except Samuel Coleridge, so competent as William Law to appreciate, from
a thoroughly religious point of view, spiritual excellence in Christian
and heathen, in Anglican, and Roman Catholic, and Methodist, and
Quaker. Much in the same way, although a firm believer in revealed
religion and a vigorous opponent of the Deists, engaged 'for twenty
years in this dust of debate,'[553] he did not yield even to Bishop
Butler in his power of recognising what was most forcible in their
objections. The mystical tendencies of his religion, whatever may have
been the special dangers incidental to them, at all events enabled him
to meet the Deists with advantage on their own chosen ground. How he met
Tindal's 'Christianity as Old as Creation' has been already mentioned.
As Eusebius and St. Augustine and many others had done before him, he
accepted it as to a great extent true, while he declined to accept
Tindal's inferences from it.'[554] So of the Atonement which was always
considered the cardinal point in the controversy with Deists. Law
willingly acknowledged the justice of many of their arguments, but
maintained that the opinions they impugned were simply a mistaken view
of true Christianity. The author of 'Deism fairly stated,' &c.--a work
which excited much attention at its publication in 1746--had said, 'That
a perfectly innocent Being, of the highest order among intelligent
natures, should personate the offender and suffer in his place and
stead, in order to take down the wrath and resentment of the Deity
against the criminal, and dispose God to show mercy to him--the Deist
conceives to be both unnatural and improper, and therefore not to be
ascribed to God without blasphemy.' 'What an arrow,' answers Law, 'is
here: I will not say shot beside the mark, but shot at nothing!... The
innocent Christ did not suffer to quiet an angry Deity, but as
cooperating, assisting, and uniting with that love of God which desired
our salvation. He did not suffer in our place or stead, but only on our
account, which is a quite different matter.'[555] 'Our guilt is
transferred upon Him in no other sense than as He took upon Him the
state and condition of our fallen nature ... to heal, remove, and
overcome all the evils that were brought into our nature by the fall ...
His merit or righteousness is imputed or derived into us in no other
sense than as we receive from Him a birth, a nature, a power to become
the sons of God.'[556] There is nothing here said which would not now
be widely assented to among members of most sections of the Christian
Church. William Law's writings will not be rightly estimated unless it
be remembered that in his time orthodox theology in England scarcely
allowed of any other than those scholastic and forensic notions of the
Atonement which he deprecates. Other views were commonly thought to
savour of rank Deism or rank Quakerism. His theological opponents seemed
somewhat to doubt under which of these denominations he should be
placed, or whether he would not more properly be referred to both.[557]
Law's unwavering trust in a Spirit which guides faith and goodness into
all necessary truth, led him to take a different course from the
evidence writers of his time. 'I would not,' he says, 'take the method
generally practised by the defenders of Christianity. I would not
attempt to show from reason and antiquity the necessity and
reasonableness of a Divine revelation in general, or of the Mosaic and
Christian in particular. Nor do I enlarge upon the arguments for the
credibility of the Gospel history, the reasonableness of its creeds,
institutions, and usages; or the duty of man to receive things above,
but not contrary to his reason. I would avoid all this, because it is
wandering from the true point in question, and only helping the Deist to
oppose the Gospel with a show of argument, which he must necessarily
want, was the Gospel left to stand upon its own bottom.'[558] To follow
up the line of thought suggested by these words would be in itself a
treatise. It is a first axiom among all mystics, that light is its own
witness. With what limitations and precautions this is to be transferred
to the spiritual region, and how far Christianity is independent of
other testimony than its own intrinsic excellence--is a question of
profound importance, and one which various minds will answer very
differently. Law's unhesitating answer is another example of the way in
which he was wont to combat Deists with their own weapons.
The vigour and success with which Law controverted the reasonings of
those who grounded human society upon expedience, was also owing in
large part to what was styled his mysticism or his enthusiasm. A
religious philosophy which led him to dwell with special emphasis on the
Divine element inherent in man's nature, and his faculties in communion
with the Infinite, inspired him with the strongest force of conviction
in combating theories such as that expressed in its barest form by
Mandeville--that, in man's original state, right and wrong were but
other expressions for what was found to be expedient or otherwise, that
not rarely
Vice is beneficial found,
When it's by justice lopt and bound;[559]
and that 'moral virtues' (unless regarded as dictates of a special
revelation) 'are but the political offspring which flattery begot on
pride.'[560] The answers even of Berkeley and Hutchinson had been
comparatively feeble. They could not altogether escape from being
hampered by those favourite reasonings of the day about the wisdom of
morality and the advantages of religion, which after all were much like
the very same argument from expedience, clothed in fairer garb. Law
wrote in a different strain. Addressing himself to Deists who, whatever
else might be their doubts, rarely departed from belief in a God, he
bade them find their answer in that belief. 'Once turn your eyes to
heaven, and dare but own a just and good God, and then you have owned
the true origin of religion and moral virtue.' 'Suppose that God is of
infinite justice, goodness, and truth ... this is the strong and
unmoveable foundation of moral virtue, having the same certainty as the
attributes of God.'[561] Thence came that original excellence of man's
nature which is essentially his healthy state, his sound and perfect
condition, and of which all evil is the corruption and disease. Examine
goodness, analyse it with unsparing strictness; and see 'whether the
investigation does not prove that evil is _not_ the substantial part of
any act which is acted, or thought which is thought, in this world; but,
on the contrary, the destructive element of it, that which makes it
unreal and false.'[562]
Closely connected with this unfaltering conviction of the immutable
character of right and wrong, that the light of our souls comes direct
from the source of light, and that the principles of justice, truth, and
mercy cannot be otherwise than identical in God and His reasoning
creatures--came William Law's speculations about the ultimate destinies
of man. It has been truly observed that 'the first step commonly taken
by Protestant mysticism is an endeavour to mitigate the gloom which
hangs over the future state.'[563] This is very strongly marked in all
the later productions of Law's mind. He was very far from taking
anything like an optimist view of the world around him. There is no
writer of his age who shows himself more impressed with an abhorrence of
sin, and with the sense of its widespread and deeply rooted influences.
He is austere even to excess in his views of what godliness requires.
