Chapter 16

The way in which Hilton conceives the "truly mystical darkness" of Dionysius is very interesting. As a psychical experience, it has its place in the history of the inner life. The soul _does_ enter into darkness, and the darkness is not fully dispelled in this world; "thou art not there yet," as he says. But the psychical experience is in Hilton _entirely dissociated_ from the metaphysical idea of absorption into the Infinite. The chains of Asiatic nihilism are now at last shaken off, easily and, it would seem, unconsciously. The "darkness" is felt to be only the herald of a brighter dawn: "the darker the night, the nearer is the true day." It is, I think, gratifying to observe how our countryman strikes off the fetters of the time-honoured Dionysian tradition, the paralysing creed which blurs all distinctions, and the "negative road" which leads to darkness and not light; and how in consequence his Mysticism is sounder and saner than even that of Eckhart or Tauler. Before leaving Hilton, it may be worth while to quote two or three isolated maxims of his, as examples of his wise and pure doctrine.

"There are two ways of knowing God--one chiefly by the imagination, the other by the understanding. The understanding is the mistress, and the imagination is the maid."

"What is heaven to a reasonable soul? Nought else but Jesus God."

"Ask of God nothing but this gift of love, which is the Holy Ghost. For there is no gift of God that is both the giver and the gift, but this gift of love."

My other example of English Mysticism in the Middle Ages is Julian or Juliana of Norwich,[281] to whom were granted a series of "revelations" in the year 1373, she being then about thirty years old. She describes with evident truthfulness the manner in which the visions came to her. She ardently desired to have a "bodily sight" of her Lord upon the Cross, "like other that were Christ's lovers"; and she prayed that she might have "a grievous sickness almost unto death," to wean her from the world and quicken her spiritual sense. The sickness came, and the vision; for they thought her dying, and held the crucifix before her, till the figure on the Cross changed into the semblance of the living Christ. "All this was showed by three parts--that is to say, by bodily sight, and by words formed in my understanding, and by ghostly sight.[282]" "But the ghostly sight I cannot nor may not show it as openly nor as fully as I would." Her later visions came to her sometimes during sleep, but most often when she was awake. The most pure and certain were wrought by a "Divine illapse" into the spiritual part of the soul, the mind and understanding, for these the devil cannot counterfeit. Juliana was certainly perfectly honest and perfectly sane. The great charm of her little book is the sunny hopefulness and happiness which shines from every page, and the tender affection for her suffering Lord which mingles with her devotion without ever becoming morbid or irreverent. It is also interesting to see how this untaught maiden (for she shows no traces of book learning) is led by the logic of the heart straight to some of the speculative doctrines which we have found in the philosophical mystics. The brief extracts which follow will illustrate all these statements.

The crucified Christ is the one object of her devotion. She refused to listen to "a proffer in my reason," which said, "Look up to heaven to His Father." "Nay, I may not," she replied, "for Thou art my heaven. For I would liever have been in that pain till Doomsday than to come to heaven otherwise than by Him." "Me liked none other heaven than Jesus, which shall be my bliss when I come there." And after describing a vision of the crucifixion, she says, "How might any pain be more than to see Him that is all my life and all my bliss suffer?"

Her estimate of the value of means of grace is very clear and sound. "In that time the custom of our praying was brought to mind, how we use, for lack of understanding and knowing of love, to make [use of] many means. Then saw I truly that it is more worship to God and more very delight that we faithfully pray to Himself of His goodness, and cleave thereto by His grace, with true understanding and steadfast by love, than if we made [use of] all the means that heart can think. For if we made [use of] all these means, it is too little, and not full worship to God; but in His goodness is all the whole, and _there_ faileth right nought. For this, as I shall say, came into my mind. In the same time we pray to God for [the sake of] His holy flesh and precious blood, His holy passion, His dearworthy death and wounds: and all the blessed kinship, the endless life that we have of all this, is His goodness. And we pray Him for [the sake of] His sweet mother's love, that Him bare; and all the help that we have of her is of His goodness." And yet "God of His goodness hath advanced means to help us, full fair and many; of which the chief and principal mean is the blessed nature that He took of the maid, with all the means that go afore and come after which belong to our redemption and to endless salvation. Wherefore it pleaseth Him that we seek Him and worship Him through means, understanding and knowing that He is the goodness of all. For the goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down to the lowest part of our need. It quickeneth our soul, and bringeth it on life, and maketh it for to wax in grace and virtue. It is nearest in nature and readiest in grace; for it is the same grace that the soul seeketh, and ever shall seek till we know verily that He hath us all in Himself beclosed."

