As to the second question, you must understand that although the intelligible image of God in the spirit partakes in its nature and purity more of the perfection of the content of its immanent essence than of the emanation of itself, nevertheless it is therein essence that has become. Take the spirit in its nearest ground, abiding within in its endless image and eternal image. As the endless image it is always within and in its eternal image it presents itself as an eternal question. As Christ asks, ‘ Whose is this image and this superscription ?’ Mark the difference between this image and its superscription. In the image exists God, and all his output in spirit and in nature—the human mind (or spirit) with all it is able to afford,—these are in uniformity so exact and close that the image of divine glory shines in all its detail in the spirit and this image in the spirit is perfectly reflected back into its indwelling essence. So much for the image of God. And what of the superscription ? That is the unspeakable species of the divine nature, which in its whole ground, actual and essential, is a naked and immediate presence in the spirit, in virtue of which the spirit in its free nature and intellectual image suffers all God’s super-rational operation. The limit comes where the divine freedom seizes the spirit’s freedom and turns it into foolishness and at this point all scientific knowledge fails; there is no further progress to be made by natural creature-knowledge but only in spirit by experiencing God.
Now to answer the third question. Philosophers say that one’s own is ever innate and can be had at will. It follows that the spirit can rise to the supreme perfection of its divine nature for it can stand in its first now, in that wherein it was not. And that is the answer to the third query.
Then there is the question, can God leave man’s spirit to itself or not? I say, No, it would be against the justice of his nature and against his truth and would make a travesty of God’s whole creation. God must either let the spirit be God extra to himself or else he must merge it in himself, when it has left all things. This will not outrage God, for the spirit is too haughty and touches too closely the honour of God for him to be able to make aught but himself theend of its perfection. It has this unique property : its ground can overleap all spirits into his super-intelligible spirit, namely, the indwelling essence of divine nature.
A man was asked, What dost thou lack? He said, Nothing, except poverty of spirit.—And though I have a will no bigger than a grain of mustard seed I am no poor man, and if God were to ask me, Art thou a poor man? I should-reply that, be my will as good as God’s yet am I not poor, not even if with that same will I do as much as God. And why? Because God and God’s will
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are one, I and my will are two, for I am a man and not God and if I mean to do real work entirely without or free from will then I must emulate the stone which lies in the water and the water flows over it but enters not into the stone. Even so if I were a poor man I should do my works in such a way that they entered _ not into my will any more than the water does into the stone: I should do them simply at the will of God. And if again God asked me, whether I was poor and if I replied, ‘I have abandoned my own will and did I know the will of God that would I do,’ I might be assuming something not my own, for no one knoweth who we are, though we are not the truth for God can change our knowledge, not his knowledge, because he is the truth and we are not.
Perhaps someone will say, How can I do my work like this, will-free ? The answer is, I ought to do my work as though no one existed, no one lived, no one had ever come upon the earth. - Then if God asked me once again, Art thou a poor man ? and if I replied, ‘I am unworthy of that knowing,’ that were the barest. poverty that ever I heard tell of or went through: the deepest, direst poverty. Yet all the while I have within enough of place for God to do his work in me, to give his gift to me, all that while I am not a poor man for all that while I am expecting God.—What more can I do ?—Thus shalt thou do: thou shalt leave all willing and knowing and receiving of things and at the very point where thou hast left all things there God has given thee all things; he durst not give thee more nor any more work with thee nor canst thou take in more, but thou shalt simply leave thyself. That is ' poverty of spirit the most near of all, for none is downright poor but he who wills not, knows not, has not, whether within or without. To the eternal truth, God help us. Amen.
The Book of Godly Comfort
Benedictus deus et pater domini nostri Jesu Christi etc. (2 Cor. 1,). That great teacher St Paul says in his epistle, ‘ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation.’ Three kinds of tribulation may fall upon a man and plunge him in distress. First, misfortune to exterior belongings. Next, to our dearest friends. Lastly, to ourselves: shame, hardship, pain of body and distress of mind.
So I purpose in this book to impart some ‘teachings apt to console a man in all adversity, unhappiness and suffering. And
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having therein and therefrom culled sundry general truths to com- fort him in any trouble, he will find thereafter thirty rules or maxims each of which alone is sufficient for his solace ; and after that again, in the third part of the book, he will find precepts and examples, theoretical and practical, the sayings and doings of the wise in times of tribulation.!
