SOURCE: “The Friends of God” in Studies in Mystical Religion, Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1909, pp. 242-97.

In the following excerpt, Jones sketches the troubled times in which the Friends of God lived; describes their literature with its vision of Apocalypse and emphasis on renunciation; and profiles Tauler—particularly his insistence on the inner Light.

I

One of the most important and remarkable expressions of mystical religion in the history of the Christian Church is that which flowered out in Germany in the fourteenth century, and whose exponents are known under the name of “Friends of God.” The title does not cover a sect, nor even a “Society,” in the strict sense of the word. It, rather, names a fairly definite type of Christianity, which found its best expression in persons of the prophet-class in that century, both men and women, who powerfully moved large groups of Christians by...