by Meister Eckhart

The Book of Benedictus — named for its opening words, Benedictus deus et pater, "Blessed be God and the Father" — is one of Meister Eckhart's most personal and sustained writings: a two-part treatise composed, scholars believe, for Queen Agnes of Hungary, widow of King Andrew III of Bohemia, who had lost her husband and her worldly position and sought consolation from the great Dominican mystic. Part I, The Book of Godly Comfort, opens with a theological argument about the nature of goodness and the soul's relationship to God, then moves through thirty maxims or "considerations," and closes with a sequence of sayings from the sages and saints. Part II, The Nobleman, takes up the parable of the nobleman who went into a far country (Luke 19:12) and uses it to trace the soul's dual nature — the outer man entangled in time and sensation, the inner man capable of union with the divine — up to its highest and most characteristic formulation: the soul that sees God sees nothing but one.

Eckhart (c. 1260–1328) was a German Dominican friar, theologian, and mystic. He studied and taught at Paris, served as Prior of Erfurt and Vicar of Thuringia, and held the chair of theology at Cologne. Tried for heresy by the Archbishop of Cologne in 1326, he died in 1328 before the verdict was announced; Pope John XXII's bull In Agro Dominico (1329) condemned twenty-eight propositions drawn from his writings — a condemnation that chilled his influence for five centuries without extinguishing it. His impact on the Rhineland mystics Tauler, Suso, and Ruusbroec, and through them on the whole tradition of Christian interior prayer, is immeasurable. D. T. Suzuki declared him the one Western mystic who could speak the language of Zen.

This archive presents the complete text of The Book of Benedictus — both Part I (The Book of Godly Comfort) and Part II (The Nobleman) — in the translation of C. de B. Evans, published in London by John M. Watkins in 1931 as Volume II of his edition of Meister Eckhart's works. Evans translated from Franz Pfeiffer's 1857 critical edition of the Middle High German text (Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. ii), where the work appears as Tractate V. The source is digitised at the Internet Archive (identifier: meistereckhart0000eckh).

Part I — The Book of Godly Comfort

Benedictus deus et pater domini nostri Jesu Christi etc. (2 Cor.
1:3). That great teacher St Paul says in his epistle, ‘ Blessed
be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
mercies and God of all comfort who comforteth us in all our
tribulations.’ Three kinds of tribulation may beset a man
and buffet him in this land of exile. First, misfortune to
outward goods; secondly, to our dearest friends; and lastly, to
ourselves: shame, hardship, pain of body, and distress of
mind.

So I purpose in this book to impart some teachings apt to
console a man in all adversity, unhappiness, and suffering.
And having therein and therefrom culled sundry general
truths to comfort him in any trouble, he will find thereafter
thirty rules or maxims, any one of which is sufficient for his
solace, and after that again in the third part of the book he
will find precepts and examples, theoretical and practical, the
sayings and doings of the wise in times of tribulation.

In the first place, we must bear in mind that the wise and
wisdom, true and truth, good and goodness, just and justice
are closely related to each other. Goodness is not made nor
created nor begotten, it is procreative and begets the good,
and the good man, so far as he is good, is the unmade, uncreated but withal begotten child and son of goodness. Goodness
procreates itself and all that it is in the good soul: knowledge,
love, energy, it pours them all forth to the good man, and the
good man receives all his being, knowing, love, and energy from
the central depth of goodness and from that alone. Good plus
goodness is no more then goodness by itself except as born and
bearing, not but what born child of goodness and being born
in the good are but one being, one life. All that belongs to the
good man he gets both from goodness and in goodness. Therein
he is and lives and dwells and there he knows himself, and all
he knows and loves he wills and works with goodness and in
goodness and goodness does all his works with him as it is
“ written—and it was said by the Son—‘ my Father that dwelleth
in me he doeth the works.’ All that belongs to the Father is
mine; all that is mine is my Father’s: his giving is my taking.

Further let us remember that the name or word goodness
stands for nothing else, neither more nor less than goodness
pure and simple. But supposing we call (a man) good we take
it that his goodness has been given him, infused, engendered
by the unborn goodness. In the words of the gospel: * As the
Father hath life in himself so hath he given to the Son also to
have the same life in himself’: in himself, not from himself,
since the Father has given it to him.

All I have said of the good and goodness equally applies to
the true and truth, to the just and justice, to the wise and
wisdom, to God’s Son and God the Father, to every God-
begotten thing that has no father upon earth and wherein is
gotten no created thing, nothing but God, and wherein exists
no form but that of God alone. As St John says in his gospel,
‘To them gave he power to become the sons of God, which
were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the
will of man but of God alone.’

By blood he means everything in man not subordinate to
the human will. By fleshly he means everything in man
which is subject to his will albeit reluctantly and with an
inclination to carnal appetites, things common to the body and the soul and not peculiar to the soul alone, which account
for the weakness and exhaustion of their powers. By the will
of man St John means the highest powers of the soul, whose
nature and work is unmixed with flesh ; which reside in the
pure nature of the soul detached from time and place and from
everything that smacks of time and space relation , that have
naught in common with naught ; wherein man is formed in
the image of God; wherein he is of the lineage of God and
God’s kindred. Yet since they are not God himself but are
in the soul and created with the soul therefore she must lose
her own form and be transformed into God alone: born into
God and out of God with only God for father. Then they too
are Son, God’s only Son.

I am his Son by virtue of the fact that he begets me in his
nature and forms me in his image. Such an one is God’s Son,
good son of goodness, right son of righteousness. So far as he
is simply son he is bringing forth the unborn, and as born son he
has the same nature as righteousness has and is and is possessed
of all the character of justice and of truth. In all this teaching
which is found in the gospel and confirmed in the natural light
of the rational soul there is solace for every human sorrow.

St Augustine says, ‘God is not far nor long.’ If thou wouldst
find it neither far nor long betake thyself to God, for there a
thousand years are as one day, to-day. Withal I say, in God
there is no sorrow or suffering or distress. And if thou wouldst
be free from all adversity and pain turn thee and cleave to
God and to God only. Doubtless all thy ills are due to thy
not turning into God and to God alone. If thou wert formed
and gotten into righteousness alone things could no more pain
thee than righteousness, than God himself.

Solomon says, * The righteous will not grieve whatever may
befall.” He does not say, the righteous man or the righteous
angel, just righteous, being right, not this or that right thing,
for the righteous man is son with a father upon earth; he is
creature, made or created just as his father is creature made
or created. He says righteous pure and simple. That has no made or created father, and righteousness is just the same as
God, so that pain and sorrow cannot molest him any more than
they do God. Justice cannot sadden him, for love and joy and
bliss are justice, and if justice grieved the just it would be
causing sorrow to itself. Injustice, iniquity, can in no wise
grieve the just, for everything created is much inferior to him
and has no effect, makes no impression on the righteous, nor
is it gotten into him whose only father is God.

A man then ought to set to work and deform himself of
himself and creatures and know no father except God alone.
Then nothing will be able to afflict or cast him down, not God
nor creature, uncreated or created, and his entire being, life,
knowledge, love, and wisdom will be out of God and in God
and God.

There is another thing which must be borne in mind as
likely to comfort us in any tribulation. It is that the just and
virtuous man assuredly delights unspeakably, incomparably
more in doing right than he or even the highest angel delights
and rejoices in his natural being or life. Thus the saints gladly
sacrificed their lives for right.

Isay then: When outward ills befall the good and righteous
man then if he keeps his even temper and his peace of mind
it is true, as I have said, that the righteous man is proof against
external happenings. But if he is perturbed by these mishaps
then it stands to reason that God is only just in sending trials
to a person who while pretending to be righteous and thinking
himself so is yet upset by so small a thing. Since it is fair of
God he has no cause to mind but rather to rejoice, far more
than he does at his own life, at what rejoices man and is more
good to him than this world all told; for what profits a man
the whole world when he is no more ?

The third important thing for us to understand is the ele-
mental truth that the fount and living artery of universal good,
essential truth and perfect consolation is God, God only, and
everything not God has in itself a natural bitterness, discomfort
and unhappiness, and does not make for good, which is of

God and is the same as God, but lessens, dims and hides the
Sweetness, joy and comfort that God gives.
And further I maintain, all sorrow comes from love of that
whereof I am deprived by loss. If I mind the loss of outward
things it is a certain sign that I am fond of outward things and
really love sorrow and discomfort. Is it to be wondered at
that I am unhappy when I like discomfort and unhappiness ;
when my heart seeks and my mind gives to creature the good
that is God’s own? I turn towards creature, whence comes
by nature all discomfort, and turn my back on that which is
the natural source of happiness and comfort, so what wonder
I am woebegone and wretched. The fact Js, it is quite im-
possible for God or anyone to bring true solace to a man who
looks for it in creatures. But he who loves only God in
creatures and creatures in God only, that man finds real and
true and equal comfort everywhere.

Follow some considerations, thirty of them, any one of which
alone should suffice to comfort the rational man in trouble.
The first one is that no hardship or discomfort is without some
comfort, no loss without some gain, and that is why St Paul
declares that God’s good faith and his natural kindness would
not permit of any suffering or trial being insupportable, more
than one could bear. He always provides some consolation
for the help of man. Withal the saints and doctors teach that
God and nature cannot brook the being or existence ‘of un-
diluted evil.

