Encouragement to the forgetting of the creature and of oneself. The author would gladly be forgotten and despised.
The Eighth Letter.
Encouragement to the forgetting of the creature and of oneself. The author would gladly be forgotten and despised.
In Jesus, the heart's Friend, beloved brother!
May Jesus take possession of your heart, for to Him it belongs; Amen! Your little sickness has been right dear to me, and I hope it will indeed have done you good; for so, at any rate, the eternal Goodness means it. We are often too much amid the noise, so that we hear the creatures more than God; and then it is indeed grace when He now and then takes something particular from us. Let us forget the creature, so vanishing and yet so easily binding, and not let ourselves be put out of our solitude with God even by its presence! Whether a creature is with us, or whether a shadow and a picture is with us, is to be counted equally small; it is nothing. God is all, and alone enough for our souls. Ah yes, my God!
It is true, what you say: you will sooner be able to give up the creature than yourself; for we are penetrated unfathomably deep with the self; we love this self so much that we do everything to please the devilish part, and would gladly grant it heaven besides. Nevertheless: forget this self too, and give it up, that it may be destroyed — in itself, and by the hand of God — from within and from without. Where this ghost meets you, there simply shut your eye to it, childlike, and look upon God with a simple faith-regard of His inward presence. Ah! this God, this God must take us in, and be our whole object and our pastime — and not we ourselves, nor the creature. For just in this, that the creatures would take us into their love and friendship, they commonly take us in good part out of God's love and friendship, because we pour ourselves so wholly out.
You know, dear brother, that my call and my leading go this one way: only to live thus with God alone. I know what God is to a true solitary: therefore it heartily gladdened me when I understood that others were exalted and praised, but I was run down — though you mention nothing of this in your letter. I have indeed borne witness to the truth; that I know: let him believe it, to whom God gives the faith! But a chief piece of this truth is this, that one must heartily love the mortifications and the contempts; and that I would then gladly do myself, without much talking. O thou dear contempt and forgetting of all creatures! how finely thou hidest us from the thousand arrows that strike those who stand exposed, and settest us in the blessed detachment and solitude with God alone. Should I not, then, love with my whole heart those who are helpful to bring me so great a good? Since moreover, dear brother, acquaintances and entanglements have long been a heavy burden to me, this is one reason why, in the confusions you know of, I keep myself at present so suffering and so still that I have not even answered you concerning the conduct of this affair. For I shun all fruitless wrangling; and especially I would not in any measure hinder the dearest God, if perhaps through these circumstances He should will to make me forgotten, despised, and hidden from the creatures — wherein I have been greatly strengthened since I perceived that some fancied I would gladly be pope. I beg only this of you, dear brother: defend me nowhere; but neither believe everything that is said to the disadvantage of the brothers at E. The spirit of suspicion works much evil there and elsewhere. Learn to hear many things in silence, and to remain with God in the heart's little chamber; to love all, without pouring yourself out; and to commit to God what you cannot change. At the last the truth conquers. What God has not wrought must fall to pieces again. — —
Brother N. has let me know that he would gladly come to me once; he is dear to me at all times — but I wish to be out of the noise, and to be forgotten: beginning with the first letter in the little Kempis's A B C.
I remain unmoved,
Your bound one in the Lord.
Mülheim, the 21st of January 1740.
German
Der achte Brief.
Aufmunterung zur Vergessung des Geschöpfes und seiner selbst. Der Autor will gerne vergessen und verachtet werden.
In JEsu, dem Herzens-Freund, geliebter Bruder!
JEsus nehme dein Herz ein, dann Ihm gehöret es; Amen! Dein bißgen Krankseyn ist mir so recht lieb gewesen, und ich hoffe, es werde dir ja gut gethan haben; dann so ists einmal von der ewigen Güte gemeynet.
— 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. A friend's small illness, and behind it a larger storm: word has reached the brother that Tersteegen is being talked against — run down while others are praised, suspected, it seems, of ambition ("some fancied I would gladly be pope"). The letter answers both at once, and with the same medicine: the forgetting of the creature and of oneself. The old print's argument-line adds a sentence found nowhere else in the letter's models, and it is the letter in six words: the author would gladly be forgotten and despised.
Even a sickbed can be grace: "it is indeed grace when He now and then takes something particular from us" — for we are too much amid the noise, hearing the creatures more than God. But the friend has seen the deeper problem himself: "you will sooner be able to give up the creature than yourself." Tersteegen agrees without flinching — we are "penetrated unfathomably deep with the self," loving it enough to grant it heaven — and gives the counsel of the closed eye: where this ghost meets you, "simply shut your eye to it, childlike, and look upon God with a simple faith-regard of His inward presence." Not analysis; aversion of the gaze. "This God must take us in, and be our whole object and our pastime."
Then the letter turns to the gossip, and produces one of Tersteegen's most startling sentences: it gladdened him to be run down. The truth he has witnessed to has a chief piece: "one must heartily love the mortifications and the contempts." And for a moment he addresses contempt itself, in the old language of apostrophe: "O thou dear contempt and forgetting of all creatures! how finely thou hidest us from the thousand arrows that strike those who stand exposed." Being despised is camouflage; obscurity is shelter; so he will defend himself nowhere, and asks his friend to do the same — "defend me nowhere" — while refusing the counter-gossip too: "neither believe everything that is said to the disadvantage of the brothers." The close gives the friend three rules that need no defense: hear much in silence; remain with God in the heart's little chamber; commit to God what you cannot change. "At the last the truth conquers." And to the brother who wishes to visit, a gentle postponement with a smile inside it: Tersteegen wishes to be "out of the noise, and forgotten: beginning with the first letter in the little Kempis's A B C" — for the first lesson of that little alphabet of Thomas à Kempis is Ama nesciri: love to be unknown.
A few words and echoes.
- Love to be unknown. Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ I.2 — ama nesciri — the "first letter" of the little Kempis A B C.
- At the last the truth conquers. 1 Esdras 3:12 — "great is Truth, and stronger than all things" — the old apocryphal sentence.
- What God has not wrought must fall to pieces. An unidentified verse-line; the thought of Gamaliel in Acts 5:38–39 — "if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought."
- The heart's little chamber. Matthew 6:6 — "enter into thy closet" — Tersteegen's Herzens-Kämmerlein, the closet carried within.
- Object and pastime. Vorwurf und Zeit-Kürtzung — the old words for what occupies the mind and what shortens the hours; God is to be both.
- A faith-regard. Glaubens-Gemerck — a simple attentive noticing, by faith, of His inward presence; not a feeling but a look.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-008 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.