, its exponents were trying to utter the unstilled
hunger of the soul ; but it was always at the mercy of pre
vailing intellectual currents, which swept it now into the
dangers of an unmoral, or even immoral, pantheism, and
now into a via negativa, ending in a blind alley of Quietism.
It was always too subtle for the common people, too far
removed from the warm pulses of actual human life. It
was, furthermore, too much absorbed in the introspection
of inward states, in the cataloguing of stages of " experi
ence," to become a social gospel, a spiritualizing power
for the age. The times called loudly for a religion of
experience, an intimate life with God, but at the same
time for a religion more simple, practical, social in a
word, more Christlike, than any of these spiritual move
ments. The New Learning was already working its
noiseless revolution. Unsuspected transformations were
commencing to remould the mind of Europe, and with
the new intellectual dawning there also began to spread,
unconsciously and without observation, a new mysticism,
born out of the old, but more practical and social
than it ; more eager to minister to the whole man, and
with wider interest in the entire spiritual mission of
Christianity.
The visible Church was sick with an astonishing com-
298
CH. xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 299
plication of diseases, which none of its doctors, " greedy
for quick returns of profit," could cure. Its spiritual
power had waned ; its hierarchy was honeycombed with
corruption ; its oracles were dumb ; it had no word of
authority for the sin-burdened multitude that " looked up
and were not fed." The great Church that had conquered
the Empire and led captive the barbarian conquerors, and
had turned the tribes of Gaul and Germany and Britain
into men of faith, was sinking into a temporal corporation
for dispensing wealth and patronage and power. But in
the dark days at the end of the fourteenth century even
its temporal power and prestige, which had been slowly
built up by the cunning statesmanship of popes, was
crumbling. The seventy years of " Babylonish Captivity "
had put a deep stain on the glory of the official Church,
had weakened its world-authority, had brought to light its
insincerity, and had been a terrible witness to its corrup
tion and rottenness. But the " great schism " that followed
the return to Rome wrought still greater havoc. The
unity of Christendom was shattered. There was no
longer any pretence of a single spiritual head to the
official Church. Each country followed its own interests
in deciding which papal head to acknowledge ; and the
mystic order, the seamless robe, was rent in twain and
finally into three parts.
" The body of Christianity," writes Gerson, at the end
of the fourteenth century, " is covered with sores from
head to foot. Everything is rushing from bad to worse,
and every one must take his part in the sum of evils."
There was no hope of a spiritual regeneration from the
official Church. It was busy bartering and trafficking in
the temple, busy with world politics and temporal schemes.
Even when the rent in the mystic order was patched up
at Constance, the next concern was to burn the man
who was most keenly diagnosing the moral and spiritual
diseases from which the Church was suffering. If tJif
religion of Christ was to be revived in power and supplant
the caricature of it, the age had to produce prophets of
the invisible Church voices of the Eternal Christ to cry
300 MYbllUAL KtLILrlUJN CHAP.
in the ears of men who could exhibit in powerful fashion
new and compelling ideals of spiritual religion.
Such prophets, in fact, did appear, and helped to turn
the battle from defeat to victory. The work of the
mystics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was not
lost. Their teaching burned in the hearts of the high-"
minded men and women who heard them ; their books
and sermons were like torches passed on by dying hands
to living successors, and the dark period of schism and
spiritual incapacity in the visible Church was relieved by
the appearance of many worthy representatives of that
invisible Church which never dies, which must always
be reckoned with by official hierarchies and traditional
systems, and which is still the hope and promise of that
kingdom of God for which Christ lived and died.
The " new mysticism " of the late fourteenth and early
fifteenth centuries was more emancipated from scholasticism
than the mystics of the early fourteenth century had been.
The influence of Dionysius and Erigena was weakening,
and the influence of Christ and of the primitive ideals was
growing. There was still an air of the recluse about it,
a smell of the cloister was upon it, and the old tendency
to be over-occupied in the cultivation of inward states was
not conquered, but there appeared now a new passion for
service, a consecration, not so much to the attainment of
the " Divine Origin " for the individual as a consecration
to the task of building the spiritual Zion, the invisible
Church for humanity. The great mystics of this period
at the turning of the century were concerned to revitalise
Christianity, and to restore the Church to its apostolic
power, not by miracle and cataclysm, but by a positive
imitation of Christ, by the cultivation of brotherhood, by
the religious education of little children, and by most
strenuous efforts to heal the diseases of the Church and
to bring its official guides to the Light of Christ. These
champions of inward religion were confined to no locality
and to no one nation. Nearly every Christian country
had its leader, or leaders, of this new mysticism, which was
forcing the attention of the most serious minds at the
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 301
very time when the New Learning was beginning to
attract the interest of little groups of men in widely-
sundered centres. France had her Gerson ; Italy her
Catharine of Siena ; Sweden her Bridget ; England her
Walter Hilton and Lady Julian ; Holland was the home
of a great mystical brotherhood the successor of the
Friends of God " the New Devotion " or " Brethren of
the Common Life," out of which came the most influential
piece of mystical literature the world has seen The
Imitation of Christ.
Catharine's life covers the years from 1347 to 13 So. 1
She was a charming, joyous child, but given to visions,
and filled with longing to imitate the desert hermits, even
at the age of six. Already at this childish age she had
her first ecstasy, and became so absorbed with the vision
of Christ that her little brother had to pull her by the
hand to bring her back to earth, and she took the vow of
virginity when she was seven ! At fourteen she put on
the black and white garb of St. Dominic, and became a
Dominican tertiary. When her father endeavoured to
compel her to marry, and deprived her of solitary con
templation to force her into the worldly life, " the Holy
Ghost taught her how to make for herself a solitude in
her heart, where amid all her occupations she could be as
though alone with God, to whose Presence she kept herself
no less attentive than if she had no exterior employment
to distract her."
In 1370 she underwent a mystical death and returned
to life under the Divine command to go abroad to save
souls and to minister to the needy world. She experi
enced, she tells us, " the sweetness of serving God, not for
her own joy ; and of serving her neighbour, not for her
own will or profit, but from pure love." 2 And this love
of hers, burning with intense desire, was kindled in her
1 She was the youngest of the twenty-five children of Jacopo Benincasa, of
Siena.
* See Letters of St. Catharine of Siena, by Vida D. Scudder, 1905. p. 63.
302 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
heart by a clear perception of the love of God as the
supreme reality of the universe, which breaks out in that
great sentence of hers : " For nails would not have held
the God-man fast to the cross had not love held Him
there." l
The corruptions of the Church and the evils of the
times oppressed her with a weight heavy almost as death,
and brought her under a severe mental strain and an
intense passion for Christ In an extraordinary ecstasy
she experienced an espousal to Christ, and she felt herself
to be ever after the espoused bride of the King of Heaven,
pledged " to do manfully and without hesitation " whatever
she might be called to do. Even more extraordinary was
a later ecstasy, in which, like St. Francis, she experienced
the imprint of the fivg wounds of Christ the stigmata.
She felt a torrent of blood and fire poured out upon her
self, and was conscious of a mystical cleansing wrought
by this torrent, so that she was " changed into another
person." In the ardour of this experience she prayed for
a sign, and suddenly felt her outstretched palm pierced
through by an invisible nail. The final imprint of the
stigmata came somewhat later. Her own description of
this experience is as follows :
" I saw the crucified Lord coming down to me in a great
light. . . . Then from the marks of His most sacred wounds I
saw five blood -red rays coming down upon me, which were
directed towards the hands and feet and heart of my body.
Wherefore, perceiving the mystery, I straightway exclaimed,
' Ah ! Lord, my God, I beseech Thee, let not the marks appear
outwardly on the body.' Then, while I was speaking, before the
rays reached me, they changed their blood-red colour to splendour,
and in the semblance of pure light they came to the five places
of my body, that is, to the hands, the feet, and the heart. So
great is the pain that I endure sensibly in all those five places,
but especially within my heart, that unless the Lord works a new
miracle, it seems not possible to me that the life of my body can
stay with such agony." 2
By a later experience the " new miracle " was granted,
1 Letters of St. Catharine of Siena, p. 8.
2 Gardner's St. Catharine of Siena, p. 134.
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 303
so that the wounds not only ceased to afflict the body,
but even fortified it. 1
The next year, after these experiences (1376), she
threw herself into the task of restoring the spiritual power
of the Church. She had poor material at hand with
which to build a kingdom of God in those years, but one
feels a sense of awe as he sees this woman, girt about
with no forces but the invisible might of God, going to
work to bring the head of the Church back to Rome and
to his ancient dignity. She finds abject superstition in
the court of Avignon ; vacillation and cowardice in the
heart of her Pope, but she rises to a full sense of her
spiritual mission, and speaks with the authority of one
inwardly conscious of a Divine commission.
"When I told you that you should toil for Holy Church," she
wrote to the Papal Legate, " I was not thinking only of the
labours you should assume about temporal things, but chiefly
that you and the Holy Father ought to toil and do what you can
to get rid of the wolfish shepherds who care for nothing but
eating and fine palaces and big horses. Oh me, that which
Christ won upon the wood of the Cross is spent with harlots ! I
beg that if you were to die for it, you tell the Holy Father to put
an end to such iniquities. And when the time comes to make
priests or cardinals, let them not be chosen through flatteries or
moneys or simony ; but beg him, as far as you can, that he notice
well if virtue and a good and holy fame are found in the men." a
That has the ring of the prophet, but it is only the
prelude. The same year she writes to the Pope himself,
Gregory XL With the licence of a little child, she calls
him " sweetest ' Babbo ' mine ! " but she tells him the plain
facts that the " blind shepherd-physicians " are leading the
Church straight into the ditch ; and rising to the very
limit of daring, she says :
" I hope by the goodness of God, venerable father mine, that
you will quench this perverse and perilous self-love in yourself,
and will not love yourself for yourself, nor your neighbour for
yourself, nor God; but will love Him because He is highest and
1 There are few pieces of autobiographical description which better show the
power of auto-suggestion than this. 8 Letters, p. 115.
304 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Eternal Goodness, and worthy of being loved ; and yourself and
your neighbour you will love to the honour and the glory of the
Sweet Name of Jesus. I will, then, that you be so true and
good a shepherd that if you had a hundred thousand lives you
would be ready to give them all for the honour of God and the
salvation of men. . . . Let no more note be given to friends or
relatives or to one's temporal needs, but only to virtue and the
exaltation of things spiritual. For temporal things are failing you
from no other cause than from your neglect of the spiritual." . . .
" I wish and pray that the moment of time that remains [for you]
be dealt with manfully, following Christ, whose vicar you are, like
a strong man." 1
Again, writing to Gregory as his " unworthy daughter
Catharine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus
Christ, in His precious blood," she urges that
" Holy Church should return to her first condition, poor, humble,
and meek, as she was in that holy time when men took note of
nothing but the honour of God and the salvation of souls, caring
for spiritual things, not for temporal. For ever since the Church
has aimed more at temporal than at spiritual things it has gone
from bad to worse." 2
There is something sublime in a message such as the
following from the daughter of a dyer of Siena to the
sovereign Pontiff of the world :
" The sick man is blind, for he knows not his own need ; and
the pastor, who is the physician, is blind, for he considers nothing
save his own pleasure and advantage, and, in order not to lose
that, does not employ the knife of justice or the fire of most
ardent charity. Such a one is truly an hireling shepherd . . . and
does not follow sweet Jesus, the true Shepherd, who has given
His life for the sheep. Oh, Babbo mine, sweet Christ on earth,
follow that sweet Gregory [Gregory the Great], for it will be as
possible for you to quench self-love as it was for him." 3
Finally, she went in person to Avignon, and, as the
messenger of Christ, persuaded the wavering Pope to
return to Rome, triumphed over all obstacles, and induced
him to " fulfil what he had promised God." 4 Another
1 Letters, p. 131. 2 Ibid. pp. 119-21. 3 Gardner, p. 154.
4 There is an account, undoubtedly fictitious, m\hzBookofthe Five Men, attributed
to ' ' The Friend of God from the Oberland, " of how he received an order from God
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 305
trait in this great woman, no less wonderful than her
statesmanlike grasp and her penetrating insight into
public affairs, was her power of seeing the hidden possi
bilities within the persons who came in contact with her,
a certain creative power which all the greatest mystics
show. She tells in one of her letters how one in close
unity with God can help bring a friend, a fellow-man to
his full possibility :
" Nay, there grows within one a love made of great and true
compassion, and with desire he brings his friend to the birth,
with tears and sighs and continual prayers in the sweet presence
of God. . . . There is no spirit of criticism in it nor displeasure
because it loves the friend not for himself, but for God." l
Her later life was devoted in the same fearless strain to
the discouraging task of rousing spiritual passion in the
hearts of officials who were immersed in material concerns.
Her noble life admirably illustrates her lofty confession :
" / would rather exert myself for Christ crucified, feeling
pain, gloom, and inward conflict^ than not exert myself and
feel repose? 2 She knew in her own experience of having
entered " that sea of peace where thou shalt never have
any fear of being separated from God." 3 She gave her
testimony to the fact that the soul " bears ever within it
the place where God lives by grace the house of our
soul wherein holy desire prays constantly," 4 and, in words
of lofty spiritual import, she wrote : " I desire to see you
seek God in truth, without anything between" s
II
It was a saint and mystic, Catharine, who was the chief
instrument in bringing the " Babylonish Captivity " of the
Church to an end ; so, too, it was a mystic and politician,
to go to the Pope, Gregory XI. , upon his return to Rome, to warn him of the
woes which were coming, and to call upon him in the name of the Holy Spirit to
reform the Church. At first the Pope was angry at the freedom with which he,
a layman, spoke of the sins of the Pope and of Christendom, but as he saw
the proofs of the layman's divine mission, the Pope promised to obey him in
everything. St. Bridget of Sweden had already, in 1366, under a Divine intima
tion, paid a visit to Avignon, to urge Pope Urban V. to return to Rome.
1 Letters, p. 250. 2 Ibid. p. t6o. * Ibid. p. 96.
4 Ibid. p. 151. 6 Ibid. p. 89.
X
306 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Jean le Charlier de Gerson (1363-1429), who was the
chief instrument in ending the " great schism." He won
for himself the title "Most Christian Doctor," he held
the foremost scholastic position in Europe, Chancellor of
the University of Paris, and he was the controlling power
in the great Council of Constance. It was the deepest
purpose of his life to build up again the invisible Church
within the visible, but he was a politician, a reconciler a
man who was ready to put unity above truth, and the
result was that in doing much good he also did some evil,
and that while toiling with valiant spirit to realize the
kingdom of Christ, he also furnished some material for
the kingdom of Anti-Christ. With a boldness and frank
ness which reminds one of Catharine speaking to her
" sweet Babbo," Gerson in a powerful sermon in 1405
told the King of France the pitiable condition of his
people, robbed by princes and plundered by soldiers, and
called him to his duty to relieve the sufferings of these
people, and to give them their rights as men. A still
greater service he rendered to the people by teaching in
person the children of the poor, declaring that they were
the children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven,
and that it was as great an honour to teach them as to
teach princes. In behalf of these little children he power
fully attacked the superstitions which were fed to them in
place of truth, and to train their innocent spirits he wrote
an A B C for Little People, telling them about the Divine
Father and His holy will. Higher than his title of " Most
Christian Doctor " was the other title he gained, " Doctor
of the people and Doctor of little children." 1
His mysticism is worked out in a series of very dry
books, which show much more subtilty than originality
and more learning than personal experience. He was
the stern foe of any mysticism which leaned toward
pantheism or which ended in a Divine Dark, but he was
not very successful at the task of blazing the way to a
positive mysticism which could ground the active life in
an inner consciousness of God. His psychological studies
1 See De Montmorency, Thomas d Kempis, p. 22.
\
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 307
of mystical processes are formal and scholastic rather than
genuine analyses of experience itself, and have little value
to-day. The main point of interest is his conclusion, in
his Mystica Theologia^ that the soul has an intuitive faculty
above the reasoning faculty a synderesis or power of
mind, for receiving truth immediately from God ; that all
genuine mystical exercises are exercises of love rather than
of thought ; that it is in contemplation of Divine Love
that the soul experiences its love-union with God, and so
finds its own true activities, and that only a few souls attain
the mystical experience, since it is a rare grace or achieve
ment, and most men stop at lower levels.
It was, however, significant that the foremost scholar
of the time was looking for God within the soul rather
than above the dome of the sky or in the bread and wine
of the altar, and it meant much for such a man to point
out that God and man discover their oneness through love.
His good and his evil work at the Council of Constance
cannot be told here. He cured the schism by formulating
the great principle that Councils are above popes, and can
unmake and make them. He stood by the mystical
movement in Holland, and saved " the Brothers of the
Common Life " from their ecclesiastical enemies ; but he,
though in intention a member of the Invisible Church,
helped to destroy its noblest living stone by consenting
to and even urging the death of John Hus.
Forced into exile at the very height of his glory,
because he dared in the Council to stand for righteousness
in a cause which called upon him the hate of the Duke of
Burgundy, he ended his public service as he began it
teaching little children. The world may forget the mystic
commentary on the Song of Songs which he wrote in his
years of exile at Lyons, but it cannot well forget the
beautiful picture of this great scholar, unifier of the
Church, and mystic, surrounded by a band of poor
children listening to his words of life, and crowding
around, as he lay dying, to pray for " our dear father,
Jean Gerson."
1 Doctrina Johannis Gersoni dt Tkeologia Mystica, Paris, 1838.
308 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Ill
But this chapter must be mainly devoted to the quiet
work for the realization of the invisible Church performed
in the mystical groups of "the Brethren of the Common
Life " a movement often called by its own members
the " New Devotion," which gives us the ripest fruit of
mysticism before the Reformation. The actual founder
and spiritual guide of the movement was Gerard Groote,
at the same time the bearer of a new evangelism, a new
education, and a new mysticism. But Gerard owed so
much to his spiritual father, John Ruysbroek, the Flemish
mystic, that I shall introduce him here as a vital part of
"the New Devotion." Ruysbroek is the link that joins
the two movements the Friends of God and the Brothers
of the Common Life together, and the spirit of both
groups is found in him. He was the intimate friend, on
the one hand, of Tauler and Suso, and, on the other, of
Gerard and his companions.
He was born, probably of German parents, in the year
1293, in the little village of Ruysbroek, on the Senne,
between Brussels and Hal, and now his " village name " is
the only name for him we know. He was not, like his
friends Tauler and Groote, a scholar. " He had," says
Denis the Carthusian, " no teacher but the Holy Ghost.
He was ignorant and illiterate. Peter and John were the
same. His authority I believe to be that of a man to whom
the Holy Ghost has revealed secrets." With consider
able exaggeration his great admirer, Maeterlink, comments
thus on his ignorance and astonishing wisdom :
"This monk possessed one of the wisest, most exact, and
most subtle philosophic brains which have ever existed (!). He
lived in his hut at Gronendal (Green Valley), in the midst of the
forest of Soignes. He knew no Greek, and perhaps no Latin.
He was alone and poor ; and yet in the depths of this obscure
forest of Brabant his mind, ignorant and simple as it was, receives
all unconsciously dazzling sunbeams from all the lonely, mysteri
ous peaks of human thought. He knows, though he is unaware
of it, the Platonism of Greece, the Sufism of Persia, the Brah-
manism of India, and the Buddhism of Tibet ; and his marvellous
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 309
ignorance rediscovers the wisdom of buried centuries, and foresees
the knowledge of centuries yet unborn." l
He at least knew Latin enough to receive priest's
orders, which he took in his twenty- fourth year, and
became vicar of the Church of St. Gudule, in Brussels.
He performed the duties of his priesthood with zeal and
fidelity until his sixtieth year, when he retired with a little
band of companions to the monastery of Gronendal, where
in the solitude of the forest he devoted himself to medita
tion and to the composition of his mystical books. He
devoutly believed that he was the recipient of immediate
revelation, and he told Gerard Groote that he was firmly
convinced that he had not written a word except under
the impulse of the Holy Spirit. He wrote in the tongue
of his own people, but he travelled so far up " within the
polar circle of the mind " that it is desperately hard to
follow him, and, as Maeterlink says, his words and phrases
are but " poor double horn-panes," through which the
light of his mind comes to us. His reputation for saintli-
ness spread widely abroad, and drew many visitors to his
retreat some seriously seeking the wise man's counsel,
and some coming to satisfy their curiosity. Among the
many legends which his fame and holiness inspired there
is one which ought to be true, whether it actually is or
not Some priests from Paris presented themselves to
him one day, desiring to consult him on the state of their
souls, but his only answer was, " You are as holy as you
desire to be." They were naturally nettled and annoyed
at such an answer, for they missed its profound meaning.
" My very dear children," continued the spiritual counsellor,
" I said that your holiness was that which you desired it
to be ; in other words, it is in proportion to your good
will. Enter into yourselves, examine your goodwill, and
you will have the measure of your state." *
One touches in those words the very secret of mysticism, j
that in the inward life itself, not in outside props, lies the
1 Maeterlink, Ruysbrotk and the Mystics, translated by Jane T. Stoddart,
London, 1894, p. 12.
a Bailie, Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic, London, 1905, p. 13.
310 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
man's salvation and power. The legend writers miss just
this secret when, to glorify him, they tell how once
Ruysbroek was lost in the forest, and the brethren sought
in all directions for him. At length one of his most
intimate friends saw a distant tree wrapped in light, and,
when he drew near, he found it enveloped in flames, while
under it sat the master in an ecstasy of meditation ! He
died at a ripe old age in 1381.
It is a primary principle of his teaching that " the
soul finds God in its own depths " : " God suffices for all,
and every spirit, according to the measure of its love, has
a manner more or less profound of seeking God in its own
depths." 1 The deepest root and very essence of the soul
in every man is the eternal image of God there there
without any agency of our own, there before our personal
creation, and there for ever. In the mirror of the Son
God sees, and we too may see, the types or patterns of all
reality ; and the way to find ourselves and God and all
that Is, is to stretch forth our arms toward the Divine
pattern which is ours : " Flying from brightness to bright
ness, the spirit aspires with outstretched arms to reach
this immortal pattern according to which it was created."
The " spiritual ladder," by which the created spirit
climbs up " that mountain without summit," has, according
to Ruysbroek, three steps or stages. The first stage is the
active life. This is a stage of religion which consists of
outward acts, such as abstinence from things harmful,
deeds of penance, acts of self-denial, the performance of
virtuous deeds in short, the living of a morally good life,
in accordance with the laws and commandments of God.
To look upon outwardly, this life appears to conform to
its pattern ; the thing, however, which spoils it, and puts
the trail of imperfection on all its deeds, is its intention.
It is a stage of self-love and self-concern. The soul does
what it does for reward and gain. It is moved by fear of
hell or desire for the joys of heaven. It is a religion of
legalism, and those who are in this stage can be called by
no higher name than " Servants of God."
1 Bailie, op. cit. pp. 22 and 23.
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 311
The second stage is the Inward Life. Deeds of good
ness and outward acts are not left behind as the soul
comes up to this higher level. The ascent is rather
marked by change of intention. What is done now is
done from sheer love. The heart, by love, has come into
a oneness of purpose with God, so that its deeds are no
longer from calculation and outward constraint ; they are
the natural fruit of the transformed soul, which burns with
pure love and devotion. The soul surpasses in aspira
tion all that it does or can do. In a beautiful passage
Ruysbroek says :
" The pure soul feels a constant fire of love, which desires
above all things to be one with God, and the more the soul obeys
the attraction of God the more it feels it, and the more it feels it
the more it desires to be one with God." l
Again he says :
" We follow the splendour of God on toward the source from
which it flows, and there we feel that our spirits are stripped of
all things and bathed beyond all thought of rising in the pure
and infinite ocean of love. This immersion in love becomes the
habit of our being, and so takes place while we sleep and while
we wake, whether we know it or whether we know it not . . .
It is simply an eternal going forth out of ourselves into a trans
formed state." 2
And in his Ladder of Love he reiterates the rapturous
cry:
" Love the love which loves you everlastingly for the more
you love the more you desire to love," and " when we spirits hold
fast by love, He by His Spirit remakes us, then joy is ours. The
Spirit of God breathes us out toward love and good works, and
it breathes us into rest and joy ; and that is eternal life, just as
in our mortal life we breathe out the air which is in us and
breathe in fresh air."
Perhaps we can get a sense of the selflessness and
spontaneity of this stage of the inward life best of all
from the personal testimony of Ruysbroek : " Lord, I am
Thine, and I should be Thine as gladly in hell as in
1 From The Book of the Sparkling Stone. In the following passages from
Ruysbroek, I have used Jane T. Stoddart's translation. * Ibid.
312 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
heaven, if in that way I could advance Thy glory ! " and
this attainment he tells us is wrought " when Christ the
Eternal Sun rises in our hearts and sends His light and
fire into our wills, and draws the heart from the multitude
of ' things,' and creates unity and close fellowship, and
makes the heart grow and become green through inward
love, and bear flowers of loving devotion." l Those who
come upon this level of the spiritual life are called no
longer Servants, but " Friends of God."
But there is still a third stage the contemplative life
to which only a few attain, and which is an experience
for pinnacle moments rather than a plateau where the
soul normally tabernacles. " Those," he says, " who have
raised themselves into the absolute purity of their spirit
by love stand in God's presence with open and unveiled
faces," and then, " by the Light and Splendour which
radiate from God they behold the very substance of God
above reason and beyond distinction." In other words,
it is a kind of knowledge, or rather of seeing, in which
there are no modes or distinctions. There is no power
of description, because what is seen is above all this,
or that. In Ruysbroek's own words :
" It is as when you stand in the dazzling radiance of the sun,
and turning away your eyes from all colour, from attending to
distinguishing all the various ' things ' which the sun illuminates,
you simply follow with your eyes the brightness of the rays, and
so are led up into the sun's very essence." 2
In this sublime experience of seeing God the
human spirit becomes what it sees, is one with the very
light by which it beholds the object of its vision. In the
beautiful words of our mystic : " What we are, that we
behold ; and what we behold, that we are ; for in this
pure vision we are one life and one spirit with God." 8 In
this experience, when the soul is burning and consumed
in the fire of love, " God possesses us and we Him in
unity, and we enjoy God and rest in blessedness." Those
' From The Book of the Adornment of Spiritual Marriage.
2 From The Book on True Contemplation.
8 From The Book of the Sparkling Stone.
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 313
who come to this round of the ladder are more than
Friends of God, they are Sons of God.
But it must be noted that Ruysbroek never taught the
fusion of the self in God. On the highest height of the
ascent the soul never loses its identity the creature is
to the end creature, and God is God. The union is one
of likeness in love and in spirit, not oneness of being.
When we live wholly in God, then for the first time we
live wholly in ourselves. " In this," he says, " consists the
nobility of our nature, now and everlastingly, that it is
impossible for us to become God and lose our created
essence," but "overwhelmed in love we are one with
God." 1
One who read only the passages on the contemplative
life would doubtless conclude that the " ecstatic doctor "
of Gronendal, like many others of the mystic order, was
too far removed from actual human life, was straining
after a spiritual vacuum, or at least that his words are
" double horn-panes " to our intelligence, but I believe
that, taken in the whole of his life and message, he is one
of the rarest souls in the goodly fellowship of mystical
teachers. One comes away from a study of him feeling
a sort of reverent awe at being so long in the company of
a man who had " entirely enveloped and saturated the
kingdom of his soul " in love. He was certainly a pillar
in the Invisible Church of God, and by the contagion of
his life he built many other souls into the same kingdom
to which he belonged. In words that burn across the five
centuries that intervene he pictures the rottenness and
corruption of the visible Church " priests and doctors
live such a life that they are incapable of receiving divine
wisdom." Prelates and even popes " seek their own honour,
and live for the world " but his own peculiar service was
his life-long exhibition of the presence of God in the holy
temple of a human soul. Nor was he a mere recluse
withdrawing from actual life to indulge in the luxury of
beatific vision. He says, with fine balance and his life
was behind the words that " the act of life must drive
1 Book of the Sparkling Stone.
314 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
man outwardly to practise virtue ; the act of death must
drive him into God, in the depth of his own being. These
are the two movements of the perfect life, united as matter
and form, as soul and body." 1 He has little patience
with those who sit idly, " with introverted eyes," waiting
for a formless vision. The thing which most impressed
Gerard Groote at the time of his visit to Ruysbroek was
the practical side of his life. It seemed to him that the
religious life of the little society at Gronendal, of which
Ruysbroek was the central figure, realized the idea of a
true brotherhood upon the highest Christian principles.
A genuine family spirit reigned among the brethren
which put them all on the same social level. Ruysbroek
himself, though prior, performed the lowliest tasks, while
the humblest servants, down to John the cook, were
treated as friends, and were taken into counsel on spiritual
affairs of high moment. 2
IV
I shall turn now to his most famous disciple using
the word disciple in a somewhat loose sense Gerard
Groote, called by one of the brothers, 8 " the first father of
our Reformation," and " founder of all our modern devo
tion." Gerard was born at Deventer, the chief city of
Overyssel, about sixty miles from Amsterdam, in 1340.
He was the son of wealthy and distinguished parents,
who planned a great career for him. He was sent to the
University of Paris at the age of fifteen, and in three years
received the degree of Master. His keen, well-equipped
mind and his prominent family connections promised him
a brilliant future, though, as Thomas a Kempis, his loving
1 Bailie, op. cit. p. 32.
2 The account of the visit is given in Thomas & Kempis's Vita Gerardi.
Neale, in his Jansenist Church in Holland, p. 68, says: "What Has influence
(that is Ruysbroek's) must have been is gathered from the tone talten at once
by all his scholars that intense love to God, that overwhelming devotion to the
Passion, which characterized the mystic school of Holland from Ruysbroek
himself to De Neercassel. "
8 This was John Buschius, a contemporary of Thomas a Kempis. He wrote
the Chronicles of Windesheim, which with Thomas a Kempis's Vita Gerardi are
the main sources of information on the early history of ' ' The Brethren of the
Common Life" (Chronicon Canonicorum Regularium Ordinis S. Augustini,
Capituli Windesemcnsis, Antwerp, 1621).
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 315
biographer, says : " He was not yet seeking the glory of
Christ, but in the broad ways of the world was following
the shadow of a great name." He obtained a professor
ship in Cologne, was the recipient of important ecclesi
astical positions, lived in the public eye, and had the
admiration of a distinguished circle in the University and
in the Church. He was apparently satisfied with a comfort
able place in the visible Church, where all his worldly
tastes were met, and where he " dabbled in magic and
astrology." But, unexpectedly to himself, by a series of
events, he was slowly prepared for a place in the invisible
Church.
The first incident which turned his mind inward
occurred while he was watching a public game in
Cologne. A stranger, with a devout face, an unnamed
" Friend of God," clothed in very simple garb, sad at
seeing Gerard wasting his rare powers of mind and spirit,
came softly to his side and said : " Why standest thou
here ? thou oughtst to become another man" l The
stranger remains unknown to us, but he belonged also
to God's invisible Church, and was building better than
he knew, when he followed his inner impulse on that day
at the game. At the moment the effect of the word
dropped into Gerard's mind seemed slight, but it went on
working. Some time after he fell dangerously ill, and
was brought face to face with the deeper issues of life
and death. This illness marked a distinct turning-point,
but his definite devotion to spiritual religion was, humanly
speaking, brought about through the personal influence of
his old Paris friend, his teacher in the University days,
Henry de Kalkar, a devout Carthusian, who had become
prior of a monastery not far away from Deventer, and
who came to visit Gerard for the definite purpose of
calling his young friend to a new life. Human instru
mentality was used to help him find the path, but Gerard
himself always attributed the great change in his life to
the direct work of the Divine Spirit. Thomas a Kempis
reports Gerard's cry of joy :
1 This phrase is twice used by Thomas & Kempis.
316 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
" Oh the power and grace of the ineffable Spirit, who can so
easily change the heart of a man whom he inwardly visits and
illumines ! This is the mighty power of God alone. He has
turned the lion into a lamb, predestinating him who was before
in the world to be incorporated into Himself."