His whole soul is oppressed with the wilful ruin of spiritual life which
he everywhere beholds. Yet he can conceive of no hope except by the
recovery of that spiritual life, no atonement except by the
extinguishing of sin,[564] no salvation nor redemption except by
regeneration of nature,[565] no forgiveness of sin but by being made
free from sin.[566] But paramount above all such thoughts is his
ever-ruling conviction of the perfect love of God. 'Ask what God is? His
name is Love; He is the good, the perfection, the peace, the joy, the
glory and blessing of every life. Ask what Christ is? He is the
universal remedy of all evil broken forth in nature and creature. He is
the destruction of misery, sin, darkness, death, and hell. He is the
resurrection and life of all fallen nature. He is the unwearied
compassion, the long-suffering pity, the never-ceasing mercifulness of
God to every want and infirmity of human nature. He is the breathing
forth of the heart, life, and Spirit of God into all the dead race of
Adam. He is the seeker, the finder, the restorer of all that was lost
and dead to the life of God.'[567] Law utterly rejected the possibility
of Divine love contradicting the highest conceptions which man can form
of it; and he turned with horror from the arbitrary sovereignty
suggested in the Calvinistic scheme. Nations or individuals, he said,
might be chosen instruments for special designs, but 'elect' ordinarily
meant 'beloved.' In any other sense the evil nature only in every man is
reprobated, and that which is divine in him elected.[568] 'The goodness
and love of God,' he asserted, 'have no limits or bounds, but such as
His omnipotence hath.'[569] It was indeed conceivable that there may be
spirits of men or fallen angels that have so totally lost every spark of
the heavenly nature, and have become so essentially evil, that
restoration is no more consistent with their innermost nature than for a
circle to have the properties of a straight line. If not, 'their
restoration is possible, and they will infallibly have all their evil
removed out of them by the goodness of God.'[570] Christianity, he said,
is the one true religion of nature, because man's corrupt state
'absolutely requires two things as its only salvation. First, the Divine
life must be revived in the soul of man. Secondly, there must be a
resurrection of the body in a better state after death.'[571] That
religion only can be sufficient to the want of his nature which can
provide this salvation. God's redeeming love, said Law, will not suffer
the sinner to have rest or peace until, in time or in eternity,
righteousness is restored and purification completed.[572] He expressed
in the strongest language his belief that 'every act of what is called
Divine vengeance, recorded in Scripture, may and ought, with the
greatest strictness of truth, to be called an act of the Divine love. If
Sodom flames and smokes with stinking brimstone, it is the love of God
that kindled it, only to extinguish a more horrible fire. It was one and
the same infinite love, when it preserved Noah in the ark, when it
turned Sodom into a burning lake, and overwhelmed Pharaoh in the Red
Sea.'[573] If God did not chastise sin, that lenience would argue that
He was not all love and goodness towards man. And so far from its being
a lessening of the just 'terrors of the Lord,' to say that His
punishments, however severe, are inflicted not in vengeance but in love,
such wholesome terrors are placed on more certain ground. Every work of
piety is turned into a work of love; but from the licentious all false
and idle hopes are taken away, and they must know that there is 'nothing
to trust to as a deliverance from misery but the one total abolition of
sin.'[574]
A few words may be added upon what was said of enthusiasm by one who was
generally looked upon as the special enthusiast of his age. How much the
usual meaning of the word has altered since the middle of the last
century, is well illustrated by the length at which he argues that
'enthusiasm' ought not to be applied only to religion, and that it
should be used in a good as well as in a bad sense.[575] It is 'a
miserable mistake,' he says, 'to treat the real power and operation of
an inward life of God in the birth of our souls, as fanaticism and
enthusiasm.'[576] 'It is the running away from this enthusiasm that has
made so many great scholars as useless to the Church as tinkling
cymbals, and all Christendom a mere Babel of learned confusion.'[577]
Instead of being blameable, the enthusiasm which meant perfect
dependence on the immediate inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit
in the whole course of life was one, he said, in which every good
Christian should endeavour to live and die.[578] But he was too wise a
man not to warn his readers against expecting uncommon illuminations,
visions, and voices, and revelations of mysteries. Extraordinary
operations of the Holy Spirit granted to men raised up as burning and
shining lights are not matters of common instruction.[579] Many a fiery
zealot would be fitly rebuked by his words, 'Would you know the sublime,
the exalted, the angelic in the Christian life, see what the Son of God
saith, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy
neighbour as thyself." And without these two things no good light ever
can arise or enter into your soul.'[580]
John Byrom, whose life and poetical writings will be found in Chalmers'
edition of the British poets, has already been slightly referred to. His
works would demand more attention at this point, were they not to a
great degree an echo in rhyme of William Law's prose works. One of his
longest poems was written in 1751, on the publication of Law's 'Appeal,'
&c., upon the subject of 'Enthusiasm.' It may be said of it, as of
several other pieces he has left, that although written in very
pedestrian verse, they are worth reading, as containing some thoughtful
remarks, expressed occasionally with a good deal of epigrammatic force.
A few of his hymns and short meditations rise to a higher poetical
level. They are referred to with much praise by Mr. G. Macdonald,[581]
who adds the just remark that 'The mystical thinker will ever be found
the reviver of religious poetry.' Like Law, John Byrom was a great
admirer of Behmen. He learnt High Dutch for the purpose of studying him
in the original, and, nowise daunted by the many dark parables he found
there, paraphrased in his halting rhymes what Socrates had said of
Heraclitus:--
All that I understand is good and true,
And what I don't, is I believe so too.[582]
The same influences, springing from a German origin, which thus deeply
and directly impressed William Law, and a few other devout men of the
same type of thought, acted upon the national mind far more widely, but
also far more indirectly, through a different channel. The Moravian
brethren, though dating in the first instance from the time of Huss,
owed their resuscitation to that wave of mystic pietism which passed
through Germany in the seventeenth century,[583] showing its early power
in the writings of Behmen, and reaching its full tide in the new vigour
of spiritual life inspired into the Lutheran Church by the activity of
Arndt and Spener. Their work was carried on by Francke, 'the S. Vincent
de Paul of Germany.' Educated by him, and trained up in the teaching of
Spener's School at Halle, Count Zinzendorf imbibed those principles
which he carried out with such remarkable success in his Moravian
settlement at Herrnhut. There he organised a community to which their
severest critics have never refused a high amount of admiration; a
society which set itself with simple zeal to lead a Christian life after
the primitive model--frugal, quiet, industrious, shunning temptation and
avoiding controversy,--a band of brethren who held out the hand of
fellowship to all in every communion who, without giving up a single
distinctive tenet, would unite with them in a union of godly
living--which sent out labourers into Christian countries to convert but
not to proselytise--whose missionaries were to be found among the
remotest heathen savages. That they should fall short of their ideal was
but human weakness; and no doubt they had their special failings. They
might be apt, in the fervency of their zeal, to speak too disdainfully
of all gifts of learning;[584] they might risk alternations of
distressing doubt by too presumptuous expectations of visible
supernatural help;[585] they might think too lightly of all outward aids
to religion.[586] Such errors might, and sometimes did, prove very
dangerous. But one who knew them well, and to whom, as his mind
expanded, their too parental discipline, their timid fears of reasoning,
their painful straining for experiences, had become intolerable, could
yet say of them, 'There is not throughout Christendom, in our day, a
form of public worship which expresses more thoroughly the spirit of
true Christian piety, than does that of the Herrnhut brotherhood.... It
is the truest Christian community, I believe, which exists in the
outward world.'[587]
The first Diaspora, or missionary colony, established by the Moravians
in England was in 1728, at the instance of a lady in that centre of
intellectual and religious activity, the Court of Queen Caroline. They
did not, however, attract much attention. Winston, ever inquisitive and
unsettled, wanted to know more about them, and began to read some of
their sermons, but 'found so much weakness and enthusiasm mixed with a
great degree of seriousness,' that he did not care to go to their
worship.[588] Their strictly organised discipline was in itself a great
impediment to success among a people so naturally attached to liberty
as the English. In the middle of the century, their missionary
enterprise secured them special privileges in the American colonies.
More than this. At the instance of Gambold, who was exceedingly anxious
that the Brotherhood should gain ground in England within the bosom of
the Anglican Church, a Moravian synod, held in 1749, formally elected
Wilson, the venerable Bishop of Sodor and Man, 'into the order and
number of the Antecessors of the General Synod of the brethren of the
Anatolic Unity.' With this high-sounding dignity was joined 'the
administration of the Reformed Tropus' (or Diaspora) 'in our hierarchy,
for life, with full liberty, in case of emergency, to employ as his
substitute the Rev. T. Wilson, Royal Almoner, Doctor of Theology, and
Prebendary of St. Peter's, Westminster.' It is further added that the
good old man accepted the office with thankfulness and pleasure.[589]
Here their success ended. Soon afterwards many of the English Moravians
fell for a time into a most unsatisfactory condition, becoming largely
tainted with Antinomianism, and with a sort of vulgar lusciousness of
religious sentiment, which was exceedingly revolting to ordinary English
feeling.[590] After the death of Zinzendorf in 1760, the Society
recovered for the most part a healthier condition,[591] but did not
regain any prospect of that wider influence in England which Gambold and
others had once begun to hope for, and perhaps to anticipate.
