| 40. "God wills that we hate the sin and love the soul, as God loves it" | ||||
THIS is a sovereign friendship of our courteous Lord that He keeps us so tenderly while we are in sin; and furthermore He touches us full privily and shows us our sin by the sweet light of mercy and grace. But when we see our self so foul, then think we that God were angry with us for our sin, and then are we stirred of the Holy Ghost by contrition to prayer and desire for the amending of our life with all our mights, to slacken the wrath of God, to the time we find a rest in soul and a softness in conscience. Then hope we that God has forgiven us our sins: and it is truth. And then shows our courteous Lord Himself to the soul well-merrily and with glad cheer with friendly welcoming as if it had been in pain and in prison, saying sweetly thus: My darling I am glad you are come to me: in all your woe I have ever been with you; and now see you my loving and we be united in bliss. Thus are sins forgiven by mercy and grace, and our soul is worshipfully received in joy like as it shall be when it comes to Heaven, as oftentimes as it comes by the gracious working of the Holy Ghost and the virtue of Christ's Passion. | ||||
Here understand I in truth that all manner of things are made ready for us by the great goodness of God, so far forth that what time we be ourselves in peace and charity, we be truly saved. But because we may not have this in fulness while we are here, therefore it falls to us evermore to live in sweet prayer and lovely longing with our Lord Jesus. For He longs ever to bring us to the fulness of joy; as it is beforesaid, where He shows the Spiritual Thirst. | ||||
But now if any man or woman because of all this spiritual comfort that is beforesaid, be stirred by folly to say or to think: If this be true, then were it good to sin [so as] to have the more meed, or else to charge the less [guilt] to sin, beware of this stirring: for truly if it come it is untrue, and of the enemy of the same true love that teaches us that we should hate sin only for love. I am sure by my own feeling, the more that any kind soul sees this in the courteous love of our Lord God, the lother he is to sin and the more he is ashamed. For if before us were laid [together] all the pains in Hell and in Purgatory and in Earth death and other , and [by itself] sin, we should rather choose all that pain than sin. For sin is so vile and so greatly to be hated that it may be likened to no pain which is not sin. And to me was shown no harder hell than sin. For a kind soul has no hell but sin. | ||||
And [when] we give our intent to love and meekness, by the working of mercy and grace we are made all fair and clean. As mighty and as wise as God is to save men, so willing He is. For Christ Himself is [the] ground of all the laws of Christian men, and He taught us to do good against ill: here may we see that He is Himself this charity, and does to us as He teaches us to do. For He wills that we be like Him in wholeness of endless love to ourself and to our fellow-Christians: no more than His love is broken to us for our sin, no more wills He that our love be broken to ourself and to our fellow-Christians: but [that we] endlessly hate the sin and endlessly love the soul, as God loves it. Then shall we hate sin like as God hates it, and love the soul as God loves it. And this word that He said is an endless comfort: I keep you securely. | ||||