CHAPTER VII.

ENTHUSIASM.

Few things are more prominent in the religious history of England in the

eighteenth century, than the general suspicion entertained against

anything that passed under the name of enthusiasm. It is not merely that

the age was, upon the whole, formal and prosaic, and that in general

society serenity and moderation stood disproportionately high in the

list of virtues. No doubt zeal was unpopular; but, whatever was the case

in the more careless language of conversation, zeal is not what the

graver writers of the day usually meant when they inveighed against

enthusiasts. They are often very careful to guard themselves against

being thought to disparage religious fervour. Good and earnest men, no

less than others, often spoke of enthusiasm as a thing to be greatly

avoided. Nor was it only fanaticism, though this was especially odious

to them. Some to whom they imputed the charge in question were utterly

removed from anything like fanatical extravagance. The term was

expressive of certain modes of thought and feeling rather than of

practice. Under this theological aspect it forms a very important

element in the Church history of the period, and is well worthy of

attentive consideration.

Enthusiasm no longer bears quite the same meaning that it used to do. A

change, strongly marked by the impress of reaction from the prevailing

tone of eighteenth-century feeling, has gradually taken place in the

usual signification of the word. In modern language we commonly speak of

enthusiasm in contrast, if not with lukewarmness and indifference, at

all events with a dull prosaic level of commonplace thought or action. A

slight notion of extravagance may sometimes remain attached to it, but

on the whole we use the words in a decidedly favourable sense, and imply

in it that generous warmth of impetuous, earnest feeling without which

few great things are done. This meaning of the word was not absolutely

unknown in the eighteenth century, and here and there a writer may be

found to vindicate its use as a term of praise rather than of reproach.

It might be applied to poetic[468] rapture with as little offence as

though a bard were extolled as fired by the muses or inspired by

Phoebus. But applied to graver topics, it was almost universally a term

of censure. The original derivation of the word was generally kept in

view. It is only within the last one or two generations that it has

altogether ceased to convey any distinct notion of a supernatural

presence--an afflatus from the Deity. But whereas the early Alexandrian

fathers who first borrowed the word from Plato and the ancient mysteries

had Christianised it and cordially adopted it in a favourable

signification, it was now employed in a hostile sense as 'a misconceit

of inspiration.'[469] It thus became a sort of byeword, applied in

opprobrium and derision to all who laid claim to a spiritual power or

divine guidance, such as appeared to the person by whom the term of

reproach was used, fanatical extravagance, or, at the least, an

unauthorised outstepping of all rightful bounds of reason. Its preciser

meaning differed exceedingly with the mind of the speaker and with the

opinions to which it was applied. It sometimes denoted the wildest and

most credulous fanaticism or the most visionary mysticism; on the other

hand, the irreligious, the lukewarm, and the formalist often levelled

the reproach of enthusiasm, equally with that of bigotry, at what ought

to have been regarded as sound spirituality, or true Christian zeal, or

the anxious efforts of thoughtful and religious men to find a surer

standing ground against the reasonings of infidels and Deists.

A word which has not only been strained by constant and reckless use in

religious contests, but is also vague in application and changeable in

meaning, might seem marked out for special avoidance. Yet it might be

difficult to find a more convenient expression under which to group

various forms of subjective, mystic, and emotional religion, which were

in some cases strongly antagonistic to one another, but were closely

allied in principle and agreed also in this, that they inevitably

brought upon their supporters the unpopular charge of enthusiasm. All

were more or less at variance with the general spirit of the century.

But, in one shape or another, they entered into almost every religious

question that was agitated; and, in many cases, it is to the men who in

their own generation were called mystics and enthusiasts that we must

chiefly turn, if we would find in the eighteenth century a suggestive

treatment of some of the theological problems which are most deeply

interesting to men of our own time.

When Church writers no longer felt bound to exert all their powers of

argument against Rome or rival modes of Protestantism, and when disputes

about forms of government, rites, and ceremonies, and other externals of

religion ceased to excite any strong interest, attention began to be

turned in good earnest to the deeper and more fundamental issues

involved in the Reformation. There arose a great variety of inquiries as

to the principles and grounds of faith. Into all of these entered more

or less directly the important question, How far man has been endowed

with a faculty of spiritual discernment independent of what is properly

called reason. It was a subject which could not be deferred, although at

this time encompassed by special difficulties and beset by prejudices.

The doctrine of 'the inner light' has been in all ages the favourite

stronghold of enthusiasts and mystics of every kind, and this was more

than enough to discredit it. All the tendencies of the age were against

allowing more than could be helped in favour of a tenet which had been

employed in support of the wildest extravagances, and had held the place

of highest honour among the opinions of the early Quakers, the

Anabaptists, the Muggletonians, the Fifth Monarchy men, and other

fanatics of recent memory. Did not the very meaning of the word

'enthusiasm,' as well as its history, point plainly out that it is

grounded on the belief in such inward illumination? And who, with the

examples of the preceding age before him, could foretell to what

dangerous extremes enthusiasm might lead its excited followers?

Whenever, therefore, any writers of the eighteenth century had occasion

to speak of man's spiritual faculties, one anxiety was constantly

present to their minds. Enthusiasm seemed to be regarded with continual

uneasiness, as a sort of unseen enemy, whom an incautious expression

might let in unawares, unless they watchfully guarded and circumscribed

the province which it had claimed as so especially its own.

It is certainly remarkable that a subject which excited so much

apprehension should have entered, nevertheless, into almost every

theological discussion. Yet it could not be otherwise. Controversy upon

the grounds of faith and all secondary arguments and inferences

connected with it gather necessarily round four leading

principles--Reason, Scripture, Church Authority, Spiritual Illumination.

Throughout the century, the relation more particularly of the last of

these principles to the other three, became the real, though often

unconfessed centre alike of speculation and of practical theology. What

is this mystic power which had been so extravagantly asserted--in

comparison with which Scripture, Reason, and Authority had been almost

set aside as only lesser lights? Is there indeed such a thing as a

Divine illumination, an inner light, a heavenly inspiration, a directing

principle within the soul? If so--and that there is in man a spiritual

presence of some kind no Christian doubts--what are its powers? how far

is it a rule of faith? What is its rightful province? What are its

relations to faith and conscience? to Reason, Scripture, Church

Authority? Can it be implicitly trusted? By what criterion may its

utterances be distinguished and tested? Such, variously stated, were the

questions asked, sometimes jealously and with suspicion, often from a

sincere, unprejudiced desire to ascertain the truth, and often from an

apprehension of their direct practical and devotional value. The

inquiry, therefore, was one which formed an important element both in

the divinity and philosophy of the period, and also in its popular

religious movements. It was discussed by Locke and by every succeeding

writer who, throughout the century, endeavoured to mark the powers and

limits of the human understanding. It entered into most disputes between

Deists and evidence writers as to the properties of evidence and the

nature of Reasonable Religion. It had to do with debates upon

inspiration, upon apostolic gifts, upon the Canon of Scripture, with

controversies as to the basis of the English Church and of the

Reformation generally, the essentials and nonessentials of Christianity,

the rights of the individual conscience, toleration, comprehension, the

authority of the Church, the authority of the early fathers. It had

immediate relation to the speculations of the Cambridge Platonists, and

their influence on eighteenth-century thought, upon such subjects as

those of immutable morality and the higher faculties of the soul. It was

conspicuous in the attention excited in England, both among admirers and

opponents, by the reveries of Fénelon, Guyon, Bourignon, and other

foreign Quietists. It was a central feature of the animated controversy

maintained by Leslie and others with the Quakers, a community who, at

the beginning of the century, had attained the zenith of their numerical

power. It was further illustrated in writings upon the character of

enthusiasm elicited by the extravagances of the so-called French

Prophets. In its aspect of a discussion upon the supra-sensual faculties

of the soul, it received some additional light from the transcendental

conceptions of Bishop Berkeley's philosophy. In its relation with

mediæval mysticism on the one hand and with some distinctive aspects of

modern thought on the other, it found an eminent exponent in the

suggestive pages of William Law; with whom must be mentioned his admirer

and imitator, the poet John Byrom. The influence of the Moravians upon

the early Methodists, the controversy of Wesley with Law, the progress

of Methodism and Evangelicalism, the opposition which they met, the

ever-repeated charge of 'enthusiasm,' and the anxiety felt on the other

side to rebut the charge, exhibit the subject under some of its leading

practical aspects. From yet another point of view, a similar reawakening

to the keen perception of other faculties than those of reason and

outward sense is borne witness to in the rise of a new school of

imaginative art and poetry, in livelier sympathy with the more spiritual

side of nature, in eager and often exaggerated ideals of what might be

possible to humanity. Lastly, there remains to notice the very important

influence exercised upon English thought by Coleridge, not only by the

force of his own somewhat mystic temperament, but by his familiarity

with such writers as Kant, Lessing, Schleiermacher, and Schelling, who

had studied far more profoundly than any English philosophers or

theologians, the relation of man's higher understanding to matters not

cognisable by the ordinary powers of human reason.

