The meanes, therefore, which unto us is lent
Him to behold, is on his workes to looke,
Which he hath made in beautie excellent,
And in the same, as in a brasen booke,
To read enregistred in every nooke
His goodnesse, which his beautie doth declare;
For all that’s good is beautifull and faire.
Thence gathering plumes of perfect speculation,
To impe the wings of thy high-flying mynd,
Mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation,
From this darke world, whose damps the soule do blynd,
And, like the native brood of eagles kynd,
On that bright Sunne of Glorie fixe thine eyes,
Cleared from grosse mists of fraile infirmities.
SPENSER: HYMNE OF HEAVENLY BEAUTIE.
WILLOUGHBY. I did not think Atherton had so much artifice in him. He
broke off his last reading from Arnstein’s Chronicle with a mystery
unexplained, quite in the most approved _feuilleton_ style.
GOWER. You have excited the curiosity of the ladies most painfully, I
assure you. I believe I am empowered to say that they cannot listen to
any more of the armourer’s journal until you have accounted for Tauler’s
singular disappearance.
KATE. One word for us and two for yourself, Mr. Gower.
ATHERTON. Ungrateful public! You all know I haven’t a particle of
invention in my nature. It is just because I am not a novelist that I
have not been able to explain everything. Arnstein is, like me, a
matter-of-fact personage, and could not be in two places at once.
However, to relieve you, I am ready to acknowledge that I am in
possession of information about these incidents quite independent of the
irregular entries in his record. There is no secret; it is all matter of
sober history. The facts are these—
One day there came a stranger to Tauler, desiring to confess to him. It
was the remarkable man who had so attracted the attention of Adolf in
the church. He was called Nicholas of Basle, and was well known in the
Oberland as an eminent ‘Friend of God.’ He was one of those men so
characteristic of that period—a layman exercising a wider spiritual
influence than many a bishop. He was perhaps a Waldensian, holding the
opinions of that sect, with a considerable infusion of visionary
mysticism. The Waldenses, and the Friends of God, were drawn nearer to
each other by opposition, and the disorders of the time, as well as by
the more liberal opinions they held in common, and it is not always easy
to distinguish them.
After confession, the layman requested, much to the Doctor’s surprise,
that he would preach a sermon on the highest spiritual attainment a man
may reach in time. Tauler yielded at length to his importunity, and
fulfilled his promise. Nicholas brought his notes of the sermon to
Tauler, and in the course of their conversation, disclosed the object of
his visit. He had travelled those thirty miles, he said, not merely to
listen to the doctor, of whom he had heard so much, but, by God’s help,
to give him some counsel that should do him good. He told him plainly
that the sermon, though excellent in its way, could teach him
nothing—the Great Teacher could impart to him more knowledge in an hour
than Tauler and all his brethren, preaching till the day of doom. Tauler
was first astonished, then indignant, to hear a mere layman address him
in such language. Nicholas appealed to that very anger as a proof that
the self-confidence of the Pharisee was not yet cleansed away, that the
preacher trusted with unbecoming pride in his mastership and great
learning.
You must remember the vast distance which at that day separated the
clerk from the layman, to give to the candour and humility of Tauler its
due value. The truth flashed across his mind. Deeply affected, he
embraced the layman, saying, ‘Thou hast been the first to tell me of my
fault. Stay with me here. Henceforth I will live after thy counsel; thou
shalt be my spiritual father, and I thy sinful son.’
Nicholas acceded to his request, and gave him, to begin with, a kind of
spiritual A B C,—a list of moral rules, commencing in succession with
the letters of the alphabet, which he was to commit to memory and to
practise, together with sundry bodily austerities, for five weeks, in
honour of the five wounds of Christ. But the discipline which followed
was yet more severe. Tauler was directed to abstain from hearing
confession, from study and from preaching, and to shut himself up in his
cell, that, in solitary contemplation of the sufferings and death of
Christ, he might attain true humility and complete renewal. The
anticipated consequences ensued. His friends and penitents forsook him;
he became the by-word of the cloister; his painful penances brought on a
lingering sickness. Borne down by mental and bodily sufferings together,
he applied to his friend for relief. The layman told him that he was
going on well—it would be better with him ere long—he might remit his
severer self-inflictions, and should recruit the body by a more generous
diet.
Nicholas was now called away by important business, he said, and Tauler
was left to himself. His parting advice to his spiritual scholar was,
that if he came to want, he should pawn his books, but sell them on no
account, for the day would come when he would need them once more.
Tauler continued in this trying seclusion for nearly two years,
contemned by the world without as one beside himself, oppressed within
by distress of mind and feebleness of body. It had been forbidden him to
desire, even when thus brought low, any special communication from God
that might gladden him with rapture or consolation. Such a request would
spring from self and pride. He was there to learn an utter
self-abandonment—to submit himself without will or choice to the good
pleasure of God—to be tried with this or any other affliction, if need
were, till the judgment day.
Now it came to pass, when he had become so ill that he could not attend
mass or take his place in the choir as he had been wont, that, as he lay
on his sickbed, he meditated once more on the sufferings and love of our
Lord and Saviour, and thought on his own life, what a poor thing it had
been, and how ungrateful. With that he fell into a marvellous great
sorrow, says the history, for all his lost time and all his sins, and
spake, with heart and mouth, these words:—
‘O merciful God, have mercy upon me, a poor sinner; have mercy in thine
infinite compassion, for I am not worthy to live on the face of the
earth.’
