J 135-] THE GIFT OF. |ilr»g l\.'2.*\xs va «\U \v5 D§e44H8iMM»^ <; 'j'ij S^ ■^ (p^lff'^ jflA^^^^STS jtiftfesasia — ^ 1#§^HH|5H§6X. H Cornell University Library BV5075.J78 S7 Spiritual reformers in tlie 16tli & 17th c oiin 3 1924 029 351 289 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://archive.org/details/cu31924029351289 OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES EDITED BY RUFUS M. JONES. STUDIES IN MYSTICAL RELIGION. (1908.) By RUFUS M. Jones. THE QUAKERS IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES. (191 1.) By RuFUs M. Jones, assisted by Isaac Sharpless and Amelia M. GUMMERE. THE BEGINNINGS OF QUAKERISM. (1912.) By William Charles Braithwaite. THE SECOND PERIOD OF QUAKER- ISM. By William Charles Braithwaite. [/« preparation. THE LATER PERIODS OF QUAKER- ISM. By RuFUS M. Jones. [/•; preparation. SPIRITUAL REFORMERS IN THE 16th & 17th centuries MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO SPIRITUAL REFORMERS IN THE 16th & 17th centuries RUEUSV-M; JONES/ M.'A., D.Litt. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, HAVERl-ORD COLLEGE, U.S.A. MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1914 EV COPYRIGHT «A'1'VV_^ PREFACE In my Quakers in the American Colonies I announced the preparation of a volume to be devoted mainly to Jacob Boehme and his influence. I soon found, however, as my work of research proceeded, that Boehme was no isolated prophet who discovered in solitude a fresh way of approach to the supreme problems of the soul. I came upon very clear evidence that he was an organic part of a far-reaching and significant historical movement — a movement which consciously aimed, throughout its long period of travail, to carry the Reformation to its legitimate terminus, the restoration of apostolic Christianity. The men who originated the movement, so far as anything historical can be said to be " originated," were often scornfully called " Spirituals " by their opponents, while they thought of themselves as divinely commissioned and Spirit-guided " Reformers," so that I have with good right named them " Spiritual Reformers." I have had two purposes in view in these studies. One purpose was the tracing of a religious movement, . profoundly interesting in itself, as a great side current of the Reformation. The other purpose was the dis- covery of the background and environment of seventeenth century Quakerism. There can be little doubt, I think, that I have here found at least one of the great historical sources of the Quaker movement. This volume, together with my Studies in Mystical Religion, will at any rate V b vi SPIRITUAL REFORMERS furnish convincing evidence that the ideas, aims, experi- ences, practices, and aspirations of the early Quakers were the fruit of long spiritual preparation. This move- ment, as a whole, has never been studied before, and my work has been beset with difficulties. I have been aided by helpful monographs on individual " Reformers," written mainly by German and French scholars, who have been duly credited at the proper places, but for the most part my material has been drawn from original sources. I am under much obligation to my friend, Theodor Sippell of Schweinsberg, Germany. I am glad to annovmce that he is preparing a critical historical study on John Everard and the Ranters, which will throw important light on the religious ideas of the English Commonwealth. He has read my proofs, and has, throughout my period of research, given me the benefit of his extensive knowledge of this historical field. I wish to express my appreciation of the courtesy and kindness which I have received from the officials of the University Library at Marburg. William Charles Braith- waite of Banbury, England, has given me valuable help. My wife has assisted me in all my work of research. She has read and re-read the proofs, made the Index, and given me an immense amount of patient help. I cannot close this Preface without again referring to the inspiration of my invisible friend, John Wilhelm Rowntree, in whose memory this series was undertaken. Haverford, Pennsylvania, January 1914. PAGE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION What is "Spiritual Religion" xi CHAPTER I The Main Current of the Reformation . . . i CHAPTER II Hans Denck and the Inward Word . . . -17 CHAPTER III Two Prophets of the Inward Word : Bdnderlin and Entfelder ........ 31 CHAPTER IV Sebastian Franck : an Apostle of Inward Religion 46 CHAPTER V Caspar Schwenckfeld and the Reformation of the " Middle Way " . . . . . . .64 CHAPTER VI Sebastian Castellio : a Forgotten Prophet . . 88 vii SPIRITUAL REFORMERS CHAPTER VII PAGE coornhert and the collegiants a movement for Spiritual Religion in Holland .... 104 CHAPTER VIII Valentine Weigel and Nature Mysticism . . . 133 CHAPTER IX Jacob Boehme : His Life and Spirit . . . -151 CHAPTER X Boehme's Universe . ..... 172 CHAPTER XI Jacob Boehme's " Way of Salvation " . . .190 CHAPTER XII Jacob Boehme's Influence in England . . . 208 CHAPTER XIII Early English Interpreters of Spiritual Religion : John Everard, Giles Randall, and others . 235 CHAPTER XIV Spiritual Religion in High Places — Rous, Vane, and Sterry ..... ... 266 CONTENTS CHAPTER XV PAGE Benjamin Whichcote, the first of the " Latitude-Men" 288 CHAPTER XVI John Smith, Platonist — " an Interpreter of the Spirit " ........ 305 CHAPTER XVII Thomas Traherne and the Spiritual Poets of the Seventeenth Century ...... 320 CHAPTER XVIII Conclusion ......... 33^ INDEX ... 351 Within thy sheltering darkness spin the spheres ; Within the shaded hollow of thy wings. The Ufe of things. The changeless pivot of the passing years — These in thy bosom lie. Restless we seek thy being ; to and fro Upon our httle twisting earth we go : We cry, " Lo, there ! " When some new avatar thy glory does declare. When some new prophet of thy friendship sings. And in his tracks we run Like an enchanted child, that hastes to catch the sun. And shall the soul thereby Unto the All draw nigh ? Shall it avail to plumb the mystic deeps Of flowery beauty, scale the icy steeps Of perilous thought, thy hidden Face to find. Or tread the starry paths to the utmost verge of the sky ? Nay, groping dull and bhnd Within the sheltering dimness of thy wings — Shade that their splendour flings Athwart Eternity — We, out of age-long wandering, but come Back to our Father's heart, where now we are at home, Evelyn Underbill in Immanence, p. 82. INTRODUCTION WHAT IS " SPIRITUAL RELIGION " There is no magic in words, though, it must be confessed, they often exercise a psychological influence so profound and far-reaching that they seem to possess a miracle- working efficacy. Some persons live all their lives imder the suggestive spell of certain words, and it sometimes happens that an entire epoch is more or less dominated by the mysterious fascination of a sacred word, which needs only to be spoken on the house-top to set hearts beating and legs marching. " Spiritual " has always been one of these wonder- working words. St. Paul, in Christian circles, was the first to give the word its unique value. For him it named a new order of life and a new level of being. In his thought, a deep cleavage runs through the human race and divides it into two sharply-sundered classes, " psychical men " and " pneumatical men " — ^men who live according to nature, and men who live by the life of the Spirit. The former class, that is psychical men, are of the earth earthy ; they are, as we should say to-day, empirical, parts of a vast nature-system, doomed, as is the entire system, to constant flux and mutability and eventually to irretrievable wreck and ruin ; the natural, psychical, corruptible man, cannot inherit incorruption.^ On the other hand, the pneumatical or spiritual man * I Cor. XV. 50. xi xii SPIRITUAL REFORMERS " puts on " incorruption and immortality. He is a member of a new order ; he is " heavenly," a creation " not made with hands," but wrought out of the sub- stance of the spiritual world, and furnished with the inherent capacity of eternal duration, so that " mortality is swallowed up of life." ^ This word, thus made sacred by St. Paul's great use of it to designate the new race of the saved, was made the bearer in the Johannine writings of a no less exalted message, which has become a living and indissoluble part of the religious consciousness of the Christian world. " Eternal life " — or, what in these writings is the same thing, " life " — comes through the reception of the Spirit, in a birth from above. " That which is bom of the flesh is flesh, and that which is bom of the Spirit is Spirit." ^ When the Spirit comes as the initiator of this abundant life, then we " know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit," and it becomes possible for the Spirit-led person to be guided " into all the truth," to " love even as He loved," and to " over- come the world." * Here, again, the human race is divided into those who have " received of the Spirit," and those who have not so received ; those who are " bom from above " and those who have had only a natural birth ; the twice-born and the once-born ; those who are " of the Spirit," i.e. spiritual, and those who are " of this world," i.e. empirical. The Gnostic Sects of the second century had one common link and badge ; they all proposed a " way," often bizarre and strange-soimding to modem ears, by which the soul, astray, lost, encumbered, or imprisoned in matter, might attain its freedom and become spiritual. Most of the Gnostic teachers, who in their flourishing time were as thick as thistle-downs in summer, conceived of man as consisting of two " halves " which corresponded with two totally different world-orders. There was in man, or there belonged to man (i) a visible body, which ' 2 Cor. V. 1-4. ^ John iii. 6. ' I John iv. 13 ; John xiii. 34 and xvi. 13 ; i John iv. 4. INTRODUCTION xiii was again dichotomized, and believed to be composed, according to many of the Gnostics, of a subtle element like that of which they supposed Adam in his unfallen state was made, which they named the hylic body, and a sheath of gross earthly matter which they called the choical body.i There was also (2) another, invisible, " half," generally divided into lower and higher stories. The lower story, the psychical, was created or furnished by the Demiurge, or sub-divine creator of the natural system, while the top-story, or pneumatical self, was a spiritual seed derived from the supreme spiritual Origin, the Divine Pleroma, the Fulness of the Godhead. Those who possessed this spiritual seed were " the elect," " the saved," who eventually, stripped of their sheath of matter and their psychical dwelling, would be able to pass all " the keepers of the way," and rise to the pure spiritual Ufe. The Montanists launched in the second century a movement, borne along on a mountain-wave of enthusiasm, for a " spiritual " Church composed only of " spiritual " persons. They called themselves " the Spirituals," and they insisted that the age or dispensation of the Spirit had now come. The Church, rigidly organized with its ordained of&cials, its external machinery, and its accumu- lated traditions, was to them part of an old and outworn system to be left behind. In the place of it was to come a new order of " spiritual people " of whom the Montanist prophets were the " first fruits," — a new and peculiar people, bom from above, recipients of a divine energizing power, pa:rtakers in the life of the Spirit and capable of being guided on by progressive revelations into all the truth. To be " spiritual " in their vocabulary meant to be a participator in the Life of God, and to be a living member of a group that was led and guided by a con- tinuously self -revealing Spirit. This Spirit was conceived, however, not as immanent and resident, not as the in- 1 They found their authority for this outer sheath of body in the text which says : " The Lord God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them." — Gen. iii. 21. xiv SPIRITUAL REFORMERS dwelling and permeative Life of the human spirit, but as foreign and remote, and He was thought of as " coming " in sporadic visitations to whom He would, His coming being indicated in extraordinary and charismatic mani- festations. This type of " spiritual religion," though eventually stamped out in the particular form of Montanism, re- appeared again and again, with peculiar local and temporal variations, in the history of Christianity.^ To the bearers of it, the historic Church, with its crystallized system and its vast machinery, always seemed " unspiritual " and traditional. They believed, each time the move- ment appeared, that they had found the way to more abundant life, that the Spirit had come upon them in a special manner, and was through them inaugurating a higher order of Christianity, and they always felt that their religion of direct experience, of invading energy, of inspirational insights, of charismatic bestowals, and of profound emotional fervour was distinctly " spiritual," as contrasted with the historic Church which claimed indeed a divine origin and divine " deposits," but which, as they believed, lacked the continuous and progressive leadership of the Spirit. They were always very certain that their religion was characteristically " spiritual," and all other forms seemed to them cold, formal, or dead. In their estimates, men were still divided into spiritual persons and psychical persons — ^those who lived by the " heart " and those who lived by the " head." Parallel with the main current of the Protestant Reformation, a new type of " spiritual religion " appeared and continued to manifest itself with mutations and developments, throughout the entire Reformation era, with a wealth of results which are still operative in the life of the modern world. The period of this new birth was a time of profound transition and ferment, and a bewildering variety of roads was tried to spiritual Canaans and new Jerusalems, then fondly believed to 1 Many of these historical reappearances are considered in my Studies in Mystical Religion. INTRODUCTION xv be near at hand. It is a long-standing tragedy of history that the right wing of a revolutionary or transforming movement must always suffer for the unwisdom and lack of balance of those who constitute the left, or extreme radical, wing of the movement. So it happened here. The nobler leaders and the saner spirits were taken in the mass with those of an opposite character, and were grouped imder comprehensive labels of reproach and scorn, such as " Antinomians," " Enthusiasts," or " Ana- baptists," and in consequence still remain largely neglected and forgotten. The men who initiated and guided this significant undertaking — the exhibition in the world of what they persistently called " spiritual religion " — ^were influenced by three great historic tendencies, all three of which were harmoniously united in their type of Christianity. They were the Mystical tendency, the Humanistic or Rational tendency, and the distinctive Faith -tendency of the Reformation. These three strands are indissolubly woven together in this type of so-called spiritual Religion. It was an impressive attempt, whether completely successful or not, to widen the sphere and scope of religion, to carry it into the whole of life, to ground it in the very nature of the human spirit, and to demonstrate that to be a man, possessed of full life and complete health, is to be religious, to be spiritual. I propose, as a preliminary preparation for differentiating this special type of " spiritual religion," to undertake a study, as brief as possible, of these three underljring and fundamental strands or tendencies in religion which will, of course, involve some consideration of the inherent nature of religion itself. For my present purpose it is not necessary to study the twilight history of rehgion in primitive races nor to trace its origins in the cradle-stage of human life. Anthro- pologists are rendering a valuable service in their attempts to explore the baffling region of primitive man's mind, and they have hit upon some very suggestive clues, though so far only tentative ones, to the psychological experiences and attitudes which set man's feet on the xvi SPIRITUAL REFORMERS momentous religious trail. At every stage of its long and devious history, religion has been some sort of life- adjustment to realities which were felt to be of supreme importance either to the individual or to the race, and it becomes thus possible for the scientific observer to note a developmental process and to discover a principle which links it in with a universal scheme of evolution. But religion can never be adequately treated either in terms of racial origins or of biological history, though there can be no doubt whatever that there are genetic and biological factors to be considered. Nor, again, can religion be adequately and exhaustively dealt with by the psychological method of investigation. The psycho- logical studies of religion in recent years have greatly enriched our knowledge of the range and scope and power of man's psychic nature and functions, of his instincts, desires, valuations, needs, yearnings, beliefs, and modes of activity and behaviour, and particularly of the important influence which the social group has exercised and still exercises in the furtherance of religious attitudes and ideals. But the psychological method has obvious and inherent limitations. Like any other natural science, psychology is limited to description and causal explanation of the phenomena of its special field, which in this case is states of consciousness. It does not pretend, or even aspire, to pronounce upon the ultimate nature of consciousness, nor upon the moral significance of personality. Psychology is as empirical as any other science. It modestly confines its scope of research to what appears in finite and describable forms. It possesses no ladder by which it can transcend the empirical order, the fact-level. The religion which the psycho- logist reports upon is necessarily stripped of all tran- scendental and objective reference. Its wings are severely clipped. It is only one of man's multitudinous reactions in the presence of the facts of his time and space world. It is nakedly subjective and works, not because there is Something or Some One beyond, which answers it, and corresponds with its up-reach, but only INTRODUCTION xvii because undivided faith-attitudes always liberate within the field of consciousness energy for life-activity. We need not blame the psychologist for this radical reduction of the age-long pretensions of religion. If he is to bring religion over into the purview of the scientific field, he can do nothing else but reduce it. Science can admit into its world nothing that successfully defies descriptive treatment. The poet may know of flowers which " can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," but science discovers no such flowers in its field. Its flowers are amazingly complex, but they call for no handkerchief. They are merely aggregations of describ- able parts, each of which has well-defined functions. The " man " whom science studies is complicated almost beyond belief. He is an aggregation of trillions of cells. He is such a centre of vibrations that a cyclone is almost a calm compared to the constant cyclic storms within the area of man's corporeal system. His " mental states " have their entries and exits before " the foot-lights of consciousness " and exhibit a drama more intricate than any which human genius has conceived. But each " state " is a definite, more or less describable, fact or phenomenon. For science, " man's " inner life, as well as his corporeal bulk, is an aggregate of empirical items. No loophole is left for freedom — ^that is for any novel undetermined event. No shekinah remains within for a mysterious " conscience " to inject into this fact-world insights drawn from a higher world of noumenal, or absolute, reality. " Man " is merely a part of the natural- istic order, and has no way of getting out of the vast net in which science catches and holds " all that is." There is, I repeat, no ground for blaming the psycho- logist for making these reductions. His science can deal only with an order of facts which wiU conform to the scientific method, for wherever science invades a field, it ignores or eliminates every aspect of novelty or mystery or wonder, every aspect of reality which cannot be brought under scientific categories, i.e. every aspect which cannot be treated quantitatively and causally and xviii SPIRITUAL REFORMERS arranged in a congeries of interrelated facts occurring according to natural laws. The only cogent criticism is that any psychologist should suppose that his scientific account is the " last word " to be spoken, that his reports contain all the returns that can be expected, or that this method is the only way of approach to truth and reality. Such claims to the rights of eminent domain and such dogmatic assertions of exclusive finality always reveal the blind spot in the scientist's vision. He sees steadily but he does not see wholes. He is of necessity dealing with a reduced and simplified " nature " which he con- stantly tends to substitute for the vastly richer whole of reality that boils over and inundates the fragment which submits to his categories. We do well to gather in every available fact which biology or anthropology or psychology can give us that throws light on human behaviour, or on primitive cults, or on the richer sub- jective and social religious functions of full-grown men. But the interior insight got from religion itself, the rich wholeness of religious experience, the discovery within us of an inner nature which defies description and baffles all plumb-lines, and which can draw out of itself more than if contains, indicate that we here have dealings with a type of reality which demands for adequate treatment other methods of comprehension than those available to science. In the old Norse stories, Thor tried to empty the famous drinking-horn in the games of Utgard, but to his surprise he found that, though the horn looked small, he could not empty it, for it turned out that the horn was immersed in the limitless and bottomless ocean. Again he tried to lift a small and insignificant-looking animal, but, labour as he might, he could not hft it, for it was grown into, and was organic with, the whole world, and could not be raised without raising the very groimd on which the lifter stood ! Somewhat so, the reality of reUgion is so completely bound up with the whole personal life of man and with his conjunct life in the social group and in the world of nature ; it is, in short, so much an INTRODUCTION xix affair of man's whole of experience, of his spirit in its undivided and synthetic aspects, that it can never be adequately dealt with by the analytic and descriptive method of this wonderful new god of science, however big with resxilts that method may be. The interior insight, the appreciation of religion, the rich and concrete whole of religious consciousness, is, and will always remain, the primary way to the secret of religion — ^religion in its " first intention " — as the experience of time-duration is the only possible way to the elemental meaning of time. It has in recent years in many quarters become the fashion to call this " interior insight," this appreciation of religion from within, " mysticism " ; and to assume that here in mysticism we come upon the very essence of religion. This con- clusion, however, is as narrow and as unwarranted as is the tnmcation of religion at the hands of science. The mystical element in religion is only one element in a vastly richer complex, and it must not be given undue emphasis and imperial sway in the appreciation of the complete whole of " spiritual religion." We must, too, carefully discriminate mystical experience from the elabo- rate body of doctrines and theories, historically known as " mysticism," which is as much an ism as are the other typical, partial, and more or less abstract formulations of religion. Mysticism for the mystic himself is characterized by a personal experience through which the ordinary Umita- tions of life and the passionate pursuits of the soul are transcended, and a self-evident conviction is attained that he is in communion, or even in union, with some self-transcending Reahty that absolutely satisfies and is what he has always sought. " This is He, this is He," the mystic exclaims : " There is no other : This is He whom I have waited for and sought after from my child- hood ! " 1 The experience is further characterized by the inrush * Isaac Penington, " A True and Faithful Relation of my Spiritual Travails," Worhs (edition of 1761), i. pp. xxxvii.-xxxviii. XX SPIRITUAL REFORMERS of new energies as though a mysterious door had been pushed open — either out or in — admitting the human spirit to wider sources of life. " Fresh bubbUngs from the eternal streams of Life flowing into the soul " is the way the recipient often describes it. All the deep-l5dng powers of the inward self, usually so divergent and con- flicting — the foreground purposes defeated by background inhibitions, and by doubts on the border, — become liberated and unified into one conscious life which is not merely intellectual, nor merely volitional, nor solely emotional, but an undivided whole of experience, intensely joyous, enriched with insight and pregnant with deeds of action. As in lofty experiences of appreciation of beauty, or of music, or when the chords of life are swept by a great love, or by a momentous moral issue, the spirit rises in mystical experience to a form of conscious- ness which no longer marks clock-time and succession of events, whether outward or inward. It may afterwards take hours or days or weeks or even years to spread out and review and apprehend and adjust to the experience — " the opening," to use George Fox's impressive word — but while it is there it is held in one unbroken synthetic time-span. It is, to revive a scholastic phrase, a totum simul, an all-at-once experience, in which parts, however many, make one integral whole, as in a melody or in a work of art ; so that the mystic has a real experience of what we try to express by the word Eternity. It feels as though the usual insulations of our own narrow personal life were suddenly broken through and we were in actual contact with an enfolding presence, life-giving, joy- bringing, and light-supplying. In instances where the intensity is great, unusual psychological phenomena appear. Sometimes voices are heard, or sounds " like a mighty rushing wind " ; some- times there are automatic visions of light, or of forms or figures, as, for instance, of Christ, or of a cross ; some- times automatic writing or speaking attends the experi- ence ; sometimes there are profound body-changes of a temporary, or even permanent character ; sometimes there INTRODUCTION xxi is a state of swoon or ecstacy, lasting from a few seconds to entire days. These physical phenomena, however, are as spiritually unimportant and as devoid of religious significance as are the normal bodily resonances and reverberations which accompany, in milder degrees, all our psychic processes. They indicate no high rank of sainthood and they prove no miracle-working power. The significant features of the experience are the con- sciousness of fresh springs of life, the release of new energies, the inner integration and unification of person- ality, the inauguration of a sense of mission, the flooding of the life with hope and gladness, and the conviction, amounting in the mind of the recipient to certainty, that God is foimd as an environing and vitalizing presence — as the recipient already quoted reports his conviction : " I have met with my God ; I have met with my Saviour. I have felt the healings drop upon my soul from under His wings." ^ If everybody had experiences of that sort there would be no more doubt of the existence of an actual spiritual environment in vitalizing contact with the human spirit than there now is of an external world with which we correspond. There is a priori no reason against the reality of such an inner spiritual universe. It is precisely as conceivable that constructive and illuminating in- fluences should stream into our inner selves from that central Light with which our inmost self is allied, as that objects in space and time should bombard us with messages adapted to our senses. The difference is that we all experience the outer environment and only a few of us experience the inner. The mystic himself has no doubt — he sees, but he cannot give quite his certainty of vision to any one else. He cannot, like " the weird sisters " of Greek story, lend out his eye for others to see with. He can only talk about, or write about, what he has seen, and his words are often words of little meaning to those who lack the vision. 1 Isaac Penington's Works, i. pp. xxxvii.-xxxviii. xxii SPIRITUAL REFORMERS II But the very characteristics of mystical reUgion which give it its self-evidence and power at the same time mark limits to its scope and range. It is and must be primarily and essentially first-hand experience, and yet it is an experience that is by no means universal. It is not, so far as we can see from the facts at hand, an experience which attaches to the very nature of consciousness as such, or indeed one which is bound to occur even when the human subject strains forward all the energies of his will for the adventure, or when by strict obedience to the highest laws of hfe known to him he waits for the high visitation. Some aspect is involved over which the will has no control. Some other factor is implied besides the passion and the purity of the seeking soul. The experience " comes," as an inrush, as an emergence from the deeper levels of the inner life, but the glad recipient does not know how he secured the prize or how to repeat the experience, or how to tell his friend the way to these " master moments " of blessedness. There are numerous persons who are as serious and earnest and passionate as the loftiest mystical saint, and who, in spite of all their listening for the inner flow of things, discover no inrushes, feel no invasions, are aware of no environing Companion, do not even feel a " More of Consciousness conterminous and continuous with their own." Their inner life appears impervious to divine bubblings. The only visitants that pass over the threshold of their consciousness are their own mental states, now bright and clear, now dim and strange, but all bearing the brand and mark of temporal origin. This type of experience must not, therefore, be insisted on as the only way to God or to the soul's homeland. Spiritual religion must not be put to the hazard of conditions that limit its universality and restrict it to a chosen few. To insist on mystical experience as the only path to religion would involve an " election " no less inscrutable and INTRODUCTION xxiii pitiless than that of the Calvinistic system — an " election " settled for each person by the peculiar psychic structure of his inner self.^ There is another limitation which must always attach to religion of the purely mystical type. In so far as it is an experience of the inward type, it is indescribable and in- commimicable. That does not mean or imply any lessened value in the experience itself, it only means that it is very dif&cult to mint it into the universal coinage of the world. The recovery of faith, after some catastrophic bankruptcy of spiritual values, as with Job or Dante or Faust, cannot be described in analytic steps. The loss of faith in the rationality of the universe, the collapse of the " beautiful world " within, can be told step by step ; the process of integration and reconstruction, on the other hand, always remains somewhat of a mystery, though it is plain enough that a new and richer inner world has been found. So, too, with Mysticism. The experience itself may, and often does, bring to the recipient an indubitable certainty of spiritual realities, revealing themselves within his own spirit, and, furthermore, it is often productive of permanent hfe-results, such as augmented conviction, heightened tone of joy, increased unification of personality, intense moral passion and larger conquering power, but he, nevertheless, finds it a baffling matter to draw from his mystical experience concrete information about the nature and character of God, or to supply, from the experience alone, definite contributions that can become part of the common spiritual inheritance of the race. The soul Remembering how she felt, but what she felt Remembering not, retains an obscure sense Of possible sublimity.^ * The exact and sharply-defined " ladders " of mystic ascent which form a large part of the descriptive material in books on Mystical Religion are far from teing universal ladders. Like creeds, or Uke religious institutions, they power- fully assist certain minds to find the way home, but they seem imreal and artificial to many other persons, and they must be considered only as symbolisms which speak to the condition of a limited number of spiritual pilgrims. * Wordsworth's " Prelude," Bk. ii. xxiv SPIRITUAL REFORMERS There can be, I think, no doubt that the persons whom we call mystics have enormously added to the richness of our conception of God, or that they have made impressive contributions to the capital stock of our religious knowledge. But I question whether these increments of knowledge can be fairly traced to " informa- tion " which has entered the world through the secret door of mystical " openings." The conception of God by which we live, and our knowledge of eternal life, are in the main not formed of the material which has mysteriously dropped into the world by means of " sudden incursions," or " oracular communications " through persons of extra- ordinary psychical disposition. What we get from the mystic, or from the prophet, is not his " experience " but his interpretation, and as soon as he begins to interpret, he does so by means of the group-material which the race has gathered in its corporate experience through the ages. The valuable content of his message, so far as he succeeds in delivering one, the ideas with which his words are freighted, bear the marks of the slow accumulations of spiritual experience, and they reveal the rich and penetra- tive influence of the social group in which the mystic's inner life formed and ripened. They have a history as all ideas do. The real fact of the matter is, that the great mystics are religious geniuses. They make their contribution to religion in ways similar to those in which the geniuses in other fields raise the level of human attainments and achievements. They swiftly seize upon and appreciate the specific achievements of the race behind them ; they are profoundly sensitive to the aspirations of their time and to the deep-lying currents of their age ; they are suggestible in an acute degree, through heightened interest, to certain ideas or truths or principles which they synthesise by such leaps of insight that slow-footed logic seems to be transcended. Then these unif5dng and intensifying experiences to which they are subject give them irresistible conviction, " a surge of certainty," a faith of the mountain-moving order, and an increasing INTRODUCTION xxv dynamic of life which, in the best cases, is manifest in thoughts and words and deeds. Their mystical experience seldom supplies them with a new intellectual content which they communicate, but their experience enables them rather to see what they know, to get possession of themselves, and to fuse their truth with the heat of con- viction. The mystical experience is thus a way of heighten- ing life and of increasing its d5mamic quality rather than a way to new knowledge. The negative way, which has been such a prominent and prevailing characteristic of historical mysticism that many writers have made it the distinct and sufficient differentia of mysticism, has often produced intensity and depth, but it is, nevertheless, a mark of the limitation of this tj^e of rehgion. The indescribable and un- differentiated character of mystical experience is no doubt partly responsible for the emphatic place which negation has held in mysticism. The experience itself, which seems like " a fhght of the alone to the Alone," can be told in no words except those of negation. " The mortal limit of the self " seems loosed, and the soul seems merged into that which it forever seeks but which having found it cannot utter. But the type of metaphysics through which most of the great mystics of history have done their thinking and have made their formulations is still further responsible for the excessive negativity of their systems. There is, of course, a negative element or aspect in all genuine religion. No person can grow rich in spiritual experience or can gain an intimate acquaintance with a God of purity and truth without negating the easy ways of uistinct, the low pursuits of life which end in self, the habits of thought and action which limit and hamper the realization of the diviaer possibilities of the whole nature. Sometimes the eye that hinders must be plucked out or the right hand cut off and thrust away for the sake of a freer pursuit of the soul's kingdom. There is, too, a still deeper principle of negativity involved in the very fibre of personal life itself. No one can advance without xxvi SPIRITUAL REFORMERS surrender, no one can have gains without losses, no one can reach great goals without giving up many things in themselves desirable. There is " a rivalry of mes " which no person can ever escape, for in order to choose and achieve one typical self another possible self must be sternly sacrificed. In a very real sense it remains forever true that we must die to live, we mustdie to the narrow self in order to be raised to the wider and richer self. But the negative way of mysticism is more rigorous and more thorough in its negation than that. Its nega- tions " wind up the hill all the way to the very top." Even the self must be absolutely negated. " The self, the I, the me and the like, all belong to the evil spirit. The whole matter can be set forth in these words : Be simply and wholly bereft of self." " The I, the me, and the mine, nature, selfhood, the DevU, sin, are all one and the same thing." ^ Not only so, but all desire for any particular thing, or any partictilar experience must be utterly extirpated. " Whatever Good the creature as creature can conceive of and understand is something this or that," and therefore not the One Real Good.^ " So long as thy soul has an image, it is without simplicity, and so long as it is without simplicity it doth not rightly love God.* " Divine love can brook no rival." He who seeks God must " rid himself of all that pertains to the creature." He that would find the absolute Good must withdraw not only beyond all his senses, but beyond all desires, into an inner " solitude where no word is spoken, where is neither creature nor image nor fancy." " Every- thing depends," Tauler counsels us, " upon a fathomless sinking into a fathomless nothingness. . . . God has really no place to work in but the ground where all has been annihilated. . . . Then when all forms have ceased, in the twinkling of an eye, the man is transformed. . . . Thou must sink into the unknown and unnamed abyss, and above all ways, images, forms, and above all powers, ^ Theologia Germcmica, chaps, xxii. and xliii . ^ Ibid. chap. liii. ■ Meister Eckhart, Pfeifier, p. 320. 20. INTRODUCTION xxvii lose thyself, deny thyself, and even unform thyself.^ The moment the will focusses upon any concrete aim as its goal, it must thereby miss that Good which is above and beyond all particidar " things " that can be conceived or named. But the negative way winds up farther still. It ends in the absolutely negative Silent Desert of Godhead " where no one is at home." Its way up is the way of abstraction and withdrawal from everything finite. He whom the soul seeks cannot be found in anything " here " or " now " ; He must be " yonder." " It is by no means permitted," says one of the great experts in negation, " to speak or even to think anything concerning the super-essential and hidden Deity. . . . It is a Unity above mind, a One above conception and inconceivable to all conceptions, a Good unutterable by word." ^ " Thou must love God," Eckhart says, " as not-God, not-Spirit, not-person, not-image, but as He is, a sheer, pure, absolute One, sundered from all two-ness and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness." ^ God, the Godhead, is thus the absolute " Dark," " the nameless Nothing," an empty God, a characterless Infinite. " Why dost thou prate of God," Eckhart says, " whatever thou sayest of Him is untrue ! " The rapt soul at the end of his road, at the top of the hill, only knows that every finite account is false and that the only adequate word is an everlasting Nay. Whatever idea your mind comes at, I tell you flat God is not that.* The great mystics have always saved themselves by neglecting to be consistent with this rigorous negation and abstraction. In their practice they have cut through their theory and gone on living the rich concrete life. 1 Tauler's Sermons. See especially Sennons IV. and XXIII. in Mutton's Inner Way. 2 The Divine Names of Dionysius the Areopagite, chap. i. sec. i. ' Meister Eckhart, Pfeiffer, p. 320. 25-30. * Quoted in W. H. J. Gairdner's The Reproach of Islam, p. 151. xxviii SPIRITUAL REFORMERS But the theory itself is a false theory of life, and it leads only to a God of abstraction, not to the God of spiritual religion. The false trail, however, is to be charged, as I have said, not so much to mystical experience as to the metaphysics through which the mystics, not only of Christian communions, but of other faiths, were compelled to do their thinking. There was no other way of thinking known to them except this way of negation. The Infinite was the not-finite ; the Absolute was precisely what the contingent was not. The perfect was free of every mark of imperfection. Behind all manifestations was the essential Substance which made the manifestations. The completely Real was above all mutation and process. " For one to assign," therefore, " to God any human attri- butes," as Spinoza, the supreme apostle of this negative way has said, "is to reveal that he has no true idea of God." It has taken all the philosophical and spiritual travail of the centuries to discover that there may be a concrete Infinite, an organic Absolute, an immanent Reality, and that the way to share in this comprehending Life is at least as much a way of affirmation as of negation, a way that leads not into " the Dark " but into the Light, and not into a " fathomless nothing," but into an abundant and radiant life. Mysticism, as a t5rpe of religion, has further staked its precious realities too exclusively upon the functions of what to-day we call the sub-conscious. Impressed with the divine significance of " inward bubblings," the mystic has made too slight an account of the testimony of Reason and the contribution of history. , The subconscious functions are very real and very important aspects of personal life, and can never again be ignored in any full account of personality. They influence every thought, feeling, attitude, volition, opinion, mood, and insight, and are thus operative in all the higher as well as in all the lower phases of human life and character. Meta- phorically, but only metaphorically, we speak of the sub-conscious as a vast zone, an indefinable margin, surrounding the narrow focus of attention, and we may INTRODUCTION xxix figuratively, but only figuratively, call it the subliminal " region " where all our life-gains, and often the gains of the race, are garnered. The contributions from this mental underworld are inestimable — we could not be men without them — but this subconscious zone is a source of things bad as well as good, things silly as well as things wise, of rubbish as well as of treasures, and it is diabolical as well as divine. It seems in rare moments to connect, as though it were a hidden inland stream, with the "immortal sea which brought us hither," and we feel at times, through its incomes, as though we were aware of tides from beyond our own margin. And, in fact, I believe we are. But obviously we cannot assume that whatever comes spontaneously out of the subconscious is divinely given. It mothers strange offspring — Esaus as well as Jacobs ; its openings, its inrushes, its bubblings must be severely tested. Impulses of many sorts feel categoric- ally imperative, but some call to deeds of light and some to deeds of darkness. They cannot be taken at their face value ; they must be judged in some Court which is less capricious and which is guided by a more universal principle — something semper et ubique. A spiritual reUgion of the full and. complete type will, I believe, have inward, mystical depth, it will keep vitalized and intensified with its experiences of divine supplies, and of union and unification with an environing Spirit, but it must at the same time soundly supplement its more or less capricious and subjective, and always fragmentary, mystical insights with the steady and unwavering testimony of Reason, and no less with the immense objective illumination of History. Ill The men whom I am here calling Spiritual Reformers are examples of this wider S5mthesis. They all read and loved the mystics and they themselves enjoyed times of direct refreshment from an inward Source of Life, but XXX SPIRITUAL REFORMERS they were, most of them, at the same time, devoted JHumanists. They shared with enthusiasm the redis- covery of those treasures which human Reason had pro- duced, and they rose to a more virile confidence in the sphere and capacity of Reason than had prevailed in Chris- 'tian circles since the days of the early Greek Fathers. They took a variety of roads to their conclusion, but in one way or another they all proclaimed that deep in the central nature of man — an inalienable part of Reason — there was a Light, a Word, an Image of God, something permanent, reliable, universal, and unsundered from God "himself. They all knew that man is vastly more than " mere man." Hans Denck, one of the earliest of this group of Spiritual Reformers, declared that there is a witness to God in the soul of every man, and that without this inward Word it would be as impossible to bring men to God by outward means as it would be to show sunlight to eyeless men. He anticipated the great saying of Pascal in these words, " Apart from God no one can either seek or find God, for he who seeks God already in truth has Him." ^ " We are," says Jacob Boehme, who belongs in this line of Spiritual Reformers, " of God's substance : we have heaven and hell in ourselves." ^ There is in us, Peter Sterry says, a unity of spirit which holds all things together in an at-once experience, " a spire-top of spirit where all things meet and sit recollected and concentred in an unfathomed Depth of Life." * Most of these men were in revolt against scholasticism and all its works. They speak often very slightingly of " Reasoning," the attempt to find a way to ultimate Realities by logical syllogisms, but they, nevertheless, believed great things of man's rational and moral nature. They are often confused and cloudy in their explicit accounts of this ultimate moral and rational nature. They ever j^wh ere indicate the conceptual limitations ' Denck's Was geredet sey, doss die Schrift, B. 2. Pascal's saying is : " Comfort thyself ; thou wouldst not be seeking Me hadst thou not already found Me." — Le Mystire de Jesus, sec. 2. 2 The Threefold Life of Man, xiv. 72. ' Sterry's Rise, Race, and Royalty of the Kingdom of God in the Soul of Man p. 24. INTRODUCTION xxxi under which even those who were the most emancipated from tradition were compelled to do their thinking in that age. They could not break the age-long spell and\ mighty fascination with which the Adam story and the\ Garden of Eden picture had held the Christian world. They were convinced, however, that the Augustinian I interpretation of the fall, with its entail of an indelible | taint upon the race forever, was an inadequate, if not an | untrue account, though they could not quite arrive at/ an insight which enabled them to speak with authority on the fundamental nature of man. But with an instinct that pointed right, they took Adam as a type of the unspoiled man, and they saw writ large in him the possi- bilities and potentialities of man. What had been originally possible in Adam became, according to their thought, actual realization in Jesus Christ — the form and type of man, the true Head of the race — and in spite of the havoc and spoiling, which sin had wrought, that original possibility, that divine potentiality, still reappears in every child, who comes now, as Adam did, made in the image of God, with the breath of God in him, and with creative freedom of will to settle his own destiny. Some of the Reformers whom I am here studying centre this image of God, this immense divine potentiality, in the ideal man, in man as God conceives him in his perfect state, or as God by His Grace intends him to be, and they do not go the whole bold way of asserting that this man we know, this man who lives in time and space, who loves and sins and suffers, has and always has, in the very structure of his inmost moral and rational being, a divine, unlost, inalienable, soul-centre which is unsundered from God, and bears eternal witness to our origin from Him, our potential likeness to Him, and our capacity to receive illumination from Him.^ But this latter 1 '• The finite individual soul seems naturally to present a double aspect. It looks like, on the one hand, a climax or concentration of the nature beneath it and the community around it, and, on the other hand, a spark or fragment from what is above and beyond it. It is crystallized out of the collective soul of nature or society, or it falls down from the transcendental soul of heaven or what is above humanity. In both cases alike it has its share of divinity." — Bernard Bosanquet, The Value and Destiny of the Individual (London, 1913), p. i. xxxii SPIRITUAL REFORMERS bolder view of the inherent greatness of man's essential nature is the prevailing tendency of these men. They are thus the forerunners of the Quaker faith that there is something of God in man, and they continue the direct hne, which goes back for ancestry to the Socratic move- ment in philosophy of those who find God involved and implicated in the nature of normal self-consciousness and in the idea of the Good toward which we live.^ Mystics and prophets, as Seel^ well says in Ecce Homo, seem to themselves to " discover truth not so much by a process of reasoning as by an intense gaze, and they annotmce their conclusions with the voice of a herald, using the name of God and giving no reasons." The rational way of approach is different. It seeks to draw out by a process of rational argument what is involved in the outer or inner facts that are present to conscious- ness. It does not claim the power to make bricks without clay, to construct its conclusions out of nothing. Its only legitimate field is that of interpreting experience. There have always been men who were religious because they could not help being religious, because a Universe without God seemed to them utterly irrational and un- thinkable. Schleiermacher is only one witness in a long and impressive succession of thinkers that have insisted that " consciousness of God and self-consciousness are inseparable.^ It is obvious even to the unmetaphysical person that self- consciousness always presupposes and involves something prior to one's own existence and some reality transcending the reality of one's own self. The finite is intelligible only through the infinite, the temporal only through the eternal. We cannot think at all without appealing to some permanent more of reality than is just now given in our particular finite experience, and no matter how far one travels on the road of knowledge one always finds it still necessary to make reference to a transcending more. " AU consciousness is," as Hegel 1 The way to the world of Perfect Reality, Socrates says in the Theaetetus, consists in Ukeness to God, nor is there, he adds, anything more like God than is d good man. — Theaetetus 176 a and b. 2 Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre. INTRODUCTION xxxiii showed in 1807, in his philosophical Pilgrim's Progress, the Phenomenology of Spirit, " an appeal to more con- sciousness," and there is no rational halting-place short of a self-consistent and self-explanatory spiritual Reality, which explains the origin and furnishes the goal of all that is real. On the other hand, there have always been men who have not granted any such compelling implications to self-consciousness. They have maintained that " finites " are forever " finites," and that there are no bridges that carry us from our finite " nows " and " heres " to an infinite Reality. The infinite Reality, they aU admit, is conceivable ; it is " an idea " to which any mind can rise by normal processes of thought, " but," so they say, " an idea of an infinite Reality, an Infinite merely con- ceived in the mind, is different, by the whole width of the sky, from an acttial objective infinite Reality that is there, and that contains inherently aU that our hearts seek in God." It is quite true, of course, that the presence of "an idea " in our mind does not of itself prove the existence of a corresponding objective reality out there in a world independent of our mind. There is most assuredly no way of bridging " the chasm " between mind and an objective world beyond and outside of mind, when once the " chasm " is assumed. But the fundamental error lies in the assumption of any such " chasm." The " chasm " which yawns between the inner and outer world is of our own making. Whenever we know any- thing, wherever there is knowledge at all, there is a syn- thetic indivisible whole of experience in which a subject knows an object. Subject and object cannot be really sundered without putting an instant end to knowledge — leaving " a bare grin without a face ! " The only way we know anything is that we know we know it in experi- ence. We do not ever succeed in proving that objects exist out there in the world beyond us exactly corre- spondent to these ideas in our minds. That is a feat of mental gymnastics quite parallel to that of " finding " xxxiv SPIRITUAL REFORMERS the self with which we do the seeking. The crucial problem of knowledge is not to discover a bridge to leap the chasm between the mind within and the world beyond. It is rather the problem of finding a basis of verifying and testing what we know, and of making knowledge a con- sistent rational whole. The method of testing and verifying any fact of truth which we have on our hands, is always to organize it and link it into a larger whole of knowledge which we our- selves, or the wider group of persons in which we are organic members, have verified, and to see that it fits in consistently into this larger whole, and in this rational process we always assume, and are bound to assume, some sort of Reality that transcends the fleeting and temporal, the caprice of the moment, the will of the subject, the here and the now. The mind that knows and knows that it knows must, as Plato centuries ago declared, rise from the welter and flux of momentary seemings to true Being, to the eternally Real,^ and the knowledge process of binding fragments of experience into larger wholes and of getting articulate insight into the significance of many facts grasped in synthetic unity — ^in the " spire-top of spirit," as Sterry puts it — carries the mind steadily and irresistibly on to an infinitely-inclusive and self-explana- tory spiritual Whole, which is always implied in know- ledge. Some reference to the permanent is necessary in judging even the fleetingness of the " now," some con- fidence in the eternally true is essential for any pro- nouncement upon the false, some assurance of the infinite is presupposed in the endless dissatisfaction with the finite, some appeal to a total whole of Reality is implicated in any assertion that this fact here and now is known as real. Any one who feels the fioll significance of what is involved in knowing the truth has a coercive feeling that Eternity has been set within us, that our finite life is deeply rooted in the all-pervading Infinite. The great thinkers of the first rank who have under- taken to sound the significance of rational knowledge, 1 Republic vii. 518 B. INTRODUCTION xxxv and who have appreciated the meaning of the S5mthetic unity of the knowing mind and the world of objects that submit to its forms of thought, have recognized that there must be some deep -lying fundamental relation between the mind that knows and the world that is known, some Reality common to both outer and inner realms. They have, almost without exception, found them- selves carried along irresistibly to an ultimate Reality that is the ground and explanation of all the fragmentary facts of experience, and without which nothing can be held to be permanent or rational — Something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the hght of setting suns. And the round ocean and the hving air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; A motion and a Spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And roUs through all things. i The technical logical formulation of arguments to prove the existence of God as objectively real — arguments from causality, ontological arguments, and arguments from design — all of which assume a " chasm " between the knower and the object known, seem to us perhaps on critical analysis thin and insufficient. The bridge of formal logic seems too weak to carry us safely over from a finite here to an infinite yonder, from a contingent fact to an Absolute Reality, from something given in con- sciousness to Something existent outside and beyond it ; but it is an impressive and significant fact that all finite experience, both of inner and outer events, involves a More yet, that we cannot think finite and contingent things without rational appeal to Something infinite and necessary, that human experience cannot be rationally conceived except as a fragment of a vastly more in- clusive Experience, always recognized within the finite spirit, that unifies and binds together into one self- explanatory whole all that is absolutely Real and True, and this is Reason's conviction of God. ^ Wordsworth's "Tintem Abbey." xxxvi SPIRITUAL REFORMERS When once the conviction is felt and the rational postulate of God is made, it immediately verifies its practical value in the solution of our deepest problems. A happy illustration of the practical value and verifying evidence of the rational postulate of God has been given by James Ward : " Suppose," he says, " that the earth were wrapt in clouds all day while the sky was clear at night, so that we were able to see the planets and observe their movements as we do now, though the sun itself was invisible. The best account we could give of the planetary motions would still be to refer them to what for us, in accordance with our supposition, would only be an imaginary focus [or centre of physical energy], but one to which was assigned a position identical with the sun's [present] position." ^ This assumption would at once unlock the mystery and account for the varying movements of these visible bodies and the more rigorously the hypothesis were applied, the more exactly it would verify itself. So, too, with Reason's sublime venture of faith. The nature of self-consciousness demands the postulate, and once it is made it works. The same result follows any attempt adequately to account for the moral imperative — ^the will to live the truly good life. The moral will turns out always to be imbedded in a deeper, richer, more inclusive Life than that of the fragmentary finite individual. There is a creative and autonomous central self in us which puts before us ideals of truth and beauty and goodness that are nowhere to be " found " in this world of sense-facts, and that yet are more real and august than any things our eyes see or our hands handle. Our main moral problem is not to adjust our inner ideals to our environment, but rather to compel the environment to level up to our ideals. The world that ought to be makes us forever dissatisfied with the world that is, and sets us with a fixity of purpose at the task of realizing the Kingdom which might possibly be, which we know ought to be, and which, therefore, has our loyal endeavour that it * Realm of Ends, p. 230. INTRODUCTION xxxvii shall be, regardless of the cost in pain and sacrifice. Man, as William Wallace has put it, " projects his own self- to-be into the nature he seeks to conquer. Like an assailant who should succeed in throwing his standard into the strong central keep of the enemy's fortress, and fight his way thereto with assured victory in his eyes of hope, so man with the vision of his soul prognosticates his final triumph." ^ But if the life of moral endeavour is to be essentially consistent and reasonable there must be a world of Reality that transcends this realm of empirical, causal, and utilitarian happenings. Struggle for ends of goodness must be at least as significant in function as struggle for existence ; our passion for what ought to be must have had birth in an inner eternal environment at least as real as that which produced our instincts and appetite for the things by which we live in time. If the universe is through and through rational, there must be some personal Heart that cares ; some moral Will that guarantees and backs our painful strivings — our groaning and travailing — ^to make what ought to be come into play here in the world which is. This postulate is Reason's faith in God, and again it works. The evolution of hfe — if it is evolving as we believe it is, and if it is to be viewed with rational insight as an upward process — ^irresistibly involves and implies some sort of fundamental intelligence and conscious purpose, some Logos steering the mighty movement. We have outgrown crude arguments from " design," and we cannot think of God as a foreign and external Creator, working as a Potter on his clay ; but it is irrational to " explain " a steadily unfolding movement, an ever-heightening pro- cession of life, by " fortuitous variations," by " acci- dental " shifts of level, or even by a blind elan vital. If there is an increasing purpose and a clearly culminating drama unfolding in this moving flood of fife, then there is some Mind that sees the way, and some Will that directs the march of Life. And this confidence of ours in some divine Event to which the whole creation moves, 1 Lectures and Addresses, p. 193. xxxviii SPIRITUAL REFORMERS this insight that there must be a significant and adequate explanation for the immanent teleology and beauty with which our imiverse is crammed, is, once more, Reason's postulate of God. There is something in us, indissoluble from Reason itself — a Light, a Word, a Witness as these Spiritual Reformers insisted — which links us in all the deeper processes of self-consciousness with That Which Is and without which " knowledge " would be a mere flux of seemings, a flight of seriatim items. IV When this world's pleasures for my soul sufftced. Ere my heart's plummet sounded depths of pain, I called on reason to control my brain. And scoffed at that old story of the Christ. But when o'er burning wastes my feet had trod, And all my life was desolate with loss, With bleeding hands I clung about the cross, And cried aloud, " Man needs a suffering God." ^ There can be no doubt that the compulsions and implications of rational insight have brought multitudes of men to God, have given them an imescapable conviction of His reality, and have swayed their wills to live in con- formity to His perfect Goodness ; and it is also true that when for any cause this clue of rationality is missed or lost, men flounder about in the fog and pass through periods of inward tragedy amounting often to despair. But