But it is time to enter somewhat further into detail on some of the

points briefly suggested. Reference was made to the Cambridge

Platonists, for although they belong to the history of the seventeenth

century, some of their opinions bear too directly on the subject to be

entirely passed over. Moreover, Cudworth's 'Immutable Morality' was not

published till 1731, at which time it had direct reference to the

controversies excited by Mandeville's 'Fable of the Bees.' The

popularity also of Henry More's writings continued into the century

after his death, and a new edition of his 'Discourse of Enthusiasm'

appeared almost simultaneously with writings of Lord Shaftesbury, Dr.

Hickes, and others upon the same subject. It might have been well if the

works of such men as H. More and Cudworth, J. Smith and Norris, had made

a deeper impression on eighteenth-century thought. Their exalted but

restrained mysticism and their lofty system of morality was the very

corrective which the tone of the age most needed. And it might have been

remembered to great advantage, that the doctrine of an inner light, far

from being only the characteristic tenet of the fanatical disciples of

Fox and Münzer, had been held in a modified sense by men who, in the

preceding generation, had been the glory of the English Church--a band

of men conspicuous for the highest culture, the most profound learning,

the most earnest piety, the most kindly tolerance. Cudworth, at all

events, held this view. Engaged as he was, during a lengthened period of

intellectual activity, in combating a philosophical system which, alike

in theology, morals, and politics, appeared to him to sap the

foundations of every higher principle in human nature, he was led by the

whole tenour of his mind to dwell upon the existence in the soul of

perceptions not derivable from the senses, and to expatiate on the

immutable distinctions of right and wrong. Goodness, freed from all

debasing associations of interest and expedience, such as Hobbes sought

to attach to it, was the same, he was well assured, as it had existed

from all eternity in the mind of God. To a mind much occupied in such

reflections, and nurtured in the sublime thoughts of Plato, the doctrine

of an inner light naturally commended itself. All goodness of which man

is capable is a participation of the Divine essence--an effluence, as it

were, from God; and if knowledge is communicable through other channels

than those of the outward senses, what is there which should forbid

belief in the most immediate intercourse between, the soul and its

Creator, and in a direct intuition of spiritual truth? We may attain a

certain comprehension of the Deity, 'proportionate to our measure; as we

may approach near to a mountain, and touch it with our hands, though we

cannot encompass it all round and enclasp it within our arms.' In fact,

Cudworth's general train of reasoning and of feeling brought him into

great sympathy with the mystics, though he was under little temptation

of falling into the extravagances which had lately thrown their special

tenets into disrepute. He did not fail, indeed, to meet with some of the

customary imputations of enthusiasm, pantheism, and the like. But an

ordinary reader will find in him few of the characteristic faults of

mystic writers and many of their merits. In him, as in his fellow

Platonists, there is little that is visionary, there is no disparagement

of reason, no exaggerated strain of self-forgetfulness. On the other

hand, he resembles the best mystics in the combination of high

imaginative with intellectual power, in warmth of piety, in fearlessness

and purity of motive. He resembles them too in the vehemence with which

he denies the liberty of interpreting Scripture in any sense which may

appear to attribute to God purposes inconsistent with our moral

perceptions of goodness and justice--in his horror of the more

pronounced doctrines of election--in his deep conviction that love to

God and man is the core of Christianity--in his disregard for

controversy on minor points of orthodoxy, and in the comprehensive

tolerance and love of truth and liberty which should be the natural

outgrowth of such opinions.

The other Cambridge Platonist whose writings may be said to have a

distinct bearing on the subject and period before us, is Henry More.

Even if there were no trace of the interest with which his works

continued to be read in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, it

would still seem like an omission if his treatise upon the question

under notice were passed over. For perhaps there never was an author

more qualified than he was to speak of 'enthusiasm' in a sympathetic but

impartial spirit. He felt himself that the subject was well suited to

him. 'I must,' he said, 'ingenuously confess that I have a natural touch

of enthusiasm in my complexion, but such, I thank God, as was ever

governable enough, and have found at length perfectly subduable.' He was

in truth, both by natural temperament and by the course which his

studies had taken, thoroughly competent to enter into the mind of the

mystics and enthusiasts against whom he wrote. It was perhaps only his

sound intellectual training, combined with the English attribute of

solid practical sense, that had saved him from running utterly wild in

fanciful and visionary speculations. As it is, he has been

occasionally[470] classed among the so-called Theosophists, such as

Paracelsus and Jacob Behmen. His exuberant imagination delighted in

subjects which, since his time, have been acknowledged to be closed to

all efforts of human reason, and have been generally abandoned to the

dreams of credulity and superstition. He revelled in ingenious

conjectures upon the condition of the soul in the intermediate state

after death, upon the different stages and orders of disembodied

spirits, and upon mysterious sympathies between mind and matter. We have

continually to remember that he wrote before the dawn of the Newtonian

philosophy, if we would appreciate his reasonings and guesses about

strange attractions and affinities, which pointed as he thought to an

incorporeal soul of the world, or spirit of nature, acting as 'a great

quartermaster-general of Providence' in directing relations between the

spiritual and material elements of the universe.[471]

Such was Henry More in one side of his character. The counterbalancing

principle was his unwavering allegiance to reason, his zealous

acknowledgment of its excellence as a gift of God, to be freely used and

safely followed on every subject of human interest. He held it to be the

glory and adornment of all true religion, and the special prerogative of

Christianity. He nowhere rises to greater fervour of expression than

where he extols the free and devotional exercise of reason in a pure and

undefiled heart; and he is convinced of the high and special spiritual

powers which under such conditions are granted to it. 'I should commend

to them that will successfully philosophise the belief and endeavour

after a certain principle more noble and inward than reason itself, and

without which reason will falter, or at least reach but to mean and

frivolous things. I have a sense of something in me while I thus speak,

which I must confess is of so retruse a nature that I want a name for

it, unless I should adventure to term it Divine sagacity, which is the

first rise of successful reason.... All pretenders to philosophy will

indeed be ready to magnify reason to the skies, to make it the light of

heaven, and the very oracle of God: but they do not consider that the

oracle of God is not to be heard but in his Holy Temple, that is to say,

in a good and holy man, thoroughly sanctified in spirit, soul, and

body.'[472]

Believing thus with all his heart both in the excellence of reason and

in a true inspiration of the spirit granted to the pure in heart, but

never dissociating the latter from the former; well convinced that

'Christian religion is rational throughout,' and that the suggestions of

the Holy Spirit are in all cases agreeable to reason--More wrote with

much force and beauty of argument his 'Exorcism of Enthusiasm.' He

showed that to abandon reason for fancy is to lay aside the solid

supports of religion, to trust faith to the mere ebb and flow of

'melancholy,' and so to confirm the sceptic in his doubts and the

atheist in his unbelief. He dwelt upon the unruly power of imagination,

its deceptive character, its intimate connection with varying states of

physical temperament--upon the variety of emotional causes which can

produce quakings and tremblings and other convulsive forms of

excitement--upon the delusiveness of visions, and revelations, and

ecstasies, and their near resemblance to waking dreams--upon the sore

temptations which are apt to lead into sin those who so closely link

spirituality with bodily feelings, making religion sensual. He warned

his readers against that sort of intoxication of the understanding, when

the imagination is suffered to run wild in allegorical interpretations

of Scripture, in fanciful allusions, in theories of mystic influences

and properties which carry away the mind into wild superstitions and

Pagan pantheism. He spoke of the self-conceit of many fanatics, their

turbulence, their heat and narrow scrupulosity, and asked how these

things could be the fruits of heavenly illumination. He suggested as the

proper remedies against enthusiasm, temperance (by which he meant

temperate diet, moderate exercise, fresh air, a due and discreet use of

devotion), humility, and the sound tests of reason--practical piety, and

service to the Church of God. Such is the general scope of his treatise;

but the most interesting and characteristic portion is towards the close

and in the Scholia appended to it, in which he speaks of 'that true and

warrantable enthusiasm of devout and holy souls,' that 'delicious sense

of the Divine life'[473] which the spirit of man is capable of

receiving. If space allowed, one or two fine passages might be quoted in

which he describes these genuine emotions. He has also some good remarks

upon the value, within guarded limits, of disturbed and excited

religious feelings in rousing the soul from lethargy, and acting as

external aids to dispose the mind for true spiritual influences.