Then as he sat up waking in his sickness and sorrow, he heard a voice
saying, ‘Stand fast in thy peace, trust God, remember that he was once
on the earth in human nature, healing sick bodies and sick souls.’ When
he heard these words he fell back fainting, and knew no more. On coming
to himself, he found that both his inward and outward powers had
received new life. Much that had before been strange now seemed clear.
He sent for his friend, who heard with joy what he had to tell.
‘Now,’ said Nicholas, ‘thou hast been for the first time moved by the
Highest, and art a partaker of the grace of God, and knowest that though
the letter killeth, the Spirit giveth life. Now wilt thou understand the
Scripture as never before—perceive its harmony and preciousness, and be
well able to show thy fellow Christians the way to eternal life. Now one
of thy sermons will bring more fruit than a hundred aforetime, coming,
as it will, from a simple, humbled, loving heart; and much as the people
have set thee at nought, they will now far more love and prize thee. But
a man with treasure must guard against the thieves. See to it that thou
hold fast thy humility, by which thou wilt best keep thy riches. Now
thou needest my teaching no longer, having found the right Master, whose
instrument I am, and who sent me hither. Now, in all godly love, thou
shalt teach me in turn.’
Tauler had pledged his books for thirty gulden. The layman went
immediately and redeemed them at his own cost, and by his advice Tauler
caused it to be announced that in three days he would preach once more.
You have already heard how our good friend Adolf records the unhappy
result of this first attempt. Tauler went with his trouble to Nicholas,
who comforted him by the assurance that such farther trial was but a
sign of the careful love which carried on the work within. There must
have been some remnant of self-seeking which was still to be purged
away. He advised him to wait awhile, and then apply for permission to
deliver a Latin address to the brethren in the school. This he at last
received, and a better sermon they never heard. So the next preacher, at
the close of his discourse, made the following announcement to the
congregation: ‘I am requested to give notice that Doctor Tauler will
preach here to-morrow. If he succeeds no better than before, the blame
must rest with himself. But this I can say, that he has read us in the
school a prelection such as we have not heard for many a day; how he
will acquit himself now, I know not, God knoweth.’
Then followed the overpowering discourse, of whose effects you have
heard; and from this time forward commenced a new æra in Tauler’s public
life. For full eight years he laboured unremittingly, with an
earnestness and a practical effect far surpassing his former efforts,
and in such esteem with all classes that his fellow-citizens would seem
to have thought no step should be taken in spiritual matters, scarcely
in temporal, without first seeking counsel of Tauler.
LOWESTOFFE. A most singular story. But how have all these minute
circumstances come down to us?
ATHERTON. When Tauler was on his death-bed he sent for Nicholas, and
gave him a manuscript, in which he had written down their conversations,
with some account of his own life and God’s dealings towards him, His
unworthy servant, requesting him to make thereof a little book. The
layman promised to do so. ‘But see to it,’ continued the Doctor, ‘that
you can conceal our names. You can easily write ‘The Man and the
Doctor’—for the life and words and works which God hath wrought through
me, an unworthy, sinful man, are not mine, but belong unto Almighty God
for ever. So let it be, for the edifying of our fellow men; but take the
writing with thee into thy country, and let no man see it while I live.’
This narrative has been preserved, and there is no difficulty in
discerning in the Doctor and the man, Tauler and Nicholas of Basle.[117]
You will now let me resume my reading, I suppose.
Chronicle of Adolf Arnstein, continued.
1344. _Eve of St. Dionysius._—I here set down passages from sermons
I have at sundry times heard Doctor Tauler preach. I have made it my
wont to go straight home as soon as the service has been ended, and
write what I could best remember. The goodly sayings which follow
are copied from those imperfect records, and placed here for my
edification and that of my children and others after me.
From a sermon on Christ’s teaching the multitude out of the
ship.—The soul of the believing man, wherein Christ is, doth find
its representation in that ship. Speaking of the perpetual peace
such souls may have, despite what storm and commotion soever, he
added (not a little to my comfort): ‘But some of you have not felt
all this; be not ye dismayed. There are poor fishers as well as
rich; yea, more poor than rich. Hold this as unchangeably sure, that
the trials and struggle of no man are of small account. If a man be
but in right earnest, longeth to be a true lover of God, and
perseveres therein, and loves those he knows or deems to be
such,—doth heartily address himself to live fairly after Job’s
pattern, and intend God unfeignedly in his doing or not doing, such
a man will assuredly enter into God’s peace, though he should tarry
for it till his dying day. Even those true friends and lovers of God
who enjoy so glorious a peace have disquiet and trouble of their own
in that they cannot be towards their faithful God all they would,
and in that even what God giveth is less large than their desires.’
‘In the highest stage of divine comfort is that peace which is said
to pass all understanding. When that noblest part of the soul to
which no name can be given is completely turned to God and set on
Him, it takes with it all those faculties in man to which we can
give names. This conversion involves both that in God which is
Nameless and that in the consciousness of man which can be named.
