^ See also Jostes, Nos. 1 and 0; and Spainer’s Texte, A. 4 (3 versions), from which the starred passages are added.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 87 To whom God grants this provender, so fragrant, so delicious, that soul shall never relish any other fare.
St Augustine says, ‘ God is of such a nature that once embracing him we can never rest elsewhere.’ St Augustine says, ‘ Lord, so thou take from us thyself, grant us then another thee or we shall have no rest; we have no mind for aught but thee.’ One holy man says of the God-loving soul, that she gets out of God whatsoever she will, befooling him so thoroughly he can deny her not a thing there is. He took himself in one way and gave himself another way: he took himself God-and-man and gave himself God-and- Man, another self in a mystic vessel. Very precious hallows arc not wantonly exposed to public gaze and touch. So he clad him- self in the frock of the appearance of bread, even as my bodily food is altered in my soul, which is not in my nature for an instant without combining with it. For there is a power in nature which separates the base and throws it out, and the high invades the low to the last needle-point and is embodied in it. The things I ate a fortnight since are every bit as much united with my soul as what I did receive within my mother’s womb. Whoso takes this food fasting becomes as truly one therewith as flesh and blood arc with my soul.
There was a certain man; the man had not a name because this man is God.
The philosopher affirms concerning the first cause that it transcends speech. All words fail. Because of the surpassing pureness of its nature. We have but three ways of speaking about things: first, in terms of things above them; second, of their likes; and thirdly, of the works of the things. To give you an example. The power of the sun draws up the precious sap out of the roots into the shoots and brings it out in flower, here the solar power being above it. * As wc say of the tree, so we say of the things above the tree; of the sun, for example, which is working in the tree.* Likewise I say the divine light is working in the soul. * The spark in the soul being drawn up in this light and in the Holy Ghost and borne aloft to its first source. But nothing true can be spoken of God, because there is nothing above him.* That the soul expresses God does not in anywise affect his real intrinsic being: no one can express what he actually is. Some- times we say one thing is like another. * We can say nothing of God because nothing is like him.* Creatures enclose a mere nothing of God wherefore they cannot disclose him. The painter who has painted a good portrait therein shows his art: it is not himself that it reveals to us. Creatures can no more give out God than they can take in exactly what he is.
The God-and-Man has prepared this supper, the ineffable man 88 MEISTER ECKHART who is wordless. According to St Augustine, what we say about God is not true and the things that we say not are true. Things we say that God is he is not; what we say he is not that he is rather than what we say that he is.
Who has prepared this repast? A man, the man who is God. King David says, ‘ O Lord, how great and manifold is thy enter- tainment, the sweets that are laid up for them that love thee! ’ (Not ‘ them that fear thee.’) St Augustine meditating on this food, regarded it with loathing and distaste, when lo! he heard a voice from within, ‘ I am the food of the great, wax and grow great * eating me; nor ween not that I shall be turned into thee: thou shalt be turned into me.* When God works in the fiery heat the diverse things within the soul sublime and burn away. By the absolute truth! soul enters more into God than any food into us; nay, the soul is changed into God. There is a power in the soul which splits off what is base and is absorbed into God. To wit, the spark of the soul. My soul becomes more one with God than food does with my soul.
Who has prepared this evening meal? A man. Dost know his name? * Not I. His name is not spoken. He is more silence than speech. He is above name. What food has he prepared for this feast? Himself, no less than himself.* (What does the servant mean?) According to St Gregory the servant means preachers. And in another sense the servant means the angels, *thc angels ever calling us with interior voice.* Thirdly, methinks this servant is the spark of the soul, which is sent there by God and is his light striking down from above, the reflection (or image) of his divine nature and ever opposed to anything ungodly: not a power of the soul, as some theologians make it, but a permanent tendency to good; aye, even in hell it is inclined to good. According to the masters, this light is of the nature of unceasing effort; it is called syndcresis, that is to say, a joining to and turning from. It has two works. One is remorse for imperfection. The other work consists in ever more invoking good and bringing it direct into the soul, even though she be in hell. It is a great supper. He said to the servant, ‘ Go out and compel them to come in, those that are bidden, for all things are now ready.’ All that he is the soul receives. What the soul desires is now prepared. The things God gives have always been. Behold them new and fresh and all at once in the eternal now.