After a period of retirement and preparation, he set
out to preach the Gospel as a lay-evangelist. The " pre
paration " which he underwent was mainly preparation of
heart ; communion with the spirits past and present who
could interpret the devout life to him, among whom the
influence of Ruysbroek was greatest. " I never loved or
honoured any mortal man so warmly," he wrote to the
brothers at Gronendal. His university studies had carried
him into the practice of magic, and had overtrained him
in subtilties which led to nothing ; and with his entrance
upon the new devotion he revolted from the higher
learning of his time, and became henceforth the advocate
of a more simple but, at the same time, more practical
culture, a culture which aimed primarily at the develop
ment of a good life ; while his observation of the priest
hood of his day inclined him to prefer the life and service
of a layman, and to the end of his days he refused to be
ordained. 1
In 1379, with a spirit aflame and with an anointing
from on high, Gerard went forth, like George Fox in the
English Commonwealth, like Wesley in the spiritual
drought of the eighteenth century, to preach to the
people and to call them to a religion of following Christ. 2
He was granted a permit by the Bishop of Utrecht to
preach anywhere within that diocese. He was dressed in
the utmost simplicity, and in every way; he showed his
nearness to the people and his sympathy with them.
His gospel, like his garb, was very simple. Scholastic
subtilties seemed to him stones instead of bread. Ruys-
1 His refusal to be ordained came partly at least from the fact that his ideal
of a genuine priest seemed unattainable in the world as it then was.
2 " He was seen, as of old Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lausanne, as after
ward St. Norbert, and as in still more recent times George Fox, William Penn,
and others, in mean attire, travelling through towns and villages, and everywhere
exhorting the people to repentance and amendment of life, with overpowering
eloquence " (Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 64).
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 317
brock had taught him to rise above appeal to rewards
and punishments. He broke completely with the tradi
tions of the time, and his message formed the strongest
contrast to the puerilities of the mendicant monks. The
central note in his preaching was the love of God, the
Divine search, the great salvation, the possibilities of life
with God. He possessed a powerful eloquence, though
the secret even of his eloquence was simplicity, directness.
It was intensity of spirit, absolute conviction ; as Thomas
a Kempis well noted, it was the powerful appeal of per
sonal experience. He preached out of his own life what
he knew. Another secret of his power was the novelty
of preaching in the popular dialect. The Latin droned in
church had no more dynamic effect than a " dead wire " ;
Gerard's words were quick and powerful, with a live faith
and a burning passion for souls.
Then, too, it was an element of the first importance
that he took no pay. Every vestige of selfishness was
removed. Here was a preacher who came to the people
for the sole reason that he loved them, who had none of the
marks of a " professional " about him, and whose life rang
true to every test 1 He was like the later Reformers and
the Evangelists of the Protestant era in that he turned
back to the Scriptures for his material, and to the Gospels
for his model. He thoroughly understood men, and one
of the old chroniclers has taken pains to tell us that
Gerard had a way of taking in his audience with a quick
survey of eye, in which he read their mood and their
needs, and which enabled him "to speak to their con
dition." His message was decidedly a new Evangelism^
and it worked powerfully. The people flocked to hear
as they had not done since the days of the great preacher
of Assisi. Whole towns left their occupations and came
to listen to Gerard's message. Every class and rank of
society yielded to his spell, even meals were neglected !
Where the local church was too small for the multitude
the meetings were held in the open, frequently in the
1 Thomas a Kempis has preserved an epitaph on Gerard, which runs thus :
" He did what he said, and what he taught that he also lived."
318 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
churchyard, and the sermon sometimes lasted two or
three hours. But more important than enthusiasm and
neglect of meals was the moral and spiritual amendment
of life wrought by the preaching. It set men and women
to living on a new moral level. They gave up vanities
and vulgar pursuits, and began to live in more Christlike
fashion. Men who had been living in sin and wickedness
turned straight about in spirit and in practice. Gerard
had a way of diagnosing the diseases of the visible
Church he drew the picture of apostolic holiness and
zeal, and over against it he set the actual conditions
which all the hearers saw day by day, and he asked his
listeners to " look on this picture and then on that, the
counterfeit presentment." Many of the clergy were
brought to shame and conviction by his preaching, and
dedicated themselves to a holy life and a pure service.
With good right his admiring biographer cries out :
" Blessed be God who raised up such a preacher among
us and gave us such preaching, that through it the light
of the heavenly life might shine upon us in this uncertain
world ! "
But it is serious business in any age to let " the light
of the heavenly life shine upon this uncertain world."
There are always Golgothas for genuine light-bringers,
and Gerard soon found that the representatives of the
visible order, living at their ease under the old system,
would not tolerate a new revealer of the living Christ.
There was little hope of easy paths for a man in the
fourteenth century who dared to say these words :
" The decadence of the Church is visible in everything.
The ruin of the whole body of the Church has been a long
time threatened. What do I say ? It is-alr_eady falling in ruins.
We suffer especially in the head the Pope ; for following the
doctrine of the physicians, the disorder of the head is the
symptom of a grave malady, and the effect of a fever which
ravages the whole organism. We are like inexperienced physi
cians ; we see the actual symptoms of the evil without taking
note of older symptoms, which are not less important. I hold
it as certain that the candlesticks of the Church are to be
removed because of the cupidity and luxury of the ecclesiastics.
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 319
This schism will not be cured without leaving a large scar, and
I, who desire the return of the Church to unity, I could wish
that the two rival Popes were in heaven to sing the Gloria in
excelsis, and that a veritable Eliakim would descend upon the
earth to establish peace, if only he be not of this race of
vipers." 1
The contrast between the spiritual ideal and the actual
Church had been made too plain to go unchallenged, and
Gerard found one day that his permit to preach was
revoked. He quietly yielded to authority, declined to
make a scandal, or to turn upon those who sought his
hurt. " Let love be inflamed within us," he wrote, and
" let us be patterns."
This brought to an end his career as an evangelist,
but it only opened the door for another type of service
hardly less important the formation of a new brother
hood. His five years of preaching had awakened in
many young men a pure desire for a spiritual life. There
were groups of these aspirants in all the centres where
he had laboured. They were eager for some movement
which would give them scope for their new zeal. Gerard
himself had always loved young men, had gathered them
about him, and had done much to promote their educa
tion. He had a passion for good books as his bio
grapher puts it : " He was more than avaricious for good
books," and it occurred to him to gather bands of these
young men together and give them copying work to do
to earn money for their education. This plan accom
plished a number of ends : it enabled him to multiply
his beloved manuscripts, to forward his educational aims,
to influence his young friends toward a holy life, and, in
cidentally, to use his means for the glory of God. It
was his dear friend Florentius Radewin (or Radewyn),
the statesman of the movement, who first suggested the
idea of a community- life that all those engaged in
copying and beautifying manuscripts should put their
earnings into a common purse and share equally in
1 This is a letter written to Guillaume de Salvavarilla, Archdeacon of Li<*ge.
I have translated it from Bonet-Maury's Gerard Groot vn frecvrstur de la
Rlforme, Paris, 1878, pp. 38-39.
320 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
common. The idea impressed Gerard, and he worked
it out, largely on the model of the primitive Church as
recorded in Acts. The first community was formed
at Deventer, with Florentius at its head, and the move
ment spread rapidly through the towns of Holland and
Germany. Brother -houses in some instances, sister-
houses were provided. The members took no per
manent vows, they mingled freely in the world for
purposes of service, and lived from their manual labour
without any resort to begging. They wore a simple grey
garb, and followed a very simple manner of life it was
an effort to make daily life spiritual. Their emphasis
was on practice rather than on contemplation. The most
visible social service which came from the movement
was the impetus it gave to practical education, in which
direction Gerard was the prime mover. Through his
brotherhoods he provided not only copies of the Scrip
tures and other holy books for the people, but what was
still more important, he provided for the instruction of
the common people, especially the children. His brothers
gave free teaching in their communities to the poorer
people, teaching them to read and write, and creating in
their minds an appreciation of the real meaning of their
religion. His aim in education, as in everything else,
was practical. He wanted his young friends to be not
more learned, but imbued with better learning. He had
come to feel that the higher learning of his time was
unprofitable, that it was more or less in league with
astrology and magic, and over fond of the subtilties of
logic and useless disputation. His plans for the new
education bore entirely on morat and spiritual improve
ment. His one concern was the formation of good lives.
He discounted degrees and all the show-aspects of educa
tion. He did nothing to encourage training for lucrative
professions. 1 His aim may be summed up in his own
1 His attitude toward theological degrees anticipates George Fox. He
says : ' ' Thou shall never study to take a degree in Theology, for it is not right
to make gain thereby, while knowledge and fame can as well be got without a
degree. The degree appeals to the flesh, and is the aim of those who are wise
according to the flesh." And finally, to get a degree one must attend " many
vain lectures " !
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 321
words : " Let the root of thy studies and the mirror of
thy life be first of all the Gospel." It was, one sees, a
narrow plan of guarded education with a single aim, to
cultivate devotion and to fashion holy lives among the
people. It must be judged by its fruits, which were
groups of devout and saintly men and women scattered
through Holland and Germany, raising the spiritual level
of religion among the people ; and in the second genera
tion the production of a book which has influenced
Christendom next to the Bible itself The Imitation of
Christ}
His mysticism is of a mild and practical sort It
was simply a religion of inward, personal experience,
and a positive experiment at re-living Christ Thomas a
Kempis has preserved for us Gerard's testimony that " the
Holy Spirit inwardly visits, illumines, and changes the
heart of a man," and that finally " He incorporates
the man into Himself." He dwelt, in his preaching, on
the spiritual truth that the kingdom of God is within
man, and is righteousness, peace, and joy in God. He
insisted throughout on grounding religion in experience,
and on making it an affair of life. He said to some
anxious youths, who were smitten with the plague : " If
you have a goodwill to serve God, you may die in peace." 2
We have only scraps of sayings from him, 8 but enough is
preserved to show that he is the true spiritual father
of the author of the Imitation. The same note is struck
in these sayings that reverberates throughout the great
treatises of the disciple : Conquer thyself ; turn thy heart
from creatures ; point thy mind continually to God, do
not for anything suffer thy mind to be discomposed ;
practise obedience ; accept things that are difficult and
irksome ; exercise thyself always in humility ; continually
observe the principle of moderation, and above all and
1 Neale says that this movement was the commencement of Holland's reputa
tion for learning. "The universities of Leyden, Utrecht, and Groningen, all
owe their name and fame to the impulse given by the scholar-monk of Deventer "
(Neale, Jansenist Church of Holland, p. 79).
8 The brothers were often called ' ' Brothers of Goodwill "
* These are preserved in a sort of appendix chapter to Thomas a Kempis's
Vita Gerardi, from which I have taken them.
Y
322 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
first of all, let Christ be the root of thy studies and the
mirror of thy life. There are three or four of these
sayings which will do for permanent spiritual principles :
for instance " The farther a man knows himself to be
from perfection, so much the nearer he is to it " ; " The
greatest temptation is not to be tempted at all " ;
" Never breathe a word to show yourself off as very
religious or very learned " ; " Nothing is a better test of a
man than hearing himself praised."
The spirit of love, which was a dominating feature
of his life, found beautiful fulfilment in his death. He
had for some time been meditating a further step in
the New Devotion the foundation of a higher grade,
or order, of Brotherhood, made up of the brothers who
wished to go on and take vows and devote themselves
wholly and irrevocably to the service of God. But
Gerard's fortune had been already exhausted in his
works of love, and no money was at hand to build the
house needed for the new movement While he was
waiting for means to accomplish his plan, a fearful
visitation of the plague came upon Deventer. One of
his friends was stricken with it, and Gerard at once
went to him to render what help he could. He was
unable to save his friend, but as the latter was dying
he left a large sum of money for the realization of
Gerard's hope. He was, however, not to see its fulfil
ment, for in his ministrations of love he contracted the
dread disease, and died of it. His most intimate disciple,
Florentius Radewin, had already imbibed his spirit, and
was in all respects his ^spiritual successor. As he was
dying, Gerard said to his band of scholars : " Here is
Florentius, the beloved disciple, in whom of a truth the
Holy Ghost rests : he shall be your father and ruler.
Hold him in my place." Under the direction of
Florentius the spiritual brotherhood developed, the life
of devotion and simplicity was cultivated, 1 and the new
1 Florentius sometimes pushed the ' ' simple-life " idea to extremes. In his
desire for simple clothes he is said to have asked a tailor if he could make him an
old coat ! It was his great disciple, a Kempis, who wrote, ' ' Blessed is the
simplicity which leaves the difficult ways of dispute. "
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 323
order, the Canons Regular, as they were called, was founded
their first monastery being that of Windesheim, and
their most famous one that of Mount St Agnes, made
immortal by the life and work of its foremost brother,
Thomas a Kempis. 1
There is, fortunately, no need now for an elaborate
discussion of the real authorship of the Imitation of
Christ, nor for the re-telling of the life of the man who
wrote it. One does not often have the satisfaction of
reading a piece of work more adequate for its purpose
than De Montmorency's Thomas a Kempis: His Age
and Book (London, 1906), and everybody who cares
for light on this great spiritual movement in Holland is
under obligation to the Rev. S. Kettlewell for his two
volumes on Thomas a Kempis (London, 1882). There
are three names intimately associated with the Imitation
as possible authors of it : Thomas a Kempis, Chancellor
Gerson, and Walter Hilton. It cannot be said that the
claims for Thomas a Kempis are absolutely proved as
against the claims for Walter Hilton, but the circum
stantial evidence is so overwhelming that the " case "
for the Canon of Mount St Agnes is as good as
settled.
I shall only attempt in this chapter to indicate the
type of religion exhibited in this extraordinary book ;
how it took men away from creeds and systems to the
eternal idea of Christianity ; how it ministered to an
inward, first-hand spiritual life in a word, how this
quiet, unassuming, self-forgetting brother in his cloister
at Mount St Agnes builded, all unconsciously perhaps,
at the invisible Church of the ages.
Thomas' real name was Haemerlein. He was born
in J 379 or !38o, in the village of Kempen (about forty
miles from Cologne), hence his name a Kempis. In 1392
1 Charles Bigg says that " within thirty-six years the mother-house of Windes
heim had given birth to forty-five daughter convents, of which eight were for
women and thirty-seven for men " (Bigg, Imitation of Christ, Introduction,
p. xxii.).
324 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
he went to Deventer, in Holland, to get his education in
the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life, where
his older brother John was already settled. Florentius
was his teacher, his adviser and his friend " My good
father and sweet master," he calls him. He has left a
most charming picture of this " sweet master."
" As often as I saw my superior, Florentius," he writes, " stand
ing in the choir, the mere presence of so holy a man inspired me
with such awe that I dared not speak when he looked up from
his book. On one occasion it happened that I was standing
near him in the choir, and he turned to the book we had and
sang with us. And, standing close behind me, he supported
himself by placing both his hands on my shoulders ; and I stood
quite still, scarcely daring to move, so astonished was I at the
honour he had done me."
Thomas entered the Community at Mount St. Agnes
in 1400, and spent there seventy years, dying in 1471.
De Montmorency gives this description of the life in
this Community :
" It knew nothing of ambition, nothing of controversy, nothing
even of the great spiritual movements of which it was the heart.
It was the silent, motionless centre of a whirling and incompre
hensible world. . . . The poor little monastery was composed
of a tiny group of men who thought only of Christ and strove
to imitate Him ; whose sins were minute fallings away from their
ideal of the Man of Nazareth sins wept over and watched ;
whose hope lay on the other side of the grave that offered them
no terror; whose faith came so near to the faith of the first
Christians that the days of Christ seemed to have returned.
Mount St. Agnes was the Little Gidding of the fifteenth century.
It represented the noblest form of Christianity that that or
perhaps any age could produce. The rule of the Community
inculcated the fundamental law^bf love towards God and man ;
the lessons of humility as taught by Christ ; the preparation of
body and soul for orderly prayer, by proper and simple attention
to both body and mind. Nothing in excess was the ideal of the
Community. The body was to be made absolutely efficient for the
purposes of the soul, and the duty of man to his neighbour was to
shadow forth the duty of man to his God. Perfect simplicity in
dress and manners, food and drink, work and play, was the ideal
for the body ; perfect charity to all men, to the young, to the sick,
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 325
to the sinful, was the ideal for the mind ; and the love of God
which passeth all understanding was the ideal for the soul." l
Here in this atmosphere of spiritual strivings and holy
aspirations, probably sometime between 1400 and 1425,
Thomas a Kempis wrote his book a book which, next
to Dante's " miracle of song," is the most perfect flower
of medieval Christianity, and which comes nearest of
any voice that was raised to being "an answer to the
sighing of Christian Europe for a light from heaven."
" This small, old-fashioned book, for which you need pay only
sixpence at a bookstall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter
waters into sweetness j while expensive sermons and treatises,
newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It was written
down by a hand that waited for the heart's prompting; it is
the chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust, and
triumph not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to
those who are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And
so it remains to all time a lasting record of human needs and
human consolations ; the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt,
suffered and renounced . . . with a fashion of speech different
from ours, but under the same silent, far-off heavens, the same
strivings, the same failures, the same weariness." 2
No other piece of literature presents greater psychological
puzzles. Nobody has ever said worse things about this
world of ours than the author of the Imitation ; nobody
has painted a darker picture of man, the poor worm of
the dust ; nobody has struck a deeper note of pessimism.
We are living in a mutability where nothing is of
worth all is but "vain vision," "deceitful shadows."
We are " exiles from our native home," " strangers and
pilgrims with no real concern for the business, the cares,
or the pleasures of this wretched world." The trail of
vanity and evil is over everything, and " death, that awful
event," is dogging the steps of us all !
And yet this book has "worked miracles" in every
generation since it was written : it has been like fresh
water to shipwrecked men ; it has helped thousands to
turn defeat to victory and despair into optimism. No
1 Op, tit. pp. 89-90. * AfiU on the Flou, Book IV. chap. Hi.
326 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
other book except the Bible has been a more permanent
source of joy and comfort and hope. It is a standing
paradox, a baffling contradiction. The politics and
world-ambitions of fourteenth century popes are things
of little interest to us now, but this poor monk's vision
of eternal reality, his message of the inward way to the
kingdom of the Spirit, his discovery of the invisible
realm whose excelling glory makes the soul forget its
temporal miseries, have persistently attracted the attention
of men, and will continue to attract it as long as the
heart pants for the living God.
There is, let us admit at once, a negative side to
the Imitation, as to much other mystical literature,
which is false in emphasis and, more than that, false
to the facts of experience and reality. This picture of
the worthlessness of the finite, the vanity of all that is,
is untrue and impossible. Taken consistently, it cuts
the nerve of spiritual effort, and destroys all faith in the
significance of earthly life with its myriad moral issues.
It turns the gaze away from the very stuff out of which
moral and spiritual fibre is to be woven. It is an attempt
to climb up by first destroying the ladder which has been
given to us. "A man ought to rise above all creatures
(finite things), and perfectly forsake himself and stand in
ecstasy of mind and see that Thou God art in no respect
like creatures " (Book III. chap. xxxi.). " Few attain to the
blessed privilege of contemplating the infinite, because few
totally abandon that which is finite " (Book III. chap. xxii.).
" Abandon all, and thou shalt possess all ; relinquish all
desire, and thou shalt find rest " (Book III. chap. xxiv.).
" Learn for the love of the Creator to subdue earth-born love
for any creature, since God suffers no rival to His love." l
" The more nature is subdued, the more Grace is infused."
This two-world scheme, this stubborn dualism, which sets
the eternal wholly over against the temporal, and negates
all that experience gives us, in order to glorify the unseen
and unexperienced, mars the book for us and tempts us
in our haste to say with Thackeray :
1 The substance of Book III. chap, xxxii. rather than a literal quotation.
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 327
"The scheme of that book (The Imitation) carried out would
make the world the most wretched, useless, dreary, doting place
of sojourn. There would be no manhood, no love, no tender
ties of mother and child, no use of intellect, no trade or science
a set of selfish beings, crawling about, avoiding one another,
and howling a perpetual Miserere ! " l
But this is certainly a hasty and superficial conclusion.
Thomas a Kempis has " crystallized into perfect literary
form the Godward yearnings of humanity through
fourteen centuries of time," z and his message is bound
to bear the marks of the intellectual climate in which it
grew. If one wants doctrines of evolution he will not go
to Dante for them, and if he is seeking for a monistic
view that does full justice to the concrete facts of
experience he will not go to a Kempis for it But if he
wants the voice that utters the passion of the mightiest
spirits of the medieval world ; if he wants to see how a
great spiritual soul, conscious of a divine mission, builds a
permanent refuge against the defeats of the present ;
if he wants a seer who can project into this finite world
the reality of worlds not yet realized, then let him go
to Dante and a Kempis. We must not be too much
disturbed over the temporal aspects, which get out
dated with the flow of time, to see and appreciate the
eternal message of this sincere and genuine book. Let us
try to find the positive and permanent notes which have
given this medieval book its power over men and women
of all religious types and of all intellectual stages.
The eternal thing in the book is its calm and
compelling revelation of the reality of the spiritual
kingdom, and its complete sufficiency for the soul. All
is well the moment the soul changes its centre of gravity
from the world of vain and fleeting things to the world
of unchanging reality where God is all. Its real remedy
for misery is not the stoic one of lopping off desires, but
of getting a new set of desires. It would raise the value
of life not by decreasing the denominator, but by increasing
the numerator. The passion of love, which shifts the
1 Letters of W. M. Thackeray, p. 96. * De Montmorency, p. 173.
328 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
values of life, is the key to peace and to the victory that
overcometh the world.
"The saints of God," this is the message which Thomas a
Kempis gathers out of the past, " ravished above self and drawn
out of love of self, plunged wholly into love of Me (Christ) : in
whom also they rest in fruition. Nothing can turn them back
or hold them down, for being full of eternal truth, they burn with
the fire of unquenchable love " (Book III. chap. Iviii.). " The saints
of God, and all the devoted friends and followers of Christ, regarded
not the things that gratified the appetites of the flesh, nor those
that were the object of popular esteem and pursuit ; but
their hope and desire panted for the purity and glory of
the celestial kingdom : their whole soul was continually elevated
to the eternal and invisible " (Book I. chap. xxii.). " Love panteth
after its original and native freedom. . . . Nothing is sweeter than
love, nothing stronger, nothing loftier, nothing broader, nothing
pleasanter, nothing fuller or better in heaven or in earth ; for
love is born of God, and cannot rest save in God from whom it
is derived. He who loveth flyeth, runneth, and is glad ; he is free
and not hindered ; he giveth all for All and possesseth all in All,
because he hath the One from whom all good proceeds. He
looketh not for gifts, but turneth to the Giver above all gifts.
Love knoweth no limits, feeleth no burden, considereth no
labour. . . . Expand my heart with love that I may be dissolved
in its holy fire. . . . Let me love Thee more than myself, let
me love myself only for Thy sake, and in Thee love all others
... for that which seeketh itself falls immediately from love "
(Book III. chap. iv.).
When the soul has thus found its centre, nothing can
disturb it ; when it has " plunged wholly into love," it has
pulled the sting from every earthly woe. It can calmly
say :
" If Thou pourest Thy light upon me, and turnest my night
into day, blessed be Thy name ; and if Thou leavest me in
darkness, blessed be Thy name. I will take alike from Thee
sweet and bitter, joy and sorrow, good and evil : for all that
befalleth me I will thank the love that prompts the gift "
(Book III. chap. xii.).
The real problem for Thomas is not how to find a
different and more comfortable world, it is how to get a
different self:
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 329
" Acquisition and increase of goods cannot help thee to peace.
Neither can change of place avail. Thou mayest change thy
situation, but thou canst not get away from the real evil, which
is thy own selfish -will" (Book III. chap. xx.). "Thy peace can
depend on nothing that makes no alteration in thy real character "
(Book III. chap. xxi.). " He that purely and simply intends and
desires only the re-union of his soul with God, will not easily be
moved by what he see or hears" (Book II. chap. v.). "//" thy
heart were right, then every creature would be a mirror of life
and a book of holy doctrine to thee"
This is the very core of Thomas' message. Poverty
in itself is no sovereign remedy. Mere abandonment of
earthly goods will not bring us to any goal. Self-
mortification, even self-crucifixion, alone does not carry
the soul anywhere. The soul must be kindled and
burn with a holy passion of love which carries it above
all dependence on and attachment to the fleeting,
failing things of the world, and be " inwardly united "
to the Divine Fountain from whom all good flows
then, in this union with God, everything becomes a
mirror of life. But this " condition " of heart is not
natural '; it does not form itself in us while we sleep
and play. The Church cannot bestow it It cannot be
bought as an "indulgence" can be. It is the business
of life to conquer and win it :
" If thou desirest to obtain victory, make ready for the battle.
The crown of patience cannot be received where there has been
no suffering. If thou wishest to be crowned, thou must fight
manfully and suffer patiently : without labour none can obtain
rest, and without contending there can be no conquest " (Book
III. chap. xiii.).
Nobody has exalted Grace more than has a Kempis
Grace as a " supernatural and special gift of God
operating on the soul " ; nobody has put a firmer
emphasis on the work of the Cross for human redemption,
but he has seen, as all true mystics see, that in the
last resort salvation, deliverance, victory, depend on
the act of the soul. M He who will have a hearty sense
of what Christ suffered on the Cross must suffer the
like himself" is his great word to men :
330 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP
" Turn thyself upwards, turn thyself downwards, turn thyself
outwards, turn thyself inwards ; everywhere thou shalt find the
Cross ; and everywhere thou must needs keep patience, if thou
wilt have inward peace and earn an everlasting crown " (Book
II. chap. xii.).
Thomas says less than the earlier mystics of the
Divine in man, because his gaze is turned more than
theirs was to Christ and His revelation of God, but
the direct, inward revelation in the soul is by no
means ignored. " The outward word," he says, in a
passage which might have come from Fox's Journal,
" the outward word, even of Moses and the prophets,
is only letter ; it cannot impart the Spirit. Speak
Thou, God, Eternal Truth, speak to my soul" (Book III.
chap, ii.), and he goes on to say that the same Spirit that
taught prophets and holy men of old now teaches us.
"Some," again he says, "place their religion in books, some
in images, some in the pomp and splendour of external worship,
but some with illuminated understandings hear what the Holy
Spirit speaketh in their hearts " (Book III. chap. iii.). " The Holy
Scriptures must be read with the same Spirit by which they
were written " (Book I. chap. v.).
Like all men of his type, he insists on life as more
important than doctrine :
" Of what benefit are thy most subtle disquisitions on the
blessed Trinity, if thou art destitute of humility ? It is not pro
found speculations, but a holy life that makes a man right and good
and dear to God. / had rather feel compunction than be able to
give the most accurate definition of it, ... It is vanity to wish
that life may be long and to have no concern whether it be
good " (Book I. chap. i.).
In another fine passage, that sounds like the text on
which Kipling's Tomlinson was written, he says :
" In the day of universal judgment, it will not be asked what
we have read, but what we have done ; not how eloquently we
have spoken, but how holily we have lived ! " (Book I. chap. iii).
Some have tried to show that the religion of the
Imitation is a religion of slavish copying of a model.
xiv BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LIFE 331
But that view is superficial, for it never stops with a
copy of the outward life of Christ It calls rather for
a deep inward, mystical appreciation of the Spirit of
Christ and life in that Spirit "only he who endeavours to
get the Spirit of Christ can imitate Christ " (Book I. chap. i.).
It has, too, been condemned as Quietism, but Thomas
is not a Quietist An act of helpfulness to a brother
is better than the performance of a " religious exercise,"
and he calls his readers to have their "loins girt like
valiant men."
" Never be idle or vacant," he says, " be always reading or
writing, or praying, or meditating, or employed in some useful
labour for the common good" (Book I. chap. xix.).
It has also been condemned as a religion of refined
selfishness " A spiritual hedonism." " The Imitation
of Christ begins in self and terminates in self," wrote
Dean Milman. 1 It is true that the book is full of that
passion for a holier self which is a spring of all pure
religion, and which cannot be washed out without
destroying religion itself, but it is not true that the
aim of the Imitation is selfish. The constant prayer of
its author is to " conquer self utterly," to " retain not
the least leaven of self-love." He had not discovered,
it was not possible for his age to discover, the true
scope of the social, altruistic spirit, but he has the
attitude of uncalculating love, and he announces that
" he does much that loves much ; and he does well
that serves the community rather than his own will"
(Book I. chap. v.). And he has found and left for us a great
spiritual law in the principle : "If thou wilt be carried,
carry another thyself" (Book II. chap. iii).
The Imitation of Christ is by no means the last
word of Christianity. It is not a full account of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ It is not a type of Christianity
that stirs profoundly the mass of men in these strenuous,
virile times, but the heart of it is sound and genuine.
It is not concerned to find some easy way to a heaven
* History of Latin Christianity, Book XIV. chap. iii.
332
MYSTICAL RELIGION
CHAP. XIV
beyond the stars. It tells how the soul comes to its
own kingdom a kingdom which is one with Eternal
Reality and thus joins the invisible Church and every
age needs this message. 1
1 One of the greatest "disciples" of Thomas was John Wesel Gansfoort
(1419-1489). He was educated in the School of the Brothers of the Common
Life at Zwolle. He travelled widely, and studied in the Universities of Cologne,
Heidelberg, and Louvain, and made himself one of the most famous scholars of
his time. "Through truth alone," he said, "lies the way to life." He also, like
his master, wrote books of meditation, and taught his contemporaries the art of
contemplation, but his greatest service was his work toward a genuine spiritual
reformation of the Church. He put the authority of the Scriptures above that of
the Church : he powerfully attacked confession, excommunication, transub-
stantiation and absolution. Luther himself said : " If I had read Wesel sooner,
my adversaries would have presumed to say that I had borrowed my whole
doctrine from him : our minds are so consonant with each other."
CHAPTER XV
THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND
WYCLIF AND THE LOLLARDS
WHILE the forces of the invisible Church were thus silently
gathering intensity and volume on the continent, and the
religion of the Spirit was working like hidden leaven in
the mass of the visible Church, a still mightier spiritual
movement was spreading in England in a very real sense
the dawn " the morning star " of a new spiritual day.
Wyclif is England's greatest religious prophet in fact
he ranks among the foremost prophets of the Christian
Church.
But Wyclif is by no means a lone figure, a solitary
path-breaker, the sudden initiator of a fresh movement.
He is rather a part to be sure magna pars of a great
national movement which was well under way when he
appeared, and of which he was the mightiest voice.
One of his great forerunners was Robert Grossetete,
Bishop of Lincoln and Chancellor of Oxford (born about
1175, died 1253). He was the foremost English scholar
of his time. 1 It was under his direction and oversight
that the first translation of Aristotle's Ethics from the
Greek was made ; he wrote Commentaries on Aristotle's
Logic and Physics ; and he was one of the founders of
the new scholasticism under the sway of Aristotle. Great
scholar as he was, and bishop of inflexible authority, his
spirit was gentle and childlike. He was a man of the
1 Roger Bacon calls Grossetete and Adam Marsh ' ' the greatest clerks (scholars)
in the world, perfect in divine and human wisdom 1 "
333
334 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
mystical type, and by his translation of the writings of
Dionysius the Areopagite, he started the wave of interest
in mystical religion which became a distinct feature of the
religious literature of the fourteenth century in England. 1
He taught that the soul has an eye as well as the body,
and this eye is Love : " Love," he says, " absorbs all the
acts of the soul. One day we shall know God face to
face, as even now some choice spirits know Him, by
Love." He, like Wyclif, made the Scriptures the founda
tion of all true learning, and he infused into the students
of his generation a new spirit of devotion to the Bible.
The supreme passion of his soul was the spiritual shep
herding of the flock. 2
Oxford was, in the fourteenth century, the centre of an
intellectual and spiritual movement in England, as extra
ordinary as any that has ever come from that famous seat
of learning. Duns Scotus, the century before (died 1308),
had been the leader of a new scholasticism the last stage
and culmination of scholasticism. William of Occam, the
flower of Oxford, in the early part of the fourteenth cen
tury (died 1346), had taken the step which destroyed
scholasticism, sundered science and theology, and prepared
the way for the method of experience and induction. In
its next period Oxford was to furnish the leaders of
English mysticism, the creators of English literature, and
the spiritual reformers of the English Church.
The first of the English mystics of the period was
Richard Rolle generally called Richard Rolle of Ham-
pole who was born in Yorkshire, near Pickering, about
1 His edition of Dionysius the Areopagite was printed in Strasbourg in
1502.
2 It has generally been supposed that the great bishop was a protestant before
his time, and that he wrote in burning words of remonstrance to the Pope : ' ' He
who commits the care of a flock to a man in order that he may get the milk and
the -wool, is a persecutor of Christ in His members." " The cure of souls consists
not in the dispensation of sacraments, in the singing of hours, and the reading of
masses, but in the true teaching of the word of life, in rebuking and correcting
vice, in deeds of charity, and in the instruction of the people in the holy exercises of
active life," and that in old age, when he was brought face to face with the reck
less power of the corrupt Church, he rose to the height of an ancient prophet,
and called upon the head of the Church to ' ' fulfil its office for the eternal
salvation of the sheep of Christ." But these famous letters are almost certainly
spurious (see Charles Jourdain's Excursions historiques et philosophiques a travers
It moyen age (Paris, 1888), pp. 149-71^.