These are they whom St. Dionysius calls godly-minded men. As Paul
saith, ‘That ye may be rooted and grounded in love; and understand
with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and
depth.’ For the height and depth which are revealed in such men can
be apprehended by no human sense or reason; they reach beyond all
sense out into a deep abyss. This great good, light, and comfort, is
inwardly revealed only to those who are outwardly sanctified and
inwardly illuminated, and who know how to dwell inwardly within
themselves. To such, heaven and earth and all creatures are as an
absolute Nothing, for they themselves are a heaven of God, inasmuch
as God dwelleth and rests in them.’
‘God draweth these men in such wise into Himself, that they become
altogether pleasing unto Him, and all that is in them becomes, in a
super-essential way, so pervaded and transformed, that God himself
doeth and worketh all their works. Wherefore, clearly, such persons
are called with right—Godlike (_Gottformige_). For if we could see
such minds as they truly are, they would appear to us like God,
being so, however, not by nature, but by grace. For God lives,
forms, ordaineth, and doeth in them all his works, and doth use
Himself in them.’
‘It fares with such men as with Peter, when, at the miraculous
draught of fishes, he exclaimed, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful
man, O Lord!’ See! he can find no words, no way of utterance, for
that within. So is it, I say, with such men—they find themselves
empty of fit words and works. And that is the first mode. The other
is that they fall utterly into their own groundless Nothing (_in ihr
grundloses Nichts_), and become so small and utterly nothing in God
as quite to forget all gifts they have received before, and do, as
it were, pour themselves back again absolutely into God (whose they
properly are) as though such bestowments had never been theirs. Yea,
they are withal as barely nothing as though they had never been. So
sinks the created Nothing in the Uncreated, incomprehensibly,
unspeakably. Herein is true what is said in the Psalter, ‘Deep
calleth unto deep.’ For the uncreated Deep calls the created, and
these two deeps become entirely one. Then hath the created spirit
lost itself in the spirit of God, yea, is drowned in the bottomless
sea of Godhead. But how well it is with such a man passeth all
understanding to comprehend. Such a man becomes, thirdly, essential,
virtuous, godly; in his walk, loving and kindly, condescending and
friendly towards all men, so that no man can detect in him any fault
or transgression, any vice or crime. Moreover, he is believing and
trustful towards all men, hath mercy and sympathy for every man
without distinction; is not austere and stern, but friendly, gentle,
and good, and it is not possible that such men should ever be
separated from God. Unto such perfectness may all we be graciously
helped of God our Saviour, unto whom be praise for ever. Amen.’[118]
‘The ground or centre of the soul is so high and glorious a thing,
that it cannot properly be named, even as no adequate name can be
found for the Infinite and Almighty God. In this ground lies the
image of the Holy Trinity. Its kindred and likeness with God is such
as no tongue can utter. Could a man perceive and realize how God
dwelleth in this ground, such knowledge would be straightway the
blessedness of salvation. The apostle saith, ‘be renewed in the
spirit of your mind (_Gemüthes_).’ When the mind is rightly
directed, it tendeth towards this ground whose image is far beyond
its powers. In this mind we are to be renewed, by a perpetual
bringing of ourselves into this ground, truly loving and intending
God immediately. This is not impossible for the mind itself, though
our inferior powers are unequal to such unceasing union with God.
This renewal must take place also in the spirit. For God is a
spirit, and our created spirit must be united to and lost in the
uncreated, even as it existed in God before its creation. Every
moment in which the soul so re-enters into God, a complete
restoration takes place. If it be done a thousand times in a day,
there is, each time, a true regeneration: as the Psalmist
saith,—‘This day have I begotten thee.’ This is when the inmost of
the spirit is sunk and dissolved in the inmost of the Divine Nature,
and thus new-made and transformed. God pours Himself out thus into
our spirit, as the sun rays forth its natural light into the air,
and fills it with sunshine, so that no eye can tell the difference
between the sunshine and the air. If the union of the sun and air
cannot be distinguished, how far less this divine union of the
created and the uncreated Spirit! Our spirit is received and utterly
swallowed up in the abyss which is its source. Then the spirit
transcends itself and all its powers, and mounts higher and higher
towards the Divine Dark, even as an eagle towards the sun.’
‘Yet let no man in his littleness and nothingness think of himself
to approach that surpassing darkness,—rather let him draw nigh to
the darkness of his ignorance of God, let him simply yield himself
to God, ask nothing, desire nothing, love and mean only God, yea,
and such an unknown God. Let him lovingly cast all his thoughts and
cares, and his sins too, as it were, on that unknown Will. Beyond
this unknown will of God he must desire and purpose nothing, neither
way, nor rest, nor work, neither this nor that, but wholly subject
and offer himself up to this unknown will. Moreover, if a man, while
busy in this lofty inward work, were called by some duty in the
Providence of God to cease therefrom and cook a broth for some sick
person, or any other such service, he should do so willingly and
with great joy. This I say that if it happened to me that I had to
forsake such work and go out to preach or aught else, I should go
cheerfully, believing not only that God would be with me, but that
He would vouchsafe me it may be even greater grace and blessing in
that external work undertaken out of true love in the service of my
neighbour than I should perhaps receive in my season of loftiest
contemplation.’
‘The truly enlightened man—alas! that they should be so few—scarce
two or three among a thousand—sinks himself the deeper in his Ground
the more he recognises his honour and his blessedness, and of all
his gifts ascribes not even the least unto himself. Our
righteousness and holiness, as the prophet saith, is but filthiness.
