Part II!

Now it must be remembered that this rest of the inner man in the divine wonder born of vision and divine love, transcends in its perfection and its sweetness any activity of the outward man, and for nine reasons.
The first reason is, because in this passivity of the interior man, which is one of knowing and loving, the highest of the faculties in man are engaged in their noblest and most proper occupation and are thus detached and free from everything temporal and mor- tal, and these powers are knowledge and love. The life of the exterior man, on the other hand, is one of varying sensation. St Gregory says that Rachel, meaning the interior life, signifies a vision of the source, but Leah, the other sister, means the life of the exterior man, for she had weak eyes.
The second reason is, that man’s interior wont of love and con- templation is more lasting, though not at the culminating point of actual vision, for the moment of supreme illumination is short- lived, and passes like a flash of lightning. According to St Augus- tine, the common use of love and knowledge lasts longer with the inner man than with the outer.
The third reason is, because man’s inner life of rest and spiritual leisure is somewhat like the peace of the divine eternal essence ; for albeit the Father is ever in the act of engendering his Word that does not disturb his rest; as our Lord says, ‘My Father worketh until now.’ The life of outward man, on the other hand, is one of perpetual physical unrest. Mary sat still and Martha kept about the house.
The fourth reason is, that the interior life is more self-sufficient than that of outward man. The inner man needs nothing for his work but the freedom from bodily affairs which comes with detachment of the soul-powers, together with knowledge and love. The freer and less occupied with mortal things the better adapted to God is the life of the inner man. But the life of outward man has need of many things which are disturbing: of working and talking and giving and taking and eating and drinking. St Luke tells us how Martha, meaning the outward man, was cum- bered with overmuch serving; aye, though it be all on God’s account, like works of mercy, natheless it entails a deal of trouble.
The fifth reason is, that the interior life is infinitely more enjoyable than that of outward man. As the philosopher says, Intellectual delights are free from drawbacks, but every mortal
1 This is not numbered separately in Pfeiffer’s text.
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pleasure has its other side. St Augustine says that while Martha was distraught Mary was in company with her interior man, Hence the comment of one teacher, ‘ Mary taxed Martha before the eterna] Word Christ Jesus.’ Why did not Mary answer? She did not hear, because she was not at home by herself. Where was she then? She was with her inner man in the Word whose word she was attending to. For the soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving natural life.
The sixth reason is, because the interior life, apart from know- ledge and apart from love, is desirable in itself. But the outward life is desirable only in so far as it makes for the greater good of the soul. The prophet cries, ‘One thing have I desired of the Lord and that same will I seek : to see God’s will and behold his godly habitation.’
The seventh reason is, because the inner life is concerned with things divine and the outer with things human. St Augustine says, Mary heard the Word in the beginning, whereas it was the human word that Martha served.
The eighth reason is, because the inner life is that of the powers most proper to the soul. But the powers used for outward purposes we have in common with the brutes, the senses, namely. David says, ‘ Lord thou dost nourish man and beast.’ And later on he adds, * but Lord, we men shall see thy light in the light of thine own self,’ that is, in the light of understanding whereby man is distinguished from the brutes.
The ninth reason is given by our Lord himself, who says, ‘ Mary has chosen the better part.’ St Augustine says, ‘ Martha had no bad one; hers was a good one too, though Mary had the best.’ Hers the uses of the inner man, which starting here go on eternally. But the outward life of works of mercy ends where there is no poverty nor woe, that is, in eternity. Now though the inner life is intrinsically best, the outward life is sometimes better, as in cases of bodily necessity ; to feed the hungry, for example, were better than to spend the time in contemplation. According to one teacher, to see a man in any need and fail to help would make me guilty towards him, and St Augustine says I ought to lend: him aid. In cases then of real necessity, to use the works of the outward man for the relief of one’s own self or neighbour is better than to settle down to the interior man’s spiritual idleness of mind and will.—It is now explained how our Lady rested in the eternal good. Let us too seek rest for the inner man as well as for the outer, So help us God. Amen. :
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CII HONOUR THY FATHER
Hec dicit dominus : honora patrem tuum ete. (Matt. 15,). This Latin quotation is taken from the gospel. The words were spoken by our Lord, and the translation runs, ‘ Honour thy father and mother.” And another commandment is given by God our Lord, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods nor his house nor anything that is his.’ The third point is that the people went to Moses and said, ‘ Do thou speak to us, for we cannot hear God.’ ‘The fourth, that God said to Moses, ‘ An altar of earth and in earth shalt thou make unto me and all that is offered thereon thou shalt burn away.’ The fifth is that Moses went into the cloud and ascending into the mountain there he found God : it was in the darkness that he found the true light.
There is a saying of St Augustine’s, ‘ Where the lamb sinks there swims the ox and the cow and where the cow swims the elephant runs and forges ahead.’ Which is a pretty parable to draw a moral from. The scriptures are the deep sea, St Augustine says, and the little lamb the humble, simple soul which is able to fathom Holy Writ. By the ox that swims we understand ill- tutored folk: each choosing out of them the: things that suit himself. But in the elephant that goes ahead we recognise wise souls searching the scriptures and making progress in them. I am amazed how full the scriptures are withal the mastérs say they are not to be taken merely as they stand ; the material things in them, they say, must be translated to a higher plane, for which we must have symbols.—First it reached to the ankles, next it came up to the knee, thirdly it rose to the girdle, and fourthly it covered his head and he was submerged altogether.
Now what does this mean? St Augustine says, at first the scriptures will amuse and attract the child, and in the end, when he tries to understand them, they make fools of the wise, for none is so simple-minded but can find his level there nor none so wise but when he tries to fathom them will find they are beyond his depth and discover more therein. All the stories and quotations taken from them have another, esoteric, meaning. Our , under- standing of them is as totally unlike the thing as it is in itself and as it is in God, as though it did not exist.
To return to our text. ‘Honour thy father and mother,’ and in a general sense it does mean father and mother, that we ought to honour them, and all who have spiritual power are to be honoured and preferred as well as the authors of thy temporal weal. Herein
we wade, herein do we touch bottom ; but it is precious little we 17
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get out of it. It is a woman who says, ‘If we ought to honour the authors of our outward good much more are we behoven to magnify the author of it all.” What we have here outwardly in multiplicity is all within and one. Yours to make this likeness like unto the Father. I was thinking this evening that all likeness ends in sameness with the Father. In the second place, thou oughtest to honour thy father, meaning thy heavenly Father, the source of thy being. Who honours the Father? None but the- Son: he alone does him honour. And none honours the Son save only the Father. The Father’s whole love, his fondness, his favours, are for the Son and him only. The Father knows nothing at all but the Son. Such delight does he take in his Son that he wants nothing else but to be getting his Son, for he is his exact © likeness, the perfect image of his Father.
The teaching of our school is that anything known or born is an image. They say that in begetting his only-begotten Son the Father is producing his own image abiding in himself, in the ground of the image, as it has ever been in him, (forme illius) i.e. his immanent form. It is contrary to nature and seems to me irrational, the doctrine that God is known by likeness, by this thing or by that. For he, after all, is neither this nor that, and father is not satisfied till he returns to his first nature, to the innermost, to the-ground and core of fatherhood, where he has been for ever in himself, in his father-nature : to where he enjoys him- self in the Father as the Father does himself in the one alone. Here wood, stone, grass-blades, all things are the same. This is the best of all, and I have fooled myself therein. All the natural powers being gathered to a head are plunged into the Father- nature, so that they are one, one Son, transcending all the rest and subsisting alone in the paternal nature, or if not the one they are at least the image of the one. This nature, being of God, seeks not what is outside her, nay, this nature, existing in itself, has naught to do with ornament: nature which is of God seeks none other than God’s likeness.
I was thinking this evening that a likeness is an outwork (preamble). I cannot see a thing unless it has some likeness, some relation to me, neither can I know a thing excepting it is like me. God has all things hidden in himself; not this and that distinct but one in the same nature. The eye is coloured and also receives colour, the ear not. The ear senses tone and the tongue has taste. It is a case of like to like. The form of the soul and God’s image have the same nature: we being sons. If I had neither eyes nor ears still I might have being. Who robs me of my eyes robs me not therefore of my being nor yet of my life, for my life is seated in the heart. A blow aimed at my eye I parry by a lifting of the
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hand. A blow at my heart I should stop with any portion of my body. But if someone attempted to cut off my head I should hit out straight from the shoulder in order to preserve my life and being.
~~ I am fond ‘of saying, You must break the outside to let out the inside : to get at the kernel means breaking the shell. Even so to find nature herself all her likenesses have to be shattered and the further in the nearer the actual thing. On coming to one, where it is all one, she is the same. Who honours God ? He who is ever seeking God’s glory.
Many years ago I was not; not long after that my father and my mother eating bread and meat and the vegetables growing in the garden, I became a man. In this my father and my mother were unable to assist, but God made my body without aid and created my soul after the supreme. Thus I became possessed of life (possedi me). This grain of rye has it in its nature to develop into wheat, and it never rests until it has that nature. This corn seed has it in its nature to be all things and pays the penalty of death in order to be all things. And this metal, copper, has it in its nature to be gold, and it will never rest till it has gotten that same nature. Aye, this wood has in its nature the power of turning into stone; I say more than that : it may indeed become all things if put into the fire and allowed to burn away and be transmuted to the fire-nature ; then same comes to same and. has eternally one being. I trow that wood and stone and bone and all the grasses have collectively one being in the first nature. And if so with this nature then how about the nature which is so intrinsically pure that it seeks not either this or that but transcending all the others is simply making for its primitive ‘perfection ?
I was thinking this evening, there are many heavens. There are some incredulous who will not believe that this bread upon the altar may be changed, that God can do it. (How unworthy, to deny that God is capable of this.) If God has given to nature the power to be all things, how much easier to him must be the changing to his body of this altar bread. If this frail nature from a drop of blood can contrive a man, how much more possible for God to make his body from a bit of bread. Who honours God ? He who is ever seeking God’s glory. This meaning is more obvious albeit the former is the better one. .
The fourth point (is), ‘ they stood afar off and said unto Moses : Moses speak thou to us for we cannot hear God.’ They were standing at a distance, that is the reason they could not hear God.
‘Moses went into the cloud and ascended into the mountain and there he beheld the divine light.’ We see this light best in
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the dark: in suffering and travail this light is nearest to us. Let God do his best or his worst he is bound to give himself to _ us whether in travail or distress. There was once a pious dame with many sons, whom they sought to slay. Smiling she said, ‘Grieve not, be of good cheer and remember your heavenly Father, for from me ye have gotten nothing whatsoever.’ As though to say, Ye have your being straight from God. This applies to us. Our Lord said, ‘ Thy darkness (i.e. thy suffering) shall be turned into bright light.” But I must not love nor covet it. It was said by a master in another place, ‘ The mysterious darkness of the invisible light of the eternal Deity is unknown and never shall be known.’ And the light of the eternal Father has ever been shining in this darkness and the darkness comprehends not the light. May we arrive at this eternal light, So help us God. Amen.
CIII OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THE MOST HIGH
Ex oro altissimi prodivi (Eccl. 24,). These words, which I have quoted in Latin, we may speak in the Person of the eternal Word. He says, ‘I proceeded forth out of the mouth of the Most High.’ This is the exalted source which uttered from the Father’s heart the eternal Word which took on human nature in our Lady’s womb. Not of this carnal birth am I going to tell, for much is told you of it. It is on the eternal birth that I propose to speak, and I will broach the subject by answering two questions.
The first one is, Whether the eternal Word can be called the perfect Word seeing it is still in the throes of birth ?— Yes, for the eternal Word is gotten in the essential light and abides therein, untold to anything outside it, and is withal infallibly uttered by _ the Father. Hence it may well be called the perfect Word.
The second question is, Whether our intelligence can at all conceive the perfect Word? for it is proper to every under- standing that it should understand. Is it not the same as our understanding in itself ?—I say no, because our word is gotten in a fitful light. Our understanding is a changing thing, so it cannot conceive a perfect word. The word you hear from me is not infallible, it is a sign of the Word within me.
Now mark the way of the eternal birth. The Personal under- standing as confined to its unity of nature is one with the under- standing whereby the Father understands himself in his char- acteristic nature. Were this not the case there would be two intelligible essences. But there are not: there is but one intelli- gible essence wherein the Father sees himself in his characteristic
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nature. The object of his thought is the eternal Word. Where this is confined to the natural understanding of the Father it is none other than the Father-nature. Where this same Word is directed to itself there is ever distinction of Person and withal one simple essence divine in nature. Here I will put four questions the better for you to understand the mode of the eternal birth, though, let me say at once, that this is inconceivable to the multi- tudinous mind. However, I will tell you as much as it is possible for your minds to grasp.
The first question is, Why is the Person of the Son @alled born and the Person of the Father not ? The answer is, that it is the personal understanding of the Father wherewith he understands himself in his characteristic nature, but the product of this con- ception is the eternal Word. Hence the eternal Word is said to be begotten and the Person of the Father not.—Question two : Is the work of the eternal birth wrought by his personal power or by his natural power? Some theologians say it is due to the personal power of the Father since it is proper to all begotten things to receive the same nature they are gotten by. Where saw ye the father that imparted not his own nature to his son ? So runs the argument for the eternal birth being due to personal power. This is not my view. Where the personal understanding keeps to its unity of nature there is this nature Person. Now the eternal Word originates in the essential thought wherein the Father understands himself in his characteristic nature. It follows that the work of the eternal birth must be due to his natural power, for if the eternal Word sprang from the personal understanding of the Father then this eternal Word would be th cause of its own self, for this conception is the Word. ;
The third question is, Where does the Father-nature have maternal names? Where it does maternal work. Where personal understanding keeps to its unity of nature and has intercourse therewith, there the Father-nature has maternal names and is doing mother’s work, for it is exclusively a mother’s work to receive the seed of the eternal Word. In essential thought the mother- nature has paternal names and does paternal work.
The fourth question is, Whether this work is essential or does the Father play a casual part therein? Isay,no. If he stopped a single instant he would negate himself. For the eternal Word is the image of the Father as he conceives himself in his character of Person, with the added dignity which the eternal Word receives in its own Person, all the perfection which the Father has and all the omnipotence peculiar to his nature. The heretical doctor Arius observes concerning this: It appears to me to be untrue that the eternal Word receives all the perfection that the Father
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has and all the omnipotence peculiar to his nature, for it cannot do what the Father does: he cannot beget another Son. But as St Augustine says, That he does not beget another Son is not due to impotence, but it behoves him not to. A statement which , some doctors misconstrue, giving to understand that the Son an
he would could beget another Son. Which is erroneous, for in that
case the Person of the Son would be the Person of the Father.
The reason for not doing it is this. Each Person receives the same
nature albeit variously : the Father as fatherhood, the Son as
sonship and the Holy Ghost as the common product of them both.
Here the Persons are an hypostasis of the nature, each Person
receiving the one nature all at once as essence. Where (the
Word) receives its dignity the three shine with one light, they
having this light as their common being. The dignity the eternal - Word receives by birth is that of being equal with the Father, for
it springs from the essential conception of the Father. As con-
fined to this conception it is none other than divine nature; in
its aspect of the Word it is distinct in Person and withal in nature
one impartible essence.
Here arises the question, How can the eternal Word be at once discrete and one simple essence divine in nature? The best answer theologians have to this is that it is due to the imparti- bility and simplicity of that nature. The entire content of divine . nature is one impartible essence which operates by divine nature. May we attain this oneness so far as it is possible to us. So help us God. Amen.
CIV SUFFERING
I say that next to God there is no nobler thing than suffering. Were there anything more noble than suffering the heavenly Father would have given it to his Son Jesus Christ, in exemplary fashion, for all things. We find in Christ, as regards his manhood, nothing so much as suffering. Suffering was with him at his birth, and it never left him while he was here on earth. I say, moreover, that had Christ been a man upon this earth without his deity, yet would he have been noble beyond all human ken by reason of his suffering; for granting that suffering is noble, he who has most suffering is the noblest. But no human suffering was equal to Christ’s passion. And he is the more noble in proportion to it. Again I hold, if anything were nobler than suffering, God would have saved mankind therewith, for we might well accuse him of being unfriendly to his Son if he knew of something superior to suffering. And I say, were not suffering
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always noble, the heavenly Father would have left his Son some few hours on earth that were free from suffering. But we do not find that Christ on earth spent one single hour without suffering. Suffering then must be superior to all else. I ween that our Lady, God’s mother, rather than that she should be deprived of the reward attached to the least instant of her suffering at sight of her child’s martyrdom, would choose to have remained here upon earth and not behold God till the judgment day, provided that would win back this reward. So great the guerdon won in that short hour.
I declare, all the humility and virtue we attribute to our Lady brought her no such great reward or love of God as the least of all the sufferings that God sent her. I say that if our Lady, God’s mother, and suffering stood together in the street and with our Lady all her earned reward for chastity, humility and her other virtues except suffering: to our Lady suffering would appear as lovely as sunshine in a burrow, for in that case she would be out- side God. And again, I say: suppose a man committed a sin beyond all sins, it might involve a suffering wherein by virtuous conduct he could cancel all his sin and win greater merit in God’s eyes than any of his saints. Further, I maintain, no man apart from God has ever been so holy or so good as to deserve the least nobility such as the smallest suffering would give. Given one man’ endowed with the collective humility and virtues of all the people who have lived since God created the first man, he, for all his virtues, would not merit the reward a man wins by a little suffering. I tell you, right suffering is the mother of all virtues, for right suffering so subdues the heart, it cannot rise to pride but perforce is lowly. And suffering makes for chastity; for in right suffering vice is burnt away. And to one who has mastered all the virtues, suffering is the mother of virtue as a whole. Noth- ing makes a man so like God as suffering. For he who has least vices is the most like God. But nothing is like suffering for killing a man’s vices. Ergo, it makes man Godlike. Finally I say, not all the theologists together could describe what profit, what glory lies in suffering. Suffering alone is sufficient prepara- tion for God’s dwelling in man’s heart. God dwells only with the sinless. But suffering exorcises sin. Hence God is always with a man in suffering; as he himself declared by the mouth of the prophet, ‘ Whosoever is sorrowful, I will myself be with him.’
[Peradventure thou wilt say, ‘If it be a fact that suffering is so noble and profits one so much, why are not the Jews and heathens saved? I see and hear a great deal of their sufferings, for as captives they are ever subject to the Christians and that
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causes them much suffering.’ I answer. Baptism is the basis. of the welfare, the salvation, of mankind. In the absence of it, | virtues and good works are not rewarded with eternal grace. And since the Jews are not baptized, they have no guerdon of eternal grace, but are accursed on earth as well as in the other world.]* But thou mayst object, Why is it that all Christians are not saved ; they are all God’s, and there is nobody on earth but is bound to suffer in some fashion? My answer is, There are two kinds of sufferers. Some, when suffering befalls, take it not as if it came from God; they resist it to the utmost, saying in their hearts, What have I done to God that he should visit me with such misfortune ? and are moved to tears. Not that in this thought they are to blame, but in other cases they chide God vehemently, whereas God sends the suffering to rid them of their sins and by not accepting it in the proper spirit they make it useless to them ; and to such as these there is no reward for suffering though they are always having it; they scorn God’s gift and thrust it from them. And they chase away God too, albeit they fain would have him. On the other hand, some people take it as from God, when their suffering comes, and send it back to God. They take © it from God, saying in their hearts: God, I accept this suffering from no one else but thee, for my sins have thoroughly deserved it. And they send their suffering back to God, saying in their hearts, Lord God, I willingly contribute all the suffering thou hast suffered from the hour of thy birth down to the very end; for thou wert a pure and sinless.soul, yet wert in great affliction ; it is more fit that I should be afflicted, I who am a man in sin. Accepting suffering thus, a man will merit the eternal kingdom. God help us to attain it. Amen.
1 This is probably a gloss which has become incorporated in the text.
\
II TRACTATES
RE |. J Ra lah ASS eo) thon
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Iı THE KINGDOM OF GOD
‘Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all things shall be added unto you.’ Since Christ bids us seek the kingdom of God it is our duty to know what this kingdom is. Know then that God’s kingdom is himself and his perfect nature. Secondly, there is God’s kingdom in the soul. He himself says: * The kingdom of God is within you.’
Consider this first kingdom. Theologists say that . God’s kingdom is unity of essence in a trinity of Persons. The question is, where is God happiest ? I answer that God’s happiness is all alike in him according to his unity but according to our under- standing God is far happier in his unity of essence than in his trinity of Persons, as we will prove. According to some theolo- gists there are three kinds of distinctions in the Godhead. First, rational distinctions; secondly, formal distinctions; and thirdly real distinctions, to wit, the mutual relations of the Persons. Others say the Godhead has no more than two kinds of distinc- tions, rational and real.
Take first the distinction of Persons. St John says: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ This beginning or origin is the Father, as St Augustine says. The question is, has the Father a begin- ning? The answer is: yes, his beginning is primary not pro- ceeding, as I will show. Theologists teach that we must distin- guish in the Godhead between essence and being (i.e. nature). - Being in the Godhead is deity itself and is the first thing we apprehend about God. Deity is the whole basis of divine per- fection. The Godhead in itself is motionless unity and balanced stillness and is the source of all emanations. Hence I assume a passive welling-up. We call this first utterance being, for the most intrinsic utterance, the first formal assumption in the Godhead is being : being as essential word. God is being, but being is not God.
Now the origin of the Father is necessarily involved in this assumption of a passive welling-up. In other words, the deity being in itself intelligence, therefore the divine nature steps forth
1 Jostes, No. 82. 267
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into relation of otherness: other but not another, for this distinc- tion is rational not real. Thus the first Person arises in the Godhead passively, not from any active beginning. Hence its beginning is without property (or, Person).
The question is, what is the Person of the Father? I answer that it is being in the Godhead, not according to essence but according to paternity which is the formal notion specifically determining the Father. The Father is the beginning of the God- head. Hence, some theologists assert that if there were neither Son nor Holy Ghost in the Godhead there would still be the Person of the Father. When, therefore, St John says: ‘ In the beginning was the Word,’ we must not understand this beginning to be God’s essence or his nature, for the Father alone is the active origin of the Son.
Mark how the Son is in the Father. Theologists say that the Father looking into himself actually conceives in himself his own impartible exuberant nature. There follows the characteristic of that nature. The same nature which in the Father is active is receptive in the Son, for they participate it according to their properties. 1
Anent this divine birth theologists teach that this word is to be taken in a two-fold sense : essential and personal. The first or essential word every Person possesses visually, but the Father possesses it both visually and really. And this same Word in Person is the Son. The same power which is active in the Father is passive in the Son, the Son receiving his divinity from the Father. We must understand the passivity begotten of passivity, divinity of divinity, as properties of the Persons by which the essence is determined. For saints and doctors teach that the Persons proceed from the essence as origin, the essence being determined by the Persons and the Persons by their properties. As paternity is the formal notion which specifically determines the Person of the Father, so filiation is the formal notion which distinguishes the Person of the Son. These formal notions signify the relationship of the Persons. And this property, this formal relationship of paternity and filiation, is the final attribute of divinity. Paternity and filiation are divine accidents and dependent properties.
Mark how in this birth from the Father the Word remains within as essence and goes forth as Person. Philosophers teach that to every rational concept there succeeds an intelligible word. Now when the Father conceives himself in himself; his own nature is the object of his understanding. The Father observes himself and his nature has another property, that of being observed. Accordingly the Son remains within as essence and goes forth as
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Person. Corresponding with the divided nature of this act the Son is born and proceeds out of the paternal heart. Thus saith the Eternal Wisdom: ‘I proceeded out of the mouth of the Most High,’ to wit, out of the natural conception of the essential word of the divine Father. Not that there are in the Godhead two words really but only logically.
‘ The Word was with God.’ That means, as a Person distinct from the Father, as here demonstrated.
Observe further concerning these two how they bring forth the Holy Ghost. Theologists teach that the Father, pouring himself out as love into the Son, there his love is as it were reflected, the Son pouring himself back into the Father. This mutual outpour- ing of love is the common spiration of the Father and the Son. It might be thought that this spiration is identical in the two Persons but it is not. For according to its formal origin this spirative force is different in Father and Son, the Father being formally something other than the Son. But taking it, this spiration, both formally and really, it is the formal notion and the property which distinguishes the Person of the Holy Ghost. Hence the Holy Ghost proceeds from two formal sources as from one active origin.
Then comes the question whether this property (Person) of the Holy Ghost results from the (divine) nature in the same way as the property of the Son does? The answer is: no, for were that so the Holy Ghost must proceed by an act of nature, like the Son; which is not the case, for then there would be two Sons in the Godhead. But the divine nature is posterior to the property of the Holy Ghost which proceeds by spiration of the free-will. Hence were it possible to separate the nature from the Person of the Holy Ghost in the Godhead, the Holy Ghost would never- theless continue to subsist in itself apart from the nature. With the Son this would not be possible seeing that the Son emanates from the Father as an intelligible word proceeding from the act ‘of the exuberant nature of the Father ; hence he could not exist apart from that nature. And as the nature is posterior to the Person of the Holy Ghost and as the Holy Ghost does not subsist apart from that nature, so on the other hand it is true that the Person of the Son is posterior to the nature. The nature does not exist apart from the Son, for the Son is the image of the Father from whom he emanates naturally ; which the Holy Ghost does not, seeing that it emanates from his free-will. It follows that there is reciprocity only between paternity and filiation ; not the Holy Ghost. Howbeit the reciprocity of the spirative power common to the paternity and filiation is rational not real. Herein, noble soul, seek with understanding the kingdom of God.
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St John says: ‘ And “God was the word,’ signifying unity of nature. Up, noble soul, arise in divine wonder at this exalted fellowship: the three Persons united in one impartible nature ! The prophet says: ‘ The Lord shall reign for ever and beyond.’ God reigns (for ever) in distinction of Persons, but his reign in the beyond is in unity of nature. There God is the kingdom of himself, being super-essential.
Then comes the question: Can the divine essence as essence, apart from those formal distinctions which philosophers call the eternal eternities, be God’s happiness or that of creatures? We answer: No! Essence as essence is the same in God and crea- tures, but God’s happiness and the soul’s also lies in the divine nature. For the divine nature subsists in itself with all its per- fections, to wit, the eternal eternities which are intrinsic in it. Some teach that it is possible for the soul to attain happiness in the knowledge of one of these formal relations regardless of the rest. But that is not true; if it were, each of these formal relations must be established in itself apart from the others and detached from its divine nature, which is impossible ; hence this opinion is false. But the soul’s beatitude consists in compre- hending all together, in one property, these eternal eternities which are the formal expression of the divine nature. For here is no division ; God is the superessential one, his own beatitude and that of all creatures in the actuality of his Godhead. Be sure that in this unity God knows distinctions but as one impartible property.
In this unity God is idle. The Godhead effects neither this nor that ; it is God who effects all things. God in activity is manifold and knows multiplicity. God as one is absolutely free from activity. In this unity God knows nothing save that he superessentially is in his own self.
Hence we understand: ‘God was the word’ to refer to the unity of the essence. ‘ The same was in the beginning with God,’ his equal in wisdom, in truth, in goodness and in all the essential perfections, to wit, the eternal eternities, the formal modes, the fullness of the divine essence. This superessential unity is what is meant by the divine kingdom which the spirit seeks with know- ledge and with love.
Secondly, by this kingdom of God we understand the soul, for the soul is of like nature with the Godhead. Hence all that has been said here about the kingdom of God, how God is himself the kingdom, may be said with equal truth about the soul.
St John says: ‘ All things were made by him.’ This refers to the soul, for the soul is all things. The soul is all things in that she is an image of God and as such she is also the kingdom of
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God; as God is essentially in himself without beginning so in the kingdom of the soul he is, as essence, without end. ‘ God,’ says one philosopher, ‘is in the soul in such a fashion that his whole Godhead hangs upon her.’ It is far better for God to be in the soul than for the soul to be in God. The soul is not happy because she is in God, she is happy because God is in her. Rely upon it, God: himself is happy in the soul, for God, when he broke out and wrought the soul, so far maintained his ground in her.as to conceal in her his divine treasure, his heavenly kingdom. Hence Christ says: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hid in a field.’ . This field is the soul, wherein lies hidden the treasure of the divine kingdom. Accordingly God and all creatures are happy in the soul. What we say of the soul applies to her as being an image of God. Let us see therefore wherein this image lies. One theologist says it lies in her powers, and this is commonly held to be true. And it is true when rightly understood. If it is taken to mean that her powers are diverse there is no ultimate truth in it, but if the powers are understood to be one at the summit of her activity then it is true. In this divine activity the soul looks back immedi- ately, intellectually, in the divine nature. In this divine act she conceives her own nature superessentially in God. In this act all is divine to the highest image, which in its proper activity it is very God and happy—formally, not objectively. For gazing into itself it simultaneously conceives God in himself, without means. Hence it is happy in him formally, and objectively owing to the divine nature. One doctor says that this supernal light flows immediately out of God and at the same instant by an act of intellection is gotten without means into God. Hence its going out of and persistence in God are one intellectual conception, the impartible nature of the same intelligent act. In God, be sure, the soul in its highest prototype has never known creature as creature nor has she ever therein possessed either time or space. For in this image everything is God: sour and sweet, good and bad, small and great, all are one in thisimage. This image is no more changed by anything in time than the divine nature is changed by anything that is creature ; for it apprehends and uses all things according to the law of godhood. cat
Now it may be asked : If this kingdom is in us why is it unknown to us? To which I answer that, owing to the soul’s natural disposition towards creatures, all her acts are bound to originate in creaturely images; hence these acts are thought by some to be the seat of this image in the soul, though this is not the case. These persons little know the nobility of the soul, whose activity in her ordinary understanding originates in an intelligible image
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in highest thought (or, memory), begotten there as to form by phantasmal images and as to essence by the supernal, God-behold- ing image whence the soul receives power to understand all truth. In the train of this understanding comes the ordinary will, which is nothing but the bias of the mind. Now since the ordinary understanding takes things for true and the will takes them for good, things are the object of both these activities which are alien and remote from God. For God is neither good nor true. And as God is detached and free from all that creatures can understand,, so also is the highest image of the Godhead.
It is a question whether there is mutual regard between God and creatures ? I answer that, God has no regard to creatures, for God has no regard except towards himself ; but creatures have regard to God, for everything that ever issued from him is ever gazing back towards him. Apply this to the highest image. The instant it glanced out from God this highest image looked back again, with countenance unveiled conceiving the divine nature without means. From this act is gotten its whole existence. In this act this prototype is God and is called the image of God ; in its breaking forth it is a creature and is called the image of the soul.
Consider then thyself, O noble soul, and the nobility within thee, for thou are honoured above all creatures in that thou art an image of God ; and despise what is mean for thou art destined to greatness !
That is what is meant by the soul being the kingdom of God.
‘Seek first the kingdom of God.’ It should be our only care, our only quest, to know the nobility of God and the nobility of the soul. Let us see then how to seek the kingdom of God.
In the Book of Love it is written : ‘ Knowest thou not thyself, O fairest among women ? Then go forth and follow after the footsteps of thy flocks!’ These words refer to the soul; she is the fairest of all creatures and she shall go forth in perceiving her own beauty. Now observe in the soul three sorts of going-forth out of three sorts of nature which she has. The first is her crea- turely nature. The second is the nature she has in the personal Word of the Trinity. The third is that which belongs to her in ‘the exuberant nature functioning in the Father, the beginning of all creatures.
Taking this first exodus, note how she has got to go out of her creaturely nature. Christ says: ‘If any man ‘will come after me let him deny himself and follow me.’ As surely as God lives, no man will ever go forth into the negation of himself until he is as free from his own self as he was when he was not. Doctors declare that man is to be known in two ways: as outward man and
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as inward man. The outward whose works are bodily and the inward whose works are ghostly: By the inner man God is sought in the contemplative life, by the outer man God is sought in the active life. Now mark my words. I say again what I have said before: outward disciplines are of little worth; they are useful only in subduing natures that are still uncontrolled. Know that the discipline ‘of outward acts, though it subdue nature, cannot kill it. Nature dies by ghostly acts. There are many to be found who, with the best intentions, cling on to themselves, not denying themselves. Verily I say, these persons are mistaken, for it is contrary to human reason, contrary to the habit of grace and against the nature of the Holy Ghost. As for those who see their salvation in outward practices, I do not say they will be lost, but they will get to God only through hot cleansing fires ; for they follow not God who quit not themselves ; keeping hold of them- selves they follow their own darkness. .God is no more to be found in any bodily exercise than in sin. Nevertheless those ‚who make much practice of outward disciplines are greatly regarded by the eyes of the world ; which follows by analogy, for those who understand only that which is bodily esteem highly the life they can grasp with the senses. None but a fool would prize any other!
Secondly, the work of the inner man is vision in knowing and loving. In this work lies the beginning of the holy life. These two activities define the nature of the soul. Doctors declare that every nature exists for the sake of its proper activity. Now since this nature (the soul) can be apprehended only in these two ‚activities, therefore they are the noblest activities in man. I have said before that virtue is a mean between vice and perfection ; now love is the form of virtue without which no virtue is virtue. Whensoever a person practises a virtue the works of the virtue are ~ works of love, not of the person; each work of virtue having power in love to bring the person to God. St Dionysius says, it is the nature of love to change a man into that which he loves. Wherefore we ought so to live that our whole life is love. In this disposition all practices are praiseworthy, outward or inward. David says: ‘ They shall go from virtue to virtue, then shall the
God of Gods be seen in Sion.’ The vision of God transcends "virtues. Virtue, as I said, is a mean between vice and perfection and the fruit of virtue—the end and object of virtue, that is to say—will never be obtained until the soul is caught up above the virtues. Be sure that as long as a man holds fast himself as thrall to virtue he will never taste the fruit of virtue, which is nothing else than seeing the God of Gods in Sion. God is not seen in Jacob, the practice of virtue, but God is seen in Sion. Sion
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is as it were a polished mirror and stands for unveiled vision with the single eye of the divine nature. Rely upon it, virtue has never seen this sight.
Now it may be asked, are we to abandon virtue altogether ? To which I answer : no, we are to practise virtue, not possess it. The perfection of virtue is freedom from virtues. Thus Christ says: ‘ When ye have done all that is possible to you, say: we are unprofitable servants.’
That is what is meant by the soul dying to her own works. The question we must now consider is how she loses her own nature. Doctors declare that everything made by God is ordered in such an excellent way that nothing can wish it did not exist. Yet the soul is to relinquish her existence. This means the death of the spirit. And in order to accomplish this death the soul must let go of herself and all things, retaining of herself and things no more than when she was not. Christ says: ‘ Except a corn of wheat die it abideth alone.’ To die is to be wholly deprived of life, so that while a man lives, as long as there is life in him, be sure that he knows nothing of this death. St Paul says:
“I no longer live.’ Some people interpret this death to mean that one must live neither in God nor in oneself nor yet in any creature. And so it does, for death is the loss of all life. But I say more: a man may be dead to everything, to God and crea- tures, yet if God still finds in his soul a place that he can live in, then the soul is not yet dead and gone out into that which follows created existence. For to die is, properly speaking, to lose everything. Ido not say the soul is brought so utterly to naught as it was before it was created ; this naughting applies to holding and possessing. In this respect the soul suffers total loss—God as well as creatures.
It sounds strange to say the soul must lose her God, yet I affirm that in a way it is more necessary to perfection that the soul lose God than that she lose creatures. Everything must go. The soul must subsist in absolute nothingness. It is the full intention of God that the soul shall lose her God, for as long as the. soul possesses God, is aware of God, knows God, she is aloof from God. God desires to annihilate himself in the soul in order that the soul may lose herself. For that God is God he gets from creatures. When the soul became a creature she obtained a God. When she lets slip her creaturehood, God remains to himself that he is, and the soul honours God most in being quit of God and leaving him to himself. _
This is the lowest death of the’ soul on her way to divinity. Such souls are hardly to be recognised for, as St Paul says: ‘ Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ If it be ques-
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tioned whether the unique virtue of these souls finds no outward expression, IT answer: Yes, just as Christ, the pattern of perfection, was unindigent and a shining light to all mankind, so these men are turned towards humanity by reason of their in wisdom and godlike frame of mind.
So much for the first exodus in which the soul goes out of her creaturely nature seeking the kingdom of God.
Secondly, she must go out of the nature she has in her eternal pretotype. Theologists teach that the prototype of the soul is the divine understanding. The divine understanding is the Person of the Son. Hence the Son is the exemplar of all creatures and the. image of the Father in which image broods the nature of all creatures. Now when the soul strips off her created nature there flashes out its uncreated prototype wherein the soul discovers herself in uncreatedness, for things are all one in this prototype according to the property of the (eternal) image.
And now the soul fares forth out of this same prototype wherein she discovers her nature according to the uncreatedness of the image and this she does in the divine death. The soul is conscious that what she seeks is neither her exemplar nor its nature, wherein she perceives herself to be in multiplicity and separation. For this final attribute of divinity is multiplicity. And since the eternal nature wherein the soul now finds herself in her exemplar is characterised by multiplicity—the Persons being in separation— therefore the soul breaks through her eternal exemplar to get to where God is a kingdom in unity. One philosopher declares that the soul’s breaking-through is more noble than her emanation. Now Christ says: ‘No man cometh to the Father but through me.’ Christ is the eternal exemplar. Though the soul’s abiding- place is not in him yet she must, as he says, go through him. This breaking-through is the second death of the soul and is far more momentous than the first. Of it St John says: ‘ Blessed . are the dead that die in the Lord,’ that is, in God.
O surpassing wonder! How can there be death in him who says of himself that he is the life? To which we answer: In the birth of the Son all creatures went forth receiving life and being, hence all things are lively imaged in the Son. Now when the soul returns again within she loses the Son. Theologists declare that when the Son returns to unity of nature he is neither Person nor its property : the Son is lost in the unity ofthe essence. Likewise I say concerning the soul: when the soul breaks through and loses herself in her eternal prototype that is the death the soul dies in God. St Dionysius says: ‘ When God exists not for the soul there exists not for her either the eternal prototype, her source.’ Equality belongs to the soul in her exemplar, for the Son is equal
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with the Father. But in that they are one in nature they are not equal, for equality resides in separation. Accordingly I say con- cerning the soul: if she is to enter the divine unity she must lose the equality she has in her eternal exemplar. Dionysius declares that the soul’s supreme delight is the nothingness of her prototype. And a heathen philosopher says: ‘ God’s naught fills everywhere and his aught is nowhere.’ God’s aught, then, is not discovered by the soul till she has come to naught as regards finding or being able to find herself, created or uncreated as we have shown her eternal prototype to be.
This is the second death and second exodus, the soul going forth out of the nature which is hers in her eternal prototype to seek the kingdom of God. ‘ He who desires to come to God,’ says one philosopher, ‘ let him come with naught.’
The third nature out of which the soul goes is the exuberant divine nature energising in the Father. According to some theologists the Father always perceived within himself tokens of emanation before he brought forth the Word. They all agree that God the Father conceived his own nature in originating the eternal Word and all creatures. Doctors distinguish between nature and essence. Essence, in as far as it is active in the Father, is nature. The distinction is therefore a logical one. From God in activity all creatures look forth potentially. But this is not the summit of divine union so it is not the soul’s abiding place.
It must be clearly understood that the soul has got to die to all the activity connoted by the divine nature if she is to enter the divine essence where God is altogether idle ; this highest prototype of soul beholds without means the essence of the Godhead abso- lutely free from activity. This supernal image is the paradigm whereto the soul is brought by her dying.
Now mark! The Godhead, self-poised, is self-sufficient. God as Godhead transcends all that creature as creature ever compre- hended or can ever comprehend. As St Paul says: ‘ God dwells in light inaccessible.’ Now when the soul has gone out of her created nature and out of her uncreated nature wherein she dis- covers herself in her eternal prototype and, entering into the divine nature, still fails to grasp the kingdom of God, then, recognising that thereinto no creature can ever get, she forfeits her very self and going her own way seeks God no more; thus she dies her highest death. In this death the soul loses every desire and image. and all understanding and form and is bereft of any nature. And as God lives it is true that the soul, being spiritually dead, can no more manifest to any man any mode or image than the dead can stir being bodily dead. This spirit is dead and buried in the Godhead and the Godhead lives for none other than itself. _
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Ah, noble soul, prove thy nobility! But while it is the case with thee that thou lettest not go thine own self altogether to drown in the bottomless sea of the Godhead, verily thou canst not know this divine death. The wise man says: ‘ The Lord possessed me in the beginning in his own way.’ God possesses all things in his Godhead’s way, not in the soul’s way, for God never received creature nor can creature ever get to him, as creature.
Now when the soul has lost herself in every way, as here set forth, she finds herself to be the very thing she vainly sought. Herself the soul finds in the supernal image wherein God really is in all his Godhead, where he is the kingdom in himself. There the soul recognises her own beauty. Thence she must go out to get into her very self and realise that she and God are one felicity: the kingdom which, without, seeking, she has found. As saith the prophet : ‘I poured out my soul into myself.’ That is the meaning of: ‘ Knowest thou not thyself thou fairest among women ? Then go forth.’ The soul has to go forth, as we have seen, in order to enter into herself, where she finds, without seeking, the kingdom of God. St Paul says: ‘I reckon as worth- less temporal suffering in comparison with the future glory which shall be revealed to us.’
Look you. I said of old, and say again, that I have now all that I shall possess eternally, for God in his felicity and in the fullness of his Godhead is enjoyed by my supernal prototype though this is hidden from the soul. As the prophet says: ‘ Indeed Lord, thou art a hidden God!’ This treasure of God’s kingdom is hidden by time and multiplicity by the soul’s own activity and by her creaturehood. The more the soul departs from all this multiplicity the more God’s kingdom is revealed in her. But the soul is not able for this without the help of grace. An she find it, it is grace that has aided her thereto, for grace is innate in her highest prototype. There the soul is God, using and enjoying all things God-fashion. There the soul no more receives either from God or creatures, for she is what she contains and takes all things from her own. Soul and Godhead are one: there the soul finds that she is the kingdom of God.
It may be asked what discipline best enables the soul to reach this end? I answer: This, that the soul remain in death, not shrinking from death. St Paul says: ‘Christ was obedient to the Father even unto the death of the cross. Therefore he hath exalted him and hath given him a name above every name.’ And I say about the soul: if she remain obedient to God in death he will exalt her likewise and will give her a new name above every name. For as the Godhead is apart from name and nameless
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so also the soul, like God, is nameless, for she is the very same as he is. Christ said: ‘ Henceforth I call you not servants but friends, for all that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.’ ‘A friend,’ says a heathen, ‘is a second self.” God became my second self that I might become his second self. And St Augustine declares: “God became man that man might become God.’ In God the soul receives a new life. In him she arises out of death into the life of the Godhead ; here God pours into her his divine fullness, here she receives a new name which is above every name. For as St John says, ‘we have passed from death unto life because we love.’
Such is the interpretation of Christ’s words: ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.’
Now let us see how ‘all things shall be added unto us.” We can take this in two ways: first, as meaning that whatever of perfection there is in things we shall find in that first kingdom. Secondly, that we must hold fast to perfection in all we do: a man’s works should be wrought according to the law of God’s kingdom. If any man acts in such a way that his deeds are able to demean him, be sure he is not acting according to the law of God’s kingdom. When works are wrought according to humanity weeds and discord soon fall among them, but he whose work is wrought in the kingdom of heaven remains tranquil in every undertaking. ‘ And God saw all that he had made and behold it was very good,’ say the scriptures. And I say -concerning the soul, that all her acts are perfect as-seen in the kingdom of heaven, for there all works are equal, my least is my greatest, and my greatest least. Humanly speaking they are imperfect, for works in themselves are manifold and lead to multiplicity, wherefore in respect of such one is nigh on the brink of discord. Hence Christ’s words: ‘Martha, Martha, thou troublest thyself about many things ; one thing is needful.’
Of this be sure: to win perfection our activity must be of a nature so exalted that all our works are wrought as one act; . and this must take place in the kingdom of heaven where man is God. There all things make divine response, there man is lord of all his works. Verily I say unto you: works wrought out of the kingdom of God are dead works but works wrought in the kingdom of God are living works. The prophet says: ‘God as "little loves his works as he is disturbed and changed by them.’ And so with the soul when she works in accordance with the law of God’s kingdom. People of this sort are always the same whether they work or whether they work not, for works give nothing to them and take nothing from them.
That is the meaning of: ‘ All things shall be added unto you.’
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This is addressed to none but those who already know it as a live reality or who at least possess it as their heart’s desire, May it be revealed to us, So help us God! Amen.
II! THE NOBILITY OF THE SOUL
Whosoever would attain to the summit of his noble nature and to the vision of the sovran good, which is God himself, must have profoundest knowledge of himself and of things above himself. Thus he reaches the supreme. Beloved, learn to know thyself, it shall profit thee more than any craft of creatures. How to know thyself, of this now learn two ways.
First, see that thy outward senses are properly controlled. Reflect, as regards these outward senses, that to the eye evil presents itself nö less than good. The ear is importuned by one as well as the other and so with the other senses. Wherefore it behoves thee strictly to confine thyself and with all diligence to those things which are good. So much for the outward senses.
Now turn to the inward senses or noble powers of the soul, lower and higher. Take the lower powers first. These are intermediate between the higher powers and the outward senses. They are excited by the outward senses : what the eye sees, what the ear hears, they offer forthwith to desire. This offers it again, in the ordinary course, to the second power, called judgment, which considers it and once more passes it on to the third power, reckoning or reason. In this way it is clarified before it arrives at the higher faculties. So exalted is the power of the soul that she can seize it minus form or image and carry it in this state up into her higher powers. Here it is stored in the memory, mastered in the intellect and consummated in the will. These are the superior powers of the soul and they are one in nature. What the soul does is done by this simple nature in her powers.
Now it may be asked, What is this nature of the soul ?—It is the consciousness (the spark or synteresis) in the soul, that is the impar- tible nature of the soul. So subtile is this nature of the soul that space might not exist at all for all it troubles her. For instance, if one has a friend a thousand leagues away, thither flows the soul with - the best part of her powers, loving her friend there. St Augustine testifies to this. He says, ‘ The soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving life.’ The simple nature of the soul is in no way hampered by place. So much for the nature of the soul.
Next consider her higher, powers, so orderly appointed, so
1 See also Greith, p. 114, etc. ; and Spamer, Texte, B. 2.
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admirably adapted to their several functions albeit of one nature. Memory is the power of storing up what the other powers bring | in, that is its function—The second power is understanding. This is so exalted that in its understanding of the highest good, God namely, all the other powers must subserve it to the best of their ability.—The third faculty is will. It is lordly enough to bid what it will and forbid what it will not; from things it does not will it is altogether free. So much for the superior powers of the soul and the röle assigned to each.
Doctors dispute as to whether understanding is the nobler or the will. The position is this. Understanding sees things beyond this mundane level, that is its prerogative. .But to will alone are all things possible. As St Paul declares, “I can do all things in God who strengtheneth me.’ When understanding comes to the end of its tether, up soars the will transcendent in the light and power of faith. Here will surpasses understanding. This is the prerogative of will. But mind you, though the will is free to do and leave undone exactly as it will, this upward flight is not achieved by its own power alone : help comes from the other powers and from faith_as well. What help we shall now see. The powers have in common their impartible nature, and to this is due the transcension of the will. The other powers are the cause of this transcension in virtue of identity of nature. That is one help.
Then comes the question, which is the power in the psychic trinity wherein faith first appears ?—The middle one: it springs from understanding but it is fortified in will and will is fortified by faith. Thus the light of faith contributes to this ascent of will. That is the second help, And of still another it remains to tell. Intellect projects itself to hear and understand. It analyses, orders, synthesises. But even when working to per- fection, always there is something on beyond which it cannot penetrate and which it recognises as belonging to a higher order. This it communicates to will, in their common nature, not in its individual capacity. This communication gives will an upward swing which displaces it into that higher order—always in their common nature. Here understanding is superior to will. But to will as individual a certain superiority belongs at the summit
of its nature where it receives from the highest good, from very God.—What does it receive ?—It receives grace and in grace the highest good itself. What soul receives she receives willingly or not at all. Not that will as such receives this light: to receive is not its part; but by the grace of the sovran good the other powers are strengthened in their common nature. This light is kindled in that second power, in the Holy Ghost. It is in this
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light that all works are wrought in the soul. As Isaias says, “All our works are wrought by God.’ This light is gracious light, and any light outside this light is the light of nature. It is a sure sign of this light when of his own free will a person turns from mortal things to the highest good, God namely. We are in duty bound to love him for conferring on the soul such great perfection. When she has reached her limit of endeavour then will as such is free to leap over to that gnosis which is God himself. A somersault which lands the soul at the summit of her power. A marvel, truly, God has made from naught in the image of himself !
See now how the soul rises to sovran rank and to the zenith of her power. One master says, God is conveyed into the soul and there implanted. Whence there arises in the soul a divine love-spring which bears the soul back into God. Mark how. According to one holy man, ‘ Whatever we can say of God, that God is not.’ According to another, ‘ Whatever we can say of God, God is.’ And an eminent authority declares that both are right. With these three holy men even so I say, that when with her own understanding the soul receives divine understanding it is offered forthwith to her will. Will accepting it grows one with what it has accepted and finally takes it and puts it’ away in the memory. Thus God is conveyed and implanted in the soul. Then as to the divine love-spring. This overflowing in the soul causes her higher powers to flood the lower ones and the lower ones flood the outward man who, borne above all nether things, is incapable save of what is spiritual. As the spirit works by divine energy even so the outward man is driven by the spirit.
Oh wonder of wonders! When I think of the union of the soul with God! He makes the soul to flow out of herself in joyful ecstasy, for no named things content her. And since she is herself a nature named therefore she fails to content herself. The divine love-spring surges over the soul sweeping her out of * herself into the unnamed being in her original source, for that is all God is. Creatures have given him names, but in himself he is nameless essence. Thus the soul arrives at the height of her perfection.
Further as concerns the noble nature of the soul. St Augustine says, ‘As with God so with the soul.’ Had God not made the soul in the likeness of himself, to be God by grace, she could never be God above grace. Her likeness to the pattern of the blessed Trinity we see by comparing her with God.
God is threefold in Person and onefold in his nature. God is in all places and in each place whole. In other words, all places are the place of God. And the same with her. God has prevision
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of all things and everything is pietured in his providence. This is natural to God. And also to the soul. She too is threefold in her powers and simple in her nature. She too exists in all her members and in each member whole. So that all her members are the place of the soul. She too has foresight and imagines such things as she is able. To anything that we can predicate of God, soul has a certain likeness. Or, in the words of St Augustine, ‘ Like God like the soul.’ God has endowed the soul with his own likeness which did she not possess she could not be God by grace nor above grace either ; whereas in this likeness she is able to attain to being God by grace and also above grace. And she must equal him in divine love and divine activity. So much for the soul as being God by grace.
The soul who abides in this perfect likeness and in this noble nature God has given her, and at the same time rises to higher rank and higher, to her, what time she leaves the body, and at that very point, eternal life is open and in the opening she is encompassed with divine light, and enveloped in this divine light she is absorbed and transformed into God. Now each of the powers of the soul is endowed with the likeness of a divine Person : will receives the likeness of the Holy Ghost; understanding receives the likeness of the Son; memory the likeness of the Father and (her nature the likeness of the) divine nature withal remaining undivided.—That is as far as I can understand it.
In the third place let us see how the soul becomes God above grace. What God has given her is changeless for she has reached a height where she has no further need of grace. In this exalted state she has lost her proper self and is flowing full-flood into the unity of the divine nature. But what, you may ask, is the fate of this lost soul: does she find herself or not? My answer is, it seems to me that she does find herself and that at the point where every intelligence sees itself with itself. For though she sink all sinking in the oneness of divinity she never touches bottom. Wherefore God has left her one little point from which to get back to herself and find herself and know herself as creature. For it is of the very essence of the soul that she is powerless to plumb the depths of her creator. Henceforth I shall not speak about the soul, for she has lost her name yonder in the oneness of divine essence. There she is no more called soul: she is called infinite being.
Now I go on to speak about abstract knowledge of God. And. I address myself to you, my brethren and my sisters, beloved Friends of God who are familiar with him and know something of the matter. I will start with the nomenclature of the holy Trinity. And here you will be called upon to follow an abstruse,
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technical discussion. When we speak of the Father or the Son or the Holy Ghost we are speaking of the Persons. When we speak of the Godhead we are speaking of their nature. The three Persons, as Person and essence, flow with their essence into the essence wherein they are Godhead. Not that the Godhead is other than what they are themselves: they are the Godhead in their unity of nature. They flow in essence into the essence, both Person and essence, because essence is comprehended by nothing but itself. It is fast locked in stillness, comprehending itself with itself. This influx is, in the Godhead, the oneness of the three inseparate Persons. In this same flux the Father flows into the Son and the Son again into the Father (as our Lord Jesus Christ declares, ‘ He that seeth me seeth my Father. My Father is in me and I in him ’), and they both flow into the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost back to them again. (As our Lord Jesus Christ says, ‘ I and my Father are one Spirit.) The Father utters his Son and in his Son tells forth himself to creatures as a whole, all in this flow. And the Father returning to himself speaks himself to himself : ‘ The fountain flows into itself,’ as St Dionysius says. This proceeding in the Godhead is a speaking without words and without sound; a hearing without ears; a seeing without eyes. Inthis proceeding each Person wordlessly utters himself in the others. It is a flow where nothing flows. Compare with this the noble soul, which provides a striking likeness of this flow; for where her higher powers and her simple nature have the same property (hyparxis) they are flowing into each other, speaking themselves without word and without sound. Happy the soul who thus attains to the vision of eternal light !
But it may be questioned, what about their power ? Is their power that of Person or of essence ?—I answer that, the three are one God, no one is before or after the other: all three Persons are one first in the unity of their essential nature. Hence we speak of the activity of the blessed Trinity not of their essence. This is silence. Now speech, remember, beats into silence. In this sense the Persons are the hypostasis of essence.—But why call it a beat ?—Because it is neither a coming nor a going. In this impulse the Trinity has equal power to act and has wrought its work entirely unmoved and undisturbed.
Examine, again, the statement, ‘ the Persons are the hypostasis.’ This reveals two things. From the word are we gather that each Person is distinct in the Personality. But saying ‘ the hypostasis ’ argues the three Persons and one nature to possess one property. The Persons are the hypostasis of the essence since their unity and personality have like power to act. This power the holy Trinity possesses in the unity of its natural essence. There you
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have the argument in full for the blessed Trinity having power in the unity of its divine nature. ‘
Two things we attribute to God, essence and nature.—‘ I should much like to know the difference.-—Essence attracts and nature is common to the Persons: they are one.—‘ For God’s sake, Sir, explain.’—Then follow with enlightenment, with mind attuned to the highest pitch. You see, God, whatever he is, has essence and essence is absolute stillness; it is immoveable. It speaks not, loves not, gets not; but it moves moveable things like creatures. Immoveability and motion do not represent (the divine nature) and the divine Persons: Persons and nature have one property. (Immoveability) distinguishes the essence. But what the divine nature is, of that no single drop did ever fall within the ken of any creature. According to one philosopher, ‘ God’s nature is God’s beauty.’ And to this I add that in this same beauty there is play of light and its reflection, each Person radiant to the rest as to itself. This illumination is the perfection of beauty.— ‘Good. I am quite satisfied with that. But now I want to ask about the eternal Word of the Father : is it to be taken as abiding within in his essence ? —No.— Is it to be taken in his Person ? ’— No.—* Then is it to be taken as being in the abstract nature of the Father ? ’—St Augustine, speaking as it were in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, gives for it five analogies: ‘I am come as a word from the heart that is spoken therefrom; I am come as the light from the sun; I am come as the heat from the fire; I am come like the fragrance of a flower; I am come like the stream from its perennial spring.’ Even so is the eternal Word uttered in the Person of the Son while remaining God by nature in his nature. That is the answer. -
—‘ Now another question. Theologians say God is in every- thing. Is God in everything in his nature ? ’—No.— Is God in everything in Person ? ’—No.—‘ Then how is he in everything ?’ —As preserving their unity of nature, Persons and nature have but one property and this property is the divine essence as a whole. As such God is in all places and in each place. God is all at once. For since God is impartible, all things and all places are the place of God. So everything is full of God, of his divine essence, continually. .
Three things are to be noted about the divine essence. First and foremost, it is the principle preserving all things; in his divine essence God is in all things upholding them. But he is in the soul innately. Witness our Lord Jesus Christ : he was God and man. He has given us his sacred body: whoso receives it worthily receives at once the Person of the Son and divine nature; he receives human nature joined with divine nature. For he is
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really present where he is worthily received. This accounts for God’s loving himself in the soul.