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 335
1 3OO. 1 He went to Oxford with a passion for learning,
but whether by a revolt from the dry and subtle scholas
ticism of the time, or through the influence of his studies
of the continental mystics, he suddenly abandoned his
University career, withdrew wholly from the world, and
devoted himself to the mystic ideal of contemplative life.
Everybody thought him mad, and he evidently underwent
in the early period of his " new life " profound psychic
changes, 2 but after passing through the three mystic stages
of purification, illumination and contemplation, he came into
an experience of pure and holy love which brought him
great inward calm, more stable nervous conditions, and
finally gave him a rare creative power. He sometimes felt
the promptings of an inward voice, which drove him from
his solitary contemplation, and turned him into a powerful
preacher of the life of love. Unordained, and with no
commission but that of the voice of God in his soul, he
stood up in church on one occasion and spoke with such
resistless power that the entire congregation broke into
tears. His life, however marred by its excessive emphasis
on withdrawal from the world and on the joys of indulgence
in contemplation, was a striking exhibition of a new type
of religion. He was absolutely free from the ecclesiastical
system of his age. He made no use of the machinery of
the Church. He owned no head but Christ, he had no
creed but love, he was in his own right a king and priest
unto God, and he flung his passionate soul into lyrics of
great fervour and beauty. He was one of the first, after
the Norman Conquest, to use his mother-tongue in the
service of religion. He turned the psalms into English,
and was thus the beginner of the great work which Wyclif
helped to complete. His writings, edited by C. Horstman,
fill two ponderous volumes, and they must have played a
great part in the spread of a freer religion of the heart.
41 He is," says Horstman, " the head and parent of the
1 He died at Ham pole in 1349.
2 " He was sitting one day in a church, rapt in meditation, when he felt in his
breast a strange and pleasant heat, as of a real sensible fire, so that he kept feeling
of his breast to see if the heat was cau <ed by some exterior cause. He often heard
heavenly music " (see Horstman, Richard Rolle of Hampole, voL ii. p. vii. ).
336 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
great mystic and religious writers of the fourteenth
century." ]
Sometime during this century there appeared the first
English translation or paraphrase of the Mystical Theology
of " Dionysius," under the title Dionise Hid Divinite, that
is, " The Hid Divinity of Dionysius." 2 There appears to
have been a school of mystics gathered about the writer
of the " Hid Divinity," and once again the anonymous
Greek of the fifth century had a large spiritual progeny.
There still exist in manuscript a number of mystical
treatises which came from this group. 8 The important
treatises are (besides Dionise Hid Divinity) The Cloud
of Unknowing, A Pistle of Private Cowncelle, A Pistle of
Prater, A Tretyse of Discrecion in Knowyng of Spirites,
and A Pistle of Discrecion in Styrryngs. The great
mystical strain which runs through these early English
writings is that God is beyond the reach of " bodily wits,
as hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching," and
also beyond the reach of " ghostly wits," i.e. the powers
of the understanding, and to be found only when the soul
has " learned to know beyond ' knowing/ " and has entered
" the cloud of unknowing" that is, has attained to an
experience in which "self" and "other" are undiffer-
entiated. No mystic of this type has come nearer giving
an adequate account of the " experience " than has the
writer of The Cloud of Unknowing. He says : " It is a
swift, piercing act, an act of direction, a naked intent of the
will fastening itself upon God. For the substance of all
perfection is naught else but a good will" and " this work
of perfection is the shortest work of all that man can
imagine ; it is neither longer nor shorter than is an atom."
But the mystical experience is more than will, as it is also
1 Op. cit. vol. ii. Introduction, p. xxxv.
2 My attention was first called to this "Hid Divinity "in an article with the
title, "The Cloud of Unknowing," by David M. M'Intyre, in the Expositor for
October 1907. He incorrectly says, in the above article, that a Cistercian monk,
named Ambrose, in Fountains Abbey, translated the Mystical Theology of
Dionysius into Latin in 1346. The MS. to which he refers was made by a
monk named Ambrose, but in 1436, and in the Monastery of Bonne Fontaine
on the continent (see MSS. Line. Col. Ox. 49).
* The two collections I have examined are MSS. Univ. Col. Ox. 14, and
MSS. Harl. 674 (in British Museum).
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 337
more than knowing. "It is a sharp dart of longing love
directed to God, and in this great joy of loving Him
there is taken away from the man all knowing or feeling
of his own."
The writer is evidently endeavouring to suggest an
experience which includes and embraces all the powers
of the inward being, functioning in an undifferentiated
activity, like that of primitive experience in the child,
though informed and heightened by all the gains of a
lifetime and by all the suggestions of the social environ
ment He calls this " the cloud of unknowing."
" It is needful for thee to bury in a cloud of forgetting all
creatures [all differentiated objects] that ever God made, that
thou mayest direct thine intent to God Himself." " Therefore
lift up thine heart unto God with a meek striving of love, and be
thou loth to think on aught but Himself; so that naught work in
thy wit nor in thy will, but only Himself. When thou dost next
begin in this work thou wilt find but a darkness a cloud of
unknowing between thee and thy Lord, so that thou art able
neither to see Him clearly by light of understanding in thy reason,
nor feel Him in sweetness of love in thine affection. Yet if ever
thou shall see Him or feel Him in the measure in which it is
possible in this life to do it behoveth thee always to abide in
this cloud and darkness. When thou enterest this cloud, per-
adventure thou feelest far from God, but thou art nearer Him
than formerly; He hath set a darkness between thee and all
creatures that ever He made. If any thought, therefore, should
come between thee and thy God, then (even though it seem to
thee most holy) tread it down with a stirring of love, and say, ' It
is God whom I covet, whom I seek.' Take thee a sharp, strong
word of prayer ; with this word thou shalt beat down all thoughts
under thee. Even to think of God's kindness or worthiness
would hinder thee in this work. For though it be good to muse
on the perfections of God, and to praise Him therefor, it is far
better to think on the native substance of Him, and to love
and praise Him for Himself. But now thou askest me, ' How
should I think on Himself, and what is He?' Unto this I
cannot answer thee. I wot now that thou has brought me into
the same cloud of unknowing that I would thou wert in thyself.
But this will I say : 'By love He may be gotten and holden, but
by thought never.' "
In the Pistle of Private Coivncelle the writer insists
Z
338 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
still further on " the naked intent stretched toward God,"
and on a life " fully meekened in noughting itself."
" Thou shalt make spoil and utterly unclothe thyself of
all manner of feeling of thyself; so shalt thou be clothed
with the gracious feeling of God Himself. . . . Yet this
is not to unbe that were madness, but it is to forego the
witting and the feeling of thy own being."
These treatises, produced under the influence of the
Dionysian writings, had a wide circulation, and, in the
words of an old writer, 1 " walked up and down (England)
at deer rates."
Walter Hilton is the best known of the popular writers
of mystical literature in England in the fourteenth century.
He was, as was Rolle, an Oxford scholar and a contem
porary of Wyclif the probable date of his death being
1395. He was a man of rare and saintly life, "travailing
busily with all the powers of his soul to fulfil the truth of
good life." A very strong case has been made out for
settling upon him the authorship of the Imitation of Christ,
and, though it is practically certain that he did not write
it, it is high praise to say, what critics generally admit,
that he might have written it? What he did write is the
profoundly mystical book called The Ladder of Perfection,
in which he tells his age how the soul can learn, not
through priests and ecclesiastical systems, but in direct
intercourse with God, to " see and know spiritual things."
He is not concerned, like his greater contemporary
Wyclif, with the task of making a new England. His
problem is to tell man how to " enter into himself,
and know his own soul and the powers of it," " to see
by inward sight the nobility and dignity that belong
to the soul." 8
" The Divine treasure," he says, " lies hidden in thy
1 Quoted by D. M. M'Intyre, from whose article the passages quoted above
are taken.
2 Hilton wrote both in English and in Latin. It is still an unsettled question
whether he wrote his books originally in English or Latin, though De Mont-
morency thinks that the evidence is in favour of English. It is well known that
he translated Latin writings into English, among others Bonaventura's Stimulus
A moris.
3 The Scale of Perfection (London, 1870), p. 49.
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 339
own soul." " The piece of money the groat is lost in
thy own house." l
" Behind this dark and formless shape of evil is Jesus
hid." " Consider thy soul as a life, immortal and invisible,
which has in itself the power to know the sovereign truth,
and love the sovereign goodness, which is God. Seek
thyself in no other place."
But he is no merely passive mystic, satisfied with con
templation, and for ever engaged in hunting for the " lost
groat" within the dark of his own soul. He calls the
Christian to a life of " busy rest " and energetic love,
which loves every man, " be he ever so sinful," for in
comparison with love, he says, " there is no great excel-
lence in watching and fasting till thy head aches, nor in
running to Rome or Jerusalem with bare feet ! "
Less mystical, less of an adept in the inward way
Godward, but much more practical and influential with
the common people of England, was William Langland,
the writer of Piers Plowman probably, though not
certainly, an Oxford man, like his contemporaries in
literature. He was no hermit like Rolle, no recluse
monk like Hilton, but he glowed with no less religious
passion than they, though his ideal was a moral and
spiritual society rather than the achievement of untroubled
contemplation of God. He is the voice of the common
people crying, in vivid alliterative verse, against the hollow
shows and mockeries and hypocrisies of outward religion,
and for a genuine religion of heart and life.
" It is not so much," says Milman, 2 " in his keen, cutting
satire on all matters of the Church, as in his solemn installation
of reason and conscience as the guides of the self-directed soul,
that he is breaking the yoke of sacerdotal domination : in his
constant appeal to the plainest, simplest Scriptural truths, as in
themselves the whole of religion, he is a stern reformer. True
religion was not to be found, it was not known by Pope,
1 George Fox says the same thing in his Journal : ' ' The woman that lost the
piece of silver was seeking it without. But when the candle was lighted, and the
house swept, she found it in her own house." Francis Howgil has a still closer
parallel. He says : " Return home to within ; sweep your house all ; the groat
is within ! " (A Lamentation to the Scattered Tribes, 1656).
8 Latin Christianity, Book XIV. chap, vii
340 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Cardinals, Bishops, Clergy, Monks, Friars. It was to be sought
by man himself, by the individual man, by the poorest man,
under the sole guidance of Reason, Conscience, and the Grace
of God, vouchsafed directly, not through any intermediate
human being, or even sacrament, to the self-directing soul."
This voice from the Malvern Hills, the voice of the
people, speaking in their own tongue, was a cry of heart
for the religion of Christ a yearning for a religion of
new life and new motives an " ill life is an ill life,
whether in pope or peasant." Everywhere in this great
poem of the people, the thing that counts is right-doing, a
life that squares with faith and conscience : " If you had
a bag full of pardons and provincial letters, though you
be in the fraternity among the four orders, and have
indulgences double-fold, I would not give a magpie's tail
for your pardon unless Do-well help you"
He, too, though no mystic in the strict sense, has his
spiritual ladder or scale of the religious life. This comes
out in his three visions of " Do- well," " Do-bet," and
" Do-best." " Do-well " religion is founded on moral
uprightness and the fear of God. It is a good, plain,
straightforward type of religion, observant of doctrine,
playing fair with conscience, and deeply concerned over
the everlasting issues of life. " Do-bet " religion is
religion according to the " law of Christ " the religion
of love like that of the Good Samaritan, a religion whose
ideal is realised in Christ, Who redeemed us by love.
" Do-best " religion is the highest type of all it is the
Christ-spirit realized in a living Church, whose members
are inwardly free, fed by Grace, united to Christ and
embodying Him in the daily work of life for at the last
Piers Plowman is seen as Christ, typifying human nature
joined to Divine Grace, and doing God's will in the midst
of the busy world. It was a beautiful insight of the poet
that made the figure of his Piers Plowman melt away into
the Divine-human Christ, and the vision of a world with
conscience as king and under the sway of love is good for
any age of humanity.
But the greatest spiritual force of this period was
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 341
embodied in the patriot and reformer John Wyclif, who
was born about 1320, of North of England parentage, in
the Richmond district of Yorkshire. 1 His life and work
are closely bound up with Oxford, which was his chief
place of residence and of intellectual activity from about
1335, when he entered the University, to within three
years of his death, which occurred at Lutterworth in 1 384. 2
He was most probably a fellow, and, for a short period,
master of Balliol College. In 1361 he was presented by
that College to the living of Fillingham, in Lincolnshire,
though he continued to reside mainly at Oxford. In
1368, in order to be nearer Oxford, he exchanged this
living for the less valuable rectory at Ludgershall, about
twelve miles from Oxford, and probably devoted himself
mainly to University work. About 1372 he received the
degree of Doctor of Theology, and entered upon the work
of a University teacher. 3 From this time to the end of
his life he was in the forefront of the great spiritual
battles of England. We must try to see what those
battles were.
The early part of the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377)
had given England " a dazzling harvest of glory," and had
established an Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the western
world. The later years of the same reign saw the military
glory fade away, saw this u Anglo-Saxon supremacy "
broken, saw England sapped by continual war, dreadfully
misgoverned through corrupt favourites, the country swept
by famine and pestilence, and brought face to face with
social and economic conditions which no statesman of the
time understood, 4 with its medieval Church sick unto
1 According to Leland, who wrote in the time of Henry VIII., Wyclif was
born at " Ipreswel," now Hipswell, about a mile from Richmond, in Yorkshire.
* All the details of Wyclif s early life are in doubt. No other great English
man, except Shakespeare, has his biographical records more completely obscured
by time. There was, too, an Oxford contemporary by the same name a certain
John Wyclyve of Mayfield whose history has been tangled up with that of the
great reformer. We do not possess a single authentic letter written either from
or to Wyclif.
* Many scholars give an earlier date for the attainment of the degree. Poole
thinks that be became Doctor between 1361 and 1366. At any rate he was
Doctor in 1374, when he was appointed a member of the royal commission to
confer with the papal representatives at Bruges on the question of " provisions."
4 These social and economic troubles came to a head in 1381 in the form of a
342 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
death with a multitude of ills, and with the new religion,
that was to save the nation, hardly yet born. The con
dition of the Church in this age especially concerns us, for
the questions of life and death with Wyclif were questions
of religion.
In this period there was only one form of " religion "
in England that of the Church, and to be an Englishman
was to be a Christian of the orthodox type. This Church,
though in the broad sense a unity, was in reality divided
into two parts the Religious Orders, such as monks and
friars, and the Church under the jurisdiction of the bishops.
The friars in the early days of their history had been the
leaders of a great spiritual revival. They had carried
religion into the homes of the people, they had spread
abroad a fresh religious enthusiasm, and they had made
a powerful protest against worldliness in the Church and
laxity in the monastery. But in the intervening years
they had greatly degenerated. Once they had been as
saving salt in a very corrupt Church, but in Wyclifs time
they had lost their savour, and were themselves one of
the most corrupt elements within the corrupt Church.
Langland has impaled them with his satire ; Chaucer,
though untroubled with religious convictions, and telling
what he saw without passion, yet with much humour, has
shown them to us in their spiritual nakedness. The
worst feature of the friar's work in the profession of " cure
of souls " was his cheap and easy method of granting
absolution. Repentance, confession, and penance were
the three acts by which sins were purged, but it had
become a fixed custom to commute penance into a fine.
The friars, once " God's poor men," were now eager to
gather in money for their Orders by this easy method of
granting absolution. A window for a church or convent
would cover the crime of a great man ; a pair of old shoes
or a dinner would obtain heaven's pardon for the peasant. 1
peasant uprising of great seriousness, headed by agitators like John Ball and Wat
Tyler. The young king, Richard II. , saved the day by temporizing promises, but
not until the mob had slain Archbishop Sudbury and other men whom they held
responsible for the evils of the time.
1 It has been estimated that there were 4000 friars in England at this time,
and that they drew from the people not less than ,,40,000 annually. Wyclif says
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 343
Then, too, both men and women much preferred to confess
to a wandering and irresponsible friar, who was here
to-day and gone to-morrow, than to the parish priest, who
would be a constant presence and a permanent witness of
their lives. The friars were furthermore a menace to the
peace and purity of households, for they ingratiated them
selves with women, made themselves their authoritative
guides and masters, and naturally aroused the jealousy of
husbands. 1
Trevelyan lays great emphasis on the influence of the
friars with women, and says :
"The friars were as much in the confidence of great ladies
as of common people's wives. Those among the laymen who
were not in the hands of these insinuating visitors hated them
with the hatred of righteous jealousy." 2
Lechler quotes the following passage from Richard
Fitzralph's sermon on the mendicant Orders, giving the
following reason why people preferred to confess to the
friars :
" With regard to confession, the archbishop shows most con
vincingly that it is much more suitable and, on moral grounds,
much more advisable that confession should be made to one's
own parish priest (sacerdos ordinarius) than to a begging monk ;
for the former stands much nearer than the latter to any member
of his own parish coming to confess, and has personal knowledge
both of the man and his previous sins ; and naturally such a
man has more feeling of shame before one whom he sees every
day, than before a stranger whom perhaps he sees face to face
only once a year." 8
The monks, too, had once embodied the purest type
of religion of the times. They had in their spiritual
prime made religion the sole business of their lives, and
they had called men, by a startlingly bold example of
complete surrender, to leave all and follow Christ. But,
like Jeshurun, they waxed fat and kicked. They had
been extremely skilful in securing endowments. Men
that the friars took more from England than Christ and all His Apostles took
from Judea 1
1 Trevelyan, Age of Wydif, pp. 146-48. a Age of Wyclif. p. 148.
8 Lechler, Jokn Wycliffe, trans, by Lorimer, p. 58.
344 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
who had been weak and profligate while living were
readily induced when dying to leave their fortunes to
persons who were believed to have the keys of the next
world at their disposal. They found out how to work
this morbid fancy to its full, and through this and other
means they became rich and increased in goods. 1 And
at the same time they became fat and lazy. They, too,
had the bad habit of absolving sin for gain and endow
ment, and though with a long list of good services to their
credit, they were, on the whole, a burden to the people
and a disgrace to the Church of Christ.
The national Church, with its array of clergy and
" clerks," was under the jurisdiction of bishops, with a
Primate at Canterbury. The bishops were, as a rule,
selected by the King. The Statute of Provisors, passed in
1351, forbade any person to receive appointment by
papal provision, but, as no one could actually become
bishop without the confirmation of the Pope, the King
found it necessary to act in alliance with the Pope, and
in practice the Pope supported the royal candidates for
bishoprics, while the King allowed the Pope to appoint
his foreign cardinals to other places in the English Church. 2
The bishops of the time were all native Englishmen.
Most of them had worked their way up from the poorer
classes, and they were, as a rule, able men. The main
trouble with them as officials of the Church was their
worldliness. They had become the leading administrators
and politicians of the kingdom. Trevelyan says that out
of the twenty-five bishops between 1376 and 1380,
thirteen at one time or another held high secular offices
under the Crown. The principal offices in the nation
were held by bishops, and what we now call the " civil
service" of the country was monopolized by clerics. 3
1 Fully one-third of the land in England was in the hands of ecclesiastical
Orders or ecclesiastical persons in the reign of Edward III., and all this enormous
Church property was very inadequately taxed as regarded the property of the
secular clergy, while the wealth of the friars was not taxed at all. The Pope's
revenue from England at this period was five times that of the King.
2 Trevelyan, p. 108.
3 There was a great "reform wave" in 1371, which swept many of the
clerical officers from their positions and put laymen in their places.
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 345
The natural result was that political ambitions, absorption
in the affairs of the world, chances at great riches, took
the attention of the leaders of the Church away from the
business for which they existed.
This entire army of clerics, by a privilege known as
" benefit of the clergy," were exempt in cases of felony
from the criminal law of the land. " Criminous clerks "
were taken from the King's courts and tried before
" spiritual tribunals," from which they generally made an
easy escape. These "spiritual courts" had a monopoly
of the probate of wills, and were used as a ready means
of extortion. Before these courts came the cases for
collection of tithes, and the administration of fines im
posed as commutation for penance for sins. It was an
opportunity for " graft " and corruption on a gigantic
scale. 1 The spiritual courts pressed hard on the poor,
and they were bitterly hated by the people. Where the
Church in its spiritual capacity touched the life of the
people most closely, namely in its shepherding of the
flock, it was weakest and least efficient. A system of
absenteeism had grown up which proved a fine source of
revenue but starved the flock. The cardinals and arch
deacons who controlled many of the best benefices were
foreigners appointed by the Pope, and they used their
" charges " for revenue purposes only. Several benefices
were often conferred upon one person, who then, under
this plural system, farmed out " the cure of souls " to
underlings. The parish priests, who at the end of the long
chain finally came into immediate touch with the people,
were generally poor, uneducated, and inefficient The
parsonage and tithes under the system of " appropriation "
belonged either to the bishopric, to a monastery, or to
some high benefice, and only a very small stipend came
to the hands of the local priest or vicar who did the
work. This was the worst possible division of the spoil.
Those who were to live among the people, and raise them
to higher spiritual levels, were too poorly paid to live
1 Those who were rich sometimes gave a lump sum annually to the more
corrupt courts to prevent inquiry.
346 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
decent lives, and generally men unfitted for these high
tasks drifted into them, while their superiors treated the
" cure of souls " as a comfortable source of income, and
lived at their ease in cities. The actual instruction which
the parish priests gave their flocks was in most places but
slight. Preaching was not unknown, but it was very
infrequent, and even when there was preaching it was
puerile in its range and power. The parish priests
taught the people the Creed, the Ten Commandments,
the Ave Maria, the Paternoster, and they inculcated
the superficial moral system which had grown up in the
Church : the six works of mercy, the seven virtues, and a
knowledge of the seven deadly sins, but they hardly
touched the moral quick in their flocks. There is over
whelming evidence of widespread immorality in all classes
of society, both among clergy and laity.
The population of rural England was several times
greater than that of all the towns together. The people
were ignorant, poor, and preyed upon by their overlords
and by the Church, and they endured their lot only
because they had no imagination of any other possible
lot to be attained.
At the top of this dual spiritual system, with its Orders
of monks and friars ; its cardinals, bishops, priests and
clerks, was the Pope. The Pope, to the medieval mind,
was an inconceivably august being, the Vicar of Christ,
the successor of Peter, the bearer of the keys, with power
to loose and bind for eternity, and, what was of still more
practical importance, by his power to excommunicate, able
to bring the mightiest monarchs on their knees before
him. He had, however, never possessed the same un
disputed power in England as in most continental
countries. The pretensions of the papacy reached their
climax in England under Innocent III., when King John
gave his crown to the Pope and received it as a fief
to the See of Rome, and promised in perpetuity the
annual sum of one thousand marks ; but the very next
year the Barons, who wrung the Magna Charta from the
King, in the same spirit of great patriotism, defied the
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 347
Pope and his excommunications, announcing in significant
words the national principle : " The ordering of secular
matters appertaineth not to the Pope."
In 1365 Pope Urban V. called upon Edward III.
to pay the tribute promised by John, with all the unpaid
arrears during the previous years of his reign, threatening
in case of refusal to summon the King before him as
feudal lord. Edward was king over a different England
from that of John's day, and he laid the question of
tribute to the Pope before Parliament. Both Houses were
unanimous in refusing the papal demand, announcing
that John's act was null and void, as no king, without
consent of Parliament, had any right to subject the realm
of England to foreign authority. And yet in spite of
this national spirit the Pope's power in England was very
great. The vast army of monks and friars was, as I
have said, under his immediate control. Through his
appointments of Cardinals and other high beneficiaries
he always had great places at his disposal throughout
the kingdom. 1 England's continental possessions forced
the Crown into European politics, and made it necessary
for the nation to keep on good terms with the papal
court, not to speak of the terrors of a possible interdict
which filled all good Catholics with awe.
As I have been trying to show in previous chapters,
the great mystics had long felt that the Church was in
the wilderness. This vast machinery, this secular power,
was weakness, not strength. They felt that things were
out of joint, and that the art of ministering balm to
burdened souls was being lost but they were not states
men. They could only withdraw from "the heavy and
weary weight of all the unintelligible world " in which
they were, and build from within the spiritual ladder for
the individual soul to mount to freedom, peace, and God.
1 The Statute of Provisors was passed in 1351, making it illegal to obtain
any benefice from the Pope, but the statute was not enforced ; and the Statute of
Premunire was passed in 1353, forbidding appeals to the papal court on questions
of property, and affirming the right of the nation to prohibit the execution of papal
bulls within the realm. This anti-papal legislation was partly due to the fact
that the Avignon popes were in league with the French, with whom England
was at war.
348 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Their service is immeasurable, for they patiently felt out,
" with toil of knees and heart and hands," the inward way
to God, and taught the finer souls of their age how to
dispense with the cumbersome machinery of the medieval
system. But the times were ripe for a prophet-statesman,
who, with a great spiritual vision, would throw himself
into the task of breaking the yoke of bondage, and of
guiding the people, the nation, to freedom, peace, and God.
Wyclif was this prophet-statesman, and few men have
ever undertaken a harder task, or done it in a more un
compromising and heroic spirit. 1
His first recorded appearance as a champion of the
secular power against papal encroachment was in the
form of a tract, written in answer to the challenge of
an anonymous monk. 2 The monk is a champion of the
indefeasible right of the hierarchy. He contends that
the clergy should never be brought before a civil tribunal,
that the temporal power has no right to withdraw property
from the Church or from churchmen, and that the Crown
of England is a fief of the papal see, and should pay
annual tribute to the Pope. Wyclif, writing " as a lowly
and obedient son of the Roman Church," has yet no
consciousness of the great fire his spark is to grow into,
nor does he see to what lengths his logic is eventually to
carry him. He answers his opponent by giving him a
summary of seven speeches given in the House of Lords
during the great debate concerning the tribute, and in the
summary of the sixth speech he gives the germ of his
dominion theory. He says that Christ is the Lord-
Paramount, the Feudal Chief-Proprietor, of all the goods
of the universe. All who hold goods or rights hold them
from Him the Pope as well as other mortals. In case
the Pope falls into mortal sin, as he may do like other
1 " Had it not been for the perverseness of our prelates, against the divine
and admirable Wicklef, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps
neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther or of
Calvin, had ever been known. The glory of reforming all our neighbours had
been completely ours " (Milton, Areopagitica).
2 The title of this tract is Determinatio de Dominio, and is Wyclif s earliest
view of dominion. The tract was probably written in 1366, though some
authorities put it in the early seventies.
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 349
men, he then loses all right to dominion of any kind, and
has no claim to the possession of England, which is held
by the English themselves directly in fief from Christ.
Shortly after this discussion Wyclif brought out his
great treatise on the Dominion of God (De Dominio
Divino), and probably about five years later he finished
his third treatise on Dominion, Civil Dominion (De
Civili Dominio]. These works are prolix and abound
in the far-fetched logic of the schoolman, in form quite
remote from our way of thinking to-day, but in his
ponderous manner he arrives at conclusions which are
profoundly significant : all dominion, lordship, and
possession belong to God, Who is Lord-in-Chief of the
universe. All right of dominion which any man holds,
whether civil or spiritual (" natural " is Wyclif s word for
spiritual), is conferred upon him by God, and is held
directly, immediately from God ; and this right of dominion
continues only so long as the man who holds it continues
in grace, and renders the service which God expects from
him. No one living in sin, or failing in service, has any
legitimate right either to rule or to possess he incurs
forfeiture of dominion. In real fact all possessions belong
to the good, though it is expedient in this present state of
society to submit to the temporary dominion of the bad
God seems for a time to endure the rule of the devil.
We are not here concerned with the social and
economic bearing of Wyclif 's theory of dominion, though
it should be said in passing that his communism of the Good
was only an interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount,
and was far removed from the aims of the leaders of the
peasant uprising. But the fundamental principle of the
theory is what concerns us, namely, that man, as man,
depends directly upon God and upon none else. The Pope,
the King, the priest have no rights except as a gift from
God, and on the condition of goodness and service ; and
the " common man " has the same direct relation to God
that the official has. Apostolic succession rests on the real
worth of the man, not on positioner outward ordination ; "for
crown and cloth make no priest, nor the emperor's bishop
350 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
with his words, but power that Christ giveth, and thus by life
are priests known" * The real Church, therefore, is not
the ecclesiastical system with inalienable magic rites ; it
is the society of good persons holding their spiritual gifts
from God, and rendering the service that belongs to a
divine society. Thus, through his dominion theory,
Wyclif arrived in the fourteenth century at the supremacy
of the individual soul, as Luther did in the sixteenth
tflrough his doctrine of justification by faith. 2 By the
time his dominion doctrine was fully developed, Wyclif
was well under way toward a complete transforma
tion of medieval Christianity. He appears for a
time in the doubtful company of John of Gaunt, in an
attack on clerical influence in State affairs, and in a
movement to dispossess or curtail the property-holdings
of the Church. The two men were seeking totally
different ultimate ends, and Wyclif was moving in
directions in which the arch-politician could not travel
with him, and their ways were soon to separate. He had,
early in his intellectual life, become convinced of the
supreme authority of Scripture over all traditions of men
and over all Church authority, and, guided by its teachings,
and pushed on by virile moral and religious instincts, he
soon began to move against the central idea of medieval
piety, and to attack the fundamental doctrines of the
" system." The evils which Chaucer ridicules with such
fine satire became intolerable to Wyclif's finer moral
sense, and he smote them with all the intense power of
his feelings and his logic. From his chair at Oxford he
levelled his glowing arguments against the type of
religion represented by the useless monks and friars
and the unspiritual clergy. 3 He declared that work and
service and a life of goodness are dearer to God than
the conventional prayer and praise which fill such a
place in the prevailing system of piety. The Gospel,
1 Matthew, English Works of Wyclif, p. 467.
2 This whole subject of Dominion is very well treated in a chapter on
" Wyclif s Doctrine of Lordship," in R. L. Poole's Illustrations of the History
of Mediaeval Thought.
3 Wyclif s hostility to the friars belongs only to this later period of his life.
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 351
he holds, gives no ground for two types of religion
the religion of the " Orders " on the one hand, and
of " common Christians " on the other. Whatever
belongs intrinsically to religion is for all men alike.
There is but one " sect " provided for in the Gospel,
and that is the " sect of Christ." The distinguishing
mark of membership in that " sect " is the practice of the
Christ-like life.
The only salvation for the Church is a return to
the primitive ideal a return to the original religion of
CJirist:^ "Well I know," he says, "that the Church
has been many a day in growing, and some call it not
Christ's Church, but the church of wicked spirits. And
man may not better know Anti-Christ's clerk than by
this, that he loveth this church and hateth the Church
of Christ." 2 He had already in his early theory of
dominion reached the logical conclusion that Christ is
the Head of all dominion, but by the late seventies
he had risen, under the influence of the Scriptures, to
a more spiritual view of that sole Headship. In his
treatise on The Four New Sects, he says : " If thou
say that Christ's Church must have a Head, sooth it
is ; for Christ is Head, and must be here with His
Church until the day of doom." 8 With the insight
that Christ is Head, and that the individual person
has direct relations with Him without interventions, it
is not strange that Wyclif moves on to the conclusion
that there is no sharp line between clergy and laity
that there is in Christ's Church a priesthood of
believers, though he never uses the phrase. 4 Though
he does not actually formulate a doctrine of inner
Light as a universal guide, he does recognise a Light
which belongs to man as man a natural Light he calls
it, though Wyclif uses " natural " to mean inherently
bound up with man's relation to God. This Light, he
holds, has been weakened by the Fall, but it is not lost,
1 See Lechler, p. 323 ; and Trevelyan, pp. 179-80.
1 English Works of Wyclif, p. 467.
Select English Works of Wyclif, iii. p. 242.
* See Lechler, pp. 305-308.
352 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
nor is it opposed to the special light of Grace. It is
simply imperfect, and needs the assistance of revealed
knowledge. 1
The directness of Divine teaching to the individual
soul is emphasized in one of his late tracts. 2 This
tract was written to exalt the Bible as the ultimate
authority in matters of religion, and to show that the
Church which has set up its traditions and its authority
in the place of Scripture is Anti-Christ, but there are
passages in this tract which acknowledge an inward
teaching also : " God," he says " is our best Master, and
ready to teach true men all things profitable and needful
for their souls." Again, in the same tract : " Christian
men take their faith of God by His gracious gift, when
He giveth to them knowledge and understanding of
truths needful to save men's souls by Grace, to assent in
their hearts to such truths. And this men call faith ; and
of this faith Christian men are more certain than any
man is of mere outward things by bodily wit."
