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Mr. Vaughan cannot be too severe upon the Romish priesthood. But it is one thing to dismiss with summary contempt men, who, as they do, keep the keys of knowledge, and neither enter in themselves nor suffer others to enter, and quite another thing to apply the same summary jurisdiction to men who, under whatsoever confusions, are feeling earnestly and honestly after truth. And therefore we regret exceedingly the mock trial which he has introduced into his Introduction. We regret it for his own sake; for it will drive away from the book–indeed it has driven–thoughtful and reverent people who, having a strong though vague inclination toward the Mystics, might be very profitably taught by the after pages to separate the evil from the good in the Bernards and Guyons whom they admire, they scarce know why; and will shock, too, scholars, to whom Hindoo and Persian thoughts on these subjects are matters not of ridicule but of solemn and earnest investigation.

Besides, the question is not so easily settled. Putting aside the flippancy of the passage, it involves something very like a petitio principii to ask offhand: “Does the man mean a living union of heart to Christ, a spiritual fellowship or converse with the Father, when he talks of the union of the believer with God–participation in the Divine nature?” For first, what we want to know is, the meaning of the words–what means “living”? what “union”? what “heart”? They are terms common to the Mystic and to the popular religionist, only differently interpreted; and in the meanings attributed to them lies nothing less than the whole world-old dispute between Nominalist and Realist not yet to be settled in two lines by two gentlemen over their wine, much less ignored as a thing settled beyond all dispute already. If by “living union of heart with”–Mr. Vaughan meant “identity of morals with”–he should have said so: but he should have borne in mind that all the great evangelicals have meant much more than this by those words; that on the whole, instead of considering–as he seems to do, and we do–the moral and the spiritual as identical, they have put them in antithesis to each other, and looked down upon “mere morality” just because it did not seem to them to involve that supernatural, transcendental, “mystic” element which they considered that they found in Scripture. From Luther to Owen and Baxter, from them to Wesley, Cecil, and Venn, Newton, Bridges, the great evangelical authorities would (not very clearly or consistently, for they were but poor metaphysicians, but honestly and earnestly) have accepted some modified form of the Mystic’s theory, even to the “discerning in particular thoughts, frames, impulses, and inward witnessings, immediate communications from heaven.” Surely Mr. Vaughan must be aware that the majority of “vital Christians” on this ground are among his mystic offenders; and that those who deny such possibilities are but too liable to be stigmatised as “Pelagians,” and “Rationalists.” His friend Atherton is bound to show cause why those names are not to be applied to him, as he is bound to show what he means by “living union with Christ,” and why he complains of the Mystic for desiring “participation in the Divine nature.” If he does so, he only desires what the New Testament formally, and word for word, promises him; whatsoever be the meaning of the term, he is not to be blamed for using it. Mr. Vaughan cannot have forgotten the many expressions, both of St. Paul and St. John, which do at first sight go far to justify the Mystic, though they are but seldom heard, and more seldom boldly commented on, in modern pulpits–of Christ being formed in men, dwelling in men; of God dwelling in man and man in God; of Christ being the life of men; of men living, and moving, and having their being in God; and many another passage. If these be mere metaphors let the fact be stated, with due reason for it. But there is no sin or shame in interpreting them in that literal and realist sense in which they seem at first sight to have been written. The first duty of a scholar who sets before himself to investigate the phenomena of “Mysticism” so called, should be to answer these questions: Can there be a direct communication, above and beyond sense or consciousness, between the human spirit and God the Spirit? And if so, what are its conditions, where its limits, to transcend which is to fall into “mysticism”?