10 MEISTER ECKHART him. He offers us the drink he drank himself. He asks nothing of us but what he has already done or suffered. We ought to suffer gladly, for God did nothing else while he sojourned upon earth. May we in God’s nature so transcend and lose our human nature, all our weakness, that nothing should be found in us but good alone. So help us God. Amen.
LVIII 1 DIVINE UNDERSTANDING Lord God Almighty, all things are in thy power. Power and lordship lie in two things, in freedom and in the possession of many good things in peace. What is freedom? A heathen philosopher says, ‘ That thing is free which cleaves to naught and to which naught cleaves.’ So there is nothing free but the first cause, that is, the cause of all things.
To lordship belongs the ])ossession of many good things and beautiful. God is all good in all; hence he possesses himself in all. What God has, that is he in all. The love and will, the wisdom, the goodness we say that he has, these he is. If God is this, he is not naught, for God was prior to naught. God has no before nor after: but naught has a sequel; its sequel is aught. Naught’s foregocr was God, for lie was prior to naught. Naught’s issue is aught. God then has no before nor after. Lo, the cause of all things, self-subsistcnt, discriminate light which is himself! God is a light shining in itself in silent stillness. The one light, the one essence itself, which knows and understands itself. The understanding of this unique light is the light from the light, it is the eternal Person of the Son from the eternal Person of the Father. The Father spoke one Word, namely, his Son. In this only AVord he spoke all things. The Word of the Father is none other than his understanding of himself. The understanding of the Father understands that he understands, and that his under- standing understands is the same as that he is who is understanding. That is, the light from the light.
Job says, God spake one Word; this was his own conception of himself: it was his Son. In this one conception he conceives all things; he sees them as issuing from nothing. They are that in themselves. But as subsisting eternally in him, they are without themselves. What they were (without) themselves, was he him- self: God is nothing but God, for God is without other. All creatures are a light, for they are conceived in the light of unity ' See Pfeiffer, Zt.J. dtsch. Alt., Bd. 8 (2), 1850. For authorship see Preger’? Qeachichte, p. 319.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 147 and eternity. Creatures flowing forth as light reveal the hidden light. As St James says, ‘ Every good gift and every perfeet gift come down from above from the Father of lights.’ We may deduce from this that all things are one light radiated by the Father for the purpose of revealing his own hidden light. And as all things have been one liglit proceeding forth, so also they are all one light which is flowing back, if they turn not away there- from of their own free will. Those who are steadfast in the face of multiplicity, behold wliat light and grace are revealed to them! For the sovran good is so ordered towards the soul that she receives it not except by means. As St Dionysius says, ‘ The means is light: grace that illumines understanding.’ What is understanding? Understanding means seeing a thing quite clearly and without mistake. St Dionysius says, ‘ Disengage thy- self entirely from things if thou wouldst understand the highest good, God namely.’ VVliat are wc to understand by God? That he is the one power. Let us therefore unify ourselves so that this one power may energise in us. He is also the good which moves things towards their good, namely himself, albeit he himself remains unmoved. And lie is perfect simplicity; and the simpler the soul is the better she understands his simplicity. How can we be perfectly simple? By departing from things and from our- selves, and knowing our own mind and all the working of the powers of the soul, except the chief one, understanding: leave that to God alone. The passive soul stands to lose all this and leave God to work without hindrance; then he begets his perfect likeness in her and conforms her to himself. Then she understands with him and loves with him. This is perfection. It is sometimes asked. Do we love God with the love wherewith the Father and the Son love one another? Let us consider.
Two kinds of love belong to us. One is the virtue. In this love we go on growing and any good we do in this love wins us eternal merit. But the love of the Father and the Son knows no increase for it is the Holy Ghost. Thus our love is as nothing compared with the love of the Father and the Son: it is the virtue that we grow with. The other love which is in us is the love of the Father and the Son. As St Paul says, ‘ God’s love is poured into our heart.’ In giving us his love God has given us his Holy Ghost so that wc can love him with the love wherewith he loves himself. We love God with his own love; awareness of it deifies us.
Intuition of the Sovran Good, that is God! To have that is to have the life most worth of any creature. God is willing his own clear conception and his own delight. What is willing in the Godhead? It is the Father watching the play of his own nature.