Therefore must we build, not on our righteousness, but on the
righteousness of God, and trust, not in our own words, works, or
ways, but alone in God. May this God give us all power and grace to
lose ourselves wholly in Him, that we may be renewed in truth, and
found to His praise and glory. Amen.’[119]
Speaking of the publican in the temple, he put up a prayer that God
would give him such an insight as that man had into his own Nothing
and unworthiness;—‘That,’ said he, ‘is the highest and most
profitable path a man can tread. For that way brings God continually
and immediately into man. Where God appears in His mercy, there is
He manifest also with all His nature—with Himself.’[120]
I understand the Doctor as teaching three states or conditions
wherein man may stand; that of nature, by the unaided light of
reason, which in its inmost tends Godward, did not the flesh hinder;
that of grace; and a higher stage yet, above grace, where means and
medium are as it were superseded, and God works immediately within
the transformed soul. For what God doeth that He is. Yet that in
this higher state, as in the second, man hath no merit; he is
nothing and God all. In the course of this same sermon he described
humility as indispensable to such perfectness, since the loftiest
trees send their roots down deepest. He said that we should not
distress ourselves if we had not detailed to our confessor all the
short-coming and sin of our hearts, but confess to God and ask His
mercy. No ecclesiastical absolution can help us unless we are
contrite for our sin before God. We are not to keep away from the
Lord’s body because we feel so deeply our unworthiness to partake of
the sacrament, seeing that they who are whole need not a physician,
but they that are sick.[121]
‘There are some who can talk much and eloquently of the incarnation
and bitter sufferings of Christ, who do with tears apostrophise him
from head to foot as they present him to their imagination. Yet is
there often in this more of sense and self-pleasing than of true
love to God. They look more to the means than to the end. For my
part, I would rather there were less of such excitement and
transport, less of mere sweet emotion, so that a man were diligent
and right manful in working and in virtue, for in such exercise do
we learn best to know ourselves. These raptures are not the highest
order of devotion, though would that many a dull heart had more of
such sensibility! There are, as St. Bernard hath said, three kinds
of love, the sweet, the wise, and the strong. The first is as a
gilded image of wood, the second as a gilded image of silver, the
third an image of pure gold. One to whom God hath vouchsafed such
sweetness should receive it with lowliness and thankfulness,
discerning therein his weakness and imperfection, in that God has to
allure and entice him as a little child. He should not rest at this
point, but press on, through images, above all image and figure;
through the outward exercise of the senses to the inward ground of
his soul, where properly the kingdom of God is. There are many
altogether at home amid sensuous imagery, and having great joy
therein, whose inner ground is as fast shut to them as a mountain of
iron through which there is no way.’
‘Dionysius writeth how God doth far and superessentially surpass all
images, modes, forms, or names that can be applied to Him. The true
fulness of divine enlightenment is known herein that it is an
essential illumination, not taking place by means of images or in
the powers of the soul, but rather in the ground itself of the soul,
when a man is utterly sunk in his own Nothing. This I say against
the ‘free spirits,’ who persuade themselves that by means of certain
appearances and glances of revelation they have discerned the truth,
and please themselves with their own exaltation, knowledge, and
wisdom; going about in a false emptiness (_Ledigkeit_) of their own;
and speaking to others as though they were not yet advanced beyond
the use of forms and images; bringing, with their frivolous
presumption, no small dishonour upon God. But know ye, Christians
beloved, that no truly pious and God-fearing man gives himself out
as having risen above all things, for things in themselves utterly
insignificant and mean are yet, in the truth, right and good; and
though any one may be in reality elevated above such lesser matters,
yet doth he love and honour them not less than heretofore; for the
truly pious account themselves less than all things, and boast not
that they have surpassed or are lifted above them.’[122]
‘O, dear child, in the midst of all these enmities and dangers, sink
thou into thy ground and thy Nothingness, and let the tower with all
its bells fall on thee, yea, let all the devils in hell storm out
upon thee, let heaven and earth with all their creatures assail
thee, all shall but marvellously serve thee—sink thou only into thy
Nothingness, and the better part is thine!‘[123]
‘Yet some will ask what remains after a man hath thus lost himself
in God? I answer, nothing but a fathomless annihilation of himself,
an absolute ignoring of all reference to himself personally, of all
aims of his own in will and heart, in way, in purpose, or in use.
For in this self-loss man sinks so deep into the ground that if he
could, out of pure love and lowliness, sink himself deeper yet, and
become absolutely nothing, he would do so right gladly. For such a
self-annihilation hath been brought to pass within him that he
thinketh himself unworthy to be a man, unfit to enter God’s house
and temple, and to look upon a crucifix painted on the wall; yea,
such a man deemeth himself not so good by far as the very worst.
Nevertheless, as far as regards the sufferings and death of the
Lord—the birth and incarnation of the Son of God—His holy and
perfect life that He lived on earth among sinful men, all this such
a man did never before so heartily and strongly love as now he doth;
yea, now his care is how he may order his life right Christianly,
and fashion it anew, and out of fervent love toward his Lord and
Saviour, exercise himself without ceasing in all good work and
virtue.’[124]
‘There are those who thoughtlessly maim and torture their miserable
flesh, and yet leave untouched the inclinations which are the root
of evil in their hearts. Ah, my friend, what hath thy poor body done
to thee, that thou shouldst so torment it? Oh folly! mortify and
slay thy sins, not thine own flesh and blood.’[125]
WILLOUGHBY. My dear Atherton, this is grand doctrine. May I never be
farther from the kingdom of heaven than such a mystic. Surely Luther’s
praise is just. Compare such theology as this with the common creed and
practice of that day. The faults are nearly all those of the time—the
excellence his own.
