SOURCE: Knowles, David. “Walter Hilton.” In The English Mystical Tradition, pp. 100-18. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961.

In the following essay, Knowles explains Hilton's views on contemplation, the Holy Ghost, and grace, illustrating his descriptions with numerous excerpts from The Scale of Perfection.

The distinguished and nameless author of The Cloud was followed, within a very few years, by a spiritual writer of different temper but of equal distinction, and with a very similar outlook upon the life of the spirit. When reading The Cloud and its companion treatises we feel the impact of a strong, original, masterful and independent personality; Hilton is gentler and less aloof. Although no one without very deep and varied spiritual experience could have written The Scale of Perfection, we do not feel when we are reading it that we are listening to a record of personal striving, any more than we do when...