148 MEISTER ECKHART What is this play? It is his eternal Son. There has always been this play going on in the Father-nature. Play and audience are the same. The Father’s view of his own nature is his Son. The Father embraces his own nature in the quiet darkness of his eternal essence which is known to none except himself. The glance returned by his own nature is his eternal Son. So the Son embraces the Father in his nature for he is the same as his Father in his nature. Thus from the Father’s embrace of his own nature there comes this eternal playing of the Son. This play was played eternally before all creatures. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, ‘ Prior to creatures, in the eternal now, I have played before the Father in his eternal stillness.’ The Son has eternally been playing before the Father as the Father has before his Son. The playing of the twain is the Holy Ghost in whom they both disport themselves and he disports himself in both. Sport and players are the same. Their nature proceeding in itself. ‘ God is a fountain flowing into itself,’ as St Dionysius says. The Father has eternally been loving himself in his Son just as the Son has been loving himself in the Father eternally. Their mutual love is the Holy Ghost: the third Person, who proceeds from the other two as love. The essence of the Godhead begets not. The Father’s Person begets the Person of the Son eternally and together they pour forth their Holy Ghost: their mutual love. Father and Son are the pouring-in and the Holy Breath is the thing inpoured, identical in nature Avith them both. Did the essence of the Deity beget there would be more than one essence; but there is not. There is one essence which gives all things life and being, for the Son is born out of the heart of the Father eternally and shall bring back into it again all things which issued forth therefrom in him. As (Christ declares, ‘ When I am exalted I will draw all things to me.’ The Floly Ghost proceeded forth as love to make our spirits one with him. The Son takes back with him all the things that issued forth in him and the Holy Ghost returns with all that he expired. St Dionysius says, ‘ Son and Holy Spirit are the light of the God-bearing Godhead.’ St Philip cried, ‘ Lord, show us the Father and wc shall be satisfied.’ Our Lord answered and said, ‘ Philip, he who seeth me seeth my lather.’ The Son revealed the mysteries of the Father for he was like him in all things and of one nature with him. Nothing satisfies the soul except the Father who is altogether good and absolutely simple. The more simple the soul the more like God she is. God spake never a word but one: his simple understanding. If the soul is to be simple she must withdraAv from multi- plicity into his one conception. That can happen here only noAV and then.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS The soul has three understandings. First, the understanding of things that are above her. Next, the understanding of herself. From this knowledge she passes to the third: the one alone. Therein she loses herself speaking never a word but possessing herself in silence for God has rapt ht^r up above herself to him; she is not and knows not by herself. What she understands she understands with him and even this she must forgo, must leave to that wherewith she understands it. As St Dionysius says, ‘ Make thyself passive, void of definition. One single glimpse of the abstraetion that God is, more unifies the soul with God than all the works of holy Christendom.’
Try diligently, therefore, to get some grasp of truth: in the conception of it thine own wont is altogetlier lost and thou dost live in truth. Those exalted ones who stand therein can never be disjoined from God. They are the blessed who know God in himself eternally. God is unchangeable, so these can never more be separated from him. It behoves us therefore to depart from all unlikencss to our highest good.
LIX THE JUST LIVES IN EI'ERNITY Justua in perpetuum vivet apud dominum est mersce cjus {Sap, Sie). We read to-day in the epistle the wise man’s words, ‘ The just lives in eternity.’ I have defined elsewhere what a just man is, but here I say in another sense, that man is just {i.e, righteous) who is informed with and transformed into justice (righteousness). The just lives in God and God in him, for God is born in the just and the just in God: at every virtue of the just God is born and is rejoiced, and not only every virtue but every action of the just wrought out of the virtue of the just and in justice; thereat God is glad, aye, thrilled with joy, there is nothing in his ground that docs not dance for joy. To unen- lightened people this is matter for belief but the illumined know The just seeks nothing in his work; only thralls and hirelings ask anything for work, or work for any why. If thou wouldst be informed with, transformed into, righteousness, have no ulterior purpose in thy work; form no idea in thee in time or in eternity, not reward nor happiness nor this nor that, for verily all such w^orks are dead. Believe me, the idea of God in thee, if thou dost work with that in view, means death to all thy works; they are good works spoilt and thou dost sin to boot, for thou doest like the gardener who first plants the garden and then roots up the trees but still expects a crop. So thou dost MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART throw away good work. If thou wouldst live and have thy work live also thou must be dead to all things and reduced to naught. It belongs to creature to make aught from aught, but God’s idiosyncrasy is making aught from naught, wherefore, if God is to make aught of thee or in thee, thou must first come to naught; so enter thou into thine own ground and work; works wrought by thee there arc all living.
