---
title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates"
author: "Meister Eckhart"
translator: "C. de B. Evans"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Mystics"
section: 47 of 132
url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/47/
cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 47. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/47/"
---

# 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.

## 47. Sermon 47 · This is Life Eternal

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/47/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/47/#p-N

[¶0] Hcec est vita ceterna ut cognoscant te solum deum verum etc, (Joh. 173). Here beginneth a discourse on a gospel saying, Christ’s dictum, ‘ This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God and thy Son whom thou hast sent.’

[¶1] Now no one knows the Father except his only Son, for he says himself, ‘ No man knows the Father save the Son and no man knows the Son save the Father.’ Ergo, if man is to know God, and therein consists his eternal bliss, he must be, with Christ, the only Son of the Father. If ye would be blest ye must be the only Son ; not many sons ; one Son. True, ye are many in your carnal birth, but ye shall be one in the eternal birth, for in God there is no more than the one natural spring with its single natural outlet of the Son ; not twain but one. And hence if ye are one with Christ ye are the sole issue with the eternal Word.

[¶2] How does man come to be the only Son of the eternal Father ? I answer. The eternal Word did not take upon itself this man or that, it took upon itself one indivisible free nature, human nature, bare and formless, for the impartible form of manhood is wholly without form ; and since in this union the eternal Word took human nature formless, therefore the Father’s image, his eternal Son, became the form of human nature. Here it is just as true to say that man became God as that God became man. For human nature was transformed by taking the divine form which is the image of the Father. It follows that to be the Son ye must depart from and discard whatever makes for division in you. Man is an accident of nature. Do away with accidents and take yourselves in the freedom of your impartible humanity. But this very nature wherein ye take yourselves is become the Son of the eternal Father by union with the eternal Word, and therefore ye with Christ become the Son of the eternal Father by reason of enjoying the same nature which was there made God. Beware lest ye take yourselves as either this or that : realize yourselves in the liberation of your undivided manhood. If ye would be one ye must be rid of not, for noVs pride is division. How so ? Well, suppose I say, Thou art not the man. This not puts a division between thee and this man. To be undivided ye must be free from not There is one power in the soul which is immune from not, which has not aught in common with any mortal thing : there is nothing in this power ; only God is seen there face to face.

[¶3] A man being thus the Son, his motion, his energy, whatever he enjoys, he has gotten of his own. Now the Son of the Father is the eternal Son as being descended from the Father. Further, all he has he has within himself since he is one in essence and in nature with the Father ; his essence and his quiddity, he has both in himself and in this sense he prays, ‘ Father, as I and thou are one even so I would they should be the same.’ And just as the Son is one with the Father in his essence, so thou being one with him in essence and in nature, hast got it all in thee as the Father has in him. Thou hast it not on loan from God, because God is thine own : all thou hast gotten thou hast gotten of thine own and such works as are not produce of thine own are dead works in the sight of God. These thou art moved to by extraneous things and they are not living : they are dead, for anything alive is endowed with a motion of its own. If man’s works are to live they must be indigenous : not foreign things nor outside but within him.

[¶4] Remember. If ye love right as God ye love not right as right, therefore ye neither take it nor love it as a whole but as divided.

[¶5] But God is right, so ye are not taking him nor loving him in his entirety. Take right as right and ye take it as God. Then where right is at work ye will be working too, seeing that ye do right all the time. Though hell stood in the way of right ye would still do right and that not as a hardship but a pleasure, because being right itself yc must do right. The more a thing participates in a common nature, the more it is one with the impartibility of the common nature, the more impartible it is itself. To the whole truth, God help us. Amen,