"After this our Lord showed concerning Prayers. In which showing I see two conditions signified by our Lord; one is rightfulness, another is assured trust. But oftentimes our trust is not full; for we are not sure that God heareth us, as we think because of our unworthiness, and because we feel right nought; for we are as barren and dry oftentimes after our prayers as we were before.... But our Lord said to me, 'I am the ground of thy beseechings: first, it is My will that thou have it; and then I make thee to wish for it; and then I make thee to beseech it, and thou beseechest it. How then should it be that thou shouldest not have thy beseeching?' ... For it is most impossible that we should beseech mercy and grace and not have it. For all things that our good Lord maketh us to beseech, Himself hath ordained them to us from without beginning. Here may we see that our beseeching is not the cause of God's goodness; and that showed He soothfastly in all these sweet words which He saith: 'I am the ground.' And our good Lord willeth that this be known of His lovers in earth; and the more that we know it the more should we beseech, if it be wisely taken; and so is our Lord's meaning. Merry and joyous is our Lord of our prayer, and He looketh for it; and He willeth to have it; because with His grace He would have us like to Himself in condition as we are in kind. Therefore saith He to us 'Pray inwardly, although thou think it has no savour to thee: for it is profitable, though thou feel not, though thou see not, yea, though thou think thou canst not.'"

"And also to prayer belongeth thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a true inward knowing, with great reverence and lovely dread turning ourselves with all our mights unto the working that our good Lord stirreth us to, rejoicing and thanking inwardly. And sometimes for plenteousness it breaketh out with voice and saith: Good Lord! great thanks be to Thee: blessed mote Thou be."

"Prayer is a right understanding of that fulness of joy that is to come, with great longing and certain trust.... Then belongeth it to us to do our diligence, and when we have done it, then shall we yet think that it is nought; and in sooth it is. But if we do as we can, and truly ask for mercy and grace, all that faileth us we shall find in Him. And thus meaneth He where He saith: 'I am the ground of thy beseeching.' And thus in this blessed word, with the Showing, I saw a full overcoming against all our weakness and all our doubtful dreads."

Juliana's view of human personality is remarkable, as it reminds us of the Neoplatonic doctrine that there is a higher and a lower self, of which the former is untainted by the sins of the latter. "I saw and understood full surely," she says, "that in every soul that shall be saved there is a godly will that never assented to sin, nor ever shall; which will is so good that it may never work evil, but evermore continually it willeth good, and worketh good in the sight of God.... We all have this blessed will whole and safe in our Lord Jesus Christ." This "godly will" or "substance" corresponds to the spark of the German mystics.

"I saw no difference," she says, "between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God. And yet my understanding took, that our substance is _in_ God--that is to say, that God is God, and our substance a creature in God. Highly ought we to enjoy that God dwelleth in our soul, and much more highly, that our soul dwelleth in God.... Thus was my understanding led to know, that our soul is _made_ Trinity, like to the unmade Blessed Trinity, known and loved from without beginning, and in the making oned to the Maker. This sight was full sweet and marvellous to behold, peaceable and restful, sure and delectable."

