XI

The third temptation was so fierce and subtle, that I doubt whether I

wholly understood it when Master Richard tried to tell it to me. He did

not tell me all, and he could answer but few questions, and I fear that

I am not able to tell even all that I heard from him. It was built up

like a house, he said, stone by stone, till it fenced him in, but he did

not know what was all its nature till he saw my lord cardinal.

A soul such as was Master Richard's must have temptations that seem as

nothing to coarser beings such as myself: as a bird that lives in the

air has dangers that a crawling beast cannot have. There are perils in

the height that are not perils on the earth. A bird may strike a tree or

a tower; his wings may fail him; he may fly too near the sun till he

faint in its heat; he cannot rest; if he is overtaken by darkness he

cannot lie still. [Sir John enumerates at some length other such dangers

to bird life.]....

* * * * *

Now Master Richard described the state into which he fell under a

curious name that I cannot altogether understand. He said that there be

three _nights_ through which the contemplative soul must pass or ever it

come to the dawn. The first two he had gone through during his life in

the country; the first is a kind of long-continued dryness, when

spiritual things have no savour; the second is an affection of the mind,

when not even meditation [This is an exercise distinct from contemplation

apparently. I include this passage, in spite of its technicalities, for

obvious reasons.] appears possible; the mind is like a restless fly that

is at once weary and active. This second is not often attained to by

ordinary souls, though all men who serve God have a shadow of it. It is

a very terrible state. Master Richard told me that before he suffered it

he had not conceived that such conflict was possible to man. It was

during this time that the fiend came to him in form of a woman. The

imagination that cannot fix itself upon the things of God is wide-awake

to all other impressions of sense. [I do not think that Sir John

understands what he is writing about, though he does his best to appear

as if he did. I have omitted a couple of incoherent paragraphs.]....

Now, these two first _nights_ I think I understand, for he told me that

what he suffered during his whipping in the hall and the strife of his

mind with the clerk were each a kind of symbol of them. But the third,

which he called the _Night of the Soul_ I do not understand at all. [It

is remarkable that this phrase frequently occurs in the writings of St.

John of the Cross, though he treats it differently. Until I came across

it in this MS. I had always thought that the Spanish mystic was the

first to use it.] This only can I say of the state itself: that Master

Richard said that it was in a manner what our Lord suffered upon the

rood when he cried to His Father _Eloi, Eloi, etc._

But I can tell you something of the signs of that affliction, as they

shewed themselves to Master Richard. Of the interior state of his soul I

cannot even think without terror and confusion. Compared with the

darkness of it, the other _nights_, he said, are but as clouds across

the sun on a summer's day compared with a moonless midnight in winter.

He had suffered a shadow of it before, when he was entering the

contemplative state, or the prefect Way of Union. Now it fell upon him.

Before I tell you how it came, I must tell you that this _night_, as he

explained it, takes its occasion from some particular thought, and the

thought from which it sprang you shall hear presently.

When the clerk had left him, sighing, as I said, as if with a kindly

weariness (to encourage the other to call for him, I suppose), Master

Richard committed himself again to God and lay still.

A fellow came in soon with his supper (for it was now growing dark), set

it by him and went out. Master Richard took a little food, and after a

while, as his custom was after repeating the name of Jesu, began to

think on God, on the Blessed and Holy Trinity, and on His Attributes,

numbering them one by one and giving thanks for each, and marking the

colour and place of each in the glory of the throne. He was too weary to

say vespers or compline, and presently he fell asleep, but whether it

was common sleep or not I do not know.

In his sleep it seemed to him that he was walking along a path beneath

trees, as he had walked on his way to London; but it was twilight, and

he could not see clearly. There was none with him, and he was afraid,

and did not know what he feared. He was afraid of what lay behind, and

on all sides, and he was yet more afraid of what lay before him, but he

knew that he could not stay nor turn. He went swiftly, he thought, and

with no sound, towards some appointed place, and the twilight darkened

as he went; when he looked up there was no star nor moon to be seen, and

what had been branches when he set out seemed now to be a roof, so thick

they were. There was no bray of stag, nor rustle of breeze, nor cry of

night-bird. He tried to pray, but he could remember no prayer, and not

even the healthful name of _Jesu_ came to his mind. He could do nought

but look outwards with his straining eyes, and inwards at his soul; and

the one was now as dark as the other. He thought of me then, my

children, and longed to have me there, but he knew that I was asleep in

my bed and far away. He thought of his mother whom he had loved so much,

but he knew that she was gone to God and had left him alone. And still,

through all, his feet bore him on swiftly without sound or fatigue,

though the terror and the darkness were now black as ink. He felt his

hair rising upon his head, and his skin prickle, and the warmth was

altogether gone from his heart, but he could not stay.

And at the last his feet ceased to move, and he stood still, knowing

that he was come to the place.

Now, I do not understand what he said to me of that place. He told me

that he could see nothing; it was as if his eyes were put out, yet he

knew what it was like.

It was a little round place in the forest, with trees standing about it,

and it was trampled hard with the footsteps of those who had come there

before him. But that was no comfort to him now; for he did not know how

these persons had fared, nor where were their souls.

So he stood in the black darkness, knowing that he could not turn, with

the horror on him so heavy that he sweated as he told me of it, and with

the knowledge that something was approaching under the trees without

sound of step or breathing--he did not know whether it was man or beast

or fiend, he only knew that it was approaching. Yet he could not pray or

cry out.

Then he was aware that it had entered the little space where he stood,

and was even now within a hand's grasp. Yet he could not lift his hands

to ward it off, or to pray to God, or to bless himself.

