Of meditation upon the hidden judgments of God, that we may not
be lifted up because of our well-doing
1. You send forth Your judgments against me, O Lord, and shake
all my bones with fear and trembling, and my soul trembles
exceedingly. I stand astonished, and remember that the heavens
are not clean in your sight. If You charge Your angels
with folly, and did spare them not, how shall it be unto me?
Stars have fallen from heaven, and what shall I dare who am
but dust? They whose works seemed to be praiseworthy, fell into
the lowest depths, and they who did eat Angels' food, them have I
seen delighted with the husks that the swine do eat.
2. There is therefore no holiness, if You O Lord, withdraw Your
hand. No wisdom profits, if You leave off to guide the helm.
No strength avails, if You cease to preserve. No purity is
secure, if You protect it not. No self-keeping avails, if Your
holy watching is not there. For when we are left alone we are
swallowed up and perish, but when we are visited, we are raised
up, and we live. For indeed we are unstable, but are made strong
through You; we grow cold, but are rekindled by You.
3. Oh, how humbly and abjectly must I reckon of myself, how must
I weigh it as nothing, if I seem to have nothing good! Oh, how
profoundly ought I to submit myself to Your unfathomable
judgments, O Lord, when I find myself nothing else save nothing,
and again nothing! Oh weight unmeasurable, oh ocean which cannot
be crossed over, where I find nothing of myself save nothing
altogether! Where, then, is the hiding-place of glory, where is the
confidence begotten of virtue? All vain-glory is swallowed up in
the depths of Your judgments against me.
IMAGE: William Blake, The Casting of the Rebel Angels into Hell (1808)
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