In the first place we must bear in mind that the wise and wisdom, true and truth, good and goodness, righteousness and righteous are closely related to each other. Goodness is not made nor created nor begotten : it is procreative and begets the good and the good man, so far as he is good, is the unmade, un- created but withal begotten child and son of goodness. Goodness reproduces itself and all it is in good things: knowledge, love, energy, it pours forth all of them into the good man, and the good man receives all his being, knowing, love and energy from the central depth of goodness and from that alone. Good and good- ness are no more than goodness by itself, except as unborn parent and born child of goodness therefrom. In the good is but one being and one life. All that belongs to a good man he gets both from the good and in the good. Therein he is and lives and dwells and there he knows himself, and all he knows and loves he wills and works with goodness and in goodness and the good does all its work with him and in him, as it is written. The Son said, ‘My Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. All that belongs to the Father is mine; all that is mine is my Father’s: | his giving is my taking.’
Further we must remember that the Name or Word stands for nothing else, nothing more or less than the good, pure and simple. But when we call him good we understand his goodness to be given him, infused and engendered by the unborn goodness; in the words of the gospel, ‘ As the Father hath life in himself so hath he given to the Son to have the same life in himself also.’ In himself, he says, not from himself for the Father gave it to him.
Now all that I have said of good and goodness equally applies to true and truth, to right (or just) and righteousness (or justice), to wise and wisdom, to God’s Son and to God the Father, to every God-begotten thing that has no father upon earth and wherein is gotten no created thing: nothing not God, and wherein exists not any form at all but that of God alone. St John says in his gospel, ‘to them gave he power to become the sons of God, which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God alone.’
1 Only Part 1 is given here.
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By blood he means everything in man not subject to the human will. By fleshly will he means everything in man which is subject. to his will, albeit with reluctance and with an inclination to fleshly appetites : a thing which is common to the body and the soul and not confined to the soul alone, which accounts for the weakness and exhaustion of their powers. By the will of man St John means the highest power of the soul, whose nature and energy, unmixed with flesh, resides in the pure nature of the soul, detached _ from time and place and from everything that smacks of time and place relation ; that has naught in common with naught ; wherein man is formed in the image of God ; wherein he is of the lineage of God, and God’s kindred. Yet since these are not God himself but are products of the soul and are in the soul, therefore they have to lose their form and be transformed into God alone: born into God and out of God with only God for father. Then they are Son indeed, God’s only Son.
I am his Son forasmuch as he begets me in his nature and forms me in his image. Such an one is the Son of God, good son of goodness, right son of righteousness. So far as he is simply good he is unborn parent and as born Son he has the same nature as righteousness has, and is and is possessed of all the character of justice and truth. In all this teaching which is found in holy gospel and confirmed in the natural light of the wise soul there is solace for every human sorrow.
St Augustine says, ‘ God is not far nor long. If thou wouldst find him neither far nor long betake thyself to God, for there a thousand years are as one day, to-day.’ And withal I say, in God there is no pain or sorrow or distress. And if thou wouldst be free from all adversity and pain, turn thee and cleave to God and to God alone. Doubtless all thy ills are due to thy non- conversion into God and to God alone. If thou wert formed and gotten in righteousness alone, things could no more pain thee than righteousness, than God himself.
Solomon says, * The righteous will not grieve for aught that may befall him.’ He does not say the righteous man or the righteous angel, not this or that right thing; just righteous, being right, for the righteous man is son with a father upon earth, he is creature, made or created as his father is creature made or created. He says righteous, pure and simple, and that has no made or created father, for righteousness is the same as God. So pain and sorrow can molest him no more than they do God. Justice will not grieve him, for love and joy and bliss are justice, and if justice made sorrowful the just it would be causing sorrow to itself. Injustice, inequality, can in no wise grieve the just, for anything created being far beneath him has no influence and
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makes no impression on the righteous nor is it gotten into him whose only father is God.
A man then ought to set to work and de-form himself of him- self and creatures and know no father except God alone. Then nothing will be able to afflict or cast him down, neither God nor creature, uncreated or created, and his entire being, life, know- ledge, love and wisdom will be from God and in God and God.