the approach of Reason still leaves much to be desired. It points to something deeper than the transitory flux of things, it raises our minds to some sort of ultimate and self-explanatory Reality, it compels the conviction that there is an all-inclusive Logos — Mind or Spirit — ^that explains what is and what ought to be, and what in the unfolding course of things is to be ; but it does not bring us to a personal God who is our loving Friend and the ' Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Life and Moments. INTRODUCTION xxxix intimate Companion of our sovls, it does not help us solve the mystery of human suffering that lies heavily upon our lives, and it does not bring to our spirits the saving reinforcement of personal Love that must be a central feature of a spiritual and adequate religion. There is still another way of approach to a Religion for mature minds which has been no less universally operative and no less dynamic in its transforming effects upon human lives than either of the two tendencies so far considered — I refer to the way of Faith. By Faith I mean the soul's moral or appreciative apprehension of God as historically revealed, particularly as revealed in the personal life of Jesus Christ. This Faith-way to God cannot be wholly separated — except by an artificial abstraction — from the inward way of mysticism, or from the implications of Reason. It is no blind acceptance of traditional opinions, no uncritical reliance on " authority," or on some mysterious infallible oracle. It is the spiritual response — or " assent," as Clement of Alexandria called it — the moral swing of our inmost self, as we catch insights of a loving Heart and holy Will revealed through the words and lives and sufferings of saints and prophets, who have lived by their vision of God, and supremely revealed in the Life and Love, the Passion and the Triumphs of that Person whose experi- ence and character and incarnation of life's possibilities seem at last adequate for all the needs — ^the heights and the depths-— of this complex life of ours. It was Luther's living word which first brought the momentous significance of Faith to clear consciousness in the sixteenth century. But the new way of Faith meant many and discordant things, according to the preparation of the ears of those who heard. It spoke, as all Pentecosts do, to each man in his own tongue. To those who came to the Lutheran insight with a deep hunger of spirit for reality and with minds hberated by Humanistic studies, the Faith-message meant new heavens and a new earth. It was a new discovery of God, and a new estimate of man. They suddenly caught xl SPIRITUAL REFORMERS a vision of life as it was capable of becoming, and they committed their fortunes to the task of making that possible world real. By a shift of view, as revolutionary as that from Ptolemaic astronomy to the verifiable insight of Copernicus, they passed over from the dogma of a Christ who came to appease an angry God, and to found a Church as an ark of safety in a doomed world, to the living apprehension of a Christ — verifiable in experience — who revealed to them, in terms of His own nature, an eternally tender, loving, suffering, self-giving God, and who made them see, with the enlightened eyes of their heart, the divine possibilities of human life. Through this insight, they were the beginners of a new type of Christianity, which has become wide-spread and impressive in the modern world, a type that finds the supreme significance of Christ's Life in His double revelation of the inherent nature of God, and the immense value and potentiality of man, and that changes the emphasis from schemes of salvation to interpretations of life, from the magic significance of doctrine to the incalculable worth of the moral will. These men were weak in historical sense, and, like everybody else in their generation, they used Scripture without much critical insight. But they hit upon a principle which saved them from slavery to texts, and which gave them a working faith in the steady moral and spiritual development of man. I mean the principle that this Christ whom they had discovered anew was an eternal manifestation of God, an immanent Word of God, a Spirit brooding over the world of men, as in the beginning over the face of the waters, present in the unfolding events of history as well as in the far-away " dispensations of Grace." As a result, they grew less interested in the problem that had f Eiscinated so many mystics, the problem of the super-empirical evolution of the divine Conscious- ness ; the super-temporal differentiation of the unity of the Godhead into a Father and Son and self-revealing Holy Ghost ; and they tried rather to appreciate and to declare the concrete revelation through Christ, and INTRODUCTION xli the import of His visible and invisible presence in the world. ^ This approach of Faith, this appreciation of the nature of God as He has been unveiled in the ethical processes of history, especially in the Person of Christ, and in His expanding conquest of the world, must always be one of the great factors of spiritual religion. The profound results of higher criticism, with its stem winnowings, have brought us face to face with problems unknown to the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries. So much of what seemed the solid continent of historical truth has weathered and crumbled away that some have wondered whether any irreducible nucleus would remain firm and permanent above the flood of the years, and whether the religion of the future must not dispense with the historical element, and the Faith-aspect that goes with it, and rest wholly upon present inward experience. There are, however, I believe, no indications worth considering, of the disappearance of Jesus Christ from human history. On the contrary. He holds, as never before, the commanding place in history. He still dominates conscience, by the moral sway of His Life of Goodness, as does no other Person who has ever Uved ; and by the attractive power of His life and love He still sets men to living coimter to the strong thrust of instinct and impulse as does no one else who has ever touched the springs of conduct. The Faith-aspect is still a very live element in religion, and it is, as it has been so often before, precisely the aspect which supplies concrete body and filling and objective ethical direction to our deep sub-conscious yearnings and strivings and experiences. Once at least there shone through the thin veil of matter a personal Life which brought another kind of world than this world of natural law and utilitarian aims full into light. There broke through here in the face of Jesus ' Jacob Boehme, however, shows this fascination for the super-empirical at its height and culmination. It was an attempt, though a bungling attempt, to pass from an abstract God to a God of character, and it was a circuitous way of getting round the problem of evil. xlii SPIRITUAL REFORMERS Christ a revelation of Purpose in the universe so far beyond the vague trend of purpose dimly felt in slowly evolving life that it is possible here to catch an illuminat- ing vision of what the goal of the long drama may be — the unveiUng of sons of God. Here the discovery can be made that the deepest Reality toward which Reason points, and which the mystical experience feels, is no vague Something Beyond, but a living, loving Some One, dealing with us as Person with person. In Him there comes to focus in a Life that we can love and appreciate a personal character which impresses us as being absolutely good, and as being in its inexhaustible depth of Love and Grace worthy to be taken as the revelation of the true nature of the God whom all human hearts long for. And finally through this personal revelation of God in Christ there has come to us a clear insight that pain and suffering and tragedy can be taken up into a self-chosen Life and absorbed without spoiling its immense joy, and that precisely through suffering-love, joyously accepted, a Person expressing in the world the heart of God may become the moral and spiritual Saviour of others. As von Hiigel has finely said : "A Person came and lived and loved, and did and taught, and died and rose again, and lives on by His power and His Spirit forever within us and amongst us, so unspeakably rich and yet so simple, so sublime and yet so homely, so divinely above us precisely in being so divinely near that His character and teaching require, for an ever fuller yet never complete understanding, the varying study, and different experi- ments and applications, embodiments and unroUings of all the races and civilizations, of all the individual and corporate, the simultaneous and successive experiences of the human race to the end of time." ^ The only salvation worth talking about is that which consists of an inner process of moral transformation, through which one passes over " the great divide " from a life that is self-centred and dominated by impulse and sin to a life that is assured of divine forgiveness, that has ' Mystical Elements of Religion, i. p. 26. INTRODUCTION xliii conceived a passion for a redeemed inward nature, that is conscious of help from beyond its own resources, and that is dedicated to the task of making moral goodness triumph over the evil of the world. Any experience which brings to the soul a clear vision of the moral signific- ance of human life, and that engenders in us a practical certainty that God is working with us in all our deepest undertakings, tends to have saving ef&cacy and to bring about this inward transformation. But nowhere else in the universe — above us or within us — ^has the moral significance of life come so full into sight, or the reality of actual divine fellowship, whether in our aspirations or in our failures, been raised to such a pitch of practical certainty as in the personal life and death and resurrec- tion and steady historical triumph of Jesus Christ. He exhibits in living fulness, with transforming power, a Life which consciously felt itself one with the heart and will of God. He reveals the inherent blessedness of Love — even though it may involve suffering and pain and death. He shows the moral supremacy, even in this imperfect empirical world, of the perfectly good will, and He impresses those who see Him — see Him, I mean, with eyes that can penetrate through the temporal to the eternal and find His real nature — as being the supreme personal unveiling of God, as worthy to be our Leader, our Ideal Life, our typical personal Character, and strong enough in His infinite Grace and divine self-giving to con- vince us of the eternal co-operation of God with our struggling humanity, and to settle our Faith in the essential Saviourhood of God. He who sees that in Christ has found a real way to God and has discovered a genuine way of salvation. It is the way of Faith, but Faith is no airy and unsubstantial road, no capricious leap. There is no kind of aimful living conceivable that does not involve faith in some- thing trans-subjective — faith in something not given in present empirical experience. Even in our most ele- mentary life -adjustments there is something operative in us which far underlies our conscious perceiving and xliv SPIRITUAL REFORMERS the logic of our conclusions. We are moved, not alone by what we clearly picture and coldly analyse, but by deep-lying instincts which defy analysis, by background and foreground fringes of consciousness, by immanent and penetrative intelligence which cannot be brought to definite focus, by the vast reservoirs of accumulated wisdom through which we feel the way to go, though we can pictorially envisage no " spotted trees " that mark the trail. This religious and saving Faith, through which the soul discovers God and makes the supreme life-adjust- ment to Him, is profoundly moral and, in the best sense of the word, rational. It does not begin with an assump- tion, blind or otherwise, as to Christ's metaphysical nature, it does not depend upon the adoption of systematic- ally formulated doctrines ; it becomes operative through the discovery of a personal Life, historically lived — and continued through the centuries as a transforming Spirit — ^rich enough in its experience to exhibit the infinite significance of life, inwardly deep enough in its spiritual resources to reveal the character of God, and strong enough in sympathy, in tenderness, in patience, and in self-giving love to beget forever trust and confidence and love on the part of all who thus find Him. The God whom we learn to know in Christ — the God historically revealed — is no vague first Cause, no abstract Reality, no all-negating Absolute. He is a concrete Person, whose traits of character are intensely moral and spiritual. His will is no fateful swing of mechanical law; it is a morally good will which works patiently and forever toward a harmonized world, a Kingdom of God. The central trait of His character is Love. He does not become Father, He is not reconciled to us by persuasive offerings and sacrifices. He is inherently and by essential disposition Father and the God of all Grace. He is not remote and absentee — ^making a world " in the beginning," and leaving it to nm by law, or only occasionally interrupt- ing its normal processes — He is immanent Spirit, working always, the God of beauty and organizing purpose. He INTRODUCTION xlv is Life and Light and Truth, an Immanuel God who can and does show Himself in a personal Incarnation, and so exhibits the course and goal of the race. The way of Faith is a way to God, and the religion of this type is as properly a first-hand religion as that of any other type. I have, of course, by no means exhausted the types of mature religion. There are other ways of approach to God, other roads by which the soul finds the way home — " On the East three gates ; on the North three gates ; on the South three gates ; and on the West three gates " — and they will continue to be sacred ways — viae sacrae — for those who travel them and thus find their heart's desire. What we shoiild learn from this brief study is that religion is too rich and complex an experience to be squeezed down to some one isolated aspect of life or of consciousness. There are many ways to God and any way that actually brings the soul to Him is a good way, but the best way is that one which produces upon the imperfect personal life the profoundest saving effects, the most dynamic moral reinforcement, and which brings into sway over the will the goal of life most adequate for men like us in a social world like ours. For most of us no one way of approach — ^no single type of religion — ^is quite sufficient for all the needs of our life. Most of us are fortunate enough to have at least moments when we feel in warm and intimate contact with a divine, enwrapping environment more real to us than things of sense and of arithmetic, and when the infinite and eternal is no less, but immeasurably more, sure than the finite and temporal. Most of us, again, succeed, at least on happy occasions of mental health, in finding rational clues which carry us through the maze of contingency and clock-time happenings, through the imperfections of our slow successive events, to the One Great Now of perfect Reality which explains the process, and we attain to an intellectual love of God. And in spite of the literary difficulties of primitive narratives and of false trails which the historical Church has again and again taken, almost any serious, earnest soul to-day xlvi SPIRITUAL REFORMERS may find that divine Face, that infinitely deep and lumin- ous Personality who spoke as no man ever spake, who loved as none other ever loved, who saw more in humanity than anybody else has ever seen, and who felt as no other person ever has that He was one in heart and mind and will with God ; and having found Him, by a morally responsive Faith which dominates and transforms the inward self, one has found God as Companion, Friend, and Saviour. Where all these ways converge, and a soul enjoys the privilege of mystical contact, the compulsion of rational insight, and the moral reinforcement of personal Faith in Christ, religion comes to its consummate flower, and may with some right be called " spiritual Religion." V The most radical step which these spiritual Reformers took — ^the step which put them most strikingly out of line with the main course of the Reformation — was their break with Protestant Theology. They were not satisfied with a programme which limited itself to a correction of abuses, an abolition of mediaeval superstitions, and a shift of external authority. They were determined to go the whole way to a Religion of inward life and power, to a Christianity whose only authority should be its dynamic and spiritual authority. They placed as low an estimate on the saving value of orthodox systems of theological formulation as the Protestant Reformers did on the saving value of " works." To the former, salvation was an affair neither of "works" nor of what they called " notions," i.e. views, beliefs, or creeds. They are never weary of insisting that a person may go on endless pil- grimages to holy places, he may repeat unnumbered " paternosters," he may mortify his body to the verge of self-destruction, and still be unsaved and unspiritual ; so, too, he may " believe " all the dogma of the most orthodox system of faith, he may take on his lips the most sacred words of sound doctrine, and yet be utterly alien INTRODUCTION xlvii to the kingdom of God, a stranger and a foreigner to the spirit of Christ. They were determined, therefore, to go through to a deeper centre and to make only those things pivotal which are absolutely essential to life and salvation. They began their reconstruction of the meaning of salvation with (i) a new and fresh interpretation of God, and (2) with a transformed eschatology. As I have already said, they re-discovered God through Christ, and in terms of His revelation ; and coming to God this way, they saw at once that the prevailing interpretations of the atonement were inadequate and unworthy. God, they declared, is not a Suzerain, treating men as his vassals, reckoning their sins up against them as infinite debts to be paid off at last in a vast commercial transaction only by the immeasurable price of a divine Life, given to pay the debt which had involved the entire race in hopeless bankruptcy. Nor, again, in their thought is He a mighty Sovereign, meting out to the world strict justice and holding all sin as flagrant disloyalty and appalling violation of law, never to be forgiven untU the full requirements of sovereign justice are met and balanced and satisfied. All this seemed to them artificial and false. Salvation, as they understand it, cannot be con- ceived as escape from debt nor as the satisfaction of justice, since it is a personal life -relationship with a personal God who is and always was eternal Love. God's universe, both outer and inner, is loaded with moral significance, is meant for discipline, and therefore it has its stem aspects and drives its lessons home with the unswerving hammer of consequences. But in the personal Heart of the universe. Love and Tenderness and Sympathy and Forgiveness are supreme, and every process and every instnunent of salvation, in the divine purpose, is vital, ethical, spiritual. God has shown Himself as Father. He has revealed the immeasurable suffering which sin inflicts on love. To find the Father-Heart ; to cry " Abba " in filial joy ; to die to sin and to be born to love, is to be saved. Jacob Boehme gave this new conception of God, and its bearing xlviii SPIRITUAL REFORMERS on the way of salvation, the most adequate expression that was given by any of this group, but all these so-called spiritual Reformers herein studied had reached the same insight at different levels of adequacy. Their return to a more vital conception of salvation, with its emphasis on the value of personality, brought with it, too, a new humanitarian spirit and a truer estimate of the worth of man. As they re-discovered the love of God, they also found again the gospel of love and brotherhood which is woven into the very tissue of the original gospel of divine Fatherhood. Their revised eschatology was due, at least partly, to this altered account of the character of God, but it was also partly due to their profound tendency to deal with all matters of the soul in terms of life and vital processes. Heaven and Hell were no longer thought of as terminal places, where the saved were everlastingly rewarded and the lost forever pimished. Heaven and Hell were for them inward conditions, states of the soul, the normal gravitation of the Spirit toward its chosen centre. Heaven and Hell cease, therefore, to be eschatological in the true sense of the word ; they become present realities, tendencies of life, ways of reacting toward the things of deepest import. Heaven, whether here or in any other world, is the condition of complete adjustment to the holy will of God ; it is joy in the prevalence of His goodness ; peace through harmonious correspondence with His purposes ; the formation of a spirit of love, the creation of an inward nature that loves what God loves and enjoys what He enjoys. Hell, here or elsewhere, is a disordered life, out of adjustment with the universal will of God ; it is con- centration upon self and self-ends ; the contraction of love ; the shrinking of inward resources ; the formation of a spirit of hate, the creation of an inward nature that hates what God loves. Hell is the inner condition inherently attaching to the kind of life that displays and exhibits the spirit and attitude which must be over- come before God with His purposes of goodness can be INTRODUCTION xlix ultimately triumphant and all in all. Salvation, there- fore, cannot be thought of in terms of escape from a place that is dreaded to a place that is desired as a haven. It is through and through a spiritual process — escape from a wrongly fashioned will to a will rightly fashioned. It is complete spiritual health and wholeness of life, brought into operation and fimction by the soul's recovery of God and by joyous correspondence with Him. Here is the genuine beginning in modem times of what has come to be the deepest note of present-day Christianity, the appreciation of personality as the highest thing in earth or heaven, and the initiation of a movement to find the vital sources and resources for the inner kindling of the spirit, and for raising the whole personal life to higher functions and to higher powers. Putting the emphasis, as they did, on personal religion, i.e. on experience, instead of on theology, they naturally became exponents of free-will, and that, too, in a period when fore-ordination was a central dogma of theology. This problem of freedom, which is as deep as personality itself, always has its answer " determined " by the point of approach. For those who begin with an absolute and omnipotent God, and work down from above, the neces- sarian position is determined. Their answer is : " All events are infallibly connected with God's disposal." For those who start, however, from actual experience and from the testimony of consciousness, freedom feels as certain as life itself. Their answer is : " Human will is a real factor in the direction of events and man shapes his own destiny toward good or evil." Calvin's logic is irresistible if his assumptions are once granted. These spiritual Reformers, however, were untouched by it, because they began from the interior life, with its dramatic movements, as their basal fact, and man as they knew him was free. This spiritual movement involved, as a natural develop- ment, an entire shift from the historical idea of the Church as an authoritative and supernatural instrument of salva- tion, to a Church whose authority was entirely vital, 1 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS ethical, spiritual, dynamic. The Church of these spiritual Reformers was a Fellowship, a Society, a Family, rather than a mysterious and supernatural entity. They felt once again, as powerfully perhaps as it was possible in their centuries to feel it, the immense significance of the Pauline conception of the Church as the continued embodi- ment and revelation of Christ, the communion of saints past and present who live or have lived by the Spirit. Through this spiritual group, part of whom are visible and part invisible, they held that the divine revelation is continued and the eternal Word of God is being uttered to the race. " The true religion of Christ," as one of these spiritual teachers well puts it, " is written in the soul and spirit of man by the Spirit of God ; and the believer is the only book in which God now writes His New Testament." ^ This Church of the Spirit is always being built. Its power is proportional to the spiritual vitality of the membership, to the measure of apprehension of divine resources, to the depth of insight and grasp of truth, to the prevalence of love and brotherhood, to the character of service, which the members exhibit. It possesses no other kind of power or authority than the power and authority of personal lives formed into a com- munity by living correspondence with God, and acting as human channels and organs of His Life and Spirit. Such a Church can meet new formulations of science and history and social ideals with no authoritative and con- clusive word of God which automatically settles the issue. Its only weapons are truth and light, and these have to be continually re-discovered and re-fashioned to fit the facts which the age has found and verified. Its mission is prophetic. It does not dogmatically decide what facts must be believed, but it sees and announces the spiritual significance of the facts that are discovered and verified. It was, thus, in their thought a growing, changing, ever- adjusting body — ^the living body of Christ in the world. To the Protestant Reformers this spiritual ideal pre- sented " a Church " so shorn and emasculated as to be 1 William Dell's sermon on " The Trial of Spirits," Works, p. 438. INTRODUCTION li absolutely worthless. It seemed to them a propaganda which threatened and endangered the mighty work of reformation to which they felt themselves called, and they used all the forces available to suppress and annihilate those of this other " way." Nearly four hundred wonderful years have passed since the issue was first drawn, since the first of these spiritual prophets uttered his modest challenge. There can be no question that the current of Christian thought has been strongly setting in the direction which these brave and sincere innovators took. I feel confident that many persons to-day will be interested in these lonely men and will follow with sympathy their valiant struggles to dis- cover the road to a genuine spiritual religion, and their efforts to live by the eternal Word of God as it was freely revealed as the Day Star to their souls. CHAPTER I THE MAIN CURRENT OF THE REFORMATION I One of the greatest tragedies in Christian history is the division of forces which occurred in the Reformation movements of the sixteenth century. Division of forces in the supreme spiritual undertakings of the race is of course confined to no one century and to no one move- ment ; it is a very ancient tragedy. But the tragedy of division is often relieved by the fact that through the differentiation of opposing parties a vigorous emphasis is placed upon aspects of truth which might otherwise have been allowed to drop out of focus. This sixteenth-century division is peculiarly tragic, because through the split in the lines the very aspects of truth which were most needed to give the movement a steady increment of insight and power were lost in the din and confusion of party warfare. There was a short but glorious period — the years from 1517 to 1523 — during which it seemed as though the spiritual and intellectual travaU of the three preceding centuries was to consummate in the birth of a movement that wotdd draw together and unify all the liberating forces which had slowly become available. The Humanists of the Renaissance, no less than Columbus, were finding a new world.i They had boldly travelled out beyond the 1 In the South the movement showed a tendency to drift back into a refined paganism. In the North, however, it was deeply Cliristian in interest, in feeling, and in its moral aspirations. Erasmus was by far the greatest figure and the most influential person in the group of Humanists of this latter type. I B 2 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. boundaries which the medieval mind had set to human interests, and had discovered that man was more than the abstract being whose " soul " had alone concerned ecclesiastics and schoolmen. Man, the Humanists saw, is possessed in his own right of great powers of reason. He is a creative and autonomous being, he has vast capacities for life and enjoyment to which the Church had failed to minister. They stood amazed at the artistic and literary culture, the political and intellectual freedom and the great richness of life which the newly discovered classical literature revealed as having existed in the pre-Christian world, and at the wonderful com- prehension of life revealed in the Gospels. With com- mendable passion they proposed to refresh and reshape the world through the new models, the new ideals, and the new spirit which they had discovered. First of all they would wipe out the old Augustinian cleavage which had carried its sharp dualism wherever it ran. They w/Duld no longer recognize the double world scheme — a divine realm set over against an undivine realm, the " sacred " set over against the " secular," the spiritual set over against the natural, the Church set against the world, faith set in contrast to reason, the spirit pitted against the flesh, " the other world " put in such light that " this world " by contrast lay duU in the shadow. Those who were broadened and liberated by the new learning found not only a new world in classical literature, but they also found a new gospel in the Gospel. As they studied the New Testament documents themselves and became freed from the bondage of tradition they discovered that the primitive message dealt with life and action rather than with theology. They found the key to the Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Parables of Jesus, and they shifted the emphasis from doctrine to ethics. This change of emphasis quite naturally involved another change. It brought man into greater prominence, and the Church as an ecclesi- astical system into less prominence ; for life, they dis- covered, was settled in the teaching of Christ by the I THE REFORMATION 3 attitude of the will and by the formation of character, rather than by the mediation of a priesthood external to man. " I wish," Erasmus wrote to Capito in 1518, " that there could be an end of scholastic subtleties, or, if not an end, that they could be thrust into a second place and Christ be taught plainly and simply. The reading of the Bible and the early Fathers will have this effect. Doctrines are taught now which have no affinity with Christ, and only darken our eyes." ^ Again in 1521 he wrote to a friend, words which appear again and again in his letters : "It would be well for us if we thought less about our dogmas and more about the gospel," ^ or, as he often puts it, " if we made less of dogmatic subtleties and more of Scripture." So far as Humanism was a religious force it was pushing toward a religion of the lay-type, with man himself — man with his momentous wUl — as the centre of interest. Another important influence was slowly but per- vasively filtering down into the life of the people and preparing the way for a religion of greater personal vitality and spiritual inwardness ; I mean the testimony of the great mystics. One has only to study the life and writings of such a scholar as Nicolaus Chrypffs — generally called Cusanus, or Nicholas of Cusa — who died shortly before Luther was bom,* to see what a live force the mystical teaching was even in this period of Renais- sance. God is for him, as for his great masters, Plotinus, Erigena, Eckhart, and Taider, the infinite and indescrib- able subsoil of the universe, in whose Reality all the roots of life and aU the reality of things are grounded. The soul, by nature spiritual and immortal, at its apex rises above the contradictions which lower knowledge every- where meets and comes into possession, by a " learned ignorance," of Truth itself and into an unspeakable union with God. But it was not merely among scholars like Nicholas that mysticism formed the elemental basis of life and thought ; it had, through the circles of the 1 Epistle CCVII. 2 Epistle DLXXXVII. ' 1401-1464. 4 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. " Brothers of the Common Life," ^ and through such masterpieces as the Imitation of Christ, the Theologia Germanica, and the Sermons of Eckhart and of John Tauler, become a part of the spiritual atmosphere which serious-minded men breathed. Every one of the men who belong in my Hst of " Spiritual Reformers " read and loved " the golden book of German Theology," and most of them knew the other writings of the great fourteenth -century mystics. There are unmistakable evidences of a subtle formative influence from these rich sources, which explains the simultaneous sporadic outbreak of similar views in widely sundered places. There was, thus, abroad at the opening of the Reforma- tion a deep yearning among serious people for a religion of inward experience, a religion based not on proof-texts nor on external authority of any kind, but on the native capacity of the soul to seek, to find and to enjoy the living God who is the Root and Sap of every twig and branch of the great tree of life. The general trend of this mystical tendency, as also of the Humanistic move- ment, was in the direction of lay-religion, and both movements alike emphasized the inherent and native capacity of man, whose destiny by his free choice is in his own hands. There were, too, at work many other deep-lying tendencies away from the bondage and traditions of the past ; aspiration for economic and social reforms to liberate the common people and give them some reed chance to be persons — tendencies which all the Reformers treated in this book deeply felt and shared. AU these movements toward intellectual, spiritual, and social freedom seemed at first to find their champion in the dynamic hero, whose ninety-five theses on the door at Wittenberg shook the world awake in 1517. He was by birth and spirit a child of the people — " ein Kind des Volkes ' ' — and he seemed to be a prophet, divinely called to voice their dumb aspirations. He possessed, ' Nicholas belonged to one of these circles. " The Brethren of the Common Life " are treated in my Studies in Mystical Religion, chap. xiv. 1 THE REFORMATION 5 like all great prophets, a straightforward moral honesty and sincerity, an absolute fearlessness, a magnetic and commanding personality, an imusual mastery of the vernacular speech, and an abundant power of pathos, humour, and satire. AU the world loves a hero who can say in the face of real danger, " I would go forward to Worms if there were as many devils there as there are tiles on the roof ! " or again, " I would go to Leipzig if it rained Duke Georges for nine days running ! " ^ He had, too, unusual rehgious depth and power which sprang, as in the pase of the great mystics, from a pro- found inward experience. Luther, like St. Paul and St. Augustine, and many another spiritual guide of the race, came upon his supreme insights in sudden epoch- making revelations or illuminations by which he found himself on a new level, with the line of march shifted and all values altered. His conversion and dedication to religion was an instance of this type. So, too, was his discovery of the way of Faith. Legend has very likely coloured our accounts of this experience, but for purposes of valuation it is of little moment to us whether the dynamic flash came to him in his ceU at Wittenberg as he was studying the Epistle to the Romans, or whether it came while he was climbing the penitential stairway in Rome.^ When all legendary coverings are stripped away we have left an inner event of the first importance, a live idea bursting into consciousness like a new star on the field of vision. By processes much deeper and richer than those of logical argument, his mind leaped to the certainty of infinite grace and forgiving love in God as revealed in Christ. In a word, this baffled and despairing monk, striving in vain to heap up merits enough to win ^ Letter to the Elector Frederick, March 5, 1522. " The story that Luther, climbing the Scala Santa in 1510, suddenly was im- pressed by the words, " The just shall live by faith," is based on a re mi niscence of Luther's son Paul. Luther's own reference to the ascent of the Scala Santa makes no allusion to any such experience. He merely says that when he reached the top of the stairs, which he climbed in the hope of getting the soul of an ancestor out of Purgatory, he thought to himself, " Who knows whether this prayer will avail? " Luther began his lectures onRomans in 1515, and his dynamic experience probably belongs near this date. 6 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. divine favour, suddenly discovered a new God who filled his whole world with a new light and freedom and joy. His name for this discovery was Faith [" Glaube "], but Faith in its first intention for Luther meant a personal experience or discovery of God, brought into full view and clear apprehension in Christ. " No one can under- stand God or God's Word," Luther once wrote, " unless he has it revealed immediately [" on Mittel "] by the Holy Ghost, but nobody can receive anything from the Holy Ghost unless he experiences it. In experience the Holy Ghost teaches as in His own school, outside of which nothing of value can be learned." ^ Not only was Faith for Luther thus possessed of a mystical character as an inward discovery and as a personal experience which laid hold on God immediately, but it also owed its illuminating birth in his consciousness largely to the influence of the writings and the lives of the mystics. However suddenly the ' ' revelation ' ' seemed to burst into his mind, there had nevertheless been a long period of psychological gestation and preparation for it before the epoch-making moment finally came. He had already in his early convent days come under the spell of St. Augustine, St. Bernard, Gerson, and many another guide into the deep regions of inward personal religion, and his intimate friend, the Vicar - general Staupitz, had been to him in some sense a personal embodiment of this type of religion. But the German mystics of the fourteenth century, with their mighty experi- ence and their extraordinary depth, carried him still farther in this direction. He was so enthusiastic over that beautiful anonymous classic of mystical religion, the Theologia Germanica, that he twice edited and pub- lished it, declaring in his Preface that he had learned from it " more of what God and Christ and man and all things are " than from any other book except the Bible and St. Augustine. John Tauler, the great Dominican preacher of Strasbourg, impressed him no less profoundly. " Neither in the Latin nor the German language," he ^ Preface to the Magnificat written in r52r. I THE REFORMATION 7 wrote to Spalatin in 1516, " have I ever found purer or more wholesome teaching, nor any that so agrees with the Gospel." Both these great teachers of spiritual religion helped him to see that complete confidence in and surrender to the will of God is salvation — " Put off thy own will and there will be no hell." In Luther's earlier writings we come frequently upon passages which reveal the way in which ex- perience stiU saturates Faith for him, and which exhibit the mystical depth of his Christianity at this period. Commenting on the phrase, " Christ liveth in me " (Gal. ii. 20), in his Commentary on Galatians} he says, " He [Christ] is my form, my furniture, and per- fection, adorning and beautifying my faith as the colour, the clear hght, the whiteness, do garnish and beautify the wall. Thus are we constrained grossly to set forth this matter. For we cannot conceive that Christ is so nearly joined and united unto us as the colour or white- ness is unto the wall. But Christ thus joined and united unto me and abiding in me, liveth this life in me which now I live ; yea, Christ Himself is this life which now I live. Wherefore Christ and I in this behalf are both one." ^ And in a famous passage in the tract " On Christian Liberty," he declares that " Faith has the incomparable grace of uniting the soul to Christ as bride to husband, so that the soul possesses whatever Christ Himself possesses." Not only was this Luther of the early period the hero of the people and the prophet of a deep and inward religion, he seemed also to have found, even mor^ emphatically than had the Humanists, a fa r-reaching principle of individualism which took the key from the Church an d put it into the hands of the Christian man himse lf. Salvatioj ^n ifp es^encp.. he sees, is conferred upon no one from without. The soul is dependent for it' upon no organization, no traditions, no dogma, no sacred performances. It is a transaction between the ^ First given as Lectures in 1516-17, and published in 1519. 2 A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. 8 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. i ndividual soul and God , and the person who lays hold on God in living faith thereby has salvation, assurance, and joy. W ith this principle of indiv id ualism there ca me naturally to Luther a new conception of the Church altogether. " ^ It wa s for h i m, in ideal at least, a com- munityjor^congregation_[" Gemeinde "] of believers, each ni^ ber a spiritual priest , ministering to the spirffuaT and social life of all : "I believe that there is on earth, wide as the world is, not more than one holy universal Christian Church, which is nothing else than the com- munity or assembly of the saints. ... I believe that in this community or Christendom, all things are common, and each one shares the goods of the others and none calls anything his own. Therefore aJl the prayers and good works of the entire community help me and every believer, and support and strengthen us at every time in life and in death." ^ This ideal of a priesthood of believers, ministering to each other in mutual service and practising neighbourly love in daily life, would, if it had been actually carried into effect, have marked a great step in the direction in which the Humanists were going, namely, the transfer of the emphasis from dogma to life, from doctrine to ethics, from ecclesiasticism to personality. Luther's great discovery that personal faith is the only thing which counts toward God, and that love and service are the only things in the human sphere which have religious signifi- cance would have introduced, if it had been put full into play, a new era of personal freedom and a new stage in the progress of the Kingdom of God as a world-wide brotherhood of men engaged in mutual service. 1 DUthey says in Archiv filr GeschicMe der Philosophic, Bd. v. Heft 3, p. 358 : " The Justification of which the medieval man had inward experience was the descending stream of objective forces upon the beUever from the transcendental world, through the Incarnation, in the channels of the ecclesiastical institutions, priestly consecration, sacraments, confession, and works. It was something which took place in connection with a super-sensible regime. The Justification by faith of which Luther was inwardly aware was the personal experience of the beUever standing in the continuous Une of Christian fellowship, by whom assurance of the Grace of God is experienced in response to personal faith, an experience derived from the appropriation of the work of Christ." * S'dmmtliche Werke (Erlangen edition), xxii. p. 20. THE REFORMATION II But the you ng Lu ther of thes e glowing ^ deals is not tho_af4iTa1_T "thpr nf thp PrntptTtant^ Reforma tJon, any more than the Augustine of the mighty spiritual experi- ences portrayed in the Confessions is the St. Augustine of history. The historical Luther had the hero-spirit in him in high degree ; he had mystical depth and inward experience as we have seen, and he possessed the pro- phetic power of vision and forereach which makes him often seem far in advance of his time ; but these dynamic ^'ZJli'-J^glS-illOtPJ'lT^Ti nvprbalanrprl hyjrk jfnndaTnpntally conse rvative di spasitioii- and-by-^Jiia delerminaSoSmot- to go faster or farther than he could c axry Germany, especially_the nobiht y, wit h him. He was, in a very real sense, a child of his time, a product of medieval Europe, and he never succeeded in liberating himself from the tight swaddling-bands in which his youth was wrapped. He could not comprehend, as we shall see, the bold spirits who were dedicated to the task of re- interpreting Christianity in terms of the new age ; he ■ loved the old, in so far as it seemed to him unspoiled by apostacy and corruption, and he naturally kept reverting to the ancient dogma and the accepted theology of the old Church instead of leading the way into a fresh, vital, spiritual form of Christianity adapted to the social/ aspiration of the time. In cite of the^ ct that L u ther knew and loved the German mystics and had himself received a powerful inward experience of Christ as the bridegroom of his soul — an experience which quickened all the forces of his will and raised him to the rank of a world-hero — nevertheles s his normal tende ncy was toward a non- myiti caFtype of Christiani ty^"Itoward "a Christianity thoroughl v based on Scripture. logicaJly constructed out' of~concepts of the nature of God and Man, so ancient, sacred, and orthodox, that they seemed to him axioms of theology and capable of being formulated into a saving 10 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. system of truth, as universal and as unalterable as the multiplication table. However unconscious Luther himself may have been of the shift of emphasis that was taking place in him as the movement progressed, the historical observer has no difficulty in noting the change from the Luther who is endeavouring to sound the deeps of life itself, and whose religion is the creation of the inward stream of life within him ; and the Luther who wanders far afield from experience, draws curious conclusions from un- verified concepts, piles text on text as though heaven could be scaled by another Pelion on Ossa, and once more turns religion back to the cooled lava-beds of theology. Hejie yer could succeed in getting the G od of Ms-heart's glowin g faith into the theologies which he laborio usly builded. As soon as he started constructing he invariably fell back upon the building-material which had already been quarried, and which lay at hand. Hisjexpeximental Faith discovered a God of all Grace, but his inherited c oncept of Go d, the God of the OldTTestament and of theology, was~vastly different, and"remained to the encT unjev olutionized by his heart s uisighL . — This back 'gromid conception of God comes to extreme expression in his De servo arbitrio [" The Unfree WiU "] of 1525 : " This is the acme of faith, to believe that God who saves so few and condemns so many is merciful ; that He is just who at His own pleasure has made us necessarily doomed to damnation, so that ... He seems to delight in the tortures of the wretched and to be more deserving of hatred than of love. // by any effort of reason I could conceive how God, who shows so much anger and harshness, could be merciful and just, there would he no need of faith." There could, in his thought, be no salvation for man, no hope, and no joy, until some way of escape was found from the stem judgments of this angry and wrathful God. This way of escape is found in what Luther calls " the Word of God," by which he means " the Gospel of God con- cerning His Son, incarnate, suffering, risen, and glorified. "^ ^ On Christian Liberty, Primary Works, p. io6. I THE REFORMATION ii This Word of God is for him the sum total of " the promises that God is for us " ; " the pure Gospel " of a pardoning, forgiving God ; the revelation in the Cross of Christ that no self-merit counts or is needed, but that on Christ's account God forgives the sinner and bestows His Grace upon him. Speaking theologically, Faith consists in believing in the God whom Christ has historically revealed — believing without any doubt that He will be and will do to us according to the things which are said of Him in "the Word of God." It must be said that for Luther himself, Faith was an " active, powerful thing," " a deliberate confidence in the grace of God," which made him " joyous and intrepid " and " for which he could die a thousand deaths " ; ^ but there was always an irresistibl e tendeii cy in the Lutheran teaching iox faith to drop~to the lower level of doctrine, and to consist in the acceptance of a scheme of justificatip n. Thi s tendenc y was. 1 say , easy and irresistible just beca .use L uther did jiot norm ally and naturally think o f God as being inherently and essentially lovin g, gracious , tender, and forgiving, jthat is to say, fund amentally a father and in his deepest nature like the self - givin g Christ.^ For him, as f or so many other theo losians. God 6ecowes"IoFgivmg ami graciousjan^account_of Christ's merit and righteousness and thus no longer imputes sin tojis^ Because of what Christ did,JGodjn9w beholds us with an attitude of mercy, grac e, an d forgiveness, and, on condition of our faith,, imputes to_us the fighteousness of Christy Salvation is, thus, a plan by which we escape "from the God of justice and wrath and have our deahngs with a God who has become merciful because our sin has been balanced off by somebody else's merit and righteousness. Not only did Luther continue this medieval fiction of God's nature and character, he had also always in mind a fictitious and constructed " man." Man for hiinjs_a beiQg,.,devQid of " merit," a creature whose personal ^ See his Preface to The Epistle to the Romans. 12 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. g oodness in an d of itse lf is of no„vaIue„., Even FaitK>- itself, by~which salvation is received, is not an attitude or function of man's own wUl or reason. It is, like every- thing else connected with salvation, something divinely given, supematurally initiated, a work of God, an opus operatum — " Mit unserer Macht ist nichts gethan " — and therefore " faith " and " reason " belong in totally different compartments of the human being. Nor, furthermore, when he is absorbed with his system, is salvation ever sjmonymous for him with an inwardly- transformed and spiritually -renewed self. Salvati on means for him Gertamty-&f-4im-ne~favour It_jdQes not inherently carry with it andJuvoLve i n i t sLmtrinslc mean- ing a. new^hfe, ^ joyous a djustment of wUl to the Will of God. If rnan is to attain to-a-j3aorai-~transformatiQn_of life, he must receive an added^gitt-of-supematmaLgiace, that is, the power of sanctification through the Holy Spirit. This conception made it impossible for him to look for the coming of a divine kingdom by slow processes now at work in the world. Luther did not intend to make the " Word of God " synon5nnous with the Scriptures, and in his great Prefaces to St. Paul's Epistles he does not identify the two. The Word of God is, as we have seen, the revelation, the message, the gospel, of Grace through Christ Jesus, wherever expressed, enunciated, or preached. But the pledged Word of God found in the Scriptures seemed to him the main miracle of the ages, and as, in his con- tests with Zwickau " Prophets," " Anabaptists," and " Spiritualists," he found himself forced to produce a fixed touchstone of faith and a solid authority to take the place left vacant by the Old Church, he swung naturally toward the dogma of t he absolute authority of Scriptur e, and he laid, without wishing to do so, the foundation for the view of the second generation of Protestantism, that the infallible Scripture is God's final communication to helpless man, and is the ultimate and only basis of _^authority in religion. His conception of the sacraments in like manner. I THE REFORMATION 13 because of his crude supernaturalism and his inadequate intellectual and spiritual penetration, drifted to a semi-medieval view. He intended to transform these ceremonies and to have them fit " the pure Word of God." In his primary intention they were to be no longer objective works of grace, but were to have a subjective value only, a faith-significance. They were to be conceived as pictorial, symbolic ways of learning the one important truth of salvation — God's grace and forgiveness ; for God deigns, he said, to speak to his immature creatures by signs and pictures. But the imperial sway of the past powerfully moved him ; his own conservative disposition carried him along paths which an enlightened reason would not have taken, and the heat of the controversy often blinded him to some of the precious truths that had seemed clear to him in the creative period of Faith. In the bitter controversy with the " spiritual prophets " on the question of sacra- ments, he wrote words which seem strangely out of harmony with his earlier views and with his own experi- ence : " External things in rehgion must precede internal experiences which come through [i.e. are mediated by] external things, for God has resolved to give nobody the internal gifts except through the external things. He wiU give nobody the Spirit and Faith without the use of external word and sign." ^ Without meaning to sur- render the precious jewel of a religion spiritually grounded, he once more introduced " the awful mystery " of the sacraments, and opened the door for the conception of the rite as an opus operatum — a grace of God objectively real. He retained infant baptism as an efficacious act, and, obsessed as he was by the literal words. Hoc est corpus — " this is my body " — ^he went back into the abandoned path of scholasticism,^ and restored the mysterious and miraculous real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.* It is true, as Loofs has said, that 1 Wider die himlichm Propheten vom Sacrament, ii. Anno 1525. 2 See F. Loofs, Dogmengeschichte (Vierte Auflage, 1906), pp. 752-755. ' In his instructions to Melanchthon for the Cassel Conference with Butzer in 1534, Luther said, " In and with the bread, the body of Christ is truly partaisen 14 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. " Luther re-discovered Christianity as religion," but it is also unfortunately true as weU that he lacked the insight, faith, and boldness of spirit to trust the people of his age and of the future with " Christianity as religion," and instead gave them a Christianity theologically con- structed, deeply marred with residual superstitions and mysteries, and heavily laden with the inheritances of dark and medieval ages. Ill There are two types of rehgious genius, both of which play great roles in history. There is first the genius who, inspired by the ideal of some earlier prophet, or made wise because he has himself discovered the trend of celestial currents, sees through the complex and tangle of his time, and forecasts a truth which all men in a happier coming age will recognize. When he has once seen it, this vision transforms aU his ideas and aims, and spoils forever for him all meaner gains, all half truths, all goods which must be won through surrender of a possible better. He will be obedient to that vision regardless of aU cost. He will bear witness to the fuU light which he has seen even though he can compel nobody else in the heedless world of his generation to see it. He may only cry in the wUdemess, but at aU events he will cry, and he wUl cry of that highest thing his heart knows. There is, on the other hand, the genius who understands his own age like an open book. He is almost hj^er- sensitive to the movings of his time. He feels the silent yearnings and strivings of the dmnb multitudes about him ; he anticipates in his thought what the rest are incipiently thinking — ^he is the clear voice and oracle of the spirit of his age. He knows to a nicety how far his contemporaries wiU allow themselves to be carried. of, accordingly all that takes place actively and passively in the bread takes place actively and passively in the body of Christ and the latter is distributed, eaten and masticated with the teeth." I THE REFORMATION 15 He will not over-hurry, he will not outrun their possible speed, and he will sacrifice everything to carry his epoch with him toward the goal which he sees. He is contented to keep his roots deep in the past, and he tempers all his creative insights with a judicious mixture of the experience of the past and the ideas which time has made sacred. He will not satisfy the idealist who wants leaps, and he will not please the radical in any period ; but if he is brave, wise, and sincere, and, withal, possessed of rare gifts of interpretation and unusual powers of leadership, he may be able to shape the course of history no less effectively, perhaps more surely, than the genius who insists upon an immediate march straight across country to Canaan the moment he glimpses it from his Pisgah. Luther was a reformer of this second type. He was beset by very real limitations. Dr. McGiffert does not overstate the facts when he says : " He cared little for clearness and consistency of thought. A satisfactory and adequate world-view was not of his concern. Of intellectual c\iriosity he had scarcely any ; of interest in truth for truth's sake none at all. . . . He remained entirely without intellectual difficulties, finding no trouble with the most extreme supematuralism." ^ In many respects, as Hamack has insisted, his Christianity was a " medieval phenomenon." ^ Only in one thing was he supremely the master of his age and the hero of a new time — in his discovery of a way of Faith which makes a man " intrepid " even in the wreck of worlds and " in a thousand deaths." On the lower levels of life, where most of his work was done, he was strangely under the sway of the past, a distruster of reason, a restorer of ancient doctrine, a conservative in thought and action, a friend of rulers, a guardian, as far as he could be, of the status quo — a leader who anathematized radicals and enthusiasts and who staved off and postponed for nearly four himdred years the truly liberating and thoroughly 1 McGiffert, Protestant Thought before Kant (igii), p- 20. See also the same view in Troeltsch, Protestantisches Christ enium und Kirche in dersNeuzeit (2nd Auflage), p. 481. 2 History of Dogma, vii. p. 169. i6 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap, i adequate reformation. He was determined to be the repairer of the " Old Church," not the builder of a " New Church," and he was resolved not to travel farther nor faster than the substantial men of his time considered safe and wise. But less was perhaps more. There will at least always be those who think that the sinuous way of progress is the most certain way of advance. The slow incline, the gradual spiral, each wind of the curve " ever not quite " the old level — that is the most approved method of leaving an outworn past and of moving forward into a new stage of history. It may be so. It certainly is true that through Luther's insight new reliance upon God came to men, new energy of faith was won, and by his work of repair, "conservative and cautious though it was, in the long sweep of time a liberated Christianity has come, a vital social gospel has become effective, and great vistas of progress are opening out before the Church of Christ. But it is impossible to forget that other group — those men of the other type — who even in Luther's day saw the way straight across into Canaan, the men who saw their vision fade away unrealized, and who failed to behold the fruit of their spiritual travail largely because Luther misunderstood them, refused to give them aid and comfort, and finally helped to marshal the forces which submerged them and postponed their victory. We may not blame him, but it is not fair to these heroic souls that they should longer lie submerged in the oblivion of their defeat. I shaU try in these pages to bring up into the light the principles and ideas which they proclaimed to Europe, perhaps ahead of their time. CHAPTER II HANS DENCK AND THE INWARD WORD ^ Hans Denck has generally been enrolled among the Anabaptists, and it is possible to use that name of scorn with such a latitude and looseness that it includes not only Denck but all the sixteenth-century exponents of a free, inward religion. Anabaptism has often been treated as a sort of broad banyan-tree which flourished exuberantly and shot out far-reaching branches of very varied characters, but which held in one organic unity aU the branches that found soil and took root. A name of such looseness and covering capacity is, however, of little worth, and it would promote historical accuracy if we should confine the term to those who opposed infant baptism and who insisted instead upon adult baptism, not as a means of Grace, but as a visible sign of the covenant of man with God. The further characteristic marks which may be selected to differentiate Anabaptism from other movements of the period are : 1. The treatment of the Gospel as a new law to be literally followed and obeyed by all who are to have the right to be called " saints." 2. The true Church is a visible Church, the community of the saints, founded by covenant, with adult baptism as its sign, formed exactly on the pattern of the apostolic ^ The best studies on Denck are Heberle's articles in Theol. Studien und KHtiken (1851), Erstes Heft, and (1855) Viertes Heft. Gustave Roehrich's Essai surla vie, les ecrits et la doctrine de Jean Denk (Strasbourg, 1853). Ludwig Keller's Ein Apostel der Wiedertdufer (Leipzig, 1882). The last two books must, however, be followed with much caution. 17 C i8 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. Church and preserved in strict purity by rigorous church discipline ; and 3. The denial to magistrates of all power to persecute men for their faith and doctrine on the ground that the Gospel gives them no such authority — its great com- mandment being love.^ Hans Denck, though in his early period of activity closely identified with this movement and regarded as one of its chief leaders in Germany, does not properly belong, however, to the banyan-tree of Anabaptism. His writings reveal ideas and tendencies of such enlarged scope that it appears clear that he had discovered and was teaching another type of Christianity altogether.^ He is the earliest exponent in the sixteenth century of a fresh and unique type of religion, deeply influenced by the mystics of a former time, but even more profoundly moulded by the new humanistic conceptions of man's real nature. There are few biographical details of Denck's life available. He was, most probably, a native of Bavaria,^ and he was bom about the year 1495. He studied in the University of Ingolstadt, where he was admitted among the baccalaureates in 1517.* In the year 1520 we catch a glimpse of him in close association with the Humanists of Augsburg.^ In 1522 he was at work in Basle as proof-reader for the famous publisher, Valentin Curio, and was living in intimate fellowship with the great scholar (Ecolampadius, whose lectures on the Prophet Isaiah he heard.* In the autumn of the same year, on the recommendation of OEcolampadius, he was appointed Director of St. Sebald's School in Nuremberg, which was then the foremost seat of learning in that city, ^ One branch of the Anabaptists held that the " saints " may, however, rightly use the sword to execute the purposes of God upon the godless, and to hasten the coming of the Thousand Years' Reign of the Kingdom. 