The Certainty and Suddenness of Death

It is a most sorrowful message that I have come to bring you this morning, my honoured hearers; and I confess to you that not without extreme difficulty have I brought myself to it, so grievous is it to me that I must sadden you so deeply on the very first morning on which I set eyes upon you, or you come to know me. The mere thought of what I have to tell you freezes the blood in my veins for horror. Yet what would it profit to keep silence? what would it avail to disguise it? I will speak it out. Every one of us gathered here—young or old, master or servant, noble or lowly—every one of us must at the last die: “It is appointed unto men once to die.”¹ Ah me, what do I see? Is there not one among you who starts at a warning so formidable? not one who changes colour? not one whose countenance falls? On the contrary, I see full well that in your hearts you are already half-laughing at me, as at a man who comes to cry up for news a warning grown stale with much repeating. And who is there—so you tell me—who does not know by this time that we all must die? “What man is he that shall live, and not see death?”² This we hear without ceasing from so many pulpits; this we read without ceasing upon so many gravestones; this so many corpses, silent though they be, cry out to us without ceasing: we know it. You know it? How can that be? Tell me. And are you not the very men who but yesterday went ranging through the city in such festivity—this one in the semblance of a lover, that one of a madman, another of a parasite? Are you not the ones who danced with such spirit at the revels, who steeped yourselves so deeply in your carousing, who gave yourselves up so unrestrainedly to the manners of a mad heathenism? It was you, surely, who sat so gaily at the plays; you who spoke so brazenly from the boxes. Answer me: are you not the ones who, all in high spirits, spent this very night before the holy Ashes in games, in gaming, in carousals, in gossip, in songs, in serenades, in love-affairs—and, please God, not perhaps in pastimes more unseemly still? And you, while you busy yourselves with such things, know for a certainty that you have still to die? O blindness! O folly! O frenzy! O perversity! I had supposed I was bringing with me a motive there was no withstanding, one that would move you all to penance and to tears, merely by proclaiming to you your death; and so, like a herald of God, I had made my way here through fog and rain and wind, through marsh and snow, through torrent and frost, easing every labour with the thought: Surely I shall gain some soul by putting sinners in mind of their mortality. But alas for me! Too bitterly have my hopes been cheated; for you, in the teeth of so mighty a motive to amend, have busied yourselves the rather with sinning still more—not ashamed, I had almost said, to behave like so many greedy, undisciplined sheep, that then most of all take their fill of good pasture, feeding over every slope and dancing across every meadow, at the very moment they perceive the storm already looming over them.

What, then, am I to do on my side? Am I to give way? Am I to draw back? Am I to leave you in the embrace of sin? No—and as surely as God shall favour my purpose, so much the more do I trust to win you. Tell me, then: do you grant me at least that you are compounded of the frailest dust? Is it not so? You know it? You grasp it? You confess it, without another’s needing to weary himself by repeating it to you: “Remember, man, remember that thou art dust”? This is the very thing I wanted. It will now be my part to prove to you how great is the presumption of those who, this once granted, yet live a single moment in mortal sin. And yet—presumption, did I call it? Audacity, audacity, is what I ought to have called it; or rather, senseless rashness, for as such I undertake to prove it to you.

You Angels, who keep guard at the side of these hearers of mine, so worthy of honour; you Saints, who lie buried beneath the altars of this basilica, so majestic in your presence: from this hour I call upon you as a suppliant, for every time that I shall climb into this pulpit, to obtain for my words that weight and that force which they can never have from my tongue. And you above all, O great Virgin, who of the divine Word can in truth be named the Mother; you who, athirst for Him, did conceive Him by great blessing within your womb; you who, fruitful of Him, did bring Him forth into the light for the common good; and you who, from hidden and imperceptible as He was, did render Him known and approachable, even to the senses: grant that I may handle Him each day with such reverence that I never sully Him with the profaneness of hollow phrases, never dishonour Him with the shame of idle jests, never distort Him with the falseness of wrested meanings, but pour Him, unmixed, into the hearts of my hearers, even as He came forth from the secret places of your womb.

