Chapter VII: Enthusiasm (3)

It has been already observed that a French historian of Christianity speaks of Quakerism and Methodism as the two chief forms of English mysticism.[604] To an educated man of ordinary observation in the eighteenth century, especially if he regarded the new movement with distrust, the analogy between this and different or earlier varieties of 'enthusiasm' appeared still more complete. Lord Lyttelton, for example, in discussing a favourite theological topic of that age--namely, the absence of enthusiasm in St. Paul, and his constant appeals to the evidence of reason and the senses--contrasts with the life and writings of the Apostles the extravagant imaginations, and the pretensions to Divine illumination, of 'mystics, ancient and modern,' mediæval saints, 'Protestant sectaries of the last age, and some of the Methodists now.'[605] Montanus and Dionysius, St. Francis and Ignatius Loyola, Madame Bourignon, George Fox, and Whitefield are all ranked together in the same general category. Methodists, Moravians, and Hutchinsonians are classed as all nearly-related members of one family. Just in the same way[606] Bishop Lavington, in his 'Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists,' has entered into an elaborate comparison between what he finds in Wesley's journals and in the lives and writings of saints and mystics of the Roman Church.[607] Nor does he fail to discover similar resemblances to Methodist experiences among the old mystic philosophers, Montanists, Quakers, French Quietists, French prophets, and Moravians. The argumentative value of Lavington's book may be taken for what it was worth. To his own contemporaries it appeared the achievement of a great triumph if he could prove in frequent cases an almost identical tone of thought in Wesley and in Francis of Assisi or Francis de Sales. To most minds in our own days it will rather seem as if he were constantly dealing blows which only rebounded upon himself, in comparing his opponent to men whose deep piety and self-denying virtues, however much tinged by the errors of their time and order, worked wonders in the revival of earnest faith. On the whole Lavington proved his case successfully, but he only proved by what easy transitions the purest and most exalted faith may pass into extravagances, and, above all, the folly of his own Church in not endeavouring to find scope for her enthusiasts and mystics, as Rome had done for a Loyola and a St. Theresa. He himself was a typical example of the tone of thought out of which this infatuation grew. What other views could be looked for from a bishop who, though himself an awakening preacher and a good man, whose dying words[608] were an ascription of glory to God ([Greek: doxa tô theô]), was yet so wholly blind to the more intense manifestations of religious fervour that he could see nothing to admire, nothing even to approve, in the burning zeal of the founders of the Franciscans and of the Jesuits? Of the first he had nothing more to say than that he was 'at first only a well-minded but weak enthusiast, afterwards a mere hypocrite and impostor;' of the other he spoke with a certain compassion as 'that errant, shatter-brained, visionary fanatic.'[609] And the Methodist, he thought, had a somewhat 'similar texture of brain.'

The Methodist leaders were wholly free from some dangerous tendencies which mysticism has been apt to develop. They never disparaged any of the external aids to religion; their meaning is never hidden under a haze of dim conceptions; above all, they never showed the slightest inclination to the vague and unpractical pantheistic opinions which are often nurtured by a too exclusive insistance on the indwelling and pervading operations of the Divine Spirit. In the two latter points they resembled the Quietist and Port-Royal mystics of the French school, who always aimed at lucidity of thought and language, rather than those of German origin. From mystics generally they differed, most of all, in adopting the Pauline rather than the Johannine phraseology.

But, with some important differences, there can be no question that Methodism rose and prospered under the same influences which in every age of Christianity, or rather in every age of the world, have attended all the most notable outbursts of mystic revivalism. Its causes were the same; its higher manifestations were much the same; its degenerate and exaggerated forms were the same; its primary and most essential principle was the same. As the religious brotherhoods of the Pythagoreans rose in spiritual revolt against the lax mythology and careless living of the Sybarites in Sicily;[610] as in the third century of the Christian era Neoplatonism concentrated within itself whatever remains of faith and piety lingered in the creeds and philosophies of paganism;[611] as in the Middle Ages devout men, wearied with forms and controversies, and scholastic reasoners seeking refuge from the logical and metaphysical problems with which they had perplexed theology, sought more direct communion with God in the mystic devotion of Anselm and Bernard, of Hugo and Bonaventura;[612] as Bertholdt and Nicolas, Eckhart and Tauler,[613] organised their new societies throughout Germany to meet great spiritual needs which established systems had wholly ceased to satisfy; as Arndt and Spener and Francke in the seventeenth century breathed new life into the Lutheran Church, and set on foot their 'collegia pietatis,' their systematised prayer-meetings, to supplement the deficiencies of the time[614]--so in the England of the eighteenth century, when the force of religion was chilled by drowsiness and indifference in some quarters, by stiffness and formality and over-cautious orthodoxy in others, when the aspirations of the soul were being ever bidden rest satisfied with the calculations of sober reason, when proofs and evidences and demonstrations were offered, and still offered, to meet the cry of those who called for light, how else should religion stem the swelling tide of profligacy but by some such inward spiritual revival as those by which it had heretofore renewed its strength? If Wesley and Whitefield and their fellow-workers had not come to the rescue, no doubt other reformers of a somewhat kindred spirit would have risen in their stead. How or whence it is useless to speculate. Perhaps Quakerism, or something nearly akin to it, might have assumed the dimensions to which a half-century before it had seemed not unlikely to grow. The way was prepared for some strong reaction. Past aberrations of enthusiasm were well-nigh forgotten, and large masses of the population were unconsciously longing for its warmth and fire. It was highly probable that an active religious movement was near at hand, and its general nature might be fairly conjectured; its specific character, its force, extent, and limits, would depend, under Providence, upon the zeal and genius of its leaders.

