--- title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates" author: "Meister Eckhart" translator: "C. de B. Evans" languages: [en] shelf: "Mystics" section: 109 of 132 url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/109/ cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 109. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/109/" --- # 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. ## 109. Tractate · The Book of Godly Comfort Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/109/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/109/#p-N [¶0] Benedictus deus et pater domini nostri Jesu Christi etc, {2 Cor. I 3 ). That great teacher St Paul says in his epistle, ‘ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who cornforteth us in all our tribulation.’ Three kinds of tribulation may fall upon a man and plunge him in distress. First, misfortune to exterior belongings. Next, to our dearest friends. Lastly, to ourselves : shame, hardship, pain of body and distress of mind. [¶1] So 1 purpose in this book to impart some teachings apt to console a man in all adversity, unhappiness and suffering. And having therein and therefrom culled sundry general truths to comfort him in any trouble, he will find thereafter thirty rules or maxims each of which alone is sufficient for his solace ; and after that again, in the third part of the book, he will find precepts and examples, theoretical and practical, the sayings and doings of the wise in times of tribulation. [¶2] In the first place we must bear in mind that the wise and wisdom, true and truth, good and goodness, righteousness and righteous are closely related to each other. Goodness is not made nor created nor begotten : it is procreative and begets the good and the good man, so far as he is good, is the unmade, uncreated but withal begotten child and son of goodness. Goodness reproduces itself and all it is in good things : knowledge, love, energy, it pours forth all of them into the good man, and the good man receives all his being, kiiowing, love and energy from the central depth of goodness and from that alone. Good and goodness are no more than goodness by itself, except as unborn parent and horn child of goodness therefrom. In the good is but one being and one life. All that belongs to a good man he gets both from the good and in the good. Therein he is and lives and dwells and there he knows himself, and all he knows and loves he wills and works with goodness and in goodness and the good does all its work with him and in him, iis it is written. The Son said, ‘ My Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. , AJl that belongs to the Father is mine ; all that is mine is my Father’s : his giving is my taking.’ [¶3] Further we must remember that the Name or Word stands for nothing else, nothing more or less than the good, pure and simple. But when we call him good we understand his goodness to be given him, infused and engendered by the unborn goodness ; in the words of the gospel, ‘ As the Father hath life in himself so hath he given to the Son to have the same life in himself also.’ In himself, he says, not from himself for the Father gave it to him. [¶4] Now all that I have said of good and goodness equally applies to true and truth, to right (or just) and righteousness (or justice), to wise and wisdom, to God’s Son and to God the Father, to every God-begotten thing that has no father upon earth and wherein is gotten no created thing : nothing not God, and wherein exists not any form at all but that of God alone. St John says in his gospel, ‘ to them gave he power to become the sons of (iod, which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God alone.’ [¶5] By blood he means everything in man not subject to the human will. By fleshly will he means everything in man which is subject to his will, albeit with reluctance and with an inclination to fleshly appetites : a thing which is common to the body and the soul and not confined to the soul alone, which accounts for the weakness and exhaustion of their powers. By the will of man St John means the highest power of the soul, whose nature and energy, unmixed with flesh, resides in the pure nature of the soul, detached from time and place and from everything that smacks of time and place relation ; that has naught in common with naught ; wherein man is formed in the image of God ; wherein he is of the lineage of God, and God’s kindred. Yet since these are not God himself but are products of the soul and are in the soul, therefore they have to lose their form and be transformed into God alone : born into God and out of God with only God for father. Then they are Son indeed, God’s only Son. [¶6] I am his Son forasmuch as he begets me in his nature and forms me in his image. Such an one is the Son of God, good son of goodness, right son of righteousness. So far as he is simply good he is unborn parent and as born Son he has the same nature as righteousness has, and is and is possessed of all the characiter oT justice and truth. In all this teaehing which is found in holy gospel and confirmed in the natural light of the wise soul there is solace for every human sorrow. [¶7] St Augustine says, ‘ God is not far nor long. If thou wouldstfind him, neither far nor long betake thyself to God, for there a thousand years are as one day, to-day.’ And withal I say, in God there is no pain or sorrow or distress. And if thou wouldst be free from all adversity and pain, turn thee and cleave to God and to God alone. Doubtless all thy ills are due to thy nonconversion into God and to God alone. If thou wert formed and gotten in righteousness alone, things could no more pain thee than righteousness, than God himself. [¶8] Solomon says, ‘ The righteous will not grieve for aught that may befall him.’ He does not say the righteous man or the righteous angel, not this or that right thing ; just righteous, being right, for the righteous man is son with a father upon earth, he is creature, made or created as his father is creature made or created. He says righteous, pure and simple, and that has no made or created father, for righteousness is the same as God. So pain and sorrow can molest him no more than they do God. Justice will not grieve him, for love and joy and bliss are justice, and if justice made sorrowful the just it would be causing sorrow to itself. Injustice, inequality, can in no wise grieve the just, for anything created being far beneath him has no influence and makes no impression on the righteous nor is it gotten into him whose only father is God. [¶9] A man then ought to set to work and de-form himself of himself and creatures and know no father except God alone. Then nothing will be able to afflict or cast him down, neither God nor creature, uncreated or created, and his entire being, life, knowledge, love and wisdom will be from God and in God and God. [¶10] There is another thing which is wont to comfort us in any tribulation. It is the certainty that the just and virtuous man delights unspeakably, incomparably more in doing right than he or even the chief angel delights and rejoices in his natural economy or life. The saints will gladly sacrifice their lives for right. [¶11] Supposing now that when outward ills befall the good and righteous man he keeps his even temper and his peace of mind, this only proves my argument that the righteous man is proof against external happenings. But suppose he is perturbed by these mishaps then it stands to reason that God is only just in sending trials to a person who while pretending to be righteous and fondly thinking himself so is yet upset by so small a thing. Since it is fair of God, he has no cause to mind but rather to rejoice, far more than he does at his own life, at what rejoices man and is of more good to him than this world all told ; for what profits a man the whole world when he is no more ? [¶12] The third important thing for us to understand is the elemental truth that the fount and living artery of universal good, essential tnith and perfect consolation is God, God only, and everything not God has in itself a natural bitterness, discomfort and unhappiness and docs not make for good which is of God and is the same as Ciod, but lessens, dims and hides the sweetness, joy and comfort that God gives. [¶13] And further I maintain, all sorrow comes from love of that whereof I am deprived by loss. If I mind the loss of outward things it is a certain sign that I am fond of outward things and really love sorrow and discomfort. Is it to be wondered at that I am unhappy when I like discomfort and unhappiness ; when my heart seeks and my mind gives to creature the good that is God’s own ? I turn towards creature, whence there comes by nature all discomfort, and turn my back on that which is the natural source of happiness and comfort; what wonder I am woebegone and wretched ! The fact is, it is quite impossible for God or anyone to bring true solace to a man who looks for it in creatures. But he who loves only God in creatures and creatures in God only, that man finds real and true and equal comfort everywhere.