* To speak freely (and do not count me your enemy for this) you cannot but observe upon cool reflection, that you retain just so much of your antient practice, as leaves your present without excuse; as makes the inconsistency between the one and the other, glaring and undeniable. For instance: this woman is too strict a Quaker, to lay out a shilling in a necklace. Very well; but she is not too strict to lay out fourscore guineas in a repeating watch. Another would not for the world wear any lace, no, not an edging round her cap. But she will wear point; and sees no harm in it at all, though it should be of twelve times the price. In one kind of apron or handkerchief she dares not lay out twenty shillings; but in another sort, lays out twenty pounds. And what multitudes of you are very jealous, as to the colour and form of your apparel, (the least important of all the circumstances that relate to it) while in the most important, the expence, they are without any concern at all? They will not put on a scarlet or crimson stuff, but the richest velvet, so it be black or grave. They will not touch a coloured ribband; but will cover themselves with a stiff silk from head to foot. They cannot bear purple: but make no scruple at all of being cloathed in fine linen: yea, to such a degree, that the linen of the Quakers is grown almost into a proverb.
Surely you cannot be ignorant, that the sinfulness of fine apparel, lies chiefly in the expensiveness. In that it is robbing God and the poor: it is defrauding the fatherless and widow; it is wasting the food of the hungry, and with-holding his raiment from the naked, to consume it on our own lusts.
7. Let it not be said, that this affects only a few among you, and those, of the younger and lighter sort. Yes it does; your whole body: for why do you, who are elder and graver, suffer such things? Why do ye not vehemently reprove them? And if thy repent not, in spite of all worldly considerations, expel them out of your society? In conniving at their sin, you make it your own; you, especially who are preachers. Do you say, “They cannot bear it; they will not hear:” Alas, into what state then are ye fallen! But whether they will bear it or not, what is that to thee? Thou art to speak, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear. To say the very truth, I am afraid, you rather strengthen their hands in their wickedness. For you not only ¹do not testify against it in the congregation, but even sit at their table and reprove them not. Why then, thou also art one of the dumb dogs that cannot bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.
I fix this charge upon every preacher, in particular, who saw a young woman, daughter to one of the Quakers in London, going to be married in apparel suitable to her diamond buckle, which cost a hundred guineas. Could you see this, and not call heaven and earth to witness against it? Then I witness against thee, in the name of the Lord, thou art a blind leader of the blind: thou strainest a gnat and swallowest a camel!
Verily the sin both of teachers and hearers, is herein exceeding great. And the little attempts toward plainness of apparel, which are still observable among you (I mean, in the colour and form of your cloaths, and the manner of putting them on) only testify against you, that you were once what you know in your hearts you are not now.
8. I come now to your main principle, “We are all to be taught of God, to be inspired and led by his Spirit. And then we shall worship him, not with dead form, but in spirit and in truth.”
These are deep and weighty words. But many hold fast the words, and are utterly ignorant of their meaning. Is not this an exceeding common case? Are not you conscious, abundance of your friends have done so? With whom the being taught of God and led by his Spirit, are mere words of course, that mean just nothing. And their crude and indigested accounts, of the things they did not understand, have raised that deep prejudice against these great truths, which we find in the generality of men.
Do some of you ask, “But dost thou acknowledge the inward principle?” I do, my friends: and I would to God every one of you acknowledged it as much. I say, all religion is either empty shew, or perfection by inspiration; in other words, The obedient love of God, by the supernatural knowledge of God: yea, all that which is not of faith is sin; all which does not spring from this loving knowledge of God; which knowledge cannot begin, or subsist one moment, without immediate inspiration: not only all public worship, and all private prayer, but every thought, in common life, and word and work. What think you of this? Do you not stagger? Dare you carry the inward principle so far? Do you acknowledge it to be the very truth? But alas! what is the acknowledging it? Dost thou experience this principle in thyself: What saith thy heart? Does God dwell therein? And doth it now eccho to the voice of God? Hast thou the continual inspiration of his Spirit, filling thy heart with his love, as with a well of water, springing up into everlasting life?