Nothing could be more natural than that to many outside observers early Methodism should have seemed a mere repetition of what England, in the century before, had been only too familiar with. The physical phenomena which manifested themselves under the influence of Wesley's and Whitefield's preaching were in all points exactly the same as those of which the annals of imaginative and excited religious feeling have in every age been full. Swoons and strange convulsive agitations, however impressive and even awe-inspiring to an uninformed beholder, were undistinguishable from those, for example, which had given their name to English Quakers[615] and French Convulsionists,[616] which were to be read of in the Lives of Guyon and St. Theresa,[617] and which were a matter of continual occurrence when Tauler preached in Germany.[618] It is no part of this inquiry to dwell upon their cause and nature, or upon the perplexity Wesley himself felt on the subject. Occasionally he was mortified by the discovery of imposture or of superstitious credulity, and something he was willing to attribute to natural causes.[619] On the whole his opinion was that they might be rejoiced in as a glorious sight,[620] visible evidences of life-giving spiritual agencies, but that the bodily pain was quite distinct and due to Satan's hindrance.[621] He sometimes added a needful warning that all such physical disturbances were of a doubtful nature, and that the only tests of spiritual change which could be relied upon were those indisputable fruits of the Spirit which the Apostle Paul enumerates.[622] His less guarded words closely correspond with what may be read in the journals of G. Fox and other early Quakers. When he writes more coolly and reflectively we are reminded not of the first fanatical originators of that sect, but of what their distinguished apologist, Barclay, has said of those 'pangs of the new birth' which have often accompanied the sudden awakening to spiritual life in persons of strong and undisciplined feelings. 'From their inward travail, while the darkness seeks to obscure the light and the light breaks through the darkness ... there will be such a painful travail found in the soul that will even work upon the outward man, so that oftentimes through the working thereof the body will be greatly shaken, and many groans, and sighs, and tears, will lay hold upon it.'[623]

Wesley himself was protected both by disposition and training from falling deeply into some of the dangers to which enthusiastic and mystical religion is very liable. He was credulous, and even superstitious, but he checked his followers in the credence which many of them were inclined to give to stories of ecstasies, and visions, and revelations. He spoke slightingly of orthodoxy, and held that 'right opinions were a very slender part of religion;'[624] but, far from countenancing anything like a vague undogmatic Pietism, his opinions went almost to the opposite extreme of precise definition. Neither could it be said of him that he spiritualised away the plain meaning of Scripture--a charge to which the old Quakers were constantly liable, and which was sometimes alleged against the later Methodists. He himself never spoke contemptuously--as the mystics have been so apt to do--of the value of learning; and of reason he said, in the true spirit of Henry More, 'I believe and reason too, for I find no inconsistency between them. And I would as soon put out my eyes to secure my faith, as lay aside my reason.'[625] But the Methodists, as a body, were far less inclined to act on this principle. Without disparagement to the conspicuous ability of some individual members of their communion, both in the present and in the past, it may be certainly said that they have always utterly failed to attract the intellect of the country at large. Great, therefore, as was its moral and spiritual power among large classes of the people, Methodism was never able to take rank among great national reformations.

Neither Wesley nor the Wesleyans have ever yielded to a mischievous tendency which has beset most forms of mysticism. They have never, in comparison with the inward worship of the soul, spoken slightingly of 'temples made of stones,'[626] or of any of the chief outward ordinances of religion. Their opponents often attempted to make it a charge against them, and thought, no doubt, they would be sure to prove it. But they never did so. Wesley was always able to answer, with perfect correctness, that what was thus said might be true of Moravians, or of Tauler, or of Behmen, or of St. Theresa, or of Madame de Bourignon, or of the Quakers, or even of William Law, but that he himself had never done otherwise than insist most strongly on the essential need of making use of all the external helps which religion can offer.[627]

