Sayings from The Theologia Germanica

Sin is self-will.

Nothing burns in Hell but self-will.

As it is with the will, so it is with knowledge, reason, power, love, and everything that moves in man: It is all God’s domain, not man’s.

Sin is to assert self-will in independence of and against the eternal Will.

The truly religious man is always more concerned about what God will do in him than what He will do to him; in his intense desire for the purification of his motives he almost wishes that heaven and hell were blotted out, that he might serve God for Himself alone.

In a divinized person the godly characteristic is humility deep in a person’s being. Where there is no humility we cannot speak of a divinized person. Christ taught this in words, works, and life.

It was written around 1350, by a Teutonic knight of Frankfurt am Main who worked as a priest and warden. Luther had it printed in 1516, speculating that the author might be Johann Tauler. The Pope banned the book in 1612.