VALENTINE WEIGEL AND NATURE MYSTICISM
It is a central idea of mysticism that there is a way to God through
the human soul. The gate to Heaven is thus kept, not by St. Peter or
by any other saint of the calendar; it is kept by each individual
person himself as he opens or closes within himself the spiritual
circuit of connection with God. The door into the Eternal swings
within the circle of our own inner life, and all things are ours if we
learn how to use the key that opens, for "to open" and "to find God"
are one and the same thing. The emphasis in "Nature Mysticism" lies
not so much on this direct pathway to God through the soul as upon the
symbolic character of the world of Nature as a visible revelation of an
invisible Universe, and upon the idea that man is a microcosm, a little
world, reproducing in epitome, point for point, though in miniature,
the great world, or macrocosm. On this line of thought, _everything is
double_. The things that are seen are parables of other things which
are not seen. They are like printed words which _mean_ something
vastly more and deeper than what the eye sees as it scans mere letters.
One indwelling Life, one animating Soul, lives in and moves through the
whole mighty frame of things and expresses its Life through visible
things in manifold ways, as the invisible human soul expresses itself
through the visible body. Everything is thus, in a fragmentary way, a
focus of revelation for the Divine Spirit, whose garment is this vast
web of the visible world. But man in a very special way, as a complete
microcosm, is a concentrated extract, a {134} comprehensive
quintessence of the whole cosmos, visible and invisible--an image of
God and a mirror of the Universe.
These views have a very ancient history and unite many strands of
historic thought. They came to light in the sixteenth century with the
revival through Greek literature of Stoic, Neo-Platonic, and
Neo-Pythagorean ideas. But the Greek stream of thought as it now
reappeared was fused with streams of thought from many other
sources--medieval mysticism, Persian astrology, Arabian philosophy, and
the Jewish Cabala, which, in turn, was a fusing of many elements--and
the mixture was honestly believed to be genuine, revived Christianity,
and Christ, as the new Adam, is throughout the central Figure of these
systems.
Marsilius Ficino, the Italian Humanist, who translated Plato and the
writings of the Neo-Platonists into Latin and so made them current for
the readers of the sixteenth century, gave a profoundly mystical
colouring to the revived classical philosophy and identified it with
pure and unadulterated Christianity.[1] His contemporary, Pico of
Mirandola (1463-94), joined the teachings of the Cabala with his
Neo-Platonized Christianity and so produced a new blend. Johann
Reuchlin (1455-1522), great German classical and Hebrew scholar, brave
opponent of obscurantism, forerunner of the Reformation, introduced the
Neo-Platonic and Cabalistic blend of ideas into German thought.
The Cabala, it may be said briefly, in the primary meaning of the word,
is the doctrine received by oral tradition as an important supplement
to the written Jewish Scriptures, but the Cabala as we know it is an
esoteric system which was formed under the influence of many streams of
ancient thought-systems, and which came into vogue about the thirteenth
century, though its devout adherents claimed that it had been orally
transmitted through the intervening ages from Adam in Paradise.
