Category: History - Religious
Hugo of St Victor 153 Mysticism combined with Scholasticism 154 The Eye of Contemplation 157 Richard of St Victor 159 The Six Stages of Contemplation 162 The Truth and the Error of Mystical Abstraction 164 The Inner Light and the Outer 166 The Faculty of Intuition 169
Hugo of St Victor 153 Mysticism combined with Scholasticism 154 The Eye of Contemplation 157 Richard of St Victor 159 The Six Stages of Contemplation 162 The Truth and the Error...
10. CHAPTER I.The Chronicle of Adolf Arnstein of Strasburg 181 Hermann of Fritzlar and his Legends 182 The Heretics of the Rhineland 184 The Preaching of Master Eckart 188 From the Known God...
11. CHAPTER II.12. CHAPTER III.13. CHAPTER IV.14. CHAPTER V.15. CHAPTER VI.Further Thoughts on Tauler and Middle-Age Mysticism 260 Tests of Mysticism 268 Spiritual Influence 272 Views of God and the Universe 277 Immanence of God 280 Montanism 284 Groun...
16. CHAPTER VII.17. CHAPTER VIII.18. CHAPTER IX.19. CHAPTER I.It was on the evening of a November day that three friends sat about their after-dinner table, chatting over their wine and walnuts, while the fire with its huge log crackled an...
20. CHAPTER II.Philosophy itself Smacks of the age it lives in, nor is true Save by the apposition of the present. And truths of olden time, though truths they be, And living through all time...
21. CHAPTER III.If we entertain the inward man in the purgative and illuminative way, that is, in actions of repentance, virtue, and precise duty, that is the surest way of uniting us to God, w...
22. CHAPTER IV.WILLOUGHBY. Science be banished! Is not the history of mysticism bright with stories of dazzling spiritual enterprise, sombre with tragedies of the soul, stored with records of...
23. CHAPTER V.Oh! contemplation palls upon the spirit, Like the chill silence of an autumn sun: While action, like the roaring south-west wind, Sweeps, laden with elixirs, with rich draughts...
24. CHAPTER I.From worldly cares himselfe he did esloyne, And greatly shunned manly exercise; From everie worke he chalenged essoyne, For contemplation sake: yet otherwise His life he led in...
25. CHAPTER II.Mysticism has no genealogy. It is no tradition conveyed across frontiers or down the course of generations as a ready-made commodity. It is a state of thinking and feeling, to w...
26. CHAPTER I.WILLOUGHBY. Ah, the Tabernacle in the Wilderness; did you not think his remarks on the use and abuse of symbolism in general very good? Brief, too, and suggestive; just what suc...
27. CHAPTER II.Plato pronounces Love the child of Poverty and Plenty—the Alexandrian philosophy was the offspring of Reverence and Ambition. It combined an adoring homage to the departed geniu...
28. CHAPTER III.MRS. ATHERTON. I confess I cannot understand what that state of mind can be which Plotinus calls ecstasy in the letter you read us last night, and about which most of your mysti...
29. CHAPTER IV._Stargaze._ ’Tis drawn, I assure you, from the aphorisms of the old Chaldeans, Zoroaster the first and greatest magician; Mercurius Trismegistus, the later Ptolemy, and the ever...
30. CHAPTER I.Questi ordini di su tutti s’ammirano E di giù vincon si che verso Iddio Tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano. E Dionisio con tanto disio A contemplar questi ordini si mise, Che li n...
31. CHAPTER II.They that pretend to these heights call them the secrets of the kingdom; but they are such which no man can describe; such which God hath not revealed in the publication of the...
32. CHAPTER I.Look up, my Ethel! When on the glances of the upturned eye The plumed thoughts take travel, and ascend Through the unfathomable purple mansions, Threading the golden fires, and...
33. CHAPTER II.The celebrated School of St. Victor (so called from an ancient chapel in the suburbs of Paris) was founded by William of Champeaux at the commencement of the twelfth century. Th...
34. CHAPTER I.I pray thee, peace; I will be flesh and blood, For there was never yet philosopher, That could endure the toothache patiently; However they have writ the style of gods, And made...
35. CHAPTER II.For as though there were metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into another; opinions do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them...
