ANTHONY: Forsooth, cousin, if we were such as we should be, I
would scant, for very shame, speak of the pains of hell in
exhortation to the keeping of Christ's faith. I would rather put us
in mind of the joys of heaven, the pleasure of which we should be
more glad to get than we should be to flee and escape all the pains
of hell.
But surely God is marvellous merciful to us in the thing in which
he may seem most rigorous. And that is (which many men would little
think) in that he provided hell. For I suppose very surely, cousin,
that many a man--and woman, too--of whom some now sit, and more
shall hereafter sit, full gloriously crowned in heaven, had they
not first been afraid of hell, would never have set foot toward
heaven.
But yet undoubtedly, if we could conceive in our hearts the
marvellous joys of heaven as well as we conceive the fearful pains
of hell--howbeit, we can conceive neither one sufficiently. But if
we could in our imagination approach as much toward the perceiving
of the one as we may toward the consideration of the other, we
would not fail to be far more moved and stirred to suffering for
Christ's sake in this world, for the winning of those heavenly joys
than for the eschewing of all those infernal pains. But forasmuch
as the fleshly pleasures are far less pleasant than the fleshly
pains are painful, therefore we fleshly folk, who are so drowned in
these fleshly pleasures and in the desire of them that we have
almost no manner of savour or taste for any pleasure that is
spiritual, we have no cause to marvel that our fleshly affections
are more abated and refrained by the dread and terror of hell than
spiritual affections are imprinted in us and pricked forward with
the desire and joyful hope of heaven.
Howbeit, if we would set somewhat less by the filthy voluptuous
appetites of the flesh, and would, by withdrawing from them, with
help of prayer through the grace of God, draw nearer to the secret
inward pleasure of the spirit, we should, by the little sipping
that our hearts should have here now, and that instantaneous taste
of it, have an estimation of the incomparable and uncogitable joy
that we shall have (if we will) in heaven, by the very full draught
thereof. For thereof it is written, "I shall be satiate" or
satisfied, or fulfilled, "when thy glory, good Lord, shall appear,"
that is, with the fruition of the sight of God's glorious majesty
face to face. And the desire, expectation, and heavenly hope
thereof, shall more encourage us and make us strong to suffer and
sustain for the love of God and salvation of our soul, than ever we
could be made to suffer worldly pain here by the terrible dread of
all the horrible pains that damned wretches have in hell.
Therefore in the meantime, for lack of such experimental taste as
God giveth here sometimes to some of his special servants, to the
intent that we may draw toward the spiritual exercise too--for
which spiritual exercise God with that gift, as with an
earnest-penny of their whole reward afterward in heaven, comforteth
them here in earth--let us labour by prayer to conceive in our
hearts such a fervent longing for them that we may, for attaining
to them, utterly set at naught all fleshly delight, all worldly
pleasures, all earthly losses, all bodily torment and pain. And let
us do this, not so much with looking to have described what manner
of joys they shall be, as with hearing what our Lord telleth us in
holy scripture how marvellous great they shall be. Howbeit, some
things are there in scripture expressed of the manner of the
pleasures and joys that we shall have in heaven, as, "Righteous men
shall shine as the sun and shall run about like sparkles of fire
among reeds."
Now, tell some carnal-minded man of this manner of pleasure, and he
shall take little pleasure in it, and say he careth not to have his
flesh shine, he, nor like a spark of fire to skip about in the sky.
Tell him that his body shall be impassible and never feel harm, and
he will think then that he shall never be ahungered or athirst, and
shall thereby forbear all his pleasure of eating and drinking, and
that he shall never wish for sleep, and shall thereby lose the
pleasure that he was wont to take in lying slug-abed. Tell him that
men and women shall there live together as angels without any
manner of mind or motion unto the carnal act of generation, and he
will think that he shall thereby not use there his old filthy
voluptuous fashion. He will say then that he is better at ease
already, and would not give this world for that. For, as St. Paul
saith, "A carnal man feeleth not the things that be of the spirit
of God, for it is foolishness to him."
But the time shall come when these foul filthy pleasures shall be
so taken from him that it shall abhor his heart once to think on
them. Every man hath a certain shadow of this experience in the
fervent grief of a sore painful sickness, when his stomach can
scant abide to look upon any meat, and as for the acts of the other
foul filthy lust, he is ready to vomit if he hap to think thereon.
When a man shall after this life feel in his heart that horrible
abomination, of which sickness hath here a shadow, at the
remembrance of these voluptuous pleasures, for which he would here
be loth to change with the joys of heaven: when he shall, I say,
after this life, have his fleshly pleasures in abomination, and
shall have there a glimmering (though far from a perfect sight) of
those heavenly joys which here he set so little by--O, good God,
how fain will he then be, with how good will and how gladly would
he then give this whole world, if it were his, to have the feeling
of some little part of those joys!
