At the Reformation period, Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, born A.D. 1493, d. 1541) was among the first to show a decided leaning to mysticism, though medicine, not theology, was his peculiar faculty. He was by no means a partisan of Luther, although he was himself a zealous Reformer. His theological mysti- cism was mixed up with medicine, astronomv, astrology, alchemy, and natural history. From a similar medley Jacob Bohme, at a later date, extracted religious com- fort. But the first of the Reformed party who gave to mysticism a definite shape was Valentine Weigel, minister of Ischopping, near Meissen, in Saxony; he died A.D. 1588. Mysticism has often made a close ap- proach to pantheism, and so in his system he said that God had pity on himself in pitying man ; for since the believer is by his act of faith raised above himself and abandons the soul to God, so God is conscious of Iiis own being in man. Thus Spinoza declared that God is only self-conscious in the self-consciousness of man. Man is a microcosmal power, and in him the world is exhibited in miniature reflection. During his life Wei- gel had the worldly wisdom to keep his thoughts to himself, and subscribed the Formula Concordue as a good Lutheran — really to avoid inconvenience, as stated in a posthumous writing, and not from inner convic- tion. In his Postils he complains earnestly of the slug- gish spirit of the existing schools of theology ; their bulky bodies of doctrine, their confession, their common- places and table-talk, as well as their far-famed Formula of Concord. All such beggarly elements of instruction he would sweep away, and go to the AYord of God alone for light. Imputed righteousness was a doctrine, he said, that could onh' have been devised by Antichrist. Thus he also, though a professed Reformer, was in many points at direct antagonism with Luther and Melancthon.
The most unintelligible of Mystics, however, was Jacob Bohme (q. v.). Light, he declared, had been revealed to him that held him in a state of ecstatic rest; and thoughts were inspired by the revelation that he seems never to have had the power of communicat- ing to others. After a silence of fifteen years he wrote the Auroi-a (A.D. 1012), which was followed by other similar coruscations. His reveries show a strange mixt- ure of the naturalism afterwards developed by Schel- ling and the wilder theosophy of the ancient Gnostics, Thus he aflirmed God and nature to be essentially one; and this dualized principle, without which neither nat- ure as a whole, nor any integral portion of it, can exist, is the Deity. As to be self-engendered is the essence of the Deitj-, so nature and the external world is the substance of that self-generation. In the fall of Lucifer, where a spirit of light should have been engendered, there issued forth a spirit of fire. It is the principle of life of all creatures, the very heart of their existence. All that is gross and hard, dark and cold, terrible and evil, has its origin in the fall of Lucifer, the Prince of this world. But intimately as his spirit interpenetrates the mass of existence, he is not wholly one with it. The spirit of life is there also, held captive, as it were, under the covenant of death, yet not extinguished. The confines of the rival kingdoms touch each other in man, and keep up a perpetual contest between Love and Rage. In the material world the Creator is born as a creature in the quickened life of the spirit ; the stars are nothing else than powers of God; and all three per- sons of the Trinity are ever present in the universe. The Father is the occult foundation of all ; the Son in the heart of the Father is the quickening spirit of life and love, of tenderness and beauty. The Spirit is uni- versally present. From nature and its internal develop- ment Biihme professed to have gained his knowledge of philosophy and astrotheology. He was indebted to no
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human lore ; his only book was the book of nature, ever open before his soul. It is true he had learned much from the Theurgists who preceded him, particularly Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, but the grand source of the knowledge wliich he professed to communicate in his mystical writings was an inward illumination, which he claimed to have received from the Spirit of God, whereby he became minutely acquainted with the essences, properties, and uses of all the objects in nature. Schlegel has been able to trace in these ravings the afflatus of a poetical mind of high order, and he does not scrujile to rank Biihme witli the master-minds that have taken their theme from the unseen world — Dante, Milton, and Klopstock. Hallam can see noth- ing in them — nothing better than the incoherence of madness {Literature of the Middle Ages, III. iii, 20). Biihrne was followed in the same form of mysticism by the liosicrucians and Freemasons, and by secret socie- ties, which so abounded in the IGth century.
Of a very different stamp was Arndt's mysticism. It means a thoroughly spiritual religion. His prin- cipal works are the four books of True Christianity, and his devotional collection, the Paradise of Christian Virtues. They maintain their high character, and are still used in many households throughout (iermany. But they encountered a vehement opposition when they first appeared, more especially from Osiander the younger, who managed to extract from them eight several heresies ; the main gravamen being that Arndt slights school learning by his advocacy of practical pi- ety, and of such " popish" Mystics as Thomas a Kem- pis and Tauler. Moreover, by his doctrine of the illu- mination and indwelling of the Holy Spirit he trenches upon the Lutheran theory of justification by faith alone and the orthodox doctrine of grace. J. Gerhard's Medi- tationes Sacra (A.D. IfiOG), his Schola Pietatis and Po- stils, are works of a similar tone of thought to Arndt's, and they met with similar ric( ptidii at lirst ; as (lorliard said, "If any writer upholds pi<ius practical Cliristiaiiity, and aims at something higher than mere theological learn- ing, he is straightway branded as a Kosicrucian or Wei- gelian." J. Val. Andreii, grandson of Jacob Andreii, who took a iirominent part in setting up the Lutheran Formula of Concord, was of the same school. In his younger years he accepted the Kosicrucian mystery (A.D. 1G02), but more in jest than in earnest. His later writings (A.D. 1G17-1()19) ai-e conceived in a spirit of mystical piety. His endeavor cvidentl}' was to ex- pose and put down the religious and political follies of the age, and uphold what he deemed to be spiritual Christianity. But he wrote in the spirit of Lucian; and it is often difficult to sec where irony ends and earn- est principle begins. His more liberal acceptation of the Formula Concordice made him many enemies among the high orthodox Lutherans. The Pietist Spencr said of him : " If I could raise any from the dead for the good of the Church, it should be Valentine Andreii." It was owing to Arndt's influence that the mocking, scoffing spirit which seemed natural to Andreii was replaced by something higher and worthier of a Christian man.