36. CHAPTER III.With that about I tourned my hedde, And sawe anone the fifth rout That to this lady gan lout, And doune on knees, anone, to fall, And to her tho besoughten all, To hiden hir goo...
37. CHAPTER IV.If you would be pleased to make acquaintance with a solid theology of the good old sort in the German tongue, get John Tauler’s sermons; for neither in Latin nor in our own lang...
38. CHAPTER V.The meanes, therefore, which unto us is lent Him to behold, is on his workes to looke, Which he hath made in beautie excellent, And in the same, as in a brasen booke, To read en...
39. CHAPTER VI.The day after the conversation recorded in the last chapter, Atherton was called to a distance from Summerford on legal business. Before leaving, he had some further talk with W...
40. CHAPTER VII.Alas poor country; Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot Be called our mother, but our grave. Where nothing, But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; Where sighs, and gro...
41. CHAPTER VIII.1354. _March. St. Brigitta’s Day._—A fortnight ago this day, there came to me, to buy as goodly a battle-axe as could be made, young Sir Ulric—the same who, at the tourney the o...
42. CHAPTER IX.Di Meistere sprechen von zwein antlitzen der sêle. Daz eine antlitze ist gekart in dise werlt. Daz ander antlitze ist gekart di richte in got. In diseme antlitze lûchtet und bre...
43. CHAPTER I.44. CHAPTER II.45. CHAPTER I.The Position of the Mystics as regards the Reformation 31 The Advantage of the Ground occupied by Luther 32 Menacing Character of the Revolutionary Mysticism 35 The Anabaptists...
46. CHAPTER II.47. CHAPTER III.48. CHAPTER IV.49. CHAPTER VII.50. CHAPTER VIII.Jacob Behmen—Sketch and Estimate of his System 103 The Mysterium Magnum 104 The Seven Fountain-Spirits 104 Examination of his Doctrine concerning the Origin of Evil 109 The Fall...
51. CHAPTER IX.The Rosicrucians 128 Romance and Reality 129 Valentine Andreä and his _Fama Fraternitatis_ 134 Secret Societies 136 The Creatures of the Elements 138 Magical Words 140 Pordage a...
52. CHAPTER I.Neo-Platonism revived in Italy 147 Its Weakness, opposed to the Reformation 148 The Counter-reformation 150 Headed by Spain 150 Character of its Mysticism 151 St. Theresa 153 He...
53. CHAPTER III.54. CHAPTER I.Queen Quietude 201 The Doctrine of ‘Pure Love’ discussed 205 Madame Guyon 207 Her Unhappy Marriage 208 The Kingdom of God within us 211 Efforts to Annihilate Self 213 Interior A...
55. CHAPTER II.The Quietist Controversy 242 Molinos 242 Madame Guyon at Paris 245 St. Cyr 248 Fénélon and Madame Guyon 250 Signs of Danger 252 The Conferences at Issy 255 The Quietism of Fénél...
56. CHAPTER III.57. CHAPTER I.58. CHAPTER II.59. CHAPTER I.60. CHAPTER II.His _Memorable Relations_ 329 His Heaven and Hell 330 Moderation of his Doctrine concerning Spiritual Influence 331 Defects of his Doctrine concerning the Work of Christ 332 The...
61. CHAPTER I.Mystical Tendencies of our own Time 340 The Faith-Philosophy 341 Schleiermacher 341 The Romantic School 343 Novalis 348 Revival of antiquated Error 350 The Modern Mysticism a Re...
62. CHAPTER II.63. CHAPTER III.64. CHAPTER I.Also, there is in God Which being seen would end us with a shock Of pleasure. It may be that we should die As men have died of joy, all mortal powers Summed up and finished in a...
65. CHAPTER II.‘Let us proceed, then,’ resumed Atherton, smoothing his manuscript, ‘on our Persian expedition. Dr. Tholuck, with his German translation, shall act as interpreter, and we may pa...
66. CHAPTER I.Amongst them all sate he that wonned there, That hight _Phantastes_ by his nature trew; A man of years yet fresh, as mote appere, Of swarth complexion and of crabbed hew, That h...
