Anon: "Ruysbroeck gives a description of the Beghards, which corresponds generally with that of the Papal Bull. He divides them into four classes, and accuses them all of the fundamental error making man's unity with God to be a unity of nature and not of Grace. The Godly man, he admitted, is united to God, not however in virtue of his essences but by a process of re-creation and regeneration. Ruysbroeck was obviously hide-bound by the dictates of theology, and to that extent his mystical knowledge was suppressed. He accused the first class of heresy against the Holy Spirit, because they claimed a perfect identity with the Absolute, which reposes in itself and is without act or operation. They said that they themselves were the divine essence, above the persons of the Godhead, and in as absolute a state of repose as if they did not at all exist; inasmuch as the Godhead itself does not act, the Holy Spirit being the sole operative power in it. The second class were considered heretics against the Father, because they placed themselves simply and directly on an equality with God; contemplated the "I" as entirely one with the divinity so that from them all things proceeded, and being themselves by nature God, they had come into existence of their own free will. `If I had not so willed,' one of them said, `neither I or any other creature would be.'"
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > Chapter 1 : Their Meeting and Interchange > # 63
