This disciple, who declared that whatever "heavenly life" there was in himself had been "hatched" by the fostering care, the nurturing love and the brave conduct of his teacher, has left a few very clear traits for the creation of a true portrait of this saintly interpreter of the Spirit: He was a Fountain running over, Worthington says, "an ever bountifull and bubbling Fountain."[14] Love was bubbling and springing up in his soul and flowing out to all. He would have emptied his soul into others. He {308} was dipped into Justice as it were over head and ears; he had not a slight tincture but was dyed and coloured quite through with it. He cared only for those substantial and solid things of a Divine and Immortal Nature, which he might carry out of the world with him. He was a living library, a walking study, a whole college in himself, that carried his learning about with him; a man of great industry, indefatigable pains, and herculean labours. His learning was so concocted that it lay not in notions in his head, but was wrought out and formed in his very soul so that a man came away always better after converse with him. His faith did not busy itself about fine notions, subtilties, and curiosities, but it was firmly set and fixed in an experience of the mercy and goodness of God, seen in Jesus Christ. He lived in a continuous enjoyment of God and perpetually drew nearer to the Centre of his soul's rest and always stayed God's time of advancement. His spirit was absorbed in the business and employment of becoming perfect in his art and profession—which was the art of being a good man.[15] The devoted scholar's highest wish, as he closes his glowing account of his beloved master, who "enshrined so much Divinity that everything about him had a kind of sacredness," was that those who had enjoyed his presence and inspiration and had formed their lives under his instruction might "so express his life" in theirs, that men would say as they saw these disciples of his, "There walks at least a shadow of Mr. Smith!"[16]

It would be difficult to find any one, in the long list of those who have interpreted Christianity, who has been more insistent than was John Smith that religion is the normal function of the soul and the surest evidence of its health and sanity. But religion of this normal and spiritual type must be sharply differentiated both from superstition and from legalistic religion. The mark of superstition in his mind is the apprehension of God as capricious, a hard Master, and of such a character that his {309} favour can be gained only by servile flattery or bribery or by spells of magic. Superstition is "a brat of darkness" born in a heart of fear and consternation. It produces invariably "a forced and jejune devotion"; it makes "forms of worship which are grievous and burdensome" to the life; it chills or destroys all free and joyous converse with God; it kills out love and inward peace, and instead of inspiring, heightening, and purifying man's soul, it bends all its energies in the vain attempt to alter the capricious attitude of the superior Being who scares and terrifies men. It is, however, a very subtle spirit and one hard to eradicate. It invades our religion even when we are least aware of it: "it enters into our chambers, creeps into our clothes, twines about our secret devotions, and actuates our forms of belief and orthodox opinions."[17]

Legalistic religion, or the "covenant of works," is much of a piece with superstition. It, again, is always a burden to be borne. Its mark is "drudgery and servility." It is a "lean and lifeless form of external performances." Its "law" is always something outside the soul itself. It is a way of acquiring "merit," of getting reckoned among "heaven's darlings," but it is not a way of life or expansion or power or joy.[18]

This "dead" legalistic form of religion is, however, not merely a thing of antiquity, of some early "dispensation" in the long stretch of years called "B.C." Like superstition, legalistic religion also has "crept into our clothes" and "twined about our secret devotions." The "gospel" can be made, and has often enough been made, "as legal as ever the religion of the Jews was." The gospel becomes legal, in Smith's sense, wherever it is treated "as something onely without us," "as a meer historical story or account," or as a collection of book-facts, or "as credenda propounded for us to believe," or when we attempt to "make Christ's righteousness serve onely as our outward covering."[19] "Some of our {310} Dogmata," he thinks, "and Notions of Justification puff us up in far higher and goodlier conceits of ourselves than God hath of us; and we profanely make the unspotted righteousness of Christ serve only as a covering to wrap up our foul deformities and filthy vices in."[20] This tendency, wherever it appears, is but legal religion. Men adopt it because it does not "pinch their sins." It gives them a "sluggish and drowsie Belief, a lazy Lethargy to hugg their supposed acceptation with God"; it enables them "to grow big and swell with a mighty bulk with airy fancies and presumptions of being in favour with Heaven," and it fans up "a pertinacious Imagination that their Names are enrolled in the Book of Life, or crossed off in the Debt-Book of Heaven." But it is all "a meer Conceit or Opinion," for such men are "never the better in reality in themselves and God judges all things as they are." "While men continue in their wickedness, they do but vainly dream of a device to tie the hands of Almighty Vengeance."[21]

True religion, on the other hand, is absolutely another thing, sundered by the width of the sky from either superstition or legalistic religion. It is a reception and assimilation of the Life of God within the soul of man which is predisposed by its fundamental nature to the influx and formative influence of the Spirit of God, who is the environing Life and inner atmosphere of all human spirits: "Spiritual Life comes from God's breath within us and from the formation of Christ within the soul."[22]

Like all of his kind, Smith begins with what to him is an axiomatic fact, that the human soul has a "royal pedigree and noble extraction," that, "as the best philosophers have alwaies taught, we must enquire for God within ourselves," that "Principles of Divine Truth have been engraven on man's Heart by the finger of God," that we can find "a clear impression of some Eternal Nature and Perfect Being stamped upon our own souls," that there are "Radical Principles of Divine Knowledge" {311} and "Seeds of Divine Nature" hidden within us and that a Divine Spirit blows and breathes upon men's hearts, assisting the soul to participate in the Life of God.[23] In one of his bold sayings this position is summed up as follows: "Religion is a Heaven-born thing, the Seed of God in the spirits of men, whereby they are formed to a similitude and likeness of Himself. A true Christian is every way of a most noble extraction, of an heavenly and divine pedigree."[24]

He finds the mark of man's excelling dignity in the inexhaustible depth of his nature and in his noble discontent with every finite and mutable thing. The soul of man is "too big for earthly designs and interests." There is forever a restless appetite within man for some infinite Good without which he can never be satisfied. Everything which he attains or achieves still leaves him in "pinching penury," unsatiated with "the thin and spare diet which he finds in his finite home." His soul, "like the daughters of the Horseleach is always crying: 'Give, give.'" No happiness worth having ever arises, nor through a whole eternity could arise, for any soul sequestered like a hermit in the narrow confines of its own private cell, sundered from "the Fountain-Goodness," for which it was created. The immortal Principle within forever drives it to seek its Original, and it lives only when it "lives above itself," and follows "its own proper motion upward."[25]

The real Gospel in contrast to the "legal gospel," is "the formation of a Christlike Nature in a man's soul by the mighty power of the Divine Spirit."[26] It is no new set of opinions; no body of Notions about Truth; "no system of saving Divinity, cast in a Pedagogical mould"; it is, from its Alpha to its Omega, Spirit and Life, or, to put it in Smith's own words, it is "a vital or energetical Spirit or Power of Righteousness," "a Principle of Life working in man's spirit," "a quickening ministration," "a Seed of God," "a vital Influx, spreading through all {312} the powers of the soul and bringing it into a Divine Life."[27] There are many close imitations of this real Gospel which on the outside look exactly like it, but they only assume "the garish dress and attire of religion," they put on "the specious and seemingly-spiritual Forms" without the inward Life and Power which are always the mark of true religion. These "mimical Christians" reform their looks, instruct their tongues, take up the fitting set of duties and system of opinions, underprop their religion with sacred performances; "chameleon-like, they even turn their insides to whatever hue and colour" is demanded of religion; they "furnish this domestick Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of religion affords them"—only, however they "cunningly fashion out their religion by Book-skill," they cannot get "the true and living thing," which creates a new spirit and produces a new inward joy: "True Religion is no piece of artifice; it is no boiling up of our Imaginative powers nor the glowing heats of Passion; though these are too often mistaken for it, when in our jugglings in Religion we cast a mist before our eyes. But it is a new Nature informing the souls of Men; it is a Godlike frame of Spirit, discovering it self most of all in serene and clear Minds, in deep Humility, Meekness, Self-denial, Universal Love of God and all true Goodness, without Partiality and without Hypocrisie; whereby we are taught to know God, and knowing Him to love Him and conform ourselves as much as may be to all that Perfection which shines forth in Him."[28]

Heaven and Hell for John Smith, as for Boehme and for Whichcote, "have their foundation laid in Men's own souls."[29] They are rather something within us than something without us. Sin and hell have the same origin, "the same lineage and descent." "The Devil is not only the name of one particular thing, but a nature. He is not so much a particular Being designed to torture wicked men in the world to come as a hellish and diabolical {313} nature seated in the minds of men. . . . Could the Devil change his foul and impure nature, he would neither be a Devil nor miserable. . . . All Sin and Wickedness in man's spirit hath the Central force and energy of Hell in it, and is perpetually pressing down towards it as towards its own place. There needs no fatal necessity or Astral influences to tumble wicked men down forcibly into Hell: No, Sin itself, hastened by the mighty weight of its own nature, carries them down thither with the most swift and headlong motion."[30] "Would wicked men dwell a little more at home, and descend into the bottom of their own Hearts they would soon find Hell opening her mouth wide upon them, and those secret fires of inward fury and displeasure breaking out upon them."[31] So, too, the Kingdom of Heaven is within. It lies not so much in external things, golden streets and crowns, as in the quality and disposition of a man's mind. The enjoying of God consists not so much in a change of place as in participation in the nature of God and in assimilation to God. Nothing can stand firm and sure, nothing can have eternal establishment and abiding permanence that "hath not the everlasting arms of true Goodness under it."[32]