2 I have included him, in my Studies in Mystical Religion {1908), among the Anabaptists, but he can be called one only by such a loose use of the word that it ceases to have any definite significance. = See J. Kessler's Sabbata (rgo2), p. 150. * L. Keller, Johann von Staupitz, p. 207. ' Ibid. p. 208. • CEcolampadius' Letter to Pirkheimer, April 25, 1525. n HANS DENCK 19 a great centre of classical humanistic studies. During the first period of his life in Nuremberg he was closely identified with the Lutheran movement, but he soon shifted his sympathies, and aligned himself with the radical tendencies which at this period were championed in Nuremberg by Thomas Miinzer, who, in spite of his misguided leadership and fanatical traits, had discovered a genuine religious principle that was destined to become significant in safer hands.^ Munzer read Tauler's sermons from his youth up ; in his own copy of these sermons, preserved in the library at Gera, a marginal note says that he read them almost continually, and that here he learned of a divine interior Teaching. It was Miinzer's teaching of the living Voice of God in the soul, his testimony to the reality of the inner heavenly Word, which God Himself speaks in the deeps of man's heart, that won the Humanist and teacher of St. Sebald's School to the new and perilous cause. He also formed a close friendship with Ludwig Hetzer, who, like Miinzer, taught that the saving Word of God must be inward, and that the Scriptures can be understood only by those who belong to the School of Christ. Having once caught the idea from these impassioned leaders, Denck proceeded directly to work it out and to develop its implications in his own fashion. He was himself sane, clear-minded,modest,sincere,far-removedfromfanaticism, and eager only to find a form of religion which would fit the eternal nature of things on the one hand, and the true nature of man on the other — ^man, I mean, as the Hmnanist conceived him.^ Already in this Nuremberg period, Denck became fuUy convinced that Luther's doctrine of sin and justification was an artificial construction — Einhildung — and that his conception of Scripture and the Sacraments was destined to clamp the new-found faith in iron bonds, tie it to outworn tradition, and make it incapable of a progressive 1 Georg Theodor Strobel, Leben, Schriften und Lehren MUnzers (Niimberg, 1795) ; J- R- Seidemamn, Thomas Miinzer (Dresden, 1842). 2 A contemporary chronicle caUs Denck a scholar, eloquent, modest and, withal, learned in Hebrew. — Kessler's Sabbata, p. 150. 20 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. and vital unfolding. He declared in his testimony or " confession " to the city council of Nuremberg in 1524, that although he had not yet a fuU experience of the inward, powerful Word of God, he distinctly felt its life as an inner witness which God had planted within him, a spark of the Divine Light breaking into his own soul, and in the strength of this direct experience he denied the value of external ceremonies, and declared that even the Bible itself cannot bring men to God without the assistance of this inner Light and Spirit.^ As a result of this change of attitude, the schoolmaster of St. Sebald's was banished from the city of Nuremberg, January 21, 1525, and from this time until his early death he was homeless and a wanderer. He spent some months — ^between September 1525 and October 1526 — in Augsburg endeavouring to organize and direct the rapidly expanding forces of the liberal movement. He was during these months, and especially during the period of the great Anabaptist synod which was held at this time in Augsburg, endeavouring to give the chaotic movement of Anabaptism a definite direction, with the main emphasis on the mystical aspect of religion. He hoped to call a halt to the vague socialistic dreams and the fanatical tendencies that put the movement in constant jeopardy and peril, and he was striving to call his brotherhood to an inner religion, grounded on the inherent nature of the soul, and guided by the inner Word rather than on " a new law " set forth in the written word. There were, however, too many eddies and currents to be mastered by one mind, too many varieties of faith to be unified under one principle, and Denck's own view was too intangible, inward, and spiritual, to satisfy the enthusiasm either of the seething masses or of ^ This " Confession " is in the archives of Nuremberg, and has been extensively used in Keller's Ein Apostel der Wiedertaufer, see especially pp. 49-62. See also Th. Kolde, Kirchengeschichtliche Stuiien (1888), p. 231 f. In this connection much interest attaches to a passage in a letter which Luther wrote to Johann Brismann, February 4, 1525. He says : " Satan has carried it so far that in Nuremberg some persons are denying that Christ is anything, that the Word of God is anything, that the Eucharist is anything, that Magistracy is anything. They say that only God is." n HANS DENCK 21 the leaders who saw a new Jerusalem just ready to come down out of heaven from God.^ After the Augsburg period, Denck spent some time in Strasbourg, where he gained many followers. Capito bears testimony at this time to the purity of Denck's life, to his moderation and goodwill, and to the impressive effect of his preaching and teaching upon the people of the city.^ Vadian, the Humanist and reforaier of St. GaJl, too, in spite of his disapproval of some of Denck's ideas, speaking of him in retrospect after his death, called him " a most gifted youth, possessed of all excel- lencies." But his teaching was too strange and unusual to be allowed currency even in free Strasbourg. After being granted a public discussion he was ordered to leave the city forthwith. During a short stay in Worms, following the Strasbourg period, in collaboration with Ludwig Hetzer, they brought to a successful conclusion a German translation of the Prophets from the Hebrew, a work which Hetzer had begun. This important piece of scholarly work was published under the title, Alh Propheten nach hebrdischer Sprache verteutscht, in Worms, April 3, 1527, and had a wide circulation and use, its main demerit being that it had been done by " Ana- baptists." Pursued on every hand, hunted from place to place, he finally sought peace and shelter with his old friend, the teacher who had first inspired him in his youth, (Ecolampadius, and here in Basle in a quiet retreat, he died of the plague in November 1527, hardly more than thirty-two years of age.' We must now turn to the little books of this persecuted and homeless Humanist to see what his religious teaching really was, and to discover the foundation principle which lay at the root of all the endeavours of this period to launch a Christianity grounded primarily on the ^ See Nicoladoni's Johannes Bunderlin von Linz (Berlin, 1893), p. 114. 2 Letter of Capito to Zwingli, December 26, 1526. ' Kessler says that CEcolampadius in a Christian spirit was with him at his death. Op. cit. p. 151. 22 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. fundamental nature of man.^ Denck writes like a man with a message — straight to the mark, lucid, vivid, and intense. He believes what he says and he wants others to see it and believe it. His writings are entirely free from the controversial temper, and they breathe through- out the spirit of tolerance and charity. He knows when to stop, and brings his books to an end as soon as he has made his points clear. The fundamental fact of man's 'nature for Denck is personal freedom. Starting with no theological presuppositions he is tmder no obligation to make the primary assumption common to all Augustinian systems that man is devoid of any native capacities which have to do with spiritual salvation. He begins instead with man as he knows him — a sadly marred and hampered being, but stUl possessed of a potentially Divine nature, and capable of co-operating, by inward *«hoices and decisions, with the ceaseless effort of God to win him completely to Himself. His little book. What does it mean when the Scripture says God does and works Good and Evil, is throughout a protest against the idea of " election," which, he says, involves " a limitation of the Love of God," and it is a penetrating account of the way in which man by his free choices makes his eternal destiny.^ " God compels nobody, for He wiU have no one saved by compulsion." ^ " God has given freewill to men that they may choose for themselves, either the good or the bad. Christ said to His disciples, ' Will ye ^ The little books of Denck from which I shall extract his teaching are : (i) Vom Gesetz Gottes (" On the Law of God "), printed without place or date, but probably pubhshed in 1536. I have used the copy in the Konigliche Bibliothek in Berlin, sig. Co. 2152. (2) Was geredet sey doss die Schrift sagt Goit thue und mache guts und hoses (" What does it mean when the Scripture says God does and works Good and Evil "), 1526. Copies of this are to be found in the University Library of Marburg, also in the KonigUche Bibliothek of Dresden. (3) Widerruf (" Con- fession "), 1527. I have used the copy in the Konigliche BibUothek in Dresden sig. Theol. Cathol. 817 (4) Ordnung Gottes und derCreaturenWerck{"The'Di-vme Plan and the Work of the Creature"), 1527, in the above Ubrary in Dresden. (5) Wer die Warheit warlich lieb hat, etc., no date (" Whoever really loves the Truth," etc.), and (6) Von der wahren Liebe (" On the True Love "), 1527. This last tract has been republished in America by the Mennonitische Verlagshandlung, Elkhart, Indiana, 1888. ^ " To hear the Word of God," he elsewhere says, " means life ; to hear it not means death." — Ordming Gottes, p. 17. ' Was geredet sey, p. C. (The paging is by letters.) n HANS DENCK 23 go away ? ' as though He would say, ' You are under no compulsion.' " ^ " God," he says again in the Widerruf, " forces no one, for love cannot compel, and God's service is, therefore, a thing of complete freedom." ^ It is freedom, too, which explains the fact of sin. God is in no way the author of sin ; He is whoUy good ^^ He can do nothing but what is good ; He ordains no one to sin ; He is the instigator of no evil at aU. All the sin and moral evU of the world have come from our own evil choices and purposes. " Thp^ thin g which hindprs and has always hind er ed is that our wUls a re different from God' s wilir" Godnever seeks Himself in His willing — we do. There is no other way to blessedness than t o loje on e's self-will." "^ ^' He who surrenders his selfish-^ ness," he says in another treatise, " and uses the freedom, which God has given him, and fights the spiritual battle as God wills that such battles are to be fought and as Christ fought His, can in his measure be like Christ." * - The whole problem of salvation for him is, as we shall see, to bring about such a transformation in man that sin ceases, and the least thing thought, said, or done out of harmony with the will of God becomes bitter and painful to the soul.^ " To be a Christian," he once wrote, " is to be in measure like Christ, and to be ready to be offered as He gave Himself to be offered. I do not say that we are perfect as Christ was, but I say rather that we are to seek the perfection which Christ never lost. Christ calls Himself the Light of the world, but He also teUs His disciples that they too are the light of the world. AU Christians in whom the Holy Ghost lives— that is all real Christians — are one with Christ in God and are like Christ. They will therefore have similar experiences, and what Christ did they will also do." ^ Not only is there a power of free choice in the soul ; there is as well an elemental hunger in man which pushes him Godward. " God," he often says, " can give only 1 Was geredet sey, B. 3. ^ Widerruf, sec. iv. ' Was geredet sey, B. * Ibid. B. 5. 6 Vom Gesetz Gottes, p. 15. ' Was geredet sey, B. 6. 24 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. to those who hunger." In a very great passage which reminds one of Pascal he says : " The kingdom of God is in you and he who searches for it outside himself will never find it, for apart from God no one can either seek or find God, for he who seeks God, already in truth has Him." ^ He says nearly the same thing again in the little book, Vom Gesetz Gottes : "He who does not know God from God Himself does not ever know Him." This central insight of Denck's religious faith that God and man are not completely sundered, but meet, as he says,^ in the deeps of ourselves, is grounded upon the fact of experience that there is within us a supra-individual Reality which becomes revealed to us sometimes as a Light, sometimes as a Word, sometimes as a Presence or environing Spirit. This testimony is Denck's main contribution, and we must next see how he sets it forth. There is, he says, a witness in every man. He who does not listen to it blinds himself, although God has given him originally a good inward eyesight. If a man wUl keep still and listen he wiU hear what the Spirit witnesses within him. Not only in us but in the heathen and in Jews this witness is given, and men might be preached to outwardly forever without perceiving, if they did not have this witness in their own hearts.^ The Light shines, the invisible Word of God is uttered in the hearts of aU men who come into the world, and this Light gives aU men freedom and power to become children of God.* There is both an inward principle of revelation which he calls das innere Wort, and a principle of active power which he calls die Kraft des Allerhochsten (the power of the Highest), not two things, but one reality under two aspects and two names, and he insists that he who turns to this Divine, spiritual reality, which is one with God, and obeys it and loves its leading has already found God and has come to himself. " Oh, who will give me a voice," he writes, " that I may cry aloud to the whole world that God, the aU highest, is in the deepest abyss ^ Was geredet sey, B. 2. ^ Ibid. B. 5. ' Ibid, B. I and 2. * Ordnung Gottes, p. 7. II HANS DENCK 25 within us and is waiting for us to return to Him. Oh, my God, how does it happen in this poor old world, that Thou art so great and yet nobody finds Thee, that Thou callest so loudly and nobody hears Thee, that Thou art so near and nobody feels Thee, that Thou givest Thyself to everybody and nobody knows Thy name ! Men flee from Thee and say they cannot find Thee ; they turn their backs and say they cannot see Thee ; they stop their ears and say they cannot hear Thee ! " ^ This self-giving nature of God is everjAvhere taken for granted — it is just that which he feels that Christ has once for all made sun-clear, and it is because He is essenti- ally self-giving that God pours out His life and love upon us as He does His sunshine upon the grass and flowers. " The Word of God is with thee before thou seekest ; He gives before thou hast asked ; He opens to thee before thou hast knocked." God like a Father deals with His wayward children. " Oh, blessed is the man," he writes, " who in his need finds the love of God and comes to Him for forgiveness ! " ^ No one of us who has been washed from his sins, he beautifully says, ought to eat a piece of bread without considering how God loves him and how he ought to love God, who in Jesus Christ His Son laid aside His right to Divinity that His love might appear complete.^ " It has pleased the eternal Love," he writes, " that that Person in whom Love was shown in the highest degree should be called the Saviour of His people. Not that it would be possible for human nature to make anybody saved, but God was so completely identified in Love with Him that all the Will of God was the will of this Person, and the sufferings of this Person were and counted as the sufferings of God Himself." * Christ is for him the complete manifestation of life and the perfect exhibition or unveiling of God's love, and he who appreciates this love, feels its attraction, and lives a life which corresponds to his soul's insight, becomes 1 Vom Gesetz Gottes, p. 27. ^ Was geredet sey, D. i and 2. ' Vom Gesetz Gottes, p. 33. * Von der wahren Liebe (Elkhaxt reprint), p. 7- 26 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. himself Christlike, forsakes sin and self, and enters upon a life of salvation. " All who are saved," he says, " are of one spirit with God, and he who is the foremost in love is the foremost of those who are saved." ^ "He who gets weary of God has never found Him," while the person who has found Him in this love-way will be ready and willing to give up even his own salvation and accept damnation for the love of God, since he knows in his heart that " God is so whoUy good that He can give to such a man only what is highest and best, and that is Himself ! " ^ That is to say, he who is willing to be damned for the love of God never wUl be damned ! But salvation must never be conceived as something which is the result of a transaction. It is from beginning to end a life-process and can in no way be separated from character and personal attitude of will. " He who depends on the merit of Christ," he says, " and yet con- tinues in a fleshly, wicked life, regards Christ precisely as in former times the heathen held their gods. He who reaUy believes that Christ has saved him can no longer be a servant of sin, for no one believes rightly until he leaves his old life." * " It is not enough," he elsewhere writes, " that God is in thee ; thou must also be in God, that is, partake of the life of God. It does not help to have God if thou dost not honour Him. It is no avail to caU thyself His child if thou dost not behave thyself like a child ! " * He insists that no one can be " called righteous " or be " counted righteous " until he actually is righteous. Nothing can be " imputed " to a man which is not ethically and morally present as a living feature of his character and conduct. No one, he truly says, can know Christ as a means of salvation unless he follows Him in his life. He who does not witness to Christ in his daily walk grows into a different person from the one he is called to be.^ The person who lives on in sin does not really know God, and, ^ Von der wahren Liehe (Elkhart reprint), p. 8. ^ Vom Gesetz Gottes, p. ig. ' Widerruf, ii. * Was geredet sey, B. i. ' Ibid. D. II HANS DENCK 27 to use his fine figure, is like a man who has lost his home and gone astray, and does not even know that he is at home, when his Father has found him and has welcomed him back, but stiU goes on hunting for home and for Father, since he does not recognize his home or his Father when he has found them ! ^ Salvation, then, for Hans Denck is wholly an inward process, initiated from above through the Divine Word, the Christ, whom we know outwardly as the historical Person of the Gospel, and whom we know inwardly as the Revealer of Light and Love, the Witness in us against sin, the Voice of the Father to our hearts, calling us home, the Goal of our spiritual quest, the Alpha and the Omega of all religious truth and all spiritual experience. The Way to God, he says, is Christ inwardly and spiritually known.^' But however audible the inner Word may be ; however vivid the illumination ; however drawing the Love, there is never compulsion. The soul itself must hear and see and feel ; must say yes to the appeal of Love, and must co-operate by a continuous adjustment of the personal wiU to the WiU of God and " learn to behave as a chUd of God." Having reached the insight that salvation is entirely an affair of the spirit, an inward matter, Denck loosened his hold upon the external things which had through long centuries of history come to be considered essential to Christianity. Sacraments and ceremonies dropped to a lower level for him as things of no importance./ With his characteristic breadth and sweetness, he does not smite them as an iconoclast would have done ; he does not cry out against those who continue to use them. He merely considered them of no spiritual significance. " Ceremonies," he writes in his dying confession, " in themselves are not sin, but whoever supposes that he can attain to life either by baptism or by partaking of bread, is still in superstition." ^ " If aU ceremonies," he adds, " were lost, little harm would come of it." * ' Was geredd sey, A. 4 and 5. ' Ibid. B. 3. 3 Widermf, vii. * Ibid. vii. 28 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. He appeals to Christians to stop quarrelling over these outward and secondary matters, and to make religion consist in love to neighbour rather than in zeal for outward ceremonies. He laid down this great principle : " AU externals must yield to love, for they are for the sake of love, and not love for their sake." ^ He was, consistently with his fundamental ideas, pro- foundly opposed to every tendency to make Christianity a legal religion. His friends, the Anabaptists, were inclined to turn the Gospel of Christ into " a new law," and to make religion consist largely in scrupulous obedi- ence to this perfect law of life. To aU this he was radically alien, for it was, he thought, only another road back to a religion of the letter, while Christ came to caU us to a religion of the spirit. " He who has not the Spirit," he wrote, " and who fails to find Him in the Scriptures, seeks life and finds death ; seeks light and finds darkness, whether it be in the Old or in the New Testament." ^ " He who thinks that he can be made truly righteous by means of a Book is ascribing to the dead letter what belongs to the Spirit." * He does not belittle or undervalue the Scriptures — ^he knew them almost by heart and took the precious time out of his brief life to help to translate the Prophets into German — but he wants to make the fact forever plain that men are saved or lost as they say yes or no to a Light and Word within themselves. " The Holy Scriptures," he writes in his dying testimony, " I consider above every human treasure, but not so high as the Word of God which is living, powerful, and eternal, for it is God Himself, Spirit and no letter, written without pen or paper so that it can never be destroyed. For that reason, salvation is not bound up with the Scriptures, however necessary and good they may be for their purpose, because it is impossible for the Scriptures to make good a bad heart, even though it may be a learned one. A good heart, however, with a Divine Spark in it is improved by everything, and to such the Scriptures will bring blessed- ' Vom Gesetz Gottes, p. 33. ^ Ibid. p. 22. ' Ibid. p. 21. n HANS DENCK 29 ness and goodness." ^ The Scriptures — the external Word — ^as he many times, in fact somewhat tediously, declares, are witnesses and pointers to the real and momentous thing, the Word which is very near to aU souls and is written in the heart, and which increases in clearness and power as the will swings into parallelism with the will of God, and as the life grows in likeness to the Divine image revealed in Christ. This inward life and spiritual appreciation do not give any ground for relaxing the moral obligations of life. No fulfilling of the law by Christ, no vanishing of the outward and temporal, furnish any excuse to us for slacking a jot or tittle of anything which belongs to the inherent nature of moral goodness. " Christ," he says, " fulfilled the law, not to relieve us of it, but to show us how to keep it in truth. The member must partake of what the Head partakes." ^ To love God alone and to hate everything that hinders love is a principle which, Denck believes, wiU fulfil all law, ancient or modern.^ Such were the ideas which this young radical reformer, dreamer perhaps, tried to teach his age. The time was not ripe for him, and there was no environment ready for his message. He spoke to minds busy with theo- logical systems, and to men whose battles were over the meaning of inherited medieval dogma. He thought and spoke as a child of another world, and he talked in a language which he had learned from his heart and not from books or from the schools. It is " the key of David," he says, that is, an inward experience, which unlocks all the solid doors of truth, but there were so few about him who really had this " key " ! His task, which was destined to be hard and painful, which was in his lifetime doomed to failure, was not self-chosen. " I opened my mouth," he says, " against my will and I am speaking to the world because God impels me so that I cannot keep silent. God has called me out and stationed me at my post, and He knows whether good will come of it or not." * 1 Widerruj, i. ^ Vom Geselz Gottes, p. 9. 2 Ibid. p. 12. ' Was geredet sey, Preface. 30 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap, n It is not often that a man living in the atmosphere of seething enthusiasm, pitilessly pricked and goaded by brutal and unfeeling persecutors, compelled to hear his precious truth persistently called error and pestilent heresy, keeps so cahn and sane and sure that all will be weU with him and with his truth as does Denck. " I am heartUy well content," is his dying testimony, " that aU shame and disgrace should fall on my face, if it is for the truth. It was when I began to love God that I got the disfavour of men." ^ He confesses that he has found it difficult to " keep a gentle and a humble heart " through aU his work among men, to " temper his zeal with under- standing," and to " make his lips say always what his heart meant," ^ but he did, at least, succeed in loving God and in hating everything that hindered love. In an epoch in which the doctrine was new and revolutionary, he succeeded in presenting the principle of the Inward Word as the basis of religion without giving any encourage- ment to libertinism or moral laxity, for he found the way of freedom to be a life of growing likeness to Christ, he held the fulfilling of the law to be possible only for those who accept the burdens and sacrifices of love, and he insisted that the privileges of blessedness belong only to those who behave like sons. ^ Widerruf, Preface. ^ Ibid., Preface. CHAPTER III TWO PROPHETS OF THE INWARD WORD : BUNDERLIN AND ENTFELDER The study of Denck in the previous chapter has furnished the main outlines of the type of Christianity which a little group of men, sometimes called " Enthusiasts," and sometimes called " Spirituals," but in reality sixteenth - century Quakers, proclaimed and faithfully practised in the opening period of the Reformation. They differed fundamentally from Luther in their con- ception of salvation and in their basis of authority, although they owed their first awakening to him ; and they were not truly Anabaptists, though they allied themselves at first with this movement, and earnestly laboured to check the ominous signs of Ranterism and Fanaticism, and the misguided " return " to millennial hopes and expectations, to which many of the Anabaptist leaders were prone. The inner circle of " Spirituals " which we are now engaged in investigating was never numerically large or impressive, nor was it in the public mind well differentiated within the larger circle of seething ideas and revolutionary propaganda. The men themselves, however, who composed it had a very sure grasp of a few definite, central truths to which they were dedicated, and they never lost sight, in the hurly-burly of contention and in the storm of persecution, of the goal toward which they were bending their steps. They did not endeavour 31 32 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. to found a Church, to organize a sect, or to gain a personal following, because it was a deeply settled idea with them ■all that the true Church is invisible. It is a communion of saints, including those of aU centuries, past and present, who have heard and obeyed the divine inner Word, and through co-operation with God's inward revelation and transformiiig Presence have risen to a mystical union of heart and life with Him. Their apostolic mission — for they fully believed that they were " called " and " sent " — was to bear witness to this eternal Word within the soul, to extend the fellowship of this invisible Zion, and to gather out of aU lands and peoples and visible folds of the Church those who were ready for membership in the one family and brotherhood of the Spirit of God. They made the mistake, which has been very often made before and since, of undervaluing external helps and of failing to appreciate how important is the visible fellowship, the social group, working at common tasks and problems, the temporal Church witnessing to its tested faith and proclaiming its message to the ears of the world ; but they did nevertheless perform a very great service in their generation, and they are the unrecognized forerunners of much which we highly prize in the spiritual heritage of the modern world. The two men whose spiritual views we are about to study are, I am afraid, hardly even " names " to the world of to-day. They were not on the popular and winning side and they have fallen into oblivion, and the busy world has gone on and left them and their little books to lie buried in a forgotten past. They are surely worthy of a resurrection, and those who take the pains wiU discover that the ideas which they promulgated never really died, but were quick and powerful in the formation of the inner life of the religious societies of the English Commonwealth, and so of many things which have touched our inner world to-day. Johann Biinderlin, like his inspirer Denck, was a scholar of no mean rank. He understood Hebrew ; he knew the Church Fathers both in Greek and Latin ; he m BUNDERLIN and ENTFELDER 33 makes frequent reference to Greek literature for illustra- tion, and he was well versed in the dialectic of the schools, though he disapproved of it as a religious method.^ He was enrolled as a student in the University of Vienna in 1515, under the name of Johann Wunderl aus Linz, Linz being a town of Upper Austria. After four years of study he left the University in 1519, being compelled to forgo his Bachelor's degree because he was too poor to pay the required fee.^ The next five years of his life are submerged beyond recovery, but we hear of him in 1526 as a preacher in the service of Bartholomaus von Starhemberg, a prominent nobleman of Upper Austria, and he was at this time a devout adherent of tiie Lutheran faith. He was in Augsburg this same year, 1526, at the time of the great gathering of Anabaptists, and here he probably met Hans Denck, at any rate he testified in 1529 before the investigating Judge in Strasbourg that he received adult baptism in Augsburg three years before. He seems to have gone from Augsburg to Nikolsburg, where he was present at a public Discussion in which a definite differentiation appeared between the moderate and the radical, the right and left, wings of the Ana- baptists. Biinderlin took part in this Discussion on the " moderate " side. He remained for some time — perhaps two years ^ — in Nikolsburg and faced the persecution which prevailed in that city during the winter of 1527- 1528. The next year he comes to notice in Strasbourg where, for a long time, a much larger freedom of thought was allowed than in any other German city of the period. The great tragedy which he had to experience was the frustration of the work of his life by the growth and spread of the Ranter influence in the Anabaptist circles, through the leadership of Melchior Hoffman and others of a similar spirit. He loved freedom, and here he saw it degenerating into license. He was devoted to a religion of experience and of inner authority, and now ^ See Veesenmeyer's article on Biinderlin in N. lit. Aneeiger for August 1807, P- 535- ^ The details of his life here given have been gathered mainly from the excellent monograph on Johannes Biinderlin by Dr. Alexander Nicoladoni. (Berlin, 1893.) D 34 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. he saw the wild extremes to which such a religion was exposed. He was dedicated to a spiritual Christianity, and now he was compelled to learn the bitter lesson that there are many types and varieties of " spiritual religion," and that the masses are inclined to go with those who supply them with a variety which is spectacular and which produces emotional thrills. Our last definite information concerning Biinderlin shows him to have been in Constance in 1530, from which city he was ex- pelled as a result of information against the " soundness " of his doctrine, furnished in a letter from (Ecolampadius. From this time he drops completely out of notice, and we are left only with conjectures. One possible reference to him occurs in a letter from Julius Pflug, the Humanist, to Erasmus in 1533. Pflug says that a person has newly arrived in Litium (probably Liitzen) who teaches that there are no words of Christ as a warrant for the celebration of the Sacrament of the Supper, and that it is to be partaken of only in a spiritual way. He adds that God had inter- vened to protect the people from such heresy and that the heretic had been imprisoned. The usual penalty for such heresy was probably imposed. This description would well fit Johann Biinderlin, but we can only guess that he was the opponent of the visible Sacrament mentioned in the letter which Erasmus received in 1533.^ Biinderlin's religious contribution is preserved in three little books which are now extremely rare, the central ideas of which I shall give in condensed form and largely in my own words, though I have faithfully endeavoured to render him fairly.^ His style is difficult, ^ This incident is given in Dr. Carl Hagen's Deutschlands literarische und religiose VerMttnisse im ReformaiionszeitaUer, 1868, iii. p. 310. ' The books are : — (i) Ein gemayne Berechnung iiber der Heiligen Schrift Inhalt, etc. ("A General Consideration of the Contents of Holy Scripture.") Printed in Strasbourg in 1529. {2) Aiis was Ursach sich Gott in die nyder gelassen und in Christo vermenschet ist, etc., 1529. (" For what cause God has descended here below and has become incarnate in Christ.") (3) Erkldmng durch Vergleichung der biblischen Geschrift, doss der Wassertauf sammt andern dusserlichen Gebr&uchen in der apostolischen Kirchen geiibet, on Gottes Befelch und Zeugniss der Geschrift^ von etlichen dieser Zeit wider efert wirdy etc., 1530. (" Declaration by comparison of the Biblical Writings that Baptism with Water, together with other External Customs practised in the ApostoUc in BUNDERLIN and ENTFELDER 35 mainly because he abounds in repetition and has not learned to write in an orderly way. I am inclined to believe that he sometimes wrote, as he would no doubt preach, in a prophetic, rapturous, spontaneous fashion, hardly steering his train of thought by his intellect, but letting it go along lines of least resistance and in a rhythmic flood of words ; his central ideas of course all the time holding the predominant place in his utter- ance. He is essentially a mystic both in experience and in the ground and basis of his conception of God and man. This mystical feature is especially prominent in his second book on why God became incarnate in Christ, and I shall begin my exposition with that aspect of his thought. God, he says, who is the eternal and only goodness, has always been going out of Himself into forms of self- expression. His highest expression is made in a heavenly and purely spiritual order of angelic beings. Through these spiritual beings He objectifies Himself, mirrors Himself, knows Himself, and becomes revealed.^ He has also poured Himself out in a lower order of mani- festation in the visible creation where spirit often finds itself in opposition and contrast to that which is not spirit. The highest being in this second order is man, who in inward essence is made in the image and likeness of God, but binds together in one personal life both sensuous elements and divine and spiritual elements which are always in collision and warfare with each other. Man has full freedom of choice and can swing his will over to either side — ^he can live upward toward the divine goodness, or he can live downward toward the poor, thin, limiting isolation of individual selfhood. But Church, have been reinstated by some at this time without the Command of God or the Witness of the Scriptures.") These three books can be found bound in one volume, with writings of Denck and others, in the Konigliche Bibliothek in Dresden. There is also a copy of his third book in Utrecht. Besides using the books themselves I have also used the monograph by Nicoladoni and the study of Biinderlin in Hagen, op. dt. iii. pp. 295-310. ^ This idea is reproduced and greatly expanded in the writings of the famous Silesian Mystic, Jacob Boehme. 36 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. through the shifting drama of our human destiny God never leaves us. He is always within us, as near to the heart of our being as the Light is to the eye. Conscience is the witness of His continued Presence ; the drawing which we feel toward higher things is bom in the unlost image of God which is planted in our nature " like the tree of Life in Eden." He pleads in our hearts by His inner Word ; He reveals the goodness of Himself in His vocal opposition to aU that would harm and spoil us, and He labours unceasingly to be bom in us and to bring forth His love and His spiritual kingdom in the domain of our own spirits. The way of life is to die to the flesh and to the narrow wUl of the self, and to become alive to the Spirit and Word of God in the soul, to enter into and participate in that etemal love with which God loves us. This central idea of the double nature of man — an upper self indissolubly linked with God and a lower self rooted in fleshly and selfish desires — ^runs through aU his writings, and in his view all the processes of reve- lation are to further the liberation and development of the higher and to weaken the gravitation of the lower self. His first book deals with God's twofold revelation of Himself — primarily as a living Word in the soul of man, and secondarily through external signs and events, in an historical word, and in a temporal incarnation. With a wealth and variety of expression and illustra- tion he insists and reiterates that only through the citadel— or better the sanctuary — of his inner self can man be spiritually reached, and won, and saved. Nobody can be saved imtil he knows himself at one with God ; until he finds his will at peace and in harmony with God's will ; until his inward spirit is conscious of unity with the etemal Spirit ; in short, until love sets him free with the freedom and joy of sons of God. Priests may absolve men if they wiU, and ministers may pronounce them saved, but aU that counts for nothing until the inward transformation is a fact and the wiU has found its goal in the will of God : " Love must bloom and the spirit in bUnderlin and ENTFELDER 37 of the man must follow the will of God written in his heart." i AU external means in religion have one purpose and one function ; they are to awaken the mind and to direct it to the inward Word. The most startling miracle, the most momentous event in the sphere of temporal sequences, the most appealing accoimt of historical occurrences can do nothing more than give in parable- fashion hints aiid suggestions of the real nature of that God who is eternally present within human spirits, and who is working endlessly to conform all lives to His perfect tjrpe and pattern. In the infant period of the race, both among the Hebrews and the Gentile peoples, God has used, Hke a wise Teacher, the symbol and picture- book method. He has disciplined them with external laws and with ceremonies which would move their chUd- minded imaginations ; but all this method was used only because they were not ripe and ready for the true and higher form of goodness. " They used the face of Moses until they could come to the full Light of the truth and righteousness of God, for which all the time their spirits really hungered and thirsted." ^ The supreme instance of the divine pictorial method was the sending of Christ to reveal God visibly. Before seeing God in Christ men falsely thought of Him as hostile, stem, and wrathful ; now they may see Him in this unveiling of Himself as He actually is, eternally loving, patiently forgiving, and seeking only to draw the world into His love and peace : " When the Abba-crying spirit of Christ awakens in our hearts we commune with God ia peace and love." ^ But no one must content himself with Christ after the flesh, Christ historically known. That is to make an idol of Him. We can be saved through Him only when by His help we discover the essential nature of God and when He moves us to go to living in the spirit and power as Christ Himself lived. His death as an outward, historical fact does not save us; it is the supreme ex- pression of His limitless love and the complete dedication 1 Bin gemayne Berechmmg, p. 57- ^ ^bid- p. 14- ' Ibid. p. 221. 38 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. of His spirit in self-giving, and it is effective for our salvation only when it draws us into a similar way of living, unites us in spirit with Him and makes us in reality partakers of His blood spiritually apprehended. Christ is our Mediator in that He reveals the love of God towards us and moves our will to appreciate it.^ Every step of human progress and of spiritual advance is marked by a passage from the dominion of the external to the sway and power of inward experience. God is training us for a time when images, figures, and picture- book methods will be no longer needed, but all men will live by the inward Word and have the witness — " the Abba-crying voice " — in their own hearts. But this process from outward to inward, from virtue impelled by fear and mediated by law to goodness generated by love, gives no place for license. Biinderlin has no fellow- ship with antinomianism, and is opposed to any tendency which gives rein to the flesh. The outward law, the external restraint, the discipline of fear and punishment are to be used so long as they are needed, and the written word and the pictorial image will always serve as a norm and standard, but the true spiritual goal of life is the formation of a rightly fashioned wiU, the creation of a controlling personal love, the experience of a guiding inward Spirit, which keep the awakened soul steadily approximating the perfect Life which Christ has revealed. The true Church is, for Biinderlin as for Denck, the communion and fellowship of spiritual persons — an invisible congregation, ever-enlarging with the process of the ages and with the expanding light of the Spirit. He blames Luther for having stopped short of a real reforma- tion, of having " mixed with the Midianites instead of going on into the promised Canaan," and of having failed to dig down to the fundamental basis of spiritual rehgion.^ In his final treatise * he goes to the full length of the implication of his principle. He recounts with luminous 1 Ein gemayne Berechmmg, pp. 218-221, freely rendered. ^ Ibid. pp. 30-34. ^ Erkldfung dutch Vergleichung. m BONDERLIN and ENTFELDER 39 simplicity the mystical unity of the spiritual Universe and tells of the divine purpose to draw all our finite and divided wiUs into moral harmony with the Central Will. Once more religion is presented as whoUy a matter of the inward spirit, a thing of insight, of obedience to a living Word, of love for an infinite Lover, the bubbling of living streams of water in the heart of man. He declares that the period of signs and symbols and of " the scholastic way of truth " is passing away, and the religion of the New Testament, the religion of life and spirit, is coming in place of the old. As fast as the new comes ceremonies and sacraments vanish and fall away. They do not belong to a religion of the Spirit ; they are for the infant race and for those who have not outgrown the picture- book. Christ's baptism is with power from above, and He cleanses from sin not with water but with the Holy Ghost and the burning fire of love. As soon as the spiritual man possesses " the key of David," and has entered upon " the true Sabbath of his soul," he holds lightly all forms and ceremonies which are outward and which can be gone through with in a mechanical fashion without creating the essential attitude of worship and of inner harmony of wiU with God : " When the Kingdom of God with its joy and love has come in us we do not much care for those things which can only happen outside us." ^ II Christian Entfelder held almost precisely the same views as those which we have found in the teaching of Biinderlin. He has become even more submerged than has Biinderlin, and one hunts almost in vain for the events of his life. Hagen does not mention him. Griitzmacher in his Wort unci Geist never refers to him. The great Realencyklopddie fur protestantische Theologie tmd Kirche has no article on him. Gottfried Arnold in his Kirchen- 1 Aus was Ursach, p. 33. These phrases, "Key of David" and "Sabbath Rest for the Soul," occur in the writings of all the spiritual reformers. 40 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. und Ketzer-Hisforien merely mentions him in his hst of " Witnesses to the Truth." The only article I have ever found on him is one by Professor Veesenmeyer in Gabler's N. theol. Journal (1800), iv. 4, pp. 309-334. He first appears in the group of Balthasar Hiibmaier's followers and at this period he had evidently allied himself with the Anabaptist movement, which gathered into itself many young men of the time who were eager for a new and more spiritual type of Christianity. Hiibmaier mentions Entfelder in 1527 as pastor at Ewanzig, a small town in Moravia, where, as he himself later says, he diligently taught his little flock the things which con- cerned their inner life. In the eventful years of 1529- 1530 he was in Strasbourg in company with Biinderlin,^ and in this latter year he published his first book, with the title : Von den manigfaliigen in Glauben Zerspaltungen disc jar erstanden. (" On the many Separations which have this year arisen in Belief.") A second book, which is also dated 1530, bears the title : Von waren Gotseligkayt, etc. (" On true Salvation.") He wrote also a third book, which appeared in 1533 under the title : Von Gottes und Christi Jesu unset es H err en Erkandtnuss, etc. {" On the Knowledge of God and Jesus Christ our Lord.") His style is simpler than that of Biinderlin. He appears more as a man of the people ; he is fond of vigorous, graphic figures of speech taken from the life of the common people, much in the manner of Luther, and he breathes forth in aU three books a spirit of deep and saintly hfe. His fundamental idea of the Universe is like that of Biinderlin. The visible and invisible creation, in aU its degrees and stages, is the outgoing and unfolding of God, who in His Essence and Godhead is one, indivisible and incomprehensible. But as He is essentially and eternally Good, He expresses Himself in revelation, and goes out of Unity into differentiation and multiplicity; but the entire spiritual movement of the universe is back again toward the fundamental Unity, for Divine Unity is both the Alpha and the Omega of the ^ See N. lit. Anzeiger (1807), p. 515. ni BONDERLIN and ENTFELDER 41 deeper inner world. His main interest is, however, not philosophical and specidative ; his mind focuses always on the practical matters of a true and saintly life. Like his teacher, Biinderlin, his whole view of life and salvation is mystical; everjrthing which concerns religion occurs in the realm of the soul and is the outcome of direct relations between the himian spirit and the Divine Spirit. In every age, and in every land, the inner Word of God, the Voice of the Spirit speaking within, clarifying the mind and training the spiritual perceptions by a pro- gressive experience, has made for itself a chosen people and has gathered out of the world a little inner circle of those who know the Truth because it was formed within themselves. This " inner circle of those who know " is the true Church : " The Church is a chosen, saved, purified, sanctified group in whom God dweUs, upon whom the Holy Ghost has poured out His gifts and with whom Christ the Lord shares His offices and His mission."^ There is, however, through the ages a steady ripening of the Divine Harvest, a gradual and progressive onward movement of the spiritual process, ever within the lives of men : " Time brings roses. He who thinks that he has all the fruit when strawberries are ripe forgets that grapes are stiU to come. We should always be eagerly looking for something better." ^ There are, he says, three well-marked stages of revelation : (i) The stage of the law, when God, the Father, was making Himself known through His external creation and by outward forms of training and discipline; (2) the stage of self- revelation through the Son, that men might see in Him and His personal activity the actual character and heart of God ; and (3) the stage of the Holy Spirit which fills all deeps and heights, flows into all lives, and is the One God revealed in His essential nature of active Goodness — Goodness at work in the world. Externals of every type — ^law, ceremonies, rewards and punishments, his- 1 Entfelder to his brethren at the end of his first book : Von Zerspaltungm. 2 Vorrede to Von Zerspaltungm. 42 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. torical happenings, written Scriptures, even the historical doings and sufferings of Christ — are only pointers and suggestion-material to bring the soul to the living Word within, " to the Lord Himself who is never absent," and who wiU be spiritually bom within man. " God," he says, " has once become flesh in Christ and has revealed thus the hidden God and, as happened in a fleshly way in Mary, even so Christ must be spiritually bom in us." So, too, everything which Christ experienced and endured in His earthly mission must be re-lived and reproduced in the life of His true disciples. There is no salvation possible without the new birth of Christ in us, without self-surrender and the losing of oneself, without being buried with Christ in a death to self-will and without rising with Him in joy and peace and victory.^ He who rightly loves his Christ will speak no word, wiU eat no bit of bread, nor taste of water, nor put a stitch of clothes upon his body without thinking of the Beloved of his soul. ... In this state he can rid himself of aU pictures and symbols, renounce everything which he possesses, take up his cross with Christ, join Him in an inward, dying life, allow himself, like grain, to be threshed, winnowed, ground, bolted, and baked that he may become spiritual food as Christ has done for us. Then there comes a state in which poverty and riches, pain and joy, life and death are alike, when the soul has found its sabbath-peace in the Origin and Fount of all Love.^ His first book closes with a beautiful account of the return of the prodigal to His Father and to His Father's love, and then he breaks into a joyous cry, as if it all came out of his own experience : " Who then can separate us from the Love of God ? " Those who rightly understand religion and have had this birth and this Sabbath-peace within themselves wiU stop contending over outward, external things, which make separations but do not minister to the spirit ; they will give up the Babel-habit of constructing theological '■ Von warcn Gotsdigkayt, pp. 18-21. " See especially Von Zerspaltungen, pp. 6-8. ni BONDERLIN AiSfD ENTFELDER 43 systems,^ they will pass upward from elements to the essence, they will stop building the city-walls of the Church out of baptism and the supper, which furnish " only clay-plastered walls " at best, and they will found the Church instead upon the true sacramental power of the inward Spirit of God.^ The true goal of the spiritual life is such a oneness with God that He is in us and we in Him, so that the inner joy and power take our outer life captive and draw us away from the world and its " pictures," and make it a heartfelt delight to do all His commandments and to suffer anything for Him.s Here, then, in the third decade of the sixteenth century, when the leaders of the Reformation were using all their powers of dialectic to formulate in new scholastic phrase the sound creed for Protestant Christendom, and while the fierce and decisive battle was being waged over the new form in which the Eucharist must be celebrated, there appeared a little group of men who proposed that Christianity should be conceived and practised as a way of living — nothing more nor less. They rejected theo- logical language and terminology root and branch. They are as innocent of scholastic subtlety and forensic con- ceptions as though they had been bom in this generation. They seem to have wiped their slate clean of the long line of Augustinian contributions, and to have begun afresh with the hfe and message of Jesus Christ, coloured, if at all, by local and temporal backgrounds, by the experience of the earlier German mystics who helped them to interpret their own simple and sincere experiences. They are as naive and artless as little children, and they expect, as all enthusiasts do in their youth, that they have only to announce their wonderful truths and to proclaim their " openings " in order to bring the world to the light ! They go to the full length of the imphcations of their 1 This " Babel-habit of constructing theological systems " is constantly referred to by Jacob Boehme, as we shall see. I believe that Boehme had read both Biinderhn and Entfelder. 2 See Von Zerspattungen, passim, especially p. I7- ' Von waren Gotseligkayt, p. 13. 44 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. fresh insight without ever dreaming that all the theological world will unite, across the yawning chasms of difference, to stamp out their " pestUent heresy," and to rid the earth of persons who dare to question the traditions and the practices of the centuries. Instead of beginning with the presupposition of original sin, they quietly assert that the soul of man is inherently bound up in the Life and Nature of God, and that goodness is at least as " original " as badness. They fly in the face of the age-long view that the doctrine of Grace makes freewill impossible and reduces salvation wholly to a work of God, and they assert as the ineradic- able testimony of their own consciousness that human choices between Light and Darkness, the personal response to the character of God as He reveals Himself, the co-operation of the wUl of man with the processes of a Hving and spiritual God are the things which save a man — and this salvation is possible in a pagan, in a Jew, in a Turk even, as well as in a man who ranges himself under Christian rubrics and who says pater- nosters. They reject all the scholastic accounts of Christ's metaphysical nature, they wUl not use the term Trinity, nor will they admit that it is right to employ any words which imply that God is divided into multi- form personalities ; but nevertheless they hold, with all the fervour of their earnest spirits, that Christ is God historically and humanly revealed, and that to see Christ is to see the true and only God, and to love Christ is to love the Eternal Love. In an age which settled back upon the Scriptures as the only basis of authority in religious faith and practice, they boldly challenged that course as a dangerous return to a lower form of religion than that to which Christ had called men and as only legalism and scribism in a new dress. They insisted that the Eternal Spirit, who had been educating the race from its birth, bringing all things up to better, and who had used now one symbol and now another to fit the growing spiritual perception of men, is a real Presence in the deeps of men's conscious- in BtJNDERLIN AND ENTFELDER 45 ness, and is ceaselessly voicing Himself there as a living Word whom it is life to obey and death to disregard and slight. Having foimd this present, immanent Spirit and being deeply convinced that all that really matters happens in the dread region of the human heart, they turned away from aU ceremonies and sacraments and tried to form a Church which should be purely and simply a Commimion of saints — a brotherhood of believers living in the joy of an inward experience of God, and boimd together in common love to Christ and in common service to all who are potential sons of God. CHAPTER IV SEBASTIAN FRANCK : AN APOSTLE OF INWARD RELIGION Sebastian Franck is one of the most interesting figures in the group of German Reformers, a man of heroic spirit and a path-breaking genius, though for many reasons his influence upon his epoch was in no degree com- parable with that of many of his great contemporaries. No person, however great a genius he may be, can get wholly free from the intellectual climate and the social ideals of his period, but occasionally a man appears who has the skill and vision to hit upon nascent aspirations and tendencies which are big with futurity, and who thereby seems to be far ahead of his age and not explic- able by any lineage or pedigree. Sebastian Franck was a man of this sort. He was extraordinarily unfettered by medieval inheritance, and he would be able to adjust himself with perfect ease to the spirit and ideas of the modem world if he could be dropped forward into it. He is especially interesting and important as an exponent and interpreter of a religion based on inward authority because he unites, in an unusual manner, the intellectual ideals of the Hmnanist with the experience and attitude of the Mystic. In him we have a Christian thinker who is able to detach himself from the theological formulations of his own and of earlier times, and who could draw, with breadth of mind and depth of insight, from the weUs of the great original thinkers of aU ages, and who, besides, in his own deep and serious soul coidd feel the inner flow of central realities. He was no doubt 46 CHAP. IV SEBASTIAN FRANCK 47 too much detached to be a successful Reformer of the historical Church, and he was too little interested in external organisations to be the leader of a new sect ; but he was, what he aspired to be, a sincere and unselfish contributor to the spread of the Kingdom of God, and a significant apostle of the invisible Church.^ Sebastian Franck was bom in 1499 at Donauworth in Schwabia. He began his higher education in the University of Ingolstadt, which he entered March 26, 15 15. He went from Ingolstadt to Heidelberg, where he continued his studies in the Dominican College which was incorporated with the University. Here he was associated in the friendly fellowship of student life with two of his later opponents, Martin Frecht and Martin Bucer, and here he came under the influence of Humanism which in the scholarly circles in Heidelberg was beginning to take a place along with the current Scholasticism of the period. While a student in Heidelberg he first heard Martin Luther speak on the insufficiency of works and on faith as the way of salvation, and though he must have felt the power of this great personality and the freshness of the message, he was not yet ripe for a radical change of front.^ He seems to have felt through these student years that a new age was in process of birth, but though he was following the great events he remained to the end of his University period an adherent of the ancient Church and was ordained a priest about the year 1524 ; but very soon after he went over to the party of Reform, and was settled as a reforming preacher in the Uttle church at Gustenfelden near Nuremberg. During this period he came into close and intimate relation with the powerful humanistic spirit of that important city. Hans Sachs was already a person of fame and influence in Nuremberg, and here he became acquainted with the writings of the most famous humanists of the day — Erasmus, Hutten, Reuchlin, Pirkheimer, 1 Troeltsch calls him a " literarischer Prophet der alleinigen Erlosungskraft des Geistes imd des inneren Wortes," Die Soziallehren, p. 886. « See article by M. Cunitz in Nouvelle Revue de Theologie, vol. v. p. 361. 48 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. Althamer and others. In 1528 he married Ottilie Behaim, a woman of rare gifts, whose brothers were pupils of Albrecht Diirer, and who were themselves in sympathy with the freer tendencies of the time as ex- pressed by the Anabaptists. Franck, however, though sympathizing with the aspirations of the Anabaptists for a new age, did not feel confidence in their views or their methods. His first literary work was a translation into German of Althamer's Diallage, which contained an attack from the Lutheran point of view upon the various Enthusiasts of the period, especially the Anabaptists. In his original preface to this work Franck, though still in most respects a Lutheran, already reveals unmistakable signs of variation from the Wittenberg type, and he is plainly moving in the direction of a religion of the spiritual and mystical type freed from the limitations of sect and party. Even in this formative stage he insists that the Spirit, and not commentaries, is the true guide for the interpretation of Scripture ; he already contrasts Spirit and letter, outer man and inner man, and he here lays down the radical principle, which he himself soon put into practice, that a minister of the Gospel should resign his charge as soon as he discovers that his preaching is not bearing spiritual fruit in the transformation of the lives of his congregation.^ Sometime before 1530 Franck had come into intimate connection with Denck, Biinderlin, Schwenckfeld, and other contemporary leaders of the " Spiritual " move- ment, and their influence upon him was profound and lasting, because their message fitted the aspirations which, though not yet well defined, were surging subconsciously in him.^ There are throughout his writings very clear marks of Schwenckfeld's influence upon him, but Biinderlin especially spoke to his condition and helped him discover the road which his feet were seeking. In an important letter which Franck wrote to Johann Campanus in 1531, he calls Biinderlin a scholar, a wonder- ' See Alfred Hegler's Gdst unA Schrift bei Sebastian Franck (Freiburg), 1892, pp. 28-48. * See next chapter for an account of Caspar Schwenckfeld. IV SEBASTIAN FRANCK 49 fully reverent man, dead to the world, powerful in the Scriptures, and mightily gifted with an enlightened reason ; and this letter shows that he himself has been moving rapidly in the direction in which Biinderlin and Denck were travelling, though neither now nor at any time was Franck a mere copier of other men's ideas.^ " We must unlearn," he writes, " aU that we have learned from our youth up from the papists, and we must change everything we have got from the Pope or from Luther and Zwingli." He predicts that the external Church will never be set up again, " for the inward enlightenment by the Spirit of God is sufficient." In his Turkenchronik, or " Chronicle and Description of Turkey," published in 1530, he had already declared his dissatisfaction with ceremonies and outward forms of any sort, his refusal to be identified with any existing, empirical Church, his solemn dedication to the invisible Church, and his determination to be an apostle of the Spirit. " There already are in our times," he writes, " three distinct Faiths, which have a large following, the Lutheran, Zwinglian and Anabaptist ; and a fourth is well on the way to birth, which will dispense with external preaching, ceremonies, sacraments, bann and office as unnecessary, and which seeks solely to gather among all peoples an invisible, spiritual Church in the unity of the Spirit and of faith, to be governed wholly by the eternal, invisible Word of God, without external means, as the apostolic Church was governed before its apostasy, which occurred after the death of the apostles." ^ The year that dates his autobiographical letter to Campanus saw the publication in Strasbourg of Franck's best - known literary work : Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel ("A Universal Chronicle of the World's History from the Earhest Times to the Present ").* It has 1 This Letter to Campanus, written originally in Latin, is extant in a Dutch translation, " Eyn Briefi van Sebastiaen Franck van Weirdt, geschreven over ethcken jaren in Latijn, tho synen vriendt Johan Campaen." See Hegler, op. cit. pp. 50-53. 