when I call God good; it is as if I called white black."[8] The bull
declares all the propositions above quoted to be heretical, with the
exception of the three which I have numbered 8-10, and these "have
an ill sound" and are "very rash," even if they might be so
supplemented and explained as to bear an orthodox sense.

This condemnation led to a long neglect of Eckhart's writings. He
was almost forgotten till Franz Pfeiffer in 1857 collected and
edited his scattered treatises and endeavoured to distinguish those
which were genuine from those which were spurious. Since Pfeiffer's
edition fresh discoveries have been made, notably in 1880, when
Denifle found at Erfurt several important fragments in Latin, which
in his opinion show a closer dependence on the scholastic theology,
and particularly on St Thomas Aquinas, than Protestant scholars,
such as Preger, had been willing to allow. But the attempt to prove
Eckhart a mere scholastic is a failure; the audacities of his German
discourses cannot be explained as an accommodation to the tastes of
a peculiar audience. For good or evil Eckhart is an original and
independent thinker, whose theology is confined by no trammels of
authority.

Sect. 3. ECKHART'S RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY

The Godhead, according to Eckhart, is the universal and eternal
Unity comprehending and transcending all diversity. "The Divine
nature is Rest," he says in one of the German discourses; and in the
Latin fragments we find: "God rests in Himself, and makes all things
rest in Him." The three Persons of the Trinity, however, are not
mere modes or accidents,[9] but represent a real distinction within
the Godhead. God is unchangeable, and at the same time an