ATHERTON. It is wonderful to see how little harm his Platonism can do to
a man so profoundly reverent, so fervent in his love to Christ. How
often he seems to tread the verge of Eckart’s pantheistic abyss, but
never falls into it! His heart is true; he walks uprightly, and so,
surely. That conception of sin as selfishness—that doctrine of
self-abandonment, death in ourselves and life in God—these are
convictions with him so deep and blessed—so far beyond all Greek
philosophy—so fatal to the intellectual arrogance of pantheism, that
they bear him safe through every peril.
GOWER. His sermons cannot fail to do one good—read with the heart and
imagination. But if you coldly criticise, and can make no allowance for
the allegories and metaphors and vehement language of the mystic, you
may shut the book at once.
ATHERTON. And shut out blessing from your soul. It is not difficult to
see, however, where Tauler’s danger lies. There is an excess of negation
in his divinity. He will ignore, deny, annihilate almost everything you
can name,—bid you be knowledgeless, desireless, motionless,—will enjoin
submission to the _unknown_ God (when it is our triumph in Christ that
we submit to the Revealed and Known)—and, in short, leaves scarcely
anything positive save the mysterious lapse of the soul’s Ground, or
Spark, into the Perfect, the Essential One. He seems sometimes to make
our very personality a sin, as though the limitations of our finite
being were an element in our guilt. The separation of a particular
faculty or higher power of the soul which unites with God, while the
inferior powers are either absorbed or occupied in the lower sphere,
this is the great metaphysical mistake which lies at the root of so many
forms of mysticism. With Tauler the work of grace consists too much of
extremes—it dehumanizes in order to deify.
WILLOUGHBY. But that, remember, is no fault of Tauler’s especially. He
does but follow here the ascetic, superhuman aspiration of a Church
which, trying to raise some above humanity, sinks myriads below it.
ATHERTON. Granted. That error does not lessen my love and admiration for
the man.
GOWER. Your extracts show, too, that the Nothingness towards which he
calls men to strive is no indolent Quietism, nor, as with Eckart, a kind
of metaphysical postulate, but in fact a profound spiritual
self-abasement and the daily working out of a self-sacrificing
Christ-like character.
ATHERTON. Blessed are his contradictions and inconsistencies! Logic
cannot always reconcile Tauler with himself—our hearts do.[126]
WILLOUGHBY. Never surely was a theory so negative combined with an
action more fervently intense—a positiveness more benign.
GOWER. In his life we understand him,—that is at once the explanation
and vindication of what his mysticism means.
ATHERTON. Few, however, of his fellow-mystics rose, so far as Tauler,
above the peculiar dangers of mysticism. Even the good layman, Nicholas
of Basle, was a man of vision, and assumed a kind of prophecy. Tauler
and the _Theologia Germanica_ stand almost alone in rejecting the
sensuous element of mysticism—its apparitions, its voices, its celestial
phantasmagoria. With many of his friends mysticism became secluded,
effeminate, visionary, because uncorrected, as in his case, by
benevolent action, by devoted conflict against priestly wrong.
KATE. Tauler, then, was a Protestant in spirit—a genuine forerunner of
the Reformation?
ATHERTON. Unquestionably.
MRS. ATHERTON. But what could the common people make of this high ideal
he sets before them? Could they be brought heartily to care about that
kind of ultra-human perfectness? Beautiful it must have been to hear
this eloquent man describe the divine passion of the soul, how—
Love took up the harp of life and smote on all the chords with
might,
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of
sight,
—but bewildering, rather?
ATHERTON. I am afraid so. Yet there was much they evidently did
understand and relish.
GOWER. In fact the Reformers were wanted, with their Bible, with their
simpler, homelier teaching—so much less ascetic, so much more human—and
with their written word, interpreted more soundly; coming, not to
extinguish that inner light, but to enclose, as in a glass, the precious
flame, otherwise fitfully blown about by the gusts of circumstance and
feeling.
WILLOUGHBY. But none the less let us praise the man who lived so nobly
by the light he had—who made human works as nothing, that God might be
all—who took the heavenly kingdom from the hands of the priest, and
proclaimed it in the heart of every spiritual worshipper.
GOWER. Though Tauler adopts at times the language of Eckart, no one can
fail to discern a very different spirit. How much more profound his
apprehension of sin—his sense of need; how much more prominent Christ,
rescuing and purifying the stricken soul. Tauler lays man in the dust,
and keeps him there. Eckart suffers him to expand from Nothing to
Infinity. Summarily, I would put the difference thus:—With Eckart the
language of Christianity becomes the metaphorical expression for
pantheism; with Tauler, phraseology approaching pantheism is the
metaphorical expression of a most truly Christian conviction. If the
former sins even more in the spirit than in the letter, in the case of
the latter the sins of the letter are redeemed by the excellence of the
spirit.
Note to page 246.