2 Chronica und Beschreibung der Turkey (Niirnberg, 1530). i^- 3 "■ 3 My copy is the first edition, printed in Strasbourg by Balthasser Beck, 1531. E 50 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. often been pointed out that much of the material of this great Chronicle is taken over from earUer Chroniclers, especially from the Nuremberger Schedel, and it is furthermore true that Franck's Book of the Ages contains large tracts of unhistorical narrative, set forth after the manner of Chroniclers without much critical insight, but the book, nevertheless, has a unique value. It abounds in Franck's peculiar irony and paradox, and it unfolds his conception of the spiritual history of the race, under the tuition of the Divine Word. At the beginning are patriarchs living in the dawn of the world under the guidance of inward vision, and at the end are saints and heretics, whom Franck finds among all races, bravely following the same inward Light, now after the ages grown clearer and more luminous, and sufficient for those who wiU patiently and faithfully heed it, while the real " heretics " for him are " heretics of the letter." " We ought to act carefully before God " — this is Franck's constant testimony — " hold to God alone and look upon Him as the cause of all things, and we ought always in all matters to notice what God says in us, to pay attention to the witness of our hearts, and never to think, or act, against our conscience. For everything does not hang upon the bare letter of Scripture ; everything hangs, rather, on the spirit of Scripture and on a spiritual imder- standing of the inner meaning of what God has said. If we weigh every matter carefully we shall find its true meaning in the depth of our spiritual understanding and by the mind of Christ. Otherwise, the dead letter of Scripture would make us all heretics and fools, for every- thing can be bedecked and defended with texts, therefore let nobody confound himself and confuse himself with Scripture, but let every one weigh and test Scripture to see how it fits his own heart. If it is against his conscience and the Word within his own soul, then be sure he has not reached the right meaning, according to the mind of the Spirit, for the Scriptures must give witness to the Spirit, never against it." ^ ^ Chronica, p. 452 b. IV SEBASTIAN FRANCK 51 The Chronica naturally aroused a storm of opposition against this bold advocate of the inner Way. Even Erasmus, who had been canonized in Franck's list of heretics, joined in the outcry against the chronicler of the world's spiritual development. His book was confiscated, he was temporarily imprisoned, and for the years immediately foUqwing he was never secure in any city where he endeavoured to pursue his labours. He supported himself and his family, now by the humble occupation of a soap-boiler, now by working in a printing- house, sometimes in Strasbourg, sometimes in Esslingen, and sometimes in Ulm, only asking that he " might not be forced to bury the talent which God had given him, but might be allowed to use it for the good of the people of God." In 1534 his Weltbuch appeared from a press in Tubingen, and the same year he published his famous Paradoxa, which contains the most clear and consistent exposition of his mystical and spiritual religion. Other significant books from his pen are his translation of Erasmus' Moriae Encomion ("Praise of FoUy"), with very important additions ; Von der Eitelkeit alter menschlichen Kunst und Weisheit ("The Vanity of Arts and Sciences"), following the treatise by Agrippa von Nettesheim ; Von dem Baum des Wissens Gutes und Bases {" Of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil ") ; ^ the Germaniae Chronicon ("Chronicle of Germany"), 153^; Die guldin Arch ("Golden Arch"), 1538; and Das verbutschiert mit 7 Siegeln verschlossene Buch ("The Seven- sealed Book"), 1539. The closing years of his life were passed in Basle, where he peacefully worked at his books and at type-setting, while the theologians fired their paper guns against him, and here in Basle he " went forth with God" on his last journey to find a safe and quiet " city with foundations," probably about the end of the year 1542. Three years before his ^ These three books were included in a volume entitled Die vier hron- bilchlein (1534). 52 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. death he had written in his " Seven -sealed Book " of the soul's journey toward God in these words : " The longer one travels toward the city he seeks the nearer and nearer he comes to the goal of his journey ; exactly so is it with the soul that is seeking God. If he wiU travel away from himself and away from the world and seek only God as the precious pearl of his soul, he will come steadily nearer to God, until he becomes one spirit with God tike Spirit ; but let him not be afraid of mountains and valleys on the way, and let him not give up because he is tired and weary, for he who seeks finds." ^ " The Sealed Book" contains an " apology " by Franck which is one of the most touching and one of the most noble documents from any opponent of the course which the German Reformation was taking. " I want my writings accepted," he declares, " only in so far as they fit the spirit of Scripture, the teaching of the prophets, and only so far as the anointing of the Word of God, Christ the inward Life and Light of men, gives witness to them. . . . Nobody is the master of my faith, and I desire to be the master of the faith of no one. I love any man whom I can help, and I call him brother whether he be Jew or Samaritan. ... I cannot belong to any separate sect, but I believe in a holy. Christlike Church, a fellowship of saints, and I hold as my brother, my neighbour, my flesh and blood, all men who belong to Christ among aU sects, faiths, and peoples scattered throughout the whole world — only I allow nobody to have dominion over the one place which I am pledged to the Lord to keep as pure virgin, namely my heart and my conscience. If you try to bind my conscience, to rule over my faith, or to be master of my heart, then I must leave you. Except that, everything I am or have is thine, whoever thou art or whatever thou mayest believe." ^ It was Franck's primary idea — the principle to which he was dedicated and for which he was content to suffer, ^ Das verbiitschierte Buch, p. 5. " Pp. 5-8 of the Apologia to Das verbutschierte Buch. IV SEBASTIAN FRANCE 53 in the faith that men in future times would come to see as he did ^ — that man's soul possesses a native capacity to hear the inward Word of God. He often calls Plato and Plotinus and " Hermes Trismegistus " his teachers, who " had spoken to him more clearly than Moses did," ^ and, like these Greek teachers of the nature of the soul's furnishings, he insisted that we come " not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter nakedness," but that there is a divine element, an innermost essence in us, in the very structure of the soul, which is the starting- point of aJl spiritual progress, the mark of man's dignity, the real source of aU religious experience, and the eternal basis of the soul's salvation and joy. He names this inward endowment by many names. It is the Word of God (" Wort Gottes"), the Power of God ("Kraft Gottes") , Spirit (" Geist "), Mind of Christ (" Sinn Christi "), Divine Activity ("gottliche Wirkung"), Divine Origin ("gotthcher Ursprung"), the inward Light (" das innere Licht "), the true Light ("das wahre Licht"), the Lamp of the soul (' ' das innere Ampellicht " ) . " The inward Light, ' ' Franck says in the Paradoxa, " is nothing else than the Word of God, God Himself, by whom aU things were made and by whom all men are enlightened." It is, in Franck's thought, not a capricious, subjective impulse or vision, and it is not to be discovered in sudden ecstatic experiences ; nor, on the other hand, is the divine Word, for Franck, some- thing purely objective and transcendent. It is rather a common ground and essence for God and man. It is God in His . self-revealing activity ; God in His self- giving grace ; God as the immanent ground of all that is permanently real, and at the same time this divine endowment forms the fundamental nature of man's soul — " Gottes Wort ist in der menschlichen Natur angelegt " ^ — and is the original substance of our being. Consciousness of God and consciousness of self have one fundamental source in this deep where God and man are unsundered. " No man can see or know himself unless he sees and knows, by the Light and Life that is 1 See Apologia, p. 2. == Ibid. p. 3. " Hegler, op. cit. p. 98. 54 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. in him, God the eternally true Light and Life ; wherefore nobody can ever know God outside of himself, outside that region where he knows himself in the ground of himself. . . . Man must seek, find, and know God through an interrelation — he must find God in himself and himself in God." ^ This deep ground of inner reahty is in every person, so far as he is a person ; it shines forth as a steady illiunination in the soul, and, while everything else is transitory, this Word is eternal and has been the moral and spiritual guide of all peoples in aU ages. Franck thus differs in a vital point from Schwenckfeld. The latter starts with man as utterly lost and devoid of any inherent goodness. By a sudden, supernatural event, at a temporal moment, divine forces break into the soul from without and supply it with a revitalizing energy. Man — lost, fallen, sin-blasted and utterly help- less — ^is by a divine and heavenly creative movement made a new Adam. For Franck, the soul has never lost the divine Image, the pearl of supreme price, the original element which is God Himself in the soul. We are aU, in the deepest centre of our being, hke Adam, possessed of a substantial essence, not of earth, not of time and space, not of the shadow but of the eternal, spiritual, and heavenly type. It may become overlaid with the rubbish of earth, it may long lie buried in the field of the human heart, it may remain concealed, like the grain of radium in a mass of dark pitchblende, and be forgotten, but we have only to return home within ourselves to find the God who has never been sundered from us and who could not leave us without leaving Himself. We do not need to cross the sea to find Him, we do not need to climb the heavens to reach Him — the Word is nigh thee, the Image is in thy heart, turn home and thou shalt find Him.2 The bottomless and abysmal nature of the human soul comes first into clear revelation in the Person of Christ, who is, Franck declares, truly and essentially both God and Man. In Christ the invisible, eternal, ' Die guliin Arch, Preface 3t)-4a. ^ Paradoxa, sec. loi. IV SEBASTIAN FRANCK 55 self-existent God has clothed Himself with flesh and become Man, has made Himself visible and vocal to our spiritual eyes and ears, and in Christ God has given us an adequate goal and norm of life, a perfect pattern (" Muster ") to walk by and to live by. Here we can see both the character of God and the measure of His ex- pectation for us. But we must not stop with the Christ after the flesh, the Christ without. He first becomes our life and salvation when He is bom within us and is revealed in our hearts, and has become the Life of our lives. We must eat His body, drink His blood until our nature is one with His nature and our spirit one in will and purpose with His spirit.^ Franck belongs in many respects among the mystics, but with peculiar variations of his own from the prevailing historical type of mysticism. He is without question saturated with the spirit of the great mystics ; he approves their inner way to God and he has learned from them to view this world of time and space as shadow and not as reality. No mystic, further, could say harsher things than he does of " Reason." ^ Hmnan reason — or more properly " reasoning " — ^has for him, as for them, a very Hmited area for its demesne. It is a good guide in the realm of earthly affairs. It can deal wisely with matters that affect our bodily comfort and our social welfare, but it is " barren " in the sphere of eternal issues. It has no eye for realities beyond the world of three dimen- sions. It goes blind as soon as it tries to speculate about God. He looks for no final results in spiritual matters from intellectual dialectics, whether they be of the old scholastic type, or of the new type of speculations, formulations and subtleties of the Protestant theologians. Franck always comes back to experience as his basis of religion, as his way to truth and to divine things. " Many," he says, " know and teach only what they have picked up and gathered in, without having experienced it 1 Pamdoxa, sec. 99 and 138. 2 Franck translated both Erasmus' Praise of Folly and Agrippa's Vanity of Arts and Sciences. 56 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. in the deeps of themselves." ^ "He who wishes to know what is in the Temple must not stand outside, merely hearing people read and talk about God. That is all a dead thing. He must go inside and have the experience for himself (" selbst erfahren"). Then first everything springs into life." ^ But " experience " with him does not mean enthusiastic visions and raptures. He puts as Httle value on ecstasies and emotional vapourings as he does on dialectic. Ecstasies lead men as often on false trails as on right tracks. They supply no criterion of certitude ; they furnish no concrete ideas or ideals to live by ; but still further, they do not bring all the deep-lying powers of the soul into play as any true source of religion must do. He is striving to find a foundation- principle for the spiritual hfe which shall not be capricious or sporadic, and which shall not be confined to one aspect of the inner self, but which shall bum on as a steady illumination in the soul and be the basis of all moral activity and aJl spiritual development. He finds this principle, as we have seen, in the Word of God, which is a divine reality, an eternal and self-existent activity, opening upward into all the resources of God, and at the same time forming the fundamental nature and ground-structure of the soul. A person may live — many persons do — in the outer region of the self, using the natural instincts with which he is supplied, pursuing the goals of life which appeal to common sense and steering the earthly course by custom and by reason, but it is always possible to have a wider range of experience, to live in deeper currents, and to draw upon a profounder source of insight. This deeper experience — which is the basis of Franck's mysticism and, for him, the very heart of any genuine religion — consists of a personal discovery of this eternal Word of God within and an irradiation of the whole being through the co-operation of the wUl with it. The will is king in man,' and can open or shut the gate which leads to life. It can make its world good or it ^ Moriae Encomion, p. 149. ^ Paradoxa, Vorrede, sec. 13. ' Moriae Enc. p. 97b, IV SEBASTIAN FRANCE 57 can make it evil ; just as out of one and the same flower the bee gets honey and the spider poison.^ It can swing over its allegiance to God the Spirit of truth, or to the god of the world who is anti-Christ. This experience of the Word of God which is thus brought about by the will of man — by an innermost personal choice — affects, Franck insists, aU the faculties of the inner life. Reason now becomes illumined with a Light which it never had until the gate into its deeper region was opened. Now, through co-operation with the Spirit of God, reason becomes capable of higher processes, and can deal with divine things because it has actual data to work upon. The emotions, too, are no longer blind and instinctive, they no longer carry the wUl whither it would not. They are now the overflow of an inner experience which is too rich and fuU for expression,^ which transcends the intellectual apprehension of it, but they are spiritualized and controlled from within. The moral hfe is especially heightened, and this is for Franck one of the main evidences that a divine source has been tapped. The discovery of the Word of God creates and constructs an autonomous " kingdom of the con- science " (" Reich des Gewissens "), gives us " a thousand- fold witness of God," and becomes to us the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.* In his little book on " the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil " — a book which was destined to have a far- reaching influence — ^he declares that the Garden-of-Eden story is a mighty parable of the human soul. All that is told in the Genesis account is told of what goes on in the mysterious realm within us. It is told as though it were an external happening, it is in reality an internal affair. The Paradise and the Fall, the Voice of God and the tempting voice of the serpent, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, are all in our own hearts as they were in the heart of Adam. Heaven and Hell are there. The one stands fully revealed in the triumphant Adam, who is Christ ; the other is ex- 1 Paradoxa, sec. 29. '^ Moriae Enc. p. 93a. " Paradoxa, sec. 63. 58 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. hibited in its awfulness in the disobedient Adam of the FaU. As fast as the Hfe comes under the sway of the " king- dom of conscience " and a solid moral character is formed, the inner guidance of the Word of God becomes more certain and more reliable. Only the good person has a sure and unerring perception of the truth, just as only the scientist sees the laws of the world, and as only the musician perceives the harmony of sounds. Not only must all spiritual experience be subject to the moral test, it must further be tested by the Light of God in other men and in history, and by the spirit of Scripture, which is the noblest permanent fruit of the Eternal Word. Every person must prove the authority of his religion. He must have his heart conquered and his mind taken captive and his wiU directed by his truth so that he would be ready to face a thousand deaths for it,^ and he must, through his truth and insight, come into spiritual unity and co-operation with all who form the invisible Church. The invisible Church forms the central loyalty of Franck's fervent soul. " The true Church," he writes, " is not a separate mass of people, not a particular sect to be pointed out with the finger, not confined to one time or one place ; it is rather a spiritual and invisible body of aU the members of Christ, bom of God, of one mind, spirit, and faith, but not gathered in any one external city or place. It is a Fellowship, seen with the spiritual eye and by the inner man. It is the assembly and communion of all truly God-fearing, good-hearted, new-bom persons in aJl the world, bound together by the Holy Spirit in the peace of God and the bonds of love — a Communion outside of which there is no salvation, no Christ, no God, no comprehension of Scripture, no Holy Spirit, and no Gospel. I belong to this Fellowship. I believe in the Communion of saints, and I am in this Church, let me be where I may ; and therefore I no * Moriae Enc. p. no. For the testing o! the Word, see Hegler, op. cit. pp. 117-119. IV SEBASTIAN FRANCE 59 longer look for Christ in lo heres or lo theres." ^ This Church, which the Spirit is building through the ages and in all lands, is, once more, like the experience of the individual Christian, entirely an inward affair. " Love is the one mark and badge of Fellowship in it." ^ No outward forms of any sort seem to him necessary for membership in this true Church. " External gifts and offices make no Christian, and just as httle does the standing of the person, or locality, or time, or dress, or food, or anything external. The kingdom of God is neither prince nor peasant, food nor drink, hat nor coat, here nor there, yesterday nor to-morrow, baptism nor circumcision, nor anything whatever that is external, but peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, unalloyed love out of a pure heart and good conscience, and an unfeigned faith." 3 In his Apology he says that he has withdrawn " from aU theological disputations, from all sectarian statements of creed, from baptism and all ceremonies," and " I stand now," he adds, " only for what is fundamental and essential for salvation " — that is, vital participation in the Life of God revealed in the soul.* " I am looking," he writes in the opening of the Paradoxa, " for no new and separate Church, no new commission, no new baptism, no new dispensation. The Church has already been founded on Christ the Rock, and since the outward keys and sacraments have been misused and have gone by. He now administers the sacraments inwardly in spirit and in truth. He baptizes His own, even in the midst of Babylon, and feeds them with His own body, and will do so unto the end of the world." ^ In a letter to Campanus he says, " I am fuUy convinced [by a study of the early Church Fathers] that, after the death of the apostles, the external Church of Christ, with its gifts and sacraments, vanished from the earth and withdrew into heaven, and is now hidden in spirit and in truth, and for these past fourteen hundred years ^ Paradoxa, Vorrede, sec. 8. ^ Paradoxa, sec. 9. ' Ibid. sec. 45. ' Das verbUtschierte Buck, Apology, p. 11. ' Paradoxa, Vorrede, sec. 8. 6o SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. there has existed no true external Church and no effica- cious sacraments." ^ His valuation of Scripture fits perfectly into this religion of the inward life and the invisible Church. The true and essential Word of God is the divine revelation in the soul of man. It is the prius of aU Scripture and it is the key to the spiritual meaning of aJl Scripture. To substitute Scripture for the self-revealing Spirit is to put the dead letter in the place of the living Word, the outer Ark in place of the inner sanctuary, the sheath in place of the sword, the horn-pane Lantern in place of the Light. 2 This letter killed Christ in Judea ; it is killing Him now. It has split the Church into fragments and sects and is splitting it now.^ It always makes a '' Babel " instead of a Church. It kept the Pharisees from seeing Moses face to face ; it keeps men now from seeing the Lord face to face.* Franck insists that, from its inherent nature, a written Scripture cannot be the final authority in religion : [a) It is outward, external, while the seat of religion is in the soul of man. (6) It is transitory and shifting, for language is always in process of change, and written words have different meanings to different ages and in different countries, whUe for a per- manent religion there must be a living, eternal Word that fits all ages, lands, and conditions, (c) Scripture is full of mystery, contradiction, and paradox which only " The key of David " — the inner experience of the heart — can unlock. Scripture is the Manger, but, unless the Holy Spirit comes as the day star in the heart, the Wise man will not find the Christ.^ {d) Scripture at best brings only knowledge. It lacks the power to deliver from the sin which it describes. It cannot create the faith, the desire, the love, the wUl purpose which are necessary to win that which the Scriptures portray. No book — no amount of " ink, paper, and letters " — can make a man good, since religion is not knowledge, but a way of living, a trans- * This Letter is preserved in J. G. Schellhom's/lwoem'iate literariae iiyzi}), xi. pp. 59-61. ^ Paradoxa, Vorrede, sec. 4. ' Ibid, sec. 6. * Ibid. sec. 2. ' See Das verbutschierte Bucli, passim. IV SEBASTIAN FRANCK 6i formed life, and that involves an inward life-process, a resident creative power. " In Pentecost all books are transcended." ^ As Franck pushes back through " the ink, paper, and letters of Scripture " to the Spirit and Truth which these great writings reveal, when they are read and appre- hended in the light of an inward spiritual experience, so, too, he is always seeking, through the historical Christ, to find the Eternal Christ — the ever-living, ever-present, personal Self -Revelation of God. He says, in his " Seven- Sealed Book," " I esteem Christ the Word of God above aU else, for without Him there is no salvation, and without Him no one can enjoy God." ^ " Christ," he says in the Paradoxa, " has been called the Image, the Character, the Expression of God, yes, the Glory and Effulgence of His Splendour, the very Impression of His Substance, so that in Him God Himself is seen and heard and known. For it is God Himself whom we see and hear and perceive in Christ. In Him God becomes visible and His nature is revealed. Everything that God is, or knows, or wills, or possesses, or can do, is incarnated in Christ and put before our eyes. Everything that can be said of God can as truly be said of Christ." ^ But this Christ, who is the very Nature and Character of God made visible and vocal, is, as we have seen, not limited to the historical Person who lived in Galilee and Judea. He is an eternal Logos, a living Word, coming to expression, in some degree, in all times and lands, revealing His Light through the dim lantern of many human lives — a Christ reborn in many souls, raised again in many victorious lives, and endlessly spreading His Kingdom through the ever-widening membership of the invisible Church.* Without this eternal revelation of Himself in a spiritual Fellowship of many members, God would not be God, as a Vine would not be a Vine without branches ; and contrariwise there could be no spiritual humanity without the inward immanent pres- 1 Quoted from Hegler, op. cit. p. 104. " Das verbiltschierte Buck, p. 3. ' Paradoxa, sec. loi. ' Ibid. sec. loi. 62 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. ence of this Self -Revealing God in Christ. ^ As in Pales- tine, so everywhere, Christ — not only Christ after the flesh, but after the Spirit— is a crucified Christ. Only those can open the Sealed Book — can penetrate the divine Revelation — who bear the mark of the Cross on their forehead, who have eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of the suffering and crucified Christ, who have discovered that the Word of God is eternally a Word of the Cross.^ God is nearest to us when He seems farthest away. He was nearest to Christ when He was crying : " My God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? " So, too, now he who is nearest to the cross is nearest to God, and where the flesh is being crucified and the end of all outward things is reached, there God is found? Sin means, for Franck, as for aU mystics of his type, ihtfree choice of something for one's private and particular self in place of life-aims that fulfil the good of the whole and realize the universal Will of God. To live for the flesh instead of for the spirit, to pursue the aims of a narrow private self where they conflict with the spirit of universal love, to turn from the Word of God in the soul to follow the idle voices of the moment — that is the very essence of sin. It is not inherited, it is self-chosen, and yet there is something in our disposition which sets itself in array against the divine revelation within us. The Adam-story is a genuine life-picture. It is a chapter out of the book of the ages, the life of humanity. We do not sin and fall because he did ; we sin and fall because we are human and finite, as he was, and choose the dark- ness instead of the Light, prefer Satan to God, pursue the way of death instead of the way of Life, as he did.* This will be sufficient to show the essential character of the religion of this lonely man and to present the main tendencies of his bold and independent thought. He had no desire to be the head of a party ; he was too remote ^ Paradoxa, sec. 8. " Das verbutschierte Buch, pp. 6-9, and Paradoxa, sec. 41. ' Paradoxa, sec. 41 and 42. * Moriae Enc. p. iii. Paradoxa, passim, especially sec. 28-32. See also Hegler op. cit. pp. 127-136. IV SEBASTIAN FRANCE 63 from the currents of evangelical Christianity to impress the common people whom he loved, and he was too radical a thinker to lead even the scholars who had become liberated from tradition by their humanistic studies and by historical insight. He was a kind of sixteenth-century Heraclitus, seeing the flow and flux of all things temporal, finding paradox and contradiction everywhere, discovering life to be a clash of opposites, with its " way up " and its " way down," on the surface a pessimist, but at the heart of himself an optimist ; and finally, beneath all the folly of history and all the sin and stupidity of human life, seeing with the eye of his spirit One Eternal Logos who steers all things toward purpose, who suffers as a Lamb slain for the flock, who reveals His Truth and Life in the sanctuary of the soul, and who through the ages is building an invisible Church, a divine Kingdom of many members, in whom He lives as the Life of their lives. CHAPTER V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD AND THE REFORMATION OF THE " MIDDLE WAY " ^ Among all the Reformers of the sixteenth century who worked at the immense task of recovering, purifying, and restating the Christian Faith, no one was nobler in life and personality, and no one was more uncompromis- ingly dedicated to the mission of bringing into the life of the people a type of Christianity winnowed clean from the husks of superstition and tradition and grounded in ethical and spiritual reedity, than was Caspar Schwenck- feld, the Silesian noble. No one, to a greater degree than he, succeeded in going behind, not only Scholastic formulations but even behind Pauline interpretations of Christ, to Christ Himself. The aspects of the Christ-life which powerfully moved him were very different from 1 The most important material for a study of Schwenckfeld is the following : — Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum, edited by C. D. Hartranft. Published Leipzig, vol. i. (1907) ; vol. ii. (1911) ; vol. iii. (1913). Other volumes to follow. Schriften von Kaspar Schwenckfeld, in 4 folio volumes. Published between the years 1564-1570. Indicated in my notes as vol. i., vol. ii., vol. iii. A, vol. iii. B. There are, too, many uncollected books and tracts, to some of which I refer in footnotes. Karl Ecke, Schwenckfeld, Luther, und der Gedanke einer apostolischen Reformation (Berlin, 1911). Important book, but to be followed with caution. R. H. Griitzmacher, Wort und Gdst (Leipzig, 1902). Gottfried Arnold, Kirchen- und Kdzer-Historien, i. pp. 1246-1299. (Edition of 1740.) H. W. Erbkam, Geschichte der proiestantischen Sekten im Zeitalier der Reformation (Hamburg und Gotha, 1848), pp. 357-475- Dollinger, Die Reformation, i. pp. 257-280. Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tubingen, 1912), pp. 881-886. 64 V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 65 those which moved Francis of Assisi three centuries earlier, but the two men had this much in common — they both went to Jesus Christ for the source and inspiration of their reUgion, they both Hved imder the spell of that dominating Personality of the Gospels, they both felt the power of the Cross and saw with their inner spirits that the real healing of the human soul and the eternal destiny of man were indissolubly bound up with the Person of Christ.^ Here again, as in the early years of the thirteenth century, there came a gentle Reformer of religion, who would use no compulsion but love, who knew how to suffer patiently with his Lord, and whose entire programme was the restoration of primitive Chris- tianity, though of necessity it would be restored, if at all, in terms of the spiritual ideals of the sixteenth century, as the Christianity of St. Francis had been in terms of thirteenth-century ideals. Caspar Schwenckfeld was bom of a noble family in the duchy of Liegnitz, in Lower SUesia, in 1489. He studied in Cologne, in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder,and probably also in the University of Erfurt, though he attained no University degree. His period of systematic study being over, about 1511 he threw himself into the life of a courtier, with the prospect of a successful worldly career before him. Luther's heroic contest against the evils and cor- ruptions of the Church and his proclamation of a Reform- ing faith shook the prosperous courtier wide awake and turned the currents of his life powerfully toward religion. He deeply felt at this time, what he expressed a few years later, that a new world was coming to birth and the old one djdng away. To the end of his days, and in spite of the harsh treatment which he later received from the Wittenberg Reformer, Schwenckfeld always remembered that it was the prophetic trumpet-caU of Luther which had siunmoned him to a new Hfe, and he always carried about with him in his long exile — an exile for which Luther was largely responsible — a beautiful respect and apprecia- 1 Christ, Schwenckfeld insisted, is the sum of the whole Bible, and to learn to know Christ fundamentally is to grasp the substance of the entire Scripture. F 66 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. tion for the man who had first turned him to a knowledge of the truth.i From the very beginning of his awakening he shows the moral earnestness of a prophet, and even in his earliest writings he emphasizes the inwardness of true religion and the importance of a personal experience of the living, creative Divine Word.^ As a result of this passion of his for the formation of moral and spiritual character in the lives of the people, he was very acute and sensitive to note the condition which actually existed around him, and he was not long in detecting, much to his sorrow, aspects of weakness in the new type of Christianity which was spreading over Germany. Even as early as 1524, in An Admonition to all the Brethren of Silesia,^ he called attention to the superficiality of the change which was taking place in men's lives as a result of the Reformation — " the lack of inward grasp " as he calls it— and to the externality of the new Reform, the tendency to stop at " alphabetical promises of salvation." He gives a searching examination to the central principles of Luther's teachings and approves of them all, but at the same time he points out that little wUl be gained if they be adopted only as intellectual statements and formulated views. He pleads for a faith in Christ and an appreciation of Him that shall " reach the deep regions of the spirit," renew the heart, and produce a new man in the believer — " the atoning work of Christ must be vital " — and for a type of religion that wiU involve suffering with Christ, real conformity of will to His wUl, dying to self and rising again with Him, which means that we cannot " take the 1 He wrote in 1543 to Luther : " I owe to you in God and the truth all honour, love, and goodwill, because from the first I have reaped much fruit from your service, and I have not ceased to pray for you according to my poor powers." — Schriften, ii. p. 701 d. ' la An Epistle to the Sisters in the Cloister at Naumberg, written probably in the autumn of 1523, he says : " A true Christian Ufe in its essential require- ments does not consist in external appearance . . . but quite the contrary, it does consist in personal trust in God through an experience of Jesus Christ, which the Holy Ghost brings forth in the heart by the hearing of the Divine Word." — Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum, i. p. 118. ' Ermahnung dess Missbrauchs etlicher fiirnemstenArtikel des Evangelii (152/1). Corpus Schw, ii. pp. 36-105. V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 67 cross at its softest spot." ^ He calls with glowing passion for a radical transformation of personal and social life, and for a serious attempt to revive primitive Christianity with its conquering power. Luther himself was always impressed with the lack of real, intense, personal religion which resulted from the Reformation movement, and he often bewailed this lack. He said once to Schwenckfeld in this early period, " Dear Caspar, genuine Christians are none too common. I wish I could see two together in a place ! " But with aU his titanic power to shake the old Church, Luther was not able to sift away the accumulated chaff of the ages and to seize upon the inward, living kernel of Christ's Gospel in such a real and vivid presentation that men were once again able to find the entire Christ, and were once again lifted into apostolic power through the discovery of Him. This was the task to which Schwenckfeld now felt himself summoned. It seemed to him that the entire basis of salvation should be grasped in a way quite different from Luther's way of formulation, and this called for a restate- ment of the whole revelation of God in Christ and of the work of Christ in the soul of man.^ Luther's final break with the spiritual Reformer of Silesia, which occurred in 1527, was primarily occasioned by Schwenckfeld's teaching on the meaning and value of the Lord's Supper, though their difference was by no means confined to that point. Schwenckfeld's position had culminated in 1526 in a suspension of the celebration of the Lord's Supper— the so-called Stillstand — until a right understanding and true practice of it according to the wUl of the Lord should be revealed.^ " We know at present of no apostolic commission," he wrote, " nor 1 " Wir greyffen das Creutz noch am waichsten Ort an." — Ermahnung dess Missbrauchs. Corpus Schw. ii. p. 89. 2 " There are now in general two parties that make wrong use of the Gospel of Christ, one of which turns to the right and the other to the left of the only true and straight way. The first party is that of the Papacy ... the other party consists of those to whom God has now granted a gracious light — But ! " — Ermahnung dess Missbrauchs. 3 The Stillstand was proposed in a Circular Letter written by Schwenckfeld, Valentine Crautwald, and the Liegnitz Pastors, April 21, 1^26.— Corpus Schwenck- feld. i. pp. 325-333- 68 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. again do we make any claim to be regarded as apostles, for we have neither received the fulness of the Holy Spirit nor the apostolic seal for such an office. We dwell in humility and ascribe nothing to ourselves, except that we bear witness to Christ, invite men to Christ, preach Christ and His infinite work of salvation, and labour as much as we can that Christ may be truly known." ^ Into the bitter controversy over the Sacrament — a controversy between noble and sincere Reformers, which forms the supreme internal tragedy of the Reformation — we need not now enter. We shall in the proper place give Schwenckfeld's position upon it, though only in so far as it belongs in an exposition of his type of spiritual Christianity ; but the immediate effect of his position and practices was such a collision with Luther, and the arousal of such hostility on the part of the Lutherans of Silesia, that the continued pursuit of Schwenckfeld's mission in that country became impossible. He was, however, not expelled by edict, but under compulsion of the existing situation ; and in order not to be a trouble to his friend, the Duke of Liegnitz, he went in 1529 into voluntary exile, never to return. For thirty years he was a wanderer without a permanent home on the earth, but he could thank his Lord Christ, as he did, for granting him through all these years an inward freedom, and for bringing him into " His castle of Peace." He once wrote : " If I had wanted a good place on earth, if I had cared more for temporal than for eternal things, and if I would have deserted my Christ, then I might have stayed in my fatherland and in my own house, and I might have had the powerful of this world for my friends." ^ He sojourned for longer or shorter periods in Stras- bourg, Augsburg, Ulm, and other cities, but nowhere was he safe from his enemies, and he always faced the prospect of banishment even from his place of temporary sojourn. ' The revival of this idea of a StiUstcmd, that is, of a suspension of certain time-honoured practices of the Church until a further revelation and new endue- ment should be granted, will be referred to in later chapters, especially in con- nection with the Collegiants of HoUand and the English Seekers. 2 Ecke, op. cit. p. 217. V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 69 Furious declarations were passed against him by the Schmalkald League in 1540, for to his anti-Lutheran views on the sacraments he had now added teachings on the nature of Christ which the theologians pronounced unorthodox. Three years later he sent a messenger to Luther in hope of a friendly understanding. Luther's answer was brief and final : " The stupid fool, possessed by the devil, understands nothing. He does not know what he is babbUng. But if he won't stop his drivel, let him at least not bother me with the booklets which the devil spues out of him." ^ At the ministerial Council of Protestant States in 1556 Schwenckfeld was denounced in the most vituperous language of the period, and the civil authorities were urged to proceed against him as a dangerous heretic. He always had, notwithstanding this pursuit of theological hate, many powerful friends, and a large number of brave and devoted followers who were glad to risk goods, home, and life for the sake of what was to them the living Word of God. He died — or as his friends preferred to say, he had a quiet and peaceful " home passage " — at Ulm in 1561. Of the purity, the brave sincerity, the nobility, the outward and inward consistency of his Hfe there is no question. His enemies had no word to say which reflected upon the motives of his heart or upon the genuine piety of his life. His religion cost him all that he held dear in the outer world — he had not taken " the cross at the softest spot " — and he practised his faith as the most precious thing a man could possess in this world or in any other. We must now turn to a study of his t5^e of Chris- tianity, which will be presented here not in the order of its historical development, but as it appears in perspective in his life and writings. He does not ground his con- ception of salvation, his idea of religion iiberhaupt, as the humanistic Reformers, Denck, Biinderhn, Entfelder, and Franck, do, on the essentially divine nature of the ^ Arnold, o^.cii.ii. p. 251. There are many similar references to Schwenckfeld in Luther's Table Talk, and he usually calls him by the opprobrious name of " Stenkfeld." 70 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. soul in its deepest reality,^ nor again as the medieval mystics do, on the substantial presence within the soul of a divine soul-centre, an unlost and inalienable Spark or Image of God which can turn back home and unite itself with its Source, the Godhead. He begins, as Luther does, with man " fallen," " dead in sin," by nature " blind and deaf " to divine realities. For him, as for Luther, there exists no natural freedom of the will, by which a person can spontaneously and of his own initiative rise up, shake off the shackles of sin, and go to living as a son of God. This stupendous event, this absolute shift of the life-level, comes, and can come, he thinks, only through an act of God, directly, immediately wrought upon the soul. Salvation must be a supernatural event. Through this act of God from above there results within the soul an experience which in every respect is a new creation. It is a cataclysmic event of the same order as the fiat lux of cosmic creation, a rebirth through which the man who has it once again comes into the condition Adam was in before he fell. Everything which has to do with salvation in Schwenck- feld's Christianity goes back to the historical Christ.^ Christ is the first-bom of this new creation. He is the first " new Adam," who by His triumphant life and victorious resurrection has become for ever " a life-giving Spirit," the creative Principle of a new humanity. In Christ the Word of God, the actual Divine Seed of God, became flesh, entered into our human nature and pene- trated it with Spirit and with Life, conquered its stubborn bent toward sin, and transfigured and transformed this human flesh into a divine and heavenly substance. By obedience to the complete will of God, even to the extreme depths of suffering, sacrifice, and death on the Cross for ' " Ein naturliches Licht kennt Schwenckfeld nicht." — Grlitzmacher, Wort und Geist (Leipzig, 1902), p. 168. ^ The important data for Schwenckfeld's doctrine of Christ and the way of salvation will be found in the following writings by him : — Von der gottlichen Kindschaft und Herrlichkeit des ganzen Sones Goltes (1538). Ermanunge zum wahren und selig machende Erkdnntnis Christi (1539). Konfession und Erkldnmg von Erkdnntims Christi und seiner gottlichen Herrlichkeit (1540). V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 71 the love of men, Christ glorified human flesh, exalted it from flesh to spirit, and in His resurrected heavenly life He is able to unite Himself inwardly with the souls of believers, so that His spiritual resurrected flesh and blood can be their food and drink, and He can become the life-giving source of a new order of humanity, the spiritual Head of a new race. " If the soul of man," he wrote, "is to be truly nourished, vitally fed and watered, so that it comes into possession of Eternal Life, it must die to its fleshly life and receive into itself a divine and spiritual Life, having its source in the Being of God and mediated to the soul by the living, inward-working Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ," through which mediation we come into spiritual union and vital fellowship with God who is Spirit.! Salvation for Schwenckfeld, therefore, is participation in the life of this new creation, this new world-order. To become a Christian, in his sense of the word, is to pass over one of the most decisive watersheds in the universe, to go from one kingdom to another kingdom of a higher rank. The process — for it is a vital process — is from beginning to end in the realm of experience. By the exercise of faith in the crucified, risen, and glorified God- Man, as the life-giving Spirit, real power from a higher world streams into the soul. Something " pneumatic," something which belongs ontologically to a higher spiritual world-order, comes into the person as a divinely bestowed germ-plasm, with living, renewing, organizing power. As with Irenaeus, so with Schwenckfeld, salvation is " real redemption," the " deification " of mortal man, the actual formation of an immortal nature, the restora- tion of humanity to what it originally was, through the in-streaming life-energy of a mystical Adam-Christ, the Founder and Head of a new spiritual race.^ By this incoming spiritued power and hfe-substance the entire personality of the recipient is affected. The ^ Schriften, i. p. 664. See also p. 662. ' For the doctrine of deification in Irenaeus see Hamack, Hist, of Dogma, ii. pp. 230-318. 72 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. recreative energy which pours in transforms both soul and body. The inner eternal Word of God, who became flesh, acts upon the inner nature of man, so that the believing man is changed into something spiritual, divine and heavenly, and like Jesus Christ, the incarnated Word of God.i There comes, with this epoch-making experi- ence, a sense of freedom not known before, a power of control over the body and its appetites, an illumination of the intellect, a new sensitiveness of conscience to the meaning of sin, an extraordinary expansion of the vision of the goal of life — ^which is a full-grown man in Christ, — and an apprehension of the gift of the Spirit sufficient for the achievement of that goal. Not least among the signs of transfiguration and of heightened life is the attainment of a joy which spreads through the inward spirit and shines on the face — a joy which can turn hard exUe into a Ruheschloss, " a castle of peace." Those who have experienced this dynamic trans- figuration gain thereby gifts, capacities, and powers to hear the Word of God within their own souls, and thus this Word, which is the same life-giving Spirit that became flesh in Christ and that produces the new creation in man, becomes a perpetual inward Teacher in those who are reborn. " Precious gifts of the Holy Ghost flow from the essential Being of God into the heart of the believer." There is, Schwenckfeld holds, a double revelation of God. The primary Word of God is eternal, spiritual, inward. " The Word, when spiritual mes- sengers preach or teach, is of two kinds with a decided difference in their manner of working. One is of God, even is God, and lives and works in the heart of the messenger. This is the inner Word, and is in reality nothing else than the continued manifestation of Christ. He is inwardly revealed, and heard with the inward ears of the heart." ^ It is, in fact, God Himself operating as Life and Spirit and Light upon the spiritual substance of the himian soul, first as the Life-Seed which forms the new creation in man, and afterwards as the permanent ^ See Schriften, i. p. 768. " Ibid. i. p. 767 a. V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 73 nourishing and tutoring Spirit who leads the obedient soul on into all the Truth, and perfects it into the likeness and stature of Christ. " There is a living, inner Scripture, written in the believer's heart by the finger of God." " This inner Scripture has an active creative power of holiness, and makes holy, living, righteous and saved all those in whose hearts it is written." The divine word in the secondary sense is the outward word — the word of Scripture. " The other word which serves the inner Word with voice, sound, and expression is the external word, and is heard by the external man with his ears of sense, and is written and read in letters. He who has read and heard only that, and not the inner Word, has not heard the Gospel of Christ, the Gospel of Grace, nor has he received or understood it." ^ It is at best only the witness or testimony which assists the soul to find the real life-giving Word. Cut apart from the inner spiritual Word, the word of the letter is " dead," as the body would be if sundered from the spirit. " It paints truth powerfully for the eye, but it cannot bring it into the heart." ^ " The Scriptures cannot bring to the soul that of which they speak. This must be sought directly from God Himself." ^ In his practical use of Scripture and in his estimate of its importance he is hardly behind Luther himself. " There is," he says, " no writing on earth like the Holy Scriptures." * His Christianity is penetrated and illuminated at every point by the profound spiritual experiences of the saints of the Bible, and stOl more by the vivid portraits of Christ in the Gospels, by the words from His lips recorded there, and by the experiences of the apostles and the develop- ment of the primitive Church. He never doubts or questions the inspiration of the Scriptures ; quite the contrary, he holds that Scripture is " given by God " and is an inexhaustible well of inspired truth from which the soul can endlessly draw. The actual content of Christian faith is supplied by the historical revelation ; 1 Schriften, i. p. 767 a. ^ Die heilige Schrift. x. d. s Ibid, cviii. c. ' Ibid. ii. b. 74 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. but Schwenckfeld always insists that written words, however inspired, are stiU external to the soul, and merely record historical events which have happened to others in other ages. " If man," he writes, " is to understand spiritual things and is to know and judge rightly, he must bring the divine Light to the Scriptures, the Spirit to the letter, the Truth to the picture, and the Master to His created work. ... In a word, to understand the Scriptures a man must become a new man, a man of God ; he must be in Christ who gave forth the Scriptures." ^ That which is to change the inner nature of a man must be something personally experienced and not external to him ; must be in its own nature as spiritual as the soul itself is and not material, as written words are. " The pen cannot completely bring the heart to the paper, nor can the mouth entirely express the well of living water within itself." ^ The Bible leads to Christ and bears witness of Him as no other book does, but it is not Christ. And even the Bible remains a closed book until Christ opens it.^ The Scriptures teU, as no other writings do, of the Word of God and its life-operations in the world, but they are still not the Word of God. The spiritual realities of life cannot be settled by laboriously piling up texts of Scripture, by subtle theological dialectic, or by learned exegesis of sacred words. If these spiritual realities are to become real and effective to us, it must be through the direct relation of the human spirit with the divine Spirit — the inward spiritual Word of God.* " He who wUl see the truth must have God for eyes." ^ Schwenckfeld's view of the process of salvation and the permanent illumination of the reborn soul by a real incoming divine substance — whether called Word or Seed — is the dynamic feature of his Christianity. He is endeavouring to find a foundation for a religious energism that will avoid the dangers which beset Luther's principle ^ Die heilige Schrift. vi. and vii. ^ Vom Worte Gottes, xxii. c. 3 Die heilige Schrift. iv. b. * Catechismus vom Wort des CreUtzes, vom Wort Gottes, und vom Underscheide des Worts des Geists und Buchstabens. ' Die heilige Schrift. iv. c. V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 75 of " justification by faith." From the inception of the Reformation movement there had appeared a tendency to regard the exercise of " faith " as all that was required for human salvation. Luther did not mean it so, but it was the easy line of least resistance to hold that " faith " had a magic effect in the invisible realm, that is to say : As soon as a person exercised " faith," God counted the " faith " for righteousness, and regarded that person as " justified." The important operation was thus in a region outside the soul. The momentous shift was not in the personal character of the individual, but in the way the individual was regarded and valued in the heavenly estimates. It was the discovery of the pre- valence of this crude and magical reliance on " faith " which first drove Schwenckfeld to a deeper study of the problems of religion. It was the necessity that he felt to discover some way by which man himself could be actually renewed, transformed, recreated, and made righteous — rather than merely counted or reckoned righteous by some magical transaction — that made him an independent reformer and set him on his solitary way. To this deep and central question of religion, How is a human soul saved ? there were in Schwenckfeld's day four well-known answers : (i) There was the answer of the Church in which he was bom. Salvation is by Grace, mediated through the sacramental channels of the mysterious and divinely founded Church. Man's part consists in the performance of the " works " which the Church requires of him and the proper use of the sacramental means of Grace. Through these sacramental channels actual Grace, sub- stantial divine help, comes into man and works the miracle of salvation in him. (2) There was the answer of the great mystics, not always clear and simple, but very profound and significant. The Ground and the Abyss of the soul is one substance with the eternal and absolute Godhead. Finite strivings, isolated purposes, selfish aims, centrifugal pursuits are vain and Ulusory. We lose our lives in so far as we live 76 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. in self-will and in self-centred joys. The way home, the way of salvation, is a return to that Ground-Reahty from which we have gone out — a return to union and oneness of Life with the infinite Godhead. (3) The third answer is that of Luther : " Salvation is by faith." This seems at first to be a dynamic answer. It breaks in on the distracted world like a new moral tmmpet-caJl to the soul. It comes to men like a fresh Copernican insight which discovers a new religious world- centre. The soul by its own inward vision, by its moral attitude, by the swing of the wiH, can initiate a new relation with God, and so produce a new inward kingdom. That, however, is not Luther's message. He could not take that optimistic view of life because it implied that man has within himself a native capacity for God, and can rise to the vision and attitude which lead to a moral renewal of the self. Luther never succeeded in clearing his principle from scholastic complications. He never put it upon a moral and dynamic foundation. It remains to the last a mysterious principle, and was easily open to the antinomian interpretation, that upon the exercise of faith God for Christ's merits " counts man justified " — an interpretation dear to those who are slack-minded and prone to forensic schemes of salvation. (4) The fourth view was that of the humanist- spiritual Reformers, men of the type of Denck and Biinderlin, who are the precursors of what we to-day call the ethical way of salvation. They assume that salvation is from beginning to end a moral process. God is in essence and nature a loving, self-revealing, self- giving God, who has in aU ages unveiled Himself in revelations suited to the spiritual stature of man, has in the fulness of time become incarnate in Christ, and forever pleads with men through His Spirit to come to Him. Those who see and hear, those who respond and co-operate, i.e. those who exercise faith, are thereby morally transformed into an inward likeness to Him, and so enter upon a life which prefers light to darkness, good- ness to sin, love to hate. V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 77 Schwenckfeld was not satisfied with any of these views. He knew and loved the mystics, but he was too much impressed with the mighty Life and message of the historical Christ to adopt the mystic's way. He felt that Lutheran Christianity was too scholastic, too dependent on externals, too inclined to an antinomian use of " faith." He could not go along the path of the Humanist-Spirituals, for he believed that man had been ruined in the Fall, was too deeply scarred with sin to help himself, was without freewill, was devoid of native capacity for spiritual vision and saving faith. Salvation, if it is to be effected at aU, must be initiated by Divine Grace and must be accomplished for man by God. But it could be for Schwenckfeld no forensic adjustment, no change of reckoning in the heavenly ledgers. " Justifica- tion," he once wrote, " is not only forgiveness of sins, but it is more, it is the actual healing and renewing of the inward man." ^ It must involve a real and radical transformation of man's nature — man must cease from sin and the love of it, he must receive from beyond himself a passion for goodness and a power to enable him to achieve it. The passion for goodness, in Schwenckfeld's view, is created through the vision of the God-Man who has suffered and died on the Cross for us, and has been glorified in absolute newness of life ; and the power for moral holiness is supplied to the soul by the direct in- flowing of divine Life-streams from this new Adam, who is henceforth the Head of the spiritual order of humanity, the Life-giving Spirit who renews aJl who receive Him in faith. " Faith," he says, " is a penetrating stream of light flowing out from the central divine Light and Fire, which is God Himself, into our hearts, by which we are inflamed with love for God and for our neighbour, and by which we see both what we lack in ourselves and what can abimdantly supply our lack, so that we may be made ready for the Kingdom of God and be prepared to become children of God." ^ " Real faith," he elsewhere says, " that is to say, justifying faith, can come from nothing 1 Schriften, i. p. 725. ' Hid- i- P- 634. 78 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. external. It is a gracious and gratuitous gift of God through the Holy Spirit. It is an emanation ["Tropflein"] from the eternal Life of God, and is of the same essence and substance as God Himself." ^ It is, in fact, the Eternal Word of God become vocal and vital within the inner region of our own lives. ^ The Church, in Schwenckfeld's conception, is this complete spiritual community of which Christ is the Head. " We maintain," he wrote in the early period of his mission, and it remained the settled view of his life, " that the Christian Church according to the usage of the Scripture is the congregation or assembly of all or of many who with heart and soul are believers in Christ, whose Head is Christ our Lord, as St. Paul writes to the Ephesians and elsewhere, and who are bom of God's Word alone, and are nourished and ruled by God's Word." ' " The Christian Church," he elsewhere says, " is the entire community of the children of God. It is the actual Body of Christ, the Seed of Abraham, the House of the living God, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. It has its life and power through the obedience of faith, it manifests to the world the Name of the Lord, the goodness and the glory of Him who called its members from darkness into His marvellous Light. Wherever such a Church is gathered, there also is Christ, its Head, who governs it, teaches it, guards and defends it, works in it and pours His Life into its members, to each according to the measure of his living faith. This inward invisible Christ belongs to all ages and aU times and lands." * The Church, in its true life and power, is thus for him a continuation of the apostolic type. He had no interest in the formation of a sectarian denomination, and he was fundamentally averse to a State-Church system. The true Church community can be identified with no temporal, empirical organization — ^whether established or separatist. It is a spiritual, invisible community as wide as the world, including all persons in aU regions of ^ Schriften, i. p. 380. ^ See ibid. ii. p. 421. ' Corpus Schwenck. i. p. 295. * Schriften, iii. A. V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 79 the earth and in all religious communions who are joined in life and spirit to the Divine Head. It expands and is enlarged by a process of organic growth under the organizing direction of the Holy Spirit. " As often," he writes, " as a new warrior comes to the heavenly arniy, as often as a poor sinner repents, the body of Christ becomes larger, the King more splendid. His Kingdom stronger, His might more perfect. Not that God becomes greater or more perfect in His essence, but that flesh becomes more perfect in God, and God dwells in aU His fulness in the flesh into which in Jesus Christ He ever more pours Himself." ^ Each soul that enters the kingdom of experience through the work of the Life-giving Spirit is buUded into this invisible expanding Church of the ages, and is endowed with some " gift " to become an organ of the Divine Head. All spiritual service arises through the definite call and commission of God, and the persons so called and commissioned are rightly prepared for their service, not by election and ordination, but by inward compulsion and illumination through the Word of God. The preacher possesses no magical efficacy. His only power lies in his spiritual experience, his clarified vision, and his organic connection with Christ the Head of the Church and the source of its energy. If his life is spiritually poor and weak and thin, if it lacks moral passion and insight, his ministry wiU be correspondingly ineffective and futile, for the dynamic spiritual impact of a life is in proportion to its personal experience and its moral capacity to transmit divine power. Here again the emphasis is on the moral aspect of religion as con- trasted with the magical. There can be no severing of the ecclesiastical ofiice or function from the moral char- acter of the person himself. Schwenckfeld has cut away completely from sacerdotalism and has returned, as far as with his limited historical insight he knew how to do it, to the ideal of the primitive Apostohc Church. The true mark and sign of membership in the community of saints — the invisible Church— is, for him as for St. Paul, 1 Schriften, ii. p. 290. 