A gr^at philosopher declares that anything I see comes into my eyes purified and ghostly, and the light that comes into my eyes would never get into my soul but for a power above it. * There is a power in sight which is superior to the eyes set in the head SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 89 and more far-reaching than the heavens and earth. This power seizes all the things that come into the eye^ and bears them up into the soul.* St Augustine says the spark comes nigher to the truth than any human knowledge, flight burns. They say that one is lighted from another. If so, the light is higher than the thing that burns. For instance, take a taper, extinguished but still glimmering and smoking, and hold it to the light; this will glance down and light the other. They say one fire burns another. But I traverse that. Fire, I ween, does burn itself. For one thing to burn another it must needs be above it, like heaven, for example, which burns not and is cold; natheless it sets on fire and that by dint of contact with the angels. For this the soul prepares by practice. Then she is fired from above. By the angelic light. He says to the servant, ‘ Go out and say to them that were bidden, Come, for all things arc now ready.* Then one said, ‘ I have bought a piece of ground, I cannot come.’ These arc they who still have worldly cares; they never taste this supper. A second said, ‘ I have bought five yoke of oxen.’ These five yoke, I fancy, stand for the five senses, for each sense is self and other and the very tongue is double. So in my story yesterday, when God said to the woman, ‘ Bring me thy husband,’ she replied, ‘ I have none.’ Whereupon quoth he, ‘ Thou sayest truly: thou hast had five, and him whom now thou hast is not thine husband.’ The moral is that those who live the life of the five senses never taste this food. The third one said, ‘ I have married a wife, therefore 1 cannot come.’ The soul is all-to single when she turns to God. As glancing down in this direction she is woman; but as seeing God in himself and visiting God at home she is the man. Of old it was forbidden to men to dress in woman’s clothes or women man’s. She is man when she penetrates into God, impartibly and without means. But when she peers forth at all she is woman. * As I have repeatedly said, the man in the soul is the intellect. When the soul looks straight up to God with her mind then the soul is the man, she is one and not two. But thinking and glancing down she dons female dress.* Quoth our liOrd, ‘ Verily, these shall not taste of my supper ’; and he commanded the servant, ‘ Go out into the streets and the lanes, into the highways and hedges — the narrower the wider and hedged about.’ * For the more recollected the soul the less scattered she is and the more concentrated the wider her ken.* And some of her powers arc hedged into one sense. The power I see with I do not hear with, nor with my power of hearing can I see. So with the rest (of the five senses). But on the other hand, the soul exists entire in every member; there is some power, therefore, not confined to place at all.
90 90 MEISTER ECKHART What is the servant? Angels and preachers (so says St Gregory). But, as it seems to irie, the servant is a symbol of the spark. He says to the servant, ‘ Go out into the hedges and drive in thither these four kinds of folk: the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind: Verily, none other shall taste of my supper.’ Let us throw off those three and rise up man, So help us God. Amen.
APPENDIX 1 Synderesis Oxford MS.
The meat and drink I took a fortnight since has turned into my blood, my flesh, my nature. That is due to the power of the soul which brings it into my nature; it is as truly one with me as what was born with me.
So does the power of the Holy Ghost take the purest and lightest and highest and the spark of the soul and carry it up in the fire of love. Just like the sun’s power; this lays hold in the roots of the tree of what is most pure and essential, drawing it up into the branches where it flowers. Even so is the spark of the soul being always drawn up in the light and in the Holy Ghost and conveyed into its source, becoming all-to one with God and searching him so throughly that it is more the same as God than food is with my life.
I say it is the light up in the soul where the soul nature Mark first in St Andrew his singleness of life and spiritual attainments whereby his soul was enabled, in her intellect, to ascend in the grace of God above all creatures into God.
For the power of the Holy Ghost seizes the very highest and purest, the spark of the soul, and carries it up in the flame of love. Just as the power of the sun takes what is purest and subtlest out of the roots of the tree and draws it into the branches where it is in flower. Likewise the soul-spark is conveyed aloft into its source and is absorbed into God and is identified with God and is the spiritual light of God.
There are two lights in the soul, one is a light up in the ^ See Zuchhold, No. 26. Turallel passages from an Oxford MS. of Eckhart’s Sermons (Sievers’ copy), and a sorinon on St Andrew, evidently by the same hand, but boaring tlie name of Nikolaus von Landau. See also Jostes, Nos. 1 and 69.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 91 touches angelic nature and passes into the angelic nature; it is from God and is pouring into the soul above nature.