The Trialogus, in which he brings together his
religious and philosophical views in systematic form,
is apparently developed from his University lectures 8 ;
and from it we can, see what he was teaching his
students in these eventful years. One can here see
the bold mind of the master moving on irresistibly
toward a religion of the Spirit, which will in time
burst the bondage and restraint of the ancient system.
He scores prelates who know how to extort money for
sins, but know not how to cleanse a man from them ;
who " babble " of the distinction between mortal and
venial sins in order to make merchandise of pardons ;
and who " chatter of Grace as though it were something
to be bought and sold like an ox or an ass." Then,
with the swing of his intense moral nature, he smites this
heresy in morals, with the announcement that morality
is grounded in the very nature of things, is immutable
and eternal is deeper than and anterior to even the will
1 This is treated in the Trialogus, I. chap. vi.
2 How Anti-Christ and his Clerks travail to destroy Holy Writ, etc.
3 Vaughan's John de Wycliffe a Monograph, pp. 142-43.
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 353
of God, for God wills the right because it is right, there
fore indulgences and pardons are but stupid and
unavailing jugglery. On the same ground he struck at
saint-worship, and the superstition that God could be won
over by a multitude of intercessors. " The apostles,
without any saint's day, loved Jesus Christ more than we
do," is his significant comment, as usual putting the
conditions of the heart above the mummery of the lips.
His test of any rite or service in the Church is the way
in which it ministers to real devotion of the heart, well
expressed in the saying : " As oft as the song delighteth
me more than what is songen, so oft I acknowledge that
I trespass grievously."
About 1380 he moved on to attack the very citadel
of medieval Christianity the doctrine of Transubstan-
tiation itself. In words as unambiguous as the multi
plication table, he says : " I maintain that among all the
heresies which have ever appeared in the Church, there
was never one which was more cunningly smuggled in by
hypocrites than this, or which in more ways deceives the
people ; for it plunders them, leads them astray into
idolatry, and denies the teaching of Scripture." l
He indicates that he was led on metaphysical
grounds to disbelieve that the bread and wine became
actual body and blood of Christ, and with his scholastic
bent of mind this is quite natural ; but he had already
arrived, along distinctly religious lines, to a type of
Christianity for which the miracle of the Mass, even if
it were real, was useless and meaningless. He came to
realize that the miraculous eucharist was the foundation
stone of a false priesthood, and it was easy and natural
for him to conclude that it had been invented for material
purposes, and that its celebration was idolatry. But
whatever Wyclif thought about it, the Church of his
day considered Transubstantiation essential to its very
existence, and in attacking this doctrine, and in pointing
out another road to salvation, he was calling down upon
himself all the bottles of wrath which the visible Church
1 Trialogus, IV. chap. ii.
2 A
354 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
had in its keeping. He was now burning every bridge
behind him and venturing his life and all on his soul's
insight. He was challenging the very supremacy of the
Church, in behalf of man's direct approach to God.
Wyclif had already come into collision with the
hierarchy. In 1377 he was summoned before the
Convocation of Canterbury at St. Paul's, but he had
behind him the support of John of Gaunt and Lord
Henry Percy and the people of London. The same
year the Pope, Gregory XL, issued five Bulls against
Wyclif, reciting his errors in nineteen articles of accusa
tion. More than a year, however, passed before he
was finally summoned by the Archbishop at Lambeth to
answer the charges. Here again he had the people with
him and the powerful influence of the royal family, so
that once more his enemies stumbled and fell. Mean
time the " great schism " arose, for a time paralysing the
papal arm, and at the same time developing into sudden
maturity Wyclif 's anti-papal views. But now, in 1381,
when Wyclif revealed the startling extent to which he
was ready to change the religious beliefs of the nation,
the situation was quite altered. The peasant rising had
produced a great conservative reaction. An effort was
made to hold Wyclif responsible for the extreme
socialistic views of the leaders. 1 Then, by the murder
of Archbishop Sudbury, Bishop Courtenay, Wyclif s great
enemy, the stern foe of heresy, had become Primate.
The Court and the nobles, who in the period of the
political attack on Church privileges had been on
Wyclifs side, were shocked at his doctrinal heresies, and
John of Gaunt hastened to counsel him against the
dangerous course he was taking. But Wyclif was a
prophet, and not a politician, and the compromiser's
words had no effect upon him. Early in 1382 a
Council at Blackfriars' Convent, in London, condemned
a long list of Wyclifite heresies, and for the first time
dealt with the Lollard preachers. While the Council
1 John Ball, in his "confession," declared that he had learned his popular
doctrines from Wyclif, but this testimony is discredited by facts. John Ball was
excommunicated for his views as early as 1366.
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 355
was coming to its decisions, a terrible earthquake shook
the building and struck panic into the hearts of all
present except the redoubtable Archbishop Courtenay.
Wyclif's friends seized on the omen and made much
of it, but Courtenay moved on to strike a powerful blow
at the centre of Wyclifs power. He determined to drive
him from Oxford. It was no light task, for Wyclif was
the greatest figure in the University, and Oxford was
very jealous of its liberty of thought and freedom of
speech ; but the union of the ecclesiastical and royal
forces, with the far-reaching influence of the friars, formed
too powerful a combination to be resisted, and in the
summer of 1382 Oxford was closed for ever to Wyclif.
With this loss of intellectual freedom, the University lost
also its intellectual power and influence.
Wyclif himself was, however, wholly unmoved by
the blow which fell upon him. He flung himself without
a sigh into the greater work which was already opening
before him a work more important even than teaching
Oxford scholars. He had for some time seen the
necessity of teaching the truths of spiritual religion to the
people of England, and to this task he now devoted all his
powers. He withdrew from the storm centre, and settled
down in the quiet parish of Lutterworth, which had been
his living since 1374, and with almost incredible activity
set himself to the crowning work of his life the
translation of the Bible, the development of a popular
evangelism, and the writing of evangelical sermons and
tracts for the people. 1
It has been generally assumed that Wyclif was
summoned to Rome in 1384, the year of his death, and
that in a bold letter he declined, saying : " If I might with
God's will travel to the Pope, I would, but necessity saith
the contrary, and teacheth me to obey God rather than
men." There is no reliable evidence that he was actually
summoned ; and Wyclifs famous letter, which throughout
names the Pope in the third person, was probably written
1 It is quite probable that Wyclif had largely withdrawn from his University
work of his own accord, at least a year before the King's mandate was executed,
and was mainly devoting himself to his work for the English people.
356 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP,
by him somewhat in the form of a popular tract, on
hearing a rumour that he was likely to be summoned
before the Pope. The letter, in any case, lets us see the
great reformer's latest views of the Pope : " He is the
highest vicar of Christ, who followeth Christ more than
other men in virtuous living, for thus the Gospel teacheth.
... I believe that no man should follow the Pope, no,
nor any saint that is now in heaven, except inasmuch as
Ju shall follow Christ."
At the time of his death, in 1384, Wyclif had come
up to a very simple and untrammelled type of Christianity.
It consisted of following Christ according to the Gospel, of
living by "the law of God," i.e. the Scriptural revelation
of truth. It put no superstitious emphasis on sacra
ments, holding that the benefit from them was wholly
subjective and dependent on the spiritual attitude of
the recipient ; and none on Church systems " any man
following Christ is as much Christ's vicar as any other
man." 1
Wyclif put a value on the Bible wholly novel to medieval
Christianity. It was for him, as it was not for other
Christians of his time, the supreme and sufficient rule of
life, and to him belongs the honour of having translated it
into English speech. This honour was unchallenged
until recent times, but through the publication of a
critical essay by Dr. Gasquet, in the July number of the
Dublin Review, 1895, maintaining that the so-called
Wyclif Bible is neither Wyclif's nor even Wyclifite, the
whole question was thrown open. 2 Dr. Gasquet has,
however, not made out his case. Great Wyclif scholars
1 The simplicity of Wyclif s final view of Christianity is well seen in the Opus
Bvangelicum, edited by Loserth, London, 1895. He put little value on music
and on church architecture, and preferred the simple appeal of truth to the soul.
Vaughan, in his summary of Wyclifs opinions (Monograph, chap. xii. ), says:
' ' Concerning the sacraments, he retained the ordinance of baptism, but without
receiving the doctrine of the Church in respect to it as being necessary in all
cases to salvation. In like manner he retained the ordinance of the Lord's
Supper, but without the doctrine of Transubstantiation, . . . according to his
general language the value of a sacrament must depend wholly on the mind of
the recipient, not at all on the external act performed by the priest ; and contrary
to the received doctrine, he could not allow that infant salvation was dependent
on infant baptism."
2 See also Dr. Gasquet's Old English Bible,
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 357
like F. D. Matthew J and Vaughan, 8 have gathered such
an array of indirect and circumstantial evidence in favour
of the Wyclif claim, that it still holds its ground. It
seems probable that between 1381 and 1384, Wyclif
with a band of efficient helpers, of whom Nicholas of
Hereford was the foremost, turned the Vulgate into
English, Wyclif doing the New Testament and Hereford
doing the Old, and that this first translation was revised
and improved under the direction of Wyclif s friend and
assistant in the Lutterworth parish, John Purvey, whose
edition was probably issued four or five years after
Wyclif's death. There is one famous testimony to the
fact that it was Wyclif who gave the Bible to the people,
and that his work was regarded in high places as a
mischievous innovation :
"Christ," says Knighton in his Chronicles, 3 "delivered His
Gospel to the clergy and doctors of the Church, that they might
administer to the laity and to weaker persons, according to the
states of the times, and the wants of men. But this master, John
Wyclif, translated it out of Latin into English, and thus laid it
out more open to the laity and to women who could read, than
it had formerly been to the most learned of the clergy, even to
those of them who had the best understanding. In this way
the Gospel-pearl is cast abroad and trodden under foot of swine,
and that which was before precious both to clergy and laity is
rendered, as it were, the common jest of both. The jewel of
the Church is turned into the sport of the people, and what had
hitherto been the choice gift of the clergy and of divines is
made for ever common to the laity."
The other great practical service of Wyclifs later life
was his preparation and organization of a band of popular
preachers " evangelical men " he called them and this
step, like that of the translation, is extremely important,
for through it Wyclif continued to influence the people of
England long after his voice was hushed, and his ashes
were thrown in disgrace into the tributary to the Avon ;
and thus his positive impact on the nation never ceased
1 English Historical Review, January 1895.
8 In his John de Wyclije, pp. 331-59.
1 Chronicon Henrici Knighton, edited by J. R. Lumby, voL ii. pp. 151-52.
358 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
until his views triumphed in the Reformation and in the
rise of the Commonwealth sects.
Unfortunately, we know extremely little of the precise
part which Wyclif took in the organization of this popular
itinerant ministry, known in history as the Lollard
movement. The word " Lollard " was first applied, so
far as we have record, to these itinerant ministers by an
Oxford opponent of Wyclif, Henry Crump, in 1382.
But the word Lollard, as a religious nickname, had been
in use on the continent for more than a hundred and fifty
years. Much labour has been bestowed on the effort to
trace the origin of the word, and a good deal of ingenuity
has been shown. The most probable supposition is that
it comes from Lollen, to mumble or babble. It was
usually given to members of the semi-monastic orders
who worked among the people, and it was a kind of fling
at persons who, though heretical, made pretensions to
unusual piety, humility, and poverty. It was often
applied to Beghards. 1
It is evident that these itinerant preachers must
already have become numerous in England by the year
1382, for they not only received a name of reproach at
Oxford, but they also were made a distinct object of
attack, under the name of " unlicensed priests," at the
" Earthquake Council " of that year. 2 It is certain that
the movement to establish itinerant preaching was already
well under way before this date. It seems likely, from
contemporary testimony, that Wyclif, in the later years of
his Oxford life, had been preparing and sending out
1 The name Lollard appears for the first time in the Chronicles of Joannes
Hocsemius in 1309 (see Du Cange, Glossarium, vol. v. p. 138). It was at first
used to designate associations of laymen who devoted themselves to the care of
the sick and insane and to the burial of the dead, and it has been suggested that
the name was derived from their low, soft singing of funeral chants (see Lea's
History of the Inquisition, vol. ii. p. 351). They were also called Alexians from
their patron St. Alexis, and Cellites, from the fact that they lived in cells. As
lay Orders developed and spread this name took on a wider signification and
became a general term, as did Beghard, to cover the members of lay Orders, and
was used in official circles as a word of opprobrium.
2 ' ' Certain unauthorised itinerant preachers are setting forth erroneous, yea,
heretical, assertions in public sermons, not only in churches, but also in public
squares and other profane places" (Mandate of Archbishop to the Bishop of
London, Mav 1382).
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 359
travelling preachers, and he seems to have been the central
figure of a group of men, mostly young, who were devoted
to the proclamation of evangelical religion in England. 1
At first the itinerant ministers were a priests " and men
of good learning who had come under Wyclif's influence
at Oxford, but after the eventful years of 1381-82 he
seems to have made no distinction between priests and
laymen, and he no longer calls the itinerants " poor
priests," but rather " apostolic men " or " evangelical
men," and he positively insists in these latter years of
his life that the Divine call and commission are entirely
sufficient for ministering ; that when God has installed
a minister, the imposition of Bishop's hands is of no
consequence?
As time went on the Lollard missionaries were less
and less from the priestly and educated classes. There
was nothing to gain and everything to lose for these
unauthorized preachers. Their course was along the line
of greatest resistance, and not many rich, not many
learned, not many with great names were ready for such
a hazardous calling. Of the early group we know the
names of John Ashton, Nicholas Hereford, John Purvey,
William Swynderby, John Parker, and Walter Brute.
Some of them lacked staying power, and were drawn
back into the Church again as the stress of persecution
increased and the dangers of independency loomed before
them. In fact, the early Lollards were not very good
martyrs, but we must remember that the spirit of martyr
dom has to be cultivated ; it is not a natural tendency,
and the need for it in England was new. There came in
time a race of Lollards whose faith rose to the sticking-
point, and whose spirit was equal to the fiery test to which
it was put. 8
1 See testimony of William Thorpe, in Acts and Monuments of John Foxe.
9 See Lecbler, p. 196.
' It must, however, be admitted that the whole history of Lollardry is seriously
marred with "recantation." Foxe has preserved a very harrowing record of a
"great abjuration," near the end of the fifteenth century in the parish of
Amersham, where there was a Lollard " conventicle " of sixty members and three
preachers. William Tylesworth, one of the preachers, was seized and carried to
the stake for burning. The members of his flock abjured their faith, and were
360 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
A decided group-spirit prevailed among these preachers.
They wore a common garb long russet-coloured gowns
with deep pockets ; they had a similarity of manner and
style in preaching ; they dwelt with peculiar fondness on
" God's law," i.e. Scripture, as the basis of their argument ;
they were uniformly opposed to image-worship, and they
were hostile to the Mass; they abhorred, like the Waldenses
whom they resemble in many ways, the common oaths of
the day. 1 They used simple, direct language, with much
illustration ; they avoided dogma and insisted on a
practical, ethical religion. They had a vigorous way of
dealing with the evils and vices of " official " Christians,
and they indulged in biting satire on the followers of
" Anti-Christ." They, however, were the bearers of a
positive message a gospel, with many real apostolic notes
in it. They have been compared to Wesley's itinerant
preachers, but a nearer parallel is found in the itinerant
lay ministry of Gerard Groote, whose preaching in Holland
in this same century was extremely like that of Wyclif's
" evangelical men."
They were from the first popular, and had the common
people with them. They also found favour at the first
with the knights and wealthy citizens, who welcomed and
supported the poor preachers on their rounds ; and in the
early stages of the movement the House of Commons was
plainly in sympathy with their efforts. By the end of
Richard's reign Lollardry had become a powerful influence
in London, in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, in
Sussex, Berks, and Wilts, in Herefordshire and Gloucester
shire. 2 The people in all these sections of England were
growing familiar with attacks on the entire medieval
system, were becoming used to lay-preaching and the
language of Scripture, and their ears had grown accustomed
ordered to "bear the fagots for his burning," which they did", and his own
daughter, herself a Lollard, was compelled to set fire to the wood ! It is a
picture of awful barbarity, and unrelieved by any touch of heroism on the part of
the flock. All three of the preachers, however, died for their faith (Foxe, folio
edition, vol. i. pp. 877 seq. ).
1 William Thorpe, who bore a good testimony to the Lollard faith before
Archbishop Arundel, in 1407, declared that "he preached that it was not lawful
to swear by creatures and so not by a booke " (Foxe's Acts and Monuments).
2 Trevelyan, p. 331
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 361
to the distinction between " Christ's Sect " and " Anti-
Christ's Church."
Foxe has preserved a remarkable document from the
early period of Lollardry, which vividly shows the character
of the movement It is written in the spirit, though not
in the style, of Piers Plowman^ and is called the Plowman's
Prayer and Complaint) The writer, a sort of fifteenth-
century Quaker, is full of passion for the spiritual rights
of man, is opposed to calling a " house " a church, and
prefers good deeds to singing psalms.
" Lord God," he cries out, " men maketh stonen houses, full
of glasen windows and clepeth thilke thine houses and churches.
And they setten in these houses mawmets (idols) of stocks and
stones, and before them they knelen and maken their prayers,
and all this they say is thy worship and a great herying (worship)
to thee. But Lord God, what herying is it to build thee a church
of dead stones and robben thy quick churches (living men) of
their bodilich lives ? Lord, I see thy image gone in cold and in
hete, in clothes all tobroken, without shone and hosen, anhungered
and athurst. . . . Lord, we lewd (unlearned) men have a belief
ihat thy goodness is endless, and if we keepen thy hests then ben we
thy true servants. Men singen thy words and that singing they
clepen thy service, but Lord, I trow that the best singer herieth
(worshippeth) thee not most"
In 1401, the second year of Henry IV.'s reign, the
famous statute " for burning heretics " was passed by
Parliament, and William Sawtrey (or Sautre or Chatrys)
was its first victim. He had once recanted, as the fashion
then was, but in 1401 he kept the faith, and was burned
for teaching that " after consecration by the priest, the
bread remaineth true material bread." The next victim,
in 1410, was John Badby, a tailor, of Evesham a lay-
preacher who declared that " Christ sitting at supper
could not give His disciples His living (t.e. literal) body to
eat" He stood by his faith, and went to the stake. The
Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry V., was present at
Smithfield when Badby was burned, and vainly offered
him Life on the condition of his recanting.
1 Foxe, voL i, pp. 453 uq.
362 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
" It was a remarkable and significant scene. The hope and
pride of England had come in person to implore a tailor to accept
life, but he had come in vain. At last the pile was lit. The
man's agonies and contortions were taken for signals of submis
sion. Henry ordered the faggots to be pulled away, and renewed
his offers and entreaties, but again to no effect. The flames were
lit a second time, and the body disappeared in them for ever." l
The next great event in the history of Lollardry is the
hunting down of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. He
had been a friend of the young King, Henry V., had
rendered on the Welsh border great service to the throne,
but he had become thoroughly imbued with the new form
of religion, and was the powerful protector of Lollard
preachers. He was brought before " the spiritual court "
by the intervention of the King, and here he made a clear
confession of faith in the Lollard tenets. He was con
demned as a heretic, and given over to the secular arm
to be burned. He made, however, his escape from the
Tower, and his Lollard friends resolved to save him. An
insurrection was in all probability planned. At any rate
it was suspected, and the Lollard meeting-place in London
was surrounded by the King's troops, and many Lollards
were seized and hung on the spot. Sir John Oldcastle
escaped, and evaded capture for three years. At length
he was caught, and executed with all the barbarity known
to the period. He died like a hero and a saint, asking
God to forgive his enemies, saying that to God only would
he confess his sins and pray for forgiveness. As the
crackling flames drowned his words of praise the people
wept and prayed with him, and counted him a martyr to
the truth.
From this time on Lollardry had scant patronage from
the knights and gentry. It became the religion of the
middle or lower classes, and its professors were shown no
mercy. There were, however, in spite of the danger,
many large congregations gathered by itinerant preachers
1 Trevelyan, p. 335. There is a book in the muniment room of Colchester
Castle which contains the account of the burning, "in the flame of fire," as a
" manifest example to other Christians," of a tailor named William Chivelyng,
who was a Lollard leader in the city of Colchester. He was burned in 1428.
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 363
down to the middle of the fifteenth century. One
preacher, going to the stake, told his judges that he had
converted not less than seven hundred persons during his
life. They had their own schools, met to hear the Bible
read, discarded the superstitious practices of the clergy,
and appear to have been called by their opponents " the
lay-party." l
During the second half of the fifteenth century this
unofficial lay-religion seemed to be a losing cause, and
likely to be stamped out. It was, however, moving on
like a subterranean stream, and filtering down into the
life of the people, and in the reign of Henry VII. there
came, after a long incubation, a deep revival of Lollardry. 2
There were, as formerly, groups or congregations of them,
with blacksmiths and tailors for preachers, who believed
themselves " the only true priests." Their schools had
been broken up, their founder's writings destroyed, 8 their
Bibles burnt, and yet they flourished and grew. Foxe
gives us a fine picture of their zeal :
" Although public authority failed then to maintain the open
preaching of the Gospel, yet the secret multitude of professors
was not much unequal ; certes the fervent zeal of those Christian
days seemed much superior to these our days and times, as
manifestly may appear by their sitting up all night in reading and
hearing ; also by their expenses and charges in buying of books
in English, of which some gave five marks (about ^40 of present
value), some more, some less, for a book. Some gave a load of
hay for a few chapters of St James or of St. Paul in English." 4
This zeal for the truth, this eagerness to barter hay for
Scripture, continued on down into the reign of Henry VIII.
There were " known men," as the Lollards came to be
called, i.e, " Known of God," at work in a silent way in
scores of English parishes on the day that Luther rode
into Worms, and there was an unbroken succession of
truth-bearers between the great " Evangelical doctor " of
1 See Bishop Pecock's The Repreaor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy.
9 Trevelyan, p. 347.
* They seem to have preserved only Wyclif 's Tract, called the Wicket, written
against Transvbstantiation.
* Quoted from Summers, Our Lollard Ancestors, p. 96.
364 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Oxford and the Protestants of the Reformation period. 1
Lollardry was never extinguished ; it merged into the great
spiritual revival which remade the modern world. " Once
the party of the Wyclifites was overcome by the power of
the Kings," wrote Erasmus to Pope Adrian VI., " but it
was only overcome, not extinguished." The Bishop of
London was right in the opinion which he expressed to
Erasmus, that the doctrines of Luther were no novelty in
England.
There came to light in 1530 a number of pieces of
anti-Church literature which gathered up in a popular way
the message of the Lollard preachers. These tracts in the
reports of the Ecclesiastical Commission bear the titles :
" The Wicked Mammon," " The Obedience of a Cristen
Man," " The Revelation of Anti-Crist," and most important
of all, the " Sum of Scriptures." This latter tract bears
strong marks of Anabaptist influence, though it may be
only the inward development of Lollardry. The following
passages give the character of the message embodied in
these tracts :
" There is noo warke better than another to please God to
wash dishes and to preche is all oon as towching the dede to
please God."
" Cereymonyes of the Churche hath brought the worlde from
God." 2
1 Foxe (Acts and Monuments, ii. p. 29) gives us a graphic picture of Lollard
activity in England, the very year Luther was nailing his theses on the door of
the Wittenberg church : "In the deposition of one Thomas Risby, weaver, of
Stratford Langthorne, against the martyr Thomas Man, it appeareth by the
Register, that he had been in divers places and countries in England, and had
instructed very many, as at Amersham, at London, at Billerica, at Chelmsford,
at Stratford Langthorne, at Uxbridge, at Burnham, at Henley-upon-Thames, in
Suffolke and Northfolke, at Newbery and divers places more : where he himself
testifieth, that as he went westward, he found a great company of well-disposed
persons, being of the same judgment touching the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper
that he was of, and especially at Newbery, where was (as he confessed) a glorious
and sweet society of faithful favourers, who had continued the space of fifteen
years together, till at last, by a certain lewd person, whom they trusted and made
of their counsel, they were bewrayed ; and then many of them, to the number of
six or seven score, abjured, and three or four of them were burnt. From thence
he came then (as he confessed) to the Forest of Windsor, where he, hearing of
the brethren that were at Amersham, removed thither, where he found a godly
and a great company, which had continued in that doctrine and teaching twenty-
three years."
2 The book of " The Wicked Mammon," Wilkins' Concilia Magnae Britanniae
et Hiberniae, vol. iii. p. 728.
xv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 365
" Every man is a priest, and we nede noon other priest to be
a meane [mediator]." l
" The Temple of God is not stones and wood, neither in the
time of Pawle was there any house that was called the temple of
God." s
" We think that when we beleve that God is God and can
[know] owr crede, that we have the faithe that a cristen man is
bound to have, but so doth the divill believe." 8
" Every man doth as much as he believeth." 4
There is a very strong social note in the Sum of
Scriptures, and it carries on the best social spirit of the
Lollards :
" He that is rich and liveth of his rents, may not use or spend
his goodes as he wille, but thy goodes belong as well unto the
poor as to thee." 6
" A man shall be reproved for noo other thinge at the day of
judgment but for forgetting the poor." 6
"Men of warre are not allowed by the Gospel, the Gospel
knoweth peace and not warre." 7
Simultaneously with the growth of Reformation prin
ciples in England, advocates of Anabaptism began to
appear, and this "heresy," feared everywhere by those
who claimed the right to be vicars to the absent Christ,
began to spread. 8 It is an interesting fact that it found
its strongholds in the very districts where Lollardry had
most flourished and where the people were familiar with
anti-clerical sentiment "God made not priests," the
Lollards had taught, " for in Christ's time there were no
priests "- " what need to go to the feet (*>. to priest or
to saints), when we may go to the Head ? " The soil in
which such teaching was sown was just the soil for Ana-
baptism to grow in, and we shall see in a later chapter
how close the historical bond was.
Lollards and Quakers, too, had much in common.
The book of "Obedience of a Cristen Man," Cone. Mag. Brit. p. 728.
"The Revelation of Anti-Crist," Cone. Mag. Brit. p. 730.
"Sum of Scriptures," Cone. Mag. Brit. p. 731.
" Sum of Scriptures. " 8 Cone. Mag. Brit. p. 732.
Ibid. p. 732. 7 Ibid. p. 732.
8 The earliest record of Anabaptists in England is in 1534. Mentioned in
Cone. Mag. Brit. pp. 776-79.
366 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
The very founders of Quakerism were " of the stock of
martyrs " martyrs directly or indirectly for their faith in
Lollard views. But the real connection is still closer than
that. George Fox and his followers, consciously or uncon
sciously, were the genuine apostolic successors of Wyclif's
" Evangelical men." They proclaimed anew to their age
truths which England had already heard ; that " God
made not priests " ; that man, and not " stonen houses
with glasen windows," is the true divine temple ; that the
simplest person may go directly to the Head of the
Church. The Lollard had already borne a valiant testi
mony to simple garb and plain speech ; he had given his
body to be burned in his protest against idolatrous sacra
ments ; he had refused to " swear on a book," and he had
called men away from " Anti-Christ " to simple member
ship in the " Sect of Christ"
" The English mind," writes Trevelyan, " moves slowly, cau
tiously and often silently. The movement in regard to forms of
religion began with Wyclif, if it began no earlier, and reached its
full height perhaps not a hundred years ago. England was not
converted from Germany ; she changed her own opinion, and
had begun that process long before Wittenberg or Geneva became
famous in theological controversy. If we take a general view of
our religious history, we must hold that English Protestantism
had a gradual and mainly regular growth."
" Apart from questions of doctrine and ritual, the importance
of Lollardry was great in formulating the rebellion of the laity.
That rebellion was directed against the attempt of the Church to
keep men in subordination to the priest, after the time when higher
developments had become possible. Lollardry offered a new
religious basis to all. In the reign of Richard the Second, many
laymen had thought the existing power, property, and privileges
of the Church to be an evil, but a sacred evil. The Lollards
asserted that ecclesiastical evils were not necessarily sacred.
The triumph of that view was the downfall of the governing
Church." 1
Who can measure the reach of the spiritual influence
of a great man's life and teaching ! Wyclif dies ; his
dust is thrown into the river, and a college is built at
1 Trevelyan, pp. 351-52.
iv THE PRE-REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 367
Oxford to counteract his teaching. Statutes are passed
to annihilate his followers, and all the might of the visible
Church gathers itself to extinguish the flame which he
had kindled. We have seen that it never was extin
guished in England. But the kindling power of this
Wyclif flame gets its most remarkable revelation in
Bohemia. The story has all the surprises of a romance.
Bohemian students came in large numbers to Oxford in
Wyclif's time and later, and they imbibed the ideas of the
great Oxford teacher, and patiently copied his manuscripts
and took them back to their native land. Richard's Queen,
Anne of Bohemia, became affected with WycliPs views,
and through her and her court circle the influence passed
over to her home country. The main work, however, was
accomplished through the scholars and the manuscripts.
John Hus, in his own University of Prague, made copies
of Wyclif's philosophical writings, and his friend Jerome,
about the same time, came back from Oxford with the
theological writings. It was like a spark in tinder, and
in a brief time Wyclifite ideas had permeated Bohemia.
Hus, from the pulpit of the Bethlehem Chapel, became
a powerful preacher of righteousness, and a fearless
opponent of the evils and corruptions of the Church, with
almost the whole nation for his audience. Once more
the visible Church girded itself to put out the fire which
had leaped from England to Bohemia. The Council
which decreed that Wyclif's bones should be burned at
Lutterworth, also decreed that Hus should die at the
stake in Constance. " The chief aim of my preaching,"
said the martyr, as the faggots were heaped about him,
" has been to teach men repentance and the forgiveness
of sins according to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, therefore I am prepared to die with a joyful
soul."
The spiritual flame was not extinguished by the
decrees of Constance ; it spread more rapidly than ever,
and when Luther was ready to speak, he found Europe
ready to hear him ; and from the continent, the truth,
which Wyclif had done so much to spread, came back
368 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.XV
to swell the native flame which had never ceased to burn.
" It is no pernicious novelty" declared the Bishop of
London, when the Lutheran teachings began to disturb
his peace ; " it is only new arms being added to the
great band of Wyclifite heretics ! "
CHAPTER XVI
THE ANABAPTISTS
I
JUDGED by the reception it met at the hands of those in
power, both in Church and State, equally in Roman
Catholic and in Protestant countries, the Anabaptist
movement was one of the most tragic in the history of
Christianity ; but, judged by the principles which were
put into play by the men who bore this reproachful nick
name, it must be pronounced one of the most momentous
and significant undertakings in man's eventful religious
struggle after the truth. It gathered up the gains of
earlier movements, and it is the spiritual soil out of which
all nonconformist sects have sprung, and it is the first
plain announcement in modern history of a programme
for a new type of Christian society which the modern
world, especially in America and England, has been slowly
realizing an absolutely free and independent religious
society, and a State in which every man counts as a
man, and has his share in shaping both Church and State.
This distinct movement toward a radically new type
of religious society later named Anabaptism * was
launched at least as early as was the movement to reform
the old Church. In fact, it is practically certain that
" the Spiritual groups," which I have been studying in
these chapters, had an unbroken existence ; that the
1 The term is an opprobrious nickname given by the enemies of the movement.
It means re-baptism, but, as we shall see. questions of baptism were by no means
the vital questions in the movement.
369 2 B
370 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
bands of " Brethren " who quietly gathered in homes and
in out-of-the-way meeting-places to foster personal religion
and to express their disapproval of the " system," had a
continuous descent down to the times of the Reformation,
and that they were gathered up by the glowing leaders of
the sixteenth century into this great, though somewhat
chaotic, movement, which ran parallel with the more
rigidly organized Reformation.
I say " practically certain," because there is very little
documentary evidence at hand to prove the direct connec
tion between Anabaptism and the earlier mystical and
evangelical societies. 1
What we actually know is that there suddenly appeared,
just at the dawn of the Reformation, in almost every
Christian country, little groups of men and women, who
were determined to reconstruct Christianity after the New
Testament model, who were bent on reviving primitive
Christianity. These groups had the same characteristic
marks that have become familiar to us in these studies,
with the addition of other peculiarities due largely to the
social conditions under which they lived. They put, too,
a peculiar and novel emphasis on certain aspects of truth,
largely as a result of their greater knowledge of Scripture,
and they felt, more intensely than any of the groups of
" Brethren " before them, the social passion the aspiration
for a society in which men might be free from every kind
of tyranny. But they present every appearance of having
evolved from the social and religious groups which we
know existed throughout Europe before them, and that,
too, in the very centres where Anabaptism later flourished
at its best.