8o SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. possession of the mind of Christ, faith, patience, integrity, peace, unity of spirit, the power of God, joy in the Holy Ghost, and the abounding gifts and fruits of the Spirit. " No outward unity or uniformity, either in doctrine or ceremonies, or rules or sacraments, can make a Christian Church ; but inner unity of spirit, of heart, soul and conscience in Christ and in the knowledge of Him, a unity in love and faith, does make a Church of Christ." ^ The Church is in a very true sense bone of Christ's bone and flesh of His flesh, vitalized by His blood, empowered by His real presence, and formed into an organism which reveals and exhibits the divine and heavenly Life — a world-order as far above the natural human life as that is above the plant. Quite consistently with this spiritual view of religion — this view that the true Church is an invisible Church — Schwenckfeld taught that the true sacrament is an inner and spiritual sacrament, and not legal and external like those of the Old Testament. " God must Himself, apart from aU external means, through Christ touch the soul, speak in it, work in it, if we are to experience salvation and eternal life." ^ The direct incoming of the Divine Spirit, producing a rebirth and a new creation in the man himself, is the only baptism which avails with God or which makes any difference in the actual condition of man. Baptism in its true significance is the reception of cleansing power, it is an inward process which purifies the heart, illuminates the conscience, and is not only necessary for salvation but in fact is salvation. Christian baptism is therefore not with water, but with Christ : it is the immersion of the soul in the life-giving streams of Christ's spiritual presence. Schwenckfeld was always kindly disposed toward the Anabaptists, but he was not of them. He presented a very different tj^e of Christianity to their type, which he penetratingly criticized, though in a kindly spirit. He did not approve of rebaptism, for he insisted that the all- important matter was not how or when water was applied, I Schrifien, ii. p. 785. 2 /j,;^. j. p_ ^gg ^^ V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 8i but the reception of Christ's real baptism, an inner baptism, a baptism of spirit and power, by which the believing soul, the inner man, is clarified, strengthened, and made pure.^ His view of the Lord's Supper in the same way fits his entire conception of Christianity as an inward religion. It was through his study of the meaning and significance of the Supper that he arrived at his peculiar and unique type of religion. He began his meditation with the practical test — the case of Judas. If the bread and wine of the Last Supper were identical with the body and blood of Christ, then Judas must have eaten of Christ as the other disciples did, and, notwithstanding his evil spirit, he must have received the divine nature into himself — but that is impossible. In his intellectual difficulty he turned to the great mystical discourse in the sixth chapter of John, in the final interpretation of which he received important suggestion and help from Valentine Crautwald, Lector of the Dom in Liegnitz. In this remarkable discourse Christ promises to feed His disciples. His followers, with His own flesh and blood, by which they will partake of the eternal nature and enter with Him into a resurrection life. The " flesh and blood " here offered to men cannot refer to an outward sacrament which is eaten in a physical way, because in the very same discourse Christ says that outward, physical flesh profits nothing. It is the Spirit that gives life, and, therefore, the " flesh and blood " of Christ must be synonymous with the Word if they are actually to recreate and nourish the soul and to renew and vitalize the spirit of man. This feeding and renewing of the soul through Christ's " flesh and blood," Schwenckfeld treats, as we have seen, not as a figure or s5rmbo], but as a literal fact of Christian experience. Through the exercise of faith in the person of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ — the creative Adam — ^incorruptible, life-giving substance comes into the soul and transfigures it. Something from the divine ^ Schriften, i. p. 513. For a criticism of the legalism of the Anabaptists see ibid. i. pp. 801-808. 82 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. and heavenly world, something from that spiritualized and glorified nature of Christ, becomes the actual food of man's spirit, so that through it he partakes of the same nature as that of the God-Man. Not once or twice, but as a continuous experience, the soul may share this glorious meal of spiritual renewal — this eating and drink- ing of Christ. The external supper — and for that matter the external baptism too — may have a place in the Chmch of Christ as a pictorial S5anbol of the actual experience, or as a visible profession of faith, but this outward sign is, in his view, of little moment, and must not occupy the foreground of attention, nor be made a subject of polemic or of insistence. The new Creation, the response of faith to the living Word, the transfiguration of life into the likeness of Christ, are the momentous facts of a Christian experience, and none of these things is mediated by external ceremonies. It was his ideal purpose to promote the formation of little groups of spiritual Christians which should live in the land in quietness, and spread by an inward power and inspiration received from above. He saw clearly that no true Reformation could be carried through by edicts or by the proclamations of rulers, or by the decision of councils. A permanent work, from his point of view, could be accomplished only by the slow and patient development of the religious life and spiritual experience of the people, since the goal which he sought was the formation, not of state-made Churches, but of renewed personal lives, awakened consciences, burning moral passion, and first-hand conviction of immediate relation with the World of Divine Reality. To this work of arousing individual souls to these deeper issues of life, and of building up little scattered societies under the headship of Christ, which should be, as it were, oases of the Kingdom of God in the world, he dedicated his years of exUe. All such quiet inward movements progress, as Christ foresaw, too slowly and gradually " for observa- tion " ; but this method of reforming the Church through rebirth and the creation of Christ-guided societies accom- V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 83 plished, even during Schwenckfeld's life, impressive results. There were many, not only in Silesia but in all regions which the missionary-reformer was able to reach, who " preferred salt and bread in the school of Christ " to ease and plenty elsewhere, and they formed their little groups in the midst of a hostile world. The public records of Augsburg reveal the existence, during Schwenckfeld's life, of a remarkable group of these quiet, spiritual worshippers in that city. Their leaders were men of menial occupations — ^men who would have attracted no notice from the ofhciaJs of city or Church if they had been contented to conform to any prevailing or recognized type of religion. Under the inspiration which they received from the writings of Schwenckfeld they formed " a little meeting " — ^in every respect like a seventeenth -century Quaker meeting — in their own homes, meeting about in turn, discarding all use of sacraments, and waiting on God for edification rather than on public preaching. They read the books and epistles of Schwenckfeld in their gatherings, they wrote epistles to other groups of Schwenckfeldians, and received epistles in turn and read them in their gatherings. They objected to any form of religious exercise which seemed to them incomprehensible to their spirits and which did not spring directly out of the inward ministry of the Word of God. They were eventually discovered, their leaders banished, their books burned, and their little meeting of " quiet spirituals " (" stillen Frommen ") as they called themselves was ruthlessly stamped out.^ Societies something like this were formed in scores of places, and continued to cultivate their inward piety in the Fatherland, until harried by persecution they migrated in 1734 to Pennsylvania, where they have continued to maintain their community life until the present day. But the most important effect of Schwenckfeld's life and work must not be sought in the history of these * The details are given in Friedlrich Roth's ^«gs6«)-gs Reformations-Geschichte (Miinchen, 1907), iii. p. 245 S. 84 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. visible societies which owed their origin to his apostolic activity. His first concern was always for the building of the invisible community of God throughout the whole world — not for the promotion of a sect — and his greatest contribution wUl be found in the silent, often unnoticed, propagation of his spirit, the contagious dissemination of his ideas, the gradual influence of his truth and insight upon Christian communions and upon individual believers that hardly knew his name. His correspondence was extraordinarily extensive ; his books and tracts, which were legion, found eager readers and transmitters, and slowly — too slowly for observation — the spiritual message of the homeless reformer made its way into the inner life of faithful souls, who in aU lands were praying for the consolation of God's new Israel. Even so early as 1551, an English writer, Wyllyam Turner, in a book written as " a preservative and treacle against the poyson of Pelagius," especially as " renewed " in the " furious secte of the Annabaptistes," mentions the " Swengfeldianes " as one of the heads of " this monstre in many poyntes lyke unto the watersnake with seven heads." ^ There is, however, slight evidence of the spread of Schwenckf eld's views, whether they be caUed " poyson " or " treacle," in England during the sixteenth century, though they are clearly in evidence in the seventeenth century. One of the most obvious signs of his influence in the seven- teenth century, both in England and in HoUand, appears in the spread of principles which were embodied in the " CoUegiants " of Holland and the corresponding societies of " Seekers " in England.^ The cardinal principle of these groups in both countries was the belief that the visible Church had become apostate and had lost its divine authoritative power, that it now lacked apostolic ministry and efficacious sacraments and " the gifts of the Spirit " which demonstrate the true apostolic succession. There- fore those who held this view, " like doves without their mates," were waiting and seeking for the appearing of a ^ A Preservative or Treacle against the Poyson of Pelagius, etc. (1551), A iii. " For a fuller account of the CoUegiants see Chap. VII. V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 85 new apostolic commission, for the fresh outpouring of God's Spirit on men, and for the refounding of the Church, as originally, in actual demonstration and power. It was a settled view of Schwenckfeld's that the visible Church had lost its original power and authority, and he cherished, too, a persistent faith and hope that in God's good time it would again be restored to its pristine vitality and its original conquering power. " We ask," he writes, " where in the world to-day there is gathered together an external Church of the apostolic form and type, and according to the will of Christ." ^ And yet scattered everywhere throughout the world— even in Turkey and Calcutta ^ — God has, he says. His own faithful people, known only to Him, who live Christlike and holy lives, whom Christ the living Word, that became flesh, baptizes inwardly with the Holy Spirit and inwardly feeds without external preaching or sacrament, writes His law in their hearts and guides into Eternal Life.^ But the time is coming when once more there wiU be in the world an apostolic and completely reformed Church of Christ, His living body and the organ of the Spirit, with divine gifts and powers and commission. In the interim let the chosen children of God, he writes, rejoice and comfort them- selves in this, that their salvation rests neither in an external Church, nor in the external use of sacraments, nor in any external thing, but that it rests alone in Jesus Christ our Lord, and is received through true and living faith.* For Schwenckfeld himself the important matter was the increase of this inward life, the silent growth of this kingdom of God in the hearts of men, the spread of this invisible Church, but his writings plainly suggest that God will eventually restore the former glory to His visible Church. " You are," he says, in one of his epistles, " to pray earnestly that God will raise up true apostles and preachers and evangelists, so that His Church may 1 Schrifien, iii. B, p. 572. ' Ibid. ii. p. 783. ' Ibid. ii. p. 784. ♦ Ibid. iii. .'V, p. 146. 86 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. be reformed in Christ, edified in tlie Holy Ghost, and unified into one, and so that our boasting of the pure preaching of the Gospel and the right understanding and use of the sacraments may be true before God," ^ and the time is coming, we may in good faith believe, when the sacraments will be used according to the wiU of Christ, and then there wUl be a true Christian Church, taught outwardly by apostolic ministers and taught inwardly by the Lord Himself.^ Fortunately, however, salvation does not depend upon anything outward, and during the Stillstand or interim there is no danger to be feared from the intermission of outward ceremonies.* Sebastian Franck graphically describes this waiting, seeking attitude as well known in his time. He wrote in his "Chronicle " (153 1) : "Some are ready to allow Baptism and other ceremonies to remain in abeyance [" stilston," evidently Schwenckfeld's Stillstand] until God gives a further command and sends true labourers into His harvest-field. For this some have great longings and yearnings and wish nothing else." * The intense expecta- tion which the Seekers, both in Holland and England, exhibit was, of course, a much later development, was due to many influences, and is connected only indirectly with the reforming work and the Gospel message of Schwenckfeld. It indicates, in the exaggerated emphasis of the Seekers, a failure to grasp the deeper significance of spiritual Christianity as a present reality, and it misses the truth, which the world has so painfully slowly grasped, that the only way to form an apostolic and efficacious visible Church is not through sudden miracles and cataclysmic " restorations " and " commissions," but by the slow contagion and conquering power of this inward kingdom, of this invisible Church, as it becomes the spirit and life of the outward and visible Church. This truth the SUesian reformer knew full well, and for this reason he was ready at aU costs to be a quiet apostle of the invisible Community of God and let the outward 1 Schriften, il. p. 785. ^ Ibid. ii. p. 783. 8 Jbid. iii. A, p. 74. * Franck's Chronica (1531), p. ccccli. V CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD 87 organism and organ of its ministry come in God's own way. The nobler men among the Enghsh Seekers, as also among the Dutch Societies, rose gradually to this larger view of spiritual religion, and came to realize, as Schwenckfeld did, that the real processes of salvation are inward and dynamic. Samuel Rutherford is not a very safe witness in matters which involve impartial judgment, or which concern types of spiritual experience foreign to his own type, but he is following a real clew when he connects, as he does, the leaders of spiritual, inward religion in his day, especially those who had shared the seeker aspira- tions, with Schwenckfeld.^ Rutherford's account is thoroughly unfair and fuU of inaccuracies, but it suffices at least to reveal the fact that Schwenckfeld was a living force in the period of the EngHsh Commonwealth, and that, though almost a hundred years had passed since his " home-passage " from Ulm was accomplished, he was stiU making disciples for the ever-enlarging com- munity and household of God. 1 Rutherford, A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist (1648), chap. v. CHAPTER VI SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO : A FORGOTTEN PROPHET ^ Reformation history has been far too closely confined to a few main highways of thought, and few persons therefore realize how rich in ideas and how complex in typical religious conceptions this spiritual upheaval really was. The types that prevailed and won their way to wide favour have naturally compelled attention and are adequately known. There were, however, very serious and impressive attempts made to give the Re- formation a totally different course from the one it finally took in history, and these attempts^-d^feated by the sweep of the main current, became,^bmerged, and their dedicated and heroic leaders became forgotten. Many of these spiritual ventures which for the moment failed and were submerged are in striking parallelism with currents of thought to-day, and our generation can perhaps appreciate at their real worth these solitary souls who were destined to see their cause defeated, to hear their names defamed, and to live in jeopardy among the very people whom they most longed to help. Sebastian Castellio is one of these submerged venturers. While he lived he was so absolutely absorbed in the battle for truth that he took no pains at all to acquaint posterity with the details of his life, or to make his name quick and powerful in the ears of men. When he died ' F. Buisson, SSbastien Castdlion, sa vie et son ceuvre (Paris, 1892), 2 vols. ; Charles Jarrin, Deux OublUs (Bourg, 1889) ; fimile Broussoux, SibasHen Cas- telUon, sa vie, ses ceuvres, d sa ihiologie (Strasbourg, 1867) ; A. Schweizer, Die protestantischen Ceniraldogmen (Ziirich, 1854), pp. 311-373. CHAP. VI SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO 89 and laid down the weapons of his spiritual warfare his pious opponents thanked God for the relief and did what they could to consign him to oblivion. But after the long and silent flow of years the world has come up to his position and can appreciate a spirit who was too far in advance of the line of march to be comprehended in his lifetime. He was bom in the little French vDlage of St. Martin du Fresne — not many miles west of Lake Geneva — in the year 1515. The home was pinched with poverty, but somebody in the home or in the village discovered that little Bastian was endowed with unusual gifts and must be given the chance to realize the life which his youth forecast ; and that ancient family sacrifice, which has glorified so many homes of poverty, was made here in St. Martin, and the boy, possessed with his eager passion for knowledge, was started on his course in the College de la Trinite in Lyons. He soon found himself bursting into a new world, the world of classic antiquity, which the Humanists were restoring to the youth of that period, and he experienced that emancipat- ing leap of soul and thrill of joy which such a world of beauty can produce upon a lofty spirit that sees and appreciates it. Some time during the Lyons period he came also under a still greater and more emancipating influence, the divine and simple Christ of the Gospels, whom the most serious of the Humanists had rediscovered, and to whom CasteUio now dedicated the central loyalty of his soul. At twenty-five years of age, now a splendid classical scholar, radiant with faith and hope and the vision of a new age for humanity which the recovered gospel was to bring in, Castellio went to Strasbourg to share the task of the Reformers and to put his life into the new move- ment. Calvin, then Uving in Strasbourg, received the brilliant recruit with joy and took him into his own home. When the great Reformer returned to Geneva in 1541 to take up the mighty task of his life he summoned CasteUio to help him, and made him Principal of the College of Geneva, which Calvin planned to make one of the fore- 90 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. most seats of Greek learning and one of the most illuminat- ing centres for the study of the Scriptures. The young scholar's career seemed assured. He had the friendship of Calvin, he was head of an important institution of learning, the opportunity for creative literary work was opening before him, and he was aspiring soon to fulfil the clearest call of his life — to become a minister of the new gospel. His first contribution to religious literature was his volume of " Sacred Dialogues," a series of vivid scenes out of the Old and New Testaments, told in dialogue fashion, both in Latin and French.^ They were to serve a double purpose : first, to teach French boys to read Latin, and secondly, to form in them a love for the great characters of the Bible and an appreciation of its lofty message of life. The stories were really good stories, simple enough for children, and yet freighted with a depth of meaning which made them suitable for mature minds. Their success was extraordinary, and their fine quality was almost universally recognized. They went through twenty-eight editions in their author's lifetime, and they were translated into many languages.^ His bent toward a religion of a deeply ethical and spiritual type already appears in this early work, and here he announces a principle that was to rule his later life and was to cost him much suffering : " The friend of Truth obeys not the multitude but the Truth." At the very time this book was appearing, an oppor- tunity offered for testing the mettle of his courage. One of those ever -recurrent plagues that harassed former ages, before microbes were discovered, feU upon Geneva. The minister, who had volunteered to give spiritual comfort to those who were suffering with the plague in the hospital, was stricken with the dread disease, and a new voltmteer was asked for. The records of the city show that CasteUio, though not yet ordained, and under no obhgation to take such risk, offered himself for the ^ Dialogi sacri, latino-gallici, ad Unguas moresque pueyorum formandos. Liber primus. Geneve, 1543. * There were at least three English translations — 1610, r7i5, and 1743. VI SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO 91 hazardous service when the ministers of the city dechned it. The ordination through human hands was, however, never to come to him, and a harder test of courage than the plague was before him. In the course of his studies he found himself compelled to take the position that the " Song of Solomon " was an ancient love poem, and that the traditional interpretation of it as a revelation of the true relation between Christ and the Church was a strained and rmnatural interpretation. He also felt that as a scholar he could not with intellectual honesty agree with the statement in the Catechism that " Christ descended into HeU." Calvin challenged both these positions of CasteUio, but his opposition to him was clearly far deeper than a difference of opinion on these two points. Calvin instinctively felt that the bold and independent spirit of this young scholar, his qualities of leadership, and his literary genius marked him out as a man who could not long be an easy-minded and supple subordinate. A letter which Calvin wrote at this time to his friend Viret shows where the real tension lay. " CasteUio has got it into his head," he writes, " that I want to rule ! " The great Reformer may not have been conscious yet of such a purpose, but there can be no question that CasteUio read the signs correctly, and he was to be the first, as Buisson has said, to discover that " to resist Calvin was, in the mind of the latter, to resist the --Holy Ghost." ^ Calvin successfully opposed his ordination, and made it impossible for him to continue in Geneva his work as an honest scholar. To remain meant that he must surrender his right of independent judgment, he must cease to foUow the line of emancipated scholarship, he must adjust his conscience to fit the ideas that were coming to be counted orthodox in the circle of the Reformed faith. That surrender he could no more make than Luther could surrender to the demands of his opponents at Worms. He quietly closed up his work in the CoUege of Geneva and went into voluntary exile, to seek a sphere of life where he might think and speak as 1 Buisson, op. cit. i. p. 205. 92 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. he saw the truth and where he could keep his conscience a pure virgin. He settled in Basle, where Erasmus had found a refuge, and where, two years before, the exiled and hunted Sebastian Franck, the spiritual forerunner of Castellio, had died in peace. For ten years (i545-i555) he Hved with his large famUy in pitiable poverty. He read proof for the Humanist printer Oporin, he fished with a boat-hook for drift-wood along the shores of the Rhine, — " rude labour no doubt," he says, " but honest, and I do not blush for having done it," — and he did whatever honest work he could find that would help keep body and soul together. Through aU these years, every moment of the day that could be saved from bread-winning toil, and much of his night-time, went into the herculean task to which he had dedicated himself — the complete translation of the Bible from its original languages into both Latin and French.^ Being himself one of the common people he always had the interests and needs of the common people in view, and he put the Bible into current sixteenth-century speech. His French translation has the marked characteristics of the Renais- sance period. He makes patriarchs, prophets, and the persons of the New Testament live again in his vivid word-pictures, as the great contemporary painters were making them live on their canvases. But that which gave his translation its great human merit and popular interest was a serious defect in the eyes of the theologians. It was vivid, full of the native Oriental colour, true in the main to the original, and strong in its appeal to religious imagination, but painfully weak in its support of the dogmas and doctrines around which the theological battles of the Reformation were centring. Still less were the theologians pleased with the Preface of his Latin Bible, dedicated to the boy-king of England, Edward VI. Here he boldly insists that the Reformation, ^ His Latin Bible appeared in 1551 and the French Bible in 1555. During this period he also brought out a new edition o£ his " Sacred Dialogues," an edition of Xenophon, a translation of the Sibylline Oracles, a Latin poem on Jonah, and a Greek poem on John the Baptist, the Forerunner. VI SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO 93 wherever it spreads, shall champion the principle of free conscience, and shall wage its battles with spiritual weapons alone. The only enemies of our faith, he says, are vices, and vices can be conquered only by virtues. The Christ who said if they strike you on one cheek turn the other, has called us to the spiritual task of instructing men in the truth, and that work can never be put into the hands of an executioner ! " I address you, king," he concludes, " not as a prophet sent from God, but as a man of the people who abhors quarrels and hatred, and who wishes to see religion spread by love rather than by fierce controversy, by purity of heart rather than by external methods. . . . Read these sacred writings with a pious and religious heart, and prepare yourself to reign as a mortal man who must give an account to immortal God. I desire that you may have the meekness of Moses, the piety of David, and the wisdom of Solomon." ^ Two years after this appeal to the new Protestantism to make the great venture of spreading its truth by love and persuasion, there came from Geneva the decisive answer in the burning of Servetus, followed by the famous Defence before the world, written mainly by Calvin, of the course that had been taken. One month later, a brief Latin work appeared from the press with the title, De haereticis, an sint persequendi, etc. (Magdeburgi, 1554), followed in very short time by a French edition (Rouen, 1554). The body of the work contained impressive passages in favour of toleration from Church Fathers, from Luther, Erasmus, Sebastian Franck, and others, concluding with a passage from " Basil Montfort," a name which thinly veils Bastian CasteHio himself. The Preface was addressed to the Duke of Wiirtemberg, bore the name of " Martinus BeUius," and was beyond doubt written by CasteUio, who inspired and directed the entire work, in which he was assisted by a very small group of refugees in Basle of similar ideas on this subject to his 1 Calvin, in striking contrast, had written to the same boy-king in 1548 : " Under the cover of the Gospel, foolish people would throw everything into confusion. Others cling to the superstitions of the Antichrist at Rome. They all deserve to be repressed by the sword which is committed to you." 94 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. own. This Preface is one of the mother documents on freedom of conscience, from which in time cEime a large offspring, and it is, furthermore, an interesting iaterpreta- tion of a type of Christianity then somewhat new in the world. Its simplicity, its human appeal, its restrained emotional power, its prophetic tone, its sincerity and depth of earnestness mark it as a distinct work of genius, almost in the class with Pascal's Provincial Letters. " If thou, Olustrious Prince, had informed thy subjects that thou wert coming to visit them at an imnamed time and had requested them to be prepared in white garments to meet thee on thy coming ; what wouldst thou do, if, on arrival, thou shouldst find that instead of robing them- selves in white they had occupied themselves in violent debate about thy person — some insisting that thou wert in France, others that thou wert in Spain ; some declaring that thou would come on horseback, others that thou would come by chariot ; some holding that thou would come with great pomp, others that thou would come without train or following ? And what especially wouldst thou say if they debated not only with words but with blows of fist and strokes of sword, and if some succeeded in killing and destroying others who differed from them ? ' He will come on horseback.' ' No, he won't ; he will come by chariot.' ' You lie.' ' No, I do not ; you are the liar.' ' Take that ' — a blow with the fist. ' You take that ' — a sword- thrust through the body. O Prince, what would you think of such citizens ? Christ asked us to put on the white robes of a pure and holy life, but what occupies our thought ? We dispute not only of the way to Christ, but of His relation to God the Father, of the Trinity, of predestination, of free wiU, of the nature of God, of angels, of the condition of the soul after death, — of a multitude of matters that are not essential for salva- tion, and matters, in fact, which never can be known until our hearts are pure, for they are things which must be spiritually perceived." With a striking boldness, but with beautiful simplicity of spirit, he describes " an honest follower of Christ " — VI SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO 95 and it is himself whom he is describing — " who beheves in God the Father and in His Son Jesus Christ, and who wants to do His will, but cannot see that will just as others about him see it, in matters of intellectual formula- tion and in matters of external practice." " I cannot," he adds, " do violence to my conscience for fear of dis- obeying Christ. I must be saved or lost by my own personal faith, not by that of another. I ask you, whether Christ, who forgave those who went astray, and commanded His followers to forgive until seventy times seven, Christ who is the final Judge of us all, if He were here, would command a person like that to be killed ! . . . Christ, Creator and King of the world," he cries out, " dost Thou see and approve these things ? Hast Thou become a totally different person from what Thou wert ? When Thou wert on earth, nothing could be more gentle and kind, more ready to suffer injuries. Thou wert like a sheep dumb before the shearers. Beaten, spit upon, mocked, crowned with thorns, crucified between thieves. Thou didst pray for those who injured Thee. Hast Thou changed to this ? Art Thou now so cruel and contrary to Thyself ? Dost Thou command that those who do not understand Thy ordinances and command- ments as those over us require, should be drowned, or drawn and quartered, and burned at the stake ! " The Christian world holds this view now. It is a part of the necessary air we breathe. But at this crisis in modem history it was unforgivably new.'^ One man's soul had the vision, one man's entire moral fibre throbbed with passion for it, and his rich intellectual nature pleaded for it as the only course of reason : "To bum a man is not to defend a doctrine, it is to burn a man ! " But it was a voice crying in a wUdemess, and from henceforth CasteUio was a marked and dangerous man in the eyes of aU who were opposed to " Bellianism " — as the principle of toleration was nicknamed in honour of Martinus Bellius — and that included almost aU the world. But to the end of his life, and in almost every one of his multitudinous 1 Beza called it " diabolical doctrine." 96 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. tracts he continued to announce the principle of reUgious liberty, and to work for a type of Christianity which depended for its conquering power solely on its inherent truth and on its moral dynamic. Calvin, who recognized the hand of Castellio in this powerful defence of freedom of thought, called his opponent " a monster full of poison and madness," and proceeded to demolish him in a Reply. In his Contra libellum Calvini, which is an answer to this Reply, Castellio declares that Calvin's act in burning Servetus was a bloody act, and that now his book is a direct menace to honest, pious people. " I," he adds, " who have a horror of blood, propose to examine the book. I do not defend Servetus. I have never read his books. Calvin burned them together with their author. I do not want to burn Calvin or to bum his book. I am only going to answer it." He notes that Calvin complains of " novelties and innovations," a strange complaint, he thinks, from a man who " has introduced more innovations in ten years than the entire Church had introduced in six centuries ! " AH the sects, he reminds the great Reformer, claim to be founded on the Word of God. They all believe that their religion is true. Calvin says that his is the only true one. Each of the others says that his is the only true one. Calvin says that they are wrong. He makes himself (by what right I do not know) the judge and sovereign arbiter. He claims that he has on his side the sure evidence of the Word of God. Then why does he write so many books to prove what is evident ? The truth is surely not evident to those who die denying that it is truth ! Calvin asks how doctrine is to be guarded if heretics are not to be punished. " Doctrine," cries Castellio, " Christ's doctrine means loving one's enemies, returning good for evU, having a pure heart and a hunger and thirst for righteousness. You may return to Moses if you wUl, but for us others Christ has come." Love, he constantly insists, is the supreme badge of any true Christianity, and the traits of the beatitudes in a person's life are a surer evidence that he belongs in VI SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO 97 Christ's family, than is the fact that he holds current opinions on obscure questions of belief. " Before iGod," he writes in his Defensio, a work of the year 1562, to those who wish to hunt him off the face of the earth, " and from the bottom of my heart, I call you to the spirit of love." " By the bowels of Christ, I ask and implore you to leave me in peace, to stop persecuting me. Let me have the liberty of my faith as you have of yours. At the heart of religion I am one with you. It is in reality the same religion ; only on certain points of interpretation I see differently from you. But however we differ in opinion, why cannot we love one another ? " He was, however, never to have the peace for which he pleaded, and he was never to experience the love and brotherly kindness for which he longed. Whole sheaves of fiery arrows were shot at him, and in tract after tract he had to see himself called " monster," " wretch," " dog," " pest," " fog-bank," and finally to see himself proclaimed to the world as a petty thief " who was supporting himself by stealing wood from his neighbours " ! With beautifxil dignity CasteUio tells the story of how he fished for public drift-wood on the shores of the Rhine, and how he kept his famUy alive by honest toil, when he was living in pitiable poverty, " to which," he says to Calvin, " every- body knows that thy attacks had brought me." " I cannot conceive how thou of all persons, thou who knowest me, can have believed a tale of theft about me, and in any case have told it to others." ^ Compelled, as he was, to see the Reformation take what seemed to him the false course — the course of defending itself by persecution, of buttressing itself on election, of elevating, through a new scholasticism, doctrine above life, — ^he turned more and more, as time went on, toward interior religion, the ctiltivation of an inner sanctuary, the deepening of the mystical roots of his life, and the perfection of a religion of inner and spiritual life. " I have never taken holy things lightly," 1 He selected as the title of this book the opprobrious word which Calvin had used in the charge — Harpago, i.e. " Boat-hook." H 98 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. he once wrote, and in the later years of what proved to be his brief as well as stormy life, he drew nearer to Christ as the Life of his life, and laboured with deepening passion to practise and present a religion of veracity, of reality and of transforming power. " It is certain," he says in his Contra Hbellum Calvini, " that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and there is furthermore no doubt about the worth of love — ^love to God and love to man. There is no doubt, again, of the worth of forgiveness, of patience, of pity, of kindness, and of obedience to duty. Why leave these sure things and quarrel over inscrutable mysteries ? " This point that the things which are essential to salva- tion are clear and luminous is a frequently occurring one in his writings. Impenetrable mysteries do not interest him, and he declares with reiteration that controversies and divisions are occasioned mainly by the proclamation of dogma on these inscrutable things. In a remarkable work, which remains still in manuscript — his De arte dubitandi et confidendi, sciendi et ignorandi, — ^he pleads for a religion that fits the facts of life and for the use of intelligence even in these lofty matters of spiritual experi- ence where most astonishing miracles occur. He returns, in this writing, to his old position that the truths which concern salvation are clear and appeal powerfully to human reason. " There are, I know," he says, " persons who insist that we should believe even against reason. It is, however, the worst of aU errors, and it is laid upon me to fight it. I may not be able to exterminate the monster, but I hope to give it such a blow that it wiU know that it has been hit. Let no one think that he is doing wrong in using his mental faculties. It is our proper way of arriving at the truth." ^ Without entering in detail into the bottomless con- troversy of those times, let us endeavour to get an adequate view of Castehio's type of Christianity, and then we shall be able to form an estimate of the man who in the ' This MS. is in the Bibliothfeque de I'^glise des Remontrants in Rotterdam. I have used only the extracts given from it in Buisson and Jarrin. VI SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO 99 strong power of his faith stood almost alone as the great battle of words raged around him.^ Those on the other side of the controversy began always from the opposite end of the spiritual universe to his point of departure. They were fascinated with the mysteries of the Eternal Will, and used all the keys of their logic to unlock the mysteries of foreknow- ledge, predestination, and grace which has wrought the miracle of salvation for the elect. Castellio, on the other hand, in true modem fashion, starts always with the concrete, the near and the known, to work upward to the nature of the unknown. We must, he says, try to discover the Divine attributes and the Divine Character by first finding out what our own deepest nature imphes. If God is to speak to us it must be in terms of our nature. Before undertaking to fathom with the plummet of logic the unsoundable mystery of foreknowledge, let us see what we can know through a return to the real nature of man as he is, and especially to the real nature of the new Adam who is Christ, the Son of God. Man, as both Scripture and his own inner self testify, is made in the image of God, is dowered with freedom to determine his own destiny, may go upward into light, or downward into darkness. Man thus made, when put to trial, failed, followed lower instincts instead of higher, and experienced the awful penalty of sin, namely its cumula- tive power, the tendency of sin to beget sin, and to make higher choices ever more difficult. Christ, however, the new Adam, has succeeded. He has completely revealed the way of obedience, the way in which spirit conquers flesh. He is the new kind of Person who lives from above and who exhibits the cumulative power of goodness. His victory, which was won by His own free choice, inspires aU men who see it with faith and hope in man's spiritual possibilities. Castellio declines to discuss Christ's meta- physical nature, except in so far as His life has revealed 1 The main lines of Castellio's Christianity can be found in his Dialogi quatuor : (i.) De praedestinatione, (ii.) De electione, (iii.) De libera arbitrio, (iv.) De fide (Gouda, 1613) and in his Scripta selecta (1596). 100 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. it to us. He sees in Him the Heart and Character of God, the certainty of Divine love and forgiveness, and the way of life for all who desire to be spiritually saved, which means, for him, the formation of a new inward self, a purified nature, a morally transformed man, a wiU which no longer loves or wUls sin. " Christ alone," he says, " can heal the malady of the soul, but He can heal it." " There is," he says again, " no other way of salvation for any man than the way of self-denial. He must put off his old man and put on Christ — however much blood and sweat the struggle may cost." Man, he insists, is always wrong when he represents God as angry. Christ showed that God needed no appeasing, but rather that man needed to be brought back to God by the drawing of Love, and be reconciled to Him. Faith — which for every prophet of human redemption is the key that unlocks aU doors for the soul — is for CasteUio the supreme moral force by which man turns God's revelations of Himself into spiritual victories and into personal conquests of character. It is never some- thing forensic, something magical. It is, as little, mere belief of historical facts and events. It is, on the contrary, a moral power that moves mountains of difficulty, works miracles of transformation, and enables the person who has it to participate in the life of God. It is a passionate leap (" elan ") of the soul of the creature toward the Creator ; it is a way of renewing strength in Him and of becoming a participator in His divine nature. It is a return of the soul to its source. It is a persistent will, which miiltiplies one's strength a hundredfold, makes Pentecost possible again, and enables us to achieve the goal which the vision of our heart sees. The only obstacle to this all-con- quering faith is selfishness, the only mortal enemy is self-wiU.^ There have been, CasteUio holds, progressive stages in the Divine education of the race, and in man's appre- hension of God. The mark of advance is always found in the progress from law and letter to spirit, and from ' For Faith see De flde and De arte dub. ii. 212. VI SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO loi outward practices and ceremonies to inward experience. Divine revelations can always be taken at different levels. They can be seen in a literal, pictorial, temporal way, or they can be read deeper — by those who are purified by faith and love, and made partakers of the self-giving Life of God — as eternal and spiritual realities. The written word of God is the garment of the Divine Thought which is the real Word of God. It takes more than eyes of flesh to see through the temporal garment to the inner Life and Spirit beneath. Only the person who has in himself the illumination of the same Spirit that gave the original revelation can see through the garment of the letter to the eternal message, the ever-living Word hidden within.^ In the Christianity of the full-grown spiritual man, sacraments and everything external must be used only as pictorial helps and symbolic suggestions for the furtherance of spiritual life. Within us, as direct offspring of God, as image of God, there is a Divine Reason, which existed before books, before rites, before the foundation of the world, and wiU exist after books and rites have vanished, and the world has gone to wreck. It can no more be abolished than God Himself can be. It was by this that Jesus Christ, the Son of God — called, in fact. Logos of God — lived and taught us how to live. It was in the Light of this that He transcended books and rites and declared, without quoting text, " God is Spirit and thou shalt worship God in spirit and in truth." This Reason is in all ages the right investigator and interpreter of Truth, even though time changes outward things and written texts grow corrupt.^ As his life was drawing to a close, he sent forth anonjan- ously another powerful prophet -call for the complete liberation of mind and conscience. Ten years before the awful deeds of St. Bartholomew's Day, he issued his httle French book with the title Conseil a la France desoUe — 1 This idea comes out in his Preface to the Bible, in his Moses Minus, and in his manuscript work, De arte dubitandi. 2 De arte dubitandi. 102 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. Counsel to France in her Distress. It is a caka and penetrating diagnosis of the evils which are destroying the life of France and working her desolation. It throbs with noble patriotism and is fuU of real prophetic insight, though he spoke to deaf ears and wrote for blind eyes. The woes of France — ^her torn and distracted condition — are mainly due to the blind and foolish method of attempt- ing to force intelligent men to accept a form of religion which in their hearts they do not believe is true. There can be no united people, strong and happy, untU the blunder of compelling conscience entirely ceases. He pleads in tenderness and love with both religious parties. Catholics and Evangelicals, to leave the outgrown legalism of Moses and go to the Gospels for a religion which leads into truth and freedom. " France, France," he cries — as formerly a greater One had said, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem " — " my counsel is that thou cease to compel men's consciences, that thou cease to kiU and to persecute, that thou grant to men who believe in Jesus Christ the privilege of serving God according to their own innermost faith and not according to some one else's faith. And you, that are private people, do not be so ready to foUow those who lead you astray and push you to take up arms and kill your brothers. And Thou, Lord our Saviour, wUt Thou give to us aU grace to awake and come to our senses before it is forever too late. I, at least, have now done my duty and spoken my word of truth." St. Bartholomew's Day was the answer to this searching appeal, and the land, deaf to the call of its prophet, was to become more " desolate " still. Just as the storm of persecution that had been gather- ing aroimd him for years was about to burst pitilessly upon him in 1563, he quietly died, worn out in body, and " passed to where beyond these voices there is peace." His students in the University of Basle, where, in spite of the opposition from Geneva, he had been Professor of Greek for ten years, bore his coffin in honour on their shoulders to his grave, and his little band of . disciples devoted themselves to spreading, in Holland and wherever VI SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO 103 they could find soil for it, the precious seed of his truth, which had in later years a very wide harvest.^ He was not a theologian of the Reformation type. He did not think the thoughts nor speak the dialect of his contemporaries. They need not be blamed for thanking God at his death nor for seeing in him an arch-enemy of their work. They were honestly working for one goal, and he was as honestly hving by the light of a far different ideal. The spiritual discipline of the modem world was to come through their laborious systems, but he, anticipat- ing the results of the travail and the slow spiral progress, and seeing in clear vision the triumph of man's liberated spirit, with exuberant optimism believed that the religion of the Spirit could be had for the taking — and he stretched out his hand for it ! " I am," he cried out beneath the bludgeons, " a poor little man, more than simple, humble and peaceable, with no desire for glory, only affirming what in my heart I believe ; why cannot I live and say my honest word and have your love ? " The time was not ready for him, but he did his day's work with loyalty, sincerity, and bravery, and seen in perspective is worthy to be honoured as a hero and a saint.^ ^ Under the nom-de-plume of John Theophilus, Castellio translated the Theologia Germanica into Latin, and published it with an Introduction. His translation carried this " golden book " of mystical religion into very wide circulation, and became a powerful influence, especially in England, as we shall see, in reproducing a similar tj'pe of reUgious thought. The Quaker William Caton, who spent the latter part of his life in Holland, cites CasteUio seven times in his Tract, The Testimony of a Cloud of Witnesses, who in their Generation have testified against that horrible Evil of Forcing of Con- science and Persecution about Matters of Religion (1662), and he seems very familiar with his writings. He also cites Schwenckfeld and Franck on pp. 37 and 17 respectively. 2 CasteUio's plea for toleration, Traiti des Hiritiques a savoir, si on les doit persicuter (Rouen, 1554), has just been reissued in attractive form in Geneva, edited by OUvet and Choisy. CHAPTER VII COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS — ^A MOVEMENT FOR SPIRITUAL RELIGION IN HOLLAND The struggle for political liberty in the Netherlands forms one of the most dramatic and impressive chapters in modem history, but the story of the long struggle in these same Provinces for the right to believe and to think according to the dictates of conscience is hardly less dramatic and impressive. Everybody knows that during the early years of the seventeenth century Holland was the one country in Europe which furnished cities of refuge for the persecuted and hunted exponents of unpopular faiths, and that the little band of Pilgrims who brought their precious seed to the new world had first preserved and nurtured it in a safe asylum among the Dutch ; but the slow spiritual travail that won this soul freedom, and the brave work of spreading, on that soil, a religion of personal insight and individual experience are not so weU known.^ The growth and development of this great movement, with its numerous ramifications and differ- entiations, obviously cannot be told here, but one or two specimen lines of the movement will be briefly studied for the light they throw upon this general type of religion under consideration, and for their specific influence ^ Three important books on this subject are C. B. HyUcema, Riformatairs (Haarlem, 1902) ; Dr. Heinrich Heppe, Geschichte des Pietismus und der Mystik in der reformirlen Kirche, nammtlich der Niederlande (Leiden, 1879) ; and Wilhelm Goeters, Die Vorbereitung des Pietismus in der reformierten Kirche der Nieder- lande (Leipzig, 1911). 104 cH. VII COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 105 upon corresponding spiritual movements in England and America. The silent propagation and germination of religious ideas in lands far away from their original habitat, their sudden appearance in a new spot like an outbreak of contagion, are always mysterious and fascinating subjects of research. Some chance talk with a disciple plants the seed, or some stray book comes to the hand of a baffled seeker at the moment when his soul is in a suggestible state, and lo ! a new vision is created and a new apostle of the movement is prepared, often so inwardly and mysteriously that to himself he seems to be " an apostle not of men nor by man." One of the earliest Dutch exponents and interpreters of this type of spiritual religion which we have been studying as a by-product of the Reformation in Germany, and one who became an apostle of it because at a critical period of his life the seeds of it had fallen into his awakened mind, was Dirck Volckertsz Coomhert.^ He was bom in Amsterdam in 1522. He perfected himself as expert in copper-plate engraving and etching, and intended to pursue a quiet career in his adopted city of Haarlem, but he found himself disturbed with " intima- tions clear of wider scope." A keen desire to go back to the original sources of religious truth and to read the New Testament and the Fathers in their own tongue induced him to learn Greek and Latin after he was thirty years of age. He possessed excellent gifts and natural abilities of mind, and he soon had an enviable reputation for skill and learning. Like Sebastian Franck, whom he resembled in many points, he was profoundly interested in history and in the stages of man's historical development, and, like the former, he undertook the translation of great masterpieces which expressed the ideas that . peculiarly suited his own temper of mind, such as Boethius' Consola- tion of Philosophy ; Cicero, On Duties ; and Erasmus' Paraphrases of the New Testament. He was throughout 1 The biographical details of his life are given in a Preface to the three-volume edition of his collected works, published in Amsterdam in 1631. io6 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. his life deeply influenced by Erasmus, and his writings show everywhere a very strong humanistic colouring. It was no accident that one of his most important literary works was on Ethics (" Sittenkunst "), for his primary interest centred in man and in the art of living weU (" Die Kunst wohl zu leben ").^ As he developed into independent manhood, he threw himself with great zeal into the cause of political freedom for the city of Haarlem, on account of which he suffered a severe imprisonment in the Hague in 1560, and at a later time was compelled to flee into temporary exUe. He attracted the attention of William of Orange, who discovered his abilities and made him Secretary to the States-General in 1572, prized him highly for his character and abilities, commissioned him to write important state papers, and intrusted very weighty affairs to him. In his youth he had been an extensive traveller and had seen with his own eyes the methods which the Spanish Inquisition employed to compel uniformity of faith and, with his whole moral being revolting from these un- spiritual methods, he dedicated himself to the cause of liberty of religious thought, and for this he wrote and spoke and wrought with a fearlessness and bravery not often surpassed.^ With this passion of his for intellectual and spiritual freedom was joined a deeply grounded disapproval of the fundamental ideas of Calvinism, as he found it expounded by the preachers and theologians of the Reformed Church in Holland. As a Humanist, he was convinced of man's freedom of will, and he was equally convinced that however man had been marred by a fall from his highest possibilities, he was stiU possessed of native gifts and graces, and bore deep within himself an unlost central being, which in all his wanderings joined him indissolubly to God. On the great theological * The title of this work is Zedekunst, dot is, Wellevens Kunst, vermits waar- heydts kennisse vanden Mensche, vande Zonden ende vande Deughden. Nu alder- eerst besckretim in't Neerlandtsch. Coomhert's Wercken (1631), i. fol. 268-3353. ^ Two of his powerful pleas for the freedom of the mind are, Epitome processus de occidendis haereticis et vi conscientiis inferenda (Gouda, 1591), and Defensio processus de nan occidendis haereticis (Hannover, 1593). VII COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 107 issues of the day he " disputed," with penetrating insight, against the leading theologians of the Netherlands, and he always proved to be a formidable antagonist who could not be put down or kept refuted. Jacobus Arminius, at the turning of his career, was selected by the Consistory to make once for all a refutation of Coomhert's dangerous writings. He, however, became so impressed, as he studied the works which he was to refute, that he shifted his own fundamental points of belief, accepted many of Coomhert's views, and became himself a greater " heretic " and a more dangerous opponent of Calvinism than the man whom he was chosen to annihilate.^ Sometime in his religious development — it is impossible to settle precisely when or where — he read the writings of the spiritual Reformers, and received from them formative influences which turned him powerfully to the cultivation of inward rehgion for his own soul and to the expression and interpretation of a universal Christianity — a Christianity of the inward Word and of an invisible Church. The lines of similarity between many of his ' views and those of Franck are so marked that no one can doubt that he read the books and meditated upon the bold teachings of this solitary apostle of the invisible Church. In fact he frequently mentions Franck by name in his writings and quotes his views. It is certain, too, that he admired, loved, and translated the writings of Sebastian Castellio, the French Humanist, first an admirer and then opponent of Calvin, pioneer defender of freedom of thought, and exponent of inward and spiritual religion of the type of the German Spiritual Reformers,^ and it is unmistakable that we have, in this Dutch self-taught scholar, a virile interpreter of this same type of Christianity, marked with his own peculiar variation, and penetrated with the living con- victions of his personal faith and first-hand experience. While putting emphasis on personal experience and on inward insight he nevertheless, like Franck, was suspicious ' Gottfried Arnold, Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historien, ii. p. 378, sec. 3. 2 See Chap. VI. io8 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. and wary of mystical " enthusiasm " and of " private openings." He criticized the " revelations " of David Joris and Henry Nicholas, and in place of their caprice he endeavoured to find the way to a religion grounded in the nature of things and of universal value. He was deeply read in the Mystics and constantly used their terminology, but he often gave new meaning to their words and pursued quite a different goal from that which absorbs the true mystic. Coomhert makes a sharp distinction between lower knowledge and higher knowledge — knowledge proper. Lower knowledge does not get beyond images and copies of true reality. It is sufficient for man's practical guid- ance in the affairs of this world of space and time, but it becomes only a " dead knowledge " when it is applied to matters of eternal moment. The higher knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge won through direct ex- perience and practice of the wUl. This higher knowledge is possible for man because through Reason he partakes of the Word of God which is Reason itself revealed and uttered, and therefore he may know God and know of his own salvation with a certainty that far transcends the lower knowledge which he possesses of external things, or of mere historical happenings.^ This Word of God is eternal, and is the source of all spiritual light and truth that have come to the race in all ages. Through it the patriarchs discovered how to live well, even in a world of sin, and through this same Word the prophets saw the line of march for their people, and by the power and inspiration of this Word the written word was given as a temporary guidance, as a peda- gogical help, as a lantern on men's paths, until the morn- ing Star, Jesus Christ, the living Word, should rise and shine in men's hearts. The living Word is, thus, vastly different from the written word. One is essence, the other only image or shadow ; one is eternal, the other is tem- poral ; one is imcreated, the other is made ; one is the Light itself, the other is the lantern through which the ^ Zedekunst, chaps, i. and ii. vn COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 109 Light shines ; one is Life itself, the other is only the witness of this Life — the finger which points toward it.^ True religion is distinguished from all false or lower forms of religion in this, that true religion is always inward and spiritual, is directly initiated within the soul, is independent of form and letter, is concerned solely with the eternal and invisible, and verifies itself by producing within man a nature like that of God as He is seen in Christ. The " law " of true religion is a new and divinely formed disposition toward goodness — a law written in the heart ; its temple is not of stone or wood, but is a living and spiritual temple, its worship consists entirely of spiritual activities, i.e. the offering of genuine praise from appreciative hearts, the sacrifice of the self to God, and the partaking of divine food and drink through living communion with Christ the Life. Religion, of this true and saving sort, never comes through hearsay knowledge, or along the channels of tradition, or by a head knowledge of texts of the written word. It comes only with inward experience of the Word of God, and it grows and deepens as the will of man lives by the WOl of God, and as the kingdom of God comes, not in some far- away Jerusalem, or in some remote realm above the sky, but in a man's own heart. This true and saving religion is begun, and completed, within the soul by a process which Coomhert names by the great historic word, faith. Faith is the soul's free assent to the living Word of God as, through amazing grace, it offers itself to man in the desperate straits of his life. Man is so made that he perpetually seeks some desired satisfaction and, in his restless search for this unattained good, he tries many false and specious trails, is endlessly baffled and deceived, and finally discovers, if he is fortunate enough to come to himself, that he is like a shipwrecked man on a single plank with sea every- where about him and no haven in sight. In this strait the Light, which he has not noted before, breaks in on his darkness, and the way of Grace is presented to him in 1 Zedehunst, chaps, iv. and v. no SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. Christ. He feels himself called to a strange way of finding his desired satisfaction — no longer the way of flesh and worldly wisdom, but the way of the cross, of suffering, and of sacrifice. Reason, enlightened by the Word of God, prompts him to assent ; the Scriptures, laden with promises, bear their affirmative testimony, and thus he makes his venture of faith, takes the risk of the voluntary sacrifice of his own pleasant desires, his preference for ways of ease and comfort, his self-wiU, and makes the bold experiment of trusting the Word of God, as it reveals itself to him, and of following Christ. He finds that his faith verifies itself at every step, his experiment carries him on into an experience, his venture brings him to the reality he is seeking. Every stage of this pragmatic faith, which in a word is obedience to the Light, makes the fact and the meaning of sin clearer, at the same time makes the knowledge of God more real and the nature of goodness more plain, and it leads away from a super- stition of fear to a religion of love and of joy.