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vision, was conducted, in the year 1340, to Tauler, then already a preacher of note. In his first interview he requested the latter to preach before him a discourse on the way to Christian perfection. The sermon did not produce the effect which Tauler expected; and the stranger afterwards explained to him that he had not come to learn from him how to attain to the most perfect life, but with the intention and hope of doing him some good. He then proceeded to speak of that internal master, respecting whom Tauler himself had spoken in his sermon. 'Know," said he, "that when this same master comes to me, he teaches me more in an hour, than you, and all the teachers who are of time, could teach me if they went on to the last day." And he assured Tauler, to his great amazement, that he must consider him a mere man of books and a Pharisee. The pious, gentle preacher did not let himself grow angry at such language from a layman addressed to a priest and doctor of theology, but instead of disdainfully turning away from him, calmly listened to all he had to say. The layman went on to distinguish two different sorts of Pharisees, the malignant and the well intentioned; those whose doctrines and life, though they were unconscious of it themselves, did not perfectly harmonise; whose preaching consisted more of the letter and of rational knowledge, than of the truth contained in the life and internal experience of the heart; who, though they knew how to discourse finely of pure love to God, and of communion with him, were still entangled in creaturely love, without any true experience as yet of vital communion of the heart with God. felt himself touched to the quick by many things which the stranger said. He chose him as the friend of God who was to be his guide; got him to prescribe the way to a new spiritual development; retired for a season from his labours in the pulpit; but on returning to his duties found himself so overcome and unmanned by his feelings, as to be unable to utter a word. The preacher who was before so famous, was now laughed at, But afterwards, when he had fully recovered himself, he stood forth with fresh energy and laboured more abundantly than ever. This story, no better authenticated, might be regarded by many as a figment of legendary tradition, a pure fabrication or an intermixture

Tauler

of poetry and historical truth.* But we have, in this case, at least one example which might teach a lesson of caution to those who would banish from history everything that looks like poetry, and retain the trivial only as matter of historical fact. This story has very recently become established as matter of history on the ground of authentic record.† And we obtain a more familiar acquaintance with the man as an historical personage, who came, according to the legend, from a town 120 miles from Strasburg. He was a person of great influence in that period, named Nicholas of Basle. He then belonged to the Waldensian sect, the members of which would, for the reasons already hinted at, be very likely to find in the more liberal Christian tendencies of the Friends of God scattered about in that district, many points of mutual agreement. But it may be commonly remarked that when a determinate spiritual tendency becomes predominant in any period or district, it is wont to impart something of its own peculiar stamp to other spiritual appearances that may happen to possess anything in common with itself, though the two may in other respects differ entirely in character, just as in the physical world a prevailing epidemic will make other forms of disease run into its own form. Thus the Waldensians in the district of the Rhine, did not at that time remain wholly true to their original direction, since this at the outset was a more simply practical one. The predominant spirit of mysticism communicated itself also to them; and there grew up a section of Waldensian Friends of God, which, paying less homage than the others did to the church spirit, developed itself with greater freedom of doctrine in opposition to the dominant church. To this party belonged Nicholas, a man who by oral discourses and writings in the Latin and German languages laboured to introduce a more experimental Christianity, and exerted a great and widely-extended influence. At Basle he had heard much about the piety and influence of Tauler. But from his Waldensian

*This story, as is well known, has been worked up into a book of great poetic beauty, by Tieck, in his novel “der Schutzgeist."

By the investigations of Schmidt, in his work before cited, p. 25,

note 5.

We see from Schmidt's quotation, p. 29 note, that in a Munich

point of view he might probably be led to conjecture that this famous preacher was after all wanting in true freedom of Christian spirit; and from what he had heard of his pious, humble character, he might perhaps hope to succeed in exercising a wholesome influence on the Christian knowledge' and the Christian life of the man. It may well be doubted, indeed, whether Nicholas, who, with a view to extend the sphere of his usefulness in promoting the religious life, rarely mentioned his own anti-churchly tendencies, would say anything to Tauler about his connection with the Waldensians; still it is impossible to know how much confidential intercommunication may have taken place betwen the two men. And Tauler as long as he lived continued to maintain the most intimate and friendly relations with this layman. This Nicholas of Basle was, as we have said, extremely cautious in disseminating his principles. He laid himself out to work on the minds of the people more particularly by writings in the German language. In a tract composed in the year 1356, he defended the circulation of German writings among the laity against the doubts entertained by many of its expediency. He speaks on this matter also with great moderation. He allows that such doubts were, in some respects, well founded; in respect to writings, namely, which required many explanations in order to be rightly understood, and which therefore, by being misapprehended, might easily lead to error. Such writing belonged exclusively to the priests, and should not be translated into German. But the case stood otherwise with simple, practical, and plainly-composed Christian writings, suited to the understanding and wants of the laity. He says: "Those book-learned men, who would keep the laity from reading these, sought their own glory more than the glory of God." But," he adds, "where you find teachers, who have no eye to themselves, you should gladly hear them; for whatever such teachers counsel, comes from the Holy Spirit." He says Christian order can never be restored, till men follow the counsel which comes from the Holy Spirit; and manuscript in the account of Tauler, the words of this unknown layman are found, which are wanting in the printed editions: "Wan mir vil von euer ler daheim ist gesagt.'