It may be asked, how does God love himself ?—God is in all things, for he is with himself. God is with himself for love of himself. Hence God loves himself with himself in all things.— Secondly, God is one alone; hence it is from itself not from another. Were it from another it would reveal the thing from whence it came. Not so: it is by itself in stillness so profound it cannot of itself reveal anything at all. And here it may be noted that although God is potent for good yet it may be main- tained that his greatest power is his impotence. The argument runs thus. The impartible essence of divine nature is unity. Now unity cannot reveal itself to itself. That is its impotence and this impotence is the unity itself: the unity which is God’s chief potentiality. Whence also the deduction that the three Persons have like power in their natural essence. And since this cannot manifest itself therefore the three Persons have manifested it and to none more than to themselves, for it is their own essential nature.—Thirdly, it unifies and embraces all things in itself and in this embrace the Father loses his name although he preserves his paternity of Person. That is one Person. And the same with the other Persons. In this embrace all is dissolved in all for all encloses all. But in itself it is self-disclosed.
Here arises the question how the first embraces all? The answer is this. Things flowed forth finite into time while abiding infinite in eternity. There they are God in God. Take an illus- tration. Suppose some master of the arts. If he produce a work of art he none the less preserves his arts within himself: the arts are the artist in the artist. Even so the first contains the idea of all things, which is God in God.
Then there is the question of how all things return into their first source? The answer is this. Creatures all change their names in human nature and become ennobled ; in human nature they lose their own particular nature and find their way back into their cause. There are two ways of doing this. First, it is feasible for human nature to scale the heights by ghostly toil, for in spiritual travail the soul ascends to whence it came. That is one way. But there is another. The meat and drink a man consumes turns into flesh and blood. Now it is the Christian faith that this actual body will rise at the last day. Then things shall all arise, not as themselves but in him who has changed them into himself. He, spiritualised and turned to spirit, shall flow in spirit back to his first cause. From this it may be argued that every single creature has, in human nature, a stake in the eternal. Furthermore it argues the faithfulness and kindness and perfect
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love of God who refuses to shut out any belonging of his faithful servant: he takes him all together to himself. All embraces all, for all is one and one is all in all.
Then there is the question how the Person of the Son was sent into Mary’s virgin body and took on human nature without his ever quitting the shelter of his Father’s bosom ? The answer is as follows : The bosom of the Father is the throne of God. The Father has given birth to his Son, is now giving him birth and shall go on giving him birth without stopping. This birth has been taking place in him for ever. At the very instant when the Son was donning human nature the Father was bringing him to birth. That is one explanation. Or take it in another way: the Son is the understanding of the Father and the architect of all things in his Father. Had this architect not wrought in his Father without ceasing the Father had not wrought at that particular point. So God’s Son while taking on man’s nature in Mary’s body was the architect of all things in his Father. That is another explanation. Or take it, thirdly, in yet another sense. The Son has no less of the essence than the Father or the Holy Ghost, with whom he possesses it in common. And in the com- munity of their essential nature the Son himself is the encloser. Unity is the close, the Persons what the one encloses. Each Person in the utterance keeps his individual nature. But within this close the three Persons have one nature. The Son has his nature in common with the Father and with the Holy Ghost so that as therein contained he has with them one common property. It follows that the Son has never for one instant left the Father. And herewith I conclude this threefold argument. It demon- strates conclusively that God has never waxed or waned in divine glory.—So much of theology and of the noble lineage of the soul.
Now we will speak about the union of the soul with God. There - are those who say, nothing unites the soul so much as knowledge. Others again aver the same of love. And yet a third school teaches that nothing unites like use (i.e. actual enjoyment). Now I put one question regarding these three things. What is the property of each? Each is its own peculiar property. But at the summit of its property (its nature) each of them approaches so closely to the rest that they are virtually the same: threefold yet one in nature. This, to be sure, is not strictly true, but in the higher reaches of their nature, where they are verging on each other, knowledge enhances love and love enjoyment. Each one, however, does its own appropriate work. Knowledge raises the soul to the rank of God; love unites the soul with God; use perfects the soul to God. These three transport the soul right out of time into eternity. There the spirit in perfect freedom
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enjoys in its origin the height of bliss. Love and the sweetness of its uses have lured forth the soul to its naked spark. What is her fortune there? All I can say is this: the glance, out of the spirit, which pierces without stop into naked Godhead; the flow, out of the Godhead, into the naked spirit, these are but one form which conforms and unites the spirit to’God in form and oneness so that it receives as like from like. How spirit fares in this exalted state I know not, nor can I tell at all more than to say that the spirit is then at the summit of its power and its welfare is supreme. .
Peradventure you will say, ‘ It is all very well to talk, my friend, but how do I arrive at this exalted state you have described ? ’— See. God is what he is and what he is is mine and what is mine I love and what I love loves me and absorbs me and what absorbs me that I am rather than my own self. By loving God therefore ye may become God with God. But I will not pursue this subject further.
Now I want to say a little about the virtuous life so that you may have some guide to its attainment. Whosoever would attain to God must make him some return for all his godly works. He who would atone to God must needs possess one virtue : righteous- ness (or justice). This is the epitome of all the virtues. He must be bare and free within and without. What is the freedom of a godly man? Being absolutely nothing to and wanting abso- lutely nothing for himself but only the glory of God in all his works. Mark two degrees of freedom in the willing poor. First they abandon friends and worldly goods and honours and descend into the valley of humility. There the willing poor find outward freedom and dwell unsolaced by perishable things. Follow the scorn and bitterness of the world. Courage, my children, establish yourselves in the valley into which ye have gone down. If the sons of the world revile you waver not; stand fast in Christ remembering and acting on his words, ‘ The servant is not greater than his lord; if the world hate you, know, it hated me before it hated you!’ Accept it all from God with hearty thanks and’ deem yourselves all unworthy of it; then, only then, have ye renounced yourselves.
Then again there is ghostly freedom. He is in this sense free who finds within himself no sort of sin or imperfection. More free is he who cleaves to nothing that has name nor it to him. Still freer is the man who works not for reward from God but solely for God’s glory. And most free of all, one who forgets himself and flows with all he is into the bottomless abyss of his first cause. This is the case of those willing poor who have descended into Humble Valley. They verily obey the precept of
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our Lord, ‘ If any man will come after me let him take up his cross and follow me.’ From such as have denied themselves to follow after God in genuine poverty how can God refrain? he must — pour out his grace into those souls who thus in love have undone themselves. He pours his grace into them filling them full and in his favours he bestows himself. With his own self does God adorn the soul like gold adorned with a precious stone. There- after he leads on the soul to the beholding of his Godhead. In eternity this happens, notintime. Although in time she has a fore- taste of it in what is here described of the virtuous life. This I have told so ye may know that none achieves the crown and sum- mit of his nature, knowing and loving, excepting by the path of willing poverty, of being like these poor. That is for all the best.
Now praising God for his eternal goodness we pray him to receive us at the last. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
III THE RANK AND NATURE OF THE SOUL
When God created the soul he fell back upon himself and made her after his own likeness. Meister Eckhart of Paris says, God made nothing like himself besides the soul. Thus we can give no shape to God nor can we to the soul, and as God is immortal so did he make the soul. The soul is not dependent upon temporal things but in the exaltation of her mind is in communication with the things of God, hence her prodigious capabilities, and it amazes me that, being so like God and of such perfection and with such a powerful word of her own, the soul is still unable to speak the same as God. Some say it is because what is innate in God is not so in the soul: God is his own being and gets this from himself, but what the soul is that she gets from God and when she issues forth from him she does not keep his nature: she takes another nature, a descendent of divinity. Soshe does not behave the same as God : God moves all things in heaven and earth and gives life to all, and the soul moves the body, giving life to every limb so that it sees, hears, feels and walks and talks although the mind may be else- where. St Gregory observes, ‘We cannot see the visible except with the invisible’: the eye sees nothing corporal, lacking the a-corporal thing which quickens it to sight. Subtract the mind, i.e. the soul which is invisible, and the eye is open to no purpose, which before did see. God has formed the soul to himself and with himself and in himself; of time and in time and timely, and no soul can get into God without first being God as she was before she was made into God. Nothing but God finds its way into
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God, and once the soul is in God she is God, borne into God on his eternal Word. Soul is the mean ’twixt God and creature; she is placed at the beginning and end of the supreme, in touch with common knowledge and with the consolation the angels bring to her from God. If she prefers the inferior powers of her five senses to her higher ones whence comes her knowledge of celestial things, then she grows ignoble and base. The creature pleasures of the soul God has no stomach for, and when she realizes this she discards the joys in which God has no share.
While the soul is still here, in sleep, she drives away the angels, and refusing any longer to serve creature she conceives herself all one with God. St Augustine says the soul is nobler, mightier, grander than any creature, but the angels are by nature of still higher rank, for they are the first issue of the breath of God which gives life to them. Gregory, again, observes that ‘ The soul God has appeared to, who has some inkling of him, finds creatures all. so narrow and so vain.’—While the higher powers of the soul are holding fast to God she actuates her lower powers so that what . occurs in these comes to the knowledge of the higher ones. The highest power of the soul is called an inextinguishable light because of the vision the soul has in this power. However far away her power is from God she can discern God always. Her power is never sö much out but that it still burns somewhat, enough to be a danger-signal to the soul and, even were she spiritually dead in sin, a beacon showing her the way to come alive again and arise in true sorrow and repentance.
Here comes the question, Can the soul with her own powers comprehend her highest happiness? The answer given to this question by the four doctors, Thomas, Egidius, Henricus and Albertus is, that if the soul had her knowledge of herself, as she has her being, image-free, then she would be able to take in her _ highest happiness, she being an infinite capacity which God cannot fill excepting with himself. St Augustine says, If her own perfect nature were immediately present to the soul she would be her proper self rather than creature in her nature, as she is classified. For God is spirit and he en-spirits the soul who, in her spiritual nature, belongs to an order above creatures ; she finishes with creature in the perfect image of the eternal birth which is directly . formed in her.
Another question is, How does God enter the soul? Is he innate in her, sustaining her with his intrinsic energy and pro- viding her with life and being? One theory is that God enters the soul in three ways. First in his grace whereby a man being gratified is filled with the desire of perfecting virtue as a whole,
mingled with alarm lest any creature ever filch it ae him.
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Secondly, God enters the soul in pure perception wherein a man beholds himself and learns to know himself and answer any call God may make upon him, be it suffering or trials, bodily or mental. Thirdly, God enters the soul in true freedom, liberating man from all the cares of life. Let the soul bid him welcome, refusing to be satisfied save with him alone. At the highest point of his inner self, his soul, man is more God than creature : however much he is the same as creature in his nature, in mind he is like God more than any creature. To the soul at rest in God in her potential, her essential, intellectual nature, everything comes natural as though she were created not at the will of something else but solely at her own. In this point creatures are her subjects, all submitting to her as though they were her handiwork. It was in this power the birds obeyed St Francis and listened to his preaching. And Daniel took refuge in this power, trusting himself to God alone, when he sat among the lions. Moreover, in this power it has been the custom of the saints to offer up their suffer- ings which, in the greatness of their love, are to them no suffering. Dionysius says the soul has got to purify herself till in her perfect clarity she is like the angels and receives by grace what the angels have by nature. For the soul will not be able to fulfil her destiny till she is like the angels in whom is no sin. But the soul is from heaven (that is to say, from God who is the heaven of the soul) and body from the earth, so they are ever opposed to one another. And that is why the soul, wanting to get back to God whence she issued forth, absconds and leaves behind her all the things which are not God and do not lead to God. All form and likeness, Dionysius says, God in the first instance imprinted in the lesser angels so that they should inform the soul with divine light and consolation and enable her to enter into her own solitude, God namely, wherein no creature can ever look and see. Theologians say the soul is more greatly blest when God begets himself in her without corporal union than the body of Christ is without his Godhood and without his soul. But any beatific soul is a nobler thing than Christ’s mortal body, for the interior birth of God within the soul is the final consummation of her happiness, a happiness more real to her than Christ’s becoming man since this profits the soul nothing without union with God. As Dionysius says, ‘ Beatitude means an in-dwelling with God such that he is more present to the soul than she is to herself, and the soul can apprehend him best when she approaches him with a tranquil mind.’ For in peace is his habitation and in peace he elected us his children. But as God is the mover in the starry and revolving heavens so here in the soul he is the mover of the freedom of our will towards himself and towards all good things :
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it is in his light that she sees the light and in his light she will be united with the light. Theologians say that in their own nature the angels in heaven are nobler than the soul of Christ or Mary because they are in essence nearer than the soul to God. But by merit Christ’s soul has more joy than all the angels and is nearer God than any angel. And the, same with Mary’s soul. Not by nature though, for by nature Christ’s soul, and Mary’s too, is the same as mine or any other human soul. Further, theologians teach that the soul in man is more than thousandfold, for it is whole in every limb: in the fingers, in the eyes and in the heart and in every several portion of each member large and small. Just as in the eighth heaven, where there are so many stars, there is one angel who revolves that heaven and exists entire in each star. When God created man he safeguarded him against all ills; the golden chain of destiny coming from the Trinity to - the highest power of the soul and running also through her lower powers subordinates them to the higher so that no fell disorder can attack either the body or the soul excepting he transgress this law. In her higher powers the soul is spirit and in her lower, soul; and betwixt soul and spirit is the bond of one common being.
tes you must know that in the soul there exists one power which rests not day or night; it is flowing from the Spirit and is altogether ghostly, and in this power God comes out in the full flower of his joy and glory, as he is in himself. Such intense delight, such supreme exaltation as no mind can conceive nor tongue express. Were he always recollected in this power a man would never age. Nay more I say: should he in this power catch but one fleeting glance of the joy and bliss therein, it would be happiness enough to make amends though he suffered all things.
The soul receives four things from God in her power of under- standing. First, the entire certainty of freedom, of riddance, from all creatures, which God objects to in her. Next, the full enjoyment of God while she abides in the power of love. Third, the complete protection of God against all harm from creatures. Fourthly, victory in this power over all her foes. For as the Son of God, so also is the soul, and the promise of the Son is the promise of the soul, only she is not suspended from where the Son issues from the Father. Fire and heat are one; taste and tasted are one, albeit far asunder. The Word God speaks eternally lies hidden in the soul so that one neither knows of it nor hears it. Dionysius says the soul resembles the procession in the Godhead since the higher powers of the soul have her nature common to them and each power flows into the rest. For the soul to rise
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to spirit she must betake herself to her eternal part, never failing to remember that, by the grace of God, hers is an imperishable nature and capable of eternal bliss. Her spirit is suspended from the unchanging God, so neither life nor death nor height nor depth nor angel nor man nor any creature can loose her steadfast hold on God: the soul who dies in God is also buried in him and beyond the ken of creatures just as much as God is beyond their ken. As Dionysius says, when the soul considers the greatness of God’s might beside her littleness she casts herself out of herself and out of every creature and thus reduced to naked nothingness, God keeping her in his power, she persists simply'in the grace of God. God is concerned solely with himself; he is to each thing absolutely whole. And the soul should be the same: what God is by nature she must be by grace: detached and free from creatures, abandoning all things to God as though they were not. In a soul like this all that survives is God: his uncreated Breath is what the soul draws in inspiration, and she is spirit to all things and all things spirit to her, the eternal spiration of the Holy Ghost. Vicentius the philosopher observes, ‘ The spirit detached is of such perfection that what it sees is real, what it wills comes true and its commands must be obeyed.’
It must be remembered that when the free spirit stands in perfect isolation it constrains God to itself, and if it could subsist as form devoid of accident it would have all the character of God. But this God grants to none beside himself; the utmost God can do is to give himself to him, and such an one is so far raised up to eternity that nothing temporal can move him, nothing material affect him ; he is dead to the world, as St Paul says, ‘I live not: Christ liveth in me.’
According to Dionysius, death in God is nothing but the un- created life, that is, God himself, not now called the soul but the sovran power of God, because with it he performs his will. What the five senses get from such a soul she gives the whole of to her inner man whenever he embarks upon some high adventure, and such an one is then nonsensical (or senseless), his object being the rational, a-sensible idea. Dionysius comments on the dictum of St Paul, ‘ There be many that run for the crown but it falls to none but the wise.’ This race, he says, is nothing else than the flight from creatures to union with their uncreated God. The soul, in hot pursuit of God, becomes absorbed in him, and she herself is “ reduced to naught, just as the sun will swallow up and put out the dawn. St Augustine says, ‘The soul has a private door into divine nature, where for her all things amount to naught.’ And, ‘The flavour of the spirit spoils the taste for flesh ° ; and, ‘ The soul at her summit is ignorant with knowing, for in the oneness of
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the spirit those that have abandoned everything to God are as he had them when we existed not.’ The Lord Jesus stands before the soul as the perfeet pattern for our human conduct. But the subjective aspect of the three Persons— Godhead, mind—no crea- ture ever saw, not soul nor angel nor the humanity of Christ, in its own nature. Yet it is held by some, and Meister Eckhart of Paris notably, maintains in the teeth of all objections: As surely as you know me for a man so surely God gives birth to his own nature in the ground of my soul as in his heaven, and I am not happy till I return to God discarding every means of sin and all its brood together with all creatures. For in the selfsame ground wherein the Father bears his Son in his own nature therein am I born. In the soul that has trodden underfoot all the ills of time _ the Father naturally will beget his Son as surely as my father gat me a living man. In the very ground wherein the Father gets his Son therein does he get me and all whom the Father draws to him by grace. And as God in himself is absolutely free from things so I am there by grace what God is by nature. God destines all of us to such a glorious lot as few indeed can credit who have not gone out of themselves. If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself : he is the very highest uncreated heaven of all the heavens in God’s nature. That the soul in us is deathless is not our doing but God’s: it is the nature of her. But union comes by grace, the highest stooping down to inform the lowest, and therein lies our hope of future sight.
The soul ascends from corporal things and, being caught up above herself, abides within herself, first, for the sake of the delights she finds in God. For the divine perfection invests her in him with his likeness. His fullness is poured forth without stint : angels more in number than the sands and grass and water- drops and every single angel with his own distinctive nature, not one the same as any other.—Secondly, the soul ascends for the sake of the purity she finds in God; things in him are all quite pure and noble, but once they issue forth from him into the nearest creatures there is all the difference between aught and naught.—Thirdly, the soul ascends for the recollection she enjoys in God. In order to grasp God she must have a wont that is higher than herself; though God had made a thousand earths and a thousand heavens the soul could comprehend them all in her one power, the active power’s reflection. But she cannot conceive God in the act of making her in his own image.—Fourthly, the soul ascends for the sake of the infinite good things she enjoys in God: all things in him are ever new in his Son who to-day is being born the same as though his Father had never given him
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birth. And as God is flowing into the soul she is flowing back into God.
The soul takes four steps into God. On turning to God, at first she feels afraid of his magnificence. Her next step is to overcome this fear and conceive the hope of God’s affection. Her third step brings the vehement desire, she hails it as the promise, of the infinite embrace wherein she is embraced by God.— At the fourth step she falls into such deep oblivion she never thinks of leaving what she has found in God. God made the soul for his only Son to be born in her. And when and where soever there befalls this birth it gives God greater pleasure than the creation of the heavens and earth because the soul is nobler and bigger than the heavens. As there is wedlock between a man and wife so there is wedlock between God and the soul. The head power in the soul is the man and the lowest is his wife. The man in the soul always stands bareheaded and the woman veiled, the lower power being caught up to the highest of the soul. First God begets his likeness in the soul and afterwards himself as he is in eternity. God’s Son is the soul’s Son: in him God and the soul have the same Son, that is, God. Once this birth has happened in the soul she is fit for God, and the oftener this birth befalls the more at home the soul will be in God, in his paternal heart.
The soul has two feet, understanding and love. And the more she knows the more she loves. Who shall cause her to fall, she being upheld by the sustainer of all creatures? Grace lending wings to desire she is borne out of herself, and by grace and in grace she is borne into grace and past grace into God her first cause where in blissful union her lot is good beyond compare. There every sense is dumb; the soul’s will and God’s will are confused with one another, the two wills love-locked in the true atonement. Now the soul does neither more nor less than the work of God, for there no longer lives in her anything but God. As the soul cries in the Book of Love, ‘ I have run the whole world round and have found no end to it. Wherefore I have cast myself into the solitary point of my one God who has wounded me with his glance.’ Whom this glance did never wound, his soul was never pierced with the love of God. St Bernard says, ‘ To the spirit that feels this glance it is ineffable ; to him that feels it not it is incredible.’ ’”Tis an arrow sped without anger and received without pain; thence starts the pure and limpid stream of healing grace which opens the inner eye to perceive in blissful beholding the delights of this divine affliction wherein we enjoy unheard-of spiritual favours, things never told nor preached of nor yet described in any book.
The soul must give up idle thoughts and worldly cares and corporal pleasures and find her way into his hiding-place whom the
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heaven of heavens is not able to contain. God’s comfort is only for that soul who scorns all temporal consolations ; and the more she runs from creatures the faster their creator comes and makes her one with him. Dionysius says, love takes the soul out of herself and identifies her with the object of her love, making her insensible and reckless of herself so long as she can do the will of her best-beloved. The powers of the soul, those of her spiritual mind, are celestial in the sense that they do celestial work ; thus the first power receives, the second one perceives and the third one loves. When the soul, conceiving God, is using in recollection her mnemonic power and, in beholding, her intelligence, then love transports her’into the midst of God, the point at which there is eternal rest. The Father abiding in the soul clasps her to his heart, and in this fatherly embrace she conceives the Son in his personal procession and hence divines his presence with the Father in his essence ; as saith the Lord, ‘ I will lead her into the desert,’ meaning, he will lead the soul away from vanity and say his say, his only Son, in her. And in this same begetting of his Son they pour their holy Breath into the soul, informing her of all things. Any act of soul that is to share in the eternal meed must be wrought in God. However good an act is in itself, excepting it be wrought in God, it meets with no reward from him who does not pay by length or size or multitude of works but for their being done in God, soul being the material God works in. In this divine alliance she is highly honoured, for what God is by nature she is made by grace. But if a soul presents herself before her bridegroom Jesus Christ without the ordinary virtues, forgetting to prepare herself in this respect for heaven, her shall he cast out into the pit of hell, there to realize his justice just as much in suffering as St Peter did in heaven his eternal joy. Her true‘ bridegroom Jesus Christ comes to the soul and shows her in his visible humanity his divine affection in order that all creatures may do homage to our nature which has been exalted higher than the angels. We cannot imagine him creating any creature nobler than ourselves. His manhood satisfies our sense as his Godhood does our soul. As St Augustine says, we shall end with our soul in the Godhead, and our bodily senses in the humanity of Christ which is exalted above the saints and angels to where, in its unchanging nature, no creature can attain. When the watching soul is warned by various signs of the coming of her king, everything in her rejoices, and it is his royal right to use his sovran power to fulfil the expectation of the soul who longs for him to buttress her against her outward senses lest by yielding to them in the least she should bring about in any creature something counter to the will of God. The surest way to friendship with the king is for the soul blindly to
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follow where God leads. If the soul, which rather than the body constitutes us man, if the soul, I say, would only obey all God’s intimations she would overcome every obstacle with ease and rejoice in the burdens borne for him. And when she finds herself with nothing to correct she will be free with perfect freedom from opinion. It is the mark of the God-loving soul that from the moment she goes into his service she never follows her own will as distinct from his. God is the one thing that needs nothing and that all things need. And when the soul, beholding herself from within, perceives herself by grace omnipotent she stays in her own ideal nature.
The soul observes concerning God, first, that she has intuition of him who is to come to her. Next, she is in essential union with him who is operating in her. Thirdly, she enjoys him who so richly entertains her at his table. Fourthly, he provides her with a refuge where she is at peace. Dionysius says, ‘ When the soul returns to God her idea of herself in God is that, except for self- awareness, nothing survives in her but God.’ When the soul does this she still keeps in touch with her outward man whom she supplies with his natural life. By speaking himself into the soul God unites himself with her and makes the soul into himself, giving her such great ability, it seems to her that being here in time is her only obstacle to good. In the virtuous uses of her examplar mind, all things being present to the soul in this interior Word of God, her spirit converses with God freely in proportion to the clearness of the Father’s inspiration. It is important then for the soul to know what behaviour to adopt towards God so that she may discover the practices that draw from God his intimations. For this the loving soul must love God more than anything, who, descending into her and energising in her with his spirit, gives her to understand that the interior love she has from him she ought to have and show towards all mankind; and the soul should submit herself to God as though he suffered death for her alone. So doing she will wax in truth and fit herself to receive the universal gift of God whereby she will arrive at the truth of the humanity of Christ. But if she does not do her best she puts herself on a material level with the brutes, that must be spurred to great exertion ; yet the sorriest of men, who are always bound to fall short of God, Christ wrought more deeds of love for than all the saints have ever done for love of him. Though all creatures were to speak they could never tell the perfection God confers on man, especially the soul, than which he neither could nor would make any nobler creature. This he proves in his own Person, with its common boundary between his divine and human natures. It follows that the soul ought to shun all creatures as things unworthy
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of her whereby she may be lured from the things she is destined to by God, and she ought to be ashamed if, being within reach of his eternal good, she should fail to grasp it.
Here there is the question, If the soul is of such high estate that time and place and nature are powerless to move or even touch her in her essential self, does God then work in her without any image of himself? To this theologists reply, Granting the soul ‚is creature and has a spiritual nature it follows of necessity that what God does in her is wrought essentially and free from all contingency ; for his works are all essential and eternal as they are in himself, and the soul participates them in her nature above grace. Grace is the outflowing light designed for the service of the spirit ; grace would not be a light had it no recognised spiritual mission. At the point where God enters the soul in love she is no more known than the highest angel is to her and loves all things God-fashion without any natural idiosyncrasy. God is abstract intellectual essence, eternal in itself, whereas the soul is made eternal. The soul is no more to be grasped in images and forms than God in words and names. The soul is one in nature with and subject to the laws of the authentic intellect of God, a monad so perfectly balanced in itself no creature can find room there.
The Lord Jesus said to his disciples, ‘ I go to prepare a place for you.’ These words teach us two important facts. First, that the soul is by nature made for heaven and God is her lawful heritage. . For God brought forth the soul alone in unbroken line and no man knoweth what she is. Every man has got a soul, but what she actually is there is no telling here in time. St Augustine says, the soul is sent from God and returns to God and she cannot rest except in him; for God is spirit and soul is also spirit and germane to God as one spirit to another. And they compare the soul with fire, most lofty in its nature, most mighty in its operation, which never rests until it licks the skies. Fire envelops all the elements, spreading further and wider and higher than the air, than water or the earth, so that it surrounds the rest and coming next the heavens turns round with them. The soul is called a fire because in her desire she keeps up with God, like fire with the heavens and can find no rest except in him. Again, the soul is dubbed a spark of celestial nature because one has already ascended into heaven, the soul, to wit, of Jesus Christ, which shows the common resting- place of souls is nowhere else than heaven. But unless the soul has turned from temporal to celestial things the Holy Ghost cannot enter in to do its work in her. All God’s work is wrought in spirit. God is high and man is low : to rise to him in prayer he has to hoist himself by putting under him God’s creatures, all of them, including the powers of the soul which end in the functions
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of the body, then she will have the love and knowledge to carry her above the world. For to know God I want no eyes or ears ; for union with God in love I want no hands or feet: I want to withdraw myself from all created things and let my spirit swoon into God’s spirit and be one spirit with God; withal it was the love God bears my soul that prevailed with him to create all creatures and therein reveal to her his glory. And albeit he made creatures: glad, he mixed therewith some sorrow, that anyone careless of his honour might be whipped and spurred with pain. Marvellous as the mind of man are the ways of God, drawing one to him with pleasure and another with the buffets’of ill-fortune ; witness the amazing conversion of St Paul on his way to persecute the Chris- tians, notwithstanding which his soul was caught up into the third heaven. And the very day St Augustine was converted he refused to be appeased with the extraordinary pleasure he felt in the security God sent into his soul to turn her to him.
Three things keep the soul from being content with creatures. In the first place they are partial. In the second, they are cor- poral : emblems of stagnation and corruption and unprogressive- ness. Thirdly, the gift of creatures is no largesse of him from whom she first came forth (i.e. from God), so they are not relished by souls who have been caught up into bliss ; but God the Lord lures souls to him just as the lambs are lured from one spot to another by green pasture. Though all psychic powers lay in a single soul she could not here receive the very least reward of the smallest act decreed by God in his eternal love without the soul melting and dying to the body. Not so, however, when she gets the whole reward, namely God himself. But for this the soul must transcend herself and creatures and enter into the divine estate, into her divine exemplar nature; for the soul contacts eternity with her higher powers and with her lower, creatures, which often lead her into evil. Could the soul see God as clearly as the angels do she would never have come into the body. God is formed in the image of himself, after a pattern of his own, and when she mingles with him in actual intuition, the soul resembles him in form, for he conforms her to him: divine light streams into the soul confusing her with God like one light with another and this is called the light of faith, the divine virtue. Where the soul with her powers and her passions is forbidden to go, there faith can take her; and when in this power God is apprehended in the soul she acquires the virtue of hope wherein the soul becomes so intimate with God she fancies there is nothing in God beyond her reach. St Augustine says, ‘The pears I stole, these were to me far sweeter than the ones my mother bought, because they were private and forbidden fruit.’ And so is that grace sweeter to the
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soul which she conceives in wisdom than that which is common to mankind. The soul must serve God here with her lower powers and in eternity with her higher ones, for she is not made of time nor of eternity: she is made from naught of the nature of them both. Leaning to the temporal she is unstable; keeping to the eternal she is strong and stable and superior to change.
The bridegroom of the soul is the Lord Jesus of sevenfold like- ness. First, in his beauty with which the sun is nothing to compare, for it is not self-luminous: God provides the light wherewith it lights the air. And his bride should be the same in thought and word and deed. For this God has to brighten all her tarnishes of sin, making luminous the place of her abode.—Secondly, her Lord is of noble lineage : in heaven he has a Father but no mother and on earth a mother but no father, parentage too strange for any mind to grasp. And his bride, the soul, by birth adorns a rank higher than anything inferior to God.—Thirdly, her Lord is immensely rich: heaven and earth belong to him with all the creatures in it. Accordingly his bride, the soul, may freely confide her every care to him and have no doubt of his providing, for he is readier to give than we are to receive.—Fourthly, his wisdom is so lucid, it lights the ground of every heart and nothing is hidden from his eyes. Wherefore his bride, the soul, must be very careful not to do anything she thinks may be displeasing in his sight.—Fifthly, his power is prodigious; by it all things have come to be and are preserved in being. And his bride, the soul, has corresponding hope in times of trouble or in any kind of suffer- ing or struggle. For what she cannot do he can to whom all things are possible.—Sixthly, he is sweet-tempered. He is called in the scriptures a lamb without blemish, for he is free from anger and bears no resentment. Likewise the soul, his bride, must be gentle, kind and patient in whatever he shall send her to his glory.—Lastly, her Lord, Jesus Christ, has .eternal health and deathlessness. And the soul, his bride, should be cheerfully indifferent to disease, not caring for anything so much but she would always be as glad to do without as keep it, just as her bridegroom pleases, and finding no pain so hard to bear but she would suffer it as lief as not. God’s justice to her is as precious as his mercy. This soul is just as pleased with God’s gifts to others as herself.
It is written, ‘ The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God’ who keeps them too tightly to his sides to be gotten out. Also he made them separate as his handiwork ; their guerdon in eternal life, himself ; for God alone did make the soul, unhelped by any crea- ture ; in power according.to his might ; in intellect according to his wisdom and according to his goodness in her will, as he from
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eternity knew how to make her ınighty in his power and, blessed in his infinite good. The soul is not made of the nature of God but in the image of the Holy Trinity, and being bound to God by love alone she, seeking perfect rest in him, proclaims her fitness to be his pleasant temple. He went into his temple and drove out the buyers and the sellers, commanding them, Take these things hence. So he made it known that he would have the temple of the soul swept clean, with nothing in it but himself alone. The soul should take example by the angels who disregard all outward things and are without intention except to do the perfect will of God. So bent are they upon the will of God, upon its being done in them, that were it to pick nettles or anything like that, they would do it with a will, as though their whole happiness depended on it.
Any soul devoted thus to the will of God and seeking not her own Jesus takes delight and will work wonders in. When she goes out of her own will all things go in with Jesus and she becomes so full of light that God alone rivals her in splendour. For though the angels do to some extent resemble the soul in the joys of the hereafter, they have a limit set which they cannot pass beyond. The soul can transcend it in good works, and having once, in grace, drawn level here with the highest angel, her will, free now from all good works, carries her incalculably higher than the angels, provided she can leave her body.
The uncreated God alone is free and the soul’s virgin nature is the same but not her creature nature: it was she who chose to come to naught, but it is left to God to fetch her back. For Jesus to be in the soul she has to recollect herself and be quiet and listen to his Word. When her spirit is receiving power in the Son her every word is pregnant of purity and virtue and perfection. Such a soul nothing can disturb: she stands firm and unshaken as in the power of God.
And Jesus reveals himself in the soul in his infinite wisdom wherein the Father knows himself in all his fatherly authority, to- gether with his Word which is wisdom’s self and all that therein is and the oneness of it. When this same wisdom is embodied in the soul, doubt, error, obstacles of all sorts fade away and leave her in the clear, pure light which is God himself. God in this soul is seen with God: she knows herself and all things with his wisdom.—Also Jesus manifests himself with passing sweetness in the power of the Holy Ghost, and with him the soul flows into herself and beyond herself and transcending all things in grace, plunges directly into her first cause.
Richardus says, commenting upon the Book of Virtue: When the divine light strikes into the soul she finds her own activities
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exceedingly insipid, and unable to tolerate herself in her own powers she confines herself to enjoying God. Now St Augustine says, ‘ My soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving life.’ At this rate God is nearer me than I am to myself; and any loving soul who follows God so far as to rise above herself, nor rests with pleasure in herself or any creature, such a soul, I say, will have no pleasure either in God’s gifts: what she desires is God himself. When the soul is rid of things she has certain knowledge of and is nothing lacking in the image of God, her mind is wide open to the eternal truth. The eternal sun sheds its light into this soul and permeates her powers, each separate faculty feeling the physical contingency of the visitation according _ to its individual nature. And the light of the eternal sun raises all the soul-powers to the power of itself in the wholly intelligible image. When the soul undergoes this operation, as it is per- formed by God, in essential understanding, then the soul’s under- standing becomes the light (or knowledge) of all God is bringing about in her by grace. And her mind being enhanced, as we have said, her faculties are raised above the things of time, so that come what may her powers are unhindered by anything infernal and are always being augmented, never getting less. For divine understanding we depend upon God’s bounty ; but it is his nature to give himself to us and the soul’s nature is to give herself to him who gives himself to her, thus giver and gift, doer and deed are one. The Lord Jesus said, ‘I go to him that sent me.’ And the soul too may say in her ascent to God, ‘ I go to him I came from.’
She goes to the Father, first, in her fixed intention no longer to disobey his will by cumbering herself with untoward creatures. Secondly, she goes the perfect way of answering every call God makes upon her; and thirdly, she goes in the sweet savour of God’s love wherein her suffering is no suffering. Fourthly, she goes in the four cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, over time and creatures. And she goes in the three virtues of faith, hope and charity, without which no one gets to God. Who knows to what wonders the soul may not attain by committing herself into the hands of God ? Every blessed soul keeps open heart to God’s consolation, and such as she receives from him she passes on to her inferior powers wherewith she knows not God else were he dishonoured in the weak intelligence of these lower faculties. And because all souls have not the same aptitude for God, the vision of God is not enjoyed the same by all any more than the sunshine affects all eyes alike.
It is written, ‘ There shall come forth a stem out of the root of Jesse.’ Here let us consider three things : what this root is out of which God is born in the soul, and what and what measure
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of profit does it bring? ‘ Root of Jesse’ is a term for the fiery nature which attracts and transmutes all comers to itself. It is: the fiery nature of God: drawing the soul it converts her into itself and she is spiritually born in understanding ; for the soul has in common with the angels a light wherein she can see God, and this light she is provided with is her intellect which is cease- lessly conveying God’s wisdom to the soul. But it darkens when poured into the body. +
We read of three kings bringing Christ their offerings. These we take to mean the three inferior powers of the soul, things by ~ rights at the disposal of her superior powers. I am going now to speak of these superior powers, showing how they are the kings and what gifts of lower powers it is they bring.
The first king is memory, bearing the produce of his kingdom. When the soul calls to mind how noble God has made her there flows from this perception a passionate desire which ascends to God, flinging behind it all the things of time. Then indeed King Memory comes offering the gold of love to God, together with - surrender of all else.—The second king of the soul is understanding. This corresponds with her other power, reason or judgment. When the soul sees that by grace she is enabled to fulfil the will of God, she is never weary of subjugating creatures to please God and each one the more in proportion to the merit she acquires from God. Understanding then, comes rich with patience and grateful acceptance of whatever lot God destines for her in the body here and with this she has the fruit of incense, the union of all virtues, so that what would otherwise be hard and difficult her love makes - feasible and easy.—The soul’s third king is will. When in the flower of his strength he brings the soul the fire of love, which tries her through and through and consumes away all the sinful affections of her nature, then she is fixed, and neither life nor death nor any creature can separate her from the love of God. So they bring her myrrh to keep her from the rot of temporal things which to the soul are a fertile source of evil. St Ambrose says, ‘God pours forth the soul creating and pouring forth he creates her.” And when she is in love with him, immediately he comes to her, as his spiritual bride admits where she says in the Book of Love, ‘ While I was at rest upon my bed my love came tapping at my window and he put in his hand and touched me.’ This suggests that when the soul comes to know herself she withdraws from all the things which are present to her here, for she herself is of greater worth and higher status than any of the other things in time. When now the loving soul has gone out of all creatures and herself, then the eternal truth comes forth as well to meet the loving soul and touch her understanding and exalt it with his
~
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light which more enriches her than all the knowledge of material things hitherto amassed by her own nature. St Augustine says, * As the sun shines through glass and makes its contents plain, so is the soul’s intelligence illumined by the light of God with the recog- nition of her divine abilities.’ Then the soul is seen in her poverty and God in his. purity. Indeed Dionysius says as much when he speaks of ‘the naked soul, one with her naked God, resting in the desert of the Godhead.’ It may well be called a desert, for crea- ture never looked therein by grace. Ignorance of these matters is just cause for shame. Yet if one of the chief angels should descend and, with creatures all as wise as he, discourse of human happiness, they might talk till doomsday and not tell the tale of all God has in store for every loving soul in life eternal. But the soul must not seek God for any reason except God himself. The emptier she keeps the more God fills her and the more perfectly,
. he does his work in her; besides, it is the safest way, for then
at any moment she will be prepared to quit the body at God’s instance rather than remain there at her own. And being so poor of self she will find naught but God both here and yonder. There is no call for such a soul to look outside herself : the Holy Ghost will teach her the elements of bliss in the school of her own heart. ° She cherishes the gift wherewith God has endowed his best beloved. And the better to fulfil God’s will in everything she does she trains herself never to be without pure consciousness so that the heavenly Father can go on ever giving birth in her to his eternal Word, Jesus Christ his Son. For at her highest point my soul is not in time and does not work in time and is just as near to things a thousand miles away as to this spot I stand on.
Theoretically speaking, nothing that takes shape or is touched
- by time can get into the soul, and not only time but likeness.
The head of the soul is her highest power, and from the moment she was made she has never for an instant been without the boon of this divine light, this power in which the time God made the world in and the judgment day are just as present to the soul as this time wherein I speak. Being in the power of her head the soul enjoys the benefit of participation in the grace and happiness common to all saints as though they were her own. It is certainly the fact that anyone actually in this head never commits sin and knows so much about eternal bliss and is so well informed that he needs no sermons. Wherefore erecting the head of the soul let us gather ourselves up into the breadth and freedom of a power like this and depart from temporal to eternal things when, in this samie power, God suddenly gives birth to all he is in might and truth and wisdom in the soul. Verily the soul in whom this grace is found is absolutely pure and every whit like God. For anything
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well-pleasing to the Father or which makes for our profit or our weal, must be well-pleasing to him in his Son, because apart from . him he has no likes whatever. This then is the nobility which God has implanted in the soul, her beatifie nature which is receptive to the grace of God, so that in this grace the light of God’s pure nature can shine into the soul and the Word of the Trinity be gpoken in her mind and the life of eternity energise in her. Theologians say the soul is a suspended force in the power of the Father and a reflected light in the wisdom of the Son and a circulation in the sweetness of the Holy Ghost. According to St Augustine, the soul comes from the heavenly land, out of the paternal heart ; the offspring of God’s love and scion of the noble house of the holy Trinity, she is the heir to heaven, the mistress of all creatures and the proprietor of all the joys God gives in his eternity. She is the image of God and the noblest creature, that ever God conceived. For God gripped in between his divine nature and his Godhood, into his eternal essence, and produced the soul from nothing, just as he made from nothing heaven and earth and all things. If you ask how big the soul is, know, she is too big for heaven and earth to fill, or even God himself whom the heavens cannot comprehend. To measure the soul you must gauge her with God. And she is so beautiful as long as she is in the grace of God and not deformed by sin, the highest angels, Seraphim and Cherubim and all the saints try in vain to copy her in form and likeness, for she is God’s image. As to her life in time, she is flowing back to her natural source whence she issued forth; and the freer she has kept herself from temporal forms and creatures the kinder her return to God, for God is absolutely free from matter, mode and form: For the soul to compare with the abstract spirit of God she must be free from the smallest trace of sensible affection and quite without attachment to anything not God. That such perfect freedom is not known to every spirit is due solely to our undiscovered life and our untaught senses. All the potential good in creatures the soul will find in God together with inestimable joy. St Augustine says, ‘When everything was still that existed in me God spake a silent Word within my soul, which no one understood but me.’ And to whatever soul this Word is said she will forget all modes and forms and become an in-dweller with God. Thus St Paul relates, ‘From the moment the eternal Word was revealed within my soul I no linger lived for flesh and blood.’ Inasmuch as she is selfless she is self-possessed and strong. The faithful, loving soul is like the bee, sipping from all kinds of flowers the sweets to make its honey. And even so the soul culls from the flowers of virtue somewhat of each one to heal and fortify her. It is a crying need for she has three mortal
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foes : the world, the flesh and the devil, hanging all together like three cherries on one stem. Of these three foes the deadliest is the body, wherein the soul is clapt as into prison : not that she may pander to its vicious appetites but to say them nay and by this resistance daily to augment her reward in heaven and here the love inpoured. It was Seneca, the heathen philosopher, who said, “ Man is his own worst enemy.’ Death stands at the door of evil appetites, and the pursuit of vice leads into paths which seem all right to us but sometimes they debouch in the pit of hell. If the soul, the mistress of the body, indulges its base appetites and fails to check its sins she has herself to blame when either here or yonder she must pay for it to God. And that there may be no escaping from God’s justice for them that kill the soul with sin and end in fleshly lusts, he says in the prophet Amos, ‘ My wrath shall drive over you like a chariot, cracking with its weight ; my anger the swift shall not outrun nor the valiant turn aside nor yet the strong man conquer with his strength. Not one shall escape me, how fair or strong or mighty soever he may be.’ . And seeing that the soul has such a high and heavenly destiny, therefore Meister Eckhart of Paris, at the end of the aforesaid things, which are taken from his writings, sets the following prayer :
O Sovran Riches of Divine Nature, show me thy way which thou in thy wisdom hast ordained and open to me thy most precious treasure whereto thou hast called me: to know with supercreaturely intelligence, to love with the angels, to enjoy with thy only Son our Lord Jesus Christ and to be thine heir to eternal wisdom and by thy help to be preserved from evil. For thou hast exalted me above all creatures and hast sealed me with the seal of thine eternal image and put my soul beyond the grasp of creatures and hast made nothing liker to thyself than man is in his soul. Teach me to live so that I never want thee ; ‘so as never to hinder the working of thy love-stream in me; so as never to lend myself to any outward pleasure without thee nor occupy my mind more with any creature than with thee. Lord thou art spirit and incomprehensible to creature ; thou dost inspire the soul and raise her to an order above creature so that she can do thy will, O Eternal Wisdom, and in grace be free from inroad of unbidden images. Thou hast made the soul to suit thyself in her nature and her laws and she maintains she has no room for anyone but thee. O Almighty and Most Merciful Creator and dear Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner and help me to overcome all pitfalls with their lures to idle pleasure; to shun in thought and act what thou forbiddest and both to do and keep all thy commands ;
help me to believe, to hope, to love ; to live and feel iene as
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thou wilt and as much as thou wilt and what thou wilt. Lord, grant me the sorrow of the humble; a mind escaped from | mortal body ; to love, to laud and to behold thee and cherish every act and thought that is toward thee. Grant me a clear and sober and genuinely prayerful mind with real intuition of thy will, together with the love and joy which make it easy to perform. Lord, vouchsafe me always modest progress towards better things and never to backslide. And, O my Lord, condemn me not, as I deserve, to rely on my own powers or on human weak- ness and unwisdom but on thy good providence alone. Direct me Lord to The Good itself, my every thought and act to thine own liking, so that on my part, in me, thy will is always being done and I being saved from evil and brought to thy eternal life where thou art three in Person and one in the essence of thy divine nature : Father, Son and Holy Ghost and ever blest almighty God. Amen.
IV THE SOUL’S PERFECTION !
Speaking of the final perfection of the soul theologians ask, What is meant by saying that the spirit in its understanding has become the intellectual existence of the eternal essence in the perennial now with nothing between? That is the first question. The second question is, How can the spirit make good its intellectual return into the unchanging, and have the eternal image in perfect clearness and essential intimacy and in the interior freedom of the spirit ? The third question is about the highest flight of the spirit, its nearest approach of all to the divine presence and whether its own powers are equal to the task ?
First, we must remember how the divine being proceeded forth in the present now, with falling man, the gist of it, immediate in his spiritual prototype in virtue of its nearness and also by reason of the inherent now of its light of glory and intellectual image from which the intellect sees back quite clearly to the un-proceeded splendour of its eternally immanent spiritual exemplar wherein it is nameless and beyond all words which are creaturely. The word is in the eternal Word and one presence with it and God with his whole nature and the full range of his power can make out of his essence nothing more resembling the divine species in the ground . divine nature and reflecting him so well. He who receives the light of the spirit as it is the image of God, wherein is no part, that is the medium of perfection, for therein his spirit is one with divine nature. + ,
1 See also Jostes, No. 34, of which this tractate forms the middle portion.
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As to the second question, you must understand that although the intelligible image of God in the spirit partakes in its nature and purity more of the perfection of the content of its immanent essence than of the emanation of itself, nevertheless it is therein essence that has become. Take the spirit in its nearest ground, abiding within in its endless image and eternal image. As the endless image it is always within and in its eternal image it presents itself as an eternal question. As Christ asks, ‘ Whose is this image and this superscription ?’ Mark the difference between this image and its superscription. In the image exists God, and all his output in spirit and in nature—the human mind (or spirit) with all it is able to afford,—these are in uniformity so exact and close that the image of divine glory shines in all its detail in the spirit and this image in the spirit is perfectly reflected back into its indwelling essence. So much for the image of God. And what of the superscription ? That is the unspeakable species of the divine nature, which in its whole ground, actual and essential, is a naked and immediate presence in the spirit, in virtue of which the spirit in its free nature and intellectual image suffers all God’s super-rational operation. The limit comes where the divine freedom seizes the spirit’s freedom and turns it into foolishness and at this point all scientific knowledge fails; there is no further progress to be made by natural creature-knowledge but only in spirit by experiencing God.
Now to answer the third question. Philosophers say that one’s own is ever innate and can be had at will. It follows that the spirit can rise to the supreme perfection of its divine nature for it can stand in its first now, in that wherein it was not. And that is the answer to the third query.
Then there is the question, can God leave man’s spirit to itself or not? I say, No, it would be against the justice of his nature and against his truth and would make a travesty of God’s whole creation. God must either let the spirit be God extra to himself or else he must merge it in himself, when it has left all things. This will not outrage God, for the spirit is too haughty and touches too closely the honour of God for him to be able to make aught but himself theend of its perfection. It has this unique property : its ground can overleap all spirits into his super-intelligible spirit, namely, the indwelling essence of divine nature.
A man was asked, What dost thou lack? He said, Nothing, except poverty of spirit.—And though I have a will no bigger than a grain of mustard seed I am no poor man, and if God were to ask me, Art thou a poor man? I should-reply that, be my will as good as God’s yet am I not poor, not even if with that same will I do as much as God. And why? Because God and God’s will
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are one, I and my will are two, for I am a man and not God and if I mean to do real work entirely without or free from will then I must emulate the stone which lies in the water and the water flows over it but enters not into the stone. Even so if I were a poor man I should do my works in such a way that they entered _ not into my will any more than the water does into the stone: I should do them simply at the will of God. And if again God asked me, whether I was poor and if I replied, ‘I have abandoned my own will and did I know the will of God that would I do,’ I might be assuming something not my own, for no one knoweth who we are, though we are not the truth for God can change our knowledge, not his knowledge, because he is the truth and we are not.
Perhaps someone will say, How can I do my work like this, will-free ? The answer is, I ought to do my work as though no one existed, no one lived, no one had ever come upon the earth. - Then if God asked me once again, Art thou a poor man ? and if I replied, ‘I am unworthy of that knowing,’ that were the barest. poverty that ever I heard tell of or went through: the deepest, direst poverty. Yet all the while I have within enough of place for God to do his work in me, to give his gift to me, all that while I am not a poor man for all that while I am expecting God.—What more can I do ?—Thus shalt thou do: thou shalt leave all willing and knowing and receiving of things and at the very point where thou hast left all things there God has given thee all things; he durst not give thee more nor any more work with thee nor canst thou take in more, but thou shalt simply leave thyself. That is ' poverty of spirit the most near of all, for none is downright poor but he who wills not, knows not, has not, whether within or without. To the eternal truth, God help us. Amen.
Vv THE BOOK OF GODLY COMFORT
Benedictus deus et pater domini nostri Jesu Christi etc. (2 Cor. 1,). That great teacher St Paul says in his epistle, ‘ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation.’ Three kinds of tribulation may fall upon a man and plunge him in distress. First, misfortune to exterior belongings. Next, to our dearest friends. Lastly, to ourselves: shame, hardship, pain of body and distress of mind.
So I purpose in this book to impart some ‘teachings apt to console a man in all adversity, unhappiness and suffering. And
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having therein and therefrom culled sundry general truths to com- fort him in any trouble, he will find thereafter thirty rules or maxims each of which alone is sufficient for his solace ; and after that again, in the third part of the book, he will find precepts and examples, theoretical and practical, the sayings and doings of the wise in times of tribulation.!
1
In the first place we must bear in mind that the wise and wisdom, true and truth, good and goodness, righteousness and righteous are closely related to each other. Goodness is not made nor created nor begotten : it is procreative and begets the good and the good man, so far as he is good, is the unmade, un- created but withal begotten child and son of goodness. Goodness reproduces itself and all it is in good things: knowledge, love, energy, it pours forth all of them into the good man, and the good man receives all his being, knowing, love and energy from the central depth of goodness and from that alone. Good and good- ness are no more than goodness by itself, except as unborn parent and born child of goodness therefrom. In the good is but one being and one life. All that belongs to a good man he gets both from the good and in the good. Therein he is and lives and dwells and there he knows himself, and all he knows and loves he wills and works with goodness and in goodness and the good does all its work with him and in him, as it is written. The Son said, ‘My Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. All that belongs to the Father is mine; all that is mine is my Father’s: | his giving is my taking.’
Further we must remember that the Name or Word stands for nothing else, nothing more or less than the good, pure and simple. But when we call him good we understand his goodness to be given him, infused and engendered by the unborn goodness; in the words of the gospel, ‘ As the Father hath life in himself so hath he given to the Son to have the same life in himself also.’ In himself, he says, not from himself for the Father gave it to him.
Now all that I have said of good and goodness equally applies to true and truth, to right (or just) and righteousness (or justice), to wise and wisdom, to God’s Son and to God the Father, to every God-begotten thing that has no father upon earth and wherein is gotten no created thing: nothing not God, and wherein exists not any form at all but that of God alone. St John says in his gospel, ‘to them gave he power to become the sons of God, which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God alone.’
1 Only Part 1 is given here.
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By blood he means everything in man not subject to the human will. By fleshly will he means everything in man which is subject. to his will, albeit with reluctance and with an inclination to fleshly appetites : a thing which is common to the body and the soul and not confined to the soul alone, which accounts for the weakness and exhaustion of their powers. By the will of man St John means the highest power of the soul, whose nature and energy, unmixed with flesh, resides in the pure nature of the soul, detached _ from time and place and from everything that smacks of time and place relation ; that has naught in common with naught ; wherein man is formed in the image of God ; wherein he is of the lineage of God, and God’s kindred. Yet since these are not God himself but are products of the soul and are in the soul, therefore they have to lose their form and be transformed into God alone: born into God and out of God with only God for father. Then they are Son indeed, God’s only Son.
I am his Son forasmuch as he begets me in his nature and forms me in his image. Such an one is the Son of God, good son of goodness, right son of righteousness. So far as he is simply good he is unborn parent and as born Son he has the same nature as righteousness has, and is and is possessed of all the character of justice and truth. In all this teaching which is found in holy gospel and confirmed in the natural light of the wise soul there is solace for every human sorrow.
St Augustine says, ‘ God is not far nor long. If thou wouldst find him neither far nor long betake thyself to God, for there a thousand years are as one day, to-day.’ And withal I say, in God there is no pain or sorrow or distress. And if thou wouldst be free from all adversity and pain, turn thee and cleave to God and to God alone. Doubtless all thy ills are due to thy non- conversion into God and to God alone. If thou wert formed and gotten in righteousness alone, things could no more pain thee than righteousness, than God himself.
Solomon says, * The righteous will not grieve for aught that may befall him.’ He does not say the righteous man or the righteous angel, not this or that right thing; just righteous, being right, for the righteous man is son with a father upon earth, he is creature, made or created as his father is creature made or created. He says righteous, pure and simple, and that has no made or created father, for righteousness is the same as God. So pain and sorrow can molest him no more than they do God. Justice will not grieve him, for love and joy and bliss are justice, and if justice made sorrowful the just it would be causing sorrow to itself. Injustice, inequality, can in no wise grieve the just, for anything created being far beneath him has no influence and
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makes no impression on the righteous nor is it gotten into him whose only father is God.
A man then ought to set to work and de-form himself of him- self and creatures and know no father except God alone. Then nothing will be able to afflict or cast him down, neither God nor creature, uncreated or created, and his entire being, life, know- ledge, love and wisdom will be from God and in God and God.
There is another thing which is wont to comfort us in any tribulation. It is the certainty that the just and virtuous man delights unspeakably, incomparably more in doing right than he or even the chief angel delights and rejoices in his natural economy or life. The saints will gladly sacrifice their lives for right.
Supposing now that when outward ills befall the good and righteous man he keeps his even temper and his peace of mind, this only proves my argument that the righteous man is proof against external happenings. But suppose he is perturbed by these mishaps then it stands to reason that God is only just in sending trials to a person who while pretending to be righteous and fondly thinking himself so is yet upset by so small a thing. Since it is fair of God, he has no cause to mind but rather to rejoice, far more than he does at his own life, at what rejoices ’ man and is of more good to him than this world all told ; for what profits a man the whole world when he is no more ?
The third important thing for us to understand is the elemental truth that the fount and living artery of universal good, essential truth and perfect consolation is God, God only, and everything not God has in itself a natural bitterness, discomfort and unhappiness and does not make for good which is of God and is the same as God, but lessens, dims and hides the sweetness, Joy and comfort that God gives.
And further I maintain, all sorrow comes from love of that whereof I am deprived by loss. If I mind the loss of outward things it is a certain sign that I am fond of outward things and really love sorrow and discomfort. Is it to be wondered at that I am unhappy when I like discomfort and unhappiness ; when my heart seeks and my mind gives to creature the good that is God’s own? I turn towards creature, whence there comes by nature all discomfort, and turn my back on that which is the natural source of happiness and comfort: what wonder I am woebegone and wretched! The fact is, it is quite impossible for God or anyone to bring true solace to a man who looks for it in creatures. But he who loves only God in creatures and creatures in God only, that man finds real and true and equal
comfort everywhere.
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VI SISTER KATREI
MEISTER ECKHART’S STRASBURG DAUGHTER z
Blessed and praised be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ who has provided for us an image of the truth, himself namely, wherein is no possibility of error !
We read in the gospel that our Lord fed the multitude with five loaves and two roast fishes. The first loaf we interpret to mean the knowledge of what we have always been in God and what we are in God now. The second loaf is the scrutiny of our life in time : seeing how our time has been spent. And for this we need help in the shape of a trusty confessor. A confessor we judge of in this way. If he has what is true we may safely confide in him. There are three signs of this. First, he is a true priest. Secondly, he is confirmed in the perfect life. And thirdly, he has the authority which stamps the true priest. Him seek where- soever thou shalt find him. It is well worth any trouble. Go to him and solemnly kneeling before him as Mary Magdalene knelt at the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, earnestly entreat him for God’s sake to hear thee. Then open thy heart to him as thou shalt appear in the eyes of our Lord Jesus Christ at the day of judgment when all things are revealed intruth. Discard shame in the knowledge that God has seen and heard all thy sins, and so too have those who are reflected into God from the face of the mirror of truth; they know thy shortcomings better than thou dost thyself. Be not ashamed before thy confessor, be ashamed before God and the friends of God, acquiring godly fear in the realization that God’s divine glance has seen thy every will, word and act; and opening thy heart pour out thy sins till, the whole tale being told, thou dost fervently pray him: ‘Sir, ghostly father, I entreat thee by the love that bound Christ on the cross, show me the nearest way to my eternal happiness.’
