his acts were the acts of the Third Person of the Trinity. All this was possible for the layman without sacerdotal observance. Man was answerable for himself to himself alone, and could make him- self at one with God without the intervention of the priest.[1]
Great as was Tauler's renown as the foremost preacher of his day, he bowed as a little child before the mysterious layman known as the Friend of God in the Oberland. In the full strength of mature manhood, when at least fifty years of age and when all Strassburg was hanging on his words, a stranger sought his pres- ence and probed to the bottom his secret weaknesses. He was a Pharisee, proud of his learning and his skill in scholastic theology; before he could be fit for the guidance of souls he must cast off all reliance on his own strength and become as an infant relying on God alone. Overcome by the mystic power of his visitor, the doctor of theology subdued his pride, and in obedience to the command of the stranger, who never revealed his name, Tauler for two years abstained from preaching and from hearing confes- sions. From this struggle with himself he emerged a new man, and formed one of the remarkable band of Friends of God whom the nameless stranger was engaged in selecting and uniting.[2]
This association was not numerous, for only rare souls could rise to the altitude in which they would surely wish only what God wishes and dislike what God dislikes; but its adepts were scattered from the Netherlands to Genoa, and from the Rhine- lands to Hungary. Terrible were the struggles and spiritual con-
- ↑ J. Tauleri Institt. c. 12.—Vitæ D. Johannis Tauleri Historia. It is no wonder that Tauler's writings have been the subject of contradictory opinion and action on the part of the Church. Their tendencies to Illuminism and Quietism were recognized, and, in 1603, the Congregation of the Index proposed to prepare an expurgated edition of his works and of those of Savonarola, but the project was never executed.-Reusch, Der Index der verbotenen Bücher, I. 370, 469, 523, 589.
- ↑ Vitæ Tauleri Historia.M. Jundt, as the result of a series of elaborate and ingenious investigations, feels himself authorized to assume that the mysterious Friend of God in the Oberland, who has given rise to so much discussion, was John of Rutberg; that he was a resident of Coire, and that his final hermitage was in the parish of Ganterschwyl, Canton of St. Gall (Jundt, Amis de Dieu, Paris, 1879, pp. 334-42). Prof. Ch. Schmidt, however, still considers that the mystery has not been solved.—Précis de l'Histoire de l'Eglise de l'Occident, Paris, 1885, p. 304.