By far the gravest imputation that has ever been brought against the disciples of each various form of mystical or emotional religion is that, in aspiring after some loftier ideal of spiritual communion with the Divine, they have looked down with a kind of scorn upon 'mere morality,' as if it were a lower path. And it must be acknowledged that men of the most pure and saintly lives have, nevertheless, used expressions which misguided or unprincipled men might pervert into authority for lawlessness. Tauler, whom an admiring contemporary once called 'the holiest of God's children now living on the earth,'[628] could yet say of the higher elevation of the Christian life that, 'where this comes to pass, outward works become of no moment.'[629] What wonder that the fanatical Beghards, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, against whom he contended with all his energies,[630] should seek to confuse his principles with theirs, and assert that, having attained the higher state, they were not under subjection to moral commandments? So, again, of the early Quakers Henry More[631] observed that, although their doctrine of special illumination had guided many into much sanctity of life, the more licentious sort had perverted it into a cloke for all kinds of enormity, on the ground that they were inspired by God, and could be guilty of no sin, as only exercising their rights of liberty. Madame de Bourignon was an excellent woman, but Leslie and Lavington[632] showed that some of her writings seem dangerously to underrate good works. Moravian principles, lightly understood, made Herrnhut a model Christian community; misunderstood, they became pretexts for the most dangerous Antinomianism.[633] An example may even be quoted from the last century where the nobler elements of mystic enthusiasm were found in one mind combined with the pernicious tendency in question. In that very remarkable but eccentric genius, William Blake, mysticism was rich in fruits of faith and love, and it is needless, therefore, to add that he was a good man, of blameless morals; yet, by a strange flaw or partial derangement in his profoundly spiritual nature, 'he was for ever, in his writings, girding at the "mere moral law" as the letter that killeth. His conversation, his writings, his designs, were equally marked by theoretic licence and virtual guilelessness.'[634]

Bishop Berkeley's name could not be passed over even in such a sketch as this without a sense of incompleteness. He was, it is true, strongly possessed with the prevalent feeling of aversion to anything that was called enthusiasm. When, for example, his opinion was asked about John Hutchinson--a writer whose mystic fancies as to recondite meanings contained in the words of the Hebrew Bible[635] possessed a strange fascination for William Jones of Nayland, Bishop Horne, and other men of some note[636]--he answered that he was not acquainted with his works, but 'I have observed him to be mentioned as an enthusiast, which gave me no prepossession in his favour.'[637] But the Christianity of feeling, which lies at the root of all that is sound and true in what the age called enthusiasm, was much encouraged by the theology and philosophy of Berkeley. It may not have been so to any great extent among his actual contemporaries. A thoroughly prosaic generation, such as that was in which he lived, was too unable to appreciate his subtle and poetic intellect to gain much instruction from it. He was much admired, but little understood. 'He is indeed,' wrote Warburton to Hurd, 'a great man, and the only visionary I ever knew that was.'[638] It was left for later reasoners, in England and on the Continent, to separate what may be rightly called visionary in his writings from what may be profoundly true, and to feel the due influence of his suggestive and spiritual reflections.

The purely mystic element in Berkeley's philosophy may be illustrated by the charm it had for William Blake, a man of whom Mr. Swinburne says that 'his hardest facts were the vaguest allegories of other men. To him all symbolic things were literal, all literal things symbolic. About his path and about his bed, around his ears and under his eyes, an infinite play of spiritual life seethed and swarmed or shone and sang.'[639] To this strange artist-poet, in whose powerful but fantastic mind fact and imagination were inextricably blended, whose most intimate friends could not tell where talent ended and hallucination began, whom Wordsworth delighted in,[640] and whose conversation in any country walk is described as having a marvellous power of kindling the imagination, and of making nature itself seem strangely more spiritual, almost as if a new sense had awakened in the mind of his hearer[641]--to William Blake the theories of Berkeley supplied a philosophy which exactly suited him.[642] Blake's ruling idea was that of an infinite spiritual life so imprisoned under the bondage of material forces[643] that only by spiritual perception--a power given to all to cultivate--can true existence be discovered.[644] He longed for the full emancipation which a better life would bring.

At the very close of the century, in the year 1798, an elaborate treatise on enthusiasm was published by Richard Graves, Dean of Ardagh, a man of considerable learning and earnest piety. It is needless to enter into the arguments of his 'Essay on the Character of the Apostles and Evangelists.' Its object was to prove they were wholly free from the errors of enthusiasts; that in their private conduct, and in the government of the Church, they were 'rational and sober, prudent and cautious, mild and decorous, zealous without violence, and steady without obstinacy; that their writings are plain, calm, and unexaggerated, ... natural and rational, ... without any trace of spiritual pride, any arrogant claims to full perfection of virtue; ... teaching heartfelt piety to God without any affectation of rapturous ecstasy or extravagant fervour.'[645] On the other hand, he illustrates the extravagances into which enthusiasts have been led, from the history of Indian mystics and Greek Neoplatonists, from Manichæans and Montanists, from monastic saints, from the Beghards of Germany, the Fratricelli of Italy, the Illuminati of Spain, the Quietists of France, from Anabaptists, Quakers, and French prophets. He refers to what had been written against enthusiasm within the preceding century by Stillingfleet, Bayle, Locke, Hicks, Shaftesbury, Lord Lyttelton, Barrington, Chandler, Archibald Campbell, Stinstra, Warburton, Lavington, and Douglas--a list the length of which is in itself a sufficient evidence of the sensitive interest which the subject had excited. He remarks on the attempts made by Chubb and Morgan to attach to Christianity the opprobrium of being an enthusiastic religion, and reprobates the assertions of the younger Dodwell that _faith_ is not founded on argument. The special occasion of his work[646] arose out of more recent events--the publication at Geneva in 1791 of Boulanger's 'Christianity Unmasked,' and the many similar efforts made during the period of the French Revolution to represent fanaticism and Christianity as synonymous terms.