Upon this it is open to thy confessor to indicate three ways with which it behoves thee to be quite familiar. Setting thee thy penance, he instructs thee to repair wrongs done ; he bids thee restore goods not thine own ; he enjoins thee to make amends for aught thou hast done to another that thou wouldst not he should do unto thee. Word, will, and act: what was willed without effect must be willed to more purpose, thy will being such that thou wouldst sooner die a thousand deaths than plan a mischief to thine evenchristian. Thy wicked will, which is toward evil
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deeds, endeavour to cörrect. Where thou wast haughty now walk humbly for all the world to see thou repentest thee of thy pride. Pride I single out, knowing it for a temporal fault most fatal to our eternal happiness. False pride robs spiritual no less than worldly folks of their eternal bliss. Dost know what pride is ? Flattery of yourself or other people is false pride which cheats you of eternal happiness.
Next, examine yourselves for sloth in God’s service. Not \ doing thy best is sloth in God’s service. To meet this, set to and do good, showing by diligence thy sorrow for thine egregious dereliction ; yet remaining detached withal and regardless of aught but God and the friends of God.
Thereafter it behoves thee to check thy third sin. Where thou wast greedy now be liberal and let thy bounty attest thy whole- _ hearted abhorrence of greed. Dost. know what greed is? Desire of anything not God is evil greed. “
The fourth sin is envy and hate: bearing malice and hatred towards any with intent to do unto him what thou wouldst not he should do unto thee. Hast injured any man by act of thine, repair the injury at any cost. Hast tarnished his fair name by word of thine, thy words must brighten it again : abasing thyself before him, entreat him humbly for God’s sake to forgive thee and reiterate thy rueful supplication till he grant thee his free pardon. Call people’s attention to this, withal speaking so well of the man that thou dost win him back honour no less than thou didst filch from him. Know forsooth, ere thou canst find favour with God thou must needs pay in full for wrongs done to thine evenchristians. Disparagement is mischievous. Worldly goods we can replace but stolen honour cannot be restored save by the payment of our own. So weigh thy words well, friend.
The fifth sin is anger. Reckon up words and deeds done in anger and cancel them with kindness. Peradventure thou hast . spoken in anger words which, if adhered to, shall doom thee to eternal death. A word said here may reach to Rome, and from Rome to overseas: how then recall it? Thus: man pays his debts through God. Saying, Shall I not tell the truth? folks canvass the failings of their evenchristians and forget their own. I say, though thou seest and hearest the faults of thine even- christians, betray them not. If so be that thou canst not for- bear the mention of them, then go and see the person privately, just you and he together; point out his faults to him in a friendly manner and invite him by thine own excellent precept and example to eschew his vicious habits. If he will not forswear them, acquaint the right authorities and leave it at that, allowing nothing of it to escape thy lips however much he vex thee. For know, to rebuke
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: him for sin in thine anger is to commit mortal sin : raising him out of sin thou dost fall in thyself. The sinner of to-day is the saint of to-morrow. Wherefore, unmindful of the sins and short- comings of our evenchristians, let us look to our own imper- fections, surely forgetting what God has forgotten: sins truly repented, which God has forgotten, ’tis no business of ours to remember.
The sixth sin is eating and drinking to excess: eating, perhaps, two regular meals or three while thine evenchristian goes hungry and thirsty, who is nigher to God than thou art, and liker to boot ; for he is poor while thou art rich in temporal things. Christ said, ‘ Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ These frailties it behoves thee to amend so thoroughly that God must needs forgive them thee.
The seventh sin in unchastity. Concerning this a heathen master says: ‘ All superfluity, anything unnecessary in word or deed, is unchastity.’ The traverner sets his hoop to a mark when he goes to sell wine. When the wine is sold, he takes off the hoop. So let them do who are minded to cure the sin of unchastity : let them avoid excess in word and deed and walk right humbly and soberly before the world, so all shall say that anything to be called excess offends them.
Thy next care, daughter, is whether thou hast kept the ten commandments all thy days. To take one that Christ mentions, ‘Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength,’ thou canst be shown to have broken this frequently. And breaking this commandment thou dost break them all. It behoves thee to tell thy confessor how often thou hast broken it from childhood up. It would take too long to go through all the ten commandments and say what thou must tell to thy confessor. Thou wilt see that for thyself better than we can tell thee.
Then, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost : how often thou hast resisted them and hast failed to practise the seven works of mercy, wherefor God shall arrantly upbraid thee at the day of judgment. Make a fresh start, my daughter, so mending thy ways that God is obliged to forget thy shortcomings.
Such is the first counsel of the worthy confessor and the first way. To the question : ‘ Sir, is it the best way ? ’ he will answer, “No, but what I am telling thee is indispensable.’ Says she, ‘Then, sir, tell me the best way.’ He answers, ‘ Bide till thou hast made thine own this counsel I have given thee ; bide till thou hast cast thy sins ; and meanwhile come often to see me.’
Obedient to her revered confessor, the daughter does this. She often comes back to him and says, ‘Sir, I will obey you to
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the death if you will help me so to live that I am bold to die.’ — “ Hast cast thy sins?’ he asked. ‘ Aye,’ she replied, ‘so far as I shall ever do it here in time ; and will do till I die.’—‘ Then I will redirect thee, and give thee fresh instructions. Keep a truthful tongue, a pure body and a loving soul. A code that may b: construed thus : A truthful tongue means that the lips utter only the intentions of the heart. Thus thou shalt speak the truth, daughter. God is truth, so thy whole conversation shall be of God ; not praying nor thinking of God thou thus speakest of God, and art ever receiving from God.
“ A pure body means that, pierced with godly fear, thou sufferest naught save God to dwell in thee.
“ A loving soul is one that loves her likes, God namely. Unite thyself with him until thee thinks thy heart is fit to burst with too much love.” Whereat the daughter cried, ‘ And I an utter stranger to it! Sir,’ she said, ‘shall I ever come acquainted with it ?’ He said, “Yes. Do as I bid you: discard the things that are darkening thy soul, and let the light of truth in. Then thy soul can retrace the road she came.’
By the third loaf we understand God’s mercy. Consider, daughter, the plenteous compassion that God has shown thee. When, having endowed thee with free will, thou didst of thy free will incur eternal death, he ransomed thee with his own self and washing thee in his own blood did cleanse thee from original sin. Observe further God’s mercy in being ready to forgive thy sins as often as thou seekest grace in time. To enumerate God’s mercies time would fail us though we lived till doomsday. Folks talk. of God’s providence. Know, what God has provided for us is his eternal felicity, in token whereof he has given us free will to do good and eschew evil.
At this point it behoves us to determine whether we truly repent us of our sins. Wouldst know the quality of true repentance ? It has to be so strong in thee that thou wouldst sooner die a thousand deaths than sin one sin. There be many that say ‘I truly repent me of my sins’ who yet remain in sin. Speaking falsely they augment their sin. Thou virtuous soul who wouldst enjoy God’s mercy and be baptized in the Hoiy Ghost, repent thee thrice: (first) for the sins thou hast committed against the Lord thy God by word and deed. Repent thee next of sins against — thine evenchristians. If thou wouldst taste God’s clemency and have him to forgive thy sins and dowse thee with his Holy Ghost. in grace, then show the mercy due to all mankind made in Christ’s image as they are, whether or not they shall have sinned against thee: needs must if thou art ever to find grace. The third repentance is heartfelt pity for thyself, bred from a survey of the
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happy days that God has granted thee for finding thy eternal happiness, he having made all creatures for signposts to thy highest good. As St Augustine says: ° All creatures point me to my good; Lord, I deeply rue that if I ever get to thee ’tis by thy mercy. The time goes by that thou hast given me and thou art still unknown to me and unbeloved : hence my regret. And yet I fear me, Lord, I never felt the true rue that I ought.’
By the fourth loaf we understand God’s justice. Innately, he is as just as he is merciful. Yet know, were I to tell you of God’s jus- tice, *twould be too hard for you: precious few would look for grace. Hence we emphasise God’s mercy, who throws souls into purgatory to find grace at the judgment day if not before. Know that in itself God’s justice is of a sternness that must make all tremble. Well knowing this, Christ said to his disciples: * Having done all that is possible to you, say, We are unprofitable servants.’ We learn this from St John also, who, though he did no sin to separate him from God yet likened himself to the beasts of the forest. Surely he knew God’s truth. I say, moreover, God’s justice is so harsh that, though a man should do all the good works wrought by the company of saints now in eternal life, yet, being found in any mortal sin (the first"is pride ; the second, slothfulness in God’s service ; the third, hate; the fourth, anger; the fifth, greed; the sixth, overeating and drinking ; the seventh, unchastity : these are the seven deadly sins), being found, I say, in one of these, he would be lost eternally. I hold it would avail him nothing for all the saints in heaven to intercede for him. I affirm, moreover, were Christ to supplicate his Father, and Mary his mother, ’twould not avail to save his soul. Further, concerning this I say that I would sooner have the man who sins a thousand mortal sins and knows it, than him who sins but one in ignorance: that man is lost. I hold he
‘may have practised every virtue of Holy Christendom and it will not avail him, he is damned with the lost, while he of a thousand conscious sins is saved, provided that, renouncing them heartily in true repentance, never to do them more, he mends his ways, steadfast in love till death. That man ranks with the saints. Ah, daughter, mark those souls who, all their days exempt from mortal sins, can say with the young man, ‘I have kept thy com- mandments all my life.’ Would to God I knew one person who could even say, “All my days have I kept the first of Christ’s commandments, Thou shalt love thy God with all thy soul-powers,’ and who has been preserved the while from spiritual pride.
The fifth loaf signifies true faith. It means absolute trust in God. He who believes in God trusts God and knows God and therefore loves God. Observe, woman, having true faith means believing in God’s omnipotence. The masters say: ‘ Whosoever
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has true faith as much as a grain of mustard seed, can remove mountains.’ Wherefore it behoves us assiduously to free our- selves from things corruptible, which dim the ligh@®wherein we see the true faith, which is God. To be able to say, ‘I am a true Christian,’ a man must subsist in Christ in the sense that Christ is his exemplar whereto he is conformed in word and deed. Know, that whatever Christ did he did to edify us in eternal truth, for he is the truth itself; he can initiate thee into the true faith. What I say is, that to get to the Father we must go to him in Christ ; to know the Father we must know him in Christ. And so Christ taught. When Philip asked him, ‘ Show us the Father,’ Christ answered, ‘ He who seeth me seeth the Father, and where the Father is there I am.’ Plainly then, we must follow the lead of the Beloved if we would be saved. People say, ‘ How can I do as Christ did?’ Christ tells us how. He said, ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’ Which do not understand to mean he bids you die the death he died upon the cross. His words were, ‘Follow me,’ meaning we are to imitate his perfect life. Our temporal failure to imitate his life in word and deed is our eternal failure. Concerning this he said, ‘ In my Father’s house are many mansions.’ For you must know that many a man who goes to, heaven no more enjoys the light of God’s countenance than sunshine in forest gloom. Nay, friend, mark what Christ said to the kinswoman who besought him for herson. He said, ‘ He who drinks of the cup I wot of shall be joint heir with me in my Father’s kingdom.’ Which being interpreted means : by our measure here it shall be meted to us again by our heavenly Father in his eternal kingdom. As St Augustine says: ‘So far as we know and love here we profit eternally.’
Theologians speak of hell. I will tell you what hell is. It is merely astate. Your state here is your eternal state. This is hell. Take an illustration. A thief who has incurred the penalty of death on being caught: picture his state of mind seeing others happy ! So do we feel, and worse. And so with those in hell who see God and his friends : the height of torment, so the masters say.
This learnt, the aforementioned daughter goes to her revered confessor. She says, ‘Sir, tell me the best way to my eternal happiness.’ Quoth he, ‘ Daughter, let be.’—‘ I shall never let be,’
she said, ‘so long as my eternal happiness is not assured.’ He said, ‘Thou art sure of eternal life, daughter.’—* But, sir,’ she persisted, ‘have you told me the nearest way to it ?’— Any creature will tell you that,’ he said. ‘ With one accord they all exclaim: Pass on, we are not God. “Tis direction enough, daughter.’—‘ Not for me, sir,’ she said. Said he, ‘ An thou wilt
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not believe me, at least thou wilt credit the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said: Take up thy cross and follow me. He did not say, Tale up my cross and follow me. What he meant was : be content to do thy best, knowing that therewith God too is satisfied..—‘ Would I had! done my best,’ she cried.— What wouldst thou do?’ he asked. She answered, ‘I would leave honour and possessions and friends and kindred and the outward solace I get from creatures.’—‘ Wouldst leave me too?’ asked her confessor. She answered, ‘ Aye, sir; leaving all things, I must leave you also.’—‘ Essay it not,’ he said, ‘’tis not for a woman.’ Quoth she, ‘ Full well I wot no woman can enter heaven till she be man. That means she must*do man’s work and have the strength of mind to withstand him and all imper- fections.-—‘ Thou deemst thyself mighty strong! I wonder now, how thou wouldst like to bear more than thou hast already.’ She said, ‘I can bear all, sir, that Christ has borne for me.’ He said, ‘These are words!’ She said, ‘It is true.-—‘ Canst prove it?’ said he. ‘ With ease,’ said she. ‘I have heard tell that in none of Christ’s sufferings did his Godhead come to the help of his manhood.’ He said, ‘ That is true. The Godhead is impassible ; „it never has suffered and never can suffer, seeing that nothing affects it.’ Quoth she, ‘ What Christ bore, I can bear.’ He said, ‘Tell me how.’—‘ I will,’ she replied. ‘ Right well I ween Christ was the noblest man that ever was born: from threescore kings and twelve he was descended ; and I say, moreover, he was the best heart’s-blood of Mary. See now my proof that I am fit to bear all he bore for me. Taking the test of breeding, the best bred are the tenderest. It follows that I can bear more than Christ can.’ Said he, ‘ Were I to tell you all I know of the perfection of his life in time in right willing poverty, ’twere like to break my heart. Bethink thee well!’ She said, ‘I have bethought me. This very day I mean to follow the dictates of the Holy Ghost.’—* What does the Holy Ghost dictate?’ he asked. She answered, ‘ He counsels me to leave myself in the mighty hands of God and to sever my ties with creatures.-—* Thou art wrong,’ he said. ‘ How so?’ said she. He said, ‘In not taking advice. Obedience is a virtue, as thou knowest.’—‘ I am obedient unto death,’ she said. ‘To whom ?’ he queried. ‘To Christ and his heavenly Father to whom John was obedient in the wilderness, and Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt and Mary Salome.’ Quoth he, ‘ It seems thou wilt no longer mind me.’—* You are right,’ she cried; ‘I am heartily sorry I listened so long to the counsels of men and was deaf to the counsel of the Holy Ghost.’—* Now listen to me, my daughter. What thinkst thou I have done to thee ? ’—‘ You have kept me from eternal bliss,’she said. ‘Howso?’heasked. She answered,
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“ By not telling me outright the quickest way to it.’—‘ It is obedience to the Holy Ghost,’ he said. ‘I should never counsel thee other- wise than I have counselled thee.’-—‘ If you had not discouraged me,’ she said, ‘ and other spiritual folks to boot, I should have spent my time more virtuously. I weened, forsooth, it were the gospel that priests propagated.’—‘ The gospel is begotten in the Holy Ghost of the perfect life of our Lord Jesus Christ and according to his noble teachings. We read and preach the gospel openly : he who would follow it let him follow it to the utmost.’—‘ God forgive me for not doing so all my days,’ said she. Quoth he, ‘I grieve thou shouldst accuse me of preventing thee.’—‘ Aye,’ she replied, ‘I accuse you and all creatures.’-—‘ Thou art mistook,’ he said. ‘No one can hinder thee but thine own self. Know, whom God impels none can resist : not all the saints in heaven nor all the preaching friars and barefoot monks on earth can stand against one man moved by the truth. He is impelled by that same word which Christ spoke, answering the youth who sought the perfect life. Christ said: Keep the ten commandments. The young man replied, All these have I kept from my youth up. Then said Christ, If thou wilt be perfect, sell all thou hast and give to the poor and follow me. Christ made known this same truth to us by Peter and others of his disciples whom he called to live with him in willing poverty. Thou knowest, daughter, that what Christ said and did is true, for he is truth itself; and know more- over, that to reach the Father we must walk in, Christ’s footsteps all the way.’ Quoth she, ‘ Well then, good father, why be so discouraging ? ’—* ’Tis such a flawless life,’ he said, ‘ anyone leading it God must needs come and help.’-—‘ God does not come and go,’ she said ; ‘ that I do know. I wot right well when we resign our- selves to him he does not fail to succour us at need.’ Quoth he, ‘ What if all creatures despise thee?’ She said, ‘I want to be the least of creatures in our Lord Jesus Christ, the lowest of his creatures ; then I can say with Paul, Rejoice, all creatures are my cross and I the cross of creatures.’ He said, ‘ Daughter, thou art too young.’—‘ Mary was younger than I,’ she said, ‘ when she set forth into the desert and exile, driven by robbery and murder.’ —‘ God was with her,’ said he. ‘ And well I wot God is with me.’ said she. ‘He was there present in her.’ he replied. ‘He is ever present in my soul,’ she said. Quoth he, ‘ But Mary had a solemn pledge of his presence, which thou hast not, my daughter.’ Quoth she, ‘Since I dispense with outward consolations, I am without his outward presence. I would that he were ever being born within my soul.’—‘ Think twice,’ he said, * before adventuring that.’—‘ Peace, let me speak ! ’ she cried, ‘ ’tis by your too much admonition that you have hindered me.’ He said, * Know, did
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the truth move thee, thou hadst not done nor yet forborne because of me. I am but creature, as thou knowest. As long as any creature has power to give and take thou livest not unto truth. Truth has virtue sufficient to raise man to the summit without help from creatures. Thou durst not cast the blame on me, for know, whom the truth moves has the Holy Ghost to his master, who educates his pupils in the highest school of all. There we learn more in the twinkling of an eye than all the doctors can express.’—‘ You speak the truth,’ she said.
The second article of faith is trust in God. He can say he trusts God who keeps not overnight so much as a pen’orth of possessions. I say more: he keeps nothing at all; but he who withholds but a pennyworth of worldly goods from his even- christian, knowing him to be in need of it, is a robber in the sight of God. I warn you, by Christ who suffered so for love of men, allow no want in any man, he being made in the likeness of Christ for whose sake God created all things ; and impair not his condition by withholding from him his father’s goods, which it behoves him to restore to God.
Further I declare, who spares a penny for himself to put it by against a rainy day, thinking, I may need that for to-morrow, is a murderer before God. And I will prove it. Forif he trust God he will leave himself in God’s hands; if God give him the morrow, he will give him also the wherewithal for it. Hence I affirm there be few who have faith enough to trust God blindly. Know that the man who sets more store by worldly goods than by his powers of knowing and loving God, is justly termed a murderer. This I call Christ to witness, who said, ‘ When I am ascended I will draw all things after me.’ In the same way the virtuous man takes all things up to God, to their first source. The masters teach that creatures were made for man. They prove it from the fact that creatures all need each other: cattle need grass, fish water, birds the air, and beasts the forest. By the same token all creatures come in useful to the good and are carried, one creature in the other, by the good soul to God. Lived there a man who trusted God, God would do unto him better than ever he could do unto himself.
Take the third article of faith, that is, knowledge of God. I say, no man knows God who knows not himself first. Mark how to know yourselves. To know himself a man must be for ever on the watch over himself, holding his outer faculties, breaking them in by vigorous training to obey the higher powers of his soul. This discipline must be continued till he reach a state of conscious- ness so pure that nothing short of God can form in it. Then thou dost come acquainted with thyself and God.
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The fourth property of faith is love. To be able to say, ‘ I love thee, Lord,’ a man must suffer without why what without why Christ suffered, and suffer it gladly without suffering. Though God shall tell him mouth to mouth, ‘ Thou shalt be lost for ever with the damned,’ he only loves God all the more, and says, * Lord, an thou wilt that I be damned, damned I will be, eternally.’ Thus he identifies his will with what God wills, willing that same in earth and heaven. Of this he deems himself unworthy. That man can say, ‘ I love thee.’
We have explained now what faith means. To carry out in practice these articles of faith as enumerated from the start entitles us to say, *I believe in God.’
By the two roast fishes (one fish is will, the other its fulfilment) we understand thorough subjection, the downright death of thy whole nature—the marrow of thy bones, blood in thy veins and whole concomitants of natural vigour—so that albeit having the will to sin, thou hast no power to. Doctors debate whether a man can reach the stage at which he is incapable of sinning in his body. ‘The best authorities say ‘ Yes’; alluding to souls so perfectly disciplined outwardly and inwardly that they have no propensity to sin.
The second fish we take to signify achievement of the virtues ; virtue consummated to the pitch where it becomes instinctive ; where virtue is our very being; where our knowledge and love transcend virtue. A man at this stage gives pure light.
Doctors describe four kinds of light. The first is natural, the light of natural man apt in affairs, which is less a help than a hindrance. The second is the light of grace. Whom this en- lightens has his natural light put out. It lights him on the road to his salvation, preserving him in grace so he follow it closely. The third light lightens the angels and man in his primitive innocence. For know, the man who with the angels receives all things from God is void of mundane things and creaturehood and naked as he was when he came out of God. Man can what angels cannot: in this light he can transcend the angels and receive all things from the source of divine truth. Then he is given divine light, the fourth light, and about this Iam dumb. I keep that to myself.
Here the daughter comes to her revered confessor and says, ‘ Sir, I fear I shall never do it.‘ Why not ?.’ said he. Said she, “I still have all the virtues to cultivate. I ween I never brought one single virtue to the pitch required.’ Quoth he, “ Be satisfied to do thy best.’—‘ I have never done my best,’ she said, ‘ albeit I am well aware that I am thrice behoven unto God. My first behoof is to repair my faults.’—‘ None can repair a =) if God
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_ forgive it not in love,’ said he. ‘I wot of that,’ she said, ‘ but I must do my share and live in hopes of grace until I die.’
Quoth he, ‘ What is thy second accusation?’ She answered, ‘That, while fain to be in the joy of our Lord, I have not lived accordingly, albeit well aware that to enter there one has to live the perfect life in our Lord Jesus Christ.’—‘ That is so,’ he said. ‘ Tell me, what is thy third behoof?’ Shesaid, “ Though there were neither hell nor heaven, to follow him for true love all the same, as he prevented me: to follow him to the end without a why. I know my duty but mend not my ways as in duty bound.’—* What more wouldst thou do?’ he asked. ‘Thou hast given up honour and possessions, and kith and kin and every comfort thou didst get from creatures.’—‘ True, sir, in letter,’ she said, * but giving up all God ever created to leave it for God’s sake is giving up nothing ; it is not mine to give. It is God’s. Anything in the shape of possessions is God’s. Wherefore I ween there is still something more for me to leave.’-—‘* What must thou leave ?’ he asked.— ‘ Myself,’ she answered. ‘ If I leave myself wherever I find myself I can say, I have left myself.’—* Thou art right,’ he cried, ‘but I marvel, being so sensitive, thou canst brook the insults heaped upon thee.’ She said, ‘God knows I feel none.’ Quoth he, * Does it not touch thee that thy friends, spiritual as well as worldly, are so distressed on thy account, thinking thee most mistook in thy behaviour ? ’—‘ What is that to me?’ she said. ‘ For well I ween Christ knew, when he was sitting in the temple, that Joseph and his mother sought him sorrowing. The doctors told Christ : Thy father and thy mother are seeking thee. Christ answered : He who is kind to me, the same is my father and mother and sister and brother. —‘ True,’ he said. ‘I prithee, though, accept life’s necessaries when they are offered thee in the name of God.’ —‘ Tell me,’ she queried, ‘what are necessaries ? ’—* Wouldst have me specify the bare necessities of life ?’ he asked. ‘ Aye,’ she replied. ‘ Bread, water, and a cloak,’ he said. ‘ These are bare bodily necessities.’ Quoth she, ‘ Now tell me what is neces- sary?’ And he made answer, ‘To dwell in utter ignominy in Christ who alone lives.’—* Now God reward you ! ’ she exclaimed. ‘Pray God on my behalf to give all creatures licence to cry me down and persecute me to their topmost bent.’ Quoth he, ‘ Thow It get a plenty in thy vocation. A holy man has said, Did God know anyone willing to suffer the sum of human suffering, he would give it him to bear that his worth might be so much the greater in eternity. God will do this out of pure love to anyone he calls to him.’ Quoth she, ‘A master says, He alone deserves suffering who dearly desires it.’—* True, daughter,’ he said. ‘ Prithee, an thou wilt, remain in these parts and busy thyself among us.’—
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* That will I not,’ she answered, ‘ I must be about my own business. I mean to live in exile, anywhere where I am persecuted. For you must know I have found more of God in the least despisery than ever I did in the sweetness of ereatures.’—* I’ll not quarrel with that for it is true,’ he said. ‘ Christ proves it by those words to his disciples, Go ye into all places where they shall persecute — you.’ Quoth she, ‘God bless you for it, who have my homage betwixt me and God.’—‘ Come to me wheresoever thou shalt find me,’ he said.—‘ That will I gladly.’
St Paul affirms of the holy martyrs and friends of our Lord, “ They are dead.’ From this we argue that we have to be dead too. I hold that anyone who is not really dead has not the faintest notion of the sacred things revealed by God to his beloved. As long as thou still knowest who thy father and thy mother have been in time, thou art not dead with the real death. Further I hold: as long as it affects thee that no one will shrive thee nor give thee God’s body nor shelter thee from the world’s scorn, as long as it is in thee to be moved by this, know that thou art a stranger to the true death. When thou art aware of nothing within thee : when, having escaped from earthly species and forgot thy honourable estate and all temporal happenings, thou hast entered oblivion so deep that nothing formulates itself in thee and thou art sensible of naught save the sheer ascension of thy soul, then thou canst say that thou art really dead. He who is dead thus is always the same ; nothing affects him. Anent this St John says, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in God.’ See then, my friends, how good it is to die in God. We can die gladly if God will live and work in us while we are idle. We die, ’tis true, but ’tis a gentle death. Folks tell us of the holy life, how they have suffered. To tell the tale of what our Lord’s friends suffered time would be all too short. I say: they did not suffer. The least suspicion of God-conscious- ness and sufferings would be all forgot. This may well happen while the soul is in the body. I say more: while yet in the body'a | soul may reach oblivion of its travail not to remember it again. Further I hold: to him who suffers not for love, to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But he who suffers for love does not suffer, and this suffering is fruitful in God’s sight. It follows, friends, that by contriving to die in God gladly, we go scot-free from suffering. To practise this is to be really dead. So to die in God, help us O Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Here the aforementioned daughter comes to her confessor, beseeching him, ‘ Sir, ‘hear me for God’s sake.’—‘* Whence come you?’ said he. ‘ From foreign parts,’ said she. He asked, * Of what country art thou?’ She answered, ‘ Sir, do you not know me ? ’—“ Not I, God wot,’ quoth he. Quoth she, ‘ By the same
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token you have never known yourself.’—‘ True,’ he replied, * for well I ween that if I knew myself as intimately as I ought, I should have perfect knowledge of all creatures.”—‘ You are right,’ she © said; ‘ but a truce to this talk, sir. Hear me, in God’s name.’— ‘ Willingly,’ he said. ‘Say on.’
The daughter made confession to her revered confessor, as it was now in her to do, in a manner to rejoice his heart. Quoth he, ‘ Return ere long, daughter.’-—‘ Gladly, God willing,’ quoth she.
Going off to his brethren he announces, ‘I have just shriven someone, whether woman or angel I misdoubt, nay, I wot not. If woman, her soul powers dwell with the angels in heaven and her soul has received angelic nature. She knows and loves beyond anyone I ever met.’—‘ Glory be to God,’ the brethren ery.
Seeking his daughter where he knows her to be, in the chapel, namely, her confessor earnestly entreats her to converse with him. --*Do you not know me yet ?’ she asks. He answers, ‘ No, God knows.’—‘ Then I will tell you for love. I am the poor soul you led to God.’ And she discovers to him her identity.—‘ Alas, wretch that I am!’ he cries. . ‘Shame on me in the sight of God that having spiritual light so long I am so unfamiliar with divinity. Prithee, my daughter, for the love of God, recount to me thy life and doings since I last saw thee.’ Quoth she, ‘ That were a deal to tell.—‘ Not more than I am fain to hear,’ he said. * Know, I have been amazed by what you told me.’
Ere taking up her tale the daughter says to her confessor : * You must never betray me while I live. —‘ I give you my word,’ he answered, ‘ not to divulge thy confession during thy lifetime.’ Whereupon she embarks on such a wondrous story he marvels any human being could go through so much. Quoth she, ‘ Sir, still I fall short. I find that I have conquered all my heart’s desires save only that my faith be not assailed.”—* God be praised for making thee,’ he cried. ‘Now rest content.’—* Never,’ she said, ‘ while my soul has no abiding place in eternity.’ Said he, ‘I should be well content to have my soul ascend as thine does.’ She said, ‘ My soul ascends freely, but it makes no stay. To will does not content me; if only I might know the thing to do to establish me permanently in eternity!’ He asked, ‘ Is the desire so strong?’ She answered, ‘ Aye.’-—‘ Be rid of it,’ he said, ‘ if thou wouldst be confirmed.’ Saying, ‘ ’Tis gladly done,’ she sinks into destitution. And God drawing her in his divine light she weens that she is one with God. While this continues she keeps beating back into herself with an overwhelming sense of deity, and keeps ejaculating, ‘ I am sure there is no escape for me.’
The confessor visits his daughter frequently, inquiring, ‘ Tell
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me, how goes it now with thee ? ’—‘ Ill,’ she replies. ‘ Heaven and earth are too confined for me.’ He entreats her to tell him something. She says, ‘I have nothing whatever to tell.’—‘ Just a word, for God’s sake,’ he pleads, and wins it for the asking. She proceeds to reveal to him such profound and marvellous things concerning the pure perception of divine truth that he exclaims, ‘Thou knowest this is not common knowledge, and were I not among those priests who have read it in theology, I had not known it either.’—* Much good it is to you,’ she said. ‘I would you had a lively sense of it.” Said he, ‘I am this much alive to it, I feel as certain of it as of my having said the mass to-day. Natheless, this lack of actual experience does trouble me.’
With the words, ‘ Pray God for me,’ the daughter returns into her solitude to enjoy God’s society. Ere long she appears at the door again, demanding her confessor, to whom she says, ‘ Sir, rejoice with me, I am God.’—‘ Glory be to God ! ’ he cries.. ‘ Retire again into thy solitude ; all joy be thine an thou remainest God.’
Obedient to her confessor, she goes into the chapel, into a secluded corner. There oblivion descended upon her, and she forgot everything named and was so far withdrawn from self and everything created that she had to be carried from the church and lay till the third day, surely accounted for dead. ‘I misdoubt she is dead,’ quoth her confessor. Know, had there been no confessor they would have buried her. They essayed by all manner of means, but whether her soul was in her body they could not discover. They said, ‘ For sure she is dead.’—‘ For sure she is not,’ said her confessor. On the third day the daughter re- turned. ‘Alas, me miserable, am I back!’ she cried. Her confessor, who was already there, addressed her, saying, ‘ Permit _me to taste divine truth in the revelation of thy experience.’ She said, ‘God knows, I cannot. My experience is ineffable.’— ‘Hast got now all thou wilt?’ he asked. She answered, ‘ Aye. I am confirmed.’
Blest and praised be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ who showed us the way to conquer by grace what he is by nature. It needs a God-receptive man who treads beneath his feet self and all creatures. He has five deaths to die. The first is death to natural things. Being dead to nature spirit reigns. Never- theless he still may lapse into eternal death, as shown by Lucifer. Himself pure spirit, from himself he fell, falling eternally. We must die in spirit, our spirit being inspired into the spirit of truth. Now we begin to live in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, strictly obeying his precepts and example. Thus we die in our Lord Jesus Christ in the truth which is himself, even as he died in his humanity. And we rise in our Lord Jesus Christ to live again in
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the quick of life. We enter the Father in the Son. Humanity receives its coup de grdce, pierced to the heart by light divine. Therein man learns to know himself. Forgot are all God’s gifts beknownst tohim. Thought, word, will, act, lie strewn before him in the reflection of the divine light received from the Father. In this divine light the soul sees herself less than creature. She finds no place to dwell in. She deems herself the vilest thing God ever made. Lucifer is to her so meritorious that she ranks under him. Accordingly the masters say, ‘ Christ’s soul and Lucifer’s were made in the same light.’ Hence the soul’s grievance and self- condemnation. Christ’s soul was the wisest soul that ever was: she faced round in the creature and looked towards the creator. Wherefore the Father clad her in the divine garment and property of his own nature. But Lucifer looked away to the deficiency and thereby fell, falling eternally. So fall all they that turn from God to things corruptible. In this plight the soul now finds herself and is consumed within herself, there thinking to remain eternally,
- for it is she who is to blame.
The best authorities aver that from the very lowest angel of all those in heaven, there fell one drop upon the highest heaven. This started the celestial revolutions, each heaven following the course nature laid down for carrying round the drop. From it all creatures get their life, those that have life in time; in it all creatures hie them back to their first source; in it the soul becomes aware that, so little has God become in time, our works must be wrought above time, in eternity. Christ taught us this. His works are all wrought in eternity. Did God perform one act outside himself, he were not God. God’s works are wrought so that they remain in him. And our works which are wrought thus endure in eternity. Understand, we call mine that which is in me, which none can take from me.—Here the soul is moved to exclaim: ‘ Alas, that I have wrought so many works outside me ! °
Concerning nature, the masters speak as follows: Nature and naturalness are not identical. The natural state is taken on in time ; nature is in itself eternal. This touches the soul. Philo- sophers will tell you that thunder is merely the result of opposites. Clouds cannot bear being charged with opposites, which crash together ; hence lightning and the thunder. So with the wind; it blows till foreign matter is expelled, namely, the rain. Creatures in general will purify themselves from incompatibles. _
Here the soul realizes that she has often harboured incompatibles. She says: ‘Creatures all pointed me to my eternal happiness. They did not Lucifer: he fell from God for ever because of the unlikes he assumed. God kept me in himself. I had no mind to
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see it, so I can never look for grace.’ And there she stops, failing to rise beyond herself.
Now theologians say, God is by nature bound to draw his likes out of their selfhood into himself just as the sun will draw up moisture. Then the soul, merged in the naked Godhead, is no more to be found than a wine-drop in mid-ocean. That soul can no more sin than God can. The man is said to be conformed to God. God is his active principle. He has real perception. Things are in him without image, for he is one with God in whom are all things. In this case it is true to say, all things are in man formless. The masters say: ‘To gauge the soul we must gauge her with God, for the ground of God and the ground of the soul are one nature.’ The part that gives life to the body is the least part of the soul. The man who realizes this has fresh and inexhaustible delight. What though he walks in time, he dwells in his eternal nature. He inhabits the truth. This man is known by five signs. First, he never complains. Next, he never makes excuses: when accused, he leaves the facts to vindicate him. Thirdly, there is nothing he wants in earth or heaven but what God wills himself. Fourthly, he is not moved in time. Fifthly, he is never rejoiced : he is joy itself.
Here the trusty confessor comes seeking his daughter in an unknown land, earnestly entreating her to hold converse with him. She says, ‘ I can talk with you of outward things.’-—‘ ’T will serve,’ quoth he. ‘ Tell me, what, thinkest thou, made thee most ripe for the eternal truth?’ She answered: ‘ Leaving myself wherever I found myself. Next, never excusing myself from accusations which concerned myself alone. Thirdly, whatever my pain, wanting still more and compelling myself to bear it equably. Fourth, being supple to insignificance, poverty and lack of creature comforts. Fifth, never seeing souls sin without rebuke and never hearing things against the gospel and the life of Christ without I fought them to the death. But know that it has been my habit rather to rebuke those persons whose sins I saw were doing them a mortal mischief. I never did it save purely out of love to God, being moved to pity for them. Many an insult they have hurled upon me. Sixth, never avoiding occasion of insult: I fled from honour but I stayed for shame. Seventh, never looking back when once I knew the way to my eternal happiness; and taking no man’s counsel, but plodding straight on. Eighth, being never content with present light nor present sight, which were as nothing to my certainty. Ninth, never resisting any use God chose to put me to. Tenth, rigid discipline, inward and outward.’
‘God be praised,’ he said. ‘Thou hast told me thy outward rule ; now tell me thy inner.” Quoth she, ‘ God wot, I fear it is
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beyond you.’—‘ But just a hint; deny me not,’ he urged. And she responded : ‘ At the moment of confirmation there existed in me all the works God ever wrought as a little thing inferior to heaven. My abode was heaven. I dwelt there with the inmates of the Trinity which to me was as familiar as to the householder the house he dwells in, and saw the partition between all creatures and God’s whole creation : it was as plain as the five fingers on my hand.’—‘ He said, ‘ Explain more fully.” She replied, ‘I will. I had assembled all my soul-powers. When I saw into myself I saw God in me and everything God ever made in earth and heaven. Let me explain it better. As you know right well, anyone who faces God in the mirror of truth sees everything depicted in that mirror: all things, that is to say. Such was my inner habit before confirmation. Do you quite take me ? ’—* It must be so, of course,’ he said. ‘Is that not thy rule now?’ She answered, “No, I have nothing to do with saints nor angels nor crea- tures nor anything created; it is all uniform: not merely nothing created but nothing uttered concerns me.’—* Explain,’ he said. She said, ‘I will. I am confirmed in the naked Godhead, wherein is neither form or image.’-—‘ Art there for good?’ he asked. She answered, ‘ Yes.” Quoth he, ‘ Daughter, say on, this talk delights me.’ And she proceeded, * As I am no creature can be, as creature. —‘ Explain,’ he said. Quoth she, ‘I am as I was before I was created: just God and God. No saint nor angel nor choir nor heaven. Eight heavens are often spoken of and nine choirs of angels ; there is nothing of that where Iam, You must know that expressions of that sort, which conjure up pictures in the mind, merely serve as allurements to God. In God there is nothing but God ; no soul gets to God until she is God as she was before she was made.’
He said, ‘ You speak the truth, daughter. Now do for God’s sake counsel me as best thou canst how I may gain possession of this good.’—* I will give you sure guidance,’ she said. ‘As you are well aware, creatures were made from nothing and must return to nothing ere they reach their source.’ ‘True,’ he agreed. Quoth she, ‘ Enough said. Tell me now, what is nothing?’ He replied, ‘I know what is nothing and I know what is less than nothing. Imperfections, I take it, are nothing to God. So that anyone subject to imperfections is less than nothing.’-—‘ How so?’ — He is the servant of imperfection. Nothing is nothing. The servant of imperfection is less than nothing.’ Quoth she, ‘ Pre- cisely. The way then to obtain your good is to subordinate yourself to yourself and creatures till you can find no more to do towards God’s working in you.’—* You are right,’ he cried. ‘ One master says, He who loves God as his God, and prays to God as
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his God and is therewith content, is to me as an unbeliever,’— “ Blessed be the master who’said that,’ quoth she. ‘ He knew the truth. For you must understand that anyone content with what can be expressed in words—God is a word, heaven is a word— whose soul-powers, love and knowledge, insist on nothing further than what can be expressed, is aptly styled an unbeliever. It is the lower senses orfpowers of the soul which grasp things uttered. The higher powers are not content with that: these keep on pressing forward till they strike the source from whence the soul flowed forth. The powers of the soul cannot enter her source. All nine powers of the soul serve the man of the soul ; they draw him out of nether things and speed him to his source. When the soul stands before her cause, superior to things in her main power, her powers remain without. Look you, it is the naked soul, naked of things nameable, one in the same, that progresses in the naked Godhead, like oil that creeps in cloth: so the soul goes creeping forward, flowing on and on so long as God ordains her to give life to the body in time. Know, while the good man lives on earth his soul is progressing in eternity. Hence the good like living.’—‘ True daughter,’ he observed. ‘One master says: Suppose there lay at point to die two men equally pleasant in the eyes of God, and that both died, the one before the other but just long enough to give that other time to breathe one sigh for God, to cast one thought to the least martyr that God ever led, the lightest word God ever spoke, this would entitle him to precedence over the other who died first, while God remains eternal.’—‘ That is so,’ she said. ‘ Know also, as the good shall rise so fall the wicked who are in sin.’
_ ‘Now prithee, daughter, tell me. We speak of heaven and hell and purgatory and read a vast amount about them. We also read that God is in everything and everything in God.’—‘ And so it is,’ she said.—“ Then, for God’s sake,’ quoth he, ‘ acquaint me with the rightful view of it.—* Gladly, so far as I can put it into words,’ she said. ‘ Hell is nothing but a state or being, Our being here is our eternal being ; we are as it were grounded init. Many people fondly imagine here to have creaturely being and divine being yonder. That is not so. It is a popular delusion. Purgatory is a thing assumed, like penance, and comes to an end. Look at it like this. Some souls so reverence God and the friends of God that God is constrained to have mercy on them, be it only at their end that true repentance comes to them in love and knowledge and they rise out of themselves and everything created. Then true love is their being and did they go on living they would sin no more but suffer for true love’s sake all our Lord Jesus Christ suffered, and his beloved. These rise in grace. But people who
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go hence in their state of creaturehood are in that state eternally which is called hell. Likewise, theré%remains their state to those - who suffer naught but God to be in them : God is their being and remains their being eternally.
‘ Again, touching the last day, people say, God shall judge. So he shall, but not as they think. Each man is his own judge in this sense : the state he then appears in he is ig eternally. People frequently assert : The body shall rise with the soul. So it shall. But not as they think. ‘The being of the body and the being of the soul go to form one being. Those souls who all their days have spent their time in God till God has come to be their being, to them God stays their being, body and soul eternally. Not so the wicked who have squandered their time on creatures ; what their state is it continues to be, and this eternal lapsing from God and from his friends is called hell. Yet bear in mind that these same persons get their being from God or they would not be at all. So they are in God and God is in them. You see, they have the being of God. Take it like this. They are in God as ’twere a man with his life forfeit to some righteous lord whose honour he has stolen. and whose friends, and plotted frequently against his life; and now his lord, who showed him only kindness in hopes of his reform, is vexed to find that he declines to mend. Holding him in the grip of justice, his lord forbears to kill. He punishes the outrage on himself. First, bound hand and foot, the man is cast into the lowest donjon among toads and reptiles and the foul water which is wont to lie in deepest donjon-keeps. Fetched up from thence, he is disgraced before the world, that they may see his open shame and he their joy. So much the more his torment. Insult after insult do they heap upon him, shame unthinkable ; he is ever.cast back into his donjon, ever in dread of execution. Even so it is permissible to say that man is at the court, for the donjon is the royal court as much as the hall is where the king stays with his friends; but conditions, you see, are different. Though not with that celestial race we spoke of. Know that grief endures eternally. I marvel that anyone who hears these words should dare to sin. Purgatory is so grievous in itself that anyone who knows the rights of it would stay no time in sin. Purgatory you must know is temporal and notional. A soul which leaves the body, as I said, in faith and love and will to do all for God’s sake and eschew sin for God, that soul is in dire distress, unable to do anything but wait till God shall deign to take compassion on her. And though this happen not till doomsday, the hope is her life. Doomsday past, this is over. But souls in the divine condition are not affected in this sense: on quitting the body such a soul remains in a condition of divinity determined by her knowledge
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and love of God, and after the day of judgment the being of the body and the being of the soul are one being in the divine actuality. According to the most reliable authorities, statements of theirs regarding creatures are not to be construed to mean that John went body and soul to heaven ; no more did others of our Lord’s friends either, of whom report says they are body and soul in God, transcending time in eternity. It is not possible. In ‚God can be nothing but God, not mouth nor nose nor hand nor foot nor any creature pertaining to the body. So they cannot be held to have got there in the body. We may reasonably suppose that when the time came for John to go, God caused to befall him what was due to happen on the day of judgment. He did this for true love’s sake, because he was so pure. The being of his soul, taking with it, God helping, the being of his body, was drawn up. We may take it that his body, which was destined to perish here on earth, was disintegrated in the air, so that there entered into God only the being of the body, which would have accompanied the soul at the last day. Thus it befell Mary and all of whom it is related that they attained to God in the body.’
“ Tis well argued,’ he said. ‘ But you must know the question is in hot dispute among the theologians.’ Said she, ‘I will give you the key to its golution. Pass to our Lord Jesus Christ and see what happened at his ascension. He was at meat when he ascended. As you well know, the food was lost in transit, with everything adventitious that Christ had taken on, which all remained in time. He could only take with him into the Father that which came out of the Father. The being of Christ’s soul took with it the being of the noble manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ in its divine actuality. The persons subsist in the Father as one with the Father. Even so are all those in the Father who conquer by grace what Christ has by nature : not that they take with them the life of the body when they go hence; that waits till doomsday. The being of the body reverts to the being of the soul only when all things have perished, according to the vulgar teaching. You doubtless know that whom God deigns to favour he treats as he treated St John.’ Quoth he, ‘I wot that well. If I did as St Dominic, I should be as St Dominic. St Dominic sold his book and all he possessed and gave to the poor for God’s sake. We do not this, daughter, nor do we practise numerous other virtues of St Dominic. We are as we are through pretending a priesthood we do not possess. St Francis was a simple soul wherefor God greatly favoured him. He approached God in perfect simplicity of life and so grew familiar with God. Now in those parts there was a priest who sorely hated a profane to be so intimate with God. Going to visit him, he said, ““ What
\
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shall we make of this, brother ? The scriptures say we must rebuke
men for their sins.” —‘‘ Assuredly,” said St Francis.—*‘ But,” said . the priest, “‘ did I rebuke a man, he might repay me twofold.”— “How should he ? ” said St Francis. “I can rede you the scriptures
better than that: we are to cultivate the true and perfect life,
within and without, till we become a living rebuke to all mankind.”
—‘‘ True, brother,” said the priest ashamed.—Know that to do as
St Francis is to become as St Francis. Further, I hold: when
we depart this life, grace departs from us. And again: to be less
than St John is to be more than St John.’—* Thank God, you
know it,’ she exclaimed. He said, ‘I have known it for long, and
I ween it is true, though I do not live it.—‘ That I rue,’ she
said.
Quoth she, ‘ You have told: me of nine heavens. Now tell me what I ask. Advise me what sort of life to lead, for you know my life better than anyone.’—‘ Indeed I will,’ said he, “and gladly. Eat when thou art hungry, drink when thou art thirsty, wear fine linen, sleep and take thine ease ; gratify thy tastes in meats and drinks and, for a season, study thyself, live for thyself alone. An thou shouldst see God’s whole creation swallowed up before thine eyes, avert it not with so much as an Ave Maria, but summon all creatures at will to do thy bidding to theglory of God. Wear delicate, beautiful raiment, and, abiding in one place, carry all things up to God. Dost thou choose to enjoy creatures, it is seemly so to do, seeing that any creature thou enjoyest thou dost render to its cause. Thou wilt know full well that everything thou enjoyest is in God to God’s glory.’ She said, ‘I know right well that all you say is true but you must understand I never shall want anything except to be a beggar till I die. —‘ Thou art mistook,’ he said.—‘ Then mistaken I will remain,’ said she. ‘I choose poverty and exile; that none can take from me.’—‘ On my soul, thou art false to God,’ he cried.—‘ How so ? ’ she asked. * Just pleasing thyself,’ he answered. Quoth she, ‘God knows I am but keeping on the lines that led me to eternal happiness. The natural error of those lines in time and in eternity shall be mine too in eternity and time. I will not deviate from the rule of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ He said, ‘ Thou shouldst know that. God prosper thee.’ Then she: ‘Believe me, I do take more ease ; my discipline is not so strict as heretofore. If only I might forward on their way good souls approaching their eternal happiness but lacking certainty, that I fain would do; I would fain succour the whole world from sin for God’s sake. Since our Lord Jesus Christ made use of all his faculties up to his death, ’tis meet I should do likewise. My outer faculties shall occupy themselves with the exalted life and noble manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ
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and with his lofty teachings, during my life in time. The highest powers of my soul will, as you know, be working in Christ’s soul in his heavenly Father, subsistent in one nature they never stoop from. The Holy Ghost flows from the Father through these powers into my soul and back from my soul into God, each several power doing its own work, here in the Holy Ghost and, in the Father, with his Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Regard it as an intercourse. He knows all my days from the time I discerned good and evil.’
‘Tell me, daughter,’ he said, ‘ doctors declare that in heaven a thousand angels can stand on the point of a needle. Now rede me the meaning of this?’ She answered, ‘The doctors are right. You can see it in this way. The soul that enters into God owns neither time nor space nor anything nameable to be expressed in words. But it stands to reason, if you consider it, that the space occupied by any soul is vastly greater than heaven and earth and God’s entire creation. I say more: God might make heavens and earths galore yet these, together with the multiplicity of creatures he has already made, would be of less extent than a single needle-tip compared with the standpoint of a soul atoned in God.’ —So the daughter went on, till her talk turning upon God, she waxed most eloquent, the father urging her at intervals : ‘ Say on, daughter.’ She imparted to him so much concerning the immen- sity of God, the might of God and the providence of God, that he took leave of his outer senses and they had to carry him into a neighbouring cell where he lay for long ere coming to himself again. Returning to himself, he desired his daughter to come to him. Admitted to his presence, his daughter inquired, * How is it now with you ? ’—‘ Excellently well,’ he answered. ° God be praised for sending thee to a man. . Thou didst show me the way to my eternal happiness, and I have been deep in divine contemplation where there was given me the realization of all I have heard from thy lips. Daughter I adjure thee, by thy love to God, help me by word and deed to win a permanent abode where now I am.’ Quoth she, ‘ Impossible. You are not tempered to it. When, soul and faculties, you are as used to going up and down as a courtier is to going to and fro at court ; when you recognise the various members of the heavenly company and everything God ever made and fail in nothing but know them as the good man knows the members of his household, then you will distinguish between God and Godhead; then too you see the difference between spirit and spirituality. Till then you are not qualified for confirmation. Do not run away ; wrestle awhile with creatures till you are independent of them and they, as such, of you. So shall you cultivate your faculties without going demented. This
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do until your soul-powers are stimulated to the consciousness we have been speaking of.’
Blessed and praised be the sweet name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Vil SIGNS OF THE TRUE GROUND
According to one master, many people arrive at specific under- standing, at formal, notional knowledge, but there are few who get beyond the science and the theory ; yet one man whose mind is free from notions and from forms is more dear to God than the hundred thousand who have the habit of discursive reason. God cannot enter in and do his work in them owing to the restlessness of their imagination. If they were free from pictures they could be caught and carried up beyond all rational concepts, as St Diony- sius says, and also have the super-rational light of faith at its starting-point, where God finds his rest and peace to dwell and work in as he will and when he will and what he will. God is unhindered in his work in these so he can do in them his most precious work of all, working them up in faith into himself. These people no one can make out ; their life is an enigma, and their ways, to all who do not live the same. To this truth and to this blessed life, to this high and perfect consummation no one can attain except in abstract knowledge and pure understanding.
Many a lofty intellect, angels not excepting (for in life and nature an angel is nothing but pure mind), has erred and lapsed eternally from the eternal truth and this may happen also to those who, like the angels, preserve their idiosyncrasy and find satis- faction in the exercise of their own intelligence. Hence the masters urge, and the saints as well, the use and the necessity of careful observation and close scrutiny to test the light which flashes in, the light of understanding and of vision which man has here in time, lest he be the subject of hallucination. If you would know and recognise the really sane and genuine seers of God, - whom nothing can deceive nor misinform, they can be detected by four and twenty signs. .
The first sign is told us by the chief exponent of knowledge and wisdom and transcendental understanding, who is himself the truth, our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, ‘ Thereby ye shall know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another and keep my commandment. What is my commandment? That ye love one another as I have loved you,’ as though to say, ye may be my disciples in knowledge and in wisdom and high understanding but without true love it shall avail you little if anything at all.
TRACTATES | 335
Balaam was so clever he understood what God for many hundred years had been trying to reveal. This was but little help to him because he lacked true love. And Lucifer, the angel, who is in hell, had perfectly pure intellect and to this day knows much. He has the more hell pain and all because he failed to cleave with love and faith to what he knew.— The second sign is selflessness : they empty themselves out of themselves giving free furlough to things.—The third sign: they have wholly abandoned themselves to God: God works in them undisturbed.—The fourth sign : wherever they still find themselves they leave themselves ; sure method of advancement.—The fifth sign: they are free from all self-seeking : this gives them a clear conscience.—The sixth sign : they wait unceasingly upon God’s will and do it to their utmost. — The seventh sign: they bend their will to God’s will till their will coincides with God’s.—The eighth sign : so closely do they fit and bind themselves to God and God to them in the power of love, that God does nothing without them and they do nothing without God.—The ninth sign: they naught themselves and make use of God in all their works and in all places and all things.—The tenth sign: they take no single thing from any creature, neither good nor bad, but all from God alone, albeit God effect it through his creature.—The eleventh sign : they are not snared by any pleasure or physical enjoyment or by any creature.—The twelfth sign: they are not forced or driven by insubordination: they are steadfast for the truth.—The thirteenth sign: they are not misled by any spurious light nor by the look of any creature: they go by the intrinsic merit.—The fourteenth sign : armed and arrayed with all the virtues they emerge victorious from every fight with vice.—The fifteenth sign : they see and know the naked truth and praise God without ceasing for this gnosis.—The sixteenth sign : perfect and just, they hold themselves in poor esteem.—The seventeenth sign : they are chary of words and prodigal of works. — The eighteenth sign : they preach to the world by right practice. —The nineteenth sign: they are always seeking God’s glory and nothing at all besides——The twentieth sign: if any man fight them they will let him prevail before accepting help of any sort but God’s.—The twenty-first sign: they desire neither comfort nor possessions, of the least of which they deem themselves all undeserving.—The twenty-second sign : they look upon themselves as the most unworthy of all mankind on earth ; their humbleness is therefore never-failing.—The twenty-third sign: they take the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ for the perfect exemplar of their lives and in the light of this are always examining them- selves with the sole intention of removing all unlikeness to their high ideal.— The twenty-fourth sign : to outward appearance they
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do little who are working all the time at the virtuous life, hence the disesteem of many people, which, however, they prefer to vulgar approbation.
These are the signs of the true ground wherein lives the image of the perfect truth and he who does not find them in himself may account his knowledge vain and so may other people.
VII! THE BIRTH OF THE ETERNAL WORD IN THE SOUL
Now we will speak of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as he is born to-day at this holy season of the Virgin Mary his blessed mother and again as he is born of grace in the perfect soul for that is the whole end of Christ’s work on earth ; and we shall ask nine questions from which any pious man may tell whether the eternal Word is born in him or no.
The first question is, how to prepare for the interior speaking of the eternal Word ?—Several things are needed. First, purity of life and mind. Next, the peace and freedom of a still and silent heart which is speaking to no creature and is spoken to by none, whether of the senses or the spirit. And now for a hard saying which few will understand : while the soul is speaking her _ own word and her noble word, the Father cannot speak his Word
in her; while the‘soul is begetting her own son, i.e. the noblest work of her own understanding, the Father is not able to beget his Son in her to her best advantage. - Thirdly, the soul must forsake herself in. order to conceive the eternal Word like St Paul and Mary, God’s mother; in whom the eternal Word was uttered perfectly. The mind must die to itself, disowning itself and becoming God’s own. Fourthly, the mind must lift up its intellect and see, for seeing is-the lustiest work and noblest of which the soul is capable. Mark how eagerly he comes; he says, ‘ Behold I stand at the door and knock!’ Fifthly, it behoves us greatly to desire this birth, for desire is the root of all virtue and goodness.
__ The second question is, what is God’s birth in the soul ? God’s birth in the soul is nothing else than a special divine motion in a special heavenly mode whereby God wrests the spirit from the tumult of creaturely unrest into his motionless unity where God can communicate himself to the soul in his divinity. There man enjoys his Word in the Father in its first discriminate emanation and with the Father as essential Person and in the Holy Ghost as the limit set to their eternal bliss, and it is in the soul as the reflection of her intellectual proto- 1 See also Greith, pp. 102, 103.
TRACTATES 837
type and in all creatures as the preserver of their being. For God speaks his Word in every creature, but no creature is aware of it save rational creatures only. The soul is reborn into God when she turns to God and pursues his eternal Word right into his paternal heart where God makes naked revelation of his birth to the soul. The soul falls upon this birth which is revealed to her, with love and knowledge. As the Father comes into the soul in his Word so in the Word the soul is returned into the Father. That we may eternally play this game in God, God help us.
