What Quietists or false mystics are.
The Sixty-ninth Letter.
What Quietists or false mystics are.
Dear brother!
For some clarification of the passage indicated, from the third part of the letters of Madame Guyon, I report the following: that she there, by the word "Spirit," understands the Spirit or the grace unto the effectual life; but more properly the first life, effectualness, and taste that our spirit receives in the good and the spiritual; and accordingly the application and desire to hear, read, contemplate, pray, and the like — all impulse and earnestness in the denial of the world, the deadening of one's flesh, one's senses, affections, self-will, the exercise of the virtues, and so forth; as also all felt gifts of grace, sweetness, comfort, and so on, that the soul might therein receive.
See, this desire, this impulse and earnestness, this feeling of grace — that is the Spirit, whereby we are to mortify the deeds of the flesh. The false spiritual ones, or properly the Quietists, begin with the Spirit; they press, from the very first beginning of conversion, and without distinction of states, only upon the death of the spirit — namely, that the soul is merely to hold itself passive, to let the images go, and to reject all spiritual comfort and feeling, and so forth — without considering that the flesh must first die before the spirit can live, let alone be put to death; yea, without considering that not we, but God Himself, must put to death this spirit (or, better said, the imperfections and self-properties of the first spiritual life); and therefore they finish in the flesh, and suppress or damp the Spirit, or the grace, whereby they were to lead the flesh effectually into death. Of such false mystics, or those who build on just such grounds, there are also still today. I express myself, in the haste, perhaps too obscurely; but you will understand me well enough from this little.
May the eternal Spirit of love, which proceeds from the Father and the Son, touch and quicken our spirit with the paradisal pure life of the children of God, that all our motions may be from God and for God, in constant inward love and magnifying of His name. Ah! may He consume all self-love in us, that we may love only God, and in childlike love wish one another well and embrace one another, as the sweet angels in heaven for the delight of God, Amen!
Mülheim, 31 August 1734.
German
Der 69te Brief.
Was Quietisten oder falsche Mystiquen seyen.
Lieber Bruder!
Zu einiger Erläuterung des angewiesenen Orts aus dem dritten Theil der Briefe von Mad. Guion berichte folgendes: Daß sie daselbst durch das Wort Geist verstehet den Geist oder die Gnade zum wirksamen Leben; eigentlicher aber das erste Leben, Wirksamkeit und Geschmack, so unser Geist im Guten und Geistlichen bekommt …
— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.
German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).
Translator’s notes
What this letter is. The most doctrinal letter in this whole stretch — and a self-defining one. Tersteegen was himself often suspected of "quietism," so it matters greatly that here he draws a sharp line between true inward religion and the quietist caricature of it. The occasion is a request to clarify a passage in the letters of Madame Guyon (the French mystic whose writings Tersteegen knew and partly translated). His clarification turns on the word "Spirit." For Guyon, and for Tersteegen, "the Spirit" is not a vacancy but a living impulse — "the first life, effectualness, and taste that our spirit receives in the good," the whole earnest desire to pray, read, deny the world, and receive "the felt gifts of grace, sweetness, comfort." That living grace is precisely the instrument "whereby we are to mortify the deeds of the flesh." The false quietists get the order exactly backwards: "they press… only upon the death of the spirit," bidding the soul be "merely passive," reject all comfort and feeling, and kill the very impulse of grace — "without considering that the flesh must first die before the spirit can live," and that "not we, but God Himself, must put to death" the soul's imperfections. The result is fatal: "they finish in the flesh," having damped the one power that could have carried them through. Written "in haste" and admittedly "obscure," it ends not in polemic but in prayer — that the Spirit of love "consume all self-love in us, that we may love only God."
A few words and echoes.
- "The third part of the letters of Madame Guyon." Jeanne-Marie Guyon (1648–1717), the French mystic condemned in the Quietist controversy; Tersteegen esteemed and translated portions of her work. He is glossing her use of "esprit" to forestall a quietist misreading.
- "That is the Spirit, whereby we are to mortify the deeds of the flesh." Romans 8:13, "if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live" — the linchpin: mortification is done by the Spirit's living grace, not by killing that grace.
- "They finish in the flesh." Galatians 3:3, "Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" — the exact charge Tersteegen lays against the false quietists: a fleshly counterfeit of spiritual death.
- "Not we, but God Himself, must put to death." The mortification is God's work in His time (Romans 8:13; Philippians 1:6); the quietist error is a self-willed, premature "death" that the soul manufactures — itself a subtle act of the flesh.
- "The eternal Spirit of love, which proceeds from the Father and the Son." John 15:26 (with the Western filioque) — the Holy Spirit invoked to "touch and quicken" the spirit; the closing prayer answers the whole letter, since it is the Spirit, not the soul's technique, that gives the "paradisal pure life."
- "The children of God… all our motions from God and for God." Romans 8:14 ("led by the Spirit of God… the sons of God"); the true goal against which the counterfeit is measured.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-069 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.