I will take the case of a man who owns an hundred marks
of which he loses forty and keeps sixty. If he goes on brooding
over the forty he has lost he must remain lugubrious and woeful.
How should he ever rid himself of disappointment and regret
with his attention fixed on failure and misfortune, turning it
over, figuring it out, ruefully regarding it, parleying with his
loss, while his loss, for answer, hits him in the face? If only
he would look instead at the sixty marks which he has left and turn his back upon the forty which are gone—conjure up the
sixty in his mind, ponder them, make much of them— he would
assuredly find solace. That which is and is good can console,
but that which is not. nor yet good, which is not mine, lost to
me, that is bound to bring trouble, vexation, chagrin.

Solomon says, ‘In the days of adversity and mourning forget
not the days of prosperity and happiness.’ That is as good as
saying, bethink thee when in trouble and misfortune of the
good and comfortable things which are still within thy grasp ;
husband them and use them to good purpose. Just as there
is comfort in the thought of the thousands of people there
must be who if they had those sixty marks which are left to
thee would think themselves quite wealthy, lords and ladies,
and be full of joy and gratitude to God.

There is another thing that should comfort us. Suppose a
man is ill, in great bodily pain, but he has his home and every-
thing he needs in the way of food and drink and medical advice,
his family to nurse him, the companionship and sympathy of
friends. What of him? What of these unfortunates who
have just as much or greater hardship to endure and not a soul
to give them a cup of cold water? In rain and snow and
bitter cold they beg their naked crust from door to door. If
thou wouldst be comforted forget the ones who are more for- _
tunate and remember those who are worse off than thee.

Further I declare, all suffering comes from loving, minding:
liking or minding is the alpha and omega of suffering. I
trouble about temporal things because I mind about them,
because I still set store by the things of time and do not yet
love God wholeheartedly, with all the affection he demands,
and would make sure of getting. So is it to be wondered at
if God is always sending us suffering and pain ?

St Augustine says, ‘Lord, I did not want to lose thee, I
wanted to have creatures besides thee; it was my greed that
made me lose thee. It would dishonour thee for man to have
false creatures along with thee, the truth.” And elsewhere he
exclaims, ‘ Greedy and double-faced is he who is not content with God alone.” How should God’s gift of creatures satisfy a
man who is not satisfied with God himself? No virtuous man
is satisfied or comforted by things ; it is all pain to him, every-
thing different from, other than God. He is always pleading,
“Lord God, my comfort, if from thy presence thou wouldst
banish me give me then another thee.’ When our Lord pro-
mised Moses every blessing and sent him to the Holy Land,
which here means heaven, Moses exclaimed, ‘O Lord, do not
send me unless thou wilt come too.’

Inclination, desire, and affection are all due to like. Always
things tend to love their likes. The pure man will love purity,
the just one loves and leans to justice and his lips betray the
secrets of his heart. ‘Out of the fullness of the heart the
mouth speaketh,’ says our Lord, and Solomon observes how
“all the labour of a man is in his mouth.’ It is a certain sign
of God’s not being in his heart, but only mortal, temporal
creature, when anyone turns outwards in search of consolation.

The virtuous man is sore ashamed in God’s eyes and his
own so soon as he becomes aware of God not being in him,
that God the Father is not energizing in him but miserable
creature is still alive and busy there. Like David in the
Psalms lamenting, ‘ Tears have been my meat day and night
while they continually say to me, Where is thy God?’ To
turn to any outside thing for pleasure and comfort in dis-ease,
to be eager for it, full of talk about it, is a certain sign God is
not shining, is not working in me. And any proper man ought
to be ashamed for good people to know of this in him. The
good man never rails at losses or misfortunes; the only thing
he will bewail is that he does bewail them: the fact of his
taking them to heart. Philosophers declare that underneath
the heavens there is fire raging, widespread and fierce with
nothing in between, yet the heavens are not affected in the
least. And another scripture says that the bottom of the soul
tops heaven’s summit. How then can he believe himself a
celestial soul who is upset and hurt by such trivial things ?
Something else I say. There is no such thing as a good man who does not will God’s will in all particulars; God can do
anything he likes, it is all one to him; by the very fact of its
being God’s will it is and must be good, the very best, and that
is why our Lord instructed the apostles, and in them ourselves,
every day to pray, ‘ God’s will be done,’ notwithstanding which
when God’s will is done, does come to pass, we grumble and
get gloomy and depressed.

Seneca, the heathen philosopher, inquires, What is the greatest
comfort in suffering and discomfort ? To take it all, he says,
as though it had been wished and prayed for. Having wished
and prayed that God’s will be done then if it is thou hast no
cause to groan. It was a pagan master who exclaimed, ‘ Lord,
supreme Father, sole ruler of the highest heaven, all that thou
wilt I am prepared for, vouchsafe me will and that will in
accordance with thine own.’

The good man trusts in God in the belief, the certainty, that -
God is good, and that it is impossible for him in his love and
kindness to let any pain or suffering fall upon a man unless in
lieu of some much heavier suffering or to pave the way for
more earthly consolation or to compass some much better
thing, something which redounds far more to God’s glory.
Be that as it may, simply by the fact of its being God’s will
and for no other reason the good man’s will is so at one with,
so merged into God’s will and with God’s will, that he is bound
to will the same as God, though to his own undoing, his own
damnation haply. Thus St Paul wished to be accursed from
God for God and for God’s glory.

The really perfect man is wont to be so dead to self, so lost
in God to his own form and so transformed in the will of God
that his entire happiness consists, I swear, in knowing self and
all for naught ; in knowing God and God alone and, all un-
witting of any will or choice except God’s choice and will, in
‘knowing God,’ to quote St Paul, ‘even as he is known.” God is
doing all his knowing, doing all his willing, doing all his loving
in himself. Our Lord says that eternal life is simply knowing.

Doctors declare that the blest in heaven know creatures free from any creature seeming ; they know them in their common
exemplar which is God, wherein God knows and loves and wills
himself and everything, which God teaches us himself to long
and pray for, saying: ‘Our Father which art in heaven, hal-
lowed be thy name’: may I know thee and thee only. ‘Thy
kingdom come’: may I know nothing, have nothing, prize
nothing but thy kingdom. And so it says in the gospel,
“ Blesséd are the poor in spirit,’ meaning the poor in will.
Accordingly we pray God that his ‘ will be done on earth,’ in
us, “as it is in heaven,’ in God himself. A man of this sort is
so one, so one-willed with God that he wills exactly what God
wills and in the way God wills it. Ifthen God chooses, as he
sometimes does, that I shall have committed various sins, I
will not wish I had not done them and then God’s will is done
on earth, i.e. in ill-doing, ‘ as it is in heaven,’ in well-doing.
In this way one does without God for God’s sake, ‘ is parted
from God for God’s sake,’ and this is the only right rue for my
sins, for my sin is then indolent suffering to me just as all evil is
indolent suffering to God. Suffering, the deepest suffering is
mine for sin—I would not sin for anything created, aye though a
thousand worlds were mine eternally—and yet no pain, believe
me, provided I accept the suffering in God’s will, take it as
being God’s will. Such suffering is the only perfect suffering,
springing as it does from nothing but love, sheer goodness, and
divine joy. Then there comes true and is realized the claim
I have put forward in this little book, namely, that the good.
man, so far as he is good, takes on all the character of that
same goodness which God is in himself.

Just think what an amazing life a man like this must lead
on earth, life as it is in heaven, in God himself! Him dis-
comfort serves as well as comfort, pain as well as pleasure.
And mark the extraordinary fortitude it brings. For with
this grace, this boon that I am talking of, I am always even-
tempered, always cheerful and at ease, and if I am without it
I do without it for God’s sake, because that is the will of God.
Suppose God chooses to repair my lack I take it in God’s name and am in bliss. If God does not choose to give I take and
do without in that same will of God wherein he will not, welcoming lack instead of plenty. What is the harm ? God
is gotten easier in wanting than receiving, there is no doubt,
-of that, for in receiving it is the gift itself which provides the
why and wherefore of a man’s rejoicing. But failing to receive
and getting nothing he finds nothing to rejoice in excepting

Godand God’s will alone.

Besides, there is this consolation, supposing that a man has
lost his outward goods, his friends, his family, his eye or what-
ever it may be, that if he bears it well for love of God, because
it is the will of God, he may be sure he has in the sight of God
at least all that because of which he might refuse to bear it.
Say he loses an eye. He would not have lost that eye for a
thousand marks or more; well then, to God, in God, he surely
has the full equivalent of what he would refuse to suffer the
pain of deprivation for, and most likely this explains the saying
of our Lord, ‘ It is better for thee to enter into life eternal with
a single eye than to be lost with both.’ In the same sense,
probably, God said, ‘ He who leaves father and mother and sister
and brother, or anything else, for my sake shall receive an
hundredfold and eternal life.’

But it must be remembered that possession of the virtues -
and willingness to suffer patiently and cheerfully vary in
degree, just as we see in nature one man better looking or
cleverer than another. Moreover, I contend that the virtuous
man, virtuous though he be, may well be moved, be shaken
more or less by natural affection for father or for mother with-
out any lapse from God or goodness while at the same time
he is good, is better, in proportion as he takes less comfort in,
is less subject to, less aware of natural love and fondness for
father, mother, sister, brother, or himself,

Further, as I have pointed out before, if people could accept
it as equally being in God’s will, so far as it is God’s will, that
(on the one hand) human nature has shortcomings, serious
lapses from God’s law, starting with the first man’s sins, and that (on the other hand) were this not the case they would,
also in God’s will, gladly be without them, then it would all
be well with them and they would assuredly be comforted in
trouble. This would explain the statement of St John that
the true light shines in darkness and also the dictum of St Paul,
that virtue is perfected in weakness. If the thief could truly,
wholly, perfectly, willingly and gladly suffer death for love of
divine justice which, in accordance with God’s will, decrees
that evil-doers shall be put to death, no doubt he would be
saved and dwell among the blesséd, for God’s will is our salva-
tion and felicity.