Henry More died the year before King William's accession. But his

opinions were, no doubt, shared by some of the best and most cultivated

men in the English Church during the opening years of the eighteenth

century. After a time his writings lost their earlier popularity.

Wesley, to his credit, recommended them in 1756 to the use of his

brother clergymen.[474] As a rule, they appear at that time to have been

but little read; their spiritual tone is pitched in too high a key for

the prevalent religious taste of the period which had then set in. Some

years had to pass before the rise of a generation more prepared to draw

refreshment from the imaginative and somewhat mystical beauties of his

style and sentiment.[475]

When once the genius of Locke was in the ascendant, more spiritual forms

of philosophy fell into disrepute. Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz were

considered almost obsolete; More and Cudworth were out of favour: and

there was but scanty tolerance for any writer who could possibly incur

the charge of transcendentalism or mysticism. It is not that Cartesian

or Platonic, or even mystic opinions, are irreconcileable with Locke's

philosophy. When he spoke of sensation and reflection as the original

sources of all knowledge, there was ample room for innate ideas, and for

intuitive perceptions, under the shelter of terms so indefinite.

Moreover, the ambiguities of expression and apparent inconsistencies of

thought, which stand out in marked contrast to the force and lucidity of

his style, are by no means owing only to his use of popular language,

and his studied avoidance of all that might seem to savour of the

schools. His devout spirit rebelled against the carefully defined limits

which his logical intellect would have imposed upon it. He could not

altogether avoid applying his system to the absorbing subjects of

theology, but he did so with some unwillingness and with much reserve.

Revelation, once acknowledged as such, was always sacred ground to him;

and though he often appears to reduce all evidence to the external

witness of the senses, there is something essentially opposed to

materialistic notions, in his feeling that there is that which we do not

know simply by reason of our want of a new and different sense, by

which, if we had it, we might know our souls as we know a triangle.[476]

Locke would have heartily disowned the conclusions of many who professed

themselves his true disciples, and of many others whose whole minds had

been trained and formed under the influences of his teaching, and who

insisted that they were but following up his arguments to their

legitimate consequences.[477] The general system was the same; but there

was nothing in common between the theology of Locke and Toland's

repudiation of whatever in religion transcended human reason, or

Bolingbroke's doubts as to the immortality of the soul, or the

pronounced materialism of Hartley and Condillac, or the blank negative

results at which Hume arrived.

But though Locke and multitudes of his admirers were profoundly

Christian in their belief, the whole drift of his thought tended to

bring prominently forward the purely practical side of religion and the

purely intellectual side of theology, and to throw into the background,

and reduce to its narrowest compass, the more entirely spiritual region

which marks the contact of the human with the Divine. Its uncertain

lights and shadows, its mysteries, obscurities, and difficulties, were

thoroughly distrusted by him. He did not--a religious mind like his

could not--deny the existence of those feelings and intuitions which,

from their excessive prominence in that school, may be classed under the

name of mystic. But he doubted their importance and dreaded their

exaggerations. Not only could they find no convenient place, scarcely

even a footing, in his philosophical system, but they were out of accord

with his own temperament and with the opinions, which he was so greatly

contributing to form, of the age in which he lived. They offended

against his love of clearness, his strong dislike of all obscurity, his

wish to see the chart of the human faculties mapped out and defined, his

desire to translate abstract ideas into the language of sound,

practical, ordinary sense, divested as far as could be of all that was

open to dispute, and of all that could in any way be accounted

visionary. His perpetual appeal lay to the common understanding, and he

regarded, therefore, with much suspicion, emotions which none could at

all times realise, and which to some minds were almost, or perhaps

entirely unknown. Lastly, his fervent love of liberty indisposed him to

admissions which might seem to countenance authority over the

consciences of men on the part of any who should assert special claims

to spiritual illumination.

Locke struck a keynote which was harped upon by a host of theologians

and moralists after him, whenever, as was constantly the case, they had

occasion to raise their voice against that dreaded enemy, enthusiasm.

There were many who inveighed against 'the new modish system of reducing

all to sense,' when used to controvert the doctrines of revelation. But

while with vigour and success they defended the mysteries of faith

against those who would allow nothing but what reason could fairly

grasp, and while they dwelt upon the paramount authority of the Spirit

which inspired Holy Scripture, they would allow no sort of spiritual

influence to compete with reason as a judge of truth. Reason, it was

perpetually argued, is sufficient for all our present needs. Revelation

is adequately attested by evidence addressed to the reason. We need no

other proof or ground of assent; at all events, none other is granted to

us. It was not so indeed in the first age of the Church. Special gifts

of spiritual knowledge and illumination were then given to meet special

requirements. The Holy Spirit was then in very truth immediately present

in power, the greatest witness to the truth, and its direct revealer to

the hearts of men. Many of the principal preachers and theological

writers of the eighteenth century dwell at length upon the fulness of

that spiritual outpouring. But it is not a little remarkable to notice

with what singular care they often limit and circumscribe its duration.

A little earlier or a little later, but, at all events, at the end of a

generation or two after the first Christian Pentecost, a line of

demarcation was to be drawn and jealously guarded.

In the second book of Warburton's 'Doctrine of Grace' there is a

singular instance of apparent incapacity on the part of a most able

reasoner to acknowledge the possible existence in his own day of other

spiritual influences than those which, in the most limited sense of the

word, may be called ordinary. He is speaking of the splendour of the

gifts which shed their glory upon the primitive Church and afterwards

passed away. He dwells with admiration upon the sudden and entire

changes which were made in the dispositions and manner of those whom the

Holy Spirit had enlightened. Sacred antiquity, he says, is unmistakeable

in its evidence on this point, and even the assailers of Christianity

confessed it. Conversions were effected among early Christians such as

could not be the result of mere rational conviction. It is utterly

impossible for the magisterial faculty of reason to enforce her

conclusions with such immediate power, and to win over the will with

such irresistible force, as to root out at once inveterate habits of

vice. 'To what must we ascribe so total a reform, but to the

all-powerful operation of grace?'[478] These remarks are true enough;

but it seems incredible that, writing in the very midst of an

extraordinary religious outburst, he should calmly assume the

impossibility in other than primitive times of such sudden changes from

irreligion to piety, and should even place the miraculous conversions of

apostolic times at the head of an argument against Methodist

enthusiasts. Well might Wesley remark with some surprise, 'Never were

reflections more just than these,'[479] and go on to show that the very

same changes were constantly occurring still.

In truth, it may be said without any disparagement of a host of eminent

English divines of the eighteenth century, that their entire sympathies

were with the reasonable rather than with the spiritual side of

religion. Their ideal of Christian perfection was in many respects an

elevated one, but absolutely divested of that mystic element which in

every age of the Church has seemed to be inseparable from the higher

types of saintliness. If we may judge from the treatises of Lord

Lyttelton and Dean Graves, the character even of the apostles had to be

carefully vindicated from all suspicion of any taint of enthusiasm if

they were to maintain their full place of reverence as leaders and

princes of the Christian army. Only it must not be supposed that this

religious characteristic of the age was by any means confined to the

sceptical and indifferent on the one hand, or to persons of a sober and

reflective spirit on the other. It was almost universal. John Wesley,

for example, repeatedly and anxiously rebuts the charges of enthusiasm

which were levelled upon him from all sides. He would have it understood

that he had for ever done with enthusiasm when once he had separated

from the Moravians. The same shrinking from the name, as one of

opprobrium, is shown by Dr. Watts;[480] and one of the greatest troubles

in Hannah More's life seems to have been her annoyance, that she and

other faithful members of the English Church should be defamed as

encouragers of enthusiasm.[481]

The eighteenth century was indeed an age when sober reason would hear of

no competitor, and whose greatest outburst of religious zeal

characteristically took its name from the well-ordered method with which

it was organised. It will not, however, be inferred that enthusiasm, as

the word was then commonly understood, scarcely existed. On the

contrary, the vigour and constancy of the attack points with sufficient

clearness to the evident presence of the enemy. In fact, although the

more exaggerated forms of mysticism and fanaticism have never

permanently thriven on English soil, there has never been an age when

what may be called mystical religion has not had many ardent votaries.

For even the most extravagant of its multiform phases embody an

important element of truth, which cannot be neglected without the

greatest detriment to sound religion. Whatever be its particular type,

it represents the protest of the human soul against all that obscures

the spirituality of belief. But of all the accidents and externals of

religion, there is not one, however important in itself, which may not

be made unduly prominent, and under such circumstances interfere between

the soul and the object of its worship. It will be readily understood,

therefore, upon how great a variety of grounds that protest may be

based, how right and reasonable it may sometimes be, but also how easily

it may itself run into excess, and how quickly the understanding may

lose its bearings, when once, for fear of the abuse, it begins to

dispense with what was not intended to check, but to guide and regulate

the aspirations of the Spirit. Mystical and enthusiastical religion,

whether in its sounder or in its exaggerated and unhealthy forms, may be

a reaction against an over-assertion of the powers of reason in

spiritual matters and questions of evidence, or against the undue

extension, in subjects too high for it, of the domain of 'common sense;'

or it may be a vindication of the spiritual rights of the uneducated

against the pretensions of learning; or an assertion of the judgment and

conscience of the individual against all tyranny of authority. It may be

a protest against excessive reverence for the letter of Holy Scripture

as against the Spirit which breathes in it, against all appearance of

limiting inspiration to a book, and denying it to the souls of living

men. It may express insurrection against all manner of formalism, usages

which have lost their significance, rites which have ceased to edify,

doctrines which have degenerated into formulas, orthodoxy which has

become comparatively barren and profitless. It may represent a

passionate longing to escape from party differences and sectarian strife

into a higher, purer atmosphere, where the free Spirit of God bloweth

where it listeth. It often owes its origin to strong revulsion against

popular philosophies which limit all consciousness to mere perceptions

of the senses, or against the materialistic tendencies which find an

explanation for all mysteries in physical phenomena. It may result from

endeavours to find larger scope for reverie and contemplation, or fuller

development for the imaginative elements of religious thought. It may be

a refuge for spirits disgusted at an unworthy and utilitarian system of

ethics, and at a religion too much degraded into a code of moral

precepts. All these tendencies, varying in every possible degree from

the healthiest efforts after greater spirituality of life to the wildest

excesses of fanatical extravagance, may be copiously illustrated from

the history of enthusiasm. The writers of the eighteenth century were

fully alive to its dangers. It was easy to show how mystical religion

had often led its too eager, or too untaught followers into the most

mischievous antinomianism of doctrine and life, into allegorising away

the most fundamental grounds of Christianity, and into the vaguest

Pantheism. They could produce examples in abundance of bewildered

intellects, of 'illuminations' obscurer than any darkness, of religious

rapture, in its ambitious distrust of reason, lapsing into physical

agencies and coarse materialism. They could hold up, in ridicule or

warning, profuse illustrations of exorbitant spiritual pride, blind

credulity, infatuated self-deceit, barefaced imposture. It was much more

congenial to the prevalent temper of the age to draw a moral from such

perversions of a tone of feeling with which there was little sympathy,

than to learn a useful lesson from the many truths contained in it.

Doubtless, it is not easy to deal with principles which have been

maintained in an almost identical form, but with consequences so widely

divergent, by some of the noblest, and by some of the most foolish of

mankind, by true saints and by gross fanatics. The contemporaries of

Locke, Addison, and Tillotson, trained in a wholly different school of

thought, were ill-fitted to enter with patience into such a subject, to

see its importance, to discriminate its differences, and to solve its

perplexities.

At the opening of the eighteenth century, the elements of enthusiasm

were too feeble to show themselves in any acknowledged form either in

the Church of England or in the leading Nonconformist bodies. In

England, no doubt, as in every other European country, there were, as

Mr. Vaughan observes, 'Scattered little groups of friends, who nourished

a hidden devotion by the study of pietist and mystical writings....

Whenever we can penetrate behind the public events which figure in

history at the close of the seventeenth, and the opening of the

eighteenth century, indications are discernible, which make it certain

that a religious vitality of this description was far more widely

diffused than is commonly supposed.[482] But these recluse societies

made no visible impression upon the general state of religion. If it

were not for the evident anxiety felt by many writers of the period to

expose and counteract the dangers of a mystical and enthusiastical bias,

it might have been supposed that there never was a time when the Church

was so entirely free from any possible peril in that direction. Their

fear, however, was not without some foundation. When an important phase

of spiritual truth is comparatively neglected by established authorities

and in orthodox opinion, it is sure to find full vent in another less

regular channel. We are told that in the first years of the century, the

Quakers had immensely increased. 'They swarm,' said Leslie, 'over these

three nations, and they stock our plantations abroad.'[483] Quakerism

had met with little tolerance in the previous century. Churchmen and

Dissenters had unanimously denounced it, and Baxter, large-minded as he

often proved himself, denied its adherents all hope of salvation. But

the sect throve under persecution; and; in proportion as its follies and

extravagances became somewhat mitigated, the spirituality of belief,

which even in its most exaggerated forms had always been its soul of

strength, became more and more attractive to those who felt its

deficiency elsewhere. Between the passing of the Toleration Act and the

end of William III.'s reign it made great progress. After that it began

gradually to decline. This was owing to various causes. Some share in it

may perhaps be attributed to the continued effects of the general

religious lethargy which had set in some years before, but may have now

begun to spread more visibly among the classes from which Quakerism was

chiefly recruited. Again, its intellectual weakness would naturally

become more apparent in proportion to the daily increasing attention

paid to the reasonable aspects of faith. The general satisfaction felt,

except by the pronounced High Church and Jacobite party, at the newly

established order in Church and State, was unfavourable to the further

progress of a communion which, from its rejection of ideas common to

every other ecclesiastical body, seemed to many to be rightly called

'the end and centre of all confusion.'[484] It may be added that, as the

century advanced, there gradually came to be within the confines of the

National Church a little more room than had lately existed for the

upholders of various mystical tenets. With the rise of Wesleyanism

enthusiasm found full scope in a new direction. But the power of

Quakerism was not only silently undermined by the various action of

influences such as these. In the first years of the century it received

a direct and serious blow in the able exposure of its extravagances

written by Leslie. The vagaries of the French 'Prophets' also

contributed to discredit the assumption of supernatural gifts in which

many Quakers still indulged.

It is needless to dwell with Leslie on the wild heretical opinions into

which the over-strained spirituality of the disciples of Fox and Penn

had led them. Certainly, the interval between them and other Christian

communities had sometimes been so wide that there was some justification

for the assertions made on either side, that the name of Christian could

not be so widely extended as to be fitly applied to both. Archbishop

Dawes, for example, in the House of Lords, roundly refused them all

claim to the title; and there were thousands of Quakers who would

retaliate the charge in terms of the most unsparing vigour. To these

men, all the Gospel was summed up in the one verse that tells how Christ

is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Leslie

was able to produce quotations in plenty from acknowledged authorities

among them which allegorised away all belief in a personal Saviour, and

which bade each man seek within himself alone for the illuminating

presence of his Christ and God.

It was well that the special dangers to which Quakerism and other forms

of mysticism are liable should be brought clearly and openly into view.

