‘ Faithful servant, I will set thee over all my goods,’ ix. the manifold goodness of God in creatures will I set thee over. Secondly, ‘ I will set thee over all my goods ’ means: at the source of creature happiness, in the pure unity of God himself wherein he has his own felicity. In other words: God being the good, in that sense will he set us above his manifold goodness. Thirdly, he will set us over all his goods, means: above all name- ables, all effables, all so-called good things and all intelligibles. Thus he sets us over all his goods.
‘ Father, I pray thee, make them one as I and thou arc one.’ Where two grow one, one loses its nature. Ergo, for God and the soul to be one the soul has to lose her own liic and nature. They arc one as regards what is left. Hut for them to be one, one must lose its identity and the other must keep its identity. Then they arc the same. Now, the Holy Ghost says: ‘ I pray thee, let them be one as we are one. I pray thee, make them the same in us.’
When I pray for aught my prayer goes for naught; when I pray for naught I pray as I ought. When I am one with that wherein are all things, past, present and to come, all the same distance and all just the same, then they are all in God and all in me. There is no lliought of Henry or of Conrad. Praying for aught save God alone is idolatry and unrighteousness. They pray aright who pray in spirit and in truth. When praying for someone, for Henry or Conrad, I pray at my weakest. When praying for no one I pray at my strongest, and when I want nothing and make no request I am praying my best, for in God is no Henry nor no Conrad. To pray to God for aught save God is wrong and faithless, and, as it were, an imperfection.. For to set up something beside God is, as I lately said, but to make naught of God and God of naught. Whoso is far and foreign to himself as the chief angel of the Seraphim is far from him, that man owns that same angel just as God docs and is God, and that’s the naked truth, as God is God. ‘ God is love, and he that is in love is in God and God in him.’
May all of us attain this love whereof I speak. So help us our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
28 MEISTER ECKHART VI JESUS WENT INTO THE TEMPLE Intravit Jesus in templum dei et ejiciehat omnes vendentes et emeyites etc. (Matt. 21 We read in the gospel that our Lord went into the temple and cast out all them that sold and bought and said to them that sold doves: ‘ Take these things hence! ’ It was his p\irpose to have the temple cleared, as though he said: This temple is by rights mine own and I want it to myself to be lord therein. This temple that God means to rule in is man’s soul which he has made exactly like himself, as saith the Lord, ‘ We will make man in our image and likeness.’ Which he did. So like himself God made man’s soul that nothing else in earth or heaven resembles God so closely as the human soul. God wants this temple cleared of everything but himself. This is because this temple is so agreeable to him and he is so comfortable in this temple when he is there alone.
Now consider who they were that sold and bought therein and who they are still. Mark me well: 1 name none but the virtuous. Yet, even so, I can point out who the merchants were, and still arc to this day, that thus buy and sell: those whom our Lord drove forth and cast out. He still does so to those that buy and sell in this temple: he would not leave a single one therein. Lo, they arc merchants all who, while avoiding niorhd sin and wishing to be virtuous, do good works to the glory of God, fasts, for example, vigils, prayers, etc., all of them excellent, but do them with a view to God’s giving tliem somewhat, doing to thein somewhat, they wish for in return. All such arc merchants. This is plain to see, for they reckon on giving one thing for another and so to barter with our Lord, though they are mistook as to the bargain. For all they have and have the power to do, they have from God and do effect by means of God alone. God has no call to do to them or give to them anything unless he choose to. For what they arc they are from God and what they have they get from God, not from themselves. God is in no wise boimden to requite their acts or gifts, except he care to do so of his own free will, apart from what they do or give; for they give not of their own nor do they act of their own selves, as God says, ‘ Without me ye can do nothing.’ They be sorry fools who bargain with our Lord like this; they know little or nothing of the truth. God cast them out of the temple and drove them forth. For light and darkness cannot dwell together. God is the truth, he is the light itself. When God enters the temple he drives out ignorance and darkness, revealing himself in the light of truth. Merchants go when the SERMONS AND COIXATIONS 29 truth appears, for the truth needs no tnerchanting. God seeks not his own, he is perfectly free in all his acts, which he does in true love. So does the man who is at one with God: he is perfectly free in all his deeds; he docs them out of love and without why, just to glorify God, not seeking his own therein, God energising in him.