According to the teaching of the Cabala, the original Godhead, called
_En-Soph_, the Infinite, is in essence {135} incomprehensible and
immutable, and capable of description only in negations. God, the
En-Soph, is above and beyond contact with anything finite, material, or
imperfect. It would be blasphemous to suppose that God the infinitely
perfect, God the absolutely immutable One, by direct act made a world
of matter or created a realm of existence marked with evil as this
lower realm of ours is. Instead of supposing a creative act,
therefore, the Cabala supposes a series of emanations, or overflows of
divine splendour, arranged in three groups of threes, called
_Sephiroth_, which reveal all that is revealable in God, and by means
of which invisible and visible worlds come into being. These
_Sephiroth_, or orders of emanation, are _thoughts_ of the Wisdom of
God become objectively and permanently real, just because He thought
them; and though He is vastly, inexhaustibly more than they, yet He is
actually immanent in them and the ground of their being. They are (1)
the intelligible world, or world of creative ideas; (2) the world of
spiritual forms, such as the hierarchies of angels, souls, and the
entire universe of immaterial beings, the world of astral substance or
of creative soul-matter; and (3) the natural world, in which the divine
plan of Wisdom, the creative ideas, and the astral soul become visibly
and concretely revealed. Man unites all the worlds in himself, and in
his unfallen state as Adam-Cadmon combined all men in one ideal,
undifferentiated Man. The visible world is full of hints and symbols
of the invisible, and the initiated learn to read the _signs_ of things
seen, the meanings of sacred letters, and so to discover the secrets
and mysteries of the inner world. The Cabala is full of unrestrained
oriental imagination, of fancies run riot, and of symbolisms ridden to
death. Its confusion of style and thought and its predilection for
magic unfortunately proved contagious, and played havoc with the
productions of those who came under its spell. Its marvels, however,
powerfully impressed the minds of its German readers. Through it they
believed they were privileged to share in mysteries which had been hid
from the creation of the world, and {136} they conceived the idea that
they had at last discovered a clue that would eventually lead them into
all the secrets of the universe.[2]
Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1487-1535) by his writings increased
the prevailing fascination for occult knowledge and pushed this
particular line of speculation into an acute stage. He was a man of
large learning and of heroic temper, and, possessed as he was of
undoubted gifts, in a different period and in a different environment
he would, no doubt, have played a notable part in the development of
human thought. But he became enamoured in his youth with the
adventurous quest for the discovery of Nature's stupendous secrets, and
under the spell of the Cabala, and under the influence of eager
expectations entertained in his day by men of rank and learning, that
fresh light was about to dawn upon the ancient mysteries of the world,
he took the false path of magic as the way to the conquest of the great
secret. It was, however, not the crude, cheap magic of popular fancy,
a magic of mad and lawless caprice, to which he was devoted; it was a
magic grounded in the nature of the deeper inner world which he
believed was the Soul of the world we see and touch. The English
translator of Agrippa's _Occult Philosophy_ in 1651 very clearly
apprehended and stated in his quaint "Preface to the Judicious Reader,"
the foundation idea of Agrippa's magic: "This is," he says, "true and
sublime Occult Philosophy--to understand the mysterious influence of
the intellectual world upon the celestial world, and of both upon the
terrestrial world, and to know how to dispose and fit ourselves so as
to be capable of receiving the _superior operations of these worlds,
whereby we may be enabled to operate wonderful things by a natural
power_."[3] That saying precisely defines Agrippa's faith. There are,
he thinks, {137} three worlds: (1) the Intellectual world; (2) the
Celestial, or Astral, world; and (3) the Terrestrial world; and man,
who is a microcosm embodying in himself all these worlds, may, in the
innermost ground of his being, come upon a divine knowledge which will
enable him to unlock the mysteries of all worlds and to "operate
wonderful things." In quite other ways than Agrippa dreamed, science
has found the keys to many of these mysteries, and has learned how to
"operate wonderful things by a natural power." His enthusiasm and
passion were right, but he had not learned the slow and patient and
laborious way.
A still greater figure in this field of occult knowledge and of nature
mysticism was the far-travelled man and medical genius, Aureolus
Theophrastus Bombast, of Hohenheim, generally known as Paracelsus. He
was born in 1493 in the neighbourhood of Einsiedeln, not far from
Zurich, the son of a physician of repute. He studied in the University
of Basle, and later was instructed by Trithemius, Abbot of St. Jacobs
at Wurtzburg, an adept in magic, alchemy, and astrology. He passed a
long period--probably ten years--of his later youth in travel, studying
humanity at close range, gathering all sorts of information, forming
his theories of diseases and their cure, and learning to know Nature
"by treading her Books, through land after land, with his feet," which,
he once testified, is the only way of knowing her truly.[4]
In 1525 he settled in Basle, and, on the recommendation of
OEcolampadius was appointed professor of physic, medicine, and surgery
in 1527, but his revolutionary teaching and practice, his scorn for
traditional methods, his attacks on the ignorance and greed of
apothecaries raised a storm which he could not weather, and he secretly
left the city in 1528. Again he became a wanderer, having
extraordinary experiences of success and defeat, treating all manner of
diseases, writing books on medicine and on the fundamental nature of
things, and finally died at Salzburg in Bavaria in 1541.