Some say it is a power. It is not. A servant is mentioned, that is the intellect. There soul attains angelic nature and is the image of God.
In this light the soul has intercourse with angels and ckc with those angels that are fallen into hell. There the spark subsists without any kind of suffering, turning straight up into God.
And withal she is like the good angels in this power, who work unceasingly in God, be- holding God in God and return- ing all work into God.
This light the soul carries within her. The masters call it a power in the soul, this synderesis. It is not. It means something hanging to God and is ever averse from evil.
In hell it tends to God. It is soul at the point where the soul is by nature in contact with the angels’ nature. The other light is what I speak of. This light pours into the soul from on high, above nature.
Some call it a power of the soul. But it is not. It is called synderesis. To wit, the intellect which is a spark (or ray) of God the Father given by God out of his Godhead’s God- nature, and is the form of God without any difference at all. In it she is in touch with the angelic nature.
In this light the soul has community with angels also those cast into hell. There the spark is free from all suffering and faces straight up into God and has precisely his nature.
And withal she has a some- what, mind, in common with good angels who are constantly working in God and emanat- ing from God and bearing back all their work into God and receiving God from God in God.
The intellect is like to these good angels, drinking God in his eternal savour, his living sweetness and in his own ground. She is sent away from God and is ’ a light that (re)turns: the reflection of the divine nature which the soul has cast into her. The masters call it synderesis which is as much as to say something suspended from God all the time and which never docs wrong.
In hell, says St Augustine, it 92 MEISTER ECKHART ever at war in the soul with the impure and the ungodly.
is turned to God. In the soul it wages constant war with things that are not pure and are not godly.
It looks neither to God’s glory nor possessions. It presses up into the goal of divine essence and is the true God’s messenger which leads and draws mankind to the celestial feast: ct misit servum suum hora ccne.
XXXIII IF YE THEN BE RISEN WITH CHRIST lS'^ consurrexistis cum Christo, qum sursum sunt, qucerite, ubi Christus est in dexter a dei sedens etc. (Col. 3|). St Paul says: ‘ If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above and set not your affections on the things on earth.’ Then he goes on to say, ‘ ye are dead, and your life is hid in Christ with God in heaven.’ Thirdly, there are the women seeking our Lord at the sepulchre. There they found an angel ‘ whose countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow,’ and he asked the women, ‘ Whom seek ye? If ye seek Jesus who was crucified, he is not here.’ For God is not in any place. Of God’s lowest all creatures are full and his highest is nowhere. They answered him not, for they were disappointed at finding the angel and not God. God is not here or there, not in time or place.
St Paul says: ‘ If ye be risen w^ith Christ, seek those things that are above.’ His first word expresses doubt. Some people rise by practising one virtue not another. Some, ignoble by nature, covet riches. Others, of a noble kind, care nothing for possessions but are bent on honour. One master says the virtues all hang upon each other. Though a person lean to the uses of one virtue rather than another they stand and fall together. Some people rise up all at once and yet rise not with Christ. That which is his rises once for all. On the other hand, we do find some who rise with Christ for good and all, but it will need a man of many parts to know in Christ the true resurrection. The masters say that with true resurrection there is no more death. Now there was never virtue so outstanding but someone might be found to have acquired it, and that by natural means, for natural powers work many signs and wonders, all the outward works found in the saints being found SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 98 too in the heathen. And that is why he speaks of being ‘ risen with Christ,’ because he is on high, above the reach of any creature. What we have to do is to make the whole ascent.
There are three signs of our having risen altogether. The first: we seek those things that are above. The second: our affections are set on the things above. The third: we set not our affections on the things that are on earth. St Paul says: ‘ Seek those things that are above.’ But where and in what way? King David tells us to ‘ seek the face of God.’ What is common to a number must needs come from above. Above the lire itself there are the fire-givers like the heavens and the sun. Our best doctors teach that heaven is the locus of all things, and though it has itself no place, no natural place, yet it makes room for all things. My soul is undivided; also, it is entire in each member. Where my eye sees my ear does not hear; where my ear hears my eye sees not. My bodily hearing and sight are engineered in the mind. Light gives my eye a sense of colour which is lacking to the soul by reason of its being a defect. All the outward senses are alive to, if the spirit is to take it in, must be raised up by the angel: he imprints it in the upper portion of the soul.