But after all it is not from the extravagances and perversions of a

dogma that the main lesson is to be learnt. With the Bible open before

them, and with hearts alive to the teachings of holiness, the generality

of religious-minded Quakers were not likely to be satisfied with what

Warburton rightly called not so much a religion as 'a divine

philosophy, not fit for such a creature as man,'[485] nor with a

religious vocabulary summed up, as a writer in the 'Tatler' humorously

said, in the three words, 'Light,' 'Friend,' and 'Babylon.'[486] There

was no reason why the worship of the individual should not be very free

from the prevalent errors of the sect, and be in a high sense pure and

Christian. For the truths which at one time made Quakerism so strong are

wholly separable, not only from the superficial eccentricities of the

system, but from its gravest deficiencies in form and doctrine. There is

nothing to forbid a close union of the most intensely human and personal

elements of Christian faith with that refined and pervading sense of a

present life-giving Spirit which was faithfully borne witness to by

Quakers when it was feeblest and most neglected elsewhere. If Quaker

principles, instead of being embodied in a strongly antagonistic form as

tenets of an exclusive and often persecuted sect,[487] had been

transfused into the general current of the national religious life, they

would at once have escaped the extravagances into which they were led,

and have contributed the very elements of which the spiritual condition

of the age stood most in need. Not only in the moderate and constantly

instructive pages of Barclay's 'Apology' for the Quakers, but also in

the hostile expositions of their views which we find in the works of

Leslie and their other opponents, there is frequent cause for regret

that so much suggestive thought should have become lost to the Church at

large. The Quakers were accustomed to look at many important truths in

somewhat different aspects from those in which they were commonly

regarded; and the Church would have gained in power as well as in

comprehension, if their views on some points had been fully accepted as

legitimate modes of orthodox belief. English Christianity would have

been better prepared for its formidable struggle with the Deists, if it

had freely allowed a wider margin for diversity of sentiment in several

questions on which Quaker opinion almost universally differed from that

of the Churchmen of the age. It was said of Quakers that they were mere

Deists, except that they hated reason.[488] The imputation might not

unfrequently be true; for a Quaker consistently with his principles

might reject some very essential features of Christianity. Often, on

the other hand, such a charge would be entirely erroneous, for, no less

consistently, a Quaker might be in the strictest sense of the word a

thorough and earnest Christian. But in any case he was well armed

against that numerous class of Deistical objections which rested upon an

exclusively literal interpretation of Scripture. This is eminently

observable in regard of theories of inspiration. To Quakers, as to

mystical writers in general, biblical infallibility has never seemed to

be a doctrine worth contending for. They have always felt that an

admixture of human error is perfectly innocuous where there is a living

spirit present to interpret the teaching of Scripture to the hearts of

men. But elsewhere, the doctrine of unerring literal inspiration was

almost everywhere held in its straitest form. Leslie, for example,

quotes with horror a statement of Ellwood, one of his Quaker opponents,

that St. Paul expected the day of judgment to come in his time. 'If,'

answers Leslie, 'he thought it might, then it follows that he was

mistaken, and consequently that what he wrote was not truth; and so not

only the authority of this Epistle, but of all the Epistles, and of all

the rest of the New Testament, will fall to the ground.'[489] Such

specious, but false and dangerous reasoning is by no means uncommon

still; but when it represented the general language of orthodox

theologians, we cannot wonder that the difficulties started by Deistical

writers caused widespread disbelief, and raised a panic as if the very

foundations of Christianity were in danger of being overthrown.

There were other ways in which profound confidence in direct spiritual

guidance shielded Quakers from perplexities which shook the faith of

many. They had been among the first to turn with horror from those stern

views of predestination and reprobation which, until the middle of the

seventeenth century, had been accepted by the great majority of English

Protestants without misgiving. It was doctrine utterly repugnant to men

whose cardinal belief was in the light that lighteth every man. The same

principle kept even the most bigoted among them from falling into the

prevalent opinion which looked upon the heathen as altogether without

hope and without God in the world. They, almost alone of all Christian

missionaries of that age, pointed their hearers (not without scandal to

their orthodox brethren) to a light of God within them which should

guide them to the brighter radiance of a better revelation. Nor did they

scruple, to assert that 'there be members of this Catholic Church both

among heathens, Jews, and Turks, men and women of integrity and

simplicity of heart, who, though blinded in some things of their

understanding, and burdened with superstition, yet, being upright in

their hearts before the Lord, ... and loving to follow righteousness,

are by the secret touches of the holy light in their souls enlivened and

quickened, thereby secretly united to God, and thereby become true

members of this Catholic Church.'[490] Such expressions would be

generally assented to in our day, as embodying sound and valuable

truths, which cannot be rejected on account of errors which may

sometimes chance to attend them. At the beginning of the eighteenth

century there were few, except Quakers, who were willing to accept from

a wholly Christian point of view the element of truth contained in the

Deistical argument of 'Christianity as old as the Creation.'

Somewhat similar in kind was the protest of the Quakers against

dogmatism as to the precise nature of the Atonement,[491] and against

unspiritual and, so to say, physical interpretations put upon passages

in Scripture which speak of the efficacy of the blood of Christ. On this

ground also they, and the mystic school in general, were constantly

inveighed against as mere Deists. Yet the rigid definitions insisted

upon by many of the Reformers were much at variance with the wider views

held in earlier and later times. It is at all events certain that, both

within and without the English Church, those who held these views were

protected from many of the most forcible objections with which the

Christianity of the age was assailed.

The Quakerism, which at the end of the seventeenth and at the beginning

of the eighteenth century was strong in numbers and in religious

influence, has claimed our attention thus far in regard only of those

modes of thought which it holds in common with most other forms of

so-called mystic theology. On this ground it comes into close relation

with the history of the English Church. M. Matter, in his 'History of

Christianity,' speaks of Quakerism in conjunction with Methodism as the

two forms of English reaction against formalism alike in doctrine and in

government.[492] But it has been a merit of the English Church, and its

most distinguishing title to the name of 'National,' that it has been

able to learn from the sects which have grown up around it. Cautiously

and tardily--often far too much so for its own immediate advantage--it

has seldom neglected to find at last within its ample borders some room

for modes and expressions of Christian belief which, for a time

neglected, had been growing up outside its bounds. It was so with

Methodism; it was so also with Quakerism. When Quakers found that its

more reasonable tenets could be held, and find a certain amount of

sympathy within the Church, it quickly began to lose its strength. A

remark of Boswell's in 1776, that many a man was a Quaker without his

knowing it,[493] could scarcely have been made in the corresponding year

of the previous century. At the earlier date there was almost nothing in

common between the Church and a sect which, both on its strongest and

weakest side, was marked by a conspicuous antagonism to established

opinions. At the latter date Quakerism had to a great extent lost both

its mystic and emotional monopolies. After a few years' hesitation

Southey concluded that he need not join the Quakers simply because he

disliked 'attempting to define what has been left indefinite.'[494] The

semi-mystical turn of thought which is most keenly alive to the futility

of such endeavours was no longer a tenable ground for secession. Or if a

man believed in visible manifestations of spiritual influences, he would

more probably become a Methodist than a Quaker; and the time was not yet

come when to be a Methodist was to cease to be a Churchman. In one

respect, however, Quakerism possessed a safeguard to emotional

excitement which in Methodism was wanting.[495] It was that notion of

tranquil tarrying and spiritual quiet which was as alien to the spirit

of later Methodism as it is congenial to that of mysticism. The language

of the Methodist would entirely accord with that of the Quaker in

speaking of the pangs of the new birth, and of the visible tokens of the

Spirit's presence; but the absence of reserve and the mutual

'experiences' of the Methodist stand out in a strong, and to many minds

unfavourable, contrast with the silence and self-absorption of which

Quakerism had learnt the value.

Then comes the Spirit to our hut,

When fast the senses' doors are shut;

For so Divine and pure a guest

The emptiest rooms are furnished best.[496]

Or, in the words of one of the saintliest of the mediæval mystics, 'In

the chamber of the heart God works. But what He works in the souls of

those with whom He holds direct converse none can say, nor can any man

give account of it to another; but he only who has felt it knows what it

is; and even he can tell thee nothing of it, save only that God in very

truth hath possessed the ground of his heart.'[497]

It may here be observed that what has been said of Quakerism, so far as

it was at one time representative of that mystic element which the

eighteenth century called enthusiasm, will be a sufficient reason for

passing all the more briefly over other branches of the same subject.