Paracelsus is a strange and baffling character. He had {138} much of
the spirit of the new age, tangled with many of the ideas and fancies
of his time. His aspirations were lofty, his medical skill was unique
for his day, he was in large measure liberated from tradition, and he
was dedicated, as Browning truly represents him, to his mission, but he
was still under the spell of "mystic" categories, and he still held the
faith that Nature's secrets were to be suddenly surprised by an inward
way and by an inward Light:
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception--which is truth,
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.[5]
There are, again, in his Universe, as in the other occult systems,
three elemental worlds--the spiritual or intellectual world, the astral
world or universal Soul, and the terrestrial world; and all three
worlds are man's "mothers." Man is a quintessence of all the elements,
visible and invisible. He has a spiritual essence within him which is
an emanation of God; he has an astral-soul essence, from the Soul of
the world; and he partakes, too, of the material and earthly world.
His supreme aim in life should be to establish, or rather re-establish,
a harmony between his own little world and the great Universe, so that
all the worlds have their right proportions in him, and so that through
his highest essence he can win the secrets of the lower worlds--the
astral and the material. To accomplish _that_ is to be spiritual, to
become like Adam, {139} a paradisaical Man, or like Christ the new
Adam. Even the lowest world is penetrated with the spiritual "seed" or
"element." The very basic substances of which it is composed--sulphur,
mercury, and salt--are in essence spiritual principles, elemental
forces, rather than crude matter, and the lower world is written over,
like a palimpsest, with "signatures" of the divine world to which it
belongs. All doors into all the worlds of God open to faith and
prayer, and he who subordinates lower elements in himself to higher has
power and potency in all realms.
But far more important for the development of spiritual religion, and
far more important as a living link between Reformers like Denck,
Schwenckfeld, and Franck of the sixteenth century, and Jacob Boehme and
the spiritual interpreters of the English Commonwealth, was Valentine
Weigel, Pastor of Zschopau. Like so many of the men who figure in
these chapters, he is little known, seldom read, not a quick and
powerful name in the world, but he is worth knowing, and he was the
bearer of a burning and kindling torch of truth. He was born at
Naundorf, a suburb of Grossenhain, District of Meissen, in 1533. He
received the Bachelor's and Master's degree of the University of
Leipzig, and he pursued his studies still further in the University of
Wittenberg, his study-period having continued until 1567. In the
autumn of that year he was ordained and called to be Pastor of
Zschopau, where he passed as a minister his entire public life, which
came to a peaceful end in 1588. He was an ideal pastor and true
shepherd of his flock--loving them and being beloved by them. His
ministry was fresh and vital, and made his hearers _feel_ the presence
and the power of the Spirit of God.
There was, so far as I can discover the facts, only one blemish on his
really beautiful character. He lacked that robust, unswerving
conscience which compels a man who sees a new vision of the truth to
proclaim it, to champion it, and to suffer and even die for it when it
comes into collision with views which his own soul has outgrown. {140}
Weigel was resolved not to have his heart's deepest faith, his mind's
most certain truth, known, at least during his lifetime, by the persons
who were the guardians of orthodoxy. He signed the "Confessions" of
his time as though they expressed his own convictions; he counted it a
duty of the first importance to guard his pastoral flock from the
distractions and assaults of heresy-hunters, and he left his matured
and deeply meditated views for posterity to discover. How far he was
personally timid cannot now be determined. It would seem, however,
from his own words,[6] that he was especially concerned for the safety
and welfare of his own flock, who would suffer if he were cried down as
an enthusiast or a spiritual prophet. But even so, it is very doubtful
if any man can rightly permit anything on earth to take precedence to
his own loyalty to the vision of truth which his soul sees. As a
result, however, of the course he took, he died in good odour of
sanctity, and the epigones of that day had no suspicion of the ideas
that were swarming in the mind of the quiet Pastor of Zschopau, or of
the mass of manuscripts proclaiming his faith in the inner Word which
he was leaving behind him, to fly over the world like the loose leaves
of the Sibyl.