The third question is, can any man be so well prepared that God is obliged to speak his eternal Word in him? We know that God must fulfil two obligations. First, when God is pledged and bound to the soul by the bonds of mutual love. Then God never fails the soul provided she is ready ; he is obliged of mutual necessity to give himself to her, as Christ said to Zaccheus, ‘ This day I must abide with thee in thine house.’ There is another word that must be spoken. Every good thing communicates itself to whatever is able to receive it; it would therefore be contrary to God’s goodness to withhold himself from us if we can take him in. And there is a third compulsory utterance, that of some cause or force which is inadmissible in God. Theologians tell us that works wrought by the soul with God and in his grace God rewards or not just as he chooses, for such works are creature and finite and befall in time. They are too insignificant and vile to deserve reward from God at all. But the work God does in us without our co-operation, where the soul’s work fails and God’s activity prevails, in that the soul is merely passive and God is the only one who works. Works wrought thus by God in the soul it is his bounden duty to requite with his own self, for these works are so divine, so eternal, so immense and so nearly touch God’s honour, he has no guerdon for them but himself. These souls are the noblest product of this life and it is of them St John declares, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.’ The outward world is dead to them as they are also to the world. Their outward man can no more clash with their inner man than the dead can with the living and this is due to the gift of God and interior prayer and profound humility. Which God grant us.
The fourth question is, what particular place or power of the soul the eternal Word is born in? The philosophers and saints have many fine sayings about this. Some say, in the intellect for that is most like God. Some say, in the will for that is the free power of the soul. A third school teaches, in the soul-spark because that is most nigh to God. A fourth, in the arcanum of the mind for it is there that God is most at home. A fifth school says (and it is with this one that I hold), that it is a in the
338 MEISTER ECKHART :
innermost being of the soul and all her powers are made aware of it in a divine savour, each power in its own mode but intellect is the highest power of the soul and therewith the soul grasps the divine good. Free will is the power of relishing the divine good which intellect makes known to it. The spark of the soul is the light of God’s reflection, which is always looking back to God. The arcanum of the mind is the sum-total, as it were, of all the divine good and divine gifts in the innermost essence of the soul, which is as a bottomless well of divine goodness. Which may God grant us.
The fifth question is, what part does the mind play in this birth ? It enters a condition of complete passivity leaving God to work his will in perfect liberty. Perhaps it may be asked, Is the mind aware that God is working init? Ianswer: Virtue, all good works wrought by God in man, fervour and devotion for example, a man will be aware of, for with works of this kind there is very often the evidence of the senses. But when the divine good over- whelms with its riches the appetitive faculty and the light of God raises the intellect to a higher power, coercing or carrying the mind into his divine countenance, then the mind pays no more attention to creatures: she is standing face to face with the highest truth. Which may God give us.
The sixth question is, what part is played by the body in this ? It is resting peacefully, incapable of movement in any of its members, for the superior powers have fetched home the lower, ' and the essence of the soul has absorbed her higher powers so all is at a stand-still while the eternal Word is being born, in the mind and in the body. So help us God.
The seventh question is, can no power of the soul remain at work while the eternal Word is being supernaturally born in this way in the soul? The answer is this. The soul has two kinds of powers, and of these the outward senses of the body are all at rest and also the powers which move the body have been fetched in so that none of her powers remain active, but the soul is merely the motionless form of the body. As the prophet says, ‘ When all things were in mid-silence God spake his silent Word into my soul.’ Motionless peace descends upon the body and the mind wherein the eternal birth is to be supernaturally conceived. To attain to this we must be like the shepherds watching in the night wherein Christ was born. So must a man keep watch and ward over his own mind, driving his intelligence up into the heights, to those eternal laws ordained by God for lost and saved.! Let us beseech him daily to carry out in us his eternal laws and rules. For
1 Referring to the soul-spark or synteresis, sometimes identified with con- science regarded as the internal repository of the laws of right and wrong.
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priests and religious the seven hours are ordained that they may thank God for his death and pray him to accomplish his eternal ‚rules and laws in us. And you who know this truth better than ‚others do should let your minds dwell more upon this birth than other people can who are ignorant about it. God help us to the truth.
The eighth question is, what fruits or gifts are granted to the soul in whom the eternal Word is spoken ? Him four things befall. The first is that he is united with God. Next, he becomes God’s Son by grace. Thirdly, he is made God’s heir. Fourthly, he is loosed from bondage; as St Paul, naming all four perfections, says, * In Christ is neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free ; but ye are all one in Christ and are sons of God. And if sons of God then heirs of God.’ May we being loosed from bondage be God’s sons, so help us God.
* Now, taking as my text, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ I will set forth the things a man must have in order to be God’s Son by grace. First, he must have perfect self- control, as the Lord Christ says, ‘I have power to lay down my soul and take it up again.’ Meaning, he is not cast down by suffering and adversity nor puffed up by worldly happiness and prosperity. Secondly, he must have his mind ever charged with divine ideas and godly sayings. Thirdly, he must have the highest good ever present to his mind so far as his nature will allow. Fourthly, he must steadfastly abide therein so far as his nature can endure it. Fifthly, if he go out into creatures for the needs of life he must not tarry there longer than is necessary. - Sixthly, what his mind conceives of from within of divine mystery or truth he must protect from nature as a rich man guards his treasure from robbers and from thieves. In the seventh place, he must make no attempt to express these things in words until the. time is ripe, that is, until he puts them into practice. Eighth, he must know well enough and consider fit any person he reveals. these secrets to: the fool confides in all the world but the wise in few. Ninthly, he must be gracious alike to yea and nay. Tenth, he must be indifferent about what God has done to him and is going to do. [Eleventh, it must not concern him what God has done or is to do.] Twelfth, he must behave impartially to those whom God has chosen or not chosen [to those to whom his grace has or has not been given]; and all these things he:must offer up to the glory of God, obeying the divine command that what pleases God shall please him also and saying with Christ, ‘ Father,
1 The rest of this tractate occurs also in Hermann von Fritslar’s Das Heiligenleben (see Pfeiffer’s Deutsche Mystiker, vol. i, p. 54), from which the words in brackets are added.
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thy will not mine be done.’ These twelve.articles, with the pre- ceding four, set forth the highest life that can be led in time. Of him who has these things may the Father say, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him.’ And he who has them not but defaults therein, his defects are what St Augustine calls spiritual sins. .
The ninth question is, how to recognise these people in whom the eternal Word is born ghostly and gratuitously ? I answer, by the following signs. The first is that these people are dead to flesh and blood and to all natural appetites, as St Paul says, ‘ Since the eternal Word was born in me I no longer live to flesh and blood.’ Secondly the pleasures of the body [the triumphs of the world], are like sour breath unto their soul. As St Gregory’ declares, ‘ Worldly joys and glories are nothing but untowardness. Thirdly, these people are for ever listening for God’s voice in them, David says, ‘ I will hearken to what God the Lord shall say within me.’ Fourthly, they are not perturbed by the uncertainty of things: nothing vexes or depresses them, as Christ said to his disciples, ‘In your patience possess ye your souls.’ Fifthly, these people turn everything to good account so nothing can corrupt them, but they are ever pure in heart; as St Paul says, ‘ All things work together for good to them that love God.’ Sixthly, they have no desire to vie with anyone; they live in the world as though there was no one but themselves and God. Wherefore their heavenly Father begets his Son in them unceasingly and this birth is for all who give their mind thereto.
The Lord Christ calls himself the flower of the field, for this is common property. Even so this birth is the common property of all those who are ready and diligently longing to receive it. May we thus desire this birth and eternally enjoy it, So help us God. Amen.
IX DETACHMENT !
I have read many writings of heathen philosophers and sages, of the old covenant and of the new, and have sought earnestly and with all diligence which is the best and highest virtue whereby a man may knit himself most narrowly to God and wherein he is most like to his exemplar, as he was in God, wherein was no differ- ence between himself and God, ere God created creature. And having approfounded all these scriptures to the best of my ability, I find it is none other than absolute detachment from all creatures.
1 See also Spamer, B. 4.
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As our Lord said to Martha, ‘ unum est necessarium,’ which is as good as saying, He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.
Our doctors sing love’s praises, as did St Paul, who said, ‘ What- soever things I do and have not charity I am nothing.’ But I extol detachment above any love. First, because at best love constrains me to love God. Now it is far better my constraining God to me than for me to be constrained to God. My eternal happiness depends on God and me becoming one; but God is apter to adapt himself to me and can easier communicate with me than I can communicate with God. Detachment forces God to come to me, and this is shown as follows. Everything is fain to be in its own natural state. But God’s own natural state is unity and purity and these come from detachment. Hence God is bound to give himself to a heart detached.—Secondly, I rank detachment above love because love constrains me to suffer all things for God’s sake : detachment constrains me to admit nothing but God. Now it is far better to tolerate nothing but God than to suffer all things for God’s sake. For in suffering one has regard to creatures, whence the suffering comes, but detachment „iS immune from creature. Further, that detachment admits of none but God I demonstrate in this wise: anything received must be received in aught. But detachment is so nearly naught that there is nothing rare enough to stay in this detachment, except God. He is so simple, so ethereal, that he can sojourn in the solitary heart. Detachment then admits of God alone. That which is received is received and grasped by its receiver according to the mode of the receiver; and so anything conceived is known and understood according to the mind of him who understands and not according to its own innate conceivability.
And humility the masters laud beyond most other virtues. I rank detachment before any meekness and for the following reasons. Meekness can be without detachment, but complete detachment is impossible without humility. Perfect humility is a matter of self-naughting ; but detachment so narrowly approxi- mates to naught that no room remains for aught betwixt zero and absolute detachment. Wherefore without humility is no complete detachment. Withal two virtues are always better than one.— Another reason why I put detachment higher than humility is this: humility means abasing self before all creatures and in that same abasement one goes out of oneself to creatures. But detach- ment abideth in itself. Now no going out however excellent, but staying in is better still. As the prophet hath it, ‘ omnis gloria filie regis ab intus,’ the king’s daughter is all glorious within. Perfect detachment is without regard, without either lowliness or
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loftiness to creatures: it has no mind to be below nor yet to be above ; it is minded to be master of itself, loving none and hating none, having neither likeness nor unlikeness, neither this nor that, to any creature ; the only thing it fain would be is same. But to be either this or that it does not want at all. He who is this or that is aught; but detachment is altogether naught. It leaves things unmolested.
Here someone may object, But surely in our Lady all the virtues flourished in perfection and among them absolute detachment. Now granting that detachment is better than humility, why did our Lady glory in her lowliness instead of her detachment, saying, ‘ quia respexit dominus humilitatem ancille sue’: ‘He regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden ’ ?
I answer that, in God there is detachment and humility as well, so.far as virtues can be attributed to God. Know, it was his loving meekness that made God stoop to enter human nature while it remained within itself as motionless, what time he was made man, as it was while he created the heavens and the earth, as I shall show you later. And seeing that our Lord when he chose to be made man did persist in his motionless detachment, by that same token did our Lady know that he expected her to do the same, albeit for the nonce he had regard expressly to her lowliness and not to herdetachment. So remaining unmoved in her detach- ment she yet gloried in her lowliness and not in her detachment. Had she but once remembered her detachment to say, ‘ He regarded my detachment,’ her detachment would by that have been disturbed and would not have been absolute and perfect since a going forth has taken place. Any event, however insignificant, will always cause some troubling of detachment. There you have the explana- tion of our Lady’s glorying in her lowliness instead of her detach- ment. Quoth the prophet, ‘ audiani, quid loquatur in me dominus deus,’ ‘I will be still and listen to what my Lord and my God may be saying within me,’ as though to say, if God would parley with me then he must come in for I will not go out. It is Boéthius who exclaims, ‘ Ye men, why do ye look without for that which is within you ?’”
_ I prize detachment more than mercy too, for mercy means naught else but a man’s going forth of self by reason of his fellow- . ereatures’ lack, whereby his heart is wrung. Detachment is exempt from this; it stays within itself permitting nothing to disturb it. In short, when I reflect on all the virtues I find not one so wholly free from fault, so unitive to God as is detachment.
It was Avicenna the philosopher who said, ‘ The mind detached is of such nobility that what it sees is true, what it desires befalls and its behests must be obeyed.’ For you must know that when
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the free mind is quite detached it constrains God to itself and could it remain formless and free from adventitiousness it would take on the nature of God. But God grants this to none beside himself ; so God can do no more for the solitary soul than make it a present of himself. The man who is in absolute detachment is rapt away into eternity where nothing temporal affects him nor is he in the least aware of any mortal thing ; he has the world well dead, he having no relish for aught earthly. St Paul meant this when he declared, ‘ I live and yet not I: Christ liveth in me.’
Peradventure thou wilt say, What then is detachment that it should be so noble in itself ?— True detachment means a mind as little moved by what befalls, by joy and sorrow, honour and dis- grace, as a broad mountain by a gentle breeze. Such motionless detachment makes a man superlatively Godlike. For that God is God is due to his motionless detachment, and it is from his detach- ment that he gets his purity and his simplicity and his immuta- bility. Ifthen a man is going to be like God, so far as any creature can resemble God, it will be by detachment. This leads to purity and from purity to simplicity and from simplicity to immova- bility ; and it is these three which constitute the likeness between man and God, which likeness is in grace, for it is grace which draws a man away from mortal things and purges him from things corruptible. I would have ycu know that to be empty of creatures is to be full of God and to be full of creatures is to be empty of God.
Now it must be remembered that in this immutable detachment God has stood for aye and does still stand. Know also, that when God created the heavens and the earth he might not have been making anything at all for all that it affected his detachment. Nay, I say more: prayers and good works wrought by a man in time affect no more the divine detachment than if no prayers nor virtuous works had come to pass in time; nor is God any kindlier disposed towards that wight than if his prayers and deeds had all been left undone. Further I declare, when the Son in his Godhead was pleased to be made man and was and suffered martyrdom, God’s motionless detachment was no more disturbed than if he had never been made man.
Haply thou wilt say, I gather then, that prayers and virtuous deeds are all in vain; God takes too little interest in them to be affected by them. And yet they say God likes to be entreated upon all occasions.
Now mark, and realize if possible, that in his first eternal glance (if a first glance may be assumed), God saw all things as they would happen and he saw in that same glance both when and how he would make creatures. He saw the humblest prayer that
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would be offered, the least good deed that anyone would do and saw withal which prayers and which devotions he would hear. He saw that to-morrow thou shalt call upon him earnestly, urgently © entreating him; and not for the first time to-morrow will God grant thy supplication and thy prayer: he has granted it already in his eternity ere ever thou becamest man. Suppose thy prayer is foolish or lacking earnestness, God will deny it thee not then, he has denied it thee already in his eternity. Thus God, who has seen everything in that first eternal glance, in no wise acts from any why at all, for everything is a foregone conclusion.
And though God does stay all the while in motionless detachment yet are men’s prayers and virtuous works not all in vain, he who does well being well rewarded. As Philippus says, ‘ God creator holds all things in the course and order he has given them from the beginning.’ With him nothing is past and nothing future, who has loved all his saints even as he foresaw them ere ever the world became. Yet when there come to pass in time the things he speculated in eternity then people think that God has changed his mind, though whether he be wrathful or benignant it is we who change and he remains the same ; just as the sunshine hurts weak eyes and benefits the strong ones what time the light itself remains unchanged. God does not see in time nor is his outlook subject to renewal. Isodorus argues in this sense in his book on the Arch-Good. He says, People are always asking what God did before he created the heavens and, the earth and whence there came to God the new will to make creatures ? His answer is that no new will at all arose in God; for what though creature was not in itself as it is now yet it’ was from eternity in God and in his mind. God did not make the heavens and the earth as we should say, man-fashion, ‘Let them be!’ but creatures are all spoken in his eternal Word. Moses said to God, ‘ Lord, if Pharaoh ask me who thou art, what am I to say?’ And God replied, ‘Say, He-who-is hath sent me.’ Or in other words, He who is unchanging in himself, he it is hath sent me.
Here someone may object, But was Christ in motionless detach- ment when he cried, ‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death!’ Or Mary when she stood beneath his cross? yet much is said about her lamentations. How is all this compatible with motion- less detachment ?—Know then, that according to philosophers there are in everyone two men: one, the outward man, is his objective nature ; this man is served by the five senses, albeit he is energised by the power of the soul. The other one, the inner man, is man’s subjective nature. Now I would have you know that the Godly-minded man employs his soul-powers in his outward man no more than his five senses really need it; and his interior man
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only has recourse to the five senses so far as it is guide and keeper. to these five senses and can stop them being put to bestial uses as they so often are by those who live according to the baser appetites, as do the mindless beasts, and who deserve the name of beast rather than that of man. What surplus energy she has beyond what she expends on her five senses the soul bestows upon her inner man, and supposing he has toward some right high endeavour she will call in all the powers she has loaned to the five senses and then the man is said to be senseless and rapt away, his object being either some unintelligible form or some formless intelligible. Remember, God requires every spiritual man to love him with all the powers of his soul. ‘ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,’ he says. Some squander all their soul-powers on their outward man. Namely, those whose thoughts and feelings hinge on temporal goods, all unwitting of an inner man. And even as the virtuous man will now and then deprive his outward self of all the powers of the soul what time he is embarking on some high adventure, so bestial man will rob his inner self of all its soul-powers to expend them on his outer man. Withal it must be realized that the outward man is able to be active and leave the inward man entirely passive and unmoved. Now in Christ too existed an outward and an inward man and also in our Lady, and what Christ and our Lady said concerning outward things was prompted by their outward man, the inner man remaining in motionless detachment. So was it when Christ said, ‘ My soul is sorrowful unto death.” And despite her lamentations and various things she said, Our Lady, in her inner man, stood all the while in motionless detachment. Take an illustration. The door goes to and fro upon its hinges. Now the projecting door I liken to the outward man and the hinge I liken to the inner man. As it shuts and opens the door swings to and fro while the hinge remains unmoved in the same place without undergoing any change. And likewise here.
What then, I ask, is the object of absolute detachment? I answer, that the object of absolute detachment is neither this nor that. Itis absolutely nothing, for it is the culminating point where God can do precisely as he will. God cannot have his way in every heart, for though God is almighty yet he cannot work except where he finds readiness or makes it. I add, or makes it, by reason of St Paul in whom he found no readiness but whom he did make ready by infusion of his grace; wherefore I affirm, God works according to the aptitude he finds. He works differently in man and in astone, and for this we have anatural analogy. If you heat a baker’s oven and place in it the dough, some made of barley,
some of oats and some of wheat and some of rye, then albeit in
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the oven the heat is all the same it does not tell alike on all the doughs, but one yields a fine bread, another one more coarse and a third a coarser still. The heat is not to blame: it is the material which differs. Nor does God tell alike on every heart but accord- ing to the readiness and the capacity he finds. In any heart containing this or that there is something to hinder God’s highest operation. For a heart to be perfectly ready it has to be perfectly empty, this being its condition of maximum capacity. To take another common illustration.. Suppose I want to write on a white tablet, then anything already written there, however excellent it be, will interfere and hinder me from writing ; ere I can write I must erase completely whatever is already on the tablet which is never better fitted for me to write upon than when there is nothing there at all. And so for God to write his very best within my heart everything dubbed this or that must be ousted from my heart leaving it quite without attachment. God is free to work his sovran will when the object of this solitary heart is neither this nor that.
Then again I ask, What is the prayer of the solitary heart ? I answer, that detachment and emptiness cannot pray at all, for whoso prays desires of God something : something added to him or something taken from him. But the heart detached has no desire for anything nor has it anything to be delivered from. So it has no prayers at all; its only prayer consists in being uniform with God. In this sense we may take St Dionysius’ comment ön the saying of St Paul, ‘ Many there be that run but one receiveth the prize.’ All the powers of the soul competing for the crown which falls to the essence alone. According to Dionysius this running is none other than the flight from creature to union with uncreated nature. Attaining this the soul loses her name; God absorbs her in himself so that as self she comes to naught, just as the sunlight swallows up the dawn and naughts it. To this pass nothing brings the soul but absolute detachment. And here it is germane to quote St Augustine’s dictum : ‘ The soul has a private door into divine nature at the point where for her things all come to naught.’ This door on earth is none other than absolute detachment. At the height of. her detachment she is ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, dark with enlightenment.
Here too we might cite a master’s words, Blessed are the spiritual poor who have abandoned unto God all things as he possessed them when we existed not. This none can do but a heart wholly without attachment.
That God would sooner be in a solitary heart than any other, I argue in this fashion. Starting from thy question, What does God seek in all things? I answer in his words out of the Book of
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Wisdom, ‘ In all things I seek rest.” Now there is nowhere perfect rest save in a heart detached. Ergo, God is happier there than in any other thing or virtue. Know that the more we are disposed to receive the inflowing God, the more happy we shall be ; perfect receptivity.gives perfect felicity. Now one makes oneself receptive to the influence of God only by dint of uniformity with God ; as a man’s uniformity with God so is his sense of the inflow of God. Uniformity comes of subjection to God, and the more one is subject to creature the less one is uniform with God. But the heart which is quite detached and all devoid of creatures, being utterly subject to God and uniform with God in the highest measure, is wholly receptive of his divine inflow. Hence St Paul’s exhorta- tion to ‘ Put on Christ,’ 7.e. uniformity with Christ. For know, when Christ was made man it was not a certain man that he assumed, he assumed human nature. Do thou go out of all things, \ then there remains alone what Christ put on and thou hast put on Christ.
Whoso has a mind to know the excellence and use of absolute detachment let him lay to heart Christ’s words to his disciples touching his manhood: ‘It is good for you that I go away; if I go not away the comforter cannot come unto you’; as though to say, ye have too much love for my visible form for the perfect love of the Holy Ghost to be yours. Wherefore discard the form and unite with the formless essence, for God’s ghostly comfort is intangible and is not offered save to those alone who despise all mortal consolations.
List ye, good people all: there is none happier than he who stands in uttermost detachment. No temporal, carnal pleasure but brings some ghostly mischief in its train, for the flesh lusts after things that run counter to the spirit and spirit lusts for things that are repugnant to the flesh. He who sows the tares of love in flesh reaps death but he who sows good love-seed in the spirit reaps of the spirit eternal life. The more man flees from creatures the faster hastens to him their creator. Consider, all ye thoughtful souls! If even the love which it is given us to feel for the bodily form of Christ can keep us from receiving the Holy Ghost then how much more must we be kept from getting God by inordinate love of creature comforts ? Detachment is the best of all, for it cleanses the soul, clarifies the mind, kindles the heart and wakes the spirit ; it quickens desire and enhances virtue giving intuition of God ; it detaches creature and makes her one with God ; for love dis- joined from God is as water in the fire, but love in union is like the honeycomb in honey. Harkee, all rational souls! The swiftest steed to bear you to your goal is suffering; none shall ever taste eternal bliss but those who stand with Christ in depths of bitterness.
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Nothing is more gall-bitter than suffering, nothing so honey-sweet as to have suffered. The most sure foundation for this perfection is humility, for he whose nature here creeps in deepest depths shall soar in spirit to highest height of Deity ; for joy brings sorrow and sorrow brings joy. Men’s ways are manifold: one lives thus, another thus. He who would attain unto the highest life while here in time, let him take in a few words culled out of all the scriptures the summary philosophy which I will now set down.
Keep thyself detached from all mankind; keep thyself devoid of all incoming images; emancipate thyself from everything which entails addition, attachment or encumbrance, and address thy mind at all times to a saving contemplation wherein thou bearest God fixed within thy heart as the object from which its eyes do never waver; any other discipline, fasts, vigils, prayers, or whatever it may be, subordinate to this as to its end, using thereof no more than shall answer for this purpose, so shalt thou win the goal of all perfections.
Here someone may object, But who can persist in unwavering contemplation of the divine object ? I answer, no one living here in time. This is told thee merely so that thou mayst know the highest, that whereon thy aspirations and desires should be set. But when this vision is withheld from thee, thou, being a good man, shalt think to have been robbed of thy eternal bliss and then do thou forthwith return into the same that it may come to thee again ; and withal it does behove thee to keep strict watch upon thy thoughts at all times, there letting, as far as possible, their goal and refuge be. Lord God, glory be to thee eternally. Amen.
xX SPIRITUAL POVERTY
Beati pauperes spiritu etc. Let us be eternally as poor as we were when we eternally were not. Abiding in him in our essence we shall be that we are. We shall abound in all things, but in their creator. We shall know God without any sort of likeness and love without matter and enjoy without possession. We shall conceive all things in perfection as the eternal wisdom shows them planned out in itself.
The poor in spirit go out of themselves and all creatures : they are nothing, they have nothing, they do nothing, and these poor are not save that by grace they are God with God : which they are not aware of. St Augustine says, all things are God. St Diony- sius says, things are not God. St Augustine says, God is all of them. But Dionysius: God is nothing we can say or think, yet
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God is the hope of all the saints, their intuition of him wherein he is himself. He (Dionysius) finds him more in naught ; God is naught, he says. In naught all is suspended. All that has being is in suspension in naught, this naught being itself an incompre- hensible aught that all the minds in heaven and on earth cannot either fathom or conceive. Hence it remains unknown to creatures. When the soul attains to the perfection of hanging to (being suspended from) naught she will find herself without sin. This is due to the freedom she is poised in. Then on coming to the body and awareness of herself, and again finding sin as before, she becomes bound and then she returns into herself and bethinks her of what she has found yonder. Thus she raises herself up above herself and crosses over to the seat of all her happiness and all her satisfaction. St Bernard says the soul knows very well that her beloved cannot come to her till everything is out of her. St Augustine says, Well and truly loves the man who loves where he well knows he is not loved ; that is the best of all loving. St Paul, We know right well that all things work together for good to them that love God. And Christ said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, God’s kingdom is theirs.
They tell of various kinds of poverty of spirit. There are four. What he refers to here is the first poverty of spirit the soul knows when, illumined by the spirit of truth, things that are not God weigh with her not a jot; as St Paul tells us, ‘ All things are as dung to me.’ In this indigence she finds all creatures irksome.
In the second poverty she considers the merit of her exemplar Christ and her own demerits and finds her own works worthless, though they be the sum of men’s achievements. Hence she laments her in the Book of Love, crying, ‘ The form of my beloved passed me by and I cannot follow him.’ To this passing she is self-condemned, following the spoor of her quarry, Christ. So sweet his scent, she swoons away into forgetfulness of outward pain. As St Augustine says, The soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving life, and St Peter tells us that our dwelling is in heaven.
The third poverty of spirit is that of the soul wherein her own nature is slain; her own natural life is stone dead and there is living in her nothing but the spirit of God. As St Paul declares, ‘I am dead nevertheless I live; yet my life Christ liveth in me.’ In this spiritual death she is grown poor, for all she has to leave or give has been taken from her; moreover she is poor of her free will, for he is doing with it what he will. f
The fourth poverty is the incomprehensibility of God in her mind, her inability to compass him whether with knowledge or with works. But the deeper she gets the more the incompre-
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hensible splendour of the Deity is reflected in her poverty. For as far as with her inner man she has gotten intuition of divinity so far she follows with her outer man the willing poverty of her pattern Jesus Christ ; or in other words, the power of God having deprived her of all selfhood, she uses all creatures as she needs them, always without attachment, and if she has them not she can do as well without them and with the same detachment. She knows of nothing more that she can do but she rejoices in his incomprehensible truth and that created things are all as naught to him and that his love has.taken to itself her naught which is cleaving to him like a tiny spark. It was this poverty St Paul was in the time that he declared ‘ he heard in God unspeakable things which it is not lawful for a man to utter.’ On that occasion he was knit to God so that neither life nor death could separate him from his love. Thus it befalls the perfectly lost soul in God, lost, not to creatures merely but to herself as well and aware of nothing but the pure unclouded radiance of God’s essence. Behold her lost in him, her heavenly joy, and all incapable of any real wrong- doing. The saints invariably say that nothing whatever can dis- turb the fixity they have in God. Real sin is any disobedience to the law of divine love, any departure from the life of Jesus Christ. He is the form and essence of all things. What then is real virtue ? Anything wrought in the soul by divine love alone, for that effects naught but its like.
Such is the doctrine of spiritual poverty. Into this u poverty lead us, O superfull goodness of God. Amen.
f XI} x 1
We read in the gospel that our Lord fed the multitude with five loaves and two fishes. The first loaf was, the duty of knowing ourselves: what we have always been to God and what we are now in relation to God. The second was, the duty of compassion towards our evenchristian in his blindness ; his misfortune ought to touch us wellnigh as keenly as our own. The third was, that it behoves us to study the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and copy it exactly so far as that is possible. The fourth, that it behoves us to recognise the justness of God. All accounts of hell-torment are true. St Dionysius has explained that absence from God is hell and God’s presence is heaven. The fifth is, that it is for us to have intuition of the deity flowing into the Father and filling him with power and flowing into the Son filling him with wisdom,
1 See also Spamer’s Texte, B. 4.
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they being one in nature. Christ himself declared, ‘ Where I am there my Father is and where my Father is there I am.’ And they flow into the Holy Ghost filling him with goodwill. As Christ said, ‘I and my Father have one Spirit’; and the Holy Ghost flows into the soul.
The soul by nature has received two powers. One power is understanding which can conceive the Holy Trinity and all its works, enclosing it, as one would fill and close a cask. The full cask comprehends its contents : it is in union with what it compre- hends, what it is full of. And so is understanding in union with what it understands, what it conceives. It is one therewith by grace as the Son is one with the Father by nature.
The second power is will. It is the nobler in that by nature it can reach to the unknown, God namely. Will seizes God above knowledge, and in grasping what he wills the impress of the unknown God is sealed and stamped into the will so that the will contains God and becomes one with God, and will brings memory and all the soul-powers in its train, therefore the soul is one with God by grace as the Holy Ghost is one with the Father and the Son by nature. She is really in God more than in her own person. As St Augustine says, ‘ The soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving life.’ To rest in this union were better than to do all the works of all creatures, for so her higher power absorbs her lower ones and the soul can do nothing but divine work. But since this may not be, therefore the highest power, seeing her stability in God, communicates it to the lower ones so that they may discern good and evil. In this union Adam dwelt, and while the union lasted he had all the power of creatures (i.e. all creatures _ in posse) in his highest power. When a lodestone spends its force upon a needle and attracts it to itself, the needle gets sufficient power to pass on to the needles underneath, which it raises and attaches to the lodestone. Part the top needle and all the rest drop off. It was like this with Adam: when his highest power parted from God, down fell all his powers. Creatures are dis- joined through failing to agree among themselves, one wanting one thing, one another. The powers decay through creatures right down to the lowest. The power of gold, for example, cannot give gold but gives silver, and this degradation goes on in silver, from which we get iron. Even so man’s powers peter out to nothing. This accounts for the various creatures.
But now all creatures which came forth from God must strive with all their powers to make one man who shall return into the union wherein Adam was before he fell and who shall raise all creatures up again into the selfsame power wherein they were, in human nature. This is accomplished in Christ, as he himself
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declared, ‘When I am lifted up I will draw all men to me.’ He meant that when he was risen in our mind he would recollect us to himself. In this sense all creatures are one man and that man is God. Human nature has not ever been as such. God is from himself eternally and the Father made all things from nothing. That he is in himself he is by his own nature, which is free from becoming and becomes not any thing, and all things’ becoming ends in not-becoming. The Son is the same as the Father except that he receives from the Father all that he has and of all becoming he is the form. Withal he is one in the not-becoming. The Holy Ghost is the tie between the Father and the Son and is one. with them in the not-becoming ; he is the author and agent of becoming in eternity and in time. This temporal becoming ends in eternal not-becoming, and the eternal not-becoming is the work of the eternal nature and has neither end nor beginning. ,
God is his own form and matter; his form emerges from his matter and according to this form does he form all things that become. But his simple nature is in form formless, in mode modeless, cause uncaused, being without becoming which trans- cends all things becoming and all that becomes comes to an end therein.
God is eternal and all things have been in him eternally. They were not in themselves. Ere God created creatures he was nothing whatever to creatures, in their understanding, though in himself he was to them eternally the same as he is now and always shall be. No Creature could say God what time itself was not. What minds ignore they count for naught: Creature did not know God when she herself was not, therefore she could not speak him. This is denied by heretics who state that Christ brought human nature with him out of heaven, but that is not true. He got his manhood from our Lady Saint Mary, withal abiding as before in the Godhead ; and the Almighty knew in his eternal wisdom the ordering of all things, to wit, the Holy Ghost. This Trinity poured forth into time into the naught of human nature. Thenceforward human nature was changeable in time and God donned human nature. In him human nature was God and human nature knew it with the three powers she has gotten from the blessed Trinity and gave God thanks therefor and loved him with infinite love. By this God sets such store that he loves human nature back with a love so great, any man who knows it possesses heaven incarnate. I charge you, my brothers and my sisters, that ye wax in knowledge and give thanks to God while ye are still in time for having made you from naught aught, and unite yourselves with his divine nature. Once out of time and your chance is gone. But if so be ye cannot apprehend God’s nature then believe in Christ and
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follow his example steadfastly ; Jews, heathens, evil Christians, all who fail to exercise their God-consciousness, are lost, barring infants not arrived at knowledge of themselves and who are properly baptized into his name: in the enjoyment of Christ’s name they are holding fast the knowledge wherewith he knows the Father eternally.
Rejoice, all ye powers of my soul, at being joined to God so that none can part you. But I can neither glorify God nor love him to the full therein; so, dying to the virtues I plunge me in the naught of the naked Godhead where, sinking eternally from naught to aught I pass with naught to aught. 3
Though I should live here in the flesh until the judgment day bearing the pangs of hell it would be small matter by reason of my Lord Jesus Christ, since I have received from him the cer- tainty of never being parted from him. While I am here he is in me: after this life I am in him. All things are possible to me united as I am with him to whom all things are possible. Before ‚that I was at a loss to know if we are God by nature or by grace. Then came Jesus with the light of his own nature and then I spied my memory under my understanding issuing from the essence of my soul and my understanding flowing out of memory and will out of them both. Essence is revealed by the powers and the powers by their works. What my knowledge gave me that I loved ; what I did not know I could not love, and to will all things were possible. At one time I was sore perplexed as to whether we are God by nature or by grace. Fear led me to Christ who in truth knows the answer. He gave me light of grace whereby I saw in the divine nature three Persons, his Father being the begetter of all things. According to the words of St James, * Every perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.’ The Father is the light itself, self-luminous in Person and in essence. In the unborn essence he is essential, essence without personality : essence self-manifest as impersonal being. The Father is that same being essentially. In the essence the Father loses his fatherhood completely ; nor is he Father there at all. The Father’s know- ledge of himself in himself, essential and personal, he draws from his unborn essence through the exalted root of his personality. So far as he takes in his unborn essence he is paternal, Father essentially. This exalted light has been for ever flowing in his heart and it is flowing out of him into his Son, as essence and as Person, and it is flowing from them both into their Holy Ghost, in essence and in Person, and these three shed one light essential and personal. The Father sheds on both the light of his essence and his Person ; and the Father and the Son shed on the Holy Ghost
the light of both essence and Person. The unborn eg being
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the oneness of the three Persons and the born essence is God as begetter so far as it flows into the Persons and so far as it emanates with the Persons. Not that the essence begets ; essence begets not. The Son and the Holy Ghost are twin lights of the God- bearing essence in the paternal source where the Father is drawing his born being out of his unborn essence. The Father knows himself with his Son, perceiving himself in himself. For this the Son is the light ; and he wills himself in himself and for this the Holy Ghost is the light. Father and Son have one will and that is the Holy Ghost : it graces the soul, this divine nature, and so suffuses the powers of the soul that the soul can do nothing except _divine work. Just as a spring in its bed at the roots of the flowers gives them itself and the flowers grow verdant and coloured on the spring water, so deity giving itself to the powers of the soul makes them grow in the likeness of God. His image appears in her powers, his likeness in her virtues. The more divine nature the soul receives the liker she grows to the nature of God and the closer becomes her union with God. Her union may become so strait that God on a sudden absorbs her in himself and that without remainder whether vice or virtue, nor can the soul distinguish aught that might be taken for herself. God takes her for a creature. Be not deluded by the light of nature. To a soul on the ascent to higher knowledge in the light of grace, dimmer and dimmer glows the light of nature. If she would know the very truth itself she must make certain whether she is detached from things ; whether she is dead to self ; whether she loves God with his own love and without self-intent and has nothing to hold her back and keep her from him ; and whether God alone is alive in her. If so then she has lost herself as Mary lost Christ. Three days she sought him knowing all the while that she would find him. And Christ, meanwhile, was at his Father’s school of higher learning all unheeding of his mother’s quest. The noble soul which goes to school in God learns to know what God is in the Godhead and what God is in the Trinity and what God is in humanity and ‘gets to know his will. : fi God in, the Godhead is spiritual substance, so elemental that ‚we can say nothing about it excepting that it is naught. To say it ‘is aught were more lying than true. God in the Trinity is the | living light in its radiant splendour, a complex of one nature with ‘distinct Persons. The (light) that is life is not this light. Though ‚one might predicate three natures to these (Persons or) distinctions ‚there is but one nature to their union for they all act together exactly like one, working all at once in all creatures. According ‚to St Augustine, the precision (or justice) of God in the Godhead, in the Trinity and in all creatures is the chief delight there is in heaven.
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God in human nature is a lamp of living light and this light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehends not this light. Darkness ever flees from light as night does from the day. Thence comes her knowledge of God’s will. Now St Paul says, “It is God’s will that we be sanctified.’ And our sanctification lies in this, in knowing what we were before time, what we are in time and what we shall be after time. Lost during these three days, soul pays no heed to body till it joins her in the temple and is subject to her without murmuring.
The Trinity is the heart of divine and human nature and human. nature flows into the Trinity in a steady stream of love. Supposing} the soul crosses over, then she sinks down and down in the abysm of the Godhead nor ever finds_a footing unless it be that she has,
_taken with her some temporal thing-;—resting.on temporal things. “brings her back into the Trinity. Things fashioned in time have,
a ground of their own whereon they can rest; they light on no \“
ground in the Godhead. By this same token the soul knows that she is creature, for all she has she has received in time from the three Persons. She flows out and in in the three Persons. The reason why Christ’s soul did never plumb the deeps of Godhead is that- she too is creature made in time. God is indeed the matter of the “soul, of her energies but not—of_her creation. Her energies are eternal because he is eternal. This matter never fails her. When fire lacks fuel it goes back to its own land. So would the soul come to naught were her matter to fail. When all her work is done she with her powers remains in God her matter ; she casts herself in her impartible essence into the passive, immaterial Godhead ; that is her native land. Then the Godhead is to her all things in a single passive power, and she withal all things to it, just as the heart of the sea gives forth in the bowels of the earth the waters which circulate back to the heart of the sea on the face of the earth. Suppose one dropped a millstone from the sun to earth, the earth being pierced straight through the centre, the millstone would stop falling at the centre of the earth. Here is the heart of the earth, the stopping-place of everything on earth. So is the Trinity the stopping-place of creatures as a whole, all the Godhead has being gotten impartible and eternal from itself. The Father is the manifestation of the Godhead, the Son is the image and. countenance of the Father and the Holy Ghost is the light of his countenance and the love of them both: all they have have they gotten eternally from ‘their own selves. But the three Persons “stooped in compassion towards human nature and the Son was made man and in this:world was more despised than any man on earth, suffering want and pain from creatures himself had made in conjunction with his Father, by whose will he became man.
.
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Christ lived in time down to his death and then, arising from the dead, this most despised of men is seen united with the Godhead | in the Person of the Christ who came on earth. Human nature wedded with the divine nature; her eternal portion, fellowship with divine nature in the same Person.
Q1
This is God’s good will, that we should know ourselves and that we should know God, and our salvation lies in putting our know- ledge into practice and loving in God all that we know. He who knows God in very truth is bound to love and will nothing but what God loves and wills. As St Paul says, ‘I do good and doing naught but good to me all things are possible. Many a thing is lawful for me which I do not lest I sin.’ Our Lord commands us to be without sin. To whom all things are possible it is also possible to keep this commandment.
The saints declare that all things are in God as they have been in God eternally ; not that we were in God in the gross nature we have here : we were in God eternalwise, like art in the artist. God saw himself and saw all things. God was not therefore manifold as things are here in separation. Though creatures here are manifold they are but one idea in God. God in himself is just the one alone. When creature goes back to her first cause she knows God simply as one in form and essence and threefold in operation. What intellect knows is knowledge and knowledge stops at what is known, with what is known becoming one. Into the simple idea no knowledge ever entered, for this impartible exemplar after which God created all creatures towers God-high above creatures. Creature in pursuing God to his eternal heights must mount above all creatures, nay, beyond her very self, her own wont and uses, and follow agnosia into the desolate Godhead. St Dionysius says, ‘God’s desert is God’s simple nature.’ A creature’s desert is her simple nature. In the desert of herself she is robbed of her own form and in God’s desert, leading out of hers, she is bereft of name; there she is no more called soul, she is called God with God.
Peradventure ye will say, ‘ Being in this exalted state why does the soul not raise the body above necessity of earthly things ? ’ To which I answer, at this stage the soul has a body of perfection which uses all things to the glory of God, there being now betwixt — God and the soul no barrier nor hindrance. So far as the soul has followed God into the desert of his Godhead so far the body follows Christ into his desert of willing poverty and is one with
1 See also Jostes, No. 37; Greith, p. 195 et seg.; and Büttner, vol. i, No. 17.
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God. Well may the Father say, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased : follow ye him.’ All creatures are with God : the being that they have God gives them with his presence. Saith the bride in the Book of Love, ‘ I have run round the circle and have found no end to it, so I cast myself into the centre.’
This circle which the loving soul ran round is all the Trinity has ever wrought.
Why is the work of the Trinity called a circle? Because the three Persons have wrought their own likeness in all creatures which are rational. The Trinity is the origin of all things and all things return into their origin. This is the circle the soul runs. When does she run in this circle ? She does so when she muses : All this that he has made he could make again a thousand times if he were so minded. So she goes round in endless chain. The least of all his creatures she can find no end to nor can she appro- found its worth. Spent with her quest she casts herself into the centre. This point is the power of the Trinity wherein unmoved it is doing all its work. Therein the soul becomes omnipotent.
The three Persons are one omnipotence. This is the motionless point and the unity of the Trinity. The circumference is the incomprehensible work of the three Persons. The point is fixed. The union of the Persons is the essence of the point. In this point God runs through change without otherness, involving into unity of essence, and the soul as one with this fixed point is capable of all things. But her powers, wherein she imitates the Trinity, with them she cannot apprehend its unity. The work of the Trinity has proved the undoing of many Paris theologians: en- grossed in the working of the Trinity they have never gotten at their unity. The centre is equally near to all ends, like time in all lands. Now is the time here and now is the same time in Rome.
Saith the bride in the Book of Love, ‘ He has wounded me with a glance of his eye.’ This refers to the unitive force which streams down from the point, isolating the soul from creatures and changing . things and gathering her up again into the point therewith to be united and therein to be eternally established. .
One is conscious of this glance within the confines of the soul when she is quite unoccupied, innocent of the practice whether of vice or virtue. During this quiet state intuitive perception is most vivid, so it is then he stabs her with his glance to make her really feel how he has known and loved her while she herself was not. This serves as a piercing reminder to the soul to go out of herself. Whom this glance wounds not is not nor ever has been wounded by love. [Concerning it St Bernard says, ‘'To him whose spirit has felt this glance it is unutterable ; to him who knows it
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not it is incredible.’ ”Tis an arrow shot without anger and felt without pain. ‘Thence starts the clear and limpid stream of healing grace which enlightens the inner eye to perceive in blissful behold- ing the delight of the divine affliction wherein we share unheard of spiritual graces, favours untold, not preached nor written down in any book.]
(Saith the soul), ‘Lord, thou thyself declarest that thou hast made me like thyself. That passes the ingenuity of man, for no philosopher is sage enough to fabricate the double of himself. Lord,’ she cries, ‘if thou hast made me like to thee, grant me to see thec seized of the power wherein thou hast created me, to know thee in the wisdom wherein thou hast known me, to conceive thee as thou conceivest me; and grant me Lord that by thy grace I be made one with thee in nature as thy Son is one with thy nature ~ eternally, and that thy grace may be my nature ; for, Lord, thy grace becomes thy nature and in thy nature we become God, as the Father in his nature is God by nature.’
Christ exhorts us to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect in his nature. He says, ‘ God is more near to you than ye are to yourselves.’ And in the same sense St Augustine says the soul has private entry to the divine nature, where things for her all come to naught. Then she is ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, dark with enlightenment. Then to know God would be an imperfection ; to know herself in God would be an imper- fection or to know God in her would be an imperfection. The incomprehensible essence she absorbs above all knowledge. by grace, as the Father does by nature ; and the born essence being gotten in her understanding as the Father has gotten it in him, she steals out of herself and pierces the naked essence there to retain no more of things than when she issued forth from God. She comes so utterly to naught that there is nothing left but God ; God outshines her as the sun the moon, and she in God’s own subtile nature flows into all that God is flowing in eternally.
If thou hast apprehended me, there are two points to notice in these words. First, the soul knowing she was made from naught desires to see who made her. And secondly, her words, ‘Grant me to see thee as creating me,’ mean that she wants to feel the faith and love wherein she was created. For then the soul sees God though she does not see through him. She knows God although she cannot fathom him ; she apprehends God but cannot comprehend him as he comprehends himself. St Paul says, ‘ Then we shall know as we are known.’ Stripped of her own being, with God her only being, the soul sees God with God, knows and con- ceives God with God. One high authority declares that the soul sees, knows, apprehends God with his very own essence which is
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the very essence of the soul. The soul sees, knows, conceives God as she is herself conceived in the pure intellect of the Deity. Then soul is comprehender as well as comprehended. But no man in this body and after the mode of his own mind can understand how soul is both conceiver and conceived be he not wholly sunk into himself, into pure knowledge of his own God-nature where no created thought did ever enter. ;
Now mark. The naught whereby soul comes to naught is the turning from images and forms to stay at none of them, for the divine nature is neither form nor image. And soul divorced from images and forms is like to the formless nature of God. This is the secret passage of the soul into divine nature. The soul which has nowhere to turn is ready to turn to the image of God. In other words, she goes with naught to naught: to the divine nature whereto none may attain be he not stripped of all mental matter. Alas ! how sorely they obstruct this secret passage, those who so lightly stay at temporal things! Dionysius exhorted his disciples in this sense, saying, ‘ Wouldst know the hidden mystery of God ? then transcend whatever hinders thy pure perception, whatever thou canst grasp with thy understanding. God has nothing so hid as to be beyond the ken of a soul that has the wit to seek it right diligently and with prudence.’
A hard saying this, there is nothing in him so hidden as to be beyond her ken. Yet mark these facts.
The power of things resides in essence. Now the soul is capable of knowing all things in her highest power, she being all closeted in her secret chamber. To the soul thus freed from things there is disclosed his secret essence. She is able to receive his arcane power. As St Paul says, ‘I can do all things in him that strength- eneth me.’ Up, noble soul! seek thee no other place than this unnecessitous naught that did create thee, the same in its im- movableness shall be thy place; there shalt thou be more motionless than naught.—But this is traversed by some learned men who hold it is impossible. Naught, say they, is motionless, so how can the soul be more motionless than naught? The soul is a created aught which can be moved: she is a variable ; naught is a constant. The soul, for instance, goes from light to light until she finds the sovran truth where all things end. So too the soul is moved in that she is aware of things other than herself. Naught has no awareness. Therefore aught is more movable than naught. So runs the argument against our thesis. Now to prove that the soul is more motionless than naught.
The arch-good, God, is more motionless than naught. And the most perfect likeness of this motionless arch-good is also most immovable. Haply thou wilt object: Naught is the same as
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God for both of them are non-existent.» Not so. For naught is nothing to itself or any creature. But God is to himself his aught and naught to the mind of any creature. Withal the creature aught tells forth God’s aught by nature rather than its own. God’s aught is intellectual being. Dionysius says, ‘The intel- lectual light that God is, gat its own image in the rational soul.’ Now if God is more motionless than naught, it follows that the soul as reflected into her motionless aught, God namely, is- more motionless than naught. Naught is movable out of itself when naught becomes aught and always is moved when aught is pro- duced out of naught. Not so the soul: she always is aught and can never be naught. Behold the soul more motionless than naught, God having set her free, free to assert her own free will.
Her motion is the quest of him who has never loved nor was ever loved. Which may be interpreted thus. The soul, uplifting with all her might and main herself above herself to love the sovran good, sees clearly she can never reach the divine aught accom- panied by any of her powers. So down she goes again into herself, and the motionless aught bides unbeloved of her and of all that is not its very self. Thus the divine aught is never loved by her nor by anything that is not itself, nor has it ever loved. You can. put it like this. He loves nothing but himself or his image in all things. But since he is not love nor anything named, there- fore he loves not neither is he loved. This is the meaning of St Dionysius’ words, ‘God dwells in motionless calm.’ And the bride says in the Book of Love, ‘I have crossed all the mountains, aye, even my own powers, and have reached the dark power of the Father. There heard I without sound, there saw I without light, there breathed I without motion ; there did I taste what savoured not, there did I touch what touched not back. Then my heart was bottomless, my soul loveless, my mind formless and my nature natureless.’
Now what does the soul mean by ‘crossing all the mountains ?’ She means she has transcended her own rational powers and gotten ‘to the dark power of the Father’ where all rational dis- tinctions end. ‘There heard I without sound.’ Hearing without sound means intuition, direct apprehension. ‘ There saw I without light.’ Seeing without light means undefined, vague perception in the naught. ‘ There breathed I without stir’: the inspiration of unity wherein all things are still. ‘ There tasted I what savoured not’: over all sensible things hangs the motionless haze of unity. ‘There did I touch what touched not back’: alien, unalloyed essence of all creatures: the substance of all things substantial. ‘Then my heart was bottomless ’: the overwhelming wonder of
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my powers. ‘And my soul loveless’: powers and senses blotted out. ‘And my spirit formless’: the sealing of the mind in the | unformed form and image of God. ‘ And my nature natureless ’ : my own nature withered away till nothing is left but the one unique is. This is-ness is the unity, the being of itself and of all . things. St Dionysius says, ‘ The one alone is the life of lives, being
of beings, reason of reasons, nature of natures, light of lights and
yet not light, not life, not nature.’ Of it St James declares, ‘ The
most perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.’ Again
St Dionysius says, ‘ The First Cause is above all names and tran-
scends love; it is superessential, superintelligible, super-rational
and supernatural. The First Cause is neither light nor darkness.’
Behold how different from all caused things. é
Saith the soul in the Book of Love, ‘No one is God to me and I am soul to none.’ By ‘no one is God to me ’ she means merely that no entity, nothing nameable, is her God. Again the words, ' “I am soul to none’ mean that she is so void of self she has not got it in her to be aught to anyone. This is the state in which the soul should be: in utter destitution. The soul cries in the . Book of Love, ‘He is mine and I am his.’ It were better she had said, * He is not mine nor am I his,’ for God who is in all is therein all his own. She can lay claim to naught: she has lost every whit whereto any wight could in anywise be aught or she withal be aught to any wight. No one is her God and she is no one’s soul, wherefore she cries in the Book of Love, ‘Fly from me, beloved, on the feathers of the wind.’
What is the meaning of these feathers of the wind whereon the soul rides ? The feathers are the choirs of Seraphim. The wind of their feathers is their clear seraphic knowledge. Above this dwells the soul. But not till she has left behind all images and forms, not harbouring any, not resting upon any. She must have lost her individual motion. And thus divested of her creature- hood, having no hold on anything at all, she sinks into downright nothingness ; there she is concealed from every creature. To this same naught no Seraph’s understanding can attain ; in this naught dwells the soul, super-seraphic, above all such knowing. Thus the soul rides on the feathers of the wind.
But what a perfect life this man must lead! How dead his soul to every kind of motion! St John declares, * Blessed are the dead that die in God.’ To this end, O man, do thou free thyself from every sort of sensible affection. God is exempt from such, and it behoves thee, man, to be the same if thou wouldst solve his hidden mystery. For this, look you, soul must be stripped of all her senses. St Dionysius spoke of this to Timothy, one of his disciples, when talk arose about St Paul who had been put to death.
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‘ Alas ! my friend ’ (said Timothy), ‘ and shall we never hear again the loved voice of our master?’ The saint replied, ‘ Friend Timothy, my counsel is to leave behind us corporal things and go to God. But this we cannot do save with blind eyes and alien senses ; not that we ought to have misleading senses: we must transcend sense and knowledge to get to his mysterious unity.’ Anent which St Augustine says, ‘ The soul has a private door into divinity where for her all things amount to naught.’ There she is ignorant with knowing, will-less with willing, dark with enlighten- ment. To wot of self would mean her imperfection ; to wot of God would mean her imperfection ; to wot of self in God or God in her would mean her imperfection: self is reduced to utter naught and there is nothing left but God, for God outshines her as the sun the moon and she with God’s all-penetrativeness streams into the eternal Godhead where God keeps ever flowing into God.
Nothing is without beginning, and since nothing is without beginning God could make us from nothing better than nothing, like himself. Alone God’s power did make the soul, so she like him is free from matter. And soul could have no homelier road into divinity than by way of nothing to nothing, for nothing unites like natural affinity. But St John Chrysostom declares that none can take it till his outward and his inward senses are focussed to clear vision of the Deity.
The naught we were before we were created was indigent of naught. Moreover of itself it could do absolutely naught and naught withstood creatures : all but the power of God ; it was this caused naught to stir when God made all things from naught. Now we have got to be more motionless than naught.—‘ But how ?’ Mark how. God gat the soul the mistress of herself, not overriding her free will nor once exacting from her aught that she will not ; so whatever in this body she elects of her free will she is free to carry through. Say she chooses to need nothing and to be more motionless than naught, then assembling all her powers into her free will so as not to be hindered by herself or any thing, she centres herself in the motionless God who was n’er moved by any act done by the blessed Trinity nor is not indigent of any thing the blessed Trinity has ever wrought. To reach this point of needing naught and being more immutable than naught, soul must be
‚sunk so deep in the bottomless well of the divine naught that nothing can draw her thereout to spend herself on mortal things, but there she steadfastly abides ; as the heavenly Father is ever- abiding in his nature without let or hindrance so the soul abides therein without let or hindrance, as far as that is possible to creature.
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—-‘ Pray, Sir, how should it be impossible seeing that the soul was created to that end ? ”—-Because, you see, if she does stoop to baser things to let herself be satisfied with these, then that which is above her is beyond her reach, whereas God keeps no secrets from the soul whose lofty nature is equal to the quest. Up, noble Soul! - Out of thyself so far thou never comest in again and enter into God so deep thou never comest out again: there stay nor ever deign to stoop to creature ; and burden not thyself with things made clear to thee, nor wander among objects presented to thy mind, nor be not hindered from achievement by any service. Steadfastly pursue thy simple nature and the unnecessitous nothingness, seeking no other place than this unnecessitous naught. God who made thee out of nothing, he in his unnecessitous nothing- ness and immovableness shall himself be thy place. There thou shalt be more immovable than nothing.
3
They that serve God for gain with outward works reap their reward in creatures, such as heaven and heavenly things. But they that serve God by interior acts are rewarded with the un- created, namely, the works of the blessed Trinity.
Mark this. No fire no light, no earth no life, no air no love, no water no place. Ergo, God is not light nor life nor love nor nature nor spirit nor semblance nor anything we can put into words. ' God flows into God and God flows out of God and God knows himself God in himself and knows himself God in his creatures in general and he knows himself God in the noble soul in particular. The Father is almighty in the soul; the Son all- wise, the Holy Ghost all-loving, loving all creatures with the same love. But he manifests as different and the soul is destined to know things as they are and conceive things äs they are when, seized thereof, she plunges into the bottomless well of the divine nature and becomes so one with God that she herself would say that she is God. The soul withdrawn into herself till nothing made or named takes shape in her and she is bare as God of any name, gathers herself up above herself into her God and takes herself cum God for God. God is not black nor white, nor large nor small, he has no place nor any past nor future time, and the soul is like him only in so far as she can project herself above all _ creatures. '
The soul is a creature receptive to everything named, but the nameless she cannot receive until she is gotten so deep into God that she is nameless herself. And then none can tell if it is she that has gotten God or God has gotten her. Dionysius says,
‘
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‘God has conceived himself in her, so utterly absorbing her that she is now no longer self but God.’ And the soul’s inferior powers have distinction of person, love uniting the persons not the essence. The soul is destined to this knowledge when, on the ebb-tide of God’s glory, she is borne back into the bottomless ground of the fount whence she flowed. forth and finds she is not from ~ herself.
The highest boon, the chief good of the soul, is not from herself. Christ himself declared he was not from himself. The truest thing we have is our intuition of not being from ourselves and that we ourselves are not of ourselves.