I come unfurnished with any other support than a most living trust in your favour. Do you, then, enlighten my mind; do you guide my tongue; do you govern my every gesture; and weigh all my speech in such a manner that it may redound to the praise and glory of God, may serve for the edification and profit of my neighbour, and may win me an increase of merit—rather than turn into matter for my own condemnation.

II. By nature, man is generally more inclined to fear in great perils than disposed to make himself secure. Hence you see that in the ship of Jonas, the untractable prophet, one man alone could sleep tranquilly amid the crash of the thunders and the fury of the whirlwinds. All the rest either cried out, or groaned, or took counsel, or laboured to deliver themselves from the imminent shipwreck. “For man” (as St. Thomas lays it down) “is more inclined to the fear whereby he flees from evils, than to the boldness whereby he assails them.”³ But this principle holds true only of temporal perils, which are less terrible and less dreadful—not of the eternal peril, which is by so much the more beyond remedy and the more to be feared. In this one alone (who would believe it?) are men commonly inclined to trust: they not only fail to fear it, they despise it; they not only fail to flee it, they go to meet it. And what think you, my beloved sinners, of your own condition? You know already that in the very instant in which you consummated your crime—whether by thought, or by word, or by deed—there was at once thundered against you a sentence, terrible, of eternal condemnation. Nor need any great labour be spent to carry it into effect. Already those flames are burning, unquenchable, which are to be your bed for all eternity: “A fire is kindled in my wrath,” God says, “it shall burn upon you.”⁴ Already the torments are prepared; already the tormentors stand ready. What, then, is wanting? Only that there be severed the single thread which holds you suspended, as it were, over the mouth of an abyss so deep: “over the pit of the abyss.” And through all this you feel no fear at all, but can sit down to supper with relish, can converse, can make merry, and then go and take your rest in the soundest of slumbers? If this be not intolerable rashness, tell me—what shall be? True, the thread of life that now sustains you might yet be strong and durable; but it might just as well be worn and all but spent. Why, then, in an equal uncertainty, will you rather cleave to the opinion that emboldens you to trust at so great a risk, than to the one that exhorts you to fear for so great a gain?

III. And yet I erred too far in saying, in an equal uncertainty. What thing is there that can promise you a single moment of life for certain? Not the oriental bezoars, not the powdered pearls, not the drinkable gold, not the jewelled cordials—remedies invented, in truth, by vanity, that not even dying might be without its luxury. On the other side, how many are the things that can take life from you at any moment! The ancients commonly flattered themselves that their Fates were no more than three. But Seneca did not so flatter himself; to him they seemed rather beyond number: “There is no man but has it in his power to take the life of a man.”⁵ Consider how many creatures there are in the universe: every one of them, so to speak, is a Fate with the steel in hand—all of them fitted, all of them able, to deal us death. And who does not know that, in order to die, we need not even await it from without? Within us lies enough to slay us. As iron breeds its own rust, as wood breeds its own worm, as cloth breeds its own moth, so does man breed his own death within his breast, and never perceives it—so truly that a famous captain of the last age, called Caldora⁶, having attained (by rare fortune, amid so many battles) the age of seventy-five, and walking merrily through the camp, and glorying that he was still as sound, as lively, as vigorous as he had been at twenty-five, ended in a single instant both his boasting and his life. For, struck suddenly by a fit of most violent apoplexy that was even then in the act of overwhelming him, and dying within the hour, he showed how ill-informed every man ever is of what passes in his own inmost self. But if this be so, how then, in a state of uncertainty so appalling as this, have you the daring, my hearers, to live a single moment in mortal sin? Is this the care you take of your soul? this the esteem you have for your last end? this your solicitude for your own happiness—to know yourselves set amid perils so grave, and yet not to be startled? Some greatly marvel that an Elias, pursued by a mighty queen, could lay himself down in the open field and sleep so composedly: “He cast himself down, and slept.”⁷ But I marvel not. Was he not, after all, most certainly a saint? He could sleep. My wonder is to see a Saul sleep, a Holofernes sleep, a Sisara sleep—though they sleep beneath their pavilions. And what shall become of them, if they be surprised there by the man who lies in wait? Would to Heaven their example were not renewed all day long among Christians! Countless are they who go to their bed in mortal sin, without a thought for the many dreadful perils that may continually hang over them—from an impetuous rush of blood, from a choking catarrh, from a stoppage of the heart, from one single venomous little creature that may sting them. And these can bring themselves to close an eye, though but for a moment? O boundless folly! O measureless stupidity! There are found in Africa certain most savage beasts, called oryxes, resembling wild bulls, which so trust in themselves that they fall asleep within the very nets of the hunters; and though on every side nothing be heard but neighing horses and baying dogs, yet they will not rouse themselves at all to seek escape in time from the toils. Is not this, in truth, an astonishing recklessness? And yet such precisely, it seems to me, is the recklessness of sinners. Seems, did I say? It is certain, it is certain. Hear it from Isaias: “They have slept at the head of every way, as an oryx caught in a snare, full of the indignation of the Lord.”⁸ Could it be uttered more sublimely? Those who—already filled with iniquity, “full of the indignation of the Lord”—keep their evil practices ever at their side; who will not restore that property; who will not give back that good name; who brood over that hidden hatred in their heart: they know full well that they lie, in consequence, within the high snares of hell. And what though they know it? Do they rouse themselves, take alarm, labour to come forth quickly? Judge for yourselves. Full often they sleep therein, after the manner of so many oryxes: “They have slept as an oryx caught in a snare.” O horrible thing! “They have slept as an oryx caught in a snare.” And is it possible that any should come to such a false security? Who makes you certain, you wretched souls, that a most universal hunt of every creature has not already been proclaimed against you—that the horses are not loosed, the dogs loosed? And you sleep—and sleep in any place, without misgiving, “at the head of every way”? And you sleep (can more be said?) at times like a Samson, even in the arms of harlots? “You sleep in beds of ivory, and are wanton.”⁹