It was perfectly natural that this freer, intenser, more
radical type of Christianity should break forth simultane
ously with the Reformation. The same tendencies which
pushed Luther and Zwingli to take their bold stand for
a reform in the Church, pushed these other groups
1 Dr. Ludwig Keller, in his Altevangelischen Gemeinden (Berlin, 1887) and
his Die Reformation und die alteren Reformparteien (Leipzig, 1885), has gathered
much material which points in the direction of direct influence, but it is not
generally admitted that he has made good his case.
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 371
of Christians into unwonted activity. They had alike
measurably shaken themselves free from the spell of tradi
tion, and had been appalled at the spiritual bankruptcy of
the Church. They had alike rediscovered Christianity in
the Bible ; and the new vision worked within them like
new wine. Those who had this vision, and with it had the
power of restraint, and the gifts of statesmanship to see
what would work and what would not work in the world
as it actually was then, became the leaders of the Protestant
Reformation, and have their renown in the pages of history.
Those who had this vision and who were resolved to make
the world fit the vision, with no shade of levelling down and
with no hairsbreadth of a compromise, became the leaders
of Anabaptism, risked everything for the cause they
believed in, flung out ideals which have been guiding stars
for us ever since, went to death in terrible fashions, and
fell on almost total obscurity. It is a story well worth
telling, and quite worth reading.
Whatever may have been the influence of the previous
mystical and evangelical societies in producing this new
religious outbreak, there can be no question that the .
circulation of the Bible among the people was the deepest !
spring and occasion of it. The priests were right when
they announced that it was dangerous for " common men "
to have the Bible. It was even more dangerous than they
knew, and everybody now realizes that putting the Bible
into the hands of peasants and craftsmen wrought one of
the greatest spiritual revolutions in the history of the race,
and marked the doom of an exclusive priesthood. The
finer spirits had, in the earlier centuries, been able to feel
out an inner way to God, and they knew in their own
souls of a Divine fellowship, independent of priest or
sacrament, but their message was vague and unformed,
and did not grip the rank and file with reality. In the
early part of the sixteenth century the actual message of
the New Testament was beginning to filter down into the
lives of the people themselves. There were many labour
ing men who had read the very words of Christ ; there
were many simple homes in which a copy of the wonderful
372 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP,
Book was owned and possessed. Men and women with
slender culture and with no wealth but their hands of toil,
were reading and pondering, and as they read and pondered
they saw a new heaven and a new earth. With his open
Bible, the " common man " became his own priest, and in
a measure his own prophet. He suddenly found himself
in strange new relations to God, and possessed of a picture
of the Church wholly different from the actual Church
which he knew. He awoke to the fact that he had been
pitiably deceived by the priests, and led off into the
wilderness instead of into the promised land. Under
the powerful inspiration of the Bible, with its vivid
prophecies and its luminous ideals of a pure and spot
less Church as the Bride of Christ, there broke forth a
great surging of spirit toward emancipation and toward
the realization of the splendid vision which the Bible
had opened.
The powerful challenge of Luther and Zwingli to the
old system, and their championship of evangelical Christi
anity, stirred all Europe and kindled new courage in the
hearts of those who were waiting and praying for the
morning to break. The early utterances of Luther voiced
the passionate yearning of multitudes of patient men and
women who had been thinking deeply, but who were
themselves unable to make their voices heard in high
places, and his hammer strokes woke many more to
sudden activity. Simultaneously, but by independent
steps, Zwingli was moving toward a sweeping Reform, and
was carrying with him the enlightened men of the Swiss
Cantons and of Southern Germany. Already, by 1520,
under his influence, the Council of Zurich issued an order
directing all pastors and preachers in the Canton to declare
the pure word of God. And by the time Luther was at
work in the Wartburg, on his translation of the New
Testament, Zwingli had declared the principle that the
Church must reject in doctrine and practice everything not
positively enjoined by Scripture}
1 Luther's own principle is much more conservative, namely, that the Church
should retain whatever is not contrary to Scripture : ' ' Whatever is not against
Scripture is for Scripture, and Scripture for it."
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 373
But it soon became manifest that Luther and Zwingli
had a very different aim in view from that which inspired
the men who had hoped at first that a " root and branch "
transformation was beginning. It quickly developed that
both Luther and Zwingli, however they might differ in
their personal views, were depending on the help of
the secular arm, and were going no farther with their J
reforms than they could carry their respective States with
them. They had no conception of a Church independent
of secular princes and powers, and they were ready to
sacrifice ideals and compromise principles to carry with
them the persons whom they supposed essential to the
formation of a winning, successful Church.
There appeared as early as I 523 a wing of the reform
ing force, composed of persons who saw then, as in the
light of history we see to-day, the glaring inconsistencies
of these great reformers. In principle, Luther and *
Zwingli announced the sovereignty and priesthood of
the individual. They proclaimed the ideal of a Church
on the New Testament model. In practice they put
personal faith in jeopardy, under an authority almost as
rigid and almost as unspiritual as in the system they were
overthrowing, and they constantly levelled their ideal of a
Church down to the standard which custom and tradition
had made familiar. It is a nice question, which we are
not debating here, whether the moderate reformers who ,
compromised and " succeeded," or the radicals who died *
for their ideals, and " failed," were right. We are only
concerned now with the fact that there quickly did develop
a radical wing, resolved on constructing a Church of the
apostolic type, and that Luther and Zwingli were among
their most persistent opponents.
The first leaders of the radical wing of the reform
movement were young Swiss scholars who were intimate
with Zwingli and had worked zealously with him in
the earliest stages of the Evangelical revival. The best-
known names in this Swiss group are Conrad Grebel
from one of the leading families of Zurich, educated in
the Universities of Vienna and Paris ; Felix Mantz, a
374 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
first-rate Hebrew scholar ; George Blaurock, a converted
monk of Chur, a man who from his eloquence was
popularly called the " mighty Jorg " and " the second
Paul " ; Simon Stumpf, the first priest to be publicly
married in Switzerland ; and Ludwig Hetzer, also a
Hebrew scholar, and who with the German Anabaptist,
Hans Denck, made the first Protestant translation of the
Old Testament Prophets. 1
The real issue, which finally led to a sharp cleavage
between the Swiss reformers, was on the question of the
type of Church to take the place of the old Church. As
. Philip Schaff well puts it, " the Zwinglian reformers aimed
' to reform the old Church by the Bible ; the Anabaptists
attempted to build a new Church from the Bible." 2 The
radical wing demanded " a pure Church, separated from
the Godless," " a congregation of believers conceived by
the word of God and born of faith." It should have in it
as members only those who had an experience of religion,
" the saved," and it should have as practices only what
was plainly enjoined by Scripture. They believed that
the old Church had been swamped by its alliance with
the world, that instead of overcoming the world it had
been overcome by it, and that the time had now come to
set religion free from all entangling alliances, and to form
a Church which should be composed of members who were
ready to make it their sole business to realize the kingdom
of God. To them the centuries intervening between their
time and the apostles formed a period of " apostasy," and
they proposed leaping over the chasm and restoring the
apostolic Church. They further maintained that both
within and without the Church a man's conscience must
' be absolutely free to follow the best light he had. " Do
not lay a burden on my conscience," said Hans Miiller, an
Anabaptist, when brought before the Zurich magistrates,
" for faith is a gift given freely by God, and is not common
property. The mystery of God lies hidden, like the
1 The movement begun by these young Swiss leaders found its noblest expres
sion in two young German scholars, Balthasar Htibmaier and Hans Denck,
whose teachings will be given later on.
2 Article on Swiss Anabaptists in Baptist Quarterly Review, vol. xl. p. 266,
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 375
treasure in the field, which no one can find but he to
whom the Spirit shows it So I beg you, ye servants of
God, let my faith stand free." l
The advocates of the " pure, separate Church " first
came into collision with the moderate reformers on the
question of the basis of authority. It was in October 1523
at the " Second Zurich Discussion." The " Discussion "
was on the celebration of the Mass and the use of images. .
Both groups of reformers agreed that there was no ground
or place for either Mass or images in a Church of the
apostolic type, but Zwingli and the moderates urged that
the decision as to further practice should be left with the
civic Council of Zurich. The radical party protested
against such a course. " You have no authority," one of
them cried out, "to leave the decision with them. The
decision is given already. The Spirit of God decides.
Should the men of the Council give a decision contrary to
the word of God, imploring Christ for His Spirit, I will
teach and act against it." z
This declaration perfectly fits the fundamental con
tention of the Anabaptists. The decision in spiritual
matters does not belong to civic councils ; it belongs alone
to the group of Spiritual persons who compose the Church,
and who have the leading of the Spirit From the time
of this " Discussion," those who united in this view of the ;
Church began to meet in the houses of the " brethren " to
study the Bible together and to mature their views. They
were men, as even their fiercest opponents admit, of marked
purity of life, of deep sincerity and simplicity, and they
were ready to follow the light as soon as it broke upon
them. 8
As they pored over the Scriptures they failed to find
that the New Testament gave any ground for infant
1 Egli. Die ZUricher Wiedertauftr, p. 98. Quoted in Lindsay's History of the
Reformation, vol. ii. p. 441.
* Burrage, Anab. i n Switserland ( Phila. 1882), p. 69.
* Bullinger in his Rise of the Anabaptists, though unfriendly to their views,
says : ' ' They denounced luxury, intemperance in eating and drinking, and all
vices, and led a serious spiritual life." Kessler of St. Gall says : "Alas ! what
shall I say of these people ? They move my sincere pity, for many of them are
zealous for God though without knowledge." The testimony, even from their
enemies, shows them consistent followers of Christ.
376 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
baptism, and they put their finger on this custom as one
of the most objectionable inventions of the " apostasy."
As in the Galatian controversy Paul focused the whole
complex issue over the two kinds of Christianity on
i circumcision ; so with a profound insight these young
Swiss leaders saw that the whole question of the kind of
Church they were to make was bound up with the question
of infant baptism. Infant baptism implied at once, they
believed, that there was some saving power in baptismal
water. The baptized child was in some mysterious way
put on a different spiritual level by the application of it.
The child himself being wholly unconscious, had contri
buted nothing, had put forth no faith, and yet before
baptism it was assumed that the child was lost ; after
baptism it was assumed that the child was in the class of
the saved. If so, then he was saved entirely by something
done for him by a priest, without the exercise of any faith
on his own part. This was the very essence of sacer
dotalism, and, as they concluded from their Scripture
study, bald superstition. It gave the priest the fulcrum
for ail his power, and it opened the door for bringing the
world into the Church, since the mere act of receiving
baptism made one a member of the Church, quite apart
from the exercise of personal faith, or a spiritual attitude
of soul.
It was on this issue that the line of cleavage was
drawn. The radicals cared little for baptism. They
conceived in it no saving power. It was neither the use
nor the non-use of it that primarily mattered or availed.
Their contention went much deeper, and dealt with really
vital matters. They were determined to lay the axe at
the root of every superstition, and to destroy utterly
sacerdotalism and priestcraft. Then, plainly, this was the
place to strike.
But more than that was involved. They were deter
mined to maintain the principle that no spiritual change
. can be wrought in the soul except by voluntary choice.
Against the view that God chooses some to be " saints "
and some to be "damned," they set the view that each
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 377
man by his own choice is made spiritual and saintly, or
unspiritual and damned. The Church, they held, should
be the congregation of those who chose to be Christ's
followers, and who were conscious of a living relation with
their Lord. Then, of course, it followed that no baptism
could be tolerated unless it were taken as an act of faith
and as an act of personal obedience to the command of
Christ
" Water," said one of their leaders, 1 " is not baptism,
else the whole Danube were baptism and the fishermen
and boatmen would be daily baptized."
For a time Zwingli himself wavered on the question
of infant baptism, and was on the point of declaring
against it as unscriptural, and Oecolampadius, too, felt a
similar halt in his mind in reference to it But the deeper
issues involved finally carried them against this insight
The ideal of a Church composed only of believers, a
fellowship of the faithful, seemed to them impracticable
for earth, and they swung over to the old plan of a Church
of wheat and tares, and Zwingli became the most stubborn
defender of infant baptism 2
The progress of events steadily pushed the two groups
of reformers, with their different ideals of the Church,
farther apart and into sharper differentiation. The radicals
" spirituals," or simply " brethren," or " Christians," they
called themselves continued to meet in little groups.
Their " apostles " were full of enthusiasm, restless, resist
less, heroic, and the movement spread with an astonishing
rapidity. Little societies of " believers " sprang up almost
spontaneously in Berne, Basle, Appenzel, St Gall, and in
other places. The movement, even in Switzerland where
it was thoroughly sane, had a powerful social aspect as
well as a religious aspect Its leaders had an intense
humanitarian spirit, a passionate love for the " common
man," and they " spoke to the condition " of the oppressed
and the heavy-laden. Even their enemies admitted that
1 Balthasar Hiibmaier.
- He defended it on the analogy of circumcision enjoined in the Old Testa
ment ; on the ground of Christ's treatment of little children ; and on the strength
of Acts xvi. 15 and 33 ; i Cor. i. 16 ; and i Cor. vii. 14.
3/8 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
by the test of life they rang true. Bullinger, in his History
of the Reformation, says :
" They had an appearance of spiritual life ; they were excellent
in character, they sighed much, they uttered no falsehoods, they
were austere, they spake nobly and with excellence, so that
they thereby acquired admiration and authority or respect with
simple pious people. For the people said : ' Let others say what
they will of the Dippers, we see in them nothing but what is
excellent, and hear from them nothing else but that we should
not swear and do no one wrong, that every one ought to do what
is right, that everyone must live godly and holy lives ; we see no
wickedness in them.' Thus they deceived many people in this
land." J
Finally, in 1525, they took the step which gave them
their name, and which separated them completely from
the moderate reformers. At one of their "brother-
meetings " in Zurich, while all were bowed in prayer that
God would grant them power to fulfil all His will,
Blaurock stood up and asked Grebel to baptize him on
his personal confession of faith. He then fell on his
knees, and Grebel baptized him, and he (Blaurock) there
upon baptized all who were present. Similar scenes
followed in the houses where the " brethren " met in the
various Swiss cities. Baptism was thus adopted as a sign
and seal of their faith and their membership in the Church
of Christ, and in adopting it as an act of faith they pro
claimed the nullity of infant baptism. Their enemies
called them henceforth Anabaptists, i,e. re-baptists. They
protested against the name as inapplicable, for they held
that their first " baptism " was no baptism at all, but only
mere water poured over a child incapable of faith, and
that therefore the baptism of a believing adult was not re-
baptism. Their protest, however, was in vain, and almost
immediately the pitiless storm of persecution, which was
pushed almost to annihilation, broke upon them.
To grasp the profounder meaning of the movement, we
must now turn to its two greatest exponents, Hiibmaier
and Denck.
1 Quoted from A Martyrology of the Churches of Christ commonly called
Baptists (London, 1850, vol. i. p. 7).
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 379
II
Balthasar Hiibmaier was born in Friedburg, about five
miles from Augsburg, probably in 1480. He received his
education in the University of Freiburg and Ingolstadt,
under the famous Dr. Eck, Luther's antagonist, receiving
in succession the Master's degree and the degree of Doctor
of Theology. His great gifts as a preacher gave him wide
fame, and he was induced to leave Ingolstadt, where he
had become vice-rector of the University, to become chief
preacher in the city of Regensburg (Ratisbon). This was
in 1516, and he remained in this city five years. During
this period he seemed thoroughly entrenched in the
theology and practices of the old Church. There was no
sign of the great radical leader, slumbering and potential,
in the zealously devoted Catholic preacher.
In 1521 the year of the Diet of Worms he became
pastor of the church at Waldshut, on the Rhine, in
Austrian territory, but near the Swiss border. Here he
took up the study of Paul's Epistles, and went seriously
to work to discover what the primitive conception of
Christianity was. Through his study he came into a
personal experience of salvation through Christ He
wrote to his Regensburg friends in 1524: "Within two
years has Christ come for the first time into my heart to
thrive." He entered into sympathetic relations with the
Swiss reformers, and conferred with the great leaders of
the new learning, Erasmus, Oecolampadius, and Vadian.
By the autumn of 1523 he was thoroughly settled in the
new faith, and had carried his congregation at Waldshut
with him, and in the famous Zurich " Discussion," already
referred to, he took his place on the side of the radical
reformers. He was baptized " re-baptized," as his
opponents would have it in 1525, by William Roublin,
and shortly after he (Hiibmaier) baptized from a milk-
pail three hundred of the people of Waldshut. Only
three years later I oth of March 152 8 he was burned
at the stake in Vienna as a martyr to his faith, but during
the five years of his evangelical ministry he led a large
38o MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
number of serious men and women into the type of
apostolic religion which he professed. 1
He was a powerful preacher, and as a lucid and
vigorous writer unmatched among the reformers except
by Luther, and, though he temporarily wavered on the
rack, on the whole he was one of the noblest spirits of the
German Reformation. There are few finer testimonies
than Hubmaier's to an absolute confidence in the power
of the Truth. Again and again he closes his addresses
and his treatises with the words, " Truth is immortal." In
a letter asking for a Discussion with Zwingli on the subject
of baptism, he says : " If I err, I will gladly retract. If
Master Ulrich (Zwingli) errs, he should not be ashamed
to forsake his error, for the truth will ultimately conquer
him" In the Zurich " Discussion " he had already said :
" I can err, for I am a man, but I cannot be a heretic, for
/ am willing to be taught better by anybody."
He made a fundamental point, as was true of all the
Anabaptists, of the necessity of personal faith and indi
vidual experience. <c You tell me," he wrote in his
Dialogue with Oecolampadius, " of the faith of another, it
may be of father or mother ; of the faith of a godfather,
or of the faith of the Church ; but all of this is without
foundation in Scripture, for the just must live by his own
faithr This necessity of personal first-hand faith was
his test of value for every religious observance, and it was
on this ground that he threw over the Mass, which in his
Regensburg days had been a central feature of his religion.
" A s I cannot believe for another" he said in his address
before the Zurich Council, " so it is not permitted for me
to celebrate the Mass for another." It is because of this
fundamental insight that he was so determined to abolish
infant baptism. To baptize a child, he says, is to per
form a " ceremony " it is not an intelligent act of faith. 2
One may as well expect, he says, to " save " a Turk or a
Jew by pouring a little baptismal water over him. And
1 During the closing year of his ministry, which was in the city of Nikolsburg,
in Moravia, it is estimated that no less than 6000 were added to the ranks of the
Anabaptists in that region (see Vedder's Balthasar Hiibmaier, p. 152).
* See his treatise on Christian Baptism of Believers.
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 381
in answer to the claim that the child is baptized as a
future believer, he says : " To baptize a child as a future
believer is like hanging out a hoop as a sign of future
wine!" 1
Hiibmaier was more distinctly evangelical than Denck,
who was the great mystic of the group, and yet there was
a decidedly mystical strain in Hiibmaier, as there was,
furthermore, in the entire Anabaptist movement. All the
sane leaders of the movement held that true religion is an
act and attitude of the person's own spirit, and that nothing
wJiatever is wrought by magic, by sacerdotalism, by rite r
or by ceremony. 2 Salvation is a change of nature within
the soul, and this change is wrought alone by a personal
transaction between the soul and God. To such an
experience Hiibmaier has given a powerful testimony : " /
believe and trust that the Holy Ghost has come in me and
the power of the most high God has, as with Mary (the
Virgin), overshadowed my soul, to conceive in me the new
man ; so that in the living, indestructible Word and in the
Spirit I might be born again, and see the kingdom of
God. For Thou, Son of the living God, didst become
man in order that through Thee we might become children
of God." 8
It is true that he founded his entire message on the
teaching of Scripture, and he patiently spelled out the
word for his age from the Word of the ages. And yet he
emphatically insisted as well on the importance of a direct,
inward work. " God draws men," he wrote in his Table
of Doctrine, " in two ways, inwardly and outwardly. The
outward drawing takes place by the public proclamation
of His holy Gospel, which Christ commanded to be
preached to every creature, and is now made known
everywhere. T/te inward drawing is wrought by God,
who enlightens the soul within, so that it understands the
undeniable truth, and is so thoroughly convinced by the
1 See his treatise on Christian Baptism of Believers.
1 Hiibmaier says in his Form of Baptiring that there is nothing sacramental in
baptism. These are his words : ' ' Water baptism is an external and public
testimony of the inward baptism of the Spirit."
8 Hubmaier's Twelve Articles of Faith (Vedder, p. 131).
382 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Spirit and the preached word, as to confess from the
conscience that these must be so and not otherwise." l
When he was face to face with the trial by fire he bore
a personal testimony to this inward leading : " Whatever I
have either written or taught hitherto was not for my own
advantage, but simply from the conviction that the Spirit
of God was leading me to do it." 2 Hiibmaier holds that
the true Church is a spiritual organism, made up of those
who have been born from above and joined to Christ, so
that they live in the Spirit as sons of God. The authority
of this Church is in itself. It cannot depend on temporal
rulers, or on any secular power, for its support. It deals
only with the affairs of the soul. " The Church," he says
in his Table of Christian Doctrine, " includes all men who
are congregated and united in one God, in one Lord, in
one faith and one baptism, and confess the faith with the
mouth wherever they may be on earth. That is the
universal Christian Church, the body and communion of
saints, that meets only in the Spirit of God." And in his
Twelve Articles of Faith he says : " I believe and confess
a holy Catholic Church, which is the communion of saints
and a brotherhood of pious and believing men."
Hiibmaier's treatment of singing as a religious exercise
throws much light on his conception of a Church and its
positively spiritual function. It is well known that the
Anabaptists made much of congregational singing, and
that they produced some of the finest of the early Pro
testant hymns, but Hiibmaier expresses the feeling, which
prevailed pretty generally among them, that whatever was
made a part of worship must be done intelligently and
with spiritual intention. He says in his Short Apology :
"With singing and reading in the Churches I am well con
tented (but not as they have been hitherto conducted), when it is
with the Spirit and from the heart, and with the understanding
of the words and edification of the Church as Paul teaches
us. But, otherwise, God rejects it and will have none of our
Baal cries"
Hiibmaier was one of the noblest spirits of his
1 Vedder, p. 199. 2 From an interview in prison in Vienna (Vedder, p. 227)*
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 383
time, but he was the herald of a message for which
the world was not yet ripe, and he met at every turn
the pitiless hate and persecution of a world that was
resolved to seal his lips. He learned in a hard school
the profound truth which he spoke : " Faith which
flows from the Gospel fountain lives only in contests ;
and the rougher they become, so much the greater
becomes faith."
Ill
Hans Denck has been rightly called "an apostle of
Anabaptism," l and as a scholar, leader and spiritual
prophet he is Hiibmaier's equal. His contemporaries,
however hostile to his doctrines, recognised his great
gifts. Bucer called him " the pope of the Anabaptists " ;
Haller, " the Anabaptist Apollo " ; and Vadian wrote in
1523: "In Denck, that most gifted youth, all excel
lencies were present" Sebastian Franck says that he
was " the President and Bishop of the Anabaptists."
He is a " priest " quite after the order of Melchizedec,
for he has no traceable lineage. His place of nativity 2
and the date of his birth are unknown. He studied in
the University of Basle, where he heard the lectures
of Oecolampadius, though he never became his disciple.
His main intellectual interest was in the prophets and
mystics, in whom he was deeply read. He was not a
revolutionary leader, but gentle in spirit and with a
single passionate aim, to build up a spiritual fellowship
of good persons.
He became headmaster in St. Sebald's School, in
Nuremberg, in 1523, but he soon came into collision
with the Lutheran theologians there, and was forced
to leave the city. Instead of shaking off the dust of
his feet against them he wrote a Tract called A
Protestation and Confession, in which he shows himself
to be a mystic and a seeker after a live faith. " I
would fain possess," he wrote, "that faith which works
1 Keller, Hans Denck, tin Afcstel der Wiedertaufer (Leipzig, 1882).
* Probably in Bavaria.
384 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
salvation and leads to life, but I do not find it in me.
Nay, if I said to-day that I had that faith, to-morrow
I should accuse myself of lying ; for an inner Voice, a
Spark of Truth which I partly feel in me, tells me that
I have not yet in me that faith which works life."
Denck's Nuremberg Confession is still in the archives
of that city, and has been put into modern shape by
Dr. Keller. 1 His leading question in the Confession
is " Who gives me faith ? Is it inborn, or is it won ?
Is it communicated by parents, or is it an elemental
condition of the soulf" His answer is that it is a
native condition of the soul. It is a tendency grounded
in the very structure of the soul, which pushes man
after a better, purer life, and which makes him resist
the lower natural tendencies. This situation involves
battle, struggle (Seelenkampf} as long as one lives in
the body, but the victory is well in sight when one
"sets his will towards God's will through Christ." He
says that the higher convictions which make man
truly religious cannot have their origin from the Bible,
as they are pre-supposed in any acceptation of the
Bible as a Word of God. Therefore the true and
primary faith must rest on " facts of experience,
directly given " ; on what he rightly calls " an inner
witness which God, by His grace, plants in the soul."
The supreme test of the Word of God in the Bible is
its power of speaking to this " inner witness." " It
[the Bible] is an echo of what is being uttered deep in
my own bosom," " it is the light and guide on the way
of Faith, and without it the best of us would stumble
and go astray, but it is not the primary Word of God."
This " inner " Word, which perfectly fits the " outer,"
is, he says, " a spark of the Divine Spirit." Without
this within him, a man would neither seek nor find
God, for "he who seeks Him, in truth already has
Him, and without this inner Spirit to guide and direct
him, one cannot find Him, even in the Bible." 2
1 Bin Apostel der Wiedertdufer, pp. 49-62.
2 Compare this view with Luther's doctrine of total depravity the absence of
all impulse toward Good : "I find nothing pure or holy in me, nor in any man,
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 385
During the next six months after his Confession^
the awful six months of the peasant revolt, Denck's
movements cannot be traced, but he finally comes to
light again in June 1525, at St. Gall, in Switzerland,
where he wrote a Tract with the luminous title : " He
who really loves the truth can herein examine himself,
so that none exalt his faith by reason of personal
experiences, but knows from whom he should ask and
receive wisdom ! " He soon received a call to teach
in Augsburg, where he found a group ready for his
spiritual message. It was apparently under the
influence of Hiibmaier, who visited Augsburg on his
way to Nikolsburg, that Denck became convinced of
the distinct views on baptism held by the Anabaptists,
though he had already arrived independently at the
spiritual conception of Christianity. In fact, he went
further than any of the other leaders in his teaching
of a Light within. He flatly denied the depravity of
man as we have seen, and asserted that there is
something divine in every man an upward impulse or
conscience which he believed to be " a spark of the
Divine Spirit" Consistently with this view he held to
the freedom of the will, man's personal power to obey or
disobey this Divine Light in the Soul. Christ, he taught,
was the Eternal Word or Spirit, incarnate ; this same
Word, or Spirit, is in some measure in all true believers,
and the Church is the company or fellowship of these
spiritual souls, united to their Divine Head : " All who
are inspired with the Spirit of love are one with
Christ in God." He had an intense love for the
Bible, and in conjunction with Ludwig Hetzer he
made a translation of the Prophets, but he would
not consent to make the Scriptures the sole source
and foundation of faith. God was, he said, before the
Scriptures, and they are only instruments to bring men
to Him.
but all our works are (if I may be allowed the expression) mere lice in an old
filthy hide, from which nothing good can come, because neither hide nor hair
is any good any more."
2 C
386 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
" The Holy Scriptures," he wrote, " I esteem above human
treasures, but not so highly as the Word of God, which is living,
powerful, and eternal, and pure from the elements of this world,
since it is God Himself, Spirit and not letter, written without
pen and paper, so that it can never be blotted out. Therefore,
blessedness is not bound up in Scripture, however useful and
good it may always be in that direction. It is not possible for
Scripture to make better a bad heart ; but a good heart is bettered
by all things. A man who is chosen by God may attain to
blessedness without preaching, without Scripture."
During his stay in Augsburg, he threw himself with
great earnestness into the task of forming a " Spiritual
fellowship " in the city, " an apostolic brotherhood "
" an embassy of God," he called it and he was so
successful that more than a thousand persons were in
a short time brought into the fellowship. But under
the fire of opposition he withdrew from Augsburg and
went to Strasbourg where another " fellowship " was
being formed. Here the opposition was led by the
great reformer, Bucer, who had Denck driven into
exile.
Homeless, penniless, the object of fierce attack,
hunted like a dangerous wild beast, he wandered about
on foot from town to town, telling his message to
those who were ready for it, and organizing the
scattered Anabaptists into local brotherhoods. He
seems also to have drawn together the leaders of the
movement throughout Germany into a sort of " general
meeting," over which he presided in Augsburg in 1527.
Broken in health, and " dying daily," he found his
way to Basle, where he hoped to spread the truth,
but his worn-out body soon gave way entirely and he
finished his course in faith.
He was one of the first in the modern world to
proclaim consistently the plain, simple Gospel of the
infinite love and fatherhood of God. He had no
sympathy with far-fetched schemes of theology. He
threw himself unreservedly on the goodness of God.
" The voice of my heart," he wrote, " the voice of my
heart, of which I assuredly know that it renders the
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 387
truth, says to me that God is righteous and merciful,
and this Voice speaks in every good heart distinctly,
and intelligibly, and it speaks the more distinctly and
clearly the better one is."
There were great diversities of view among the Ana
baptists, and it is not safe to make any universal state
ments about their views or practices, but nearly all these
early leaders of Anabaptism were radical in their
opposition to the keeping of fasts, to the payment of
tithes? the taking of oaths, and a very large number of
them opposed the performance of any military service.
As early as 1 5 24 Grebel and his friends wrote :
" The Gospel and its followers shall not be guarded by the
sword. . . . Truly believing Christians are sheep in the midst
of wolves, sheep ready for the slaughter ; they must be baptized
in fear and in need, in tribulation and death, that they may
be tried to the last, and enter the fatherland of eternal peace,
not with carnal, but with spiritual weapons. They use neither
the sword of the world nor war, for to kill is forbidden." z
They had discovered the fatherhood of God, and
they had a firm belief in human brotherhood. 8 They
opposed the fiction that from all eternity some were
God's men and some were Satan's men, and they
hoped to bring about a transformation of society, so
that all men might actually live as children of God
and as brothers. Sebastian Franck, the Chronicler,
though himself not one of them, says that " they
taught nothing but love, faith, and crucifixion of the
flesh, manifesting patience and humility under many
sufferings, breaking bread with one another in sign of
love and unity, helping one another with true helpful
ness, lending, borrowing, giving, learning to have all
1 Some of the early Anabaptists strongly objected to a salaried ministry.
Denck's disciple, Eitelhans Langenmantel, attacked the reformed clergy on the
ground of its "hireling" feature. He condemned the grasping avarice of
ministers who "will do nothing for the poor except for money," and he
denounced the administration of ordinances for money (see Newman,
History of Anti-Pedobaptism, p. 169).
2 Letter to Thomas Munzer.
* One of the errors charged against an early English Anabaptist was his
affirmation : " I am bound to love the Turke from the bethome (bottom) of my
heart! 1
388 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
things in common, calling each other ' brother.' " 1
There was a wing of the Anabaptists which pushed
this idea of brotherhood to its limit in complete
communism. " The highest command of God," said
Eitelhans Langenmantel, of Augsburg, "is love. 'Love
the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and thy neighbour
as thyself.' In the Community no one ought to say
' mine, mine,' it is also the brother's. A community
where one is rich and another poor belongs not to
Christ." In similar vein Ulrich Stradler, of Auspitz,
taught : " All those who truly believe and have wholly
given themselves up to Christ have all God's gifts and
possessions in common. In the house of the Lord
there is no mine, thine, nor his." 2 But the apostles of
this great spiritual movement the men whose views
I have been studying were simply bent on following
Christ in the spirit of love, and on transforming
society by practising the Gospel of the kingdom.
