SOURCE: Inge, William Ralph. “Walter Hylton.” In Studies of English Mystics: St. Margaret's Lectures 1905, pp. 80-123. London: John Murray, 1906.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1905, Inge examines Hilton's treatment of sin, desire, fear; metaphorical language; and the nature of God's love and grace in The Scale of Perfection.

The picture of human life as a spiritual Jacob's ladder, on which angels are for ever ascending and descending, and which we all have to climb step by step, is as old as the rule of St Benedict. The idea of a gradual ascent, not in time or place, but from stage to stage of reality, leaving behind us the vain shadows of earth, and beholding ever more clearly the mysteries of Divine truth, has always been dear to mystics. Charts of spiritual progress have been drawn up in large numbers, till in the later Romanist...