His writings were not printed until 1609 and onwards, and as his
disciples went on producing writings, somewhat in the style and spirit
of the master who inspired them, the list of books in Weigel's name is
considerably larger than the actual number of manuscripts extant at his
death in 1588. It is not always easy to distinguish the
pseudo-writings from the genuine ones, but there is a vividness and
pregnancy of style, a spiritual depth and power in the earlier writings
which are lacking in the later group, and there is an emphasis on the
magical and occult in the secondary writings that is largely absent in
the primary ones.[7] The most important of his books will be referred
to and quoted from as I present his type of religion and his message,
but I shall draw especially upon his little {141} book, _Von dem Leben
Christi, das ist, vom wahren Glauben_ ("On the Life of Christ, or True
Faith"), as it is the one of Weigel's writings which, in English
translation, most deeply influenced kindred spirits in the English
Commonwealth.[8]
His spiritual conception of Christianity was formed and fed by the
sermons of Tauler, and by that little book which was "the hidden Manna"
for all the spiritual leaders of these two centuries--the _German
Theology_. Weigel edited it with an introduction. He calls it "a
precious little book," "a noble book"; but he tells his readers that
they can understand it and find it fruitful only if they read it "with
a pure eye" and with "the key of David," _i.e._ with a personal
experience. But while he loved the golden book of mysticism and the
sermons of the great Strasbourg preacher, and was led by the hand of
these guides, he drew also from many other sources and finally arrived
at a type of religion, still interior and personal, but less negative
and abstract than that of the fourteenth-century mystics, and more
penetrated and informed with the presence of the Christ of the Gospels.
He insists always that in the last analysis it is Christ in us that
saves us, but it was Christ in the flesh, the Christ of Galilee and
Golgotha, that revealed to men the way to apprehend the inward and
eternal Christ of God. "The indwelling Christ," he wrote, "is all in
all. He saves thee. He is thy peace and thy comfort. The outward
Christ, the Christ in the flesh, and according to the flesh, cannot
save thee in an external way. He must be in thee and thou must abide
in Him. Why then did He become man and suffer on the Cross? There are
many reasons why, but it was especially that God by the death and
suffering of Christ might take the wrath and hostility out of _our_
hearts, on account of which we falsely conceive of God as a wrathful
enemy to us. He had to deal that way with poor blind men like us and
so reconcile us with Himself. {142} There was no need of it on His
part. He was always Love and He always loved us, even when we were
enemies to Him, but we should never have known it if God had not
condescended to show Himself to us in His Son and had not suffered for
us."[9]
Weigel everywhere maintains Christ's double identity--an identity with
God, so that in Christ we see God; and an equal identity with man, so
that Christ is man revealed in his fulfilled possibilities. In Him God
and man are _one_. In this deep-lying and fundamental idea of his
entire Christianity he was undoubtedly influenced, profoundly
influenced, by Schwenckfeld. He presents in chapter i. of his _Life of
Christ_ the Schwenckfeldian view that Christ is God and Man in _one_.
But He is Man not in the crass, crude and earthly form: He is not
composed of mortal and earthly substance as our "Adamical bodies" are.
He is wholly and absolutely composed of heavenly, spiritual, divine
substance. His flesh and blood are as divine and spiritual in origin
as is His spirit, so that His resurrection and ascension are the normal
outcome of His nature. It was as natural for Him to rise into life and
to ascend into glory as it is for heavy things to fall. But that
divine, spiritual, heavenly nature, which appeared in Him, is the true,
original, consummate nature of Man. Man, as we know him, is cloudy, or
even muddy, with a vesture of decay, but that is not a feature of his
_real_ nature--either in its original or its potential form--and all
who "put on Christ," all who have "Christ in them," become one flesh
with Him and gain an indestructible and permanent inward substance like
His.
Consistently with this view, Weigel declares that here lies the
significance of Christ's saying, "I am Bread"; "I am Meat and Drink."
The only adequate Supper of the Lord, he says, is real feeding upon His
spiritual, life-giving flesh and blood, so that Salvation is not tied
to external sacraments, but stands only in the faith that Christ feeds
us with Himself.[10] There are, he proceeds to show, two radically
diverse natures, the traits and {143} characteristics of which he
arranges in opposing pairs, in two parallel columns as follows:
A. The Nature of Christ and B. The nature of Adam and
of those who live in Him those who live by him,
and by Him. _i.e._ those who live the
natural, earthly life.
1. This Nature turns from 1. This nature turns from God
creatures to God. to creatures.
2. This Nature hates itself and 2. This nature loves itself
loves others. more than it loves God or
others.
3. This Nature abhors all it 3. This nature delights only
itself does or omits. in itself and in things of
self.
4. This Nature seeks to lose 4. This nature seeks itself in
self. everything.
