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| Chapter II. How the occasions of these faults, being found in everybody, are ignored by everybody; and how we need the Lord's help to make them plain.
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Chapter II.
How the occasions of these faults, being found in
everybody, are ignored by everybody; and how we need the Lord’s
help to make them plain.
And of these passions as
the occasions are recognized by everybody as soon as they are laid open
by the teaching of the elders, so before they are revealed, although we
are all overcome by them, and they exist in every one, yet nobody knows
of them. But we trust that we shall be able in some measure to explain
them, if by your prayers that word of the Lord, which was announced by
Isaiah, may apply to us also—“I will go before thee, and
bring low the mighty ones of the land, I will break the gates of brass,
and cut asunder the iron bars, and I will open to thee concealed
treasures and hidden secrets”820
—so that
the word of the Lord may go before us also, and first may bring low the
mighty ones of our land, i.e. these same evil passions which we are
desirous to overcome, and which claim for themselves dominion and a
most horrible tyranny in our mortal body; and may make them yield to
our investigation and explanation, and thus breaking the gates of our
ignorance, and cutting asunder the bars of vices which shut us out from
true knowledge, may lead to the hidden things of our secrets, and
reveal to us who have been illuminated, according to the
Apostle’s word, “the hidden things of darkness, and may
make manifest the counsels of the hearts,”821
that thus penetrating with pure eyes of
the mind to the foul darkness of vices, we may be able to disclose them
and drag them forth to light; and may succeed in explaining their
occasions and natures to those who are either free from them, or are
still tied and bound by them, and so passing as the prophet
says,822
through the fire of vices which terribly
inflame our minds, we may be able forthwith to pass also through the
water of virtues which extinguish them unharmed, and being bedewed (as
it were) with spiritual remedies may be found worthy to be brought in
purity of heart to the consolations of perfection.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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