* 9. Art thou acquainted with the leading of his Spirit, not by notion only, but by living experience? I fear very many of you talk of this, who do not so much as know what it means. How does the Spirit of God lead his children, to this, or that particular action? Do you imagine, it is by blind impulse only? By moving you to do it, you know not why? Not so. He leads us by our eye, at least as much as by the hand; and by light as well as by heat. He shews us the way wherein we should go, as well as incites us to walk therein. For example. Here is a man ready to perish with hunger. How am I led by the Spirit to relieve him? First, by his convincing me, it is the will of God I should, and secondly by his filling my heart with love toward him. Both this light and this heat are the gift of God; are wrought in me by the same Spirit: who leads me, by this conviction as well as love, to go and feed that man. This is the plain, rational account of the ordinary leading of the Spirit. But how far from that which some have given!
* Art thou thus led by the Spirit to every good word and work? Till God ♦hath thereby made thy faith perfect? Dost thou know what faith is? It is a loving, obedient sight of a present and reconciled God. Now where this is, there is no dead form; neither can be, so long as it continues. But all that is said or done is full of God, full of Spirit and life and power.
10. But perhaps, as much as you talk of them, you do not know the difference between form and Spirit; or between worshipping God in a formal way, and worshipping him in spirit and in truth.
The Lord is that Spirit. The seeing and feeling and loving him is spiritual life. And whatever is said or done in the sight or love of God, that is full of spirit and life. All beside this is form, mere dead form; whether it be in our public addresses to God, or in our private; or in our worldly business, or in our daily conversation.
* But if so, how poor and mean and narrow have your views and conceptions been! You was afraid of formality in public worship. And reason good. But was you afraid of it no where else? Did not you consider, that formality in common life, is also an abomination to the Lord? And that it can have no place in any thing we say or do, but so far as we forget God? O watch against it in every place, every moment, that you may every moment see and love God: and consequently, at all times and in all places, worship him in Spirit and in truth.
My brethren, permit me to add a few words, in tender love to your souls. Do not you lean too much on the spirit and power which you believe rested upon your forefathers? Suppose it did! Will that avail you, if you do not drink into the same spirit? And how evident is this! That whatever you once were, ye are now shorn of your strength. Ye are weak and become like other men. The Lord is well nigh departed from you. Where is now the spirit, the life, the power? Be not offended with my plain dealing, when I beseech you who are able to weigh things calmly, to open your eyes and see multitudes even in the church, pursuing, yea and attaining the substance of spiritual life, and leaving unto you the shadow. Nay a still greater evil is before you: for if ye find not some effectual means to prevent it, your rising generation will utterly cast off the shadow as well as the substance.
11. There is an abundantly greater difference still, according to your own account, between us who profess ourselves members of the church of England, and you who are members of the church of Rome. But notwithstanding this, do you not agree with us in condemning the vices above recited? Prophaneness, drunkenness, whoredom, adultery, theft, disobedience to parents, and such like? And how unhappily do you agree with us in practising the very vices which you condemn?
And yet you acknowledge (nay and frequently contend for this with a peculiar earnestness) that every Christian is called to be zealous of good works, as well as to deny himself and take up his cross daily. How then do you depart from your own principles, when you are gluttons, drunkards or epicures? When you live at your ease, in all the elegance and voluptuousness of a plentiful fortune! How will you reconcile the being adorned with gold, arrayed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day, with the denying yourself and taking up your cross daily? Surely while you indulge the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life, the excellent rules of self-denial that abound in your own writers, leave you of all men most inexcusable.
12. Neither can this self-indulgence be reconciled, with the being zealous of good works. For by this needless and continual expence, you disable yourself from doing good. You bind your own hands. You make it impossible for you to do that good which otherwise you might. So that you injure the poor in the same proportion as you poison your own soul. You might have cloathed the naked; but what was due to them, was thrown away on your costly apparel. You might have fed the hungry, entertained the stranger, relieved them that were sick or in prison. But the superfluities of your own table swallowed up that whereby they should have been profited. And so this wasting of thy Lord’s goods, is an instance of complicated wickedness; since hereby thy poor brother perisheth, for whom Christ died.
