has no more to do with things than she had when she was not.
Now, dead to self, she is alive in God and the dead perish (in the
tomb). Even so is naughted the soul entombed in God.
Some people fondly ween that they have gotten into the Holy Trinity who have never got beyond themselves. Loath to leave themselves, they keep their selfish interests and pleasures and interior sweetness, all of which they have forsworn, just the same in thought and will. These are no disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ who never looked for sweetness in anything he did; on the contrary, he said, ‘My soul is sorrowful even‘ unto death.’ Meaning his most lofty soul, and he was thinking also of his bodily life. This was ‘sorrowful even unto death,’ until a term was put to the conditions of our exile, until our death was dead. And our soul too is ‘ troubled even unto death,’ until there dies within us
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whatever is alive there of own will, own interests and multitudi- nous will. When the soul is dead as to the life of her desires and selfish interests and is buried in God, then, hidden and unknown to any creature, she can never be troubled any more.
Now mark the signs whereby a soul is known to have been taken into the Holy Trinity. First, it is vouchsafed to her that at the sight of the Holy Ghost her sins are blotted out and she forgets herself and things. In the next place, she has gotten a conception of the Godhead, namely the eternal wisdom of the Father, the knowledge and discernment of all things; and she is bereft of opinion, hypothesis, belief, for now she knows the truth; and whereas hitherto she has taken things on trust and learnt by wordy arguments and hearsay, now things presented to her, whether by men or angels, she need ask none about, like those with no notion of reality, who, when an abstract truth is revealed to them, will try to grasp it with their finite mind: a thing that is beyond angelic understanding. Whereupon they question others on the subject, propounding it in the material form in which they have conceived it, and these take it as they hear it, in a concrete sense, and so pronounce it wrong and contrary to the Christian faith. It is false to them, because they accept it at face-value, which they are unable to see through. In this they are mistaken. Furthermore, the soul who is in truth translated into the Holy Trinity is immediately endowed by the Father’s power and strength with the ability to do all things. As St Paul says, ‘I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.’ Now the soul works not, knows not, loves not; but God is working in her, perceiving himself in her. According to the words of Jeremiah, ‘ Verily ye are God’s in divine knowing and loving.’ God help us to this truth. Amen.
I Go to Him That Sent Me
‘Vado ad eum qui misit me (Joh. 16;). ‘Igo to him that sent me.’ These words have a threefold meaning. In the first place, Christ went to his Father in his manhood. In the second place, the soul of Christ went in the light of grace. In the third place, the soul of Christ went in his Godhead.
About this saying, Thomas, Origen, Damascenus and Richardus hold the same opinion, and I hold it with them. What we say is, that Christ in his manhood went first through our manhood ; he has known all the wants that flesh is heir to, for he has been through every creature and set creature lower than mankind : the humanity of Christ has carried our humanity beyond the realm of creature, -exalting our nature above the angelic nature in the unity of God
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and man. The manhood of Christ went also by itself without impediment of creature, for he alone was ever perfect in virtue at every point of time. ;
In the second place, the soul of Christ went without means in the light of grace. In the light of grace the soul of Christ received four gifts which Mary his mother never did receive nor did any of the saints. The first gift of Christ’s soul was wisdom, the knowledge of his end. The second gift was understanding, which his soul received on achieving virtue as distinct from means. The third gift Christ’s soul received was that in all she did she remained unchanged. The fourth gift was that of doing nothing except in virtue of the love of God.
In the third place, the soul of Christ went in his godhood ; he went, that is to say, in the personality of the eternal Word, for this eternal Person is essentially the vehicle of human nature. He also went the way of the three Persons of whom he is one Person. He went in his own nature to the Father-nature in the understanding of them both. And he went in the work of the Person of the Holy Ghost, who effects the union of human nature and divine Person. Touching Christ’s words, ‘I go to him that sent me,’ Lincolniensis and Master Henry "Augus- tiniensis tell us what he means by ‘go.’ I hold with Thomas and Gilbertus that by this word he meant to say, ‘ I go to release you from the straits whereto ye have been brought by Adam’s transgression ; I go to set you free from the bonds of creature ; I go to him that sent me, in my understanding wherein I take you straight to him; I go the way of my own nature, the way of my lordship, wherein alone I keep unto myself what creature has no part nor lot in. He went in essence and in nature; he went to ' reveal in his own Person the essence and the life to creatures in separation ; for the Persons are God in their personal divinity according to their nature’s unity.
Here arises the question, Is the Person of the nature or the nature ofthe Person? In answering this it must be borne in mind that it is the nature of the Persons to manifest the fruits of their own nature.