But while Dean Graves was writing in careful and moderate language his not unseasonable warnings, thoughts representative of a new and deeper strain of theological feeling were passing through the mind of Samuel Coleridge. His was a genius singularly receptive of the ideas which emanated from the leading intellect of his age in England or abroad. He was probably better acquainted than any other of his countrymen with the highest literature of Germany, which found in him not only an interpreter, but a most able and reflective exponent. Few could be better fitted than he was--no one certainly in his own country and generation--to deal with those subtle and intricate elements of human nature upon which enthusiasts and mystics have based their speculations, and hopelessly blended together much that is sublime and true with not a little that is groundless and visionary, and often dangerous in its practical or speculative results. In the first place, he could scarcely fail in sympathy. He was endowed with a rich vein of that imaginative power which is the very life of all enthusiasm. It is the most prominent characteristic of his poetry; it is no less conspicuous in the intense glow of excited expectation with which he, like so many other young men of rising talent, cherished those millennial visions of peace and brotherhood, and simple faith and love, which the French Revolution in its progress so rudely crushed. Mysticism also must have had great charms for one who could write verses so imbued with its spirit as are the following:--

He first by fear uncharmed the drowsèd soul,
Till of its nobler nature it 'gan feel
Dim recollections; and thence soared to hope,
Strong to believe whate'er of mystic good
The Eternal dooms for His immortal sons;
From hope and firmer faith to perfect love
Attracted and absorbed; and centred there,
God only to behold, and know, and feel,
Till by exclusive consciousness of God,
All self annihilated, it shall make
God its identity--God all in all!
We and our Father one!
And blest are they
Who in this fleshy world, the elect of heaven,
Their strong eye darting through the deeds of men,
Adore with steadfast, unpresuming gaze
Him, nature's essence, mind, and energy;
And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend,
Treading beneath their feet all visible things
As steps, that upward to their Father's throne
Lead gradual.[647]

If we would further understand how far removed must have been Coleridge's tone of thought from that which for so long a time had regarded enthusiasm in all its forms as the greatest enemy of sober reason and sound religion, we should only have to consider what a new world of thought and sentiment was that in which Coleridge was living from any of which the generation before him had experience. The band of poets and essayists represented by Coleridge and Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, De Quincey, and we may add Blake, were in many respects separated by a wider gulf, except only in time, from the authors of twenty years before, than they were from the writers of the Elizabethan age. New hopes and aspirations as to the capabilities of human life, new and more spiritual aspects of nature, of art, of poetry, of history, made it impossible for those who felt these influences in all the freshness of their new life to look with the same eyes as their fathers on those questions above all others which related to the intellectual and spiritual faculties of the soul. It was a worthy aim for a poet-philosopher such as Coleridge was--a mystic and enthusiast in one aspect of his mind, a devoted 'friend of reason' in another--to analyse reason and unite its sublimer powers with conscience as a divinely given 'inner light,' to combine in one the highest exercise of the intellectual and the moral faculties. Emotional religion had exhibited on a large scale alike its powers and deficiencies. Thoughtful and religious men could scarcely do better than set themselves to restore the balance where it was unequal. They had to teach that faith must be based, not only upon feeling and undefined impulse, but on solid intellectual apprehension. They had to urge with no less earnestness that religious truth has to be not only outwardly apprehended, but inwardly appropriated before it can become possessed of true spiritual efficacy. It is most true that vague ideas of some inward illumination are but a miserable substitute for a sound historical faith, but it is no less true that a so-called historical faith has not become faith at all until the soul has received it into itself, and made of it an inward light. In the eighteenth century, as in every other, mystics and enthusiasts have insisted only on inward illuminations and spiritual experiences, while of men of a very different cast of mind some have perpetually harped upon authority and some upon reason and reasonableness. It may be hoped that our own century may be more successful in the difficult but not discouraging task of investigating and harmonising their respective claims.

C.J.A.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 468: Or to a painter's imagination. The _Idler_, not however without some fear of 'its wild extravagances' even in this sphere, allows that 'one may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the modern painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the present age.'--No. 79.]

[Footnote 469: Henry More, _Enthus. Triumphatus_, § 4.]

[Footnote 470: _Quarterly Review_, xxviii 37.]

[Footnote 471: H. More, _On the Immortality of the Soul_, b. iii. ch. 12; and the whole treatise, especially the third and fourth books.]

[Footnote 472: H. More, _Phil. Works_, General Preface, § 6; and _Enthusiasmus Triumphatus_, § 52.]

