to be renewed in spirit, then those six powers of the soul, the higher and the lower, must each wear a golden finger-ring all gilded over with the gold of divine love. Consider the lower powers, which are three. The first is called reason, rationale ; on this thou shalt wear a golden finger-ring : light, so that thy reason may be all the time timelessly irradiated with divine light. The second power is rage, irascibilis ; on it thou shalt wear the finger-ring, thy peace. And why? Because, in peace, in God; without peace, out of God. The third power is desire, concupis- cibilis; and on it thou shalt wear, enough, so that thou mayst have done with all creatures under God; but with God thou shalt never have done, for of God thou canst never have enough: the more thou hast of God the more thou wantest of him; couldst thou have enough of him, could enough ever be applied to God, God were not God. |
Also on each higher power thou shalt wear a golden finger- ring. Of these higher powers there are likewise three. The first is the retentive faculty, memoria. This power is likened to the Father in the Trinity. On it thou shalt wear the golden finger- ring, remembrance, that all eternal things may be stored up in thee. The second one is understanding, intellectus. This power is likened to the Son. On this, too, thou shalt wear a golden finger-ring, perception, that thou mayst be ever apprehending God.—* In what way ?’—Thou shalt know him without image, without semblance and without means.—‘ But for me to know God thus, with nothing between, I must be all but he, he all but me.’ —I say, God must be very I, I very God, so consummately one that this he and this I are one is, in this is-ness working one work eternally ; but so long as this he and this I, to wit, God and the soul, are not one single here, one single now, the I cannot work with nor be one with that he. The third power is will, voluntas. This power is likened to the Holy Ghost. On it thou shalt wear the golden finger-ring, love, that thou mayst love God. But thou shalt love God apart from loveworthiness: not because he is worthy of love, for God is unloveworthy : he is superior to love and loveworthiness.—‘* How then shall I love him ? ’— Thou shalt love God non-spiritually, thy soul must be de-spiritualised : stripped of spirituality. For while thy soul is specifically spirit, she has form; the while she has form she has neither unity. nor union; the while she lacks union she has never really loved God, for actual love lies in union. Wherefore let thy soul be de-spirited of all spirit; let it be spiritless ; if thou lovest God as God, as spirit, as Person or as image, that must all go.—* Then how shall I love him ? ’—Love him as he is: a not-God, a not-spirit, a not- Person, a not-image ; as sheer, pure, limpid unity, alien from all
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duality. And in this one let us sink down eternally from nothing- ness to nothingness. So help us God. Amen.
One God and Father of All
Unus deus et pater omnium, qui est super omnes et per omnia et in omnibus nobis (Ephes. 4,). I am quoting St Paul’s words, ‘One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all.’ From the gospel I will take another saying, the saying of our Lord, ‘ Friend, go up higher.’
To begin with, when St Paul speaks of ‘ one God and Father of all’ the omission of the particle suggests some variation from his ‘one God.’ God is one in himself and apart from all. God belongs to none and none belongs to him, God is one. Boéthius says, God is one and changes not. God’s whole creation he created without changing. All things, once created, progress in changing. The moral of which is that we ought to be one in ourselves and wholly free from attachment. Firm and unshaken in God does it behove us to be. Out of God there is nothing but naught. No change nor movement can get into God. What seeks another place outside him, that changes. God has all things in him in one omnipotentiality ; God seeks not anything outside himself, for he has got it in him in its perfection. No creature can conceive it as it is in God.
Another teacher says, ‘ Father of all, blessed art thou.’ This too is big with change, for calling him Father he makes us his children. And if he is our Father then we as his children shall have his honour at heart. Our Lord says, ‘ Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ Purity of heart means separation, cleansing, from all bodily things, the isolation of the self and in this abstraction the plunging into God and being atoned with him.
David says, ‘Those works are pure and guileless which are pursued and perfected in the light of the soul’; and those are yet more guileless which abide therein in the depths of the spirit and proceed not forth. ‘One God and Father of all.’
The other saying, ‘ Friend, come up higher, take the higher seat.’ I will make of twain one. ‘Friend, come up higher, draw up,’ is the friendly conversation of the soul with God. He says, ‘Friend, draw up, come up higher,’ and, answering her: one God and Father of all. A certain philosopher says, Friend- ship resides in the will. But so far as friendship resides in the will it does not unify. Love does not unify; true, it unites in act but not in essence. It merely says, ‘One God, come up higher,
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draw nigh.’ Into the ground of the soul nothing enters but God himself. Even the highest angel, although he is so nigh to God and is endowed so largely with God’s love (his works are estab- lished in God in one essence not one operation; he has in God an immanence, a settled habitation), this angel, strange to say, exalted though he be, is not allowed into the soul. One master lays it down that all creatures individually merit that God himself should work in them. Soul as transcending body is too virgin- exquisite to set her heart on aught save pure Deity himself. But nothing enters there until it has been shorn of all additions. That is why she was answered, ‘ one God.’