The above designs and produces the below, so our doctors say. Even so St James asserts that ‘ Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above.’ One who is risen to the full with Christ is known by his seeking for God above time. He seeks God above time who seeks him timeless. ‘ Seek those things that are above,’ he says. Where shall we look? ‘ Where Christ is sitting on the right hand of his Father.’ Where is Christ sitting? He is sitting nowhere; he is nowhere. If ye seek him anywhere ye shall not find him. A master has said that he who sees anything does not see God. Now Christ means anointed; the anointed of the Holy Ghost. Sitting, theologians say, symbolises rest and implies timelessness. Turning and changing lead nowhere: stop- ping we progress.
‘ I am God, I change not,’ saith the Lord. ‘ Christ sitteth on the right hand of his Father.’ The best gift of God, that is his right hand. With natural man, he starts his work with his right hand. Christ says, ‘ I am the door.’ The first outburst and the first effusion God runs out in is his fusion into his Son, a process which in turn reduces him to Father. I said on one occasion that the door was the Holy Ghost: there he is poured out in blessings into all creatures. According to one master, the heavens receive from God direct. Another one says. No; God is spirit, pure light, and anything receiving straight from God must itself be spirit and pure light. The master denies that it is possible, in the first eruption, the first escape of God, that any corporal thing should 94 MEISTER ECKHAR^ 94 MEISTER ECKHAR^ take it in: it must be either light or abstract mind. The heavens transcend time and are the cause of time. One philosopher maintains that the heavens are too lofty in their nature to stoop to be the cause of time. It is not in their nature that they are the cause of time: it is in their revolution that, timeless, they give rise to time, i.e. in the defection of the heavens. My looks are not my nature, they are accidents of nature; our soul is far above them, out of sight in God. And hence I say, not only above time but hid in God. That is what heaven means. Everything mortal spells deficiency: rise and fall, growth and decay. King David sings, ‘ A thousand years in God’s sight are as a day that is past ’: for all the future and the })ast yonder are in the now. May we find this now. So help us God. Amen.
XXXIV 1 ST DIONYSIUS SPEAKS OF THREE KINDS OF LIGHT St Dionysius speaks of three kinds of light the soul has who attains to pure knowledge of God. The first is natural, the second ghostly and the third divine.
Now consider what this natural light is and how far it helps her to know God. The soul innately knows that existing things are not of themselves. But there must be one thing that is of itself and from none but itself: whatever that is it created all things.
Further, the soul innately understands that the good which is scattered among things is as a whole in the one cause of things. Also, it is natural to the soul to love each thing so far as it is good. And when her natural intellect stumbles on the cause of things, whose good, broadcast in things, is as a whole in their common cause, then this natural perception provokes in her a natural love towards this cause of all things.
All creatures are infirm and changeful, not in reality (which is exempt) but in the first stages of perfection. St Augustine says, The soul cannot dwell for long upon one thought but lapses from it into others. Neither can she entertain several thoughts at once; she must leave one and die to it to quicken in another. But God has no community with creatures, wherefore it is evident that there is no deficiency in him. He has no community with creatures; but this applies alone to God, and in so far as the soul is like him she is without defect. By nature the soul knows and loves God above all things.
The second light is ghostly; it originates in faith. But the ' Jostes, No. 69.
95 SERMONS AND COLLATIONS whole content of faith is beyond the scope of the nature of the soul. The faith is, that three Persons are in the same nature and the same nature in three Persons. No natural light or intellect is adequate for this, for no natural light affords a likeness of it. What the three Persons do, or are capable of doing, is the product of their unity; for though there are three Persons they do not act as three but they function as one God. That is a ghostly light whereby the soul in faith can actually see that this is so, (a light) such as her natural mind could never give her.
The third light is the light of glory, divine light. This the soul receives into the chief power of the soul. In this light we see God with nothing between. So far as this light sinks into her chief power so far is God immediately perceived. In this light the soul divines the noble nature of all things in God, for all that ever issued forth or is issuing forth or ever shall, has in God eternal life and being; not defective as it is in creatures but as his very being for it is his nature. God has his own being not from naught, he has it of his proper nature which in itself is truly aught though naught to the intelligence of creature.