In a very fine passage, in the noble discourse on "True Religion," Smith says: "I wish there be not among some such a light and poor esteem of Heaven, as makes them more to seek after Assurance of Heaven onely in the Idea of it as a thing to come than after Heaven it self; which indeed we can never be well assured of untill we find it rising up within ourselves and glorifying our own souls. When true Assurance comes, Heaven it self will appear upon the Horizon of our souls, like a morning light chasing away all our dark and gloomy doublings before it. We shall not then need to light up our Candles to seek for it in corners; no, it will display its own lustre and brightness so before us that we may see it in its own light, and our souls the true possessours of it." "Should a man hear a Voice from Heaven or see a Vision from the Almighty to testifie unto him the Love of God towards him [and the {314} Assurance of his Salvation]; yet methinks it were more desirable to find a Revelation of all from within, arising up from the Bottome and centre of a man's own soul, in the Reall and Internal impressions of a Godlike nature upon his own spirit; and thus to find the Foundation and Beginning of Heaven and Happiness within himself; it were more desirable to see the crucifying of our own Will, the mortifying of the meer Animal life and to see a Divine life rising up in the room of it, as a sure Pledge and Inchoation of Immortality and Happiness, the very Essence of which consists in a perfect conformity and cheerful compliance of all the Powers of our Souls with the Will of God."[33]

The consciousness of Immortality rises or falls with the moral and spiritual height of the soul. Nothing makes men doubt or question the Immortality of their souls so much as their own "base and earthly loves," and so, too, inward goodness "breeds a sense of the Soul's Immortality": "Goodness and vertue make men know and love, believe and delight in their Immortality. When the soul is purged and enlightened by true sanctity it is more capable of those Divine irradiations whereby it feels it self in conjunction with God. It knows that Almighty Love, by which it lives, is stronger than death. It knows that God will never forsake His own life which He has quickened in the soul. Those breathings and gaspings after an Eternal participation of Him are but the energy of His own breath within us."[34]

Smith finds the world in which he lives a fair world, everywhere full of "the Prints and Footsteps of God," the finite creatures of which are "Glasses wherein God reflects His glory." There are many "golden links that unite the world to God," and good men, "conversing with this lower world and viewing the invisible things of God in the things that are made in the outward Creation, may many times find God secretly flowing into their souls and leading them silently out of the Court of the Temple into the Holy Place."[35]

{315}

The outward world is thus not something stubbornly foreign to the spirit; it is not the enemy's country, but every finite good and everything of beauty is "a Blossom of the First Goodness, a Beam from the Father of Lights." The spiritual person discovers that the whole creation is spiritual. He learns to "love all things in God and God in all things, and he sees that God is All in all, the Beginning and Original of Being, the Perfect Idea of their goodness and the end of their motion." In the calming illumination of this clarified vision, the good man, in whose soul religion has flowered, "is no longer solicitous whether this or that good thing be mine, or whether my perfections exceed the measure of this or that particular Creature, for whatever good he beholds anywhere he enjoys and delights in as much as if it were his own, and whatever he beholds in himself he looks upon not as his property but as a common good; for all these Beams come from one and the same Fountain and Ocean of Light in whom he loves them all with an universal Love. When his affections run along the stream of any created excellencies, whether his own or any one's else, yet they stay not here but run on until they fall into the Ocean; they do not settle into a fond love and admiration either of himself or any other's excellencies, but he owns them as so many Pure Effluxes and Emanations from God, and in any particular Being loves the Universal Goodness. Thus a good man may walk up and down the world as in a Garden of Spices and suck a Divine Sweetness out of every flower. There is a twofold meaning in every Creature: a Literal and Mystical; a good man says of everything that his Senses offer to him: it speaks to his lower part but it points out something above to his Mind and Spirit. . . . True Religion never finds it self out of the Infinite Sphere of Divinity and wherever it finds Beauty, Harmony, Goodness, Love, Ingenuity, Wisdom, Holiness, Justice, and the like, it is ready to say: Here is God. Wheresoever any such Perfections shine out, an holy Mind climbs up by these Sunbeams and raises up it self to God. . . . A good man finds every place he {316} treads upon Holy Ground; to him the world is God's Temple."[36]

The supreme instance of the revelation of the Universal through the particular, of the invisible through the visible, the Divine through the human, is seen in Christ. It was precisely such an event as might have been expected, for "the Divine Bounty and Fulness has always been manifesting Itself to the spirits of men." Those who have lived by inward insight have perpetually found themselves "hanging upon the arms of Immortal Goodness." At length, in this One Life the Divine Goodness blossomed into perfect flower and revealed its Nature to men. In Him divinity and humanity are absolutely united in one Person. In Christ we have a clear manifestation of God and in Him, too, "we may see with open face what human nature can attain to."[37] This stupendous event, however, was no "gracious contrivance," no scheme to restore lapsed men in order that God might have "a Quire of Souls to sing eternal Hallelujahs to Him"; it was just "the overflowing fountain and efflux of Almighty Love bestowing itself upon men and crowning Itself by communicating Itself."[38] The Christ who is thus divine Grace become visible and vocal is also at the same time the irresistible attraction, "strongly and forcibly moving the souls of men into a conjunction with Divine Goodness," which is what Smith always means by the great word, Faith. It is something in the hearts of men which by experience "feels the mighty insinuations of Divine Goodness"; complies with it; perpetually rises into co-operation with it, and attains its true "life and vivacity" by partaking of it.[39] Christ is thus the Node, or Centre, of both Grace and Faith.

With this apprehension of Faith as a vital thing—a new and living way—Smith thinks very lightly of "notions" and what he calls "a knowledge of Divinity [Theology] which appears in systems and models."[40] This is but a poor way, he thinks, to "the Land of Truth." {317} "It is but a thin and aiery knowledge that is got by meer speculation." "This is but spider-like to spin a worthless web out of one's own bowels." "Jejune and barren speculations may unfold the Plicatures of Truth's garment, but they cannot discover her lovely Face." "To find Truth," he says in another figure, "we must break through the outward shell of words and phrases which house it," and by experience and practice discover the "inward beauty, life and loveliness of Truth."[41]

This hard "shell of words and phrases" which must be broken before Truth is found, is one of Sebastian Franck's favourite sayings, and we find Smith also repeating Franck's vivid accounts of the weakness of Scripture when it is treated only as external history, or as words, texts, and phrases. "Scripture," he says, in the exact words and figures of the German Humanist, "is a Sealed Book which the greatest Sophist may be most acquainted with. It is like the Pillar of fire and cloud that parted between the Israelites and Egyptians, giving a clear and comfortable light to all those that are under the manuduction and guidance thereof [i.e. those who have the inner experience] but being full of darkness and obscurity to those that rebel against it."[42] "The dead letter," he says, "is a sandy foundation" for religion, because it is never in books and writings but rather in the human soul that men must seek for God.[43] Action and not words; life and not motions; heart and not brain, hold the key to Truth: "They cannot be good at Theorie that are bad at Practice."[44] "Our Saviour," he says, "would not draw Truth up into any System, nor would He lay it out into Canons or Articles of Faith, because He was not so careful to stock the world with Opinions and Notions as to make it thrive with true piety, Godlike purity and spiritual understanding"; and in a very happy passage, he reminds us that there are other ways of propagating religion besides writing books: "They are not alwaies the best Men who blot the most paper; Truth is not so {318} voluminous nor swells into such a mighty bulk as our Bookes doe. Those minds are not alwaies the most chaste that are the most parturient with learned Discourses."[45]

I have, I believe, now given a true account of Smith's type of Christianity, It was no new message. It was a re-expression of ideas and ideals that had already been often proclaimed to the dull ears of the world. He, however, is never a repeater of other men's ideas. What he offers is always as much his own as was the life-blood which coursed through his heart. He fed upon the literature which was kindred to his growing spirit, and his books helped him find the road which he was seeking; but he was nobly true to his own theory that the way of Life is discovered by spiritual experience rather than by "verbal description," and this quiet, sincere scholar and prophet of the soul found it thus. He once said that "Truth is content, when it comes into the world, to wear our mantles, to learn our language and to conform itself as it were to our dress and fashions";[46] that is to say, prophets speak in their own dialect and use the modes of their own culture, but they are prophets through their own temporal experience of that one eternal Reality which shines into their souls in its own Light.[47]

What impressed his contemporary friends most was the beauty of his spirit, and that is what still most impresses the reader of his Discourses. He has succeeded in preserving some of the strong elixir of his life in the words which survive him, and we know him as a valiant soldier in that great army of soldier-saints who have fought with spiritual weapons. "This fight and contest," he himself has told us, "with Sin and Satan is not to be known by the rattling of Chariots or the sound of an alarm: it is indeed alone transacted upon the inner stage of men's souls and spirits—but it never consists in a sluggish kind of doing nothing that so God might do all."[48] A Life is always battle, and the true Christian is always "a Champion of God" clad in the armour of Light for the defeat of {319} darkness and the seed of Satan. In this battle of Armageddon John Smith took a man's part, and his affectionate disciple Simon Patrick was quite right in saying, as the master passed away, "My father, my father, The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof."

The other members of this impressive group of Cambridge Platonists, especially Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, Nathaniel Culverwel and John Norris, might well be studied, and they would furnish some additional aspects of religious thought, but the teachings of the two exponents whom I have selected as representative of the school have brought the central ideas and the underlying spirit of this seventeenth century religious movement sufficiently into view. Their intimate connection with the currents of thought which preceded them has also been made adequately clear. This volume does not pretend to be exhaustive, and it cannot follow out all the interesting ramifications of the complicated historical development which I have been tracing. I have been compelled to limit myself to the presentation of typical specimens and examples of this continuously advancing spiritual movement which found one of its noblest figures in John Smith.



[1] Simon Patrick uses this phrase in his funeral sermon on his friend John Smith. Select Discourses (1673), p. 472.

[2] Rational Theology, ii. p. 122.

[3] Patrick's Sermon, Select Discourses, p. 496.

