In few works of mystical theology does one find surpassed the ordered lucidity with which the Espousals expounds its complex and profound ideas. Ruysbroek tells of the anguish and contention in the soul striving against nature to cross the threshold of time into the eternity from which God calls to it, but coming to accept and welcome this agony as an indispensable stage in the soul's homeward journey. Ruysbroek's learning, his natural curiosity, and his literary gifts are all ordered and controlled, and the whole book breathes harmony and great peace.
The book is composed of three successive expositions of the text "See, the Bridegroom comes; go out to meet Him." He tells us in Book t how Christ the Bridegroom must be seen and met "according to common usage. . . in the active life. . . by all who wish to be saved." Book 2 describes that meeting as it may come about in "the interior, exalted, yearning life achieved by virtues and grace." In Book 3 we read of the extraordinary way along which some are called to travel toward Our Lord, the supernatural life of the contemplation of God." It may be thought that there is nothing exceptional in such a plan, since writings abound that teach of an ascent to God out of activity, through purgation, into the vision of Him. But this is not at all what Ruysbroek is telling us. Instead he insists that quietism is wrong and dualism is false because these three lives must be led simultaneously: man must reflect in his nature that triune God head in whose image he was made.