After the _Tabernacle_, this is the most lengthy of our Saint's works,
and it is of great importance as throwing considerable light on
Ruysbroeck's ideas and system. We are introduced to twelve Beguines
discoursing together on the love of Jesus Christ, whence an easy transit
to the real subject-matter of the tract, the contemplative life. To
attain the state of contemplation, four conditions are required: a ray of
divine light, producing illumination, whence, on the part of the soul, a
looking at God, or speculation, passing into contemplation, and this
stage again merging into a state of sublime, ecstatic love. There are
four distinct acts or states of love, corresponding respectively to each
of these stages. Ruysbroeck also shows here the action of the Holy Ghost
in forming the soul to a more intimate knowledge of God.
The second part of the book then opens with a fresh order of ideas.
Ruysbroeck divides mankind into good Christians and wicked men. Holiness
consists of the union of the active and the contemplative life. There
are, however, some who practise neither one nor the other and yet give
themselves out as the most holy of all. Among these Ruysbroeck proceeds
to distinguish four kinds of errors or heresies: (1) Errors against the
Holy Ghost and His Grace; (2) Errors against God the Father and His
power; (3) Errors against God the Son and His Sacred Humanity; and
finally errors against God and all that makes up Christendom, namely, the
Scriptures, the Church, and the Sacraments. On the other hand, the good
Christian is one who loves God with all his heart and mind and soul and
strength.
Blessed John then goes on to discourse of the Divine Nature in Unity and
Trinity. He also discusses man in his material and in his spiritual
nature. The spiritual part of man alone he says, can elevate him to the
mystic life (of which once more the three ways are expounded), and alone
also can show him the reasons wherefore God created the universe. The
three ways of the mystic life are symbolised by the three heavens. The
stars and the planets exercise an influence on terrestrial creatures,
that is to say, upon our bodies, for God alone can touch the soul,
leading it to good and restraining it from evil. Thence also Ruysbroeck
describes the various temperaments of men by reference to the planets and
their conjunction with the signs of the zodiac.
A chapter on our Divine Lord, held up as the Model Religious, serves as a
transition to the third part, which is a treatise, largely symbolical, on
the Passion of Christ, divided and subdivided according to the sequence
of the Canonical Hours.
This is perhaps the most discursive of Ruysbroeck's works, and in that
sense the most difficult to follow, because of the number and length of
the digressions. For instance, when he comes to speak of the planet
Venus, he mentions the sign of the Balance, and this suggests a whole
treatise of thirty-nine chapters on the _Balance of Divine Love_. The
love of God for us, and all the blessings, spiritual and temporal, which
flow from it, are cast into one pan of the balance, and we must weigh
down the other pan with our virtues; and there follows a long
disquisition on the virtues we should practise, prominent among which, as
usual, he ranks humility. Here, further, he finds occasion to work out
his distinction between the spirit and the reasonable soul; and the whole
digression closes with a sad and striking comparison between the fervour
of primitive Christianity and the laxity of his own days.
Bossuet very severely criticised this work, holding it up as an example
of forced allegories, and so forth, and speaking of Ruysbroeck as
involved in the vain speculations of astrologers. This opinion, though
not surprising, is not just, for the author is careful to insist that the
planets have not influence on the will of man as such. But it is natural
that Bossuet should regard such works with suspicion and dislike, for he
had considerable trouble with false mystics, the quietists of his own
day; and even Ruysbroeck's own friends and contemporaries found much in
the volume that was strange, even to startling, and Gerard Groote advised
him not to publish it in its entirety.