IV. And here you must consider, my hearers, that if none of us can ever promise himself a single moment of life (so jealously has God, among all His other dominions, chosen to reserve to Himself this one of time), far less can he promise it to himself who lives in sin. Sin brought death into the world—who does not know it? “By sin, death.”¹⁰ And therefore sin has ever retained this power, truly most terrible, of hastening death, of speeding it, of making it arrive long before its due. Numberless are the places in the Scriptures in which this truth is confirmed to us: “Be not over wicked”¹¹—thus precisely does Ecclesiastes speak. Give not yourself over a prey to iniquity; live not, as you live, with such liberty, with such licence; make not, as the saying is, of every weed one bundle: “Be not over wicked.” And for what cause? “Lest thou die before thy time.” That you may not have to die before your time. “The wicked man shall perish before his days be fulfilled”¹²—so too does Job reason. “The wicked are taken away before their time”¹³—so too is it repeated in Job. “He that hateth reproof, his life shall be shortened”¹⁴—so too does Ecclesiasticus affirm; and Solomon in his Proverbs declared openly that the years of the wicked should be cut in half: “The years of the wicked shall be shortened,”¹⁵ the most of them falling like wild grapes, rotten before they ripen, or like cockle, withered before it grows. Hear what befell the wicked Emperor Anastasius. One night he lay asleep, tormented by the accustomed torches of his Furies, which harassed him the more importunately in sleep, now with hideous shadows, now with terrifying thoughts. When there appeared to him a figure of most terrible aspect, with a pen in his right hand and a book in his left: “Behold,” said he, “how for thy impiety I blot out fourteen years of thy life.”¹⁶ At these words the wretched prince awoke, astonished and full of anguish, not knowing whether to fear it as a vision or to laugh it off as a dream. A few days after, the sky, clear as it had been, began to grow overcast, then to flash, and to rumble, and to hurl its bolts. Anastasius was seized with the deepest horror; and, as though he foreboded in his soul that he was the one for whom so great a tempest was stirred up in heaven, he set himself to run through his palace like a second Cain, fleeing now from one hall into another, now from one chamber into another. But all in vain. On a sudden a ruinous thunderbolt burst forth, and went straight to seek him out in a hidden closet, where he lay cowering like a rabbit in its burrow, and there it slew him—giving plainly to understand that there is no laurel, I say not royal, but not so much as imperial, that can save a wicked head from the lightnings. But you, meanwhile—what do you say? Does it not seem true to you that the years of the wicked must be cut in half? “The years of the wicked shall be shortened.” Ah, do not trust to it, my hearers, do not trust to it! For though you see death mounted upon a horse spent, wan, and lean—such as that on which it appeared in the deserts of Patmos—yet I can tell you that, when it has the spur besides, it knows well how to make that horse run. And do you know what the spur is? Sin: “For the sting of death is sin,”¹⁷ so Paul cries. “For the sting of death is sin.” Some—ah, how deceived!—give themselves to believe that this spur is rather penance; and so, no sooner do they see a companion withdraw, recollect himself, give himself somewhat to the spiritual life, than at once they make a show of pitying him. “Oh, you poor simpleton,” they say, “do you not see that you would be the death of yourself?” Simpleton? Simpleton? Forgive me if I chide you: the veriest simpletons are you, who have not yet learned to recognize the sting of death. It is not fasting that makes death come so swiftly. Rather, I find it promised by Ecclesiasticus that “He that is temperate shall prolong his life.”¹⁸ It is not the disciplines, not the silences, not the psalm-singing, not the beds full hard. Did we say so, there would rise at once from his tomb the great Romuald—a most austere penitent of a hundred years—and, in wrath, would give us the lie; a Jerome would give us the lie, an Antony, an Arsenius, and a whole host of the most mortified hermits, who outlived any pampered Lucullus. No—the sting of death is sin: this it behoves us to understand: “For the sting of death is sin.” It is those savage blasphemies that some, with the utmost audacity, still let escape their lips; it is thefts, it is frauds, it is the oppression of the wronged poor, it is sacrilegious confessions, it is sacrilegious communions, it is the many horrid ingratitudes we practise toward Him who gave us life—since it is entirely conformable to all good laws to strip of his fief, to strip of his lease, whoever refuses the homage he owes his sovereign.¹⁹