Moreover I maintain: as long as we work at all for gain, while we desire aught God may have given or may give, we rank with these merchants. Woiildst thou be free from any taint of trade? then do what good thou canst and do it solely to God’s glory, as exempt from it th 3 ^self as though thou wert not. Ask nothing whatever in return. So done 1 hy works are ghostly and godly; the merchants are driven from the tem])le and God is there alone when one has no intention but God. Behold thy temple cleared of merchants. The man who is intent on God alone and on God’s glory, verily he is free from any taint of commerce in his deeds, nor is he in any wise self-seeking.
T have related further how Jesus said to them that sold doves: ‘ Take these things hen(*e! ’ These peoj3lc‘ he did not drive forth nor rebuked them harshly: he said quite mildly: ‘ Take these things away! ’ As though to say, it is not wrong albeit a hindrance to the pure and simple truth. These are virtuous folk, working for God impersonally though subject to personal limitations, to time and numljer, to before and after. Their activities keep them from the highest truth, from being absolutely free like our Lord Jesus Christ who is receiving himself afresh incessantly and a-temporally from his heavenly Father and in that same now is borne back again unceasingly with praise and thanksgiving into the Father, perfect, vicing with him in his majesty. Even so, to be receptive to the sovran truth, a man must be without before and after, without the hindrance of any acts or images that are wiihin his ken, but freely receiving the divine gift in the perennial now and bearing it back unhindered in th(‘ liglit of the same with praise and thanksgiving in our Lord Jesus Christ. Then the doves arc gone, to wit, the obstacle of ownership in actions, good in themselves, wdicrcin one has any self-interest at all. ‘ Tak(‘ these things hence! ’ said our Lord, as though to say, they are blameless but tliey ar(‘ in the way.
When the tem])le is free from obstructions (possessions and strangers to wit), it looks right beautiful, shilling out bright and clear above cver^dJiing God has created and through everything (iod has created, so that none (*an compare with it but the uncreated God alone. In very truth, there is none like this tein]Jc but the uncreated God himself. Nothing below the angels is the least like this temple. The very highest angels arc the same as this 30 MEISTER ECKHART temple of the human soul in many ways, but not entirely. This partial likeness with the soul they have in love and knowledge. But there is a limit set them which they cannot pass. The soul goes on beyond. Suppose the soul to be identical with the highest human being here in time, natheless that man has the potential freedom to soar to untold heights above the angels in the now of each, new without number, that is, without mode: above the angelic mode and every created intelligence. God who alone is uncreated is her sole peer in freedom, though not in uncrcated- ness, for the soul is created. Emerging into the unclouded light she in her naught leaps so far into his naught that she is helpless to regain the state of her created aught. God with his uncreatedness supports her nothing-at-all, preserving the soul in his all-in-all. The soul has dared to come to naught and, failing by herself to reach herself, she swoons away ere God comes to her rescue. It must needs be so. ^ Jesus, as 1 said, went into the temple and east out them that bought and sold and he began to command the rest, ‘ Take these things hence! ’ The words I have here read, ^ Jesus went in and began to say, “ Take these things hence! ” ’ Observe, there was no one there but Jesus when he began to speak in the tenij^lc of the soul. Be sure of this: while anyone else is speaking ii^ the temple {i,e, the soul) but Jesus, Jesus is silent, as thougli he were away, nor is he at home in the soul while she has strange guests to talk to. For Jesus to s])eak in the soul slic must be all alone, and she has to be quiet to hear what he says. VV(*11 then, he comes in and starts speaking. What is it he says? He says what he is. What is he, then? lie is the Word of the Father. In this same Word the Father speaks himself, all his divine nature, all that God is, just as he knows it, and he knows it as it is, for he is perfect in knowledge and j)ower. It follows that he is ])crfcet in s])eeeh too. In pronouncing the Word he utters himself and all things in another Person to whom he gives the nature that he has himself, and speaks all intelligences in echo of the actual Word, accord- ing to the indwelling image; like the sun-rays shining forth, so each (intelligence) is a word in itself, not the same in all respects as the Word, but: they have the power to receive by grace the same nature as the actual Word, and this Word as it is in itself the Father sj)oke entire by the Word and everything in that Word.
If this is what the Father said, then what is Jesus saying in the soul? As I have told: the Father speaks his Word; he speaks in this Word and no otherwhere, and Jesus speaks in the soul. His manner of speaking is to reveal himself and what the Father said in him, so far as the soul is able to receive it. He reveals the SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 31 Father in the soul in infinite power. Experiencing this power in the Son the soul waxes powerful in like emanation till she is the same in might and virtue and every perfection, so that neither joy nor sorrow nor aught that God has made in time avails to destroy that soul, she standing staunch as it were in this divine power against which all else is insignificant and futile.