^ All other religions, besides this true and inward religion of the spirit, called by Coomhert " outer or external religions," are considered of value only as preparatory stages toward the one true religion which establishes the kingdom of God in man's heart. With this fundamental view, he quite naturally regards all external forms and ceremonies as temporary, and he holds that all of them, even the highest of them, are nothing else than visible signs, figures, shadows, symbols, pointing to invisible, spiritual, eternal realities, which in their nature are far different from the signs and symbols. The signs and symbols can in no way effect salvation ; they can at best only suggest to the quickened soul the true realities, to know which is salvation. The real and availing circum- cision, as the spiritual prophets and apostles always knew, was a circumcision of the heart, and not of the flesh, and so, too, the true and availing baptism is a baptism into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, 1 Wefchen, iii. fol. 413-427. See also " Hert-Spiegel godlycker Schrifturen," Werclien, i. fol. 1-44. VII COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS iii and cleanses the soul of its sins and produces " a good conscience toward God " — the old sinful man is buried and a new and Christlike man is raised. The same transforming effects attach to the real communion in which the finite human spirit feeds upon its true divine food and drink — the Life of Christ given for us. The real Sabbath is not a sacred day, kept in a ceremonial and legal sense, but rather an inward quiet, a prevailing peace of soul, a rest in the life of God from stress and strain and passion. The Church has been pitiably torn and mutilated by disputes over the genuine form of administering these outer ceremonies, supposing them to be in themselves sacraments of life. As soon as they are recognized to be what they really are, only temporary signs and symbols, then the main emphasis can be put where it properly belongs, and where Christ himself always put it, on love and on the practice of love. No ceremony, even though instituted by Christ himself and practised with absolute correctness, can make a bad heart good, but love — love which suffers long and is kind — ^flows only from a renewed and transformed heart which already partakes of the same natiure as that which was incarnate in Christ. Imprisonment, isolation, exile, excommunication may deprive one of the outward ceremonies, but neither death nor life, nor any outward circumstance in the universe, need separate the soul from the love of God in Christ, or deprive it of the privilege of loving ! ^ Coomhert criticizes the great Reformers for having put far too weighty emphasis on externals, and he especi- ally criticizes Calvin for having given undue prominence to " pure doctrine " and to the right use of sacraments. It is impossible, he insists, to establish authoritatively from Scripture this so-called " pure doctrine." In fact, many parts of Scripture are against the doctrine of pre- destination, and Scripture is always against the doctrine of perseverance in sin. AH speculations about the Trinity, or about the dual nature of Christ, transcend our knowledge and should be rejected. Furthermore ^ Wercken, iii. fol. 413-427. 112 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. there is no authoritative Scripture or revelation for the new forms of the sacrament that have been introduced by the Reformers and are being made essential to sal- vation. The true Reformation, he thinks, should be devoted to the construction of the invisible Church, which has existed in all ages of the world, but which is kept from realizing its full scope and power because the attention of men is too greatly absorbed with signs and symbols and outward things.^ For similar reasons he disapproved of the Anabaptists, even in their purified form as worked out under the guidance of Menno Simons. They stUl held, as did the reformed churches, that the true Church is a visible church which every one to be a Christian must join, though this true Church, as they conceive it, consists only of " saints." They claim the authoritative right to ban all persons who, according to their opinion, are not " saints." This right Coomhert denies. He further disapproves of their literal interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount, and of the obstacles which they put in the way of the free exercise of prophecy on the part of the members of the community. He insists that a person may be a Christian and yet belong to no visible church, if meantime he is a true member of the invisible Communion. He himself refrained from taking the communion supper, either with Papists, Lutherans, or Calvinists, because he said they all set the sacrament above the real characteristic mark of Christian membership, which is love, and because there is no divine command, with distinct and unambiguous authority, for the efficacious celebration of the sacrament, which in any case could not be rightly kept so long as sectarian hostility and lack of love prevaU in the contend- ing visible churches.^ Under these circumstances, Coom- hert, who was intensely concerned for the sincere, simple- minded souls, perplexed by the maze of varying sects and parties, refused to found a new sect or to head a new schismatic movement. On behalf of those who could not ^ See Arnold, op. cit. ii. p. 380, sec. 8. » His views in this particular are very similar to those of Schwenckfeld. vii COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 113 conform, he pleaded for freedom of conscience and for the right to live in the world undisturbed as members of the invisible Church, using or omitting outward cere- monies as conscience might direct, waiting meantime and seeking in quiet faith for the coming of new and divinely commissioned apostles who would really reform the apostate Churches, unite aU divided sects, and gather in the world a true Church of Christ.^ Meantime, while waiting for this true apostolic Church to appear, Coornhert approved of the formation of an interim-Church. This Church, according to his programme, would accept as truth, and as true practice, anything plainly and clearly taught in the canonical Scripture, but he advised against using glosses and commentaries made by men, since that is to turn from the sun to the stars and from the spring to the cistern. This interim- Church was to have no authoritative teachers or preachers. In place of official ministry, the members were to edify one another in Christian love, with the reservation that they would welcome further illumination out of the Scriptures wherever they have made a mistake or gone wrong. All persons who confess God as Father, and Jesus Christ as sent by God, and who in the power of faith abstain from sins, may belong to this interim- Church. For the sake of those who are stiU weak and spiritually immature, he allowed the use of ceremonies in the interim-Church, but aU ceremonies are held as having no essential function for salvation, and the believer is at liberty to make use of them or to abstain from using them as he prefers.^ II Coomhert's proposed interim-Church, which at best was conceived as only a temporary substitute for the true apostolic Church, for which every spiritual Christian is a " waiter " or " seeker," found actual embodiment in a very interesting movement of the early seventeenth 1 Arnold, op. cit. pp. 381-382. ^ Werckm, i. fol. 554 ft. I 114 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. century, known in Dutch history as the " CoUegiants " or " Rynsburgers," which we shall now proceed to study.i The CoUegiants had their origin in one of the stormiest of the many theological controversies which swept over the Netherlands in this critical period of religious history, a controversy arising over the views taught by Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609). The Dutch Protestants who accepted his views presented a " Re- monstrance " to the States of Holland and Friesland in 1610, in which they formulated their departure from strict, orthodox Calvinism. The " Remonstrance " con- tained five main Articles : (i) that the divine decrees of predestination are conditioned and not absolute ; (2) that the atonement is in intention universal ; (3) that a man cannot of himself do anything good without re- generation ; (4) that though the Grace of God is a necessary condition of human effort it does not act irresistibly in man ; (5) that believers are able to resist sin, but are not beyond the possibility of falling from Grace. The opponents to these views, often called " Gomarists," issued a counter-blast from which they received the name " counter- Remonstrants." The States -General passed an edict tolerating both parties and forbidding further dispute, but the conflict of views would not down. It spread like a prairie fire, became complicated with political issues, had its martyrdoms, and produced far-reaching results and consequences.^ At the Synod of Dort, on April 24, 1619, the Remonstrants were declared guilty of falsifying religion and of destroying the unity of the Church, and were deposed from all their ecclesiastical and academic offices and positions. Two hundred were deposed from the ministerial office for life, and one hundred were banished. Among the number of deposed ministers was Christian ^ The best history of the CoUegiants is J. C. Van Slee's De Rijnsburger Col- legiawten (Haarlem, 1895). ^ One of the most tragic consequences of the controversy was the martyrdom of John of Bameveldt, the political head of the Remonstrants. Hugo Grotius was thrown into prison, but escaped through the bold ingenuity of his wife. vn COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 115 Sopingius, the pastor of Warmund, and the " Remon- strants," who formed an important part of his congrega- tion, were left without the opportunity of hearing any ministry of which they approved. In this strait Giesbert Van der Kodde, an Elder in the Warmund church, took a bold step. He was the son of a prosperous farmer who had given his children, John, William, Adrian, and Giesbert, an unusually extended education. All the sons learned Latin, Italian, French, and English, while William (known in the scholarly world as Gulielmus Coddaeus) was a Hebrew and Oriental scholar of note, and at the age of twenty-six was made Professor of Hebrew in the University of Leyden. They owed the course of their reHgious development and their particular bent of mind to the writings of men like Sebastian CasteUio ; Coorn- hert, whose views have been given above ; and Jacobus Acontius, the Italian humanist, who laid down the principles that no majority can make a binding law in matters of faith, that only God's Spirit in the hearts of men can certify what is the truth, and that " Confessions of Faith " have been the ruinous source of endless divisions in the Church. Deeply imbued with the ideas of these spiritual reformers, and in sympathy as they were with many of the views and practices of the Mennonites about them, the Van der Kodde brothers decided, xmder the leadership of the boldest and most conscientious of them, Giesbert, to come together without any minister and hold a meeting of a free congregational type. At first the meeting was probably held in Giesbert's house, and consisted of readings from the Scripture, prayers, and the public utterance of messages of edification by those who formed the group. A little later a " Remonstrant " preacher was sent to care for the orphaned Church in Warmund, but Giesbert had become satisfied with the new type of meeting, and now expressed himself emphatic- ally against listening to preachers who lived without working and at the expense of the community, and who hindered the free exercise of " prophecy." Many of the members of the Church did not share these views, but ii6 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap- much preferred to have the comfort of a minister, so that a " separation " occurred, and Giesbert, with his brothers and fellow-behevers, rented a house and perfected their new type of congregational meeting. They soon moved their meeting (called a " Collegium," i.e. gathering) to the neighbouring town of Rynsburg, where it received additions to its adherents, largely drawn from the Men- nonites, many of whose ideas were strongly impressed upon the little " Society," — for example, opposition to taking oaths, refusal to fight, or even to take measures of self-defence, and rejection of the right of magistrates and other political officers to inflict punishment. They also adopted, as the Mennonites did, the Sermon on the Mount as the basis of their ethical standard, which they applied with literalness and rigour. They insisted on simplicity of life, the denial of " worldly " occupations or professions, plainness of garb, rejection of the world's etiquette, absence of titles in addressing persons, and equality of men and women, even in public ministry. Theyintroducedthepractice of immersion ("Doyipeldoop") as a mark of initiation into the Society, but they con- sidered true Christian baptism to be with the Spirit and not with water, and they allowed their members a large range of liberty in the use or disuse of water baptism, as well as in the form of receiving it. They rejected the Supper as an ecclesiastical ceremony, but they highly prized it as an occasion of fellowship and of group worship. Every person might share the supper with them if he confessed his faith in Christ and were not living in un- repented sin, though they were inclined to exclude persons occupjnng offices which involved the violation of the Sermon on the Mount. The one essential mark of fellow- ship was brother-love, which was not to be confined to the narrow limits of the Society, but that person was regarded the truest disciple of Christ who practised the neighbour-spirit in the broadest and most effective manner. They cared for their own sick and poor, and they had a wide sympathy for all oppressed and suffering people. They pushed to the farthest limit vn COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 117 their opposition to war and all other forms of destroying human life. From the first there was a decided strain of " Enthusi- asm " evident in the movement, and a pronounced tendency to encourage a ministry of " prophetic open- ings." One of the original members, John Van der Kodde, declared that he should fear the loss of his salva- tion if he failed in a meeting to give utterance to the Word of God revealed to him in his inner being. They encouraged the custom of silent waiting in their gatherings as a preparation for " openings." They proved from the fourteenth chapter of i Corinthians that free prophecy is the highest form of ministry, and they held that God by His grace could poirr out His Spirit upon men in the seventeenth century as well as in the days of the Apostles and Evangelists, who did their mighty work, not as Chmrch officials, but as recipients of gifts from God. They felt that prayer accompanied by tears was true prayer, " moved " from above. They, however, were persons of scholarship and refinement, and not tumultuous or strongly emotional, but, on the contrary, they highly valued dignity and propriety of behaviour. As the movement spread. Collegia, or societies, were formed in Leyden, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and in other localities, essentially like the mother-society in Rynsburg, but with characteristic variations and with particular lines of local developments. Once every year they had a large yearly meeting in Rynsburg, to which the scattered members came from all parts of HoUand where there were societies. As time went on, two marked lines of differentiation appeared in the movement, due to the trend of the influence of important leaders, one group emphasizing especially the seeker-attitude, and the other group receiving its formative influence from Cartesian philosophy. Daniel Van Breen, Adam Boreel, and Michael Comans were the early leaders and pillars of the Amsterdam Collegium, which was begun in 1645, and some years later the group was greatly strengthened by the " convincement " of the young Mennonite doctor and ii8 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. teacher, Galenus Abrahams, who soon became the most prominent Collegiant leader in Holland. Adam Boreel gave the movement a strong impetus and did much toward putting the teachings of Coomhert into practice. He was born at Middleburg in 1603. He was a man of good scholarship, being especially learned in Hebrew, and he was thoroughly impregnated with the views of the spiritualistic Humanists of the former century, Franck, CasteUio, and Coornhert, as well as with the views of the mystics, and he was himself a champion of individual rehgious freedom. He held that the visible Church since the apostolic age has been astray and apostate, that Confessions of faith. Church officers, and sacraments are without " authority," that the uncon- taminated teaching of the Holy Scripture is the only safe norm of faith, and that until a true apostolic Church is again established in the world by divine commission, each faithful, believing Christian should maintain meantime the worship of God in his own way and wait in faith for a fuller revelation.^ His mystical piety appears strongly in his hymns, which are preserved in his complete works. One of these hymns of Boreel has been very freely trans- lated into English " by a Lover of the Life of our Lord Jesus," probably Henry More, the Platonist. More says that he finds the hymn " running much upon the mortifi- cation of our own wills and of our union and communion with God," and he loves it as a deep expression of his own faith that " no man can really adhere to Christ, and unwaveringly, but by union to Him by His Spirit." I give a few extracts from More's free Translation : I. O Heavenly Light ! my spirit to Thee draw, With powerful touch my senses smite. Thine arrows of Love into me throw With flaming dart Deep wound my heart, And wounded seize for ever, as thy right. ^ Adam Boreel' s teaching is set forth in his treatise. Ad legem et testimonium (Amsterdam, 1645). Information upon his life and teaching is given in Arnold, op. cit. ii. 386-387 ; in Hylkema, Reformaieurs ; and in Walter Schneider, Adam Boreel (Giessen, 191 1). VII COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 119 3. Do thou my faculties all captivate Unto thyself with strongest tye ; My will entirely regulate : Make me thy slave. Nought else I crave For this I know is perfect Liberty. 5. O endless good ! Break like a flood Into my soul, and water my dry earth, 6. That by this mighty power I being reft Of everything that is not One, To Thee alone I may be left By a firm will Fixt to Thee still And inwardly united into one. 11. So that at last, I being quite released From this strait-laced Egoity My soul will vastly be increased Into that AU Which One we call, And One in itself alone doth All imply. 12. Here's Rest, here's Peace, here's Joy and Holy Love, The heaven is here of true Content, For those that seek the things above. Here's the true hght Of Wisdom bright And Prudence pure with no self-seeking blent. 15. Thus shall you be united with that One, That One where's no Duality, For from that perfect Good alone Ever doth spring Each pleasant thing The hungry soul to feed and satisfy.^ Stoupe, in his Religion of the Dutch,^ gives some inter- esting contemporary light on this branch of CoUegiants whom he calls " Borellists," as follows : " The Borellists had their name from one Borrell, the Ringleader of their 1 Henry More's Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth (London, 1682), pp. 271-276. 2 Stoupe, La RSligion des Hollandois (Paris, 1673), translated into English under the title The Religion of the Dutch (London, 1680). The extract is from p. 82 of the French edition and pp. 26-28 of the English edition. 120 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. sect, a man very learned, especially in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latine tongues. He was brother to Monsieur Borrell, ambassador from the States-General to his most Christian Majesty. These BorreUists do for the most part maintain the opinions of the Mennonites though they come not to their assemblies. They have made choice of a most austere kind of life, spending a considerable part of their Estates in almsgiving and a careful discharge of all the duties incumbent on a Christian. They have an aversion for aU Churches, as also for the use of the Sacraments, publick prayers, and all other external functions of God's Service. They maintain that all Churches which are in the world and have been since the death of the apostles and their first subsequent successors have degenerated from the pure doctrine which they preached to the world ; for this reason, that they have suffered the infallible Word of God contained in the Old and New Testaments to be expounded and corrupted by Doctors who are not infallible and would have their own confessions, their catechisms, and their Liturgies and their sermons, which are the works of men, to pass for what they really are not, to wit, for the pure Word of God. They hold also that men are not to read anything but the Word of God alone without any additional application of men." Abrahams (b. 1622) intensified the seeker aspect of the Amsterdam group, emphasizing the view that the existing Church, even in its best form, is only an interim- Church with no saving sacraments and no compelling authority. His position is expressed in the highly import- ant " Nineteen Articles " which he, and his fellow-believer, David Spruyt, drew up in 1658, and in the further Ex- position Nader Verklaringe of 1659. These documents present the apostolic pattern or model as the ideal of the visible Church for all ages. There neither is nor can be any other true Church. It is essentially a Church managed, maintained, and governed through " gifts " bestowed by the Holy Spirit, and in this Church each spiritual member takes his part according to the measure of his special " gift." This pattern Church, however, vn COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 121 fell away and became corrupted after the death of the apostles, and instead of this glorious Church an external Church was established, claiming to possess authoritative officials, saving sacraments, and infallible doctrines, but really lacking the inward power of the apostolic Church, no longer following and imitating Christ, on the contrary adopting the world's way and the world's type of authority, and destitute of the very mark and essence of real Chris- tianity, the spirit of love. Through all the apostasy of the visible Church, however, an invisible Church has siuvived and preserved the eternal ideal. It consists of all those, in whatever ages and lands, who have lived by their faith in Christ, have kept themselves pure and stainless in the midst of a sinful world, have practised love, even when they have received the buffets of hate, have lived above division and schism and sect, and have steadily beheved that their names were written in heaven and that their Church was visible to God, even though none on earth called them brother, or recognized their membership in the body of Christ. Some time, in God's good time, that invisible Church, which no apostasy has annulled or destroyed, will become once again a visible Church, equipped with " gifted " teachers and with apostohc leaders as at the first, beautiful once more as a bride adorned for her husband, and powerful again as the irresistible sword of the Spirit. But the Reformers — Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and even Menno Simons — have taken an unwarranted course toward the reform and restoration of the Church. It was within their right and power to improve the unbearable condition of the outward Church, by faithfully following the plain teaching of the New Testament, and without usurping authority. They, however, have not been satisfied to do what lay within the narrow limits of their commission. They have ambitiously undertaken to set up again an authoritative visible Church, even though they lacked the gifts of the Spirit for it, and were without the necessary apostolic commission. They insisted on their form of sacraments as essential to salvation ; they 122 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. drew up their infallible creeds ; they set up Church of&cials who were to rule over other men's faith, and they assumed a certain divine right to compel the consciences of their members. Most of the Reformers have even sanctioned the use of bonds and prisons to secure uni- formity of faith ! The primitive apostles claimed no such right and made use of no such unspiritual methods. Order is a good thing and is everywhere to be sought, but God nowhere has conferred upon the heads of His Church the authority to compel conscience or to force tender souls to submit to a system which reveals in itself no inherent evidences of divine origin. The writers of these Nineteen Articles faU to see anywhere in the world a divinely established and spiritually endowed Church of Jesus Christ. They are determined to live in purity and love, to avoid dissension and strife, to guard their membership in the invisible Church, and to wait in faith for the outpouring of the Spirit and the bestowal of miraculous gifts for the restoration of the Church in its pristine apostolic purity and power. We have thus, here in Holland, an almost exact parallel to the " Seekers " who were very numerous in England in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. We get a very interesting side-light .on Galenus Abrahams in the Journal of George Fox. William Penn and George Keith held a " discussion " with this famous CoUegiant leader in 1677, at which time the latter " asserted that nobody nowadays could be accepted as a messenger of God unless he confirmed his doctrine by miracle," ^ and Fox says that Abrahams was " much confounded and truth gained ground." ^ Fox himself was not present at the " discussion," but he had a personal interview with Abrahams at about the same time as the " discussion." The interview was not very satisfactory. Fox says that he found this " notable teacher " " very high and shy, so that he would not let me touch him nor look upon him, but he bid me keep my eyes off him, for 1 Sewel, History of the People called Quakers (Phila. edition, 1823), ii. p. 368. 2 Journal, (ed. 1901), ii. p. 310. VII COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 123 he said they pierced him ! " ^ But at a later visit, in 1684, Fox foirnd the Collegiant doctor, now venerable with years, " very loving and tender." " He confessed in some measure to truth," Fox says, " and we parted very lovingly." At a meeting, held in Amsterdam a few weeks later, Abrahams was among the large group of attenders, and " was very attentive to the testimony of the truth," and, when the meeting was over, Fox says, " he came and got me by the hand very lovingly," ^ and seemed no longer afraid of the Quaker's " piercing eyes." In spirit they were very near together, and with a little more insight on both sides the two movements might have joined in one single stream. For many years afterwards the common people, not given to nice distinctions, called the annual gathering of the CoUegiants at Rynsburg " the meeting of the Quakers." * The other tendency in the movement, which received its fuUest expression in the group of CoUegiants at Rynsburg and their friends in Amsterdam, had a still greater parallelism with Quakerism, in fact, the most important book which came from a member of this group — The Light on the Candlestick — is indistinguishable in its body of ideas from Quaker teaching, and differs only in one point, that it reveals a more philosophically trained mind in the writer than does any early Quaker book with the single exception of Barclay's Apology. The author of The Light on the Candlestick — written originally in Dutch and published in 1662 under the title Lucerna super candelabro— was probably Peter Balling, though the book, with characteristic Collegiant modesty, was published anonymously. Peter Balling was one of an interesting group of scholarly CoUegiants who became very intimate friends of Baruch Spinoza, and who received from the Jewish philosopher a strong impulse toward mystical religion. Before they became acquainted with the young Spinoza, however, they had already received through Descartes a powerful intellectual awakening, 1 Journal, ii. p. 401. ' Ibid. ii. pp. 401-402. ' Simeon Friderich Rues, Mennoniten und Collegianten (Jena, 1743), p. 244. 124 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. and had discovered that consciousness itself, when fully sounded, has its own unescapable evidence of God. It is not possible here to turn aside and study adequately this extraordinary philosophical movement known as Cartesianism, beginning in Descartes (1596-1650) and culminating in Spinoza (1632-1677), but the distinct religious influence of it is so profoundly apparent, both in Peter Balling and in the Quaker apologist Robert Barclay (1648-1690), that a very brief review of the contribution from this source seems necessary. Ren6 Descartes, like almost every other supreme genius who has discovered a new way and has forever shifted the line of march for the race, passed through a momentous inward upheaval, amounting to a con- version experience, and emerged into a new moral and intellectual world.^ It was on November 10, 1619, in the midst of a great campaign during the opening stages of the Thirty Years' War, in which at this time the young Frenchman was a soldier on the Roman Catholic side, that Descartes, sitting alone all day in a heated room of some German house, resolved to have done with outworn systems of thought and with tradition, and determined to make the search for truth the object of his life.^ The new scientific method, which was the fruit of his reflections and experiments, and which has since been carried into every field of human research, does not now concern us. The feature of his philosophy which impressed these serious seekers after God was his fresh discovery of what is involved in the nature of self-con- sciousness. Beginning with the bold resolution to accept nothing untested, to doubt everything in the universe that can be doubted, and to receive as truth only that which successfully resists every attempt to doubt it, he iound one absolutely solid point with which to start, in the self -existence of self -consciousness — " At least I who am doubting am thinking, and to think is to exist." 1 See E. S. Haldane, Descartes, His Life and Times (igoj), pp. 51-53. ^ The autobiographical account of this experience is given in the opening of part ii. of the Discourse on Method. VII COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 125 Pushing his search deeper down to see what is further involved in the constitution of this self-consciousness, he discovered a consciousness of God — the idea of an infinitely perfect Being — ^within himself, and this con- sciousness of God seemed to him to be the under- lying condition of every kind of knowledge what- ever. It turns out to be impossible, he believes, to think of the " finite " without contrasting it, in implication at least, with the " infinite " which is therefore in conscious- ness, just as it is impossible to talk of " spaces " without presupposing the one space of which given " spaces " are parts. That we are oppressed with our own littleness, that we " look before and after and sigh for what is not," that we are conscious of finiteness, means that we partake in some way of an infinite which reveals itself in us by an inherent necessity of self -consciousness. There are, then, some ideas within us — at least there is this one idea of an infinitely perfect reahty — implanted in the very structure of our thinking self, which could have come from no other source but from God, who is that infinitely perfect Reality. Other things may still be doubtful, and a tinge of uncertainty may rest upon everything external to the mind that perceives them, but the soul and God are sure, and, of these two certainties, God is as sure as the soul itself, because an idea of Him is native to the soul as a necessary part of its " furnishings," and is the condition of thinking anything at aU.^ Spinoza, though bringing to his philosophy elements which are foreign to Descartes, and though fusing his otherwise mathematical and logical system with the warmth and fervour of mystical experience that is wholly lacking in the French philosopher, carried Cartesianism to its logical culmination, and has given the world one of the most impressive presentations that ever has been given of the view that all things centre in God and are involved in His existence, that it belongs to the very nature of the "• Descartes' famous argument is found in Meditations III. and IV. of his Meditations on First Philosophy, first published in 1641. For an Illuminating interpretation of the entire movement, see Edward Caird's Essay on Cartesianism in Essays on Literature and Philosophy (1892), li. pp. 267-383. 126 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. human mind to know God, and that all peace and felicity come from " the love of an infinite and eternal object which feeds the soul with changeless and unmingled joy." He, too, had his conversion-awakening which took him above the love of earthly things, and through it he found an unvarying centre for his heart's devotion, which made his life, outwardly extremely humble, inwardly one of the noblest and most saintly in the history of philosophy. " After experience had taught me," he writes in the opening of his early Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, " that all things which are ordinarily encountered in common life are vain and futile ... I at length determined to inquire if there were anything which was a TRUE GOOD, capable of imparting itself, and by which alone the mind could be affected to the exclusion of all else ; whether, indeed, anything existed by the discovery and acquisition of which I might have continuous and supreme joy to all eternity," and the remainder of his hfe was penetrated by a noble passion for the Eternal, and dedicated to the interpretation of the Highest Good which he had discovered, and which hence- forth no rival good was ever to eclipse. Dr. A. Wolf well says of him : " His moral ardour seems almost aglow with mystic fire, and if we may not call him a priest of the most high God, yet he was certainly a prophet of the power which makes for righteousness." ^ He is giving his own experience in the spiritual principle which he laid down early in his life : "So long as we have not such a clear idea of God as shall unite us with Him in such a way that it will not let us love anything beside Him, we cannot truly say that we are united with God, so as to depend immediately on Him." ^ It is Spinoza's primary principle that the only Reality in the universe is an all-inclusive Reality which is the origin, source, and explanation of all that is. All human experience, either of an inward or outward world, if it is to have any meaning and reality at all, involves the ^ Spinoza, Short Treatise on God, Man, and his Weil-Being, Wolfs edition (London, 1910), p. 102. ^ Ibid. p. 40. vn COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 127 existence of this inclusive Whole of Reality, that is of God. It belongs, thus, fundamentally to the nature of human consciousness to know God, for if we did not know Him we should not know anything else. The moment a " finite thing " or a " finite idea " is severed from the Whole in which it has its ground and meaning, it becomes nothing ; it is " real " only so long as it is a part of a larger Reality, and so every attempt to understand a " flower in a crannied wall," or any other object in the universe, drives us higher up tmtil we come at last to that which is the prius of all being and knowledge, the explanation of all that is. But this ultimate Reality up to which all our experience carries us — if we take the pains to think out what is involved in the experience — is no mere sum of " finites," no bare aggregation of " parts," no heaped-up totality of separate " units." It is an Absolute Unity which binds all that is into one living, organic Whole, a Divine Nature, — natura naturans Spinoza calls it, — and which lives and is manifested in aU the finite " parts," in so far as they are real at all. And as soon as the mind finds itself in living unity with the eternal Nature of things, and views all things from their centre in God, and sees how aU objects and events flow from the eternal Being of God, it is " led as by the hand to its highest blessedness." ^ The complications of Spinoza's system, and the difficulty of finding a " way down " from the Absolute Unity of God to the differentiation of the modes of a world — natura naturata — here, in space and time, do not now concern us. The point of contact between Spinoza and the spiritual movement which we are studying is found in his central principles that God is the prius of all finite reality, that to know things or to know one's own mind truly is to know God, and that a man who has formed a pure love for the eternal is above the variations of temporal fortune, is not disturbed in spirit by changes in the object of his love, but loves with a love which eternally feeds the soul with joy. * Ethics, part ii. Preface. 128 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. During the most important period of his intellectual and spiritual development, Spinoza spent three years (1660-1663) in the quiet village of Rynsburg, living in close and intimate contact with his CoUegiant friends. It was here during these happiest years of his life, in this quiet retreat and surrounded with spiritually - minded men with whom he had much in common, that he wrote his Short Treatise on God, Man and his Well-Being, as well as his Treatise on the Improvement of the Under- standing, which opens with his account of the birth of his own spiritual passion. These intellectual and high- minded CoUegiants had their influence upon the philo- sopher, and he in turn had a deep influence upon them. Peter Balling translated into Dutch in 1664 Spinoza's version of Descartes' Principia, and Balhng turned to his friend Spinoza for consolation in his great loss occa- sioned by the death of his child that same year.^ while the philosopher at his death left all his unpublished manu- scripts to another life-long intimate CoUegiant friend of his, John Rieuwertsz. The Light on the Candlestick, to which we shall now turn for the ripest ideas of the little sect, was written while Spinoza was living among the CoUegiants in Rynsburg. It was very quickly discovered by the Quakers, who immediately recognized it as " bone of their bone," and circulated it as a Quaker Tract. It was translated into EngUsh in 1663 by B. F.,^ who published it with this curious title-page : " The Light upon the Candlestick. Serving for Observation of the Principal things in the Book called. The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, &c. Against several Professors, Treated of, and written by Will Ames. Printed in Low Dutch for the Author, 1662, and translated into English by B. F." The CoUegiant author, quite in the spirit and style of Spinoza, urges the importance of discovering a central love for " things which are durable and incorruptible," " knowing thereby better things than those to which the ' See Spinoza's Correspondence, Letter No. XXX. 2 Benjamin Furley, a Quaker merchant of Colchester, then living in Rotterdam. VII COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 129 multitude are link't so fast with love." We have out- grown the " toyes with which we played as children," there is now " no desire or moving thereunto, because we have found better things for our minds " ; so, too, " all those things in which men, even to old age, so much delight " would seem like " toyes " if they once dis- covered the true Light " which abides forever unchange- able," and if through it they got a sight of " those things which are alone worthy to be known." This " true and lasting change," from " toyes " to " the things which are durable and eternal," can come only through an inward conversion. When a new vision begins from within, then the outward action follows of itself, but no man will part with what he judges best till he sees something better, and then the weaker yields to the stronger without any forcing.^ This whole work of conversion, of transforma- tion, of " lasting change," must have its origin in some- thing within ourselves. We cannot turn from baubles and " toyes " and our " desire for that which is high in the world " until a Light from some source plainly shows us an eternal reality for which we may " highly adventure the tryal." There is, our author insists, only one place where such a guiding Light could arise, and that is within the soul itself, as an inward and immediate knowledge : " 'Tis not far to seek. We direct thee to within thyself. Thou oughtest to turn into, to mind and have regard unto, that which is within thee, to wit, the Light of Truth, the true Light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world. Here 'tis that thou must be and not without thee. Here thou shalt find a Principle certain and infallible, through which increasing and going on into, thou mayest at length arrive unto a happy condition. Of this thou mayest highly adventure the tryal. And if thou happenest to be one of those that would know aU things before thou dost begin . . . know this. Thou dost therein just as those that would learn to read without knowing the Letters. He that will not adventure till he be fully satisfied, shall never begin, much less finish 1 The Light upon the Candlestick, p. 8, freely rendered. K 130 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. his own salvation. We say then, that we exhort every one to turn unto the Light that's in him." ^ In true Cartesian fashion, he demonstrates why this Light must have its locus within the soul and not in some external means or medium. All knowledge that God is being revealed in external signs, or through external means, already presupposes a prior knowledge of God. We can judge no doctrine, no Book to be Divine except by some inward and immediate knowledge of what really is Divine. Without this Light the Scriptures are only Words and Letters. But " if we experience that the Book called the Bible in regard to the Divine doctrine therein com- prised hath such a harmony with That [in us] by which God is known, that He must needs have been the Author of it, there cannot rationally be any more powerful demonstration." ^ The same principle is true with regard to every con- ceivable form of revelation which could be made to our outward senses, whether by words, or by miracles, or by any other visible " operations." No finite thing can bring us a knowledge of God unless we already have within us a sufficient knowledge of Him to make us able to appreciate and judge the Divine character of the particular revelation ; that is to say, we must already have God in order either to seek Him or to find Him ; or, as Balling puts it, " Unless the knowledge of God precedes, no man can discern Him." God is, therefore, the prius of all knowledge : " The knowledge of God must first be, before there can be knowledge of any particular things," ' and God must be assumed as present in the soul before any basis of truth or of religion can be found. " The Light is the first Principle of Religion ; for, seeing there can be no true Religion without the knowledge of God, and no knowledge of God without this Light, Religion must necessarily have this Light for its first Principle." * " Without thyself, Man," he concludes, " thou hast no ' The Light upon the Candlestick, pp. 3-4. " Op. cit. p. 10. He uses also the Cartesian argument that there must at least be as much reality in the cause as there is in the effect, p. 12. ' Op. cit. p. 12. ♦ Ibid. p. 6. vii COORNHERT AND THE COLLEGIANTS 131 means to look for, by which thou mayest know God. Thou must abide within thyself ; to the Light that is in thee thou must turn thee ; there thou wilt find it and nowhere else. God is nearest unto thee and to every man. He that goes forth of himself to any creature, thereby to know God, departs from God. God is nearer unto every man than himself, because He penetrates the most inward and intimate parts of man and is the Life of the inmost spirit. Mind, therefore, the Light that is in thee." ^ This Light — the first Principle of all Religion — is also called in this little Book by many other names. It is " the living Word," " the Truth of God," " the Light of Truth " ; it is " Christ " ; it is the " Spirit." 2 As a Divine Light, it reproves man of sin, shows him that he has strayed from God,. accuses him of the evil he commits. It leads man into Truth, " even though he has never heard or read of Scripture " ; it shows him the way to God ; it gives him peace of conscience in weU-doing ; and, if followed and obeyed, it brings him into union with God, " wherein all happiness and salvation doth consist." ' It operates in aU men, though in many men there are serious " impediments " which hinder its operations — " the lets to it are manifold " — but as soon as a man turns to it and cleanses his inner eye — removes the " lets " — he discovers " a firm foundation upon which he may build stable and enduring things : A Principle whereby he may, without ever erring, guide the whole course of his life, how he is to carry himself toward God, his Neighbour and himself." * The writer, having thus delivered his message, wishes to have it distinctly understood that he is not trying to draw his readers to any new sect, or to any outward and visible church. " Go to, then, O Man," he says, " whoever thou art, we wiU not draw thee off from one heap of men to carry thee over unto another, 'tis somewhat else we invite thee to ! We invite thee to Something which may be a means to attain thy own ^ The Light ttpon the Candlestick, pp. 12-13. " Ibid. pp. 4 and 9. » Ibid. p. 5. ' Ibid. p. 6. 132 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap, vn salvation and well-being " — a membership in the invisible Church. Such is the teaching of this strange little book, written by the friend of Spinoza, and revealing the maturest ex- pression of this slowly developing spiritual movement, which began with Hans Denck and flowed uninterruptedly through many lives and along many channels and burst out full flood in England in " the Children of the Light," who were known to the world as Quakers. CHAPTER VIII 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 symbohc 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 macro- cosm. 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. Every- thing 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 com- 133 134 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. prehensive 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 Hterature of Stoic, Neo-Platonic, and Neo-Pythagorean ideas. But the Greek stream of thought as it now re- appeared 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 re- vived classical philosophy and identified it with pure and unadulterated Christianity.^ 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, forerimner 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 trans- mitted 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 ^ Ficino is dealt with at greater length in Chapter XIII. VIII VALENTINE WEIGEL 135 incomprehensible and immutable, and capable of descrip- tion 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 in- finitely 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 aU 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 (i) 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 unfaUen 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 im- pressed 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 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. they conceived the idea that they had at last discovered a clue that would eventually lead them into all the secrets of the universe.^ Cornehus 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 en- amoured 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 ex- pectations 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 165 1 very clearly appre- hended 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 our- selves so as to be capable of receiving the superior opera- tions of these worlds, whereby we may be enabled to operate wonderful things by a natural power." ^ That saying precisely defines Agrippa's faith. There are, he thinks, ^ The Cabala was, as I have tried to make clear, only cue of the influences which produced this new intellectual climate. The rediscovered " Hermes Tris- megistus," 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 aU played an important part toward the formation of the new Weltanschauung. 2 Three Boohs of Occult Philosophy, translated by J. F. (London, 1651). viii VALENTINE WEIGEL 137 three worlds : (i) 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 groimd 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 aU sorts of information, forming his theories of diseases and their cure, and learning to know Natvire " by treading her Books, through land after land, with his feet," which, he once testified, is the only way of knowing her truly.^ In 1525 he settled in Basle, and, on the recommenda- tion of (Ecolampadius, 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 ' Stoddait's Life of Paracelsus (London, igii), p- 76. 138 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. 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 Natiire'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 bafiiing 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. ^ There are, again, in his Universe, as in the other occult systems, three elemental worlds — the spiritual or in- tellectual 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 accomphsh that is to be spiritual, to become like Adam, ^ 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 attrac- tions, and the elements of which they consist, he will be a Master of nature, of the elements, and of the spirits." vm VALENTINE WEIGEL 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 hving 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 kindhng 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 — bloving them and being beloved by them. His ministry was fresh and vital, and made his hearers /eeZ 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 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. 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 ortho- doxy. 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,^ 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.^ 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 '■ Christliches Gesprdch, chap. iii. 2 There is an excellent critical study of Weigel's writings by A. Israel, entitled, Weigels Leben iind Schriften nach den Quellen dargestelU (Zschopau, 1888). VIII VALENTINE WEIGEL 141 book, Von dem Leben Christi, das ist, vom wahren Glauhen {" On the Life of Christ, or True Faith "), as it is the one of Weigel's writings which, in Enghsh translation, most deeply influenced kindred spirits in the English Common- wealth.^ 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 imderstand 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, stiU 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. 1 " 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.) 142 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. 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." ^ 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 imdoubtedly 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 com- posed 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 hfe 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 inde- structible 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.^ There are, he proceeds to show, two radically diverse natures, the traits and char- ' Quoted from Israel, op. cit. p. 107. ^ On the Life of Christ, part i. chap. ii. vin VALENTINE WEIGEL 143 acteristics 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. I. This Nature turns from I. This nature turns from God creatures to God. to creatures. 2. This Nature hates itself and 2. This nature loves itself more loves others. 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.^ 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 reahzed, 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 temporal! goods ; he does not kill ; he lets his coat and cloke go rather than oppose another." ^ " If Christ were of the seed of Adam, He would have the 1 On the^Life of Christ, part i. chap. iii. " Ibid, part i. chap. viii. 144 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. 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." ^ 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, and 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 MosaicaU, earthly fashion, but they walke in the Life of Christ, without all revenge." " We walk no longer under Moses but under Christ." ^ 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.* 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 un- sundered. 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.* Not only is the body a ^ On the Life of Christ, part i. chap. ix. 2 Ibid, part ii. chap. ix. ; part i. chap. x. ; part ii. chap. x. ; and part. i. chap. xiv. ' Ibid, part ii. chaps, iii. and iv. * This is the view set forth in his Vv&Bi Scaurii' [Know Thyself]. vin VALENTINE WEIGEL 145 " habitation " for the Christ-formed soxil, but the world now becomes to the enhghtened 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 ! " ^ 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 stiU remains until the fleshly taber- nacle 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 ! " ^ 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." * In close conformity to the teaching of Sebastian Franck,* Weigel thinks of the Church of God as an in- visible Assembly of aU true Behevers 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 : (i) The church composed of a visible group, ^ On the Life of Christ, part ii. chaps, v. and vii. 2 Ibid, part i. chap. viii. 2 Vom himmlischen Jerusalem in uns, chap. viii. " Weigel enjoins his readers to read Franck's book on " the Tree of the Know- ledge of Good and Evil." See On the Life of Christ, part ii. p. 57. L 146 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. " 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 per- swasions," to conform. i 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 Chvirch doe I rejoice to be. . . . Jesus Christ is my Head, my Teacher. He is ever3rwhere with me and in me, and I in Him. Although the Protestants shoiild 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." ^ 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 ' " Faith," he says, " cannot be forced into any person by gallows or pillory." On the Life of Christ, part i. chap. xv. 2 Ihid. part ii. chap. xiv. This is built on a passage in Franck's Apologia. VIII VALENTINE WEIGEL 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." ^ 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 theologicalbooks, who, nevertheless, showno "spiritual profit " therefrom. The reason is that " Truth runs into no one by a pipe ! " ^ "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 interpreta- tion, 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.' 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." * 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." * 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." ^ And in his ChrisUiches 1 On the Life of Christ, part i. chaps, iv. and v. 2 Ibid, part i. chap. vi. * Ibid, part i. chaps, xii. and xiii. " Quoted from Tauler by Weigel, ibid. chap. vii. See also part iii. chap. i. » Ibid, part ii. chap. ii. " Op. cit. chap. xx. 148 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. Gesprdch 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.^ No person can ever be in Heaven until Heaven is in him. In Der giildene 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. AH 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 in- fluence 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 SUesian mystic.^ 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." 1 Christ. Gesprach, chap. ii. 2 In his Der guldene 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 wUdemess 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. vni VALENTINE WEIGEL 149 The anonymous translator ascribes the book to Weigel. It is, in fact, Part Two of Tv&di "teavrov, 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, everjd;hing 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 " ^ — 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 wUl, 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 affec- tions ; 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." ^ Adam, who was " the Protoplast " and begetter of all men, and who, like everything else in the universe, was " double," 1 Astrologie Theologized, p. 8. ^ Ibid. pp. 16-17. 150 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap, vni 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 .1 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. ^ This little book refers with much appreciation to Theophrastus Paracelsus. It uses his theory of " first matter " and his doctrine of " the seven govemours of the world," which we shall meet in a new form in Boehme. Another book which carried astrological ideas into rehgious 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 Medicina diastatica (Jena, 1629). It was trans- lated into EngUsh in 1657 by N. Turner with the title : " The Mumial Treatise of TentzeUus, being a natural account of the Tree of Life and of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and EvU, with a mystical mterpretation 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. CHAPTER IX JACOB BOEHME : HIS LIFE AND SPIRIT ^ Few men have ever made greater claim to be the bearer of a new revelation than did the humble shoemaker- prophet of Silesia, Jacob Boehme. " I am," he wrote in his earliest book, " only a very little spark of God's Light, but He is now pleased in this last time to reveal through me what has been partly concealed from the beginning of the World," 2 and he admonished the reader, if he would understand what is written, to let go opinion ^ I have used as primary sovirce the German edition of Boehme's Works — Theosophia refetoto— published in 1730 in 8 vols. All my references are to the English translations made by Sparrow, EUistone, and Blunden, 1647-61. These translations were repubUshed, 1764, in 4 vols, in an edition which has incorrectly been called William Law's edition. Four volumes have been republished by John M. Watkins of London, as follows : The Threefold Life of Man, 1909 ; The Three Principles, 1910 ; The Forty Questions and The Clavis, ign ; and The Way to Christ, 1911. The Signatura rerum, in EngUsh, has been published in " Everyman's Library." A valuable volume of selections from " Jacob Behmen's Theosophic Philosophy " was made by Edward Taylor, London, 1691. Many volimies of selections have been published in recent years. The books on Boehme which I have found most suggestive and helpful are the following : Franz von Baader's " Vorlesungen und Erlauterungen uber J. Bohme's Lehre," Werke (Leip/.ig, 1852), vol. iii. [edition of 1855, vol. xiii.]; Emile Boutroux, Le Philosophe allemand (Paris, 1888): translated into English by Rothwell in Boutroux's Historical Studies in Philosophy (London, 1912), pp. 169-233 ; Hans Lassen Marteusen's Jacob Boehme (translated from the Danish by T. Rhys Evans, Loudon, 1885) ; Franz Hartmann's Life and Doctrine of Jacob Boehme (London, 1891) ; Von Harless' Jacob Boehme und die Alchymisten (Leipzig, 1882) ; Eder- heimer's Jahob Boehme und die Romantiker (Heidelberg, 1904) ; Paul Deussen's Jacob Boehme — an Address delivered at Kiel, May 8, 1897 — translated from the German by Mrs. D. S. Hehuer and printed as Introduction to Watkin's edition of The Three Principles (igio) ; Christopher Walton's Notes and Materials for a Biography of William Law (London, 1854) — a volume of great value to the student of Boehme; Rudolph Steiner's Mystics of the Renaissance (translated, London, 1911), pp. 223-245 ; A. J. Penny's Studies in Jacob Boehme (Loudon, 1912), Tmcritical and written from the theosophical point of view ; Hegel's History of Philosophy (translated by Haldane and Simson, London, 1895), iii. pp. 188-216. 2 Aurora, John Sparrow's translation (London, 1656), ii. 79-80. 151 152 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. and conceit and heathenish wisdom, and read with the Light and Power of the Holy Spirit, " for this book comes not forth from Reason, but by the impulse of the Spirit." ^ " I have not dared," he wrote to a friend in 1620, " to write otherwise than was given and indited to me. I have continually written as the Spirit dictated and have not given place to Reason." ^ Again and again he warns the reader to let his book alone unless he is ready for a new dawning of divine Truth, for a fresh Light to break : " If thou art not a spiritual overcomer, then let my book alone. Do not meddle with it, but stick to thy old matters \" ^ Before the Spirit came upon him, he felt himself to be a " little stammering child," and he always declared that without this Spirit he could not comprehend even his own writings — " when He parteth from me, I know nothing but the elementary and earthly things of this world " * — but with this divine Spirit unfolding within him " the profoundest depth " of mysteries, he believed, though with much simplicity and generally with humUity, that the true ground of things had " not been so fully revealed to any man from the beginning of the world " — " but," he adds, " seeing God will have it so, I submit to His will." ^ Nobody before him, he declares, no matter how learned he was, " has had the ax by the handle," but, with a sudden change of figure, he proclaims that now the Morning Glow is breaking and the Day Dawn is rising.* In his Epistles he says : " I am only a layman, I have not studied, yet I bring to light things which all the High Schools and Universities have been unable to do. . . . The language of Nature is made known to me so that I can understand the greatest mysteries, in my own mother-tongue. Though I cannot say I have learned or comprehended these things, yet so long as the hand of God stayeth upon me I understand." ' We shall be able to estimate the value of these lofty ^ Aurora, iii. 1-3. ^ Third Epistle, 15. ' Aurora, xiii. 27. * Ibid. viii. 19. ° Ibid, ix- 90. ° Ibid. xiii. 2-4. ' Third Epistle, 22. IX JACOB BOEHME 153 claims after we have gathered up the substance of his teaching, but it may be well to say at the opening of this Study of Boehme that in my opinion no more remarkable religious message has come in modern centuries from an untrained and undisciplined mind than that which lies scattered through the volvraiinous and somewhat chaotic writings of this seventeenth- century prophet of the common people.