The eighth question is, what fruits or gifts are granted to the soul in whom the eternal Word is spoken ? Him four things befall. The first is that he is united with God. Next, he becomes God’s Son by grace. Thirdly, he is made God’s heir. Fourthly, he is loosed from bondage; as St Paul, naming all four perfections, says, * In Christ is neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free ; but ye are all one in Christ and are sons of God. And if sons of God then heirs of God.’ May we being loosed from bondage be God’s sons, so help us God.
* Now, taking as my text, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ I will set forth the things a man must have in order to be God’s Son by grace. First, he must have perfect self- control, as the Lord Christ says, ‘I have power to lay down my soul and take it up again.’ Meaning, he is not cast down by suffering and adversity nor puffed up by worldly happiness and prosperity. Secondly, he must have his mind ever charged with divine ideas and godly sayings. Thirdly, he must have the highest good ever present to his mind so far as his nature will allow. Fourthly, he must steadfastly abide therein so far as his nature can endure it. Fifthly, if he go out into creatures for the needs of life he must not tarry there longer than is necessary. - Sixthly, what his mind conceives of from within of divine mystery or truth he must protect from nature as a rich man guards his treasure from robbers and from thieves. In the seventh place, he must make no attempt to express these things in words until the. time is ripe, that is, until he puts them into practice. Eighth, he must know well enough and consider fit any person he reveals. these secrets to: the fool confides in all the world but the wise in few. Ninthly, he must be gracious alike to yea and nay. Tenth, he must be indifferent about what God has done to him and is going to do. [Eleventh, it must not concern him what God has done or is to do.] Twelfth, he must behave impartially to those whom God has chosen or not chosen [to those to whom his grace has or has not been given]; and all these things he:must offer up to the glory of God, obeying the divine command that what pleases God shall please him also and saying with Christ, ‘ Father,
1 The rest of this tractate occurs also in Hermann von Fritslar’s Das Heiligenleben (see Pfeiffer’s Deutsche Mystiker, vol. i, p. 54), from which the words in brackets are added.
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thy will not mine be done.’ These twelve.articles, with the pre- ceding four, set forth the highest life that can be led in time. Of him who has these things may the Father say, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him.’ And he who has them not but defaults therein, his defects are what St Augustine calls spiritual sins. .
The ninth question is, how to recognise these people in whom the eternal Word is born ghostly and gratuitously ? I answer, by the following signs. The first is that these people are dead to flesh and blood and to all natural appetites, as St Paul says, ‘ Since the eternal Word was born in me I no longer live to flesh and blood.’ Secondly the pleasures of the body [the triumphs of the world], are like sour breath unto their soul. As St Gregory’ declares, ‘ Worldly joys and glories are nothing but untowardness. Thirdly, these people are for ever listening for God’s voice in them, David says, ‘ I will hearken to what God the Lord shall say within me.’ Fourthly, they are not perturbed by the uncertainty of things: nothing vexes or depresses them, as Christ said to his disciples, ‘In your patience possess ye your souls.’ Fifthly, these people turn everything to good account so nothing can corrupt them, but they are ever pure in heart; as St Paul says, ‘ All things work together for good to them that love God.’ Sixthly, they have no desire to vie with anyone; they live in the world as though there was no one but themselves and God. Wherefore their heavenly Father begets his Son in them unceasingly and this birth is for all who give their mind thereto.
The Lord Christ calls himself the flower of the field, for this is common property. Even so this birth is the common property of all those who are ready and diligently longing to receive it. May we thus desire this birth and eternally enjoy it, So help us God. Amen.
Detachment !
I have read many writings of heathen philosophers and sages, of the old covenant and of the new, and have sought earnestly and with all diligence which is the best and highest virtue whereby a man may knit himself most narrowly to God and wherein he is most like to his exemplar, as he was in God, wherein was no differ- ence between himself and God, ere God created creature. And having approfounded all these scriptures to the best of my ability, I find it is none other than absolute detachment from all creatures.
1 See also Spamer, B. 4.
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As our Lord said to Martha, ‘ unum est necessarium,’ which is as good as saying, He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.
