workman designs to carry out in us to his glory, but so to maintain ourselves that the material is always ready for the workman to do his work in us. St Paul says, ‘ The spirit of the Lord descends from on high in secret, working in whom it will and when and where and how it will in him in whom it meets no hindrance.’ In the children of God. They are led by this spirit.—It is thus ye shall know yourselves. Next, we have to know God. To this St Dionysius exhorted one of his disciples, saying, ‘ Up, friend, divest thyself of things and put off thyself that thou mayst under- stand the Sovran Good.’ Of it three things are predicated. F irst, it is a unique force entire in everything; next, a unique good embracing everything. (Thirdly) to know God really ye must, know him as the unknown. So Dionysius says.
God’s will is our welfare, and our welfare consists in knowing God and doing accordingly. Here timorousness mutters in the soul, both she will and she will. not. And hard on this comes rage of soul. When she divines that it remains for her to be somewhat that he is not, she is transported with ire. She would sooner come to naught than have or take aught that belongs to him. ‘Lord,’ she cries, ‘my welfare lies in thy never calling me to mind; and forbid, I pray thee, any creature ever to console me. I rejoice that my powers never come before thy face.’
See what the soul means by her strange words: ‘my welfare lies in thy never calling me to mind.’ She wots right well that she has never been one instant out of his mind and that is her felicity. She begs not to be comforted by any creature, because she is in indigence right comfortless where her disconsolateness is her one consolation. And when she says her powers come not before his face? Observe what God’s face is. We see ourselves best in what is called our face. So too where God is manifest to himself in the mysterious stillness of his own essence. This revelation is called the face of the Godhead. The soul is well aware that, accompanied by her powers, she can never enter the absolute stillness where he is manifest to himself. Hence she desires her powers not to come before his face, i.e. his self-revelation. See, her powers halt at its reflection in the Trinity and only the pure essence of her spirit is flashed from the stillness of her own power straight into this perfect revelation. As a master says: ‘ Where pure and purified are one the powers of the soul are at an end.’ Meaning that in the one perfect nature the pure nature of the spirit transcends all its powers. St Paul says, ‘ He who is joined to God is one spirit with him.” Amen.
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St John Says, ‘I Saw the Word in God’
St John says, ‘I saw the Word in God.’ God is abstract being, pure perception, which is: perceiving itself in itself. St John means that the Son is in the Father, in his nature. ‘I saw the Word with God.’ Here he is referring to the intellect which, flowing into God eternally, proceeded forth from God in distinction of Person, namely, the Son. ‘I saw the Word before God.’ This means that the Son is ever being born of the Father and that he is the image of the Father. ‘In the Word there is only the Word,’ refers to the eternal emanation of creatures in the Word. ‘I saw the Word under God’; the Son become man, as God said, “I have loved you in the reflection of my darkness.’ God’s dark- ness is his nature which is unknowable. Good people know it not and no creature can divine it; therefore it is a darkness. While God was flowing in his own darkness the Son was not distinct from him. In the darkness of his nature the Father flowed as Person so far as he was pregnant. ' The Father gave his Son birth and gave him his own nature; he gave him not his Person: his nature he can give away but he can give to none his Person for that is the product of his unborn essence. The Father spoke himself and all creatures in his Son; the Father spoke himself to all creatures in his Son. The Father turning back into himself speaks himself in himself ; he flows back into himself with all — creatures. As Dionysius says, ‘ God proceeded into himself,’ mean- ing that his hidden nature suffices him, which is concealed from creatures. The soul cannot follow him into his nature, except he absorb her altogether, and then in him she is made dark of all created lights. The darkness of creatures is their incomprehensibility in their simple nature, that is, in the nothing from which they were created. In this uncreated light they discern his uncreatedness. Into his uncreatedness they flow in the reflection of his darkness.
—‘ Tell me, good Sir, do Father, Son and Holy Ghost speak the same word in the Godhead or has each a different word ? ’—In the Godhead there is but one word ; in it the Father in the Godhead speaks into his unborn essence and into his born essence, the Father flowing into his Son with all that he is and the Son speaks the same word, and the Father and the Son flow into the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost speaks the same word. They speak this one simple word in their essence and each speaks the same word in his own Person, and in their common nature they discourse the truth and the Persons receive the essence as it is essentially. Yet the Persons receive from one another. They bow down to
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the essence in praise, lauding the essence ; and the unborn essence pronounces its unborn word in the Persons, lauding the Persons, and the Persons receive the essence every whit and pass it on to one another. This unborn essence is self-sufficient, without birth and without activity. Birth and activity are in the Persons. The Persons say they are the truth and that creatures have none of the truth. When the soul attains to this divine speech she speaks this very truth and is the Deity to every creature as well as to herself. This comes of her indivisible nature and therein creatures are a matter of the will. The bad are bad and the good good, the Persons preserving justice in the Godhead. They give the bad ‘their due and the good theirs.