He says, ‘ his reward is with the Lord.’ lie says with, meaning that the reward of the just is where God is himself; that the happiness of the just and God’s happiness arc one; the righteous are in bliss where God is in bliss. St John says, ‘ The Word was with God.’ He says xmth because God is righteousness and the righteous are like him. Whoever is in righteousness is in God and is God.
Further, with regard to tlie word, just. lie does not say, the just man or just angel, he simply says, the just. The Father begets his Son the just and the just his Son; every virtue of the just, every act done by the just, is nothing but the Son being begotten by the Father. The Father never stops, he is always trying to beget his Son in me, according to the scriptures: ‘ For Sion’s sake will I not hold my peaee and for Jerusalem I will not rest till the righteous is revealed and shincth like the lightning.’ Sion is the height of living, the contemplative life, and Jerusalem the profoundest calm. Not for the most exalted life nor for the deepest peace will God desist until the riglitcous is revealed. God and God alone works in the just. If thy works are prompted by anything external, then thy works are dead. For thy works to be living it must be God that prompts them in the innermost recesses of thy soul: that is thy life and that alone.
Further I declare: if it seems to thee that one virtue is greater than another, if thou dost cultivate it more and value it above the rest, then thou art not loving it as it is in righteousness nor is it God who is working in thee. As long as a man prizes or leans to one virtue more than to another he neither takes nor feels it as it is by rights, and he is not righteous. The just man loves and practises virtue as a whole, in righteousness, as righteousness itself. It says in holy writ: ‘ Before the fabricated world, I am.’ He says, I am before, above. Meaning that in eternity, exalted above time, man does one work with God. People sometimes ask how man can do the work that God was doing a thousand years ago and in a thousand years will be doing still. They cannot under- stand it. But in eternity is no before nor after; the happenings of the past milleimium and the future one and now, in eternity arc all the same. God’s doings of a thousand years ago and now and a thousand years to come are but one single act. It follows that SERMONS AND COLLATIONS the man who is exalted above time into eternity will do with God what he did in the past and also what he does in the next thousand years. This is matter of knowledge to the wise and of belief to fools.
St Paul says, ‘ We are eternally chosen in the Son and we should never rest until we get to be what wc have been in him eternally.’ The Father ceaselessly endeavours to get us born in his Son so that we may be the same as his Son is. The Father is begetting his Son, and in his begetting the Father finds so much peace and pleasure that his entire nature is expended in it. That which is in God moves him to beget; by his ground, his nature and his essence the Father is moved to generation. And you must know, God is born in us as soon as all our soul-powers, which hitherto have been tied and bound, are absolutely free (and passive) and when the mind is stilled and sense troubles us no longer. Then the Father begets in us his Son. Then wc keep as free from forms and images as God, and find ourselves as free from likeness as God is void and free in his very self. When the Father bears his Son in us we shall know the Father with the Son and the Holy Ghost in both of them and the holy Trinity, and therein all things as a mere naught in God. Then time and number are no more. God’s essence neither does nor suffers, nor does his nature suffer, but it works.
Sometimes a light is apparent in the soul and she fondly thinks it is the Son, whereas it is nothing but a light. When the Son reveals himself within the soul the love of the Holy Ghost is revealed at the same time. It is the nature of the Father to beget his Son, and it is of the nature of the Son for me to be begotten in him and in his nature; it is of the nature of the Holy Breath for me to be consumed therein and melted and reduced entirely to love. One who is thus in love and altogether love, will think that God loves none but him and knows no love for anyone nor yet from anyone but him alone.
Some doctors hold that the spirit finds its beatitude in love. Some make him find it in behohling God. I say he finds it not in love nor in gnosis nor in vision. But, it may be asked, has the spirit in eternal life no vision of God? Yes and no. Once born he neither sees nor pays heed to God. But in being born he does see God. The spirit is in bliss then, not in its begetting but as being begotten, for then it lives as the Father lives, impartible, in its abstract and essential nature. Wherefore do thou turn from things and realize thyself in thy naked essence, for outside essence all is accident and the accidental makes for why. Let us live in the eternal, So help us God. Amen.
