swer, with perfect
correctness, that what was thus said might be true of Moravians, or of
Tauler, or of Behmen, or of St. Theresa, or of Madame de Bourignon, or
of the Quakers, or even of William Law, but that he himself had never
done otherwise than insist most strongly on the essential need of making
use of all the external helps which religion can offer.[627]

By far the gravest imputation that has ever been brought against the
disciples of each various form of mystical or emotional religion is
that, in aspiring after some loftier ideal of spiritual communion with
the Divine, they have looked down with a kind of scorn upon 'mere
morality,' as if it were a lower path. And it must be acknowledged that
men of the most pure and saintly lives have, nevertheless, used
expressions which misguided or unprincipled men might pervert into
authority for lawlessness. Tauler, whom an admiring contemporary once
called 'the holiest of God's children now living on the earth,'[628]
could yet say of the higher elevation of the Christian life that, 'where
this comes to pass, outward works become of no moment.'[629] What wonder
that the fanatical Beghards, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, against
whom he contended with all his energies,[630] should seek to confuse his
principles with theirs, and assert that, having attained the higher
state, they were not under subjection to moral commandments? So, again,
of the early Quakers Henry More[631] observed that, although their
doctrine of special illumination had guided many into much sanctity of
life, the more licentious sort had perverted it into a cloke for all
kinds of enormity, on the ground that they were inspired by God, and
could be guilty of no sin, as only exercising their rights of liberty.
Madame de Bourignon was an excellent woman, but Leslie and
Lavington[632] showed that some of her writings seem dangerously to
underrate good works. Moravian principles, lightly understood, made
Herrnhut a model Christian community; misunderstood, they became
pretexts for the most dangerous Antinomianism.[633] An example may even
be quoted from the last century where the nobler elements of mystic
enthusiasm were found in one mind combined with the pernicious tendency
in question. In that very remarkable but eccentric genius, William
Blake, mysticism was rich in fruits of faith and love, and it is
needless, therefore, to add that he was a good man, of blameless morals;
yet, by a strange flaw or par