V. And oh, did the straits of time but permit me, how gladly would I show you, by the unbroken testimony of every age, how frequent it is among the wicked to perish by deaths not only untimely, as was but now said, but likewise the most sudden, the most unlooked-for, that can ever be found. But to confine ourselves to the divine Scriptures: take them, all that they are, and examine them. You will find that, of those just men whose salvation cannot be called in doubt, not one, if I mistake not, is known ever to have failed by a chance mishap—save the sons of the most patient Job, crushed beneath the sudden ruins of that house which was changed all at once into their sepulchre. And even to these—when did so great a disaster befall them? While they sat at a merry banquet: the very hour in which their wise father had ever feared for them some stain, knowing well that for the young, amid feasting, nothing is easier than to defile themselves. For the rest, if you look to the personages of a more signal holiness—an Abraham, an Aaron, an Isaac, a Jacob, a Joseph, a Josue, a Samuel, a Moses, a Mathathias, a Tobias, and others like them—you will find that they died at their ease in their beds, leaving wholesome counsels, some to their children, some to their peoples. But if, on the contrary, you will give the wicked even a single glance in passing—oh, how you will see them snatched away in misery: some by the waters, some by the flames, some by wild beasts, and some by a hundred other strange manners of death, the more horrible for being the less awaited! “How are they brought to desolation!” cried the Psalmist, terrified as he beheld them; “they have suddenly ceased to be: they have perished by reason of their iniquity.”²⁰ Suddenly died proud Pharao, with all his hosts, swallowed in the gulfs of the Red Sea. Suddenly died those gluttons who sighed after the fleshpots of Egypt. Suddenly died those bold men who spoke ill of the promised land. And suddenly died others beyond number in the Scriptures, who all—as they made the same end and “suddenly ceased to be”—you will likewise find were all guilty of some like crime: “they have perished by reason of their iniquity.” Now what would I infer from this, my hearers—that the wicked alone die by a death as horrible as this which is called sudden? Not at all, not at all. That were a most manifest error; for God wills that the very saints should here sometimes lie subject to the pains proper to the wicked—whether to purify them, or to prove them, or that men be not given to believe that in the end every recompense is paid upon earth. What I do say is that, if we must credit the plain testimony of the Scriptures, such a sudden end is far more frequent among sinners than among the just. Hear from Solomon words most terrible: “The man that with a stiff neck despiseth him that reproveth him, shall suddenly be destroyed.”²¹ Nor are natural reasons wanting to confirm it. For sinners often procure themselves such a death: by the gluttony of the carousals with which they load the belly; by the wildness of the impurities in which they squander their strength; by the licence of the slanders by which they earn themselves enemies; by the brawls of gaming, the rivalries of love-affairs, the rashness of feuds, the gnawing of envy, the anxieties of ambition, and other such disorders—from all of which every just man lives far removed, and of whom it may well be said with the Apostle that all things turn to good: “All things work together unto good”²²; while his very mortification serves him, more than once, to keep death afar. However that may be, do you know how God proceeds with men in this matter? Precisely as one deals with the timber of a wood. When one goes to cut some timber to put to use—to make of it a chest, to fashion a cabinet, to carve a fair statue—one goes with a hundred precautions, and takes care that it be sound, be seasoned, and above all be felled at its own proper time, which is that of the waning moon. But not so when one goes to cut wood only for burning. Then one goes at any season whatever. Hardened sinners—what kind of wood are they? Wood to be cast upon the fire. Who does not know it? “They shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire.”²³ Therefore are they hewn at any hour, without regard. What need of so many precautions, so many circumspections? “There is no regard to their death.”²⁴ No heed is taken.