MEISTER ECKHART LX LIKES LOVE AND UNITE Meister Eckhart says, Likes love and unite with one another; unlikes hate and shun each other. According to one master, no two things arc so unlike as earth and heaven. Earth knew itself by nature alien and unlike to heaven. Wherefore it fled from heaven to the lowest place and there bides still lest haply it draw night at all to heaven. And the celestial nature grew aware that earth had fled and had possessed itself of the lowest place. And that is how the heavens came to empty themselves out into the earth in fruitful wise, indeed the masters say the broad expanse of heaven does not withhold a needle-point in size, it brings itself forth every whit as fruitfulness on earth. So earth is the most fruitful of all mortal creatures.
Likewise I say about the man who has brought himself to naught in himself, in God and in all creatures. That man assumes the lowest place and God is bound to empty himself whole into his soul, else would he not be God. I warrant you by God’s eternal truth, that into any man who is brought low God pours out his whole self in all his might, so utterly that neither of his life, his being, nor his nature, nay, nor of his perfect Godhead, docs he keep aught back, he empties out the whole thereof as fruits into that wight who in abandonment to God assumes the lowest place.
To-day as I pursued my way pondering my discourse and wondering how to make you understand, I hit on an analogy. If yc can follow this my meaning W'^ill be plain and eke the drift of all my teaching. The analogy is with my eye and wood. My eye when it is open is an eye. It is the same eye, shut; and the wood is neither more or less by reason of its seeing. Now mark me well. Suppose my eye, being one and single in itself, falls on the w^ood in seeing, then though each thing stops as it is, yet in the actual seeing they are so far the same that we can argue: my eye is the wood and the wood my eye. Now if the wood were free from matter and wholly immaterial, as my eyesight is, then we could truly say that in my actual vision wood and eye are essen- tially the same. If this is so with corporal things, then how much more with ghostly. Remember, my eye is far more one with some transoceanic sheep’s that I have never seen than with my ear, albeit with this it has organic union. The sheep’s eye works like mine, and therefore I impute to it more unity of action than I can do to eye and ear which have their different functions.
I have often spoken of the light within the soul, which is un- created and eke uncreaturely. It is this light I am so often hinting SERMONS AND COLLATIONS at in my discourses, it is the light which lays straight hold of God, bare and unveiled, as he is in himself; that is to say, it catches him in the act of self-begetting. Hence I can truly say this light is rather one with God than with any of my powers wherewith it has organic union. For know, this light within my soul i^; no better in its essence than the humblest, the grossest of my powers; my sight or my hearing, for example, or any other sense which is the sport of heat and cold, hunger or thirst, seeing that essence is impartible.
Now I maintain, if thou dost turn from thine own self and from created things, then in what measure thou dost this thou dost attain to unity and happiness in thy soul-spark; a thing which is immune from time and space. This spark is opposed to creatures. It has no want but just God, God as he is in himself. Not enough for it the Father or the Son or Holy Ghost, nor even all three Persons, so far as they preserve their several properties. I trow this light would not be satisfied with the alone-begotten fruit of Deity. Nay, more, and even stranger to relate, I warrant you this light is not content with the changeless impartible essence of God, which neither gives nor takes, but wants to find its source; it wants to get into its simple ground, into the silent desert whcrcinto no distinct thing ever pryecl, not Father, Son nor Holy Ghost. At the centre, where no one abides, there this light is quenched in still stronger light, wherein it is more one than in itself, for this ground is the im[)artible stillness, motionless in itself, and by this immobility all things are moved and all those have their life who, rceollceted in themselves, do live the life of mind. May we too live this intellectual life, So help us God. Amen.