The passages in the text are from the second _Sermon on Fifth Sunday
after Trinity_, _Predigten_, ii. pp. 353, &c. The spiritual conflict and
desolation which had shaken Tauler’s nature to its depths bears fruit in
this profound humility. Self-abasement is the cardinal doctrine of all
his sermons; his lowliness of spirit the safeguard of his theology from
all dangerous error. The troubles through which he and Suso were made to
pass, gave them an antidote to the poison of the current ecclesiastical
doctrine. Consciences so stirred were not to be cast into a sleep by the
mesmeric passes of a priestly hand. He only who had hurt could heal;
they fled from man to God—from means to the End, and so, like the
patriarch, their eye saw God, and they repented and abhorred themselves
as in dust and ashes. Never after that could they believe in salvation
by works, and so they became aliens from the spirit of that Church whose
pale retained them to the last.
Tauler and his brethren will ‘escape _distinction_;‘—not that which is
between creature and Creator, or between good and evil—that rather which
the Pharisee makes when he says, ‘I am holier than thou.’ It is their
very anxiety to escape all assumption of merit which partly vitiates the
letter of their theology, and makes them speak as though grace
substituted God for man within the renewed nature. They will escape the
dry and fruitless distinctions of the schoolman. They will escape the
distinction which selfish comfort-worshippers make so broad between ease
and hardship. Sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure, are trustfully accepted
as alike coming from the hand of love.
Even when Tauler speaks of self-surrender to an ‘_unknown_ Will,’ we
must not press his words too far. It is very evident that he who reaches
this coveted abandonment is not supposed to have forgotten that gracious
character under which God has made Himself known—of which Christ is the
manifestation. In casting his care on an unknown Will, Tauler acts on
the conviction that he is cared for,—this fact he knows; but precisely
what that care may deem best for him he does not know. He surrenders, in
true self-distrust, his personal notion of what may be the Divine good
pleasure in any particular case. Few lessons were more needed than this
in Tauler’s day, when superstition found signs and wonders everywhere,
and fanaticism so recklessly identified human wrath and Divine
righteousness.
Tauler’s ‘state above grace,’ and ‘transformed condition of the soul, in
which God worketh all its works,’ are perhaps little more than
injudicious expressions for that more spontaneous and habitual piety
characteristic of the established Christian life,—that religion which
consists so much more in a pervading spirit of devotion than in
professed and special religious acts. He certainly inculcates no proud
and self-complacent rejection and depreciation of any means. Rather
would the man who learnt Tauler’s doctrine well find all persons,
objects, and circumstances, made more or less ‘means of grace’ to him.
In a landscape or a fever, an enemy or an accident, his soul would find
discipline and blessing, and not in mass and penance and paternoster
merely;—for is not God in all things near us, and willing to make
everything minister to our spiritual growth? Such teaching was truly
reformatory, antagonistic as it was to that excessive value almost
everywhere attached in those days to works and sacraments.
So again with Tauler’s exhortation to rise above symbol, image, or
figure. He carries it too far, indeed. Such asceticism of the soul is
too severe a strain for ordinary humanity. It is unknown to His
teaching, who spake as never man spake. Yet there lay in it a most
wholesome protest against religious sentimentalism, visionary
extravagance, hysterical inoperative emotions,—against the fanciful
prettinesses of superstitious ritual and routine.
Tauler’s ‘Nothing,’ or ‘Ground’ of the soul, may be metaphysically a
fiction—religiously it indicates the sole seat of inward peace. Only as
we put no trust in things earthly,—only as amidst our most strenuous
action the heart saith ever, ‘Thy will be done,’—only as we strive to
reduce our feverish hopes and fears about temporal enjoyment as nearly
as we can to Nothing,—are we calm and brave, whatever may befal. This
loving repose of Faith is Eternal Life, as sin is so much present
death;—it is a life lived, in harmony with the everlasting, above the
restlessness of time;—it is (in Eckart’s phrase, though not in Eckart’s
sense) a union with the Allmoving Immobility—the divine serenity of Love
Omnipotent, guiding and upholding all without an effort.
Note to page 248.
The above is from the _Sermon on the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity_,
ii. p. 546. He says in this discourse that the soul has various names,
according to the different operations and attributes belonging to it. It
is called Anima, or soul; Spirit; and Disposition (_gemüth_), a
marvellous and very lovely thing—for the memory, the understanding, and
the will of man are all collected therein. The Disposition hath an
_objectum_ above the other powers, and as it follows or forsakes that
aim so is it well or ill with the rest of man’s nature. Fourthly, the
soul is called mens or mensch (_man_), and that is the ground which is
nameless, and wherein dwells hidden the true image of the Holy Trinity.
(Compare _Third Serm. on Third Sunday after Trin._, ii. p. 305, and
_Serm. on Eleventh Sunday after Trin._, ii. p. 435.) By the synteresis,
or synderesis, Tauler appears to mean the native tendency of the soul
towards God. With Tauler and the mystics generally this tendency is an
original capacity for knowing God immediately. The term is not peculiar
to the mystics, but it bears in their writings a signification which
non-mystical theologians refuse to admit. The distinction usually made
between συντήρησις and συνείδησις is simply this: the former expresses
that constitution of our nature whereby we assent at once to the axioms
of morality, while the latter denotes that judgment which man passes on
himself in conformity with such constitution of his moral nature. The
second is related to the first somewhat as recollection is to memory.
