Chapter LV
"Christ is our Way" - "Mankind shall be restored from double death"
AND thus Christ is our Way, us surely leading in His laws, and Christ in His body mightily bears us up into heaven. For I saw that Christ, us all having in Him that shall be saved by Him, worshipfully presenteth His Father in heaven with us; which present thankfully His Father receiveth, and courteously gives it to His Son, Jesus Christ: which gift and working is joy to the Father, and bliss to the Son, and pleasing to the Holy Spirit. And of all things that belong to us to do, it is most pleasing to our Lord that we enjoy in this joy which is in the blessed Trinity in virtue of our salvation. (And this was seen in the Ninth Shewing, where it speaks more of this matter.) And despite all our feeling of woe or well-being, God wills that we should understand and hold by faith that we are more truly in heaven than in earth.
Our Faith cometh of the natural Love of our soul, and of the clear light of our Reason, and of the steadfast Mind which we have from God in our first making. And when that our soul is inspired into our body, in which we are made sensual, so soon mercy and grace begin to work, having of us care and keeping with pity and love: in which working the Holy Spirit forms, in our Faith, Hope that we shall come again up above to our Substance, into the Virtue of Christ, increased and fulfilled through the Holy Spirit. Thus I understood that the sense-soul is grounded in Nature, in Mercy, and in Grace: which Ground enables us to receive gifts that lead us to endless life.
For I saw assuredly that our Substance is in God, and also I saw that in our sense-soul God is: for in the self-same point that our Soul is made sensual, in the self-same point is the City of God ordained to Him from without beginning; into which seat He cometh, and never shall remove from it. For God is never out of the soul: in which He dwells blissfully without end. And this was seen in the Sixteenth Shewing where it says: The place that Jesus taketh in our soul, He shall never remove from it. And all the gifts that God may give to creatures, He has given to His Son Jesus for us: which gifts He, dwelling in us, has enclosed in Him to the time that we be waxen and grown, - our soul with our body and our body with our soul, either of them taking help of other, - till we be brought up to stature, as nature works. And then, in the ground of nature, with working of mercy, the Holy Spirit graciously inspires into us gifts leading to endless life. And thus was my understanding led of God to see in Him and to understand, to perceive and to know, that our soul is made-trinity , like to the unmade blissful Trinity, known and loved from without beginning, and in the making joined to the Maker, as it is aforesaid. This sight was sweet and marvellous to behold, peaceable, restful, sure, and delectable. And because of the worshipful joining that was thus made by God betwixt the soul and body, it is fitting for needs to be that mankind shall be restored from double death: which restoring might never be until the time that the Second Person in the Trinity had taken the lower part of man's nature; to Whom the highest part was joined in the First-making. And these two parts were in Christ, the higher and the lower: which is but one Soul; the higher part was one in peace with God, in joy and bliss; the lower part, which is sensenature, suffered for the salvation of mankind. And these two parts in Christ were seen and felt in the Eighth Shewing, in which my body was fulfilled with feeling and mind of Christ's Passion and His death, and furthermore with this was a subtle feeling and hidden inward sight of the High Part which I was shewed in the same time when I could not, even for the friendly proffer made to me, look up into Heaven: and that was because of that mighty seeing that I had of the Inward Life. Which Inward Life is that High Substance, that precious Soul, of Christ, which is endlessly rejoicing in the Godhead.