Chapter LIX
"Jesus Christ that does Good against evil is our Very Mother: we have our Being of Him where the Ground of Motherhood begins, - with all the sweet Keeping by Love, that endlessly follows."
AND all this bliss we have by Mercy and Grace: which manner of bliss we might never have had nor known but if that property of Goodness which is God had been opposed: whereby we have this bliss. For wickedness has been suffered to rise contrary to the Goodness, and the Goodness of Mercy and Grace opposed against the wickedness and turned all to goodness and to worship, to all these that shall be saved. For it is the property in God which does good against evil. Thus Jesus Christ that does good against evil is our Very Mother: we have our Being of Him, - where the Ground of Motherhood begins, - with all the sweet Keeping of Love that endlessly follows. As truly as God is our Father, so truly God is our Mother; and that shewed He in all, and especially in these sweet words where He says: I it am. That is to say, I it am, the Might and the Goodness of the Fatherhood; I it am, the Wisdom of the Motherhood; I it am, the Light and the Grace that is all blessed Love: I it am, the Trinity, I it am, the Unity: I am the sovereign Goodness of all manner of things. I am that makes you to love: I am that makes you to long: I it am, the endless fulfilling of all true desires.
For there the soul is highest, noblest, and worthiest, where it is lowest, meekest, and mildest: and out of this Substantial Ground we
have all our virtues in our Sense-part by gift of Nature, by helping and speeding of Mercy and Grace: without the which we may not profit.
Our high Father, God Almighty, which is Being, He knew and loved us from before any time: of which knowing, in His marvellous deep charity and the foreseeing counsel of all the blessed Trinity, He willed that the Second Person should become our Mother. Our Father wills, our Mother works, our good Lord the Holy Spirit confirmeth: and for that it belongs to us to love our God in whom we have our being: Him reverently thanking and praising for our making, mightily praying to our Mother for mercy and pity, and to our Lord the Holy Spirit for help and grace.
For in these three is all our life: Nature, Mercy, Grace: whereof we have meekness and mildness; patience and pity; and hating of sin and of wickedness, - for it belongs properly to virtue to hate sin and wickedness. And thus is Jesus our Very Mother in Nature by virtue of our first making; and He is our Very Mother in Grace, by taking our nature made. All the fair working, and all the sweet natural office of precious Motherhood is allocated to the Second Person: for in Him we have this Godly Will whole and safe without end, both in Nature and in Grace, of His own proper Goodness. I understood three manners of seeing of Motherhood in God: the first is grounded in our Nature's making; the second is taking of our nature, - and there begins the Motherhood of Grace; the third is Motherhood of working, - and in it is a distribution by the same Grace, of length and breadth and height and of deepness without end. And all is one Love.