[4] Worthington's Sketch is given in the Preface to the Reader in Select Discourses, pp. iii-xxx, and Patrick's Sermon is given as an Appendix to the same volume, pp. 471-512.

[5] Preface, p. vi.

[6] Patrick, op. cit. p. 498.

[7] Preface, p. xxviii.

[8] Patrick, op. cit. pp. 471 and 472.

[9] Ibid. p. 484.

[10] Ibid. p. 477.

[11] Ibid. p. 474.

[12] Ibid. pp. 480-481.

[13] Ibid. p. 486.

[14] Preface, p. iii.

[15] This portrait is made up entirely of passages gathered out of Patrick's Sermon, and but slightly altered.

[16] Op. cit. p. 509.

[17] "A Short Discourse on Superstition," in Select Discourses, pp. 24-36.

[18] "Discourse on Legal Righteousness, etc.," ibid. pp. 273-338.

[19] Smith uses this phrase in precisely the same manner as Jacob Boehme.

[20] Select Discourses, p. 316.

[21] Ibid. pp. 319-321, quoted freely.

[22] Ibid. p. 21, quoted freely.

[23] Select Discourses, pp. 13, 14, 57, 61, and 118.

[24] Ibid. p. 370.

[25] Ibid. pp. 375, 393, 395, 403, 407-408.

[26] Ibid. p. 311.

[27] Select Discourses, pp. 303, 305, and 315.

[29] Ibid. p. 364. For Smith's view of mimical Christians see pp. 359-364.

[29] Ibid. p. 144.

[30] Select Discourses, p. 452.

[31] Ibid. p. 456.

[32] Ibid. pp. 452 and 445.

[33] Select Discourses, p. 416.

[34] Ibid. pp. 97-98. Quoted freely.

[35] Ibid. pp. 419-420.

[36] Select Discourses, pp. 421-423.

[37] Ibid. pp. 332 and 336.

[38] Ibid. p. 398.

[39] Ibid. p. 325.

[40] Ibid. p. 2.

[41] Select Discourses, pp. 4, 7, and 8.

[42] Ibid. p. 278.

[43] Ibid. pp. 3 and 288.

[44] Ibid. p. 12.

[45] Select Discourses, p. 12.

[46] Ibid. p. 165.

[47] Ibid. p. 260.

[48] Ibid. pp. 461 and 458.



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CHAPTER XVII

THOMAS TRAHERNE AND THE SPIRITUAL POETS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

I

The powerful religious upheaval in England which reached its culmination during the two middle decades of the seventeenth century, profoundly stirred both the upper and lower intellectual strata of society. It fused and organized men on the one hand, and carried them beyond themselves; and on the other hand it broke up settled habits of thought, swept away many customs and practices which had become almost irresistible subconscious influences, and left those who were in any way morally and intellectually defective at the mercy of chance currents and eddies. As a result there appeared a strange medley of tiny sects. These groups, seething with enthusiasm, scattered pretty much over England, unorganized or loosely organized, generally gathered about some influential psychopathic leader, were lumped together in the public mind and named "Ranters."[1] They are by no means a negligible phenomenon of the period. They reveal the back-wash of the spiritual movement, which in the main went steadily onward. They exhibit, in their loose and unmoralized freedom, the inherent dangers which attach to the proclamation of spiritual liberty, and they furnish a clear historical illustration of the truth that progress toward a religion grounded upon the inner life of man can only be slowly and painfully achieved.

{321}

The religious poets of this period, on the other hand, furnish clear evidence of the constructive, organizing and fusing power of these newly dawning spiritual insights, as they worked upon the minds of highly gifted and endowed persons. Poets are not Reformers. They do not consider themselves "commissioned" to reconstruct old systems of thought, old forms of faith and old types of church-organization, or to re-interpret the Gospel, the way of salvation and the communion of saints. Their mission is a different one, though it is no less spiritual and, in the best sense of the word, no less practical. The poets are always among the first to feel the direction of spiritual currents, and they are very sure voices of the deeper hopes and aspirations of their epoch. All the religious poets of this particular period reveal very clearly the influence of the ideas which were central in the teaching of the spiritual leaders whom we have been studying. The reader of Milton needs no argument to convince him of the fact that, however far removed the great poet was in most points of view from the contemporary Quakers, he nevertheless insisted emphatically, as they did, on the illumination of the soul by a Light within; "a celestial Light," he calls it in Paradise Lost, which shines inward and irradiates the mind through all her powers, and supplies an inward sight of things invisible to sense[2]—a Light which steadily increases as it is used by the obedient soul.[3] The origin of this inward Light, according to Milton's thought, is the eternal Word of God, who is before all worlds and who is the source of all revelation, whether inward or outward: the Spirit that prefers

Before all temples the upright heart and pure.[4]

The minor religious poets of the period had not, however, formed their intellectual outlook under the imperial sway of theological systems of thought in anything like {322} the degree that Milton had. They reflect the freer and less rigidly formulated currents of thought. "All divinity is love, or wonder," John Donne wrote in one of his poems. No phrase could better express the intense religious life of the group of spiritual poets in England who interpreted in beautiful, often immortal, form this religion of the spirit, this glowing consciousness that the world and all its fulness is God's and that eternity is set within the soul of man, who never is himself until he finds his Life in God.

E'en like two little bank-dividing brooks, That wash the pebbles with their wanton streams, And having rang'd and search'd a thousand nooks, Meet both at length in silver-breasted Thames, Where in a greater current they conjoin: So I my best beloved's am; so He is mine.

E'en so we met: and after long pursuit, E'en so we joined; we both became entire: No need for either to renew a suit, For I was flax and He was flames of fire. Our firm united souls did more than twine; So I my best beloved's am; so He is mine.[5]

Whatever these poets, Herbert, Vaughan, Traherne, Crashaw, Quarles, say of the soul and its fuller life, they say quite naturally in terms of love and wonder. Religion has become for them the flowering of the soul; the flooding of the whole being with health and joy; the consummation of life; and they tell of it as lovers tell of their discovery and their joy.

Oh mightie love! man is one world and hath Another to attend him.[6]

We have here in these poets, as in the writings of Whichcote and Smith, a type of religion which is primarily concerned with the liberation and winning of the whole of life, a thing which, they all tell us, can be done only in conscious parallelism with the set of eternal currents.

These minor prophets of seventeenth century English literature have often been treated as mystics, and there {323} is in all of them, except George Herbert, a rich strand of mystical religion, but their mysticism is only an element, a single aspect, of a very much wider and completer type of religion which includes all the strands that compose what I have been calling "spiritual religion"—an inner flooding of the life with a consciousness of God, a rational apprehension of the soul's inherent relation to the Divine, and a transforming discovery of the meaning of life through the revelation in Christ, which sets all one's being athrob with love and wonder.

Eternal God! O thou that only art The sacred fountain of eternal light, And blessed loadstone of my better part, O thou, my heart's desire, my soul's delight, Reflect upon my soul and touch my heart, And then my heart shall prize no good above thee; And then my soul shall know thee; knowing, love thee.[7]



II

Thomas Traherne is one of the best and most adequate representatives, in this literary group, of this type of religion. He was profoundly influenced by the revival of Plato and Plotinus, and by the writings of the religious Humanists and he had absorbed, consciously or unconsciously, the ideas and ideals which appear and reappear in the widespread movement which I have been tracing. He was a pure and noble soul, a man of deep experience and fruitful meditation, the master of a rare and wonderful style, and we shall find in his writings a glowing appreciation and a luminous expression of this type of inner, spiritual religion.

He was born about the year 1636, probably at Hereford, the son of a poor shoemaker, but of a notable and well-endowed family line. He took no pains to inform the world of his outward history and we are left with guesses as to most of the details of his earthly career, but he has himself supplied us with an unusually full account of his {324} inward life during the early years of it. "Once I remember," he says, "I think I was about four years old when I thus reasoned with myself, sitting in a little obscure room of my father's poor house: If there be a God certainly He must be infinite in Goodness, and I was prompted to this by a real whispering instinct of Nature."[8] Whereupon the child wonders why, if God is so rich, he himself is so poor, possessed of "so scanty and narrow a fortune, enjoying few and obscure comforts," but he tells us that as soon as he was old enough to discover the glory of the world he was in, and old enough for his soul to have "sudden returns into itself," there was no more questioning about poverty and narrow fortunes. All the wealth of God was his—

I nothing in the world did know But 'twas divine.[9]

As nobody has better caught the infinite glory of being a child, and as nobody in literature has more successfully "set the little child in the midst," than has Traherne, it may be well to let him tell us here in his splendid enthusiasm what it is to be a child and what the eyes of a child can see. He shall do it, first in his magnificent prose and then in his fine and simple verse.

"Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child. All appeared new, and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful. I was a little stranger, which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys. My knowledge was Divine. . . . My very ignorance was advantageous. I seemed as one brought into the Estate of Innocence. All things were spotless and pure and glorious: yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious. I knew not that there were any sins, or complaints or laws. I dreamed not of poverties, contentions or vices. All tears {325} and quarrels were hidden from mine eyes. Everything was at rest, free and immortal. I knew nothing of sickness or death or rents or exaction, either for tribute or bread. In the absence of these I was entertained like an Angel with the works of God in their splendour and glory, I saw all the peace of Eden; Heaven and Earth did sing my Creator's praises, and could not make more melody to Adam, than to me. All Time was Eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not strange, that an infant should be heir of the whole World, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?

"The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die. But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared; which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it. . . . So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world. Which {326} now I unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God."[10]

How like an Angel came I down! How bright are all things here! When first among His works I did appear O how their Glory did me crown! The World resembled His Eternity In which my soul did walk; And everything that I did see Did with me talk.[11]

Long time before I in my mother's womb was born, A God preparing did this glorious store, The world, for me adorne. Into this Eden so divine and fair So wide and bright, I come His son and heir.[12]

Like Vaughan, who, in his "angel-infancy," could

In these weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity,

and who

Felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness,[13]

Traherne not only saw, in his paradise-innocence, the glory of the earth and sky—the streets paved with golden stones, and boys and girls with lovely shining faces—but he also felt that he was part of a deeper world which lay about his infancy and wooed him with love.