And another comfort. Most likely there is no one to be
found who is not fond enough of some living being gladly to
sacrifice an eye and go blind for a year if at the end of it he
can have his sight again and at the same time save his friend
from death. Now if a man is ready to sacrifice his sight on
another man’s behalf to prevent the death of one who in any
case is bound to die ere many years have passed, surely it
stands to reason that he would gladly give the twenty, thirty
years perhaps that he still has to live to win his own eternal
happiness: to be ever seeing God in his divine light and in
God himself and all creatures.

And there is this comfort also. The good man so far as he
is good, gotten of goodness alone, model of goodness, to him
created things are worthless all, bitter and untoward every
one. For why, their loss means liberation, the loss of pain,
of drawbacks, of discomfort, rightly understood. Release from
pain is indeed a comfort, and outward possessions are nothing
but a worry, anxiety, dis-ease, so it is folly to bewail their loss ;
rather should he bewail that ease and comfort are unknown
to him, that comfort has no chance to comfort. He has much
more cause to grieve at not being all de-formed of creature and
fully formed and set in the mould of virtue.

Let a man bethink him in his trouble that God tells the
truth, he keeps his word with himself. If God failed to keep
his word, his troth, he would fail in deity and would not be

God, for his word is his very nature. His word (his promise)
is that our sorrow shall be turned into joy. And doubtless if
I knew beyond all peradventure that my stones were going to
turn into fine gold, then the more and the bigger were my
stones the more precious they would be. This consideration
I feel sure would give the greatest comfort to anyone in pain
and trouble.

And another one of the same kind. No pot can hold two
separate kinds of drink : if it has got to hold wine we shall
have to pour out the water, leaving it empty and clean. And
for thee to take in divine joy thou must needs throw out
creature, cast it away. As St Augustine says, ‘ Pour out if
thou wouldst be filled. Learn not to love if thou wouldst
learn to love. To turn towards thou must first turn away.’
In plain words: to take in, to be receptive, a thing must be
empty. Philosophers tell us that the eye, if it had colour
of its own, would be unable in the act of vision to see any
colour that it had itself or that it had not, but since it is quite
colourless it sees every colour. The wall is coloured, and it
neither sees its own nor any other colour; it is insensitive to
hue, to gold as well as black. Eye has it not and has it really,
perceiving it with pleasure and delight.

The moral of this is that the less preoccupied and freer the
powers of the soul the better, wider open they will be to receive
and to conceive and the greater is their bliss and the more
one they will be with what they do receive, till finally the
highest power of the soul, which is quite free from things and
has nothing in common with naught, gets nothing less than
God himself in his own nature. And this union, this break-
through, the bliss of it, is, so the masters say, beyond compare.
This explains that striking saying of our Lord, ‘ Blesséd are the
poor in spirit.” That man is poor who has not, who is indigent
of, spirit: just as the eye being poor of, free from, colour is
sensitive to every colour, so being poor of spirit he is all alive
to spirit, spiritually receptive. God is spirit, and the fruit of
the spirit is love, peace, and joy. Naked poverty, having nothing, being empty, transmutes nature; emptiness makes water
run uphill and many other marvels which we cannot tell of now.

So if thou hast a mind to find in God perfect joy and con-
solation see thou art quite free from creatures, from all creature
consolations. Certain it is that so long as creatures do and can
console thee thou shalt never find true consolation. But when
nothing save God can console thee any more then verily God
shall console thee and with him and in him all bliss. While
things not God do comfort thee thou hast no (proper comfort)
here or yonder. But when creatures fail to comfort, when
thou hast no stomach for them, then thou findest it both here
and yonder.

Suppose someone wanted and knew how to make a vessel
absolutely empty and keep it exhausted of all filling, even air,
that vessel would assuredly forget and belie its proper nature
altogether, and emptiness would carry it straight up into the
sky. Even so being poor and empty of all creatures the soul
springs up to, into God. Likeness too and heat are causes
of ascent. Likeness we ascribe to the Son in his godhood,
heat and love to the Holy Ghost. Likeness generally speak-
ing and more particularly in the first place in divine nature
connotes birth of the one and likeness of one to one and with
one is source and beginning of the passion-flower of love. One
is beginning without any beginning. Likeness (image) is
beginning gotten of the one alone, getting its being and its
being a beginning from the one in the one. It is of the
nature of love to arise and flow out of two as a one, as one
love not two, for love is not twain; two as one natural love
must needs be in will, in ardour, appetitively. _

Solomon observes that water and creatures all go streaming
past, hastening back into their source. And similarly it must
needs be true, as I have said, that likeness and love go pressing
on, burning to raise, to transport the soul into the first cause
—the one, our Father namely—of everything in heaven and
earth. Wherefore I maintain, the likeness born of one draws
the soul into God, (God) as he is one in his unborn oneness, and of this we have clear evidence. When ordinary fire kindles
wood and burns it up in sparks it (wood) receives the fire
nature and becomes like fire itself which abides just underneath
the heavens. It suddenly forgets, and abandoning father and
mother and sister and brother upon earth shoots up to its
father in heaven. The father here below of the spark is the
fire and the mother of it is the wood; its brothers and sisters
are the other sparks, and for these the first spark will not
tarry: it flies up and away at top speed to its genuine father,
to heaven. Anyone who really knows the truth will plainly
see that the fire as fire is no true parent of the spark: the real
true father of all fire, all heat, is heaven.

Furthermore, this spark, remember, is not leaving, not for-
getting only its father and mother upon earth: it forgets,
forsakes, itself to go of natural love to its real parent, heaven ;
for though it is sure to be put out in the coldness of the air
it will show its natural love for its real, heavenly Father.

And just as it was claimed above for emptiness, or purity,
that in proportion as the soul is more throughly bare and poor—
has less of creature, is more free from ordinary things, which
are not God—she gets God better, gets more into God, is more
one with God and herself in God and sees God, as St Paul
observes, more face to face, (as) in an image, or reflected,
even so of likeness and the fire of love I say : the stronger the
likeness to the other it pursues the hotter on the trail and the
better and pleasanter the going ; and the more it out-distances
itself and all except its quarry the more unlike it grows to
self and everything except what it is after and the liker to the
object of the chase. And since likeness flows out of the one,
attracting, drawing by dint of and in virtue of the one, there-
fore there is no rest or satisfaction whether for the drawer or
the drawn till they be joined in one. So in the prophet Isaiah
our Lord says in effect that no height nor depth nor likeness
shall content me nor no peace of mind till I myself do shine
forth in my Son, till I myself am kindled and eonsumed in the
love of the Holy Spirit.

Our Lord Jesus Christ besought his Father to make us one
with him and in him : not only united but one and the same.
Of the fact that this happens we find clear evidence in nature,
and externally in fire. When fire is at work kindling and burn-
ing up the wood the heat reduces it to something unlike wood.
It robs the wood of its solidity, of cold and mass and moisture,
and turns it more and more into what it is itself. But neither
wood nor fire is appeased and quieted by any temperature or
heat or likeness till fire, being gotten in the wood gives it its
own nature as well as its own being, and it is all one fire, the
same without distinction, neither more nor less. Before this
happens there is always a reeking, crackling, fighting: strife
between the fire and the wood. But as soon as the unlikeness
is all destroyed and gone the fire dies down and the wood is
mute. (So much for the overt action of a natural force.)
Further I say it is a fact that the hidden power of nature hates
any covert likeness so far as this connotes difference and
division ; it seeks therein the same, loving that in it and it for
that alone; just as the palate seeks to relish in the wine its
savour, its aroma. If water had as good a taste as wine the
lips would care for wine no more than water.

I argue then that the soul hates her likeness, she has no
love of likeness in and for itself, she loves it for the same which
is concealed therein and which is the true father, beginningless
and endless of everything in heaven and earth. And that is
why I say that as long as likeness shows, is still to be found
between and the fire and the wood, there is no true peace or
pleasure there, no rest, no satisfaction. Philosophers teach
that fire thrives by conflict, movement, change, in time. But
the birth of fire, of desire, is independent of both time and
distance. Love, enjoyment, no one finds tedious or remote.
‚All this is summed up in the saying of our Lord, ‘A woman
when she is in travail hath sorrow and pain, but as soon as
she is delivered of the child she remembereth no more the
anguish.’ God bids us in the gospel to ask the heavenly Father
that our joy may be full. And in the same sense Philip says,

‘Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” ‘For ‘Father’
means one (same): in him likeness vanishes and everything is
stilled that has desire and mode.
Now we can see quite clearly the why and wherefore of a
' man’s disconsolation in pain, adversity, and loss. It comes
wholly and solely from his being turned outwards and away
from God and not empty and free from creature: from being
unlike God and cold in divine love.

There is another thing which anyone who knows and tales
to heart will draw great comfort from in case of outward loss
and pain and trouble. Suppose a man embarks upon a certain
course, starts this work or gives up that, and then some accident
befalls, he breaks his arm or leg perhaps, loses an eye or falls
ill. If he keeps on saying to himself, hadst thou pursued a
different course or done otherwise thes would never have
occurred, he will remain disconsolate and is bound to suffer.
But if he argues with himself, hadst thou taken any other
step, done or forborne to do some other thing, a much worse
fate might have been thine, he will soon take heart and feel
more cheerful.