VI. Now if it be yet more probable for all of you, my beloved sinners, to perish by an end so wretched—one which, when you least expect it, may overtake you either in the deepest of your sleep, or in the fairest of the game, or in the merriest of some other of your pleasant pastimes—then, I pray you, confess it to me again: is it not senseless rashness to live a single moment in mortal sin? What pledge have you, what security, what warrant, that it befall not you likewise as so many, who “spend their days in wealth,” aggravating their sin by making light of it, and “in a moment go down to hell”²⁵—so swiftly does the great weight that drags them down bring them to ruin? Has God, by some special privilege, revealed to you the hour of your death? Or has He at least promised to send it you, not as a thief that moves in silence lest he wake you, but as a courier that sounds his horn afar, that you may open to him? What is it—what is it—that makes you so overweening? “Why is he lifted up as though secure,” I will say to you, dismayed, with St. Gregory, “whose life is held under the penalty of uncertainty?” The Ninivites no sooner heard that their city was to be overthrown within forty days than at once “they did a penance full of terrors”²⁶: at once they clothed themselves in sackcloth, at once they strewed themselves with ashes; nor did they wait for the edicts of their prince—who, as it commonly happens, was the last to learn tidings so grievous, whether because he gave little access, or gave little heart, or because everyone, well-nigh stupefied, minded nothing but his own deliverance. Now what could have caused so great a haste, my hearers? Did they not know for certain that they had still a full forty days, “Yet forty days”²⁷? Why, then, did they not say, “Let us wait a little”? To appease God, many hours are not required; a single moment suffices. An act of contrition, near the dawn of the fortieth day, will save us. So might they certainly have said, and gone on eating if they were at table, and finished the game if they were at play. But suppose they had done so—what judgment would you make of it? Would they not have been bold, presumptuous, defiant, and unworthy of that pardon which they in fact received through their promptness? But how much worse, my hearers, is our own case? The Ninivites could at least, all of them, count upon a full forty days, granted them as a peremptory term for penance. And therefore, where their security was the greater, their rashness would have been the less, had they persisted yet an hour longer in their sins. But you are not even sure of so much. No, says Christ: “You know not when the time is.”²⁸ The destruction of your body might be not only near, but imminent. It might befall in this very week now running, in this very morning, in this very moment—for Death goes ever armed with sword and with bow: “He hath brandished his sword, he hath bent his bow.”²⁹ With the sword it strikes the old, who can no longer defend themselves; it strikes the delicate, it strikes the weak: with the bow, the young, who proudly trust in flight. How, then, will you be able to justify your rashness, if you let any time whatever, however little, slip uselessly away? What do you say? What answer do you make? How do you excuse, in a peril so great, your daring? Never could the fowler hold the falcon on his fist with such ease and such assurance, had he not first sealed its eyes. And precisely this has the devil done with you. He has closed your eyes, my hearers, he has closed your eyes; and therefore does with you whatever he will.

