Juliana’s view of human personality is remarkable, as it reminds us of the Neoplatonic doctrine that there is a higher and a lower self, of which the former is untainted by the sins of the latter.  “I saw and understood full surely,” she says, “that in every soul that shall be saved there is a godly will that never assented to sin, nor ever shall; which will is so good that it may never work evil, but evermore continually it willeth good, and worketh good in the sight of God....  We all have this blessed will whole and safe in our Lord Jesus Christ.”  This “godly will” or “substance” corresponds to the spark of the German mystics.

“I saw no difference,” she says, “between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God.  And yet my understanding took, that our substance is in God—­that is to say, that God is God, and our substance a creature in God.  Highly ought we to enjoy that God dwelleth in our soul, and much more highly, that our soul dwelleth in God....  Thus was my understanding led to know, that our soul is made Trinity, like to the unmade Blessed Trinity, known and loved from without beginning, and in the making oned to the Maker.  This sight was full sweet and marvellous to behold, peaceable and restful, sure and delectable.”

“As anent our substance and our sense-part, both together may rightly be called our soul; and that is because of the oneing that they have in God.  The worshipful City that our Lord Jesus sitteth in, it is our sense-soul, in which He is enclosed, and our natural substance is beclosed in Jesus, sitting with the blessed soul of Christ at rest in the Godhead.”  Our soul cannot reach its full powers until our sense-nature by the virtue of Christ’s passion be “brought up to the substance.”  This fulfilment of the soul “is grounded in nature.  That is to say, our reason is grounded in God, which is substantial Naturehood; out of this substantial Nature mercy and grace spring and spread into us, working all things in fulfilling of our joy:  these are our ground, in which we have our increase and our fulfilling.  For in nature we have our life and our being, and in mercy and grace we have our increase and our fulfilling.”

In one of her visions she was shown our Lord “scorning the fiend’s malice, and noughting his unmight.”  “For this sight I laught mightily, and that made them to laugh that were about me.  But I saw not Christ laugh.  After this I fell into graveness, and said, ’I see three things:  I see game, scorn, and earnest.  I see game, that the fiend is overcome; I see scorn, in that God scorneth him, and he shall be scorned; and I see earnest, in that he is overcome by the blissful passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, that was done in full earnest and with sober travail.’”