And therefore let us all who cannot now conceive such delight in
the consideration of them as we should, have often in our eyes by
reading, often in our ears by hearing, often in our mouths by
rehearsing, often in our hearts by meditation and thinking, those
joyful words of the holy scripture by which we learn how wonderful
huge and great are those spiritual heavenly joys. Our carnal hearts
have so feeble and so faint a feeling of them, and our dull worldly
wits are so little able to conceive so much as a shadow of the
right imagination! A shadow, I say, for, as for the thing as it is,
not only can no fleshly carnal fancy conceive that, but beside that
no spiritual person peradventure neither, so long as he is still
living here in this world. For since the very essential substance
of all the celestial joy standeth in the blessed beholding of the
glorious Godhead face to face, no man may presume or look to attain
it in this life. For God hath said so himself: "There shall no man
here living behold me." And therefore we may well know not only
that we are, for the state of this life, kept from the fruition of
the bliss of heaven, but also I think that the very best man living
here upon earth--the best man, I mean, who is no more than
man--cannot attain the right imagination of it; but those who are
very virtuous are yet (in a manner) as far from it as a man born
blind is from the right imagination of colours.
The words that St. Paul rehearseth of the prophet Isaiah,
prophesying of Christ's incarnation, may properly be verified of
the joys of heaven: _"Oculus non vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in
cor hominis adscendit, quae preparavit Deus diligentibus se."_ For
surely, for this state of this world, the joys of heaven are by
man's mouth unspeakable, to man's ears not audible, to men's hearts
uncogitable, so far excel they all that ever men have heard of, all
that ever men can speak of, and all that men can by natural
possibility think on.
And yet, whereas such be the joys of heaven that are prepared for
every saved soul, our Lord saith yet, by the mouth of St. John,
that he will give his holy martyrs who suffer for his sake many a
special kind of joy. For he saith, "To him that overcometh, I shall
give him to eat of the tree of life. And I shall confess his name
before my Father and before his angels." And also he saith, "Fear
none of those things that thou shalt suffer . . . , but be faithful
unto the death, and I shall give thee the crown of life. He that
overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." And he saith
also, "To him that overcometh will I give manna secret and hid. And
I will give him a white suffrage, and in his suffrage a new name
written, which no man knoweth but he that receiveth it." They used
of old in Greece, where St. John did write, to elect and choose men
unto honourable offices, and every man's assent was called his
"suffrage," which in some places was by voices and in some places
by hands. And one kind of those suffrages was by certain things
that in Latin are called _calculi_ because, in some places, they
used round stones for them. Now our Lord saith that unto him who
overcometh he will give a white suffrage, for those that were white
signified approving, as the black signified reproving. And in those
suffrages did they use to write the name of him to whom they gave
their vote. Now our Lord saith that to him who overcometh he will
in the suffrage give him a new name, which no man knoweth but him
who receiveth it. He saith also, "He that overcometh, I will make
him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out
thereof, and I shall write upon him the name of my God and the name
of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem which descendeth from
heaven from my God, and I shall write on him also my new name." If
we wished to enlarge upon this, and were able to declare these
special gifts, with yet others that are specified in the second and
third chapters of the Apocalypse, then would it appear how far
those heavenly joys shall surmount above all the comfort that ever
came in the mind of any man living here upon earth.
The blessed apostle St. Paul, who suffered so many perils and so
many passions, saith of himself that he hath been "in many labours,
in prisons oftener than others, in stripes above measure, at point
of death often times; of the Jews had I five times forty stripes
save one, thrice have I been beaten with rods, once was I stoned,
thrice have I been in shipwreck, a day and a night was I in the
depth of the sea; in my journeys oft have I been in peril of
floods, in peril of thieves, in peril by the Jews, in perils by the
pagans, in perils in the city, in perils in the desert, in perils
in the sea, perils by false brethren, in labour and misery, in many
nights' watch, in hunger and thirst, in many fastings, in cold and
nakedness; beside those things that are outward, my daily instant
labour, I mean my care and solicitude about all the churches," and
yet saith he more of his tribulations, which for the length I let
pass. This blessed apostle, I say, for all these tribulations that
he himself suffered in the continuance of so many years, calleth
all the tribulations of this world but light and as short as a
moment, in respect of the weighty glory that it winneth us after
this world: "This same short and momentary tribulation of ours that
is in this present time, worketh within us the weight of glory
above measure on high, we beholding not these things that we see,
but those things that we see not. For those things that we see are
but temporal things, but those things that are not seen are
eternal."
Now to this great glory no man can come headless. Our head is
Christ, and therefore to him must we be joined, and as members of
his must we follow him, if we wish to come thither. He is our guide
to guide us thither, and he is entered in before us. And he
therefore who will enter in after, "the same way that Christ
walked, the same way must he walk." And what was the way by which
he walked into heaven? He himself showed what way it was that his
Father had provided for him, when he said to the two disciples
going toward the village of Emaus, "Knew you not that Christ must
suffer passion, and by that way enter into his kingdom?" Who can
for very shame desire to enter into the kingdom of Christ with
ease, when he himself entered not into his own without pain?