c. 3.] Soul-starving and Body-starving. 223 them, comforted them with kind words and good ale by the great fire,―then argued with them. They thought it a cruel thing that they must starve because pope and emperor are at feud. And is it not,' urged I, 'a crueller that thousands of innocent poor folk should live without sacrament, never hear a mass, perhaps die unshriven, for the very same reason? Is not God's law higher than the pope's,-do to others as ye would they should do unto you? Could you look for other treatment at the hands of our magistrates, and expect to be countenanced and sustained by them in administering the malediction of their enemies? Thought it most courteous, however, to ply them. more pressingly with food than with arguments. While they were there, in comes my little Otto, opens his eyes wide with wonder to see them, and presently breaks out with the words, now on the tongue of every Strasburger, a rhyming version of the decree :— They shall still their masses sing, Or out of the city we'll make them spring." Told him he should not sing that just then, and, when he was out of the room, bade them mark by that straw which way the wind blew. I record here a vision vouchsafed to that eminent saint the abbess Christina Ebner, of Engelthal, near Nurnberg. She beheld the Romish Church in the likeness of a great minster, fair to see, but with doors closed by reason of the bann. Priestly voices, solemn and sweet, were heard to chant within; and, without, stood a multitude waiting and hearkening, but no man dared enter. Then came there to the nun one in the habit of a preacher, and told her that he would give her words to speak to comfort the poor folk withal that stood outside,-and that man was the Lord Christ. 11 Schmidt, p. 14: 'do soltent sü ouch fürbas singen And verily, in some sort, so hath God done, having pity upon us, for through all Rhineland hath he moved godly men, both clerks and laity, to draw nearer the one to the other, forming together what we call the association of the Friends of God, for the better tending of the inward life in these troublous times, for wrestling with the Almighty on behalf of his suffering Christendom, and for the succour of the poor people, by preaching and counsel and sacrament, that are now as sheep without a shepherd, and perishing for lack of spiritual bread." Tauler is of the foremost among them, and with his brethren, Egenolph of Ehenheim and Dietrich of Colmar, labours without ceasing, having now the wider field and heavier toil, as so few are left in Strasburg who will perform any church service for love or money. Ah! well might the Abbess Christina say of him that the Spirit of God dwelt within him as a sweet harping. He has travelled much of late, and wherever he goes spreads blessing and consolation; the people flock to hear him; the hands of the Friends of God are strengthened; and a savour of heavenly love and wisdom is left behind. His good name hath journeyed, they say, even beyond the Alps, and into the Low Countries. Neither are there wanting many like-minded, though none equal to him. He found at Cologne Henry of Löwen, Henry, and Franke, and John of Sterngasse, brother Dominicans all of them, preaching constantly, with much of his own fervour, if with a doctrine more like that of Eckart. In Switzerland there is Suso, and I hear much of one Ruysbroek, in the Netherlands, a man younger than Tauler, and a notable master in the divine art of contemplation. 18 Among the Friends of God are numbers both of men and women of every rank, abbots and farmers, knights and nuns, 12 Schmidt's Tauler, Anhang über die Gottesfreunde. 13 Passages from two of these mystics, Heinrich von Löwen and Johannes von Sterngasse, are given among the Sprüche Deutscher Mystiker, in Wackernagel, p. 890. c. 3.] The Friends of God. 225 monks and artizans. There is Conrad, Abbot of Kaisersheim : there are the nuns of Unterlinden and Klingenthal, at Colmar and Basle, as well as the holy sisters of Engelthal; the knights of Rheinfeld, Pfaffenheim, and Landsberg; our rich merchant here, Rulman Merswin, and one, unworthy of so good a name, that holds this pen. Our law is that universal love commanded by Christ, and not to be gainsaid by his vicar. Some have joined themselves to us for awhile, and gone out from us because they were not of us; for we teach no easy road to heaven for the pleasing of the flesh. Many call us sectaries, Beghards, brethren of the Free Spirit, or of the New Spirit, and what not. They might call us by worse names, but we are none of these. The prophecies of some among us, concerning judgments to be looked for at the hands of God, and the faithful warnings of others, have made many angry. Yet are not such things needed, when, as Dr. Tauler saith, the princes and prelates are, too many of them, worse than Jews and infidels, and mere horses for the devil's riding." So far from wishing evil, we mourn as no others over the present woe, and the Friends of God are, saith Dr. Tauler again, pillars of Christendom, and holders off for awhile of the gathered cloud of wrath. Beyond all question, if all would be active as they are active in works of love to their fellows, the face of the times would brighten presently, and the world come into sunshine. It was but yesterday that in his sermon Tauler repeated the saying of one-an eminent Friend of God—' I cannot pass my neighbour by without wishing for him in my heart more of the blessedness of heaven than for myself;'-' and that,' said the good Doctor, 'I call true love.' Sure I am that such men stand between the living and the dead.1 14 See Tauler's Predigten, vol. ii. p. 584; and also, concerning the charge of sectarianism, p. 595; and the serVOL. I. vices of the Friends of God, vol. i. 16 1339. March.