"As anent our substance and our sense-part, both together may rightly be called our soul; and that is because of the oneing that they have in God. The worshipful City that our Lord Jesus sitteth in, it is our sense-soul, in which He is enclosed, and our natural substance is beclosed in Jesus, sitting with the blessed soul of Christ at rest in the Godhead." Our soul cannot reach its full powers until our sense-nature by the virtue of Christ's passion be "brought up to the substance." This fulfilment of the soul "is grounded in nature. That is to say, our reason is grounded in God, which is substantial Naturehood; out of this substantial Nature mercy and grace spring and spread into us, working all things in fulfilling of our joy: these are our ground, in which we have our increase and our fulfilling. For in nature we have our life and our being, and in mercy and grace we have our increase and our fulfilling."

In one of her visions she was shown our Lord "scorning the fiend's malice, and noughting his unmight." "For this sight I laught mightily, and that made them to laugh that were about me. But I saw not Christ laugh. After this I fell into graveness, and said, 'I see three things: I see game, scorn, and earnest. I see game, that the fiend is overcome; I see scorn, in that God scorneth him, and he shall be scorned; and I see earnest, in that he is overcome by the blissful passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, that was done in full earnest and with sober travail.'"

Alternations of mirth and sadness followed each other many times, "to learn me that it is speedful to some souls to feel on this wise." Once especially she was left to herself, "in heaviness and weariness of my life, and irksomeness of myself, that scarcely I could have pleasure to live.... For profit of a man's soul he is sometimes left to himself; although sin is not always the cause; for in that time I sinned not, wherefore I should be so left to myself; for it was so sudden. Also, I deserved not to have this blessed feeling. But freely our Lord giveth when He will, and suffereth us to be in woe sometime. And both is one love."

Her treatment of the problem of evil is very characteristic. "In my folly, often I wondered why the beginning of sin was not letted; but Jesus, in this vision, answered and said, 'Sin is behovable,[283] but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.' In this naked word _sin_ our Lord brought to my mind generally all that is not good.... But I saw not sin; for I believe it had no manner of substance, nor any part of being, nor might it be known but by the pain that is caused thereof; and this pain ... purgeth and maketh us to know ourself, and ask mercy. In these same words ('all shall be well') I saw an high and marvellous privity hid in God." She wondered _how_ "all shall be well," when Holy Church teacheth us to believe that many shall be lost. But "I had no other answer but this, 'I shall save my word in all things, and I shall make all thing well.'" "This is the great deed that our Lord God shall do; but what the deed shall be, and how it shall be done, there is no creature beneath Christ that knoweth it, ne shall wit it till it is done."

"I saw no wrath but on man's party," she says, "and that forgiveth He in us. It is the most impossible that may be, that God should be wroth.... Our life is all grounded and rooted in love.... Suddenly is the soul oned to God, when it is truly peaced in itself; for in Him is found no wrath. And thus I saw, when we be all in peace and love, we find no contrariousness, nor no manner of letting, through that contrariousness which is now in us; nay, our Lord God of His goodness maketh it to us full profitable." No visions of hell were ever showed to her. In place of the hideous details of torture which some of the Romish visionaries describe almost with relish, Juliana merely reports, "To me was showed none harder hell than sin."

Again and again she rings the changes on the words which the Lord said to her, "I love thee and thou lovest Me, and our love shall never be disparted in two." "The love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning; in which love," she concludes, "we have our beginning, and all this shall be seen in God without end."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 257: The indebtedness of the fourteenth century mystics to Eckhart is now generally recognised, at any rate in Germany; but before Pfeiffer's work his name had been allowed to fall into most undeserved obscurity. This was not the fault of his scholars, who, in spite of the Papal condemnation of his writings, speak of Eckhart with the utmost reverence, as the "great," "sublime," or "holy" master.]

[Footnote 258: "Vir ut ferunt devotus sed parum litteratus," says the Abbé Trithême (_ap._ Gessner, _Biblioth._). "Rusbrochius cum idiota esset" (_Dyon. Carth._ Serm. i.). Compare Rousselot, _Les Mystiques Espagnols_, p. 493.]