^ He frequently speaks of himself as " unlearned," and in the technical sense of the word he was unlearned. He had only a simple schooling, but he possessed extra- ordinary native capacity and he was well and widely read in the books which fitted the frame and temper of his mind, and he had very imusual powers of meditation and recollection, so that he thought over and over again in his quiet hours of labour the ideas which he seized upon in the books he read. There are many strands of thought woven together in his writings, and ever5rthing he dealt with is given a 1 Many thinkers of prominent rank hiave borne testimony to the greatness of Boehme's genius. I shall mention only a few of these estimates : " I would recommend you to procure the writings of Boehme and diligently read them. For though I have studied philosophy and theology from my youth . . . yet I must acknowledge that the above writings have been to me of more service for the understanding of the Bible than aU my University learning." — J. G. Gichtel, 1698. " Jacob Boehme, as a reUgious and philosophical genius, has not often had his equal in the world's history." — " Jacob Boehme : His Life and Philosophy." An Address by Dr. Paul Deussen. " Jacob Boehme est le seul, an moins dont on ait eu les ecrits jusqu'a lui, auquel Dieu ait decouvert le fond de la nature, tant des choses spirituelles, que des corporeUes." — Peter Poiret, in a note at the end of his TMologie germanique, 1700. " As a chosen servant of God, Jacob Boehme must be placed among those who have received the highest measures of Ught, wisdom, and knowledge from above. . . . All that lay in religion and nature as a mystery unsearchable was in its deepest ground opened to this instrument of God." — ^William Law, Works (ed. 1893), vi. p. 205. " To Jacob Boehme belongs the merit of having taught more profoundly than any one else before or after Tiim the truth that back of and behind all that has come to appear of good and evil there is an immaterial World which is the essence and reality of all that is." — Franz von Baader, Werke (Leipzig, 1852), iii. p. 382. NovaUs wrote in a letter to Ludwig Tieck in 1800 : " Man sieht durchausin ihm [Jakob Bohme] den gewaltigen Friihhng mit seinen queUenden, treibenden, bildenden, und mischenden Kraften, die von innen heraus die Welt gebaren. Ein echtes Chaos voll dunkler Begier und wunderbarem Leben — einen wahren auseinandergehenden Mikrokosmos." — Quoted from Edgar Ederheimer's Jakob Boehme und die Romantiker (1904), p. 57. 154 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. new aspect through the vivid insights which he always brings into play, the amazing visual power which he displays, and his profoundly penetrating moral and intellectual grasp. But, nevertheless, he plainly belongs in the direct line of these spiritual reformers whom we have been studying. He was deeply influenced, first of all, by Luther, especially in two directions. He got primarily from the great reformer his transforming insight of the immense importance of personal faith for salvation, and secondly he was impressed — almost over- whelmingly impressed in his early years — ^with the awful reality and range of the principle of positive evil in the universe, upon which Luther had insisted with intensity of emphasis. His feet, however, were set upon the track which seemed to him to lead to light by the help which he got from the other line of reformers. Schwenckfeld made him feel the impossibility of any scheme of salvation that rested on transactions and operations external to the human soul itself, and through that same noble Silesian reformer he discovered the central significance of the new birth through a creative work of Grace within. Sebastian Franck was clearly one of his spiritual masters. From him, directly or indirectly, he learned that the spirit must be freed from the letter, that external revelations are S5mabols which remain dead and inert until they are vivified and vitalized by the inwardly illuminated spirit. He was still more directly influenced by Valentine Weigel, the pastor of Zschopau, who united the spiritual-mystical views of Schwenckfeld, Franck, and the other teachers of his type with a nature mysticism or theosophy which had become, as we have seen, a powerful interest in the sixteenth century when a real science was struggling to be born, but had not yet seen the light. This nature mysticism came to him also in a crude and indigestible form through the writings of Paracelsus. Through him Boehme acquired a vocabulary of alchemistical terms which he was always labouring to turn to spiritual meaning, but which always baffled him. It has been customary to treat Boehme as a mystic, and he has not IX JACOB BOEHME 155 usually been brought into this line of spiritual develop- ment where I am placing him, but his entire outlook and body of ideas are different from those of the great Roman Catholic mystics. He has read neither the classical nor the scholastic interpreters of mysticism. In so far as he knows of historical mysticism he knows it through Franck and Weigel and others, where it is profoundly transformed and subordinated to other aspects of religion and thought. Unlike the great mystics, he does not treat the visible and the finite as unreal and to be negated. The world is a positive reality and a divine revelation. Nor, again, are sin and evil negative in character for him. Evil is tremendously real and positive, in grim conflict with the good and to be conquered only through stern battle. A mystic, an illuminate, he undoubtedly was in his first-hand experience, but his message of salvation and his interpretation of life are of the wider, distinctively " spiritual " type. Jacob Boehme ^ was born in November 1575 in the little market-town of Alt Seidenberg, a few miles from Gorlitz. His father's name was Jacob and his mother's Ursula, both persons of good old German peasant stock, possessed of a strong strain of simple piety. The family religion was Lutheran, and Jacob the son was brought up both at home and at church in the Lutheran faith as it had shaped itself into definite form at the end of the sixteenth century. His early education was very limited, but he was possessed of unusual fundamental capacity and always exhibited a native mental power of very high order. He was always a keen observer ; he looked through things, and whether he was in the fields, where much of his early life was spent as a watcher of cattle, or reading the Bible, which he knew as few persons have known it, he saw everything with a vivid and quickened imagination. He plainly began, while still very young, to revolt from the orthodox theology of his time, and his 1 His English translators in the seventeenth century variously spelled his name Behm, Behme, and Behmen. This latter spelling was adopted in the so- called Law Edition of 1764, and has thus come into common use in England and America. 156 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. years of reading and of silent meditation and reflection were the actual preparation for what seemed finally to come to him like a sudden revelation or, to use his own common figure, as " a flash." ^ His external appearance has been quaintly portrayed by his admiring friend and biographer, Abraham von Franckenberg, who, like a good portrait-painter, strives to let the body reveal the soul. " The external form of Jacob's body," he says, " was worn and very plain ; his stature was small, his forehead low, his temples broad and prominent, his nose somewhat crooked, his eyes grey and rather of an azure-cast, lighting up like the windows of Solomon's Temple ; his beard was short and thin ; his voice was feeble, yet his conversation was mild and pleasant. He was gentle in manner, modest in his words, humble in conduct, patient in suffering and meek of heart. His spirit was highly illuminated of God beyond anjrthing Nature could produce." ^ This youth, with " azure-grey eyes that lighted up like the windows of Solomon's Temple," was from his childhood possessed of a most acutely sensitive and suggestible psychical disposition. He always felt that the real world was deeper than the one which he saw with his senses, and he was frequently swept from within by mighty currents which he could not trace to any well- mapped region of the domain of Nature. His vivid and pictorial imagination, his consciousness of inrushes from the unplumbed deeps within, and his inclination to solitude and meditation are well in evidence at an early age, and we have no difficulty at all in seeing that his psychological equilibrium was unstable, and that he was capable of sudden shifts of inward level. The first sign of his psychical peculiarity comes to light in an incident of his early childhood. While he was tending cattle in the fields one day he climbed alone a neighbouring 1 Boehme refers frequently to " the -writings of high masters," whom he says he read (Aurora, x. 45), and he often names Schwenckfeld and Weigel in particular. See especially The Second Epistle, sec. 54-62. " Memoirs of the Life, Death and Burial, and Wonderful Writings of Jacob Behmen, translated by Francis Okeley (1780), p. 22. IX JACOB BOEHME 157 mountain-peak, and on the summit he espied among the great red sandstones a kind of aperture overgrown with bushes. Boy-like he entered the opening, and there within, in a strange vault, he descried a large portable vessel full of money. The sight of it made him shudder, and, without touching the treasure, he made his way out to the world again. To his surprise he was never able to find the aperture again, though, in company with the other less imaginative cowboys, he often himted for it. His friend, von Franckenberg, who relates the story and says that he had it from Boehme's mouth, thinks that the experience was " a sort of emblematic omen or presage of his future spiritual admission to the sight of the hidden treasury of the wisdom and mysteries of God and Nature," ^ but we are more interested in it as a revelation of the extraordinary psychical nature of the boy, with his tendency to hallucination. When he was in his fourteenth year he was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Seidenberg, and devoted himself dili- gently to the mastery of his trade. It was during this period of apprenticeship, which lasted three years, that there was granted to him " a kind of secret tinder and glimmer " of coming fame. One day a stranger, plain and mean in dress, but otherwise of good presence, came to the shop and asked to buy a pair of shoes. As the master shoemaker was absent, the uninitiated prentice- boy did not feel competent to sell the shoes, but the buyer would not be put off. Thereupon young Jacob set an enormous price upon them, hoping to stave off the trade. The man, however, without any demur paid the price, took the shoes, and went out. Just outside the door the stranger stopped, and in a serious tone called out, " Jacob, come hither to me ! " The man, with shining eyes looking him full in the face, took his hand and said, " Jacob, thou art little but thou shalt become great — a man very different from the common cast, so that thou shalt be a wonder to the world. Be a good lad ; fear God and reverence His Word." With a little more counsel, the ' Memoirs, p. ii. 158 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. stranger pressed his hand and went his way, leaving the boy amazed.i He had, his intimate biographer tells us, lived from his very youth up in the fear of God, in all humility and simplicity, and had taken peculiar pleasure in hearing sermons, but from the opening of his apprenticeship he began to revolt from the endless controversies and " scholastic wranglings about religion," and he withdrew into himself, fervently and incessantly praying and seeking and knocking, until one day " he was translated into the holy Sabbath and glorious Day of Rest to the soul," and, according to his own words, was " enwrapt with the Divine Light for the space of seven days and stood possessed of the highest beatific wisdom of God, in the ecstatic joy of the Kingdom." ^ Boehme looked upon this " Sabbatic " experience as his spiritual call, and from this time on he increased his endeavours to live a pure life of godliness and virtue, refusing to listen to frivolous talk, reproving his fellows and even his shop- master when they indulged in light and wanton conversa- tion, until finally the master discharged him with the remark that he did not care to keep " a house-prophet " any longer.^ Hereupon he went forth as a travelling cobbler, spending some years in his wanderings, dis- covering more and more, as he passed from place to place, how religion was being lost in the Babel of theological wrangling, and seeing, with those penetrating eyes of his, deeper into the meaning of life and the world. Near the end of the century — probably about 1599 — ^^ gave up his wanderings, married Catherine Kunchman, " a young woman of virtuous disposition," and opened a shoemaker's shop for himself in the town of Gorlitz, where he soon established a reputation for honest, faithful work, and where he modestly prospered and was able to buy a home of his own, and where he reared the four sons and two daughters who came to the happy home. ^ Memoirs, p. 6. Von Franckenberg says that Boehme himself told him this incident. ' Ibid. pp. 4-5. The reader will have noted the long history of this phrase, " Sabbath of the soul." ' Ibid. p. 7. IX JACOB BOEHME 159 The supreme experience of his life — and one of the most remarkable instances of " illumination " in the large literature of mystical experiences— occurred when Boehme was twenty-five years of age, some time in the year 1600. His eye fell by chance upon the surface of a polished pewter dish which reflected the bright sunlight, when suddenly he felt himself environed and penetrated by the Light of God, and admitted into the innermost ground and centre of the universe. His experience, instead of waning as he came back to normal consciousness, on the contrary deepened. He went to the public green in Gorlitz, near his house, and there it seemed to him that he could see into the very heart and secret of Nature, and that he could behold the innermost properties of things.^ In his own account of his experience, Boehme plainly indicates that he had been going through a long and earnest travail of soul as a Seeker,^ " striving to find the heart of Jesus Christ and to be freed and delivered from ever5d;hing that turned him away from Christ." At last, he says, he resolved to " put his life to the utmost hazard " rather than miss his life-quest, when suddenly the " gate was opened." He continues his account as follows : "In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together in a Uni- versity. ... I saw and knew the Being of Beings, the Byss and Abyss, the eternal generation of the Trinity, the origin and descent of this world, and of all creatures through Divine Wisdom. I knew and saw in myself all the three worlds — (i) the Divine, Angelical, or Para- disaical World ; (2) the dark world, the origin of fire ; and (3) the external, visible world as an outbreathing or expression of the internal and spiritual worlds. I saw, too, the essential nature of evil and of good, and how the ^ Memoirs, p. 8. Paracelsus taught that the inner nature of things might be seen by one who has become an organ of the Universal Mind. He says ; " Hidden things which cannot be perceived by the physical senses may be found through the sidereal body, through whose organism we may look into nature in the same way as the sun shines through a glass. The inner nature of everything may be known through Magic [The Divine Magia] and the power of inner sight." — Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus (1896), p. 53. 2 He uses this word Seeker hundreds of times in his writings. i6o SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. pregnant Mother — the eternal genetrix — brought them forth." 1 He has also vividly told his experience in the Aurora : " While I was in affliction and trouble, I elevated my spirit, and earnestly raised it up unto God, as with a great stress and onset, lifting up my whole heart and mind and will and resolution to wrestle with the love and mercy of God and not to give over unless He blessed me — then the Spirit did break through. When in my resolved zeal I made such an assault, storm, and onset upon God, as if I had more reserves of virtue and power ready, with a resolution to hazard my life upon it, suddenly my spirit did break through the Gate, not without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, and I reached to the innermost Birth of the Deity and there I was em- braced with love as a bridegroom embraces his bride. My triumphing can be compared to nothing but the experience in which life is generated in the midst of death or like the resurrection from the dead. In this Light my spirit suddenly saw through all, and in all created things, even in herbs and grass, I knew God — who He is, how He is, and what His will is — and suddenly in that Light my will was set upon by a mighty impulse to describe the being of God." 2 This experience was the momentous watershed of his life. He is constantly referring to it either directly or indirectly. " I teach, write, and speak," is his frequent testimony, " of what has been wrought in me. I have not scraped my teaching together out of histories and so made opinions. I have by God's grace obtained eyes of my own." * " There come moments," he writes, " when the soul sees God as in a flash of lightning," * and he tells his readers that " when the Gate is opened " to them, they also " will understand." ^ "In my own faculties," he writes again, " I am as blind a man as "■ Second Epistle, sec. 6-8. 2 Aurora, xix. 10-13. He goes on in the following sections to describe how for twelve years this insight " grew in his soul like a young tree before the exact understanding of it all " was arrived at. ^ The Fifth Epistle, 50. ' Aurora, xi. 146. ^ Ibid. xi. 6. IX JACOB BOEHME i6i ever was, but in the Spirit of God my spirit sees through all." 1 During the ten quiet years which followed " the opening of the Gate " to him, Boehme meditated on what he had seen, and, though he does not say so, he almost certainly read much in the works of " the great masters," as he calls them, who were trying to tell, often in confused language, the central secret of the universe. Instead of fading out, his " flash " of insight grew steadily clearer to him as he read and pondered, and little by little, as one comes to see in the dark, certain great ideas became defined. With his third " flash," ^ which came to him in 1610, when he felt once more " overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and touched by God," ^ he was moved to write down for his own use what he had seen. " It was," he says, " powerfully borne in upon my mind to write down these things for a memorial, however difficult they might be of apprehension to my outer self [intellect] and of expression through my pen. I felt compelled to begin at once, like a chUd going to school, to work upon this very great Mystery. Inwardly [in spirit] I saw it all well enough, as in a great depth ; for I looked through as into a chaos where all things lie [undifferentiated] but the unravelling thereof seemed impossible. From time to time an opening took place within me, as of a growth* I kept this to myself for twelve years [1600-12], being full of it and I experienced a vehement impulse before I could bring it out into expression ; but at last it over- whelmed me like a cloud-burst which hits whatever it lights upon. And so it went with me : whatsoever I could grasp sufficiently to bring it out, that I wrote down." ^ This first book which thus grew out of his spiritual travails and " openings " Boehme called Morning Glow, to which later, through the suggestion of a friend, he gave * Aurora, xxii. 47. 2 In the Aurora Boehme speaks of the Flash as an experience : " As the lightning flash appears and disappears again in a moment, so it is also with the soul. In its battle the soul suddenly penetrates through the clouds and sees God like a flash of Light." — Ibid. xi. 76. ' Memoirs, p. 8. ' Evidently the " flash " of the year 1610 was not the last one. In fact, he seems to have had frequent ecstasies. ' The Second Epistle, 9-10. M i62 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. the title Aurora. It is a strange melange of chaos where all things lie undifferentiated and of insight ; dreary wastes of words that elude comprehension, with beautiful patches of spiritual oasis. He himself always felt that the book was dictated to him, and that he only passively held the pen which wrote it. " Art," he says, speaking of his writing, " has not written here, neither was there any time to consider how to set it down punctually, according to the understanding of the letters, but all was ordered according to the direction of the Spirit, which often went in haste, so that in many words letters may be wanting, and in some places a capital letter for a word ; so that the Penman's hand, by reason that he was not accustomed to it, did often shake. And though I could have wrote in a more accurate, fair, and plain manner, yet the reason was this, that the burning fire often forced forward with speed, and the hand and pen must hasten directly after it ; for it goes and comes like a sudden shower." ^ This is obviously an inside account of the production of inspirational script, amounting almost to automatic impulsion. Throughout his voluminous writings he often speaks of " this hand," or " this pen " as though they were owned and moved by a will far deeper than his own individual consciousness,^ and his writings themselves frequently bear the marks of automatisms. I His manuscript copy of Morning Glow was freely lent to readers and circulated widely. Boehme himself kept no copy by him, but he teUs us that during its wanderings the manuscript was copied out in full four times by strangers and brought to him.* One of the copies fell into the hands of Gregorius Richter, pastor primarius of Gorlitz, a violent guardian of orthodoxy and a man extremely jealous of any infringement of the dignity of his official position. He proceeded at once — " without suffiicient examination or knowledge " — to 1 Third Epistle, 35. ^ See especially Signatura rerum, ix. 63, and Forty Questions, xxvi. 2-3 and XXX. 3 and 5. * Third Epistle, 32. The Memoirs describe how it was copied by " a Gentle- man of some rank " [Carl von Endern]. IX JACOB BOEHME 163 " vilify and condemn " the writing, and in a sermon on " False Prophets " he vigorously attacked the local prophet of Gorlitz, who meekly sat in Church and listened to the " fulminations " against him.^ After the sermon, Boehme modestly asked the preacher to show him what was wrong with his teaching, but the only answer he received was that if he did not instantly leave the town the pastor would have him arrested ; and the following day Richter had Boehme summoned before the magis- trates, and succeeded by his influence and authority in overawing them so that they ordered the harmless prophet to leave the town forthwith without any time given him to see his family or to close up his affairs. Boehme quietly replied, " Yes, dear Sirs, it shall be done ; since it cannot be otherwise I am content." The next day, however, the magistrates of Gorlitz held a meeting and recalled the banished prophet and offered him the privilege of remaining in his home and occupation on condition that he would cease from writing on theological matters. On this latter point we have Boehme's own testimony, though he does not refer the condition to the magistrates. " When I appeared before him " [Pastor Richter], Boehme says, " to defend myself and indicate my standpoint, the Rev. Primarius [Richter] exacted from me a promise to give up writing and to this I assented, since I did not then see clearly the divine way, nor did I understand what God would later do with me. ... By his order I gave up for many years [1613-18] all writing or speaking about my knowledge of divine things, hoping vainly that the evil reports would at last come to an end, instead of which they only grew worse and more malignant." ^ Boehme's friend, Doctor Cornelius Weissner, in his account, which is none too accurate, endeavours to find an explanation of Richter's persistent hate and persecution ' Memoirs, p. 9. 2 Preserved in the Diary of Bartholomew Scultetus, then Mayor of Gorlitz (Ueberf eld's edition, 1730). This Diary does not record any actual banishment of Boehme. The data for our knowledge of the persecutions of Boehme are found in a personal narrative written by his friend Cornelius Weissner, M.D. — Memoirs, pp, 39-50. i64 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. of the shoemaker-prophet in a gentle reproof which the latter administered to the former for having meanly treated a poor kinsman of Boehme in a small commercial transaction, but it is by no means necessary to bring up incidents of this sort to discover an adequate ground for Richter's fury. The Aurora itself furnishes plenty of passages which would, if read, throw a jealous guardian of orthodoxy into fierce activity. One passage in which Boehme boldly attacks the popular doctrine of pre- destination and asserts that the writers and scribes who teach it are " masterbuilders of Lies " wiU be sufficient illustration of the theological provocation : " This present world doth dare to say that God hath decreed or concluded it so in His predestinate purpose and counsel that some men should be saved and some should be damned, as if hell and malice and evil had been from eternity and that it was in God's predestinate purpose that men should be and must be therein. Such persons pull and hale the Scriptures to prove it, though, indeed, they neither have the knowledge of the true God nor the understanding of Scripture. These justifiers and disputers assist the Devil steadfastly and pervert God's truth and change it into lies." ^ He closed his book with these daring words : " Should Peter or Paul seem to have written otherwise, then look to the essence, look to the heart {i.e. to interior meaning]. If you lay hold of the heart of God you have ground enqugh." ^ His entire conception of salvation was, too, as we shall see, vastly different from the pre- vailing orthodox conception, and furthermore he was only a layman, innocent of the schools, and yet he was claiming to speak as an almost infallible instrument of a fresh revelation of God. Theologians of the type of the Primarius Richter need no other provocation to account for their relentless pursuit of local prophets that appear in the domain of their authority. Meantime Boehme's fame was slowly spreading, and he was drawing into sjonpathetic fellowship with himself a number of high-minded and serious men who were 1 Aurora, xiii. 7-10. 2 Ibid, xxxvi. 152. IX JOCOB BOEHME 165 dissatisfied with the current orthodox teaching. In this group of friends who found comfort in the fresh message of Boehme were Dr. Balthazar Walther, director of the Chemical Laboratory of Dresden, Dr. Tobias Kober, physician at GorUtz, a disciple of Paracelsus, Abraham von Franckenberg, who calls Jacob " our God-taught man," Doctor Cornelius Weissner, who became intimate with him in 1618, and the nobleman Carl von Endern, who copied out the entire manuscript of the Aurora. These friends frequently encouraged Boehme to break his enforced silence, and he himself was restless and melan- choly, feeling that he was " entrusted with a talent which he ought to put to usury and not return to God singly and without improvement, like the lazy servant." " It was with me," he writes, describing his years of silence, " as when a seed is hidden in the earth. It grows up in storm and rough weather, against all reason. In winter time, all is dead, and reason says : ' It is all over with it.' But the precious seed within me sprouted and grew green, oblivious of all storms, and amid disgrace and ridicule it has blossomed forth into a lily ! " ^ Under the pressure, from without and from within, he resolved after five years of repression to break the seal of silence and give the world his message. Writing to a dear friend, whom he called " a plant of God," he says : " My very dear brother in the life of God, you are more acceptable to me in that it was you who awaked me out of my sleep, that I might go on to bring forth fruit in the hfe of God — and I want you to know that after I was awakened a strong smell was given to me in the life of God." ^ During the next six years (1618-24) he wrote almost incessantly, producing, from 1620 on, book after book in rapid succession.* In 1622, he informs a friend that he 1 Third Epistle, f. 2 Fifteenth Epistle, i8. This " new smell in the life of God " often occurs in Boehme's writings. Compare George Fox's testimony, " The whole creation had a new smell." For finther comparisons see pp. 221-227. ' The following is a complete list of his writings : 1612. The Aurora. i6ig. The Three Principles of the Divine Essence. 1620. The Threefold Life of Man ; Forty Questions ; The Incarnation of Jesus i66 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. has " laid aside his trade to serve God and his brothers," ^ and in 1623, he says that he has written without ceasing during the autumn and winter. He felt throughout his life that the " illumination," which broke upon him in the year 1600, steadily increased with the years, and he came to look upon his first book as only the crude attempt of a child as compared with his later works. " The Day," he writes in 1620, " has now overtaken the Aurora [the morning glow] ; it has grown fuU daylight and the morning is extinguished." ^ He says, with artlessness, that when he wrote the Aurora, he was not yet accustomed to the Spirit. The heavenly joy, indeed, met him and he followed the Spirit's guidance, but much of his own wild and untamed nature still remained to mar his work. Each successive book marks a growth of " the spiritual lily " in him, he thinks : " Each book from the first is ten times deeper ! " ^ Once again, the zeal of a friend brought Boehme into the storm-centre of persecution. Until 1623, his works circulated only in manuscript and were kept from the eye of his ecclesiastical enemy, but toward the end of that year, an admirer, Sigismund von Schweinitz, printed three of his little books — True Repentance ; True Resignation ; and The Supersensual Life — ^in one volume under the title The Way to Christ. Richter was immediately aroused and poured forth his feelings in some desperately bad verses : Quot continentur lineae, blasphemiae Tot continentur in libro sutorio. Qui nil nisi picem redolet sutoriam, Christ ; The Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Christ ; The Tree of Faith ; Six Points ; Heavenly and Earthly Mysterium ; The Last Times. 1621. De signatura rerum ; The Four Complexions ; Apology to Balthazar Tilken in 2 parts ; Consideration on Esaias Stiefel's Book. 1622. Sec. Apology to Stiefel ; Repentance ; Resignation ; Regeneration. 1623. Predestination and Election of God ; A Short Compendium of Repentance ; The Mysterium magnum. 1624. The Clavis ; The Supersensual Life ; Divine Contemplation ; Baptism and the Supper ; A Dialogue Between the Enlightened aud Unenlightened Soul ; An Apology on the Book of Repentance ; ijy Theosophic Questions ; An Epitome of the Mysterium magnum ; The Holy Week ; An Exposition of the Threefold World. Undated. An Apology to Esaias Stiefel ; The Last Judgment ; Epistles. » Thirty-first Epistle, 10. " The Third Epistle, 30. " Ibid. 29. IX JACOB BOEHME 167 Atrum et colorem, quem vocant sutorium. Pfuy ! pfuy ! teter sit fetor a nobis procul 1 1 But the Primarius was not content with this harmless weapon of ridicule. He stirred up the neighbouring clergymen to join him in the attack, and a complaint was lodged in Town Council against Boehme as a " rabid enthusiast," and he was warned to leave the town. Boehme was as sweet and gentle in spirit now as he had been ten yeajs before. He wrote in 1624 : "I pray for those who have reviled and condemned me. They curse me and I bless. I am standing the test [" Proba"] and have the mark of Christ on my forehead." ^ But he thought that it did not befit him as an instrument of God's revela- tion to let the false charges against him go unanswered. He accordingly repUed to the accusations in an Apology, in which the whole depth and beauty of his spiritual nature breathes forth. His appeal was in vain and he was forced to leave Gorlitz. He went forth, however, in no discouraged mood. He saw that his message was " being sounded through Europe," and he predicts that " the nations wiU take up what his own native town is casting away." Already, he hears, his book has been read with interest in the Court of the Elector of Saxony, and he writes, March 15, 1624 : " I am invited there to a conference with high people and I have consented to go at the end of the Leipzig fair. Soon the revelation of Jesus Christ shall break forth and destroy the works of the Devil." ^ The real trouble with the world, he thinks, is that the Christians in it are " titular and verbal " — they are only " opinion-peddlers," * and that is why a man who insists upon a reproduction of the life of Christ is persecuted. The visit to the Elector's Court in Dresden came off well for the simple shoemaker. He spent two months in the home of the Court physician. Dr. Hinkel- mann, where many of the nobility and clergy came to see ^ There are as many blasphemies in the shoemaker's book as there are lines. It smells of shoemaker's wax and filthy blacking. May this intolerable stench be far from us. * Thirty-fourth Epistle, 5. 3 Thirty-third Epistle. * Thirty-fourth Epistle, 16 and 21. i68 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. him and to talk with him. Three professors of theology and other learned doctors were asked by the Elector to examine him. They reported that they did not yet quite succeed in understanding him, and that therefore they could not pronounce judgment. They hoped " His Highness would please to have patience and allow the man sufficient time to expound his ideas " — which were, in fact, already " expounded " in more than a score of volumes ! One of the professors is reported to have said : " I would not for the world be a party to this man's condemnation," and another declared : " Nor would I, for who knows what lies at the bottom of it aU ! " ^ The end of the good man's life, however, was near. He was taken iU in November 1624, whUe staying with his old friend, von Schweinitz, and he hurried home to Gorlitz, where his family had remained during his absence, to die in the quiet of his own house. The night before he died, he spoke of hearing beautiful music, and asked to have the door opened that he might hear it better. In the morning — as the Aurora appeared — ^he bade farewell to his wife and children, committed his soul to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ, arranged a few simple matters, and, with a smile on his face, said, " Now I go to Paradise." His old enemy, Richter, had died a few months before him, but the new pastor was of the same temper and refused to preach his funeral sermon. The second pastor of the city was finally ordered by the Governor of Lausitz to preach the sermon, which he began with the words, " I had rather have walked a hundred and twenty miles than preach this sermon ! " ^ The common people, however, — the shoemakers, tanners and a " great con- course of us his fast friends," as one of them writes, — were at the funeral, and a band of young shoemakers carried his body to its last resting-place, where a block of porphyry now informs the visitor that " Jacob Boehme, philosophus Teutonicus " sleeps beneath. Griitzmacher holds that Boehme is an " isolated thinker," having little, if any, historical connection with ^ Weissner's Narrative, Memoirs, p. 49. 2 Ibid. p. 58. IX JACOB BOEHME 169 the past.^ I do not agree with this view. I find in him rather the ripe fulfilment of the powerful protest against the dead letter, against a formal religion, and equally a fiilfilment of a Christianity of inward life, which was voiced so vigorously in the writings of Denck, Biinderlin Entfelder, Franck, and Weigel, neglecting for the moment another side of Boehme and another set of influences which appeared in him. The central note of his life-long prophet-cry was against a form of religion buUt upon the letter of Scripture and consisting of external ceremonies and practices, and this is the ground of Richter's bitter hostility and stubborn opposition.^ The Church of his day seems to him a veritable Babel — • " fuU of pride and wrangling, and jangling, and snarling about the letter of the written Word," lacking in true, real, effectual knowledge and power ; a pitiably poor " substitute for the Temple of the holy Spirit where God's living Word is taught." * Through each of his books we hear of " verbal Christendom " ; of " titular Chris- tians " ; of " historical feigned faith " ; of " history religion " ; of "an external forgiveness of sins " ; of " the work of outward letters." " The builders of Babel," he says, " cannot endure that one should teach that Christ Himself must be the teacher in the human heart " — " they jangle instead about the mere husk, about the written word and letter while they miss the Uving Word." * The divisions of Christendom are due to the fact that its " master-bunders " are of the Babel-tj^e. They always follow the line of opinion ; their basis is " the letter " ; their method of approach is external. They buUd " stone houses in which they read the writings which the Apostles left behind them," while they them- selves dispute and contend about " mental idols and 1 Wort und Geist, p. 196 seq. ' What could be a bolder criticism of the existing Church of his day than this : " In place of the wolf [the Roman Church] there has grovm up the fox [the Lutheran Church] another anti-Christ, never a whit better than the first. If he should come to be old enough how he would devour the poor people's hens ! " — The Three Principles of the Divine Essence, xviii. 102. ' Mysterium magnum, xxvii. 47. * Ibid, xxviii. 49-51. 170 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. opinions." i The true Church of Christ, on the contrary, is the hving Temple of the Spirit. It is built up of men made wholly new by the inward power of the Divine Spirit and made one by an inward unity of heart and life with Christ — as " a living Twig of our Life-Tree Jesus Christ." Nobody can belong to this Church unless " he puts on the shirt of a little child," dies to selfishness and hypocrisy, rises again in a new wUl and obedience, and forms his life in its inmost ground according to Christ, the Life.2 " The wise world," he declares, " will not believe in the true inward work of Christ in the heart ; it win have " only an external washing away of sins in Grace," but the ABC of true religion is far different.* He only is a Christian in fact in whom Christ dwelleth, liveth and hath His being, in whom Christ hath arisen as the eternal ground of the soul. He only is a Christian who has this high title in himself, and has entered with mind and soul into that Eternal Word which has mani- fested itself as the life of our humanity.* He wrote near the end of his life to Balthazar Tilken : " If I had no other book except the book which I myself am, I should have books enough. The entire Bible lies in me if I have Christ's Spirit in me. What do I need of more books ? Shall I quarrel over what is outside me before I have learned what is within me ? " ^ " What would it profit me if I were continually quoting the Bible and knew the whole book by heart but did not know the Spirit that inspired the holy men who wrote that book, nor the source from which they received their knowledge ? How can I expect to understand them in truth, if I have not the same Spirit they had ? " ^ This insistence on personal, first-hand experience and practice of the Christ-Life, as the ground of true religion, ^ Mysterium magnum, xxxvi. 34 ; xl. 98. 2 Ibid. Ixiii. 47-51 ; Tweniy-first Epistle, i. ' Myst. mag. xxv. 13. * The First Epistle, 3-5. ' Apology to Tilken, ii. 298. ' Ibid. 72. Compare George Fox's testimony : " All must come to that Spirit, if they would know God or Christ or the Scriptures aright, which they that gave them forth were led and taught by." — Journal (ed. 1901), i. 35 and passim. IX JOCOB BOEHME 171 is the fundamental feature of Boehme's Christianity. He travels, as we shall see, through immense heights and deeps. Like Dante, who immeasurably surpasses him in power of expression, but not in prophetic power of vision, he saw the eternal realities of heaven and hell and the world between, and he told as weU as he could what he saw, but his practical message which runs like a thread through aJl his writings is always simple — almost childlike in its simplicity — " Thou must thyself be the way. The spiritual understanding must be born in thee." ^ "A Christian is a new creature in the ground of the heart." ^ " The Kingdom of God is not from without, but it is a new man, who lives in love, in patience, in hope, in faith and in the Cross of Jesus Christ." ^ And this simple shoemaker of Gorhtz, with his amazing range of thought and depth of experience, practised and embodied the way of life which he recommended. He was a good man, and his life touches us even now with a kind of awe. " Life," he once said, " is a strange bath of thorns and thistles," * and he himself experienced that " bath," but he went through the world hearing every- where a divine music and " having a joy in his heart which made his whole being tremble and his soul triumph as if it were in God." ^ ^ Sig. re. xiv. i. * Myst. mag. Ixx. 40. ' Fourth Epistle, 27 and 32. * The Three Princ. xxii. i. 5 Aurora, iii. 39. CHAPTER X boehme's universe "If thou wilt be a philosopher or naturalist and search into God's being in Nature and discern how it all came to pass, then pray to God for the Holy Spirit to enlighten thee. In thy flesh and blood thou art not able to apprehend it, but dost read it as if a mist were before thy eyes. In the Holy Spirit alone, and in the whole Nature out of which all things were made, canst thou search into Nature." — Aurora, ii. 15-17. One idea underlies everything which Boehnae has written, namely, that nobody can successfully " search into visible Nature," or can say anything true about Man or about the problem of good and evil, until he has " apprehended the whole Nature out of which all things were made." It win not do, he thinks, to make the easy assumption that in the beginning the world was made out of nothing. " If God made all things out of nothing," he says, " then the visible world would be no revelation of Him, for it would have nothing of Him in it. He would still be off beyond and outside, and would not be known in this world. Persons however learned they may be, who hold such ' opinions ' have never opened the Gates of God." ^ Behind the visible universe and in it there is an invisible universe ; behind the material universe and in it there is an immaterial universe ; behind the temporal universe and in it there is an eternal universe, and the first business of the philosopher or naturalist, as Boehme conceives it, is to discover the essential Nature of this invisible, immaterial, eternal universe out of which this fragment of a visible world has come forth. ^ Aurora, xxi. 60-62. 172 CHAP. X BOEHME'S UNIVERSE 173 Need have we, Sore need, of stars that set not in mid storm, Lights that outlast the lightnings.^ The visible fragment is never self-explanatory ; all attempts to account for what occurs in it drive the serious observer deeper for his answer, and with a breathless boldness this meditative shoemaker of Gorlitz undertakes to teU of the nature of this deeper World within the world. As a boy he saw a vast treasury of wealth hidden in the inside of a mountain, though he could never make any- body else see it. As a man he believed that he saw an immeasurable wealth of reality hidden within the world of sense, and he tried, often with poor enough success, to make others see the inside world which he found. We must now endeavour to grasp what it was that he saw. There is no doubt at all that this inside world which he discovered within and behind visible Nature, within and behind man, is really there, nor is there any doubt in my mind that he, Jacob Boehme, got an insight into its nature and significance which is of real worth to the modem world, but he is seriously hampered by the poverty of his categories, by the difficulties of his symbolism and by his literary limitations, when he comes to the almost insuperable task of expressing what he has seen. He is himself perfectly conscious of his hmitations. He is constantly amazed that God uses such " a mean instru- ment," he regrets again and again that he is " so difficult to be understood," and he often wishes that he could " impart his own soul " to his readers that they " might grasp his meaning," ^ for he never for a moment doubts that " by God's grace he has eyes of his own." ^ He lived in an unscientific age, before our present exact terminology was coined. He was the inheritor of the vocabulary and symbolism of alchemy and astrology, and he was obliged to force hife spiritual insight into a language which for us has become largely an antique rubbish heap.* If he 1 Swinburne, Erechiheus. ^ See Fifteenth Epistle, 25. » Fifth Epistle, 50. • Like Paracelsus, he uses " sulphur " in a symbolic way to represent an active energy of the universe and a form of will in man. In a similar way, 174 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. had possessed the marvellous power that Dante had to compel words to express what his soul saw, he might have fused these artificial symboUsms with the fire of his spirit, and given them an eternal value as the Florentine did with the equally dry and stubborn terminology of schol- asticism, but that gift he did not have.^ We must not blame him too much for his obscurities and for his large regions of rubbish and confusion, but be thankful for the luminous patches, and try to seize the meaning and the message where it breaks through and gets revealed. The outward, visible, temporal world, he declares, is " a spiration, or outbreathing, or egress " of an eternal spiritual World and this inner, spiritual World " couches within " our visible world and is its ground and mother, and the outward world is from husk to core a parable or figure of the inward and eternal World. " The whole outward visible world, with all its being, is a ' signature ' or figure of the inward, spiritual World, and everything has a character that fits an internal reality and process, and the internal is in the external." ^ As he expresses the same idea in another book : " The visible world is a manifestation of the inward spiritual World, and it is an image or figure of eternity, whereby eternity has made itself visible." * But there is a stUl deeper Source of things than this inward spiritual World, which is after aU a manifested and organized World, and Boehme begins his account with That which is before beginnings — the unoriginated Mother of all Worlds and of All that is, visible and in- visible. This infinite Mother of all births, this eternal Matrix, he calls the Ungrund, " Abyss," or the " Great " mercury " stands for inteUigence and spirit, and " salt " is the symbol for substance. No one could find in a chemist's shop the salt or sulphur that Boehme talks about ! 1 There is a fine saying about Dante in the Ottimo Commento : "I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say for him what they were not wont to say for other poets." 2 Sig. re. ix. 1-3. Paracelsus said, " Everything is the product of one creative effort," and, " There is nothing corporeal that does not possess a soul." ^ The Supersensual Life, p. 44. X BOEHME'S UNIVERSE 175 Mystery," ^ or the " Eternal Stillness." Here we are beyond beginnings, beyond time, beyond " nature," and we can say nothing in the language of reason that is true or adequate. The eternal divine Abyss is its own origin and explanation ; it presupposes nothing but itself ; there is nothing beyond it, nothing outside it — there is, in fact, no " beyond " and " outside " — ^it is " neither near nor far off." ^ It is an absolute Peace, an indivisible Unity, an undifferentiated One — an Abysmal Deep, which no Name can adequately name and which can be described in no words of time and space, of here and now. But we must not make the common blunder of sup- posing that Boehme means that before God expressed Himself and unfolded Himself in the infinite processes of revelation and creation. He existed apart, as this un- differentiated One, this unknowable Abyss, this incom- prehensible Matrix. There is no " before." Creation, revelation, manifestation is a dateless and eternal fact. God to be a personal God must go out of Himself and find Himself in something that mirrors Him. He must have a Son. He must pour His Life and Love through a universe. What Boehme means, then, is that no manifestation, no created universe, no expression, is the ultimate Reality itself. The manifested universe has come out of More than itself. The Abyss is more than anything, or all, that comes out of it, or can come out of it, and it lies with its infinite depth beneath everything which appears, as a man's entire Ufe, conscious and unconscious, is in and yet lies behind every act of will, though we can " talk about " only what is voiced or expressed. Even within this Abysmal Depth, that underlies all that comes to being, there is eternal process — eternal movement toward Personality and Character : " God is the eternal Seeker and Finder of Himself." ' " In the 1 Paracelsus and others used the term Myslerium magnum to denote the original, but unoriginated, matter out of which all things were made. " Mys- terium " is anything out of which something germinally contained in it can be developed. 2 Mysterium magnum, xxix. 1-2. ' Forty Questions, i. 57. 176 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. Stillness an eternal Will arises, a longing desire for mani- festation, the eye of eternity turns upon itself and discovers itself " 1 — in a word there is within the infinite Divine Deep an eternal process of self-consciousness and person- ality, which Boehme expresses in the words, " The Father eternally generates the Son." " God hath no beginning and there is nothing sooner than He, but His Word hath a bottomless, unfathomable origin in Him and an eternal end : which is not rightly called end, but Person, i.e. the Heart of the Father, for it is generated in the eternal Centre." ^ This inner process toward Personahty is often called by Boehme " the eternal Virgin " who brings to birth God as Person, or sometimes " the Mirror," in which God sees Himself revealed as will and wisdom and goodness. In the greatest artistic creation of the modern world — "The Sistine Madonna" — Raphael has with almost infinite pictorial power of genius tried to express in visible form this Birth of God. Behind curtains which hang suspended from nowhere and stretch across the universe, dividing the visible from the invisible, the world of Nature from the world of holy mystery, the infinite, immeasurable and abysmal God is pictured as defined and personal in the face and figure of a little Child, in which the artist suggests in symbolism the infinite depth and joy and potency of Divinity breaking forth out of mystery into form. It is precisely this birth of God into visibility that Boehme is endeavouring to tell. " The Son," however, Boehme says, " is not divided or sundered from the Father, as two persons side by side — there are not two Gods. The Son is the heart of the Father — God as Person — the outspringing Joy of the total triumphing Reality,' and through this eternal movement toward self-consciousness and Personality, God becomes Spirit, an out-going energy of purpose, a dynamic activity, bursting forth into infinite manifestation and differentia- tion — a forth-breathed or expressed Word.* Through 1 Sig. re. ii. 4-15, and iii. i-io. ^ The Threefold Life of Man, iii. 2. 3 Aurora, iii. 35-39. * Ibid. vi. 6-8 ; Clavis, 18-29. X BOEHME'S UNIVERSE 177 this eternal process of self-differentiation and outgoing activity, the inner spiritual universe comes into being — as an intermediate Nature or world, between the ineffable Abyss of God on the one hand, and our world of material, visible things on the other hand. " The process of the whole creation," he says, " is nothing else but a mani- festation of the deep and unsearchable God, and yet creation is not God but rather like an apple which springs from the power of the tree and grows upon the tree, and yet is not the tree — even so all things have sprung forth out of the central divine Desire." ^ This entire manifested or out-breathed universe is, he says, the expression of the divine desire for holy sport and play. The Heart of God enjoys this myriad play of created beings, all tuned as the infinite strings of a harp for contributing to one mighty harmony, and all together uttering and voicing the infinite variety of the divine purpose. Each differentiated spirit or light or property or atom of creation has a part to play in the infinite sport or game or harmony, " so that in God there might be a holy play through the universe as a child plays with his mother, and that so the joy in the Heart of God might be increased," ^ or again, " so that each being may be a true sounding string in God's harmonious concert." ^ This eternal, interior World— the Mirror in which the Spirit manifests Himself — is a double world of darkness and light, for there can be no manifestation except through opposites.* There must be yes and no. In order to have a play there must be opposing players. In order to have life and reality there must be conflict and conquest. As soon as the forth-going Word of God is differentiated into many concrete expressions and the fundamental Unity of the Abyss is broken up into par- ticular desires and wills, there is bound to be a clash of opposites — ^will and contra-will, strain and tension, light and joy and beauty, and over against them pain and sorrow and evU. Evil must appear as soon as there is * Sig. re. xvi. i. 2 Aurora, xiii. 48-57 ; Myst. mag. viii. 31 ; The Three Principles, iv. 66. ' Sig. re. XV. 38. * Myst. mag. viii. 27. N 178 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. process of separation, differentiation, variety, specializa- tion and particularity.^ Darkness appears as soon as there is a contraction or narrowing into concrete desire and will. Both worlds — the light world and the dark world — are made by desire and wUl. Narrowing desires for individual and particular aims, which sever a being from the total whole of divine goodness, make the kingdom of darkness, while death to self-will and a yearning desire and will for all that is expressed in the Heart and Light of God, in the Person of His Son, make the kingdom of Light. Lucifer — ^the awful example of the dark World — fell because he stood in pride and despised the Birth of the Heart of God and its gentle, universalizing love-spirit ; and so his light went out into darkness. His climbing up into a severed will was his fall. The more he climbed toward the sundered aim of his own will and turned away from the Heart of God, the greater was his fall, for to turn away from the Heart of God is always to fall.^ There is no darkness, no evil, in angel or devil or man, except the nature of that particular being's own will and desire — both darkness and light are bom of desire. The origin of the fall of any creature, therefore, is not outside that creature, but within it.* The evil in the world is only a possible good spoiled. Beings created for a holy sport and play, for an ordered harmony, as infinite harp-strings for a celestial music, set their wilful desires upon sundered ends, broke the intended harmony, or " temperature," as Boehme calls it, introduced strife — ^the turba magna — and darkness, and so spoiled the actual material out of which the kingdoms of nature are made, for the attitude of will moulds the permanent structure of the being. Through the whole universe, visible and invisible, as a result, the dark lines run, and the drama of the whole process of the universe is the mighty issue between light and darkness, good and evil : Two universal qualities persist from ^ Myst. mag. xxix. i-io. 2 The Three Principles, iv. 68-74 ; The Threefold Life, iv. 33. ' Myst. mag. ix. 3-8. X BOEHME'S UNIVERSE 179 beginning to end and produce two kingdoms arrayed against each other — each within the other — one love, the other wrath ; one hght, the other darkness ; one heavenly, the other hellish.^ Now out of this inner spiritual universe — a double universe of light and darkness — this temporal, visible, more or less material, world has come forth, as an outer sheath of an inner world, and, like its Mother, it, too, is a double world of good and evil. " There is not," as William Law, interpreting Boehme, once said, " the smallest thing or the smallest quality of a thing in this world, but is a quality of heaven or hell discovered [i.e. revealed] under a temporal form. Every thing that is disagreeable to taste, to the sight, to our hearing, smelling or feeling has its root and ground and cause in and from hell [the dark kingdom], and is as surely in its degree the working and manifestation of hell in this world, as the most diabolical malice and wickedness is ; the stink of weeds, of mire, of all poisonous, corrupted things ; shrieks, horrible sounds ; wrathful fire, rage of tempests and thick darkness, are all of them things that had no possibility of existence, till the fallen angels disordered their kingdom [i.e. until the inner universe was spoiled by narrow, sundered desires]. Therefore everything that is dis- agreeable and horrible in this life, everything that can afflict and terrify our senses, all the kinds of natural and moral evil, are only so much of the nature, effects and manifestation of hell, for hell and evil are only two words for one and the same thing. ... On the other hand, all that is sweet, delightful and amiable in the world, in the serenity of air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of soimds, the beauty of colours, the fragrance of smells, the splendour of precious stones, is nothing else but heaven breaking through the veil of this world, manifesting itself in such a degree and darting forth in such variety so much of its own nature." ^ I have spoken so far as though Boehme traced the 1 Aurora, Preface 84. '' Christopher Walton, Notes and Materials for u. Biography of Wm. Law (London, 1854), 55. i8o SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. source of every thing to will and desire, as though, in fact, the visible universe were the manifold outer expression of some deep-lying personal will, and in the last analysis that is true, but his more usual form of interpretation is that of the working of great structural tendencies, or energies, or " qualities," as he calls them, which are common both to the inner and the outer rmiverse. There are, he declares again and again with painful reiteration, but with little advance of lucidity, seven of these funda- mental laws or energies or qualities, like the sevenfold colour-band of the rainbow, though they can never be untangled or sundered or thought of as standing side by side, for together in their unity and interprocesses they form the universe, with its warp and woof of light and darkness.^ The first " quality " is a contracting, compacting tendency which runs through the entire universe, outer and inner. It is in its inmost essence desire, the egoistic tendency, the focusing of will upon a definite aim so that consciousness contracts from its universal and absolute possibilities to a definite, limited, concrete something in particular, and thus negates ever57thing else. Desire always disturbs the " Quiet " and brings contrac- tion, negation and darkness. In the outer world it appears as the property of cohesion which makes the particles of a particular thing hold and cling together and form one self-contained and separate thing. It is the individualizing tendency which permeates the universe and which may be expressed either as a material law in the outer world, or as personal will-tendency in the inner world. The second " quality " is the attractive, gravitating tendency which binds whole with whole as an organizing, universalizing energy. This, again, is both spiritual and physical — it has an outer and an inner aspect. It is a fundamental love-principle in the inner world — the 1 The great passages in which Boehme expounds the seven qualities are found in the Aurora, chaps, vui.-xi. ; Sig. re. chap. xiv. ; The Clavis, 54-132 ; though they are more or less definitely stated or implied in nearly everything he wrote. Seven " qualities " or " principles " or " sources " appear and reappear in ever shifting forms throughout the entire literature of Gnosticism, alchemy, and nature-mysticism. X BOEHME'S UNIVERSE i8i foundation, as Boehme says, of sweetness and warmth and mercy ^ — and at the same time is a structural, organ- izing law of nature, which tends out of many parts to make one universe.^ These two diverse tendencies at work eternally in the same world produce strain and tension and anguish. The tension occasioned by these opposite forces gives rise to the third " quality," which is a tendency toward movement, oscillation, rotation — what Boehme often calls the wheel of nature, or the wheel of motion, or the wheel of life.^ This, too, is both outer and inner ; a law of the physical world and a tendency of spirit. There is nothing in nature that is not ceaselessly moved, and there is no life without its restlessness and anguish, its inward strain and stress, its tension and its problem, its dizzy wheel of life — the perpetual pursuit of a goal which ends at the starting-point as an endless circular process. The fourth " quality " is the flash, or ignition, due to collision between nature and spirit, in which a new principle of activity breaks through what before was mere play of forces, and reveals something that has activity in itself, the kindling, burning power of fire, though not yet fire which gives light. In the outer world it is the bursting forth of the elemental, fusing, consuming powers of Nature which may either construct or destroy. In the inner world it is the birth of self-consciousness on its lower levels, the awaking of the soul, the kindling of passion, and desire, and purpose. Any one of these four lower " qualities " may stay at its own level, remain in itself, out of " temperature " or balance with the rest, and so be only a " dark principle " ; or it may go on and fulfil itself in one of the higher " qualities " next to be described, and so become a part of the triumphing " light principle." Fire may be only a " fire of anguish " or it may go up into a " fire of love " ; it may be a harsh, 1 Aurora, viii. 32-35. 