-Much encouraged on hearing Dr. Tauler's sermon on Whose is the image and superscription ?' 16 It was the last part that gladdened me more especially, when he was enforcing watchfulness and self-examination, and yet showed that the command might be obeyed by men such as I am, in the midst of a worldly calling. Many, said he, complain that they are so busied with outward things as to have no time to look inward. But let such, for every six steps they have to take outward in their daily duty, take one step inward, and observe their hearts, and their business will be to them no stumbling-block. Many are cloistered in body while thought and desire wander to and fro over the earth. But many others do, even amid the noise and stir of the market-place and the shop, keep such watch over their hearts, and set such ward on their senses, that they go unharmed, and their inner peace abides unbroken. Such men are much more truly to be called monks than those who, within a convent wall, have thought and senses so distraught that they can scarce say a single Paternoster with true devotion. He said that God impressed his image and superscription on our souls when he created us in his image. All true Christians should constantly retire into themselves, and examine throughout their souls wherein this image of the Holy Trinity lieth, and clear away therefrom such images and thoughts as are not of God's impressing,-all that is merely earthly in love and care, all that hath not God purely for its object. It must be in separateness from the world, withdraws from all trust and 16 The sermon referred to is that on the Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity, vol. ii. p. 598. While he is careful to warn his hearers against the presumption of attempting at once to contemplate Deity apart from its manifestation in the humanity of Christ, he yet seems to admit that when the soul has been thoroughly exercised in the imitation of Christ, has become conformed, as far as man can be, to his spirit and his sufferings, then there commences a period of repose and joy in which there is an extraordinary intuition of Deity, which approximates to that perfect vision promised hereafter, when we shall see, not through a glass darkly,' but face to face. -Vol. ii. p. 609. ་ c. 3.] Tauler on the Image of God. 227 satisfaction in what is creaturely, that we present God the image he hath engraven, clear and free from rust. This image and superscription lies in the inmost inmost of the soul, whither God only cometh, and neither men nor angels, and where he delights to dwell. He will share it with no other. He hath said, 'My delight is in the sons of men.' Thus is the inmost of our soul united to the inmost of the very Godhead, where the eternal Father doth ever speak and bring forth his eternal essential Word, his only-begotten Son, equal in honour, power, and worthiness, as saith the Apostle-' He is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person.' By him hath the Father made all things. As all things have their beginning and source from the Godhead, by the birth of the eternal Word out of the Father, so do all creatures in their essence subsist by the same birth of the Son out of the Father, and therefore shall they all return in the same way to their source, to wit, through the Son to the Father. From this eternal birth of the Son ariseth the love of God the Father to his divine Son, and that of the Son to his divine Father, which love is the Holy Ghost-an eternal and divine Bond, uniting the Father and the Son in everlasting Love. These three are essentially one-one single pure essential unity, as even the heathen philosophers bear witness. Therefore, saith Aristotle, 'There is but one Lord who ordaineth all things.' He, therefore, that would be truly united to God must dedicate the penny of his soul, with all its faculties, to God alone, and join it unto Him. For if the highest and most glorious Unity, which is God himself, is to be united to the soul, it must be through oneness (Einigkeit). Now when the soul hath utterly forsaken itself and all creatures, and made itself free from all manifoldness, then the sole Unity, which is God, answers truly to the oneness of the soul, for then is there nothing in the soul beside God. Therefore between such a soul |