Hiibmaier wrote before he left Zurich :
" I am accused as if I would have made all things in common,
which yet I have not done, but I have called this a Christian
community of goods, namely : that when one have, and see his
neighbour suffer, he should give him alms, in order that the
hungry, thirsty, naked, and imprisoned may be helped ; and that
the more a man practise such works of mercy, the nearer would
he be to the Spirit of Christianity." 3
But it was bound to happen, at that stage of history
and of education, that such large principles of free and
spiritual religion as those which this movement expressed
could not be presented without producing extremes and
divisions. There was throughout the primitive period of
Anabaptism a fanatical wing which greatly hampered the
sane leaders, and which gave a strong pretext to the
authorities for their merciless attack on the whole move-
1 Chronica, p. 164. Quoted in Lindsay's History of the Reformation, vol.
ii. p. 437.
2 The most successful of all the Communistic leaders was Jacob Huter, to
whom belongs the chief credit for the organization of the Moravian Communities,
which have survived through baptisms of blood and fire, and through many
migrations, to the present time.
3 Vedder, p. 139.
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 389
ment. There are always in any given group of men a
certain number of psychopathic persons in whom sugges
tions will work with abnormal coerciveness. If new ideas
are " in the air " these persons will be powerfully infected
with them, obsessed with them. If their unstable nervous
systems are organized and constructed under the control
of the new insight, these persons will be the prophets and
heroes of the movement ; if they are unstrung and over
wrought by the contagion they then become the fanatics
and wreckage of the movement Anabaptism had its full
quota of psychopaths of both types. It had powerful
prophets, and it also had its flotsam and jetsam.
IV
It has been customary among historians to reckon the
" Zwickau Prophets " among Anabaptists, though strictly
speaking they do not belong to this class. They were,
however, considered a part of the movement by their
contemporaries, and they well illustrate the new ideas that
were abroad, and that worked like leaven in the ranks of
the Anabaptists. " Zwickau Prophets " is a name given
to a little group of ultra-evangelical reformers who came
into prominence in Zwickau while Luther was in the
Wartburg (1521-1522). Their leader was Thomas
Miinzer (born about 1490), a Master of Arts, a profound
student of the mystics, and a fervent sympathizer with
the people, burdened with wrongs and sufferings. While
he was pastor at Zwickau he was greatly influenced by
Nicholas Storch, an itinerant weaver, who in his travels
had come under the influence of the " Bohemian Brethren."
He had picked up a ready knowledge of Scripture, and
had become strongly imbued with millenarian doctrine,
a doctrine which prevailed in a branch of the " Bohemian
Brethren." He was decidedly psychopathic, given to
" visions " and conscious of immediate " inspiration."
Like Miinzer, he had a passion for the emancipation of
the people. They both came to the conclusion that
infant baptism was useless and not founded on Scripture,
390 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
and they considered baptism with the Spirit the only
important baptism ; but they did not confirm this view
by their practice, for in " the model Church," which he set
up after he was driven from Zwickau, Miinzer still pro
vided for the baptism of children.
While Luther was in the Wartburg, Storch and some
of his disciples resolved to visit Wittenberg and win the
University to their cause. It was a bold stroke, and in
it they succeeded to the extent of gaining the rector of
the University, Carlstadt, and of deeply impressing even
Melanchthon. Luther hurried home and broke the spell
of the " prophets " in Wittenberg. Meantime Miinzer was
carried farther and farther into millenarian and revolu
tionary views. His preaching became denunciatory and
menacing, 1 and finally he conceived himself as a new
Gideon, commissioned with " the sword of the Lord " to
lead the people to victory over all princes and into com
plete freedom. He infused a fanatical spirit into the
peasant revolt, and he did much to wreck the cause he
championed. Against the warnings of the Swiss Ana
baptists, he took the sword, and he perished by it But
he left a heavy legacy behind, for he and his group of
disciples had spread widely abroad the extreme super-
naturalism of this Zwickau movement, the eager expecta
tion of an imminent millennium, and a passion for the
sword to hasten religio-social ideals.
Soon after the death of Miinzer, Hans Hut, an illiterate
but powerful preacher, who firmly believed himself a
divinely inspired prophet, played a remarkable r61e. His
millenarian views, which he drew from the apocalyptic
sections of the Bible, spread like contagion wherever he
went, under his infectious preaching.
Melchior Hoffman was another leader of the " apoca
lyptic type." He had pored over the Scriptures, especially
the apocalyptic chapters, until he became convinced that he
had the key to all mysteries. He interpreted Bible texts
by far-fetched allegory, and formulated a marvellous mil-
1 "If princes act not only against the Gospel, but also against the natural
rights of the people, they should be strangled like dogs," is one of his "sayings."
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 391
lenarian dream. He was opposed to a salaried ministry,
and supported himself at his trade. He opposed all
distinction between clergy and laity, except a difference
in gifts. He was opposed to all oaths, and he held that
it was inconsistent for a Christian to fill the office of
magistrate.
His " Church " was as unecclesiastical as that of the
primitive Quakers. He says :
" God's community knows no head but Christ. Teachers and
ministers are not lords. The pastors have no authority except to
preach God's word and punish sins. A Bishop (i.e. overseer)
must be elected out of the community. ... A true preacher
would willingly see the whole community prophesy."
He believed himself divinely inspired. He had a
" revelation " that the New Jerusalem was to come in the
City of Strasbourg, and though thrown into prison there
he continued to set date after date for the " coming."
Before his imprisonment he had been the " apostle " of
Anabaptism in the Netherlands, where there was a great
" convincement" His " message " reached the people, and
he kindled the highest hopes in the popular mind wher
ever he went This " message," though without the
powerful magnetic personality which was behind it, is
preserved in his Tract on " The Ordinances of God," an
extract from which is herewith given :
" Christ, King in heaven and on earth, sends His friends and
servants to teach all nations that He has sacrificed Himself for
the whole world, and taken away its sins. It is the work of a
true apostle, not only to proclaim this Gospel of the Crucified,
but also to bring to all people the joyful kiss from the mouth of
the Bridegroom, who has been made by His Father king over all
creatures in heaven and earth, and to deliver the message that
all those who serve Him and will acknowledge Him as Lord can
come to Him freely and surely, and that He will keep them with
Him eternally. And the messengers of the Lord are furthermore
commanded to unite to Christ through baptism all who have
thus given Him their hearts. To the Bride (the holy com
munity formed of those who have thus given themselves in
baptism) the Bridegroom gives Himself in bread and wine, as an
earthly bridegroom gives himself with a ring; and the Bride
392 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
receiving the bread and wine, through faith becomes with the
Bridegroom one body and one flesh, one spirit and one mind."
Unfortunately the Dutch leaders, Jan Matthys and
Jan Bockelson (often called John of Leyden), adopted
the less spiritual side of Hoffman's teaching, and pushed
his millenarian ideas to their extreme limit. They con
cluded that the time had come for the " believers " to take
the sword and hasten " the coming of the Kingdom," and
they swept along with them a band of followers who
credited them with infallible divine guidance. The result
was the maelstrom of fanaticism in the " Minister King
dom " which shocked the civilized world. 1
Even before the fanaticism of the " Miinster Kingdom "
had broken out, or the excesses of millenarianism had
become apparent, the imperial authority and the officials
of the Church had resolved on the extirpation of Ana-
baptism at whatever cost. It can be safely said that no
other movement for spiritual freedom in the history of the
Church has such an enormous martyrology. 2 Almost all
the Swiss leaders suffered martyrdom while the movement
was in its infancy. As early as 1528 the Suabian League
sent out four hundred, and later eight hundred, and then
a thousand armed troopers to scour the districts under
their rule, and the leaders of the company were given
authority, at once and without trial or law, to put to death
Anabaptists wherever caught, and to hunt them down like
wild beasts. Keller says that not less than 2000 were
put to death in a few years, 3 and Sebastian Franck records
that 2000 Anabaptists had been executed by 1530. At
1 The story of this " Mtinster Kingdom" is well and fairly told for English
readers in Belford Bax's Rise and Fall of Anabaptism, also in Heath's Anabap-
tism, chap. vii.
2 The Martyrology of the Anabaptists was compiled by a Mennonite teacher
named Tieleman Jans van Braght, and published in Dutch in 1660. It gives the
memorial and dying witness of the leading martyrs ' ' who suffered and were put
to death for the testimony of Jesus their Saviour." It was translated into English
by Benjamin Millard, edited by Edward Bean Underbill, and published in two
volumes by the Hanserd-Knollys Society, in 1850, London.
8 Keller, Ein Apostel der Wiedertdufer, p. 12.
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 393
the imperial Diet of Speier, in 1529, an edict was passed
for the absolute eradication of Anabaptism. It decreed
that " re-baptizers and re-baptized, all and each, male and
female, of intelligent age, be judged and brought from
natural life to death, without antecedent inquisition of the
spiritual judges." This edict was ruthlessly carried out
in almost every part of the empire. The records show
that in Gorz and the Tyrol alone the number of execu
tions in the year 1531 number one thousand, in Enisheim
six hundred, while seventy-three suffered martyrdom in
Linz in six weeks. 1 An eye-witness of the persecution in
the Tyrol, Conrad Braun, an assessor to the Imperial
Chamber, wrote :
" I have seen with my own eyes that nothing has been able to
bring back the Anabaptists from their errors or to make them
recant The hardest imprisonment, hunger, fire, water, the
sword, all sorts of frightful executions, have not been able to
shake them. I have seen young people, men and women, go to
the stake singing, filled with joy ; and I can say that in the
course of my whole life nothing has moved me more."
The slaughter in the Netherlands was almost beyond
belief. Buckle estimates that by 1546 thirty thousand
persons had been put to death in Holland and Friesland
alone for their faith in Anabaptism. 2
It was the sight of the pitiless murder and martyrdom
of three hundred Anabaptists in West Friesland, near his
own home, and one of whom was his own brother, which
finally brought Menno Simons to the definite step of
allying himself with the movement. He became the
leader and organizer of a new stage of Anabaptism, and
the prophet of the type out of which the modern Baptist
1 See Lindsay's History of Reformation, vol. ii. p. 449; Cornelius, Geuhichte
des miinsterischen Aufruhrs (Leipzig, 1855), voL ii. p. 58.
9 Buckle, History of Civilitation, voL i. p. 189.
Driven to frenzy and desperation under terrific persecution, the Anabaptists
sometimes showed fanatic traits, as has happened in ail eras of persecution. Who
can read except with pity the account which relates how some Anabaptists in
Amsterdam stripped off their clothes and ran through the street crying : ' Woe I
woe ! woe ! The wrath of God 1 The wrath of God ! " ? Brought before the
magistrates they refused to dress. "We are," they said, "the naked truth."
They were hurried to the scaffold in barbaric fashion. Blok, in his History of the
People of the Netherlands (New York and London, 1899), thinks that Buckle's
estimate is too large. VoL ii. p. 317.
394 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
sects sprang a type of Christianity which profoundly
affected the religious life of Holland, the inner life of the
religious societies of the English Commonwealth and the
spiritual destinies of America. Menno Simons was born
in Whitmarsum, in West Friesland, about 1496, and
while still a young man was settled as priest in the near
by village of Pingjum. He was well-educated for his
time, but had no first-hand knowledge of the Bible, and
performed his priestly duties in a perfunctory fashion,
living a worldly life with apparent unconcern.
One day, without any conscious reflection on the
subject, he found himself arrested in the consecration of
the Mass with the over-mastering suggestion that what
he held in his hands was mere bread and wine, not
Christ's flesh and blood. He thought at first that it
must be a suggestion of the devil, but the impression
would not leave him. He took counsel with other priests,
and began to read his Bible and the new writings of
Luther which were just appearing. A wonderful change
came over his spirit. He discovered, to his surprise, that
many of the practices of the Church had no foundation in
Scripture, and that especially was this true of the practice
of baptizing infants. The edicts for the suppression of
the Anabaptists brought their views forcibly to his
attention. In 1533 he was deeply stirred by the
martyrdom of an Anabaptist near by, and two years
later occurred the moving event already referred to.
This spectacle, instead of arousing fear, fired his own
faith to the point of conviction. In his own account of
it, he says :
" I thought within myself, wretched man that I am, what do
I, remaining in this position and not confirming by my life the
word of the Lord and the knowledge that I have received ? If I
do not lead the ignorant, misguided sheep, who are so anxious
to do what is right, as much as in me lies, to the true fold ot
Christ, how then will the blood shed in error rise up against me
in the judgment of Almighty God ? My heart trembled in my
body at this contemplation of myself. I implored God for grace
and the pardon of my transgressions, and besought the Almighty
that He would create in me a pure heart, that He would endow
xvi THE ANABAPTISTS 395
me with frankness and manly power in order that I might preach
His unfalsified word."
Forthwith the die was cast, and he threw himself with
the fervour of an apostle into his mission, which seemed
to him a heavenly calling. He resolved from the outset
to have done with dreams and fancies ; to turn away for
ever from the follies and fanaticisms of the " false
prophets" of Anabaptism, and to organize the scattered
forces of the great movement into a solid society, on the
fundamental spiritual truths revealed in Scripture. He
opposed all oaths, all war, and every form of capital
punishment He utterly refused to have anything to do
with a salaried ministry ; he insisted on a personal faith,
a birth from above, and a new life in Christ as necessary
conditions of membership in a Christian Church, 1 and he
made a complete separation of State and Church.
1 " Let no one trust," be wrote, " in the fact that he is a baptized Christian,
nor upon the long usage of the times, nor upon papal decrees, nor upon
imperial edicts, nor upon the wit of learned men, nor upon human counsels
and wisdom, for he must be born from above and transposed from evil nature
to good nature, from which a new life follows."
CHAPTER XVII
ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND
THERE are two well-marked stages in the development
of Anabaptism in England. The first stage, speaking
roughly, covers the sixteenth century. During this
period frequent refugees from Holland and Germany
introduced, into different localities of Great Britain, the
doctrines of the continental Anabaptists, and there was
simultaneously a steady maturing of the ideas and
teachings which the scattered groups of Lollards had
kept alive. The early movement was, however, never
allowed to have free development, nor did it achieve
distinct national characteristics or produce a prophetic
leader who was able to organize it into a national move
ment. Throughout the entire century it was regarded
with disgust and horror by all sections of the Church,
and it was subjected to a persistent campaign of
" extermination."
The founder of the new Anabaptism the Ana-
baptism of the second stage, more properly named the
" General Baptist " movement was himself an English
man, a Cambridge scholar, a noble spirit with a great
religious vision, and this movement was from its origin
thoroughly English, with an early promise of national
significance.
It is extremely difficult to fix the date of the first
appearance of Anabaptism in England, because, as I have
said, it had very many traits in common with the Lollards,
396
CHAP. XVH ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 397
who were secretly nursing a spiritual religion. We get
glimpses in the early years of the sixteenth century of
little groups of " brethren " in England who had views
very similar to those of the continental Anabaptists.
Proceedings were instituted in the court of Bishop
Wareham, in 1511, against persons who were teaching
that the sacraments of baptism and of confirmation are
not necessary or profitable to man's soul. 1 They were
probably Lollards who had come, independently, to the
position which characterized the Anabaptists. Wareham
succeeded in terrifying them into a renunciation of
their " errors," and compelled them to " wear the badge
of a fagot in flames on their clothing during the rest
of their lives or till they were dispensed with for it" 2
A commission appointed by Henry VIII., in 1530,
consisting of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop
of Durham, and others, found " divers heretical erroneous
opinions," among others " the unlawfulness of all war."
The commission declared that it had found a group
of people who taught that Jesus Christ "hath not
ordeyned in His spirituall kingdom which is all trewe
Cristen people any sworde, for He Himself is the
King and Governour without sworde and without any
outward law. Cristen men among themselves have
nought to do with the sworde, nor with the lawe, for
that is to them neither needful nor profitable. The
secular sworde belongeth not to Crist's kingdom, for in it
is noon but good and justice. Crist saith that noo Cristen
shall resist Evil, nor sue any man at the law." J This has
the hall-mark of Anabaptism, but it is quite possible for
such views to have developed from Lollardry without any
foreign influence from the continent
The name " Anabaptism " does not, so far as I
am aware, appear in English documents before 1534.
Two proclamations were issued in 15 34, in which
1 Evans" Early English Baptists, voL i. p. 41 ; Crosby's English Baptists,
vol. i. p. 30.
3 Burnet's History of the Reformation, voL i. p. 27.
* Quoted from Barclay's Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Common,
wealth (London, 1879), P- J 4-
398 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP
Anabaptists were denounced by name, were spoken of as
being both of foreign and native origin, and they were
accused of " lurking secretly in divers corners and places,"
and of increasing " naughty printed books." l But they
were almost certainly " lurking secretly in divers corners "
before that date. In an address issued by Bishop
Wareham, in 1530, a statement is made which indicates
that persecuted Anabaptists from the continent had
already begun to seek refuge in Great Britain. It says
that " many books in the English tongue, containing
many detestable errors and damnable opinions, are printed
in countries beyond the seas, to be brought into divers
towns and sundry of this realm in England, and sown
abroad in the same, to the great decay of our faith, and
the perilous corruption of the people unless speedy
remedy were provided." 2
One of these books, full of "detestable errors and
damnable opinions," was the Sum of Scriptures^ which
contained this " opinion " : " The water in the font has
no more virtue in it than the water of the river ; the
baptism lies not in hallowed water, or in any outward
thing, but in the faith only. The water of baptism is
nothing but a sign that we must be under the standard
of the cross." 8 This " opinion " contains the very
essence of Anabaptism, and was most probably written
by a person who had been influenced by the continental
movement. 4
The terrible persecution of the Anabaptists in the
Netherlands drove many of them across to England to
try their fate under Henry VIII. The result was that
the prevailing strain of teaching in Early English
Anabaptism was of the " Hoffmanite " or " Melchiorite "
type due to the influence of Melchior Hoffman, the
" apostle " to the Netherlands. There are many evidences
of the presence in the kingdom of these Anabaptist
1 Wilkins' Concilia Magnae Britanniae ef Hiberniae, vol. iii. p. 776.
2 Evans' Early English Baptists, vol. i. p. 42.
8 The " Sum of Scriptures " is printed in Wilkins' Concilia Magnae Britanniae
et Hiberniae, vol. iii. pp. 730-33 (see chap. xv. ).
4 It is, of course, possible that such opinions are only a native development
of English Lollardry.
xvii ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 399
refugees, especially of the artisan class. The proclamation
of 1534, already referred to, says that "divers and
sundry strangers of the sects and false opinions of the
Anabaptists . . . are lately come into this realme, where
they lurke secretely in divers corners and places, minding
craftily and subtilly to provoke and stir the King's loveing
subjects to their errors and opinions." They are ordered
to leave the country within eight days.
Again, in 1535, more "strangers" fell into the hands
one cannot say the " tender mercies " of the Church
authorities. A contemporary chronicler 1 gives the
following account of the occurrence :
" The 25th day of May, were in St. Paul's Church, London
examined, nineteen men and six women, born in Holland,
whose opinions were first, that in Christ is not two natures, God
and man ; secondly, that Christ took neither flesh nor blood of
the Virgin Mary ; 2 thirdly, that children born of infidels may be
saved ; fourthly, that baptism of children is of none effect ; fifthly,
that the sacrament of Christ's body is but bread only ; sixthly,
that he who after baptism sinneth wittingly, sinneth deadly, and
cannot be saved. Fourteen of them were condemned ; a man
and woman were burnt in Smithfield ; the other twelve of them
were sent to other towns there to be burnt."
The chronicler further says that the above " damnable
errors" were drawn from "the indiscreet use of the
Scriptures."
Latimer, in one of his sermons, shows the indomitable
spirit of these martyrs :
" I should have told you here of a certain sect of heretics.
They will have no magistrates nor judges on the earth. Here I
have to tell you what I heard of late, by the relations of a
credible person and a worshipful man, of a town in this realm
of England that hath about 500 of heretics of this erroneous
opinion in it" "The Anabaptists that were burnt there, in
divers towns of England, as I have heard of credible men (I
saw them not myself), met their death even intrepid, as you will
say ; without any fear in the world. Well, let them go. There
was, in the old times, another kind of poisoned heretics, that
1 Stow's Chronic la of England, p. 1004.
* These opinions marked " first " and "secondly " are evidently " Hoffmanite "
opinions.
400 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
were called Donatists ; and those heretics went to their execu
tion as they should have gone to some jolly recreation or
banquet." l
Barclay, in his study of the Inner Life of the Religious
Societies of the Commonwealth, which contains a large
amount of valuable though badly digested material, gives
an interesting account of a great gathering of Ana
baptists on the continent in 1536, to which the English
societies sent a deputation. He says (quoting Dr.
Nippold's Life of D. Joris* as his authority) :
"In that year (1536) certain Baptist societies in England
sent a deputation to a great gathering of the Anabaptists near
Buckholt, in Westphalia, which was held after the fall of Miinster,
to compose their differences upon the subject of the bearing of
arms, in order to further the interests of the kingdom of Christ,
and respecting some other matters. The violent party were
represented by Battenburg, who approved the views of the
Miinster faction, and it is well to note that this man regarded
the tenet of adult baptism as quite unimportant compared with
the extirpation by the sword of the enemies of the ' Kingdom of
God,' and had abolished it (i.e. water baptism) among his
followers previously to this meeting. The party in direct
antagonism were represented by Ubbo Phillips (although he
was not present), who opposed all war and revenge as anti-
Christian, and maintained the purely spiritual character of
Christ's kingdom. The third party represented was that of
Melchior Hoffman. David Joris, the originator of a fourth
party, acted the part of mediator, and subtilely maintained that
even if the Battenburgers were right, the time was not
come to set up the 'Kingdom of the Elect,' and that for the
present, therefore, the power must be left in the hands of the
hostile and unbelieving magistracy. This meeting at Buckholt
1 Latimer's Sermons {Parker Soc. Pub.), vol. v. p. 151. Froude has com
memorated these unnamed heroes in a passage full of beautiful sympathy : ' ' The
details are gone their names are gone. Poor Hollanders they were, and that is
all Scarcely the fact seemed worth the mention, so shortly is it told in a pass
ing paragraph. For them no Europe was agitated, no courts were ordered into
mourning, no papal hearts trembled with indignation. At their death the world
looked on complacent, indifferent, or exulting. Yet here, too, out of twenty-
five poor men and women were found fourteen who by no terror of stake or
torture could be tempted to say they believed what they did not believe. History
for them has no word of praise ; yet they, too, were not giving their blood in
vain. Their lives might have been as useless as the lives of most of us. In
their deaths they assisted to pay the purchase money for England's freedom"
(History of England, voL ii. p. 365).
2 In Zeitschrift fur die historische Tkeologie for 1863, pp. 52-55.
xvii ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 401
was the commencement not only of the disentanglement of the
Baptist Churches from political aims, but of the active propaga
tion of the great idea concerning the entire distinction between
the province of the Church and that of the State. This view
was later developed by Menno, who was a follower of Ubbo
Phillips.
A certain Englishman of the name of 'Henry' was very
active in promoting this meeting, and himself paid the travelling
expenses of the deputies. (Krohn's supposition that this
' Henry ' was Henrick Niclaes is quite beside the mark, as may
be seen by comparing the dates.) England was represented by
John Mathias, of Middleburg (who was afterwards burnt at
London for his adhesion to the tenets of Melchior Hoffman).
It is interesting to notice that the representatives of England
were very indignant at the loose views of the Minister party.
The result of this conference was that the power of the unruly
Anabaptists was completely destroyed." 1
"The Pilgrimage of Grace," in 1536, which was an
attempt on the part of Roman Catholics to overthrow
the Reformation, included Anabaptism among the " new
doctrines " that were to be extirpated. The list of
heresies which the "pilgrims" laid before Henry VIII.
ended with the words : " Heresies of Anabaptists, clearly
within this realm, are to be annihilated and destroyed," 2
and the Articles of Religion, drawn up by the Con
vocation which met in June 1536, show that Anabaptist
opinions were on the increase in England. 8 The same
year, in July, the Lower House laid before the Prelates
in Convocation a portentous collection of sixty-seven
erroneous doctrines which were then being publicly pro
fessed and preached in the country. In the list are
found many tenets which are distinctly in line with
Anabaptism. For example : 4
" Item 5. That all ceremonies accustomed in the Church,
which are not clearly expressed in Scripture, must be taken away,
because they are men's inventions."
" Item 8. That it is preached and taught that the Church
1 Barclay, p. 76 note.
3 Froude. History of England, voL ii. pp. 156-57.
3 Crosby, History of English Baptists, vol L p. 33.
4 These " items " are taken from Fuller's Church History of Britain (London
Edition. 1868), voL iii. pp. 81-86.
2 D
402 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
that is commonly taken for the Church is the old synagogue ;
and that the Church is the congregation of good men only"
" Item 12. That all religions and professions (i.e. all
established religions), whatsoever they be, are clean contrary
to Christ's religion"
" Item 1 7. That it is as lawful to christen a child in a tub
of water at home, or in a ditch by the way, as in a font-stone in
the church."
" Item 34. That it is not necessary or profitable to have any
church or chapel to pray in or to do any Divine service in." J
" Item 35. That the church was made for no other purpose,
but either to keep the people from wind and rain, or else that
the people upon Sundays and holy-days should resort thither to
have the word of God declared unto them."
"Item 41. That it is as much available to pray unto saints
as to hurl a stone against the wind ; and that the saints have no
more power to help a man than a man's wife hath to help her
husband."
"Item 52. That the singing or saying of Mass, matins, or
even-song, is but a roaring, howling, whistling, mumming, torn-
ring, and juggling ; and that playing at the organ is a foolish
vanity."
" Item 5 6. That by preaching the people have been brought
in opinion and belief that nothing is to be believed except it can
be proved expressly by Scripture."
"Item 61. That water running in the channel or common
river is of as great virtue as the holy water."
The King was from the first resolved to " repress
and utterly extinguish these persons," who, " whilst their
hands were busied about their manufactures, had their
heads also beating about points of divinity " ; and from
the year 1538, "by the exercise of the royal prerogative
in the imposition of dogmas of faith on the consciences
of his subjects," 2 he set the machinery in operation to
exterminate both the Anabaptists themselves and their
books. The hated " sect," however, steadily increased,
and Strype says that their " opinions were believed by
many honest, well-meaning people."
1 It is not possible to decide in the case of some of these views whether they
have a Lollard or an Anabaptist origin. Strype records (in Eccl. Mem. under
Henry VIII. vol. i. p. 288) how a converted friar taught that " Christ would
dwell in no church that was made of lime and stones, but only in heaven above
and in men's hearts on earth."
z Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, Intro, by Dr. Underbill, p. xlvL
xvn ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 403
Burnet, in his History of tJie Reformation? makes it
plain that the " extermination " policy was not succeed
ing. He says : " At this time (15 49) there were many
Anabaptists in several parts of England. They were
generally Germans whom the Revolution forced to change
their seats." Burnet further says that
" the Reformers made the Scriptures the only rule for Christians,
and thereupon many argued that the mysteries of the Trinity
and Christ's Incarnation and sufferings, the fall of man and the
aids of Grace, were indeed philosophical subtilties and only pre
tended to be deduced from Scripture, as almost all opinions of
religion were, and therefore they rejected them. Among these,
Baptism of Infants was one. They believed that our Saviour,
commanding the Apostles to baptize, did join teaching with it,
and they said that the great decay of Christians followed from
this way of making children Christians before they understood
what they did."
The county of Kent was especially infected with
Anabaptist teaching, and an ecclesiastical commission,
consisting of Cranmer and six other prelates and divines
with various distinguished laymen, was appointed in 1549,
" for the examination of the Anabaptists and Arians that
now began to spring up apace and show themselves more
openly." 2 The first martyr under this commission was
the famous Joan Boucher, a member of a small congrega
tion of Anabaptists in the town of Eythorne. 3 Strype
says 4 that these sectaries in Kent and Essex were
"the first that made separation from the reformed Church of
England^ having gathered congregations of their own. The
congregation in Essex was mentioned to be at Bocking, that
in Kent at Feversham, as I have from an old register. From
whence I also collect that they held the opinions of the
Anabaptists and Pelagians (free-willers) ; that there were con
tributions made among them for the better maintaining of their
congregations; that the members of the congregation in Kent
-went over to the congregation in Essex, to instruct and to join
J Vol. ii. p. 202.
2 Strype's Life of Sir Thomas Smith, p. 37.
* Strype calls her an Arian, and she probably did hold "heretical" views on
the nature of the Incarnation.
4 Strype's Memorials of Reformers (Oxford), vol. L p. 369.
404 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
them ; and that they had their meetings in Kent in divers
places besides Feversham."
Strype has gathered some of the tenets of these
sectaries as follows : " That the doctrine of predestination
is meeter for devils than for Christian men " ; " that
children are not born in original sin " ; " that there is
no man so chosen but that he may damn himself, neither
any man so reprobate but that he may keep God's com
mands and be saved." He further records a great dis
pute which arose among them, " whether it was necessary
to stand or kneel, bareheaded or covered, at prayers."
Their wise conclusion was " that the ceremony is not
material (i.e. counts for nothing), but that the heart before
God is required, and nothing else'.' 1
The Cranmer commission, which was renewed in
1 55 1, burnt George van Pare, evidently a Dutch Ana
baptist, and forced from another Dutchman a recanta
tion of the opinion that " there is no priest but God
only ; that no priest has power to take away sin ; that
no bishop can make one ground holier than another ;
that no man ought to keep any day holy but the
Sunday." 2
The sufferings of the " Reformers " during the reign
of Mary have bulked so large that historians have given
little thought and attention to " the root and branch
Reformers," the Anabaptists, whom these very " martyrs "
of " Bloody Mary's " reign had harried and done to
death. All through Mary's reign the " extermination of
Anabaptists continued, always needing, however, a re
petition of " extermination " immediately after. It is
with sadness that one reads of Ridley's condemnation of
these noble " heretics " just before he himself was called
to the stake in Oxford to " light such a candle in
England as by the grace of God was never to go out."
He condemns them because they regard the sacraments
as "only badges and tokens of Christian men's profes
sion " ; because they " make no difference between the
1 See Strype's Life of Parker, vol. L pp. 54-55 ; vol. iii. p. 413 ; and Mem.
of Cranmer, vol. L p. 337. 2 Evans, of. cit. vol. i. p. Si.
xvu ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 405
Lord's table and their own " ; because " they refuse to
attend the ministry, or submit to any Christian rite from
any clergyman, however regular his succession, who was
not known as a man of God by his holy life and the
fruits of piety:' *
During Elizabeth's reign not only the existence but
the wide diffusion of Anabaptist principles is acknow
ledged on all hands. Marsden says, 2 speaking of this
period :
" But the Anabaptists were the most numerous, and for some time
the most formidable, opponents of the Church. They are said
to have existed in England from the early days of the Lollards ;
but their chief strength was now derived and their numbers
reinforced from Germany."
Contemporary writers bear witness to the prevalence
of the sect
Bishop Jewel, in his correspondence with the Swiss
divines, complained : " We found at the beginning of
the reign of Elizabeth large and inauspicious crops of
Arians, Anabaptists, and other pests," and Bishop Cox
wrote to Gaulter : " You must not be grieved, my Gaulter,
that sectaries are showing themselves to be mischievous
and wicked interpreters of your most just opinion. For
it can not be otherwise but that tares must grow in the
Lord's field, and that in no small quantity. Of this kind
are the Anabaptists, Donatists, Arians, Papists, and all
the good-for-nothing tribe of sectaries." Bishop Aylmer
was especially embittered, saying : 8 " The Anabaptists,
with infinite other swarms of Satanists, do you think that
every pulpit may be able to answer them ? I pray God
there may be many who can. . . . And in these latter
daies the old festered sores newly broke out, as the
Anabaptists, the free-willers, with infinite other swarms
of God's enemies." And Dr. Parker, in his letter,
declining the Archbishopric of Canterbury, says: 4 "They
1 Underbill, Liberty of Conscience, p. cxxv.
8 Marsden's History of the Early Puritans, p. 145.
* Bishop Aylraer's An Harborowc for Faithful and True Subjects, etc.
(iSS9). P- A. 3.
4 Burnet's History of Reformation, vol. ii. p. 359.
406 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
say that the realm is full ot Anabaptists, Arians,
libertines, free-will men, etc."