2 Some of Boehme's enthusiastic friends insist that Sir Isaac Newton, who was an admirer of Boehme, " ploughed with Boehme's heifer," i.e. got his suggestion of the law of universal gravitation from the philosopher of GorUtz. See Walton, Notes, p. 46 and passim. ' Sig. re. iv. passim. i82 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. self-tormenting fire, or it may be a soft, light-bringing, purif)dng fire. Suffering may liarden the spirit, or it may be the condition of joy. Crucifixion may be mere torture, or it may be the way of salvation. It is then here at the great divide between the " qualities " that the universe reveals its differentiation into two kingdoms — " the dark " and " the light." The fifth " quality " is Light, springing out of the " flash " of fire and rising to the level of illumination and the revelation of beauty. It is at this stage of Light that the lower force-forms and fire-forms first stand revealed in their full meaning and come to their real fulfilment. On its inner or spiritual side this Light-quality is an " amiable and blessed Love." It is the dawn and beginning of the triumphing spirit of freedom which wills to draw all things back to one centre, one harmony, one unity, in which wild will and selfish passion and isolating pride, and all that springs from the dark fire-root are quenched, and instead the central principle of the spiritual world — Love — comes into play. Boehme calls his sixth " quality " voice or sound, but he means by it the entire range of intelligent expression through tone and melody, music and speech, everything in the world, in fact, that gives joy and beauty through purposeful utterance. He even widens his category of " sound " to include colours and smells and tastes, in short, all the sense-qualities by which the world gets revealed in its richness of beauty and harmony to our perception. He widens it, too, to include deeper and subtler tones than those of our earth-born sense — the heavenly sports and melodies and harmonies which the rightly attuned spirit may hear with a finer organ than the ear. The seventh, and final, " quality " is body or figure, by which he means the fundamental tendency or energy toward expression in actuality and concrete form. The final goal of intelligent purpose is the realization of wisdom, of idea, in actual Nature-forms and life-forms — the incarnation of the spirit. There is nothing real in the X BOEHME'S UNIVERSE 183 universe but has its form, its " signature," its figure, its body-aspect : " There is not anything but has its soul and its body, and each soul is as it were an inner kernel, or seed, to a visible and comprehensible body," ^ and, as we shall see, the supreme achievement of the universe is the visible appearance of the Word of God, the eternal Son, in flesh like ours — a visible realization in time of the eternal Heart of God. The glory of God appears in a kingdom of God, a visible vesture of the Spirit. AH these seven qualities, or " fountain-spirits," or fundamental tendencies, are in every part and parcel of the universe, and each particular thing or being finds his true place in the vast drama or play of the universe, according to which " quality " is prepotent, and marks the thing or being with its " signature." They con- stitute in their eternal nature what Boehme calls The Three Principles that underlie all reality of every order. The first principle is the substratum or essence of these first three "qualities," the nature - tendencies at the level of forces, which he generally calls the fire-principle, i.e. the dark fire, before the " flash " has come. The second principle is the substratum or essence of the last three " qualities " — the tendencies toward unity, harmony, order, love, which he calls the light-principle. The third principle produces the union or synthesis of the other two — the principle of realization in body and form, the triumph over opposition of these two opposing principles in the exhibition of the real, the actual, the living, the conscious, where dark and light are both joined, but are dominated by another irreducible principle. To these three fundamental principles correspond the three supreme divine aspects : Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.2 We are here, of course, far from a scientific account of the processes and evolution of the universe. Boehme 1 Sig. re. xiii. ' For fuller treatment of this point see Boutroux, Historical Studies in Philosophy, chapter on " Jacob Boehme, the German Philosopher," pp. 199-201. i84 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. is no scientific genius and he did not dream that every item and event of the world of phenomena could be causally explained, without reference to any deeper abysmal world of Spirit. His mission is rather that of the prophet who " has eyes of his own." He is endeavour- ing to tell us, often no doubt in very laborious fashion, sometimes as " one who is tunnelling through long tracts of darkness," that this outside world which we see and describe is a parable, a pictorial drama, suggesting, hinting, revealing an inside world of Spirit and Will ; that every slightest fragment of the seen is big with significance as a revelation of an unseen realm, which again is an egress from the unimaginable Splendour of God. He believes, like Paracelsus, that everything in Nature — plants, metals, and stars — "can be fundamentally searched out and comprehended " by the inward way of approach, can be read like an open book by the children of the Spirit who have caught the secret clue that leads in, and who have the key that unlocks the inner realm. ^ Obviously his " inner way of approach " works more successfully when applied to man than when applied to plants and metals and stars, and when he writes of man, whether in the first or in the third person, he does often seem to have " eyes of his own," and to " hold the key that unlocks." It is an elemental idea with him that man is " a little world " — a microcosm — and expresses in himself all the properties of the great world — the macrocosm.^ " As you find man to be," he writes, " just so is eternity. Consider man in body and soul, in good and evil, in light and darkness, in joy and sorrow, in power and weakness, in life and death — all is in man, both heaven and earth, stars and elements. Nothing can be named that is not in man." ^ Every man's life is inwardly bottomless and opens from within into all the immeasurable depth of God. Eternity springs through time and reveals itself in every person, for the foundation property of the soul 1 Third Epistle, 33. ^ Twenty-fourth Epistle, 7 ; Sig. re. i. ' The Threefold Life, vi. 47. X BOEHME'S UNIVERSE 185 of every man is essentially eternal, spiritual, and abysmal — it is a little drop out of the Fountain of the Life of God, it is a little sparkle of the Divine Splendour.^ God is spoken of again and again as " man's native country," his true " origin and home " — " The soul of man is always seeking after its native country, out of which it has wandered, seeking to return home again to its rest in God." 2 " The soul of man," he says again, " has come out from the eternal Father, out from the Divine Centre, but this soul — ^with this high origin and this noble mark — stands always at the opening of two gates." * Two worlds, two mighty cosmic principles, make their appeal to his wUl. Two kingdoms wrestle in him, two natures strive for the mastery in his life, and he makes his world, his nature, his life, his eternal destiny by his choices : " What- soever thou buildest and sowest here in thy spirit, be it words, works, or thought, that will be thy eternal house." * " The good or evil that men do, by acts of will, enters into and forms the soul and so moulds its permanent habita- tion." 5 Adam once, and every man after him also once, has belonged, in the centre of the soul, to God, and whether it be Adam or some far-off descendant of him, each is the creator of his own real world, and settles for himself the atmosphere in which he shall live and the inner " tincture " of his abiding nature. " Adam fell " — and any man's name can here be substituted for " Adam " — " because, though he was a spark of God's eternal essence, he broke himself off and sundered himself from the universal Will — by contraction — and withdrew into self-seeking, and centred himself in selfishness. He broke the perfect temperature — or harmonious balance of qualities — and turned his will toward the dark world and the light in him grew dim." ^ To follow the dark world is to be Lucifer or fallen Adam, to follow the light world com- pletely is to be Christ ' — and before every soul the two 1 The Three Princ. xiv. 89 ; First Epistle, 42. 2 The Three Princ. x. 26 ; xvi. 50. ' Ibid. X. 13. * Aurora, xviii. 49. 5 Myst. mag. xxii. 41. « Ibid, xviii. 31-43, given in substance. ' Ibid. xxvi. 19. The place of Christ in Boehme's system will be given in the next chapter. i86 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. gates stand open.i In a powerful and penetrating passage he says : " We should take heed and beget that which is good out of ourselves. If we make an angel of ourselves we are that ; if we make a devil of ourselves, we are that." ^ This last sentence is a good introduction to Boehme's conception of " the next world "—" the great beyond." He was as completely free of the crude idea that heaven is a shining locality in the sky, and hell a yawning pit of fire below the earth, as the most exact scientific scholar of the modem world is likely to be. He had grasped the essential and enduring character of man's spiritual nature so firmly that he ceased to have any further interest in the mythological aspects in which vivid and pictorial imagina- tion has invested the unseen world. " God's presence itself," he says, " is heaven, and if God did but put away the veiling shadows, which now curtain thy sight, thou wouldst see, even where thou now art, the Face of God and the heavenly gate. God is so near that at any moment a holy Birth [a Birth into the Life of God] may be accom- plished in thy heart," ^ and, again, in the same book he writes : " If man's eyes were opened he would see God everywhere, for heaven is everjrwhere for those who are in the innermost Birth. When Stephen saw heaven opened and Jesus at the right hand of God, his spirit did not swing itself aloft into some heaven in the sky, but it rather penetrated into the innermost Birth where heaven always is. Thou must not think that God is a Being who is off in an upper heaven, or that when the soul departs it goes many hundred thousands of miles aloft. It does not need to do that, for as soon as it has entered the innermost Birth it is in heaven already with God — near and far in God is one thing." * The " next world " — " the beyond " — therefore, must not be thought of in terms of space and time, of here and there, of now and then, as a place to which we shall journey at the momentous moment of death : " the soul ' Myst. mag. xxvi. 5. ' Incarnation, part ii. ix. 12-14. ' Aurora, x. 100-103. * tf>id. xix. 56-59. X BOEHME'S UNIVERSE 187 needeth no going forth." ^ As soon as the external veil of flesh dissolves, each person is in his own country and has all the time been in it. There is nothing nearer to you than heaven and hell. To whichever of them you incline and toward whichever of them you tend — that is most near you, and every man has in himself the key.^ Heaven and hell are ever57where throughout the whole world. You need not seek them far off. It is always the nature of " Anti-Christ " and " Babel " and " opinion-peddlers " to seek God and heaven and hell above the stars or under the deep. There is only one " place " to look for God and that is in one's own soul, there is only one " region " in which to find heaven or hell, and that is in the nature and character of the person's own desire and will : " Even though the devU should go many millions of mUes, desiring to see heaven and enter into it, yet he would still be in hell and could not see heaven at all."^ The soul, Boehme says in substance, hath heaven or hell in itself. Heaven is the turning of the will into God's love ; hell is the turning of the wUl into hate. Now when the body falls away the heavenly soul is thoroughly penetrated with the Love and Light of God, even as fire penetrates and enlightens white-hot iron, whereby it loses its darkness — this is heaven and this is the right hand of God. The soul that dwells in falsehood, lust, pride, envy, and anger carries hell in itself and cannot reach the Light and Love of God. Though it should go a thousand miles or a thousand times ten thousand miles— even climb beyond the spaces of the stars and the bounds of the universe — it would still remain in the same property and source of darkness as before.* The " next world " — " the world beyond " — is 1 The Supersensual Life, 36. 2 The Three Princ. ix. 25-27 and xix. 33. ' Myst. mag. viii. 28. * The Supersenstial Life, 38. Every reader will naturally be reminded oi Milton's great lines : "The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." There were no doubt many sources in Milton's time for such a conception, but the poet surely would read the translations of Boehme which were coming from the press all through the period of his literary activity. i88 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. just this world, as it is in each one of us, with its essential spirit and nature and character clearly revealed and fulfilled. God creates and maintains no hell of ever- lasting torture ; He builds and supports no heaven of endless glory. They are both formed out of the soul's own substance as it turns toward light or darkness, toward love or hate — in short, as " it keeps house," to use one of his vivid words, with the eternal nature of things. Something like this, then, was the universe which Boehme — with those " azure-grey eyes that lighted up like the windows of Solomon's Temple " — saw there in Gorlitz, as he pegged his shoes. " Open your eyes," he once said, " and the whole world is full of God." i But he is not a pantheist, in the usual sense of that word, blurring away the lines between good and evil, or the boundaries which mark off self from self, and self from God. There is forever, to be sure, a hidden essence or sub- stance in the soul which is from God, and which remains to the end tmlost and unspoiled — something to which God can speak and to which His Light and Grace can make appeal ; but I am indestructibly a real I, and God is in His true nature no vague Abyss — He eternally utters Himself as Person : " The first Abysmal God without beginning begets a comprehensible will which is Son. Thus the Abyss which in itself is an indescribable Nothing [nothing in particular] forms itself into Some- thing [definite] through the Birth of a Son, and so is Spirit." 2 In God Himself there is only Good, only triumphing eternal Joy,* but as soon as finite processes appear, as soon as anything is differentiated into actuality, the potentialities of darkness and light appear, the possibilities of good and evil are there : "All things consist in Yes or No. In order to have anything definite made manifest there must be a contrary therein — a Yes and a No." ^ The universe, therefore, though it came forth out of the eternal Mother and remains still, in its deepest origin and being, rooted in the substance of God, is a ^ The Threefold Life, xi. io6. ^ Election, i. 10-17. * Aurora, ii. 63. •• Theosoph. Quest, iii. 2-4. X BOEHME'S UNIVERSE 189 battleground of strife, an endless Armageddon. Both within and without the world is woven of mixed strands, a warp of darkness and a woof of light, and all beings possessed of will are thus actors in a mighty drama of eternal significance, with exits, not only at the end of the Fifth Act but throughout the play, through two gates into two worlds which are both all the time present here and now. CHAPTER XI JACOB BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " " I WILL write a Process or Way which I myself have gone." ^ Most writers who have treated of Boehme have mainly dealt with his Weltanschauung — ^his theosophical view of the Abyss and the worlds of time and eternity, — or they have devoted themselves to descriptions of his type of mysticism.^ His important permanent con- tribution to Christianity is, however, to be found in his interpretation of the way, or, as he calls it, the process of salvation. Very much that he wrote about the procession of the universe is capricious and subjective. His interpretations of Genesis, and of Old Testament Scripture in general, are thoroughly uncritical and of value only as they reveal his own mind and his occasional flashes of insight. But his accounts of his own experience and his message of the way to God possess an elemental and universal value, and belong among the precious words of the prophets of the race. His Way of Salvation is in direct line with the central ideas of Denck, Biinderlin, Entfelder, Franck, Schwenckfeld, and Weigel ; that is, his emphasis is always, as was theirs, upon the native divine possibilities of the soul, upon the fact of a spiritual environment in immediate correspondence and co-opera- tion with the soul, and upon the necessity of personal and inward experience as the key to every gate of life ; but he puts more stress even than Schwenckfeld did ' True Repentance, i. ^ I have given his Weltanschauung in the previous chapter, and I shall discuss his mysticism at the end of this chapter. 190 CHAP. XI BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " 191 upon the epoch-making new birth, and he sees more in the Person of Christ as the way of salvation than any of the spiritual Reformers of the sixteenth century had seen, while his own personal experience was so unique and illuminating, so profound and transforming, that he was able to speak on divine things with a grasp and insight and with a spiritual authority beyond that attained by any of the reformers in this group. He has given, I think, as profound and as simple, and at the same time as vital an interpretation of salvation through Christ as the Reformation movement produced before the nineteenth century, and much that he said touches the very core of what seems to us to-day to be the heart of the Gospel, the central fact of mature religion.^ As we have seen, Boehme does not in the least blink the tragic depth of sin, while he goes as far as anybody in holding that " the centre of man's soul came out of eternity," ^ that " as a mother bringeth forth a child out of her own substance and nourisheth it therewith, so doth God with man his child," ^ and that the inward ground and centre of the soul, with its divine capacity of response to Grace and Light, is an inalienable possession of every man.* Yet, at the same time, he insists that there is in every soul " both a yes and a no," a vision of the good and a contrarium, a hunger for the universal will of God and a hunger for the particular will of self.^ The form of hunger, the inclination of desire, the attitude of will shapes the destiny, forms the fundamental disposition, and builds the life of every man into heaven or into hell — " a man puts on a garment of light or a garment of wrath as he puts on clothes." * To consent to false desire, to turn toward objects that feed only the particular selfish will, to live in the lower " qualities " of dark-fire is to 1 Hegel says that Boehme's piety is " in the highest degree deep and inward." — History of Philos. iii. p. 216. 2 True Resignation, iii. 20. ' The Three Princ., Preface, 4. * " There is in every man an incorporate grovind of Grace, an inner Temple of Christ, the soul's immortal Dowry. No man can sell or pawn this ground of Grace, this habitation and dwelling-place of Christ. It remains unlost as the possession of God — an inward Ground and spiritual substance." — Myst. mag. Ixxiv. 20-33, freely rendered. ^ Sig. re. XV. 45. ' Aurbra, xviii. 43. 192 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. form a soul tinctured with darkness and sundered from the eternal root of Life. Lucifer went the whole way in his consent to false and evil desire. He said, " Evil be thou my good ! " and formed his entire nature out of the dark-principle, and " his Light went out." Adam and his offspring after him, however, only dimmed the native Light and deadened the original power that belongs to one who comes from God, to live in heavenly harmony and joy. Man has fallen indeed, but he is not hopelessly lost, he is " forever seeking his native country," and he forever bears within himself an immortal seed which may burst into Life — into a " Lily-blossom." ^ The way of salvation for Boehme is the process by which this original Light and power, dimmed and deadened by sin, are restored to the soul. He never tires of insisting that the restoration can come only by a process of Life, not by a " scheme " of theology. Like the early prophets of Israel, in their sweeping attacks on the ritual and sacrificial systems that were being substituted for moral and spiritual life, Boehme flings himself with holy passion against the substitution of doctrines of salvation for a real life-process of salvation, personally experienced in the soul. " Cain " and " Babel " are his two favourite types of the prevaihng substitute- religion which he calls " verbal," or " historical," or "titular" Christianity.2 "Whatever Babel teaches," he says, " of external imputed righteousness, or of external assumed adoption is without foundation or footing." ^ He is still only a follower of " Cain " who tries to cover his old, evil, unchanged self " with the purple mantle of Christ's death." * The " opinion " that the old man of evil- will can be " covered " with Christ's merit, the " faith " that His death pays off for us the debt of our sin is only " a supposed religion." ^ " Christianity," he says again, " does not consist in the mere knowing of history and appljdng the history-knowledge to ourselves, ^ The Three Princ. xiv. 3 and 12 ; also ibid. 85 and 88. 2 Myst. mag. xxvii. 41. ' Ninth Epistle, 16. • Myst. mag. xxvii. passim ; also Seventh Epistle, 11- 14. ' Tenth Epistle, 13-14. XI BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " 193 saying : ' Christ died for us ; He hath paid the ransom for us, so that we need do nothing but comfort ourselves therewith and steadfastly believe that it is so.' " ^ The " doctors " and " the wise world " and " the makers of opinion " will have it that Christ has suffered on the Cross for all our sins, and that we can be justified and acquitted of all our transgressions by what He did for us, but it is no true, safe way for the soul. To stake faith upon a history that once was, to look for " satisfaction " through the sufferings which Christ endured before we were born is to be " the child of an assumed grace," is to possess a mere external and historical faith that leaves the dim, weak soul where it was before. All such " invented works " and " supposed schemes " are of Anti-Christ, they " avail nothing " whatever toward the real process of salvation.^ The gravamen of his charge is not that the " opinions " are false, or that the " history " is unimportant, but that " opinions " and " history " are taken as substitutes for religion itself, which is and must always be an actual inward process constructing a new and victorious life in the person himself. " All fictions, I say, and devices which men contrive to come to God by are lost labour and vain endeavour without a new mind. Verbal forgive- ness and outward imputation of righteousness are false and vain comforts — soft cushions for the evU soul — with- out the creation of a will wholly new, which loveth and willeth evil no more." * The whole problem, then, is the problem of the formation of a new vision, a new desire, a new will, and Boehme finds the solution of this deepest human problem in Christ. Christ is the Light-revelation of God — the shining forth of the Light and Love nature of the Eternal God. It must not be supposed for a moment that once — before satisfaction was made to Him — God was an angry God who had to be " reconciled " by a transaction, or that there was a time in history when God began to reveal His Heart in a Christ-revelation, or 1 Regeneration, 6. ' For a sample passage see Sig. re. xv. 22-47. ' True Resignation, 30-41. Freely rendered. O 194 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. that when Christ became man, Deity divided itself into sundered Persons.^ " No. You ought not to have such thoughts," Boehme says. The Heart and Light and Love of God are from eternity. Christ has never sundered or broken Himself away from God ; they are not two but forever One. All the Light and Love and Joy of God have blossomed into the Christ-manifestation and become revealed in Him. Like everything else in the universe, Christ is both outward and inward. He belongs in the eternal inward world and He also has had His temporal manifestation in the visible world. The Heart of God became a human soul, brought the fulness of the Deity into humanity, and slew the spirit of the world.^ The inward penetrated the outward and illuminated it with Light.' Christ entered into humanity and tinctured it with Deity.* In Him the Heart of God became man, and in the power of the heavenly Light He wrestled with our wild human nature and conquered it.^ Eternity and time are united in Him.^ He is the wedding chamber of God and man.'' He is God and man in one undivided Person.^ He is actual God ; He is essential man — the God-man, the man-God, in whom the arms of everlasting Love are outstretched and through whom humanity is brought into the power of the Eternal God.* It was in this " dear Emmanuel," as he often calls Christ, that " Love became man and put on our human flesh and our human soul," ^" and the full power of Eternal Love stood revealed in time, for " One who is Love itself was bom of our own very birth." ^^ The Cross was not a transaction. It was the culmination of this mighty 'Love, for " here on the cross hung God and man " — God's Love springing forth in a soul strong enough to show it in its full scope.-'^ But let no person think that he can " cover himself with the purple mantle of Christ's sufferings and death," ' The Three Princ. xxxiii. 8-17. ^ Ibid- xix. 6. 3 Sig. re. ix. 67. ^ lUd,. xi. 88. ^ Aurora, Preface, 27. ° Sig. re. xi. 80. ' Prayer in True Repentance. * Three Princ. xxii. 8r. ' Myst. mag. Ixx. 7-ro ; Three Princ. xviii. 80 ; and Supersensual Life, 27. ^'' Three Princ. xxv. 43. •'^ Ibid. xxv. 6. ^ Read Ibid. xxv. 7-4r. XI BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " 195 and so win his salvation : " Thou thyself," he says, " must go through Christ's whole journey, and enter wholly into His process." ^ " We become children of God in Christ," he wrote in one of his Epistles, " not by an outward, adventitious show of appropriating Grace, not through some merit of Grace appropriated from without, or received in an historical apprehension of being justified by another, but through an inward, resident Grace, which regenerates us into childlikeness, so that Christ the conqueror of death arises in us and becomes a dominating operation in us." ^ This is the heart of his entire message. Every step must be experi- mental. Salvation is an inward process, and Christ is efficacious and effective because He lives and operates in us. " The suffering and death of Christ," he says, " avail only for those who die to their own will in and with Christ, and are buried with Him to a new wUl and obedience, and hate sin ; who put on Christ in His suffering, reproach, and persecution, take His cross upon them and follow Him under His red banner ; to those who put on Christ in His process and now become in the inward spiritual man Christ's members and the Temple of God who dwells in us. No one has a right to comfort himself with Christ's merits unless he desires wholly to put on Christ in himself. He is not a Christian until he has put Him on by true repentance and conversion to Him with absolute resignation and self-denial, so that Christ espouseth and betrotheth Himself with him. . . . For a Christian must be bom of Christ and must die to the will of Adam. He must have Christ in him and be a member of His Life according to the spiritual man." * Faith, which is always the key-word in any person's interpretation of Christianity, is for Boehme a dynamic process of appropriating Christ, and of re-living Him. " Faith," he writes in his treatise on The Incarnation, 1 True Repentance. 2 First Epistle, 6. Hegel well says of Boehme : " What marks him out and makes him noteworthy is the Protestant principle of placing the intellectual world within one's own mind and heart, and of experiencing and knowing and feeling in one's own self-consciousness all that was formerly conceived as a Be- yond." History of Philos. iii. p. 191. ' Tenth Epistle, 16-19. 196 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. " is not historical knowledge for a man to make articles of it and to depend on them, but faith is one spirit with God, it is the activity of God ; it is free, but only for the right and for pure Love, in which it draws the breath of its power and strength. It is, finally, itself the substance." ^ Faith is, thus, not knowledge, it is not believing facts of history, it is not accepting metaphysical dogma. It is, as he is never weary of saying, " strong earnestness of spirit," the earnest will to five in the inward and eternal, passionate hunger and thirst for God, and finally the act of receiving Christ into the soul as a present power and spirit to live by. " I must die," he wrote, " with my outward man [the man of self-centred will] in Christ's death and arise and live anew in Him. Therefore I live now by the will of faith in the spirit of Christ and receive Christ with His humanity into my will. He makes through me a manifestation of the spiritual world and introduces the true Love-sound into the harp-strings of my life. He became that which I am, and now He has made me that which He is ! " ^ Another word for this efficacious and dynamic Faith is " Birth " or " innermost Birth," by which Boehme means the act of discovering the Gate to the Heart and Love and Light of God, and of entering it. " The Son of God, the Eternal Word of the Father, the Glance and Brightness and Power of Eternal Light must become man and he horn in you ; otherwise you are in the dark stable and go about groping." ^ "If thou art born of God, then within the circle of thy own life is the whole undivided Heart of God." * It is a transforming event by which one swings over from life in the outer to life in the inner world, from life in the dark world to life in the light world, and is born into the kingdom, or principle, which Christ revealed in His triumphant spiritual Life. The human spirit, by this innermost Birth, reaches the principle of Life by which Christ lived, and the gate into heaven is opened and paradise is in the soul. In a ^ Incarnation, part iii. chap. i. 5-15. ^ Sig. re. xii. 10-13. ' The Threefold Life, iii. 31. « Ibid. vi. 71. XI BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " 197 beautiful passage he says : " This birth must be wrought within you. The Heart, or the Son of God must arise in the birth of your Hfe, and then you are in Christ and He is in you, and all that He and the Father have is yours ; and as the Son is one with the Father, so also the new man is one with the Father and with the Son, one virtue, one power, one light, one life, one eternal paradise, one enduring substance, one Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and thou His child ! " ^ God is no longer conceived as far away. He is now with His Love and Light as near as the soul is to itself, and the joy of being born in Christ is hke the joy of parents when a little child is born to them.2 God's will now becomes the man's will, he turns back into the unity from which he broke away, he sees now in one moment what all the doctors in the schools, on the mere level of reason, have never seen, and his inward eye is so opened that he knows God as soon as his eye turns toward Him.* This Faith-process, or innermost life-birth, is not the act of a moment that is over and done with. It means the progressive formation of a new man within the man, so that the real Christian becomes a living branch in a mighty Christ-Tree. Just as Adam was the trunk of a great race-tree of fallen humanity, Christ is to be the Eternal Life-Tree of the universe in whom all the new- born souls of men shall live as springing, flowering branches or twigs : God created only one Man ; all other men are twigs of the One Stem.* " In Christ," he says, " we are all only one, as a tree in many boughs and branches," and, with a return to autobiography, Boehme adds, " His Life has been brought into mine, so that I am atoned with Him in His Love. The will of Christ has entered into humanity again in me, and now my will in me enters into His humanity.^ He writes to one of his Silesian friends : " You are a growing branch in the Life-Tree of God in Christ, in whom all the children of God are also branches," and he adds that there is " no other faith 1 The Three Princ. iv. 9. ^ Aurora, xix. 52-66. ^ Myst. mag. Ixxii. 7-10. ■• Ibid. xxiv. 17. ^ Sig. re. ix. 63. 198 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. which saves except Christ in us," the Life of our lives.^ Sometimes he calls this triumphant experience the birth of a new branch in Christ's Life-Tree, sometimes the birth of the Lily in Christ's garden of flowers, sometimes it is the birth of the immortal seed. Sometimes it is uniting in life and spirit with Him who is " the Treader on the Serpent," sometimes it is finding the noble Virgin, sometimes it is discovering the Philosopher's Stone, sorrtetimes it is winning the precious Diadem, sometimes it is possessing the key which unlocks the Door, sometimes it is arriving at the Sabbath Quiet of the soul. These are only a variety of ways, many of them forgotten inheritances from alchemy and astrology, of saying that the soul finds its goal in an experience which binds it into one common corporate life with Christ and so into an elemental Love-Unity with God : whoever is born of Christ liveth and walketh in Him, puts Him on in His suffering, death, and resurrection, becomes a member of Christ's body, is " tinctured " with His spirit, and has his own human life rooted in the Love of God.^ Here, then, in the creation and formation of this organic Life- Tree the universe attains its ultimate goal. It is wholly an achievement of free will, of holy choice. The dark Principle is not annihilated, is not suppressed, but the Heart of God moves ever on in a steadily growing triumph, binding soul after soul into the divine Igdrasil Tree of the Light Universe, in a unity that is not now the unity of negation and undifferentiation — an Abyss that swallows up all that is in it, — but a unity of many wills united in a spirit of concord and love, many persons formed by holy desire into one unbroken symphony as harps of God. With the change of centre in the inner man corresponds also the outer life of word and deed, for the outer, here as everywhere, is only the " signature " of an inner which fits it : "A man must show the root of the tree out of which spirit and flesh have their origin." ' When the will becomes new-born and the soul unites itself as a twig 1 Seventh Epistle, i. ^ Ibid., 6 and 12. ' Apology to Stiefel, 23. XI BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " 199 in Christ's Life-Tree, then it ceases to love sin and will it. When God brings His will into birth in us, He gives us virtue and power to will what He wills, and to leave our sins behind.^ The attitude of hate, the spirit of war are marks of the old unchanged nature, and are heathenish and not Christian. When Christ is formed in the inner ground of the soul, a man leaves the sword in the sheath and lives in the virtue and power of peace and love. " What will Christ say," he asks the ministers of the Church of his day, " when He sees your apostolic hearts covered with armor ? When He gave you the sword of the Spirit, did He command you to fight and make war, or to instigate kings and princes to put on the sword and kill ? " 2 Like the prophets of Israel, he feels intensely the sufferings of the poor and the oppressed, and he breaks out frequently into a biting satire on a kind of Christianity which not only neglects the true cure of soul and body, but " consumes the sweat and blood of the needy," and feeds upon " the sighs and groans and tears of the poor." ' The true idea of a real Christianity is " fraternity in the Life of Christ " — " thy brother's soul," he says, " is a feUow-member with thy soul," * and he insists, as though it were the mighty burden of his spirit, that all possessions, goods, and talents shall contribute to the common hfe of humanity and to the benefit of the social group.^ It is much better for parents to labour to form good souls in their children than to strive to gather and to leave behind for them great riches and abundance of goods ! ^ Self- desire is a ground not only of personal disquiet but also of social disturbance, and Boehme feels that the way to spread peace and joy through the world is to cultivate the Love-spirit of Christ and to practice it in fellowship with men. Like his German predecessor, Sebastian Franck, he is ^ True Resignation, iii. 21. ^ Myst. mag. Ixii. 25. ' The Three Principles, xix. 47 ; xxi. 32. ; Sig. re. viii. 27. * Forty Questions, xii. 39. ^ For an example of it, see Myst. mag. Ixxiv. 46. ' Forty Questions, x. 9. 200 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. primarily concerned with the invisible Church, and he holds lightly to the empirical Church as he knows it. The Church to which his spirit is dedicated is the organic Life-Tree of which Christ is the living Stem. The holy Zion is not from without, he says, it is built up of those who are joined to Christ and who all live together in one city which is Christ in us.^ A Christian in the life belongs to no sect, he ceases to wrangle over opinions and words, he dwells in the midst of sects and Babel-churches, but he keeps above the controversies and contentions, and " puts his knowing and willing into the Life of Christ," and works quietly on toward the formation and triumph of the one true Christian Church,^ which will be, when its glory is complete, the visible expression of the Divine Life-Tree. He dislikes, as much as did the English Quaker, George Fox, the custom of calling " stone houses " churches, and he will not admit that a building is anything but a building : " Stone houses, called churches, have no greater holiness than other houses, for they are built of stone and other such material, as other houses are, and God is no more powerful in them than He is in other houses, but the Church [i.e. the Congregation] which meets there, if the members of it bind themselves by prayer into one body in Christ, is a holy Temple of Jesus Christ." * His attitude toward outward sacraments consistently fits in with all his central teachings. The outward, for Boehme, is never unimportant. It is always significant and can always be used as a parable or symbol of something inner and eternal. But the outward is at best only temporal, only symbolic, and it becomes a hindrance if it is taken for the real substance of which it is only the outward " signature " : " The form shall be destroyed and shall cease with time, but the spirit remains forever." * The sacraments, he declares, do not take away sin, for men go to church all their lives and receive the sacraments ^ Fourth Epistle, 32, and True Repentance. ^ Regeneration, 161-162. ' Myst, mag. Ixiii. 47. This theme constantly reappears. * Sig. re. XV. 37. XI BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " 201 and remain as wicked and beastly as ever— while a holy man always has a Church within himself and an inward ministry.! Blessedness, therefore, lies not in the out- ward, but in the life and power of the inward spirit, and it is only a Babel-Church that claims the right to cast out those who have the real substance and neglect only the outward form.^ In his Treatise on the Holy Supper, he wrote : " It is not enough for a man to hear sermons preached, and to be baptised in the name of Christ, and to go to the Supper. This maketh no Christian. For that, there must be earnestness. No person is a Christian unless Christ live and work in him." * The pith and heart of Christianity, the consummate goal of the way of Salvation, for Boehme is, as we have seen, not " history " and not any kind of outward " form " or " letter " — buchstdbliches Wort, — it is an experience in which the soul finds itself " at the top of Jacob's ladder," and feels its hfe in God and God's Life in it in an ineffable Love-union. He has himself given a very simple and penetrating account of this type of experience drawn from what he calls his own book of life : " Finding within myself a powerful contrarium, namely, the desires that belong to flesh and blood, I began to fight a hard battle against my corrupted nature, and with the aid of God I made up my mind to overcome the inherited evil will, to break it, and to enter wholly into the Love of God. . . . This, however, was not possible for me to accomplish, but I stood firmly by my earnest resolution, and fought a hard battle with myself. Now while I was wrestling and battling, being aided by God, a wonderful light arose within my soul. It was a light entirely foreign to my unruly nature, but in it I recognized the true nature of God and man, and the relation existing between them, a thing which heretofore I had never understood." * In one of his other autobiographical passages, he says that after much earnest seeking and desire and many a hard repulse, " the Gate was opened ! " These are char- 1 Resignation, vi. 134-151. ' Forty Questions, xiv. 17-ig. ' Op. cit. iv. 16. " Von Hartmann's Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme, p. 50. 202 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. acteristic accounts of a profound mystical experience. There had been long stress and inward battle, the tension of a divided self, and then a great ground swell of earnest will — a resolve, he says, to put my life in hazard rather than give over, when " a wonderful light arose within the soul " and " the Gate was opened." And " when this mighty light fell upon me, I saw," he says, in still another description, "in an effectual peculiar manner, and I knew in the spirit." ^ The central aspect of his experience was plainly an overmastering conviction of contact with, an immersion into, a deeper world of spirit and of inner unity of life and spirit with this deeper world. His own personal spirit united, as he once put it, " with the innermost Birth in God and stood in the Light." ^ He discovered that " God goes clean another way to work " than by the way of reasoning or of sense experience ' — instead of waiting for man to climb up to Him, He climbs up into man's soul.* By a new and inner way, to change the figure, the tides of the shoreless Divine Sea break in upon the life of a man and bathe his entire being. It seems to Boehme, at one time, like the rising of a mid-noon Sun, with illuminating rays, and he describes the experience in terms of Light and enlarged Vision, or, again, it appears like the bursting open of a secret door into a world of new dimensions, and he calls it the opening of the Gate, or now again he feels as though the elemental creative power of God had burst into operation within him and that a mighty birth-process had lifted him to a new kingdom, or to a new order of nature, or, finally, hushed and soothed and healed as though he had suddenly found the breast of an infinite Mother, he describes his state as " the inner- most Quiet " — ^the return to " the soul's eternal jiative country and abiding Home." Descriptions here all fail and are only " stammering words of a child," as Boehme himself says. But, as a matter of fact, descriptions fail and fall short in the case of all genuine life-experiences, ■• Twenty-fifth Epistle, z. ^ Aurora, xix. 95. ^ Twenty-sixth Epistle, 7. * Aurora, xviii. 9. XI BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " 203 even those that are most universal and common to the race. How one feels when after nights of agony from watching over a child that is hovering between life and death, and seemingly certain to slip away from human reach, the doctor says, " He has passed the crisis and the danger is over ! " one cannot describe. Whenever it is a matter that concerns the inner quick of the soul, all words are the stammerings of a child. The true mystical experience is not primarily a know- ledge-experience, it is not the apprehension of one more describable fact to be added to our total stock of in- formation — what Boehme so often calls " opinions " and " history," — ^it is a sudden plunge or immersion into the stream of Life itself, it is an interior appreciation of the higher meaning of life by the discovery of a way of enter- ing the Life-process, or, better, of letting the Life-process enter you, on a higher level than is usual. Life always advances by a kind of leap, an elan, which would not have been predicted or anticipated, but which, now it is here revealed in a being with a novel function and a higher capacity of survival, will lift the whole scale of life hence- forth to a new level. So, in some way which must for the present at least remain mysterious, the eternal Source of Life, when it finds a human door ready for its entrance, breaks in — or shall we say that the earnest will climbs up and pushes open the door into new regions in this eternal Life Source ? — and it seems then, as Boehme says, as though " the true nature of God and man and the true relation between God and man " had been found. The mystical experience is, thus, one way, perhaps the highest we have yet discovered, of entering the Life- process itself and of gaining an interior appreciation of Reality by living in the central stream and flow of it, so that the Spirit can " break through " and can " see into the Depth of Deity." Boehme appears to hold two inconsistent and seem- ingly contradictory views about the human attitude which is the psychological pre-condition for this epoch- making experience. In his own autobiographical ac- 204 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. counts, he always refers to the part that earnest resolution has played in bringing success to his momentous quest. No great mystic since St. Augustine has made more of the will in spiritual matters than he does. We have seen how the doors to both world-kingdoms stand before the soul, and how " free-will," " earnest purpose," " decisive endeavour " settle for each soul which door shall open and which shall shut, and so determine its eternal destiny. " Election " is, for Boehme, a fiction of the false imagina- tion, a " Babel-opinion," a perverse invention of " the Church of Cain." Christ never says " thou couldst not," but rather " thou wouldst not." ^ Not only does he, in a general way, thus make the will the decisive element in human destiny, he also implies that the creative " flash " of spiritual insight, " the innermost birth " which brings the soul into living union with its source is due, on the human side, to " resolution," to " earnestness," to " valiant wrestling," to a brave venture of faith that risks everythiag. It requires "mighty endurance," " hard labour," " stoutness of spirit," and " a great storm, assault, and onset " to open the Gate. In a word, the key to any important spiritual experience is intention, inward pre-perception, that holds the mind iiitently focussed in expectation, without which the " flash " of spiritual vision is not likely to come. But on the other hand Boehme is a powerful exponent of the idea that desire and wiU must utterly, absolutely die before God can come to birth in the soul — " Christ is bom and lives in our Nothingness." ^ A man, he says, must die wholly to self-hood, forsake it and enter again into the original Nothing, — ^the eternal Unity in which nothing is willed in particular, — ^before God can have His way with him ; all sin arises from self-hood, from desire.* " How," asks a disciple in one of Boehme's imaginary dialogues, " shall I come to the hidden centre where God dweUeth and not man ? Tell me plainly, loving sir, how it is to be foimd and entered into ? " ^ Sig. re. xvi. 38. 2 /jj^, j^. gg. 2 Ibid. xiii. 27 and xv. 9. XI BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " 205 The Master : " There where the soul hath slain its own will and willeth no more anything of itself." . . . The Disciple : " But how shall I comprehend it ? " The Master : "If thou goest about to comprehend in thy own will, it flieth from thee, but if thou dost surrender thyself wholly, then thou art dead to thy own will, and Love will be the Life of thy nature." ^ He seems to go as far in this direction toward the annihilation of desire, negation of the finite, and loss of self-hood as any of the pantheistic mystics. This sample passage wiU indicate his teaching : " When thou art wholly gone forth from the creature and become nothing to all that is nature and creature, then thou art in that Eternal One which is God Himself, and then thou shalt experience the supreme virtue of Love." ^ These two diverse statements are, however, not as inconsistent as they at first seem. The will, the intention that is a psychological preparation for this mystical experi- ence is a will washed and purged of selfish impulse and self-seeking aims. It is an intention that cannot be described in terms of any finite " content." It is the intense heave of the whole undivided being toward God with no reservation, no calculation of return profits, no thought even of isolated and independent personaUty. A true account of consciousness, preceding the moment of bursting through the Gate, might emphasize with equal accuracy either the " earnest resolution," " the storm and onset of wUl," or " the annihilation of particu- lar desire," " the surrender of individualistic self-hood," " death to own will in the Life and Virtue of Love." The effects of such an experience as that which came to Boehme, if we may take his case as typical, are (i) the birth of an inner conviction of God's immediate and environing Presence amounting to axiomatic certainty — faith through experience has become " the substance," and " is now one spirit with God " ; (2) The radiation of the whole being with " a joy like that which parents have at the birth of their first-bom child " — the joy now of the 1 The Supersensual Life, 29 and 30. ^ Ibid. 27. 2o6 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. soul crying, " Abba " ; (3) A vastly heightened perception of what is involved in the eternal nature of the religious life and in the spiritual relation between the soul and God, i.e. increased ability to see what promotes and furthers the soul's health and development ; (4) A uni- fication, co-ordination, and centralizing of the inner faculties, so that there is an increment of power revealed in the entire personality ; and (5) An increase of clarity and a sharpening of focus in the perception of moral distinctions together with a distinctly heightened moral and social passion. Boehme himself always believed, further, that his entire system of ideas, his philosophy of the universe, and his way of salvation were a " revelation " of the Spirit to him, — ^in a word, that his wisdom was " theo- sophy," a God - communicated knowledge. I have no desire to mark off dogmatically the scope and possible limits of " revelation," nor is it necessary here to discuss the abstract question whether " ideas " are ever " com- municated " to a mind ab extra, and without the mediation of subjective processes, or not. In the concrete case of Jacob Boehme, I do not find any compelling evidence of the unmediated communication of ideas. He was a man of unusual native capacity, and, though untrained, his mind possessed a high order of range and quality, and swept, as he was, by a mighty transforming experience, he found himself in novel fashion, and was the recipient of inspirations, which fired and fused his soul, gave him heightened insight into the significance of things old and new, and often enabled him to build better than he knew. He is, however, obviously using the stock of ideas which his generation, and those early and late before it, had made " part of the necessary air men breathed." His terminology and symbolism were as old as mythology, and were the warp and woof of the nature philosophies and the alchemy of his day. His impressive and spiritual interpretation of Christianity is always deep and vital, and freighted with the weight of his own inward direct appreciation of God's revelation of Himself in Christ, XI BOEHME'S " WAY OF SALVATION " 207 but even here he is walking on a road which many brave souls before hira had helped to build, and we cannot with truth say that he supplies us with a new gospel which had been privately " communicated " to him. In fact, the portions of his voluminous writings which bear the mark of having been written as automatic script — by " this hand," as he often says — are the chaotic and confused portions, full of monotonous repetitions, of undigested and indigestible phrases and the dreary re-shufflings of sub-conscious wreckage. Boehme used to say that " in the time of the lily " his writings would be " much sought after." But I doubt if, even " in the time of the lily," most persons will have the patience to read this shoemaker - prophet's books in their present form, that is, if " in the time of the lily " men still enjoy and prize intelligence and lucidity ; but there already is enough of " the lily-spirit " in the world to appreciate and to give thanks for the experience, the flashes of insight, the simple wisdom, the brave sincerity, the inner certainty of the true World within the world we see, and the spiritual message of " the Way to the soul's native Country," which he has given us. CHAPTER XII JACOB BOEHME'S influence IN ENGLAND The first appearance in English of any of the writings _X)f Jacob Boehme was in 1645, when a tiny volume was issued with the title : Two Theosophical Epistles, Englished. There had appeared a year earlier (1644) a seven-page biography of Boehme which was the first presentation of him to the English reader. This brief sketch contains the well-known incidents which became the stock material for the later accounts of his life.^ It also contained the following quaint description of Boehme which was the niodel for all the portraits of the Teutonic philosopher in the English biographies of him : " The stature of his outward body was almost of no Personage ; his person was little and leane, with browes somewhat inbowed ; high Temples, somewhat hauk-nosed : His eyes were gray and somewhat heaven blew, and otherwise as the Windows in Solomon's Temple : He had a thin Beard ; a small low Voyce. His Speech was lovely. He was modest in his Behaviour, humble in his conversation and meeke in his heart. His spirit was highly enlightened by God, as is to be seen and discerned in the Divine Light out of his writings." The slender volume of Theosophical Epistles was followed by another little book issued a year later (1646) , ^ " The Life of one Jacob Boehmen, who although he was a meane man, yet wrote the most wonderful deepe knowledge in Naturall and Divine Things, that any hath been known to doe since the Apostles' Times, and yet never read them or learned them from any other man, as may be scene in that which foUoweth." — London, 1644, printed by L. N. for Richard Whitaker. 208 cH.xn BOEHME'S INFLUENCE IN ENGLAND 209 consisting of a Discourse delivered in Latin in the Schools at Cambridge by Charles Hotham, Rector of Wigan. This Discourse was translated into English by the author's brother, Justice Durant Hotham, and was published under the title : Introduction to Teutonic Philosophy, or A Determination concerning the Original of the Soul, Englished by D. F. [Durant Frater], 1650. This interesting little volume, full of quaint phrase and strange speculation, reflects throughout its pages the profound influence of Boehme on these two brothers. The Preface to the Englished edition written by Justice Hotham not only shows specific marks of Boehme's influence upon a high- minded and scholarly man, but it also reveals in an impressive way a t5^e of thought that was very prevalent in England at this period of commotion. " There are71 Justice Hotham says, " two islands of exceeding danger,' yet built upon and inhabited and defended as part of thei main continent of Truth. The first is called : ' I believe| as the Church believeth.' Happy man whom so easie labour hath set on the shore of wisdom ! The other island is called : ' whatsoever the Church believes that' will I not believe.' " Both these " islands " seem to him " exceeding dangerous." To adopt as truth what the Church has believed, solely because the Church has believed it, to forego the personal quest and to arrive at " the shores of wisdom " without the venturous voyage, is " too easie labour " for the soul. But, nevertheless, he feels that the opposite danger — ^the danger of negating a truth merely because the Church affirms it — ^is even more serious. It is wise to maintain an attitude of " much reverence " toward the " unanimous consent of good and pious men in sacred matters." He suggests that the way of wisdom consists in making the " I believe " of the Church " neither a fetter nor a scandal." " May I be," he says, " in the bed-route of those Seekers that, distrusting the known and experienced deceits of their own Reason, walk unfettered in the quest of truth, . . . not hunting those poor soviles with Dogge and speare whose dimme sight hath led them into desert and unbeated p 210 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. paths." This was in all probability the Justice Hotham of whom George Fox wrote : "He was a pretty tender man yt had had some experiences of God's workeinge in his hearte : & after yt I had some discourse with him off ye things of God hee tooke mee Into his Closett & saide hee had knowne yt -principle [of the Light] this lo yeere : & hee was glad 3^ ye Lorde did now publish it abroade to ye people." ^ Like his Teutonic master, Justice Hotham distrusts Reason and Sense as spiritual guides. They are at best, he says, " but guides of the night, dim lights set up, far distant from Truth's stately mansion, to lead poor groping souls in this world's affairs." The surer Guide is within the soul itself, for the soul of man, he insists, has " a noble descent from eternal essences " and " our nobel Genealogy should mind us of our Father's House and make us weary of tutelage under hairy Faunes and cloven- footed Sat57res." ^ He shows that he has lost all interest in theological speculations that assume a God remote in time and space, a God who once created a world and left it to go to ruin. He reminds his readers that the God in whom he believes is " yet alive and still speaks." * In the light of this Preface, in which he declares that he has " suckt in truth from divinest philosophy " from his childhood, it is not strange that he welcomed Fox, when the latter appeared in Yorkshire in 1651, proclaiming an inward Light and a present God near at hand, nor is it surprising that Hotham said to the young prophet of the inward Guide : "If God had not raised uppe this principle of light and life, ye nation had beene overspread with rantism . . . but this principle of truth overthrew ye roote & grounde of there [i.e. the Ranters'] principle." * The enthusiasm of Justice Hotham for his Teutonic master gets fervid expression at the end of his Preface as follows : " Whatever the thrice great Hermes [Hermes Trismegistus] delivered as oracles from his prophetical tripos, or Pythagoras spake by authority or ^ Journalof George Fox (CaLiabndge edition, 1911), i. p. 18. " Preface, A. 4. ^ Ibid. * Journ. i. p. 29. xn BOEHME'S INFLUENCE IN ENGLAND 211 Socrates debated or Aristotle afl&rmed ; yea, whatever divine Plato prophesied or Plotinus proved : this and all this, or a far higher and profounder philosophy is (I think) contained in the Teutonick's writings. And if there be any friendly medium which can possibly reconcile these ancient differences between the nobler wisdom which hath fixt her Palace in Holy Writ and her stubborn handmaid, Naturall Reason : this happy marriage of the Spirit and Soul, this wonderful consent of discords in one harmony, we owe in great measure to Teutonicus his skiU ! " The central problem of the Discourse, written by the brother, Charles Hotham, is the origin of the soul. After the manner of his German teacher, the English disciple finds the origin of man's soul in " the bottomless, im- measurable Abyss of the Godhead," in " the great deep of the perpetually eternal God." Man is an epitome of the universe. He unites in himself all the contrary principles of the worlds visible and invisible, he is a unity of body and soul, a centre of light and darkness, and in him is a " supreme region," or " Divine Principle," " by the mediation of which man has direct fellowship with God." In man, who thus epitomizes all the spheres and principles of the universe, " God, as in a glasse, hath a lively and delightful prospect of His own lovely visage and incomprehensible Beauty." Finally, again, the disciple reflects the constant teaching of Boehme that everything in the visible world is a symbol of a funda- mental and eternal World. Durant Hotham showed the full measure of his devotion to his German master in the Life of Jacob Behmen which he wrote in 1653.^ It is, however, much more important for the insight which it gives of the inner life of the Yorkshire Justice than for any biographical information it furnishes of Boehme himself. Hotham thinks that in Boehme he has discovered a new type of Christian Saint — " one who led a saint-like life in much sweet communion "■ The Life of Jacob Behmen, written by Durant Hotham, Esquire, November 7, 1653. Printed for H. Blunden, and sold at the Castle in Corn Hill, 1654. 212 SPIRITUAL REFORMERS chap. with God," while he declares that many of those who " get admission into the Calendar by the synodical jurisdiction of those who claim also to hold the bunch of keys to the bigger Heaven " are hardly ripe for canoniza- tion — " As for many who in these last ages have termed themselves saints — ^what shift God may make of them in heaven, I know not (He can do much) — ^but if I may speak unfeignedly, they are so unmortified and untrue of word and deed that they are found untoward members for a true Commonwealth and civil Society here on Earth." ^ The type of saint the Justice admires is one who refuses utterly to choose the path of least resistance, one who will not be " a messenger of eternal happiness at a cheap rate," but rather one who comes to challenge the easy world, to fight evU customs and entrenched systems and to win " the Land which the Devil holds in posses- sion " ; and, with the name of Jacob Boehme, he thinks he can " begin a new roll of Civil Saints," hoping, he says, that in these last generations " much company " may be added to the bead roll thus happily started. Two points stand out clearly as central ideas of Justice Hotham's Christianity. The first one is that religion is an inward affair. " God," he declares, " hath sent this last Generation a plain, uncouth Message, bidding man to fight, telling him that he shall have a Heaven, a Joy, a Paradise, a Land, a Territory, a Kingship — ^but that all this is in himself, the Land to be won is himself." ^ The second one is that religion is a progressive movement, an unfolding revelation of life. " What a height of Presumption is it," he says, " to believe that the Wisdom and fullness of God can ever be pent up in a Synodical Canon ? How overweening are we to limit the successive manifestations of God to a present rule and light, persecut- ing all that comes not forth in its height and breadth ! " It is through this " unnatural desire " to keep Christians in " a perpetual infancy " that " our dry nurses " in the Church have " brought us to such a dwarfish stature," ' Life of Jacob Behmen, B. 2. 2 gp. cit. B. 2. XII BOEHME'S INFLUENCE IN ENGLAND 213 and he prays that the merciful God may teach at least one nation a better way than that of " muzzling " the bringer of fresh light. Much more important, however, for the dissemination of Boehme's ideas in England was the patient and faithful work of John Sparrow who, in collaboration with his -kinsman, John EUistone, translated into English the entire body of Boehme's writings, between the years 1647 3-nd 1661.1 Sparrow was bom at Stambourne in Essex in 1615. He was admitted to the Inner Court in 1633 and subsequently called to the Bar. He was probably the author of a widely-read book, published in 1649, under the title of Mercurius Teutonicus, consisting of a series of " propheticall passages " from Boehme.^ His outer life was uneventful ; his inner life is revealed in his Introductions to the Boehme Translations. He begins his long series of Translations with the testimony that the writings of this author have " so very much satisfied " his own soul that he wants others to be par- takers of the same source of light, though he warns his readers that their own souls must come by experience into the condition Boehme himself was in before they can fully understand him.^ He is profoundly impressed, ^ The writings were translated in the following order : In 1647, Forty Questions by Sparrow; T/i« C/atiis, by Sparrow, la l6^&,TheThree Principles, hyS^arcovi; The Way to Christ (including the Treatises, On True Repentance ; On True Resignation; On Regeneration ; The Supersensual Life ; and On Illumination), hy Sparrow. In 1649, 0/