LXI THERE COMES FORTH A ROD OUT OF THE ROOT OF JESSE Egredietur virga de radice Jesse et jlos de radice ejus ascendet et requiescet super eum spiritus domini {Isaias Hi, g)- read to-day in the Mass that there comes forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and out of the root conies forth a flower, and on this flower there rests, reposes, the spirit of the Lord. Jesse means a brand, which is burning; it signifies love in the abstract, where it is no more called love, where nothing adventitious exists, and in this ground where as yet nothing grows, it germinates just like, within the root, the coming shoot. The offshoot has three properties: likeness to what it shoots from, the nature of the same, and it is of exactly the same species; thirdly, it is free from all attach- ments, simply an emanation. Thus the Son proceeded from the MEISTER ECKHART Father, as another Person with the Father, albeit in the Father essentially the same. Accordingly he says, ‘ Out of the root came a rod and on the rod came a llower.’ My loving is a heavenly matter, for likes all end in same and the same is in the ground, and a thing that grows out of another is in every respect the same kind. An apple grafted on a pear-tree has the taste of both. It is not so here: this has the llavour of the one alone; itself is not therein and yet it is therein. It could never come out were it not first within in the abstract, in brooding essence. The wine is in the vine: it is and it is not.
I say concerning God’s freedom that it yields no nature save one. God starts with the Son, and the Son is another than the Father who is power, and from them twain there blossoms forth the Holy Ghost. Our philosophers teach that the sun draws the flow’^ers out of the roots through the stem, tirnelcssly wellnigh and too subtly for any eye to follow. The soul, which lias no nature in her ground, the ground of love, where slie is love, emerges from this nature where she is stoied in God. VVhatcviH' enters this being has much the same being. At the coming of the bride he devotes himself to her and works with all his might within his ground, in his innermost, where naught exists, where activity stops altogether. The tree of the Godhead grows in this ground and the Holy Ghost sprouts from its root. The flower that blossoms, love, is the Holy Ghost. In this Holy Ghost the soul flowers with the Father and the Son, and on this flower there rests and reposes the spirit of the Lord. He could not repose had he not rested first upon the Spirit. The Father and the Son rest on the Spirit, and the Spirit reposes upon them as on its cause. What is rest? St Augustine says, rest is complete lack of motion; body and soul bereft of their own nature. One philosopher says, God’s idiosyncrasy is im- mutability. That is, all creatures. Man as trans(;ending motion. Jesse means a fire and a burning; it signifies the ground of divine love and also the ground of the soul. Out of this ground the rod grows, i,e, in the purest and highest; it shoots up out of this virgin soil at the breaking forth of the Son. Upon the rod opens a flower, the flower of the Holy Ghost. We beseech the Lord our God that we may rest in him and he in us to his glory. So help us God. Amen.
LXII WHAT MANNER OF CHILD SHALL THIS BE?
Puis puer isle erit? Etenim manu^ domini erat cum illo {Luc, l^g). ‘ What manner of child shall this be? The hand of the Lord is with him.’ The hand of the Lord means the Holy Ghost, for two SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 155 reasons. First, because work is wrought with the hand; and next, because it is one with the arm and with the body. All human actions start in the heart, extend to the limbs, and are done by the hand; so the seat of the soul being chiefly in the heart, in the heart is the mainspring of licr energies. Likewise it is the Father who is the fount and oi’igin of all divine activity, and the Son is represented by his arm; as it says in the Magnificat, ‘ he hath shewed strength with his arm.’ Divine power proceeds from the body via the arm to the hand, whereby is signified the Holy Ghost, even as the soul which courses through the body and in material things proelaims her ghostly properties. Wherefore we argue that the Holy Ghost is meant by the hand which wrought in this child.
Now mark the state of the soul wherein God is apt to work. He speaks of a ehild, suggCvsting pure joy, an unblemished state. The soul God works in must be pure and clean. A master says, ‘ The eternal wisdom tarries in Zion, her rest is in that pure city ’; Zion meaning a height and a watch-tower (or resting-place). Again, she must be withdrawn (rom mortal, impermanent things. And thirdly, she must be on the watch for coming hindrances. God comes out of kindness because of the love he bears to the soul. He has endowed her with a godly light, the reflection of himself, so that he may be able fri'cly to energise in her in his own likeness. Love cannot be without finding or making alike. Suppose I have bidden a man, unless he have gotten some liking for me, he will never willingly follow me. And so with the soul which follows God; God’s members must all do his bidding whether they want to or no. If they do it reluctantly, then it is painful to him; no work is ever pleasant that is done without liking.