Warburton said of Methodism, that 'William Law was its father, and Count
Zinzendorf rocked the cradle.'[592] The remark was no doubt a somewhat
galling one to Wesley, for he had afterwards conceived a great
abhorrence of the opinions both of the father and the nurse. But it was
perfectly just; and Wesley, though he might have been unwilling to own
it, was greatly and permanently indebted to each. The light which, when
he read Law's 'Christian Perfection and Serious Call,' had 'flowed so
mightily on his soul that everything appeared in a new view,' was
rekindled into a still more fervent flame by the glowing words of the
Moravian teacher on the morning of the day from which he dated his
special 'conversion.' Nor was his connection with men of this general
turn of thought by any means a passing one. His visit to William Law at
Mr. Gibbon's house at Putney in 1732--the correspondence he carried on
with him for several years afterwards--his readings of the mystic
divines of Germany--his loving respect for the company of Moravians who
were his fellow-travellers to Georgia in 1736--his meeting with Peter
Böhler in 1738--the close intercourse which followed with the London
Moravians--the fortnight spent by him at Herrnhut, 'exceedingly
strengthened and comforted by the conversation of this lovely
people,'[593]--his intimate friendship with Gambold, who afterwards
completely threw in his lot with the United Brethren and became one of
their bishops,[594]--all these incidents betoken a deep and cordial
sympathy. It is true that all this fellow-feeling came at last to a
somewhat abrupt termination. Passing, at first, almost to the bitter
extreme, he even said in his 'Second Journal' that 'he believed the
mystic writers to be one great Anti-Christ.'[595] Some years afterwards
he retracted this expression, as being far too strong. He had, he said,
'at one time held the mystic writers in great veneration as the best
explainers of the Gospel of Christ;'[596] but added, that though he
admired them, he was never of their way; he distrusted their tendency to
disparage outward means. 'Their divinity was never the Methodist
doctrine. We cannot swallow either John Tauler or Jacob Behmen.'[597]
His friendly correspondence with Law ceased after a few years. He
continued to 'admire and love' his personal character, but attacked his
opinions[598] with a vehemence contrasting somewhat unfavourably with
the patience and humility of Law's reply.[599] As for the Moravians, not
Warburton, nor Lavington, nor Stinstra, nor Duncombe, ever used stronger
words against 'these most dangerous of the Antinomians--these cunning
hunters.'[600] Count Zinzendorf, on the other hand, published a notice
that his people had no connection with the Wesleys.
Like many other men who have been distinguished in divinity and
religion,[601] John Wesley, as he grew older, became far more
charitable and large-hearted in what he said or thought of opinions
different from his own. Methodism also had become, by that time, well
established upon a secure basis of its own. Wesley had no longer cause
to be disturbed by its features of relationship with a school of
theology which he had learnt greatly to distrust. The fanciful and
obscure philosophy of Dionysius, of Behmen, or of Law had been repugnant
to him from the first. He had beheld with the greatest alarm Law's
departures from commonly received doctrine on points connected with
justification, regeneration, the atonement, the future state. Above all,
he had become acquainted with that most degenerate form of mysticism,
when its phraseology becomes a pretext to fanatics and Antinomians. Much
in the same way as in the Germany of the fourteenth century the lawless
Brethren of the Free Spirit[602] had justified their excesses in
language which they borrowed from men of such noble and holy life as
Eckhart[603] and Tauler, and Nicolas of Basle, so the flagitious
conduct, at Bedford and elsewhere, of some who called themselves
Moravians threw scandal and odium on the tenets of the pure and
simple-minded community of Herrnhut. This was a danger to which Wesley
was, without doubt, all the more sensitive, because he lived among
hostile critics who were only too ready to discredit his teaching by
similar imputations on its tendencies. The truth is that Methodism, in
its different aspects, had so many points of contact with the essential
characteristics of mysticism, both in its highest and more
spiritualised, and in its grosser and more fanatical forms, that Wesley
was exceedingly anxious his system should not be confused with any such
'enthusiasm,' and dwelt with jealous care upon its more distinctive
features.
It has been already observed that a French historian of Christianity
speaks of Quakerism and Methodism as the two chief forms of English
mysticism.[604] To an educated man of ordinary observation in the
eighteenth century, especially if he regarded the new movement with
distrust, the analogy between this and different or earlier varieties of
'enthusiasm' appeared still more complete. Lord Lyttelton, for example,
in discussing a favourite theological topic of that age--namely, the
absence of enthusiasm in St. Paul, and his constant appeals to the
evidence of reason and the senses--contrasts with the life and writings
of the Apostles the extravagant imaginations, and the pretensions to
Divine illumination, of 'mystics, ancient and modern,' mediæval saints,
'Protestant sectaries of the last age, and some of the Methodists
now.'[605] Montanus and Dionysius, St. Francis and Ignatius Loyola,
Madame Bourignon, George Fox, and Whitefield are all ranked together in
the same general category. Methodists, Moravians, and Hutchinsonians are
classed as all nearly-related members of one family. Just in the same
way[606] Bishop Lavington, in his 'Enthusiasm of Methodists and
Papists,' has entered into an elaborate comparison between what he finds
in Wesley's journals and in the lives and writings of saints and mystics
of the Roman Church.[607] Nor does he fail to discover similar
resemblances to Methodist experiences among the old mystic philosophers,
Montanists, Quakers, French Quietists, French prophets, and Moravians.
The argumentative value of Lavington's book may be taken for what it was
worth. To his own contemporaries it appeared the achievement of a great
triumph if he could prove in frequent cases an almost identical tone of
thought in Wesley and in Francis of Assisi or Francis de Sales. To most
minds in our own days it will rather seem as if he were constantly
dealing blows which only rebounded upon himself, in comparing his
opponent to men whose deep piety and self-denying virtues, however much
tinged by the errors of their time and order, worked wonders in the
revival of earnest faith. On the whole Lavington proved his case
successfully, but he only proved by what easy transitions the purest and
most exalted faith may pass into extravagances, and, above all, the
folly of his own Church in not endeavouring to find scope for her
enthusiasts and mystics, as Rome had done for a Loyola and a St.
Theresa. He himself was a typical example of the tone of thought out of
which this infatuation grew. What other views could be looked for from a
bishop who, though himself an awakening preacher and a good man, whose
dying words[608] were an ascription of glory to God ([Greek: doxa tô
theô]), was yet so wholly blind to the more intense manifestations of
religious fervour that he could see nothing to admire, nothing even to
approve, in the burning zeal of the founders of the Franciscans and of
the Jesuits? Of the first he had nothing more to say than that he was
'at first only a well-minded but weak enthusiast, afterwards a mere
hypocrite and impostor;' of the other he spoke with a certain compassion
as 'that errant, shatter-brained, visionary fanatic.'[609] And the
Methodist, he thought, had a somewhat 'similar texture of brain.'