The idea of self-surrender to the immediate action of spiritual

influence is a bond of union far more potent than any external or

ecclesiastical differences. Whatever be the period, or Church, or state

of society in which it is found, mysticism is always very nearly the

same both in its strength and in its weakness. It exhibits, indeed, the

most varied phases, according to the direction and degree in which it

falls into those excesses to which it is peculiarly liable, but such

extravagances are very independent of the particular community in which

they happen to appear. Different as are the associations connected with

such names as Plato and Pythagoras, Plotinus and Dionysius, St. Bernard

and T. à Kempis, Eckhart and Tauler, More and Norris, Fénelon and Guyon,

Arndt and Spener, Law and Byrom, Quakers and Moravians, Schleiermacher

and Schelling, yet passages might be collected from each, often striking

and sometimes sublime, which show very close and essential points of

affinity. And just in proportion as each form of mysticism has relaxed

its hold upon steadying grounds of reason, the diversified dangers to

which it is subject uniformly recur. Every successive type of mystic

enthusiasm, if once it has passed its legitimate bounds, has produced

exactly analogous instances of pantheism, antinomianism, or fanaticism.

Early in the eighteenth century, when Quakerism was just beginning to

lose its influence, its wild assumptions of an earlier date were

paralleled by a new form of fanatical enthusiasm. In 1706 there arose,

says Calamy, 'a mighty noise as concerning new prophets.'[498] These

were certain Camisards,[499] as they were called, of the Cevennes, who,

after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had risen in the cause of

their religion, and had been suppressed with great severity by Marshals

Montrevel and Villars. Suffering and persecution have always been

favourable to highly-wrought forms of mysticism. In their sore distress

men and women have implored for and obtained consolations which

transcend all ordinary experience. They have cried, in agonies of faith

and doubt, for cheering visions of brighter things.

Father, O Father, what do we here,

In this land of unbelief and fear?

The land of dreams is brighter far,

Above the light of the morning star.[500]

Not only have they been comforted by what they feel to be direct

intuitions of a Divine Presence in them and about them, but their

imaginations have been kindled into fervent anticipations of triumphs

near at hand and of judgments soon to fall upon their oppressors. From

excited feelings such as these it is but a very little step for

illiterate and undisciplined minds to pass into the wildest phrensies of

fanaticism. So it was with these 'French prophets.' The cause of foreign

Protestantism was at this time very popular in England; and when a

number of them found their way hither as refugees they met at first with

much sympathy, and had many admirers. Some men even of learning and

reputation, as Sir Edward Bulkeley and John Lacy, threw themselves heart

and soul into the movement, on the not unreasonable ground that the

dulness of religion and the degeneracy of the time needed a new

dispensation of the Spirit, and that a great revival had begun. It is

unnecessary to follow up the history in any detail. The impulse had been

very genuine in the first instance, and had stood the test of much

fierce trial. Transplanted to alien soil, it rapidly degenerated, and

presently became degraded into mere imposture. For a time, however, it

not only created much excitement throughout England, and even as far

north as Aberdeen, but also attracted the anxious attention of several

men of note. There could not be many subjects on which Hoadly and

Shaftesbury, Spinckes the Nonjuror, Winston and Calamy could all be

writing contemporaneously on the same side. But it was so in this case.

The commotion caused by these Camisard refugees quickly passed away, but

left its impression on the public mind, and made the educated classes

more than ever indisposed to bear with any outbursts of religious

feelings which should in any way outstep the bounds of sobriety and

order. When strange physical manifestations began to break out under the

preaching of Wesley and Whitefield, the quakings and tremblings, the

sighings and convulsions, which middle-aged people had seen or heard of

in their younger days were by many recalled to memory, and helped to

strengthen the unfortunate prejudices which the new movement had

created, Wesley himself was vexed and puzzled at the obvious

resemblance. He was quite ready to grant that such agitations betokened

'natural distemper'[501] in the case of the French prophets, yet the

remembrance of them embarrassed him, for he was convinced that what he

saw around him were veritable pangs of the new birth, the undoubted

effects of spiritual and supernatural agencies.

About the same time that the Protestant enthusiasts of the Cevennes were

conspicuously attracting the admiration or derision of the English

public, another form of mysticism imported from Catholic France was

silently working its way among a few persons of cultivated thought and

deep religious sentiment. Fénelon was held in high and deserved esteem

in England. Even when vituperation was most unsparingly lavished upon

Roman Catholics in general, his name, conjointly with those of Pascal

and Bossuet, was honourably excepted. His mild and tolerant spirit, his

struggles with the Jesuits, the purity of his devotion, the simple,

practical way in which he had discussed the evidences of religion, and,

lastly, but perhaps not least, the great popularity of his 'Telemachus,'

combined to increase his reputation in this country. The Duke of

Marlborough, at the siege of Bouchain, assigned a detachment of troops

to protect his estates and conduct provisions to his dwelling.[502]

Steele copied into one of the Saturday papers of the 'Guardian,'[503]

with a preface expressive of his high admiration of the piety and

talents of its author, the devotional passage with which Fénelon

concluded his 'Demonstration.' Lyttelton made Plato welcome him to

heaven as 'the most pure, the most gentle, the most refined, disciple of

philosophy that the world in modern times has produced.'[504] Richard

Savage spoke of him as the pride of France.[505] Jortin, in reference to

him and other French Churchmen of his stamp, observed that no European

country had produced Romanists of so high a type.[506] But Fénelon is

thoroughly representative of a pure and refined mysticism. He is,

indeed, singularly free from the various errors which closely beset its

more exaggerated forms. Yet no admirer of his who had become at all

penetrated with the spirit that breathes in his writings could fail to

sympathise with the fundamental ideas common to every form of mystic

theology. An age which abhorred enthusiasm might have found,

nevertheless, in the author whom all extolled, opinions closely

analogous to those by which the wildest fanatics had justified their

extravagances. The doctrines of an inner light, of perfection, of reason

quiescent amid the tumult of the soul, of mystical union, of

disinterested love, are all strongly maintained by the Archbishop of

Cambray. He wrote his 'Maximes des Saints' with the express purpose of

showing how, in every age of the Church, opinions identical with those

held by himself and Madame Guyon had been sanctioned by great

authorities.[507] It was, in fact, a detailed defence of the Quietism

and moderated mystical views which had excited the violent and unguarded

attack of Bossuet.

Fénelon, with instinctive ease, escaped the pitfalls with which his

subject was encompassed; but it was not so with Madame Guyon, whose

opinions he had so vigorously defended and all but identified with his

own. There could scarcely be a better example of the insensible degrees

in which, by the infirmity of human nature, sound spiritualism may

decline into visionary fancies and a morbid state of religious emotion,

than to notice how the writings of Guyon and Bourignon form transitory

links between Fénelon and the extreme mystics. Their principles were the

same, but the meditations of Madame Bourignon, although sometimes ranked

in devotional value with those of À Kempis and De Sales, fell, if Leslie

and others may be trusted,[508] into most of the dangerous and heretical

notions into which an unreined enthusiasm is apt to lead. A defence of

her opinions, published in London in 1699, and a collection, which

followed soon after, of her translated letters, had considerable

influence with many earnest spirits[509] who chafed at the coldness of

the times, and cared little for other faults so long as they could find

a religious literature in which they could, at all events, be safe from

formalism and scholastic or sectarian disputings.

Lyttelton, in the same paper in which he pronounces his panegyric on

Fénelon, calls Madame Guyon a 'mad woman' and 'a distracted enthusiast.'

So much depends upon the greater or less sobriety with which views are

stated; and excellent as Madame Guyon was, her effuse and somewhat

morbid form of devotional sentiment can never be altogether congenial to

English feeling, still less to English feeling such as it was in the

first half of the eighteenth century. But her hymns, made familiar to

readers in this country by Cowper's translations, were received by many

with the same welcome as the works of Madame de Bourignon. If there were

few who could appreciate the high-strung mystic aspirations after

perfect self-renunciation, self-annihilation, and absorption in the

abyss of the Divine infinity, the ecstatic joy in self-denial and

suffering, whereby the soul might be so refined from selfishness as to

surrender itself wholly to the will of God, and to see the marks of His

love equally present everywhere--if to religious men and women outside

the cloister this seemed like vainly striving

To wind ourselves too high

For sinful man beneath the sky,

yet in the general spirit of her verses they could gain refreshment not

always to be found elsewhere. They could sympathise with the intense

longing for a closer walk with God, with the hunger and thirst after a

purer righteousness, a more unselfish love, a closer mystical union with

the Divine life.