5. This Nature denies self. 5. This nature cleaves to self.
6. This Nature patiently bears 6. This nature thrusts the
the Cross. Cross away.
15. This Nature desires to be 15. This nature desires to be
conformed to Christ and equal with God without
His Cross in all things. any humility at all.[11]
Christ is thus for Weigel entirely a new order of Being--the Beginner
of a new race. Adam had in himself all the possibilities which Christ
realized, but the former failed and the latter succeeded and so has
become the Head of a divine and heavenly type of humanity. By "a new
nativity," a rebirth from above, any man in the world who wills it in
living faith may be a recipient of the divine-principle, the
Christ-Life, and may thereby be raised to membership in the Kingdom of
the Christ-Humanity, which is as far above the Adam-Humanity as the
flower is above the soil from which it first sprang. When Christ is
formed within and the Humanity which He produces appears in the world,
then a new way of living comes into operation. Love is the supreme
"sign" of the new type or order. "The man who has the Christ-Life in
him does not quarrel; he does not go to law for temporall goods; he
does not kill; he lets his coat and cloke go rather than oppose
another."[12] "If Christ were of the seed of Adam, He would have the
{144} nature and inclinations of Adam. He would hang thieves, behead
adulterers, rack murderers with the wheel, kill hereticks, and put
corporeally to death all manner of sinners; but now He is tender, kind,
loving. He kills no one. The Lamb kills no woolf."[13] Weigel goes
the whole bold way in his revolt from legalism, and he accepts the
principle of love as a structural principle of the society which Christ
is forming in the world: "Where the Life of Christ is, there is no
warre made with corporall weapons." "The world wars but Christ doth
not so. His warfare is spiritual." "He that maketh warre is no
Christian but a woolf, ana belongs not to the sheepfold nor hath he
anything to expect of the Kingdom of God, nor may the warrs of the Old
Testament, of the time of darknesse serve his turne, for Christians
deal not after a Mosaicall, earthly fashion, but they walke in the Life
of Christ, without all revenge." "We walk no longer under Moses but
under Christ."[14]
The Christian man, however, even with his new "nativity" and with his
re-created spirit of love, differs in one respect from Christ. Christ
is wholly heavenly, His Nature is woven throughout of spiritual and
divine substance. There is no rent nor seam in it. Man, on the other
hand, is double, and throughout his temporal period he remains double.
By his new "nativity" man can become inwardly spirit though he remains
outwardly composed of flesh.[15]
Before the "fall" Adam was unsundered from God. It was sin which made
the cleft or rent which separated God and man. Through Christ, the new
and heavenly Adam, the _junction_ may be formed again in man's inner
self, and once again God and man in us may be unsundered. The flesh is
not destroyed, but it ceases to be the dominating factor. It serves
now merely as the "habitation" of an invisible spirit, and it exists
for the spirit, not the spirit for it.[16] Not only is the body a
{145} "habitation" for the Christ-formed soul, but the world now
becomes to the enlightened soul an Inn for a transient guest rather
than a permanent abiding-place: "like as in an Inne there is meat set
before the guest and bedding is allowed to him, even so Christians are
in this world guests and their country is above." "It is not fitting
for a guest that comes into an Inne, where nothing is his own, that he
should appropriate things to himself and quarrel about them!"[17]
As fast as Christ is formed within, as the Life of one's life, the
believer attains thereby a peace and a power which make the "rent"
between flesh and spirit ever less disturbing, though it still remains
until the fleshly tabernacle dissolves. The goal of the spiritual life
here on earth is the attainment of "the silent Sabbath of the soul," in
which God becomes so completely the soul's sufficiency that the flesh
has little scope or sway any more, and there is no longer need of
furious struggle against it, "like a serpent between two rocks, trying
to pull off his old skin!"[18] In his _Heavenly Jerusalem in Us_, he
says: "It is an attribute of God that He is the Eternal Peace which is
longed for by us men, but found by few because they do not _mind
Christ_, who is the Way. God has not grounded either thy Peace or thy
Salvation on thy running hither and yon, nor on thy works and thy
creaturely activities, but on an inner calm and quiet, on a Sabbath of
the soul, in which thou canst hear, with the simple and the
