her, hurt her or kill her, if you want
to!'"[26]

The conception of God which forms the foreground of {247} all Everard's
teaching is one perfectly familiar to those that have studied the great
mystics who have formed their ideas under the direct or indirect
influence of Plotinus. The conception is, of course, not necessarily
mystical--it is rather a recurring type of metaphysics--but it has
peculiarly suited the mystical mind and is often regarded by Christian
historians as synonymous with mysticism. God, for Everard as for
Dionysius and for Eckhart, Tauler, and Franck, is unknowable,
unspeakable, unnamable, abstracted from all that is created and
visible, an absolute One, alone of all beings in the universe able to
say "I am," since He alone is Perfect Reality; but just for that reason
He is unrevealable in His inmost nature to finite beings and incapable
of manifestation through anything that is finite.[27]

He is a permanent and unchanging Substance; all things that are visible
are but shadow and appearance, are like bubbles in the water which are
now here and now gone.[28] Every created and finite thing,
however--from a grain of sand to a radiant sun and from a blade of
grass to the Seraph that is nearest God--is a beam or a ray or
expression of that eternal Reality, is an angel or messenger that in
some minute, or in some glorious fashion, reveals God in space and
time; and all created things together, from the lowest to the highest,
from the treble of the heavenly beings to the base of earthly things,
form "one mighty sweet-tuned instrument," sending forth one harmonious
hallelujah to the Creator and revealing a single organic universe,
"acted and guided by one Spirit"--the Soul of all that is.[29] "Ask
the craggy mountains what part they sing, and they will tell you that
they sing the praise of the immutableness and unchangeableness of God;
ask the flowers of the field what part they sing, and they will tell
you they sing the wisdom and liberality of God who cloathes them beyond
Solomon in all his glory; ask the sun, moon and stars what part they
sing, and they will say the constancy of God's promises, that they hold
their course and do not alter it; ask the poor received sinner {248}
what part he sings, and he will tell you he sings the infinite free
mercy of a most gracious Father; and ask the wicked, obstinate sinner
what part he sings, and he will tell you he sings the praise of the
patience and justi