Chapter 74
THE SIXTEENTH SHOWING
Tot the ordinance of holy Church, there still dwells in us a dread that holds us back, because of our seeing ourselves and the sins we have previously committed. And some of us are in fear because of our daily sins, for we do not hold to our promises or keep the cleanness that our Lord has set us in, but frequently fall into so much wretchedness that it is shameful to say it. And the contemplation of these things makes us so sorry and so depressed that only with difficulty can we see any comfort. We sometimes mistake this fear for meekness, but it is really a foul blindness and a wickedness. We cannot despise it as we do another sin that we recognize, for it comes from enmity and lack of true judgment, and is opposed to truth. For of all the properties of the blessed, blissful
Trinity, it is God's will that we have the greatest security and delight in love, for love makes might and wisdom most meek for us. For just as God, by His courtesy, forgets our sin when we repent of it, so He wills that we forget our sin as far as our unskillful depression and our doubt-filled dreads are concerned.
Chapter 74 There are four kinds of dread; but reverent dread is a lovely, true dread that is never separated from meek love; and yet these are not both the same thing; and how we should pray to God for reverent dread.
I understood four kinds of dread. The first is the dread from fright, which comes to a man suddenly by his frailty.
This dread does good, for it helps to purge a man, as does a bodily sickness or any other such pain that is not sin. For all such pains help man if they are patiently accepted.
The second is the dread from pain, by which man is stirred and awakened from the sleep of sin. For a man who is fast asleep in sin is not able, for that time, to receive the soft comfort of the Holy Spirit until he has undergone this dread from the pain of bodily death and of spiritual enemies, and has an understanding of it. And this dread stirs us to seek com-
THE REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE
~ fort and mercy from God. Thus, this dread, serving as an entrance, helps us and enables us to have contrition by the blessed touching of the Holy Spirit.
The third is the dread full of doubt. Insofar as doubtfilled dread draws us to despair, God will have it transformed within us into love, by the true knowing of love; that is to say that the bitterness of doubt will be turned into the sweetness of natural love by grace. For it can never please our Lord that His servants doubt His goodness.
The fourth is reverent dread. There is no dread in us that fully pleases God except reverent dread. It is very soft, for the more it is possessed the less it is felt, because of the sweetness of love.
Love and dread are brothers. They are rooted in us by the goodness of our Maker, and they shall never be taken away from us without end. We have the power to love from nature, and we have it from grace. We have the power to dread from nature, and we have it from grace. It is proper for us who are
His servants and His children to dread Him, on account of His lordship and His fatherhood, as it is proper for us to love
Him for His goodness.
Though this reverent dread and this love are not separated from one another, they are not both the same thing. They are two in their qualities and two in working, yet neither of them can be possessed without the other. Therefore I am sure that he who loves, dreads, though he scarcely feels it.
All dreads that are offered to us, other than reverent dread, though they come under color of holiness, are not holy in truth. By this they can be told apart: the dread that makes us hastily flee from all that is no good and fall onto our Lord's breast as a child into its mother's arms, with all our intent and all our mind, knowing our feebleness and our great need, knowing His everlasting goodness and His blessed, blissful love, only seeking within Him for our salvation, cleaving to Him with faithful, certain trust — the dread that draws us into doing these things — that dread is natural, gracious, good and true. All that is opposed to it is either wrong or mixed with wrong.