dreameth itself to be God, and sinless"; but "none is without sin;
if any is without consciousness of sin, he must be either Christ or
the Evil Spirit."

Very characteristic is the teaching of all these writers about
rewards and punishments. Without in any way impugning the Church
doctrine of future retribution, they yet agree with Benjamin
Whichcote, the Cambridge Platonist, that "heaven is first a temper,
then a place"; while of hell there is much to recall the noble
sentence of Juliana of Norwich, the fourteenth-century visionary,
"to me was showed no harder hell than sin." "Nothing burneth in hell
but self-will," is a saying in the "Theologia Germanica."[24] They
insist that the difference between heaven and hell is not that one
is a place of enjoyment, the other of torment; it is that in the one
we are with Christ, in the other without Him. "The Christlike life
is not chosen," to quote the "Theologia Germanica" once more, "in
order to serve any end, or to get anything by it, but for love of
its nobleness, and because God loveth and esteemeth it so highly. He
who doth not take it up for love, hath none of it at all; he may
dream indeed that he hath put it on, but he is deceived. Christ did
not lead such a life as this for the sake of reward, but out of
love, and love maketh such a life light, and taketh away all its
hardships, so that it becometh sweet and is gladly endured." The
truly religious man is always more concerned about what God will do
in him than what He will do to him; in his intense desire for the
purification of his motives he almost wishes that heaven and hell
were blotted out, that he might serve God for Himself alone.

Sect. 5. WRITERS OF THE SCHOOL OF ECKHART--TAULER