The Methodist leaders were wholly free from some dangerous tendencies
which mysticism has been apt to develop. They never disparaged any of
the external aids to religion; their meaning is never hidden under a
haze of dim conceptions; above all, they never showed the slightest
inclination to the vague and unpractical pantheistic opinions which are
often nurtured by a too exclusive insistance on the indwelling and
pervading operations of the Divine Spirit. In the two latter points they
resembled the Quietist and Port-Royal mystics of the French school, who
always aimed at lucidity of thought and language, rather than those of
German origin. From mystics generally they differed, most of all, in
adopting the Pauline rather than the Johannine phraseology.
But, with some important differences, there can be no question that
Methodism rose and prospered under the same influences which in every
age of Christianity, or rather in every age of the world, have attended
all the most notable outbursts of mystic revivalism. Its causes were the
same; its higher manifestations were much the same; its degenerate and
exaggerated forms were the same; its primary and most essential
principle was the same. As the religious brotherhoods of the
Pythagoreans rose in spiritual revolt against the lax mythology and
careless living of the Sybarites in Sicily;[610] as in the third century
of the Christian era Neoplatonism concentrated within itself whatever
remains of faith and piety lingered in the creeds and philosophies of
paganism;[611] as in the Middle Ages devout men, wearied with forms and
controversies, and scholastic reasoners seeking refuge from the logical
and metaphysical problems with which they had perplexed theology, sought
more direct communion with God in the mystic devotion of Anselm and
Bernard, of Hugo and Bonaventura;[612] as Bertholdt and Nicolas, Eckhart
and Tauler,[613] organised their new societies throughout Germany to
meet great spiritual needs which established systems had wholly ceased
to satisfy; as Arndt and Spener and Francke in the seventeenth century
breathed new life into the Lutheran Church, and set on foot their
'collegia pietatis,' their systematised prayer-meetings, to supplement
the deficiencies of the time[614]--so in the England of the eighteenth
century, when the force of religion was chilled by drowsiness and
indifference in some quarters, by stiffness and formality and
over-cautious orthodoxy in others, when the aspirations of the soul were
being ever bidden rest satisfied with the calculations of sober reason,
when proofs and evidences and demonstrations were offered, and still
offered, to meet the cry of those who called for light, how else should
religion stem the swelling tide of profligacy but by some such inward
spiritual revival as those by which it had heretofore renewed its
strength? If Wesley and Whitefield and their fellow-workers had not come
to the rescue, no doubt other reformers of a somewhat kindred spirit
would have risen in their stead. How or whence it is useless to
speculate. Perhaps Quakerism, or something nearly akin to it, might have
assumed the dimensions to which a half-century before it had seemed not
unlikely to grow. The way was prepared for some strong reaction. Past
aberrations of enthusiasm were well-nigh forgotten, and large masses of
the population were unconsciously longing for its warmth and fire. It
was highly probable that an active religious movement was near at hand,
and its general nature might be fairly conjectured; its specific
character, its force, extent, and limits, would depend, under
Providence, upon the zeal and genius of its leaders.
Nothing could be more natural than that to many outside observers early
Methodism should have seemed a mere repetition of what England, in the
century before, had been only too familiar with. The physical phenomena
which manifested themselves under the influence of Wesley's and
Whitefield's preaching were in all points exactly the same as those of
which the annals of imaginative and excited religious feeling have in
every age been full. Swoons and strange convulsive agitations, however
impressive and even awe-inspiring to an uninformed beholder, were
undistinguishable from those, for example, which had given their name to
English Quakers[615] and French Convulsionists,[616] which were to be
read of in the Lives of Guyon and St. Theresa,[617] and which were a
matter of continual occurrence when Tauler preached in Germany.[618] It
is no part of this inquiry to dwell upon their cause and nature, or upon
the perplexity Wesley himself felt on the subject. Occasionally he was
mortified by the discovery of imposture or of superstitious credulity,
and something he was willing to attribute to natural causes.[619] On
the whole his opinion was that they might be rejoiced in as a glorious
sight,[620] visible evidences of life-giving spiritual agencies, but
that the bodily pain was quite distinct and due to Satan's
hindrance.[621] He sometimes added a needful warning that all such
physical disturbances were of a doubtful nature, and that the only tests
of spiritual change which could be relied upon were those indisputable
fruits of the Spirit which the Apostle Paul enumerates.[622] His less
guarded words closely correspond with what may be read in the journals
of G. Fox and other early Quakers. When he writes more coolly and
reflectively we are reminded not of the first fanatical originators of
that sect, but of what their distinguished apologist, Barclay, has said
of those 'pangs of the new birth' which have often accompanied the
sudden awakening to spiritual life in persons of strong and
undisciplined feelings. 'From their inward travail, while the darkness
seeks to obscure the light and the light breaks through the darkness ...
there will be such a painful travail found in the soul that will even
work upon the outward man, so that oftentimes through the working
thereof the body will be greatly shaken, and many groans, and sighs, and
tears, will lay hold upon it.'[623]
Wesley himself was protected both by disposition and training from
falling deeply into some of the dangers to which enthusiastic and
mystical religion is very liable. He was credulous, and even
superstitious, but he checked his followers in the credence which many
of them were inclined to give to stories of ecstasies, and visions, and
revelations. He spoke slightingly of orthodoxy, and held that 'right
opinions were a very slender part of religion;'[624] but, far from
countenancing anything like a vague undogmatic Pietism, his opinions
went almost to the opposite extreme of precise definition. Neither could
it be said of him that he spiritualised away the plain meaning of
Scripture--a charge to which the old Quakers were constantly liable, and
which was sometimes alleged against the later Methodists. He himself
never spoke contemptuously--as the mystics have been so apt to do--of
the value of learning; and of reason he said, in the true spirit of
Henry More, 'I believe and reason too, for I find no inconsistency
between them. And I would as soon put out my eyes to secure my faith, as
lay aside my reason.'[625] But the Methodists, as a body, were far less
inclined to act on this principle. Without disparagement to the
conspicuous ability of some individual members of their communion, both
in the present and in the past, it may be certainly said that they have
always utterly failed to attract the intellect of the country at large.
Great, therefore, as was its moral and spiritual power among large
classes of the people, Methodism was never able to take rank among great
national reformations.
Neither Wesley nor the Wesleyans have ever yielded to a mischievous
tendency which has beset most forms of mysticism. They have never, in
comparison with the inward worship of the soul, spoken slightingly of
'temples made of stones,'[626] or of any of the chief outward ordinances
of religion. Their opponents often attempted to make it a charge against
them, and thought, no doubt, they would be sure to prove it. But they
never did so. Wesley was always able to answer, with perfect
correctness, that what was thus said might be true of Moravians, or of
Tauler, or of Behmen, or of St. Theresa, or of Madame de Bourignon, or
of the Quakers, or even of William Law, but that he himself had never
done otherwise than insist most strongly on the essential need of making
use of all the external helps which religion can offer.[627]
By far the gravest imputation that has ever been brought against the
disciples of each various form of mystical or emotional religion is
that, in aspiring after some loftier ideal of spiritual communion with
the Divine, they have looked down with a kind of scorn upon 'mere
morality,' as if it were a lower path. And it must be acknowledged that
men of the most pure and saintly lives have, nevertheless, used
expressions which misguided or unprincipled men might pervert into
authority for lawlessness. Tauler, whom an admiring contemporary once
called 'the holiest of God's children now living on the earth,'[628]
could yet say of the higher elevation of the Christian life that, 'where
this comes to pass, outward works become of no moment.'[629] What wonder
that the fanatical Beghards, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, against
whom he contended with all his energies,[630] should seek to confuse his
principles with theirs, and assert that, having attained the higher
state, they were not under subjection to moral commandments? So, again,
of the early Quakers Henry More[631] observed that, although their
doctrine of special illumination had guided many into much sanctity of
life, the more licentious sort had perverted it into a cloke for all
kinds of enormity, on the ground that they were inspired by God, and
could be guilty of no sin, as only exercising their rights of liberty.