On this divine centre or substratum of the soul rests the fundamental
doctrine of these mystics. So Hermann of Fritslar says, speaking of—di
kraft in der sêle di her heizit _sinderisis_. In dirre kraft mac inkein
krêatûre wirken noch inkein krêatûrlîch bilde, sunder got der wirket dar
in âne mittel und âne underlâz. _Heiligenleben_, p. 187. Thus, he says
elsewhere, that the masters speak of two faces of the soul, the one
turned toward this world, the other immediately to God. In the latter
God doth flow and shine eternally, whether man knoweth it or not. It is,
therefore, according to man’s nature as possessed of this divine ground,
to seek God, his original; it must be so for ever, and even in hell the
suffering there has its source in the hopeless contradiction of this
indestructible tendency.
Note to page 251.
This passage is from the _Third Serm. on Thirteenth Sun. after Trin._,
ii. p. 480. The same remarkable combination of inward aspiration and
outward love and service is urged with much force and beauty in the
_Sermon on Fifth Sunday after Trinity_, and in that on the _Sixteenth
Sunday after Trinity_, ii. p. 512.
Tauler speaks of this Ground of the soul as that which is inseparable
from the Divine nature, and wherein man hath by Grace what God is by
nature. _Predigten_, ii. p. 199. He quotes Proclus as saying that, while
man is busied with images, which are beneath us, and clings to such, he
cannot possibly return into his Ground or Essence. ‘If thou wilt know by
experience that such a Ground truly is, thou must forsake all the
manifold and gaze thereon with thine intellectual eye alone. But wouldst
thou come nearer yet, turn thine intellectual eyesight therefrom—for
even the intellect is beneath thee—and become one with the One—that is,
unite thyself with Unity.’ This unity Proclus calls the ‘calm, silent,
slumbering, and incomprehensible divine Darkness.’ ‘To think, beloved in
the Lord, that a heathen should understand so much and go so far, and we
be so behind, may well make us blush for shame. To this our Lord Jesus
Christ testifies when he says the kingdom of God is within you. That is,
this kingdom is born in the inmost Ground of all, apart from all that
the powers of the mind can accomplish.... In this Ground the eternal
heavenly Father doth bring forth his only-begotten Son, a hundred
thousand times quicker than an instant, according to our
apprehension,—ever anew in the light of Eternity, in the glory and
unutterable brightness of his own Self. He who would experience this
must turn himself inward far away from all working of his outward and
inward powers and imaginations—from all that ever cometh from without,
and then sink and dissolve himself in the Ground. Then cometh the power
of the Father, and calls the man into Himself through his only-begotten
Son; and so the Son is born out of the Father and returneth unto the
Father, and such a man is born in the Son of the Father, and floweth
back with the Son into the Father again, and becomes one with them’ (p.
203, and Schmidt, p. 127). Yet, with all this, Tauler sincerely
repudiates any pantheistic confusion of the Divine and human, and is
always careful to state that this highest attainment—the vanishing point
of Humanity, is the work of Grace. Some of his expressions in describing
this union are almost as strong as those of Eckart (_Third Serm. on
Third Sun. after Trin._, ii. p. 310), but his general tone far more
lowly, practical, and true.
Note to page 253.
We best ascertain the true meaning of Tauler’s mystical phraseology, and
discover the point at which he was desirous that mysticism should arrest
its flight, by listening to the rebukes he administers to the
unrighteous, pantheistic, or fantastical mystics of the day. A sermon of
his on Psalm xci. 5 (_Pred._ vol. i. p. 228) is of great importance in
this respect.
Speaking of such as embrace a religious life, without any true vocation,
he points out how, as they follow only their own inclinations, they
naturally desire rest, but are satisfied with a merely natural inaction
instead of that spiritual calm which is the gift of God. Consequently,
while the devout mind (as Gregory saith) cannot tolerate self-seeking,
or be content with any such mere negation, these men profess to have
attained the elevation of true peace while they have done nothing more
than abstain from all imagination and action. Any man, remarks Tauler,
very sensibly, may do this, without any especial grace from God. Such
persons live in indolence, become self-complacent and full of pride.
True love ever longs to love more; the more of God it hath the more it
covets. God is never to be found in the pretended quiet of such men,
which any Turk or heathen could find in the same way, as easily as they.
They are persuaded by the devil that devout exercises and works of
charity will only disturb their inward quiet, and do, in fact, disobey
and resist God in their self-satisfied delusion.
He next exposes the error of those who undergo great austerities to be
thought holy,—suffering for their own glory rather than that of God; and
who think their penance and their works give them an extraordinary claim
on the Most High. He shows how often they fall into temptation by their
wayward and passionate desire after special spiritual manifestations,
and by their clamorous importunity for particular bestowments on which
their unmortified self-will has been obstinately set. Divine love, he
says, offers itself up without reserve to God—seeks His glory alone, and
can be satisfied with nothing short of God Himself. Natural love seeks
itself in all things, and falls ere long, as Adam did, into mortal
sin—into licence, pride, and covetousness.
Then he proceeds to describe an error, ‘yet more dangerous than this,’
as follows:—‘Those who compose this class call themselves God-seeing
(_Gott schauende_) men. You may know them by the natural rest they
profess to experience, for they imagine themselves free from sin and
immediately united to God. They fancy themselves free from any
obligation to obey either divine or human laws, and that they need no
longer be diligent in good works. They believe the quiet to which they
have devoted themselves so lofty and glorious a thing that they cannot,
without sin, suffer themselves to be hindered or disturbed therein.