God has done all things for himself and he has made the soul like to himself, over all things, under all things, in all things, out of all things and withal abiding in herself impartibly. But she is noblest keeping to the desert wherein she is naught and there is nothing doing. St Dionysius prays, ‘ Lord, lead me into the desert where thou art formless that in thy solitude I may lose all form.’ The soul is in all things in her subtile nature wherein she inhabits all things without affecting them or being affected by them. Thus transcending things she cries, * Lord, fetch me into thy Godhead where thou art naught, for what is aught I deem to be not God.’ The soul is over all things in her freedom; she knows none can compel her, not even God himself. Surrendering her free will to God she plunges into her own emptiness, beseeching, ‘ Lord, take me into the gloom of thy Godhead that in thy dark I may lose all my light, for nothing that can be revealed do I account as light.’ She is out of all things in her power of understanding, which makes her so elastic she is able to hold God as well as all his creatures. Embodying God thus she is more God than her own self. This is hers by grace. Aught of God is God entire and aught of him holds his whole being. This he is in the lowliest as much as in the loftiest nature. A small bung stops the barrel no less well than the biggest. |
Comprehension belongs to his paternal power. He grasps him- self in himself in all creatures and grasps himself in his countenance whereto he admits no creature and whereinto no creature can get. And this comprehension he veils in a cloud of distortion so that no creature can grasp him as he grasps himself. What the soul grasps in the light she loses in the darkness. Yet she makes for the cloud, deeming his darkness better than her light. There she suddenly loses her light and herself in his darkness.
The soul cries in the Book of Love, ‘ No one is my God and I am no one’s soul, and nothing manifest to me do I take for God. I flee from God for God’s sake.’ St John says, ‘ God is love.’ But theologians argue that if he means the love wherewith the soul loves
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God, this is not true. Were that love God, wherewith the soul can love, it would not fail her as it does. This is a natural love, the virtue. But suppose her will is turned toward God, then God draws love from nothing and pours it into the virtue, so her love is both nature and grace. In grace God gives himself to the soul and the Holy Ghost unites with her love, and the love which is the Holy Ghost is God, and the love which is grace is the nature which unites the soul with God, and in this union the soul is absorbed into God and loves God with his own love in God, which in herself she cannot do.
The Father is the revelation of all things and the Son is the image of all things and the Holy Ghost is the fulfilling of that order. Philosophers say that things in contact with God are not God but his works. The soul is self-motive before she is moved and her being moved is the work of God, the soul being the agent while the work itself is creature. The power which perfects the soul, which sweeps her out of herself without her aid or abetting, is God. I can touch the minster, not carry it off. That we attribute to God matter and form and work is due to our gross senses. Theologians tell of the light which gives no light, which has no form nor matter and is yet a creature. To know God as he is we must be absolutely free from knowledge. Thus St Augus- tine says, ‘ Lord, I know not what I love in thee if it be not light.’ As God is timeless and modeless so he is also nameless. St Paul says, “ There be many that run but one receiveth the prize.’ All the soul-powers run but pure nature alone receives the crown, for, according to Dionysius, this race is nothing else than the flight from creatures to unite with their creator. Atoned with her creator the soul has lost her name for she herself does not exist : God has absorbed her into him just as the sunlight swallows up the dawn till it is gone.
Tell me, where is the soul’s abode ?—Upon the pinions of the wind. The pinions are the powers of divine nature. The wind is the waging of the powers of the soul’s divine nature. When he thrusts her sins under her eyes she sinks down into him like a fish in the sea. All creatures lose their names on entering human nature. Hence Christ’s exhortation, ‘Preach the gospel to all creatures.’ He meant only human beings.
Observe when a man is all creatures. When he has the power of them all. When a man, knowing with his outward senses all corporal things, detaches himself from them and abides therein without attachment; when, knowing with his interior senses all spiritual things, he detaches himself from these and abides therein without attachment, then at length that man is all creatures ; then, not till then, that man has come to his own nature and is
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ready to go into God. If we fail to find God it is because we seek in semblance what has no resemblance. The scriptures tell us more of his unlikeness than his likeness. Origen says the soul’s quest of God comes by self-observation. If she knew herself she would know God also. If she pietures herself or pietures her God that comes of over-defining. On merging into the Godhead all definition is lost.
Dionysius says to Timothy, ‘Friend Timothy, if thou dost view the spirit of truth, pursue it not with mortal senses. It is so swift, it comes rushing.’ God must be sought in estrangement, forget- fulness and non-sense ; for the Godhead has in it all things in posse without the least likeness to anything. The supremely pure splendour of the impartible essence illumines all things at once. According to Dionysius, beauty is order : symmetry with supreme . lucidity.” In this sense the Godhead is the beauty of the three Persons. And it behoves the soul to order her lower powers to her higher and her higher ones to God ; the outer senses to the inner and the inner ones to reason ; thought servant to intelligence, intelligence to willand her will to their unity, then the soul will be a unity with nothing flowing into her except pure deity as it is proceeding from itself. Concerning this St Dionysius says the soul has flung her faculties into her pure being and only her chief ~ power remains at work. And one doctor says that when the chief power takes command the rest all enter into it losing their own activities, so now behold the soul in her proper order and in her pure nature, her pure nature being her exalted light-nature which is potentially all things.
The Godhead flows into the Father, into the Son and the Holy Ghost, into itself in eternity and in time into creatures. It gives to each as much as it can hold: to stones existence, to the trees their growth, to birds their flight, to beasts their pleasures, to the angels reason and to man free nature. God was made man and _ took upon himself by grace the nature of all things in time even as in eternity he has them all by nature. St Paul says, ‘ Christ is to me all things.’ One Person with two natures. Each seems all things to each. It is a play of the light and reflection of his own nature. God’s being is first being, flowing being, fixed being, initial being and final being.
From essence in general emanates power and work. The three Persons are in this respect the storehouse of divinity, and the three Persons descend into the essence of the soul by grace, and the Persons bring divine nature into the soul in their train, one nature coursing through the other. The higher powers of the soul fiow out of the essence of the soul as the three Persons issue from the Godhead. And when God pours his grace into the soul he pours
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it into the essence of the soul, for into the essence of the soul no fleck can fall let her powers do what they may. The higher powers of the soul draw their seeming from the essence of grace in the essence of the soul, and her chief power transcends the lower ones in nature.
Mind big with the conception of God’s nature is the corollary of Christ’s Person in human nature. When the soul is absorbed into God’s nature her sins and shortcomings are stripped off and she becomes God, divine in nature ; she enjoys divine nature in herself just as the Father does in him. She gets it not from her own nature: she takes divine nature from God into her. nature. She receives perfection and power. Hence the words of St Paul, ‘I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.’ Wisdom springs up in understanding ; it begins in understanding and ends in desire and has neither heart nor thought. As St Dionysius says, ‘ When the soul, finding this outlet, has a footing in eternity and in time in her own understanding, therein she shall return into the flow where God is flowing back into himself, and does not flow away.’
God is flowing back into himself, recking no more of creatures than he did when they were not. And the soul shall do the same. She shall with her humanity conceive the Person of the Son-and | with the Person of the Son she shall apprehend the Father and the Holy Ghost in both and them both in the Holy Ghost ; and with the Person of the Father she shall grasp his impartible nature and in his nature discerning the abyss she shall flow into the, void bereft of matter and of form. Form, matter, mind and mode she loses in the unity for she herself has come to naught : God is doing all her work, he preserves her in his being and leads her in his power into his naked Godhead. She flows with his deity into all that God is flowing in. She is all things’ place and has herself no place. This is the spirit of wisdom which has neither heart nor thought.
Soul flowing in the Deity is so nearly God that in the power of the Father she receives divinity, (she) by grace as the Father does by nature. St Paul says, ‘ In one image shall we go from glory to glory.’ Meaning that we shall receive the impartible Godhead with all that flows therefrom and shall therein conceive the Deity as the Deity conceives itself. Her will and God’s will shall be one, and wherever God has gotten himself there she is with God. To this none may attain while in this body except God grant his best gift to the soul, namely, the vision of God which confirms the soul in the Trinity and in the image of the Godhead.
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XII THE DROWNING
Though there be neither hell nor heaven yet will I love God : thee Father and thy sovran nature wherein the Trinity abides in the unity whence it gets its power.—Now you desire to hear about this hidden and exalted nature of the Trinity. The Persons are God in their personality, Godhead by nature in their oneness. But you must know what God and Godhead are. The former has distinctions ; which the soul of me explains by the reflection of the exalted unity. This shines in its own essence wholly indiscriminate. Therein is contained its unity entire, including the distinctions of lofty personality. The river is fontal wherein unity abides ; the one alone is unnecessitous, poised in itself in sable stillness. In- comprehensible and yet self-evident. Light is the first thing to appear; it beguiles the mind into the unknown without itself, everlasting, in-drawn, plunged in gloom. There it is befooled, there it is bereft of light’s darkness, losing them both in the abyss ; there that mysterious thing the mind is estranged in the unity which is withal its life.
O unfathomable sink, in thy depth thou art high and in thy height profound !—How so ?—That is hidden from us in thy bottomless abysm. St Paul declares that it shall be made known to us. In this gnosis the mind transcends itself; it has been absorbed into the Trinity. There the mind dies all dying in the wonder of the Godhead, for with that unity it is confused; the personal losing its name in sameness. There mind, atoned, is accounted naught ; there it loses the means of divinity. Light and darkness, it is rid of both, matter as well as form. The spark thus bare, made naught from its own naught, is swallowed up in its naught’s aught. This same naught is poverty in the Persons, which beguiles the mind and reduces it to unity. In the embrace of this sovran one which naughts the separated self of things, being is one without distinction although a thing created in its individual nature. The one I mean is wordless. One and one uniting, void shines into void. Where these two abysms hang, equally spirated, de-spirated, there is the supreme being ; where God gives up the ghost, darkness reigns in the unknown known unity. This is hidden from us in his motionless deep. Creatures cannot penetrate this aught.
Well that this aught transcends us. Even so loving it transcendently, _ Plunge in: this is the drowning.
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THIS IS THE GLOSS ON THE DROWNING
It is true spiritual perfection to love God for his own sake regardless of hell or heaven. We must love the three Persons in their unity of nature and their one nature in the three Persons. The Trinity has its power in the unity and the unity has its dignity in the Trinity. It belongs, moreover, to the noble mind to perceive the distinction between God and Godhead ; how it is the three Persons in him have gotten his unity as their natural being. Each Person has for nature his unity entire, so each of the Persons is in himself God and in his nature Godhead. God is God in the Persons and Godhead in his nature: in his impartible nature. The unity shines forth in the Trinity as articulate speech. But the perfect reflection of the one is shining by itself in lonely silence, there safely pent as one and indivisible. ‚Further, the three Persons in their utterance keep their distinctive pro- perties. The Father is source of the Son and the Son is the river thereof eternally flowing out of the Father as Person; while abiding within him in essence. The Father and the Son give forth their breath (or spirit). Thus the originated river with its original source is the origin of the Holy Ghost. , Unity which, logically speaking, is the condition of the öriginal source is also the condition of the river which, together with its source, is source of the Holy Ghost. And as this oneness is the nature of them both so too it is the nature of the breath exhaled by both. This river then is fontal. The unity which is in them both is unnecessitous, it has no need of speech, but subsists alone in unbroken silence. Not that the utterance dies, i.e. the spoken essence. But where speech beats into the silence of its nature both have one common character, the character of sameness. What is this? It is the motionless dark that no one knows but he in whom it reigns : the one with its selfhood. First to arise in it is light. Lo, this is the originated river, and origin itself, which has the character of light as proceed- ing forth in its individual nature. And what here streams forth to view will reveal itself and that from which it springs. In its interior procession this originated river, which is also the origin itself, has the nature of obscure, unmanifest intelligence, but the light proceeding forth brings revelation to the mind, beguiling it out of itself into its mysterious indwelling cause. There it is shorn of light’s illusion. Of everything, that is, which has been revealed to it in the form of light. Thereof it is despoiled, but now it finds another and better than this light-like understanding. Light has mode without knowledge. Darkness is knowledge without mode, a thing, that is, we can in nowise have. The mind
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is rid of light when it is rid of mode ; and it is rid of darkness when, letting go of all natural things, it sinks in nameless actuality. Then it loses both light and darkness in the abyss that creature in its own right never plumbs. Such is the estrangement in the one as foreshadowed in the ordinary mind, but the realization of unity which the blessed have lies in the exquisite consciousness of another than themselves.
O unfathomable void, bottomless to creatures and to thine own self, in thy depth art thou exalted in thy impartible, imperish- able actuality ; in the height of thy essential power thou art so deep thou dost engulf thy simple ground which is there concealed from all that thou art not ; yet those whom thou wouldst commune with shall know thee with thyself. As St Paul declares, ‘ Then shall we know as we are known.’ This knowledge the mind gets. not from its individual nature: the unity hales it in the Three into itself, that is, to its true and natural abode where it transcends itself in what inhales it; where ‘the spirit dies all dying in the wonder of the Godhead.’ This dying of the spirit means its con- fusion with the one essential nature though it remains discrete in the Persons of the Trinity. This shows the activity of spirit ; its having variety of Persons. But by their union is shed a single light, for the three Persons are aglow with one intrinsic nature, like three lights with one shine. According to St Augustine this essential light is cast by the Persons into the pure spirit. At its
- glance the spirit forfeits self and selfhood and the uses of its powers. Such is the effect of the shaft of pure impartible light of unity which this spirit is rather than itself when it is reduced to nothing but the same. We call the unity naught because mind has no notion what it is; what the mind does know is that it is upheld by another than itself. Its upholder then is aught rather than naught, though mind has no idea what it can be. It is more real to him than his own self in that it belies his personal naught. For mind, as actually dwelling there, loses every means of divine nature, which to him is all things. He loses his individual nature and yet he does not die ; he wins the nature of divinity although not God by nature but by grace. Now remember, he is something created out of naught. Yet he, a mere created wight, is drawn by the power of God’s essence into his unity, a thing unknown in anywise to any creature. This unity which is in nowise creaturely is poverty, for it is poor of creatures, its content being that of simple actuality. This modeless creature-essence is the being of the Persons who alone contain it in its most primitive and simple form as their nature. This knowledge de-ments the mind. This spiritual dementia means the absolute modelessness of the unity which the Persons have in actual mode. The spirit broods in
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sameness without light or darkness. Sans light, in its impene- trable actuality ; sans darkness in its lack of any special name. The spirit free from matter and from form has taken on the form of God. Thus the mind attains to its eternal image which is one in its essential nature and threefold as uttered in the Persons. Though the spirit in this image has an eternal nature of its own yet in itself it is a thing created. This created thing is mens ; by mens being meant the spark, the living principle of spirit. This is the spirit in itself. Its eternal image is another ; that is really God. When the spirit in itself turns from all things becoming into the not-becoming of its eternal object in the Persons, whence it comes, then the mind is said to return to its exemplar. Then void shines into void: the purified becomingness of mind turns to the pure not-becoming nature of its eternal idea. In this embrace is consummated that exalted union wherein at length the spirit at one with all its nature is in divine atonement. Where these two meet in one, equally spirit and not-spirit, there is beatitude.
Now consider what the spirit of God means. The most signi- ficant and subtile word that creature can employ is spirit (breath or ghost) and that is why we call God spirit. But creature has no proper name for the nameless God and therefore to our mind God is not spirit.
Mark too the meaning of spirituality of soul. It means that, aloof from the coil of nether things, she is living at her summit in thought and love. Here she is one spirit with God. Spirituality of soul, besides, means that in her aught she is no more material than in her naught wherefrom she was created. Such is the spiritual nature of the soul. But she is de-spirited (de-mented) when, at her absorption, she is what is his rather than her own, and this is the perfection of her sanity. The interior spiration of God, again, is his hidden nature, the quarry of the mind which it escapes ; for this mysterious and silent one lies hid in depths of stillness that no creature ever plumbs. This being is beyond our grasp, whereat, rejoicing greatly, let us hasten to seize it with itself: this is our highest happiness. So be it, by thy help, O divine Trinity. Amen.
XII! THE FLOW INTO THE FATHER
Concerning the flow into the Father, note as follows. The Godhead is contained in the Father as nature, wherefore
1 See Spamer’s Texte, B. 2, from which the words in brackets are taken.
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he is omnipotent and receives naught from aught that he is not himself in his divine potentiality, seeing that he has it in him in essence, as his own. Nevertheless, speaking of the Father we mean the Person of the Father, and speaking of the Godhead we mean his nature, his impartible substance, that is to say. Now since: this nature stays brooding in settled immoveable stillness, moving - all things which have proceeded in eternity in the word of his power (or potential Word), it follows that, as power, it has ever been flowing into the Father making him able to beget a Son like unto himself. We can prove it thus. The Persons are impotent as Persons ; anything they do is done in virtue of their nature which is their real being. So much for the flow into the Father which he has of his own nature wherein he is omnipotent.
Now mark. The soul has received two powers by nature. The first of these powers is understanding. This comprehends the Trinity, although it is incomprehensible, and all its works. Observe how understanding comprehends the Trinity, and all its works, despite its being incomprehensible. The soul in her understanding is the image of the Son and the Son is the Father’s understanding. So when the soul is empty of her own understanding, and only the Son is her understanding, she understands with the Son the Son and the Father and their common Spirit. That is how the soul comprehends the Trinity and all its works.
Her other power is will. It is its nature to cast itself into the unknown which is God. God is said to be -unknown because no creature knows him as he knows himself; as known to himself he is unknowing to all creatures. Hence we call God agnosia. Now the chief power of the soul is too fastidious to dally with temporal, known things, so free will boldly disregards the known and cleaves to what it knows not. As St Paul says, ‘I know not; God knoweth.’
Christ says, * When I am ascended I will draw all things to me.’ He means that when he dawns upon our heart and understanding he gathers us up into himself. In this sense all creatures are one man and that man is God. [In this sense man is all things. For he has the nature of all creatures, and souls joined to Christ are in this sense one man with him. He is the head and they are his members, who are in his charity.] In Christ his all was assembled into one. His higher and his lower faculties, and the senses of his outward and his inward man were in harmonious union with his highest power, conceived there by divine conception, which was united with him in one Person. And so with the man in whom all creatures end, in whom all multitudinous things have been reduced to one in Christ : man is then one in God with Christ’s humanity. Thus all creatures are one man and that man is God
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in Christ’s Person. As one master says: With God one spirit and with Christ one body, that is unity indeed.
With the powers received from the Trinity the soul knows the ordering of all things ordained by God in such exalted fashion. But those that turn away their eyes from God relapse into the self- same naught wherein they were before they had received the likeness of the Trinity, this likeness of the Trinity aye informing them of the dark nothing back to which they wend. In this darkness gather all the pangs of hell. The dark enwraps them and hides the sight of God ; it burns them past soothing by their created aught. This is bitter to their conscience which damns them to all time. In this pit of nothingness they sink for evermore, powerless to grasp the naught they were before they had the likeness of the . Trinity.
And now, my children, let us examine these dark sayings carefully. You will see the obvious meaning of these damned. But another, ghostly, sense lies hid therein, which it behoves you to note specially. This applies to the elect who turn away their mind from God and flow back into that same naught, for when the soul is carried by her understanding above all things and beyond the scope of her own understanding to the understanding of the sovran good she sees that to all creatures this is unintelligible. So down she goes with her own understanding.
The fastidious soul can rest her understanding on nothing that has name. She escapes from every name into the nameless nothing- ness. Escaping her own nature she falls clear of her own aught. The naught she falls into is the unknowing, which is called the dark. ‘In this dark gather the pangs of hell,’ where the soul is plunged sheer into the void. This only happens when she is perfectly devoid of knowledge. The slightest trace of knowledge or under- standing of the naught that she is plunged in would be hell- torment to her. All sense and knowledge of the naught ends in this darkness. ‘The darkness burns them past salving by any of their kind. Bitter is this conscience which damns them to all time. In this abyss of nothingness they sink for evermore, failing to grasp the naught they were before they took the likeness of the Trinity.’ By virtue whereof they have their being. To approfound the naught wherein they drown they are as helpless as they were when they were not. All sense and knowledge end in the darkness of their naught. For this darkness is the incom- prehensible nature of God. She sinks for evermore in the depths of this naught. She sinks and drowns; she drowns to her own aught. Her aught, surviving, sinks as naught to naught. But the naught that sinks can never comprehend the naught it sinks in. Every virtue mastered and transcended, the soul cries; ‘ Even
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so I cannot glorify and love God to the full. I die then to the virtues casting me into the naught of the Godhead to sink eternally from naught to aught.’ The highest meed of love and praise the soul can lavish on the sovran good is given in the knowledge that all her love and praise fall short of God. So down she goes through the little she can call her own and dying to her virtues is cast into the naught of her own self.
Two points mark here. She casts herself with the naught of herself when, self-bereft of her exalted power she ever regards her own insignificance.
The other naught she plunges in is the naught of the Godhead. Seeing that she herself is naught and not disposed to stay at aught, the soul casts herself into the naught of the Godhead and so comes with naught to naught. She wants the aught she recognises in herself to perish in the naught which is its very aught and so subsist in unity. She sees we cannot love and glorify God better than by recognising how inadequate all love and glory are. Wherefore she holds her peace. St Dionysius being bent on lauding Mary’s virtues found them so inconceivable he held his tongue. By his dumbness the worthy Dionysius did Mary highest honour. Thus it befalls the soul on being ravished into God’s incomprehensibility. Her lips struck dumb, °O groundless Truth,’ she cries, ‘ how paltry is our praise!’ So she attains to union close enough for God to pour himself into her every whit and snatch her every whit into himself, leaving no trace of either vice or virtue; nor does the soul know any difference.
For you must know that to the soul in her perfection goodness would come quite natural; she would not merely practise virtues, but virtue as a whole would be her life and she would radiate it naturally. We seem to be vicious or virtuous from being now the one and now the other. This should not be : we ought to be always in a state of perfection. That is one thing to note.
Further, God absorbs the soul, leaving no trace. This means that the soul ravished by God into the peace and quiet of his secret self makes little show save to her kind. There the soul knows no separation, for he who has absorbed her has merged her in himself. She well knows that she is but knows not what she is.—The sun in certain countries is too hot for fruits to flourish on the surface of earth, but, on the other hand, the sun produces gold in plenty in the bowels of earth. And so with the soul in whom the bright sun of the divine nature shines: it produces its like there, scattering the darkness and bringing about perfect unity. Look you, it behoves us to be very merciful to these, for, withdrawn into his hiding, they are out of touch with the profane.
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St Chrysostom says, ‘It is not yet manifest what we are, but ‚when we are changed into him we shall show what we are.’ What- ever she may take herself for, to God she is creature.
The Godhead is a spiritual substance, so impenetrable that none can say what manner of thing it is. They say: God in the Trinity is the living light in its visible radiance. In other words, the three Persons are but one in nature though distinct in Person in the same sense that the source of light is not the light nor is the source its shine. Applying this to the three Persons, the source is the Father, the Son is the light and the Holy Ghost is the shine. The Father is the living source in whom all things have lived eternally without themselves as in their cause. The light is the Son in whom all things appear eternally as in their idea. The shine is the Holy Ghost in whom all things are one eternally as in their naught. Not that one Person is the life and another the light : the three Persons are one life, one light.
The Trinity is the heart of the divine nature. As you may prove. For in human life it is the heart which beats in all the limbs, energising, co-ordinating them. Because the limbs receive from it, therefore it is called the heart. Now touching the God- head, this is not active in its nature, but anything it does it does with the Persons, and the Trinity is called the heart of divine nature because this works by means of it, and because it (the Trinity) is the origin of all things and all things flow back into it and end. This heart’s heart, again, is the paramount power of the unity wherein and whereby it is omnipotent. Human nature flows in love into the Trinity as into its universal origin. The unity of the Trinity is bottomless and nothing is contained therein. In the embrace of unity the naked soul sinks down for aye nor ever touches bottom. Her temporalities (7.e. the created natures of her powers) stop at the Persons, whereas her pure essence is received by the pure unity of God without return.
Behold the soul divorced from every aught. For he who stoops to aught that is not God can never be received into God’s unity. This unity is causeless: it is self-caused. Of bottomless depth the floor, of endless height the roof, of boundless space the rim. I refer to the Trinity of Persons: the unity underlies it, holding it together; it overtops it, energising it ; it surrounds it, ending its distinctions. Thus the Trinity is in the unity and the unity in the Trinity. As saith the psalm Quicumque vult.
That we should know ourselves and God so far as we are able, that is God’s will. If we would know ourselves we have to recog- nise that we are nothing but the raw material of God for the blessed Trinity to work in. It behoves us therefore to be vastly careful not to hamper in any way the work which the exalted
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workman designs to carry out in us to his glory, but so to maintain ourselves that the material is always ready for the workman to do his work in us. St Paul says, ‘ The spirit of the Lord descends from on high in secret, working in whom it will and when and where and how it will in him in whom it meets no hindrance.’ In the children of God. They are led by this spirit.—It is thus ye shall know yourselves. Next, we have to know God. To this St Dionysius exhorted one of his disciples, saying, ‘ Up, friend, divest thyself of things and put off thyself that thou mayst under- stand the Sovran Good.’ Of it three things are predicated. F irst, it is a unique force entire in everything; next, a unique good embracing everything. (Thirdly) to know God really ye must, know him as the unknown. So Dionysius says.
God’s will is our welfare, and our welfare consists in knowing God and doing accordingly. Here timorousness mutters in the soul, both she will and she will. not. And hard on this comes rage of soul. When she divines that it remains for her to be somewhat that he is not, she is transported with ire. She would sooner come to naught than have or take aught that belongs to him. ‘Lord,’ she cries, ‘my welfare lies in thy never calling me to mind; and forbid, I pray thee, any creature ever to console me. I rejoice that my powers never come before thy face.’
See what the soul means by her strange words: ‘my welfare lies in thy never calling me to mind.’ She wots right well that she has never been one instant out of his mind and that is her felicity. She begs not to be comforted by any creature, because she is in indigence right comfortless where her disconsolateness is her one consolation. And when she says her powers come not before his face? Observe what God’s face is. We see ourselves best in what is called our face. So too where God is manifest to himself in the mysterious stillness of his own essence. This revelation is called the face of the Godhead. The soul is well aware that, accompanied by her powers, she can never enter the absolute stillness where he is manifest to himself. Hence she desires her powers not to come before his face, i.e. his self-revelation. See, her powers halt at its reflection in the Trinity and only the pure essence of her spirit is flashed from the stillness of her own power straight into this perfect revelation. As a master says: ‘ Where pure and purified are one the powers of the soul are at an end.’ Meaning that in the one perfect nature the pure nature of the spirit transcends all its powers. St Paul says, ‘ He who is joined to God is one spirit with him.” Amen.
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XIV ST JOHN SAYS, ‘I SAW THE WORD IN GOD’
St John says, ‘I saw the Word in God.’ God is abstract being, pure perception, which is: perceiving itself in itself. St John means that the Son is in the Father, in his nature. ‘I saw the Word with God.’ Here he is referring to the intellect which, flowing into God eternally, proceeded forth from God in distinction of Person, namely, the Son. ‘I saw the Word before God.’ This means that the Son is ever being born of the Father and that he is the image of the Father. ‘In the Word there is only the Word,’ refers to the eternal emanation of creatures in the Word. ‘I saw the Word under God’; the Son become man, as God said, “I have loved you in the reflection of my darkness.’ God’s dark- ness is his nature which is unknowable. Good people know it not and no creature can divine it; therefore it is a darkness. While God was flowing in his own darkness the Son was not distinct from him. In the darkness of his nature the Father flowed as Person so far as he was pregnant. ' The Father gave his Son birth and gave him his own nature; he gave him not his Person: his nature he can give away but he can give to none his Person for that is the product of his unborn essence. The Father spoke himself and all creatures in his Son; the Father spoke himself to all creatures in his Son. The Father turning back into himself speaks himself in himself ; he flows back into himself with all — creatures. As Dionysius says, ‘ God proceeded into himself,’ mean- ing that his hidden nature suffices him, which is concealed from creatures. The soul cannot follow him into his nature, except he absorb her altogether, and then in him she is made dark of all created lights. The darkness of creatures is their incomprehensibility in their simple nature, that is, in the nothing from which they were created. In this uncreated light they discern his uncreatedness. Into his uncreatedness they flow in the reflection of his darkness.
—‘ Tell me, good Sir, do Father, Son and Holy Ghost speak the same word in the Godhead or has each a different word ? ’—In the Godhead there is but one word ; in it the Father in the Godhead speaks into his unborn essence and into his born essence, the Father flowing into his Son with all that he is and the Son speaks the same word, and the Father and the Son flow into the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost speaks the same word. They speak this one simple word in their essence and each speaks the same word in his own Person, and in their common nature they discourse the truth and the Persons receive the essence as it is essentially. Yet the Persons receive from one another. They bow down to
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the essence in praise, lauding the essence ; and the unborn essence pronounces its unborn word in the Persons, lauding the Persons, and the Persons receive the essence every whit and pass it on to one another. This unborn essence is self-sufficient, without birth and without activity. Birth and activity are in the Persons. The Persons say they are the truth and that creatures have none of the truth. When the soul attains to this divine speech she speaks this very truth and is the Deity to every creature as well as to herself. This comes of her indivisible nature and therein creatures are a matter of the will. The bad are bad and the good good, the Persons preserving justice in the Godhead. They give the bad ‘their due and the good theirs.
St Dionysius says, ‘ God is the Prime Cause, and God has fashioned all things for himself who is the cause of all; and his works are all wrought in the likeness of the First Cause.’ Father and Son show forth the first cause, and the Son is playing in the Father with all things for he proceeded forth from him. The Son plays before Father with all things, the Son plays below the Father with all things. The Father begat the Son with his Godhead and with all things. The Father begat his Son in his Godhead with all things. The Father begat his Son into his Godhead with all things. The Godhead is the several Persons and the fullness of the Persons. The Godhead is not given to any thing. On coming to its knowledge the soul sees God and glancing back into herself she sees that the Godhead is in all things. Receiving into her the likeness of the creator she creates what she will but cannot give it essence: she gives it form and is herself its matter and its eternal activities are in her; these are in the eternal birth. Its temporal activities are in time, where God gives his works essence, form and matter out of nothing, which the soul is unable to do; God reduces his works to the unity of Christ and this order shall- not pass away but shall be raised up to the glory of the one. Soul, transcending order, enters the naked Godhead where she is seen when God is seen in the soulas God. This soul has God as God in her, she has gotten in her the image of her creator.
Now mark the difference between the work of God and creature.
God has done all things for himself, for he is the universal cause and all his works are wrought in the likeness of the first cause and creatures all work according to the likeness of the first cause. That is the intention they have towards God. God made all things from nothing, infusing into them his Godhead so that all things are full of God. Were they not full of the Godhead they would all perish. The Trinity does all the work in things and creatures exploit the power of the Trinity, creatures working as creatures and God as God, while man mars the work so far as his intention is
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evil. When a man is at work his body and soul are united, for body cannot act without the soul. When the soul is united with ‘ God she does divine work, for God cannot work without the soul and the soul cannot work without God. God is the soul’s life just as the soul is the body’s, and the Godhead is the soul of the three Persons in that it unifies them and in that it has dwelt in them for ever. And since the Godhead is in all things it is all sdul’s soul. But in spite of its being all soul’s soul, the Godhead is not creatures’ soul in the way it is the Trinity’s. God does one work with the soul; in this work the soul is raised above herself. The work is creature, grace to wit, which bears the soul to God. It is nobler than the soul as admitting her to God; but the soul is the nobler in her admissibility. This creature which has neither form nor matter nor any being of its own, translates the soul out of her natural state into the supernatural.
To his eternally elect God gives his spirit as it is, without means; they cannot miss it. Creatures God is going to make at his good pleasure he has known eternally as creatures, for in God they are creatures albeit nothing in themselves : they are uncreated creatures. Creatures are always more noble in God than they are in themselves. In God the soul shall see her own perfection without image and shall see the difference between things un- created and created and she shall distinguish God from Godhead, nature from Person, form from matter. The Father is the begin- ning of the Godhead, he is the well-spring in the Godhead, over- flowing into all things in eternity and time. , The Godhead is a heaven of three Persons. The Father is God and a Person not born nor proceeding from any ; and the Son is God and a Person and born of the Father ; and the Holy Ghost is God and a Person proceeding from both. St Paul speaks of the uncreated spirit flowing into the created spirit (or mind). This meeting which befalls the created spirit is her saving revelation ; it happens in the soul who breaks through the boundaries of God to lose herself in his uncreated naught. The three Persons are one God, one in nature, and our nature is shadowing God’s nature in perpetual motion ; having followed him from naught to aught and into that which God is to himself, there she has no motion of her naught. Aught is suspended from the divine essence; its progression is matter, wherein the soul puts on new forms and: puts off her old ones. The change from one into the other is her death: the one she doffs she dies to, and the one she dons she lives in.
St John says, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in God: they are buried where Christ is buried.. Upon which St Dionysius com- ments thus: Burial in God is the passage into uncreated life. The power the soul goes in is her matter, which power the soul
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can never approfound for it is God and God is changeless, albeit the soul changes in his power. As St Dionysius says, ‘ God is the mover of the soul.’ Now form is a revelation of essence. St Dionysius says, ‘Form is matter’s aught. Matter without form is naught.’ So the soul never rests till she is gotten into God who is her first form and creatures never rest till they have gotten into human nature: therein do they attain to their original form, God namely. As St Dionysius hath it, ‘ God is the beginning and the middle and the end of all things.’
Then up and spake the loving soul, ‘ Lord, when enjoyest thou thy creatures ? ’—‘ That do I at high noon when God is reposing in all creatures and all creatures in God.’ St Augustine says, ‘ All things are God,’ meaning, they have always been in God and shall return to God. So when St Dionysius says, ‘ All things are naught,’ he means they are not of themselves and that in their egress and their ingress they are as incomprehensible as naught. When St Augustine says, ‘ God is all things,’ he means he has the power of all things, one more noble than he ever gave to. creatures. And St Dionysius’ dictum; ‘ God is naught,’ implies that God is as inconceivable as naught. As King David sings, ‘God has assigned to everything its place: to fish the water, birds the air and beasts the field and to the soul the Godhead.’ The soul must die in every form save God : there at her journey’s end her matter rests and God absorbs the whole of the powers of the soul, so now behold the soul a naked spirit. Then, as St Dionysius says, the soul is not called soul, she is the sovran power of God wherewith God’s will is done. It is at this point St Augus- tine cries, ‘ Lord thou hast bereft me of my spirit!’ Whereupon Origen remarks, ‘ Thou art mistaken, O Augustine. It is not . thy spirit, it is thy soul-powers that are taken from thee.’ The soul unites with God like food with man, which turns in eye to eye, in ear to ear. So does the soul in God turn into God: com- bining with each divine power she is that power in God ; and God combines with the soul and is each power in the soul; and the two natures flowing in one light, the soul comes utterly to naught. That she is she is in God. The divine powers swallow her up out of sight just as the sun draws up things out of sight.
What God is to himself no man may know. God is in all things, self-intent. God is all in all and to each thing all things at once. And the soul shall be the same. What God has by nature is the soul’s by grace. God is nothing at all to anything ; God is nothing at all to himself, God is nothing that we can express. In this sense Dionysius says, ‘ God is all things to himself for he bears the form of all things.’ He is big with himself in a naught : there all things are God, and are not, the same as we were. When we
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were not then God was heaven and hell and all things. St Diony- _ Sius says that ‘God is not’, meaning that he bears himself in a not, namely, the not-knowing of all creatures, and this not draws the soul through all things, over all things and out of all things into that superlative not where she is not-known to any creature. There she is not, has not, wills not, she has abandoned God and everything to God. Now God and heaven gone, the soul is finally cut off from every influx of divinity, so his spirit is no longer given to her. Arrived at this the soul belongs to the eternal life rather than creation; her uncreated spirit lives rather than herself: the uncreated,. eternally-existent which is no less than God. Wherewith being all-pervaded to the total loss of her gwn self, the soul at length returns without herself to eternal indigence,
for what is left alive in her is nothing less than God. Thus she is poor of self. This is the point where soul and Godhead part and the losing of the Godhead is the finding of the soul, for the spirit which is uncreated drawing on the soul to its own knowledge she comes nearer to the not-being of the Godhead than by knowing all the Father ever gave. [The gift of the Father is the positive existence of all creatures in the Person of his Son and with the Son the Holy Ghost as well. For the Persons must be looked on as inseparate, albeit distinct illuminations of the understanding.] And so far as she attains this in the body she enjoys the eternal wont and escapes her own.
We ought to be eternally as poor as when we were not and then our kingdom shall not pass away, abiding as it does in God whose it is eternally. The Godhead gave all things up to God; it is as poor, as naked and as idle as though it were not: it has not, wills not, wants not, works not, gets not. St Dionysius says, ‘ Be the soul never so bare the Godhead is barer’: a naught from which no shoot was ever lopped nor ever shall be. It is this counsel of perfection the soul is straining after more than after anything that God contains or anything she can conceive of God. Saith the bride in the Book of Love, ‘ The form of my beloved _ passed by me and I cannot overtake him.’ It is God who has the treasure and the bride in him, the Godhead is as void as though it were not. God has consumed the form of the soul and formed her with his form into his form. Now she gets all things free from matter, as their creator possesses them in him, and resigns the same to God.
Ours to contain all things in the same perfection wherein the eternal wisdom has eternally contained them. Ours to expire them as the Holy Ghost has expired them eternally. Ours to be all things’ spirit and all things’ spirit to us in the spirit. Ours to know all and deify ourselves with all. Ours to be God by grace
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as God is God by nature ; ours to resign the same to God and be as poor as when we were not. In this state we are as free as when we were not: free as the Godhead in its non-existence. Christ says, ‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit.” These same poor in spirit enjoy the Father without let or hindrance. The Father knows no difference between this soul and him save that he has by nature what she has by grace. For as Christ declares, ‘Them that follow me I will bring to where I am.’ ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: God’s kingdom is in them.’ These spiritual poor are those who have abandoned everything to God as he possessed them when we were not and the naught itself. In this naught dwells God and in God dwells this soul. There she has no dwelling and thereinto no creature can get in its own right and no creature can go higher.
XV THE THREE CREATIONS
The three Persons made creatures out of nothing to enjoy the uses of the blessed Trinity. There is difference of wont in the Persons and their powers; for the essence being self-sufficient there is nothing in the essence to enjoy excepting unity, so the soul demands nothing, knows nothing, wills nothing.
As to the Persons, the one knows the others so far as they are Persons, for one Person begets the others. Essence begets not. In the domain of Person, one is receiving from another. The Son receives all he possesses from the Father ; the Holy Ghost receives all he possesses from the Father and the Son, and each of the Persons receives from the others presence and well-being and co-operation and mutual delight. As to their activity, each one finds itself entire as essence in the others and each enjoys the others as Persons and itself in both the others.
We speak of three creations. Birth is called creation, and being made from nothing, and being raised in grace to higher grace. The same applies especially to Christ. If birth is a creation then Christ was the creature of his Father in his eternal birth of Person and of nature. Christ himself declared, ‘ Wisdom created wisdom.’ The creation of the Son has ever been to him his whole existence, who is still being born of the Father eternally with all that he is, and this birth remains in the Father eternally. St Dionysius says, ‘God created a God as good as God.’ Inasmuch as the Father conceives himself of himself he is his own creation. As St Dionysius says, ‘God is his own self-begotten Son.’ In eternity, that is. Creatures abide in eternity as being in the God-bearing Godhead. The Son knows all things essentially in the
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essence of the Father who, essentially, has the potentiality of all things that shall happen and shall not happen. He has in his Person the universal image, so that he knows all things in common with the Father and wields joint power over what has happened, what is happening and what is still to happen, as well as’ over what God could do an he would that never happens. As the Father stretches his will to things that are to happen so the Son stretches his wisdom to effect their happening ; and as the Father directs his will towards things that shall not happen, the Son directs his wisdom to prevent them happening.
The second creation is that of all the three Persons at once who are one in their work of making all things from nothing. This applies pre-eminently to Christ’s soul, for she was created from nothing in time. The images existing in the middle Person are imprinted in his soul’s potentiality so that she knows ideally, all things past, present and to come. But things that are not going to happen, things which God in his omnipotence could do but which will not take place, albeit possible essentially, these his soul does not know for that belongs to God alone. This light is creature, created from nothing and is supernatural to the soul. His soul has one light in common with the angels. This is the image impressed in her wherein she perceives in herself things that have happened and are happening; but in this image she sees nothing of those things which are going to happen except God grant her knowledge of them. And this is supernatural to the soul.
The third creation is the raising of his body from grace to higher grace, that is, something extra to his animal nature. In his animal nature he cannot see into peoples’ consciousness ; in his animal nature he could give no sign nor know about the future unless God granted it. Christ was so foolish as a child he did not know his father or his mother. St Ambrose says: ‘He was created from grace to higher grace when he rose from death to immortality.’ Christ sees in heaven, with his fleshly eyes, only what is before him; he must turn round to see what is behind him. So the Son has never known the Father in that funda- mental mode wherein the Three are united in one nature. That mode Christ’s soul was sharing when, at the moment of her creation she was bereft of it and prevented from seeing her divine nature. Christ’s soul enjoys divine nature by grace as God does by nature. This is so far removed from creature that never a drop has ever leaked into any creature. The furthest limit of man’s knowledge is an intuition of how the three Persons enjoy their divine nature. To this none can attain unless his soul is plunged into the consciousness of the created and uncreated
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natures confluent in her where she stands in the midst and, seeing straight into them both, has at that point pure intuition of her wont and how what she enjoys there is withdrawn from her and how, though borne along with and by grace, she is still unable to apprehend God’s nature. She clearly sees that she is God’s and not her own at all. She is acutely sensible that enjoying and suffering are identical. That Christ should have action and passion both in one, bodily, that was the wonder. His soul must have suffered in all her powers. Her highest power suffering as much more than the rest as it was more capable of suffering. One wise doctor says, ‘In this intuition the soul has perfect joy, for perfect joy is perfect knowledge.’ Christ says, ‘They that know thee Father and thy Son whom thou hast sent, have life eternal.’ Also he says, ‘ Pray, that your joy may be full.’ St Dionysius says, fullness of joy is perfect consciousness, a balanced interchange of nature, whereby the soul beholds herself in the mirror of the Godhead. God is the mirror, unveiled to whom he will and veiled from whom he will. St Peter says, ‘ God fashioned his nature and the Persons in that nature and chose the nature not the Persons.’ St Dionysius says the soul has a light that lights her to work. By the light God casts on the angels next him they cast themselves back into God with all they are. As St Bernard observes, ‘Minds do not flow back into God in their natural light ; the Godhead absorbs them in its own light without _ their seeing.” Now St John says, ‘God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.’ When God reveals himself to the soul and the soul loves God, she is in God and God is in her. When the sun shines and the eye sees it, the eye is in the sun and the sun is in the eye. Well then, friend mine, here you have the notion, which it defies me to express in words, for the divine nature in the Persons is a mirror, beyond the reach of any word. In so far as the soul can project herself beyond words so far she approaches that mirror. In that mirror the union is simply one of likeness.
When, Lord, I was in thee I was unnecessitous in my nothing- ness ; it was thy look, thy notice of me, that made me indigent. If it be death for the soul to part from God, then it is death to her to emanate from God. All change is a dying. Wherefore we die from time to time and the soul dies all-dying in the wonder of the Godhead, impotently grasping at the divine nature. In the naught she is undone and comes to nothing. In this not-being she is buried, in un-knowing she is merged in the unknown, in unthinking merged in the unthought-of, in un-love one with the unloved. Death’s grip none can unloose: it severs life from limb and the soul from God and casts her into the Godhead
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wherein, sepultured, she is ignored by every creature. She is forgotten-as one changed within the tomb nor is she held in any man’s embrace. She like God is incomprehensible. For the dead who have died in the Godhead are beyond our ken, like the dead are who die here to the body. That death is the soul’s eternal quest. Slain in the three Persons she loses her naught and is hurled into the Godhead. Where she discovers the face of her naught. ‘Thou art all fair my love, there is no spot in thee,’ says our Lord ; and of his incomprehensible beauty she declares, “ Thou art more fair.’ There she sees the secret art of God: how marvellously God contrived that nothing should be indigent, yet without detriment thereto. St Dionysius says: ‘ No wonder God made the soul indigent with a look, when the sun, unbidden, gives life to mites and worms in rotten wood.’ The soul, perceiving God’s immensity and her own insignificance, casts herself out of God’s heart and out of all creatures and rests upon her naked nothingness: the divine power has her in its keeping. As St Dionysius says: ‘ All things are naught at the command of God.’ Again he says: ‘ The look which goes from God into the soul is the beginning of faith whereby I believe things not revealed to me.’ So far as the soul sinks down in faith into the unknown good, so far she is one with the unknown good and is unknown to self or any creature. She well knows that she is but knows not what she is. Not till she knows all that there is to know does she cross over to the unknown good. This crossing is obscure to many a religious.
The nature of the soul is such that where she is at all there she is altogether. She is entire in every limb, for where her nature is at all there it is wholly. So is the Godhead in all places and in all creatures and in each wholly.
Unnatured nature is natured only so far as it is natureable. It natures not itself but the Father natures his Son in natured nature, for the Father is as much natured as unnatured nature, seeing that it is one with him. The Father is alone in unnatured nature and is the first in natured nature. And in natured nature the Son is naturing with the Father, for (Father) and Son nature the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost exists with the Father and the Son in natured nature and natures not. In (un)-natured nature they are one, natured nature distinguishing the Persons; and the Persons are as eternal in their Persons as the unnatured nature in its nature and their natured nature is as eternal in them as their unnatured nature, and this is nothing else than one God in three Persons, who nature creatures, each in its own nature, and give them the power and activity that is best suited to them. So dear each creature holds its nature that it would have no other.
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A master says, ‘ If sorrow could befall the Father he would rue his inability to make all things divine by nature.’ When the soul in her simple nature turns into God’s nature forthwith she is made one with God, but to heed discrete powers and persons and virtues hampers the soul’s divine unity. Her common sense endows the other senses with sight, hearing, touch and savour, albeit in itself no more than one. And the perceptions of the outward senses are all referred to common sense. Discursive reason sorts out what is good and, leaving out the animal and gross, presents it to the memory for union with the soul. Her highest power introduces it to her understanding which has intuition of God’s will, and so it is conveyed into the soul who harmonises all with God’s good will.
God in himself is simple good and undivided. The names the soul gives God are taken from herself. Albeit threefold in his Person, God is the one and only good by nature. He is omni- potent good in the Father, clear wisdom in the Son and pure goodness in the Holy Ghost. He is threefold and he is one in creatures generally ; and of those burning spirits who are con- sumed in the fire and brought to naught in him he is the impartible substance. When, having harmonised all things in herself, the soul is reduced to her impartible substance, then she inhales the powers of the divine nature and exhales them from her being into the being of the divine nature which permeates her throughly, the two beings meeting in one point which is common to the soul and God and the variety of Persons hinders not their unity nor does their nature interfere with the variety of Persons. He is threefold and one in every Person in his born and unborn natures severally and the Persons are not admitted to the essence. To receive one Person is to receive the divine nature threefold in its unity. For one Person in essence is as good as three distinct.
Happy the soul who, taking this transcendental flight, receives all things in the naked Godhead. That soul is buried in the face of God ; she is rapt into heaven wherein the three Persons dwell in the oneness of their nature. This is the hidden Godhead whereof no man can speak. Blessed are they who make this passover: all things are known to them in truth and they themselves unknown to any creature. So far as they are above creatures they are God and super-creaturely, owing to their unity with God. God’s face conceals them, every shadow of them, in itself. Where two unite, the stronger draws the weaker to it. Christ says, ‘ Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you.’ Blessed are the chosen, they bear God’s image. Christ says, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.’ The poor in spirit are those who have abandoned all to God as
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he possessed them when we were not. God’s kingdom means the soul being full of God and nothing of herself. In this nothing God dwells and the soul dwells in the same nothing. There she changes not and thereinto no creature can get in its own right, and creature can rise no higher. St Dionysius says, ‘God dwells in the nothing.’ O Dionysius, that is not enough! God dwells in the nothing-at- all that was prior to nothing, in the hidden Godhead of pure gnosis whereof no man durst speak. Unity is of God alone. As St Dionysius says: ‘Did God not dwell in the naught things would all perish.’ St Dionysius, that is not enough! Did God not dwell in the nothing-at-all sustaining creatures with his might, they would all come to nothing for they by nature pass away into the nothingness from which they were created. There- fore God dwells in the nothing-at-all that was prior to nothing.
Creature has access to God, who is her being, energising in the power which moves her to rise from naught to aught. Now St Paul asks, and Augustine too, ‘ How did I get from naught to aught, from worm to God, from creature to creator?’ The soul shall be so one with God she weens that nothing is save God alone and that God made no creature save herself alone. The soul that makes this transcendental passage enters the universal peace. She is God as he is in himself. Christ says, ‘ I have been man for you and if ye are not God for me ye wrong me.’ God became man that we might become God. God in his God-nature lay hid in human nature so that we saw naught but man. And so this soul shall hide her in God’s nature until we can see naught but God ; not putting on a Person as Christ did but wholly immersed in the divine nature. God is not a nature like a creature is which has some quality another lacks. The brewer who is also baker we cannot simply call a brewer for he is baker too. God is the nature of each nature: -he is all natures’ nature undivided. He is the light of lights, the life of lives, the being of beings, the reason of reasons. He is all natures’ common nature. As Dionysius says : “We cannot say he is a nature seeing that he is impartible and there is nothing like him.’ And again St Dionysius says: ‘ We know God only in unknowing.’
When God enters the soul he comes in with all things. Although in God there is but one thing simply, the soul possesses it as ~ separate notions, angels and devils and all. The soul is able to conceive all things in God and to discern what God is in them and what they are in God by soaring up to the supernal simplicity, into unknowing. St Dionysius says, ‘ That is Lordship, tran- scending earthly things and the likes of them and raising them to the heights.” Christ says, ‘ Them that follow me I will raise to where lam.’ The Father speaks himself into the soul in his Son,
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Now the Son is the Word of the Father, so the Father reveals to the soul in this wise that he is shapeless in his divine nature. The soul, speaking herself back to the Father in the selfsame Word, says she has no shape either in her naught, so she abandons her naught in the Word and plunges shapeless into the unshapen.
The Godhead is an abstract simple thing, omnipotent above all Person as well as having the power of the inseparate three Persons : giving to none, receiving from none, save as therein subsisting. St Dionysius says, ‘ The Godhead has gotten all things.’ The three Persons are in the Godhead ; they reveal of it to creatures and each other as much as they are able to receive. The Father reveals the Godhead to himself and to his Son and Father and Son reveal it to the Holy Ghost and the three Persons reveal it to creatures and the Godhead wantons with the Word and before the Word and above the Word and the Word cannot comprehend it. Were the three Persons undistinguished in the Godhead, the Godhead would not. be revealed at all and creatures would not have been created. The eternal activities are the cause of creatures. The Father reveals the Godhead, the Son reveals the Father, the Holy Ghost reveals them both : This revelation the Godhead gets from things beneath it. The supreme perfection is indigent of creatures. So it befalls from time to time that when the moon, shooting below the sun, monopolises all the sunlight and the sun is said to be eclipsed, that then a star exerts its force upon the moon and drawn it off the sun; thus the sun owes its light to things beneath it.
The soul gets from the Trinity those finite things commensurate with her powers. Out of the naked Godhead there shines into the simple being of the soul a single light invisible to her powers, both high and low. For though the Godhead has in it all things, it has them all in one, not piecemeal. It begets not, so it is not Father ; it receives not, so it is not Son nor Holy Ghost. The three Persons are God in person and in nature Godhead. The Godhead shines through the distinction of Persons and through separate creatures down to the very lowest, illuminating them and illuminating itself in itself. And when the soul in her naked essence enters into the Godhead, all things are within her ken even the meanest creature; then she illuminates herself and “ everything in her and discerns in the Godhead the divine nature and in the variety of Persons she loses her name and the Persons lose their names in the unity and everything the unity compre- hends loses its name in the unity. And here the soul, as good now as her naught, both draw together to their close in the God- head’s naught, where her powers are useless. As St Diony- sius observes, ‘ God passes away.’ By which he signifies that the
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soul in her naked essence has escaped her powers. Her powers have lost their deity, and the pure substance of their deity as well, to the Persons and their powers, which powers react upon the essence by hindering the swing-back of the Three to unity. Here love loses her name and all things in the Godhead’s naught, now the soul has flowed into her aught. In the Godhead’s naught, the Father has his consummation and the three Persons their one nature wherein they give to creatures the perfection of their created aught and the soul in her aught in the Godhead’s naught courses through all things all undisturbed in her being’s aught. As St Dionysius says, ‘ The soul is not moved in her naught in the Godhead’s naught neither does the soul move the Godhead in its naught. There she is so great . . ., she flows to him as it were in a light.’ St Dionysius says, ‘The Godhead has come to naught for the powers of the soul cannot comprehend it.”
Blessed and praised be the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in the unity of their divine nature. Blessed and praised be Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, one Person of divine nature and human nature.
XVI THE SOUL’S RAGE
The soul is furious for self-knowledge. Her face is lit with | passion, red with rage for the arrears withheld from her in God, | because she is not all God is by nature, because she has not all | God has by nature.
The masters say there is no fiercer appetite than a friend’s desire to possess his friend and all that he possesses. The soul proclaims her rage so boundless she cannot be appeased by him. The bonds of love are all too cruel for her. Alas! she cries, who shall console me? My misery is too deep. Were I the one creator, beginningless and endless, and had I made creatures and were he soul like me, then I would go straight out of my estate and let her enter in and be God while I was creature; and if it were an obstacle to God to get his being from me, he would be welcome to efface me for I would perish sooner than be a hindrance to him. But seeing it is common to everything © created to have somewhat of the eternal in man’s nature ever present in it, therefore I know not where to turn to find a place. So I take refuge in myself and there I find the lowest place, aye, one more base than hell for even thence do my shortcomings hound me. It seems I cannot then escape myself. Here I sit me down and herein will I stay. And I beseech thee, Lord, that thou never callest me to mind and forbiddest any creature ever
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. to console me and deniest to my powers that ever any one of them should come before thy face, lest I offend thee. So I go out and. let the soul go in.
The third rage of the soul is that she should be God and that there should not be a single creature, like when God was in his eternity ere he created creature, so that she may enjoy God- nature in its simplieity as he did before. But then his love were lacking to him, for it is the nature of good things to communicate themselves.
Fourthly, she rages to be absolutely nothing but the naked ‘essence, there being neither God nor creature. She asks, What ) is the good of the three Persons in the Godhead and what is the | use of creatures? But hold, she cries, except for them there
' would be no creatures. That must be the reason why there are
| three Persons in the Godhead: they are the cause of creatures.
| God is God-exalted: the creatures he has made cannot exalt
‘him. All that creatures do to God is themselves: such glory as
\ they can give to God is the same as they are.
XVII THE TWOFOLD WAY!
Ego sum via, veritas et vita, “I am the way, the truth and the life,’ says our Lord Jesus Christ. Mark specially the words, ‘I am the way.’ In a twofold sense we take Christ as the way: according to his manhood and according to his Godhead. His manhood was the way of our own manhood. This we have to follow, both the counsel of perfection as a whole and also in its parts. If but one of our members leaves the way of his example we are thereby deformed. St Paul declares we ought to live so that God may find in us the perfect reflection of all his divine works, i.e. we must copy the exemplar he has set before us. That is true spiritual life. But this is greatly hampered by numerous defects ; mainly numerous interior shortcomings due to the powers of our soul being disorderly. The joy of the soul should be so set upon its proper work that no created things can gladden her but only the fact that her consciousness is clear. As Christ said to his disciples, ‘ Rejoice not in anything except in this, that your names are written in the book of life.” And the fear of the soul should be so well controlled that she fears nothing under God either for person or possessions, nor aught that may be inflicted upon her whether by God or creature. And similarly with the
1 See Pfeiffer, Zt. f. dtsch. Alt., Bd. 8 (2), 1850, and Preger, Zt. f. hist. Theol., _ Bd. 34, 1864 (two versions). Also Jostes, Nos. 18 and 19. For authorship sce Preger’s Geschichte, vol. i, p. 318.
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other powers, desire and thought. The entire soul, in short, has
to be gathered up into the impartible simplicity of her will and her
will must fly at the highest good and fasten itself thereto. But
S Paul says, * He who is fastened to God becomes one spirit with im.
Behold how rich is the spirit grown thus one spirit with God ! No things can enrich it though it hold sway over them all. For things are necessaries whereas its riches consist in its dwelling in a nature superior to creaturely necessity. He who has nothing and needs nothing is richer than the man who possesses all things with necessity. St Paul says: ‘ Our sufficiency is in God alone whose able ministers we are.’
