Chapter LXXIII
"Two manners of sickness that we have: impatience, or sloth; despair, or mistrustful fear"
ALL the blessed teaching of our Lord was shewed by three parts: that is to say, by bodily sight, and by word formed in my understanding, and by spiritual sight. For the bodily sight, I have said as I saw, as truly as I can; and for the words, I have said them right as our Lord shewed them to me; and for the spiritual sight, I have told some deal, but I may never fully tell it: and for that of this sight I am stirred to say more, as God will give me grace. Generally, He shewed sin, wherein that all is comprehended, but in special He shewed only these two. And these two are they that most do travail and tempest us, according to that which our Lord shewed me; and of them He would have us be amended. I speak of such men and women as for God's love hate sin and dispose themselves to do God's will: then by our spiritual blindness and bodily heaviness we are most inclining to these. And for that it is God's will that they be known, for then we shall refuse them as we do other sins.
And for help of this, meekly our Lord shewed the patience that He had in His Hard Passion; and also the joying and the satisfying that He has of that Passion, for love. And this He shewed in example that we should gladly and wisely bear our pains, for that is great pleasing to Him and endless profit to us. And the cause why we are travailed with them is for lack in knowing of Love. Though the three Persons in the
Trinity be all even in Itself, the soul took most understanding in Love; yea, and He wills that in all things we have our seeing and our enjoying in Love. And of this knowing are we most blind. For some of us believe that God is Almighty and may do all, and that He is AllWisdom and can do all; but that He is All-Love and will do all, there we stop short. And this not-knowing it is, that hinders most God's lovers, as to my sight.
For when we begin to hate sin, and amend us by the ordinance of Holy Church, yet there dwells a fear that hinders us, because of the seeing of our self and of our sins before done. And some of us because of our every-daily sins: for we hold not our Covenants, nor keep we our cleanness that our Lord sets us in, but fall often into so much wretchedness that shame it is to see it. And the seeing of this makes us so sorry and so heavy, that scarcely we can find any comfort.
And this fear we take sometime for a meekness, but it is a foul blindness and a weakness. And we cannot despise it as we do another sin, that we know as sin: for it cometh subtly of Enmity, and it is against truth. For it is God's will that of all the properties of the blissful Trinity, we should have most sureness and comfort in Love: for Love makes Might and Wisdom meek to us. For right as by the courtesy of God He forgives our sin after the time that we repent us, right so wills He that we forgive our sin, as a result of our unskilful heaviness and our doubtful fears.