This nature is causeless, therefore it is unfathomable except to causeless understanding. Creaturely intelligence is finite, so it has a cause; hence it cannot fathom causeless mind, not Christ nor his humanity. Where God is beholding his own nature, which is groundless, it is incomprehensible except to groundless understanding. This understanding is none other than his nature is itself: only God in his own nature can conceive himself. This conception is the understanding wherein, self- revealed, God manifests in light that no man can attain to. As St Paul says, ‘ God dwells in light unapproachable.’
XXXV STAND IN THE GATE Dominus (licit: sta in porta domus dornini et prcedica verhum istud (Jer. Tg). The Lord says, ‘ Stand in the gate of God’s house and proclaim his word, extol his word.’ The heavenly Eather speaks one Word and that he speaks eternally and in this Word expends he all his might: his entire God-nature he utters in this Word and the whole of creatures. This Word lies hidden in the soul unnoticed and beyond our ken, and were it not for rumours in the ground of hearing we should never heed it; but all sounds and voices have to cease and silence, perfect stillness, reign. This is a meaning I will not pursue.
Stand in the gate. Who stands there, his limbs are orderly MEISTER ECKHART disposed. lie is about to speak; the head of the soul is held stiffly up. The ordered is subject to an order which is higher than itself. Creatures are not of the order of God till the soul’s natural light, wherein they get their being, overshadows them, and the angelic light overshadows the light of the soul preparing and adapting it for divine light to work in; for God works not in corporal things, he works in the eternal. That is why the soul must be recollected and integrated to the spirit. It is there God works and there all works are agreeable to God. Never a thing is to God’s liking unless it is wrought there.
Stand in the gate in the house of God, that is, his unity of essence. One is best kept by itself. So the unity stands by God and keeps God together, adding nothing. There he sits in his own presence, in his is -ness, all in himself, nowhere out of himself. But as he melts he runs out. He melts and runs out in his good- ness which, as I have explained, consists of knowledge and love. Knowledge is the flux, for knowledge is hotter than love. But two are better than one. And this knowledge is laden with love. Love is fooled and caught by kindness; in love I hang about the gate turning a blind eye to the authentic vision. Even stones have love, a love that seeks the ground. If I insist on goodness in the first effusion and seize this at the point where it is good, then I shall seize the gate, not God himself. Knowledge is the better, as being the head and front of love. Love is the will to, the intention. No single thought attaches to this know- ledge: wholly detached and self-forsaken it runs all bare into the arms of God and grasps him in himself.
Lord it is meet that thy house be holy and a house of prayer. What is prayer? It is the practice of pure being and glorying therein. What is the glory? The arraying of man in the likeness of God in him. But while any image exists in the soul there is no glorifying God therein, as in a prayer-house, in the length of days. I do not mean days here: when I say length without length that means the length; breadth without breadth means the breadth. When I speak of all time I mean above time and above it, as I have explained, there is no here or now.
The woman asked our Lord when we ought to pray. Our Lord replied, ‘ The hour cometh but not yet, when true worshippers shall worship in spirit and in truth.’ For God is a spirit and they must worship in spirit and in truth that which is truth itself. Which we are not; true we may be, but there is false mixed with it. For ye do not exist in God in that first eruption where truth comes spouting from its source. In the gate of God’s house the soul has to stand and trumpet forth his Word- Everything which is in the soul has to utter praise, standing, SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 97 deaf to all the world, in silence and in peace, as I described the angels as sitting there with God. In that choir of wisdom and of burning God on a sudden declares himself to the soul plighting her his troth for good and all. It is the Father begetting his Son and in his Word he takes such huge delight, so fond he is of it, that he never stops but goes on pledging his Word the whole time: timelessly, that is to say. And here we must observe that the house God plights his troth in is deserted: bare spirit, above time. Meet for thine house are holiness and praise, there must be nothing there that does not praise thee.
