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He was very well read in English theological literature. He thought Luther the greatest of all theologians, but his favourite reading was Tauler. He had an emotional understanding of, and sympathy with, the "Friends of God." And what illusions had he not outlived!
In a period which has given birth to a skeptical philosophy, one never looks in vain for the complementary phenomenon of mysticism. The stone offered by doubt in place of bread is incapable of satisfying the impulse after knowledge, and when the intellect grows weary and despairing, the heart starts out in the quest after truth. Then its path leads inward, the mind turns in upon itself, seeks to learn the truth by inner experience and life, by inward feeling and possession, and waits in quietude for divine illumination. The German mysticism of Eckhart (about 1300), which had been continued in Suso and Tauler and had received a practical direction in the Netherlands, Ruysbroek (about 1350) to Thomas
It is not in accordance with modern Christian sentiment to dwell very much on the physical sufferings of Christ. Once the feeling on this subject was very different: in old writers, like the mystic Tauler, for example, every detail is enlarged upon and even exaggerated, till the page seems to reek with blood and the mind of the reader grows sick with horror.
As the religious brotherhoods of the Pythagoreans rose in spiritual revolt against the lax mythology and careless living of the Sybarites in Sicily; as in the third century of the Christian era Neoplatonism concentrated within itself whatever remains of faith and piety lingered in the creeds and philosophies of paganism; as in the Middle Ages devout men, wearied with forms and controversies, and scholastic reasoners seeking refuge from the logical and metaphysical problems with which they had perplexed theology, sought more direct communion with God in the mystic devotion of Anselm and Bernard, of Hugo and Bonaventura; as Bertholdt and Nicolas, Eckhart and Tauler, organised their new societies throughout Germany to meet great spiritual needs which established systems had wholly ceased to satisfy; as Arndt and Spener and Francke in the seventeenth century breathed new life into the Lutheran Church, and set on foot their 'collegia pietatis, their systematised prayer-meetings, to supplement the deficiencies of the time so in the England of the eighteenth century, when the force of religion was chilled by drowsiness and indifference in some quarters, by stiffness and formality and over-cautious orthodoxy in others, when the aspirations of the soul were being ever bidden rest satisfied with the calculations of sober reason, when proofs and evidences and demonstrations were offered, and still offered, to meet the cry of those who called for light, how else should religion stem the swelling tide of profligacy but by some such inward spiritual revival as those by which it had heretofore renewed its strength?
We cannot swallow either John Tauler or Jacob Behmen. His friendly correspondence with Law ceased after a few years. He continued to 'admire and love' his personal character, but attacked his opinions with a vehemence contrasting somewhat unfavourably with the patience and humility of Law's reply.
If Tauler was right, and all kinds of skill are gifts of the Holy Ghost a proposition which no thorough-going theist can refuse then will not a reference back on the part of the worker to that fontal source of power make for humility and perfection in all work?
Meister Eckhart, whose free treatment of Christian doctrines, in order to bring them into consonance with his mystical theology, had drawn him into conflict with the Papacy, undoubtedly influenced Luther through his disciple, Tauler, and especially through the book which proceeded from the latter's school, the Deutsche Theologie.
Much in the same way as in the Germany of the fourteenth century the lawless Brethren of the Free Spirit had justified their excesses in language which they borrowed from men of such noble and holy life as Eckhart and Tauler, and Nicolas of Basle, so the flagitious conduct, at Bedford and elsewhere, of some who called themselves Moravians threw scandal and odium on the tenets of the pure and simple-minded community of Herrnhut.
Moreover, if it were intelligible, it would not be divine. If the God whom we serve could be comprehended by reason, He could not be worth the trouble of serving, said Tauler; and the 'Imitation' declares plainly also at the end of the IVth book that if the works of God were such as man's intelligence could easily grasp, they would cease to be marvellous, and could not be qualified as ineffable."
More, you must be willing that it should lay hold of you. "A pure bare going forth," says Tauler, trying to describe the sensations of the self at this moment. "None," says Ruysbroeck, putting this same experience, this meek outstreaming of the bewildered spirit, into other language, "is sure of Eternal Life, unless he has died with his own attributes wholly into God."
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