Yet, after all, it is not France, but Germany that has been for many

centuries the chosen abode of every variety of mystic sentiment. The

most exalted forms of spiritual Christianity have prospered there, and,

on the other hand, the vaguest reveries and the grossest epidemics of

fanaticism. We turn from the influence in the England of the eighteenth

century of French revivalists and French Pietists to that exercised by

one of the most remarkable of German mystics, Jacob Behmen. If it was an

influence no longer popular and widely spreading, as it once had been,

yet it directly and profoundly impressed one of the most eminent of our

theologians, and indirectly its effects were by no means inconsiderable.

Behmen's writings (1612-24) travelled rapidly through Europe, found

readers in every class, and are said to have been widely instrumental in

recalling unbelievers to a Christian faith. They popularised and gave an

immense extension to mysticism of every kind, good and bad. In Germany

they largely contributed[510] to form the opinions of Arndt and

Andreas, Spener and Francke, men to whom their country was indebted for

a remarkable revival of spiritual religion. Their further influence may,

perhaps, be traced through Francke on Count Zinzendorf and the

Moravians,[511] and through Wolff on the mystic rationalism of later

Germany. The German Romanticists of the end of the last and the

beginning of this century were extravagant in his praises,[512] Schlegel

declaring that he was superior to Luther. Novalis was scarcely less

ardent in his admiration. Kahlman protested that he had learnt more from

him than he could have learnt from all the wise men of his age

together.[513] In England, both in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, he had many devoted followers and many violent opponents.

Henry More speaks of him as a good and holy man, but at the same time

'an egregious enthusiast,' and regrets that he 'has given occasion to

the enthusiasts of this nation in our late troublesome times to run into

many ridiculous errors and absurdities.'[514] J. Wesley admitted that he

was a good man, but says 'the whole of Behmenism, both phrase and sense,

is useless.'[515] With an absence of appreciation almost amounting to a

want of candour, not uncommon in this eminent man towards those from

whom he disagreed, he will not even allow that he had any 'patrons'[516]

who have adorned the doctrine of Christ. 'His language is barbarous,

unscriptural, and unintelligible.' 'It is most sublime nonsense,

inimitable bombast, fustian not to be paralleled.' Bishop Warburton also

refers to him in the most unqualified[517] terms of contempt. William

Blake, most mystical of poets and painters, delighted, as might well be

expected, in Behmen's writings.[518] A far weightier testimony to their

value is to be found in the high estimate which William Law--a

theologian of saintly life, and most thoughtful and suggestive in his

reasonings--formed of the spiritual treasury which he found there. He

can scarcely find words to express his thankfulness for 'the depth and

fulness of Divine light and truth opened in them by the grace and mercy

of God.'[519]

This extreme contrast of opinions may be easily accounted for. To most

modern readers Jacob Behmen's works must be an intolerable trial of

patience. They will find page after page of what they may very

pardonably call, as Wesley did, 'sublime nonsense' or unintelligible

jargon. Repetitions, obscurities, and verbal barbarisms abound in them,

and the most ungrounded fancies are poured profusely forth as the most

indubitable verities. But it is like diving for pearls in a deep and

turbid sea. The pearls are there, if patiently sought for, and sometimes

of rare beauty. To Behmen's mind the whole universe of man and nature is

transfigured by the pervading presence of a spiritual life. Everywhere

there is a contest against evil, sin, and death; everywhere there is a

longing after better things, a yearning for the recovery of the heavenly

type. Everywhere there is a groaning and travailing in pain until now,

awaiting the adoption--to wit, the redemption of the body. None felt

more keenly than Behmen that heaven is truly at our doors, and God not

far away from every one of us. The Holy Spirit is to him in very deed

Lord and Giver of all life, and teaches all things, and leads into all

truth. He is well assured that to him who thirsts after righteousness,

and hath his conversation in heaven, and knoweth God within him, and

whose heart is prepared by purity and truth, such light of the eternal

life will be granted that, though he be simple and unlearned, heavenly

wisdom will be granted to him, and all things will become full of

meaning. He puts no limit to the grand possibilities and capabilities of

human nature. To him the soul of man is indeed 'larger than the sky,

deeper than ocean,'[520] but only through union and conformity with that

Divine Spirit which 'searcheth all things--yea, the deep things of God.'

He would have welcomed as a wholly congenial idea that grand mediæval

notion of an encyclopædic wisdom in which all forms of philosophy, art,

and science build up, as it were, one noble edifice, rising heavenwards,

domed in by Divine philosophy, the spiritual and intellectual knowledge

of God; he would have agreed with Bonaventura that all human science

'emanates, as from its source, from the Divine Light.'[521] He felt also

that in the unity of 'the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man

severally as He will,' would be found something deeper than all

diversities in religion, which would reconcile them, and would solve

Scripture difficulties and the mysteries which have tormented men.

These and suchlike thoughts, intensely realised, and sometimes expressed

with singular vividness and power, possessed great attraction to minds

wearied with the religious controversies or spiritual dulness of the

time, and which were not repelled by the wilderness of verbiage, the

hazy cloudland, in which Behmen's conceptions were involved. William

Law, the Nonjuror, was thoroughly fascinated by them, and their

influence upon him forms an episode of considerable interest in the

religious history of the period.

Yet if it had been only as the translator and exponent of 'the Teutonic

theosophy' that William Law had become prominent, and incurred on every

side the hackneyed charge of 'enthusiasm,' this excellent man might have

claimed but a passing notice. His theological position in the eighteenth

century is rendered chiefly remarkable by the power he showed (in his

time singularly exceptional) of harmonising the ideas of mediæval

mysticism with some of the most characteristic features of modern

religious thought. A man of deep and somewhat ascetic piety, and gifted

with much originality and with a cultured and progressive mind, he had

many readers and a few earnest and admiring adherents, yet was never

greatly in sympathy with the age in which he lived. Three or four

generations earlier, or three or four generations later, he would have

found much more that was congenial to one or another side of his

intellectual temperament. At the accession of George I. in 1716 he

declined to take the oaths, and resigned his fellowship at Cambridge,

although, like others among the moderate Nonjurors, he remained to the

last constant to the communion of the National Church.[522] In 1726 he

wrote the 'Serious Call,' one of the most remarkable devotional books

that have ever been published. Dr. Johnson, upon whom it made a profound

and lasting impression, describes it as 'the finest piece of hortatory

theology in any language.'[523] Gibbon, in whose father's house Law

lived for some time as tutor and chaplain, says of it that 'if it found

a spark of piety in the reader's mind it would soon kindle it to a

flame.'[524] Southey remarks of it that 'few books have made so many

religious enthusiasts.' The reading of it formed one of the first epochs

in Wesley's religious life. It did much towards forming the character of

the elder Venn. It was mainly instrumental in effecting the conversion

from profligacy to piety of the once famous Psalmanazar.[525] Effects

scarcely less striking are recorded in 1771 to have resulted upon its

copious distribution among the inhabitants of a whole parish.[526] And

lastly it may be added that Bishop Horne made himself thoroughly

familiar with a kindred work by the same author--on 'Christian

Perfection'--and was wont to express the greatest admiration of it.

From his retirement at Kingscliffe,[527] where he lived a life of

untiring benevolence, Law took an active part in the religious

controversies of the time; refusing, however, all payment for his

publications. He entered the lists against Tindal, Chubb, and

Mandeville, against Hoadly, against Warburton, against Wesley. His

answer to Mandeville is called by J. Sterling 'a most remarkable

philosophical essay,' full 'of pithy right reason,'[528] and has been

republished by Frederick Maurice, with a highly commendatory

introduction. The authority last mentioned also speaks of him as 'a

singularly able controversialist in his argument with Hoadly;' and adds:

'Of all the writers whom he must have irritated--Freethinkers,

Methodists, actors, Hanoverians,--of all the nonjuring friends whom he

alienated by his quietism, none doubted his singleness of purpose.' It

may be added that there were few of his opponents who might not have

learnt from him a lesson of Christian courtesy. Living in an age when

controversy of every kind was, almost as a rule, deformed by virulent

personalities, he yet, in the face of much provocation, kept always

faithful to his resolve that, 'by the grace of God, he would never have

any personal contention with anyone.'[529]

Such was the man who, from about 1730 to his death in 1761, was a most

earnest student of mystical theology. 'Of these mystical divines,' he

says, 'I thank God I have been a diligent reader, through all ages of

the Church, from the Apostolical Dionysius the Areopagite down to the

great Fénelon, the illuminated Guyon, and M. Bertot.'[530] Tauler made a

great impression on his mind, but Jacob Behmen most of all. Of these

writers in general he speaks in grateful terms, as true spiritual

teachers, purified by trials and self-discipline, and deeply learned in

the mysteries of God, 'truly sons of thunder and sons of consolation,

who awaken the heart, and leave it not till the kingdom of heaven is

raised up in it.'