No creature can do more than in her lies. The soul makes headway solely by the light that God has given her, that being her own, presented her by God as a bridal gift. God comes in love with intent that the soul may arise, that in love she may energise above herself. For love cannot be without finding her like or making alike, except in as far as God works in love passing soul. Soul does not ply the work of grace (since that is not her nature) till she is gotten yonder, where God is plying himself, where the work is as noble as the worker, his own nature, to wit. As with light, for example. In wood it produces its like: heat and fire, and the harder the wind blows the fiercer the flame. Now put love for the fire and the Holy Ghost for the wind: the stronger breathes the Holy Ghost the more all-consuming its fire, albeit not sudden; it keeps pace with the growth of the soul. If the whole man were consumed at once it would not be well, for one niight live a thousand years and still go on waxing in love. Light MEISTER ECKHART acts upon flowers, making them grow and bear fruit; in living creatures it makes for life; in man it makes for happiness. This comes by the grace of God which raises the soul to a higher power; for if the soul is to be like God she must transcend herself. Amen.
LXIII ATONEMENT Manete in me {Joh. 15^); beatxis vir^ qui in sapientia morahitur (EccL 1422)* ‘ Abide in me,’ says our Lord Jesus Christ in the gospel; and the other text from the epistle says, ‘ Blessed is the man that shall continue in wisdom.’ Both mean exactly the same thing. Mark then what is required of a man to dwell in him, i.e, in God. He requires three things. First, to renounce himself and all things, not cleaving to aught that is grasped by the senses within nor abiding in any creature existing in time or in eternity. Again, he must love neither this good nor that good: he must love good for good’s sake, since nothing is good or desirable except in so far as God is therein. Wc ought to love things no whit more than just as much as wc love God in them; nor is it right to love God for his heaven’s sake nor for the sake of anything at all except the good he is in his own self. Whoso loves him for aught abides not in him, but abides in the thing he is loving him for. If then ye desire to dwell in him, ye must love him for naught but himself. Thirdly, he must take God not as good nor as right, but he must apprehend him in his pure and virgin substance where he is apprehending himself. Goodness and right are the garment of God which is covering him. Do thou then strip God of all cover- ings: discover him in his vestibule bare, just in his naked self. So shall ye abide in him.
Whoso abides in him thus has live things. First, betwixt him and God there is no difference at all, they are one. Angels arc many, beyond number, they can do nothing without number; they arc numberless because of their simplicity. The three Persons in God, who counts as three, they, again, have number. But betwixt man and God is not alone no difference but no multi- plicity: nothing but one. The second is, that he is conceiving his happiness in that same virgin nature where God is conceiving himself and conserving himself. Thirdly, his knowledge is one with God-knowledge, and this knowing consists in co-operation and con-sciencc in God’s operation and science, to wit, the actual energy and gnosis at work towards the end that God may be ever being born in man.
How is God ever being born in man? Look you. Suppose a SERMONS AND COLLATIONS man hews out and brings to light the divine form which God has wrought into his nature, then God’s image in him stands revealed. Birth must be taken in the sense of revelation, the Son being said to be born of the Father because he reveals the Father as father. So the more and the more clearly God’s image shows in man the more evidently God is born in him. And by God’s eternal birth in him we understand that his image stands fully revealed. The fifth thing is that this man is ever being born in God. How can a man be ever being born in God? Lo! by revealing this form in a man the man grows like unto God, for the form of man is the same as the image of God whieh is God in every respect. The more he is like God the more he is one. So man’s eternal birth in God we understand to mean ideal man refulgent in God’s image, which is God in form and matter, wherewith man is the same. This oneness of man and God is a matter of likeness of form, man being Godlike in form. So when we talk of man being one with God and take him to be one with God by nature, we refer to the exemplary element in him which is on a par with God, and not to his created nature. When we look at him as God we are blind to him as creature; remembering his deity we forget his creature-nature; withal this same oblivion must not be construed to mean the negation of his created nature, rather the affirmation of God in him whom we are regarding as God. Christ, for example, who is both God and man: what time we arc considering his manhood we disregard his Godhead; not that we are denying him his Godhood, we simply ignore it for the nonce. And hence the explanation of St Augustine’s dictum, ‘ What a man loves a man is.’ If he loves a stone he is that stone, if he loves a man he is that man, if he loves God — nay, I durst not say more; were I to say, he is God, ye might stone me. I do but teach you the scriptures. Man being all meet for God is conformed to, in- formed with and transformed into, the divine uniformity wherein he is one with God. All this man gets by abiding within.