sheweth us Cheer of His Passion and His Cross, helping us to bear it by His own blessed virtue. And in the time of our sinning He sheweth to us Cheer of Ruth and Pity, mightily keeping us and defending us against all our enemies. And these be the common Cheer which He sheweth to us in this life; therewith mingling the third: and that is His Blissful Cheer, like, in part, as it shall be in Heaven. And that [shewing is] by gracious touching and sweet lighting of the spiritual life, whereby that we are kept in sure faith, hope, and charity, with contrition and devotion, and also with contemplation and all manner of true solace and sweet comforts.
CHAPTER LXXII
"As long as we be meddling with any part of sin we shall never see clearly the Blissful Countenance of our Lord"
BUT now behoveth me to tell in what manner I saw sin deadly in the creatures which shall not die for sin, but live in the joy of God without end.
I saw that two contrary things should never be together in one place. The most contrary that are, is the highest bliss and the deepest pain. The highest bliss that is, is to have Him in clarity of endless life. Him verily seeing. Him sweetly feeling, all-perfectly having in fulness of joy. And thus was the Blissful Cheer of our Lord shewed in Pity:[1] in which Shewing I saw that sin is most contrary,—so far forth that as long as we be
- ↑ S. de Cressy has "in party" = part, but the word seems to "pite" = pity. See pp. 174, 58, 64, 83, 101 111–113, 157, 185, 195–196.