[Footnote 473: § 62.]

[Footnote 474: 'Address to the Clergy.'--Wesley's _Works_, 492.]

[Footnote 475: Coleridge seems to have read H. More with much enjoyment.--_Aids to Reflection_, i. 106-10. 'Occasional draughts,' Channing writes, of More and other Platonists, 'have been refreshing to me.' ... Their mysticism was noble in its kind, 'and perhaps a necessary reaction against the general earthliness of men's minds. I pardon the man who loses himself in the clouds, if he will help me upwards.'--W.E. Channing's _Correspondence_ 338.]

[Footnote 476: Quoted by Bishop Berkeley, _Theory of Vision_, pt. i. § 116.]

[Footnote 477: Schlosser, _History of the Eighteenth Century_, chap. 1. i. Horsley's _Charges_, 86. _Quarterly Review_, July 1864, 70-9.]

[Footnote 478: Warburton's _Works_, iv. 568.]

[Footnote 479: 'Letter to the Bishop of Gloucester.'--Wesley's _Works_, ix. 151.]

[Footnote 480: Dedication to his _Three Sermons_, quoted by H.S. Skeats, _History of the free Churches_, 333.]

[Footnote 481: W. Roberts, _Memoirs of Hannah More_, i. 500, ii. 61, 70, 110.]

[Footnote 482: R.A. Vaughan's _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 391.]

[Footnote 483: C. Leslie, 'Snake in the Grass.'--_Works_, iv. 21.]

[Footnote 484: Dr. Sherlock, _On Public Worship_, chap. iii. § 1, 4.]

[Footnote 485: Warburton's 'Alliance.'--_Works_, 1788, iv. 53.]

[Footnote 486: _Tatler_, No. 257.]

[Footnote 487: Canon Curteis remarks of the early Quakers, 'What was urgently wanted, and what Christ (I think) was really commissioning George Fox and others to do, was not a destructive, but a constructive work,--the work of breathing fresh life into old forms, recovering the true meaning of old symbols, raising from the dead old words that needed translating into modern equivalents.'--G.H. Curteis, _Dissent in Relation to the Church of England_, 268.]

[Footnote 488: C. Leslie, 'Defence, &c.'--_Works_, v. 164.]

[Footnote 489: C. Leslie, _Works_, iv. 428.]

[Footnote 490: R. Barclay's _Apology for the Quakers_, 259.]

[Footnote 491: No doubt some forms of Quakerism (for in it, as in every form of mystic theology, there were many varieties) lost sight almost altogether of any idea of atonement. Cf. _British Quarterly_, October 1874, 337; C. Leslie, 'Satan Disrobed.'--_Works_, iv. 398-418; id. v. 100.]

[Footnote 492: M.J. Matter, _Histoire du Christianisme_, iv. 343.]

[Footnote 493: Boswell's _Life of Dr. Johnson_, ii. 456.]

[Footnote 494: Southey's 'Letters,' quoted in _Quarterly Review_, 98, 494.]

[Footnote 495: 'I fancy that most of the Churches need to learn and receive of one another; and I have often wished that the zealous Methodist, for instance, who lives so much in action and in the atmosphere of religious excitement, could sometimes enter thoroughly into the spirit of the more religious Friends.'--H.H. Dobney, _Free Churches_, 106.]

[Footnote 496: J. Byrom's _Poems_.]

[Footnote 497: Tauler's _Sermon for Epiphany_; Winkworth's _History and Life, with twenty-five Sermons translated_, 223.]

[Footnote 498: Calamy's _Own Life_, ii. 71.]

[Footnote 499: W.M. Hatch's edition of Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, Appen. 376-8.]

[Footnote 500: W. Blake, _Miscellaneous Poems_, 'The Land of Dreams.']

[Footnote 501: Wesley's _Third Journal_, p. 24, quoted by Lavington, _Enthus. of Meth. and Pa. Comp._, 252.]

[Footnote 502: A. Alison's _Life of Marlborough_, chap. ix. § 30.]

[Footnote 503: _Guardian_, No. 69.]

[Footnote 504: Lord Lyttelton's _Dialogues of the Dead_, No. 3.]

[Footnote 505: R. Savage's _Miscellaneous Poems_,' Character of Rev. J. Foster.']

[Footnote 506: Jortin's _Letters_, ii. 43.]

[Footnote 507: R.H. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 226.]

[Footnote 508: C. Leslie's 'Snake in the Grass.'--_Works_, iv. 1-14. So also Lavington's _Enthusiasm_, &c., 346.]

[Footnote 509: 'In England her works have already deceived not a few.'--Leslie, Id. 14. 'What think you too of the Methodists? You are nearer to Oxford. We have strange accounts of their freaks. The books of Madame Bourignon, the French _visionnaire_, are, I hear, much enquired after by them.'--Warburton to Doddridge, May 27, 1738. Doddridge's _Correspondence_, &c., iii. 327.