Again. Say thou hast lost a thousand marks. Lament not
for the thousand marks which thou hast lost, thank God for
giving thee the thousand marks to lose, and let them go with
a good grace. Thus thou dost exercise thy patience and make
thee ready for eternal life—a chance not given to one man in
a thousand. And here is yet another comforting reflection.
A man who has been prosperous and then falls on evil days
will do well to take counsel with himself and give thanks to
God what time he is feeling his reverses, for then and only
then he will realize his previous good fortune. Let him give
God thanks for prosperity enjoyed so many years, and not
complain.

Let him remind himself that man does in fact get nothing
from himself but naughtiness and imperfection. The good
things God has lent, not given him. Anyone who knows the truth will see that God the heavenly Father gives the whole of

what is good to his Son and to the Holy Ghost. No good
thing does he give to creatures, he lends it them ontrust. To
the air the sun gives heat, but the light is loaned. When the
sun sets the air loses its light but still remains warm, since the
heat is given it for its own, and that is why theologians say
the heavenly Father-God is the Son’s Father, not his Lord, nor
the Holy Ghost’s Lord. God-Father, Son and Holy Ghost are
Lord, the Lord of creatures. And we say that God was and
is eternal Father, but as creating creatures he is Lord. So I
argue in this way. If it is the case that every good and com-
fortable thing is lent a man on credit what right has he to
grumble if God likes to take it back ? Rather should he give
God thanks for letting him have it for solong. Withal he ought
to thank him for not recalling everything he loaned, for it would
be no more than just for God to take away again everything
he lent from one who waxes wrath when he withdraws a
fraction of what was never his and of which he never was the
master. Well says Jeremiah, in the throes of pain and lamen-
tation, “O how great and manifold are God’s mercies that we
be not utterly destroyed.’ Supposing someone lent me his
coat, his kersey, and his cloak, and then took back the cloak,
leaving me in the frost the coat and kersey, I should thank
him heartily and be well pleased. So remember, we are
guilty of a monstrous wrong, that man and I who resent and
make a grievance of the loss of anything, for by claiming that
the good things I possess are given me, not lent, I am setting
myself up to be the Lord, pretending to be God’s natural Son
and perfect who am not as yet even God’s Son by grace, seeing
it belongs to the Son and Holy Ghost to be invariably the
same.

Further, we must remember that natural human virtues
are beyond all doubt of great nobility and power; no outward
work is too much for them nor big enough indeed to provide
them with full scope or adequate expression. But there is
an inner work not limited, not touched by time and place,
and in this same there is what is God and divine and the image of God who is not confined by time or place. It is present
alike everywhere and always and is in this too more like God,
for no creature can perfectly receive or reflect God’s goodness.
It must therefore be something more deep-seated, more exalted,
some measureless, modeless,uncreated thing which the heavenly
Father is perfectly poured forth, neproguced and manifested
in; to wit, the Son and Holy Ghost.

This interior work of virtue is no more to be hindered than
God is to be hindered. Day and night this work lightens and
shines. This work glorifies God, singing his praises and a new
song. David says, ‘ Sing unto the Lord a new song, his glory
is from the ends of the world.’ That work does not make for
God, that outward one which is confined to time and place,
which is narrow and subject to hindrance and constraint,
which tires and grows old with time and use. The (inner)
work is loving God, intending good and goodness to such
purpose that any good the man intends wholeheartedly to do
he has already done and in this too he is like God. David says
of him that all his intentions are accomplished.

We have in a stone a good example of this teaching. Its
outward work consists in falling down and lying on the ground.
This work may be hindered. It is not falling all the time nor
without interruption. But there is another work less obvious
in the stone, a constant tendency to fall, which being inherent _
in it none can interfere with, not God nor creature nor anyone
at all. This work the stone is doing day and night without a
break. It may lie perched up for a thousand years, ‘but its
tendency to fall will be no greater and no less than it was on
the first day. Even so I say of virtue that she has an inner
work : a will and tendency towards good of every kind coupled
with repugnance to and avoidance of all things bad and evil
and incompatible with God and goodness. And the worse an
act is and the less godly the stronger the repugnance, and the
better the act is and the more godly the easier and pleasanter
and more welcome does she find it, her sole lament in times uf
tribulation is that her sufferings for God are over light, that

„utward works in time are on too small a scale for the full
expression and realization of herself. By effort she grows
stronger and by giving she grows richer. She would not she
had suffered and had got past pain and suffering: she is willing
and anxious to be always suffering without stopping, for love
of God and goodness. All her happiness consists in suffering
for God’s sake, not in having suffered. Our Lord says, * Blesséd
are they that suffer for righteousness’ sake.’ He does not say,
“ those who have suffered.’ Such an one hates having suffered,
for having suffered is not suffering, which he loves, it is some-
thing past and done with, a privation of suffering for God
which is all that matters to him. Similarly I maintain that a
‘person of this kind hates also future suffering, which is not
suffering either. But to have to suffer he does not hate so
much as having suffered, for having suffered is nothing like
the same as suffering—far from it, seeing it is done, whereas
prospective suffering is not without its sting and that is what
he prizes.

St Paul declares that he would choose to be accursed from
God if it were for the enhancement and furtherance of God’s
glory. They say these words were spoken by St Paul while
he was not yet perfect. But I ween this was the utterance of
a perfect heart. They say too that he meant he would choose
to be disjoined from God only for a time. My answer to this
is that a perfect soul would be as loath to leave, to be away
from God for a single hour as for a thousand years, and would
hate it just as much. But if it were God’s will and to his
glory that he should be bereft of God then a thousand years
would be no worse than a day, a single hour.

The inner work is godly too, divine, endowed with all the
character of God, in this respect, that just as God plus creatures
—though there were a thousand worlds—is not one hair’s-
breadth more than God is by himself, so this man’s outward
works, as I maintain and have said before, do neither by their
length or breadth, their number or their size, add to the value
of this inner work at all: the value of it lies in its own self, and

64 > MEISTER ECKHART the outer work never can be small if the inner one is great,
neither can the outer work be great or good where the inner
one is weak or nil. With him who has the inner work going
on within him all the time, any greatness, length or breadth ©
of the interior work, is drawn, is gotten nowhere else than
from God and in God’s heart. God owns him Son who is born
Son in the heavenly Father’s womb.

With the outward work it is not so: this gets its godliness
through the channel of the inner work, produced, poured forth
in a descent of Godhead, the Godhead garbed in motley, in
variety and part, all which and the likes thereof, likeness its
very self, is foreign to and very far from God. These go with,
cleave to, rest in that which is good, which is creature, blind
altogether to goodness and light in itself, to the one wherein
God bears his only Son and in him ali who are God’s children
and born sons. There is the fount and origin of the Holy
Ghost by whom alone, as being God’s Spirit, one spirit (with)
God himself, the Son is gotten into us and it is the exhalation
of all who are God’s sons so far as they are born of Ged alone
in the image of God and in God transformed and estranged
from multiplieity of which, however, some may still be found
in the most exalted angel’s nature.

Further, he who aims at actual gnosis will fight shy of good-
ness, of truth, of anything which even in thought or name has
the least suggestion, the slightest shade of difference, and will
pin his faith to the one devoid of any sort of number or variety,
the one wherein is lost, is blotted out, every property and
all distinctions, which are there the same: the same are Father,
Son and Holy Ghost. This is the one which makes us blest,
and the further we are from this one the less do we be Son or
sons and the more imperfectly does the Holy Ghost arise in us
and issue from us. And the more we approximate to the one
the more really are we God’s Son, his sons, and there proceeds
from us God the Holy Spirit. This explains the saying of our
God’s Son in his divinity, ‘ Whoso drinketh of the water that
I give, in him there shall arise a fount, a well of water springing up to everlasting life.’ And St John says he was speaking of
the Holy Ghost.

The Son in the Godhead, properly (personally) speaking, con-
notes nothing but sonship (filiation), God-begottenness, fount
and origin and outflow of the Holy Spirit, of the love of God ;
full true and perfect savour of the one, of the heavenly Father.
Thus the heavenly Father’s voice speaks from heaven to his
Son, ‘ Thou art my belovéd Son, in whom I am beloved and
at home, in whom I am well pleased.’

It is certain that no one who is not God’s Son can love God
properly and perfectly, for love the Holy Ghost arises in and
issues from the Son and the Son loves the Father in himself
and himself in the Father. As our Lord so truly says, ‘ Blessed
are the poor in spirit,’ meaning those who have none of their
own human spirit and naked come to God. And St Paul says,
“God has revealed it to us in his spirit.’

According to St Augustine, he best of all will hear and under-
stand the scriptures who, all unshackled by the mind, seeks for
the truth of scripture in itself: in the same spirit wherein it
is written and spoken, namely, the Holy Spirit. St Peter says,
“ All holy men have spoken in the Holy Ghost.’ It is written
by St Paul that ‘ no man knoweth the things of a man save the
mind of man which is in him, and no man knoweth the things
of God but the divine mind and God.’ This is well put in a
gloss which reads, ‘ No one can understand or teach the Pauline
writings unless he be of the same mind in which Paul spoke
and wrote.’ I constantly lament the fact that unenlightened
people who are wanting in the mind of God and have not as
yet turned to it the benighted human mind should pretend to
judge of things they hear or read about in holy writ, forgetting
how it is set down that with men things are impossible which
with God are possible, not to say usual and natural. The impos-
sibles of the lower nature are the commonplaces of the higher.