tender-minded, what the Lord is saying and doing."[19]
In close conformity to the teaching of Sebastian Franck,[20] Weigel
thinks of the Church of God as an invisible Assembly of all true
Believers in the entire world, united, not outwardly but inwardly, in
the unity of the Spirit and by the bond of Love and Peace. There are
for him, as for Franck and other "Spirituals," two kinds of churches:
(1) The church composed of a visible group, {146} "to be pointed out
with the finger," located in a definite country, allied with a temporal
government, held together by a body of doctrine, "tied to" certain
sacraments and possessed of force to constrain men, by "carnall
perswasions," to conform.[21] Then there is (2) the real Church of
God, "the upper Jerusalem," a body visible in no one locality, but
dispersed over the earth like wheat in chaff, held together by no
declarations of doctrine, tied to no sacraments, dependent on no
earthly Lieutenant or Vice-gerent, and on no university-trained
Doctors, which recognizes Prince and Ploughman alike, and secures its
unity through Christ and through the invisible cement of Love. "To
this Assembly," writes Weigel, "doe I stick; in this holy Church doe I
rejoice to be. . . . Jesus Christ is my Head, my Teacher. He is
everywhere with me and in me, and I in Him. Although the Protestants
should chase me amongst Papists or Atheists, yet I should still be in
the holy Church and should have all the heavenly Gifts common to all
Believers, and although the Papists should banish me into Turkey, yet
even there should I be in the holy Church."[22]
No book appeared in England before 1648--the date of the translation of
Weigel's _Life of Christ_--which more closely approached the Quaker
position. That religion must have an inward seat and origin; that
divine things must be learned of God, are taken as axiomatic truths
throughout this book. If a man is to _see_, he must have eyes of his
own; if he is to teach, he must have the Word of God within him.
People say that "there can be no true Faith without outward preaching
ministry." That is not so, Weigel declares. The way to heaven is open
to hungry penitent souls everywhere, although, as is the case with
infants, they may hear no sermons at all: "Faith comes by inward
hearing. Good books, outward verbal ministry have their place, they
testify to the real Treasure, they are witnesses to the inner Word
within us, but Faith is not tied to books; it is a new nativity which
{147} cannot be found in a book. He who hath the inward Schoolmaster
loseth nothing of his Salvation although all preachers should be dead
and all books burned."[23] Many take great pains to be baptized, and
"to hear sermons of their hired priests," and to use the Lord's Supper,
and to read theological books, who, nevertheless, show no "spiritual
profit" therefrom. The reason is that "Truth runs into no one by a
pipe!"[24] "In the Church of men--the man-made Church--the
measuring-line," or standard, he says, is the written Scripture,
according to one's own interpretation, or according to books, or
according to University men; but in the true Church the measuring-reed
is the inward Word, the Spirit of Christ, within the believer. Those
who are in the Universities and Churches of men have Christ in their
mouths, and they have a measuring-reed by their side--the inhabitants
of God's Church on the other hand have the Life of Christ and the
testing-standard within themselves.[25] Those who are "nominal
professors" hang salvation on a literal knowledge of the merit secured
by Christ's death; the true believer knows that salvation is never a
purchase, is never outwardly effected, but is a new self, a new spirit,
a new relation to God: "Man must cease to be what he is before he can
come to be another kind of person."[26] Outward baptism and external
supper may, if one wishes, be used as symbols of the soul's supreme
events, but they cannot rightly be thought of as effecting any change
of themselves in the real nature of the man; only Christ the
Life-bringer, only the resident work of God within the soul, can
produce the transformation from old self to new self. "Salvation is
not tyed to sacraments."[27]
It is a well-settled view of Weigel's that Heaven and Hell are
primarily in the soul of man. He says, in _Know Thyself_, that both
the Trees of Paradise are in us; and in his _Ort der Welt_ he declares
that "the Eternal Hell of the lost will be their own Hell."[28] And in
his _Christliches {148} Gespraech_ he insists that the holy Spirit, the
present Christ, does not need to _come down_ from Heaven to meet with
us, for when He is in our hearts there then is Heaven.[29] No person
can ever be in Heaven until Heaven is in him.
