and supernatural knowledge, but his method of distinguishing them is, I think, original.  Natural knowledge, he says, is not conveyed by the object; it is the percipient subject which creates knowledge out of itself.  The object merely provokes the consciousness into activity.  In natural knowledge the subject is “active, not passive”; all that appears to come from without is really evolved from within.  In supernatural knowledge the opposite is the case.  The eye of the “understanding,” which sees the Divine, is the spark in the centre of the soul where lies the Divine image.  In this kind of cognition the subject must be absolutely passive; its thoughts must be as still as if it were dead.  Just as in natural knowledge the object does not co-operate, so in supernatural knowledge the subject does not co-operate.  Yet this supernatural knowledge does not come from without.  The Spirit and Word of God are within us.  God is Himself the eye and the light in the soul, as well as the object which the eye sees by this light.  Supernatural knowledge flows from within outwards, and in this way resembles natural knowledge.  But since God is both the eye that sees and the object which it sees, it is not we who know God, so much as God who knows Himself in us.  Our inner man is a mere instrument of God.

Thus Weigel, who begins with Paracelsus, leaves off somewhere near Eckhart—­and Eckhart in his boldest mood.  But his chief concern is to attack the Bibliolaters (Buchstabentheologen) in the Lutheran Church, and to protest against the unethical dogma of imputed righteousness.  We need not follow him into either of these controversies, which give a kind of accidental colouring to his theology.  Speculative Mysticism, which is always the foe of formalism and dryness in religion, attacks them in whatever forms it finds them; and so, when we try to penetrate the essence of Mysticism by investigating its historical manifestations, we must always consider what was the system which in each case it was trying to purify and spiritualise.  Weigel’s Mysticism moves in the atmosphere of Lutheran dogmatics.  But it also marks a stage in the general development of Christian Mysticism, by giving a positive value to scientific and natural knowledge as part of the self-evolution of the human soul.  “Study nature,” he says, “physics, alchemy, magic, etc.; for it is all in you, and you become what you have learnt.”  It is true that his religious attitude is rigidly quietistic; but this position is so inconsistent with the activity which he enjoins on the “reason,” that he may claim the credit of having exhibited the contradiction between the positive and negative methods in a clear light; and to prove a contradiction is always the first step towards solving it.

A more notable effort in the same direction was that of Jacob Boehme, who, though he had studied Weigel, brought to his task a philosophical genius which was all his own.