His whole endeavor was to stimulate an enthusiasm for privation and a taste for things spiritual, and it was because in his earnestness and single-mindedness he so largely succeeded that his book was eagerly seized by the hands of thousands who desired and needed such stimulation and help.

The Dutch canon was not capable of rising to the heights of Tauler and the Frankfort priest, who saw in the love of God a good in itself transcending the happiness of one's own soul.

He just wanted to be saved and tried to love God for that purpose with all his might.

But this careful self-cultivation made his religion self-centered; it was, compared even with the professions of the Protestants and of the Jesuits, personal and unsocial.
Notwithstanding the profound differences between the Mystics and the Reformers, it is possible to see that at least in one respect the two movements were similar.

It was exactly the same desire to get away from the mechanical and formal in the church's scheme of salvation, that animated both.