‘The second class say, with like blasphemy, ‘We are divine by nature. There is one God, and we are identical with Him. We with Him have created all things; if we had not chosen, we had not been born. It was our own choice to exist as we do. God can do nothing without us, and we give Him therefore no preference, pay Him no homage. Honour to Him is honour to us. What we are we would be, what we would be we are; with God we have created ourselves and all things; heaven and earth hang on our will.’ This insane spiritual pride is flatly contrary to all catholic doctrine. ‘The third class sin not less against the Son. They say, we are as much incarnate as Christ was, and, in the same sense, divine sons of God. Had He lived long enough, He would have attained to the same contemplative quiet we enjoy. Retired into our inmost selves, we find ourselves the same Wisdom of God which Christ is. When He is honoured, we are honoured, for we are identical with Him. ‘The fourth class declare that neither God nor themselves, heaven nor hell, action nor rest, good nor evil, have any real existence. They deny God and the work of Christ, Scripture, sacraments,—everything. God is nothing; they are nothing; the universe is nothing. ‘Some hold doctrines such as these in secret, and conform outwardly, for fear. Others make them the pretext for every kind of vice and insolent insubordination. Of a truth we should cross ourselves when we but speak of them, as in the neighbourhood of spirits from the pit.’ ‘And what hope,’ said Tauler, ‘of better things, while the Church is crowded with hirelings, and, with lust and bravery, everywhere leads on the world in sin?’ ‘What hope, indeed!’ mournfully responded Ruysbroek. ‘The grace of the sacraments is shamefully bought and sold. Rich transgressors may live as they list. The wealthy usurer is buried before the altar, the bells ring, the priest declares him blessed. I declare that if he died in unrighteousness, not all the priests in Christendom, not all his hoards lavished to feed the poor, could save him from perdition. See, too, the monks, mendicants and all, what riches! what sumptuous fare! what licence, in violation of every vow! what odious distinctions! Some have four or five garments, another scarcely one. Some revel with the prior, the guardian, and the lector in the refectory, at a place of their own. Others must be content with herring and cabbage, washed down with sour beer. Little by little the habit is changed, black becomes brown, grey is exchanged for blue, the white must be of the finest stuff, the shape of the newest cut.’