| 73. "Impatience, or sloth; despair, or mistrustful dread" | ||||
ALL the blessed teaching of our Lord was shown by three parts: that is to say, by bodily sight, and by word formed in my understanding, and by spiritual sight. For the bodily sight, I have said as I saw, as truly as I can; and for the words, I have said them right as our Lord showed them to me; and for the spiritual sight, I have told some deal, but I may never fully tell it: and therefore of this sight I am stirred to say more, as God will give me grace. Generally, He showed sin, wherein that all is comprehended, but in special He showed only these two. And these two are they that most do travail and tempest us, according to that which our Lord showed me; and of them He would have us be amended. I speak of such men and women as for God's love hate sin and dispose themselves to do God's will: then by our spiritual blindness and bodily heaviness we are most inclining to these. And therefore it is God's will that they be known, for then we shall refuse them as we do other sins. | ||||
And for help of this, full meekly our Lord showed the patience that He had in His Hard Passion; and also the joying and the satisfying that He has of that Passion, for love. And this He showed in example that we should gladly and wisely bear our pains, for that is great pleasing to Him and endless profit to us. And the cause why we are travailed with them is for lack in knowing of Love. Though the three Persons in the Trinity be all even in Itself, the soul took most understanding in Love; yea, and He wills that in all things we have our beholding and our enjoying in Love. And of this knowing are we most blind. For some of us believe that God is Almighty and may do all, and that He is All-Wisdom and can do all; but that He is All-Love and will do all, there we stop short. And this not-knowing it is, that hinders most God's lovers, as to my sight. | ||||
For when we begin to hate sin, and amend us by the ordinance of Holy Church, yet there dwells a dread that letts us, because of the beholding of our self and of our sins before done. And some of us because of our every-daily sins: for we hold not our Covenants, nor keep we our cleanness that our Lord setts us in, but fall oftentimes into so much wretchedness that shame it is to see it. And the beholding of this makes us so sorry and so heavy, that scarsely we can find any comfort. | ||||
And this dread we take sometime for a meekness, but it is a foul blindness and a weakness. And we cannot despise it as we do another sin, that we know [as sin]: for it comes [subtly] of Enmity, and it is against truth. For it is God's will that of all the properties of the blissful Trinity, we should have most sureness and comfort in Love: for Love makes Might and Wisdom full meek to us. For right as by the courtesy of God He forgives our sin after the time that we repent us, right so wills He that we forgive our sin, as regarding our unskilful heaviness and our doubtful dreads. | ||||