O Lord I wonder at Thy Love, Which did my Infancy so early move.[14]

And out of this childhood experience, which many a meditative child can match, he insists that God visited him.

He did Approach, He did me woo; I wonder that my God this thing would do.

He in our childhood with us walks, And with our thoughts Mysteriously He talks; He often visiteth our Minds.[15]

{327}

I know of no one who has borne a louder testimony than Traherne to the divine inheritances and spiritual possibilities of the new-born child, or who has more emphatically denied the fiction of total depravity: "I speak it in the presence of God," he says, "and of our Lord Jesus Christ; in my pure primitive Virgin Light, while my apprehensions were natural and unmixed, I cannot remember but that I was ten thousand times more prone to good and excellent things than to evil."[16] And he adds this impressive word on the doctrine of inheritance: "It is not our parents' loins, so much as our parents' lives, that enthrals and blinds us."[17]

After a happy childhood, during which "The Earth did undertake the office of a Priest,"[18] and when his soul was

A living endless eye Just bounded with the sky, Whose power, whose act, whose essence was to see,[19]

he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in the year 1652, being made B.A. in 1656, M.A. in 1661, and Bachelor of Divinity in 1669. He was admitted in 1657 to the Rectory of Credenhill, near Hereford, where he remained for about ten years, and in 1667 he was made chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman, in whose service he died in 1674, and was buried "under the reading-desk" in the church at Teddington near Hampton Court.

During his lifetime he published Roman Forgeries (1673), an unimportant work, and had begun the publication of his Christian Ethics, which appeared, after his death, in 1675. His Poems and his Centuries of Meditations remained in MS. unknown until they were discovered in a London bookstall about the year 1897, and their authorship was proved by Bertram Dobell who published the Poems in 1903, and the Centuries of Meditations in 1908. There still remains in MS. an octavo volume of meditations and devotions.

Traherne's poems show that he always dwelt near the {328} gate of Heaven and was easily aware of the "ancient Light of Eden." An accidental bit of gossip, reported in John Aubrey's Miscellanies, indicates that he was subject to psychical experiences of an unusual sort, and the poet himself has reported an impressive crisis-experience when he chose his destiny and settled his preference for inward treasures, even though it meant, as with George Fox, the wearing of a leather suit.

"When I came into the country, and being seated among silent trees, and meads and hills, had all my time in mine own hands, I resolved to spend it all, whatever it cost me, in the search of happiness, and to satiate that burning thirst which Nature had enkindled in me from my youth. In which I was so resolute, that I chose rather to live upon ten pounds a year, and to go in leather clothes, and feed upon bread and water, so that I might have all my time clearly to myself, than to keep many thousands per annum in an estate of life where my time would be devoured in care and labour. And God was so pleased to accept of that desire, that from that time to this, I have had all things plentifully provided for me, without any care at all, my very study of Felicity making me more to prosper, than all the care in the whole world. So that through His blessing I live a free and a kingly life as if the world were turned again into Eden, or much more, as it is at this day."[20]

Like his predecessors in this faith, Traherne is never tired of declaring the infiniteness of the human soul. Eternity is in the human heart, if only the way of the open door is taken, if only the eyes are opened to see. God, he says, has made our spirits "centres in eternity," opening upon "innumerable infinities." The Ocean is but a drop of a bucket to the immensity of the soul, with its abysmal deeps and its immeasurable capacities. It is the very essence and being of the soul to feel infinity, for "God is ever more near to us than we are to ourselves, so that we cannot feel our own souls without feeling Him."[21] "You are never," he says, "your true self, till you live {329} by your soul more than by your body, and you never live by your soul until you feel its incomparable excellence."[22] Its nobility is revealed by its insatiable hungers, its surpassing dignity is declared by its endless wants, its inability to live by bread alone. "As by the seed we conjecture what plant will arise, and know by the acorn what tree will grow forth, or by the eagle's egg what kind of bird; so do we by the powers of the soul upon earth, know what kind of Being, Person, and Glory will be in the Heavens, where its latent powers shall be turned into Act, its inclinations shall be completed, and its capacities filled."[23]

Not only in a primitive Eden, but in the world as we know it, with its black and white, man always bears within himself the mark of a heavenly origin, and has the quickening Seed of God in the depth of his soul: "The Image of God is seated in the lineaments of the soul." Man is the greatest of all miracles; he is "a mirror of all Eternity."[24] His thoughts run out to everlasting; he is made for spiritual supremacy and has within himself an inner, hidden life greater than anything else in the universe.[25] We are "nigh of kin to God" and "nigh of kin

To those pure things we find In His great mind Who made the world."[26]

There is

A Spiritual World standing within An Universe enclosed in Skin.[27]

With the same enthusiasm with which he proclaims the divine origin and the heavenly connections of the soul, Traherne also proclaims the glory and beauty of the visible world as a revelation of God.

Eternity stooped down to nought And in the earth its likeness sought.[28]

The world is not God, for He is Spirit, but the world is "a glorious mirror" in which the verities of religion are {330} revealed and in which the face of God is at least partially unveiled.[29] It is here in this "mirror" that the clairvoyant eye discovers God's being, perceives His wisdom, goodness, and power, guesses out the footsteps of His love, and finds promises and pledges of the larger fulfilment of that love. Here in the world, which is full of "remainders of Paradise," is surely the visible porch or gate of Eternity.[30] It is easy to believe that God has given us His Son when once we have seen the richness of the world which He has given us.[31] But the world is never "ours" until we learn how to see it and enjoy it in its beauty, even in the most common things, and until we discover that all its service and all its excellency are spiritual: "Pigs eat acorns, but neither consider the sun that gave them life, nor the influences of the heavens by which they were nourished, nor the very root of the tree from whence they came. This being the work of Angels who in a wide and clear light see even the sea that gave them [the acorns] moisture: And feed upon that acorn spiritually while they know the ends for which it was created, and feast upon all these as upon a World of Joys within it: while to ignorant swine that eat the shell it is an empty husk of no taste nor delightful savour."[32]

Men, as well as angels, can learn to use the world spiritually—can learn to see how rough, common things are part of "the divine exchequer"; how a grain of sand exhibiteth the wisdom of God and manifesteth His glory.[33] With this prelude, Traherne gives his glowing account of the true, spiritual way to enjoy the world.

"Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father's Palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as Celestial Joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride of a monarch, in her husband's chamber, hath no such causes of delight as you.

"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself {331} floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.

"Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all Ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it: and more rejoice in the palace of your glory, than if it had been made but to-day morning.

"Yet further, you never enjoy the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it, that you had rather suffer the flames of Hell than willingly be guilty of their error. . . . The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven. When Jacob waked out of his dream, he said, 'God is here, and I wist it not. How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the House of God, and the Gate of Heaven.'"[34]

But notwithstanding his exuberant and overflowing joy in creation, Traherne is conscious that the world has {332} its "dreggy parts," that it has been "muddied" by man's misuse of it, and that the havoc of sin is apparent. The light which shined in infancy becomes eclipsed as the customs and manners of life close down over it and cover it. Men's mouths are full of talk of fleeting, vulgar, and worthless things, and they speak no syllable of those celestial and stable treasures which form the only wealth of life. The emphasis in education is on the wrong things. So with much ado the innocent child is "corrupted and made to learn the dirty devices of the world," which he must again unlearn and become a little child once more in the Kingdom of God.[35] The taint, however, is not in the native structure of the soul, it is not through a biological transmission, it is due to false training—it is from the parents' lives rather than their loins. Let parents, he says, who desire holy children learn to make them possessors of divine things betimes. It is "deadly barbarous and uncouth" to "put grubs and worms" into little children's minds, to teach them to say this house is mine, this bauble is a jewel, this gew-gaw is a fine thing, this rattle makes music, when they ought to be made instead to see the spiritual glory of the earth and sky, the beauty of life, the sweetness and nobility of Nature, and to live joyously, like birds, in union and communion with God. I am sure, he concludes, that barbarous people that go naked come nearer to Adam, God, and the Angels, in the simplicity of their wealth, than do many among us who partake of what we nick-name civility and mode.[36] The entire work of redemption is, thus, to restore man to himself, to bring him once more to the Tree of Life, to enable him to discover the glory all about him, to reveal to him the real values of things, and to bring to birth within him an immortal love. The true healing of the soul is always through the birth of love. Before a soul loves, it lives only to itself; as soon as love is born it lives beyond itself and finds its life in the object of its love. It is Christ who first reveals the full measure of love, who makes us see the one adequate Object of love, and who {333} forges within our human spirits the invisible bonds of a love that binds us forever to Him who so loved us. Here in Him—"a Man loving all the world, a God dying for mankind"[37]—we see that we are infinitely beloved, that the foundations of an eternal Friendship are laid, that God is infinitely prone to love, and that true love spares nothing for the sake of what it loves—"O miraculous and eternal Godhead suffering on a Cross for me!"[38] "That Cross is a tree set on fire with invisible flame which illuminateth all the world. The flame is love: the love in His bosom that died upon it."[39]

