ground in the Godhead. By this same token the soul knows that she is creature, for all she has she has received in time from the three Persons. She flows out and in in the three Persons. The reason why Christ’s soul did never plumb the deeps of Godhead is that- she too is creature made in time. God is indeed the matter of the “soul, of her energies but not—of_her creation. Her energies are eternal because he is eternal. This matter never fails her. When fire lacks fuel it goes back to its own land. So would the soul come to naught were her matter to fail. When all her work is done she with her powers remains in God her matter ; she casts herself in her impartible essence into the passive, immaterial Godhead ; that is her native land. Then the Godhead is to her all things in a single passive power, and she withal all things to it, just as the heart of the sea gives forth in the bowels of the earth the waters which circulate back to the heart of the sea on the face of the earth. Suppose one dropped a millstone from the sun to earth, the earth being pierced straight through the centre, the millstone would stop falling at the centre of the earth. Here is the heart of the earth, the stopping-place of everything on earth. So is the Trinity the stopping-place of creatures as a whole, all the Godhead has being gotten impartible and eternal from itself. The Father is the manifestation of the Godhead, the Son is the image and. countenance of the Father and the Holy Ghost is the light of his countenance and the love of them both: all they have have they gotten eternally from ‘their own selves. But the three Persons “stooped in compassion towards human nature and the Son was made man and in this:world was more despised than any man on earth, suffering want and pain from creatures himself had made in conjunction with his Father, by whose will he became man.
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Christ lived in time down to his death and then, arising from the dead, this most despised of men is seen united with the Godhead | in the Person of the Christ who came on earth. Human nature wedded with the divine nature; her eternal portion, fellowship with divine nature in the same Person.
This is God’s good will, that we should know ourselves and that we should know God, and our salvation lies in putting our know- ledge into practice and loving in God all that we know. He who knows God in very truth is bound to love and will nothing but what God loves and wills. As St Paul says, ‘I do good and doing naught but good to me all things are possible. Many a thing is lawful for me which I do not lest I sin.’ Our Lord commands us to be without sin. To whom all things are possible it is also possible to keep this commandment.
The saints declare that all things are in God as they have been in God eternally ; not that we were in God in the gross nature we have here : we were in God eternalwise, like art in the artist. God saw himself and saw all things. God was not therefore manifold as things are here in separation. Though creatures here are manifold they are but one idea in God. God in himself is just the one alone. When creature goes back to her first cause she knows God simply as one in form and essence and threefold in operation. What intellect knows is knowledge and knowledge stops at what is known, with what is known becoming one. Into the simple idea no knowledge ever entered, for this impartible exemplar after which God created all creatures towers God-high above creatures. Creature in pursuing God to his eternal heights must mount above all creatures, nay, beyond her very self, her own wont and uses, and follow agnosia into the desolate Godhead. St Dionysius says, ‘God’s desert is God’s simple nature.’ A creature’s desert is her simple nature. In the desert of herself she is robbed of her own form and in God’s desert, leading out of hers, she is bereft of name; there she is no more called soul, she is called God with God.
Peradventure ye will say, ‘ Being in this exalted state why does the soul not raise the body above necessity of earthly things ? ’ To which I answer, at this stage the soul has a body of perfection which uses all things to the glory of God, there being now betwixt — God and the soul no barrier nor hindrance. So far as the soul has followed God into the desert of his Godhead so far the body follows Christ into his desert of willing poverty and is one with
1 See also Jostes, No. 37; Greith, p. 195 et seg.; and Büttner, vol. i, No. 17.
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God. Well may the Father say, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased : follow ye him.’ All creatures are with God : the being that they have God gives them with his presence. Saith the bride in the Book of Love, ‘ I have run round the circle and have found no end to it, so I cast myself into the centre.’
This circle which the loving soul ran round is all the Trinity has ever wrought.
Why is the work of the Trinity called a circle? Because the three Persons have wrought their own likeness in all creatures which are rational. The Trinity is the origin of all things and all things return into their origin. This is the circle the soul runs. When does she run in this circle ? She does so when she muses : All this that he has made he could make again a thousand times if he were so minded. So she goes round in endless chain. The least of all his creatures she can find no end to nor can she appro- found its worth. Spent with her quest she casts herself into the centre. This point is the power of the Trinity wherein unmoved it is doing all its work. Therein the soul becomes omnipotent.
