---
title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates"
author: "Meister Eckhart"
translator: "C. de B. Evans"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Mystics"
section: 101 of 132
url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/101/
cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 101. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/101/"
---

# Sermons, Collations and Tractates

*Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans*

A hundred and four sermons, the tractates and the Sayings, in Evans's 1924 English of Pfeiffer's German.

## 101. Sermon 101 · In All Things I Seek Rest

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/101/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/101/#p-N

[¶0] Part I

[¶1] In omnibus requiem quwsivi {Eccles, 24). St Augustine says, ‘ My soul was created by thee and for thee wherefore she is ever restless till she finds thee. In all created things, which I search in understanding, there is no refuge for my soul, but in thee, God, alone. In the love-spring of thy substance are gathered up to one the perfections of all creatures, which in them are scattered and divided.’ Were there any single creature with all creaturely perfections both in quality and number then God would not have made more than that one alone, as I have pointed out in my discourse, ‘ Whosoever would follow me let him take up his cross.’ Now the whole happiness of creatures depends on resting in the sovran good which is the fount of all good things, and hence our Lady Mary says these words about herself wherein she counsels our interior man to cultivate in lowliness the habit of divine repose in which the soul is most of all united, and without it not. She says, ‘ In all things have I sought rest for my inner man.’

[¶2] In this connection mark how the divine esseiuc carries pent up in itself all creaturely perfection, creaturely existence being the reflection of God’s essence. St .John says, Quod factum esty in ijjso vita erat : that which was made, in God was life. Creatures in their pre-existing form in God have been divine life for ever. Hence the opening words of our quotation from the Book of Wisdom, ‘ all things,’ mean that our Lady sf)ught [)eaee for her inner man iu the eternal good of the divine nature wherein as in a magic mirror creature-nature as a whole is one in God eternally. Referring to the paradigm of all things in God, they being one divinity.

[¶3] Theologians put three fundamental questions about these preexisting forms in God, whereto attach some admirable doctrines and stimulating facts. The first question is, whether ideas of all the creatures exist in God eternally or not ? The second question is, whether these ideas are one or more in number ? The third question is, whether the divine mind has ideas of all the things it knows or does it know at all without ideas ?

[¶4] To the first question Doctor Thomas answers that, it is necessary to suppose in the divine being ideas of all the creatures. And his argument is this. The three terms, form, idea and semblance are identical in meaning. Now the form, idea or semblance of a thing, a rose for instance, is present in my soul and must be for two reasons. One is, because from the appearance of its mental form I can paint the rose in corporal matter, so there must be an image of the rose-form in my soul. The second reason is, because from the subjective rose-idea I recognise the objective rose although I do not copy it. Just as I can carry in my head the notion of a house I never mean to build. In both these ways [Le. as types and principles of knowledge] ideas exist in God, for with all natural things it is the rule for the natural form or character of the progeny or fruit to exemplify the type belonging to its species ; as with mankind, for instance, the generative power of the father’s manhood is repeated in the son’s born manhood so that a man breeds men, a lion lions and a falcon falcons. The rose grows on a rose-bush not a cabbage-stalk ; fire engenders fire.

[¶5] And sometimes the idea of the work is in the practical power not as a natural species but theoretically, as the house of wood and stone is designed in the architect’s practical mind, who makes the outward house as much like his ideal as he can. Now since God created this whole world (not that all creatures are by natural birth descended from God’s nature like the eternal Word of the Father, for in that case all creatures would be God, which no sane mind allows : creature-nature rejects it as an impossible, false thing), therefore God created all creatures by practical understanding of divine nature. So there must be eternally in the divine understanding the pre-existing form or idea to the likeness of which God created this creature and not another whereof God had no pattern in his mind.

[¶6] The second question is, whether the idea is one or more in number ? To this the Doctor answers that, the ultimate end of the work is ever the real intention of the work’s first cause. Now the ultimate end of the world is its good, i.e. the divine ordering of all creatures, as Aristotle says. Hence this ordering of the world must be eternally foreknown and foreordained in God, who is its first cause. Ergo, he has in him the particular ideas appropriate to that order, whence it follows that he must carry in him ideas of individual creatures. For just as no architect can carry in his head the plan of a whole house without the plans of all its details, so there must be in God as many forms as there are natural grades of created things emanating from him ; the rose, for instance, has one special form, the violet another; man has one distinctive type, an angel has another, and so with other things.

