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revealed them unto babes." No; the haughty priests of learning not only banished from the schools and marts of science all who had dared draw living waters from the fountain, but drove them out of the very Temple, which, meantime, the buyers, and sellers, and money-changers were suffered to make a den of thieves.

And yet it would not be easy to discover any substantial ground for this contemptuous pride in those literati, who have most distinguished themselves by their scorn of Behmen, Thaulerus," 10 St. Luke x., 21.

"[I have ventured to substitute "Thaulerus" for "De Thoyras” in the text, having reason to suppose that the latter name was a mistake or misprint for the former.

John Thaulerus or Taulerus, sometimes called Dr. Thaulerus, was a celebrated mystic divine of the fourteenth century, the time and place of whose birth is uncertain. He became a monk of the Dominican order, and died at Strasbourg, according to the epitaph on his tomb, on the 17th of May, 1361.

He wrote several books of divinity in his own native language; the original edition is very rarely found, but they were translated into Latin by Surius, and published at Cologne in 1548. Among them are Exercises on the Life and Passion of Christ, Institutions and Sermons. The Theologia Germanica, also entitled, in the English translation, a little Golden Manual, has been ascribed to him.

Very different judgments have been formed of the character and value of his writings, as is commonly the case with respect to mystical productions, the thoughts and language of which are in a state of glowing fusion, and therefore capable of assuming different appearances, according to the moulds of mind into which they are received. Some behold in them heresy and fanaticism; some hold them good in substance but too capable of perversion; whilst, on the other hand, many authors of weight and note, both Romanist and Protestant, especially the latter, as Arnd, Müller, Melanction, and others, have commended them highly and unreservedly. Blosius the Abbot styled their author a sincere maintainer of the Catholic faith By Luther this Mystic is spoken of in a spirit very similar to that manifested by Schelling and Coleridge, respecting the illiterate enthusiasts, whom they uphold against the literati by profession. "I know," says he, "that the Doctor is unknown to the schools of Divines, and therefore much despised; but I have found in him, though his writings are all in the German language, more solid and true divinity than is found in all the Doctors of all the Universities, or than can be found in their opinions." (Luther, tom. i., Latin Jenens., page 86, 6, apud Heupelium, folio B. verso.) Dr. Henry More's opinion of him is thus given in the Gen. Biog. Dictionary, whence this account, with the quotation from Luther, is taken:

"But amongst all the writings of this kind there was none which so

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George Fox, and others; unless it be, that they could write or. thographically, make smooth periods, and had the fashions of authorship almost literally at their fingers' ends, while the latter, in simplicity of soul, made their words immediate echoes of their feelings. Hence the frequency of those phrases among them, which have been mistaken for pretences to immediate inspiration; as for instance, "It was delivered unto me;"—"I strove not tc speak ;"—" I said, I will be silent ;”- "But the word was in my heart as a burning fire ;"—" and I could not forbear." Hence, too, the unwillingness to give offence; hence the foresight, and the dread of the clamors, which would be raised against them, so frequently avowed in the writings of these men, and expressed, as was natural, in the words of the only book with which they were familiar.12 "Woe is me that I am become a man of strife, and a man of contention-I love peace: the souls of men are dear unto me yet because I seek for light every one of them doth i curse me!" O! it requires deeper feeling, and a stronger ima gination, than belong to most of those, to whom reasoning and fluent expression have been as a trade learnt in boyhood, to conceive with what might, with what inward strivings and commotion, the perception of a new and vital truth takes possession of an uneducated man of genius. His meditations are almost inevitably employed on the eternal, or the everlasting; for "the world is

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affected him, as that little book, with which Luther was so prodigiously pleased, entitled Theologica Germanica; though he discovered in it, even at that time, several marks of a deep melancholy, and no small errors in matters of philosophy. But that,' says our author, which he doth so mightily inculcate, viz. that we should thoroughly put off and extinguish our own proper will, that being thus dead to ourselves, we may live alone to God, and do all things whatsoever by his instinct and plenary permission, was so connatural, as it were, and agreeable to my most intimate reason and conscience, that I could not of anything whatsoever be more clearly and certainly convinced."" S. C.]

12 An American Indian, with little variety of images, and a still scantier stock of language, is obliged to turn his few words to many purposes, by likenesses so clear and analogies so remote as to give his language the semblance and character of lyric poetry interspersed with grotesques. Something not unlike this was the case of such men as Behmen and Fox with regard to the Bible. It was their sole armory of expressions, their only organ of thought.

not his friend, nor the world's law." Need we then be surprised, that, under an excitement at once so strong and so unusual, the man's body should sympathize with the struggles of his mind; or that he should at times be so far deluded, as to mistake the tumultuous sensations of his nerves, and the co-existing spectres of his fancy, as parts or symbols of the truths which were opening on him? It has indeed been plausibly observed, that in order to derive any advantage, or to collect any intelligible meaning, from the writings of these ignorant Mystics, the reader must bring with him a spirit and judgment superior to that of the writers themselves:

And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek ?13

-a sophism, which I fully agree with Warburton, is unworthy of Milton; how much more so of the awful Person, in whose mouth he has placed it? One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding, and the nature of man, which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much fulness of heart and intellect, as burst forth in many a simple page of George Fox, Jacob Behmen, and even of Behmen's commentator, the pious and fervid William Law.14 14

13 [Paradise Regained, b. iv., 1. 325. S. C.]