William Law was a man of far too great intellectual ability to be a

mere borrower of ideas. What he read he thoroughly assimilated; and

Behmen's strange theosophy, after passing through the mind of his

English exponent, reappeared in a far more logical and comprehensible

form. It cannot be said that Law was altogether a gainer by his later

studies. To many of his contemporaries the result appeared quite the

contrary; and he was constantly reproached with having become a mere

mystic or a hopeless enthusiast. No doubt, he borrowed from his

favourite authors some of their faults as well as many of their virtues.

Jacob Behmen's most glaring faults in style and phraseology are

sometimes transferred with little mitigation to his pages. A person who

gathered his ideas of William Law from Wesley's critique would probably

turn with impatience, and something like aversion, from one who could

use upon the gravest subjects what might seem a strange jargon

compounded out of Gnostic cosmogonies and alchemistic fancies. We take

Jacob Behmen for what he was--a man in some respects of extraordinary

spiritual insight, but perfectly illiterate; living at a time when the

fame of Agrippa and Paracelsus was still recent, and accustomed to refer

all his conceptions to immediate revelation from heaven. But we do not

expect to find in a cultivated scholar of the eighteenth century such

outlandish sayings as 'Nature is in itself a hungry, wrathful fire of

life,' or pages of argument grounded upon the condition and fall of

angels before the creation of the world. Such phraseology and such

reasonings, even if culled from Law's writings less unrelentingly and

more fairly than by Wesley and Warburton, are quite sufficient to create

a reasonable prejudice against his opinions. Yet these are blemishes

which lie comparatively on the surface. They are always found in

reference to certain views which he had adopted about creation and the

fall of man. Although, therefore, they occur constantly--for the Fall is

always a very essential feature in the whole of Law's theology--they do

not interfere with the general lucidity of his argument, or the

devotional beauty of his thought.

Independently of occasional obscurities of language and visionary

notions, Law does not altogether escape those more serious objections to

which mystic writers are almost always liable. When he speaks of

heavenly illumination, and of the birth of Christ within the soul, or of

the all of God and the nothingness of man, or when he refers over

slightingly to 'human reason' or 'human learning,' or to the outward

machinery of religion in contrast to the direct communion of the soul

with its Creator, it is impossible not to feel that he sometimes

approaches over nearly to the dangerous verge where sound spiritualism

loses self-control.

The ascetic austerity of Law's life and teaching was at once a

recommendation and an impediment to the influence of his writings. From

the beginning to the end of his active life he would never swerve an

atom from the high and uncompromising type of holiness which he

constantly set before himself as the bounden goal of all human effort.

His mysticism only intensified this feeling. Assured as of a certain

truth that, corrupt, fallen, and earthly as human nature is, there is

nevertheless in the soul of every man 'the fire and light and love of

God, though lodged in a state of hiddenness, inactivity, and death, ...

overpowered by the workings of flesh and blood,'[531] it seemed to him

the one worthy object of life, by purification and by mortification of

the lower nature, to remove all hindrances to the enlightening efficacy

of the Holy Spirit. So only could the Divine Image, the life of the

triune God within the soul, be restored, and the heaven-born Spirit,

'that angel that died in Paradise,'[532] be born again to life within

us. His words sound like a Christian paraphrase of what Plato had said

in the 'Republic,' where he compares the present appearance of the soul

to an image of the sea-god Glaucus, so battered by waves, so disfigured

by the overgrowth of shells, and seaweed, and all kinds of earthy

substances, that it has almost lost the similitude of the immortal

likeness.[533] No one could have felt more keenly than William Law the

overpowering need of this restorative process, and the fervent longing

of the awakened soul to be delivered from that bondage of corruption

which presses like a burden too heavy to be borne, not upon man only,

but upon all creation, groaning and travailing in sympathetic pain, to

be delivered from the evil and misery and death with which it is

laden.[534] He will allow of no ideal short of the highest pattern of

angelic[535] goodness, nor concede that we are called upon to pray,

'God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven,' without its full

accomplishment being in human power. This height of aspiration gives

great stimulative power to Law's writing, but, as is unfortunately apt

to be the case, it is a source of weakness as well as of power. With

him, as with many mystic writers, all other elements of human nature are

slighted and neglected in the absorbing thirst for holiness. His ideal

is indeed lofty, but it fails in expansiveness. When he speaks of

absorption into the Divine will--of seeking 'deliverance from the misery

and captivity of self by a total continual self-denial'[536]--of

converting 'this poison of an earthly life into a state of

purification'[537]--of 'turning from all that is earthly, animal, and

temporal, and dying to the will of flesh and blood, because it is

darkness, corruption, and separation from God;'[538] when--sound and

thoughtful reasoner as he often is--he speaks with thorough distrust of

'the guidance of our own Babylonian reason,' and of learning as good

indeed within its own sphere, but 'as different from Divine light as

heaven from earth,'[539] and wholly useless to one who would 'be well

qualified to write notes upon the spirit and meaning of the words of

Christ;'[540] it is impossible not to feel that he is approaching very

closely to the morbid pietism of the recluse. His was indeed no mere

contemplative asceticism, but fruitful in practical virtues; and even

its weaker points stand out in noble contrast with the deficiencies of

an age which admired prudential religion, and took in good earnest the

words of the Preacher as to being righteous overmuch.[541] But his

writings would probably have had greater and wider influence if his

piety had been less austere, and his ideal of life more comprehensive.

Yet, on the whole, William Law's mysticism had a most elevating effect

on his theology, and has done much toward raising him to the very

foremost rank of eighteenth-century divines. It broadened and deepened

his views, so that from being only a luminary of the estimable but

somewhat narrow section of the Nonjurors, he became a writer to whom

some of the most distinguished leaders of modern religious thought have

thankfully acknowledged their obligations. He learnt to combine with

earnest piety and strong convictions an unreserved sympathy, as far as

possible removed from the sectarianism of religious parties, with all

that is good and Christlike wherever it might be found, wherever the

Light that lighteth every man shines from its inward temple. He would

like no truth, he said, the less because Ignatius Loyola or John Bunyan

or George Fox were very zealous for it;[542] and while he chose to live

and die in outward communion with the Church of England,[543] he

desired to 'unite and join in heart and spirit with all that is

Christian, holy, good, and acceptable to God in all other

Churches.'[544] He deplored the 'partial selfish orthodoxy which cannot

bear to hear or own that the spirit and blessing of God are so visible

in a Church from which it is divided.'[545] He grieved that 'even the

most worthy and pious among the clergy of the Established Church are

afraid to assert the sufficiency of the Divine Light, because the

Quakers who have broken off from the Church have made this doctrine

their corner-stone.'[546] Of Romanism he remarked that 'the more we

believe or know of the corruptions and hindrances of true piety in the

Church of Rome, the more we should rejoice to hear that in every age so

many eminent spirits, great saints, have appeared in it, whom we should

thankfully behold as so many great lights hung out by God to show the

true way to heaven.'[547]

Nor would he by any means limit the operations of true redeeming grace

to the bounds of Christendom. Ever impressed with the sense that 'there

is in all men, wherever dispersed over the earth, a divine, immortal,

never-ending Spirit,'[548] and that by this Spirit of God in man all are

equally His children, and that as Adam is spoken of as first father of

all, so the second Adam is the regenerator of all,[549] he insisted that

'the glorious extent of the Catholick Church of Christ takes in all the

world. It is God's unlimited, universal mercy to all mankind.'[550]

Understood rightly, Christianity might truly be spoken of as being old

as the Creation; for the Son of God was the eternal life and light of

men, quite independently of the infinitely blessed revelation of Himself

afforded in the Gospel. There is a Gospel Christianity, which is as the

possession compared with the expectation. There is an 'original,

universal Christianity, which began with Adam, was the religion of the

Patriarchs, of Moses and the Prophets, and of every penitent man in

every part of the world that had faith and hope towards God, to be

delivered from the evil of this world.'[551] The real infidel, whether

he be a professed disciple of the Gospel, of Zoroaster, or of Plato, is

he who lives for the world and not for God.[552]