Secondly: Jesus reveals himself in the soul in infinite wisdom, himself to wit, the wisdom wherein the Father knows himself in full paternal power. The very Word, whieh is wisdom itself, and all that is therein, is, at the same time, one alone. When wisdom is in union with the soul, doubt, error and illusion arc entirely removed, she is set in the bright pure light of God himself, as saith the prophet, ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see light.’ Then God is known by God in the soul; she discerns with his wisdom both herself and all things. She knows not this same wisdom with herself, but with this widsom she discerns the Father fruitful in travail and his real being in impartible oneness void of all distinctions.
Jesus manifests himself further in infinite suavity and fullness in all receptive hearts. When Jesus reveals himself in this plenitude of sweetness, uniting with the soul, then on this amiable tide the soul floats into herself and out of herself and beyond the things of grace, back in unmitigated power into her first source. Thus the outward man is obedient, even unto death, to the inner man now established in peace in the service of God for ever.
May Jesus enter into us and clear out and east away all hindrances of soul and body to the end that we arc one with him here upon earth and there in heaven. So help us God. Amen.
VII THE SONS OF GOD Videte, qualem charilaiem dedit nobis pater, ut Jilii dei nominemur et simus (/ Joh. It must be understood that this is all the same thing: knowing God and being known by God, and seeing God and being seen by God. We know God and see him because he makes us know and sec. Even as the luminous air is not distinguishable from its luminant, for it is luminous with what illumines it, so do we know by being known, by his making us conscious. Christ said, ‘ Again ye shall see me.’ That is to say: by making you see I make you see me, whereat ‘ your heart shall rejoice,’ rejoice in the vision and knowledge of God, and ‘ your joy no man taketh from you.’
32 MEISTER ECKHART 32 MEISTER ECKHART St John says: ‘ Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called and should be the sons of God.’ lie says not only ‘ should be called ’ but ‘ should be.’ Now I maintain that we can no more be wise without wisdom than Son without the filial nature of God’s Son: without having the very same nature as the Son of God himself. Wouldst thou be the Son of God? Thou canst not, without having the same nature as the Son of God. But this is hidden from us hero, as it is written, ‘Beloved, now we are God’s sons (and it doth not yet appear what we shall he), but we know that he is our exemplar and we shall be like him.’ That is, the same as he is: same life and enjoyment and understanding: exactly the same as he is, when wc see him as God. I say, God cannot make me the Son of God without I have the nature of God’s Son, any more than God can make me wise without my havdng wisdom, "riiough we are God’s sons, wc do not realize it yet: ‘ it doth not yet a]3pear ’ to us, but this much wc do know, he says, ‘ we shall be like him.’ Sundry things in our souls overlay this knowledge and conceal it from us.
The soul has something in her, a spark of intellect, that never dies; and in this spark, as at the apex of the mind, we place the paradigm of the soul; and there is also in our souls knowledge of externals, sensible and rational ])erecption, present there as images and words which obscure it from us. ITow are we God’s sons? By having one nature with him. But any realization of this, of being God’s sons, is subjective not objective knowledge. The inner consciousness strikes down to the very essence of the soul. Not that it is the soul itself, but it is rooted there and is in a measure the life of the soul, her intellectual life, the life, that is, wherein a man is born God’s Son, born into tlu' eternal life, for this know- ledge is a- temporal, unex tended, without here and without now. In this life all things arc the same thing and all things common; all things arc all in all and all atoned.
I will give you an illustration. In the body the members are united so that eye belongs to foot and foot to eye. Could the foot speak, it would declare that the eye seems rather in the foot than in the head, and the eye would say the same the other way about. Accordingly, I trow that the grace which is in Maiy is really more an angel’s and is more in him (yet being in Mary) than if it were in him or in the saints. For everything that Mary has belongs to every saint, so the grace in Mary is his own and he enjoys it more than if it really wore in him.
But such a simile is too gross and carnal, depending as it does on bodily imagery. I will give you another, therefore, more subtle, less material. I assert that in heaven all is in all and all one SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 33 and all ours. The grace our Lady has exists in me (when I am yonder), not as welling up in and flowing out of Mary, but as in me as my own and not of foreign origin. I contend that there what one has another has, not as from another nor as in another, but in its own self, so that the grace in one is simultaneously in another as his own grace. Thus spirit is in spirit. And that is why I say I cannot be the son of God unless I have the very nature the Son of God has there; and that having this same nature makes us the same as he is, we seeing him as God. ‘ Hut it doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ Meaning, I take it, that there is then no like nor different, but: wholly without distinction we are the same in essence and in substance and in nature as he is himself. This is not apparent now: it will be obvious when we see him as God.
