IF a volume were filled with the history of the Mystic theology, as a system, it would be but a volume of absurdities--a perpetual recurrence of human abortions, exciting the ridicule of the thoughtless and the pity of the wise. The only good which could be anticipated from such a work, would be the warning it would give, on every page, of the danger of slighting common sense; and this, we hope, will be as effectually accomplished by the facts exhibited in this brief chapter, and in that which has preceded it.

      It has been said above, that though the Mystic Theology originated with Origen and his contemporaries, it was [59] established through the influence of the reputed works of Dionysius. It will be remembered that about A. D. 54, through the instrumentality of Paul's preaching in Athens, one of the judges of the Areopagus, bearing the above name, was converted to Christianity, (Acts, xvii. 34.) Some four hundred years afterwards a number of works made their appearance, on "The Heavenly Hierarchy," "The Names of God," "The Mystic Theology," and "The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," which, owing to the credulity of the age, were palmed off as the productions of this early Christian convert. "Though it is certain," says the Encyclopedia Americana, "from internal evidences, that these writings could not have been written earlier than about the beginning of the fifth century, they contained such fantastic descriptions of the Deity, and of the orders of angels and blessed spirits, borrowed from the New Platonic philosophy--such brilliant representations of the Catholic ceremonies, exaltations of the hierarchy, praises of the monastic life, and mystic interpretations of the doctrines of the church--as gave them the highest charm in the eyes of the ignorant clergy, who had no doubt of their genuineness."¹ Thus the wildest vagaries of an unknown and unscrupulous fanatic were clothed with the sanction of a supposed apostolical name; and now, to evaporate, as it were, the reason in fumes of murky mysticism, was esteemed the duty, as it had been the delight, of almost the entire Church. [60]

      The sacred charm which those wonderful writings threw over the naive and the person of Dionysius can with difficulty be appreciated by a Protestant of the nineteenth century. Canonized with the apostles and early martyrs, he became the patron saint of France, whose convents quarreled about his bones, and ended by proving him a monster. For, too churches, in the heat of their controversy concerning the possession of his genuine skull, referred the important matter to the pope--the highest recognized authority--who, with characteristic infallibility, sustained the claims of each!²

      It will not surprise us to read, that the works of a saint so highly venerated, and which were so serviceable to the hierarchy, were translated in Paris in the ninth century. This was done by the celebrated Joannes Scotus, under the patronage of Charles the Bald. And thus the stream whose origin we traced to the darkness and mists of ancient Chaldea. and Persia, and which became strong and bold in the days of Origen and Ammonius, poured the whole of its accumulated tide of waters into the Western world; while every drop was thought to have been consecrated by one who was religiously venerated as a, saint, and heard as a prophet of the Most High. Popes and cardinals, bishops and priests, monks and laymen, all vied with each other in the fanatical attempt to smother reason with enthusiasm, [61] and to cover the inscriptions of sense with the incoherent rhapsodies of dreamy contemplation. They not only set limits to the pretensions of reason, but "excluded it entirely from religion and morality, as they considered that true knowledge, being unattainable by study or reasoning, was the fruit of mere contemplation, inward feeling, and passive acquiescence in divine influences." We need scarcely inquire how the Bible fared in the hands of such interpreters. "° They pretended," says Mosheim, "to draw from the depths of truth (or rather of their imaginations) what they called the internal sense and marrow of the Scriptures, i. e. their hidden and mysterious sense; and this they did with so little dexterity, so little plausibility and invention, that the greater part of their explications must appear insipid and nauseous to such as are not entirely destitute of judgment and taste. The Mystic doctors carried this visionary method of interpreting Scripture to the greatest height, and displayed the most laborious industry, or rather the most egregious folly, in searching for mysteries where reason and common-sense could find nothing but plain and evident truths. They were too penetrating and quick-sighted not to perceive in the holy Scriptures all those doctrines that were agreeable to their idle and fantastic system."³

      In an age when the learning of the world was confined to the Church, and when its most reverend dignitaries could barely read; when men regarded their fanatical dreams and [62] extravagant reveries as the depth of wisdom and the certain index of divine truth; when the chief requisite in a good priest, apart from his ability to dream dreams and see visions, was familiarity with the principles and practice of music, we cannot be surprised at any absurdities, nor marvel at any exhibitions of folly. It must not, however, be supposed, because mysticism reigned over reason, and fancy took the place of revealed truth, that there were no common bonds of union, and no general agreement in their sentiments; for, as Mr. Hallam judiciously remarks, "Though the number of those who professed themselves to be under the influence of supernatural illumination was very great--with the exception of a few founders of sects, and lawgivers to the rest--the Mystics fell into the beaten track, and grew mechanical even in their enthusiasm."⁴ The great multitude were more prone to follow the "inward light" of others than to cultivate the dubious flickerings of their own. They looked for some authority upon which to repose, "and instead of builder, became, as it were, occupants of mansions prepared for them by more active minds."

