Chapter XLIX
"Where our Lord appears, peace is taken, and wrath has. no place." "Immediately is the soul made at one with God when it is truly set at peace in itself"
FOR this was a high marvel to the soul which was continually shewed in all the Revelations, and was with great diligence seen, that our Lord God, a result of Himself may not forgive, for He may not be angry: it were impossible. For this was shewed: that our life is all grounded and rooted in love, and without love we may not live; and for that to the soul that of His special grace sees so far into the high, marvellous Goodness of God, and sees that we are endlessly joined to Him in love, it is the most impossible that may be, that God should be angry. For wrath and friendship be two contraries. For He that wastes and destroys our wrath and makes us meek and mild - it is fitting that He Himself be ever one in love, meek and mild: which is contrary to wrath.
For I saw surely that where our Lord appears, peace is taken and wrath has no place. For I saw no manner of wrath in God, neither for short time nor for long; - for in truth, as to my sight, if God might be angry for an instant, we should never have life nor place nor being. For as truly as we have our being of the endless Might of God and of the endless Wisdom and of the endless Goodness, so truly we have our keeping in the endless Might of God, in the endless Wisdom, and in the endless Goodness. For though we feel in ourselves, frail wretches, debates and strifes, yet are we in all ways enclosed in the mildness of God and in His meekness, in His benignity and in His graciousness. For I saw surely that all our endless friendship, our place, our life and our being, is in God.
For that same endless Goodness that keeps us when we sin, that we perish not, the same endless Goodness continually treats in us a peace against our wrath and our contrary falling, and makes us to see our need with a true fear, and mightily to seek to God to have forgiveness, with a gracious desire of our salvation. And though we, by the wrath
and the contrariness that is in us, be now in tribulation, distress, and woe, as falls to our blindness and frailty, yet are we securely safe by the merciful keeping of God, that we perish not. But we are not blissfully safe, in having of our endless joy, till we be all in peace and in love: that is to say, pleased with God and with all His works, and with all His judgments, and loving and peaceable with our self and with our fellow-Christians and with all that God loves, as love beseems. And this does God's Goodness in us.
Thus saw I that God is our very Peace, and He is our sure Keeper when we are ourselves out of peace, and He continually works to bring us into endless peace. And thus when we, by the working of mercy and grace, be made meek and mild, we are fully safe; suddenly is the soul joined to God when it is truly at peace in itself: for in Him is found no wrath. And thus I saw when we are all in peace and in love, we find no contrariness, nor no manner of letting through that contrariness which is now in us; nay, our Lord of His Goodness makes it to us profitable. For that contrariness is cause of our tribulations and all our woe, and our Lord Jesus taketh them and sends them up to Heaven, and there are they made more sweet and delectable than heart may think or tongue may tell. And when we come thither we shall find them ready, all turned into very fair and endless worships. Thus is God our steadfast Ground: and He shall be our bliss and make us unchangeable, as He is, when we are there.