corruptions of the Church and of the State, and other practical matters more within my compass. Ruysbroek said that the great sin and error of these heretics lay in their aspiring to union with God by a summary and arrogant method of their own. They persuaded themselves that, merely by ceasing to think and distinguish, they could withdraw themselves into the essence of their nature, and so, without the help of grace or the practice of virtue, attain by bare nature the rest and blessedness of absolute simplicity and superiority to all modes and images. 'Verily,' quoth Tauler, though they give themselves out for the wisest and the holiest, it is only themselves, not God, they enjoy. Yet mischievous as they are, often as I have preached against them, I never have taken, nor shall I take, any part in their persecution. 122 'I have had plentiful opportunity,' continued Ruysbroek, 'for observing these men. I would divide them into four classes.23 Engelhardt, p. 225. Schmidt's Tauler, p. 61.-The same doctrine which furnished a sanctuary for the devotion of purer natures supplied also an excuse for the licence of the base. Wilful perversion, or mere ignorance, or some one of the manifold combinations of these two factors, would work the mystical exhortation into some such result as that denounced by Ruysbroek. We may imagine some bewildered man as speaking thus within himself: -'So we are to covet ignorance, to surmount distinctions, to shun what is clear or vivid as mediate and comparatively carnal, to transcend means and bid farewell to the wisdom of the schools. Wise and devout men forsake all their learning, forget their pious toil and penance, to lose themselves in that ground in which we are united to God, to sink into vague abstract confusion. But may I not do at first what they do at last? Why take in only to take out? I am empty already. Thank heaven! I haven't a distinct idea in my head.' It is so that the popular mind is sure to travesty the ultra-refinements of philosophy. Engelhardt, pp. 224-228.-Eckart, like Hegel, would seem to have left behind him a right-hand and a lefthand party,-admirers like Suso and Tauler, who dropped his extreme points and held by such saving clauses as they found; and headstrong spirits, ripe for anarchy, like these New-Lights or High-Fliers, the representatives of mysticism run to seed. Ruysbroek's classification of them is somewhat artificial; fanaticism does not distribute itself theologically. In the treatise entitled Spiegel der Seligkeit, § 16, he describes them generally as follows:'Ander quade duulische menschen vint men, die segghen dat si selue Cristus sijn of dat si god sijn, ende dat haer hant hemel ende erde ghemaect heest, ende dat an haer hant hanghet hemel c. 7.] Heretical Mystics. 331 First of all there are those whose doctrine sins especially against the Holy Ghost. They say the essential Godhead works not, but the Holy Ghost doth: that they belong to that Divine Essence, and will rest in like manner;-that they are, therefore, above the Spirit of God. They hold that, after time, all things will be God, one absolute Quiescence, without distinction and without change. So they will neither know nor act, neither think nor thank, but be free from all desire, all obligation. This they call Poverty of Spirit. I say it is a devilish poverty, and such souls must be poor as hell in divine love and knowledge. 'The second class say, with like blasphemy, 'We are divine by nature. There is one God, and we are identical with Him. We with Him have created all things; if we had not chosen, we had not been born. It was our own choice to exist as we do. God can do nothing without us, and we give Him therefore no preference, pay Him no homage. Honour to Him is honour to us. What we are we would be, what we would be we are; with God we have created ourselves and all things; heaven and earth hang on our will.' This insane spiritual pride is flatly contrary to all catholic doctrine. 'The third class sin not less against the Son. They say, we are as much incarnate as Christ was, and, in the same sense, divine sons of God. Had He lived long enough, He would ende erde ende alle dinc, ende dat si verheuen sijn boven alle die sacramenten der heiligher kerken, ende dat si der niet en behoeuen noch si en willen der ooc niet.' He represents their claim to identity with God as leading to a total moral indifference ($17) Ende sulke wanen god sijn, ende si en achten gheen dine goet noch quaet, in dien dat si hem ontbeelden connen ende in bloter ledicheit haer eighen wesen vinden ende besitten moghen. Their idea of the consummation of all things savours of the Parisian heresy-the offspring of John Scotus, popularised by David of Dinant and his followers. The final restitution is to consist in the resolution of all creatures into the Divine Substance:'So spreken si voort dat in den lesten daghe des ordels enghele ende duuele, goede ende quade, dese sullen alle werden een eenvoudighe substancie der godheit. . . ende na dan, spreken si voort, en sal god bekennen noch minnen hem seluen noch ghene creature'(§ 16). have attained to the same contemplative quiet we enjoy. Retired into our inmost selves, we find ourselves the same Wisdom of God which Christ is. When He is honoured, we are honoured, for we are identical with Him. "The fourth class declare that neither God nor themselves, heaven nor hell, action nor rest, good nor evil, have any real existence. They deny God and the work of Christ, Scripture, sacraments, everything. God is nothing; they are nothing; the universe is nothing. 'Some hold doctrines such as these in secret, and conform outwardly, for fear. Others make them the pretext for every kind of vice and insolent insubordination. Of a truth we should cross ourselves when we but speak of them, as in the neighbourhood of spirits from the pit.' 