What the true solitude with God is.

The Eighty-second Letter.

What the true solitude with God is.

Grace and peace from God the Father, in the sweet name of Jesus! In the Same, beloved brother!

Your beloved letter of the 25th of June this year I found on my homecoming from Holland, whither I had had to travel once more — and probably for the last time — to visit the friends, at their urgent desire. I was not only ill at A[msterdam], but have also since had one blow after another upon my outer hut, so that I could scarcely have expected to be set up again, that I might answer you by the pen — on account of an inflammation of the head, and an exhaustion of the vital spirits, paired with creeping fevers; though it was all quite bearable, and still is. Now it is, so long as God will, a little better again; but I must still greatly spare myself, if only it does not become altogether too much.

Thus far I can heartily thank God for His fatherly visitation, and for all the graces imparted therein. The impression of the so-nearly-impending end of our pilgrimage sets the spirit into a solitude with God, wherein we know the truth whose knowledge alone makes us free and blessed. If only we foolish children knew, as we ought, that our whole salvation is to be found in God alone, we would give ourselves over much more willingly to His inner and outer leadings, whereby He wants to lure us into this inner solitude and wilderness, that He may speak freely and kindly to our hearts. Whoever says "solitude with God" says: a thorough going-out from oneself and from the created.

We are unspeakably deeply hung about with the creature, and still more with ourselves — which self is a very Satan, that disguises itself as an angel of light. We go to God, but we take ourselves along, and much of our own; and in such a way God cannot deal intimately with us, nor we purely with God. We want to embrace God, and secretly hold fast to ourselves and the creature; therefore it cannot possibly go. O great misery — to be so entangled, and unable to disentangle oneself! But a still greater misery is not to give oneself over wholly to God's blessed leadings, whereby He is so unspeakably willing and faithful to lead us into the true detachment and nakedness — if only we left our whole will in His hand. Naked we went out from God; naked must we go back into Him, that He may clothe us with Himself, even as we have by nature been clothed with ourselves, to the dishonoring of His glorious image.

Our continual strivings-against God's leadings and purposes are truly astonishing. Self-love wants only to adorn itself, to fill itself, to hold fast — instead of our letting go, letting ourselves be emptied and stripped bare. But whoever loves the truth adores the purposes of God, and sees nothing but blessedness in His ways; for he learns that he is himself his own greatest hindrance, but that he finds everything in the measure in which he forsakes himself and all things. So let us then now, beloved brother, turn back and become as little children, who give themselves over to the guidance of divine Providence from without, and to the discipline and drawings of His love from within, as though we had neither wit nor will any longer — that He may rule us en maitre (as Lord and Master), and carry out His work in us, to His glorification, Amen!

Mülheim, 8 September 1735.

German

Der 82te Brief.

Was die rechte Einsamkeit mit GOtt sey.

Gnade und Friede von GOtt dem Vater in dem süßen Namen JEsu! In demselben geliebter Bruder!

— 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).