Rules of conduct: how to bear oneself in disclosing one's state, in acting and suffering, in losing and forgetting oneself, and in private prayer.
The Seventeenth Letter.
Rules of conduct: how to bear oneself in disclosing one's state, in acting and suffering, in losing and forgetting oneself, and in private prayer.
Dearly beloved brother!
Whether your state is sufficiently known to me, your reason now and then doubts; let it doubt as much as it likes! I will look for no grounds to convince it otherwise — I might well find them. This only I say: that souls must indeed not deliberately conceal anything that may serve to make their state understood, but for the rest must build neither on their exact disclosure nor on the person to whom they disclose it, but solely on the boundless goodness of God, in childlike faith that He will lead them rightly, and will also put it into the heart of the one who is to counsel them, to say or to withhold everything at the right time. Our gracious Father will not give us a stone for bread, nor a serpent for a fish: His Spirit, the holy and unerring one, He gives to all who ask Him for it, who does not let them go astray.
As for my own person and my light, there is nothing to say. I am such a one that I am not in the least surprised when someone has no confidence in me; it would even be much dearer to me if, to that end, all were to forget me: only I have an uncommon longing to see all whom I love holy and inward, because I know no blessedness but this, and this one I know with unquestionable certainty.
That you have a calling and capacity for the inner life is certain; but this life is not reached without death, into which one is led partly in an active, partly in a passive way: in an active way, through the surrender and turning-away from all wherein one has life, delight, and support outside God; in a passive way, through everything — I say everything — adverse or mortifying that meets one inwardly or outwardly, when one takes it from God with a pliant will, in simplicity, and with no disquiet wills it otherwise than it is: to which then also belong insensibility, dryness, unwilling distractions, over-reasonings, the stirrings of the passions, etc.; all of which one must suffer, with all possible aversion, undisturbed, and for the love of God. This is the way one is led into death; but He who leads us into it is, from without, the loving Providence, and from within the Spirit of love, who is near us in the ground, and who draws, entices, inclines us, according to our state.
To believe this loving Presence, to nourish this faith by frequent remembrance, and to take good heed of the secret drawing and inclination which this faithful Friend awakens in the ground, and to follow with entire surrender — this must so utterly be your One and All, that over the secret and silent intercourse with this Friend of the heart you happily forget your own self and all your miseries, and lose yourself.
So you see that you too must lose and forget yourself. Each one must understand the truth only according to his own state; for you it will say this: that you are not to go directly against your enemies, miseries, difficulties, and dangers, nor to stare fixedly at them, but gently — yet wholly — to turn away from them, forget them, and, inclining yourself toward God, to look on Him alone, and in faith to keep Him for your object.
The neglect of the private prayer is a serious matter for you, when it comes of your own fault; learn to give God room therein, and, in the faith of His inward presence, to be given over to Him. Faith in God's inward nearness, and the pure intent to be wholly for Him, is the soul of prayer. You must suffer more than act before and toward God; yet the Spirit of grace must have a free hand. You work too much in a sensual and rational way: or better said, you let your sensual part know too much of what the Spirit is doing. Your intercourse with God, and your deeds in prayer, must be somewhat more secret, gentle, and inward; and because they are at times not enough so, there comes no peace: for the Spirit sees well that what you then do is not so wholly truth, and therefore it seems to Him partly counterfeit. Only remain constant and patient, even in the midst of dryness! Your self-love must first be dead — then you will be able to taste God's love without danger.
Mülheim, 17 May 1741.
German
Der siebzehnte Brief.
Verhaltungs-Regeln, wie man sich im Entdecken seines Zustandes, im Wirken und Leiden, im Verlieren und Vergessen, und im besondern Gebet zu betragen.
Herzlich geliebter Bruder!
Ob mir dein Zustand gnugsam bekannt sey, zweifelt bisweilen deine Vernunft; sie mags immerhin thun! ich will keine Gründe suchen, sie davon zu überzeugen, möchte sie sonst wohl finden.
— 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 set of "rules of conduct" for a brother whom Tersteegen judges genuinely "called and fitted to the inner life." The argument-heading names the four arenas: disclosing one's state, acting-and-suffering, losing-and-forgetting oneself, and private prayer. It is one of the most practical of the letters — a spiritual director's checklist, but each rule turned back toward the one thing. The first rule is about the very correspondence they are conducting. Yes, be open: souls "must not deliberately conceal anything that may serve to make their state understood." But do not lean on the disclosure, or on the director: build "solely on the boundless goodness of God," trusting that He will both lead you and "put it into the heart of the one who is to counsel you" what to say and what to withhold. He caps it with Jesus' own promise: the Father gives no stone for bread, no serpent for a fish, but "His Spirit… to all who ask Him."
A characteristic aside follows, and it is utterly sincere: he is "not in the least surprised when someone has no confidence in me; it would even be much dearer to me if… all were to forget me." His only "uncommon longing" is to see those he loves "holy and inward." From there the letter turns to its center, an anatomy of dying to self. The inner life "is not reached without death," and that death has two faces. The active face is our own turning-away from everything we lean on "outside God." The passive face is everything "adverse or mortifying" that simply happens to us — including the unwelcome inner weather of "insensibility, dryness, unwilling distractions, over-reasonings, the stirrings of the passions" — received "from God with a pliant will." And the agent of the whole process is not our technique but a Person: "from without, the loving Providence, and from within the Spirit of love, who is near us in the ground."
The counsel against direct combat is pure Tersteegen: do not "go directly against your enemies… nor stare fixedly at them," but "gently — yet wholly — turn away," and look on God alone. And the letter's rule for prayer diagnoses this brother exactly: "You work too much in a sensual and rational way… you let your sensual part know too much of what the Spirit is doing." Prayer must become "more secret, gentle, and inward." The closing sentence is the whole ascesis in one line: "Your self-love must first be dead — then you will be able to taste God's love without danger."
A few words and echoes.
- A stone for bread, a serpent for a fish. Matthew 7:9–11 / Luke 11:11–13 — and the gift named is "the Holy Spirit to them that ask him" (Luke 11:13).
- The faithful Friend / Friend of the heart. dieser getreue Freund … Hertzens-Freund — the indwelling Spirit as intimate companion, a recurring Tersteegen figure.
- Active and passive way. wirkender / leidender Weise — the two modes of the soul's death; the passive is the deeper and the slower.
- Mortifying. Mortificirendes — a Latinate word Tersteegen sets in the ordinary Fraktur (naturalized) — rendered "mortifying," in the ascetic sense of putting to death.
- Your object. Vorwurf — the technical prayer-word of Briefe 8, 11, 15: that on which the soul's regard rests. To "keep Him for your object" is to hold God as the one thing looked at.
- Taste God's love without danger. The peril is that self-love feeds on consolations; only when self-love is dead is the taste safe.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-017 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.