Our theologians ask, what praises God? Likeness does. Any likeness to God that lives in the soul redounds to the glory of God. Things at all different from God do not glorify God. A portrait, for example, reflects credit on the painter who embodies in it his dearest conception of his art and makes it the image of himself. The likeness of the portrait praises the author without words. Of little worth is spoken praise or praying with the lips. Our Lord said on one occasion, ‘ Ye pray, not knowing what prayer is. There shall come again true prayers, praying to my Father not in words but in spirit and in tnith.* What is prayer? Dionysius says, ‘ The mind’s ascent to God, that is what prayer means.’ It is a heathen who observes that where spirit is and unity and eternity there God will be at work. Where flesh is warring against spirit; where disruption is warring against union; where time is warring with eternity, there God works not: he can do nothing with it. Further, any pleasure we may have, or contentment or comfort, has to go. To worship God she must be holy, summed up to a whole, one spirit naught beside: all wrought up at once into the eternal eternity on high, transcending all. Not all creatures which have been created, it is not them I mean, but all he could do an he would. This soul must transcend. While there is anything above the soul; while there is anything in front of and in God, she can never enter his ground in the length of days.
Now, according to St Augustine, when the light of the soul eclipses creatures, it is dawn; when the angelic light eclipses the light of the soul and devours it, then it is broad day. David says, ‘ The righteous man mounts up and up to the perfect day.’ His path is fair and smooth and pleasant and familiar. And when the psychic and angelic lights are swallowed up in the light divine, he calls that high noon. Now day is at its longest, in its prime, when the sun at its zenith pours its light into the stars and the stars pour it into the moon. These are members of the solar system. And even so the light of God embraces the angelic light and that of the soul, an orderly array, an ascending scale steadily rising in the day, all praising God in chorus. There 98 MEISTER ECKHART is nothing over that is not praising God: they are all alike, the liker the fuller of God, all lauding God together. The Lord said, ‘ I will abide with thee in thine house.’ Dear God, we do beseech thee abide thou with us here, to the end that we abide with thee eternally. Amen.
XXXVI YOUNG MAN, ARISE!
Adolescens, tibi dico: surge {Luc, 7^^), Our Lord went to a city called Naim, and many of his disciples went with him and much people. And when they came under the gate there was a dead man carried out, a youth, the only son of a widow. And our Lord came and touched the bier whereon the body lay, and said, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise! ’ The life spake life into the dead. The youth arose and straightway took up his parable: his resurrection by the eternal Word.
He went to a city. I say, that means the soul which is well ordered and fortified in the Holy Ghost and, having set a watch for sin and shut out multiplicity, is safe and sound in Jesus: en- compassed and walled round by the light of God. As the prophet hath it, ‘ God is the wall round Zion.’ The eternal wisdom says, ‘ In the holy and in the sanctified city I shall have like repose.’ Nothing is so restful, so unifying, as like; hence same and in and near and by. That soul is holy in whom is God alone and wherein no creature finds rest. He says, ‘ I shall have like repose in the holy and in the sanctified city.’ All sanctity is of the Holy Ghost. This nature nothing transcends: beginning with the lowest it works it up into the highest. Philosophers say air only turns to fire when it is rarefied and hot. The Holy Ghost seizes the soul and clarifying her in its light and grace draws her up to the supreme. He says, ‘ In the sanctified city I shall alike repose.’ As the soul rests in God so God reposes fn her. If she rests partly in him then he rests partly in her; if she rests wholly in him he rests wholly in her. That is why the eternal wisdom says, ‘ I shall repose alike (or equally).’
According to philosophers, the green and yellow colours of the rainbow merge into one another too gradually for any eye to follow, however keen its sight. And nature works so gradually when it resolves itself into the first effusion, this is so homogeneous with the angels, that Moses durst not write thereof for fear of the faint- hearted, lest they should worship them: so much the same they are with the first emanation. One high authority definitely states that the topmost angel is so nigh the first eruption, he has in him so much of God’s likeness and God’s might, that he it is who cares 99 SERMONS AND COLLATIONS for and looks, after this whole world as well as all the angels who are under him. The moral of which is, that God the high, the pure, and the impartible is operative in his highest creature who exerts his power, as a viceroy rules the land in the name of the king. He says, ‘ In the holy and in the sanctified city alike do I repose.’
As I was saying lately, the gate or door that, melting, God flows out by, is goodness. Essence is self-absorbed: not an effusion but an inner fusion. And unity is one and self-contained: aloof from everything and free from outside intercourse. But goodness is the melting and running out of God: his diffusion to the whole of creatures. Essence is the Father, unity the Son, and goodness is the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost seizes the soul (the sanctified city) at its purest, at its highest, and hales it up into its first source, which is the Son, and the Son bears it on into his source, his Father namely, into the ground, into the first, where the Son has his being; where the eternal wisdom is in like repose in the holy and in the sanctified city, in the innermost.