In _Der gueldene Griff_ and elsewhere Weigel works out a very
interesting theory of knowledge, which fits well with the inwardness of
his religious views. He holds that in sense perception the percipient
brings forth his real _knowledge_ from within. The external "object,"
or the outward stimulus, is the soliciting occasion, or suggestion, or
the sign for the experience, but what we see is determined from within
rather than from without. All real knowledge is in the knower. Both
external world and written scriptures are in themselves _shadows_ until
the inward spirit interprets them, and through them comes to the Word
of God which they suggest and symbolize.
Weigel plainly arrived at his ground ideas under the formative
influence of Schwenckfeld and Franck, but he also reveals, especially
in his conception of the deeper inner world and of the microcosmic
character of man, the influence of Paracelsus and of the nature mystics
of his time. He was himself, in turn, a most important influence in
the development of the religious ideas of Jacob Boehme, and he is
historically one of the most significant men of the entire spiritual
group before the great Silesian mystic.[30]
This chapter cannot come to a proper close without some consideration
of a Weigelean book which was translated into English in 1649, under
the title, "_Astrologie Theologized_: That the Inward man by the Light
of Grace, through possession and practice of a holy life, is to be
acknowledged and live in us: which is the only means to keep the true
Sabbath in inward holinesse." {149} The anonymous translator ascribes
the book to Weigel. It is, in fact. Part Two of [Greek] _Gnothi
Seauton_, but it is uncertain whether it was written by Weigel himself.
But whether written by Weigel or later by one of his school, it is a
good illustration of the way in which mystically inclined Christians of
that period endeavoured to make spiritual conquest of the prevailing
Astrology and, through its help, to discover the nature of the inner,
hidden universe. Astrology, this little book declares, is "conversant
with the secrets of God which are hidden in the natural things of
creation." It is the science of reading the unseen through the seen,
for, according to the teaching of this book, everything visible is an
unveiling of something invisible. Man--who is a centre of the whole
universe, who has in himself elements of all the worlds, inner and
outer--"is created to be a visible Paradise, Garden, Tabernacle,
Mansion, House, Temple and Jerusalem of God." All the wisdom, power,
virtue, and glory of God are hidden and are slumbering in man. There
is nothing so near to man as God is--"He is nearer to us than we are to
ourselves"[31]--and the only reason we do not find Him and know Him and
open out our life _interiorly_, so that the true Sabbath comes to the
soul, is due to our "vagabond and unquiet ways of keeping busy with our
own will, outside our internal country." If I could desist from the
things with which I vex and worry myself, and study to be at rest in my
God who dwells with me; if I could accustom my mind to spiritual
tranquillity and cease to wander in a maze of thoughts, cares, and
affections; if I could be at leisure from the external things and
creatures of this world, and chiefly from myself; if, in short, I might
"come into a plenary dereliction of myself," I should at once "begin to
see and know of the most present habitation of God in me and so I
should eat of the Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradise, _which
Paradise I myself am_, and be a Guest of God."[32] Adam, who was "the
Protoplast" and begetter of all men, and who, like everything else in
the universe, was "double," {150} allowed himself to live toward the
outward instead of toward the inward, permitted the seed of the serpent
to grow in him instead of the divine seed, and so came under the
dominance of the natural, elemental world, with its "lesser light" of
knowledge and with its "tree of death." But the Paradise, with its
greater Light of Wisdom and with its Tree of Life, is always near to
man and can be repossessed and regained by him. The outer elements,
and the astral world with its visible stars, _rule_ no one, determine
no one. Each man's "star" is in his own breast. It lies in his own
power to "theologize his astrologie," to turn his universe into
spiritual forces. By "a new nativity," initiated by obedient response
to the inward Light--the spiritual Star, not of earth and not of the
astral universe, but of God the indwelling Spirit--he may put on the
new man, created after the likeness of God, and become the recipient of
heavenly Wisdom springing up within him from the Life of the Spirit.[33]
There can be no question in the mind of any one who is familiar with
the literature and religious thought of seventeenth-century England,
that the ideas set forth in this chapter exerted a wide and profound
influence, and were a part of the psychological climate of the middle
decades of that century. The channel here indicated was only one of
the ways through which these ideas came in. In due time we shall
discover other channels of this spiritual message.
[1] Ficino is dealt with at greater length in Chapter XIII.
[2] The Cabala was, as I have tried to make clear, only one of the
influences which produced this new intellectual climate. The
rediscovered "Hermes Trismegistus," the mystically coloured Platonism,
as it came from Italy, the awakened interest in Nature and in man, and
the powerful message of the German Mystics all played an important part
toward the formation of the new _Weltanschauung_.