VII. One only escape do I see that might yet remain to you, and it would be to say: that you truly cannot know you have longer to live, but that you may nevertheless hope it; that, notwithstanding all the perils we have reckoned, many even of sinners live on, and grow fat, and grow old, and die peacefully in their senses; and that you would therefore rather hope for a like lot than fear the contrary misery. But softly, I pray you—for if you spoke thus, you would give me to understand that you had wholly forgotten the point of which we treat. You know well that we treat of the soul, is it not so? Of a soul which is yours—or rather, which is you; of a soul which is the only one you have; of a soul which is immortal; of a soul which can never be recovered. And of this very soul do you reason with so little concern? Ah, remember, remember, I will say to you with St. John Chrysostom, remember that you are speaking of a soul. And does it seem to you a thing so cheap that it may be committed into the hand of chance? It might fall out for you happily—come, be it granted. But if it fell not out (tell me, my hearers), if it fell not out? That you should not always put yourselves in surety in other human interests, I am content. I forgive you that you hazard your goods, that you venture your good name, that you often even set your health at stake—for all these are like merchandise which, once cast into the sea through a resolution too hasty, may be fished up again after the shipwreck. But the soul? Ah, this is not to be prized so lightly; for where the loss, once made, has no repair, who does not see that it is the height of rashness not to proceed with the height of caution?

VIII. And yet—O stupidity!—is there any interest in which caution is not used far greater than in the eternal one? The Emperor Hadrian, because he had learned of an oracle that to the rulers of Rome it would be fatal to cross the Euphrates, rendered up to the Persians of his own accord all Armenia, all Assyria, all Mesopotamia (already conquered by Trajan), only to make himself sure that he should never, upon any event whatever, have to pass those ill-omened waters; and upon their banks he set the boundaries of the Empire.³⁰ But why stand here begging illustrious instances? Do you not know, of your own selves, with what sure rules you guide yourselves in every little private affair of your household? If you fall sick, you do not say: “Let us forbear to call the physician; perhaps I shall recover without medicine.” If you go to the war, you do not say: “Let us forbear to make a will; perhaps I shall return in health.” When you lend a friend a good sum of money, you do not trust so readily; but what do you do? You do as Tobias, who, though he knew Gabelus for a man upright, God-fearing, and faithful, forbore not to require of him an authentic bond: “He gave the weight of the silver under a bond.”³¹ To sow, you choose the fittest days; to plead, you seek the most practised advocates; to traffic, you elect the most trusted correspondents; in a word, there is no business in which you would, as they say, commit yourself to hazard, while you are able to proceed with certainty. Why, then, into the hand of chance will you come to put the business the greatest of all, which is that of eternity; and, being able to repent now, will you say: No—perhaps I shall yet have time to do it hereafter? Ah, Christians, believe me, I cannot conceive how this comes to pass; and I am constrained, with St. John Chrysostom, to exclaim, beside myself for astonishment: “Do you, then, commit yourself to uncertain events? Do you, then, commit yourself to uncertain events?”³² You would not trust to the uncertainty of chance a lawsuit of yours, a deposit of yours, the least little interest of yours—and yet to it you confide your soul? Be astonished, O heavens; be confounded, O you powers on high, to hear of a rashness so great—for I am certain that a greater cannot be found in all the world: “Who hath heard such horrible things, as the virgin of Israel hath done in excess?”³³