Madame de Bourignon was an excellent woman, but Leslie and
Lavington[632] showed that some of her writings seem dangerously to
underrate good works. Moravian principles, lightly understood, made
Herrnhut a model Christian community; misunderstood, they became
pretexts for the most dangerous Antinomianism.[633] An example may even
be quoted from the last century where the nobler elements of mystic
enthusiasm were found in one mind combined with the pernicious tendency
in question. In that very remarkable but eccentric genius, William
Blake, mysticism was rich in fruits of faith and love, and it is
needless, therefore, to add that he was a good man, of blameless morals;
yet, by a strange flaw or partial derangement in his profoundly
spiritual nature, 'he was for ever, in his writings, girding at the
"mere moral law" as the letter that killeth. His conversation, his
writings, his designs, were equally marked by theoretic licence and
virtual guilelessness.'[634]
Bishop Berkeley's name could not be passed over even in such a sketch as
this without a sense of incompleteness. He was, it is true, strongly
possessed with the prevalent feeling of aversion to anything that was
called enthusiasm. When, for example, his opinion was asked about John
Hutchinson--a writer whose mystic fancies as to recondite meanings
contained in the words of the Hebrew Bible[635] possessed a strange
fascination for William Jones of Nayland, Bishop Horne, and other men of
some note[636]--he answered that he was not acquainted with his works,
but 'I have observed him to be mentioned as an enthusiast, which gave
me no prepossession in his favour.'[637] But the Christianity of
feeling, which lies at the root of all that is sound and true in what
the age called enthusiasm, was much encouraged by the theology and
philosophy of Berkeley. It may not have been so to any great extent
among his actual contemporaries. A thoroughly prosaic generation, such
as that was in which he lived, was too unable to appreciate his subtle
and poetic intellect to gain much instruction from it. He was much
admired, but little understood. 'He is indeed,' wrote Warburton to Hurd,
'a great man, and the only visionary I ever knew that was.'[638] It was
left for later reasoners, in England and on the Continent, to separate
what may be rightly called visionary in his writings from what may be
profoundly true, and to feel the due influence of his suggestive and
spiritual reflections.
The purely mystic element in Berkeley's philosophy may be illustrated by
the charm it had for William Blake, a man of whom Mr. Swinburne says
that 'his hardest facts were the vaguest allegories of other men. To him
all symbolic things were literal, all literal things symbolic. About his
path and about his bed, around his ears and under his eyes, an infinite
play of spiritual life seethed and swarmed or shone and sang.'[639] To
this strange artist-poet, in whose powerful but fantastic mind fact and
imagination were inextricably blended, whose most intimate friends could
not tell where talent ended and hallucination began, whom Wordsworth
delighted in,[640] and whose conversation in any country walk is
described as having a marvellous power of kindling the imagination, and
of making nature itself seem strangely more spiritual, almost as if a
new sense had awakened in the mind of his hearer[641]--to William Blake
the theories of Berkeley supplied a philosophy which exactly suited
him.[642] Blake's ruling idea was that of an infinite spiritual life so
imprisoned under the bondage of material forces[643] that only by
spiritual perception--a power given to all to cultivate--can true
existence be discovered.[644] He longed for the full emancipation which
a better life would bring.
At the very close of the century, in the year 1798, an elaborate
treatise on enthusiasm was published by Richard Graves, Dean of Ardagh,
a man of considerable learning and earnest piety. It is needless to
enter into the arguments of his 'Essay on the Character of the Apostles
and Evangelists.' Its object was to prove they were wholly free from the
errors of enthusiasts; that in their private conduct, and in the
government of the Church, they were 'rational and sober, prudent and
cautious, mild and decorous, zealous without violence, and steady
without obstinacy; that their writings are plain, calm, and
unexaggerated, ... natural and rational, ... without any trace of
spiritual pride, any arrogant claims to full perfection of virtue; ...
teaching heartfelt piety to God without any affectation of rapturous
ecstasy or extravagant fervour.'[645] On the other hand, he illustrates
the extravagances into which enthusiasts have been led, from the history
of Indian mystics and Greek Neoplatonists, from Manichæans and
Montanists, from monastic saints, from the Beghards of Germany, the
Fratricelli of Italy, the Illuminati of Spain, the Quietists of France,
from Anabaptists, Quakers, and French prophets. He refers to what had
been written against enthusiasm within the preceding century by
Stillingfleet, Bayle, Locke, Hicks, Shaftesbury, Lord Lyttelton,
Barrington, Chandler, Archibald Campbell, Stinstra, Warburton,
Lavington, and Douglas--a list the length of which is in itself a
sufficient evidence of the sensitive interest which the subject had
excited. He remarks on the attempts made by Chubb and Morgan to attach
to Christianity the opprobrium of being an enthusiastic religion, and
reprobates the assertions of the younger Dodwell that _faith_ is not
founded on argument. The special occasion of his work[646] arose out of
more recent events--the publication at Geneva in 1791 of Boulanger's
'Christianity Unmasked,' and the many similar efforts made during the
period of the French Revolution to represent fanaticism and Christianity
as synonymous terms.
But while Dean Graves was writing in careful and moderate language his
not unseasonable warnings, thoughts representative of a new and deeper
strain of theological feeling were passing through the mind of Samuel
Coleridge. His was a genius singularly receptive of the ideas which
emanated from the leading intellect of his age in England or abroad. He
was probably better acquainted than any other of his countrymen with the
highest literature of Germany, which found in him not only an
interpreter, but a most able and reflective exponent. Few could be
better fitted than he was--no one certainly in his own country and
generation--to deal with those subtle and intricate elements of human
nature upon which enthusiasts and mystics have based their speculations,
and hopelessly blended together much that is sublime and true with not a
little that is groundless and visionary, and often dangerous in its
practical or speculative results. In the first place, he could scarcely
fail in sympathy. He was endowed with a rich vein of that imaginative
power which is the very life of all enthusiasm. It is the most prominent
characteristic of his poetry; it is no less conspicuous in the intense
glow of excited expectation with which he, like so many other young men
of rising talent, cherished those millennial visions of peace and
brotherhood, and simple faith and love, which the French Revolution in
its progress so rudely crushed. Mysticism also must have had great
charms for one who could write verses so imbued with its spirit as are
the following:--
He first by fear uncharmed the drowsèd soul,
Till of its nobler nature it 'gan feel
Dim recollections; and thence soared to hope,
Strong to believe whate'er of mystic good
The Eternal dooms for His immortal sons;
From hope and firmer faith to perfect love
Attracted and absorbed; and centred there,
God only to behold, and know, and feel,
Till by exclusive consciousness of God,
All self annihilated, it shall make
God its identity--God all in all!
We and our Father one!
