Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/379

Rh 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.

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.

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-