I will not recommend to you either the writings or examples of those whom you account hereticks, (although some of these, if you could view them with impartial eyes, might provoke you to jealousy.) But O! that God would write in your hearts the rules of self-denial and love, laid down by Thomas a Kempis! Or that you would follow both in this and in good works, that burning and shining light of your own church, the Marquis de Renty! Then would all who know and loved the Lord rejoice to acknowledge you as the church of the living God: when ye were zealous of every good word and work; and abstained from all appearance of evil: when it was hereby shewn that you were filled with the Holy Ghost, and delivered from all unholy tempers: when ye were all unblameable and unrebukable, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, shewing forth to all Jews, infidels and hereticks, by your active, patient, spotless love of God and man, the praises of him, who had called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
13. Men and brethren, Children of the seed of Abraham, suffer me to speak a few words to you also; you who do not allow, that Messiah the Prince is already come and cut off. However you so far hear Moses and the prophets, as to allow, 1. That it is the inspiration of the Holy One, which giveth man understanding, and that all the true children of God are taught of God. 2. That the substance both of the law and the prophets, is contained in that one word, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself. ♦3. That the sure fruit of love is obedience, ceasing from evil, and doing good.
And do you walk by this rule? Have you yourselves that inspiration of the Holy One? Are you taught of God? Hath he opened your understanding? Have you the inward knowledge of the most High? I fear not. Perhaps you know little more, even of the meaning of the words than a Mahometan.
Let us go a little farther. Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength? Can you say, Whom have I in heaven but thee; and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee? Do you desire God at all? Do you desire to have any thing to do with him, till you can keep the world no longer? Are you not content, so you enjoy the good things of earth, to let God stand afar off? Only calling upon him now and then, when you cannot well do without him. Why then you do not love God at all, tho’ you will sometimes condescend to use him. You love the world. This possesses your heart. This therefore is your God. You renounce the God of your fathers, the God of Israel; you are still uncircumcised in heart. Your own conscience bears witness, you in this no more hear Moses and the prophets, than you do Jesus of Nazareth.
14. From Moses and the prophets it has been shewn, that your forefathers were a faithless and stubborn generation; a generation which set not their hearts aright, and whose spirit cleaved not stedfastly unto God. And this you acknowledge yourselves. If you are asked, how is it that the promise is not fulfilled? Seeing the scepter is long since departed from Judah, why is not Shiloh come? Your usual answer is, “because of the sins of our fathers, God hath delayed his coming.” Have you then reformed from the sins of your fathers? Are you turned unto the Lord your God? Nay, do ye not tread in the same steps? Bating that single point of outward idolatry, what abomination did they ever commit, which you have not committed also? Which the generality of you do not commit still, according to your power? If therefore the coming of the Messiah was hindered by the sins of your forefathers, then by the same rule, your continuance therein will hinder his coming to the end of the world.
Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God is, that he would gather the outcasts of Israel. And I doubt not, but when the fulness of the Gentiles is come in, then all Israel shall be saved. But mean time, is there not great cause that ye should say with Daniel, O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of face, as at this day, to the men of Judah, and unto all Israel. O Lord, we have sinned, we have rebelled against thee, neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God. Yet O our God, incline thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes and behold our desolations; for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies. O Lord hear! O Lord forgive! O Lord, hearken and do! Defer not, for thine own sake; for thy city and thy people that are called by thy name.
15. I cannot conclude without addressing myself to you also, who do not admit either the Jewish or Christian revelation. But still you desire to be happy. You own the essential difference between vice and virtue; and acknowledge, (as did all the wiser Greeks and Romans) that vice cannot consist with happiness. You allow likewise that gratitude and benevolence, self-knowledge and modesty, mildness, temperance, patience and generosity, are justly numbered among virtues; and that ingratitude and malice, envy and ill-nature, pride, insolence and vanity, gluttony and luxury, covetousness and discontent, are vices of the highest kind.
Now let us calmly enquire, how far your life is consistent with your principles.
* You seek happiness. But you find it not. You come no nearer it with all your labours. You are not happier than you was a year ago. Nay, I doubt you are more unhappy. Why is this, but because you look for happiness there, where you own it cannot be found? Indeed, what is there on earth which can long satisfy a man of understanding? His soul is too large for the world he lives in. He wants more room.
Æstuat infelix augusto limite Mundi,
Ut brevibus clausus Gyaris, parvaque seripho.