14 [William Law was born at King's Cliffe, Northamptonshire, in 1689, died April 9, 1761. A list of seventeen religious works written by him is given in the Gent. Mag., Nov., 1800. Towards the latter end of his life he adopted "the mystic enthusiasm of Jacob Behmen," which tinctured his later writings; and of that author's works he prepared an English edition. (Behmen's, Jacob, Works, to which is prefixed the Life of the Author, with figures illustrating his principles. Left by the Rev. William Law, M.A. London, 1764-81. 4 vols., 4to)

Mr. Southey has the following passage on Law in his Life of Wesley: "About this time Wesley became personally acquainted with William Law, a man whose writings completed what Jeremy Taylor, and the treatise De Imitatione Christi, had begun. When first he visited him, he was prepared to object to his views of Christian duty as too elevated to be attainable; but Law silenced and satisfied him by replying, 'We shall de well to aim at the highest degrees of perfection, if we may thereby at least attain to mediocrity.' Law is a powerful writer: it is said that few

The feeling of gratitude which I cherish towards these men, has caused me to digress further than I had foreseen or proposed; but to have passed them over in an historical sketch of my literary life and opinions, would have seemed to me like the denial of a debt, the concealment of a boon. For the writings of these Mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the outline of any single dogmatic system. They contributed to keep alive the heart in the head; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and working presentiment, that all the products of the mere reflective faculty partook of death, and were as the rattling twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had not penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter. If they were too often a moving cloud of smoke to me by day, yet they were always a pillar of fire throughout the night, during my wanderings through the wilderness of doubt, and enabled me to skirt, without crossing, the sandy deserts of utter unbelief. That the system is capable of being converted into an irreligious Pantheism, I well know. The Ethics of Spinoza," may, or may not, be an instance. But at no time could I believe, that in itself and essentially it is incompatible with re

books have ever made so many religious enthusiasts as his Christian Perfection and his Serious Call: indeed, the youth who should read them without being perilously affected, must have either a light mind or an unusually strong one. But Law himself, who has shaken so many intellects, sacrificed his own at last to the reveries and rhapsodies of Jacob Behmen. Perhaps the art of engraving was never applied to a more extraordinary purpose, nor in a more extraordinary manner, than when the nonsense of the German shoemaker was elucidated in a series of prints after Law's designs, representing the anatomy of the spiritual man. His own happiness, however, was certainly not diminished by the change: the system of the ascetic is dark and cheerless; but mysticism lives in a sunshine of its own, and dreams of the light of heaven; while the visions of the ascetic are such as the fear of the devil produces, rather than the love of God" Vol. i., pp. 57-8

The forthcoming new edition of the Life of Wesley contains numerous marginal notes by Mr. Coleridge. Among these are two, explaining and defending some of the German shoemaker's and his commentator's sense or "nonsense." S. C.]

15 [Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata.

Baruche or Benedict de

ligion, natural or revealed: and now I am most thoroughly per. suaded of the contrary. The writings of the illustrious sage

Spinoza was born at Amsterdam, Nov. 24, 1632, was the son of a Portuguese Jew; died at the Hague, Feb. 21, 1677.

Cousin positively denies the charge of atheism, in the form in which it was laid, against Spinoza, declaring it to have originated in personal animosity, as did a similar one against Wolf. He affirms that Spinoza's is by no means, either in terms, or the spirit of the author, an atheistic system, but rather a pantheism (formal and not material like that of the Eleatics) containing and unfolding a high and worthy notion of God." Ce n'est qu'à une époque récente," says he, "qu'on a commencé à traiter avec plus de justice la personne et la doctrine de ce grand homme, et en même temps on a découvert, par la méthode critique (the method of Kant), le côté foible du système." Spinoza must indeed have been a most elaborate hypoHow strange it crite if he was consciously and intentionally an atheist. appears that Christians, who are commanded to hope and believe all things favorable of others, should have such an appetite for discovering unbelief and misbelief even in those who manifest no evil heart or godless temper! It would seem as if some men's faith could not be kept alive and properly exercised, unless, like the passionate lord in the play, it were

allow'd a carcase to insult on,*

the vile body, to wit, of some other man's infidelity and irreligion.

"I have often thought," says Mr. Coleridge, in his Notes on Noble's Appeal, "of writing a work to be entitled Vindicia Heterodoxa, sive celebrium virorum napadoɣparisóvтwv defensio; that is Vindication of Great Men unjustly branded; and at such times the names prominent to my mind's eye have been Giordano Bruno, Jacob Behmen, Benedict Spinoza and Emanuel Swedenborg."

Still it was Mr. Coleridge's ultimate opinion, that Spinoza's system excluded or wanted the true ground of faith in God as the Supreme Intelligence and Absolute Will, to whom man owes religious fealty. He speaks thus in The Friend, vol. iii., Essay xi., p. 214, 5th edit.

"The inevitable result of all consequent reasoning, in which the intellect refuses to acknowledge a higher or deeper ground than it can itself supply, and weens to possess within itself the centre of its own system, is -and from Zeno the Eleatic to Spinoza, and from Spinoza to the Schellings, Okens, and their adherents of the present day, ever has been-pantheism under one or other of its modes, the least repulsive of which differs from the rest, not in its consequences, which are one and the same in all, and in all alike are practically atheistic, but only as it may express the striving of the philosopher himself to hide these consequences from his own mind." S. C.]

This line, from The Nice Valour or The Passionate Madman of Beaumont and Fletche 'first saw quoted by Mr. Southey in a letter to Mr. Murray.

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