Then he perceived that the thing--_negotium perambulans in tenebris_

["the Business that walketh about in the dark" (Ps. xc. 6.)]--was

formless, without hands to strike or mouth to bite him with, and that it

was all about him now, closing upon him. If there had been aught to

touch his body, wet lips to kiss his face, or fiery eyes to look into

his own, he would not have feared it with a thousandth part of the fear

that he had. It was that there was no shape or face, and that it sought

not his body but his soul. And when he understood that he gave a loud

cry and awoke, and knew, as in a mystery, that it was no dream, but

that he was indeed come to the place that he had seen, and that this

_negotium_ was at his soul's heart. [There is either an omission here

in the translation of Sir John's original MS., or else the transcriber

has dashed his pen down in horror, or sought to produce an impression

of it.]....

I find it impossible, my children, to make you understand in what state

he was; he could not make even me understand. I can only set down a

little of what he said.

First, he knew that he had lost God. It was not that there was no God,

but that he had lost Him of his own fault and sin. He was aware that in

all other places there was God and that the blessed reigned with Him,

but not in the place where he was, nor in his heart. In all men that

ever I have met there was a certain presence of God. As the apostle told

the men of Athens, _Ipsius enim et genus suum_; ["For we are also His

offspring" (Acts xvii. 28.)] and, again, _Non longe est ab unoquoque

nostrum_; ["He is not far from every one of us" (Acts xvii. 27.)] and

again, _In ipso vivimus, et movemur, et sumus_. ["In Him we live, and

we move, and we are" (Acts xvii. 28.)] I have not seen a man who had

not this knowledge, though maybe some, such as Turks and pagans, may

call it by another name. But until death, I think, all men, whatever

their sins or ignorance, live and move in God's Majesty. Hell, Master

Richard told me, is nothing less than the withdrawal of that presence,

with other torments superadded, but this is chief. Master Richard told

me that that black fire of hell rages wherever God is not; and that the

worm gnaws in all hearts that have lost Him, and know it to be by their

own fault--_maxima culpa_. ["the very great fault."]

There be a few men in this world--the Son of God derelict is their

prince--who are called to this supreme torment while they yet live--if

indeed that man may be said to live who is without God--and of this

company Master Richard was now made one.

It was with him now as he had dreamed. Where God is not, there can be no

communion with man, for the only reason by which one perceives another's

soul, or understands that it is the soul of a man and has a likeness to

his own, is that both are, in some measure, in God. If we were more holy

and wise we should understand for ourselves that this is so, and see,

too, why it is so, for He is eyes to the blind and ears to the deaf.

[I do not understand this at all. I wonder whether Sir John did as he

wrote it; I am quite sure that his flock did not.]

For Master Richard, then, there was no other person in the world. There

was that that fenced him from all living. Our Saviour Christ upon the

rood spoke to His Blessed Mother before His dereliction, but not again

afterwards. There was no more that He might say to her, or to His

cousin, John.

This, then, was the state in which Master Richard lay--that

_specialissimus_ of God Almighty, to whom the Divine Love and Majesty

was as breath to his nostrils, meat to his mouth, and water to his body.

I an say no more on that point.

As to the fault by which it seemed that he had come to that state, it

was the most terrible of all sins, which is Presumption. Holy Church

sets before us Humility as the chief of virtues, to shew us that

Presumption is the chief of vices. A man may be an adulterer or a

murderer or a sacrilegious person, and yet by Humility may find mercy.

But a man may be chaste and stainless in all his works, and a worshipper

of God, but without Humility he cannot come to glory. [Sir John proceeds

in this strain for several pages, illustrating his point by the cases of

Lucifer, Nabuchodonosor, Judas Iscariot, King Herod, and others.]....

Now the matter in which it seemed to Master Richard that he had sinned

the sin of Presumption was the old matter of the tidings he had borne to

the King. It was not that the tidings were false, for he knew them for

true; but yet that he had been presumptuous in bearing them. It was as

though a stander-by had overheard tidings given by a king to his

servant, and had presumed to hear them himself, as it were Achimaas the

son of Sadoc. [I supposed that this obscure reference is to 2 Kings

xviii. 19.] And more than that, that he had presumed in thinking that he

could be such a man as our Lord would call to such an office. He had set

himself, it appeared, far above his fellows in even listening to our

Saviour's voice; he should rather have cried with saint Peter, _Exi a me

quia homo peccator sum Domine_. ["Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,

O Lord" (Luke v. 8.)]

It was this sin that had driven him from God's Presence. Our Lord had

bestowed on him wonderful gifts of grace. He had visited him as He

visits few others and had led him in the Way of Union, and he had

followed, triumphing in this, giving God the glory in words only, until

he had fallen as it seemed from the height of presumption to the depth

of despair, and lay here now, excluded from the Majesty that he desired.

* * * * *

Now, here is a very wonderful thing, and I know not if I can make it

clear.

You understand, my children, a little of what I heard from Master

Richard's lips--of what it was that he suffered. But although all this

was upon him, he perceived afterwards, though not at the time, that

there was something in him that had not yielded to the agony. His body

was broken, and his mind amazed, and his soul obscured in this _Night_,

yet there was one power more, that we name the Will (and that is the

very essence of man, by which he shall be judged), that had not yet sunk

or cried out that it was so as the fiend suggested.

There was within him, he perceived afterwards, a conflict without

movement. It was as when two men wrestle, their limbs are locked, they

are motionless, they appear to be at rest, but in truth they are

striving with might and main.

So he remained all that night in this agony, not knowing that he did

aught but suffer; he saw the light on the wall, and heard the cocks

crow--at least he remembered these things afterwards. But his release

did not come until the morning; and of that release, and its event, and

how it came about, I will now tell you.