[3] _Three Books of Occult Philosophy_, translated by J. F. (London,
1651).
[4] Stoddart's Life of Paracelsus (London, 1911), p. 76.
[5] Browning, _Paracelsus_, B. i. This passage fairly represents
Paracelsus' general position. "There is," he says in his
_Philosophia sagax_, "a Light in the spirit of man which illuminates
everything. . . . The quality of each thing created by God, whether
it be visible or invisible to the senses, may be perceived and
known. If man knows the essence of things, their attributes, their
attractions, and the elements of which they consist, he will be a
Master of nature, of the elements, and of the spirits."
[6] _Christliches Gespraech_, chap. iii.
[7] There is an excellent critical study of Weigel's writings by A.
Israel, entitled, _Weigels Leben und Schriften nach den Quellen
dargestellt_ (Zschopau, 1888).
[8] "Of the Life of Christ, That is, Of True Faith which is the Rule,
Square, Levell or Measuring Line of the Holy City of God and of the
Inhabitants thereof here on Earth. Written in the German Language by
Valentine Weigelus." (London, Giles Calvert, 1648.)
[9] Quoted from Israel, _op. cit._ p. 107.
[10] _On the Life of Christ_, part i. chap. ii.
[11] _On the Life of Christ_, part i. chap. iii.
[12] _Ibid._ part i. chap. viii.
[13] _On the Life of Christ_, part i. chap. ix.
[14] _Ibid._ part ii. chap. ix.; part i. chap. x.; part ii. chap. x.;
and part. i. chap. xiv.
[15] _Ibid._ part ii. chaps. iii. and iv.
[16] This is the view set forth in his [Greek] _Gnothi Seauton_ [Know
Thyself].
[17] _On the Life of Christ_, part ii. chaps. v. and vii.
[18] _Ibid._ part i. chap. viii.
[19] _Vom himmlischen Jerusalem in uns_, chap. viii.
[20] Weigel enjoins his readers to read Franck's book on "the Tree of
the Knowledge of Good and Evil." See _On the Life of Christ_, part ii.
p. 57.
[21] "Faith," he says, "cannot be forced into any person by gallows or
pillory." _On the Life of Christ_, part i. chap. xv.
[22] _Ibid._ part ii. chap. xiv. This is built on a passage in
Franck's _Apologia_.
[23] _On the Life of Christ_, part i. chaps. iv. and v.
[24] _Ibid._ part i. chap. vi.
[25] _Ibid._ part i. chaps. xii. and xiii.
[26] Quoted from Tauler by Weigel, _ibid._ chap. vii. See also part
iii. chap. i.
[27] _Ibid._ part ii. chap. ii.
[28] _Op. cit._ chap. xx.
[29] _Christ. Gespraech_, chap. ii.
[30] In his _Der gueldene Griff_, he tells of a personal spiritual
"opening" which is very similar to the one which occurred later in the
life of Boehme. He found himself astray in "a wilderness of darkness"
and he cried to God for Light to enlighten his soul. "_Suddenly,_" he
says, "_the Light came and my eyes were opened so that I saw more
clearly than all the teachers in all the world with all their books
could teach me._" Chap. xxiv.
[31] _Astrologie Theologized_, p. 8.
[32] _Ibid._ pp. 16-17.
[33] This little book refers with much appreciation to Theophrastus
Paracelsus. It uses his theory of "first matter" and his doctrine of
"the seven governours of the world," which we shall meet in a new form
in Boehme. Another book which carried astrological ideas into
religious thought in a much cruder way was Andreas Tentzel's _De
ratione naturali arboris vitae et scientiae boni et mali_, etc., which
was Pars Secunda of his _Medicinii diastatica_ (Jena, 1629). It was
translated into English in 1657 by N. Turner with the title: "The
Mumial Treatise of Tentzelius, being a natural account of the Tree of
Life and of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, with a mystical
interpretation of that great Secret, to wit, the Cabalistical
Concordance of the Tree of Life and Death, of Christ and Adam." Tentzel
was a famous doctor and disciple of Paracelsus and "flourished" in
Germany during the first half of the seventeenth century.
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