The Godhead is an abstract simple thing, omnipotent above all Person as well as having the power of the inseparate three Persons : giving to none, receiving from none, save as therein subsisting. St Dionysius says, ‘ The Godhead has gotten all things.’ The three Persons are in the Godhead ; they reveal of it to creatures and each other as much as they are able to receive. The Father reveals the Godhead to himself and to his Son and Father and Son reveal it to the Holy Ghost and the three Persons reveal it to creatures and the Godhead wantons with the Word and before the Word and above the Word and the Word cannot comprehend it. Were the three Persons undistinguished in the Godhead, the Godhead would not. be revealed at all and creatures would not have been created. The eternal activities are the cause of creatures. The Father reveals the Godhead, the Son reveals the Father, the Holy Ghost reveals them both : This revelation the Godhead gets from things beneath it. The supreme perfection is indigent of creatures. So it befalls from time to time that when the moon, shooting below the sun, monopolises all the sunlight and the sun is said to be eclipsed, that then a star exerts its force upon the moon and drawn it off the sun; thus the sun owes its light to things beneath it.
The soul gets from the Trinity those finite things commensurate with her powers. Out of the naked Godhead there shines into the simple being of the soul a single light invisible to her powers, both high and low. For though the Godhead has in it all things, it has them all in one, not piecemeal. It begets not, so it is not Father ; it receives not, so it is not Son nor Holy Ghost. The three Persons are God in person and in nature Godhead. The Godhead shines through the distinction of Persons and through separate creatures down to the very lowest, illuminating them and illuminating itself in itself. And when the soul in her naked essence enters into the Godhead, all things are within her ken even the meanest creature; then she illuminates herself and “ everything in her and discerns in the Godhead the divine nature and in the variety of Persons she loses her name and the Persons lose their names in the unity and everything the unity compre- hends loses its name in the unity. And here the soul, as good now as her naught, both draw together to their close in the God- head’s naught, where her powers are useless. As St Diony- sius observes, ‘ God passes away.’ By which he signifies that the
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soul in her naked essence has escaped her powers. Her powers have lost their deity, and the pure substance of their deity as well, to the Persons and their powers, which powers react upon the essence by hindering the swing-back of the Three to unity. Here love loses her name and all things in the Godhead’s naught, now the soul has flowed into her aught. In the Godhead’s naught, the Father has his consummation and the three Persons their one nature wherein they give to creatures the perfection of their created aught and the soul in her aught in the Godhead’s naught courses through all things all undisturbed in her being’s aught. As St Dionysius says, ‘ The soul is not moved in her naught in the Godhead’s naught neither does the soul move the Godhead in its naught. There she is so great . . ., she flows to him as it were in a light.’ St Dionysius says, ‘The Godhead has come to naught for the powers of the soul cannot comprehend it.”
Blessed and praised be the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in the unity of their divine nature. Blessed and praised be Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, one Person of divine nature and human nature.
The Soul’S Rage
The soul is furious for self-knowledge. Her face is lit with | passion, red with rage for the arrears withheld from her in God, | because she is not all God is by nature, because she has not all | God has by nature.
The masters say there is no fiercer appetite than a friend’s desire to possess his friend and all that he possesses. The soul proclaims her rage so boundless she cannot be appeased by him. The bonds of love are all too cruel for her. Alas! she cries, who shall console me? My misery is too deep. Were I the one creator, beginningless and endless, and had I made creatures and were he soul like me, then I would go straight out of my estate and let her enter in and be God while I was creature; and if it were an obstacle to God to get his being from me, he would be welcome to efface me for I would perish sooner than be a hindrance to him. But seeing it is common to everything © created to have somewhat of the eternal in man’s nature ever present in it, therefore I know not where to turn to find a place. So I take refuge in myself and there I find the lowest place, aye, one more base than hell for even thence do my shortcomings hound me. It seems I cannot then escape myself. Here I sit me down and herein will I stay. And I beseech thee, Lord, that thou never callest me to mind and forbiddest any creature ever
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. to console me and deniest to my powers that ever any one of them should come before thy face, lest I offend thee. So I go out and. let the soul go in.
