The Early English Mystics make good reading,—even as to the mere manner of their writings we might say, if it were possible to separate the style from the freshness of feeling and the pointedness of thought that inform it; and though we do not, of course, have from Julian,—a woman writing of the Revelations of Love,—the delightfully trenchant, easy address of Hilton in his counsels as to how to scale the Ladder of Perfection—counsels both wise and witty—yet Julian, too, with all her sweetness, is full of this every day vigour and common sense. And sometimes she puts things in a naïve, engaging way of her own, grave and yet light—as if with a little understanding smile to those to whom she is speaking:—“Then ween we, who be not all wise”; “That the outward part should draw the inward to assent was not shewed to me, but that the inward draweth the outward by grace and both shall be oned in bliss without end by the virtue of Christ, this was shewed” (lxi., xix.).
Rolle, Hilton, and more especially the Ancren Riwle, give examples of that custom of allegorical interpretation of Sacred Scriptures that has fascinated many mystical authors, but one can scarcely suppose that this method would ever have been a favourite one with Julian even if she had been in the way of dealing with literary parallels and references. For though she uses “examples,” or illustrations (sometimes calling them “shewings,” or “bodily examples”) and also metaphorically figurative speech, she does not shew any interest in elaborate, arbitrary symbolism. At any rate she is too directly simple, it seems, and too much in the centre of realities, to be a writer that (without constraint of following the lines of others) would take as foundation for an argument or an exposition outward resemblances or verbal connections, fit perhaps to illustrate or enforce the truth in question, but lacking in relation to it that inward vital oneness whereby certain things that to man seem below him may become symbolic to him of others that he beholds as within or above him.
Exposition by analysis has been reckoned to be characteristic of the Schoolmen rather than of the Mystics,{21} though surely a mystical sight may be served by an analytical process, and to see God in a part before or while He is seen in the whole is effected not without analysis of the subtlest kind. So we find analysis in Julian’s sight (Rev. iii.): “I saw God in a point”; and in her conclusions from this: “By which sight I saw that He is in all things”; and in her immediate raising, from this conclusion, of the question: “What is sin?” and throughout her treatment of the problem in the scheme of her book. Even for the merely formal task of distinguishing by number, Julian, we see, will set briskly forward (though we may not feel much inclined to follow) and often she begins her careful dissections with: “In this I see”—four, five, or six things, as the case may be. Her speech of spiritual Revelations is, however, helped out less by numbers than by living and homely things of sight: the mother and the children and the nurse; lords and servants, kings and their subjects (with echoes of the language of Court and chivalry); the deep sea-ground, waters for our service; clothing, in its warmth, grace and colour; the light that stands in the night, the hazel-nut, the scales of herrings.{22}
As one grows familiar with the “Revelations” one finds oneself in the midst of a great scheme: a network of ideas that cross and re-cross each other in a way not very clear at first, perhaps, but not really in confusion. All through this treatise from its beginning, the Revelation as a whole is in the mind of Julian; interpolation by another writer is out of the question: the book is all of a piece, both as the expression of one person, in mind and character, and as the setting forth of a theological system. From the first we find Julian holding her diverse threads of nature and mercy and grace for the fabric of love she is weaving, and all through she guides them in and out, with no hesitation, till at last the whole design lies fair before her, shewing the Goodness of God.
With regard to this scheme it may be noted that apart from her merely intellectual pleasure in arithmetical methods of statement, Julian shews throughout a mystical sense of numerical correspondences. Life, both as being and action, is, to her sight, in its perfection full of trinities; while there are doubles,—incident to its imperfection, as we may put it, perhaps, though the book itself does not mark this distinction in so many words—there are doubles wherein two things are partially opposed and require for their reconciling a third that will complete them into trinity. First, as the Centre of all, there is the BLESSED TRINITY: All-Might, All-Wisdom, All-Love: one Goodness: FATHER and SON and HOLY GHOST: one Truth. To the First, Second, and Third Persons correspond the verbs MAY, for all-powerful freedom to do; CAN, for all-skilful ability to do; WILL, for all-loving will to do. So also “the Father willeth, the Son worketh, the Holy Ghost confirmeth” Another nomenclature of the Holy Trinity is, Might, Wisdom, Goodness: one Love; but that of Might, Wisdom, Love (employed by Abelard, Aquinas, and the Schoolmen generally) is the usual one, while Truth, Wisdom, Love, is employed in reference to that Image of God wherein Man is made: for man has not created might: his might is all in the uncreated might of God. Man in his essential Nature is “made-trinity,” “like to the unmade Blessed Trinity”—a human trinity of truth, wisdom, love; and these respectively see, behold, and delight in the Divine Trinity of Truth, Wisdom, Love.
Man possesses Reason, which knows, Mind, or a feeling wisdom, which wits, and Love, which loves. The making of Man by the Son of God as Eternal Christ, is the work of Nature; the falling of Man is “suffered” (allowed), and afterwards healed, by Mercy; the