But there is no salvation for us in the Cross until it kindles the same flame of love in us, until that immeasurable love of His becomes an irresistible power in us, so that we henceforth live unto Him that loved us. It must, if it is to be efficacious, shift all our values and set us to loving as He loved—"He who would not in the same cases do the same things Jesus Christ hath done can never be saved," for love is never timorous.[40] The love of Christ is to dwell within us and every man is to be the object of it. God and we are to become one spirit, that is, one in will and one in desire. Christ must live within us. We must be filled with the Holy Ghost, which is the God of Love; we must be of the same mind with Christ Jesus and led by His Spirit, and we must henceforth treat every man in respect to the greatness of Christ's love—this is salvation in Traherne's conception of it, and holiness and happiness are the same thing.[41] The Cross has not done its complete work for us until we can say: "O Christ, I see thy crown of thorns in every eye; thy bleeding, naked, wounded body in every soul; thy death liveth in every memory; thy crucified person is embalmed in every affection; thy pierced feet are bathed in every one's tears and it is my privilege to enter with thee into every soul."[42]

However contemplative and mystical the bent of Traherne's mind may have been, he always finds the {334} terminus of spiritual life in action, indeed, in brotherly service, in what he calls "blessed operations." Speaking apparently of himself, he finely says: "He thought it a vain thing to see glorious principles buried in books, unless he did remove them into his understanding; and a vain thing to remove them into his understanding unless he did revive them and raise them up with continual exercise. Let this therefore be the first principle of your soul—that to have no principles or to live beside them is equally miserable. Philosophers are not those that speak but do great things."[43] "It is," he writes in words which sound like those of his contemporary Winstanley, "it is an indelible principle of Eternal truth, that practice and exercise is the Life of all. Should God give you worlds and laws and treasures, and worlds upon worlds, and Himself also in the Divinest manner, if you will be lazy you lose all. The soul is made for action and cannot rest till it be employed. . . . If therefore you would be happy, your life must be as full of operation as God of treasure."[44]

Love, once kindled in the soul, is the mother of all heroic actions; love knows how to abound and overflow—the man who has lighted his life from Christ's love is constant in trials, patient in sufferings, courageous in assaults, prudent in difficulties, victorious and triumphant in action.[45]

Traherne shares with Boehme and with the Cambridge Platonists the view that Eternity is as much here as anywhere. Those Christians, he thinks, who put off felicity and defer their enjoyment with long delays "are to be much suspected."[46] "'Tis not," so he states his law, "change of place, but glorious principles well practised that establish Heaven in the life and soul. An angel will be happy anywhere and a devil miserable, because the principles of the one are always good, of the other, bad. From the centre to the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills all is Heaven before God, and full of {335} treasure; and he that walks like God in the midst of them is blessed."[47] "You are in Heaven everywhere."[48] The real business of life, as he elsewhere declares, is to "piece this life with the life of Heaven, to see it as one with all Eternity, a part of it, a life within it,"[49] which reminds us of Vaughan's great words:

I saw Eternity the other night Like a great ring of pure and endless light, As calm as it was bright: And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres, Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world And all her train were hurl'd.[50]

And with much penetration Traherne tells us that Eternity is not an endless addition of "times "—a weak infinite series of durations, but rather a Reality in which all true realities abide, and which retains in a present now all beginnings and all endings.[51] Eternity is just the real world for which we were made and which we enter through the door of love.

It is a spiritual world within, A living world and nearer far of kin To God than that which first He made. While that doth fade This therefore ever shall endure Within the soul as more divine and pure.[52]



[1] See my Studies in Mystical Religion, chap. xix.

[2] Book III. lines 51-55.

[3] Book III. lines 194-197.

[4] Book I. line 18. Since this chapter was written, Alden Sampson's Studies in Milton (New York, 1913) has been published. His valuable chapter on "Milton's Confession of Faith" reveals in Milton a very wide acquaintance with the ideas which I have been tracing, and shows by a vast number of quotations how frequently the poet used these ideas sympathetically.

[5] Francis Quarles' "My Beloved is Mine."

[6] George Herbert's poem "Man."

[7] Francis Quarles' "Light."

[8] Centuries of Meditations (London, 1908), iii. 16. For details of his life and for the story of the discovery of his writings, see the Introduction to The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne (1903) by Bertram Dobell.

[9] Traherne's pom "Wonder," iii.

[10] Centuries of Meditations, iii. 1, 2 and 3.

[11] "Wonder," i.

[12] "The Salutation"

[13] Vaughan's "The Retreat."

[14] Traherne's "The Approach."

[15] Ibid.

[16] Centuries of Meditations, iii. 8.

[17] Ibid.

[18] "Dumbness."

[19] "The Preparative."

[20] Centuries of Meditations, iii. 46.

[21] Ibid. ii. 81. See also ii. 70 and 83.

[22] Centuries of Meditations, ii. 92.

[23] Ibid. iv. 70.

[24] Ibid. i. 19, and iv. 81.

[25] Ibid. ii. 23.

[26] "My Spirit."

[27] "Fullness."

[28] "The Choice."

[29] Centuries of Meditations, ii. 17.

[30] Ibid. ii. 1 and 17.

[31] Ibid. ii. 6.

[32] Ibid. i. 26.

[33] Ibid. i. 25 and 27.

[34] Centuries of Meditations, i. 28-31.

[35] Centuries of Meditations, iii. 7 and 3.

[36] Ibid. iii. 11-13.

[37] Centuries of Meditations, i. 59.

[38] Ibid. i. 67 and 62.

[39] Ibid. i. 60.

[40] Ibid. iv. 59.

[41] Ibid. iv. 28. See also iv. 31.

[42] Ibid. i. 86.

[43] Centuries of Meditations, iv. 2.

[44] Ibid. iv. 95.

[45] Christian Ethics, chapter on "Charity."

[46] Centuries of Meditations, iv. 9.

[47] Centuries of Meditations, iv. 37.

[48] Ibid. iv. 38.

[49] Ibid. iv. 93.

[50] Vaughan's poem, "The World."

[51] Centuries of Meditations, v. 7-8.

[52] Traherne's poem, "Thoughts."



{336}

CHAPTER XVIII

CONCLUSION

Few words are needed in conclusion to point out the historical significance of the movement which we have been studying, and to indicate its connection with the rise and development of seventeenth century Quakerism. These chapters have presented sufficient historical evidence to show that from the very beginning of the Reformation there appeared a group of men who felt themselves commissioned, like the prophets of old, to challenge the theological systems of the Reformers, and to cry against what proved to be an irresistible tendency toward the exaltation of form and letter in religion. They were men of intense religious faith, of marked mystical type, characterized by interior depth of experience, but at the same time they were men of scholarship, breadth and balance.

Their central loyalty was to the invisible Church which in their conception was the Body of Christ, forever growing and expanding through the ages under the guidance of the ever-present Spirit; and they esteemed but lightly the established Churches which seemed to them formed not after the pattern in the mount but after very earthly and political models. Challenging, as they did, the formulated doctrines of the Reformation, the type of Church which was being substituted for the Roman Catholic Church, and the entire body of ceremonial and sacramental practices which were being put in place of the ancient sacraments of the Church, these "prophets" found themselves compelled to discover the foundations {337} for a new type of Church altogether, and to feel their way down to a new and fundamental basis of religious authority. That would be a momentous task for any age, or for any spiritual leaders, and we must not demand the impossible of these sixteenth century pathbreakers. What they did do consistently and well was to proclaim the spiritual character of God as revealed in Christ, the native capacity of the human soul for God, the intimate and inherent relationship of the divine and human, the progressive revelation of God in history, the priority of the inward Word, the august ethical aspect which must attach to any religion adequate for the growing race, and the folly of losing the heart and spirit of Christianity in contentions over external, temporal, and pictorial features of it.

They themselves were not founders of sects or churches. Their sole mission was the propagation of a message, of a body of truth and of spiritual ideals. They were from the nature of the case destined to be voices crying in a wilderness-world, and they were obliged to trust their precious cause to the contagion of their word and life and truth. The Quakers of the seventeenth century are obviously one of the great historical results of this slowly maturing spiritual movement, and they first gave the unorganized and inarticulate movement a concrete body and organism to express itself through. The modern student, who goes to the original expositions of Quakerism to find what the leaders of this movement conceived their message and their mission to be, quickly discovers that they were not radical innovators setting forth novel and strange ideas, but that they were on the contrary the bearers, the interpreters, the living embodiment of ideas which have now become familiar to the reader of these chapters.

No one has given us a clearer statement of George Fox's mission and of the creation of the new "Society" than has the writer of the "Epistle to the Reader" in Fox's strange book The Great Mystery of the Great Whore (1659). This "Epistle to the Reader" was {338} written by Edward Burrough and was printed, also under the same title, in Burrough's Works in 1672.[1] In this striking document the writer gives his account of the existing Church, and over against this dark background he sets God's new Reformation that is just beginning, of which he feels himself to be the divinely sent herald and prophet. "As our minds became turned, and our hearts inclined to the Light which shined in every one of us," he writes, "we came to know the perfect estate of the Church; her estate before the apostles' days, and in the apostles' days and since the days of the apostles. And her present estate we found to be as a woman who had once been clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, who brought forth Him that was to rule the nations; but she [the Church] was fled into the wilderness, and there sitting desolate, in her place that was prepared of God for such a season, in the very end of which season, when the time of her sojourning was towards a full end, then we [Friends] were brought forth."[2]