Nor do the virtues enrich the spirit. Doctors declare that it is not, properly speaking, the virtues which enrich the spirit but the fruit of virtues. The soul has virtues of necessity. But virtues being a necessity, the spirit is of necessity not enriched by them. The utmost a spirit can attain to in this body is to dwell in a condition beyond the necessity of virtues; where goodness as a whole comes natural to it so that not only is it possessed of virtues but virtue is part and parcel of it: it is virtuous not of necessity but of innate good nature. Arrived at this the soul has traversed and transcended all necessity for virtues : they are now intrinsic in her. Now she has reached the goal whither the virtues merely pointed her, to wit, the infusion of the Holy Ghost. This is the fruit of virtue ; this alone serves to enrich the spirit. Concerning this St Paul says: ‘ Put on the new man, Christ,’ who was in this way our way.
The other way is the way of his Godhead.
— What way has the Godhead and where can it go seeing it is in all places; and wherewithal does it go seeing that it has no feet nor anything bodily ?
—The way of the Godhead is the unity wherein the three Persons run together into one essence. The going of the Persons consists in their mutual knowing and loving, each knowing and loving itself in the others. Thus do the Persons walk together in unity.
The feet with which the Godhead enters the Persons and the Persons the essence are: the one foot of the Godhead is foresight of all things ; the other, pleasure in the things eternally foreseen, for God enjoys eternalwise the contingency of things. This refers to the eternal image. He enjoys only good in all things : image of all things which is very God.
It may be questioned, What pleasure does God enjoy ?
All things must needs please him for he who saw was God and what he saw was likewise God. In their eternal image which is God himself, God saw himself and saw things as a whole. God
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enjoyed himself, God being in himself the unique one. The soul sees her impartible idea in God, which has never come out of him. This her multiform image does, and the consummation of her spirit lies in the reduction of its here created aught to the naught of its eternal prototype. God is the origin of the spirit and the spirit never rests till it returns into its origin, to its eternal proto- type. Essentially this prototype is God wherefore it aye eludes the spirit which is never able quite to apprehend it. Yet it divines how it has been in God eternalwise without itself; and the supremest bliss the spirit knows is to relapse into its origin, to its eternal image, wherein, as self, it is lost altogether. There the spirit loses its uses not its essence. The essence of the Godhead sucks the spirit out of itself into itself, making it as itself, so that there seems now but one essence. As though I were to take blood of a serpent—which is very red—and pour it into a trans- parent glass; the glass would lose its seeming not its substance. So in this union the divine light illuminates and outshines the spirit which shines one light with it. The spirit loses its seeming not its substance for God has fetched the spirit out and united it with himself. Natheless the spirit in this union can never plumb the depths of Godhead. As St Paul discovered when, caught up to the third heaven, he saw things not permissible, nay, not possible to speak of, and cried out : ‘ O thou depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge, how unsearchable are thy judgments and thy ways past finding out.’ God’s riches consist in having nothing and being nothing that can be clothed in words. His wisdom consists in the well-ordering of things. God’s knowledge is his conception of himself in his supernal light. Concerning which St Dionysius says, ‘ The light God dwells in is his own nature which is known to none besides himself.’ This is the highway of the Godhead which no creature ever trod. Of it God spake by his prophet: ‘ As the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than thy ways.’—St Augustine says, There is nothing more difficult and more exacting nor at the same time more useful and salutary to the soul than excursions in the science of the holy Trinity and unity.
Mark well, therefore, the meaning of the Persons and the essence.
—What is a Person in the Trinity ?
—A Person is that which preserves its own rational individuality apart from any other distinct Person. One Person is not another. The work of the Persons consists in the genesis and output of things. Genesis belongs to the Father alone; outputting of things to the Trinity jointly.
—What is the essence of the three Persons in the Trinity ?
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—That which, impartible, contains all things impartibly while of itself as essence it neither generates nor produces things. That is done by the three Persons which activate the essence or it could do nothing. Nevertheless the Persons do not act as three : they work as one God.
—What is the potentiality of the essence ?
—The potentiality of the essence lies in not being a rational Person: in persisting in its essential unity. Not that it differs from the Persons ; this same essence is the essential nature of the Persons and the being of all things. Existence of all existing things, life of all living things, the light of lights and nature of natures: all this it is in its impartibility. Not so with the Persons ; they are not the personality of things as essence is the essence of all things. The Father is not able to be anybody’s person but his own. He gat another Person out of his Person not out of his essence: with his nature in his nature. That the Father was able to produce a Son so rarely, so consummately his like, a God as perfect as himself, is due to his essential nature. When he begets the Son the Father gives him another Person than his own Person but not another nature nor another essence than his own. It follows that the essence is revealed in the procession of the Persons. The Persons are able to reveal the essence which cannot of itself reveal itself, seeing that of itself, as essence, it neither gets nor bears. This impotence of the essence is its chief potentiality ; nevertheless it is revealed to itself.
The Persons know and comprehend the essence equally. The essence hears the same relation to all the Persons. Now it is a question among theologians whether or no the personality has basic knowledge and comprehension of the essence, seeing that the essence is comprehended only by the essence ?
The Persons have basic knowledge and comprehension of the essence because this is the Persons’ own essential nature; more- over, the essence is not comprehended wholly save by the three Persons, whose nature it is. The Persons comprehend the essence wholly, they being God in Person by reason of their comprehension of his essence which is their own essential nature. And so far as the soul comprehends this essence she too is divine. Though what she comprehends of it is no bigger than a drop compared with all the boundless ocean. Still it is God whole. The surplus good which is ever baffling her apprehension, that is the shadowy abyss wherein, self-lost, she sinks eternally.
It may be questioned, Why is there not one Person like one essence ?—I answer that, existing things exist not from themselves but in eternity are descended from an origin which is the origin
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of its own self and in time have been created out of nothing by the blessed Trinity. Their eternal origin is the Father and the universal image in him is the Son; love to this same image is the Holy Ghost. Had not this archetype of all things been always in the Father, the Father could never have wrought anything at all. That is, in his modeless essence. There must be more than one Person, for it was in the eternal procession (that is, in the begetting of) the Son that things as a whole emanated from the Father and not from themselves. This eternal procession is the cause of things on their eternal side, but in time they were created from nothing and in this sense they are creatures. In the eternal procession wherein they flowed without themselves, they are God in God. For as St Dionysius says, the Prime Cause generates all things in the likeness of itself.
Now mark the difference of this emanation in eternity and time. What is the (temporal) emanation? It is the indulgence of his love of clear discrimination. So we come forth into time by constraint of his love. The eternal procession is the revelation of himself to himself. The knower being that which is known. This is the eternal flow no drop of which did ever fall into any created intelligence; it is the Son from the Father. In the temporal emanation things flowed forth finite. In the eternal emanation they remain infinite. The flow goes flowing on in itself. As St Dionysius hath it, ‘God is a fountain flowing into itself.’
The Father is the origin of his Son, in his eternal child-bearing ; Father and Son originate their Spirit, in the eternal out-pouring. But, someone may question, how about the Father-nature? Is it the cause (of the essence or is the essence cause) of the Paternity ?
What follows needs clear thinking. Essence as essence neither gives nor takes. Now were the essence origin of the Father then the essence, being parent, would not be essence, it would be Person. But it is not; for essence in its unity is not Person. Again, were paternity the origin of essence the cause of this would be the paternal Person. But this is not so either. The Father in Person is a cause but not of essence; for paternity and essence have the same characteristic. That is why, in his paternity, he is the omnipotent cause. The essence cannot be apart from Person nor can Person be apart from nature, as ye can see. For nothing that exists can be without its nature, since it cannot take leave of itself ; it must be what it is. Now the Father is a Person and he cannot be a Person without a nature nor can his nature be without a Person. Given his nature, there must be someone whose nature it is. Note then that the essence can in nowise
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exist without distinction and hypostasis. Person and hypostasis can in nowise be without their nature, to wit, their essence.
Thus it is demonstrated that neither is the essence cause of paternity nor paternity cause of the essence, for neither can be without the other. The Son cannot be without the Father nor the Father without the Son nor the twain without the Holy Ghost albeit they have three properties to distinguish them apart. Not so with paternity and essence. Neither of these can be without the other. For albeit essence is not Person nor Person essence yet paternity and essence have the same nature so that neither can be said to be the origin of the other; for it is with one and the same nature that the Father originates his Son and these twain originate their Spirit which is of one nature with them both.
All hail to the exalted spirit that is received into this full, this naked knowledge which is unknown to those that are not naked of themselves. For the soul to be naked she must turn away from all the images and forms spread out before her and stop at none of them. For the divine nature is no form nor semblance that she can understand. Being turned away from these towards what transcends them—divorced, that is, from images and forms —the soul receives the likeness of the formless nature of God whose real form has never been revealed to any creature. This is the secret door into the divine nature, which the soul has in the image. For when the soul has naught to stay her, she is ready to pass into the image of God whereto none can attain be he not stripped of spiritual matter. Alas, how they obstruct this secret passage, those who so lightly stop in temporal things! Wherein I also acknowledge my wretchedness. In this sense St Dionysius exhorted his disciples, saying, ‘ An thou wouldst know the hidden mystery of God, transcend whatever hinders thy pure perception.’ When with her pure intellect now illumined with divine light, the naked soul sees God, then she knows herself. And when she sees how apt she is to him, how she is his and how they are both one, then, the burden of the body permitting, she remains thus always. This lofty intuition the soul has of the hidden mystery of God is that of which Job tells: ‘In the horror of a vision by night he cometh and whispereth in the ears of men.’ What does he mean by the horror? Solieitude for this perception we are speaking of. The nocturnal vision is the revelation of the hidden truth. And the whispering is the flowing union wherein knower and known are one.
This book is difficult and obscure to many people. Publish it not I pray you for God’s sake, for it was forbidden to me to do so. If any condemn it, forsooth it is the fault of his blindness for it is
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the absolute truth. But if there be in it things inaptly expressed, do not wilfully misunderstand it, for words fail in speaking of the divine nature. Its meaning is clear in the truth which is with Christ and in Christ. Wherefor may he be blessed and praised for ever. Amen.
XVIII COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF ST JOHN
The profound Gospel of St John begins: in principio erat verbum, that is to say :
‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ He who would grasp the interpretation of these abstruse writings of St John, which with God’s help I shall unfold, let him turn his mind from created things and from his own understanding, that being illumined by God’s spirit he may apprehend the meaning I shall give to these dark sayings.
To start with, I premise from his words, ‘ in the beginning,’ a beginning without beginning. In God’s name I proceed. In the beginning was the Word : in the source of the effulgent formal light of rational creature and in the origin of its radiance the Word subsisted as the perfect Word, perfect in its wordless potentiality, and this wordless word was with God. This gives me a. hint of some distinction, the word being with God. Now bring your best intelligence to bear on this. When the bound word of the Persons’ unity remained unuttered by the omnipotent intellect, then the Word, suspended in its divine origin tran- scended all words and names. When it was with God in the providential light dawning devoid of the created universe, then God was manifest to the world. Wherefore I, Meister Eckhart, do affirm: as soon as God was he created the world, the world being with God distinct in name. Whereas God in his motionless power was free from God and every name, God was the unspoken word in the bottomless abyss of his divine nature wherein the Word as such did never throughly understand itself. A thing that understands itself waxes and wanes in the act of understand- ing, but this word does not wax or wane, it is unchanging in itself, so it has never understood itself in itself albeit it is the intellect of the Father. It was in the beginning of the new procession of the Son that that the Son proceeded forth into the time of natural images united with the word ever-abiding in the paternal source. This same Word wrought its entire work of nature after the fashion of a person, humanly, and the bound Word itself energises in the Father in his characteristic nature, this same word being eternally immanent by nature. And such
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being the nature of the Word it is therefore porssible to say, ‘ In the beginning was the Word.’
I will now give the psychic interpretation, which whosoever cannot understand let him go to the truth for enlightenment.
In the beginning of the divine nature the soul is seeking herself above the points of time. Cast into the abysmal naught of the divine nature, her receptivity all gone, her portion in her felicity is the perfect naught that distinguishes her from creatures generally. As our Lord says, ‘ Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ But were it that the soul could know God with his own peculiar nature she would be loving something above God. Accord- ingly I say, that this word subsisting in the essential activity of the divine nature is the soul wholly deprived of receptivity, for with this she would be loving herself and all she is with a personal nature. So she may properly affirm herself to be the work of God in the beginning where, albeit she is formless, she is expressing form. But the form she gets from God is gotten by the sealing in the soul of God’s own nature. In the beginning of her nothing- ness was the word and the word was with God as Son and the Word was God.
He goes on to say, ‘ The same was in the beginning with God.’ Mark, I have just said, ‘ In the beginning was the Word.’ Now I say, ‘and the Word was in the beginning with God.’ From these cryptic statements it appears that the Word was with God ‘in the beginning. Now I suggest an obvious rational meaning. * The word was in the beginning with God.’ I say, in the principle of paternity this same principle is to the Father the source of his entire Godhead, personal and essential, of Son and Spirit.
St John says, ‘The word was in the beginning with God.’ Since there is in the Father an outpouring of his causeless divinity into the Word of his Son, this must occur in the paternal mind when, looking upon himself in the light of his abiding intellect, he perceives himself in the answering reflection in his divine essence ; or, in other words, the conception of the Word is God. Moreover by this reflection of his divine nature the intellect of the Father fashions or utters itself in imitation of his nature. So the Word is Son and it is in the divine substance, to wit, in the intellectual reflection of the Father, that occurs this birth of the Word proceeding, thus it is one in essence and distinct in Berson, Hence we may say: ‘ The same was in the beginning with God ’ and because introspection and reflection of the divine nature are involved in its continuous thinking of itself, therefore this birth is eternal. For if once this reflection were to stop, if mental holiday, inertia, should once supervene, there would remain one God without distinction of Persons. Thus the Word of the
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Father subsists eternally in its parental origin. Thereby it is ever being conceived and being born and born. The same was in the father-principle with God as distinct Person. This may well stand in lieu of my former explanations of the passage, ‘ In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.’ This is now fully explained.
Next come the words, ‘ All things were made by him and without him was not anything made.’ Examine this carefully. Granting that all things were made by him and that without him nothing was made, then supposing someone asks me, * Can God do anything without me seeing, that all things were made by him and without him was not anything made?’ I answer, No. God made all things with me standing in the groundless ground of God; God made all things through me while I stood in 'him idle. While the Father was performing the act peculiar to his nature I was standing right in the gate through which all things return perfectly free to their supreme felicity. As our Lord said, ‘ Father, to know thee one true God and only Son, that is eternal life.’ If life eternal be aught beside the rational soul I have no knowledge of it.
To return. Since I was lying dormant in the personal nature of the Father when he created creatures as a whole in his own nature, it follows that I was working with him ; I was the work of God wherein he wrought all things as giver, I being then conscious in my Personal nature of co-operating with the divine nature in this divine process. All the while I was working with him I was resting in God’s nature exactly as I was in God before I was created. God made the universe and I with him, standing as I did all undefined albeit substantial in the Father.
Observe further, ‘ All things were made by him.’ If everything was made by him and without him nothing was made, then I affırm there is a power in the soul centred in the perennial now in the paternal heart and in the nature of God; nor does it differ from the essential nature of God save in being the created image of God, as one saint observes: ‘ What the soul cannot conceive by nature can never be hers by grace.’ Like corn-seed dropped into the ground and lost to view, even so the seed or spark in the soul is shed from the essential nature of the Father, and is shining back into the incomprehensible essence, into that wherein the soul conceives superintelligibly, beatifically. There, in beatific mode, bereft of life and power, she returns to the uncreated good where, robbed of every faculty, she is the image in the Trinity, as our Lord said, ‘ Father, make them one with us.’ And when my soul, doffing her beatific habit, is buried in the paternal
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field, in the living vine, as the gospel says: when in this sense I lose myself and come into my own as the rightful Son, then I with God do make all things and the Word is in the beginning with God.
Take the next words, “and without him was not anything made.’ I offer this interpretation of them. In all rational creatures I find the quest of God. They forge ahead according to the time and will bestowed upon it. But without him nothing is accomplished, in those creatures namely who, even as the brutes, stop at their outward powers; their mental works are worthless, lacking as they do the divine light and spiritual freedom which gives them permanence. Christ says, ‘ What my heavenly Father planted not shall be plucked up, yea by the very roots.’ That is all I want to say about this passage.
Take the next, ‘ What was made, in him was the life.’ To see what this means, turn O ye blessed and commune with the under- standing of your uncreated intellect. ‘ What was made, in him was the life.” In this eternal procession, wherein all things pro- ceeded forth without themselves, they were now; but in time they were created from nothing and their life is in him. Thereof they are the creatures, the effect of that cause, the patent of his power resplendent in luminous detail. Thus we came forth into time; but the revelation of himself to himself is in his eternal procession where the knower is the same as what is known, to wit, the eternal emanation which is the Son from the Father, in whom all things flow forth. Thus what was made was the life in him.
Look you. All rational creatures proceeded from God alike, ‘ wherefore I say: all things participate in every intellectual mode. I hold that in her abstract understanding every rational soul knows the uncreated image which is her life. Now if my life and the life of all creatures is in God, I ask then, Can God know himself in me without my soul? I answer, No. Man knows heat apart from the fire and light apart from the sun but God cannot know himself without the soul. And why? Because the soul is the out-flowing stream of the eternal deity and she is sealed in the image of the blessed Trinity. By this she knows she is God’s creation. Therein I know the love of the divine fire whereby rational creatures are illumined. Isay: as the Father made me naked and free that I might stay and make my home in the groundless ground of the innermost heart of the Godhead, even so my soul must be utterly despoiled if I am to be beatified with God. As St Paul observes, ‘ He who is joined to God is one spirit with him.’ The Father cannot know himself without me, seeing that I stand in the ground of his eternal deity wherein his whole incomprehensible work is wrought with me and what is compre-
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hended that I am. By which I mean the light of the divine Sun, the universal life-giver, therefore I see that God cannot know himself without me. ‘ The life was the light of men,’ St John says.
Der realize the marvellous significance of this. What I say is: the life which is the light of men is man himself understanding (conceiving) himself in the wonder of the primordial power of the Father, in the leaping forth of his mysterious naught, in the blinding light of his indwelling Word brought forth in eternal creation, albeit the uncreated nature of the nameless. essence. It is his nature and his wont, with perfectly receptive understand- ing, to take the incomprehensible essence for his own nature whereby the wonders of the negating naught are revealed to him, , the night of the mind becoming bright like noon in the light of his pure primitive perfection and his distinct ineffable perfections shine out as clear as day. As David says, ‘ The truth shall not be hidden from thee and thy night shall be as light as day.” And as his light is so is his enlightenment for in the naked essence man knows himself even as he is known. Which knowing, our Lord said, ‘I am the door of my sheep-fold.’ In these words he invites us. to enter by the door of his emanation and return into the source whence we came forth, for this gives promise in us of something more than is afforded by the soul’s beatitude.
Haply thou wilt say, ‘Good Brother, if the life is become the light of men enabling them to know themselves as they are known, is it then possible for me to know myself the very Son of God ?’ I answer and say, that the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is so attached to the Father’s nature that never for an instant does he quit the paternal mode of deity. He wrought his whole work in that nature and into that nature which gives being to all things and he did so freely, in absolute idleness, for no reason at all. Here, bound to human nature, I have to work above nature freely, in absolute idleness or motionless quiet, so as not to be hindered by myself and by my personal nature and by things which are conditioned by time and temporalities; for to know all things in the cause of their existence I must soar beyond all lights, temporal and eternal, and plunge into the causeless essence which gives mind and being to my soul. Drowned in this being, aware of self and things merely as being, my soul has lost her name and there remains no nature but that which, in the Father, is eternally in travail with the Son and as such I am a new man born in his nature and doing all I do supernaturally in the divine nature. As our Lord said, ‘ When I am lifted up I will draw all things after me.’ So I being lifted up with all my powers into the. uncreated good do be with Christ one body and with God one
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spirit and do draw all things to me in one pure, perfect nature. As the gospel says, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well _ pleased.’ Knowing myself none other than the Son of God, in
that same sonship I am cast into my middle power and that in the perennial now, thus the eternal Word is born in me unceasingly, as our Lord says, ‘ Father, glorify thy Son.’ In this interpretation lies the explanation of the words, ‘ How hardly does the rich man enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Christ says in effect that the life is none other than the naked spark alight within the soul, which in the groundless Godhead knows itself none but God; to wit, the light which in rational creatures is splendid with the truth. I might give another meaning but I fear ye could not follow it.
To continue: ‘ The light shineth in the darkness and the dark- ness comprehendeth it not.’ I make no comment here save to lament to the eternal truth what numbers fail to realize the high perfection, the deep happiness, glowing unseen within the soul. Christ says, ‘ Blessed be the eyes which see the things ye see.’ He did not mean our bodily eyes, he meant those eyes, twin powers of the soul, set in her mind. As the gospel says, ‘ There was a man sent from God whose name was John.’ Verily, be they male or female, these souls are John, for John denotes the grace of God. What is grace ? There is a power in the soul which is idle and does no work ; this is none other than the image of God, not that grace is itself this image, it is its form which reforms and transfigures the soul; and in this re-formation wherein she has no form, in this transformation in which she has all forms, the omniform form, there is this quiet the soul has, she being self-contained because the truth is in her: not as hers nor as a quality. As Christ said, ‘ He that enjoyeth me liveth eterfially.’ Such an one is sent from God but is not God-forsaken. Christ says, ‘He that sent me -sendeth me not alone, he sendeth also every one that doeth the will of my Father.’
_ There are four signs to tell a man that he is sent from God. First, that in time he is superior to time and temporalities. Secondly, being therein he is detached from creatures. The third is, that he is idle or quiet-minded. The fourth is, that he is not changeable by nature. Christ said, ‘I am that I am.’ Possessing these a man may take it that he is sent from God and his name is John for he is the grace of God itself. Hence Paul’s words, ‘ God is my soul’s new form wherein she is formless.’
Pass on to the next. ‘ He came to bear witness to the light that “all might believe in him.’ Examine this carefully. The words are open to a purely figurative interpretation. Just as he (John) bore witness to the light of the divine unity concealed * Christ 2
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in order that all might believe in him, so forerunning intuition tells the soul of insight into the innermost recesses of the mind where shines the spark which knows itself none other than the uncreated good of the ineffable Deity. Then the soul with all her powers acknowledges and affirms the Son eternally in the Father and eternally born of the Father who is without beginning. As Christ said, ‘ Whoso heareth my Word and keepeth it liveth forever.’
Now take this in another sense. I will put a question and answer it myself: What reference has this to the true light ? Look you. There is a power in the soul called mind, God sent it with the soul, it is her storehouse of incorporeal forms and intel- lectual notions. This soul-capacity the Father fashions in his outflowing divinity whereby all the words of his divine essence flow into the word in our mind in distinction of Person just as memory pours out treasure of images into the powers of the soul. When the soul sees in this power the form of a rational creature, an angel’s or her own form, the idea of the Father is clearly impressed in the soul angelically. But on penetrating deeper, into the very centre of the soul, intellect finds God there in this power face to face, and in this capacity, if she recollect herself to con- template the vision of God in her, there wakes another power of the soul called understanding and the eternal Word is born, conceived by the soul while subsisting eternal in the Father, these two powers forming one amicable disposition which gives direction to the intellect and is its will towards its source. When the spirit is flowing from the Father and the Son into this power and into all the powers she has, the soul, oriented to God, grows cognisant of his image as her eternal prototype in God and she perceives too how the holy Trinity is sealed in her. Thus the energies of the soul all bear witness to the light of the blessed Trinity that gives light to all mankind and they acknowledge and affirm and believe in the Son born in this man without ceasing. As the gospel says, ‘ He was not the light but bare witness to the light.’
Mark what follows. ‘That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’ Throw wide now the ears of understanding to catch the arcane meaning of the boundary between created and uncreated light which is plainly indicated in St John’s words, ‘ That was the true light.’ Taking the name John to mean the light of grace, as said above, then I propose to show what may be rightly termed ‘ the true light that lighteth every man,’ which we receive direct.
I distinguish five lights. The first is devilish light, the second natural light, the third is angelic light, the fourth is spiritual
sd
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ee the fifth is divine light. Mark carefully how these five lights iffer.
The first or devilish light leads all astray from the truth. This can be seen in cases where the outward man is not entirely in sympathy with the inward man. Supposing then that the in- ward man is sunk into his inner mind, where the eternal Word is born in the perennial now, the sudden shock of seeing the out- ward man pictured in the uncertain, fluctuating light of time, will distort the light of his understanding and stop the eternal birth from taking place. This shows it to be devilish light and it behoves you therefore to turn away from it to the peace and quiet of your higher mind. By this means Mary in her virginity, being enlightened by the Holy Ghost, contrived to shun ideas ofıtemporal things and thus, transcending time, to harmonise her inner and her outer man into one settled calm, quite free from images, and this shows you the difference between this devilish light and the divine light.
_ The second light is natural light. The line of demarcation between natural light and the divine light comes where soul sees spirit direct in very truth. Thinking in natural light, in random images, human nature is changing, waxing and waning, sensible of weal and woe, as Christ shows by his death and passion. But when human nature is face to face with her proper self she is reflected into the divine nature. I ask then, does the soul in this natural light remain changeless in time? I say, no. That is a supertemporal state of union with the divine light and by the grace of God. Being drawn or caught up into the suavity of the indwelling spirit of God, the soul loves universal human nature as her own nature, as God has been loving it eternally, where this nature is set over time in the light of glory. Apart from this light, this man has the natural light of indwelling grace and at the point where he expresses the idea everything in this light of nature must needs fade away out of time, as I have said. Even so Mary was changeless by nature inasmueh as she was free from sinful accidents in the idea of her created nature wherein she knew and loved all mankind. Here ye have the difference between the light of nature in time and light of that nature beyond time in eternal glory. To me it proves that all creatures are one man, loving God by nature.
The third light is angelic light. Now you must know that every individual angel is always open to any ideas that he may choose, one more than another according to the idiosyncrasy of his angelic nature. Their stability is not impaired thereby provided they know and will and love in idleness. This uncreated understanding Lucifer had, and if Lucifer in his creaturehood had seen into the
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light of nature, if his creature nature had veered round in his angelic nature to his formless divine nature, he would never have fallen from the truth. As Isaiah observes, ‘ The angelic light in man is the means.’ In the divine light the soul is not subject to ideas nor can any shape appear to her now that she knows, with knowledge that transcends the soul’s, of the incarnation of the Word. Even so Mary, aloof in absolute purity of mind and body, knew creatures as a whole in super-angelic light and her mind conceiving no form save the unformed form of God, she knew herself to be the ornament of God not fashioned in the form of any creature. Wherefore she cried, ‘ My spirit hath rejoiced in God my saviour.’
The fourth light is spiritual light, which is moreover the medium of the light of grace in the mind. In this light of the spirit ye know how to order things in your mind with a view to the con- templation and enjoyment of the groundless essence in your soul. Absorbed therein ye are aware that the divine deep transcends the highest height of creatures. Why, I ask, was Peter oblivious of himself upon the mountain when Christ was transfigured before his three disciples ? I answer, that the spiritual light of his mind was eclipsed by interior vision of the divine light : he forgot his own form on perceiving himself in this glory as the reflection ever streaming back to its paternal source. By formlessly appre- hending in itself the bound Word whereto Christ knew himself united, he was taking the Christ-image for his own image. How- beit he was not ravished into the divine light of the perfect intellect but he was caught up into the spiritual light of its reflection shining back into its actual self. Beyond this spiritual light Mary was ravished when at the annunciation she conceived the Word in the word begotten according to the love of men.
The fifth light is divine light. Therein stood Mary always, bearing her gracious child. But Christ was born of her bodily. This birth transcends all sense and reason and whoso is rapt away into this unveiled light perceives himself none other than that essence wherein God has his being, his very Godhead. An we would bear with Mary this eternal Word we must be caught up past the four lights into this fifth where we are ever giving birth to God in spirit as Mary bare him in the flesh. _
To continue. ‘ He was in the world and the world knew him not,’ vide what was said above anent the difference between created and uncreated light. I say, this means in the world of his pro- vidential knowledge. What time the world was in the Father as uncreated essence, his light, his flowing intellect to wit, was shining on this world-stuff wherein the world subsisted in the Father in uncreated formless simplicity. But in its first eruption
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the world leaps forth manifold albeit this multiplieity is one essentially. In this eruption this world was self-luminous light.
Mark a second interpretation of the words, ‘He was in the world and the world was made by him.’ By this world I under- stand none other than the divine man. See how this divine light may be called the world. Isay, man has within his soul the power of being all creatures, stones, trees and all the rest of them, and that in this same potentiality his mind has gotten the universal prototype of creatures discriminately. So within the ambit of her five senses the soul compares with rational and irrational creatures. In this sense the soul has gotten both the form and matter, the rational and irrational natures of creature generally. In this sense all things were made in man. And by the same token, before God made everything as such, hell, purgatory, everything, was God: this man is the world this light was in, this is the world that was made by him. John says, ‘ All things were made by him and without him was not anything made.’ From which I can only gather that multitudinous man too is the world, to wit the world of darkness which comprehended not the light referred to in Christ’s words, ‘I am the light of the world and whoso walketh in me walketh not in darkness.’ Here our Lord is inviting rational men to follow his example.
He goes on to say, ‘ He came into his own and his own received him not.’ This refers to Christ and I apply it to the individual soul as well. He is come into his own and his own have neither known him nor accepted him. Isay : whatever is found in Christ’s nature is found in the highest power of the soul, therefore God is man’s own, but his own is not received. by him. I refer to the intellectual five senses. Clearly we have a parable of this in the woman at the well to whom Christ said, ‘ Show me thy husband.’ The woman answered, ‘I have no husband.’ Christ said, ‘ Thou sayest truly: thou hast had five husbands and him whom thou now hast“is not really thy husband.’ I take it that her interests had lain in her five senses. Christ’s words, ‘ him whom thou now hast is not really thy husband,’ I interpret to mean that she was neglecting the intellect she had so it was no true man to her. When God comes sensibly to the soul, which is his own, he is received by what is not his own, to wit the outward senses and inward faculties of the soul. When God is conceived by the soul insensibly then we can say, ‘our abode is in heaven.’ This passage is clear in the light of the foregoing.
I Brother John, propound two questions. They concern the statement, ‘ But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become God’s sons, even to them that believe in his name.’ I ask in the first place, does the power to become God’s sons lie
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with us or with God ? In the second I ask, what name do we believe in? My answers are briefly as follows.
To start with it must be borne in mind that God is without will, without love, without justice, without mercy, nay without divinity or anything we can ascribe to him or predicate of him or attribute to him (for any good attributed to God or predicated of him simply reduces God to naught), so it is with the soul that lies the power, the ability to make this her own will; in her real will she is incapable of stooping to anything opposed to the nature of that will, and at the point where God and spirit vanish, in that same point I am the Son of God, begotten of God eternally according to Christ’s words, ‘ I am the only-begotten Son of God,’ for I am free from self in all creaturehood. Where I am God is and where God is I am and our joint love is God and he who dwells in this love dwells in God and God in him. Then mine is the highest angel God has in heaven, as much as he is God’s, by whose power and by whose might we make ourselves God’s sons, for he em- powers us with himself, penetrating the will of the soul even as Father and Son permeate their common Spirit. That is the answer to the first question to the best of my knowledge at present.
Now to answer the second question: What divine name do we believe in? That is written in the gospel in Christ’s words, ‘Father, this is eternity or eternal life, to believe in thee the true God, i.e. truly as God.’ Truth is God, and love, as truly as God is God. If God is free from names then, I durst not think I have the name of Henry nor of Conrad nor of Ulric for by adding any- thing to God I block him with an idol ; but he who believes in the name of God rejoices in the universal name, to wit the divine name which we believe in. In this unfathomable light of faith, faith makes us of multitudinous knowledge ignorant, of multi- tudinous will without volition, in multitudinous form unshapen. And so with the prophet, ‘I say, ye are Gods.’ Believing in the name of God we are God’s sons. If anyone is able to give a better answer to these two questions I would fain hear it.
(He goes on to say, ‘ Which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man ’) for flesh and blood and human will unconquered cannot possess the kingdom of heaven till they are born again in God. This is quite clear, the meaning is patent to all. But I desire to speak briefly on the subject of manhood.
Isay : the highest power of the soul is the man, her will namely, which always stands bare and uncovered. The second power is intellect, the woman, who is always veiled, and the lower is raised up to the higher. Now when the power we call the man, i.e. the will, is joined to the power we called the woman, the intellect,
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that is to say, then the woman brings forth fruit in the perennial now. When the male is parted from the female power man’s will is wavering in false light. The apostle truly says, ‘the Word was made fiesh.’ The manhood of Christ as seeing in[to God] has a reflection in the Father’s personal nature. In the groundless substance of the Godhead human nature stands perfectly steady, gazing down in the transcendent light for love of creatures. Thus divine and human nature’are atoned in human nature. And by the same token, even if Adam had not fallen yet would Christ have been made man by reason of the love proceeding which is ever being born in eternity in the divine nature and was bound to become man in Christ owing to the idiosyncrasy of that nature which flowed for aye out of the groundless ground of God. The smallest spark falling from out the least and lowest of the angels would illuminate and outshine this world and it would dim the brightest lights of human and angelic nature did it shine next to God. So Christ restores human nature not angelic nature. As his divinity lay hid in his humanity when ‘ the Word was made flesh ’ in him, so let us hide our human nature in his divine nature in that same Word which was incarnate. By living the Christ life more than my own life I am Christ rather than myself and my proper name is Christ rather than James or John, and so this befall beyond time I am changed into God.
Now listen to another meaning, the incarnation of the Word in the sacrament. Just as he made his body in the sacrament by word and knowledge and took and gave it to his disciples idly, without motion or passion, that is to say, nor was this sacrament consummated by knowledge alone but by words as well, even so I observe that in the highest power of the soul, corresponding to the Father-nature, intellect begat itself in the image of Divinity to smite into this Word as perfect will and in the groundless love of this same will the Holy Ghost was gotten in the Word with this same intellect. And still this birth is ever going on in the sacrament to those who are Christ properly so called : these people are true priests and in the truth, for their going is above the angels and they are not to be touched by temporal things. As Christ said to Mary Magdalene, ‘ Touch me not for I am risen,’ so verily these souls are risen with Christ. God gives himself freely, idly, as he gave himself to his disciples in token of the love which works the same in us, and those who take this sacrament as freely and resignedly and unselfhindered, do receive it as really as the giver gives it and he who takes it otherwise does not wholly and solely resign him to the truth. When in the sacrament I receive God from God thus supersacramentally, I am actually changed into the same that I receive, thus the Word is made
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flesh and dwells among us mystically and wherever this is realized there is the proof of the divine spark, moreover I make bold to say, were anyone prepared for outward food as for the sacrament he would receive God as much as in the sacrament ; which is to many people a hard saying albeit quite consistent with the truth, for the gift prepares for its own reception and I should be the thing prepared for that which has prepared me. St John says, ‘ We have his glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.’ From which I gather that anyone who knows the joys of the divine life is shining within and without like the only Son of God, as St Paul says, ‘ I live not but Christ liveth in me in his love.’
Consider what is meant by sons of God and children of God. To be God’s children in the sense that he created us is not enough. For instance. If I paint my likeness on the wall, he who sees the likeness is not seeing me; but anyone who sees me sees my like- ness and not my likeness merely but my child. If I really knew my soul, anyone who saw my conception of it would say it was my son for I share therewith my energy and nature, and as here so is it in the Godhead. The Father understands himself perfectly clearly so there appears to him his image, that is to say, his Son. The Father is light, the Son is light and image and the Holy Ghost also is light and image and inasmuch as the Father imagines (or conceives) his Son he is called Son and inasmuch as he endows him with his nature he is called his child. Likewise that man is the image of God who, being detached from things, is living as spirit in the spirit of God and such have glory and honour as the only Son of God full of grace and truth of the reflection of God, and really containing and possessing God in them; thus the kingdom of God is within us.
Here endeth the Commentary on this Gospel.
XIX? THE BEATIFIC VISION
King David said: ‘Lord in thy light shall we see light.’ Doctors debate as to the medium in which we shall see God. The common doctrine is that it will be in the light of glory. But this solution appears to me to be unsound and untenable. From time to time I have explained that man has within him a light called the active intellect : this is the light in which man will see God in bliss, so they seek to prove. Now man according to his creaturely nature is in great imperfection and is unable by nature
* See Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystiker, vol. i, p. 484,
TRACTATES 409
to discern God otherwise than as creatures do, by images and forms, as I have elsewhere demonstrated. The soul is unable of herself and by her own innate power to transcend this state ; that must happen in some supernatural power such as the light of grace. Mark this solution which I will now proceed to discuss.
St Paul says: “By God’s grace I am that I am.’ He does not say that he is ‘of grace.’ There is a difference between being by grace and being grace itself. Doctors declare that form gives being to matter. Now there are various definitions of grace current among them. But I say grace is nothing else than the flowing light proceeding direct from God’s nature into the soul : a supernatural form of the soul which gives her a supernatural nature. This is what I had in mind when I stated that the soul
. was unable of herself to transcend her own natural activity ; this she can do in the power of grace which endgws her with a super- natural nature.
Observe, grace effects nothing by itself. Moreover it exalts the soul above activity. Grace is bestowed in the essence of the soul and is received into her powers ; for if the soul is to effect anything in this matter, she must needs have grace by virtue of which to transcend her own activities such as knowing and loving. Whilst the soul is in process of taking this transcendental flight out of herself into the nothingness of herself and her own activity, she is “by grace’; she is grace when she has accomplished this transcendental passage and has overcome herself and now stands in her pure virginity alone, conscious of nothing but of behaving after the manner of God. As God lives, while the soul is still capable of knowing and acting after the manner of her creature- liness and as a child of nature, she has not become grace itself though she may well be by grace. For to be grace itself the soul must be as destitute of activity, inward and outward, as grace is, which knows no activity. St John says: ‘ To us is given grace for grace,’ for to become grace by grace is the work of grace. The supreme function of grace-is to reduce the soul to what it is itself. Grace robs the soul of her own activity; grace robs the soul of her own nature. In this supernatural flight the soul transcends her natural light which is a creature and comes into immediate touch with God. |
Now I would have you understand me. I am going to give an explanation I have never given before. The worthy Dionysius says: “When God exists not for the spirit there exists not for it either the eternal image, its eternal origin.’ I have said before and say again that God has wrought one act eternally in which act he made the soul in his own [likeness], and out of which act
and by means of which act the soul issued forth into her created %
“410 MEISTER ECKHART
existence, becoming unlike God and estranged from her own proto- type, and in her creation she made God, who was not before the soul was made. At various times I have declared: I am the cause that God is God. God is gotten of the soul, his Godhead of him- self; before creatures were, God was not God albeit he was Godhead which he gets not from the soul. Now when God finds a naughted soul whose self and whose activity have been brought to naught by means of grace, God works his eternal work in her above grace, raising her out of her created nature. Here God naughts himself in the soul and then neither God nor soul is left. Be sure that this is God indeed, When the soul is capable of conceiving God’s work she is in the state of no longer having any God at all; the soul is then the eternal image as which God has always seen her, his eternal Word. When, therefore, St Dionysius says that God no longer exists for the spirit, he means what I have just explained.
Now it may be asked whether the soul as here seen in the guise of the eternal image is the light meant by David wherein we shall see eternal light ?
We answer, no. Not in this light will the soul see the eternal light that shall beatify her; for, says the worthy Dionysius, ‘neither will the eternal image exist for the spirit.” What he means is that, when the spirit has accomplished its transcendental flight, its creaturely nature is brought to naught, whereby it loses God as I have already explained, and then the soul, in the eternal image, breaks through the eternal image into the essential image of the Father. Thus saith the Scriptures: ‘ Everything flows back in the soul into the Father who is the beginning of the eternal Word and of all creatures.’
It may be questioned whether this is the light, the Father namely, in which the spirit sees the eternal light ?
I answer, no. Now mark my words. God works and has created all things ; the Godhead does not work, it knows nothing of creation. In my eternal prototype the soul is God for there God works and my soul has equality with the Father, for my eternal prototype, which is the Son in the Godhead, is.in all respects equal with the Father. One scripture says: ‘ Naught is equal with God ; to be equal with God, then, the soul must be naught.’ That interpretation is just. We would say, however: where there is equality there is no unity for equal is a privation of unity ; and where there is unity there is no equality for equality resides in multiplicity and separation. Where there is equality there cannot be unity. I am not equal to myself. I am the same as myself. Hence the Son in the Godhead, inasmuch as he is Son, is equal with the Father but he is not one with the Father. There
TRACTATES 411
is no equality where Father and Son are one ; that is, in the unity of the divine essence. In this unity the Father knows no Son nor does the Son know any Father, for there there is neither Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost. When the soul enters into the Son, her eternal prototype wherein she is equal with the Father, then, breaking through her eternal prototype, she, with the Son, tran- scends equality and possesses unity with the three Persons in the unity of the essence. David says: ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see light,’ that is: in the light of the impartible divine essence shall we see the diyine essence and the whole perfection of the divine essence as revealed in the variety of the Persons and the unity of their nature. St Paul says: ‘ We shall be changed from one brightness into the other and shall become like unto him,’ meaning: we shall be changed from created light into the un- created splendour of the divine nature and shall become like it ; that is, we shall be that it is.
St John says: ‘ All things live in him.’ In that the Father “ eontemplates the Son all creatures take living shape in the Son, that being the real life of creatures. But in another passage St John says: ‘ Blessed are the dead that have died in God.’—It seems passing strange that it should be possible to die in him who himself said that he is the life !—But see: the soul, breaking through her eternal prototype, is plunged in the absolute nothing- ness of her eternal prototype. This is the death of the spirit ; for dying is nothing but deprivation of life. When the soul realizes that any thing throws her eternal prototype into separation and negation of unity, the spirit puts its own self to death to its eternal prototype, and breaking through its eternal prototype remains in the unity of the divine nature. These are the blessed dead that are dead in God. No one can be buried and beatified in the Godhead who has not died to God, that is, in his eternal prototype, as I have explained.
Our creed says: Christ rose from the dead: Christ rose out of God into the Godhead, into the unity of the divine essence. That is to say that Christ’s soul and all rational souls, being dead to their exemplar, rise from that divine death to taste the joys above it, namely the riches of the divine nature wherein the spirit is beatified.
Now consider the fact of happiness. God is happy in him- self; and all creatures, which God must make happy, will be so in the same happiness that God is happy in, and after the same fashion that he is happy. Be sure that in this unity the spirit transcends every mode, even its own eternal being, and everything created as well as the equality which, in the eternal image, it has with the Father, and together with the Father soars up into the
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unity of the divine nature where God conceives himself in absolute simplieity. There, in that act, the spirit is no longer creature, it is the same as happiness itself, the nature and substance of the Godhead, the beatitude of its own self and of all creatures. Further, I hold that if God did what he is impotent to do, granted the soul while still a creature the knowledge and enjoyment of actual beatitude, then, were the soul to be and to remain happy, it were impossible for God to remain God. Anyone in heaven knowing the saints according to their happiness, would not have anything to say of any saint but only of God; for happiness is God and all those who are happy are, in the act of happiness, God and the divine nature and substance of God. St Paul says: ‘He who being naught, thinketh himself aught, deceiveth himself.’ In the act of happiness he is brought to naught and no creaturehood exists for him. As the worthy Dionysius says: ‘ Lord lead me to where thou art a nothingness,’ meaning: lead me, Lord, to where thou transcendest every created intellect ; for as St Paul declares : ‘ God dwells in a light that no man can approach unto’ ; that is: God is not to be discerned in any created light whatever.
St Dionysius says: ‘ God is nothing,’ and this is also implied by St Augustine when he says: ‘God is everything,’ meaning : nothing is God’s. So that by saying ‘ God is nothing ’ Dionysius signifies that there is no thing in his presence. It follows that the spirit must advance beyond things and thingliness, shape and shapenness, existence and existences: then will dawn in it the ‘actuality of happiness which is the essential possession of the actual intellect.
I have sometimes said that man sees God in this life in the same ‘perfection and is happy in the same perfect fashion as in the life to come. Many people are astonished at this. Let us try there- fore to understand what it means. Real intellect emanates from the eternal truth as intelligence and contains in itself intelligibly all that God contains. This noble divinity, the active intellect, conceives itself in itself after the manner of God in its emanation, and in its essential content it is downright God ; but it is creature according to the motion of its nature. This intellect is to the full as noble in us now as in the after life.
Now the question may be asked: How then does this life differ from the life to come ?
I answer that, this intellect which is happy in exactly the same way as God is, is at present latent in us. In this life we know God only according to potentiality. In the after life, when we are quit of body, our potentiality will be all transfigured into the act of happiness which belongs to the active intellect. This trans- figuration will render the fact of happiness no more perfect than it
TRACTATES 413
is now ; for active intellect has no accidents nor any capacity to receive more than it contains innately. It follows that when we are beatified we shall be completely deprived of potentiality and shall conceive happiness only actually, after the manner of the divine nature. As David says: ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see light ’: with the divine nature we shall conceive the perfection of the divine nature, which alone is our entire felicity, here in grace and there in perfect happiness.
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1
THIS IS MEISTER ECKHART FROM WHOM GOD NOTHING HID
Meister Eckhart said in a sermon, The work wrought by God in the God-loving soul which he finds empty and detached enough for him to bring himself to spiritual birth in her, this work, he said, gives God greater pleasure than any work he ever did with any creature and is far nobler than the creation of all things from nothing. ;
On being asked the reason why this work gives God such pleas- ure, he said it was because God has no creature but the soul of large enough capacity for him to empty his entire might, the whole ground of his being in, as he does in this act of begetting himself ghostly in the soul.
When asked what God’s birth is, he said, God’s being born within the soul is nothing else than God’s self-revelation to the soul in some new knowledge and in some new mode.
Anon they asked him, Does the soul’s chief happiness consist in this act whereby God gets himself in her in ghostly fashion ? Quoth he, Though it is true that God takes greater pleasure in this act than in any other deed he ever did concerning creature, natheless the soul is happier being re-born into God. God being born in her makes her not wholly blessed: she is beatified when, in love and praise, she follows this wisdom whereinto she is born, back to the source from whence it came and in their common origin, holding to what is his lets go her own, she being happy not in hers but his.
2
Meister Eckhart said, A man of godly love and godly fear and perfect faith may, an he will, receive God’s body every day at the
priest’s hands. 3
The question is, what does God do in heaven? The answer given by the saint is this, He crowns his own work: the works God crowns his saints for he wrought in them himself.
417 27
418 : MEISTER ECKHART
Meister Eckhart says, I have been asked what God is doing in heaven ? I answer, He has been giving his Son birth eternally, is giving him birth now and will go on giving him birth for ever, the Father being in childbed in every virtuous soul. Blessed, thrice blessed is the man within whose soul the heavenly Father is thus brought to bed. All she surrenders to him here she shall enjoy from him in life eternal. God made the soul on purpose for her to bear his one-begotten Son. His birth in Mary ghostly was to God better pleasing than his nativity of her in flesh. When this birth happens nowadays in the good loving soul it gives God greater pleasure than his creation of the heavens and earth.
4
& Meister Eckhart says, He who is everywhere at home is God- worthy ; to him who is ever the same is God present and in him in whom creatures are stilled God bears his one-begotten Son.
5
Meister Eckhart says, Holy scripture cries aloud for freedom from self. Self-free is self-controlled and self-controlled is self-possessed and self-possession is God-possession and possession of everything God ever made. I tell thee, as true as God is God and I a man, wert thou quite free from self, free from the highest angel, then were the highest angel thine as well as thine own self. This method gives self-mastery. :
6
According to Meister Eckhart, Grace comes not otherwise than with the Holy Ghost. It bears the Holy Ghost upon its back. Grace is no stationary thing, it is ever-becoming. It is flowing straight out of God’s heart. Grace does nothing but re-form and convey into God. Grace makes the soul deiform. God, the ground of the soul and grace go together. ;
7
Query, does God pour his grace into a power of the soul or into her essence, for no creature is allowed in the essence of the soul ? The answer is that grace is a matter of the soul and naught beside and grace without soul is not grace at all. It is immaterial for it is not true creature, it is creaturely. Grace to be grace must have the soul for substance for if God poured his grace into a power of the soul that power alone would benefit. Not so: he
instils it into her essence and essence works by grace in all her. powers.
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8
Meister Eckhart says, Practice is better than precept ; but the practice and precept of eternal God is a counsel of perfection. If I wanted a teacher of theology I should go for one to Paris, to its learned university. But if I came to ask about the perfeet life, why then he could not tell me. Where then am I to turn ? To pure and abstract nature, nowhere else: that can solve thy anxious queries. Why, good people, search among dead bones ? Why not seek the living sacrum that gives eternal life? The dead give not nor do they take. An angel seeking God as God would look not anywhere for him except in a quiet, solitary creature. The essence of perfection lies in bearing poverty, misery, despisery, adversity and every hardship that befalls, willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly, calm and unmoved and persisting unto death without a why.
9
Meister Eckhart said, Whate’er it be that lights devotion in man’s heart and knits him closest unto God, that is the best thing for him here in time.
Again. he says, To be the heavenly Father’s Son one has to be a stranger to the world, remote from self, heartwhole and having the mind purified.
O man, renounce thyself and so with toil-free virtue win the prize or, cleaving to thyself, with toilful virtues lose it.
10
Meister Eckhart says, He who is ever alone is Godworthy and to him who is ever at home is God present and in him who stands ever in the present now does God the Father bear his Son unceasingly.
11
Meister Eckhart says, He to whom (God) is different in one thing from another and to whom God is dearer in one thing than another, that man is a barbarian, still in the wilds, a child. He to whom God is the same in everything has come to man’s estate. But he to whom creatures all mean want and exile has come into his own.
He was also asked: Does the man who goes out of himself need to trouble at all about his nature? He answered, God’s yoke is easy and his burden is light : No, only about his will; what the tyro fears is the expert’s delight. The kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughly dead.
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12
God’s every infliction is a lure. I give no thanks to God for | loving me because he cannot help it, it is his nature to; what I do thank him for is that he cannot of his goodness leave off loving
me.. 13
The highest the soul can get to in this life is a settled habitation without all in all. Being without all means being detached, perfectly free from self and things. Being in all means a state of perpetual rest: poise in her eternal idea, in the omniform image shining impartible.
14
Eckhart said, There are people upon earth that bear our Lord in spirit as his mother did in flesh.
They asked him who these were? He answered, They being free from things do see in the mirror of truth whereto they are gotten all unknowing ; on earth, their dwelling is in heaven and they are at peace: they go as little children.
15
Meister Eckhart said, Better to my mind is the man who in the cause of charity will lend himself to taking dole of bread than he who gives an hundred marks for charity. How do I make that out? I argue thus. Doctors agree that honour is of far more worth than temporal goods. Now he who gives an hundred marks for charity gets back in praise and honour more than his hundred marks’ worth. The hand he stretches forth with gifts collects both more and better than it gave. But the beggar reaching out his hand for bread is bartering his honour; the giver buys honour but the taker sells it.
Another thing advantages the beggar who receives over the donor of the hundred marks to God: the giver glories in and gratifies his nature, the beggar is subduing his and flouting it ; the giver is made much of for his gifts, the beggar scorned and shunned for taking them.
16
Meister Eckhart said, I never ask God to give himself to me: I beg of him to purify, to empty, me. If I am empty, God of his very nature is obliged to give himself to me to fill me.
How to be pure? By steadfast longing for the one good, God to wit. How to acquire this longing? By self-denial and dislike to creatures ; self-knowledge is the way for creatures are all naught, they come to naught with lamentation and bitterness.
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God being in himself pure good can nowhere dwell except in the pure soul: he overflows into her, whole he flows into her. What does emptiness mean ? It means a turning from creatures : the heart uplifted to the perfeet good so that creatures are no comfort nor is there any want of them save inasmuch as the perfect good, God namely, is to be grasped therein. The clear eye tolerates the mote no more than does the pure soul aught that clouds, that comes between. Creatures as she enjoys them are all pure for she enjoys creatures in God and God in creatures. She is so limpid she sees through herself; nor is God far to seek : she finds him in herself when in her natural purity she flows into the supernatural pure Godhead where she is in God and God in her and what she does she does in God and God does it in her.
17
Meister Eckhart said, To die the death in love and knowledge, that is more noble and more worth than all the good works put together that holy Christendom has done in love and knowledge from its beginning until now and ever shall do till the judgment day. These do but serve to bring this death about, this death wherein springs life eternal.
18
Meister Eckhart says, We fail to get our way with God because we lack two things: profound humility and a telling will. Upon my life I swear that God in his divinity is capable of all things but this he cannot do, he cannot leave unsatisfied the soul with these two things. Wherefore vex not yourselves with trivialities ; ye were not made for trivial things and the glory of the world is but a travesty of truth, only a heresy of happiness.
19
Meister Eckhart being questioned as to God’s greatest gift to him answered, There are three. First, cessation of carnal desires and pleasures. Secondly, divine light enlightens me in everything Ido. Thirdly, daily I grow and am renewed in virtue, grace and happiness.
20
Meister Eckhart says, Lofty aim is lofty nature. The vision of God is a high endeavour. I say, God is omnipotent, but he is powerless to thwart the man of meek and mighty aspiration, and any failure on my side to get my way with God is due to lack either of will or meekness.
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21
Meister Eckhart says, As a man gets to be like God and God gets dear enough for him to disregard himself and not seek what is his in time or in eternity, he is released from all his sins and purgatorial pains, yea though he have committed every sin on earth. And this life is attainable while yet he eats and drinks. Further he declares, To be the heavenly Father’s Son we must be strangers to the world, remote from self, pure-hearted, inward minded. ,
22
On one occasion Brother Eckhart said, Five things there be which in whomsoever has them are sure sign that he will never lapse from God. First, though most grievous things befall this man from God or creature, never a murmur does he make: no word but praise and thanks is ever heard. Again, at the most trying times he never says one word in his excuse. Thirdly, this man desires of God what God will freely give and nothing else : he leaves it all to him. Fourthly, nothing in heaven or earth can Tuffle him : so settled is his calm that heaven and earth in topsy- turveydom would leave him quite content in God. Fifth, nothing in heaven or earth can cheer him; for having reached the point where naught in heaven or earth can sadden him so neither can it gladden him, except as. trifles can.
A man remote and far from his own self as the chief angel of the Seraphim from him, would have that angel for his own as he is God’s and God is his. And that is the bare truth, as God is God.
St Paul says: ‘ The whole world is the cross to me and I the cross to you.’
24
Said Meister Eckhart the preacher, There is no greater valour nor no sterner fight than that for self-effacement, self-oblivion.
25
Brother Eckhart said, Not all suffering is rewarded ; only what is cheerfully consented to. A man hanged on the gallows, suffering unwillingly, were better pleased that it had been another. There is no reward for that. Other sufferings the same. It is not the suffering that counts, it is the virtue.—I say, to him who suffers not for love to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But one who suffers for love suffers not and his suffering is fruitful in God’s sight.
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26
According to Meister Eckhart, Every sign, every holiness, every perfection possible to creature our Lady had par excellence. To take her holiness, it was so prodigious that our Lady never sinned. Of signs, again, she had the chief one, that of being God’s mother ; albeit our theologians do contend that our Lady was far happier uniting God to Godhead than she was in giving carnal birth to God. As to the overfullness our Lady got from deity, she was worthy of it, bearing as she did God in the flesh. Soul over- brimming like this overflows into the body and makes the body like it, thus she was God’s carnal mother. Accordingly some doctors do affirm that mental concepts tell upon the body more than physicians do with all their drugs. God is never born except in souls which have put creatures under their feet. Our philo- sophers say, Perfect rest is freedom from all motion.
27.
On St Peter’s words, ‘ We have abandoned all things,’ Meister Eckhart comments thus: Thou hast well said, for laden thou couldst not follow him. It is no profitless exchange, giving up all for God: by him all things are given and having gotten him he stands in lieu of all.
28
Meister Eckhart said, What our Lord did was done with this intent, and this alone, that he might be with us and we with him.
29
Brother Eckhart preached saying, St Peter said, ‘We have left all things.” St James said, ‘We have given up all things.’ St John said, ‘We have nothing left.’ Whereupon Brother Eckhart asks, When do we leave all things ? When we leave everything conceivable, everything expressible, everything audible, everything visible, then and then only we give up all things. When in this sense we give up all we grow aflood with light, passing bright with God.
30
He that would be what he ought must stop being what he is. When God made the angels the first sight they saw was that of the Father with the Son sprouting out of his Father’s heart like a green shoot out of a tree. This blissful vision they have had more than six thousand years and how it comes they wot as well
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to-day as when they were first made. This owing to their keen perception : the more we know the less we understand.
