Preface.

...had preached publicly for a long time
with great honors. Nevertheless,
since he was not free from the common
failings of ambition ambition: Ehrgeitz—literally "honor-greed," a prideful desire for status and recognition., hypocrisy, and the
desire to please men:
He was, by a foreign layman This refers to a famous story in Tauler's biography where a mysterious layman, often called the "Friend of God from the Oberland," traveled to hear Tauler preach and then challenged him to seek a deeper, more personal experience of God.,
through the co-operating power of the
Spirit of God, very marvelously brought
to a right knowledge of himself,
converted to God the Lord,
and after he was well-practiced through
much mockery and shame, cross and suffering,
and was (as it were) baptized again
with many tears, he was completely
changed into another man.
So that he, who previously
seemed to be a learned and pious man
by outward appearance, now
became entirely spiritual and divine,
who much more [valued] the inward ground
of the soul inward ground: inwendiger Grund der Seelen—a core concept in German mysticism referring to the deepest, uncreated part of the human soul where God dwells., and essential virtue...