IX. And yet who does not see that this very rashness would be more supportable, were it run for some notable gain? It was a principle most received in all human affairs, that of Appian: that “it is the height of madness to undergo a huge peril for slight things.”³⁴ A great peril ought never to be chosen for a slight gain; for that were even as to fish with a hook of gold, which, being lost, brings so great a loss that it cannot be recompensed by the prey it promises. Yet if a husbandman risk many bushels of grain in the sowing, and a banker venture some sum of money in his exchanges, and a suitor consume a good part of his revenues in fees, each one knows why: because far more is that which he hopes than that which he risks. And however far you turn back the ancient annals, you will never find a pilot so reckless as to have run to the remote Indies—wrestling with the south winds, doing battle with the north—only to bring back on his ship, instead of a golden fleece, sand or dung. But you, Christians—what do you do? For what gain do you live in so great a hazard of losing yourselves eternally? for what profit? Does it seem to you that, set in the balance, the good outweighs which, living in sin, you draw, over the evil that would come to you, should you die in sin? If, in your present state as sinners, you do not die, you contrive—I grant it—to enjoy that lustful pleasure, to heap up that money, to acquire that dignity, to attain that revenge. But if you die? If you die, it is a matter of going straightway down into the deep, to pay for so brief a laugh with an infinite mourning of all the ages. And does the good seem to you comparable, which living you enjoy, to the evil which, dying there, you would incur? Ah, unjust men! Ah, unreasonable men! “The sons of men are liars in the balances.”³⁵ How can it be that, again and again, a temporal good—fleeting, frivolous, empty—should outweigh with you an eternal evil? There shall not be found, in the house of any huckster, scales that could ever tell lies so gross, unless one make them tell them by main force. Therefore it is not “the balance false in the sons of men,” but “the sons of men liars in the balances”; because it is you who give your own understanding the down-weight, as it pleases you, by rebelling against every clearest light of reason: “They themselves have been rebellious to the light.”³⁶

X. By the bowels of Jesus, be willing no longer to deceive yourselves: “Deceive not your own souls.”³⁷ Rouse yourselves, bethink yourselves; and, beginning from this very hour to re-enter within your own heart, consider a little what fruit you draw from your state. If the gain be greater than the risk, then hold for nothing all that I have told you. But if it be, beyond comparison, the less—then have pity, I pray you, pity upon your souls. Would you have to weep one day, and to say then, with Jeremias all afflicted: “My enemies have chased me and caught me like a bird, without cause”³⁸? Oh, what a bitterness would that be! what an anguish! what a heartbreak! Here the prophet speaks, by inspiration, in the person of a sinner, and is confounded at having borne himself like a bird that lets itself be foully lured by the fowlers—and for what? for nothing, for nothing, “without cause,” for a worthless grain of millet. “My enemies have chased me and caught me like a bird, without cause.” And would you too be of that number? Ah, Christians! And what, after all, are all the goods of earth, set against not only the least, but the very least, of the eternal evils to which your sinning exposes you? A grain of millet? No—not even so much. And for so little are you content to go on fluttering about so many terrible ensnarers of yours, at the gravest risk of being taken for all the ages, of losing yourselves, of perishing?³⁹ “O most wicked presumption, whence wast thou created?”—so will I say, with Ecclesiasticus. I have not feeling enough to detest a rashness so strange. I can only remain here, as it were stupefied, to marvel at it.

SECONDA PARTE

XI. If in a man—who, like dust, may easily be scattered at every breath—it be the height of rashness, as we have seen, to live even one moment in mortal sin, what can you answer me this morning in your own favour, you who in such sin live, not the moments, but the days, but the weeks, but the months, but whole years⁴⁰, “for days innumerable”? Do you act with prudence? do you proceed with wisdom? What likelihood is left you of not being damned⁴¹? “No man can safely offer himself so often to perils so frequent,” said Seneca. And why? “What the chance often passes over, it sometimes finds.” To cross the trapdoor once and not fall in; to alight once upon the birdlime and not stick fast; to sip the poison once and not perish—that is no great matter. Whether by the protection of Heaven or the turn of the lot, now and again it happens. But that he should not perish who will glut himself with poison as with water; that he should not stick fast who will fling himself upon the birdlime as upon flowers; that he should not fall who will go dancing upon the trapdoors as upon the firmest floors—where will you show it me? If, then, it be so senseless a rashness to expose oneself even once to the peril of being damned, and to expose oneself for a single moment, what shall it be to abide there so long a time—so that far more, in your year, are those days in which you are plainly subject to a like peril than those others in which you are probably secure from it?