      Hence, when at length the scholastic system had filled all Europe with puerile controversies and profitless logomachies, until many persons, disgusted and almost disheartened, perceived that, in committing themselves to such a guide, they were sacrificing things for names and substances for shadows, the rebound into mysticism which followed was not characterized by any great individual and independent [63] "meditations." Bold and daring originality was not then so common as it has since become. Men felt safer if they could have some great name of antiquity to lead them. And as those disaffected scholastics were seeking to free themselves from the subtleties of Aristotle, it was the most natural thing in the world for them to call in the aid of Plato. Of him, however, they knew little or nothing except what they could learn through the school of Alexandria, which, as we have seen, transmitted--not Platonism--but a forced and incongruous agglomeration of all isms, both human and divine, which were held together by the cohesive power of allegorized mysticism.

      To this system, as if not satisfied with mere incomprehensibility, they added the mysteries of Pythagoras and the occult learning of the Jewish Cabala. This latter consisted in a very specific and complex system concerning the nature of the Supreme Being, the emanation of various orders of spirits in successive links from his essence, their properties and characters. It is evidently one modification of the Oriental philosophy, borrowing little from the Scriptures, at least through any natural interpretation of them, and the offspring of the Alexandrian Jews not far from the beginning of the Christian Era.⁵ Thus Neo Platonism, Pythagoreanism, and Cabalism, each mysterious enough, one would think, to satisfy a taste only ordinarily perverted, were compounded into a sort of system paradoxical and [64] esoteric in the highest degree, but which was religiously held as the embodiment of all ancient wisdom.

      Such was the Mystic Theology which was revived and invigorated as a refuge from scholasticism. And can any two systems be found, in the whole history of the Church, so perfectly contrasted and yet so equally worthless? The one deprived religion of its spirit, the other destroyed its body. The one quarreled over forms without substance, and postulated dogmata without meaning or importance; the other, with a sublime contempt for the vulgar inlets and sources of knowledge, transported itself beyond the precincts of reason, and mistook the phantoms of imagination for the images of spiritual truth.

      But let us do justice, even to "man's miraculous mistakes." Abortive as was this attempted reformation, in itself considered, and wild and deluded as were the votaries of this system, they, nevertheless, exerted a sort of conservative influence upon the religious society of their times. It was something, in that age, to tell men there was a spiritual religion, even if they were unable to point it out. I cannot despise the man who has a heart to expose the errors of the world, though he may not have an intellect that can grasp the whole truth. It was thus with the Mystics at the period immediately preceding the Protestant Reformation. For, to quote from an eminent historian, "while superstition reigned supreme, while empty and gorgeous ceremonials had supplanted the spirit of worship, and while every germ of truth and holiness seemed to be ignored by the clergy or blasted by the wranglings of the Realists and [65] Nominalists, this sect, renouncing the subtleties of the schools, the vain contentions of the learned, and all the acts and ceremonies of external worship, exhorted their followers to aim at nothing but internal sanctity of heart, and communion with God, the centre and source of all holiness and perfection."⁶ We may, therefore, admit that they approximated more nearly to piety than any others in that dark and licentious age, if we remember that it was but an approximation. For their piety, if such it must be called, was by no means an intelligent and reverent communion with God, and appreciation of his word, but merely the extreme of contemplative enthusiasm, or, in one word, fanaticism.

      After the great battle for reform had been fought by Luther and his compeers--and notwithstanding the light which the rough conflict struck from the Scriptures--George Fox, in the seventeenth century, and, after him, William Law and Emanuel Swedenborg, in the eighteenth, bring down the developments of the Mystic Theology to a very recent period, and, indeed, transmit them to our day.

      That both the "Friends" and the Swedenborgians have all the essential characteristics of that mysticism whose history we have rapidly sketched, will not, I presume, be denied by the intelligent members of those two societies. "The former, in their notions concerning the Holy Scriptures, the internal word, the divine light within and its operations and effects, so perfectly agree," says Mosheim, "with [66] those Mystics who lived before George Fox, as to leave but little question that he was indebted to their writings, directly or indirectly, for all the capital articles in his theology."⁷ Nay more, the Friends took "the famous Mystic Theology which arose so early as the second century," and "set off the motley form with their own inventions." And Mr. Bancroft says, "The faith of the people called Quakers is, that every heart contains an incorruptible seed, capable of springing up and producing all that man can know of God, and duty, and the soul. An inward voice, uncreated by schools, independent of refinement, opens to the unlettered hind, not less than to the polished scholar, a sure pathway into the enfranchisements of immortal truth." Again, "The inner light is to the Quaker not only the revelation of truth, but the guide of life and the oracle of duty."⁸ I am unable to perceive any essential difference between this and the mysticism of earlier times.