In the Light which broke in upon them, he says, they saw that "the world was in darkness" and that "anti-Christ was set up in the temple of God, ruling over all, having brought nations under his power, and having set up his government over all for many ages; even since the days of the apostles and true churches hath he reigned.... As for the ministry, first, looking upon it with a single eye in the Light of the Spirit of God which had anointed us, we beheld it clearly not to be of Christ, nor sent of Him, nor having the commission, power, and authority of Christ, as His ministry had in the days of true churches; but in all things, as in call, practice, maintenance, {339} and in everything else, in fruits and effects we found it to disagree, and to be wholly contrary to the true ministry of Christ in the days of the apostles."[3] His charge against the ministers of his day is one now very familiar to us: "You preach to people what you have studied out of books and old authors, and what you have noted down you preach by an hour-glass and not as the Spirit of God gives you utterance. You preach other men's words which you have collected."[4] The "call" to ministry, he urges, is based upon learning acquired in schools, colleges, and universities, and is not of the Spirit, and ministers' lives are obvious signs that they are not in the true "apostolic succession."[5] "As for all churches (so called)," he continues, "we beheld you all in the apostasy and degeneration from the true Church, not being gathered by the Spirit of the Lord, nor anointed thereby as the true members of Christ ever were, but to be in forms of righteousness without power, and imitations without life. All the practices of religion we beheld to be without power and life.... We beheld all professions [of religion] to be but as coverings of fig-leaves, while the [inner] nature stood uncondemned and not crucified."[6]

He insists that no true and radical reformation of the Church has taken place, that the churches of his day still bear the marks of apostasy as did the churches before the Reformation occurred: "Do not professors and sects of people have the form without the power of godliness? Are not all people still covetous and earthly-minded, and given to the world, and proud and vain, even such as profess religion? Are not professors as covetous and proud as such as do not profess? Are they not given to the world, and doth it not show that they are not changed nor translated? And is it not manifest that they have taken up the form of the apostles' and Christ's words and practices, and are without the {340} life, and not guided by the Spirit of Christ and the apostles in their praying and preaching?"[7]

Here, with an air of prophet-like boldness and infallibility, we have once again an announcement of the inadequacy of the Reformation, the formal and external character of prevailing types of religion, and the unapostolic nature of the existing churches. The language describing the visible church is throughout the language of a "Seeker." "We ceased," he says in words that exactly describe the "Seeker," "from the teachings of all men, and their words and their worships, and their temples, and all their baptisms and churches, and we ceased from our own words and professions and practices in religion.~.~.~. We met together often, and waited upon the Lord in pure silence from our own words, and harkened to the voice of the Lord and felt His Word in our hearts."[8]

The striking difference between him and the contemporary "Seeker" lies in the fact that he profoundly believed, that the time of "apostasy" was now at an end, that a new "commission" had come, that a real Reformation was being set into operation, and that the apostolic Church—the Church of Christ, the Church of the Spirit—had appeared as though let down from heaven. He relates how the "Lord raised us [Friends] up and opened our mouths in this His Spirit," and how "the Light of Christ revealed and made known to us all things that pertain to salvation, redemption, and eternal life, needful for man to know," and how through the outpouring and anointing of the Spirit "the true Church," "the true worship," "the true ministry" have come again to the world. He makes such exalted claims as these: we received the pouring out of the spirit upon us; the gift of God's eternal Spirit was bestowed upon us as in the days of old; the deep things of God were revealed to us; the Lord Almighty brought us out of captivity and bondage and put an end to sin and death; {341} the babe of glory was born in us; we entered into ever-lasting union, fellowship, and covenant with the Lord, and we were raised from death to Life. And, finally, he announces the new "commission" in positive words of glowing faith: "Then having armed us with power, strength, and wisdom and dominion, according to His mind, and having taught us in all things, and having chosen us unto His work, God put His sword into our and and gave us a perfect commission to go forth in His name and authority, giving us the Word from His mouth what to cut down and what to preserve, and giving us the everlasting gospel to preach."[9]

In the absolute certainty of his divine "commission," he challenges the Churches which are defending their authority "with jails and prisons and whips and stocks and inquisitions—all Cain's weapons"—to a "trial" of faith and spirit and power, like that on Mount Carmel in the days of Elijah, "whether it be they or we that are of the true faith and true worship of God that the apostles were in."[10]

There can be no doubt, I think, that the writer of this "Epistle to the Reader" in The Great Mystery, has come out of the "Seeker" movement, or that he has "come out" of it only because he believes that he with others have found what they sought, and are the seed and nucleus of the true, restored, apostolic Church of God. They refuse absolutely to be called a sect; and they assume in all their early writings that they are the restored Church of Christ, though they seldom use that word "Church" because in their thought it was a name associated with the "apostasy," and they preferred to call themselves "the Seed," or "the Children of the Light." These were, as I have sufficiently shown, names already in use.

It is an interesting fact that this "Epistle" dates the beginning of the new era as 1652—"it is now {342} about seven years since the Lord raised us up in the North of England and opened our mouths in this His Spirit"[11]—and that it locates the springing forth of "the Seed" in the North of England. It was, we are now well aware, out of the Seeker-groups of the northern counties of England that the new "Society" was actually born, and it grew, like a rolling snowball, as it gathered in the prepared groups of "Seekers," both north and south in England, and a little later in America.[12]

The creation of the Quaker "Society" was not the work of any man; the groups were there before the formative leader appeared on the scene. In fact the very term "Quaker," which was soon fixed upon the new movement as the popular name for it, had already been in use—at least as far back as 1646—for the members of some of these highly emotional communities. As soon as these groups—intense in their expectations—found a leader who was already raised to an impelling conviction of immediate contact with God and of definite illumination by the living Christ, and possessed of an overmastering sense of mission, the effect was extraordinary. The account of what happened is, we may be sure, none too strong: "The gift of God's eternal Spirit was poured upon us as in days of old, our hearts were made glad, our tongues were loosed, and we spake with new tongues as the Lord gave us utterance and as His Spirit led us."[13] Profound psychological experiences occurred; they felt themselves baptized together, fused and formed into one group-spirit, swept into trembling as by a mighty rushing wind, and carried beyond their common ordinary range of thought and power and utterance. Their group-experiences of a common divine Spirit coming upon their lives from beyond themselves, their discovery that God was in their midst, that gifts were conferred upon them, and, above all, Fox's compelling sense of apostolic mission—a conviction which was, as it always is, contagious—were {343} grounds enough to change these Seeker-groups into the seed and nucleus of a Body possessed of the faith that the long-expected Church of the Spirit had at last come. They rose to the group-consciousness that they were the beginners, in modern times, of a Church of the spiritual order, and a community-loyalty was born which gave the movement great conquering power and an amazing capacity for endurance and suffering.

In Fox we have a person of extraordinary psychical experiences and of dynamic leadership, and in him the "prophetical" and "enthusiast" traits of the movement are strikingly in evidence. He reveals in a variety of ways his connections with the great body of spiritual ideas that had been accumulating for more than a century before his time, but for the most part these influences worked upon him in sub-conscious ways as an atmosphere and climate of his spirit, rather than as a clearly conceived body of truth which he got by reading authors and which he apprehended through clear intellectual processes. He can be rightly appreciated only as he is seen to be a potent member of an organic group-life which formed him as much as he formed it.

The expositions, however, of the more trained and scholarly Quakers show an explicit acquaintance with the writings of these men whom we have been studying, and they cannot be adequately understood in isolation. The fruits of reading and of contact with a wider intellectual world are clearly in evidence, and the ideas and the peculiar phrases of the spiritual reformers "pass and come again" in their voluminous works. Robert Barclay is the chief literary exponent of Quakerism. His range of familiarity with religious and theological literature is very extensive, and he shows intimate acquaintance with contemporary thought. For him, as for his spiritual predecessors, the existing Church is "in apostasy"; it has departed from "the simplicity and purity of the gospel as it was in the apostles' days." Christian faith has become "burdened with manifold inventions and traditions, with various notions and opinions" which {344} have been "substituted instead" of the true religion of Christ.[14]

The Quaker interpreters all unite in treating "notions and opinions"—or, to use their sweeping phrase, "notional religion"—as barren substitutes for a true religion of spiritual reality, which for them is always born in a first-hand experience of Christ as the inner spirit and life and power of one's entire being and activity. A good specimen instance of this position is found in William Penn's Tract, "A Key opening the Way to every Capacity," etc.[15] He says: "It is not Opinion, or Speculation, or Notions of what is true; or Assent to or Subscription of Articles or Propositions, tho' never so soundly worded, that makes a Man a true Believer or a true Christian." "Phrases of Schoolmen," "notions of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," "conceptions of man's meer Wit," "superfining interpretations of Scripture texts," he declares to be very chaffy substitutes for a consciousness of Christ's Life and Light within, conformity of mind and practice to the will of God, and the actual formation of Christ in the inner self.[16] The further Reformation, upon the necessity of which he insists, is one that will take Christianity not only beyond and beneath outward ceremonies, but beyond and beneath all formulations of creed and doctrine, and that will ground and establish it in the experience and attitude and verifying power of the person's life.[17] This is precisely what all these teachers of spiritual religion have all the time been demanding.