And here let me remind you how I said that the good man,
God’s son born into God, will love God for his own sake, in
himself, and many earlier words of mine to the effect that the good man born of goodness and in God takes on all the char-
acter of deity. Now Solomon says it is the mark of deity that
everything is wrought by God on his own account, or, in other
words, God pays no heed to things outside himself, only to
himself, loving and doing all things for himself. So if a man
values himself and all he does, not for the sake of honour or
reward or pleasure but solely for God and for God’s glory, that
is a sign he is God’s Son.

And again, God loves for his own sake, works for his own
sake alone, that is to say, he loves for love’s sake and works
for the sake of the work; for God would never, surely, have
begotten in eternity his only Son if born meant never being
born. Accordingly holy men declare the Son is born eternally
in the sense that he is ever being born. And God would never
have made the world if creation meant not being created, -
but God has in suchwise created the world that he is still
creating it incessantly. Things past as well as future are all
of them alien and remote from God.

-Whoso is born of God God’s Son will love God for his own
sake, will love God for the love of God and do his work for love
of work, for love of God, tireless in working as in loving, and it
is all the same to him what he is loving. Which shows the love
is God and that, as I was saying, the good man wants to
be suffering all the while, not to have suffered. Suffering he
has, (the suffering) that he loves: suffering for God and suffering
(bearing) God, wherefor and wherein he is God’s Son, of the
nature of God and formed in the image of God. He loves for
his own sake, that is to say, he is loving for love’s sake, working
for work’s sake, for the same reason that God is loving and
working, without ceasing: divine activity is his nature, his
being, his life, and his felicity. So verily the God’s Son, the
good man, in so far as he is God’s Son, will suffer for God and
work for God, since that is his being, his life, his function, his
delight. Of such our Lord declares, ‘ Blesséd are they that
suffer for righteousness’ sake.’

Further, in the third place, I declare that the good man so

‚far as he is good behaves the same as God not only in loving
all he loves and doing all he does on account of God whom he
loves therein and for whom he works, but in loving too and
working for himself, the lover; for what he loves is God-Father
and unborn; the lover is God-Son and born. But the Father
is in the Son and the Son in the Father, Father and Son being
one in the Holy Ghost. As to how the deepest and the highest
of the soul God’s Son draws and takes in to become God’s Son
in his heavenly Father’s heart, that is to be found in the last
part of this book, on The Nobleman.

It must be remembered that in nature the inrush, the flow
of a higher nature into anything is always fraught with pleasure
and is pleasanter than the nature of the thing itself. Water
runs by nature down into the valley, that is its proper habit.

But under the pull, the influence, of the moon up yonder in the sky it will so far forget and belie its proper nature as to
flow uphill and up more readily than down.

The moral of this is that the proper thing to do, the obvious
and happy course, is to resign one’s natural will, to let go of
and make good one’s escape from self in all the sufferirig God
sends. This may well explain the saying of our Lord, ‘ Who-
soever will come to me let him deny himself and raise up his
cross’: shift, discard, that is to say, all that is to him a cross,
a pain; for it is quite certain that anyone who is rid of self,
who is perfectly resigned, will have no cross, no pains, no
suffering : everything is bliss to him, joy and heart’s content.
He would indeed be coming to, following after God, for nothing
makes God sad or sorry and no more can anything make this
man sad or sorry. So this saying of our Lord is no mere
exhortation in the ordinary sense, it is a promise, a divine
prescription for making a man’s doings and his sufferings, his
whole life joyous and delightful, an offer of reward more than
acommand. Such an one will have what he desires and desire
nothing evil, and that, after all, is what blessedness means.
As our Lord truly says, ‘ Blesséd are they that suffer for
righteousness’ sake.’

Again, our Lord’s words, ‘ Let him deny himself and lift up
his cross and come unto me,’ mean, so that he may become
Son as I am Son by birth. God is the same one that I am,
that I inhale in essence while abiding within in the Father’s ~
heart. ‘ Father, I will that my follower, he who comes to me,
shall be where I am,’ says the Son. No one really comes to
the Son, as he is Son, but he who comes to be the Son, and
no one is where the Son is but he who is in the Father’s heart,
one in the same, where the Son is.

‘I,’ says the Father, ‘ will lead her into the wilderness and
will speak to her heart.” Heart to heart, one in the same does
God love, everything other and different God hates. God
gathers up, draws up to one, one is what all creatures seek,
even the basest of creatures are looking for one. That this is
what the highest find on being caught up above nature and
transformed: that they do find one, one in itself, perhaps
provides the key to that saying of the Son, Jesus Christ in his
divinity, ‘ Father, where I am there shall my servant be, he
who follows, he who comes to me.’

There is also the comforting reflection that it is impossible
for nature to rupture or to spoil or even to disturb unless for the
betterment of the thing disturbed. Not content with just as
good it always aims at better. No wise physician meddles with
a man’s bad finger, for fear of causing pain, unless he can make
the finger better or by making some improvement in his general
health do good to the whole man. If he can cure the man
and his finger too he will do it gladly, but if not he will sacrifice
the finger to benefit the man. For it is much better to lose
a single finger and preserve the man than to let both man
and finger perish. Better one loss than two, especially where
one is much more serious than the other.

Besides, we must remember that a finger or a hand, any
human limb, is of far more value to the man whose limb it
is than to itself, and it will blithely and without a qualm sacrifice
itself for the man at need. I say it is no doubt the fact that
a limb has no feeling whatever for itself but only on account of, as a part of, that of which it is a member. And it stands
to reason that the natural and proper thing for us is not to
love ourselves at all except as God and in God. Then it would
all be easy and delightful whatever God requires of and in
us; especially if we understand and feel quite sure that God
would allow immeasurably less dis-ease and wrong did he not
know of and intend much better things therein. Failing to
trust God for this it is but just, I do declare, that we should
have suffering and discomfort.

There is yet another comfort. According to St Paul God
chastens those he loves and accepts as sons. Sonship involves
suffering. God’s Son in his eternity in the Godhead was in-
. capable of suffering, so his heavenly Father sent him into time
to be made man, so that he might suffer. If thou dost hope
to be God’s Son and yet not suffer thou art much mistaken.
In the Book of Wisdom it is written that God tries and proves
the righteous man as gold is tried by fire in the furnace. It
is a mark of trust for king or prince to send a knight into the
van of battle. I have seen one lord who sometimes when he
chose a man for his household company would send him forth
by night and then ride out himself to do battle with him, and
it so befell on one oceasion that he came nigh to death by the
hand of him he was testing in this way, a henchman henceforth
loved and valued.

We read how in the desert once upon a time St Anthony was
sore beset by evil spirits, and when he emerged victorious from
the fray our Lord appeared to him outwardly and much
rejoicing. ‘ Alas, Lord,’ cried the saint, * but where wast thou
just now in my so dire need ? ’—* I have been here,’ our Lord
replied, ‘the same as Iam now. I wanted to enjoy the sight
of thy doughtiness.’ The silver and gold may be pure, yet
to fashion therefrom a cup for the king to drink out of it has
to be fired much more than for another. Thus we are told of
the apostles how they heartily rejoiced to be accounted worthy
of bearing despisery and shame for God.

Again, God’s Son by nature was graciously pleased to be made man so that he might suffer for thy sake, whereas thou
dost want to be God’s Son, not man, so that thou needst not,
canst not suffer whether for God’s sake or thine own. If
people only knew and would remember the enormous pleasure
which God himself after his own fashion and all the angels as
well as all God-conners and God-lovers really feel in the patience
of a man, that alone, believe me, would be ample recompense
for any pain or suffering borne for God. One does not hesitate
to part with goods or endure discomfort to please a friend and
show him friendship. And supposing that someone had a
friend who was suffering for his sake, was in pain or trouble,
surely it were only fair that he should keep him company to
stay him with his presence and give him such comfort as he can.
Our Lord says in the Psalter, speaking about the righteous
man, that he is with him in his trouble. This will serve as
the text for seven comfortable teachings.

First, as St Augustine says, patience in suffering for love of
God is better, higher, nobler than suffering any involuntary
loss, of outward goods for instance. God knows, there is
none so rich, no lover of this world, but he would be
ready and willing to bear cruel pain and hardship, and long
drawn out at that, if it were going to make him ruler of the
world.

In the.second place, I take not only the words wherein God
says he is with us in our trouble but also a passage which reads
thus: If God is with me in my suffering what more or what
else do I want? Of course I shall want nothing else, I shall
want God only, if I am as I should be. St Augustine says,
‘Most greedy and unwise is he who is not satisfied with God.’
How should one be content with the gifts of God, external or
internal, if one is not content with God himself? And else-
where he exclaims, Lord, so thou deniest us thyself give us
then another thee, for we desire none else.

In the Book of Wisdom it is written, ‘ With God, the eternal
wisdom, all good things have come to me at once.’ This means,
according to one interpretation, that nothing is good nor can

_be so which comes without God, and anything that comes with
God is good, good simply by the fact that it does come with
God. Leave out God and take from creatures, from the world,
its being, which God gives, and the remainder is of no account,
untoward, hateful, useless. Many other admirable meanings,
too long to enter into here, are implicit in the statement that
all good comes with God. Our Lord says, ‘I am with a man
in trouble.’ On which St Bernard comments thus, ‘ Lord, if
thou art with us in our suffering then let me suffer all the while
that all the while thou mayst be with me, by me, that I may
have thee all the time.’