The soul too goes to the Father. First, in the fixed intention to cumber herself no more with creature unless with the objective form of Christ. Secondly, she goes in responding to whatever calls God may make upon her. Thirdly, she goes in the sweet savour of divine love wherein suffering is no suffering to her. Christ ascended into heaven; he ennobled his humanity by withdrawing it from time and establishing it in eternity. Lifting up his soul he gave her his essential self, the essence he is ever making manifest in his personal works. Further, the soul ascends flying with the feathers of the virtues, wisdom, prudence, strength
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and justice namely, for on these four virtues the soul is able to wing her way past time and past all creatures which exist in time. And she flies as well in the three godly virtues of faith, hope and charity, resting in the love that is God, wherein we behold the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Now it must be remembered that three kinds of men see God. The first see him in faith ; they know no more of him than what they can make out through a partition. The second behold God in the light of grace but only as the answer to their longings, as giving them sweetness, devotion, inwardness and other such-like things which are issuing from his gift. The third kind see him in the divine light. Christ’s disciples beheld God as the satisfaction of their longings, but they did not see him as one who longs to love. Philip said to Jesus, ‘ Lord, show us the Father and satisfy us,’ as though to say, Lord, show us thyself as transcending creature, as the immediate entry to the soul which thou dost nature in her proper nature. Jesus answered, ‘ He that seeth me seeth my Father,’ as though to say, Whoso seeth me unchanging, as well disposed towards them that would wound as towards them that show the wish to please me ; whoso seeth me apart from my humanity as the door into the soul, the same beholds my Father as energising in his personal power and I in personal wisdom and the Holy Ghost in personal goodness: having God means having all these three in the one essence of their nature.
The Soul’S Place!
Our Lord said to his disciples, ‘ It is expedient for you that I should go away, for while I am with you the Holy Ghost will not come unto you.’ With these words our Lord comforted his disciples after supper on the eve of his departure, knowing full well that they were sorrowful at finding he was going to leave them. Our Lord will not long suffer his lovers to be troubled. Fear is cruel and therefore incompatible with love. As a man gains in love he loses his fear. But at the beginning of conversion fear goes through the soul as the awl goes through the shoe in making a passage for the thread ; and even so the heart is pierced with fear of sin which is then followed and chased out by love. Our Lord’s words to his disciples, ‘ I go to prepare a place for you,’ teach us two valuable lessons of which we have the proofs in his ascension.
The first one is, that the soul is by nature made for heaven and God is her lawful heritage. For God brought forth the soul
1 A variant of LXXV. In Pfeiffer’s text it is part of (2).
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alone in lineal descent and no man knoweth what she is. They say she is a light, for as the sunlight is poured forth in beams upon all creatures, even so the soul is the immediate product of the light of God. St Augustine says, the soul proceeds from God and returns to God, so she is not at rest except in him. The soul is a spirit formed in the likeness of God and agreeable to him as one spirit is to another. Philosophers, again, compare the soul with fire, a thing most lofty in its nature, most theurgie in its operation, which never stops until it licks the heavens. Fire encircles all the elements; spreading much wider and higher than the air or than water or the earth it envelops all of them. It comes next to heaven and revolves therewith; the air goes rather slower because it is more dense, and water being denser still is unable to keep pace and runs behind. The soul is called a fire because in her desire she can keep up with God like fire with the heavens, nor has she any rest except in him. Also, the soul is called a spark of God’s celestial nature, and this jumps with our theory that the soul is intrinsically heavenly. For where one clod falls there earth in general would fall as well; and thus a single clod of earth will betray the resting-place of the earth itself ; so too the spark which shoots out of the fire will indicate the resting-place of fire. Now we have sent a spark to heaven, namely the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shows the resting-place of souls is nowhere else than heaven ; yonder they belong. But the resting-place of body, made up as it is of the four elements, is by nature upon earth, and yet God joins these twain to one another and fates them to remain together: soul and body for their mutual uses. Of this God found a wise solution, himself becoming man and going in his proper power to heaven, the resting- place of Jesus Christ being in union with his Father. And since God is threefold in his Persons and simple in his nature, they having one common life and being, it follows that the place our Lord Jesus Christ prepares for our life and being is that of eternal union with God.
The other thing Christ taught by his ascension is what prepara- tions we must make for following him, pursuant to his words,
‘I go to prepare a place for you.’ Just as it is upon four grounds that soul is called light, spirit, fire and a spark of God’s celestial nature, so we must be prepared in four particulars. When Moses would have gone and looked at the burning bush upon Mt. Sinai God told him to put off his shoes, which teaches us four lessons.