The third rage of the soul is that she should be God and that there should not be a single creature, like when God was in his eternity ere he created creature, so that she may enjoy God- nature in its simplieity as he did before. But then his love were lacking to him, for it is the nature of good things to communicate themselves.
Fourthly, she rages to be absolutely nothing but the naked ‘essence, there being neither God nor creature. She asks, What ) is the good of the three Persons in the Godhead and what is the | use of creatures? But hold, she cries, except for them there
' would be no creatures. That must be the reason why there are
| three Persons in the Godhead: they are the cause of creatures.
| God is God-exalted: the creatures he has made cannot exalt
‘him. All that creatures do to God is themselves: such glory as
\ they can give to God is the same as they are.
The Twofold Way!
Ego sum via, veritas et vita, “I am the way, the truth and the life,’ says our Lord Jesus Christ. Mark specially the words, ‘I am the way.’ In a twofold sense we take Christ as the way: according to his manhood and according to his Godhead. His manhood was the way of our own manhood. This we have to follow, both the counsel of perfection as a whole and also in its parts. If but one of our members leaves the way of his example we are thereby deformed. St Paul declares we ought to live so that God may find in us the perfect reflection of all his divine works, i.e. we must copy the exemplar he has set before us. That is true spiritual life. But this is greatly hampered by numerous defects ; mainly numerous interior shortcomings due to the powers of our soul being disorderly. The joy of the soul should be so set upon its proper work that no created things can gladden her but only the fact that her consciousness is clear. As Christ said to his disciples, ‘ Rejoice not in anything except in this, that your names are written in the book of life.” And the fear of the soul should be so well controlled that she fears nothing under God either for person or possessions, nor aught that may be inflicted upon her whether by God or creature. And similarly with the
1 See Pfeiffer, Zt. f. dtsch. Alt., Bd. 8 (2), 1850, and Preger, Zt. f. hist. Theol., _ Bd. 34, 1864 (two versions). Also Jostes, Nos. 18 and 19. For authorship sce Preger’s Geschichte, vol. i, p. 318.
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other powers, desire and thought. The entire soul, in short, has
to be gathered up into the impartible simplicity of her will and her
will must fly at the highest good and fasten itself thereto. But
S Paul says, * He who is fastened to God becomes one spirit with im.
Behold how rich is the spirit grown thus one spirit with God ! No things can enrich it though it hold sway over them all. For things are necessaries whereas its riches consist in its dwelling in a nature superior to creaturely necessity. He who has nothing and needs nothing is richer than the man who possesses all things with necessity. St Paul says: ‘ Our sufficiency is in God alone whose able ministers we are.’
Nor do the virtues enrich the spirit. Doctors declare that it is not, properly speaking, the virtues which enrich the spirit but the fruit of virtues. The soul has virtues of necessity. But virtues being a necessity, the spirit is of necessity not enriched by them. The utmost a spirit can attain to in this body is to dwell in a condition beyond the necessity of virtues; where goodness as a whole comes natural to it so that not only is it possessed of virtues but virtue is part and parcel of it: it is virtuous not of necessity but of innate good nature. Arrived at this the soul has traversed and transcended all necessity for virtues : they are now intrinsic in her. Now she has reached the goal whither the virtues merely pointed her, to wit, the infusion of the Holy Ghost. This is the fruit of virtue ; this alone serves to enrich the spirit. Concerning this St Paul says: ‘ Put on the new man, Christ,’ who was in this way our way.
The other way is the way of his Godhead.
— What way has the Godhead and where can it go seeing it is in all places; and wherewithal does it go seeing that it has no feet nor anything bodily ?
—The way of the Godhead is the unity wherein the three Persons run together into one essence. The going of the Persons consists in their mutual knowing and loving, each knowing and loving itself in the others. Thus do the Persons walk together in unity.
The feet with which the Godhead enters the Persons and the Persons the essence are: the one foot of the Godhead is foresight of all things ; the other, pleasure in the things eternally foreseen, for God enjoys eternalwise the contingency of things. This refers to the eternal image. He enjoys only good in all things : image of all things which is very God.
It may be questioned, What pleasure does God enjoy ?
All things must needs please him for he who saw was God and what he saw was likewise God. In their eternal image which is God himself, God saw himself and saw things as a whole. God