Francis Lee, the Nonjuror, an excellent man, one of Robert Nelson's friends, was 'once a great Bourignonist.'--Hearne to Rawlinson, App. in. 1718, quoted in H.B. Wilson's _History of Merchant Taylors' School_ ii. 957.]

[Footnote 510: M.J. Matter, _Histoire du Christianisme_, iv. 344.]

[Footnote 511: Francis Okely, one of the most distinguished of the English Moravians of the last century, was a great student and admirer of Behmen.--Nichol's _Literary Anecdotes_, iii. 93.]

[Footnote 512: Schelling and others, says Dorner, 'sought out and utilised many a noble germ in the fermenting chaos of Böhme's notions.'--J.A. Dorner's _History of Protestant Theology_, 1871, ii. 184.]

[Footnote 513: R.A. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 349.]

[Footnote 514: H. More's _Works_, 'Antidote against Atheism,' note to chap. xliv.]

[Footnote 515: J. Wesley, 'Thoughts upon Jacob Behmen.'--_Works_, ix. 509.]

[Footnote 516: Id. 513.]

[Footnote 517: Unqualified, even for Warburton. 'Doctrine of Grace,' b. iii. ch. ii. _Works_, iv. 706.]

[Footnote 518: A. Gilchrist's _Life of Blake_, i. 16.]

[Footnote 519: W. Law's introduction to his translation of Behmen's _Works_.]

[Footnote 520: H. Coleridge, _Sonnet on Shakspeare_.]

[Footnote 521: Quoted in _Christian Schools and Scholars_, ii. § 5.]

[Footnote 522: For fuller details, see _The Life and Opinions of W. Lam_, by J.H. Overton, published since the first edition of this work.]

[Footnote 523: Boswell's _Johnson_, ii. 125.]

[Footnote 524: E. Gibbon, _Memoirs of My Life_, 13.]

[Footnote 525: _Quarterly Review_, 103, 310.]

[Footnote 526: Ewing's _Present-Day Papers_, 14.]

[Footnote 527: In Leslie Stephen's _English Thought in the Eighteenth Century_ we have a vivid picture of the retreat at Kingscliffe--the devotional exercises, the unstinted almsgiving, and Law's little study, four feet square, furnished with its chair, its writing-table, the Bible, and the works of Jacob Behmen. 'Certainly a curious picture in the middle of that prosaic eighteenth century, which is generally interpreted to us by Fielding, Smollett, and Hogarth.'--Chap. xii. 6 (70).]

[Footnote 528: F.D. Maurice, Introduction to Law's _Answer to Mandeville_, v.]

[Footnote 529: _Works_, xi. 216.]

[Footnote 530: _Answer to Dr. Trapp._--_Works_, vi. 319.]

[Footnote 531: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 2nd ed. 1762, p. 7.--_Works_, vol. vii.]

[Footnote 532: Id.]

[Footnote 533: Plato, _Republic_, b. x. § 611.]

[Footnote 534: _Appeal to all that Doubt_, 3rd ed. 1768, p. 131.--_Works_, vol. vi. _Spirit of Prayer_, 1st part, 73, vol. vii.]

[Footnote 535: Id. 24.]

[Footnote 536: _Answer to Dr. Trapp_, 38-39, vol. vi.]

[Footnote 537: Id.]

[Footnote 538: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 14.]

[Footnote 539: _Answer to Dr. Trapp_, 244.]

[Footnote 540: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 98.]

[Footnote 541: The special reference to Dr. Joseph Trapp's 'Four Sermons on the Folly, Sin, and Danger of being Righteous overmuch; with a particular view to the Doctrines and Practices of Modern Enthusiasts,' 1739. The work had an extensive sale. S. Johnson's _Works_ (R. Lynam), v. 497. It should be added that, from their own point of view, the sermons contain much sound sense and are by no means deficient in religious feeling.]

[Footnote 542: _Appeal_, &c., 278.]

[Footnote 543: _Appeal_, &c., 279.]

[Footnote 544: Id. 280.]

[Footnote 545: Id. 282.]

[Footnote 546: Id. 275.]

[Footnote 547: Id. 282.]

[Footnote 548: Id. 4.]

[Footnote 549: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. i. 56-8.]

[Footnote 550: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. i. 67.]

[Footnote 551: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 78, and 31. _Appeal_, &c., 5.]

[Footnote 552: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 14.]

[Footnote 553: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 15.]

[Footnote 554: One of the passages on the title-page of Tindal's _Christianity as Old as the Creation_, was the following sentence from the _Retractations_ of St. Augustine: 'The thing which is now called the Christian Religion was also among the ancients, nor was it wanting from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the flesh, when the true religion that then was began to be called Christian.'--Quoted in Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, ii. 434.]

[Footnote 555: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 124, vol. viii.]

[Footnote 556: _Appeal_, &c., 199-200. _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. ii. 159.]

[Footnote 557: Wesley's 'Letter to W. Law.'--_Works_, ix. 488--. Also Warburton on Middleton; and 'Doctrine of Grace,' part iii.--_Works_, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 558: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 10. _Appeal_, &c., 325.]