He has already travelled through all which is called pleasure; diversions and entertainments of every kind. But among these he can find no enjoyment of any depth; they are empty, shallow, superficial things: they pleased for a while, but the gloss is gone: and now they are dull and tasteless. And what has he next? Only the same things again; for this world affords nothing more. It can supply him with no change. Go, feed again: but it is upon one dish still. Thus
Occidit miseros crambe repetita.
Yet what remedy under the sun!
* 16. The sounder judgment, the stronger understanding you have, the sooner are you sated with the world. And the more deeply convinced, all that cometh is vanity; foolish, insipid, nauseous. You see the foibles of men in so much clearer a light, and have the keener sense of the emptiness of life. Here you are, a poor, unsatisfied inhabitant of an unquiet world; turning your weary eyes on this side and on that side: seeking rest, but finding none. You seem to be out of your place: neither the persons nor things that surround you are such as you want. You have a confused idea of something better than all this; but you know not where to find it. You are always gasping for something which you cannot attain, no, not if you range to the uttermost parts of the earth.
But this is not all. You are not only negatively unhappy, as finding nothing whereon to stay the weight of your soul; but positively so, because you are unholy: you are miserable, because you are vicious. Are you not vicious? Are you then full of gratitude to him, who giveth you life and breath, and all things? Not so; you rather spurn his gifts, and murmur at him that gave them. How often has your heart said, God did not use you well? How often have you questioned either his wisdom or goodness? Was this well done? What kind of gratitude is this? It is the best you are master of. Then take knowledge of yourself. Black ingratitude is rooted in your inmost frame. You can no more love God, than you can see him; or than you can be happy without that love.
Neither (how much soever you may pique yourself upon it) are you a lover of mankind. Can love and malice consist? Benevolence and envy? O do not put out your own eyes. And are not these horrid tempers in you? Do not you envy one man, and bear malice or ill-will to another? I know you call these dispositions by softer names; but names change not the nature of things. You are pained that one should enjoy what you cannot enjoy yourself. Call this what you please, it is rank envy. You are grieved, that a second enjoys even what you have yourself; you rejoice in seeing a third unhappy. Do not flatter yourself: this is malice, venomous malice, and nothing else. And how could you ever think of being happy, with malice and envy in your heart? Just as well might you expect to be at ease, while you held burning coals in your bosom.
17. I intreat you to reflect, whether there are not other inhabitants in your breast, which leave no room for happiness there. May you not discover, through a thousand disguises, pride? Too high an opinion of yourself? Vanity, thirst of praise, even (who would believe it?) of the applause of knaves and fools? Unevenness or sourness of temper? Proneness to anger or revenge? Peevishness, fretfulness, or pining discontent? Nay, perhaps even covetousness.—And did you ever think, happiness could dwell with these? Awake out of that senseless dream. Think not of reconciling things incompatible. All these tempers are essential misery. So long as any of these are harboured in your breast, you must be a stranger to inward peace. What avails it you, if there be no other hell? Whenever these fiends are let loose upon you, you will be constrained to own,
“Hell is where’er I am: myself am hell;”
And can the supreme Being love those tempers, which you yourself abhor in all but yourself? If not, they imply guilt as well as misery. Doubtless they do. Only enquire of your own heart. How often in the mid career of your vice have you felt a secret reproof, which you knew not how to bear, and therefore stifled as soon as possible?
18. And did not even this point at an hereafter? A future state of existence? The more reasonable among you have no doubt of this; you do not imagine the whole man dies together: although you hardly suppose the soul, once disengaged, will dwell again in an house of clay. But how will your soul subsist without it? How are you qualified for a separate state? Suppose this earthly covering, this vehicle of organized matter, whereby you hold commerce with the material world, were now to drop off! Now, what would you do in the regions of immortality? You cannot eat or drink there. You cannot indulge either the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life. You love only worldly things; and they are gone, fled as smoke, driven away for ever. Here is no possibility of sensual enjoyments; and you have a rellish for nothing else. O what a separation is this, from all that you hold dear! What a breach is made, never to be healed!