Many natives of the Low Countries, exiled by religious
persecutions at home, had settled in Norfolk and Suffolk
by 1560, and in the fourth year of Elizabeth's reign a
proclamation was issued by the Queen, 1 commanding " the
Anabaptists and such like heretics, which had flocked to
the coast towns of England from the parts beyond the seas,
under colour of shunning persecution, and had spread the
poison of their sects in England, to depart the realm
within twenty days, whether they were natural-born people
of the land or foreign, upon pain of imprisonment and loss
of goods." Many were forced to wander in other lands,
and probably fell victims to the persecuting power. Collier
says : " Several secured themselves with their Protestancy,
and joined the French and Dutch congregations, both in
London and the coast towns." 2
A sect came to light in the diocese of Ely in 1573,
which gave the " ecclesiastical commission " great trouble,
and which seems like a small Society of Friends three-
quarters of a century before their time. " They maintain
and defend," the report of the commission declares, " that
it is not lawful by the word of God to take any kind of
oath, for any cause, before any person " ; " that it is not
lawful for any magistrate to put a malefactor to death " ;
" that every man may, without lawful callings, leap into
the Church of God, and, as his furious brain moveth him,
preach and interpret ! Whose voice all men are bound to
hear, as well as the ministers of God " ; and finally, " they
meet in privy conventicles, with the doors shut upon them :
intromitting no man but him that will join with them in
their mysteries, as they call them. Their preacher is some
one of their company ; a private man called and moved, as
is above said" 8
There is overwhelming evidence from contemporary
1 Camden's Annales of Elizabeth (edition of 1625), p. 64.
a Strype, in his Annals, gives a long account of these commotions, which he
professes to draw from Dutch MSS. Evans (vol. i. p. 151) says: "These
(MSS. ) we believe still exist, and as yet unpublished. Their publication is much
to be desired" 8 Strype's Life of Parker, vol. ii. pp. 287-88.
xvii ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 407
writers to prove that Anabaptism never was " extermin
ated " in England. Such confessions as : " Now began
the Anabaptists wonderfully to increase in the land " ; l
and "There are several Anabaptistical conventicles in
London (1589) and other places, and some of this sort
have been bred at our universities," 2 show that " the
infection of England," as it was called, went on unchecked
by " ecclesiastical commissions " and " martyr fires."
II
The second stage of English Anabaptism begins with
John Smyth, the " Se-Baptist," or self-baptizer. 8 There
is an amazing confusion of John Smyths (or Smiths) in
this period of history. Our John Smyth received his
Master's degree at Cambridge in 1593, was probably
ordained a minister of the Church of England in 1594,
and certainly became lecturer and preacher of the city of
Lincoln in 1600, a position which came to an end two
years later. He soon after wrote two books, The Bright
Morning Star and A Pattern of True Prayer, and by 1 606
he was a member of the " Separatist Church " of Gains
borough, a part of the famous congregation which assembled
at Scrooby Manor House in 1602, and " formed themselves
by covenant into a Church of the congregational order,"
and soon " afterwards he was chosen their pastor." Under
the pitiless fire of persecution, a large band of this
Gainsborough congregation resolved to migrate to Holland
with their leading spirits, John Smyth, Thomas Helwys
(or Helwisse), and John Murton (or Morton), to secure
1 Fuller's Church History of Britain.
1 Dr. Some's Treatise Against Barrow. Dr. Some gives interesting light on
the views of the Anabaptists of the period. "They held," he says, "that
ministers of the Gospel ought to be maintained by voluntary contributions of the
people" ; "that the civil power has no right to make or impose ecclesiastical
laws"; "that the people ought to have the right of choosing their own
ministers" ; "that no man ought to arrogate to himself the title of Doctor of
Divinity" ; and "that though the Lord's Prayer be a rule and foundation of
prayer, yet it is not to be used as a form ; and that no forms of prayer ought to
be imposed on the Church."
3 The movement inaugurated by John Smyth is the beginning of what is
historically known as the " Society of General Baptists," and the term Anabaptism
gradually fell out of use.
408 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
freedom of faith, and thither they sailed, in all probability,
toward the end of 1607.
Smyth was one of the most able of the Separatists,
and, as Bishop Creighton says, none of them had " a finer
mind or a more beautiful soul." He was broad and open-
minded, and just the type of man to carry the separation
idea to its logical issue, which he did by enunciating the
principle of complete and perfect freedom, as opposed to
a partial toleration by the State of certain " tolerable
opinions."
It must be admitted, however, that with all his "open-
mindedness " Smyth was, by a fundamental trait of nature,
prone to put over - emphasis on unimportant scruples.
This trait, in spite of his genuine honesty and sincerity,
made him a disturbing element in the new Church, and
the leader of separatist tendencies within " the separation."
For example, in the interest of " spiritual worship," he
insisted that it was a sin to use the English Bible
in the worship of God, and he thought that the
preachers should bring the originals, the Hebrew and
Greek, and out of them translate by voice. " A written
translation," he claimed, " was as much a human
writing as a homily or written prayer." * Under the
influence of the Mennonite teaching about him in
Holland he came to see that "infants ought not to
be baptized, (i) because there is neither precept nor
example for it in the New Testament, and (2) because
Christ commanded to make disciples by teaching them and
then baptizing them." z This conclusion carried with it
the necessity of re-baptism (for Smith did not adopt the
Quaker position that baptism with water is no necessary
part of the Christian dispensation), and the question there
fore arose, as it had arisen with the primitive Swiss
Anabaptists, who was qualified to give the leader the new
baptism ? The decision reached was novel and unique.
It was decided that Smyth should baptize himself, which
he did. He then baptized Thomas Helwys and the rest
1 Ainsworth's " Reply" to Smyth's Differences of the Churches of the Separa
tion, p. 108. ' 2 Smyth's Character of the Beast.
ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 409
of the company, 1 defending his action on the ground that
he had "as good warrant for baptizing himself" as his
critics had for " beginning a new Church," namely, " the
true Church of the separation."
He, however, later looked on his act as an error and
blunder, since, on further consideration, he came to the
conclusion that the Mennonites were already " a true
Church with a true baptism," and that he should have
joined himself to that Church. On this ground he, with
thirty-one others, asked for membership in the Mennonite
congregation of Amsterdam ; 2 but before the decision to
receive them was reached Smyth had already joined the
great company of those " who have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
Before leaving Smyth, to follow the development of
the larger movement which grew out of this initiation
of the English Baptist Society, I must gather up the
important religious principles which were more or less
clearly enunciated by him.
The following passage from his Long Confession is
remarkable for the boldness of its insistence on " freedom,"
its absolute rejection of " original sin," and for its declara
tion that the " atonement " means the reconciliation of men
to God:
" God created man with freedom of will, which was a natural
power or faculty in the soul. Adam, after his fall, did not lose
any natural faculty, but still retained freedom of will. Original
sin is therefore an idle term. Infants are conceived and born in
innocency without sin, and so dying are undoubtedly saved, and
this is to be understood of all infants under heaven. All actual
sinners bear the image of Adam in his innocency, fall, and resti
tution to grace. As no man begetteth his child to the gallows,
nor no potter maketh a pot to break it, so God doth not pre-
1 The form of baptism used by Smyth is unimportant, but it is generally
thought to have been affusion, as was the custom of the Mennonites of the time,
and not immersion (see Newman's history of Baptists, p. 41).
3 The application for admission to the Mennonite Church runs as follows :
"The names of the English who confess this their error and repent it, viz.
that they undertook to baptize themselves contrary to the order appointed by
Christ, and who now desire on this account to be brought back to the true
Church of Christ as quickly as may be suffered." (Evans, vol. i. p. 209, and
Appendix D. )
4 io MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
destinate any man to destruction. The sacrifice of Christ's body
doth not reconcile God unto us, Who did never hate us nor was
our enemy, but reconcileth us unto God. The efficacy of Christ's
death is derived only to them who do mortify their sins, being
grafted with Him in the similitude of His death ; and every
regenerate person hath in himself the three witnesses of the
Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. Repentance and faith
are wrought in the hearts of men by the preaching of the Word ;
but the new creature which is begotten of God needeth not the
outward Scriptures, creatures, or ordinances of the Church ; yet
he can do nothing against the law and Scriptures, but rather all
his doings shall serve to the confirming and establishing of the
law. All penitent and faithful Christians are brethren in the
communion of the outward Church, wheresoever they live, by
what name soever they are known ; and we salute them all with
a holy kiss, being heartily grieved that we which follow after one
faith and one Spirit, one Lord, one God, one baptism, should be
rent into so many sects and schisms ; and that only for matters
of less moment. The outward baptism of water is to be admin
istered only upon penitent and faithful persons, not upon innocent
infants and wicked persons. The sacraments have the same use
that the Word hath : they are a visible Word, and teach the eye
of them that understand as the Word teacheth them that have
ears to hear. The outward Church visible consists of penitent
persons only, and is a mystical figure of the true, spiritual,
invisible Church. The separation of the impenitent from the
outward Church is a figure of their eternal rejection, but is
reserved for those who forsake repentance and deny the power of
godliness. There is no succession in the outward Church, but
all succession is from heaven, and is of the new creature only.
The magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with
religion or matters of conscience, to force or compel men to this
or that form of religion or doctrine, but to leave (the) Christian
religion free to every man's conscience, and to handle only civil
transgressions, injuries, and wrongs of man against man, in
murder, adultery, theft, etc., for Christ only is the King and Law
giver of the Church and conscience." l
Some of the positions taken by Smyth in his book
called The Differences of the Church of the Separation are
of great interest for the light they throw on the teachings
of the General Baptists and the practices of the Society of
1 John Smyth's Last Book, which contains his "Confession of Faith" in one
hundred propositions, was found in The York Minster Library. It has been
printed in full in Barclay's Inner Life, as Appendix to chap. vi.
xvn ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 411
Friends. The three following principles have special
bearing :
" First We hold that the New Testament, properly so-called,
is spiritual, proceeding originally from the heart, and that reading
out of a book (though a lawful ecclesiastical action) is no part of
spiritual worship. Second We hold that, seeing prophesying is
a part of spiritual worship, therefore in the time of prophesying
it is unlawful to have the book as a help before the eye. Third
We hold that seeing singing a psalm is a part of spiritual worship,
it is unlawful to have the book before the eye in time of singing
a psalm." l
In his Short Confession Smyth announced principles
which are entirely in line with the doctrines later pro
mulgated by Friends. Two or three specimens of these
principles will suffice :
" They that are redeemed of the Lord do change their fleshly
weapons, namely their swords, into shares, and their spears into
scythes, do lift up no sword, neither have nor consent to battle."
" Yea, rather they are called of Him (whom they are commanded
to obey by a voice heard from heaven) to the following of His
unarmed and unweaponed life and His cross-bearing footsteps."
"It is not permitted that the faithful of the New Testament
should swear at all."
John Smyth died in the autumn of i6i2, 2 and shortly
before his death his old associate, Thomas Helwys, whom
he had baptized, and who had refused to follow him into
the Mennonite Church, returned to England, accompanied
by Murton and a great part of their fellow-members, and
established a Baptist Church in London, on Newgate
1 The full title of this book, which was answered by Ainsworth, is The
Differences of the Church of the Separation : containing a description of the
Leitourgie and Ministrie of the Visible Church, annexed as a Correction and
supplement to a little treatise lately published, bearing title ' ' Principles and
Inferences respecting the Visible Church." By John Smyth, 1608. Copy in the
Bodleian.
3 A footnote to p. 95 of Barclay's Inner Life says : ' ' Smyth's burial is
registered in the register of the New Church of Amsterdam, on the ist of
September 1612, where he was buried, and at the time of his decease he lodged
in the hinder part of the ' great bakehouse ' then belonging to John Munter,
where religious meetings were held by the English who joined the Mennonites. I
am indebted for this to Dr. Scheffer, who has, by searching these registers,
established a date of great importance in the history of the English Separatist
Church in Holland. The date of the death of Smyth has been variously stated,
and no authority has hitherto been given for the date."
412 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Street the first General Baptist Church on English soil. 1
Helwys was actuated by the highest motives in his perilous
undertaking, and in his courage and devotion to truth
deserves to rank with the " Pilgrims," who eight years
later began their experiment at Plymouth. He braved
persecution in his homeland because he felt, as he says,
that " thousands of ignorant souls in our own country
were perishing for lack of instruction." He was fiercely
attacked by some of those still in " exile " for his " return,"
and he was charged with an exhibition of " natural
courage" and "vain-glory." His Short Declaration is a
sufficient defence of his course. 2 There are, unfortunately,
no extant " records " of this famous church, but there is no
question that the ideas embodied in this little "society"
in Newgate Street spread rapidly, for by 1626 there were
five Baptist churches besides the original church, namely,
in London, Lincoln, Sarum, Coventry, and Tiverton, in
correspondence with the Mennonite Church of Amsterdam. 3
There was, too, a society of Baptists in Yarmouth in the
year 1624.* There was also, as early as 1625, a Baptist
society at Stony Stratford, which met for some time as a
congregation without any settled minister. 5
Taylor says : 6 " There is some reason to believe that
in 1626 there was a General Baptist Church at Amer-
sham, in Buckinghamshire. In the first page of an old
church book belonging to that ancient church, there is an
imperfect entry in this form : ' Brother David, 26 April,
1626,'" which affords a strong presumption that there
was a church in that town at that early period. And we
1 They were called "General Baptists" because they were Arminian in faith,
i.e. they held to the general salvability of mankind.
2 Helwys' writings are as follows : (i) An Advertisement to the New Fiyelers
(Freewillers) in the Low Countries, dated 1611 ; (2) A Declaration of Faith of
the English People at Amsterdam (1611) ; (3) A Proof that God's Decree is Not
the Cause of any Man's Sin or Condemnation (1611); (4) Declaration of the
Mystery of Iniquity (1612) ; (5) A Short Declaration (1614) ; (6) Persecution for
Religion, Judged and Condemned (1615). This last work may be from the pen
of Helwys' associate, John Murton. It is, in any case, one of the most explicit
expositions that had yet appeared of the doctrine that the soul of man should be
absolutely free in matters of faith.
3 Barclay, Inner Life, p. 95.
4 See Stoughton's Church of the Commonwealth, vol. ii. pp. 232-34.
5 Evans, vol. ii. p. 54.
8 Taylor's History of Baptists (1818), vol. i. pp. 96-97.
xvn ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 413
have Dr. Featley's authority for stating that two years
prior to this (i.e. to 1626) they had many converts in
Southward
Thomas Helvvys seems to have died in 1616, and
upon his death John Murton apparently became the leader
of the movement 2 By the year 1626 the society had
grown to 150, in spite of the fact that it had had two
years earlier a secession of eighteen members under the
leadership of Elias Tookey. The most notable spiritual
contribution of this little group of returned " exiles " was
their splendid promulgation of liberty of conscience.
" It was," says Masson, 3 " from their little dingy meeting
house, somewhere in Old London, that there flashed out first in
England the absolute doctrine of Religious Liberty. Religious
Peace ; or a Plea for Liberty of Conscience, is the title of a little
tract first printed in 1614, and presented to King James and the
English Parliament by ' Leonard Busher, citizen of London.'
This Leonard Busher, there is reason to believe* was a member
of Hehvys' congregation ; and we learn from the tract itself that
he was a poor man, labouring for his subsistence, and had had his
share of persecution. He had probably been one of Smyth's
Amsterdam flock who had returned with Helwys. The tract is
certainly the earliest known English publication in which full
liberty of conscience is openly advocated. It cannot be read
now without a throb. The style is simple and rather helpless ;
but one comes on some touching passages. Thus : ' May it
please your Majesty and Parliament to understand that by fire
and sword to constrain princes and peoples to receive that one
true religion of the Gospel is wholly against the mind and
merciful law of Christ' ' Persecution is a work well pleasing to
all false prophets and bishops, but it is contrary to the mind of
1 Daniel Featley's Dippers Dipt, dedication, London, 1645.
8 A passage in Truths Victory (London, 1645) says: "Some thirty years
ago Mr. Morton (Murton) was a teacher of a church of Anabaptists in Newgate.
Then his confessions comprehended all the errors of the Arminians, which now
of late many that go under your name in and about London dissent from."
* Masson's Milton, vol. iii. pp. 98-129.
4 This cannot be definitely proved. See Underhill's Introduction to the reprint
in Tracts for Liberty of Conscience. He was a citizen of London, and had been
an exile from his native land at some part of his life, when he probably became
acquainted with the Brownists and Mr. Robinson, to whom he refers. From
them he differed on several important subjects, especially on Infant Baptism and
Liberty of Conscience.
Leonard Busher 's Tract was first printed in 1614. It is in the Bodleian
Library.
4 i4 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Christ, Who came not to judge and destroy men's lives, but to
save them. And, though some men and women believe not at
the first hour, yet may they at the eleventh hour, if they be not
persecuted to death before. And no king or bishop can or is
able to command faith. That is the gift of God, Who worketh
in us both the will and the deed of His own good pleasure. Set
him not a day, therefore, in which, if His creature hear not and
believe not, you will imprison and burn him. ... As kings
and bishops cannot command the wind, so they cannot command
faith ; and, as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so is every man
that is born of the spirit. You may force men to church against
their consciences, but they will believe as they did before when
they come there.' ' Kings and magistrates are to rule temporal
affairs by the swords of their temporal kingdoms, and bishops and
ministers are to rule spiritual affairs by the word and Spirit of
God, the sword of Christ's temporal kingdom, and not to inter
meddle one with another's authority, office, and function.' "
Masson finely says that "the task of vindicating for
England the idea of Liberty of Conscience " fell to " two
of the most extreme and despised sects of the Puritans."
"The despised Independents," he continues, "and the still
more despised Baptists, or thorough Separatists of the school of
Smyth and Helwisse, were groping for the pearl between them ;
and, what is strangest at first sight, it was the more intensely
Separatist of these two sects that was groping with most success.
How is this to be explained? Partly, it may have been, that the
Baptists were the sect that had been most persecuted that they
were the ultimate sect, in the English world, in respect of the
necessary qualification of pain and suffering, accumulated in their
own experience." 1
The little band of English Anabaptists, sometimes
called the " Smyth remainder," left behind in Holland
on the return of Helwys and his Church, became
thoroughly incorporated into the Mennonite Church.
There was for some years an intimate relationship
between the English societies and the Mennonite
Church of Amsterdam, and it is evident from existing
correspondence that the persecuted societies, struggling
for their life, turned for recognition and support to
their spiritual kindred on the continent. There were,
1 Masson's Milton, vol. iii. p. 104.
xvn ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 415
however, some differences between the two groups which
made complete union impossible.
" The English did not see their way to reject oaths, magistracy,
and warfare entirely, and asked for toleration of slight differences
of opinion in these matters. The Mennonites limited the
administration of the ordinances to such as had received
ordination ; the English sought to explain their practice as
substantially in accord with that of the Mennonites, but they would
extend the privilege of administering the ordinances, in the absence of
an ordained minister, to teachers and evangelists recognized as such
by the Church. The efforts at union would seem to have been un
successful. The Mennonites were too inflexible in their positions
to make compromises." 1
III
These Baptist societies, of the Smyth and Helwys
type, were, as we have seen, Arminian in their faith ;
that is to say, they rejected utterly the dogmas of
original sin and predestination to wrath and salvation,
and for that reason they are called General Baptists.
We now come to the formation of another type of
Baptist society, which was destined to have a great
future : that was the Calvinistic, or " Particular,"
Baptist Society. The first society of this type was
organized in Southwark, London, in 1616, under the
leadership of Henry Jacob. Such a movement in the
very nature of things was almost certain to appear
sooner or later. Some person who accepted the Cal
vinistic theology was bound to ask on what Scriptural
ground infants were baptized, and finding no satisfying
ground was likely to start a " new Church." At any
rate somebody did ask the question, and somebody
did take the novel step, and that person was Henry
Jacob. He was, like the other Separatist leaders of
the period, a scholar, and a man with the genuine
qualities of leadership. He was an Oxford graduate,
and at first was disinclined to "separation," believing
that the National Church offered sufficient scope for
all genuine spiritual development Time and events
and the personal influence of the Separatist leaders in
1 Newman, Baptists, p. 47.
416 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
Holland carried him over to the opposite view. He
was for a time at Middleburg, in Zealand, where he
collected a band of English exiles into a congregation,
to which he ministered, and his experience in this
congregation, together with the influence of John
Robinson, with whom he conferred at Leyden, led him
to adopt the " congregational idea." l And, in 1 6 1 6, as
stated, he decided to follow the bold course of Helwys,
and organize a " congregation " in his home country.
This Southwark congregation, often called the "Jacob
Church," is the mother congregation of the Particular
Baptists. Its founder went to Virginia in 1622, in the
hope of founding a congregation under freer conditions
than then prevailed in England. He, however, died
before his contemplated " Jacobopolis " materialized.
His successor in the mother congregation was John
Lathrop, who, in his turn, surrendered the hard task
of holding out against the organized forces of perse
cution, and sought relief in the New England colony.
There are other great names associated either with this
mother Church or with the daughter Churches which
sprang from it : Samuel How, the " learned cobbler " ;
Praise -God Barebones, the "leather-seller," who gave
the name to Cromwell's nominated Parliament ; Henry
Jessey, the " oracle " of his party ; Hanserd Knollys, who
" built on grace, not works " ; and William Kiffin, " the
strict communionist."
This Church was sadly prone to "separations."
The first division came during Lathrop's pastorate, when
a number withdrew " because the congregation kept not
to their first principles of separation," and because those
withdrawing were " convinced that baptism was not to be
administered to infants, but only to such as professed
faith in Christ." The inference is that the Church was
too " broad," or open in its admission of members, to suit
the seceders. One of the most interesting of the
complicated separations was due to the adoption of
"immersion." Richard Blunt had an "opening" that
1 Barclay thinks he was influenced by Helwys (see op. cit. p. 98).
ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 417
baptism ought to be " by dipping the body into the
water," " though none had so practised it in England to
professed believers." If Blunt had been a natural-born
innovator like John Smyth, he would probably have
immersed himself and, as a " se-immersionist," started a
new line. But he rather inclined to follow precedents
and to value channels of " succession." It was discovered
that there was on the continent a body of immersionists
called the " Collegianten," who were a branch of the
Mennonites. To them Blunt went for what he had come
to believe was "true baptism," and on his return in 1642
he immersed his fellow -believers, and " the new way of
baptizing," as Praise-God Barebones puts it, " began to
be practised the particular of which opinion and practice
is to dip" The " new baptism " was attacked and
ridiculed as " a new leaven " ; as " a new crotchet, that all
who have not been dipt under water have not been truly
baptized," and books against it abounded, 1 but the practice
spread and came to be the approved method among the
Baptist societies " the fit symbol of Christ's death, burial,
and resurrection."
By 1644 the sect of Particular Baptists had become a
powerful influence, and, as Masson puts it, had " attained
considerable dimensions." There were seven congrega
tions in London, and forty-seven in the rest of England,
with many vigorous adherents in the Parliamentary Army.
They carefully defined their position in 1644, in a Con
fession of Faith of fifty-two articles, which impressed their
contemporaries with the orthodoxy of their theology. Even
Featley calls it " a little ratsbane in a great quantity of
sugar." The permanent ground of objection, however, to
all branches of the Baptists, on the part both of the
Established Church and the Presbyterian Church, was the
congregational form of organization, the complete separa
tion of Church and State, the wide toleration of faith and
practice, and the enormous expansion of the rights, privi
leges and functions of the laity. They were, therefore,
1 See Featley's Dippers Dipt, or The Anabaptists Duck'd and Plunged over
Head and Ears, London, 1647 ; and Pagitt's Heresiography, London (first
edition), 1645.
2 E
4 i 8 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
throughout the formative period of their history, subject
to persecution, and, when that ceased, to slander and
abuse. Edwards, 1 with his drag-net spread all over
England, gathered up a few stories of the extravagant
practices of the Baptists in their conventicles and at
" river-dippings," but there is no good evidence to show
that the movement was not sane and morally sober. The
famous Confession of Faith contained the injunction that
at times of immersion "convenient garments be upon
both the administrator and subject, with all modesty,"
and the fragments of truth in reported scandals are
nothing more than " the occasions of offence " which
attend any widespread movement.
They were frequently ridiculed for having illiterate
preachers of mean origin. The charge was partly true ;
there were among them preachers who had been tailors,
leather-sellers, soap-boilers, brewers, weavers, and tinkers,
but the important point is that these preachers carried
conviction and wrought righteousness and constructed
spiritual churches to the glory of God. They did, in
their generation, what herdsmen and vine-dressers did in
the early days of Hebrew prophecy, what tax-collectors
and fishermen did in the primitive days of the Church ;
and it was vastly to the credit of these primitive Baptists
that they rediscovered how to bring the gifts of laymen
and unschooled members into play for spiritual ends.
Masson, in an interesting passage, 2 gathers up some of
the important tenets and practices of the Baptists which
were in the line of the expansion of the laity : " They put
all Church power in the hand of the people " ; " They give
the power of preaching and celebrating the sacraments to
any of their gifted members, out of all office" ; "All churdies
must be demolished : they are glad of so large and public
a preaching place as they can purchase, but of a steeple-
house they must not hear " ; " All tithes and all set
stipends are unlawful ; their preachers must work with
their own hands ; and may not go in black clothes."
1 Edwards' Gangraena, or Catalogue and Discovery of Errors, Heresies, and
Blasphemies, London, 1646. 2 Life of Milton, vol. iii. p. 149.
xvn ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 419
According to Baillie, 1 also, the Baptists outwent even the
Brownists 2 in the power which they gave to women in
Church matters. There were many women preachers
among them, of whom a Mrs. Attaway, " the mistress of
all the she-preachers in Coleman Street, was the chief."
Baillie (p. 30) says further, that the continental Baptists
allowed every one of their members, including women, to
preach in public, and also to question the preacher on
doctrine before the Church, and tJtat in England it was
the same.
We get more light on the famous " she-preacher of
Coleman Street " from Edwards. In his gossipy way he
gives testimony to the common custom of allowing women
to preach among the Baptists, and incidentally he describes
Mrs. Attaway :
"Among all the confussions and disorder in the Church," he
writes, 8 " matters both of opinions and practices, and particularly
of all sorts of mechanicks, taking upon them to preach
and baptize as smiths, taylors, shoemakers, pedlars, weavers,
etc., there are also some women preachers in our times, who keep
constant lectures, preaching weekly to many men and women.
In Lincolnshire, in Holland and those parts [i.e. the parts about
Holland in Lincolnshire], there is a woman preacher who
preaches (it's certain), and 'tis reported also she baptizeth, but
that's not so certain. In the Isle of Ely (that land of errors and
sectaries) is a woman preacher also ; in Hartfordshire also there
are some woman preachers who take upon them to expound the
scriptures in houses, and preach upon texts as on Rom. viii. 2.
But in London there are women who for some time together
have preached weekly on every Tuesday, about four of the clock,
unto whose preaching many have resorted. I shall particularly
give 'the reader an account of the preaching of two women (one
a lace-maker that sells lace in Cheapside, and dwells in Bell
Alley in Coleman Street, and the other a major's wife living in
the Old Bailey), who about a month ago, the second Tuesday in
December (as I take it), did preach in Bell Alley in Coleman
Street, the manner whereof is as follows (as I had it from a godly
minister of this city who was there present, an eye and ear witness
1 Baillie, Anabaptism the True Foundation of Independency, Brvwnism,
Familism, Antinomy, etc., London, 1646.
2 The Brownists were primitive Congregationalists.
* Gangraena (edition of 1646, second division, p. 29).
420 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
of it] : Three women came forth out of an inward room or
chamber into the room where they used to exercise and where
some company waited for to hear them. These women came
with Bibles in their hands, and went to a table ; the lace-woman
took her place at the upper end of the table ; the gentlewoman,
the major's wife, sate on one side by her ; the third woman stood
on the other side of the table. The lace-woman at the upper
end of the table turned herself first to this gentlewoman (who was
in her hoods, necklace of pearls, watch by her side, and other
suitable apparel), and intreated her to begin."
(Then follows a long account of their parleys and
excuses, each trying to have the other speak.) Finally
" the lace- woman began with making a speech to this purpose, that
now those days were come and were fulfilled which was spoken
of in Scriptures, that God would pour out of His Spirit upon the
handmaidens, and they should prophesy, and after this speech
she made a prayer for almost half an hour, and after her prayer
took that text, If ye love Me, keep My Commandments ; when she
had read the text she laboured to analyze the chapter as well as
she could, and then spake upon the text, drawing her doctrines,
opening them and making two uses, for the space of some three-
quarters of an hour ; when she had done she spake to the com
pany and said if any had anything to object against any of the
matter delivered they might speak, for that was their custome to
give liberty in that kinde."
The gossipy account runs on and on until finally the
minister who furnished the information had to leave the
meeting " for fear the candles might go out." Edwards
has heard that on another occasion a thousand persons
came to hear these women preach ! He says, too, that at
a later meeting
" One Mrs. Attaway " " the woman who before preached in
Bell Alley (as he has described above), delivered many and
dangerous doctrines: As (i) that it could not stand with the
goodness of God to damn His own creatures eternally. (2) That
God the Father did reign under the law ; God the Son under the
Gospel ; and now God the Father and God the Son are making
over the kingdom to God the Holy Ghost, and He shall be
poured out on all flesh. (3) That there shall be a general
restauration, wherein all men shall be reconciled and saved ; and
(4) that Christ died for all."
xvii ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 421
It plainly appears from this account of Mrs. Attaway's
" dangerous errors " that this was a congregation of General
Baptists, though the preaching of women seems not to
have been confined to this branch of the movement.
Edwards knows of " she-preachers in Kent, Norfolk, and
the rest of the shires." Barclay quotes a vivid passage
from The Schismatics Sifted (London, 1646), which is in
line with Edwards' testimony :
" Is it a miracle or wonder to see saucie boys, bold botching
taylors, and other most audacious, illiterate mechanicks to run out
of their shops into a pulpit ? To see bold, impudent huswifes to
take upon them to prate an hour or more ; but when, I say, is
the extraordinary Spirit poured upon them ? " *
William Prynne adds his testimony that women not
only have " decisive votes " in their congregations, but
" liberty of preaching and prophesying." He further asks :
" Whether Independents admitting women not only to vote as
members, but sometimes to preach, expound, speak publicly as
predicants in their conventicles, be not directly contrary to the
Apostles' doctrine and practice, and a mere politick invention to
engage that sex to their party ? " 2
Barclay has found in an " uncalendered State paper "
an account of " an audacious virago " who preached for
two hours in the Strand, and who " claps her Bible and
thumbs the pulpit cushion " with much confidence. 8 Some
one who was nourishing in his soul a rhymester's gift
undertook to answer a letter written against Edwards,
and has given a description in " poetry " of a woman
preacher :
" And that her zeal, piety, and knowledge
Surpassed the gravest student in college,
Who strive their human learning to advance ;
She with her Bible and concordance
Could preach nine times a week, morning and night,
Such revelation had she from New Light ! "*
Henry Denne, who wrote a tract on Ttie Drag-net of
the Kingdom of Heaven, or Christ Drawing All Men
1 Barclay, Inner Life, p. 157. * Quoted by Barclay, p. 157. * Ibid.
* From Tub-Preachers Overturned (London, 1647). Quoted in Barclay, p. 156.
422 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
(London, 1646), was one of the great exponents of lay-
religion and of the doctrine of the indwelling of the Divine
Light in all men. He was a Cambridge graduate, and an
ordained minister of the Church, but in 1643 he joined
himself to the Baptist congregation in Coleman Street,
and he is " embalmed " in the pages of the Gangraena as
" an antinomian and desperate Arminian," who was " re-
baptized by a mechanick." He preached against tithes,
which the " people " liked to hear. " He hath," mourns
Edwards, " a kind of strain in his preaching which affects
and takes the people much ; as, for instance, he will say :
' Oh Lord Christ, if Thou wert now on earth and didst
reveal the Gospel to men, they would call Thee Anabaptist,
Antinomian, Independent, who now call us so.'" Edwards
reports that " Mr. Denne preaches and prays, and after he
hath done he calls to know if any be not satisfied, and
then they stand up that will, and object, and he answers
them." This seems to have been the settled custom in
the Independent congregations. It is further reported
that " others of the brethren that will, meer mechanicks,
one, two, or more sometimes, do exercise (i.e. preach) after
him." " This Mr. Denne delivered his opinions in such
a manner as if he had been an apostle from heaven"
Edwards' whole account, in spite of himself, lets daylight
enough through for us to see that here was a truly great
soul. " Mr. Disbrough," he declares, " says of him that he
is the ablest man in England for prayer, expounding, and
preaching." * " His usual theme that he is upon is Christ 's
dying for all, for Judas as well as Peter. He often
preaches this doctrine. This is the everlasting Gospel,
that Jesus Christ has died for all men, Turks, Pagans ;
and men are only damned for not believing in Christ, and
for nothing else." 2 A passage from Denne's Drag-net 3
will show that two years before George Fox began his
preaching of the " Light within " there was an advocate of
the same doctrine among the Baptists :
1 " Mr. Disbrough" was James Disbrough, an elder in the famous Fenstanton
Church, and a brother of Cromwell's major-general.