God makes us to know him, and his knowing is his being, and his making me know is the same as my knowing, so his knowing is mine: just as, in the master, what he teaehes is the same as, in the pupil, the thing that he is taught. And be(*ausc his knowing is mine, and his knowing is his substance and his nature and his essence, it follows that his substance and his nature and his essence are mine. And his substance, his nature and his essence being mine, therefore I am tjie Son of God. Behold, brethren, what manner of love God hath bestowed upon us that we should be called and should be the Son of God!
Mark whereby we arc sons of God: by having the same nature as the Son of God.- -How can one be the Son of God, or know it, seeing that God is not like anybody? — True, Isaias says, ‘To whom will ye liken God or what likeness will ye compare unto him?’ Sitice it is God’s nature to be not like anyone, we must needs not be so to be the same as he is. AVhen I contrive to see myself in naught and to scc naught in me; when I succeed in rooting up and (tasting out everything in me, then 1 am free to pass into the naked being of the soul. Likes must be ousted ere I can be trans- planted into God and be the same as he is: same substance, same essence, same nature and the Son of God. Onc;c this happens, there is nothing hid in God that is not revealed, that is not mine. I am wise and mighty just as he is, and one and the same with him. Then Sion is a true beholder, true Israel, a seer: God, since nothing in the Godhead is (concealed from him. IMan is turned into God. Lilt that nothing may be concealed from me, everything revealed, there must appear in me no like, no image, for no image can show 'is God’s nature nor his essence. While there abideth in thee any image or like thou art never the same as God. To be the same as ^od there must be nothing in thee, latent or defined, nothing Covered in thee that is not discovered and cast out.
3 84 MEISTER ECKHART Mark wliat sin is. It is born of negation. Negation’s brood must be exterminated in the soul; while there is not in thee thou art not the Son of God. VVe weep and lament for want of some- thing. The minus quantity must go, be cancelled out, if man is to become tlie Son of God and \veep and wail no more. Man is not wood nor stone: impcrfeetioii and naught. We shall not be like him until this minus is made good and we are all in all as God is all in all.
There are two births of man: one in the world, the other one out of the world and ghostly, in God. VVouldst know if thy child is born and if he is naked? Whether, that is to say, thou hast been made God’s Son? If thy heart is heavy, except for sin, thy child is not born. In thine anguish thou art not yet mother; thou art in labour and thine hour is nigh. Doubt not, if thou art travailing for thyself or for thy friend no birth has taken place though birth be close at hand, 'fhe birth is not over till thy heart is free from earc: then man has the essenee and nature and substance and wisdom and joy and all that God has. Then the very being of the Son of God is ours and in us and we attain to actual Deity.
Christ says: ‘ If any will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ That is: east away care and let perpetual joy reign in your heart. Thus the (^hild is born. And when the child is born in me, the sight of friends, of father, dead there before my eyes will leave my heart untouched. Were my heart moved thereby the child would not be born in me, though peradventurc its nativity is nigh. I maintain that God and his angels lake such keen delight in every act a good man docs, that there is no joy like it. And accordingly, I say, the birth of this child in thee brings thee most keen delight in all good deeds done in this world, thy joy being so continuous as to be never- ending. Hence the words: ‘ ^'our joy no man taketh from you.’ When I am transported into God, then God is mine and all he has.
‘ I am the Lord thy God,’ he says. Then I have real delight which neither pain nor sorrow can take from me, for then I am installed in Ciod where sorrow^ has no place. We shall sec that in God is no anger nor sadness, but only love and joy. Though he seem sometimes to be wrathful with sinners it is not really wrath, it is his kindness, the effect of his great love: ‘ Whom he loveth he chasteneth,’ for he is love, the Holy Ghost. God’s anger springs from love; he chides us with dispassion. When nothing is grievous or hard, when all is pure joy, then verily thy child is born. Strive that this child shall be not nascent merely but be born in thee, even as in God his Son is ever being born and is ever born. May this betide, So help us God. Amen.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 85 VIII THE CASTLE OF THE SOUL Intravit Jesus in quoddam castellum et mulier qiuedam excepit ilium etc, {Luc, 10.^^). I quote first in Latin this text from the gospel. The translation reads: " Our I^ord Jesus Christ went up into a certain fastness and was receivTd by a oerlain virgin who was a wife.’