St Dionysius says, ‘ God is the Prime Cause, and God has fashioned all things for himself who is the cause of all; and his works are all wrought in the likeness of the First Cause.’ Father and Son show forth the first cause, and the Son is playing in the Father with all things for he proceeded forth from him. The Son plays before Father with all things, the Son plays below the Father with all things. The Father begat the Son with his Godhead and with all things. The Father begat his Son in his Godhead with all things. The Father begat his Son into his Godhead with all things. The Godhead is the several Persons and the fullness of the Persons. The Godhead is not given to any thing. On coming to its knowledge the soul sees God and glancing back into herself she sees that the Godhead is in all things. Receiving into her the likeness of the creator she creates what she will but cannot give it essence: she gives it form and is herself its matter and its eternal activities are in her; these are in the eternal birth. Its temporal activities are in time, where God gives his works essence, form and matter out of nothing, which the soul is unable to do; God reduces his works to the unity of Christ and this order shall- not pass away but shall be raised up to the glory of the one. Soul, transcending order, enters the naked Godhead where she is seen when God is seen in the soulas God. This soul has God as God in her, she has gotten in her the image of her creator.
Now mark the difference between the work of God and creature.
God has done all things for himself, for he is the universal cause and all his works are wrought in the likeness of the first cause and creatures all work according to the likeness of the first cause. That is the intention they have towards God. God made all things from nothing, infusing into them his Godhead so that all things are full of God. Were they not full of the Godhead they would all perish. The Trinity does all the work in things and creatures exploit the power of the Trinity, creatures working as creatures and God as God, while man mars the work so far as his intention is
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evil. When a man is at work his body and soul are united, for body cannot act without the soul. When the soul is united with ‘ God she does divine work, for God cannot work without the soul and the soul cannot work without God. God is the soul’s life just as the soul is the body’s, and the Godhead is the soul of the three Persons in that it unifies them and in that it has dwelt in them for ever. And since the Godhead is in all things it is all sdul’s soul. But in spite of its being all soul’s soul, the Godhead is not creatures’ soul in the way it is the Trinity’s. God does one work with the soul; in this work the soul is raised above herself. The work is creature, grace to wit, which bears the soul to God. It is nobler than the soul as admitting her to God; but the soul is the nobler in her admissibility. This creature which has neither form nor matter nor any being of its own, translates the soul out of her natural state into the supernatural.
To his eternally elect God gives his spirit as it is, without means; they cannot miss it. Creatures God is going to make at his good pleasure he has known eternally as creatures, for in God they are creatures albeit nothing in themselves : they are uncreated creatures. Creatures are always more noble in God than they are in themselves. In God the soul shall see her own perfection without image and shall see the difference between things un- created and created and she shall distinguish God from Godhead, nature from Person, form from matter. The Father is the begin- ning of the Godhead, he is the well-spring in the Godhead, over- flowing into all things in eternity and time. , The Godhead is a heaven of three Persons. The Father is God and a Person not born nor proceeding from any ; and the Son is God and a Person and born of the Father ; and the Holy Ghost is God and a Person proceeding from both. St Paul speaks of the uncreated spirit flowing into the created spirit (or mind). This meeting which befalls the created spirit is her saving revelation ; it happens in the soul who breaks through the boundaries of God to lose herself in his uncreated naught. The three Persons are one God, one in nature, and our nature is shadowing God’s nature in perpetual motion ; having followed him from naught to aught and into that which God is to himself, there she has no motion of her naught. Aught is suspended from the divine essence; its progression is matter, wherein the soul puts on new forms and: puts off her old ones. The change from one into the other is her death: the one she doffs she dies to, and the one she dons she lives in.
St John says, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in God: they are buried where Christ is buried.. Upon which St Dionysius com- ments thus: Burial in God is the passage into uncreated life. The power the soul goes in is her matter, which power the soul
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can never approfound for it is God and God is changeless, albeit the soul changes in his power. As St Dionysius says, ‘ God is the mover of the soul.’ Now form is a revelation of essence. St Dionysius says, ‘Form is matter’s aught. Matter without form is naught.’ So the soul never rests till she is gotten into God who is her first form and creatures never rest till they have gotten into human nature: therein do they attain to their original form, God namely. As St Dionysius hath it, ‘ God is the beginning and the middle and the end of all things.’