31
In the Book of Wisdom it is writ, ‘ All men are fools in whom is no knowledge of God for men are mortal without God.’ Without divine wisdom we are without God and to be without God is to be without truth for God it is who inculcates the truth. Not being in God means being in lies and without wisdom. One may be worldly-wise without being Godly-wise but this is folly in God’s sight : wisdom wisdomless, more foolishness than wisdom. The question is, who has this heavenly wisdom ? Meister Eckhart says, He who in deep and real humility so yields himself to God that his will is wholly God’s will and God’s will is his, as saith Isaiah the prophet, God teaches true wisdom to none but the humble.’ And in the Book of Wisdom too we read, ‘ Where there . is meekness there is true wisdom.’ Also the heathen doctor Ptolemeus says, ‘ Among wise.men the humblest are the wisest.’ According to Meister Eckhart, with humility goes love : lowliness without love is dead indeed for the virtues are virtue in virtue of love.
32
—‘ And so shall a man order his life if he would be perfect.’ Anent this Meister Eckhart says, Works wrought from within are pleasant both to God and man ; they are benign and living works. They are Godworthy for he alone it is who does in man works wrought from within, as saith the prophet Isaiah, ‘ Lord all our works thou hast wrought in us,’ and Christ too said, ‘My Father who is in me he doeth that I do.’ Such works are both easy and pleasant to man for all deeds are agreeable and pleasant to man in which body and soul are harmonious. This is the case in all these works. Again, these works are living works: the dead beast differs from the living one in that the dead is moved from outside only ; it must be pulled or pushed, to wit, and its works are all dead works. The live beast moves itself where’er it will; its motive power is within and its works are living works. In the same way those works of men which have their source within where God moves by himself, essential products, these are our works, divine works, useful works. But works which come from some external cause and not from inner being, these works I say are dead, they are not godly works nor are they ours. Meister Eckhart also says, Works wrought from within are willing works. But that which is willing is sweet, therefore works from within are all pleasant whereas works due to any outward cause are
SAYINGS 425
unwilling and slavish for were there nothing moving from without no work were done at all, so that it is reluctant, menial, bitter.
33
Meister Eckhart said, No person can in this life reach the point at which he is excused from outward works. What though one lead the contemplative life, one cannot altogether keep from flowing out and mingling in the life of action. Even as a man without a groat may still be generous in the will to give, whereas a man of means in giving nothing cannot be called generous, so no one can have virtues without exercising virtue at the proper time and place. Hence those who lead the contemplative life and do no outward works, are most mistaken and all on the wrong tack. What I say is that he who lives the contemplative life may, nay he must, be absolutely free from outward works what time he is in act of contemplation but afterwards his duty lies in doing outward works ; for none can live the contemplative life without a break and active life bridges the gaps in the life of contemplation.
34
Meister Eckhart says and so do other masters, that there are two things in God : essence and regard, 1.e. relatio. According to these doctors, not in the Godhead does the Father bear his Son; the Father in his essence does but see into his naked essence where he discerns himself in all his power: himself by himself, without the Son and without the Holy Ghost ; naught sees he there but the unity of his own essence. But the Father being minded to regard himself, to reflect upon himself in another Person, by this act of retrospection is begetting his Son ; and being well contented with himself in this regard and finding his reflection most delightful he must, since all joy is his eternally, keep on looking back eternally. So the Son is as eternal as the Father, and from the mutual liking and the love betwixt the Father and the Son there comes the Holy Ghost and since this love between the Father and the Son has been for aye therefore the Holy Ghost is as eternal as the Father and the Son and these three Persons have one simple essence and are distinct as Persons only: the Father’s Person never was the Son’s nor the Holy Ghost’s Person ; all three have each their own Person albeit they are one in essence,
35
Meister Eckhart says and so do other masters, No man has any merit apart from his intention and the why of a man’s action
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gives the measure of his merit, naught beside. Hence anyone intending, anyone striving, for something less than God is not worthy of God unless as the lover of creature, whatever it be, in God. God-lovers have no guerdon but God; them God rewards with himself.
36
Meister Eckhart says, and so do other masters, that in the course of nature it is really the higher which is ever more ready to pour its power out into the lower than the lower is ready to receive it. The highest heaven, for instance, is turning far more rapidly than the rest which run against it. However fast the lower heavens race against the upper, in order to receive the influx from it, the highest heaven will go harder still both as to pace and influx. So God is vastly quicker to pour out his grace than man to take it in. There is no dearth of God with us ; what dearth there is is wholly ours who make not ready to receive his grace.
37
The question is, When do the passions perforce obey the mind ? The answer Meister Eckhart gives is this. What time the mind is fixed on God and there abides, the senses are obedient to the mind. As one should hang a needle to a magnet and then another needle on to that, until there are four needles, say, depending from the magnet. As long as the first needle stays clinging to the magnet all the other needles will keep clinging on to that but when the leader drops the rest will go as well. So, while the mind keeps fixed on God the senses are subservient to it but if the mind should wander off from God the passions will escape and be unruly.
38
Why is it, Meister Eckhart asks, that people are so slow to look for God in earnest ? His comment is: When one is looking for a thing and finds no trace of its existence one hunts half-heartedly and in distress. But lighting on some vestige of the quarry, the chase grows lively, blithe and keen. The man in quest of fire, cheered when he feels the heat looks for its source with eagerness and pleasure. And so it is with those in quest of God: feeling none of the sweetness of God they grow listless but sensing the sweetness of divinity they blithely pursue their search for God.
39
Meister Eckhart asks, Whose are the prayers God always hears ? And Meister Eckhart answers, Who worships God as God God hears.
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But he who worships God for worldly goods, worships not God : he worships what he worships God for and employs God as his servant for the getting of it. As St Augustine puts it, ‘ What thou dost love thou dost worship; true prayer, real prayer is nothing but loving: what one loves that one prays to. Hence no one prays to God aright but he that prays to God for God without a thought of aught but God.
40
Meister Eckhart says and so do other masters, Whoso wants a virtue ought to seek it at the source, in God to wit, where we find all the virtues added up to virtue. The man who finds a single virtue thus discovers every virtue in the one and, attaining to the unity where all virtues are virtue, the soul sees God and God looks on the soul. Soul is caressed by God who, talking with her in familiar fashion, teaches her universal wisdom and God and man now fully reconciled, man is the lord of every creature, of all the good things that have flowed from God; as it is written in the Book of Wisdom where the wise man says, ‘ All good have I gotten in thee alone’: in virtue have I gotten all the virtues.
41
According to Meister Eckhart, God is not only the Father of all good things but he is the mother of all things to boot. He is Father for he is the cause of all things and their creator. He is the mother of all things as well, for when creatures have gotten their being from him he still stays with creatures to keep them in being. If God did not remain with creatures after they had started their own life they would most speedily fall out of being. Falling from God means falling from being into nothingness. It is not so with other causes, they can with safety quit the things they cause when these have gotten being of their own. When the house is in being its builder can depart and for the reason that it is not the builder alone that makes the house: the materials thereof he draws from nature. But God provides creature with the whole of what it is, with form as well as matter, so he is bound to stay with it or it will promptly drop out of existence.
42
Meister Eckhart says, the man who doing some good deed does it not wholly for God’s sake and without any thought save God, - that man darkens God’s glory. All good works are God’s. Hence _ if a man in his good work harbours intent towards aught but God
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he gives thereto the honour of the work and robs God of his glory and all such works are sterile and unfruitful.
43
The question is, Does the virtue of prayer increase with the outward practice of it? Meister Eckhart says that the external habit adds little or nothing to the value of prayer. Prayer is a good thing in itself. Now a thing that is good in virtue of its muchness is not good in virtue of itself. One groat has little value all alone but if thou hadst a thousand groats that were a handsome property, solely by reason ofthenumber. Groats have small value in themselves apart from number. And so it is with outward practices: number adds little to the good of prayer; one Ave coming freely from the heart has greater power and virtue than a thousand from the lips. And by the same token, no virtue dwells in number of good works; virtue is every whit as fine, as good, in one least act of virtue rightly done as in a thousand. Virtue is not enhanced by multiplying outward acts of virtue, for were it good from number it would not then be good in its own right. A thing good in itself is good in its oneness not in its multi- plication. True virtue means virtuous works wrought virtuously. Who gives an alms in God’s name but gives it grudgingly and not with cheerful heart, what though he do a virtuous deed, he does not do it virtuously. And so with prayer or any other virtue: done rightly it is virtue but not else. Take patience for example. External suffering does not make one patient : it merely tries one’s patience, as fire will try a penny whether it be of silver or of copper. The patient man is patient still though outward suffering n’er befall. And prayer the same. The man of pure heart Godward turned who never does a stroke of outward work is natheless in good case for hearts are not made pure by outward prayers: ‘prayer rises pure from out pure hearts.
44
Doctors declare that God moves all things, 7.e. all creatures, but creatures cannot move God. God can move creatures for he has created all creatures and it is he who keeps them in existence. But creatures cannot move God: no creature can affect God, according to the universal law that the lower does not flow into the higher. Now creatures are inferior to God so they do not influence God, ergo, they do not move God.
In this connection some enquirers ask how God can move creatures and not be defiled by creatures which are full of fault ? The masters answer, If, as we see, the sun can shine on mire and
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filth without contamination then how much more can God protect himself from any taint of creature. But Meister Eckhart argues in a different fashion. He says God is in all things but so as to be wholly outside things, hence faults in creatures will not affect God. Just as we see the soul whole in the eye and at the same time whole outside the eye for she is whole in every limb; no blemish of the eye can touch the soul which is in suchwise wholly in the eye as to be independent of the eye. Even so God in creature
is wholly without creature, untouched and untainted by creature. _ There is another answer Meister Eckhart gives: God is only in the essence (or being) of a creature. His argument runs thus. Kssence is without defect, defect being nothing but a lapse from being. Now seeing no defect can touch the essence and God is only in the essence of a creature therefore God is unaffected by the defects of creature. Regarding this amazing fact of deity John Chrysostom observes: ‘ That God is in all creatures we know and declare but how and in what manner we do not understand.’ Yet Meister Eckhart says it is quite plain if for the word God we put the word being. We see and have abundant proof that being is in all things. But if actual being is God it follows then that God must be in all things.
45
Thus saith the wise man in the Book of Wisdom, ‘ Eternal wisdom is omnipotent for it is one.’ Upon which Meister Eckhart com- ments thus. The simpler a thing is the more powerful and effective it is. We can demonstrate it thus. In a thing made of parts the power of the thing resides in its parts. In a house made of walls, foundations and roof, the whole force of the house consists in these parts. If the house could but draw from its oneness the virtue it gets from its walls then it need have no walls. Now God is the simplest possible good wherein all things are one and as one he is therefore omnipotent. Again, the heathen doctors say that power dispersed is dissipated. It is so with the mind. Scattered in multitudinous creature it is’so much more feeble and infirm toward God. But when the mind gets rid of creatures, when all the senses vanish into mind, then mind and passions being met in one the mind is strong enough to wrest from God whatever it desires. When man does what is in him not even God can say him nay.
46
In one of his sermons Meister Eckhart said, It is my humility that gives God his divinity and the proof of it is this. God’s peculiar property is giving. But God cannot give if he has nothing to receive his gifts. Now I make myself receptive to his gifts by
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my humility so I by my humility do make God giver and since giving is God’s own peculiar property I do by my humility give God his property. The would-be giver must needs find a taker ; without a taker he cannot be a giver for it is the taker by his taking that makes the man a giver. So God, to be the giver, must discover a receiver. Now none but the humble can receive the gift of God. So God, to use his godlike power of giving, will eke need my humility ; without humility he cannot give me aught for I without humility cannot accept his gift. Thus it is true that I by my humility do give God his divinity.
47
Meister Eckhart also said, My lowliness raises up God and the lower I humble myself the higher do I exalt God and the higher I do exalt God the more gently and sweetly he pours into me his divine gift, his divine influx. For the higher the inflowing thing the more easy and smooth is its flow. How God is raised upon my lowliness I argue thus : the more I abase and keep myself down the higher God towers above me. The deeper the trough the higher the crest. In just the same way, the more I abase and humble myself the higher God goes and the better and easier he pours into me his divine influx. So it is true that I exalt God by my lowliness.
48
Meister Eckhart says, We ought not to have to ask God for his grace, his divine goodness, we ought to contrive to take it ourselves without asking. God has gotten himself in his divine outflow just as the flowing. . . .
49
Meister Eckhart points out how Isaias says, ‘ Thy light is come to thee, the light which is eternal, unchangeable and new and inconceivable, free and thine own; well may thy heart both wonder and rejoice.’
The question is, how is it light if it is inconceivable ?_ How does it come if it is immoveable ? How be called thine if it is free ? I answer first, That light is God which is light in itself and which is light in all created things and wherein all creatures are light. For to begin with I contend that light has the peculiar property of being clear and luminous in itself and in others revelation. But this belongs exclusively to God. Wherefore I say the light in itself is God. The second point is argued thus. If everything caused is a manifestation of the first cause then light of intellect in us is surely God ; no mind can see the naked truth in a created
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light for nothing gives what it has not got. Augustine says, * Our mind can only see the naked truth in light which is perfectly simple and pure, God, to wit.’ The third is proved as follows. If creature is light and God is light, as has been shown before, then creaturely being is merely a light in light-being. But one light in another produces but one light, so it is true.
— Talking of light, now if so be that in this life our minds can see the naked truth by means of the light that is God, then it is also true that man may here see God and needs must it be true withal that man is here beatified.’
I answer that, albeit here a man may see the truth by means of the light that is God natheless he sees not what God is, using this light as a means. I say, what though he see God as he is, he is not yet beatified for God as a means is germane to creature. Look you, God beatifies not as being the beginning (when he is of the nature of all things), not yet as being the mean (where he is of the nature. of a creature), nor even as the end (for then again he is all things), neither does he beatify as being all of these but he beatifies just inasmuch as he transcends them all ; he beatifies as being God impartible, as being simply pure light in itself.
If thou shouldst ask, ‘ How is he light, being incomprehensible ?’ I answer, Being incomprehensible therefore he is the light. I say, moreover, incomprehensibility is the light nature and this is plain, for his incomprehensibility comes from his unendingness. But his unendingness is due to his simplicity, to his purity (or clarity), which constitutes lightness in God. It is well said then, God is light. But know, this vision of the truth in the divine light is gotten in no school of creatures, it is learnt in the school of renouncement, of utter detachment from creatures, and for such lore the school is heaven, the book thy empty heart, eternity thy reading, thy mentor uncreated light and truth thy mentor too. This David meant when he declared, ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see the light.’
Then take the second question. How does he come who is without motion and how does he come who is without place? To whom does he come who is in all hearts ?
I answer, He does not come as anything at all nor yet as gaining something for himself but he comes ordering ; he who was hidden comes and reveals himself. He comes as the light which lay concealed in people’s hearts and in their minds, now taking shape in intellect and will and in the deepest being of the soul. He is in the inner man in such a way that there is naught without him and there is naught there with him: he is there all by himself. He comes, appearing in the mind and in the will, nothing at all without him, nothing at all with him but mind and will are full
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of him alone. There seems nothing with him, nothing without him ; the mind is but the place of God, a Godstead to itself and nothing more, as David sings, ‘ Lord the light of thy countenance is risen upon us’ as though to say, Holding thy peace, with sighing and with rue do thou by means of intellect turn thy will round to feel the charm of God. Converse with him as man to man and as thou dost discourse with God in the first person and of God in the third so do thou talk to God in the second Person. Forgetting everything, aware of God alone, say unto him, * Thou art my God, thou only art within, thou only art all things.’ Creatures are not receptive to God, except those that are made in the image of God, like angels and man’s soul: these being God- receptive he is in them and they in him. To others God is essential, not that they have gotten him but simply that they have no being without him. Not in virtue of his presence do they see him, does she see God in her innermost depth ; nor is it by his power for he is powerless apart from her ; but we can do nothing without him. God being in the soul as in himself therefore the soul is called a place and soul is also called the place of peace for where God is as it were ‘in himself there is the kingdom of heaven and peace untroubled, joyous and delightful. The blest soul is at rest in God as in her own, and more so.
A man who has gone clean out of himself straightway finds God in God and God with God. He behaves like him for what he is he is to God and what he is to God God is to him: God belongs wholly to him and is wholly he and he is wholly in God and is downright God they being so entirely the same, one cannot be without the other.
50
The soul is no different from Christ save that the soul has a born nature and a created nature. This Christ has not in his eternal Person. Ifthe soul doffed her born nature and her created nature she would be all the same, just essence itself. I say, put off thy creature ; itis easy to doff the creature for this is a labour of love and the greater the pain the greater the joy.
51
Whoso has three things is beloved of God. The first is riddance of goods ; the second, of friends, and the third is riddance of self.
‘
52
Meister Eckhart said that in the essence of the soul we may surely see and know God. And the closer acquainted one is in
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this life with the soul the closer acquainted with God. The only way is to abandon creature and escape from self. Harkee. Love creature as I may in God never can I love God in creature as perfectly as in myself. Thou hast to go out of thyself into thyself again : there lies the home of truth which none may find who looks for it ini outward things. Mary Magdalene, when she left creatures and betook herself into her heart, found there our Lord. God is unmixed and pure: I can find God then only in the pure. But my interior soul is more undefiled and pure than any creature ; so my best chance of finding God is down in my own soul. And eke I am the life in God for ‘ All that is in the Father is the life in him,’ John said. In this guise does the Father bear the Son and in this selfsame birth I do proceed from him. Now he declares the Son to be in him, in the very depth of his heart. But since all that was made in him is the life in him therefore I am this life in the innermost heart of God. ‘ And the life was the light of men,’ said John. Mark you, he says the divine light in us is our light wherein we see all things conceived in the mind. God is being, perfect being, without which are no beings; for all beings are from his being. May we be this same heing, So help us God. Amen.
53
According to Meister Eckhart, there are seven degrees of con- templation. Whoso would practise contemplation let him seek out a quiet spot and set himself to thinking, first, how noble his soul is, how she has flowed straight out of God, a thought that fills him with a great delight. Having well cogitated this, next let him think how God must love his soul to make it in the likeness of the Trinity, so that all God is by nature he may be by grace ; whereat he will delight perforce more vehemently still for it is far more noble to be made in the form of the Trinity than merely to come straight from God.—In the third stage he meditates that he has been beloved of God for aye ; the Trinity has been for aye and God has loved the soul for aye.—Fourthly, he reflects that God did ever charge him to enjoy with God what God has aye enjoyed and always shall, God himself namely. At the fifth stage the soul enters into herself and knows God in herself, which - happens in this wise: No being can be without being and being feeds on being ; but being cannot live upon this food till this food is converted to the same blessed nature as that which feeds upon it and this applies to being which is being-of-itself. But there is no being-of-itself excepting God. So my soul is living on nothing but God. And by entering into oneself like this one finds God in oneself. If God will that I faint not he must give me air No
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being can stand without God so if he means me to have being then he must give me himself.
The sixth stage is, soul knows herself in God. As thus. Every- thing in God is God. Now my idea has always been in God, is still and ever shall be, therefore my soul is ever one with God and is God and I do find myself in God in the exalted fashion of being God in God eternally. This brings the expert soul ineffable delight.
At the seventh stage the soul knows God in himself as being without beginning whence all things emanated. This gnosis comes to no man fully in this life for it means the beholding of God, a thing not of this world.
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Mind you, all our perfection, our whole happiness, depends on our traversing and transcending creature, time and state and entering the cause which is causeless.
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God will never give himself openly to the soul . . . except she bring her husband, her whole free will, to wit.
56
What the joy of the Lord is none can tell. But mark this much concerning it. The joy of the Lord is the Lord himself, none else, the Lord being live, essential, actual intellect which knows itself and is and lives itself in itself and is the same. I do not saddle it with any mode, nay, I divest it of all mode for he himself is modeless mode who is and is glad because he is. This is the joy of the Lord and is the Lord himself. White is not black nor is aught naught. From naught naught can be taken. From aught aught can be taken and it is wholly thus with God. Of aught that is wholly in God naught remains. Soul joined to God has in him once for all all that is at all in absolute perfection. There soul forgets things and herself, as she is in herself, waking up in God, godlike as God.in her, so much in love with self in him, so indiscriminately one with him, she enjoys naught but him, delighting in him. What more should she know or desire ?
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God being still sets everything going. So desirable a thing starts them all running back into that from whence they came : to that which stays unchanged in its own self; and the nobler the thing the more blithely it runs.
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God can no more abide his likes than he could abide not being God. Likeness is not a thing that can belong to God. There is sameness in the Godhead, in eternity ; but likeness is not sameness. If I am same I am not like. Likeness is no form of being in the one; there is sameness for me in the unity, not likeness.
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The first work of God in the soul is the birth of his Son in the soul and from this act his other gifts do flow into the soul, as grace and virtue. What God can do in the soul is to bring forth his Son in the soul and this must needs be. It is characteristic of God that he cannot refrain, he must beget his Son in me and in you all. I say, God begets me his Son and so say I of you all as well. That we are all born of God his Son, is nothing wonderful ; we can see this with creatures. Now mark my words, I say, this man is the not; I am not what you are and you are not what I am. Suppress the not and we are just the same; take naught from creatures and creatures are all the same. The remainder is one. What is this one? It is the Son the Father bears. To be the actual Son the Father bears we must cancel the naught of creatures. This naught which all creatures are cumbers a man and stops him being the very Son begotten of the Father. God bids us part with naught so as to be ähe selfsame Son the Father bears. For this man must be one; he must escape from images and forms ere he can be the actual Son the Father brings to birth ; he must be rid of everything, not merely alien things, but eke his - own; for God’s Son and man’s son are not two sons, they are one Son, one nature ; so it behoves a man to flee from other natures as well as from his own and stand in the bare nature of the Son in the Godhead, in that only. What I say is that if one is to be the actual Son the Father bears one must give up own nature altogether. — can they surrender their own nature ? ’—We always must surrender our own natures in order to become the very Son the Father bears. As St Paul says, ‘We must be changed into his Son.’ In other words, the Son alone being beloved of the Father, what- ever things the Father loves he must love in his Son and inas- much as we become this Son the Father bears we do be changed into his Son of love and are his very Son. Of this be sure. God will love them in us and in all creatures in the guise of his alone- begotten Son. Provided we abandon naught, become estranged from naught. We. must relinquish all things, must forget all
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things, keeping nothing but the single nature of the Son. It seems a great deal but is not. It is a simple thing God bids us do, he bids us give up naught. Whoso is without why has given up naught and.by doing this we gain the whole world and abund- ance. ‘To the good man all things come, be sure of that. If I am better than you are, all the good you do and what you have is rather mine than yours for what you have you have in naught. But if I have abandoned naught I am the very Son the Father bears and everything belongs to me in God.
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What could be sweeter than to have a friend with whom, as with thyself, thou canst discourse all that is in thy heart ?
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When God made man the innermost heart of the Godhead was. put into man. | 62
What is God’s speaking ? The Father regarding himself with pure perception sees into his own simple uncompounded essence and there descrys the whole idea of creature. By doing so he speaks himself, his Word being clear understanding and this is his Son. ;
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Speaking of man we mean a person ; speaking of manhood we mean human nature.
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Doctors define what nature is. It is the thing that essence can take on. God took on manhood and not man. Isay: Christ was the first man. How so? What is first in intention is last in execution, as the roof is the finish of the house.
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The uppermost soul-face has two acts. By one she knows God, his gift and his emanation. Therein she loves God today and knows him, and not tomorrow.. The image lies not in these powers owing to theirimpermanence. There is another action of the upper face, which is concealed. In the concealment lies the image. Five things belong to this image. First, it is cast by another. Secondly, it answers to that same. Thirdly, it emanates therefrom. Fourthly, it is like thereto in nature; not that it is God’s nature but it is a substance which is self-sub- sistent ; pure light-emanation from God and differing from him
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only by the fact of knowing God. Fifthly, it tends towards the exemplar whence it came. Two things adorn this image. The one, its being arrayed like him. The other, its having in it a somewhat of eternity. The soul has three powers. Not in them lies the image. But she owns a single power, namely, the active intellect. Now according to Augustine and the New Philosophers, memory, understanding and will are found herein together, nor can these three be told apart. This is the secret image answering to God, God shining straight into this image.
It is God’s will that we be holy and that we do what makes us holy. Holiness is a matter of will and wisdom. According to the best authorities holiness lies in the ground, in the summit of the soul, where soul is in her cause, where she has outgrown names and her own powers withal. For powers too are the defi- ciency. We cannot give a name to God, nor can we name the soul in her own nature. The point where these twain meet is holiness.
Essence is so noble it gives being to all things. Were there no essence angels would be like stones.
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A learned doctor said on one occasion when preaching in the capital, that there was once a man, we read of him in holy scrip- ture, who went a full eight years yearning for God to indicate some person who should instruct him in the way of truth. Then in a moment of vehement desire there came a voice from God and said, ‘ Get thee to the temple, there shalt thou find a man to set thee on the path to truth.” And he went and found a beggar, his feet all cracked and dirty, his rags scarce worth three pence. He greeted him, ‘Give thee good morrow!’ He answered, ‘I n’er had a bad.’—‘ How now!’ quotha, ‘Give thee good luck!’ He answered, ‘I never had ill.’ Again he adventured, ‘ God bless thee! How sayst thou, Sirrah, to that?’ He said, ‘ I was never accursed.’—‘ God ’a mercy !’ he cried, ‘ unriddle me this, I trow it is beyond me!’ Said he, ‘I will. Thou dost wish me good morrow and I say I ne’er had a bad. Hungry I praise God ; freezing I praise God ; poor and forsaken withal I praise God so I never have a bad morrow. Thou dost wish me good luck ; I say, I have never had ill. Whatsoever God gives or may lay up for me, be it sour or sweet, good or bad, I accept all from God for the best so I have no ill hap. Thou dost call down God’s blessing upon me. I answer, I am not accursed. I have given my will up to God’s, every whit, so that anything God wills I will. That is why I am never unblessed, because I have no will but God’s.’-—‘ Marry, good Sir, suppose God chose to cast thee into
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hell, what wouldst thou say to that ?’—‘To cast me into hell ?’ quoth he, ‘that would spite himself! Yet if he cast me into hell I should still have two arms to clasp him with. One arm is true humility and this I should put under him, embracing him the while with the other arm of love. Better,’ he said, ‘ to be in hell with God than be in heaven without him.’
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Said Meister Eckhart to a beggar, ‘ Good morrow, brother.’ * The same to you Sir, but I never have bad ones.-—‘ How so, brother ?° he asked. —* All God gives me to bear I cheerfully suffer for his sake deeming myself unworthy, so never am I sad or sorry.’—* Where didst thou find God first ?’ he asked.—‘ Leaving all creatures I found God.’—‘ Where didst thou leave God, brother ?’ he said.— ‘In every man’s pure heart.”—‘ What manner of man art thou, brother?’ quoth he.—‘I am a king,’ he said.—‘ Of what?’ he queried.—‘ Of my own flesh. Whatsoever my spirit desires of. God my flesh is more eager, more ready to do and to bear than my mind to accept.’—‘ Kings have kingdoms,’ he said : ‘ where is
‘thy realm, brother ?’—‘In my own soul.’—‘ How so, brother ?’ he asked.—* When, having locked the doors of my five senses, I am desiring God with all my heart then do I find God in my soul as clearly and as joyful as he is in life eternal.’—He said, ‘ Granting thee holy, who made thee so brother ? ’—‘ Sitting still and thinking deep and keeping company with God has gotten me to heaven, for never could I rest in aught inferior to God. Now having found him I have peace and do rejoice eternally in him and that is more than any temporal kingship. No outward act however perfect but hinders the interior life.’
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Meister Eckhart met a lovely naked boy. He asked him whence he came. He said, ‘I come from God.’—‘ Where hast thou left him ? ’—‘ In virtuous hearts.’—‘ Whither away ? "—‘ To God.’— ‘Where wilt thou find him ? ’—* Leaving all creatures.’—‘ Who art thou ? —‘ A king.’—‘ Where is thy kingdom ? ’—‘ In my own heart.’—‘ Mind no one shares it with thee.—‘So I do.’ He took him to his cell and said, ‘ Take any coat thou wilt.’—‘ Then I should be no king’ (said he), and vanished.
It was God himself that he had had with him a little spell.
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A daughter came to the Dominican convent asking for Meister Eckhart. The porter said, ‘Who shall I tell him?’ She
1 See also Spamer’s Texte, CO, 5.
SAYINGS \ 439
answered, ‘I do not know.’—‘ Why do you not know?’ he enquired.— Because,’ she said, ‘ I am not either virgin or spouse, not man nor wife nor widow nor lady nor lord nor wench nor thrall.’ The porter went off to Meister Eckhart. ‘Do come out,’ he said, ‘ to the strangest wight that ever I heard and let me come too and you put your head out and say, ‘ Who is asking for me ? ’ He did so. She said to him what she had said to the porter. Quoth he, ‘My child, thou hast a shrewd and ready tongue, I prithee now thy meaning ? ’—‘ An I were virgin,’ she replied, ‘I were in my first innocence ; spouse, I were bearing the eternal Word within my soul unceasingly ; were I a man I should grapple with my faults; wife, should be faithful to my husband. Were I a widow I should be ever yearning for my one and only love ; as lady I should render fearful homage ; as wench I should be living in meek servitude to God and to all creatures and as thrall I should be working hard, doing my best tamely to serve my Master. Of all these things I am no single one who am the one thing as the other running thither.’ The doctor went away and told his students, ‘ I have been listening to the most perfect person I ween I ever met.’ This fragment is entitled, ‘ Meister Eckhart’s Daughter.’
70 MEISTER ECKHART’S FEAST
Meister Eckhart tells how once upon a time there came a beggar to Cologne on Rhine in quest of poverty and the life of truth. Accosted him a noble dame, ‘ Eat with me, brother, of God’s charity !°—‘ Gladly,’ quoth he. When they were seated she encouraged him, ‘ Eat heartily, be not ashamed.’— ’Tis wrong,’ he said, ‘ to eat too much, to eat too little is wrong too ; the just mean lies between : I will eat as a beggar.’-—“ What is a beggar ? ’ she asked.—He said, ‘It means three things. First, being dead to natural things. Next, not having inordinate desire of posses- sions. Thirdly, begrudging suffering to everyone except oneself.’ — Tell me,’ she questioned, ‘ what is poverty of the inner man ?’ —‘That also means three things,’ he said. ‘ First, complete detachment from creatures, which are out of God, in time and in eternity. Secondly, abject humility of the outward and the inward man. Thirdly, an active interior life: the mind un- ceasingly wrought up to God.’—* What is poverty of spirit ? ’ she asked.— You want to know too much,’ he said.—‘ I can never know too much,’ said she, ‘ of God’s glory and man’s happiness.’— ‘True,’ he returned. ‘That again means three things. First,
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not knowing aught but God in time and in eternity. Secondly, not seeking God outside oneself. Thirdly, not owning any pro- perty that one conveys from place to place.'-—‘ But surely Meister Eckhart, our father, must get from out ‘his cell the sermons he preaches from his pulpit ? ’—‘ Not he,’ he said.— Whence then ? i (she asked).—‘ The more temporal the more personal, the more personal the more temporal.’—‘I trow,’ she said, * this guest is not out of Bohemia.’! Quoth he, ‘ The sun that shines here in Cologne is shining also in the town of Prague.’—* Explain,’ she begged. He said, ‘Tis not my place with Meister Eckhart present.’ Meister Eckhart said, ‘ He who knows nothing of the truth from within, if he woo it without shall find it too within. — The reckoning is paid,’ she cried. And he: ‘ Lady, you furnish the wine.’—‘ I am not loath,’ she answered, ‘ an you ask me.’ ; (So Meister Eckhart asked her), ‘ Wherein do we divine the work- ing of the Holy Ghost within our souls ?’ She answered, ‘ In three things. First, in the waning day by day of personal things, desires and natural love. Next, in the waxing of divine love and of grace from day to day. Last, in the eager charity which moves us to bestir ourselves on our fellow-man’s behalf before ourown.’ Quoth he, ‘ Our Lord’s friends prove it.” Anon he asked, ‘ How does the spiritual man divine God’s presence at his orisons or exercises ? ’ She answered, ‘ By three things. First, by the object he sets before his chosen, world scorn and body suffering, to wit. Next, by a growth in grace commensurate with the love betwixt himself and God. The third one is that God does never leave him without hint of some fresh truth.’-—‘ That is, of course, the case,’ he said. “ Now tell me, how does he know if what he does is wholly in accord- ance with the sovran will of God?’ She answered, ‘ By three things. First, clear consciousness never fails him. Secondly, he has union with God without break. Thirdly, the heavenly Father keeps giving his Son birth in him, in inspiration.’ Quoth Meister Eckhart, ‘ Were every reckoning as well paid as this one for the . wine there’s many a soul in purgatory would this day be in life eternal.’ Whereon the mendicant chimed in, ‘ What more remains it is the Doctor’s turn to pay.’—* Leave the old to their age,’ pro- tested Meister Eckhart.—‘ Then love shall settle it,’ the beggar said, ‘ that never faileth.’ ithe Quoth the lady, * Prithee father, how does one know oneself the heavenly Father’s child ?’ Heanswered, ‘ Bythreethings. First, one does everything forlove. Next, one takes everything the same from God. Thirdly, one has no hope in anyone but God.’
18 Béheim (Bohemia) I interpret thus: 6é stands for beatus ; heim, domus oe mr is to be interpreted as own house or fixed abode.’ Wilhelm von enden.
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Quoth the beggar, ‘ Prithee father, how are we to tell if virtue is doing her perfect work in us ?’ He answered, ‘ By three things, love of God for God’s sake, good for good’s sake, truth for truth’s sake.’
Quoth the Doctor, ‘ My children, how lives the teacher of the truth ?’ The lady said, ‘ He practises what he preaches.’ The beggar cried, ‘Agreed. But the truth in his heart no words can say.’
As the eternal Word is the birth of the heavenly Father, so is the will of God the birth and the becoming of all creatures.
THIS IS MEISTER ECKHART’S FEAST
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IV LIBER POSITIONUM
4
1. Here the disciple is supposed to question his master, saying, * Tell me, could God an he would have made all things as good as he is himself ?’ The master said, Yes, what God wills he can do.—- * Are things all made of his own nature ?’ The master said, No.
2. The disciple inquired, ‘ What is the soul made of ? ’—She is made out of nothing. —* Where did God get the nothing he made the soul out of ? —Some say he got it in himself. That is not the case for in God is not nothing : that which is in God is God. — ‘But God has all things in himself and without God is nothing. Surely then he gets this nothing out of himself? ’—The master said, No, not at all! He gets it neither in himself nor out of * himself, nor above himself nor below himself. There is no getting nothing from inside or out. Ifit were gotten anywhere it would not be nothing. Anything that does this: takes nothing from nowhere and makes of it something, is God. So runs the argument that the nothing is gotten from nowhere. They asked St Augustine about this mysterious nothing out of which the soul is made and where, apart from place, this nothing hides ? His explanation was that this nothing is openly enclosed in betwixt God and God- head, in his almighty power. Were it in close confinement it would not be naught : it either would have place or else be God by nature, the soul being made of the nature of God. But it is not. Ergo, this nothing is at large in the almighty power of the Father to whom it is as easy to get from nowhere naught as aught. It is confined to his omnipotence to be able to take naught from nowhere and from it create aught. Whatever can do this is God.
8. Now another question. Dionysius says, Tell me, what about the soul who is in full enjoyment of her rights : what is it that she has by rights at the height of her perfection ?—By rights the soul has knowledge : clear understanding of all things andisso mellowed — by love as to be all unwitting, when people love and hate her, whether she be not dearer to her haters than her lovers. And this soul has by rights absolute freedom from herself and things : sunk in the sovran good she cannot find herself at all. Here we have two natures. One, the thing that sinks; the other, what it sinks in. She sinks eternally but never touches bottom. This
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sinking shows her two things. In sinking from herself she is more God than creature. The fact that she does sink proclaims . her creaturely for deity sinks not.—But when she has yielded her aught to his aught and her naught is subsisting in naught, then what will belong to her aught and her naught ?—None can tell, but she has no more than her rights. That is the answer.
4. Another question is, has the soul more enjoyment in the source of joy or in the vision of its wonders ?—Consider what she has in each. In admiring its wonders she obeys the selfsame wondrous law that the first cause laid down for all causes as befitting each. But soul does not stop here, she transcends wonder. The wonders have become her potential being. Hence her enjoyment is much keener in the source of joy than in the beholding of its wonders. In the source is her abode, not in its wondrous vision. There all wonders end ;° there all is one to her and one in all. That is the answer to this question.
5. The question is, if the Godhead has all things how comes it then neither to give nor to beget ? If.it does not beget it is not Father.—The explanation is this. Man’s nature is called man- hood, and manhood as such neither acts nor begets ; it acts and begets in a human person. And the same with Godhood : it.is all-containing and yet not active and productive in itself. What it does is all done by the Persons in person and nature. The God- head is called fruitful inasmuch as it is brought forth in the Persons in Person and essence.
6. An angel may do three things in the soul. Either he con- fronts her with the scriptures or with the holy life or, again, with the example of Christ Jesus, showing her something clearly as though in a mirror wherein one may espy some blemish on the human face and so proceed to cure it. Thus she sees herself, what she still lacks ; where-she is not as yet all that she ought to be; what things to leave and what to keep; how much or little she should be to things: all this she plainly sees. And whatever an angel can do the devil may very well copy.— Have we no means of telling, Sir, if it is an angel or the devil ? ’—Yes, they are ike different. Tests for angel and the devil are as follows. An an angel does is done in the light, orderly and clearly, and the uch! rejoices in the amiable presence of the angel ; also it is a sign to know him by that she is left with a sense of pleasure. In counter- feiting this the devil makes it vague, confused, ambiguous, and the soul, affrighted at this haunting ofthe fiend, is restless and depressed and by this she may know it is the devil.
The angel talks virtue to the soul, the fiend talks virtue too but God does not talk virtue.—* For the love of God, good Sir, tell us what you mean.’—I will explain. The angel talks virtue to the
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soul and his talk (the angel’s), which is of necessary virtue, is friendly and persuasive, something in this fashion : ‘ See, there is still this to go and that to do and the other to leave off’: orderly counsel and plain and the soul finds peace in complying with his words. The devil. talks virtue too, but he urges superfluous virtues : too much fasting and watching and kneeling, too much weeping, and his counsels are more in the nature of commands, as thus : * Do this or that or thou art damned,’ or ‘ art not good nor perfect.’ An orgy of uncontrolled virtues with no definite aim, ‘that is his cue and the soul is affrighted within her and gleans no satisfaction from his words.—But God’s talk is not of virtue though it is wonderful talk. The burden of it a fair Word that is passing good to hear. The Holy Ghost goes before the angel and embracing the soul prepares her to receive what the angel has to say; and the Son gives wisdom and order to the words and God the Father help and consummation to that which is spoken in the soul. Thus God does not talk virtue in the soul ; he forestalls the angel and prepares the soul, giving wisdom, order and achievement to the angelic utterance in the soul; the Holy Trinity all work together in her without speaking.
7. The statement that our Lord from time to time holds con- verse with good people and that they hear words or become im- pressed with the sense of certain sayings such as, ‘Thou art mine elect, or my beloved; thou shalt never leave me and I will never leave thee,’ and the like, things like this, I say, should be accepted with reserve and judged upon their merits for locutions of this kind are often due to a trick the soul has, when indulging in comfortable intuitions of divinity, of answering herself by a sort of reflex - action. When the soul, aflood with God, is void and free from sensible affections she grows apace in created light till nothing transcends her but intellect and essential knowledge. In this detachment the knower is the known ; out of her own light she creates what she desires. Such is the effect of the benignant
‘reign of essential understanding. Aristotle says in the third book of The Soul, ‘Every immaterial substance or isolated form is in itself both the knower and the known,’ and this is why the soul,
_eut off from the corporal things by the encircling flood of God, draws deiform truth out of her own self. It follows that anything in her of which she has a rational perception is not said by God : God’s speech is none other than the perfect image of divine truth wherein the spirit is caught up out of its selfhood, past under- standing, into intellect. There in unity she understands without understanding. é
8. To drag the hawthorn through the hay without a catch we must lop it well, like our Lord Jesus Christ, the tree of love, who
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dragged the hawthorn through the hay of this wicked world, so shorn of all its branches that no moving thing could cling thereto and so he gathered up nothing that was unstable. And to attain to him we must be too bare for things to cling to us or we to them. We take up our cross when stripping everything of self and self of everything we cling all pure and naked to the bare cross of Christ. 9. He who loves aright loves not nor is not loved. They love and are beloved who can be pleased and pained: they pour out themselves in love on creatures and creatures back on them. But they love not nor are they loved who are not moved by creature good and ill; these neither give nor do they take: they pour not out on creature nor creature back on them. They love not neither are they loved. ‘We ought to love God out of love. They love in love who love for why : who love him for some bodily or temporal good. But they love out of love who love without a why : who do not love for temporal good nor yet eternal: they love him merely for himself, for his own sake pure and simple apart from anything he gives. \ 10. We read of John the Baptist that he was a prophet. He was ‘more than prophet for when the Holy Ghost from time to time spake by the prophets they were thereafter as they were before, in sinful habit. Prophets are people who are now and then con- strained to play’ this part. While the Holy Ghost is speaking through them by actual infusion of his grace they are exereising virtue and thereafter they revert to their former habit: they are called virtuous as practising virtue intermittently : they do right and also wrong. Not so St John; he was more than prophet for he practised virtue not at intervals, it was his natural and settled wont. And those who follow him in this are not prophets either, they are more than prophets, seeing as they do in the clear light of God exactly what to do and what to leave undone and having given them the Godlike power to act up to their lights with effortless, spontaneous delight and delightful spontaneity. These are called virtuous not because they practise virtue intermittently : they are fixed and established in it. That thing is habitual which we do at one time and at another not; it is an alternation. That is not habitual which is continuous and without admixture. 11. A good man is known by three things. One is singleness of will: all we call nature his will is free from. The second is clear understanding : any mental knowledge that she has his soul has fully mastered : she either approfounds it here or yonder in the common ground during illumination. The third is peace of . mind : such images as may occur therein are no hindrance to the soul. 12. Three things distinguish the solitary soul. The first is,
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cessation of desire: no more wants or sense of deficieney. The second is, active love for and acquiescence in the will of God. The third is a lively feeling in the soul of the love of the Holy Ghost.
13. Divine good in.the singular no body or blood receives but it does receive God’s manifold goodness. It is simple divine good for the spirit to be rapt out of itself into God’s oneness, there to understand without sensible perception. But God’s manifold goodness means anything revealed to her in form and likeness, for this is all a matter of the mortal nature.—The heavenly Father gives his consolation to none but the man of peaceful heart. Christ said to his disciples, ‘ My peace I give unto you.’
14. Let no one claim to have received the perfect gift of the Holy Ghost, who can be shaken in his convictions by any arguments that are disquieting. I refer to things which are spoken contrary to our knowledge of eternal truth.
15. Nature comes with God into creature and driving God out remains alone in creature. Spirit goes with creature into God and driving creature out stays by itself in God. The most perfect mode of soul is one of self-oblivion in good works as a whole and the way thereto is the clear discernment of special imperfections. In the least of mortal quests there is at stake all natural creature appetite. Effortless achievements‘ are wiped out of the mind as though they had not been. It is true wisdom to recognise the folly of evil and the freedom of perfection.
18, Hosea the prophet, rapt in wonder, had a threefold marvel shown him. The first one was, how God is one in essence and three in Person. The second marvel, which, though somewhat less is still ineffable and incomprehensible to creature, is this: how two natures meet together in one Person. The third marvel is the marvel of marvels: how creator is creature and creature is creator. The prophet Hosea says, ‘ His going forth is prepared as the morning ; he shall come unto us as the soft evening rain.’ Here the morning light suggests the nearness of his coming: the dawn is the herald of the day. The day dawns thrice. First in the chamber of the Person of the Father. Next, in the chamber of the Person of the Son. Thirdly, in the world. The first dawn was the will of the Father; the second, the obedience of the Son ; the third one broke when their common Spirit caught the precious most pure blood-drops that ever flowed from the virgin heart of Mary. The fire of love once kindled, he no longer tarries: day is here.
20. Suppose a man insults me and I silence him by my retort, it is not I who conquer: I am conquered. I conquer if, in true humility, I hold my peace. Conquering we are conquered and being conquered conquer.
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21. It is a question if angels grow in heaven ? I declare they do. They go on growing till the day of judgment, waxing in knowledge and in love; by then the lowest is about as wise as the highest was when he was created. —* But tell me Sir, does the soul grow in heaven as well ? ’—I say, No.—‘ But why, Sir, should the angel grow and not the soul ?’—For this reason. The soul grows in the body and when she quits the body that is her judgment day: the highest she has reached by then is the nearest she will ever get to knowing God. But her growth is far nobler than an angel’s for what an angel has comes by no effort of his own; hers is the reward of toil so that one light of hers is worth ten of any angel’s.
22. Three kinds of progress take place in serious people. The first is natural; when, fought to a finish, man’s nature is van- quished and subdued, then at length he sees all random thoughts as things he can turn to his account and we to ours. Not a single notion but will serve to bring light to pious people, and this (light) is essential almost as much as natural ; essential, though by grace, a divine repugnance to all base inventions.—The second kind of progress is unconscious. ‘The man is spiritualised so that his words, his ways and his whole self enlighten other people with a realization of their own shortcomings. Nature sleeping, spirit wide awake, that I call light and she is a light not alone to other people but the devil quails before her.—‘ Sir, tell me, what is he afraid’ of ? ’—The devil does not know what is in the soul except what he can recognise by its outward form. Supposing her brimfull of light then divine light comes surging out of her and when the fiend sees this he is afraid and durst not test her with a notion, so the soul stays undisturbed. Which is to her credit though unbeknownst to her.—The third progress is spiritual. When such a soul is flooded with the influx of God’s spirit, love reinforces love, light light, giving a love which fires the soul and which she cannot fail to be aware of. The first growth is conscious, the third also is conscious and the middle one unconscious.
23. Plato says, ‘ The soul of all creatures is the Godhead.’ Then our Lord Jesus Christ is the soul of the elect.
24. The question is, what is the effect on man of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ ? I say that its effect on man is to clarify his nature and prevent him committing mortal sin. On the en- lightened it confers another boon, receptivity to the divine light and then though they die they will have nothing between.
27. ‘ Pray Sir, one to whom eternal light is given, suppose he were to die, would he have aught between ? ’—Once having had eternal light he never has anything between.
28. ‘Tell me, good Sir, what is divine light ? ’—With divine ©
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light the natural life is no obstacle to the eternal light, or in other words, there is no consenting to sin. When we are unable to act up to our lights that is a sign that we have not received eternal light. Knowledge with the power to apply it, that is eternal light. He who receives eternal light takes everything the same.
29. * But even good people are now and then perturbed : have they then no light ? —When our Lord Jesus Christ was drawing near his passion, his agony of suffering pierced his soul and called forth the rebuke to Judas at the table and St Peter on the mount, to whom he said, “ Couldst thou not watch with me a while ? Thou who didst promise to be with me unto death.” But he did not on this account lose the light of unity. Once more har- monious with his Father’s will he was filled with joy at having in
‚accord therewith submitted willingly to pain. The fact of being moved involves no loss of light: anything conceived in time is moved in time. While we are in time we are affected by time. But the more imperturbable one is the more one is established in eternity. By their deeds ye shall know them. |
80. He alone can do God’s will who resigns his own. We are strong in proportion as we are inspired with divine power to withstand the things that come between ourselves: and God. When we stand in our primitive innocence, then at last we begin to live.
81. “But when is a man in a state of primitive innocence ? ’— Primitive innocence is not attained without divine light. Simple, primitive innocence reigns when the pattern of all virtues is present in a man and he stands without impediment of nature in the eternal truth. It is only by treading upon creature that we reach the bottom rung of Godhood.—‘ What is the bottom rung of Godhood ? ’—It is spiritualised nature.
82. ‘Sir, is it better having and giving or not having and letting ? —Letting is better than giving. Giving adds more lustre, letting shows more spirituality. We shed our blood; the saints let their blood be shed.
83. ‘ Will you tell me, Sir, what causes the decay of tenderness ? ’ — What is the tenderness you mean ?—‘ I mean interior tenderness.’ — To have it is a sign of immaturity ; to lose it betokens ado- lescence. The father pets his child when the child is young but as it gets to know its father’s will he grows seemingly less fond and this less obvious fondness is an indication of the child’s approach to man’s estate. With the soul it is the same. His tenderness to her proclaims her immature, but as she grows in knowledge and _ constant harmony with the will of God he inspires her with less irrational fondness and this is a sign she is developing.
85. That alone is perfect which does not seek for aught outside
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‚itself. Whatever we can say about perfection to that we can attain.—A gentle man is one whose serenity no trouble can dis- turb.—We stand before God while we do not cross the will of God.
36. When does God work in man unhindered ?—God finds no hindrance in a man who takes both good and ill from God with the
‚same thankfulness.
87. Sure proof of true humility is the fearful joy of being praised. For on coming into touch with truth and finding in himself a witness of it, a man is sensible of pleasure but fears it as a likely cause of his undoing.
88. The right loyal heart receives with bitterness inventions of the soul which are not sent by God.—That heart is kind whose graciousness is proof against every good and ill.
89. The treasure of God is loss of possessions, people’s despisery, sickness and submission to God.
41. Our Lord Jesus Christ waxed not at all in eternal light ; but the things he taught, in beholding these he took peculiar pleasure.
42. Pious folk should imitate the deified man, Christ. By imitating Christ I mean becoming Godlike. What I mean by Godlike is, your words, deeds, conduct, being free from human wont. By human I mean imperfect. In proportion to his im- perfection a man is moveable by aught or anybody can be (moved) by him.—‘ What do you mean by moveable ? —By moveable I mean not impatience only : moveable I call anything affected by either good or ill and that can in anywise be anything to anyone or to whom anyone can as such be anything, and I call immoveable only that which nothing can affect and which affects nothing. That man then I call immoveable to whom good and ill are just the same ; who is as far as possible exempt from the agitations of both joy and sorrow. It will never be natural to him that his emotions stir not independently of mind. But once the mind takes charge, it is all over and as it was before and then the man is not a mortal man, he is man deified.
43. Good people have three sorts of expert knowledge. In the first place the intelligence is sharpened so that it estimates correctly the smallest thing presented to it: its more or less amount of sensible admixture they gauge to a nicety and can act accord- ingly.—In the second place, when they have to do a thing they can always tell whether it proceeds from the ground of God. or the ground of nature. Thirdly, so subtile is their understanding that any ghostly form, the very faintest light, which appears to them, they recognise for fiend or spirit.
44. The true test of interior perfection is that nothing thou doest from without casts any shadow within.
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45. When the Godhead began to inquire how mankind could be
restored to its original perfection, the Father sat in counsel in the ‚chamber of the Holy Trinity. The Father said, ‘ Who shall we send to save mankind ?’ Answered him the Son and said, ‘ Father, send me: I will save mankind.’ Then stooped him down the eternal Word of the heavenly Father, that is to say, his Son, who is the middle Person of the Holy Trinity, and clad himself in human nature. Remaining what he was he took upon him that which he was not and was thus obedient to his Father in heaven and not in heaven only but on earth as well. Obedience to his Father and love towards mankind constrained him to perfect all his Father’s work. .
46. ‘Sir, for God’s sake, may I ask you something that I want to know, something very subtle ?’—By all means. Whatever it may be and however subtle, I will try and answer. Ask me what you will.— Well, what I want to know is this: was our Lord Jesus Christ hindered in any way by doing outward works ?’ —I can give you a definite answer to that. The soul of Christ was never an independent entity as such. It no sooner was than it was Christ; directly it was made, straightway it was united ; first one and then the other it is true but yet both timeless. At his first appearance Christ was snatched from independence into the keeping of the middle Person of the Trinity where in essential wisdom he gazes without blenching at the naked fullness of the divine perfection. From the moment when Christ’s soul and body were united with the Godhead his soul has been gazing at the Godhead as it is doing to this day. As to the lower powers of his soul which function in the body making possible his preaching and his teaching and the other things he did, there the joy of contemplation was diminished somewhat: not the vision but the pleasure of the sight. But the higher powers of his soul, wherein he was united, these remained always in unveiled contemplation. Now I have explained how Christ was hindered and at the same time not. One thing more and let that suffice as giving you the key to the whole matter. The hindrance was physical not psychic. But even so he never failed in the minutest point to fulfil the mission on which his Father sent him, preaching and teaching and doing outward works whereby he earned reward and honour.
47. ‘ Could Christ earn reward ? ’—There are two rewards ; one of them Christ earned, the other not. One of the rewards we earn by our good works is the vision of the Godhead. This reward Christ did not earn since from the moment Christ’s body was united with the Godhead, his soul has been gazing at the Godhead, as it is doing to this day. The other reward we earn by our good
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works is the glorification of the body with the soul after the day of judgment and this-reward Christ earned by his holy life, his body being glorified together with his soul at his resurrection. Now thou knowest how Christ did earn reward and also not.
48. ‘ Just one other thing.’ —Tell me, what is that ?—‘ You say that Christ gained honour. What honour did he gain? — Christ has the title of The Head of Holy Christendom and this honour Christ has won by his holy life.
49. ‘A man to whom eternal light is given, is he prone to sin in time ? ’—One to whom eternal light is given may well stoop to imperfection and sometimes falls an easier prey to frivolity and suchlike venial sins than another man.—‘ What is the cause of this propensity ? ’—It comes from being engrossed in one simple thing ; multitudinous images disturb the soul, tossing her about with their various conceits. Once conceiving unity she is dis- tracted by diversity. But as soon as she begins to see, it is as though it had never been and she can free herself completely without the slightest effort ; which is a sign that she has eternal light. To see and be unable to escape would argue lack of eternal light. You know now how it is that people, even with eternal light, are prone to sin. St Paul sinned after he had been caught up.
50. The first and noblest work of God is motionlessness : divine rest. It stands to reason that the maker of the motionless is him- self unmoved. Were God not immoveable there could nothing motionless be made.
Aristotle says all moving things proceed from rest and from necessity and moving things are all seeking rest. Man likewise then ought to be as motionless as possible.—* When is a man motionless ? ’—The soul is motionless when nothing whatever can perturb her; when she is neither glad nor sad and cannot be gladdened nor yet saddened. And she must be unnecessitous.— “When is she unnecessitous ? —The soul is unnecessitous when she has no need to cleave to any creature and not only has no need, it is hell-pain to her to dwell upon the form of creature since there is no rest for her save in the formless form of God. She is un- necessitous when she has come into her rights and, with no need of change, rests in the unnecessitous nothingness of his unchanging nature.
51. ‘Sir, what did St Paul mean by saying, ‘‘ We shall be one spirit with God?” When is the soul one spirit with God ? ’—She is one spirit with God when she has no image or anything between. And she is turned to spirit when she is not subject to any creature love or appetite.
52. ‘Sir, what is perfect love ? ’—Perfect love leaves nothing
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less than God.—‘ Pray tell me what you mean.’—I mean, having hold of nothing but God they cannot leave go of less than God, who are as they should be. Natural ties have been cut.
53. * Tell me, Sir, for the love of God, is it possible to pray or ask of God quite unselfishly ?’—Oh yes. I will tell you how. There are two cases of unselfish prayer. The first is on our own account, that we may be rid of some imperfection which comes between us and eternal truth. The second case is prayer for some other person’s sin, knowing all the facts and that he desires to be free. For these things we may pray and with avidity. But our human will must confine itself to the will of God, as thus : ' Lord, thou knowest I desire not nor do I will aught save what thou dost will: an thou know something better, give me that,’ so losing thine own and keeping his.
54. ‘Sir, what about the man they talk of sometimes among pious folk, who sets such store by physical austerities and long- winded prayers ; is that the best or is there something better ? ’— The most perfect bond that we can have is innocence, a blame- less life, and being wholly without guile it is best to drop words altogether for words are interlopers between ourselves and God.
55. ‘What is the sign of union with God’s will ? —Perfect singlemindedness.—It is characteristic of the gracious, deified mind, from trivial error to extract much wisdom.—The very least thing in excess of absolute necessity will count.—Christ’s every action is a pious precept.—An angel’s nature is his intellect and his intellect is his impartible nature.
56. He to whom light is given grows conscious of the darkness in all creatures. :
57. ‘ Will you tell me, Sir, why Solomon should say, The righteous man falls seven times a day? What is this falling of the righteous man ? ’—It is the lapsing of his soul from the highest level she can reach to: failure to remain ‚at the very summit where she tran- scends creature in God, that is the fall of the perfect man.
58. ‘ When does one person love another in God without ad- mixture of nature ? ’—The sure test of pure divine love is the sense of nothing but God, always with enlightenment.
59. ‘ Why is it that a man will ask for things he does not need and knowing this to be the case will still go on doing it: what does he do it for? ’—It is nature. When appetites are uncon- trolled a man will ask for the impossible.—‘ But supposing it is not impossible nor yet unlikely and he is self-controlled, what is it then ? ’—I tell you it is nature.—‘ Yes, yes, good Sir, but leave out nature !’—That will I not. It is nature inasmuch as it is mingled with divine nature.