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such cannot be at variance with holy Scripture, for holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit are one. "If," he adds, “a great lord of this world, or a whole district or city should ask me how, as things now stand, men may return to God, and find reconciliation with him, I would advise that they should seek that counsel which comes from the Holy Spirit, whether such counsel proceed from priest or layman.' In all this we may easily recognise the general drift and tendency above described, though there is an attempt to conceal it. We recognise a man who estimated the inward voice of the spirit above all outward authority, and who certainly therefore could not be inclined to pay that authority the same submissive homage with other Friends of God. The mystical bent may undoubtedly have led many to entertain very free opinions respecting the apostles, whose characters they would estimate according to their own peculiar principles of Christian perfection. It would not be strange in such persons to accuse an apostle Paul of boasting too much of his own labours. But Nicholas was widely removed from all this. He says of such, "Mark, my beloved brethren, how some men are scandalised at the words of holy Paul, who was a bright shining light, a full vessel overflowing with lovely humility." All that he said to his brethren, or wrote to them, was suited to the times when Christianity began; and there was need of it too. He wrote from divine love, and never had an eye to himself; in all things he had a single eye to the glory of God. I believe if the words addressed to John the Baptist had been spoken to the apostle Paul, he would in like manner have answered, "I am not worthy to unloose his shoe's latchet." + This Nicholas directly or indirectly exerted a great influence, as a guide and counsellor in the spiritual life, on many who never had the remotest suspicion of his heretical tendencies. But he could not always succeed in escaping the suspicion of the head of the church; and from some hints which he drops we may understand the perilous situation in which these more free-minded Friends of God sometimes found themselves placed. He writes: " Ah, * Schmidt, p. 231.

And

† In a letter to the Strasburg Johannites, in the year 1377, Schmidt,

p. 234.

beloved brethren, may God in his infinite goodness, in this present time of Christianity, have pity! For know, the Friends of God are in a great strait. But what is to come of it, they know not, God only knows."* Having succeeded through a long life in escaping the snares of the inquisition,† he undertook when very old, in company with two of his disciples, to make a journey to France, where probably he was in the habit of going to disseminate his doctrines. At Vienne, he was arrested by the inquisition, together with one of his disciples; and as nothing could induce him to consent to a recantation, he was handed over, as an heretical Beghard, to the civil authorities, and died at the stake.

The highest regions of the interior life, in souls where impure elements rule, are exposed to the most dangerous perturbations; the deepest truths of religion, when they are not purely apprehended, may intermingle indistinguishably with the most dangerous misconceptions. It is often but a very thin and subtle line which separates truth from error. Thus the doctrine of these Friends of God respecting man's ability and duty to go back to the deepest grounds of his being; respecting an inward concentration of the mind withdrawn from every thing creaturely; utter renunciation of self, and absorption in God, was liable to pass over into very serious errors. Where the longing for union with God was not ever accompanied side by side with a consciousness of the self-subsistence of the creaturely spirit, and the infinite exaltation of God above the world, with a consciousness of sin standing in contrariety with the holiness of God, with a humility never forgetting for a moment the strict line that separates the creature from the Creator, the sobriety and modesty of true humility; where an unbridled imagination, a speculative spirit ignorant of its proper limits, where the intoxication of a soul governed entirely by its feelings, intermingled with the natural and the divine, and took complete possession of the man; in a

* Letter to the Strasburg Johannites, &c. p. 235.

†The Dominican John Nieder, of Suabia, says of him in his book, already mentioned, Formicarius, p. 304: Acutissimus enim erat et verbis errores coloratissime velare noverat. Idcirco etiam manus inquisitorum diu evaserat et multo tempore.

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