67. CHAPTER II.He that misbelieves and lays aside clear and cautious reason in things that fall under the discussion of Reason, upon the pretence of hankering after some higher principle, (whi...
68. CHAPTER III._Face._ ’Tis a stone, And not a stone; a spirit, a soul, and a body; Which if you do dissolve, it is dissolved; If you coagulate, it is coagulated; If you make it to fly, it fli...
69. CHAPTER IV.For I am siker that there be sciences, By which men maken divers apparences, Swiche as thise subtil tregetoures play. For oft at festes have I well herd say, That tregetoures, w...
70. CHAPTER V.The reason that Men do not doubt of many things, is, that they never examine common Impressions; they do not dig to the Root, where the Faults and Defects lye; they only debate...
71. CHAPTER VI.It is evening, and in the little town of Görlitz the business of the day is over. The shopkeepers are chatting together before their doors, or drinking their beer at tables set...
72. CHAPTER VII.When I myself from mine own self do quit, And each thing else; then all-spreaden love To the vast Universe my soul doth fit, Makes me half equall to all-seeing Jove. My mighty w...
73. CHAPTER VIII.So our Behmen, rejoicing in his supernatural light, is prepared to answer more questions than ever the Northern hero, Ganglar, put to the throned phantoms in the palace roofed w...
74. CHAPTER IX.A strict regard for historical accuracy compels me to state that the following conversation took place in the drawing-room, and not in the library. By such an arrangement, that...
75. CHAPTER I.It is no flaming lustre, made of light, No sweet concert nor well-timed harmony, Ambrosia, for to feast the appetite, Of flowery odour mixed with spicery,— No soft embrace, or p...
76. CHAPTER II.Indeed, when persons have been long softened with the continual droppings of religion, and their spirits made timorous and apt for impression by the assiduity of prayer, and per...
77. CHAPTER III.And those that endeavour after so still, so silent, and demure condition of minde, that they would have the sense of nothing there but peace and rest, striving to make their who...
78. CHAPTER I.Love! if thy destined sacrifice am I, Come, slay thy victim, and prepare thy fires; Plunged in thy depths of mercy let me die The death which every soul that lives desires!
79. CHAPTER II.In the year 1686, Madame Guyon returned to Paris, and entered the head-quarters of persecution. Rumours reached her, doubtless, from beyond the Alps, of cruel measures taken aga...
80. part III. chapp. i. ii. iii. Fénélon’s _Réponse à la Relation sur le_Autobiography_, part III. chap. ix. Fénélon declares that her explanations at these interviews were such as to satisfy him of the harmlessness and orthodoxy of her intention. S...
81. CHAPTER III.All opinions and notions, though never so true, about things spiritual, may be the very matter of heresy, when they are adhered to as the principle and end, with obstinacy and a...
82. CHAPTER I.Is virtue then, unless of Christian growth, Mere fallacy, or foolishness, or both? Ten thousand sages lost in endless woe, For ignorance of what they could not know? That speech...
83. CHAPTER II.And to such Enthusiasm as is but the triumph of the soul of man, inebriated, as it were, with the delicious sense of the divine life, that blessed Root, and Original of all holy...
84. CHAPTER I.The doctrine of Correspondence is the central idea of Swedenborg’s system. Everything visible has belonging to it an appropriate spiritual reality. The history of man is an acte...
85. CHAPTER II.I find Swedenborg, in the midst of his spiritual interviews and voluminous authorship, taking his part for some time in the Diet of 1761, and presenting three memorials with hig...
86. CHAPTER I.Early in December, Atherton was called away from Ashfield by some matters of business. His solitary evenings were spent in the chief inn of a quiet cathedral town, and solaced b...
87. CHAPTER II.La raison, dit saint Augustin, ne se soumettroit jamais, si elle ne jugeoit qu’il y a des occasions où elle doit se soumettre. Il est donc juste qu’elle se soumette quand elle j...
88. CHAPTER III.These lines hovered in Gower’s memory that night, as he walked home after the conversation just recorded. He thought how applicable they were to asceticism,—especially to that i...
89. i. 111;Theology of the Pseudo-Dionysius, 113-115, 278; influence of his Mysticism on the Middle Ages, 119; in the East and in the West contrasted, 130; identified with St. Denys of Fra...