[¶7] The astonishing thing is that this multiplicity of forms should consist with the simplicity of God in whom all essential things are one. We can explain it thus. The idea of the work exists in the worker’s practical mind as an object of his understanding which regards it as expressing his idea to which he forms the material work, and is not in the mind of the worker as a form of understanding informing his mind and setting up active intellection. The plan of the house in the architect’s mind is (something understood by him). It is not repugnant to the simplicity of divine understanding to see and understand more than one thing as object. But it would be repugnant to his simple nature if by a plurality of objective forms it were stimulated and reduced to the subjective act of understanding as opposed to the mirror of God’s essence. Countless ideas exist in God in the sense that he sees and understands them, not in the sense that his intellect sees in them. To resume. God knows his essence perfectly so far as it is knowable both in itself and so far as all creatures in their natural mode are exemplified in divine essence ; and this express image of all creatures in the divine essence is their prototype, their idea. It follows that there are as many types as there are grades of nature to be typified.

[¶8] With regard to this question of how the countless forms in the divine essence consist with their being the essence of God, they being many in number and the essence of God only one, it may be looked at in this way. We call these ideas the essence of God, not as such but inasmuch as the essence of God is a mirror reflecting all creatures. And since in the impartible essence of God we have the exemplar of all things, which we call their idea, therefore the form is many and the essence only one. Even as in a mirror there are many forms reflected, but an eye placed in the mirror would see all these forms as one object of its vision ; they would not be innate in it nor would they form the eye’s intrinsic faculty of active present or passive and potential sight, for in that case the image would be no more than one.

[¶9] The third question was, whether God has in him ideas of all the things he knows or does he know at all without ideas ? Doctor Thomas answers this as follows : These pre-existing forms are the origin or principle of the creation of all creatures, and in this sense they are types and pertain to practical knowledge. These forms, again, are the principle of all knowledge of creatures and as such they are really essential images of creatures ; wherefore of everything he knows and his conception of it he must have ideas.

[¶10] This fact prompts the question. How does God know evil, which has no being in itself but is a privation of being ? The answer is this. As I said above, all creaturely existence has its idea in God, but since evil or sin has no being that is aught (as Dionysius says), but deprives good of good or virtuous being, as blindness of eye has no positive existence but it deprives the eye of sight, even so God’s mind perceives all sin and evil in the idea of the corresponding good, not in the form of sin ; for instance, he knows lying in the idea of truth.

[¶11] Consider next how God knows virtue. In the eternal mirror of his works God knows all creaturely perfections both natural and ghostly, perceiving in their pre-existing forms all accidents as substantial being. But accidents are various. Basic characteristics of the abiding nature of their subject God has no ideas of apart from the ideas which are proper to their subject : the whiteness of the daisy, for example, not its whiteness as a separate idea. But accidents subsequently added to the abiding nature he knows in particular ideas apart from the idea of any host. Whence it follows that all noble human attributes like acquired virtues and spiritual wisdom, God knows in separate eternal forms reflecting the wisdom and virtue of souls in general.

[¶12] Moreover, since grace is not natural to creature therefore grace is communicated to the soul in the guise of accident, and by the same token, faith and other godly virtues are inspired supernaturally in the soul, and love and sometimes divine wisdom as with the prophets and apostles. Again, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost are supernaturally instilled into the soul. And spiritual sweetness too is an inspired accident. Wherefore of all the graces in mere creatures God has ideas wherein he knows the contingencies of grace.

[¶13] In the divine essence there exist then also particular ideas reflecting the certainty or hope and divine charity of the soul, albeit she is but a creature. In their own ideas there exist as well all the gifts of the Holy Ghost, which have an adventitious character. This I affirm because the prime gift of love wherein he gives all gifts, this love he is himself in Person and in essence. And because, again, all the sacred rites of the seven sacraments, wherein the soul is sanctified and initiated into godly life, because all these were instituted to show forth the workings of grace in the soul, therefore God must know all the seven sacraments in eternal pre-existing forms and each in a distinct one. The cathartic virtue of baptism by natural water comes springing out of the eternal formal baptism of the mirror of God’s nature. So, too, the primordial perfect conception of that nature survives in marriage, wherein the mutable nature of the father is reborn into the immortal and impersonal nature of the soul of his child, where nature, no longer ridden by the race-instinct governing creatures, is in that sense performing the work of all creation. Marriage is true to its exemplar as long as we preserve it in its natural purity and free from animal intention which is all opposed to its divine ideal. And the same I say about the other sacraments. God then has ideas of every longing, love and godly intuition, whether of sweetness or of inwardness, wherein he feels and knows at once all thy desires when thou dost call on him in prayer ; and in these same ideas the soul of any saint whom we invoke sees all our prayerful longings from the beginning of the world down to the very end in one flash of God’s essence, just as an angel sees creatures and their prototype in God all at once in the vision of God, in the dawn, not in the evening light, or else they would not know our longing for them. Here ends the first part of this sermon.

