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The Imitation of Christ
Thomas à Kempis
The Fourteenth Chapter
CONSIDER THE HIDDEN JUDGMENTS OF GOD LEST YOU BECOME PROUD OF YOUR OWN GOOD
DEEDS
THE DISCIPLE
YOU thunder forth Your judgments over me, Lord. You shake all my bones with fear
and trembling, and my soul is very much afraid. I stand in awe as I consider
that the heavens are not pure in Your sight. If You found wickedness in the
angels and did not spare them, what will become of me? Stars have fallen from
heaven, and I -- I who am but dust -- how can I be presumptuous? They whose
deeds seemed worthy of praise have fallen into the depths, and I have seen those
who ate the bread of angels delighting themselves with the husks of swine.
There is no holiness, then, if You withdraw Your hand, Lord. There is no wisdom
if You cease to guide, no courage if You cease to defend. No chastity is secure
if You do not guard it. Our vigilance avails nothing if Your holy watchfulness
does not protect us. Left to ourselves we sink and perish, but visited by You we
are lifted up and live. We are truly unstable, but You make us strong. We grow
lukewarm, but You inflame us. Oh, how humbly and lowly should I consider myself!
How very little should I esteem anything that seems good in me! How profoundly
should I submit to Your unfathomable judgments, Lord, where I find myself to be
but nothing!
O immeasurable weight! O impassable sea, where I find myself to be nothing but
bare nothingness! Where, then, is glory's hiding place? Where can there be any
trust in my own virtue? All vainglory is swallowed up in the depths of Your
judgments upon me.
What is all flesh in Your sight? Shall the clay glory against Him that formed
it? How can he whose heart is truly subject to God be lifted up by vainglory?
The whole world will not make him proud whom truth has subjected to itself. Nor
shall he who has placed all his hope in God be moved by the tongues of
flatterers. For behold, even they who speak are nothing; they will pass away
with the sound of their words, but the truth of the Lord remains forever.
