never arrived at the ‘emptiness’ of which these men (the false mystics) talk.”  Of contemplation he says, “Spiritual enjoyments are the food of the soul, and are only to be taken for nourishment and support to help us in our active work.”  “Sloth often makes men fain to be excused from their work and set to contemplation.  Never trust in a virtue that has not been put into practice.”  These pupils of Eckhart all led strenuous lives themselves, and were no advocates of pious indolence.  Tauler says, “Works of love are more acceptable to God than lofty contemplation”:  and, “All kinds of skill are gifts of the Holy Ghost.[275]”

The process of deification is thus described by Ruysbroek and by Tauler.  Ruysbroek writes:  “All men who are exalted above their creatureliness into a contemplative life are one with this Divine glory—­yea, are that glory.  And they see and feel and find in themselves, by means of this Divine light, that they are the same simple Ground as to their uncreated nature, since the glory shineth forth without measure, after the Divine manner, and abideth within them simply and without mode, according to the simplicity of the essence.  Wherefore contemplative men should rise above reason and distinction, beyond their created substance, and gaze perpetually by the aid of their inborn light, and so they become transformed, and one with the same light, by means of which they see, and which they see.  Thus they arrive at that eternal image after which they were created, and contemplate God and all things without distinction, in a simple beholding, in Divine glory.  This is the loftiest and most profitable contemplation to which men attain in this life.”  Tauler, in his sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, says:  “The kingdom is seated in the inmost recesses of the spirit.  When, through all manner of exercises, the outward man has been converted into the inward reasonable man, and thus the two, that is to say, the powers of the senses and the powers of the reason, are gathered up into the very centre of the man’s being,—­the unseen depths of his spirit, wherein lies the image of God,—­and thus he flings himself into the Divine Abyss, in which he dwelt eternally before he was created; then when God finds the man thus firmly down and turned towards Him, the Godhead bends and nakedly descends into the depths of the pure waiting soul, and transforms the created soul, drawing it up into the uncreated essence, so that the spirit becomes one with Him.  Could such a man behold himself, he would see himself so noble that he would fancy himself God, and see himself a thousand times nobler than he is in himself, and would perceive all the thoughts and purposes, words and works, and have all the knowledge of all men that ever were.”  Suso and the German Theology use similar language.