specially
learned in Hebrew, and he was thoroughly impregnated with the views of
the spiritualistic Humanists of the former century, Franck, Castellio,
and Coornhert, as well as with the views of the mystics, and he was
himself a champion of individual religious freedom. He held that the
visible Church since the apostolic age has been astray and apostate, that
Confessions of faith, Church officers, and sacraments are without
"authority," that the uncontaminated teaching of the Holy Scripture is
the only safe norm of faith, and that until a true apostolic Church is
again established in the world by divine commission, each faithful,
believing Christian should maintain meantime the worship of God in his
own way and wait in faith for a fuller revelation.[17] His mystical
piety appears strongly in his hymns, which are preserved in his complete
works. One of these hymns of Boreel has been very freely translated into
English "by a Lover of the Life of our Lord Jesus," probably Henry More,
the Platonist. More says that he finds the hymn "running much upon the
mortification of our own wills and of our union and communion with God,"
and he loves it as a deep expression of his own faith that "no man can
really adhere to Christ, and unwaveringly, but by union to Him by His
Spirit." I give a few extracts from More's free Translation:

1. O Heavenly Light! my spirit to Thee draw,
With powerful touch my senses smite,
Thine arrows of Love into me throw
With flaming dart
Deep wound my heart,
And wounded seize for ever, as thy right.

{119}

3. Do thou my faculties all captivate
Unto thyself with strongest tye;
My will entirely regulate:
Make me thy slave,
Nought else I crave
For this I know is perfect Liberty.

5. O endless good!
Break like a flood
Into my soul, and water my dry earth,

6. That by this mighty power I being reft
Of everything that is not One,
To Thee alone I may be left
By a firm will
Fixt to Thee still
And inwardly united into one.

11. So that at last, I being quite released
From this strait-laced Egoity
My soul will vastly be increased
Into that All
Which One we call,
And One in itself alone doth All imply.

12. Here's Rest, here's Peace, here's Joy and Holy Love,
The heaven is here of true Cont