2 Edwards, p. 23. 3 P. 91.
xvu ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 423
" Now God is light, and God is spirit. If then Christ lighteth
every man, God lighteth every man. The Spirit lighteth every
man that cometh into the world. What is it for man to be
lighted, but for the light of the glory of God, shining forth in the
face of Jesus Christ, to shine in darkness ? For every man to be
lighted is (as I conceive) for the manifestation of the glory of God
to be showed forth in some measure to them.
Lay-preaching greatly increased during the Civil War,
and in spite of the Parliamentary Ordinance against it the
practice was common in many parts of England during
the Commonwealth. A prominent soldier of the period
says :
" Many thousand souls besides me can testify that Christ hath
been preached, and that effectually and to the comfort of many
hearts, and I bid defiance to the devil and all his black-mouthed
instruments (ordained ministers in black coats) to produce that
even those who they call Sectaries in the preaching of the Lord
Jesus did by that open a gap to profaneness." 1
The Baptists not only opened the way for lay-preach
ing, and even women's preaching, but they vigorously
opposed tithes, state-supported ministry, and anything
that led to " hireling ministry." Many of their preachers
gave their time and service freely to their congregation.
Even as late as 1679 the practice of having "a set main
tenance for preaching" is denounced. 2 Taylor thus
describes the views of the General Baptists :
"The ministers of Christ, they say, who have freely received
from God, ought freely to minister to others, and such as have
spiritual things ministered unto them ought freely to communicate
necessary things to the ministers upon account of their charge ;
but tythes or any forced maintenance we utterly deny to be the
maintenance of Gospel ministers." 3
They strongly protested against creating a worldly
clergy for worldly ends. They were almost as positive
as the Quakers were later in their assertions that human
learning could not make a minister. Samuel How, a
1 Preaching without Ordination, etc.. by Edward Chillenden, Lieutenant of
Horse. Quoted oy Barclay, p. 171.
a Berkhamstead Church Book (1679). Quoted by Taylor in his General
Baptists. * Ibid. vol. i. p. 420.
424 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
minister of the Particular Baptists, says : " Human learn
ing would never make a man a minister of the Gospel, or
enable him to understand the mind of God in His Word." 1
Barclay has collected much evidence to show that
the Baptists originated the practice of standing up in
church after the preacher had finished his sermon, and
that this practice was current when George Fox began
his ministry. 2
" Our brethren in London " (i.e. the Independents), says
Baillie, 3 " are for this exercise " (i.e. the exercise of prophesying),
"but especially to hold a door open for them to preach in
parish churches where they neither are, nor ever intend to be,
pastors ; only they preach as gifted men and prophets, for the
conversion of those who are to be made members of their
congregations."
Richard Baxter says there were " few of the
Anabaptists that have not been the opposers and troublers
of the faithful ministers of the land" (i.e. of the
Presbyterians).
"On the 2yth day of the ninth month, Henry Denne (the
celebrated General Baptist preacher) declared the proceedings
at Hawson. There was mention of a promise that I should go
to Hawson the next first-day, and accordingly, on the i Qth day of
this present month, I went thither, and on the next day, it being
the first day of the week, the priest and chiefest men of the
town sent to me to come and preach in the public place (i.e. the
church). Whereupon I went, intending to have spoken there
unto the people, but as soon as I began to speak the rude
multitude gathered together and would not suffer me to speak.
. . . Whereupon I departed from them, and I spake in a
private house." 4
Edwards mentions that Lamb (of Bell Alley Church
of the General Baptists) " preaches sometimes (when he
can get into pulpits) in our churches." On 5th November,
1 644, he preached at Grace Church in London, " where
he had mighty great audience, and preached universal
grace." 5 Hanserd Knollys preached " in the churchyard
1 How's Sufficiency of the World's Teaching without Human Learning (1640).
2 Inner Life, pp. 288-90. 3 Baillie's Dissuasive, p. 175.
4 Fenstanton Church Records, p. 81. 5 Edwards, Part II. p. 35.
xvii ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 425
when he could not in the church, and getting up into
the pulpits when the sermon or lecture had been
ended, against the will of the minister, so that there
were several riots and tumults by his means. He was
complained against for this to a committee of Parlia
ment, but he got off from that committee." l On
another occasion Mr. Kiffin handed a letter to Edwards
in the pulpit asking leave, "to declare against what
you say when your sermon is ended." 2
On the 1 4th July 1648, Edward Barber, a cele
brated General Baptist, spoke at the " parish meeting
house of Bentfinck," London. Several of the inhabit
ants of the parish had invited Mr. Barber to come,
promising that he should have liberty to add to what
the minister (Mr. Calamy) should deliver, or contradict
if erroneous. " I desired him," says Mr. Barber, " and
the rest of the audience to add some few words. . . .
Upon which he (Calamy) desired me to ' forbear till he
had concluded, and I might speak."' Mr. Barber then
complains that he dealt with him as Calamy had
before dealt with Mr. Kiffin, Mr. Knowles, and Mr. Cox,
and charged him with " coming to make a disturbance
in the ' Church of God.' " Mr. Barber was then sadly
handled by the audience, who cried, " Kill him, kill
him ! pull him limb from limb ! " and " a woman
scratched his face." A constable, however, interfered
in his favour, or he " might have been robbed or
murdered." Some of the audience, however, spoke
kindly to him, and wished him to "go to Mr. Calamy's
house" and be satisfied, but Mr. Barber says that
after this treatment he was satisfied that they were all
anti-Christian ministers. 8
The General Baptists, with their faith in universal
1 Edwards. Part II. p. 39. a Ibid. p. 47.
8 "A Declaration and Vindication of the carriage of Mr. Edward Barber
at the parish meeting-house of Bentfinck, London, Friday, February 14, 1648.
After the morning exercise of Mr. Calamy was ended, wherein the pride of the
ministers and Babylonish carriage of the hearers is laid open, etc. ... as also
the false aspersions cast upon him, he doing nothing but what was according to
the primitive institution, and is, and ought to be. in the best reformed churches
according to the Protestation and Covenant " (Barclay, p. 290).
426 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
redemption through Christ, felt that the Gospel should
be preached to every person under heaven, and that
the work of " discipling all nations " should be seriously
taken up. In fact, they had a vision of an apostolic
mission. Says a quaint Baptist writer :
" It is most certain that there were several things proper and
peculiar to the first and chief Apostles, not to be pretended at all
by their successors, yet it is also true that many things pertaining
to their office as itinerant ministers are of perpetual duration in
the Church with respect to that holy function, and consequently
to descend to those who were to succeed them as travelling
ministers, to plant churches, and to settle them in order who are
as sheep without a shepherd." 1
They plainly had bands of travelling ministers, some
times called " apostles," sometimes " messengers of the
churches," who "travelled up and down the world
planting new churches, edifying old churches, and
seeing that good order and government was carefully
and constantly kept up." The discipline, or Church
power, in the Baptists' congregations was in the hands
of the members themselves. Periodical meetings were
held and officers were chosen " to look after the poor
and the suffering," "to have care over the members
in their respective districts," " to oversee their con
versation and carriage," " to report on attendance of
the members at meetings for worship and business." z
They insisted, however, that Christ Himself is Head
and Governor of the Church, and they made it a
principle of the first importance that in order to " restore
the primitive way " there must be <c men professing
and practising the order and form of Christ's doctrine
who shall beautify the same with a holy and wise con
versation in all godliness and honesty." 8
1 Grantham's Christianismus Primitivus, Book II. p. 119.
2 Taylor's General Baptists, p. 435. If they absent themselves without
sufficient cause, " they shall be looked upon as offending, and be proceeded with
accordingly" {Records of the Fenstanton Church, p. 126, and passim, pp. 433-35).
' ' As soon as any General Baptist Churches had been gathered, they united to
support a periodical meeting such meeting was called an association, and was
usually held quarterly, half-yearly, or annually" (ibid. 437). The Travelling
Ministers or Elders were most frequently chosen representatives.
3 Grantham, op. cit. p. 69.
xvn ANABAPTISM IN ENGLAND 427
They were the ringing champions of a free conscience,
a free ministry, a spiritual Church and a pure daily
life. They were the beginners of a new order, which
did much to prevent old customs from "corrupting
the world." Their part in the great political transactions
which were going on, as George Fox was starting out
on his momentous journeys to enlarge the spiritual
horizon of England, are beyond the scope of my
work. I shall merely give one important passage from
Skeats. 1
" They protested against any compulsory religion, stating that
' the ways of God's worship are not all entrusted to us by any
human power.' The Presbyterians, on the other hand, insisted
on the establishment of their own religion only, upon 'a
covenanted uniformity,' and upon the extirpation of the sects.
A third party was represented by the King, who, after two years'
treaty, consented to most of the views of the Presbyterians. It
was at this period that the Army, seeing that everything for
which they had fought, including liberty of conscience, was about
to be wrested from them, sent in a remonstrance to the legis
lature. It was not attended to; Fairfax at once marched on
London, and on December 6, 1648, Pride "purged" the
House of Commons. From this time Cromwell and the
Independents held the reins of government" *
1 History of the Free Churches of England, p. 56.
* Skeats points out that it is remarkable that so few modern writers should
have drawn attention to the intimate connection of the question of religious liberty
with the events which led to Pride's "purge," the execution of Charles, and the
establishment of the Commonwealth. Rushworth, and Neal following him, have
clearly pointed it out.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FAMILY OF LOVE
AMONG the obscure sects which came into existence
during the opening period of the Reformation, none was
more novel and unique, and none has been more vilified
than the " Family of Love," or " House of Love," or
" Familists." It was synchronous in origin with the rise
of Anabaptism on the Continent, and, like Anabaptism,
too, it had a great second flowering period in England
during the early part of the seventeenth century, and on
through the Commonwealth. It was, however, in origin
entirely independent of the Anabaptist movement, and
though its founder undoubtedly read the writings of
Luther, the movement was in the main an isolated out
burst, a sporadic upheaval, having its own course apart
from the central stream which was breaking up the
hardened crust of tradition and custom. It brought into
public notice and gave wide vogue to many doctrines and
practices generally supposed to have originated with the
Quakers, and it was at its best the exponent of a very
lofty type of mystical religion. Its founder was a very
extraordinary character, and his voluminous writings con
tain spiritual insights and religious teachings which deserve
to be rescued from the oblivion into which they have
largely fallen.
This founder was Henry Nicholas (or Niklaes, or
Niclaes), who was born of extremely devout and pious
parents in Munster in Westphalia either in 1501 or I5O2. 1
1 The data for the story of Nicholas are three unpublished manuscripts pre
served in the Maatschappy Library in Leyden. They are (i) Chronika des
428
CHAP, xvm THE FAMILY OF LOVE 429
The boy was dowered with a constitution which made
him susceptible even as a child to intimations and openings,
and which turned him with an instinct like that of the 1
homing pigeon toward Divine things. He was, like
George Fox, a boy apart from the throng, solitary and
brooding, full of vivid imaginations and unsatisfied with
the ordinary, traditional explanations which were given to
the boyish minds of the period. The whole atmosphere
of the home was intensely religious. His father, a zealous
Catholic, prayed to God every day " to be gracious to
him, to give him a holy nature, and to give him holy
offspring." 1 As little Heinrich was weak and delicate
his mother gave him the first stages of his education, and
thus he was in a peculiar degree penetrated and permeated
with the religious spirit of the family. A special effort
was made to cultivate in him reverence and love for the
ceremonies of the Church. The child was taken to daily
Mass, and his father took pains to talk with him freely
about the holy things of his religion.
Under this nurture the highly susceptible boy advanced
to a wisdom and insight unusual in persons of such tender
years, so that by his eighth year his questions became too
deep and puzzling for the simple pious father. The
chronicler has preserved an incident from this period
which seems to him to show that the Lord Himself opened
the mouth of the child and touched his lips and tongue.
He, so the account runs, naively asked his father one day
what he thanked God for. The father replied that he
thanked God for forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ
and for the true life of godliness established by Him.
The child startled his father with the blunt remark that
he could not see that sin in man had been bettered by
Jesus Christ's coming, or that he was brought into actual
godliness. The boy was told that he must not doubt or
question the grace of God, but simply accept what was
Hiisgesinnes der Lie/ten, (a) Acta H.N., and (3) Ordo Saterdotis. Owing to an
ambiguity in the Chronika it is impossible to decide whether he was born in 1501
or 1502, and also whether the birthday was the 9th or xoth of January.
1 I have made large use of Nippold's excellent chapter on ' ' Heinrich Niclaes
und das Haus der Liebe " in Zeitschrift fiir die historiscke Theologie. Gotha, 1862.
Nippold has drawn his material from the three MSS. mentioned above.
430 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
taught about it Not easily hushed he still urged the
point that he did not at all doubt that through the death
of Christ the door to the kingdom of God was opened for
all, but that for him faith was meaningless without an
imitation of Christ's passion, and that he could think of no
restoration to the perfect state of godliness until sin itself
was destroyed. So far he could not see that this had taken
place among men, therefore God must intend to destroy
sin and establish perfect righteousness in some other way
than men generally thought. This seems like an advanced
position for an eight-year-old lad, but some such brooding
is by no means unnatural or impossible in such a child.
He was next brought to a Franciscan monk confessor for
counsel, and to dispel " the strange whimsies in his head."
He was told that he was much too young and too small
to search into the deep, profound mysteries of divine
things, or to expect to fathom them. " Very true," answered
I the boy, " and that is why I have asked, and have not
tried to search them out in my own power." And then
with simple earnestness he laid his spiritual burden on the
confessor. His trouble was that the very thing which
Christ died to do was not yet done. He died, everybody
told him, to redeem mankind, to bring men back into the
condition of righteousness which Adam was in before he
fell ; but men all about were still living in sin and very
far from that first condition ! There was a discrepancy
somewhere ; something was lacking. Sin was not de
stroyed, and men were not perfect like the Christ who had
died for them. The helpless confessor had no illumination
for the strange boy, and a second monk was called to no
better purpose. In the end the boy was severely scolded,
| and told that he had committed the greatest sin possible
in his questionings about the hidden things of God, and
that perhaps he could never be forgiven at all, which
threw him into a great fright. To quiet him he was
finally promised absolution if he would repent. He came
home far from satisfied with the " instruction of the two
love-brothers," and he " went up and down with a sad
heart" He now kept his musings to himself. He shrank
xvin THE FAMILY OF LOVE 431
from companions and playmates, and dwelt much on his
spiritual problems. In his ninth year a marvellous vision
came to him the beginning of a series of visions. It
came at daybreak when he was in a half-sleeping, half- '
waking state a borderland condition and when he was
deeply troubled over the sinful condition of men. A
great light suddenly surrounded him, the light of the
splendour and glory of the Lord, in shape like a mountain
rising from his bed up into heaven, wrapping him wholly
about and illuminating him in mind and spirit through
and through, until he was absolutely one being with the
shining mountain. He felt himself penetrated with the
divine Spirit, and, to use his later phrase, raised to " a
begodded man." In this unity of being he discovered,
says the chronicler, 1 the true fulfilment of redemption in
Jesus Christ When the vision departed he awoke in a
weak and nervously exhausted state, and soon fell into a
trance condition in which he saw a multitude of saints of
God, to whom he imparted this glorious life for which
men were created, and into which Christ had redeemed /'
them, and this vision was taken as his call to be a prophet )
of the new revelation. 2 He early became a constant and
careful reader of the Scriptures, and his later works show
an extraordinary familiarity with them. Before he under
took his studies of the Bible he already had read the
writings of Luther, but disapproved of them, first because
of their attack on the priesthood of the Roman Catholic
Church (to which he was still loyal), and secondly because
Luther did not, to his mind, teach the ground of true
righteousness and, the fulfilment of real godliness in Jesus '
Christ, and did not insist on a Church composed of trans
formed persons. 8 He was married at twenty to a " virtuous
lady, of a plain and simple family," who made him an
excellent wife, and he took up a mercantile business in
which, strangely enough, he was very successful. He was
1 The discovery is, however, certainly the outcome of later reflection, and the
whole account shows expansion in the light of later experience.
2 Compare this vision of the " multitude of saints" with George Fox's vision
in Wensleydale : ' ' The Lord opened unto me, and let me see a great people in
white raiment coming to the Lord " (Journal, London edition, 1901, vol. i. p. no).
* Nippold, p. 349. In this particular he was like the Anabaptists.
432 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
early suspected of holding " unsound views," and partly on
account of these prevailing suspicions he moved with his
family to Amsterdam (about 1530), where he allied
himself with persons " who had fallen away from the
Catholic Church, though they were persons who earnestly
sought after righteousness." It was, however, not till his
thirty-ninth year that he received the revelation which at
length made him the founder of a new sect. He had
during his nine years in Amsterdam prayed unweariedly
that God would " reveal His perfect truth on the earth."
Suddenly one day " God appeared to him, enwrapt him,
became one being with him, and communicated to him
the hidden things of His Divine nature and of the spiritual
nature of man. The Holy Spirit of Love was poured out
upon him, and he felt himself chosen to be the revealer of
the Word." With the revelation there came the command
to write and publish what had been revealed to him.
A further vision of similar character came to him later
(in Emden, whither he had removed his home). He had
an enwrapping experience which so expanded his heart
and mind that he comprehended the perfection of God
and the heavenly host, and the things as well of the
earthly kingdom, and he was definitely called to be the
prophet of the Holy Spirit of love. 1 From now on he
gathered adherents about him, and organized a society
called the " House, or Family, of Love." 2 It spread
slowly but steadily in the towns of Friesland, Holland,
Brabant, Flanders, and later in England and France. He
and his supporters were everywhere harried, and though
he himself appears somewhat unheroic under the onset of
persecution, his practice of allowing all abuse, slander, and
enmity to go unnoticed was highly dignified, and was
wholly unique at that date of the world. In the " House
of Love," he insisted, there is to be no violence, no bluster,
no wranglings. 3
1 Nippold, p. 354.
2 From now on he always used the initials H. N. , which may, and very likely
do, stand for Homo Novus (New Man), as well as for his old name Henry Nicholas.
3 " Brawling and discord do I not hold for any Christian fight, seeing men do
thereby forsake love. Therefore such a fight doth nothing further the life "
(Introduction to Glass of Righteousness, chap. xi. p. 21).
xviii THE FAMILY OF LOVE 433
The organization of the " House of Love " was formed
more on the basis of the Roman Catholic hierarchy than
on any Protestant model. It had a highest bishop, twenty- t
four elders, and three lower orders of priests, but, notwith
standing his cumbersome hierarchy, it was the supreme
purpose of Nicholas, through his writings, to raise the
entire membership of the " House of Love " to " full-grown
men in Christ," so that each member should attain to the
experience of " a begodded person." l These " writings "
were very numerous and voluminous, though they are now
extremely rare. 2 They were originally in a Low German
dialect (called by the English translator Basse Almayne},
and they were all, or nearly all, translated into English.
The works of chief importance were The Glass of Righteous
ness f An Introduction to the Glass of Righteousness ; The
First Exhortation of H. N. to his Children, The Evangelium
Regni (Gospel of the Kingdom), Epistles, Cantica, and
Terra Pads: or Spiritual Land of Peace, which is a
spiritual pilgrimage quite like Pilgrim's Progress in germ. 4
The central idea in all Henry Nicholas's writings is his
insistence on real righteousness and actual holiness as '
contrasted with the fiction of a merely imputed righteous
ness and a forensic holiness, or holiness based on a trans
action outside the person himself. He maintains that the
1 He says in Introduction to Glass of Righteousness, chap. xxv. , that ' ' Every
father of a family under the Love hath the liberty in his family to use services
and ceremonies as he perceiveth out of the Testimonies of the Holy Spirit of Love,
that they are profitable or necessary for his household, to the lile of Peace, and
the true righteousness which God esteemeth. If any have any heavenly revelation,
or use any service of the Priestly Ordinance, let him do it to concord and not to
strife, dissension, or schism." He made much of the Elders, and frequently
urged the members to obey them and take counsel of them. It is not improbable
that the Elders in the Family of Love had an influence on the formation of the
Quaker Eldership. He writes: "Give care to the Elders of the Holy Under
standing, follow not the will or counsel of your own mind, but under the service
of Love follow the counsel of wisdom and keep with the Elders in the Family of
Love, to the concord and multiplying in good of the peaceable Kingdom in all
Love. Be not wavery, but if ye stumble or fall, yet rise again, stay not upon
yourselves lest ye come not at any time to the light of life or day of Love.
Subject yourselves to teaching and the service of Love, that ye come to the
Freedom of the Children of God " (Introduction to Glass of Righteousness).
1 Charlotte Fell-Smith in her excellent article in the Nat. Diet, of Biog. gives
a list of twenty-three genuine works and five doubtful works commonly ascribed
to him.
* The only English translation of this work, so far as known, is the manuscript
fragment in the Bodleian Library.
4 It was printed in English in 1649.
2 F
434 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
only righteousness that amounts to anything is one which
appears in the person himself one which bears witness to
a new life in the person. And this righteousness, this
new life, comes from a spiritual incorporation of the person
into God's life, so that the person, once a mere man,
becomes " godded," or made comformable to Christ, who
was an absolutely begodded man. 1 " God," he says, " is a
living God, a perfect, clear Light and Love itself. This
God manneth Himself [i.e. reveals Himself humanwise],
and we may become likewise, through His godly Light,
godded and made a conformable willing spirit with Him." 2
It is through Jesus Christ that we are renezved in our
human spirit and brought into " a goodwilling life," and
when we become " incorporated into Christ as fellow-
members with Him," then and only then does He become
our Saviour. This experience involves a following after
Christ, even to His death on the Cross, in perfect obedience
to His Holy Spirit of Love, to the actual vanquishing of
sin, death, and hell, to the burying of all iniquity, to the
destroying of our old nature and ungodly being. " Those
that do not even so become baptized in His name, and do
not bear in their inwardness the death of sin through the
death on the Cross of Christ, are no Christians." s
In a passage of the Spiritual Tabernacle (chap. v. 15)
he expresses himself precisely as George Fox so often
does on the inwardness of the Christ-revelation :
" Behold this high Priest is spirit and life, the true King and
faithful Lord, a peaceable Prince, and not this or that without us,
but He is in us all which believe on Him according to the truth"
1 He appears to have held the orthodox view of Christ's divinity, though his
conception is often expressed in words which sound extremely modern. For
example, he says in one of his epistles that ' ' the true Christ was the like- being of
God, only begotten Son of God from eternity, born of the seed of David according
to the flesh, delivered to death on the Cross, but risen again from the dead for a
perpetual conquering of sin and death, and making himself manifest unto the
friends that love him." Quoted freely from Prof. Allen C. Thomas's excellent
monograph on "The Family of Love," in Haverford College Studies, fifth mo.
1893, p. 31.
2 First Exhortation (London, 1656), pp. 27-31.
3 Ibid. pp. 35-37. He means by the atonement a vital and dynamic re
demption by which we are brought into union with Christ, who " mannetk
Himself with us to an implanting of us in Him with the like death of His Cross,
to crucify and slay even so, through His suffering and death, the sinful flesh
with its lusts and desires" (First Exhortation, p. 156).
XVHI THE FAMILY OF LOVE 435
This same idea is expounded again and again in the
writings. It is set forth with a fair degree of clearness
in another section of the First Exhortation, which I
have freely rendered :
" The true Light is the everlasting life itself and has its origin
and forthcoming out of the lovely Being and true Mind of the
eternal and living God. This Light shows itself (in the world)
through illuminated, i.e. godded men, for through such persons
the Most High is manned (i.e. humanly shown). The true Light,
therefore, consists not in knowing this or that, but in receiving
and partaking of the true Being of the Eternal Life, by the
renewing of the mind and spirit and by an incorporation of the
inward man into this true Life and Light, so that the person
henceforth lives and walks in the Light in all Love." l
Nothing short of this experience, he holds, can make
a man a Christian, and apart from such an experience,
" ceremonies " and " God-services " are " mere vain husks."
" Ye shall find," he writes to his " dear children," " in experi
ence that God with His Christ and Holy Spirit and with
the heavenly fellowship of all the holy ones will inhabit in
you and live and walk in you, for He hath chosen none
other house or temple for His habitation but you." 2 With
this exalted conception of the religious life as an inward
experience of Christ incorporated in the soul, was joined
also an equally lofty conception of the moral life in daily
walk and conversation. Henry Nicholas and his Family
of Love have been frequently charged with libertinism
and antinomian leanings. There is no ground in his '
writings for the charge, and there is no evidence that the
society countenanced loose and immoral living. 8 Henry
Nicholas's writings abound in wholesome counsel, and his
moral injunctions have everywhere the ring of sincerity.
1 First Exhortation, pp. 107-9. s MM. P- I 5 1 -
* It is quite probable that loose livers took advantage of the movement in its
beginning, and, under the guise of a spiritual Family of Love, formed a Family
of Love with low motives and so gave the Society a bad reputation. No such
charges can be established against the founder himself or against the genuine
members of the House of Love. Nicholas, while admitting that marriage is a
proper ordinance, counsels those who are married to destroy the lusts of the flesh
in themselves, and he urges that there shall be no sexual intercourse even in the
married state except such as is consistent with pure love (see Henry Nicholas
upon the Beatitudes under " Beatitude on Cleanness of Heart ").
436 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
In fact the entire burden of his " prophecy " is the necessity
of exhibiting a renewed and transformed life in which the
righteousness of God is realized.
" If now," he says, " any man be a Christian, let him then
have also a Christian nature and stand under the obedience of
the love of Jesus Christ." x
And he continues :
" If he have no Christian nature and standeth not subject
under the Love of Jesus Christ, then can he not assuredly be
illuminated, neither can he be any Christian in the sight of God."
On the subject of Antinomianism, he is as clear as a
bell:
" No one is ever released from law. Those who think the
law is abolished have not the Love of Christ formed in them.
The law is not abolished, it is fulfilled in Love. He that loveth
doeth the will. No one ever transcends righteousness, for the
entire work of God toward salvation has been making for the
fruits of righteousness." 2
There is a fine personal testimony in the Introduc
tion, in which Nicholas impresses his " dear friends " with
the importance of positive righteousness for the reception
of spiritual experience :
"I (Henry Nicholas) held my own human nature straight
unto all virtue and righteous dealings to do the Lord's will in all
my doings. I passed under the obedience of love with my
human nature to the intent to obtain the virtuous disposition of
love and to be incorporated to the same with soul and body, and
with all the senses and thoughts of my human nature, and so the
Lord received me into the Grace of His love and gave me inherit
ance with Christ and His saints in His heavenly riches, and
revealed His last will unto me." 3
Like the Anabaptists and the Quakers, he called his
followers away from oaths and war and capital punish-
1 Introduction to Glass of Righteousness, p. 7.
2 An epitome of chap. ii. sees. 1-5, Introduction to Glass of Righteousness.
In a fine passage of the First Exhortation, he defines ' ' the true freedom "
as the " Unbinding " of the man from himself and his wicked nature, " through
the ministration of the gracious word," and as the formation in him of a new and
heavenly life conformed to "the lovely being of the true Life and Love,"
pp. 120-21. 8 Introduction, chap. xii. sec. 57.
xvm THE FAMILY OF LOVE 437
merit. Here is a clear announcement of his position
from the " Introduction " :
" In the House of Love men do not curse nor swear ; they do
not destroy nor kill any. They use no outward swords or spears.
They seek to destroy no flesh of men ; but it is a fight of the
cross and patience to the subduing of sin" *
Their attitude, again, toward the Scriptures and toward
outward ordinances and ceremonies (Henry Nicholas's
phrase is " God-services ") is almost exactly that of the
Friends. The following passage from the Introduction
sounds as though it were taken from Fox's Journal or
Barclay's Apology, though they were written a hundred
years later :
" The written word of the letter is not the Word itself, that
cleanseth and sanctifieth the man, or which procreateth the life.
But it is a shadow or figuring out of the holy and true word, a ser
viceable instrument whereby we are made well-affected inwardly
in our souls to the true word of vivification, to the end that
through belief and love we might in the spirit of our minds be
made of like-being with the nature and being of the Good Life ;
even as the words of Scripture witness." 2
In his First Exhortation? he says that "this Word
of Life (which now inspires us with the holy Spirit of
Love) hath in all ages, by figures, shadows, parables, words,
written letters, been working men up to good will," but he ,
constantly speaks of the danger of being led astray by
those who are only " Scripture-learned." So, too, all rites
and ceremonies are only shadows and figures for a low
stage of religious progress.
" Alas," he writes, " how great contention and disputation
hath there been among many touching baptism. The one would
have the baptism thus, the other so. But while it was right with
them, yet hath no man been able, before this day of love which
is the true light and glory of God himself, to understand nor dis
cern the baptism of John (the outward) nor the baptism of Christ
(the inward)." 4
1 Cbap. xi. p. 20. 9 Chap. vii. sec. 29. * Pp. 13, 14.
* Evangelium Regni, xiz. 12 ; quoted in Thomas's Monograph, p. 32.
438 MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAP.
This teaching gets a clearer interpretation in the
First Exhortation where he says that those upright
(i.e. spiritual) believers that follow after Christ in death
' and life become baptized and washed through Christ in
the pure living water of the holy Ghost. 1 In another
passage of sweeping import he sets forth his principle, in
words that are probably inspired by the Galatian Epistle :
" Not in anything whatsoever that is visible or feelable, nor in
any factious God-services or ceremonies which are observed
with men's hands in contention and which do not require any life
of righteousness, consisteth either salvation or condemnation
before God, nor can they bring any vantage or damage at all
unto souls." 2
It was his overmastering concern that the life should
be put above forms and " God-services," and it may not
be amiss to quote one more passage out of an abundance
of similar utterances :
" Let no man bind his heart unto any outward thing, for here
is the sum of perfect Righteousness. It is a humble heart that
departeth from all earthly and corruptible things and with a lowly
and meek spirit is incorporated with God in pure love, according
to the Spirit, living in the form of Jesus Christ, in an unspotted
conscience." 3
Nicholas, like George Fox, made much of quiet waiting
in silence.
"Grow up in stillness and singleness of heart," he says,
(" praying for a right sight in the truth, for that shall make you
free. He urges his Family to break spiritual bread together in
stillness, abiding steadfast in prayer, till all covering wherewith
1 P. 20, see also pp. 41-43.
8 Introduction to Glass of Righteousness, chap. xvi. sec. 35. There is an
interesting passage in the Evangelium Regni, chap, xxxiii., which shows that he
believed that no religious service is of value unless the person who performs it is
illuminated : ' ' Therefore consider now that no man by his knowledge of the
Scripture can rightlie erect, teach, or set forth the Christian ceremonies. But
they shall be administered and taught in their right form by them that are chosen
or raised up thereunto by God, which follow after Christ in his death, become
renewed with him in a new life, in whom the living God with His Christ hath even
so then obtained his dwelling and shape. From whose bodies likewise the Words
of God and Christ do then flow forth as living waters, which also concordably
agree with the testimony of the Holie Ghost."
8 Introduction to Glass of Righteousness, chap. xii. p. 25.
xviii THE FAMILY OF LOVE 439
their hearts, after the flesh, are covered is done away, that is
to say until the spiritual, heavenly, and uncovered being of Christ
appears and comes to their spirit" 1
He undoubtedly looked upon himself as a prophet of
at least equal standing and inspiration with any in the
Scriptures, and he always assumes that his new sect, ,
founded on his own revelations, is the only true church. 2
" The House of Love " is God's latest stage of revelation
" the more perfect way," for which the world had waited
long. It was, they believed, "the New Day of Life,"
"the fulfilment of God's Covenant of Grace" the begin
ning of the Religion of the Spirit. " Now in the last
time" writes Henry Nicholas, 8 " through the appearing of
Christ, God hath raised up His community of holy ones,"
which is " the only true seed and witness of Jesus Christ in
the world," or, as he says again, " the stool of Grace to
an everlasting remission of sins " ; though the benefit
is promised only to such as " submit your hearts until
that Love which is the being of Christ have a shape
in you." 4
It has often been assumed that both Henry Nicholas
and his followers pushed their claims of holiness and
perfection to a wild and dangerous extreme. It is pro
bably true that they held a " perfection " that inclined
them, or at least some of them, to believe in their own
infallibility, and that ministered to an over-security in
their attainments. The doctrine was, however, safe
guarded by an unvarying insistence on purity of life, and '
by an emphasis on the truth that the final goal of perfec
tion is " the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ," or as Henry 