And blest are they
Who in this fleshy world, the elect of heaven,
Their strong eye darting through the deeds of men,
Adore with steadfast, unpresuming gaze
Him, nature's essence, mind, and energy;
And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend,
Treading beneath their feet all visible things
As steps, that upward to their Father's throne
Lead gradual.[647]
If we would further understand how far removed must have been
Coleridge's tone of thought from that which for so long a time had
regarded enthusiasm in all its forms as the greatest enemy of sober
reason and sound religion, we should only have to consider what a new
world of thought and sentiment was that in which Coleridge was living
from any of which the generation before him had experience. The band of
poets and essayists represented by Coleridge and Wordsworth, Southey,
Lamb, De Quincey, and we may add Blake, were in many respects separated
by a wider gulf, except only in time, from the authors of twenty years
before, than they were from the writers of the Elizabethan age. New
hopes and aspirations as to the capabilities of human life, new and more
spiritual aspects of nature, of art, of poetry, of history, made it
impossible for those who felt these influences in all the freshness of
their new life to look with the same eyes as their fathers on those
questions above all others which related to the intellectual and
spiritual faculties of the soul. It was a worthy aim for a
poet-philosopher such as Coleridge was--a mystic and enthusiast in one
aspect of his mind, a devoted 'friend of reason' in another--to analyse
reason and unite its sublimer powers with conscience as a divinely given
'inner light,' to combine in one the highest exercise of the
intellectual and the moral faculties. Emotional religion had exhibited
on a large scale alike its powers and deficiencies. Thoughtful and
religious men could scarcely do better than set themselves to restore
the balance where it was unequal. They had to teach that faith must be
based, not only upon feeling and undefined impulse, but on solid
intellectual apprehension. They had to urge with no less earnestness
that religious truth has to be not only outwardly apprehended, but
inwardly appropriated before it can become possessed of true spiritual
efficacy. It is most true that vague ideas of some inward illumination
are but a miserable substitute for a sound historical faith, but it is
no less true that a so-called historical faith has not become faith at
all until the soul has received it into itself, and made of it an inward
light. In the eighteenth century, as in every other, mystics and
enthusiasts have insisted only on inward illuminations and spiritual
experiences, while of men of a very different cast of mind some have
perpetually harped upon authority and some upon reason and
reasonableness. It may be hoped that our own century may be more
successful in the difficult but not discouraging task of investigating
and harmonising their respective claims.
C.J.A.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 468: Or to a painter's imagination. The _Idler_, not however
without some fear of 'its wild extravagances' even in this sphere,
allows that 'one may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to
the modern painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the present
age.'--No. 79.]
[Footnote 469: Henry More, _Enthus. Triumphatus_, § 4.]
[Footnote 470: _Quarterly Review_, xxviii 37.]
[Footnote 471: H. More, _On the Immortality of the Soul_, b. iii. ch.
12; and the whole treatise, especially the third and fourth books.]
[Footnote 472: H. More, _Phil. Works_, General Preface, § 6; and
_Enthusiasmus Triumphatus_, § 52.]
[Footnote 473: § 62.]
[Footnote 474: 'Address to the Clergy.'--Wesley's _Works_, 492.]
[Footnote 475: Coleridge seems to have read H. More with much
enjoyment.--_Aids to Reflection_, i. 106-10. 'Occasional draughts,'
Channing writes, of More and other Platonists, 'have been refreshing to
me.' ... Their mysticism was noble in its kind, 'and perhaps a necessary
reaction against the general earthliness of men's minds. I pardon the
man who loses himself in the clouds, if he will help me upwards.'--W.E.
Channing's _Correspondence_ 338.]
[Footnote 476: Quoted by Bishop Berkeley, _Theory of Vision_, pt. i. §
116.]
[Footnote 477: Schlosser, _History of the Eighteenth Century_, chap. 1.
i. Horsley's _Charges_, 86. _Quarterly Review_, July 1864, 70-9.]
[Footnote 478: Warburton's _Works_, iv. 568.]
[Footnote 479: 'Letter to the Bishop of Gloucester.'--Wesley's _Works_,
ix. 151.]
[Footnote 480: Dedication to his _Three Sermons_, quoted by H.S. Skeats,
_History of the free Churches_, 333.]
[Footnote 481: W. Roberts, _Memoirs of Hannah More_, i. 500, ii. 61, 70,
110.]
[Footnote 482: R.A. Vaughan's _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 391.]
[Footnote 483: C. Leslie, 'Snake in the Grass.'--_Works_, iv. 21.]
[Footnote 484: Dr. Sherlock, _On Public Worship_, chap. iii. § 1, 4.]
[Footnote 485: Warburton's 'Alliance.'--_Works_, 1788, iv. 53.]
[Footnote 486: _Tatler_, No. 257.]
[Footnote 487: Canon Curteis remarks of the early Quakers, 'What was
urgently wanted, and what Christ (I think) was really commissioning
George Fox and others to do, was not a destructive, but a constructive
work,--the work of breathing fresh life into old forms, recovering the
true meaning of old symbols, raising from the dead old words that needed
translating into modern equivalents.'--G.H. Curteis, _Dissent in
Relation to the Church of England_, 268.]
[Footnote 488: C. Leslie, 'Defence, &c.'--_Works_, v. 164.]
[Footnote 489: C. Leslie, _Works_, iv. 428.]
[Footnote 490: R. Barclay's _Apology for the Quakers_, 259.]
[Footnote 491: No doubt some forms of Quakerism (for in it, as in every
form of mystic theology, there were many varieties) lost sight almost
altogether of any idea of atonement. Cf. _British Quarterly_, October
1874, 337; C. Leslie, 'Satan Disrobed.'--_Works_, iv. 398-418; id. v.
100.]
[Footnote 492: M.J. Matter, _Histoire du Christianisme_, iv. 343.]
[Footnote 493: Boswell's _Life of Dr. Johnson_, ii. 456.]
[Footnote 494: Southey's 'Letters,' quoted in _Quarterly Review_, 98,
494.]
[Footnote 495: 'I fancy that most of the Churches need to learn and
receive of one another; and I have often wished that the zealous
Methodist, for instance, who lives so much in action and in the
atmosphere of religious excitement, could sometimes enter thoroughly
into the spirit of the more religious Friends.'--H.H. Dobney, _Free
Churches_, 106.]
[Footnote 496: J. Byrom's _Poems_.]
[Footnote 497: Tauler's _Sermon for Epiphany_; Winkworth's _History and
Life, with twenty-five Sermons translated_, 223.]
[Footnote 498: Calamy's _Own Life_, ii. 71.]
[Footnote 499: W.M. Hatch's edition of Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_,
Appen. 376-8.]
[Footnote 500: W. Blake, _Miscellaneous Poems_, 'The Land of Dreams.']
[Footnote 501: Wesley's _Third Journal_, p. 24, quoted by Lavington,
_Enthus. of Meth. and Pa. Comp._, 252.]
[Footnote 502: A. Alison's _Life of Marlborough_, chap. ix. § 30.]
[Footnote 503: _Guardian_, No. 69.]
[Footnote 504: Lord Lyttelton's _Dialogues of the Dead_, No. 3.]
[Footnote 505: R. Savage's _Miscellaneous Poems_,' Character of Rev. J.
Foster.']
[Footnote 506: Jortin's _Letters_, ii. 43.]
[Footnote 507: R.H. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 226.]
[Footnote 508: C. Leslie's 'Snake in the Grass.'--_Works_, iv. 1-14. So
also Lavington's _Enthusiasm_, &c., 346.]
[Footnote 509: 'In England her works have already deceived not a
few.'--Leslie, Id. 14. 'What think you too of the Methodists? You are
nearer to Oxford. We have strange accounts of their freaks. The books of
Madame Bourignon, the French _visionnaire_, are, I hear, much enquired
after by them.'--Warburton to Doddridge, May 27, 1738. Doddridge's
_Correspondence_, &c., iii. 327.