'And what hope,' said Tauler, ' of better things, while the Church is crowded with hirelings, and, with lust and bravery, everywhere leads on the world in sin ?' 'What hope, indeed!' mournfully responded Ruysbroek. 'The grace of the sacraments is shamefully bought and sold. Rich transgressors may live as they list. The wealthy usurer is buried before the altar, the bells ring, the priest declares him blessed. I declare that if he died in unrighteousness, not all the priests in Christendom, not all his hoards lavished to feed the poor, could save him from perdition. See, too, the monks, mendicants and all, what riches! what sumptuous fare! what licence, in violation of every vow! what odious distinctions ! Some have four or five garments, another scarcely one. Some revel with the prior, the guardian, and the lector in the refectory, at a place of their own. Others must be content with herring and cabbage, washed down with sour beer. Little by little the habit is changed, black becomes brown, grey is exchanged for blue, the white must be of the finest stuff, the shape of the newest cut.' c. 7.] Ecclesiastical Corruption. 333 'This,' said Tauler, 'is what I so much admire in your little community here. You have practically abolished those mischievous distinctions, the cause of so much bitterness in our religious houses. Every one has his place, but no one is degraded. You yourself will perform the meanest offices, as the other morning, when Arnstein found you sweeping the lectorium. Yours is the true canonical life-the life of a family. Every one is ready to do kind offices for his brethren, and your own example teaches daily forgetfulness of self.' Ruysbroek looked uneasy under these praises, and they spoke again of the prevalent evils in the Church." 'How many nuns have I seen,' said Ruysbroek, 'daintily attired, with silver bells to their girdles, whose prison was the cloister and their paradise the world! A retinue of forty reiters is a moderate attendance for a prelate out on a visitation. I have known some priests who engaged themselves as business agents to laymen; others who have entered the service of ladies of rank, and walked behind them as footmen into church. A criminal has but to pay money down, and he may serve the devil for another year. A trim reckoning, and satisfaction for all parties! The bishop gets the gold, the devil gets the soul, and the miserable fool the moment's pleasure of his lust.' 25 When, one day, they were conversing on future rewards and punishments, I remember hearing Ruysbroek say—' I trust I am 24 Engelhardt, pp. 326-336.-Good Ruysbroek was fully entitled to the encomium placed in the mouth of Tauler. He himself, like Bernard, would frequently perform the meanest offices of the cloister. The happy spirit of brotherhood which prevailed among the canons of Grünthal made a deep impression on that laborious practical reformer, Gerard Groot, when, in 1378, he visited the aged prior. What he then saw was not without its influence in the formation of that community with which his name is associatedthe Brethren of the Common Life.— See Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. ii. 25 Engelhardt, p. 330.-Ruysbroek inveighs with much detail against the vanities of female dress-as to those hair-pads, sticking up like great horns, they are just so many devil's nests.' ready for all God sends me, life or death, or even hell-pains themselves.' An attainment of virtue inconceivable to me. 26 At Grünthal I saw much of a lay brother named John Affliginiensis, the cook of the community." He accompanied Ruysbroek thither. Though wholly unlettered, he serves daily as a goodly ensample of the active and contemplative life united. It is his calling to see to the dinners of the brethren; he is scarce less helpful to their devotions. That he is a good plain cook I can bear witness, and to the edifying character of the discourses he sometimes delivers to the canons, all testify. He scarcely sleeps at all, goes meanly clad, and eats the veriest refuse of the convent fare. He is one of the meekest and most humble of men -has had his sore fights of temptation, fierce inward purgations, and also his favoured hours and secret revelations. Ruysbroek loves him like a brother. The esteem in which he is held, and the liberty of speech allowed him, is characteristic of the simple and brotherly spirit which dwells among these worthy canons. Grünthal is not, like so many religious houses, a petty image of the pettiest follies of the world. There they do seem to have withdrawn in spirit from the strife and pomp of secular life. 26 Ruysbroek expressed himself in these words to Gerard Groot (Engelhardt, p. 168). In his touching description of the 'desolation' endured by the soul on its way upward toward the 'super-essential contemplation,' he makes the sufferer say, 'O Lord, since I am thine (want ich din eygen bin), I would as soon be in hell as in heaven, if such should be thy good pleasure; only do thy glorious will with me, O Lord!'-Geistl. Hochzeit, § 30. the friends, and the sons. Those worshippers who stand in the relation of friends have still something of their own (besitten oer inwendichkeit mit eygenscap) in their love to God. The sons ascend, dying-wise, to an absolute emptiness. The friends still set value on divine bestowments and experiences; the sons are utterly dead to self, in bare modeless love (in bloeter; wiseloeser mynnen). Yet, very inconsistently, he represents the sons as more assured of eternal life than the friends. (Von dem funkelnden Steine, § 8.) 27 A veritable personage. He died in 1377, and left behind him a book recording the conflicts he underwent and the revelations vouchsafed hìm. (Engelhardt, p. 326.) |