[Footnote 559: Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, 1714, l. 425.]

[Footnote 560: Mandeville's _Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue_, p. 12.]

[Footnote 561: W. Law's _Answer to Mandeville_, 27.]

[Footnote 562: F.D. Maurice's Preface to Id.]

[Footnote 563: R.A. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 246.]

[Footnote 564: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 87.]

[Footnote 565: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. i. 58. Also, Id. 39, _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 96.]

[Footnote 566: W. Law's _Letters_, in R. Tighe's _Life of Law_, 72.]

[Footnote 567: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. ii. 127]

[Footnote 568: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 161.]

[Footnote 569: _Appeal to all that Doubt_, 88.]

[Footnote 570: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 65.]

[Footnote 571: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 140.]

[Footnote 572: _Letters_, in Tighe, 73; and _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 107-8.]

[Footnote 573: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 80.]

[Footnote 574: Id. 112-9.]

[Footnote 575: _Appeal_, &c., 301-13.]

[Footnote 576: _Spirit of Love_, pt. ii. 46. _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. i. 55.]

[Footnote 577: _Answer to Dr. Trapp_, 87.]

[Footnote 578: _Appeal_, &c., 310-3.]

[Footnote 579: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. ii. 202.]

[Footnote 580: Id.]

[Footnote 581: G. Macdonald's _England's Antiphon_, 288.]

[Footnote 582: Chalmers' _English Poets_, xv. 269. _Thoughts on Human Reason_.]

[Footnote 583: M.J. Matter, _Histoire de Christianisme_, vol. iv. 347. H.J. Rose, _Protestantism in Germany_, 46-9. Dorner's _History of Protestant Theology_, ii. 217-227.]

[Footnote 584: Matter, _Histoire_, &c., 348.]

[Footnote 585: Lavington's _Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists_, 1747, § 14.]

[Footnote 586: Id. 20.]

[Footnote 587: Schleiermacher, in a Letter to his Sister, 1805; F. Rowan's _Life of Schleiermacher_, ii. 23.]

[Footnote 588: Whiston's _Life_, by Himself, 576.]

[Footnote 589: Hatton's _Memoirs_, p. 216, quoted in L. Tyerman's 'Life of J. Gambold,' in his _Oxford Methodists_, 188. Archbishop Potter, in 1737, wrote a Latin letter to Zinzendorf, full of sympathy and interest. It is given in Doddridge's _Correspondence_, v. 264.]

[Footnote 590: Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, 1758, vol. v. 86. Doddridge's _Correspondence_, v. 271, note. Remarks on Stinstra's 'Letters,' in J. Hughes' _Correspondence_, 1772, ii. 204-5.]

[Footnote 591: Tyerman, _Oxford Methodists_, 197.]

[Footnote 592: Warburton's 'Doctrine of Grace,' chap. vi.--_Works_, 1788, 4, 626.]

[Footnote 593: Wesley's _Journal_. Quoted in _Wesley's Life_, Religious Tract Society, 34.]

[Footnote 594: 'Life of Gambold,' in L. Tyerman's _Oxford Methodists_, 155-200.]

[Footnote 595: _Second Journal_, p. 26-7. (Quoted by Lavington, § 21); and _Works_, ed. x. 438.]

[Footnote 596: 'Remarks on Mr. Hill's Review,' &c.--_Works_, x. 438.]

[Footnote 597: 'Answer to Lavington.'--_Works_, ix. 49.]

[Footnote 598: 'Letter to Mr. Law.'--_Works_, ix. 466-509.]

[Footnote 599: I. Taylor, _Wesley and Methodism_, 33.]

[Footnote 600: 'Short View,' &c.--_Works_, x. 201. 'My soul,' he wrote in one of his journals, 'is sick of their _sublime_ divinity.' Quoted in H. Curteis, _Dissent in Relation to the Church of England_, 366.]

[Footnote 601: Stanley instances, in addition to Wesley, Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, and Baxter.--_Speech at Edinburgh_, January 2, 1872.]

[Footnote 602: S. Winkworth's _Tauler's Life and Times_, 86.]

[Footnote 603: Id.; also a review of F. Pfeiffer's 2nd vol. of _Deutsche Mystiker_ (Meister Eckhart) in _Saturday Review_, January 9, 1858, and _British Quarterly_, October 1874, 300-5.]

[Footnote 604: M.J. Matter's _Histoire du Christianisme_, 4, 343.]

[Footnote 605: _Works of George, Lord Lyttelton_, 239.]

[Footnote 606: Id. 271.]

[Footnote 607: _Enthusiasm of Romanists and Methodists Compared_, passim.]

[Footnote 608: Polwhele's _Introduction to Lavington_, clxxx.]

[Footnote 609: Lavington's _Enthusiasm_, &c., § 2.]

