Cyvard MARIETTE Louis-Claude Saint-MARTIN Les Décennies 19 ...

1839
Journal of the Rev. Josepf Wolff ...In a Series of Letters to Sir Thomas ... - Page 292 de
Joseph Wolff - 1839 - 402 pages
On the 26th of January we arrived in the harbour of Alexandria, at ten in the morning, and I
found my old friends, the Gliddons, well. I called on Colonel Campbell, who received me
kindly, and invited me to dinner. In the evening I went to the celebrated Antiquarian, Captain
Caviglia, so frequently mentioned in my former Journals. He is still occupied in the
disquisition of mystical philosophy. He informed me that he was reading the Bible more than
ever, and that he perceived, in reading the Book of Joshua, that men have to expel from their
hearts the same rebel nations against whom Joshua had fought. He connects strangely
Zechariah XIII. 5, "But he shall say, I am no Prophet, I am an husbandman, for man taught
me to keep cattle from my youth," with Genesis II, and attempts to prove by the connection of
both texts, the renovation of the earth, which shall be purified by fire ; citing for this, Luke
XII. 49, " I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I if it be already kindled?" What I
invariably observe to be the case with mystical philosophers is that they are averse to engage
in a close argument. He reads with great eagerness "Le Nouvel Homme," of the famous
mystic philosopher, Louis Claude de Saint Martin.
Mysticism like that of St. Martin and Jacob Boehme leads to nothing but to rationalism and
infidelity clothed in hieroglyphics and emblems — and mysticism is actually nothing else. It
is more dangerous to Church and State than open Jacobinism: that it led to liberalism and to a
spirit of rebellion St. Martin's History shows, for he himself approved of the French
Revolution in the year 1793. All the mystical philosophers I have met with are like Sooffees
in Persia, Pantheists, denying the necessity, and asserting the indifference of all external
Cultus. They profess at the same time the art of withholding from the inquirer their real
sentiments until they have sufficiently entangled him, exactly as the [292] Neologists in
Germany deceive often the orthodox Christians by terms borrowed from Moravians, as
Schleiermacher at Berlin, and Dr. Channing at Boston. In all they say there is some mental
reservation. The Mystics are, by far, worse than Unitarians, for Unitarians speak, after all,
about the Creator, but the mystical philosophers idolize man and the inanimate creation. They
are subtle and refined idolators. Caviglia is followed by St. Simonians and filthy French and
Italian infidels. Caviglia, for instance, says he does not believe but understands the Trinity. He
explains the words in Genesis I. 1, 2. In the intention of the three attributes of God the
heavens and the earth were created, and the active power of the three attributes of God was
brooding upon the face of the waters. I told him that I knew this mystical interpretation
before. He got very angry about it; and Gen. VI. 6, he translates — "And the Lord suspended
his usual love of preserving men whom he had created!" The acquisition of such mystical
knowledge as these mystics possess, or profess to possess, is with them regeneration.
Knowledge of animal magnetism or phrenology, and Homoeopathy, is with them the means
of obtaining regeneration.
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décennies 1830_1839
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