The Quaker view of the moral and dynamic character of saving faith, the view that justification is a vital process and not merely a forensic scheme, is, in heart and essence, indistinguishable from the central teaching of these spiritual predecessors of the Quakers. No Quaker has presented this view in a more compact, and at the same time adequate way than has Barclay in one of his {345} important early Tracts: "The manner and way whereby Christ's righteousness and obedience, death and sufferings, become profitable unto us and are made ours, is by receiving Him, and becoming one with Him in our hearts, embracing and entertaining that holy Seed, which as it is embraced and entertained, becometh a holy birth in us~.~.. by which the body of sin and death is done away, and we cleansed, and washed, and purged from our sins, not imaginarily, but really; and we are really and truly made righteous.... Christ Himself revealed in us, indwelling in us. His life and spirit covering us—that is the ground of our justification."[18]

The root principle of Quakerism is belief in a divine Light, or Seed of God, in the soul of man. All of the multitudinous Quaker books and tracts bear unvarying testimony to that, and all their contemporary accounts make that faith, that principle, their organizing idea. What they all say is that there is a Light in man which shines into his darkness, reveals his condition to him, makes him aware of evil and checks him when he is in the pursuit of it; gives him a vision of righteousness, attracts him toward goodness, and points him infallibly toward Christ from whom the Light shines. This Light is pure, immediate, and spiritual. It is of God, in fact is God immanently revealed.[19]

Then, again, the figure is changed and what was called Light is now called "Seed," and it is thought of as a resident germ of divine Life which, through the active co-operation of the individual, produces a new creation within, and makes the person through and through of a new nature like itself.[20] It is also frequently called "the Word of God," or "Grace of God," or "That of God in you," or "Christ within," or "the Spirit," or "the Kingdom within you." "By this Seed, Grace, and Word of God, and Light wherewith every one is enlightened," {346} Barclay says, "We understand a spiritual, heavenly, and invisible Principle in which God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, dwells; a measure [i.e. a portion] of which divine and glorious Life is in all men as a Seed, which of its own nature draws, invites, and inclines to God. This some call vehiculum dei, or the spiritual Body of Christ, the flesh and blood of Christ, which came down from heaven, of which all saints do feed and are thereby nourished unto eternal life."[21] But under whatever name it goes, it is always thought of as a saving Principle. He who says yes responds, obeys, co-operates, and allows this resident Seed of God, or Christ-Light, to have full sway in him becomes transformed thereby and re-created into likeness to Christ, by whom the inner Seed was planted and of whose nature it is. The spiritual predecessors of the Quakers, as we have seen, all held this view with individual variations of phrase and experience. All the Quaker terms for the Principle were used by Sebastian Franck and by Caspar Schwenckfeld; and all the men who taught the dynamic process of salvation presuppose that something of the divine nature, as Light or Seed or Spirit, or the resurrected Christ, is directly operative upon or within the human soul. That is, salvation is for them more than a moral change, it is a birth-and-life-process, initiated and carried through by the real presence of the Divine in the human.[22]

The Quakers are perhaps somewhat more emphatic than were their spiritual forerunners, with the exception {347} of Schwenckfeld, in their declarations that this Seed, this Light, is not natural. "We assert," William Penn wrote, "the Light of Christ not to be a Natural Light, otherwise than as all men born into the world have a Measure of Christ's Light, and so in a sense it may be called Natural to all Men. But this Light is something else than the bare Understanding which Man hath as a Rational Creature."[23] What man does naturally have, in William Penn's view, is a capacity for the Light, but the Light itself is from a source wholly heavenly and divine. Barclay, in quite Cartesian fashion, interprets it to be "a real spiritual Substance," "a substantial Seed" from another world, hidden away within man's soul at birth, lying there "like naked grain in stony ground," until the child is old enough to feel its stirrings and to determine by his own free choices of obedience or disobedience to its movings whether it shall grow and develop or not.[24] We plainly have here a double world. The once-born man is "natural," though he carries buried deep in the subsoil of his nature a Seed of God, a germ of Life drawn from the higher, spiritual world. He may live in and under the dominion of either world, but he must choose which it shall be. By response to and participation with the divine Seed of radio-active spiritual energy, he can become transformed—utterly and completely—into a new nature, and can belong here and now to the spiritual World which Christ by His victorious Life has brought across the chasm and planted in our soil. On the other hand, by negligence or by disobedience he can live a mere empirical, natural life, and keep his inestimable Seed of God buried and forgotten in a region of himself which he seldom or never visits.

The Quakers, however, as a consequence of their heightened group-consciousness, and as a result of the intense experiences enjoyed in their gatherings, exhibited a far greater degree of enthusiasm than had appeared in the earlier exponents of the inner Word; and they showed a heightened element of prophetism, both in their faith {348} and practice. They devoutly believed that in them the prophecy of Jeremiah had found fulfilment: God had written His Word in their hearts, so that they were recipients of His will and His message. The more sure Word of prophecy, announced by Peter, had come and the Day Star had risen in their hearts. Their Light was to them not only a principle of connection with a higher world, a germ of a new nativity, it was also a principle and basis for continuous revelation, and for definite openings of light and guidance on all matters that concern present-day life and practice. "The inward command," Barclay says, "is never wanting in the due season to any duty."[25]

Like their predecessors, they did not slight the importance of the outward word, the Scriptures. They had an immense reverence for them and were diligent in the study and skilful in the use of them, though of course they used them in a thoroughly uncritical and unhistorical way, as did also their opponents. But they would never allow the Scriptures to be called the Word of God or to be treated as God's only revelation of Himself to man without a challenge. "The Word of God," Barclay says, "is, like unto Himself, spiritual, yea, Spirit and Life, and therefore cannot be heard and read with the natural external senses as the Scriptures can." Our Master, he adds, is always with us. "His letter is writ in our hearts and there we find it."[26] "There is," William Penn declares, "something nearer to us than Scriptures, to wit, the Word in the heart from which all Scriptures came," though he is very emphatic in his claim that Friends never slight the Scriptures and believe in their divine authority.[27]

It is not necessary to prolong the exposition of early Quakerism farther. The similarity of its fundamental position with that of the preceding spiritual reformers is perfectly clear. Quakerism is, thus, no isolated or sporadic religious phenomenon. It is deeply rooted and embedded in a far wider movement that had been {349} accumulating volume and power for more than a century before George Fox became a "prophet" of it to the English people. And both in its new English, and in its earlier continental form, it was a serious attempt to achieve a more complete Reformation, to restore primitive Christianity, and to change the basis of authority from external things, of any sort whatever, to the interior life and spirit of man.

That the formulation of this vast spiritual Reformation, as presented by the men who are studied in this volume, was adequate, I do not for a moment assert. The views here expounded in their historical setting are plainly hampered by inadequate philosophical and psychological presuppositions. They need reconstructive interpretation and a fresh re-reading, in terms of our richer experience, our larger historical perspective, and our truer psychological conceptions. That work of reexamination and reinterpretation, especially of the Quaker movement and the Quaker message, is a part of the task undertaken in the historical volumes which follow this one in this series. It must suffice for the present to have reviewed here the story and the struggles of these brave, sincere men and their heroic endeavours to proclaim a spiritual Christianity. It has been a privilege to live for a little while with this succession of high-minded men, to review for our time their type of spiritual religion, and to retrace their apostolic efforts to bring the world, with its sins and its tragedies and its inner hungers, back to the Father's Love and to the real presence of the eternal Christ. They may have failed in their intellectual formulation, but at least they succeeded in finding a living God, warm and tender and near at hand, the Life of their lives, the Day Star in their hearts; and their travail of soul, their brave endurance, and their loyal obedience to vision have helped to make our modern world.



[1] This document, though, as stated above, not written by Fox, had his approval, and may be taken as exactly expressing his views and his position. Many of the early Quaker books show how remarkable was the corporate character and the group-spirit of the "Society" at this period. Whatever any individual could contribute was given for the common cause and went into the life of the whole. I have given the passages, which I have quoted from this "Epistle," in modern English.

[2] The Great Mystery of the Great Whore (London, 1659), p. B1. Jacob Boehme had already set Fox the example of calling the existing Church by this opprobrious name. See The Threefold Life of Man, vii., 56-58.

[3] The Great Mystery of the Great Whore, p. B3.

[4] Ibid. p. A6.

[5] Ibid. pp. A5-A7.

[6] Ibid. p. B4. This is almost word for word Boehme's view.

[7] The Great Mystery of the Great Whore, p. C3.

[8] Ibid. p. B1.

[9] The Great Mystery of the Great Whore, p. B2. I have taken some liberty in correcting the grammatical form of the passage quoted, but the original sense is preserved.

[10] Ibid. p. C2.

[11] The Great Mystery of the Great Whore, p. B.

[12] For evidence of Seeker-groups in America, see my Quakers in the American Colonies.

[13] The Great Mystery of the Great Whore, pp. B1-B2.

[14] Preface to A Catechism and Confession of Faith.

[15] Works (London, 1726), ii. p. 781.

[16] Ibid. ii. pp. 781-783.

[17] "Salvation lieth not in literal but in experimental knowledge."—Barclay's Apology, Props. V. and VI. sec. 25.

[18] Barclay, "Truth cleared of Calumnies," Works (London, 1691), i. pp. 1-48.

[19] This view appears passim in the works of Isaac Penington.

[20] See Penington's Tract, "Concerning the Seed of God," Works (edition of 1761), ii. pp. 593-607.

[21] Apology, Props. V. and VI. sec. 13. This passage could be exactly paralleled in the writings of Schwenckfeld.

[22] It is interesting to see how closely William Law, the great exponent of "Spiritual" Christianity in the eighteenth century, carrying on this train of thought in another channel, approaches the Quaker position: "Thou needest not run here or there saying, 'Where is Christ?' Thou needest not say, 'Who shall ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above?' or, 'Who shall descend into the deep, to bring up Christ from the dead?' For, behold, the Word, which is the Wisdom of God, is in thy heart. It is there as a bruiser of Thy serpent, as a Light unto thy feet and Lanthorn unto thy paths; it is there as an Holy Oil, to soften and overcome the wrathful fiery properties of thy nature, and change them into the humble meekness of Light and Love; it is there as a speaking Word of God in thy soul; as soon as thou art ready to hear, this eternal, speaking Word will speak wisdom and peace in thy inward parts, and bring forth the birth of Christ, with all His holy nature, spirit, and temper within thee."—"Spirit of Prayer," Works, vii. p. 69.

[23] Works, ii. p. 780.

[24] Apology, Props. V. and VI. sec. 13.

[25] "Truth Cleared of Calumnies," Works, i. p. 13.

[26] Ibid. i. pp. 13-15.

[27] Works, ii. p. 782.