      The Swedenborgians, also, or members of the New Church, in their fundamental postulate, that the Scriptures are to be interpreted according to the doctrine of "correspondences"--from which, as a matter of course, the whole system must spring--seem to me to set aside the rational understanding as an incompetent judge of the sense of Scripture, and refer us for the true meaning to what we must regard as questionable--the inspiration of Swedenborg himself, their founder and leader. Origen and his [67] co-laborers, as we saw above, ascribed a "double sense" to the words of Scripture--the one natural, the other spiritual; Swedenborgians simply go one step farther, and give us a triple sense--the "natural," the "spiritual," and the "celestial." It would seem, then, that whatever may be predicated of the first mystics, may, with even stronger reason, be affirmed of these.⁹

      Swedenborg himself was a man of learning, and has transmitted an unblemished reputation. In his works there are many excellent remarks, and some just representations of Scripture doctrine. They contain many things which all approve, and to the knowledge of which intelligent and independent Protestants have been conducted, without reading a line of his voluminous productions, or laying the least claim to any "inner light," or angelic association. It is unfortunate that he should have handed down to posterity the only qualification of an otherwise illustrious fame--his lofty and unsupported pretensions to inspiration, with the errors to which those pretensions necessarily gave birth. As it is, he must be classed among the most extravagant of mystics, whose early instruction and accurate learning, while they could not save him from the vortex of error into which the whole tribe before him had been drawn, were sufficient to add dignity to a system that might else have fallen, long since, into merited contempt.

      If Swedenborg was really inspired, then it follows that his own works should be classed with those of the apostles [68] and prophets; in which case, they themselves must be interpreted "correspondentially." But as this has not hitherto been done, we may suppose that the true sense of his writings has not yet been ascertained, and that it must remain locked up until some future Swedenborg shall furnish the key that will open all their secrets. Till then we must stand, therefore, with respect to biblical interpretation, just where we would have stood if he had not written. Or, if the interpretation of his writings, according to the ordinary laws of language, supplies us with their true sense, we may conclude that the same is true of all other inspired productions. But if his writings are not inspired, then they are without authority, and we are left where we were before--alone with the Bible and common-sense.

      Thus mysticism increases in mystery the more it is examined. Its devotees must believe it at the expense of truth, and follow it at the cost of safety. They must hush the voice of God without, in order to distinguish the confused noises that are within. I will, however, leave the reader to make his own reflections, and will conclude this brief notice of the New Jerusalem Church and its founder by a quotation from an eminent French philosopher of the Eclectic school:--

      "In the midst of the eighteenth century, has not Swedenborg united in his own person an exalted mysticism and a sort of magic, opening thus the way to those senseless persons who contest with me in the morning the solidest and best-established proofs of the existence of the soul and God; who propose to me in the evening to make me see [69] otherwise than with my eyes, and to make me hear otherwise than with my ears; to make me use all my faculties otherwise than by their natural organs, promising me a superhuman science on the condition of first losing consciousness, thought, liberty, memory, all that constitutes me an intelligent and moral being? I should know all, then, but at the cost of knowing nothing that I should know. I should elevate myself to a marvelous world, which, awakened and in a natural state, I am not even able to suspect, of which no remembrance will remain to me--a mysticism at once gross and chimerical, which perverts both psychology and physiology; an imbecile ecstasy, renewed without genius from the Alexandrian ecstasy; an extravagance which has not even the merit of a little novelty, and which history has seen reappearing at all epochs of ambition and impotence."¹⁰

      Such is a faint outline of the rise and progress of the Mystic Theology; a system which began with Origen in the absurd attempt to adjust the infinite to the finite--the word of God to the varying philosophies of men; which was established by the fraud of a pretended Dionysius, made honorable by the patronage of the Medici, and influential by the support of Paracelsus and the learning of Boehmen, Van Helmont, and Poiret; a system which was modified at one time by the pseudo-science of the Scholastics, and super-excited at another into the frenzied ravings of Theosophism; which was rendered sacred by Fox, and respectable [70] by Law and Penn; which Emanuel Swedenborg garnished with the drapery of learning, and commended by the power and prestige of distinguished talents and a blameless life; and which, in one form or another, has ever been, and is now, a controlling element in the most important of all undertakings--that of arriving at the true sense of the revealed word of God. Modern "Spiritualists," with the undignified designation of "spirit rappers," have capped the climax of unblushing pretension. Like the Theosophists of the sixteenth century, their converse with angels, their rapport with departed spirits, and their brilliant internal light, will hardly bear being treated in a grave discussion; it is transcendental fanaticism, mysticism carried out; the frenzy of the Rosacrusians, coupled with vanities and puerilities that would make even a Scholastic blush! Let us hope that this monstrous departure from reason will be the last of the numerous schemes of systematized mysticism, for the construction of a religion which, while it professes attachment to the word of God, is really infidel and destructive.

      As a system, the Mystic Theology will not again attract attention in these pages. We have deemed it advisable to exhibit it first in this light, to enable the reader better to understand its real nature and tendency. Henceforth we are to consider it as a concomitant power, secretly present and insidiously active, which negatives but partially the conclusions of common-sense, and counteracts, only to a limited extent, the influence of reason and of Scripture. [71]

[TOOS 59-71]