is the Holy Ghost—an eternal and divine Bond, uniting the Father and the Son in everlasting Love. These three are essentially one—one single pure essential unity, as even the heathen philosophers bear witness. Therefore, saith Aristotle, ‘There is but one Lord who ordaineth all things.’ He, therefore, that would be truly united to God must dedicate the penny of his soul, with all its faculties, to God alone, and join it unto Him. For if the highest and most glorious Unity, which is God himself, is to be united to the soul, it must be through oneness (_Einigkeit_). Now when the soul hath utterly forsaken itself and all creatures, and made itself free from all manifoldness, then the sole Unity, which is God, answers truly to the oneness of the soul, for then is there nothing in the soul beside God. Therefore between such a soul and God (if a man be so prepared that his soul hangs on nothing but God himself) there is so great a oneness that they become one, as the Apostle saith, ‘He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.’ But there are some who will fly before they have wings, and pluck the apples before they are ripe, and, at the very outset of the Divine life, be so puffed up that it contents them not to enter in at the door and contemplate Christ’s humanity, but they will apprehend his highness and incomprehensible Deity only. So did once a priest, and fell grievously, and bitterly mourned his folly, and had to say, ‘Ah, most Merciful! had I followed truly the pattern of thy holy humanity, it had not been thus with me!’ Beware of such perilous presumption—your safe course is to perfect yourselves first in following the lowly life of Christ, and in earnest study of the shameful cross. Methinks this is true counsel, and better, for our sort at least, than Master Eckart’s exhortation to break through into the essence, and to exchange God made manifest for the absolute and inscrutable Godhead. 1339. _March 20._—Finished to-day a complete suit of armour for young Franz Müllenheim. The aristocratic families bear the change of government more good-humouredly than I looked for. Their influence is still great, and they can afford to make a virtue of necessity. Most of them now, too, are on the right side. A great improvement—locking our doors at night.[112] This is the first time I have thought to record it, though the custom has been introduced these nine years. Before, there was not a lock to a house-door in Strasburg, and if you wanted to shut it, on ever so great a need, you had to work with spade and shovel to remove a whole mountain of dirt collected about the threshold. Several new roads, too, made of late by the merchant-league of the Rhineland. Footnote 96: