Therefore it is not death, but a bad life we should fear. But, you say, it is a terrible and bitter thing to die in the state of sin; to leave this world a sworn enemy of God, and immediately after death to fall into the hands of an angry and living God, and to become the object of His vengeance. There is no doubt of this; but what is the cause of it? Not death; for death does not place men in the state of sin, nor make them enemies of God. It is a man’s own sinful life that is to blame. And, again, if he persists in wickedness to the end, that is not death’s fault. Death puts an end to life just as he finds it; if he finds it good, he finishes a good life, otherwise he terminates a bad one. “Death itself,” says St. Ambrose, “is not terrible, but the opinion that each one forms of it according to the state of his conscience; for there is nothing we need fear in death if we have done nothing to make us afraid during life.”[1] What? you exclaim; and must I not fear death when I have committed a grievous sin? Certainly; for there is nothing more dreadful than to die with a bad conscience, in the state of sin; but, answers St. Ambrose, you must blame yourself and your sins for your fear; it is guilt alone that renders death terrible. But if you continue to live as you would not willingly be when dying, then, do not say: how awful it is to die an enemy of God! but rather: how terrible it is to have lived and still to live as an enemy of God! Do not say: how fearful the torments that follow a bad death! but, how fearful the torments that follow a bad life! “Therefore,” concludes the Saint, “let each one accuse the wounds of his own conscience, not the bitterness of death.”[2] The only thing that is bitter or terrible in death is a bad conscience; and hence, O pious Christian! who have a good conscience, you need not fear death, nor expect to find anything ghastly in it. Nor is there anything bitter or terrible in the circumstances of death, except a bad conscience; and that bitterness and terror are taken away by a good conscience, as we shall see in the
Second Part.
Separation from the world is not terrible in itself. Some of the circumstances of death refer to the things that are left behind here, and others to what is coming in the future life; for death is partly a separation from earthly things and partly
- ↑ Non mors ipsa terribilis, sed opinio de morte, quam unusquisque pro conscientia sua perhorrescit; non enim habemus, quod in morte metuamus, si nihil quod metuendum sit, vita nostra commisit.
- ↑ Suæ igitur unusquisque conscientiae vulnus accuset, non mortis acerbitatem.—S. Ambr. L. de Bona Morte, c. viii.
