n hail of an inner world of divine splendour. "I was
first breathed forth from heaven," he says, "and came from God in my
creation. I am divine and heavenly in my original, in my essence, in my
character. . . . I am a spirit, though a low one, and God is a Spirit,
even the highest one, and God is the fountaine of this spirit [of
mine]."[4]

The possession of this divine "original," unlost even in the mist and
mystery of a world of time and sense, enables man, he holds, to live in
that higher world even while he sojourns in this lower world. Human
reason, _i.e._ reasoning, is sufficient to guide in the affairs of this
life, but it is blind to the world of the Spirit from which we came.
"The soule has two eyes--one human reason, the other far excelling that,
a divine and spiritual Light. . . . By it the soule doth see spiritual
things as truly as the corporall eye doth corporal things."[5] "Human
reason acknowledges the sovereignty of this spiritual Light as a candle
acknowledges the greater light of the sun," and, {269} by its in-shining,
the soul passes "beyond a speculative and discoursing holiness, even
beyond a forme of godliness and advances to _the power of it_."[6] But
this inward Light does not make outward helps unnecessary. "The light of
the outward word [the Scriptures] and the Light in our soules are twinnes
and agree together like brothers,"[7] and again he says, "It is an
invaluable [inestimable] Loss that men do so much divide the outward
Teacher from the Inward," though he insists that the ministry of the
Spirit is above any ministry of the letter.[8]

This eye of the soul which is a part of its original structure and is
responsive to the Light of the spiritual world, so that "soule and Light
become knit together into one," is also called by Rous, as by his
predecessors, "Seed" or "Word." Sometimes this divine Seed is thought of
as an original part of the soul, and sometimes, under the assumption that
"man has grown wild by the fall of Adam" and is "run to weeds," it is
conceived, as by Schwenckfeld, as a saving remedy supernaturally supplied
to the soul--"Christ entering into our spirits lays in them an immortal
seed."[9] In any case, whether the Seed be original, as is often implied
and stated, or whether it be a supernatural gift of divine Grace in
Christ, as is sometimes implied, it is, in Rous' conception, essential
for the attainment of a religious experience or a Christian life: "A
Chris