hould rank immediately after the _Bible_ and the writings of S.
Augustine of Hippo. Another "Friend" was Ruysbroeck, to whose influence
with Groot was due the founding of the Brethren of the Common Lot or
Common Life--a Society that must remain ever memorable, as it numbered
among its members that prince of mystics, Thomas a Kempis (A.D.
1380-1471), the author of the immortal _Imitation of Christ_.

In the fifteenth century the more purely intellectual side of mysticism
comes out more strongly than the exstatic--so dominant in these
societies of the fourteenth--and we have Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, with
Giordano Bruno, the martyred knight-errant of philosophy, and
Paracelsus, the much slandered scientist, who drew his knowledge
directly from the original eastern fountain, instead of through Greek
channels.

The sixteenth century saw the birth of Jacob Boehme (A.D. 1575-1624), the
"inspired cobbler," an Initiate in obscuration truly, sorely persecuted
by unenlightened men; and then too came S. Teresa, the much-oppressed
and suffering Spanish mystic; and S. John of the Cross, a burning flame
of intense devotion; and S. Francois de Sales. Wise was Rome in
canonising these, wiser than the Reformation that persecuted Boehme, but
the spirit of the Reformation was ever intensely anti-mystical, and
wherever its breath hath passed the fair flowers of mysticism have
withered as under the sirocco.

Rome, however, who, though she canonised Teresa dead, had sorely harried
her while living--did ill with Mme. de Guyon (A.D. 1648-1717), a true
mystic, and with Miguel de Molinos (1627-1696), worthy to sit near S.
John of the Cross, who carried on in the seventeenth century the high
devotion of the mystic, turned into a peculiarly passive form--the
Quietist.

In this same century arose the school of Platonists in Cambridge, of
whom Henry More (A.D. 1614-1687) may serve as salient example; also
Thomas Vaughan, and Robert Fludd the Rosicrucian; and there is formed
also the Philadelphian Society, and we see William Law (A.D. 1686-1761)
active in the eighteenth century, and overlapping S. Martin (A.D.
1743-1803), whose writings have fascinated so many nineteenth century
students.[156]

Nor should we omit Christian Rosenkreutz (d. A.D. 1484), whose mystic
Society of the Rosy Cross, appearing in 1614, held true knowledge, and
whose spirit was reborn in the "Comte de S. Germain," the mysterious
figure that appears and disappears through t