{351}

INDEX

Abrahams, Galenus, 118, 120-121 and George Fox, 122-123 discussion with Penn and Keith, 122 Acontius, J., 115 Agrippa of Nettesheim, Cornelius, 55 n., 136-137 Althamer, A., 48 Ambrose, Saint, 267 Anabaptism— characteristics of, 17-18, 28, 31, 81 n., 112, 267 n. attacked by Franck, 48 Schwenckfeld and, 80 Coornhert and, 112 Giles Randall and, 254 Anabaptists, xv divisions among, 33 Anderdon, John— on Behmenists, 227, 231-232 Antinomianism, 238, 241, 254, 263 Antinomians, xv Aristotle, 211 Arminius, J.— controversy over views of, 114 and Coornhert, 107 and Whichcote, 289, 294 and Culverwel, 289 Arnold, Gottfried— on Entfelder, 39 on Schwenckfeld, 64 n. on Arminius, 107 n. on Boreel, 118 n. Astrology, 134, 137 as used by Weigel, 148-150 as used by Tentzel, 150 n. Aubrey, John— on Traherne, 328 Augsburg— Anabaptist Synod in, 20, 33 Augustine, Saint, 6, 9, 246, 267 theology of, 22, 204 Automatism— of Jacob Boehme, 162, 207

Baader, F. von— on Boehme, 151 n., 153 n. Baillie, Robert— on Anabaptism, 254 n. on Giles Randall, 256 n.; 262 Balling, Peter, 123-124, 128 influence of Cartesianism on, 124, 128, 130 Barclay, Robert (of Ury), 123 influence of Cartesianism on, 124, 347 on divine Seed in man, 283, 345-346, 347 teaching of, 343, 344-345, 348 Barclay, Robert— on Boehme's influence on Quakers, 220 n. Barneveldt, John of, 114 n. Baxter, Richard— on Behmenists, 227 on Vane, 271, 274 on Sterry, 280 Behmen, Jacob, 155 n. (see Boehme) Behmenists, 227-234 and Quakers, 231-233 Bellers, John— on John Everard, 253 n. "Bellius, Martinus," 93, 95 Bernard, Saint, 6, 267 Bewman, Jacob, 220 Beza, T., 95, 290, 294 Bible, translations from— by Denck, 21 by Castellio, 90, 92 by de Valdes, 237 by Rous, 267 Boehme, Jacob, 43 n., 139 life and character of, 151-171, 208 vision of, 148 n., 158, 159-161 mysticism of, 154, 159, 201-206 automatism of, 162, 207 symbolism of, 173 view of man, xxx view of God, xli n., 35 n; 174-177 views on salvation, 170, 190-198, 289, 309 views on the universe, 150 n., 159-160, 172-189 writings of, 151 n., 161, 165 n. in England, 208-220 influence on— George Fox, 165 n., 170 n.; 221-227, 338 n., 339 n. Quakers, 220, 233 Seekers, 220 Isaac Newton, 181 n., 234 John Milton, 234 William Law, 153 n., 179, 234 Sir Harry Vane, 275 and the Behmenists, 227-234 and B. Whichcote, 289, 302 n. Boethius, 105 Boreel, Adam, 117-120 Borellists— views of, 119-120 Bosanquet, Bernard, xxxi n. Bourne, Benjamin— on Randall, 256 n; 257 Boutroux, Emile— on Boehme, 151 n., 183 n. Breen, Daniel van, 117 Brooks, Thomas— on Everard, 241 Brothers of the Common Life, 4 Broussoux, Emile— on Castellio, 88 n. Browne, Sir Thomas, 275 Browning, Robert— on Paracelsus, 138 Bucer, Martin, 47 Buisson, F.— on Castellio, 88 n. Buenderlin, Johann— life of, 32-34, 40 teaching of, 34-39, 69, 76, 169, 190 writings of, 34 n. a mystic, 35 Franck's opinion of, 48 Buonarotti, Michael Angelo, 237 Burnet, Bishop G.— on Vane, 272 on Cambridge Platonists, 289-290 Burrough, Edward— on mission of "the Children of Light," 337-341

Cabala, the— teaching of, 134-136 Caird, Edward— on Cartesianism, 125 n. Calvin, xlix, 121 relations with Castellio, 89-91, 93, 96 influence on Cambridge Platonists, 290, 294, 295 Calvinism— in Holland, 106 in England, 279 and Arminianism, 114 Campanus, Johann, 48, 59 Carlyle, Thomas— on Rous, 267 Castellio, Sebastian— life, 88-93, 97 teachings of, 90, 91, 93-102, 107 writings, 90, 92-94, 96, 97, 98, 99 n., 101, 103 n. nom-de-plume of, 93, 103 n. as a Reformer, 103 influence in England, 103 n., 243 on Van der Kodde brothers, 115 on Boreel, 118 Caton, William— on Castellio, 103 n. Charles II.— on Vane, 272 "Children of the Light," 132, 221, 260, 277, 341 Chillingworth, William, 291 Christ— in a Faith religion, xxxix-xliv as viewed by— Denck, 25 Buenderlin, 37 Entfelder, 41, 42 Spiritual Reformers, 44, 337 Franck, 54, 61 Schwenckfeld, 65, 69, 70 Castellio, 99-101 teachers of "Nature Mysticism," 134 Weigel, 142-144 Boehme, 183, 185 n., 191, 193-194 John Sparrow, 216 John Everard, 244, 250 Pascal, 250 n. Francis Rous, 269-270 Peter Sterry, 284 John Smith, 316 Thomas Traherne, 332 Chrypffs, Nicolaus (see Cusa) Church, the— historical conception of, xlix as conceived by— Montanists, the, xiii Protestant Reformers, l Luther, 8, 121 Denck, 38 Buenderlin, 38 Entfelder, 41 Spiritual Reformers, l, 45 Franck, 58-59, 145, 199 Schwenckfeld, 78-80, 85 Seekers, 84, 86, 340 Collegiants, 84 Borellists, 120 Abrahams, 120-121, 122 Weigel, 145, 147 Boehme, 169-170, 199-201, 226 George Fox, 200, 226, 339-340 Church, interim, (see also Sttilstand)— Coornhert and, 113 Cicero, 105 Clarendon, Earl of— on Vane, 271, 279 Clement of Alexandria, xxxix, 267 Colet, John, 236 Collegiants, the— and the Stillstand, 68 n. Schwenckfeld and, 84 history of, 113-124 influence of Descartes and Spinoza on, 123 seq. Colonna, Vittoria, 237 Comans, Michael, 117 Commonwealth, English— Reformation in, 266 Rous in, 268 Vane in, 271-272 Puritans in, 290 Conscience, liberty of— taught by— Castellio, 93-96 Coornhert, 106 Boreel, 118 Vane, 273, 275 Sterry, 286 William Caton on, 103 n. in Holland, 104 dangers of, 320 Coornhert, D. V.— life, 105-108 writings, 105, 106 teachings, 106, 108-113 and Calvinism, 106, 111 and Van der Kodde brothers, 115 and Adam Boreel, 118 Cotton, John, 292 "Covenant of Grace," 274 "Covenant of Works," 274, 309 Crashaw, Richard, 322 Crautwald, Valentine, 67 n., 81 Cromwell, Oliver, 268, 271, 272, 274, 275, 280 Cudworth, Ralph, 280, 290 Culverwel, Nathaniel, 319 on Arminius, 289 Cunitz, M., 47 n. Curio, Valentin, 18 Cusa, Nicholas of, 3, 4 translated into English by Everard, 243, 256, 260 published by Randall, 256, 260

Dante, xxiii, 171, 174 Dell, William, l, 267 n. Denck, Hans, 48 life of, 18-21 writings of, 22 n. teaching of, xxx, 21-30, 69, 76, 242-243 not an Anabaptist, 18 begins "Spiritualist" movement, 132, 139, 169, 190 Everard's translation of, 242 Denqui, John, 242 n. Descartes, R.— philosophy of, 117, 123-125, 128 and Cambridge Platonists, 291 Deussen, Paul— on Boehme, 151 n., 153 n. Dilthey, Wilhelm— on justification, 8 n. Dionysius, the Areopagite, 236, 239 his conception of God, xxvii, 247 translation of, by Everard, 243 influence on Rous, 267 on Sterry, 280 Dobell, Bertram— on Traherne, 324 n.; 327 Doellinger, Johann— on Schwenckfeld, 64 n. Dompeldoop, 116 Donne, John, 322 Dort, Synod of, 114 Duerer, Albrecht, 48

Ecke, Karl— on Schwenckfeld, 64 n. Eckhart, Meister, 3, 4, 239, 243 his conception of God, xxvi, xxvii, 247 Ederheimer, Edgar— on Boehme, 151 n., 153 n. Edward VI. of England, 92 Ellington, Francis— on Boehme, 221 Ellistone, John, 213 translates Boehme into English, 213, 217, 221, 234 n. views of, 217-220, 222 Emmanuel College, 279, 290, 291, 306 Endern, Carl von, 162 n., 165 England— influence in— of Castellio, 103 n. of Schwenckfeld, 84, 87, 103 n. of Weigel, 139, 141, 146, 148, 150 of Boehme, 208-234 of Spiritual Reformers, 235, 251, 252, 267, 288 of de Valdes, 237-238 Quakers in, 132, 221, 227, 337 Reformation spirit in, 266-267 religious upheaval in, 320 Entfelder, Christian— life of, 39, 40 writings, 40 teaching, 40-43, 69, 169, 190 "Enthusiasm," 238 "Enthusiasts," xv, 31, 48 Erasmus, 34, 51, 55 n., 92, 105 Christian Humanist, 1 n., 3, 47 quoted on toleration, 93 Erbkam, H. W.— on Schwenckfeld, 64 n. Erigena, 3 Etherington, John— on Randall, 255 Everard, John— life of, 239-241, 289 translations by, 241-243, 250 n., 256, 260 Sermons, 241 teaching, 243-252 and Randall, 243 n., 256, 260 Evil (see Sin)