The three Persons are one omnipotence. This is the motionless point and the unity of the Trinity. The circumference is the incomprehensible work of the three Persons. The point is fixed. The union of the Persons is the essence of the point. In this point God runs through change without otherness, involving into unity of essence, and the soul as one with this fixed point is capable of all things. But her powers, wherein she imitates the Trinity, with them she cannot apprehend its unity. The work of the Trinity has proved the undoing of many Paris theologians: en- grossed in the working of the Trinity they have never gotten at their unity. The centre is equally near to all ends, like time in all lands. Now is the time here and now is the same time in Rome.
Saith the bride in the Book of Love, ‘ He has wounded me with a glance of his eye.’ This refers to the unitive force which streams down from the point, isolating the soul from creatures and changing . things and gathering her up again into the point therewith to be united and therein to be eternally established. .
One is conscious of this glance within the confines of the soul when she is quite unoccupied, innocent of the practice whether of vice or virtue. During this quiet state intuitive perception is most vivid, so it is then he stabs her with his glance to make her really feel how he has known and loved her while she herself was not. This serves as a piercing reminder to the soul to go out of herself. Whom this glance wounds not is not nor ever has been wounded by love. [Concerning it St Bernard says, ‘'To him whose spirit has felt this glance it is unutterable ; to him who knows it
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not it is incredible.’ ”Tis an arrow shot without anger and felt without pain. ‘Thence starts the clear and limpid stream of healing grace which enlightens the inner eye to perceive in blissful behold- ing the delight of the divine affliction wherein we share unheard of spiritual graces, favours untold, not preached nor written down in any book.]
(Saith the soul), ‘Lord, thou thyself declarest that thou hast made me like thyself. That passes the ingenuity of man, for no philosopher is sage enough to fabricate the double of himself. Lord,’ she cries, ‘if thou hast made me like to thee, grant me to see thec seized of the power wherein thou hast created me, to know thee in the wisdom wherein thou hast known me, to conceive thee as thou conceivest me; and grant me Lord that by thy grace I be made one with thee in nature as thy Son is one with thy nature ~ eternally, and that thy grace may be my nature ; for, Lord, thy grace becomes thy nature and in thy nature we become God, as the Father in his nature is God by nature.’
Christ exhorts us to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect in his nature. He says, ‘ God is more near to you than ye are to yourselves.’ And in the same sense St Augustine says the soul has private entry to the divine nature, where things for her all come to naught. Then she is ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, dark with enlightenment. Then to know God would be an imperfection ; to know herself in God would be an imper- fection or to know God in her would be an imperfection. The incomprehensible essence she absorbs above all knowledge. by grace, as the Father does by nature ; and the born essence being gotten in her understanding as the Father has gotten it in him, she steals out of herself and pierces the naked essence there to retain no more of things than when she issued forth from God. She comes so utterly to naught that there is nothing left but God ; God outshines her as the sun the moon, and she in God’s own subtile nature flows into all that God is flowing in eternally.
If thou hast apprehended me, there are two points to notice in these words. First, the soul knowing she was made from naught desires to see who made her. And secondly, her words, ‘Grant me to see thee as creating me,’ mean that she wants to feel the faith and love wherein she was created. For then the soul sees God though she does not see through him. She knows God although she cannot fathom him ; she apprehends God but cannot comprehend him as he comprehends himself. St Paul says, ‘ Then we shall know as we are known.’ Stripped of her own being, with God her only being, the soul sees God with God, knows and con- ceives God with God. One high authority declares that the soul sees, knows, apprehends God with his very own essence which is
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the very essence of the soul. The soul sees, knows, conceives God as she is herself conceived in the pure intellect of the Deity. Then soul is comprehender as well as comprehended. But no man in this body and after the mode of his own mind can understand how soul is both conceiver and conceived be he not wholly sunk into himself, into pure knowledge of his own God-nature where no created thought did ever enter. ;
Now mark. The naught whereby soul comes to naught is the turning from images and forms to stay at none of them, for the divine nature is neither form nor image. And soul divorced from images and forms is like to the formless nature of God. This is the secret passage of the soul into divine nature. The soul which has nowhere to turn is ready to turn to the image of God. In other words, she goes with naught to naught: to the divine nature whereto none may attain be he not stripped of all mental matter. Alas ! how sorely they obstruct this secret passage, those who so lightly stay at temporal things! Dionysius exhorted his disciples in this sense, saying, ‘ Wouldst know the hidden mystery of God ? then transcend whatever hinders thy pure perception, whatever thou canst grasp with thy understanding. God has nothing so hid as to be beyond the ken of a soul that has the wit to seek it right diligently and with prudence.’
A hard saying this, there is nothing in him so hidden as to be beyond her ken. Yet mark these facts.