Mark the term. Needs must it be a virgin by whom Jesus is received. Virgin is, in other words, a person void of alien images, free us he was when he existed not. It may be questioned; Man born and launched on rational life, how can he be as free from images as he was when he was not, he knowing a variety of things, iinagt'S all of them: how can he possibly be void thereof?
I answer tliat, were I sulfieiently intelligent to have within me intellectually the sum of all the forms eoueeived by man aiid which subsist in C«od himself, I having no projxTty in them and no idea of ownership, positive or tiegative, past or to eome, but standing in the present fioro ])erfectly free in the will of (h.)d and doing it perpetually: then verily I were a virgin, unlumdleapped by forms, just as 1 was when J was not.
Further, T hold that the fact of being virgin does not deprive a man at all of works that he has done: he is untrammelled, virgin- free of them in the sovran truths even as Jesus is absolutely free and virgin in himself. According to the masters, likeness, likeness only, is the cause of union, so man must be maiden, virgin, to rcceiv^e the virgin Jesus.
Now lay this fact to heart: the ever virgin is never fruitful. To be fruitful the soul must be wife. Sj)ouse is the noblest title of the soul, nobler than virgin. For a man to rec(‘iv'e God within him is good and in receiving he is virgin. Ihit for God to be fruitful in him is still better: the fruits of his gift being gratitude therefor, and in this newborn thankfulness the spirit is the spouse bearing Jesus back into his Prather’s heart.
Many good gifts received in maidenhood are not brought forth in wifely fruitfulness, reborn in praise and thanks to God. Such gifts corrupt and come to naught, man being no better and no happier for them. In this case his virginity is useless because to his virginity he docs not add the perfe(*t fruitfulness of wife. That is the mischief. Hence my text, ‘ Jesus ascended to a certain fastness and was re(?eived by a certain maid who was a wife.’ It must be so, as I have said.
Wedded folks yield little more than one fruit yearly. But it is other wedded ones that I have now in mind: those whose hearts 36 MEISTER ECKHART are wedded to praying, fasting, vigils or other outward discipline and mortilications of the i’esh. A predilection for this sort of thing, involving loss of freedom to wait instantly on God in the here and now, and follow him alone in the light wherein he would fain show thee what to do and what to leave undone, moment by moment, fresh and clearly, as though thou hadst naught else, nor would nor could not: any such proclivity or preoccupation which constantly deprives thee of this freedom I call here a year, and thy soul yields no fruit till she is done with this work of thy affection nor hast thou any trust in God or in thyself till thou hast finished with thy predilection,* in other words, thou hast no peace. There is no fruit till thy own work is done. 1 reckon this a year and one whose yield is poor; the proceeds of affection not of freedom. And these folks I call wedded, yolked to their affections. Their crop is small and undersized at that, so I say, in God’s sight.
The virgin wife, free and unbound in her affections is ever as near God as to herself. She abounds in fruit and big withal, no more nor less than God is himself. This fruit, his birth, does that virgin bear who is a wife; daily she yields her hundred and her thousandfold, nay, numberless her labours and her fruits in that most noble ground, the very ground, to speak more plainly, wherein the Father is begetting his eternal Word: there she is big with fruit. For Jesus, light and shine of the paternal heart (according to St Paul he is the ‘ light and splendour ’ of the Father’s heart), this Jesus is atoned with her and she with him, she is radiant with him and shining as the one alone, as one pure brilliant light in the paternal heart.
Elsewhere I have declared, there is a power in the soul untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In this power is God, ever verdant, flowering in all the joy and glory of his actual self. Such dear delight, such incon- ceivable deep joy as none can fully tell, for in this power the eternal Father is procreating his eternal Son without a pause, the power being big with child, the Father’s Son and its own self this self- same Son withal, in the unique power of the Father. Suppose a man absolute monarch, the sole ])osscssor of all earthly goods; suppose he gave up all for God and was the poorest of the poor; and that God laid on him to boot a burden big as ever he did lay on mortal man, all which he bare down to his death and then God granted him one fleeting vision of his being in this power: so vehement would be his joy that poverty and suffering would be wiped out. Aye, though God gave him never any taste of heaven but this, yet would he have the guerdon of his passion, for God himself is in this power as in the eternal now. If a man’s spirit were always joined to God in this same power, he could not age SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 87 For the now wherein God made the first man and the now wherein the last man disappears and the now I speak in, all arc the same in God where there is hut the now. Behold this man in,thc same light as God having in hirii ho past nor yet to come, only one level of eternity. This man in truth has motion taken from him and all things stand intrinsic in liim. Nothing new conu'S to him from future things nor yet by accident for he dwells in the now, ever new and unceasingly renewed. So dominant is God in this same power.
