[Footnote 351: I have omitted Böhme's gnostical theories as to the seven _Quellgeister_ as belonging rather to theosophy than to Mysticism. The resemblance to Basilides is here rather striking, but it must be a pure coincidence.] [Footnote 352: And of English Mysticism before the Reformation; cf. p. 208.] [Footnote 353: From the _Spirit of Prayer_. The sect of Behmenists in Germany, unlike Law, attended no church, and took no part in the Lord's Supper.--Overton, _Life of William Law_, p. 214.] [Footnote 354: This stimulating doctrine, that the soul, when freed from impediments, ascends naturally and inevitably to its "own place," is put into the mouth of Beatrice by Dante (_Paradiso_, i. 136)-- "Non dei più ammirar, se bene stimo, Lo tuo salir, se non come d'un rivo Se d'alto monte scende giuso ad imo. Maraviglia sarebbe in te, se privo D'impedimento giu ti fossi assiso, Com' a terra quieto fuoco vivo. Quinci rivolce inver lo cielo il viso." ] [Footnote 355: It may be interesting to compare the following passage from George Fox, which dramatises the irruption of natural science, with its faith in fixed laws, into the sphere of the religious consciousness:--"One morning, while I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me, a temptation beset me; and I sat still. It was said, _All things come by Nature_; and the elements and stars came over me, so that I was in a manner quite clouded by it. And as I sat still under it and let it alone, a living hope and a true voice arose in me, which said, _There is a living God who made all things_. Immediately the cloud and temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all; my heart was glad, and I praised the living God."] [Footnote 356: So we may fairly say, if we remember that we are speaking of what transcends time. Neither Böhme nor Law looks forward to a golden age on this earth.] [Footnote 357: Henry More's judgment is as follows: "Jacob Behmen, I conceive, is to be reckoned in the number of those whose imaginative faculty has the pre-eminence above the rational; and though he was a good and holy man, his natural complexion, notwithstanding, was not destroyed, but retained its property still; and, therefore, his imagination being very busy about Divine things, he could not without a miracle fail of becoming an enthusiast, and of receiving Divine truths upon the account of the strength and vigour of his fancy; which, being so well qualified with holiness and sanctity, proved not unsuccessful in sundry apprehensions, but in others it fared with him after the manner of men, the sagacity of his imagination failing him, as well as the anxiety of reason does others of like integrity with himself."]