[Footnote 259: Maeterlinck, Ruysbroek's latest interpreter, is far too complimentary to the intellectual endowments of his fellow-countryman. "Ce moine possédait un des plus sages, des plus exacts, et des plus subtils organes philosophiques qui aient jamais existé." He thinks it marvellous that "il sait, à son insu, le platonisme de la Grèce, le soufisme de la Perse, le brahmanisme de I'Inde et le bouddhisme de Thibet," etc. In reality, Ruysbroek gets all his philosophy from Eckhart, and his manner of expounding it shows no abnormal acuteness. But Maeterlinck's essay in _Le Trésor des Humbles_ contains some good things--e.g. "Les verités mystiques ne peuvent ni vieillir ni mourir.... Une oeuvre ne vieillit qu'en proportion de son antimysticisme."]

[Footnote 260: So Preger, probably rightly. Noack places his birth five years later. The chronology of the _Life_ is very loose.]

[Footnote 261: The extreme asceticism which was practised by Suso, and (though to a less degree) by Tauler, is not enjoined by them as a necessary part of a holy life. "We are to kill our passions, not our flesh and blood," as Tauler says.]

[Footnote 262: It would be very interesting to trace the influence of the chivalric idea on religious Mysticism. Chivalry, the worship of idealised womanhood, is itself a mystical cult, and its relation to religious Mysticism appears throughout the "Divine Comedy" and "Vita Nuova" (see especially the incomparable paragraph which concludes this latter), and in the sonnet of M. Angelo translated by Wordsworth, "No mortal object did these eyes behold," etc.]

[Footnote 263: Nothing in the book is more touching than the scene when the baby, deserted by its mother, Suso's false accuser, is brought to him. Suso takes the child in his arms, and weeps over it with affectionate words, while the infant smiles up at him. In spite of the calumny which he knew was being spread wherever it would most injure him, he insists on paying for the child's maintenance, rather than leave it to die from neglect. The Italian mystic Scupoli, the author of a beautiful devotional work called the _Spiritual Combat_, was calumniated in a similar manner.]

[Footnote 264: By Schmidt, whose researches formed the basis of several popular accounts of Tauler's life. Preger and Denifle both reject the identification of the mysterious stranger with Nicholas; Denifle doubts his existence altogether. The subject is very fully discussed by Preger]

[Footnote 265: Tauler was well read in the earlier mystics. He cites Proclus, Augustine (frequently), Dionysius, Bernard, and the Victorines; also Aristotle and Aquinas.]

[Footnote 266: Tauler adheres to the doctrine of an "uncreated ground," but he holds that it must always act upon us through the medium of the "created ground." He evidently considered Eckhart's later doctrine as too pantheistic. See below, p. 183.]

[Footnote 267: See p. 155. In my estimate of Tauler's doctrine, I have made no use of the treatise on _The Imitation of the Poverty of Christ_, which Noack calls his masterpiece, and the kernel of his Mysticism. The work is not by Tauler.]

[Footnote 268: See above, p. 170.]

[Footnote 269: This expression is found first, I think, in Richard of St. Victor; but St. Augustine speaks of "oculus interior atque intelligibilis" (_De div. quæst._ 46).]

[Footnote 270: But Christ, he says, could see with both eyes at once; the left in no way hindered the right.]

[Footnote 271: Tauler often uses similar language; as, for instance, when he says, "The natural light of the reason must be entirely brought to nothing, if God is to enter with His light."]