But beside this, you are unholy: full of evil tempers: for you did not put off these with the body. You did not leave pride, revenge, malice, envy, discontent behind you, when you left the world. And now you are no longer cheared by the light of the sun, nor diverted by the flux of various objects: but those dogs of hell are let loose to prey upon your soul, with their whole, unrebated strength. Nor is there any hope, that your spirit will now ever be restored to its original purity; not even that poor hope of a purging fire, so elegantly described by the Heathen poet some ages before the notion was revived among the doctrines of the Romish church
—Aliæ tenduntur inanes
Suspensæ ad ventos; aliis sub gurgite vasto
Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni—
Donec longa dies, exacto temporis orbe,
Concretam exemit labem, purumque reliquit
Æthereum sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem.
19. What a great gulph then is fixed between you and happiness, both in this world and that which is to come? Well may you shudder at the thought! More especially when you are about to enter on that untried state of existence. For what a prospect is this, when you stand on the verge of life, ready to launch out into eternity? What can you then think? You see nothing before you. All is dark and dreary. On the very best supposition, how well may you address your parting soul in the words of dying Adrian:
“Poor, little, pretty, fluttering thing,
Must we no longer live together?
And dost thou prune thy trembling wing,
To take thy flight thou know’st not whither?
Thy pleasing vein, thy hum’rous folly
Is all neglected, all forgot;
And pensive, wavering, melancholy,
Thou hop’st, and fear’st thou know’st not what.”
“Thou know’st not what!” Here is the sting, suppose there were no other. To be thou knowest not what? * Not for a month, or year, but thro’ the countless ages of eternity! What a tormenting uncertainty must this be? What racking unwillingness must it occasion, to exchange even this known vale of tears, for the unknown valley of the shadow of death?
“And is there no cure for this?” Indeed there is an effectual cure; even the knowledge and love of God. There is a knowledge of God which unveils eternity, and a love of God which endears it. That knowledge makes the great abyss visible; and uncertainty vanishes away. That love makes it amiable to the soul, so that fear has no more place! But the moment God says, by the welcome angel of death, “Come thou up hither!” She
“Claps the glad wing and towers away,
And mingles with the blaze of day.”
20. See ye not, what advantage every way, a Christian has over you? Probably the reason you saw it not before was, because you knew none but nominal Christians; men who professed to believe more (in their way of believing) but had no more of the knowledge or love of God than yourselves. So that with regard to real, inward religion, you stood upon even ground. And perhaps in many branches of outward religion, the advantage was on your side.
May the Lord, the God of the Christians, either reform these wretches, or take them away from the earth! That lay this grand stumbling-block in the way of those who desire to know the will of God!
O ye who desire to know his will, regard them not! If it be possible, blot them out of your remembrance.
They neither can nor will do you any good. O suffer them not to do you harm. Be not prejudiced against Christianity by those who know nothing at all of it. Nay, they condemn it, all real substantial Christianity; they speak evil of the thing they know not. They have a kind of cant word for the whole religion of the heart. They call it enthusiasm.
I will briefly lay before you the ground of the matter, and appeal to you yourselves for the reasonableness of it.
* 21. What a miserable drudgery is the service of God, unless I love the God whom I serve? But I cannot love one whom I know not. How then can I love God till I know him? And how is it possible I should know God, unless he make himself known unto me? By analogy or proportion? Very good. But where is that proportion to be found? What proportion does a creature bear to his Creator? What is the proportion between finite and infinite?
I grant, the existence of the creatures demonstratively shews the existence of their Creator. The whole creation speaks, that there is a God. But that is not the point in question. I know there is a God. Thus far is clear. But who will shew me what that God ♦is? The more I reflect the more convinced I am, that it is not possible for any of all the creatures, to take off the veil which is on my heart, that I might discern this unknown God; to draw the curtain back which now hangs between, that I may see him which is invisible.
This veil ♦or flesh now hides him from my sight. And who is able to make it transparent! So that I may perceive through this glass, God always before me, till I see him face to face.
I want to know this great God who filleth heaven and earth: who is above, beneath, and on every side, in all places of his dominion; who just now besets me behind and before, and lays his hand upon me. And yet I am no more acquainted with him, than with one of the inhabitants of Jupiter or Saturn.
O my friend, how will you get one step farther, unless God reveal himself to your soul?