Therefore will they be subject to no man—will work not at all, either
inwardly or outwardly, but lie like an idle tool awaiting its master’s
hand. They think, if they were to work, God’s operation within them
would be hindered; so they sit inactive, and exercise themselves in no
good work or virtue. In short, they are resolved to be so absolutely
empty and idle that they will not so much as praise and thank God—will
not desire or pray for anything—will not know or learn anything. All
such things they hold to be mischievous—persuade themselves that they
possess already all that can be requested, and that they have the true
spiritual poverty because, as they flatter themselves, they live without
any will of their own, and have abandoned all choice. As to the laws and
ordinances of the Church, they believe that they have not only fulfilled
them, but have advanced far beyond that state for which such
institutions were designed. Neither God nor man (they say) can give or
take from them aught, because they suffered all that was to be suffered
till they passed beyond the stage of trial and virtue, and finally
attained this absolute Quiet wherein they now abide. For they declare
expressly that the great difficulty is not so much to attain to virtue
as to overcome or surpass it, and to arrive at the said Quiet and
absolute emptiness of all virtue. Accordingly they will be completely
free and submit to no man,—not to pope or bishops, or to the priests and
teachers set over them; and if they sometimes profess to obey, they do
not in reality yield any obedience either in spirit or in practice. And
just as they say they will be free from all laws and ordinances of the
Holy Church, so they affirm, without a blush, that as long as a man is
diligently striving to attain unto the Christian virtues he is not yet
properly perfect, and knows not yet what spiritual poverty and spiritual
freedom or emptiness really are. Moreover, they believe that they are
exalted above the merits of all men and angels; that they can neither
add to their virtues nor be guilty of any fault or sin, because (as they
fancy) they live without will, have brought their spirit into Quiet and
Emptiness, are in themselves nothing, and veritably united unto God.
They believe, likewise, madly enough, that they may fulfil all the
desires of their nature without any sin, because, forsooth, they have
arrived at perfect innocence, and for them there is no law. In short,
that the Quiet and freedom of their spirit may not be hindered, they do
whatsoever they list. They care not a whit for fasts, festivals, or
ordinances, but what they do is done on account of others, they
themselves having no conscience about any such matters.’
A fourth class brought under review are less arrogant than these
enthusiasts, and will admit that they may progress in grace. They are
‘God-suffering (_Gottesleidende_) men’—in fact, mystics of the
intransitive theopathetic species _par excellence_. Their relation
toward God is to be one of complete passivity, and all their doings (of
whatever character) are His work. Tauler acknowledges duly the humility
and patient endurance of these men. Their fault lies, he says, in their
belief that every inward inclination they feel is the movement of the
Holy Ghost, and this even when such inclinations are sinful, ‘whereas
the Holy Spirit worketh in no man that which is useless or contrary to
the life of Christ and Holy Scriptures.’ In their constancy as well as
in their doctrine they nearly resemble the early Quakers. They would
sooner die, says Tauler, than swerve a hair’s breadth from their opinion
or their purpose.
Tauler’s reprobation of these forms of mysticism—which his own
expressions, too literally understood, might appear sometimes to
approach—shows clearly that he was himself practically free from such
extremes. His concluding remarks enforce very justly the necessity of
good works as an evidence to our fellow-men of our sincerity. He dwells
on the indispensableness of religious ordinance, worship, and
thanksgiving, as at once the expression and the nourishment of devout
affection. He precludes at the same time, in the strongest language, all
merit in the creature before God. ‘I say that if it were possible for
our spiritual nature to be deprived of all its modes of operation, and
to be as absolutely inactive as it was when it lay yet uncreated in the
abyss of the Divine Nature,—if it were possible for the rational
creature to be still as it was when in God prior to creation,—neither
the one nor the other could even thus merit anything, yea, not now any
more than then; it would have no more holiness or blessedness in itself
than a block or a stone’ (p. 243). He points to the example of Christ as
the best refutation of this false doctrine of Quiet, saying, ‘He
continued without ceasing to love and desire, to bless and praise his
Heavenly Father, and though his soul was joined to and blessed in the
Divine Essence, yet he never arrived at the Emptiness of which these men
talk.’
Footnote 117:
The substance of the foregoing narrative concerning Tauler and the
laymen will be found in the _Lebenshistorie des ehrwürdigen Doctors
Joh. Tauler_. See also C. Schmidt’s account of Nicholas in his
monograph on Tauler (p. 28), and a characteristic letter by Nicholas
concerning visions of coming judgment given in the Appendix.
Footnote 118:
See Note, p. 254.
Footnote 119:
See first Note, p. 256.
Footnote 120:
_Serm. on Eleventh Sun. after Trinity_, ii. p. 436.
Footnote 121:
_Serm. on Eleventh Sun. after Trin._, ii. pp. 442, 443. Also,
_Predigten_, vol. iii. p. 19, and _Schmidt_, p. 125.
Footnote 122:
_Third Serm. on Thirteenth Sun. after Trin._, ii. pp. 474-478.
Footnote 123:
_First Serm. on Thirteenth Sun. after Trin._, ii. p. 459.
Footnote 124:
See second Note, p. 256.
Footnote 125:
_Twenty-first Sun. after Trin._, ii. p. 584.
Footnote 126:
See Note, p. 257.