[Footnote 272: Stöckl criticises the _Theologia Germanica_ in a very hostile spirit. He finds it in "pantheism," by which he means acosmism, and also "Gnostic-Manichean dualism," the latter being his favourite charge against the Lutherans and their forerunners. He considers that this latter tendency is more strongly marked in the _German Theology_ than in the other works of the Eckhartian school, in that the writer identifies "the false light" with the light of nature, and selfhood with sin; "devil, sin, Adam, old man, disobedience, selfhood, individuality, mine, me, nature, self-will, are all the same; they all represent what is against God and without God." Accordingly, salvation consists in annihilation of the self, and substitution for God for it. There is no doubt that the writer of this treatise is deeply impressed with the belief that the root of sin is self-will, and that the new birth must be a complete transformation; but it must be remembered that the language of piety is less guarded than that of dogmatic disputation, and that the theology of such a book must be judged by its whole tendency. My own judgment is that, taken as a whole, it is safer than Tauler or Ruysbroek, and much safer than Eckhart. The strongly-marked "ethical dualism" is of very much the same kind as that which we find in St. John's Gospel. Taken as a theory of the origin and nature of evil, it no doubt does hold out a hand to Manicheism; but I do not think that the writer meant it to be so taken, any more than St. John did.]

[Footnote 273: Throughout the fourteenth century, and still more in the fifteenth, we can trace an increasing prominence given to subjugation of the _will_ in mystical theology. This change is to be attributed partly to the influence of the Nominalist science of Duns Scotus, which gradually gained (at least this point) the ascendancy over the school of Aquinas. It may be escribed as a transition from the more speculative Mysticism towards quietism. In the fourteenth century writings, such as the _Theologia Germanica_, we merely welcome a new and valuable aspect of the religious life; since the change is connected with a distrust of reason, and a return to standpoint of harsh legalism, we cannot regard it as an improvement.]

[Footnote 274: Compare p. 161, for similar teaching in Eckhart himself.]

[Footnote 275: See the quotation on p. 11, note.]

[Footnote 276: Irenæus, _Contra Har_. iv. 6.]

[Footnote 277: No. 31. on Psalm xci. 13.]

[Footnote 278: Hilton's book has been reprinted from the edition of 1659, with an introduction by the Rev. J.B. Dalgairns. Very little is known about the author's life, but his book was widely read, and was "chosen to be the guide of good Christians in the courts of kings and in the world." The mother of Henry VII. valued it very highly. I have also used Mr. Guy's edition in my quotations from _The Scale of Perfection_.]

[Footnote 279: 1 Cor. xiv. 15. This text was also appealed to by the Quietists of the post-Reformation period.]

[Footnote 280: The texts to which he refers are those which Origen uses in the same manner. Compare 1 Cor. i. 23, ii. 2, Gal. vi. 14, with 1 Cor. i. 24.]

[Footnote 281: Julian (born 1343) was probably a Benedictine nun of Carrow, near Norwich, but lived for the greater part of her life in an anchorage in the churchyard of St. Julian at Norwich. There is a copy of her _Revelations_ in the British Museum. Editions by Cressy, 1670; reprint issued 1843; by Collins, 1877. See, further, in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. In my quotations from her, I have used an unpublished version kindly lent me by Miss G.H. Warrack. It is just so far modernised as to be intelligible to those who are not familiar with fourteenth century English.]

[Footnote 282: This was a recognised classification. Scaramelli says, "Le visioni corporce sono favori propri dei principianti, che incomminciano a camminare nella via dello spirito.... Le visioni immaginari sono proprie dei principianti e dei proficienti, che non sono ancor bene purgati.... Le visioni intellectuali sono proprie di quelli che si trovano gia in istato di perfezione." It comes originally from St. Augustine (_De Gen. ad litt._ xii. 7, n. 16): "Hæc sunt tria genera visionum.... Primum ergo appellemus corporale, quia per corpus percipitur, et corporis sensibus exhibetur. Secundum spirituale: quidquid enim corpus non est, et tamen aliquid est, iam recte dicitur spiritus; et utique non est corpus, quamvis corpori similis sit, imago absentis corporis, nee ille ipse obtutus quo cernitur. Tertium vero intellectuale, ab intellectu."]

[Footnote 283: That is, "necessary" or "profitable."]

LECTURE VI