There is another power, immortal too: proceeding from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In tliis power God is fiery, aglow with all his riches, with all his sweetness and with all his bliss. Aye, in tliis power is such poignant joy, such vehement, immoderate delight as none can tell nor yet in truth reveal. I say, moreover, if once a man in intellectual vision did really glimpse the bliss and joy therein, then all his sufferings, all God intends tliat he should suffer, would be a trille, a mere nolhing to him; nay, I say more, it would be pure joy and pleasure.
Wouldst thou know for certain whether tliy sufferings are thine owp or God’s? Tell by these tokens. Suffering for thyself, in whatever way, the suffering hurts thee and is hard to bear. But suffering for God and God alone thy suffering Inirts thee not nor docs it burden thee, for God bears the load. Believe me, if there were a man willing to suffer on account of God and of God alone, then though he fell a sudden prey to the collective sufferings of all the world it would not trouble liim nor bow him dowji, for God would be the bearer of his burden. If the burden they put upon my neck is forthwith shouldered by another I would as lief a hundred pounds as one, for not to me is it heavy and distressful. In brief: man’s sufferings for God and God alone he makes both light and pleasant.
I prefaced this sermon with the words: ‘ Jesus went up into a fastness and was received by a virgin who was wife.’ Why? She must needs be virgin and wife too. How Jesus was received I have explained. 1 have not told the meaning of this fastness and that I will now proceed to do.
From time to time I tell of the one power in the soul which alone is free. Sometimes I have called it the tabernacle of the soul; sometimes a spiritual light, anon I say it is a spark. But now I say: it is neither this nor that. Yet it is somewhat: somewhat more exalted over this and that than the heavens are above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion than before as regard- ing rank and mode which it transcends. It is of all names free, of all forms void: exempt and free as God is in himself. It is one and simple as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise 38 MEISTER ECKHART behold it. This same power I am speaking of, herein God blooms and thrives in all his Godhood and the spirit in God; in this very power the Father bears his only Son no less than in himself, for verily he liveth in this power, the spirit with the Father giving bii th therein to his very Son, itself this selfsame Son, for in this light wliich is the light of truth, it is the Son himself. Could ye see with iny heart yc would understand my words, but it is true, for truth itself has said it.
So om' and simple is this fastness, frowning above all ways, of whieh 1 mind me and am telling you, within tlic soul, that this high faculty I speak of is not Avorthy even of a fleeting glam^e therein; nor is tliat other power God glows and burns in, it durst not peer in either; so one and indivisible this refuge is, so way- and powcr-transeeiiding tliis solitaiy one that never mode nor faculty has any insight there, not even (h)d himself. Never for an instant, as God lives, docs God see into this, nor did he ever look in his conditioned nature, in his gnis(.‘ of Person. Note well, this ()7ie (done is lacking in every mode and quality. It follows that for God to see therein would cost him all Ins divine names and personal properties: all tliese he must forgo to look therein: only as one and indivisible, having no jot of mode or (piality, not Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost as sm^h, can he do this; as some- what, yes, but not as tliis or that.
As one and impartible behold him entering this one that here I call the fastness of the soul, but in no different guise can he get in: thus only does he enter and subsist in it. In part the soul is the same as God but not altogether. — This that I tell you is true: truth is my witness and my soul the pledge. May we be as this fastness whereinto on ascending Jesus is received to abide eternally as I have said. So help us God. Amen.
IX THE ETERNAL BIRTHS To return to the subject of the eternal birth. There is the ques- tion whether the soul brings forth the eternal Word in images or imagcless? Remember this. When tlic soul resigns herself to God and is atoned with him and God undertakes her work, she is receptive merely and leaves God to act. Here the soul is pregnant without form or image, for anything conceived in form or image trenches upon time and place and is akin to creatures; whence it follows that the more the work is of the soul the less it is of God.
^ Soe Pfeiffer, Deut, Myst., vol. i, p. 2G.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 8d