life, by inward feeling and possession, and waits in quietude for divine
illumination. The German mysticism of Eckhart[1] (about 1300), which had
been continued in Suso and Tauler and had received a practical direction
in the Netherlands,--Ruysbroek (about 1350) to Thomas à Kempis (about
1450),--now puts forth new branches and blossoms at the turning point of
the centuries.

[Footnote 1: Master Eckhart's _Works_ have been edited by F. Pfeiffer,
Leipsic, 1857. The following have written on him: Jos. Bach, Vienna, 1864;
Ad. Lasson, Berlin, 1868; the same, in the second part of Ueberweg's
_Grundriss_, last section; Denifle, in the _Archiv für Litteratur und
Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters_. ii. 417 _seq_.; H. Siebeck,
_Der Begriff des Gemuts in der deutschen Mystik (Beiträge zur
Entstehungsgeschichte der neueren Psychologie_, i), Giessen Programme,
1891.]

Luther himself was originally a mystic, with a high appreciation of Tauler
and Thomas à Kempis, and published in 1518 that attractive little book by
an anonymous Frankfort author, the _German Theology_. When, later, he fell
into literalism, it was the mysticism of German Protestantism which, in
opposition to the new orthodoxy, held fast to the original principle of
the Reformation, _i.e._, to the principle that faith is not assent to
historical facts, not the acceptance of dogmas, but an inner experience,
a renewal of the whole man. Religion and theology must not be confounded.
Religion is not doctrine, but a new birth. With Schwenckfeld, and also with
Franck, mysticism is still essentially pietism; with Weigel, and by the
addition of ideas from Paracelsus, it is transformed into theosophy, and as
such reaches its culmination in Böhme.

Caspar Schwenckfeld sought to spiritualize the Lutheran movement and