[¶14] Part II'

[¶15] Now it must be remembered that this rest of the inner man in the divine wonder born of vision and divine love, transcends in its perfection and its sweetness any activity of the outward man, and for nine reasons.

[¶16] The first reason is, because in this passivity of the interior man, which is one of knowing and loving, the highest of the faculties in man are engaged in their noblest and most proper occupation and are thus detached and free from everything temporal and mortal, and these powers are knowledge and love. The life of the exterior man, on the other hand, is one of varying sensation. St Gregory says that Rachel, meaning the interior life, signifies a vision of the source, but Leah, the other sister, means the life of the exterior man, for she had weak eyes.

[¶17] The second reason is, that man’s interior wont of love and contemplation is more lasting, though not at the culminating point of actual vision, for the moment of supreme illumination is shortlived, and passes like a flash of lightning. According to St Augustine, the common use of love and knowledge lasts longer with the inner man than with the outer.

[¶18] The third reason is, because man’s inner life of rest and spiritual leisure is somewhat like the peace of the divine eternal essence ; for albeit the Father is ever in the act of engendering his Word that does not disturb his rest ; as our Lord says, ‘ My Father worketh until now.’ The life of outward man, on the other hand, is one of perpetual physical unrest. Mary sat still and Martha kept about the house.

[¶19] The fourth reason is, that the interior life is more self-sufficient than that of outward man. The inner man needs nothing for his work but the freedom from bodily affairs which comes with detachment of the soul-powers, together with knowledge and love. The freer and less occupied with mortal tilings the better adapted to God is the life of the inner man. But the life of outward man has need of many things which are disturbing : of working and talking and giving and taking and eating and drinking. St Luke tells us how Martha, meaning the outward man, was cumbered with overmuch serving ; aye, though it be all on God’s account, like works of mercy, natheless it entails a deal of trouble.

[¶20] The fifth reason is, that the interior life is infinitely more enjoyable than that of outward man. As the philosopher says, Intellectual delights are free from drawbacks, but every mortal pleasure has its other side. St Augustine says that while Martha was distraught Mary was in company with her interior man. Hence the comment of one teacher, ‘ Mary taxed Martha before the eternal Word Christ Jesus.’ Why did not Mary answer ? She did not hear, because she was not at home by herself. Where was she then ? She was with her inner man in the Word whose word she was attending to. For the soul is where she loves rather than where she is giving natural life.

[¶21] The sixth reason is, because the interior life, apart from knowledge and apart from love, is desirable in itself. But the outward life is desirable only in so far as it makes for the greater good of the soul. The prophet cries, ‘ One thing have I desired of the Lord and that same will I seek : to see God’s will and behold his godly habitation.’

[¶22] The seventh reason is, because the inner life is concerned with things divine and the outer with things human. St Augustine says, Mary heard the Word in the beginning, whereas it was the human word that Martha served.

[¶23] The eighth reason is, because the inner life is that of the powers most proper to the soul. But the powers used for outward purposes we have in common with the brutes, the senses, namely. David says, ‘ Lord thou dost nourish man and beast.’ And later on he adds, ‘ but Iord, we men shall sec thy light in the light of thine own self,’ that is, in the light of understanding whereby man is distinguished from the brutes.

[¶24] The ninth reason is given by our Lord himself, who says, ‘ Mary has chosen the better part.’ St Augustine says, ‘ Martha had no bad one ; hers was a good one too, though Mary had the best.’ Hers the uses of the inner man, which starting here go on eternally. But the outward life of works of mercy ends where there is no poverty nor woe, that is, in eternity. Now though the inner life is intrinsically best, the outward life is sometimes better, as in cases of bodily necessity ; to feed the hungry, for example, were better than to spend the time in contemplation. According to one teacher, to see a man in any need and fail to help would make me guilty towards him, and St Augustine says I ought to lend him aid. In cases then of real necessity, to use the works of the outward man for the relief of one’s own self or neighbour is better than to settle down to the interior man’s spiritual idleness of mind and will. — It is now explained how our Lady rested in the eternal good. Let us too seek rest for the inner man as well as for the outer. So help us God. Amen.