Thirdly, I maintain that God’s being with us in suffering
‘means that he is actually suffering with us. Anyone who
knows the truth will know that I am right. God is suffering

with man, aye and after his own fashion incomparably more
than the sufferer who suffers for his sake. Now what I say is
this: If God himself elects to suffer then it is only right that
I should suffer too, since my will ought by rights to jump
with God’s, Every day I pray, as God tells me to, ‘ Lord, thy
will be done,’ notwithstanding which if God wills suffering I
grumble at the suffering, which is altogether wrong. It is safe
to say, God so gladly suffers with and for us—provided we
are suffering for God and God alone, that he suffers without
suffering. The suffering is to him such bliss that the suffering
gives no pain. And if we were as we ought to be our suffering
would be not pain but joy and comfort.

In the fourth place I note that a friend to share the suffering
with will surely ease the pain. But if I am consoled by human
sympathy how much more by God’s ?

Fifthly, I would say: Granting I am ready to suffer with
a person I am fond of and who is fond of me, then it stands to

-reason that I would gladly suffer too with God, who is suffer-
ing in this way, a victim to the love he feels for me.

Further and sixthly, I declare: If God pre-suffers what I
suffer, and I am suffering through God, my suffering promptly
turns to joy and comfort however great and manifold it be.

In the ordinary way, when anybody does a thing for someone
else, the one he does it for lies nearer to his heart and the
thing he does lies further off and touches not his heart except
through hiın for whom he does it. The builder hewing wood ~
and stone because he wants to build a house ’gainst summer’s
heat and winter’s chill is thinking first and last about the house,
excepting for the house he would never hew a single stone or
do a hand’s turn of the work. We often see a sick man when
he drinks sweet wine complain it tastes so bitter, as of course
it will: the wine has lost its sweetness outside in the bitter
of his tongue before it can get in to where his soul would taste
and appreciate the flavour. Infinitely more and more truly
this applies to the man who is doing all he does for love of God.
God is the middle and the end of this man’s soul, so naught
can touch his heart and soul unless it goes through God and
through God’s suavity, losing as lose it must its sour in his
perfect sweetness ere it can move or even touch this human
heart.

Philosophers tell us that the heavens underneath are all
wrapped in flames, stopping any wind or rain or tempest or
bad weather from coming near enough to affect them in the
least : it is all consumed, spent with the fiery heat before it
reaches heaven. Even so, I say that everything we do and
undergo through God is sweetened in God’s sweetness ere it
can arrive at the heart of anyone doing and suffering through
God alone. ‘ Through ’ God, we say, because the heart is reached
only after passing through God’s sweetness, only after sublima-
tion in the fiery flames of divine affection which embrace the
good man’s heart on every side.—Now we plainly see how well
in various ways a good man is always comforted in trouble,
doing or suffering. One way if he is doing and suffering
through God, another if he is in godly love. And he can tell
whether he is doing all he does for love of God; for as surely
as he finds himself in unalleviated suffering so surely his work
was not for God alone. Neither, you see, surely, is he in godly
love. King David says, ‘ With God there comes a fire, divine and burns up all his enemies, everything unlike him, round
about,’ grief namely and distress and bitterness.

Further, from the statement that God is with us in our suffer-
ing and is suffering with us comes a seventh cause of profoundest
consolation, God’s idiosyncrasy to wit, that of being one with-
out the least admixture, even in thought, of something different ;
that what is in him is all God himself. And if this is true then
I declare that everything the good man is suffering through
God he is suffering in God, and in suffering my suffering in God,
God is my suffering, my suffering God. How then should
suffering trouble me if pain and suffering lose their sting ?
My suffering is in God: my suffering is God. Granting God
is the truth then wherever I find truth there surely do I find
my God the truth. And just in the same way where I find
suffering solely through and in God there I find God my suffer-
ing. He who cannot see this let him blame his own blindness,
not me or God’s truth.

Fondly and supply then suffer through God, seeing it is
something so full of profit and of bliss, even as our Lord declares,

• Blesséd are they that suffer for righteousness’ sake.’ How
  can the kind and loving God bear that his friends, good people,
  should not be always suffering without ceasing? If someone
  had a friend who was given the chance of suffering temporary
  hardship with great and lasting profit to himself, to his honour
  and well-being, and he tried to thwart him or would like to see
  him thwarted, we should say he was no friend, not to say un-
  friendly. This is why, most likely, God would on no account
  permit his friends, good people, ever to be free from suffering
  if they consented to it and bore it patiently. The whole benefit
  of outward suffering springs ae is the outcome of, good-will,
  as I have said.

It follows that whatever the good man is ready to go through,
all he is longing to suffer for God’s sake, those things in God’s
eyes he really suffers through God and in God. King David
in the Psalms exclaims, ‘ I am ready for all scourges and my
sorrow is continually before me.’ St Jerome, again, says that an empty vessel, one well wrought and fit for ordinary purposes,
is already charged with all its possibilities albeit never actually
used. And I too have explained above that a stone is no less
heavy for lying on the ground, its weight all tells in falling
and also as the tendency to fall. It was in this sense that I
said just now, the righteous man has already done in heaven
and in earth all that he has willed to do and therein he is
like God.

We can see how benighted people are by the astonishment
they generally show at sight of good souls suffering pain and
hardship and by their readiness to put them down to secret
sins. They lose no opportunity of saying, ‘ But I thought he
was so virtuous, how comes he to be so much afflicted? He
seemed to me a man of blameless character!’ And of course
if it were pain and hardship, only pain and hardship that they
felt they would not be good or blameless. But granting they
are good then far from being a curse and a misfortune their
suffering is their greatest blessing and good fortune. God says,
‘ Blesséd are they that suffer for righteousness’ sake.’

According to the Book of Wisdom the souls of the just are
in the hand of God. In the sight of the unwise they seem to
die, but they are in peace, in joy and bliss. St Paul, telling
how many of the saints have suffered manifold and cruel pains, -
declares the world unworthy ofthem. And this dictum, rightly —
understood, has a threefold meaning. One is that the world
is all unworthy of the presence of many a righteous man.
Another and better explanation is that goodness is inconvenient
and worthless to this world; it is of worth to God alone, so
they (the saints) are of worth to God and God-worthy. A
third sense and the one I am using it in here is this: the people
who love this-worldly things are not worthy to bear pain, to
suffer anguish for God’s sake. As it is written that the apostles ©
rejoiced to be accounted worthy of suffering reproach in the
name of God.

Now enough of this discourse, but I want, in the third part
of the book, to cite a number of examples showing how a righteous man may and should find solace in his trouble, and
‚it can be found not only in the sayings but also in the doings
of the sages and the saints.

In the Book of Kings we find that a man cursed King David
and offered him gross insult. Thereupon a friend of David’s
swore that he would slay the scurvy hound. ‘No, no,’ said
the King, ‘let no one do him any harm; most likely God intends
‘the insult for my good.’

And in the Book of Patriarchs we read of someone lamenting
‘to a holy father that he was in trouble. The father said,
‘Wouldst have me pray to God, my son, to remove it from
thee ? ’—‘ Nay, father,’ quoth the other, ‘it is good for me,
I know that right well; do thou ask God to give me grace to
bear it patiently.’

One sick man’ who was asked why he did not pray to God
to make him sound explained he was unwilling to and for three
reasons. One was, because he felt quite sure God never would
permit him to be ill unless that were the best thing for him.
Another reason was: if a man is good he wants to do God’s
will and not God to do his, which would be all wrong. So
if he please that I be sick it is not for me to desire to be well.
Doubtless were it possible for God against his will to make
me well the cure would be a worthless and sorry one for me.
Willingness to suffer comes from love, refusal from the want of it.
{t is a far dearer, better thing for me and one which profits
me much more that God should love me sick than that he
should love me not and my body sound. God’s loving is aught,
what God loves not is naught.

It says in the Book of Wisdom, and there is truth in it, that
whatever God wills, by the very fact of God’s willing it, is good.
Humanly speaking, I would certainly much rather have some-
one rich and powerful, a king for instance, like me and leave
me giftless for the nonce than that he should dislike me and
make me a present on the spot, always providing that love was the motive for not giving then and there: that he refrained
from giving out of hand the better and more richly to endow
me later on. Again, suppose this person who is fond of me
but for the moment gives me nothing, has no idea as yet of ©
making me a gift but presently most likely will think better _
of it and bestow on me some boon; it will behove me to wait
patiently, especially as all his gracious gifts are undeserved.
And surely, with one whose love I flout, whose will my will
runs counter to, all desire for his. gifts apart, it is only meet
that he should give me nothing and hate me and leave me to
my fate.

The third reason why it would be unworthy and despicable
of me to call on God to make me well is that I do not choose,
nor is it right, to ask the bounteous, kind, and generous God
for so small a thing. Suppose I journeyed to the Pope a
hundred leagues or two, and when I got there said to him,

• Sir, holy father, I come a full two hundred leagues of toilsome
  road at heavy cost and I beseech you grant me that for which
  I came: give me a bean!’ Forsooth, himself and all who
  heard of it would write me down, and justly, as an arrant
  fool. I do but state what is indeed the fact, that creatures, .
  generally speaking, are of less value than a bean, compared
  with God. So it will go against the grain with me, if I am
  a wise and virtuous man, to pray to be made well.

And here too let me say that it is a sign of infirmity of mind
to be either glad or sorry about the things of this passing
world. We ought to be heartily ashamed to be found guilty
of it in the sight of God and of his angels and in the eyes of ©
men. One is quick enough to blush for any blemish on one’s
face that can be seen by outward eyes. But why say more ?
The books of the Old Testament as well as of the New, those
of the saints and of the heathen too abound in instances of
pious souls who through love of God and eke through
natural virtue have given their lives and willingly sacrificed
themselves.

