16. Why should we not believe
these to be angelic operations through dispensation of the
providence of God, Who maketh good use of both good things and
evil, according to the unsearchable depth of His judgments? whether
thereby the minds of mortals be instructed, or whether deceived;
whether consoled, or whether terrified: according as unto each one
there is to be either a showing of mercy, or a taking of vengeance,
by Him to Whom, not without a meaning, the Church doth sing “of
mercy and of judgment.”2746
Let each, as it shall please him,
take what I say. If the
souls of the dead took part in the affairs
of the living, and if it were their very selves that, when we see
them, speak to us in
sleep; to say nothing of others, there is my
own self, whom my pious mother would no
night fail to
visit, that
mother who by
land and
sea followed me that she might
live with me.
Far be the thought that she should, by a
life more
happy, have been
made cruel, to that degree that when any thing vexes my
heart she
should not even console in his
sadness the son whom she
loved with
an only
love, whom she never wished to see mournful. But assuredly
that which the
sacred Psalm
sings in our
ears, is true; “Because
my
father and my mother have forsaken me, but the
Lord hath taken
me up.”
2747
Then if
our
parents have forsaken us, how take they part in our cares and
affairs? But if
parents do not, who else are there of the dead who
should know what we are doing, or what we
suffer? Isaiah the
Prophet says, “For Thou art our
Father: because
Abraham hath not
known us, and
Israel is not cognizant of us.”
2748
If so great Patriarchs were
ignorant what was doing towards the People of them begotten, they
to whom, believing
God, the People itself to spring from their
stock was
promised; how are the dead mixed up with affairs and
doings of the living, either for cognizance or help? How say we
that those were
favored who
deceased ere the evils came which
followed hard upon the
decease, if also after
death they feel
whatever things
befall in the calamitousness of human
life? Or
haply do we err in saying this, and in accounting them to be
quietly at
rest whom the unquiet
life of the living makes
solicitous? What then is that which to the most godly king Josias
God promised as a great benefit, that he should first
die, that he
might not see the evils which He threatened should come to that
place and People? Which words of
God are these: “Thus saith the
Lord God of
Israel: concerning My words which thou hast heard, and
didst
fear before My face when thou didst hear what I have spoken
concerning this place and them which dwell therein, that it should
be forsaken and under a
curse; and hast rent thy
garments, and wept
before Me, and I have heard thee, saith the
Lord of
Sabaoth: not
so; behold, I will add thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be
added unto them in
peace; and thine
eyes shall not see all the
evils which I am bringing upon this place and upon them that dwell
therein.”
2749
He,
frightened by
God’s comminations, had wept, and rent his
garments, and is made, by hastening on of his
death, to be without
care of all future evils, because he should so
rest in
peace, that
all those things he should not see. There then are the spirits of
the departed, where they see not whatever things are doing, or
events happening, in this
life to men. Then how do they see their
own
graves, or their own bodies, whether they
lie cast away, or
buried? How do they take part in the misery of the living, when
they are either suffering their own evils, if they have contracted
such merits; or do
rest in peace, as was promised to this Josiah,
where they undergo no evils, either by suffering themselves, or by
compassionate suffering with others, freed from all evils which by
suffering themselves or with others while they lived here they
did undergo?
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