[Footnote 610: G. Grote's _History of Greece_, chap. xxxvii. There is a full and interesting account of the Pythagorean revival in Dr. F. Schwartz's _Geschichte der Erziehung_, 1829, 301-21.]

[Footnote 611: H.H. Milman. _Early History of Christianity_, 1840, ii. 237.]

[Footnote 612: H.H. Milman, _Lat. Christianity_, 1857, iii. 270, vi. 263, 287; R.A. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, i. 49, 152.]

[Footnote 613: Milman's _Lat. Christianity_, vi. 371-80; Winkworth's _Life and Times of Tauler_, 186.]

[Footnote 614: M.J. Matter's _Histoire du Christianisme_, 4, 347; H.T. Rose, _Protestantism in Germany_, 50.]

[Footnote 615: C. Leslie's _Works_, 'The Snake in the Grass,' and 'Defence, &c.' Id. vols. iv. and v. passim; R.A. Vaughan's _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 255-60. Barclay's _Apology_, 339.]

[Footnote 616: N. Spinckes, _New Pretenders to Prophecy_, 1709, 402, &c.]

[Footnote 617: Vaughan, ii. 165-208.]

[Footnote 618: Winkworth's _Life of Tauler_, 172.]

[Footnote 619: J. Wesley, 'Letter to the Bishop of Gloucester.'--_Works_, ix. 137, 142.]

[Footnote 620: Wesley's _Journal_, quoted by Lavington, _Enthusiasm_, &c., 271.]

[Footnote 621: _Works_, ix. 121; and _Journal_, 1738-43, quoted by Warburton, 'Doctrine of Grace.'--_Works_, iv. 605-75.]

[Footnote 622: _Works_, ix. 143.]

[Footnote 623: Barclay's _Apology_, 339. Cf. Wesley's 'Letter to W. Downes,' 1759. _Works_, ix. 104-5.]

[Footnote 624: Wesley's _Plain Account of the People called the Methodists_, 6th ed. 1764, 4.]

[Footnote 625: 'Predestination calmly considered,' 1745.--_Works_, x. 267.]

[Footnote 626: Behmen, _Three Principles_, chap. xxvi.]

[Footnote 627: 'Answer to Lavington.'--_Works_, ix. 50; 'Letter to Mr. Law,' id. 505.]

[Footnote 628: Winkworth's _Life, &c., of Tauler_, 96]

[Footnote 629: Tauler, 'Sermon for Third Sunday after Epiphany,' id. 223.]

[Footnote 630: Id. 86, 137-8.]

[Footnote 631: H. More's note to § 44 of _Enthus. Triumphatus_.]

[Footnote 632: C. Leslie, _Works_, iv. 5-8; Lavington, 346.]

[Footnote 633: Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, 1758, v. 86 (note); Tyerman, _Oxford Methodists_, 194; Wesley, continually; &c.]

[Footnote 634: A. Gilchrist's _Life of W. Blake_, 331.]

[Footnote 635: Warburton called him and his followers 'our new Cabalists.'--Letter to Doddridge, May 27, 1758.]

[Footnote 636: A full statement of Hutchinson's views may be found in the _Works of G. Horne_, by W. Jones (of Nayland), Pref. xix-xxiii, 20-23, &c. His own views were visionary and extreme. Natural religion, for example, he called 'the religion of Satan and of Antichrist' (id. xix). But he had many admirers, including many young men of promise at Oxford (id. 81). They were attracted by the earnestness of his opposition to some theological tendencies of the age. It was to this reactionary feeling that his repute was chiefly owing. 'Of Mr. Hutchinson we hear but little; his name was the match that gave fire to the train' (id. 92).]

[Footnote 637: Berkeley to Johnson, July 25, 1751.--_G. Berkeley's Life and Works_, ed. A.C. Fraser, iv. 326.]

[Footnote 638: Warburton and Hurd's _Correspondence_, Letter xx.]

[Footnote 639: Alg. C. Swinburne, _W. Blake: a Critical Essay_, 41.]

[Footnote 640: A. Gilchrist's _Life of W. Blake_, i. 303.

It was not only that Wordsworth was at one with Blake in his intense feeling of the mysterious loveliness of nature. There is also an occasional vein of mysticism in his poetry. Thus it is observed in Ch. Wordsworth's _Memoirs of his Life_ (p. 111), that his _Expostulation and Reply_ (1798) was a favourite with the Quakers. It is the poem in which these verses occur:--

'Nor less I deem that there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed these minds of ours
In a wise passiveness.
Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?'--_Poems_, iv. 180.]

[Footnote 641: Gilchrist, i. 311.]

[Footnote 642: Id. 190-1.]

[Footnote 643: Swinburne, 274.]

[Footnote 644: Gilchrist, 321.]

[Footnote 645: R. Graves's _Works_, 'The Apostles not Enthusiasts,' i. 199-200.]

[Footnote 646: Id., _Memoirs_, i. lvi.]

[Footnote 647: S.T. Coleridge's _Poetical Works_, 'Religious Musings,' i. 83-4.]

* * * * *