60. ‘ What is an angel ? "—Angel like soul is a perpetual nature.
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The soul has no parts, this and that. Wherever she turns she turns as 2 whole.
‘What is essential virtue ? —In essential virtue man is in a ie of having no active heart’s desire ; he knows what is right and is able to live up to his lights in the power of his primitive aS ee
‘What is the sign of eternal life ? —Absence of hate is a a Wr eternal light. So far as we fail in love towards all mankind, we never really have it.
‘Pray Sir, when are we discriminating ? ’—When we know one thing from another. —‘ And when are we above discrimination ?’ — When we know all in all then we transcend discrimination.
64. ‘What does St Paul mean when he speaks of ““ redeeming the time because the days are evil ” ? ’—He calls the days evil referring to the changeableness of time. He says, redeeming the time— ‘When is time redeemed ? ’—Let me tell you. To do a good work is not to redeem time but to pawn it. It is a good work to rest from sin and exercise some virtue. To do better work is not redeeming time. He who perfects by practice does better. To do the best of all, that does redeem the time. It is best of all to rest in the embrace of God.— But is that redeeming the time ? ’—To be sure it is. Time is not redeemed in time. The redemption of time is the timeless spirit’s atonement above time.
65. ‘ Will you expound that sentence in St John’s epistle, “ Blessed are the dead that die in God?”’ When do we die in God ?’ — When everything is dead that intervenes between ourselves and God.—* Well then, will you tell me what is the joy of spirits in eternity: are they always finding something new in God ? — Verily I say, if they did not find it ever new there would be an end to eternity. Were there aught in God exhaustible by creature, eternity would end and heaven cease to be.
6. ‘Sir, what is true wisdom ? ’—-True wisdom, so says one philosopher, means the knowledge of all created things and the creator who has made them.
67. According to St Paul, the closest bond of love a man can have is harmony of will. Our Lord in his love made eternal provision for all human suffering when his Son died upon the cross.
68. He follows hardest on the heels of God who leaves all temporal things behind and clings to the eternal.
69. Joy is the reward of virtue, says one of the saints.—‘ Tell me, when does a man do his duty by creatures ?’—When he knows © them and leaves them.
70. A saint says, So long as we will and will not our free will is
not captive to God. If any man does as he should God will do what that man would.
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71. * Sir, how would you define grace ? ’”—I define grace as him whom no joy nor pleasure can gladden, no pain nor adversity sadden.
72. The most successful prayérs are the willing learners from creature or the spoken word.
73. ‘When does God work in man unhindered ? ’—When he takes good and ill from God with the same thankfulness.—‘ But, with one and the same thankfulness or each with thankfulness ? ’ —They must be received with the same thankfulness. Time is always true to its own nature but were soul and body displaced into eternity motion would be lost. The less moveable thou art the more thou art established in eternity.
74. ‘Sir, when is virtue present in a man ? ’—There is virtue in the soul just as memory and knowledge and love are in the soul, for they are spiritual in their substance. There is virtue in the ‚soul and it is present in a man as long as it is not cast out in lawless utterances.
75. * Will you tell me, Sir, why we are sometimes quite unmoved in suffering whereas at other times we hail it with delight and then again it readily affects us ? —Supposing a man is by himself with his senses indrawn from the multiplicity of things and recollected to himself, then his soul will be unmoved inasmuch as God is present in her. But if his senses are broadcast upon things and more or less unstable on those things, he will be readily affected. Then let him beware of lawless utterance ; he must recollect him- self and in deep humility just appeal lovingly to God: ‘ Lord thou knowest I can do naught without thee,’ and quick as thought thou art back in God.
76. ‘ Pray Sir, is one quite detached when one gives no consent to sin and bitter as it was to part from things it were just as bitter to return to them ? ’— Yes, surely.
77. ‘Is eternal light vouchsafed to anyone who falls short ? ’— Oh yes! It was to St Paul.
78. ‘Is no holy soul beatified that has shortcomings ? ’— Yes, thousands if one reckoned them.—‘ But no saint can be sanctified unless he has received eternal light ? —Yes, numbers.
79. ‘What do you mean, Sir, when you talk of divine light and eternal light, are they the same or is there a difference ? Do they consist in the same thing ? ’—They are not the same. By one light we know, by another we can and by a third one we do. Now to distinguish between them. To perceive divine truth and answer thereto, that I call divine light. I say it is God’s light because it is Godlike. It is not God himself; it may be given by an angel or asaint. Eternal light, again, I define to be the perfect image of the impartible nature of God and of it St Paul says, the
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third heaven and its light are not immediately present to us here in this body ; we have to return to our trueselves. Ah, woe is me, how wearisome my exile! It is impartible light when the soul departing from the body flies straight back to God into whose light she is absorbed. Beyond this her perception does not go. And I mean by impartible light the vision of God with nothing between: no creaturely hindrance, no time, no looking back: in eternity.—St John had eternal light; he knew the whole truth and attained to it. All things were possible to him, but though - not guilty of any mortal sin he was still liable to its suggestion. That no man can escape.
80. ‘ What is the sign of eternal light ? "—It is a sure sign when everything not God is irksome and virtue has become a second nature.
81. Talkativeness or over-attention to our daily wants is fatal to friendly intercourse with God. If we would escape the purgatorial fires we must set a watch on all our ways, especially our words. Different is the cleansing fire of the perfection of God and the love of the soul, between them imperfections are consumed away.
82. Good people’s food is clear consciousness and intercourse with holy souls and constant reception of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Neither the devil nor yet any creature ever gave an appetite for the body of our Lord Jesus Christ: this comes from God alone, you may be sure.
84. ‘ Tell me, Sir, do we find in holy writ mention of any rapture besides that of St Paul ? °—No.—‘ But they tell me three are to be found: Adam was caught up while he was asleep and St John when he was resting on the bosom of our Lord and St Paul when he was felled to earth ; they each saw God without means, without any image or likeness.—Verily, I say, before the death of our Lord Jesus Christ no man had ever seen God in his God-nature except that golden temple our Lady Mary at the moment when our Lady conceived divine and human nature; then she received eternal light and saw God in his simple nature, but before that no creature.—‘ Then what was Adam’s rapture and St John’s ? — When God created Adam his body was made painless like his soul. You could have hewn him in his sleep and it would not have hurt him for the lower powers of his soul were obedient to her higher ones and she was subject to the law of her perfect nature and unhindered by gross body and this was his by right of nature. Had he stayed at the summit of his soul he would have kept her in her maker. He knew God had created him and that divine nature was destined to unite with human nature and he had dis- criminate knowledge of all creatures, each in its natural perfection just as God had made them and he was carried away by enjoyment
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of the sight. You must know that he was sleeping like any other man.—‘ Then what was the rapture of St John ? ’—He was resting. Rest so called from its likeness to the abstraction of our Lord Jesus Christ and St John’s from its likeness to them both: a gentle sinking into dispassion, that is what his rapture was.
85. “Is a man liable to fall once he has had eternal light ?’—I say, No. If Adam had seen God he would not have fallen and the archangel Lucifer, if he had seen God in his impartible essence would not have fallen.—‘ I have heard tell that in ecstasy there is no interference with free will. Is that really so ? ’—It neither strengthens nor weakens the free will. Verily I say, anyone who holds that a man can fall after eternal light, though he commit no greater sin than St Agnes did, shall die infallibly for it is heresy and mortal sin to have this belief. That soul can no more fall than St Peter could. The heavenly Father might as well forsake his Son as the soul wherein he has given his Son birth. If the Father ends the Son ends ; if the Son ends eternity ends ; if eternity ends the soul ends.
86. ‘ Sir, when you speak of God’s birth, of the Father begetting his Son in the soul, is this birth the same as the rapture of St Paul and what happened at Pentecost to the disciples or are these different things ? "—They are exactly the same.— Then when you talk of eternal light do you mean God’s birth in the soul or is that something else? ’—I mean the same thing; they are identical. But one thing I do say. Birth is the better term and nearer to the truth though in reality there is no difference. I will tell you why. An angel by nature is eternal light; the sun is eternal light ; the stars are eternal light. Eternal light is ascribed to things that are not changed by time; and since we can attribute eternal light to creatures so we may to man in an imperfect sense. But birth applies to the heavenly Father alone, this birth in eternity. God catches the soul all at once to himself and his birth is gotten therein. There it is to him well-nigh the same as the Son in the Trinity. I say, well-nigh, for it is there by grace and the Son by nature.—‘ Suppose a man has eternal light, is he prone to temporal sin ? ’—It was after Pentecost that Peter sinned.
90. ‘ Can a man make certain of having nothing more to over- come ? ’—St Paul had things to overcome after he was caught up. And our Lord Jesus Christ had to overcome. Though his soul and body were united with the Godhead and the Godhead is impassible, yet his future pains were present with him, racking all his soul-powers.
91. ‘ When the soul prepares for God by chasing away thoughts and discarding all the things she has relied on and endeavours to get rid of every means but without success, tell me, Sir, what
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ought she to do next ?’—When the images from outside are all gone let her abase herself and lovingly entreat of him somewhat . that she still lacks.—‘ But if she refuses to desire or entreat, being minded to remain quite simple ? —Then let her simply fix her mind on God with vehement longing.— But surely, Sir, longing is a means and she wants to be quite simple and direct: without any images and free from this and that, with not a word or prayer to come between ? ’—I say it is impossible in the unglorified body ; she ought not to expect it.—‘ If that is the case, Sir, then it seems to me her watchword ought to be refusal—of objective things and subjective images—and that is her best way.’— There is no doubt of it; she can do no more. When a soul like this is rapt above herself into naked knowledge of naught it is God who does it at his own good pleasure, absolutely freely, without any help of hers.
92. ‘Sir, can we realize all our minds can grasp ?’—No. I can conceive of things I cannot be: the unglorified body is not so agile as the mind.
93. ‘ What is a reasonable man ? ’—One who is controlled in joy and sorrow, him I call a reasonable man.— How would you define prayer ? ’—St Augustine says, prayer is the soul’s detach- ment from things and attachment to God.—‘ Tell me, Sir, can we be rid of things at once without any trouble ? ’—No, it is always accompanied with pain: that indicates the pull of something higher. If it comes without pain it is no matter for rejoicing. True, St Paul lost things all at once, but afterwards he had to
‘conquer them in detail. Conquests made by suffering are lasting.
94. What God has by nature in unity is not denied to any rational creature, by grace, in his individuality. Rejoicing and sorrowing, that is nature. We must expect nature in people.
95. ‘Sir, are we punished for faults ?’—We are punished for sins and hindered by faults.—‘ But you said that when a man has eternal light he never has anything between and now you say he is prone to sin. Do such people sin and is sin punished with tire ? You certainly did say that they have nothing between. How are these two facts to be reconciled ? How is the sin wiped out ?’ —By the perfect love of the creator to his creature and the creature to his creator: the sin lies between them and in the fire of their love sin burns away. \
96. ‘ Those to whom eternal light has come, do they afterwards remain in a state of love and vision? I am wondering, being established in the one, where there is naught but one, how they manage to be one and other, for there is that in me, when spirit conceives unity, that passes all distinction. Are grace and vision and light all the same? ’—No, not by any means. Take an illustration. The stars are put out by the sun and in the same way
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grace and vision fade when eternal light is given. The highest of the angels draws a form from God and on assuming it, adapts it further to himself and informs therewith the middle ones who pass it on to those below and the lowest give it to the soul and the fiend can copy it. So they may be deceived. But the soul in whom the heavenly Father speaks his Word does not receive from the lower angels: what the highest of the angels draws from God he pours into this soul without the intervention of the rest. Verily I say, seldom or never do people get through angels apparitions of such things as are given in time and temporalities.
97. ‘ What is the difference between nature and spirit ? ’—I call that spirit whereby we are aware what we ought to have and what to leave whether we would or no. Spirit makes us do it, willy-nilly. Not to do it because we do not want to would be nature.
98. “When is nature uppermost ? ’—When we have at heart something we ought to get rid of and will not.
99. ‘How would you distinguish, Sir, between sin, fault and infirmity ? ’—It is sin to cleave with desire to anything that does not make for God. ‘By a fault I mean any accidental falling short of God. And infirmity may be defined as not having the mind fixed on God all the time.
100. *O thou fathomless Truth,’ cries St Paul, ‘ thy ways are past finding out!’ When he cries O, he is thinking of the hidden hoard of the divine nature.—* What hoard ? ’—The wisdom of God. Angels’ and souls’ desire is appeased by nothing but the best. The wisdom of God is savoured when all creatures point (us) towards -—— the best.. The other hoard is God’s art. Art amounts, in temporal things, to singling out the best. True art loses this altogether and abides in the ground of them all. St Paul was caught up above this wonder and above this O and saw the very thing he is seeing to this day, the bond of life meanwhile persisting in his body as form does in its matter. His higher self received naked eternal light ; body was no hindrance, soul received from God.
101. ‘ When is the soul above O ? ’—When she gets the simple impression of divine form, of the image which is the Son himself for so the Father is always letting down the apex of the higher world into the one below.—Anyone on earth may be deceived excepting him in whom the Father bears his Son.
102. ‘ What is the sign of the eternal birth ?’— While a man is subject to sensible affection he has no conception of eternal truth. When he does conceive the eternal truth no creature can comfort or discomfit him. The time when Paul was felled to earth he heard a voice which said to him, ‘ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? ” He said, ‘Who art thou Lord? ’—‘I am Jesus of Nazareth.’
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The voice was not God: God was speaking through an angel. God can no more lose his nature than utter his eternal Word in sound or image. God said through an angel, I am Jesus of Nazareth. He said I, referring to the impartible I of divine nature. The am shows distinction between the Father and the Son. Jesus of Nazareth suggests the union of divine and human nature.
103. St James says, ‘ With the Father of lights is no turning.’ There are three kinds of turning. One of nature, another of will and a third of power. I speak of the first. Turning means changing from one thing to another, becoming more or less, going to and fro. One philosopher says, ‘Things are all fighting their way back to naught.’ If God withdrew support things would all relapse into primeval chaos. The philosopher says, all created things are fluent. That is fluent which is not stationary in itself. If creature could touch bottom heaven would end and creature would be God. Natural change there is none with the Father of lights. Change is due to a longing for rest. If there were rest in him divine nature would pass away and heaven be at an end. He does not alter. What he has like nature is generation. If generation stopped things would all go back to their primeval nothingness. But of what avail are long discussions of God’s nature if we are not aware of his image in us ?
104. ‘Pray Sir, what makes the soul unchangeable ? ’— Stability of soul depends upon three things. First on her having her body well-controlled : what the soul wills, that her body must do without question. If Adam had preserved his natural perfection he could have done whatever he desired and creatures would all have been obedient to him. But when he fell both his own body and all creatures left off obeying him: they were no longer true to him who was untrue to God.—The second thing is to have no attachment to or enjoyment in anything inferior to God.—Thirdly, no quarter must be given to the mortal nature. If Adam had stood firm he would not have become mortal. Adam as God made him on the first day would have survived until the day of judgment. St Paul declares, ‘From the moment God called me not once have I looked back.’ If Adam had seen God in him- self he could not have fallen. He knew that God had made him and what he made him for and this he viewed with carnal pleasure. It was this and nothing else that carried him away.
105. When our Lord Jesus Christ was about to depart to heaven to his Father his disciples were with him at the place of his ascen- sion, distraught and unable to speak or pay attention, so much were they engrossed with the bodily presence of our Lord. And while they stood staring up at the sky there came an angel saying, ‘Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven ? ”
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Why so absorbed in that which, after all, cannot remain with you for ever? Philosophers tell us that creature does not stay, it is flowing all the time back into its source. If the disciples had been proof to sweetness not one of them would have been distraught. For this the angel chid them saying, ‘Why stand ye here?’ as though to say, why occupy your minds so much with the beloved bodily form of our Lord Jesus Christ ? Ye only waste yourselves on temporal things which, after all, are impermanent. ‘ Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?’ God is the form of the soul, the soul’s soul. When spirit is caught up above all images, into the eternal truth, then the soul stops and sees into heaven. It is
‘ man’s highest happiness that she cannot rest until, being rid of
images, she is reflected back into the naught where she has been eternally without herself. Soul becomes Son when she is thus transported over all into the open where God is ; then soul draws out of God and when she is as we have said she is standing at the door. She loses her own nature drinking out of God, on the threshold of gnosis, where nothing enters into her except the eternal, Eternal rest, then, is not given her except by him.
106. Aristotle says, everything partial is painful; the most united is most painful when divided.
107. Three kinds of people receive God. The first receive him for pleasure. God is sweet to them in anticipation so they enter- tain him selfishly and to their cost, with little genuine profit. The second receive him of necessity, in discarding sins, for without God they have no power to do it. The third lose desire and desiring naught receive him wisely and with real benefit. The benefit is this: they recognise each fault with rue and in true penitence contrive that he shall find in us the reflection of what we seek in him; thus getting him to dwell in us as we do in him we attain to angelic life: the upward flight, the simple glance into God’s nature, and at each ending of the act the steady reflection of God so that in multitudinous things like bodily necessity, she is not debarred from the eternal but in multiplicity is still united.
108. ‘ Pray Sir, is it possible for mere creature to partake of God’s nature ? ’—No, for as St Augustine argues, God is remote from matter and that which has no matter has no, parts and is indivisible. Creature can receive no part of God’s nature because God is impartible by nature.— I do not mean part, Sir, in the sense of fragment; I mean part in the sense of community of spirit with spirit in divine nature. That was my idea in asking.’— You must make allowance for the difference in creatures. One is united, another separated. See how one is united. The will of the Father and the obedience of the Son seized, with the power of their common Spirit, in the bare chamber of the virgin heart of
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their chosen vessel Mary, her most pure blood-stream and there- from, with all his members, wrought one faultless man and poured therein a soul complete with powers and this by the power of the Godhead. When, out of chaos (having brooded there for aye) a shining spiritual soul emerged, straightway all imperfection was removed and by the Spirit itself this soul was admitted to the rank of spirit and, sponsored by the soul, the body was received as well. Such is the mode of union of. united creatures.—‘ And how do separated creatures participate God’s nature ? ’—St Peter says that creatures according to their natures partake of God in three ways: as being, as life and as grace. As being, creatures all without exception. As life, receptive creatures, from angels and men downwards. Mark how the Father by his generative power created by the propagation of his Word. From his interior Word burst forth their common mind, by nature the one angel of all creatures. Him he commanded to pour his mobile power into the sun and from the solar energy there showered upon earth, increased and multiplied, trees, beasts and all mankind. As regards the soul, the heavenly Father.draws up with his power the lower powers of the soul; the Son lights up the middle ones
and the Holy Ghost impinging on the sharpness of her mind,
flashes it back to the absolute zero of the Tri-unity. I say to zero : to the boundary line between united and separated creatures. Christ namely, as he was in his first light, bereft of personality which the middle Person of the Trinity preserves therein, where in essential wisdom he is transfixed, confused with God’s all- perfection. Further, the soul gets light from God’s essential revelation. This is her aught and his causeless incomprehensibility. There her aught abides, graven in a point, mounted in the splendour of his eternal love-nature. In this sense mere creature receives and partakes of the divine nature.
109. * When do we lose God altogether ? ’—How do you mean, lose ? What is your idea in asking this ?—‘ I mean lose in the sense of knowing God one without other: free from matter and form and exempt from creatures, which are matter and form, one and other. So that creature conveys to her not one whit of God for all they say that God is in all creatures. How is this loss to be accounted for ? I answer : Three sorts of people are deprived of God. One in material creatures, another in spiritual substances, the third above creature and below God. In the first case there is loss in creatures of gross material nature. This happens when, her senses being sated with their objective forms, she escapes from their separateness to their perfect whole. Thus she loses the dense part of their nature and there remains to her only the sweetness of their innate nobility. In the second case, since no
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caused thing is superior to its cause and the aforesaid sweetness is derived from creatures whereas the soul proceeds from God, like though not of his same nature, therefore the soul being sated, not stinted, with this sweetness will acquire a fresh thirst, for ineffable sweetness, a longing for her first felieity. This finally detaches her from material nature and drives her to pure knowledge of herself and spiritual substances in general. Now she seeks delight in the enjoyments of her kind but finds it not for creatures are all dry and like no better than its like: abiding actuality is the only thing to quench her parching thirst.—In the third case she loses her activity. It happens thus. All spiritual substances act instantaneously though not at any instant of time. Losing instantaneously her materiality she loses each and every use of her separated nature. The thirst is followed by the loss of all variable activities and approach to the outskirts of eternity. Here she awaits the love-light wherein she sees the Trinity. This waiting is personified in Mary, Mary standing without at the sepulchre, waiting in her outward helplessness the embrace of the eternal nature. She saw two angels one at the feet and another at the head. Sight is light-perception. The angel at the head stands for the omnipotence of the majesty of God; the one at the feet, for his subtile nature. They asked her, ‘ Whom dost thou seek ? ’ For the incomprehensibility of God and her passionate desire- nature would form no satisfying union. The question is one of incapacity for his incomprehensible nature ; she wants to embrace the whole extent of him and is not able to. She said, ‘ Jesus of Nazareth!’ He is the keeper in this solitude. Turning, she sees him standing in the likeness of a gardener : in the in-graven nature of the Person imaged in the ground of unity. He questioned her, ‘Whom seekest thou?’ This is the blinding transcendental light, the glory in the midst of the Trinity, which eclipses her own dim understanding and the aforesaid light. “If thou hast borne him hence, tell me,’ she says. She has lost her wits in the overwhelming light of the immediate truth. He says, ‘ Mary !’ using her own name. When the Father, departing from his essential personality, begets out of himself in otherness of Person his Word, the perfect reproduction of himself, he grasps with his paternal hand his impartible, beatific nature and harking back in spirit to himself is with himself as Son well-nigh in otherness. This is her name of whose child David cries, ‘ Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee.’ She would have touched him. Now behold and marvel at her love of God! Not satisfied with rising beyond all creaturely conception she desires to sink into the undifferentiated oneness of the essence of the Three, of God with God, nature with nature, and lose the creature-nature that is hers e’en though that would 30
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not be for her own highest happiness. For in oneness she would lose her knowledge, her love and her enjoyment, in other words, the actual goal of creatures. Hence his warning, ‘Touch me not !’ for this touching means the refunding into God of separated natures, whereas it is to creatures full of love and feeling that the consciousness of unbroken oneness brings supreme felicity. If she runs into God or God runs into her, either way hers is the loss because of the immensity of his essential nature and the insignificance of her creaturehood. As a dewdrop to the ocean are all creatures as compared with their creator. He bids her ‘ Go to Galilee to my disciples and tell them of my resurrection ; there they shall see me as I said.’ Truly a bitter blow! She, who was not satisfied with God in the likeness of the second Person, who wanted to merge into his oneness, and Jesus bids her go to Galilee to bring word of his presence to mere creatures : her, who was impatient of the universal Word in eternal unity ! She obeys him and goes thither. To Galilee, submissive to Jesus. Galilee means crossing (or transition). There is no temporal life. but has to yield to physical necessity. Her watchword then must be, ‘ I no longer live but Christ liveth in me.’ She came to Jesus’ brethren who are three. Uninterrupted union; perfect corre- spondence with the mirror of eternity, without any discrepancy whatever ; complete submission of the soul-powers and loss of all activity in the actual power of God in the essential nature of the body and the soul. Lo, she loses God in the limiting value of creature.
110. Love God with all thy soul. —‘ What do you mean by loving God with all one’s soul ? —Ascending naked to God with nothing. between, that I call whole-souled love. The soul’s life is love, the soul’s love is gnosis and her gnosis is her being. The soul’s real being is delight. The soul is never so near to God but God stands one side soul the other.. Being belies not itself. Augustine says, God is the soul’s soul and being.
114. ‘Pray Sir, can one be moved without sinning ?’—When the animal passions are stirred the movement comes from with- out, not from within. Like a tree blown about by the wind and not torn up from the ground because the roots hold. In a case of agitation allowance must be made both for the person and the cause.
115. ‘ Can one remain the same in good and ill ? — Your bodily nature must always be the sport of joy and sorrow; that it can never lose. But will remains the same in fortune and misfortune, without resentment in the depths of woe. The power of impatience is taken from the recipient of eternal light.
116. ‘How do you mean Sir, the power? Pray explain,’—I
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am using power here with reference to two things. On the one hand there is loss of the power of resentment. And on the other hand the power to be upset is removed from those who are vouch- safed eternal light. To lose their equanimity would be to them hell-torment and impossible. Joys and sorrows are not grown in the ground of eternal truth ; none of creatures’ nurslings are truth’s seedlings and that is the key to this matter of dispassion. |
117. * There is another thing that needs explanation. You say that power is withdrawn and they are not able for it. Is this inability of nature or of grace ? "—Nature acts differently. Were it a natural disability then effort would be vain, which it is not. It is an inability of grace ; the soul is caught in the blaze of divine light and held by the majesty of God in the reflection of the essential good of the third Person. There personal distinction disappears merged in the oneness of the Three. There she is lost to the multiplicity of creatures. That answers your inquiries about the loss of power-in pious souls and how they are impotent to lose their equanimity. Now, at last, they are omnipotent.
118. * For the love of God, Sir, expound to me one statement you are fond of making.”—What is that ?—‘ You say that inability to live up to one’s lights shows the absence of eternal light. The man who has eternal light can put his theories into practice. She only has to see a thing and lo, it is as though it had not been and she is free from it, which alarms me somewhat for I am never guilty of the most venial fault but first it is suggested to my mind and this does not prevent me from committing it.. Tell me, Sir, what is her essential power ? ’—Essential power is one. Her essential power is will-and-love and this is not a prey to images bodily or ghostly, so she is essentially potential and that is what I mean when I call her really free from (passive to) it.
119. ‘I crave your counsel, Sir: In the throes of intellectual conception, at the actual moment of it, I would fain be absolutely free.’—It is impossible : gross matter forbids. Soul is volatile by nature, body is made of dense material. That this dense material should be as nimble as the psychic is not to be expected in the unglorified body. To the eye colour, to the ear sound. There is no harm in that nor is it any barrier to eternal truth. We ought to disregard them it is true, but that cannot be. Yet one thing I can tell you for your comfort : no will or love is lost on these dis- turbers of the peace. Furthermore I say, the power to will and love being absent, her power is what I call essential power. It is a certain test of essence when nothing wrought from without gives any reaction within.
120. In the image-bearing form of God which impartibly con- tains the form of all things there shines the universal form unformed
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in oneness, which radiates one single light into all spirits variously : the highest spirits, as becomes their stable nature, without reflec- tion and souls in this body according to their fitness in this passing time. Mark how this image-bearing light, which the soul receives from its reflection, carries her beyond this mode of changing time into eternity, to the level of the highest spirits. When a mind habitually dwells in its eternal image, God to wit, with more delight than in itself, to such a mind the image-bearing light appears in its eternal form. Then the mind is transported over these manifold and changing things which exist in time and inhabits these rather than itself. Remember, we are dealing here with spirit not with essence.
121. The image-bearing light of divine unity is impartible and yet both essence and nature. Now the question ‘is, how is it essence and how is it nature? The answer is as follows. As essence it subsists in permanent, immanent stillness. It appears as all things in impartible mode ; not in the mode of any creature : it is a mode of its own in that same absolute stillness. There the distinctions of the Persons are sublimed to this simple modeless mode. Behold it now the essence of the Persons and of all things : the essence of the Persons it is by nature but of creatures by grace. For consider. It contains the form of all things impartibly, as essence. In this form it is ingrained in all things. This same impartible form (or image) is also nature and as nature it preserves its one-being in the Trinity and the Trinity its one-being in the unity. And as this one-being in the Trinity it is the impartible potentiality of the Trinity: the nature of the Persons but not that of all things. For if it were the nature of all things it would reproduce itself in all the things in manifestation in its own potential nature. Then things would all be God in the same sense that God is God. Now that is not the case. This shows that it is not the nature of all things but only the nature of the Persons and there exists no thing but has its own appropriate nature.
122. Since the impartible image-bearing light behaves as essence and also as its nature, has it then, I ask, the idiosyncrasies of each or not ?—No, assuredly not. There is no more than one. Its chief idiosyncrasy is that it is shining by itself and is manifest only to the Persons. But in that this image-bearing light falls upon all things and the only thing that shows it is itself, you see it has the character of light. This character belongs to essential essence and it also belongs to its nature’s nature. Here essence and nature are shown to be one being with one idiosyncrasy not two idiosyncrasies ; for supposing there were two then one idiosyncrasy would cause the other; which is impossible: the essential stillness behaves as simple essence and nature’s radiant Trinity as well.
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123. Hence arises the question, in the essence and its nature do things all appear in impartible fashion or no ?— The answer is, Yes, they appear in the essence in immanent stillness and impartible mode: essence and nature one light in light’s summit. The essence is light’s source and centre. As such it is essence. Also in the Trinity nature shines with the light of all things in the same impartible way. But there is stillness in the depths of essence.
124. But how nature in the Trinity is one and three proceed from one is not to be deduced from the impartibility of the first cause. Augustine says, the Persons are one in nature. Hence nature and Persons are alike eternal. Intellect is by nature perfectly intelligible to itself in the light of nature and its con- ception of itself is other than this intellect. Intellect is not begotten ; it is the paternal Person who begets the knower in perfectly conceiving his own Person. Lo, on a sudden, the eternal birth ! Now there are two Persons and in the very act of the Son’s proceeding from the Father, the knower looking back, leaps to the perfect understanding of his Father whence he sprang. In that same origin these two natures know each other with one knowledge. The knowing is the same as the knower himself. Therein they know themselves one love in the omnipotence of the Father whence the knower sprang. This love is their common spiration : in this love they are one. It is the third Person. It starts with the re- birth, the reposing of the knower on the heart of the omnipotent Father. Thus the first river originates the second river, in con- junction with the original source. Hence the several natures are all one in nature and this nature is the same in the several natures. That is to say, Persons.
125. ‘ But what enjoyment do the Persons get out of their natural essence ? —Well, as you may prove, the Persons are in their nature and their nature in the Persons: their nature keeps the Persons. quite distinct while at the same time preserving them in unity. As preserving them in one, nature is simply the power of the Persons. In this same power the three Persons disappear into their nature. For essence and nature form one light in light’s summit, the impartible image of God, essence passing into nature ; moreover all the Persons being clapt into their nature vanish into the dim silence of their interior being. There they retain no per- sonality for with this confinement goes entire loss of property. Lo, God de-spirited! The fathomless deep is fathomed by the master- mind of God. The delight and satisfaction and perfection found therein no nature can describe. That is how the three Persons enjoy their natural essence.
126. ‘ Tell me, when the spirit runs back into its source, does it remain in its original source or in the naught of its idea ? ’—Its
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proper habitation is its source. The naked spark of spirit is the mens. Mens is the natural image of the spirit. But mind is never perfect spirit till it passes into its exemplar and is lost to its own selfhood, escaping in that same natural image into its ideal nature. In this sense its abode is in the naught of its idea rather ‘than in its source. But its origin is its real abode.
127. How is the Son re-born in the Father once he has come forth ?—In this way. The Father grasps the light of his own understanding and bears it into the ground of his essence. Thus the knower is reflected back into the light of his Father’s heart.
128. ‘I should much like to know, about the appearance of the paternal Person in the unity, where it is all-conceiving.’—When the Father conceiving the impartible idea of all things in the unity, appears to himself in Person and essence, lo, the paternal Person vanishes in this mysterious unity and there is an end of the Father and of all distinctions. Unity conceiving all as one, nothing but one appears and communes with itself. But since logically speak- ing there is Person in the unity, it is in this unity that it conceives its nature, appearing and calling itself Person and there too the paternal Person must conceive his unity, as the unity the Person, since both of them have the same nature.
129. Mark how conception differs. There is ideal conception and real conception. Ideal conception is the nature’s general conception of the Persons, all the three. But the real conception
‚is the special conception of each particular Person in its own proper nature in the nature.
130. ‘ Tell me, when God conceives the soul does he conceive her by ideal conception or by real conception ? ’—He conceives her by ideal conception for this general idea embraces all in one ; supposing he conceived her by particular conception she would be bereft of the flower of her nature for in a particular conception nothing is conceived besides the special nature of the thing itself. In other words, its nature as a unit, an expression, not its innate nobility.
131. Mark the noble lineage of the Persons. They are uncreated and without beginning and infinite and inconceivable and are possessed of property which comes to them in the course of nature. Not so with the soul: she is created and has a beginning and is man and has possessions and not property for to her it is all given.
132. ‘ Is the seér as free as the will ? ’—No, not by any means. If it were it would be always in the naked Godhead. But it is not; it has to be doing its work, the ordering and management of the various powers. Will has not got this to do: it bids and forbids.
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133. ‘ Now what I want to know is this: why has the Godhead a feminine name and no feminine function and the Person of the Father on the other hand a masculine name and a feminine function ? ’—The explanation is this. The Godhead contains all things impartibly and the thing in which another is contained is called mother in virtue of this content. It has, however, no maternal act since it does not as such give birth to anything. The Father, again, has a masculine name and a feminine function and the reason is that the Father in Person does not contain things in him, he begets them out of him by the power of his Person. The Father in his proper personality is empty of the content which he impartibly contains. But also he plays a mother’s part, the unity providing him with all that-he brings forth. In this bringing forth he is functioning as mother ; as being free from content in his personal nature he retains his masculine name. The birth of the Son shows the Father travailing. But the Father is Father in that he begets.
134. ‘ Then there is this question : Is the Son born or is he not ' born or is he still to be born ? ’—Let us consider. There are three ‘Persons and that shows the Son is born for each of the Persons has its own peculiar nature. They could none of them have this if the Son had not been born. This proves the Son is born. But the Father changes not at all in his eternal childbirth: could we / attribute to him any deed at all it would be in the sense that anything he does he is doing now and what he is doing now he has always done, for with him there is no past nor future. This proves the Son has not been born : he is now this instant being born and this now is an ever-becoming ; as the Father himself says, ‘ To-day have I begotten thee.’ To-day is the eternal now. It is in this now that his birth is taking place.
135. Remember, the eternal Word is both unborn and born. This is a hard saying, but being in the Trinity the Word must needs be born; it cannot there be called the unborn Word. Taking the eternal Word as Person, it is born; but take it in its essence and the Word is non-existent. Here the Word has to be born.
136. Now mark how we argue that the Word remains the Word unborn. Where the Word issues from the Father as a birth it shows its born nature and proclaims the Father parent. But where the Word proceeds from the Father as a light it is the species of the Father and shows the Father formless for it has the form of the Father. He himself declared, ‘He who seeth me seeth my Father.’ Thus the Word reveals the Father in his own form and shows the Father formless and where the Word proceeds from the Father as understanding it proceeds as abiding within.
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As intelligence leaves not the heart but reveals to himself the man in whom it dwells, so we have the Word in the eternal procession of the Father, the Word which proceeds from understanding, while understanding itself does not issue forth but abides within. In this: procession we have, in the immanent understanding, the Word unborn. This explains what is meant by the unborn Word and how, in the eternal procession, the Word is as it were born of understanding and is still to be born and is this instant being born.
137. One of the masters (Erigena) says: The Father never wrought anything inferior to himself. If this is true, then all the creatures God has ever wrought are God. The question here is, whether the work wrought is as noble as the worker when the worker is God? Let us see. We speak of a working work and a wrought work. The working work is God, the wrought work is not God for it is creature. Hence the explanation. When it is stated that the Father wrought no work inferior to himself that is as good as saying that the Father does one work and one alone in his own Person, to wit, the begetting of his Son in the eternal emanation personal and essential. Only this one work properly belongs to the Father-nature and all other work wrought we attribute not to the Father alone but to the three Persons and one God. But, it may be objected, can the eternal emanation of the Son from the Father be called a work ? You can look at it in this way. Everything existing has its appropriate work ; the work of fire, for instance, is to heat and so with understanding : it is its work to understand itself. Here the work is not inferior to the worker. And in this sense the Son may very well be called the eternal work of the Father. He brings him forth eternally as Person who yet remains in him in essence.
188. Then there is the question: Was the eternal Word con- ceived in Mary in Person and essence and was it in the bosom of the Father as Person and essence as well ?—In the continuous emanation wherein the Word emanates from the Father as it were from understanding, wherein the Word is now being born, in that same emanation Mary received the eternal Word in a point of time as Person and essence, in its immanence : the Word as flowing from the understanding of the Father. It remained in the bosom of the Father as immanent understanding personal and essential. Thus it came, coming after the manner of a flow and remaining within after the manner of an understanding. Ah, what light and grace enlightened souls obtain from this glorious knowledge !
139. To return to Christ. According to theologists, our Lord Jesus Christ’s soul and Lucifer’s were made in the same light.
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The soul of Jesus Christ our Lord was the very wisest soul that ever was. She turned in the creature to the creator wherefore the Father clothed her in the divine garment and flower of her nature. Lucifer turned to the deficiency and he therefore fell, falling eternally. So fall all they who turn away from God to perishable things.
140. But this light which Christ’s soul supernaturally was, this was a creature and our Lord’s soul itself being creature too, which of these two creatures then, theologians ask, is the nobler and the higher ?—I was asking one wise doctor about this and he said that in one way the light is nobler but in another Christ. See what this supernatural light means. When Christ’s soul was created she was taken from herself and haled above herself into the Tri-unity. Therewith she was united. This was not natural to her, it was all above nature, what befell Christ’s soul. What befell was the supernatural light. Herein Christ’s soul was omnipotent, in virtue of this happening. Here the supernatural light is nobler than Christ’s soul, you can see that for yourselves. The adorner is more noble than the thing that it adorns. Take an illustration. Material is adorned by colour while the colour is displayed by the material, since it has no body of its own. Even so Christ’s soul is adorned by this supernatural light and on the other hand Christ’s soul makes manifest this supernatural light.
141. Now mark how the soul of Christ is nobler than the super- natural light. The supernatural light having had its effect upon Christ’s soul (it happens in a flash), Christ has no more to do with this supernatural light, for the union of divine and human nature to one Person happens instantly and once for all. Here the soul of Christ is nobler than the supernatural light.
142. Then as to souls who have overcome themselves so far as to imagine themselves God. This is due to nothing more than their own natural light: they are withdrawn into themselves till they can see themselves in it as light. You know how a blow in the eye will sometimes make one see stars. By stars in their eyes these souls see themselves. The way the supernatural light reveals the soul to herself is this: the naked spark of the soul, her mens, reflects the supernatural light and the pure essence of her spirit seeing itself in this supernatural light fondly imagines itself God. But as you see, it is nothing else than the spirit in the supernatural light, a very great perfection, none the less.
143. Another question is, whether God is (God) by nature or by will ?—He is God not by nature nor by will. If God were God by nature he would be a caused God: nature would have caused him. But that is not the case. And the same with will : were he God by will he would be subject to will and will would
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be superior to God. Which is not true either; but he is God naturally, not by nature; he is God willingly and not by will. That is the answer.
144. Again, did God beget himself or did he beget some other ? —He did not beget himself nor any other: God the Father is unbegotten God. He begat another and not any other. He begat another, i.e. another Person, not something other, 1.€. another nature: the impartible nature of the Father is also the impartible nature of the Son and of their common Spirit. That is the answer.
145. It is a question among theologians whether the nature is common to the Persons and the Persons common to the nature seeing that each Person contains the whole of nature as its natural being. Does God impart himself to human nature ?—Yes.—How can God impart himself to human nature if he is one in essence and distinct in Person ?—Each of the Persons has the nature as a whole and the Person of the Son, by assuming human nature, imparted himself to it, the two natures meeting in his Person. Here divine and human natures are in communion. Only the middle Person took on human nature but the three Persons are . equally allied with the three powers of the soul.—Are these two natures one or are they united ?—They are united and not one. That is one which is in itself without any other and where two meet in one they are united.—How are these two natures united ? —They are united by something between so that each one keeps its own nature. The Person which took on human nature is the medium uniting these two natures. Had this Person not assumed man’s nature the two natures could not have been united. Neither robs the other of its idiosyncrasy : uncreated nature does not rob created nature of its createdness nor does created nature rob the uncreated of its uncreatedness.—How did the Person take man’s nature ?—He assumed manhood and not man.—What is the difference between man and manhood ?—Man originates with perfect man and is not taken by a Person: it is two natures united in one Person. But manhood is emanating God and man and is taken by the Person of the Son and is divine and human nature and corporal nature united in one person. So much for man and manhood.
146. Did the Person take the manhood of our Lady ?—Yes and no. He took the bodily nature of our Lady and the nature of his spirit God produced from naught and poured it into corporal nature ; God inspired his spirit and embodied himself in his body. —Is our Lady, soul and body, one person ?—Yes.—Did he not take the person of our Lady ?—No. The eternal Word of the Father took to itself what was not there already. There was
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Person there for the eternal Word is itself a Person. But human nature was not there. Hence the eternal Word assumed a nature
not a person: God’s nature and man’s nature were united in one
common form with one Person for Christ does not belie himself. —What brings about this union ?—Grace.—What is grace ?— According to Dionysius, grace is the light of the soul, which lights the understanding of the soul. This light is not God but it is something from God. Just as the sunshine is not the sun but something that comes from the sun so God sheds this light into the soul. In this light man knows and loves and to some extent enjoys in time what beatific spirits know and love and feel in eternal life. But here in time man knows and loves in his own way, dimly: he does not see God face to face as a spirit does in eternal life. Yet the mere feeling of him makes a man able to do all things, to practise all the virtues and in the virtues he grows Godlike and the liker God in virtues the more one he is with God. Thus grace makes for union.
147. There is a further question about the union of divine and
„human nature: have they both the same essence in the Person
they are joined in or have they two essences in this non-potential state ?—One Person can have no more than one essence. So far as the personal nature is Person each nature is its own hypostasis. Where two natures are created in one Person that Person has one essence and that in two natures so far as the two natures are unmingled.—Then we may consider nature as apart from essence in the personal union ?—Yes, it can-be seen from another point of view. We find nature in its image unmingled but in the Person ~ two natures are present in one Person as in their hypostasis. So far as both belong to the same Person the Person has one essence and that in two natures. The Persons are eternal, they are in no- wise creature for they have no before or after. Person, that is unity keeping silence albeit big with speech. The Persons are*not contained by the unity: they are in unity.
148. There is the question of the worker and the work, whether the work is as noble, as perfect as the worker? This refers to the Persons of the Trinity. Examine it in this way. The Father is an origin able to originate an origin like unto himself. The Son is such an origin and he together with his Father originates their common Spirit. Here the worker and the work, the effectual work of revelation, are equally perfect. As Dionysius says, ‘ The first cause causes everything equal to itself.’ It was said by one master that the work wrought by God in the patient soul which is all bare of things is nobler than any of the works he has ever wrought in time in heaven or in earth. Just think what this means. The works God has wrought in the angels in heaven
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were wrought by the almighty power of God who created them from naught. He was not hindered in this work. In the case of the soul which also he created out of naught, he endowed her with free will nor would God do a single thing without her free will’s sanction. But when the soul is passive and cleared of every- thing in her that might be a hindrance to God’s will and turning to God of her own account she gives God the freedom of her noble will as though she had never had free will, enabling God to work in her as freely as when he made all things from naught, then this work has two outstanding features. One is that her free will is no obstacle to God although he is so careful not to override free will: God can work as freely as he will, what he will and when he will and how he will just as if the soul had no free will. The second feature is that God being free in himself his work is freely wrought in what by right of its free will might well object but which does in fact raise no objection. And that is why this is the noblest work God does in heaven or earth in respect of creature. Now you may ask what this work is? It is nothing less than God’s revelation of himself to himself in the soul. As sure as he is in himself he himself is in this work. That which is wrought in is turned into that which works there, to the likeness of him, the worker, who has wrought there his like. Here the work which is wrought is as perfect as the worker for it is his living image which is in the work.
149. The soul cannot prepare herself for the reception of God : he who prepares her, him does she receive in preparation. There is a special profit accruing to the soul in the reception of the body of our Lord, which she does not get in any other gift.—‘ What profit is that ? ’—Her nature receives its own nature for Jesus Christ’s nature is our nature. Nature is received by nature albeit not received pure nature: it is received united with divine nature.
150. Mark how these two natures are united. They are not united nature to nature: they are joined together in one Person, z.e. the middle Person. Just as the divine nature is the nature of this Person so is human nature in Christ the Person in the Trinity. For what the eternal Word assumed was humanity not a human person. Had the eternal Word assumed a human person there would be four Persons in the Trinity. But there are not. Jesus Christ’s humanity in the eternal Word is the very Person who has ever been the central figure of the Trinity. There- in is not one nature as there is one Person: the natures are of different nature and are united in the Person. Wherefore whoso receives the body of our Lord receives the middle Person and divine nature and Christ’s manhood, which is Person in the
LIBER POSITIONUM ATT
eternal Word, and Christ’s eternal soul. We receive this all at once in Jesus Christ’s body. This we do not do in any other gift in heaven or earth. Let us therefore prize this gift above all other gifts to be gotten here below.
151. When Christ gave his body to his disciples he said, ‘ Take, eat, this is my body.’ But Christ was mortal. Now the question is, did Christ give his body mortal or immortal? According to Hugo of St Victor, every property of his original body of immor- tality, the whole of these Christ had in him what time he was mortal. So in spite of being mortal he could give his brethren his immortal body ; if he had given them his mortal body the eating of it would have outraged them. Bishop Albertus contro- verts this doctor. I am amazed, he says, that such a great authority should hazard such a foolish statement. Every nature emanates from its appropriate form and Christ’s form here was mortal and no immortal property could emanate from his mortal form. If you really want to know how Christ gave his body, mortal and immortal, he gave his body as mortal in itself and immortal in its form and in its effect for its action is divine and he gave it therefore in another form than that of himself. He gave his body as immortal in its work and in its form and mortal in itself for in his mortal body Christ had power to communicate his body immortally as to its effect but not so as to its own nature.
152. It is a question whether in Christ’s body there remains aught of what it seems ? No, there is seeming without substance and substance without seeming. It seems to be bread but there is really no substance of bread: it is really the body of God without its appearance. So far as its appearance goes it would nourish us like any other food. But if there is really no substance of bread and only the substance of bread feeds the body then how, without the substance of bread, does this nourish the body ?— At the consecration of the body of our Lord the bread loses its nature while it retains its form, its mass, its smell and its feeling of bread, so that it does not disappear. Nothing we can taste and feel, nothing, in short, which is apparent to the outward senses, is God’s body. The outward senses do not lose what pertains to them. They derive their nourishment from such things as re- main. In bread the solid part is all that nourishes. The solidity of the body of Christ is not his body: the solid of the bread remains and that feeds the outward man. This is the explanation of how the sacrament nourishes like any other food. But it really has none of the nature of bread.
153. —When Christ consecrated his body on that Sabbath day and gave it to his disciples, supposing some to have been left and hidden in a bush, would this have died when Christ died on the
478, MEISTER ECKHART
cross ?—If the consecrated body had been maltreated by scourging or in any other way, that would not have hurt it. Christ suffered no hurt by eating in the sacrament for he gave his body in another form than that of himself. Christ suffered not at all in the form he gave. But mark. When Christ died upon the cross since there lay under consecration the body of the soul that died upon the cross therefore all the pain Christ suffered in his human form was suffered by his body under consecration. When Christ died to his manhood there died his body dying under consecration, for there was no more than a single body. This death of Christ was the parting of the soul from body; and since she is impartible therefore wherever she is she is altogether. When she was in the precincts of hell she was not in the body. Neither could she be in his consecrated body. We speak hére of two bodies, but there is only one, that which rose from the dead on the third day.
154. Did the consecrated body rise too ?—Oh yes, it rose up glorified for it was the Christ.
155. Then it was questioned, can the soul while in this body get to the point of receiving without means ?—The answer is both no and yes. In the first sense I declare that anything the soul receives must be by light and grace. Light and grace are her means for she is creature. Soul cannot do without these means as long as she is in the body. On the other hand the affirmative reply, that the soul is able to receive direct while in the body, is argued thus. The soul has within her a likeness of the sovran good. In this likeness she receives like. Here like is being received direct by like. Mark how. In receiving thus without means we have to abide by this likeness.—Wherein does this like- ness consist ?—Likeness to the sovran good consists in motionless- ness of the inner and the outer man : in imperturbability towards all nether things, the outward man not being moved by them nor the inward man disturbed by any mental agitation; he remains firm and unshaken in the here and now. Be so always.
156. One other question. How have all things been in God ?— In his impartible essence all things subsist impartibly, no one more noble than another. But in the essential Word where all things are distinct one thing is nobler than another.
157. Once the spirit is one with God is it at all enriched by virtues ?—Virtues are products of necessity and necessity enriches not the spirit. It is not virtues that enrich the spirit but the fruit of virtues.
158. It may be asked, are we to take the impartible image of all things as Person or essence ?—There are three distinct Persons but not three images to correspond. We may therefore look at the image in the light of impartible essence. But since essence
LIBER POSITIONUM 479
in the Persons is possessed impartibly as essence and partibly as speech (one utterance in the Father and another in the Son and another in the Holy Ghost), therefore we may take the image of the Trinity also as a speaking in the Persons as well as simple essence, for the essence is simple in the Persons no less than in its own particular nature.
159. It may be asked, has the one essence no form to correspond with its essential nature ?—That which reveals another is its form. Essence cannot manifest itself in its essential nature: it is mani- fested by the Persons. Hence the Persons are the form of the essence so far as they reveal it. But Person is one thing, essence is another. Nothing that exists can be without its proper form. If essence exists it must wear its appropriate form. In its own essential form it is manifest to itself as well as to the Persons and none else. But the Persons reveal it to creatures. Here the Persons are its form by the fact of being Persons and making manifest the formless essence. The Persons are the form of the essence inasmuch as they reveal it and in its arcane nature it has its own form latent in itself. This form is none other than the immanent essence itself. Under this essential form the forms of all things are formless for this essential form is the impartible form of all things: this universal form is essential God in its onefold nature and threefold as uttered in the Persons.
160. This is what the spirit clearly sees in a foretaste of delight. The best the spirit can hope for in this body is the perennial feeling of being without all and within all. Without all means in com- plete detachment, remote from self and things. In all means abiding in perpetual stillness : conscious life in its eternal exemplar wherein the universal image shines in impartibility. There the spirit dwells in all: it has attained to its ideal.
161. Doctors discuss that most abstruse and difficult of ques- tions : What is that which is not caused and which, though neither essence nor yet Person, has might and power in the Father and makes the Father father and the essence essence ?— The answer needs your close attention. Nature cannot be without something whose nature it is and the Person of the Father cannot be without someone whose Person it is. Neither can exist without the other so neither can originate the other. At the same time they have a dual character: speech-silence. Where both alike vanish into their common ground they have the same character ; there speech detracts not from silence neither silence from speech. This lapse into their common ground applies to the eternal and eventful nature. Uneventful nature does not interfere: eventful nature goes on speaking while uneventful nature holds its peace. But this uneventful nature must have an hypostasis, i.e, the eternal
480 MEISTER ECKHART
and eventful nature which gives power and might to the objective Person. This makes the Father father and the nature nature; not that the Father has an eventful nature: his is the eternal uneventfulness. This let none gainsay in the interests of eternal truth for it is the eternal truth. The ignorant, remember, are given to attacking the eternal verity.
162. St Dionysius says the highest spirits are poured into the lower in succession, and the lowest are poured into the soul. Now the question is, can the soul receive at all without the aid or knowledge of superior angels ? I answer. Grant one spirit is more toward than the rest then anything received by the other spirits will be known beforehand to this spirit which is better placed than any of the others. Thus a Seraph is more open to divine inspiration than any single spirit in this life and for two reasons. One is that the angel being pure spirit cannot be poured into the soul. While sharing with the body she has no accom- modation for the angel. Secondly, the angel is in the condition of ever beholding the divine light and that is not for any soul in this life. Hence Seraph is more apt to receive God’s inspiration and what’ all spirits receive that spirit knows who is more apt than all the rest. Seraph is not the means of its reception, but, flying as he does nearer to the source of the divine light, it is apparent to him what other spirits are getting of that light. In this sense souls get nothing without the angels knowing.
But let us see, in the working of the soul, if we cannot find some secret way in which enlightened souls receive without the Seraph’s knowledge. Well, as you know, the soul animates the members of the body all unbeknownst to those same members. And though life runs so secretly into all the limbs that they are unaware of its mysterious flow, the work of life is none the less carried on in them. The fact is, God instils his life into the soul and into every spirit surreptitiously : no Seraph knows about this stealthy stream of life. Its reception by the soul is a clandestine act. How should Seraph know ? He knows nothing of himself or of the soul. That is one thing the soul receives without the higher angels knowing.
‘The other she receives in the mysterious spark of her own nature, her undivided likeness. But when like meets like there is no mean between them. Like gives like its likeness all unknown to its unlike, in unbroken union. But Seraph is unlike the soul. A Seraph, as you know, is spirit not embodied in any sort of body... But soul is spirit embodied in something of the kind. And secondly to Seraph in his created nature there came all at once and without addition what he this day possesses in his vision of the eternal light ; for he is constant in his likeness to God. Here the soul is different from the angels for in the reflection of her like
LIBER POSITIONUM 481
she receives a secret influx unknown to any angel. It has been said by John, a sage of Greece, that the likeness of the soul consists in perfect likeness to that which has no like. Dionysius calls the angels ‘divine minds.’ And St Bernard says of those who lead angelic lives while in the flesh that into them there flows the mind of God as it does into the angels. O thou God turned God in thy temporal unified mind, thou spirit inspired into the oneness of God, stand up and do thy crowning work !
You ask how the spirit stands up ? He stands on his two feet, understanding and love, and oversteps all perishable things lest he should foul his feet with matter of corruption.—And what is his crowning work ?—The clear and naked vision of the highest good, God yonder, wherein the highest good shall bathe the spirit in the light of exquisite consciousness. Then shall thou look and see !—Do the light-streams of the highest good affect the spirit ?— —When the Sovran Good floods the spirit with light the spirit is borne up above its natural abode.
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Meister Eckhart was besought by his good friends, “Give us one last word before you go.’ He said, I will give you a rule which is the sum of all my arguments, the key to the whole theory and practice of the truth. 5
It very often happens that a thing seems small to us which is of greater moment in God’s sight than what looms large in ours. Wherefore it behoves us to take alike from God everything he sends us without ever thinking or looking to see which is greatest or highest or best but following blindly God’s lead, that.is to say, our own feeling, our strongest dietates, what we are most prompted to do. Then God gives us the most in the least without fail.
People often shirk the least and prevent themselves getting the most in the least. They are wrong. God is everywise, the same in every guise to him who can see him the same. There is much searching of heart as to whether one’s promptings come from God or no ; but this we can soon tell for if we find ourselves aware of, privy to, God’s will above all when we follow our own impulse, our clearest intimations, then we may take it that they come from God.
Some people make believe to find God as a light or savour ; they may find a light or a savour but that is not to find God. According to one scripture, God shines in the dark where every now and then we may catch a glimpse of him. Where to us God shows least he is often most. So it behoves us to take God the same in every mode and in every thing.
Someone may say, But if I do take God alike in every mode and every thing my mind refuses to abide in that mode or in this one as in that.— Then I say, he is wrong. For finding God in one way rather than another, I allow due credit, but that is not the best. God is everywise, alike in every guise to one who can find him the same. Knowing one guise, such and such, is not knowing God. Finding this or that is not finding God. God is everywise, the same in every guise to one who can see him the same.
Someone may object, But to find God in every mode and in every thing do I not need some special way ?—In whatever way you find God best and are most aware of him that way pursue. Should another way appear quite different from the first you will
482
LIBER POSITIONUM 483
do right in quitting that to close with God in this one which appears as in the one forsworn. It is a counsel of perfection in this manner to attain to such a final certainty and peace that we can see God and are able to enjoy him in any guise and in any thing without having to stop and look for him at all: a boon accorded me. For this and to this end all works are wrought and on the whole works help. The things that do not help let us eschew.
We thank thee, heavenly Father, for giving us thy only Son in whom thou givest thine own self and all things. We pray thee, heavenly Father, as thou has given us thy only Son our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and in whom thou dost deny us naught, nor wouldst nor couldst not, hear us in him and make us pure and free from all our many faults, uniting us with him in thee. Amen.
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Meister Eckhart, by Franz Pfeiffer, Leipzig, 1857; trans- lation, with some omissions and additions, by C. de B. Evans.
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A B5 London, J. M. Watkins, 1924-31. vl 2v. 22 cm.
“In the following translation ‚of vol. 1, the six last and doubtful sermons have been omitted and a few other numbers of Parts r and have been replaced by substitutes, either discoveries of Pfeiffer’s or from independent sources.”’—ıvol. I, p. xiii.
Vol. Ir has title: The works of Meister Eckhardt ... volume II, con- taining, besides the ‘lost’ Book of Benedictus and Pfeiffer’s Tractate Xvil, a number of sermons form the Oxford codex entitled ‘The para-
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