22. And why should this seem a thing incredible to you? That God, a Spirit, and the Father of the Spirits of all flesh, should discover himself to your spirit, which is itself the breath of God, Divinæ Particula Auræ? Any more than that material things should discover themselves to your material eye. Is it any more repugnant to reason, that spirit should influence spirit, than that matter should influence matter? Nay, is not the former the more intelligible of the two? For there is the utmost difficulty in conceiving, how matter should influence matter at all: how that which is totally passive should act. Neither can we rationally account either for gravitation, attraction, or any natural motion whatsoever, but by supposing in all the finger of God, who alone conquers that vis inertiæ, which is essential to every particle of matter, and worketh all in all.
Now if God should ever open the eyes of your understanding, must not the love of God be the immediate consequence? Do you imagine you can see God without loving him? Is it possible in the nature of things? Si virtus conspiceretur occulis, said the old Heathen, mirabiles amores excitaret sui. How much more if you see him who is the original fountain, the great archetype of all virtue, will that sight raise in you a love that is wonderful, such as the gay and busy world know not of!
23. What benevolence also, what tender love to the whole of human kind, will you drink in, together with the love of God, from the unexhausted source of love? And how easy is it to conceive, that more and more of his image will be then transfused into your soul? That from disinterested love, all other divine tempers will, as it were naturally, spring? Mildness, gentleness, patience, temperance, justice, sincerity, contempt of the world; yea, whatsoever things are venerable and lovely, whatsoever are justly of good report.
And when you thus love God and all mankind, and are transformed into his likeness, then the commandments of God will not be grievous; you will no more complain, that they destroy the comforts of life. So far from it, that they will be the very joy of your heart; ways of pleasantness, paths of peace! You will experience here that solid happiness, which you had elsewhere sought in vain. Without servile fear or anxious care, so long as you continue on earth, you will gladly do the will of God here, as the angels do it in heaven. And when the time is come that you should depart hence, when God says, “Arise and come away,” you will pass with joy unspeakable out of the body, into all the fulness of God.
* Now does not your own heart condemn you, if you call this religion enthusiasm? O leave that to those blind zealots, who tack together a sett of opinions and an outside worship, and call this poor, dull, lifeless thing, by the sacred name of Christianity. Well might you account such Christianity as this, a mere piece of empty pageantry, fit indeed to keep the vulgar in awe, but beneath the regard of a man of understanding.
But in how different a light does it now appear? If there be such a religion as I have sketched out, must not every reasonable man see, there is nothing on earth to be desired in comparison of it?—But if any man desire this, let him ask of God: he giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not.
24. May you not ask, quite consistently with your principles, in some manner resembling this;
O thou Being of beings, thou cause of all, thou seest my heart; thou understandest all my thoughts. But how small a part of thy ways do I understand! I know not what is above, beneath, on every side. I know not my own soul. Only this I know, I am not what I ought to be. I see and approve the virtue which I have not. I do not love thee, neither am I thankful. I commend the love of mankind; but I feel it not. Thou hast seen hatred, malice, envy in my heart. Thou hast seen anger, murmuring, discontent. These uneasy passions harrow up my soul. I cannot rest, while I am under this yoke. Nor am I able to shake it off, I am unhappy, and that thou knowest.
Have compassion upon me, thou whose years do not fail! On me, who have but a short time to live. I rise up, and am cut down as a flower. I flee as it were a shadow. Yet a little while, and I return to dust, and have no more place under the sun.
Yet I know thou hast made my soul to live for ever. But I know not where; and I am unwilling to try. I tremble, I am afraid to go thither, whence I shall not return. I stand quivering on the edge of the gulph; for clouds and darkness rest upon it. O God! Must I go always “creeping with terrors, and plunge into eternity with a peradventure!”
O thou lover of men, is there no help in thee? I have heard (what indeed my heart cannot ♦conceive) that thou revealest thyself to those that seek thee, and pourest thy love into their hearts: and that they who know and love thee, walk through the shadow of death and fear no evil. O that this were so! That there was such an unspeakable gift, given to the children of men! For then might I hope for it. O God, if there be, give it unto me! Speak that I may see thee! Make thyself known unto me also in the manner that thou knowest! In any wise let me know thee and love thee, that I may be formed after thy likeness! That I may be love, as thou art love; that I may now be happy in thee; and when thou wilt, fall into the abyss of thy love, and enjoy thee through the ages of eternity!