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| 1469 |
'Why
did you forgo the lustrous life that for love I faithfully purchased
with my body in aid of you, being abject, and why did you grow so
witless that you knew no gratitude to the Ruler for your redemption?
I ask nothing now for that bitter death of mine which I underwent
on you behalf; but pay me for your life, since I once gave you mine
as a ransom in worldly torment. I claim the life which you have sinfully
destroyed with vices, to your own shame. |
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| 1480 |
'Why
did you of your own free will, through wicked lusts and foul sins,
filthily pollute the lodging-place, the cherished house I hallowed
within you for my delight; and why did you shamefully blemish by evil-doing
the body which I freed for myself from the fiends' grasp and then
forbade it sin? Why do you more grievously hang me on the cross of
your hands than I hung before? for indeed this seems to me more painful.
The cross of your sins on which I am unwillingly fastened is presently
more oppressive to me than was the other, which once I mounted of
my own free will when your woeful state most moved me at heart, so
that I led you out of hell on condition that you yourself would keep
it so thereafter. |
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| 1495 |
'I
was a beggar in the world, so that you should be prosperous in heaven;
I was destitute in your country so that you should be blessed in mine.
For all this you knew then in your heart no gratitude to your Saviour. |
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| 1499 |
'I
commend you to comfort well my brothers in the worldly realm from
among those possessions which I gave you on earth, and to help the
destitute. Feebly have you fulfilled that; you denied it to the needy
that they might enter under your roof, and in your hardheartedness
you completely withheld clothing from the naked and sustenance from
those without food. Though in my name the weary and the sick begged
water for themselves in torment for a drink, devoid of means and consumed
with thirst, you shamelessly withheld it from them. You did not visit
those in grief nor speak to them a friendly word of consolation, so
that they might attain in heart to a happier state of mind. All that
you did to me, the King of heaven, by way of slight; for which you
shall cruelly endure torment to existence infinite, and suffer banishment
with the devils.' |
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| 1515 |
Then
over all those there, over that doomed people, the Governor of victories
himself will issue forth the appalling sentence fraught with pain;
to the legion of those sinful souls he will say: |
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