One of the heathen, Socrates, declares that by virtues things impossible are made not only possible but easy and pleasant
as well. Nor would I forget that devoted woman in the Book
of Machabees who upon a day did see most harrowing things,
inhuman in their cruelty, done to her seven sons before her eyes,
while she looked on rejoicing, sustaining them with fervent
exhortations not to be afraid but give up soul and body will-
ingly for God and right.

Two more points and I have done. One of them is this.
Any proper godly man should surely be profoundly galled and
heartily ashamed for hardship to upset him, seeing how for a
coin or two any pedlar faces far and foreign lands, rough roads,
oceans, deserts, murder and robbery of body and of goods,
cruel want of food and drink, of sleep and other comforts, all
of which he is ready to forget in view of very small and uncertain
profit. The knight in combat stakes his all, body and soul,
for perishable things, a fleeting triumph, whereas it seems
so much to us a little suffering for God to gain eternal
happiness.

The other thing I want to tell you is that many unenlightened
people will be sure to say a number of the statements are not
true that I have set down in this book besides elsewhere. My
answer to them lies in St Augustine’s words, from the first book
of his Confessions. He says all future things for thousands
upon thousands of the years to come (if the world last so long)
God has already made and all past things for many thousand
years he is still making fresh to-day. How can I help it if this
is not always understood ? And in another place he says that
to try and blind others to dissemble one’s own blindness is
nothing but pandering to self-love.—Enough for me that in
myself and God what I say and write is true. To see a lance
pole in the water anyone would think the shaft was bent
although it is quite straight; it is due to the water being
denser than the air. The shaft is really straight, not crooked,
in itself, and also in his eyes who sees it simply in the air
alone.

St Augustine says: He who, free from all kinds of thoughts, all kinds of sense impressions and ideas, inwardly perceives
things not conveyed to him by any outward sight, he knows
that it is true. But one who lacks this certainty will laugh
and jeer at me and I pity him. Some, again, are anxious to
behold and experience eternal things, divine activities, and
stand in the eternal light while yet their heart is on the wing
in to-day and yesterday, in time and place.

Seneca, the heathen doctor, says, great and lofty matters
ought to be discussed by great and lofty minds and exalted
souls. And it will be said, no doubt, that teaching of this kind,
whether in writing or by word of mouth, ought not to be given
to the profane. My answer to this is: If the ignorant were
not taught they would never learn, so none would ever know
the art of living and of dying. The ignorant are taught in
the hope of changing them from ignorant to enlightened men. |
If there were no new there would be no old. ‘ They that are
whole have no need of a physician,’ says our Lord. The
physician is there to make the sick ones sound. But supposing
anyone mistakes his words, how can he help it who rightly
teaches the right doctrine? St John proclaims his blessed
tidings to all believers and unbelievers too, so that they may
believe, yet he begins his Gospel with the highest that anyone
on earth can say of God and his words, to say nothing of our
Lord’s, are always being misconstrued.

May the kind and loving God who is the truth itself vouchsafe
that I and all who read this book may grow aware of truth
in us.

Part II — The Nobleman

Our Lord says in the Gospel : ‘ A certain nobleman went out
into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and returned.’
In these words our Lord teaches us how noble man is by nature and how divine is that to which he may attain by grace. In
these words too we have the theme of the major part of holy
scripture.

To start with you must know and it is manifest that man
has in him two natures: body and spirit. Hence it has been
said: He who knows himself will know all creatures, for creatures
are all either body or spirit. Accordingly the scriptures say of
human beings that there is in us one man outwardly and another
man within. To the outward man belong the dependents of the
soul which are concerned and entangled with the flesh, which
have a work in common with the organs of the body, the eye
for instance, or the ear, the tongue, the hand and so forth.
The scriptures call all this the old man, the earthly man, the
outward man, the enemy, the servant.

The other man, within us, is the inner man. The scriptures
call him the new man, the heavenly man, the young man, the
friend, the nobleman. It is of him that our Lord says, ‘A
nobleman went out into a far country.’

Further, you must know that St Gregory says, and so with
one accord do all the doctors, that every man by the very fact
of his being a man has a good genius, an angel, and a bad
genius, a devil. The good angel counsels and tends without
ceasing to good, to things godly, things virtuous and heavenly
and eternal. The bad genius counsels and tends all the while
to things temporal, impermanent, vicious, devilish, and evil.
This same evil genius is for ever parleying with the outward
man, and through him succeeds in covertly getting at the inner
man—just as the serpent became friendly with the woman Eve
and through her with her husband Adam. Adam is the inner
man, the man in the soul. He is the good tree of which our Lord
said that it always brought forth good fruit. He is also the
field wherein God has sowed his image and likeness and is
sowing good seed, the root of all wisdom, all knowledge, all
virtue, all goodness, seed of divine nature. This seed is God’s
Son, God’s Word.

The outward man is the enemy, the wicked man who sows tares on the field. Of him St Paul says: ‘I find within me
hindrance and opposition to God’s command and counsel’: to
what God has said and keeps on saying in the ground and
summit of my soul. Elsewhere he cries, ‘O wretched man that -
Tam! who shall deliver me from the body of my mortal flesh?’
And in another place he speaks of man’s spirit and his flesh
always warring with each other. Flesh counselling vice and
evil, spirit counselling love of God, peace, joy, and every virtue.
He who is obedient and lives according to the spirit, to its teach
ing, to him belongs eternal life. He who is obedient to the flesh
shall die. It is the inner man, the one of whom our Lord
declares that he is the good tree, which always bears good fruit
and never evil, for he wants goodness, is inclined to goodness,
to goodness in itself all unconcerned with this and that. The
outer man is the bad tree which can never bear good fruit.

As to the nobility of the inner spiritual man and the baseness
of the carnal man the heathen philosophers Tullius and Seneca
maintain that there is no rationzl soul without God, the seed
of God exists in us. Given a hard worker and a good director
it thrives apace and grows up into God whose seed it is and its
fruit is likewise God’s nature. Pear seed grows up into pear
tree, nut seed grows up into nut tree: God seed into God, to
God.t But if the good seed has a lazy worker and an in-
competent director then weeds spring up and strangle that
good seed and by shutting out the light prevent it growing.
And yet, says Origen, a great authority, ‘ Since God himself
has sown, dropped in and gotten into us this seed, therefore it
may be covered up and lost to view, but it can never be destroyed
or die out in itself: it glows and sparkles, lightens and burns,
always making for God.

In the first stage the inner or new man, St Augustine says,
follows in the footsteps of good, pious people. He is still an
infant at his mother’s breast.

1 This is one of the hundred ‘errors’ for which Eckhart was excom-
‘municated by the Inquisition. See No. 14: Idem est quod dicitur quod
homo possit fieri deus. :

In the second stage he no longer follows blindly the example
even of good people. He goes in hot pursuit of sound instruc-
tion, godly counsel, holy wisdom. He turns his back on man
and his face to God: leaving his mother’s lap he smiles to his
heavenly Father. |
In the third stage he parts more and more from his mother,
draws further and further away from her breast. He flees
care and casts away fear. Though he might with impunity
treat everyone with harshness and injustice he would find no
satisfaction in it, for in his love to God he isso much engaged
with him, so much occupied with him in doing good : God has
established him so firmly in joy, in holiness and love that every-
thing unlike and foreign to God seems to him unworthy and
repugnant,

In the fourth state he more and more grows and is s rooted i in

‚love, in God. He is ever ready to welcome any struggle, any
trial, adversity or suffering, and that willingly, gladly, joyfully.

In the fifth stage he is at peace, enjoying the fullness of
supreme ineffable wisdom. —

In the sixth stage he is de-formed and ‘transformed by God’s
eternal nature. He has come to full perfection and, oblivious
of impermanent things and temporal life, is drawn, transported,
into the image of God and become a child of God. There is no
further and no higher stage. It is eternal rest and bliss. The
end of the inner and new man is eternal life.

As to this inner noble man in whom God’s form is stamped,
God’s seed is sown, how this seed and exemplar of God’s nature
and God’s essence, God’s Son, appears, and one grows aware of
him, and how he sometimes disappears, to this Origen, that
great authority, suggests a parallel: that God’s Son, God’s
image, is in the ground of the soul like a living spring. If earth
is thrown on it, earthly desire that is, it smothers it, covers it
over, and it vanishes from our ken. But it in itself remains
alive, and on removing the soil that was thrown on from without
we see it again. He notes how this truth is set forth in the First
Book of Moses, where we read that Abraham had digged wells in his field and that.evil-doers had filled them with earth and
when the earth was thrown out the living stream re-appeared.

To use another simile: the sun is always shining, but when
there is a cloud or mist between us and the sun we do not see
its brightness, nor when the eyes are diseased or blind can they
see its light. I sometimes use this illustration. When the
artist makes a statue out of wood or stone he does not put the
image in the wood, he chips away the wood which hides the
form. He gives the wood nothing, he takes it away: carves
it out where toothick, pares off overlay, and then there appears
‚what was hidden. This is the treasure hid in a field, of which
our Lords tells in the Gospel.

St Augustine says that when the human soul is all up-turned
into eternity, into God and God alone, that then God’s image
lightens and shines ; but when the soul faces outwards, even
in good outward works, then the image is veiled, That is what
is meant by the women’s heads being covered while the men’s
are bare, in St Paul’s teaching. And in all downward turning
of the soul what it is turning to means the same thing: a
covering, a head cloth. But the up-turned face of the soul is
God’s bare form, God’s birth, naked, unveiled in the naked
soul of the noble man as God’s image, God’s Son, seed of
divine nature in us which never dies out though haply covered
over. As David says in the Psalms, though suffering and
sorrow are man’s portion yet shall he abide in the image of
God and that image in him. The true light shines in the
darkness, but we are not aware of it.