Francis Lee, the Nonjuror, an excellent man, one of Robert Nelson's
friends, was 'once a great Bourignonist.'--Hearne to Rawlinson, App. in.
1718, quoted in H.B. Wilson's _History of Merchant Taylors' School_ ii.
957.]
[Footnote 510: M.J. Matter, _Histoire du Christianisme_, iv. 344.]
[Footnote 511: Francis Okely, one of the most distinguished of the
English Moravians of the last century, was a great student and admirer
of Behmen.--Nichol's _Literary Anecdotes_, iii. 93.]
[Footnote 512: Schelling and others, says Dorner, 'sought out and
utilised many a noble germ in the fermenting chaos of Böhme's
notions.'--J.A. Dorner's _History of Protestant Theology_, 1871, ii.
184.]
[Footnote 513: R.A. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 349.]
[Footnote 514: H. More's _Works_, 'Antidote against Atheism,' note to
chap. xliv.]
[Footnote 515: J. Wesley, 'Thoughts upon Jacob Behmen.'--_Works_, ix.
509.]
[Footnote 516: Id. 513.]
[Footnote 517: Unqualified, even for Warburton. 'Doctrine of Grace,' b.
iii. ch. ii. _Works_, iv. 706.]
[Footnote 518: A. Gilchrist's _Life of Blake_, i. 16.]
[Footnote 519: W. Law's introduction to his translation of Behmen's
_Works_.]
[Footnote 520: H. Coleridge, _Sonnet on Shakspeare_.]
[Footnote 521: Quoted in _Christian Schools and Scholars_, ii. § 5.]
[Footnote 522: For fuller details, see _The Life and Opinions of W.
Lam_, by J.H. Overton, published since the first edition of this work.]
[Footnote 523: Boswell's _Johnson_, ii. 125.]
[Footnote 524: E. Gibbon, _Memoirs of My Life_, 13.]
[Footnote 525: _Quarterly Review_, 103, 310.]
[Footnote 526: Ewing's _Present-Day Papers_, 14.]
[Footnote 527: In Leslie Stephen's _English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century_ we have a vivid picture of the retreat at Kingscliffe--the
devotional exercises, the unstinted almsgiving, and Law's little study,
four feet square, furnished with its chair, its writing-table, the
Bible, and the works of Jacob Behmen. 'Certainly a curious picture in
the middle of that prosaic eighteenth century, which is generally
interpreted to us by Fielding, Smollett, and Hogarth.'--Chap. xii. 6
(70).]
[Footnote 528: F.D. Maurice, Introduction to Law's _Answer to
Mandeville_, v.]
[Footnote 529: _Works_, xi. 216.]
[Footnote 530: _Answer to Dr. Trapp._--_Works_, vi. 319.]
[Footnote 531: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 2nd ed. 1762, p. 7.--_Works_,
vol. vii.]
[Footnote 532: Id.]
[Footnote 533: Plato, _Republic_, b. x. § 611.]
[Footnote 534: _Appeal to all that Doubt_, 3rd ed. 1768, p.
131.--_Works_, vol. vi. _Spirit of Prayer_, 1st part, 73, vol. vii.]
[Footnote 535: Id. 24.]
[Footnote 536: _Answer to Dr. Trapp_, 38-39, vol. vi.]
[Footnote 537: Id.]
[Footnote 538: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 14.]
[Footnote 539: _Answer to Dr. Trapp_, 244.]
[Footnote 540: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 98.]
[Footnote 541: The special reference to Dr. Joseph Trapp's 'Four Sermons
on the Folly, Sin, and Danger of being Righteous overmuch; with a
particular view to the Doctrines and Practices of Modern Enthusiasts,'
1739. The work had an extensive sale. S. Johnson's _Works_ (R. Lynam),
v. 497. It should be added that, from their own point of view, the
sermons contain much sound sense and are by no means deficient in
religious feeling.]
[Footnote 542: _Appeal_, &c., 278.]
[Footnote 543: _Appeal_, &c., 279.]
[Footnote 544: Id. 280.]
[Footnote 545: Id. 282.]
[Footnote 546: Id. 275.]
[Footnote 547: Id. 282.]
[Footnote 548: Id. 4.]
[Footnote 549: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. i. 56-8.]
[Footnote 550: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. i. 67.]
[Footnote 551: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 78, and 31. _Appeal_, &c., 5.]
[Footnote 552: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 14.]
[Footnote 553: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 15.]
[Footnote 554: One of the passages on the title-page of Tindal's
_Christianity as Old as the Creation_, was the following sentence from
the _Retractations_ of St. Augustine: 'The thing which is now called the
Christian Religion was also among the ancients, nor was it wanting from
the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the flesh, when
the true religion that then was began to be called Christian.'--Quoted
in Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, ii. 434.]
[Footnote 555: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 124, vol. viii.]
[Footnote 556: _Appeal_, &c., 199-200. _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. ii. 159.]
[Footnote 557: Wesley's 'Letter to W. Law.'--_Works_, ix. 488--. Also
Warburton on Middleton; and 'Doctrine of Grace,' part iii.--_Works_,
vol. iv.]
[Footnote 558: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 10. _Appeal_, &c., 325.]
[Footnote 559: Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, 1714, l. 425.]
[Footnote 560: Mandeville's _Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue_,
p. 12.]
[Footnote 561: W. Law's _Answer to Mandeville_, 27.]
[Footnote 562: F.D. Maurice's Preface to Id.]
[Footnote 563: R.A. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 246.]
[Footnote 564: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 87.]
[Footnote 565: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. i. 58. Also, Id. 39, _Way to
Divine Knowledge_, 96.]
[Footnote 566: W. Law's _Letters_, in R. Tighe's _Life of Law_, 72.]
[Footnote 567: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. ii. 127]
[Footnote 568: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 161.]
[Footnote 569: _Appeal to all that Doubt_, 88.]
[Footnote 570: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 65.]
[Footnote 571: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 140.]
[Footnote 572: _Letters_, in Tighe, 73; and _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii.
107-8.]
[Footnote 573: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 80.]
[Footnote 574: Id. 112-9.]
[Footnote 575: _Appeal_, &c., 301-13.]
[Footnote 576: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 46. _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. i.
55.]
[Footnote 577: _Answer to Dr. Trapp_, 87.]
[Footnote 578: _Appeal_, &c., 310-3.]
[Footnote 579: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. ii. 202.]
[Footnote 580: Id.]
[Footnote 581: G. Macdonald's _England's Antiphon_, 288.]
[Footnote 582: Chalmers' _English Poets_, xv. 269. _Thoughts on Human
Reason_.]
[Footnote 583: M.J. Matter, _Histoire de Christianisme_, vol. iv. 347.
H.J. Rose, _Protestantism in Germany_, 46-9. Dorner's _History of
Protestant Theology_, ii. 217-227.]
[Footnote 584: Matter, _Histoire_, &c., 348.]
[Footnote 585: Lavington's _Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists_, 1747,
§ 14.]
[Footnote 586: Id. 20.]
[Footnote 587: Schleiermacher, in a Letter to his Sister, 1805; F.
Rowan's _Life of Schleiermacher_, ii. 23.]
[Footnote 588: Whiston's _Life_, by Himself, 576.]
[Footnote 589: Hatton's _Memoirs_, p. 216, quoted in L. Tyerman's 'Life
of J. Gambold,' in his _Oxford Methodists_, 188. Archbishop Potter, in
1737, wrote a Latin letter to Zinzendorf, full of sympathy and interest.
It is given in Doddridge's _Correspondence_, v. 264.]