St Paul says, ‘one God.’ One is something more simple than good- ness and truth. Goodness and truth are constants, they are added to (only) in thought; thinking attributes things to them. There is no addition to the one as proceeding in himself into the Son and into the Holy Ghost. He said, ‘ Friend, go up higher.’ A master says, One is the denial of denials. If I say God is good, that is an affirmation. One is the denial of denials, the grave of expecta- tions. What does one mean? That to which nothing is added. The soul receives Godhead as told forth in her, unadded to, unthought. One is the denial of denials. Every creature makes innate denial; the one denies it is the other; an angel denies being any other creature. But God makes the denial of denials ; he is one and denies all other, for there is nothing without God. All creatures are in God; they are his very Godhead, that is to say, the fullness. He is the Father of all deity. One God, not proceeding, unmoved, unmindful of the Word. By the fact of denying God something—and by denying God goodness I am not denying God,—(I say), by denying God something I conceive something about him, that he is not; even this has to go. God is one, he is the negation of negations. According to one master, the angelic nature secretes no power nor work, it has no know- ledge save of God alone. Everything else it ignores. As he says, “one God and Father of all.’
Some of the powers of the soul take in from without, as, for. example, the eye. Though it lets in but little, rejecting the great bulk, yet it is dependent on and does receive something from outside in the mode of here and now. But intelligence and intellect, paring to the core, seize what is neither here nor now. In her unconditioned state she is right in touch with nature, but she still receives from the senses; what the senses bring in from outside the intellect uses. Not so the will; in this respect will ranks above the intellect. Will accepts nothing save in abstract understanding, where there is neither here nor now. God intends to convey what a pure and exalted thing will is. It rises to
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familiar colloquy with God, and God says, ‘ Friend, come up higher, honour waits thee.’ The will wills happiness. It has been asked, what is the differ-
ence between grace and happiness. Grace, as we are now in this life, and happiness as ours to be hereafter in eternal life, are to one another as the flower to its fruit. When the soul is brimming with grace and nothing is left her, then grace works to perfect all that exists in the soul; not that it comes to actual work, but by its mere presence in the soul what the soul does grace makes perfect. Grace does no work but, all-pouring, pours all at once into the soul. The third grace atones the soul with God. Its consumma- tion, its effect, is to bring back the soul to God; hers, after the blossom, the fruit. Will, as the will to happiness, as the will to be with God and the actual ascent, in this singleness (of heart) God slips into the will, and the single mind seeing God as the truth, God slips into the intellect. But his entering into the will raises it up. As he says, ‘one God. Friend, come up higher.’ One God: God’s unity is the crown of God’s divinity. God could never bear his one-begotten Son were he not one. The fact of being one determines all he does creaturely and godly. Oneness belongs to God alone; God’s idiosyncrasy is oneness ; God must be one God or not be God at all. Divine riches or wisdom or truth, it is all the same thing in God ; it is not one, it is unity. God has all he has in him; it is one with him. Theo- logians say that heaven revolves with the object of gathering all things in; hence its rapid motion. He said, ‘ Friend, come up higher, thou art honoured.’ It is the honour and adornment of the soul that God is one. God behaves as though he existed for no purpose but to please the soul ; as though he did adorn himself solely in order to attract the soul. And man desires now one thing now another; he cultivates now wisdom and now art. If she has nothing of the one she will never rest; (she will never rest) till she is all the same in God.. God is one; that is the soul’s beati- tude, her ornament, her rest. A philosopher says, God orders all things in his operation. The soul is all things, and in all respects the noblest and highest and God pours in all at once ; God is one.
Part I In omnibus requiem quesivi (Eccles. 24,,). St Augustine says, “My soul was created by thee and for thee wherefore she is ever restless. till she finds thee. In all created things, which I search
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in understanding, there is no refuge for my soul, but in thee, God, alone. In the love-spring of thy substance are gathered up to one the perfections of all creatures, which in them are scattered and divided.’ Were there any single creature with all creaturely perfections both in quality and number then God would not have made more than that one alone, as I have pointed out in my discourse, * Whosoever would follow me let him take up his cross.’ Now the whole happiness of creatures depends on resting in the sovran good which is the fount of all good things, and hence our Lady Mary says these words about herself wherein she counsels our interior man to cultivate in lowliness the habit of divine repose in which the soul is most of all united, and without it not. She says, ‘ In all things have I sought rest for my inner man.’