Our doctors sing love’s praises, as did St Paul, who said, ‘ What- soever things I do and have not charity I am nothing.’ But I extol detachment above any love. First, because at best love constrains me to love God. Now it is far better my constraining God to me than for me to be constrained to God. My eternal happiness depends on God and me becoming one; but God is apter to adapt himself to me and can easier communicate with me than I can communicate with God. Detachment forces God to come to me, and this is shown as follows. Everything is fain to be in its own natural state. But God’s own natural state is unity and purity and these come from detachment. Hence God is bound to give himself to a heart detached.—Secondly, I rank detachment above love because love constrains me to suffer all things for God’s sake : detachment constrains me to admit nothing but God. Now it is far better to tolerate nothing but God than to suffer all things for God’s sake. For in suffering one has regard to creatures, whence the suffering comes, but detachment „iS immune from creature. Further, that detachment admits of none but God I demonstrate in this wise: anything received must be received in aught. But detachment is so nearly naught that there is nothing rare enough to stay in this detachment, except God. He is so simple, so ethereal, that he can sojourn in the solitary heart. Detachment then admits of God alone. That which is received is received and grasped by its receiver according to the mode of the receiver; and so anything conceived is known and understood according to the mind of him who understands and not according to its own innate conceivability.
And humility the masters laud beyond most other virtues. I rank detachment before any meekness and for the following reasons. Meekness can be without detachment, but complete detachment is impossible without humility. Perfect humility is a matter of self-naughting ; but detachment so narrowly approxi- mates to naught that no room remains for aught betwixt zero and absolute detachment. Wherefore without humility is no complete detachment. Withal two virtues are always better than one.— Another reason why I put detachment higher than humility is this: humility means abasing self before all creatures and in that same abasement one goes out of oneself to creatures. But detach- ment abideth in itself. Now no going out however excellent, but staying in is better still. As the prophet hath it, ‘ omnis gloria filie regis ab intus,’ the king’s daughter is all glorious within. Perfect detachment is without regard, without either lowliness or
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loftiness to creatures: it has no mind to be below nor yet to be above ; it is minded to be master of itself, loving none and hating none, having neither likeness nor unlikeness, neither this nor that, to any creature ; the only thing it fain would be is same. But to be either this or that it does not want at all. He who is this or that is aught; but detachment is altogether naught. It leaves things unmolested.
Here someone may object, But surely in our Lady all the virtues flourished in perfection and among them absolute detachment. Now granting that detachment is better than humility, why did our Lady glory in her lowliness instead of her detachment, saying, ‘ quia respexit dominus humilitatem ancille sue’: ‘He regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden ’ ?
I answer that, in God there is detachment and humility as well, so.far as virtues can be attributed to God. Know, it was his loving meekness that made God stoop to enter human nature while it remained within itself as motionless, what time he was made man, as it was while he created the heavens and the earth, as I shall show you later. And seeing that our Lord when he chose to be made man did persist in his motionless detachment, by that same token did our Lady know that he expected her to do the same, albeit for the nonce he had regard expressly to her lowliness and not to herdetachment. So remaining unmoved in her detach- ment she yet gloried in her lowliness and not in her detachment. Had she but once remembered her detachment to say, ‘ He regarded my detachment,’ her detachment would by that have been disturbed and would not have been absolute and perfect since a going forth has taken place. Any event, however insignificant, will always cause some troubling of detachment. There you have the explana- tion of our Lady’s glorying in her lowliness instead of her detach- ment. Quoth the prophet, ‘ audiani, quid loquatur in me dominus deus,’ ‘I will be still and listen to what my Lord and my God may be saying within me,’ as though to say, if God would parley with me then he must come in for I will not go out. It is Boéthius who exclaims, ‘ Ye men, why do ye look without for that which is within you ?’”
_ I prize detachment more than mercy too, for mercy means naught else but a man’s going forth of self by reason of his fellow- . ereatures’ lack, whereby his heart is wrung. Detachment is exempt from this; it stays within itself permitting nothing to disturb it. In short, when I reflect on all the virtues I find not one so wholly free from fault, so unitive to God as is detachment.
It was Avicenna the philosopher who said, ‘ The mind detached is of such nobility that what it sees is true, what it desires befalls and its behests must be obeyed.’ For you must know that when
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the free mind is quite detached it constrains God to itself and could it remain formless and free from adventitiousness it would take on the nature of God. But God grants this to none beside himself ; so God can do no more for the solitary soul than make it a present of himself. The man who is in absolute detachment is rapt away into eternity where nothing temporal affects him nor is he in the least aware of any mortal thing ; he has the world well dead, he having no relish for aught earthly. St Paul meant this when he declared, ‘ I live and yet not I: Christ liveth in me.’