[Footnote 590: Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, 1758, vol. v. 86.
Doddridge's _Correspondence_, v. 271, note. Remarks on Stinstra's
'Letters,' in J. Hughes' _Correspondence_, 1772, ii. 204-5.]
[Footnote 591: Tyerman, _Oxford Methodists_, 197.]
[Footnote 592: Warburton's 'Doctrine of Grace,' chap. vi.--_Works_,
1788, 4, 626.]
[Footnote 593: Wesley's _Journal_. Quoted in _Wesley's Life_, Religious
Tract Society, 34.]
[Footnote 594: 'Life of Gambold,' in L. Tyerman's _Oxford Methodists_,
155-200.]
[Footnote 595: _Second Journal_, p. 26-7. (Quoted by Lavington, § 21);
and _Works_, ed. x. 438.]
[Footnote 596: 'Remarks on Mr. Hill's Review,' &c.--_Works_, x. 438.]
[Footnote 597: 'Answer to Lavington.'--_Works_, ix. 49.]
[Footnote 598: 'Letter to Mr. Law.'--_Works_, ix. 466-509.]
[Footnote 599: I. Taylor, _Wesley and Methodism_, 33.]
[Footnote 600: 'Short View,' &c.--_Works_, x. 201. 'My soul,' he wrote
in one of his journals, 'is sick of their _sublime_ divinity.' Quoted in
H. Curteis, _Dissent in Relation to the Church of England_, 366.]
[Footnote 601: Stanley instances, in addition to Wesley, Athanasius,
Augustine, Luther, and Baxter.--_Speech at Edinburgh_, January 2, 1872.]
[Footnote 602: S. Winkworth's _Tauler's Life and Times_, 86.]
[Footnote 603: Id.; also a review of F. Pfeiffer's 2nd vol. of _Deutsche
Mystiker_ (Meister Eckhart) in _Saturday Review_, January 9, 1858, and
_British Quarterly_, October 1874, 300-5.]
[Footnote 604: M.J. Matter's _Histoire du Christianisme_, 4, 343.]
[Footnote 605: _Works of George, Lord Lyttelton_, 239.]
[Footnote 606: Id. 271.]
[Footnote 607: _Enthusiasm of Romanists and Methodists Compared_,
passim.]
[Footnote 608: Polwhele's _Introduction to Lavington_, clxxx.]
[Footnote 609: Lavington's _Enthusiasm_, &c., § 2.]
[Footnote 610: G. Grote's _History of Greece_, chap. xxxvii. There is a
full and interesting account of the Pythagorean revival in Dr. F.
Schwartz's _Geschichte der Erziehung_, 1829, 301-21.]
[Footnote 611: H.H. Milman. _Early History of Christianity_, 1840, ii.
237.]
[Footnote 612: H.H. Milman, _Lat. Christianity_, 1857, iii. 270, vi.
263, 287; R.A. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, i. 49, 152.]
[Footnote 613: Milman's _Lat. Christianity_, vi. 371-80; Winkworth's
_Life and Times of Tauler_, 186.]
[Footnote 614: M.J. Matter's _Histoire du Christianisme_, 4, 347; H.T.
Rose, _Protestantism in Germany_, 50.]
[Footnote 615: C. Leslie's _Works_, 'The Snake in the Grass,' and
'Defence, &c.' Id. vols. iv. and v. passim; R.A. Vaughan's _Hours with
the Mystics_, ii. 255-60. Barclay's _Apology_, 339.]
[Footnote 616: N. Spinckes, _New Pretenders to Prophecy_, 1709, 402,
&c.]
[Footnote 617: Vaughan, ii. 165-208.]
[Footnote 618: Winkworth's _Life of Tauler_, 172.]
[Footnote 619: J. Wesley, 'Letter to the Bishop of
Gloucester.'--_Works_, ix. 137, 142.]
[Footnote 620: Wesley's _Journal_, quoted by Lavington, _Enthusiasm_,
&c., 271.]
[Footnote 621: _Works_, ix. 121; and _Journal_, 1738-43, quoted by
Warburton, 'Doctrine of Grace.'--_Works_, iv. 605-75.]
[Footnote 622: _Works_, ix. 143.]
[Footnote 623: Barclay's _Apology_, 339. Cf. Wesley's 'Letter to W.
Downes,' 1759. _Works_, ix. 104-5.]
[Footnote 624: Wesley's _Plain Account of the People called the
Methodists_, 6th ed. 1764, 4.]
[Footnote 625: 'Predestination calmly considered,' 1745.--_Works_, x.
267.]
[Footnote 626: Behmen, _Three Principles_, chap. xxvi.]
[Footnote 627: 'Answer to Lavington.'--_Works_, ix. 50; 'Letter to Mr.
Law,' id. 505.]
[Footnote 628: Winkworth's _Life, &c., of Tauler_, 96]
[Footnote 629: Tauler, 'Sermon for Third Sunday after Epiphany,' id.
223.]
[Footnote 630: Id. 86, 137-8.]
[Footnote 631: H. More's note to § 44 of _Enthus. Triumphatus_.]
[Footnote 632: C. Leslie, _Works_, iv. 5-8; Lavington, 346.]
[Footnote 633: Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, 1758, v. 86 (note);
Tyerman, _Oxford Methodists_, 194; Wesley, continually; &c.]
[Footnote 634: A. Gilchrist's _Life of W. Blake_, 331.]
[Footnote 635: Warburton called him and his followers 'our new
Cabalists.'--Letter to Doddridge, May 27, 1758.]
[Footnote 636: A full statement of Hutchinson's views may be found in
the _Works of G. Horne_, by W. Jones (of Nayland), Pref. xix-xxiii,
20-23, &c. His own views were visionary and extreme. Natural religion,
for example, he called 'the religion of Satan and of Antichrist' (id.
xix). But he had many admirers, including many young men of promise at
Oxford (id. 81). They were attracted by the earnestness of his
opposition to some theological tendencies of the age. It was to this
reactionary feeling that his repute was chiefly owing. 'Of Mr.
Hutchinson we hear but little; his name was the match that gave fire to
the train' (id. 92).]
[Footnote 637: Berkeley to Johnson, July 25, 1751.--_G. Berkeley's Life
and Works_, ed. A.C. Fraser, iv. 326.]
[Footnote 638: Warburton and Hurd's _Correspondence_, Letter xx.]
[Footnote 639: Alg. C. Swinburne, _W. Blake: a Critical Essay_, 41.]
[Footnote 640: A. Gilchrist's _Life of W. Blake_, i. 303.
It was not only that Wordsworth was at one with Blake in his intense
feeling of the mysterious loveliness of nature. There is also an
occasional vein of mysticism in his poetry. Thus it is observed in Ch.
Wordsworth's _Memoirs of his Life_ (p. 111), that his _Expostulation and
Reply_ (1798) was a favourite with the Quakers. It is the poem in which
these verses occur:--
'Nor less I deem that there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed these minds of ours
In a wise passiveness.
Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?'--_Poems_, iv. 180.]
[Footnote 641: Gilchrist, i. 311.]
[Footnote 642: Id. 190-1.]
[Footnote 643: Swinburne, 274.]
[Footnote 644: Gilchrist, 321.]
[Footnote 645: R. Graves's _Works_, 'The Apostles not Enthusiasts,' i.
199-200.]
[Footnote 646: Id., _Memoirs_, i. lvi.]
[Footnote 647: S.T. Coleridge's _Poetical Works_, 'Religious Musings,'
i. 83-4.]
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