In the Book of Love it is written : Look not upon me because
I am brown, for I am shapely and beautiful, only the sun hath
altered my colour. The sun is the light of this world, so it
means that the highest and best things created or made will
dim and discolour the divine image in us. Solomon says,
remove the dross from the silver and there shines forth that
purest of vessels, the image of God in the soul.

This too is what our Lord meant when he said, ‘ a nobleman
went out.’ For man has to go out of all forms and of himself, and to all such he must be wholly foreign and remote if he
really means and is to be a son: to become the Son in his
Father’s heart. Means of all kinds are alien to God.

God says, ‘I am the first and the last.’ No difference exists
either in the nature of God or in the Persons so far as they are
one in nature. The divine nature is one and each of the
Persons also is one, the same one as their nature. Distinction
in being and existence is taken as same and is one. Where it
is not in (God) it takes on and has and shows difference. In
one God is found, so to find God a man must be one. Our
Lord says: ‘A man went out.’ In difference (separation) we
find neither one nor reality, nor God nor rest nor bliss nor
satisfaction. Be one, that thou mayst find God! And truly,
wert thou really one thou wouldst stay one in separation, and
separation would be one to thee, so nothing could stand in thy
way. One remains equal to one in a thousand thousand stones
just as much as it does in four stones, and a million is a simple
number just as much as four.

A heathen philosopher says, ‘ The one is gotten of the supreme
God. Its idiosyncrasy consists in being one with one. He
deceives himself who seeks. it under God.’ And the same
philosopher says too, and fourthly, that with nothing has this
one a truer friendship than with maidens, virgins, as St Paul
says: ‘I have espoused you chaste virgins to the one.’ And
so shall mankind be united together to the one, which is God
and God only.

A man went forth, our Lord says. Man: The fundamental
meaning of the Latin word for man is, according to one inter-
pretation, a person who submits himself wholly to God, with
all he is and all that is his ; one who looks up to God disregard-
ing his own which he knows is behind him, beneath him. This
is perfect and genuine humility. He takes this name from the
earth. I will say no more of this now. But this word also means
—this word man—something superior to nature, above time,
above temporal things, things smacking of time, place, or body.
Further, this man has in one way got nothing in common with

84 > MEISTER ECKHART naught, for he is not copied from this or from that nor is he

like them, and he knows nothing of naught : there is no feeling, no sense, of naughtiness in him. He is quite free from naught.
There is found in him only pure being, goodness and truth.
A man of this sort is a noble man and none else. There is yet
another way of explaining the term ‘ nobleman’ which our
Lord uses.

You must know that those who see God face to face see e also
creatures with him. Intuition is the light of the soul, and
all men by nature desire this knowledge. No better thing
exists. Intuition is good. Doctors declare that when we know
creatures in themselves that is evening knowledge, and in this
creatures are seen in all sorts of different forms. But when we
know creatures in God that is called morning knowledge, and
then creatures are seen all the same, free from form, deprived
of all likeness, in the one: God himself. Such is the noble
man of whom our Lord says: ‘A nobleman went out.’ N oble
because he is one and also because he knows God and creatures
in one. I will offer still another explanation of what i is meant
by a nobleman. I say: ai

When anyone—his soul, his spirit—is contemplating God
then too he is aware and knows that he is seeing, he knows
that he is knowing and seeing God. Now there are some who
think, and it is quite credible, that the kernel, the flower of
felicity, consists in knowing, in the Spirit knowing that it is
knowing God. For though I had all bliss yet if I knew it not
what help, what good, would it be to me? But I, of course,
would not subscribe to this. For granting that the soul would
(not) be happy without it, nevertheless her happiness does not
consist therein, for the first condition of bliss is the vision of
God face to face: that is her life and her being ;. she draws all
she is from the ground of God, all unwitting of knowing, un-
witting of loving, not wotting of things at all. She is fast
asleep in the essence of God, conscious only of being there and
God. If she knows and knows that she knows and sees and
loves God that involves sallying forth, going back to the first in order fof nature. To know oneself white is much more

external than to be white.

Philosophers say it is one thing, they power whereby: the eye
“sees and another whereby it knows that it sees. The first,
' its seeing, all depends on the colour not on the thing coloured.

It is all one what is coloured,: stone, ‚wood, man, or angel: to
have colour, that is the whole thing. Even so I say that the
noble man is drawing, getting, his whole being, life and happi-
‘ness out of God, in God and from God alone, not from knowing,
seeing or loving God or anything of that kind. Our Lord said
well, it is eternal life simply to know God the one true God,
‘not: to know that one knows God. How should a man know
himself God-knowing when he does not even know himself ?—
Surely though, a man does not know himself, he knows God
; alone and nothing else at all, when he goes to heaven and is
happy in the root and ground of happiness.—But when the
soul knows she knows God then she knows God and herself as
well. As I was saying just now it is one thing, the power
whereby a man sees and another the power whereby he:knows
and is aware that he sees. As a matter of fact, now, here in
us, the power whereby we see and know that we see is nobler
and higher than the power by which we see, for nature begins
its work with the weakest, but God starts his work with the
strongest, most forward. Nature makes man from the child
and the hen from the egg, but God makes the man before the
child and the hen before the egg. God gives the Holy Ghost
before he gives the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

My verdict then is this. Though man may know and realize
that he is seeing and knowing God, his happiness does not
depend on this, nor would God wish my happiness to lie therein.
He who would have it otherwise must settle it with himself—
I am sorry but I cannot help it. Heat of the fire and nature
of fire are totally different things and poles apart in nature
albeit near allied in time and place.

God’s seeing and my seeing are poles apart and quite unlike
each other. Well indeed may our Lord say a nobleman went

86, MEISTER ECKHART out into a far country to receive-a kingdom, and returned.
For man must be one in him(self), he must seek for that in
himself and in one and ‘receive’ in one: see God and God
only. And returning means (recognition) : seeing and knowing
that he sees and knows God.

All this the prophet Ezekiel has already said where he speaks
of a great eagle with great wings, long-limbed, full of feathers
and of variety, coming to the pure mountain and taking away
the pith or marrow of the highest tree and cropping off the top-
most branch which he brought down. What our Lord calls a nobleman Ezekiel describes as a great eagle. Who is nobler
than he who is begotten half of the highest and best that
creature has and the other half of the innermost ground of the
divine nature, of its solitariness ? In the prophet Hosea our
' Lord says: ‘I will lead the noble souls into the desert and will
speak to their hearts,’ one to one, one from one, one in one
and in one one eternally. A r

The soul is one with God and not RR so the coripuures
say. For instance, if we fill a tub of water the water in the a tub is united and not one: what is water is not wood and

where ‘it is wood -it is not water, Now take the wood and
throw it in the middle of the water, the wood is still united,
nothing more, and not the same. It is different with the soul, she is one with God and not united : “where God is there is the soul and where the soul is there is God.

Moses saw God face to face, so the scriptures say. This
theologists deny. They argue in this way. Where two faces
show God is not seen, for God is one not two. Who sees God
sees nothing but one. Here I take the passage I gave in my
first sermon, ‘ God is love, and he who is in love is in God and
God in him.’ Whoso is thus in love to him do I address the
invitation [of St Paul], ‘ Faithful servant enter thou into the
joy of thy lord.’ Here too I quote the saying of ‘our Lord,
_ ‘Enter in faithful servant, I will set thee over all my goods.’
This may be understood in three ways. First, ‘I will set thee
over all my goods’: all my goods as divided up into creatures, .
over this dividedness will I set thee in one (i.e. in God). Next,
taking them as all summed up to one, over this summation
will I set thee, in unity. Thirdly, I will set thee in the oneness ©
where all name is gone. There God is to the soul as though the reason of his being God was that he might be the soul’s.
For supposing God withheld aught of his being, of his is-ness,
wherein he is to himself, so that God was greater than the soul
by a hair’s-breadth even, then he would not be God, so absolutely
one is the soul with God. Witness the gospel-saying of our
Lord, ‘ I pray thee Father as I and thou are one that they also may be one in us.’ And those other words, also from the gospel,

in which our Lord declares, ‘ Where I am there shall also my
servant be,’ so throughly does the soul become the same being
that God is, no less, and this is as true as God is God. — Dear
children I beseech you realize what this means. I pray you
for God’s sake do it in love’s name and carefully preserve this
frame of mind. All such are in unity, as I have said, for they
are free from form, and we durst not think that there is in form
less chance of their departing from the unity. To do so would
be wrong and might even be called heresy, for you must know
that there, in the unity, there is no Conrad nor yet Henry. I
will tell you how I think of people. I try to forget myself and
everyone and merge myself for them in unity. May we abide
in unity, So help us God. Amen.

Source: Meister Eckhart. The Works of Meister Eckhart, Doctor Ecstaticus. Vol. II. Translated by C. de B. Evans. London: John M. Watkins, 1931. First edition 1931. Tractate V (The Book of Benedictus), pp. 45–90. Public domain in the United States (published 1931, UK first edition; US copyright not renewed). Scanned and digitised at the Internet Archive (identifier: meistereckhart0000eckh, Claremont School of Theology copy). Archived for the New Tianmu Anglican Church Good Work Library, March 2026.

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