Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ 3.14

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.

4. What is all flesh in Your sight? For how shall the clay boast against Him that fashioned it? How can he be lifted up in vain speech whose heart is subjected in truth to God? The whole world shall not lift him up whom Truth has subdued; nor shall he be moved by the mouth of all who praise him, who has placed all his hope in God. For they themselves who speak, behold, they are all nothing; for they shall cease with the sound of their words, but the truth of the Lord endures for ever.

IMAGE: William Blake, The Casting of the Rebel Angels into Hell (1808)