XII. It is a curiosity most common among Christians, to ask whether in the Church there be more of those who die and are saved, or more of those who plunge into perdition. It falls not to me now to enter as arbiter into so great a suit; and if it did, I would incline the more willingly to the kinder side, and would say that greater, among Catholics, is the number of the elect than of the damned. But although many concur in this opinion, I know not whether you will find so much as one—whether among the modern theologians or the ancient—who will tell you that the greater part of habitual sinners is saved. Oh, this, no. St. Gregory, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome—the four chief doctors of Holy Church—all hold the contrary with one accord; and the precise words of St. Jerome, which have seemed to me the most telling, are these: “Scarcely one out of a hundred thousand men, whose life has always been evil, deserves to obtain indulgence from God.”⁴² And let none marvel at it: for a man dies, in general, even as he has lived. When a tree is felled, on which side does it fall? On that whereto it leans. If it lean to the right, it falls to the right; if to the left, to the left. Those evil-livers ever lean to the left—and then, once felled, do they claim to fall to the right, as the good do? For that, a grace would need to arise in their favour at that very point, powerful enough to drive them back, like a most furious wind, with prodigious force, to the opposite side. But who is ever made worthy of such a grace? “Scarcely one out of a hundred thousand”—out of a hundred thousand, with great ado, one alone. How then, knowing yourselves in a state from which it may be inferred, with far greater likelihood, that you belong to the damned rather than to the elect, do you not commit an insane rashness in persisting there yet longer? Even though the greater number of sinners like you were to be saved, and the fewer to perish, you ought nonetheless to fear without ceasing lest you be, by chance, among these wretches. What, then, shall it be, when the greater number are to perish, and the fewer to be saved? Arnulf, Count of Flanders, was once tormented by the most acute pains of the stone. His physicians and his surgeons debated of proceeding to the cutting. But he would first see the proof of it in some other body. There were therefore sought out all in his State who suffered of his malady, and twenty were found. They were opened by the same surgeons, treated by the same physicians, and so happily that of the twenty there died but one. They returned, then, all joyful, to the Count, heartening him to the cutting. But he, when he heard that it had yet failed in one, instead of taking heart, turned pale. “And who among you,” he answered them, “assures me that the lot of this wretched man falls not to me?” And so, more fearful for the death of one than hopeful for the recovery of nineteen, he never suffered himself to be put to such a trial. Now imagine that, of the twenty patients who were cut, it had not been nineteen who were healed and one only who died, but nineteen who died and one only who was healed—what would the prudent prince have answered then? How would he have driven far from him those bold surgeons, those reckless physicians? Would he ever have borne to expose himself to the cutting, on the hope that he should be that one so fortunate? Ah, my dear Christians, that very rashness which, in the cure of the body, would seem so intolerable, is precisely the one you commit—but in the governance of the soul. St. Jerome affirms that not of twenty, nor of thirty, but of a hundred thousand habitual sinners scarcely one is saved: “Scarcely one out of a hundred thousand.” And is it possible that you should be more emboldened by the lot of the one than fearful for the misfortune of the ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine? There were ten brethren who went down to Joseph in Egypt for sustenance; and yet, when they heard that one of them was to remain there a prisoner, the anguish in their hearts was universal. There were twelve disciples whom Christ bade to table in Jerusalem before His death; and yet, when they heard that one of them was to be turned into His betrayer, the paleness on their faces was common to all. And to know that the far greater number of those who live as you do must be damned—does this bring you no fear at all? Behold, then, verified of the sinner that which is read in Job: “God hath given him place for penance, and he abuseth it unto pride.”⁴³ Oh, what pride! what pride!—to hope to be that one most fortunate soul who is saved amid so great a slaughter! that one so privileged, so protected, whom all Paradise might one day point out with the finger, as a prodigy! “As one that hath escaped”—these are the very words of Ecclesiasticus—“as one that hath escaped in the day of battle”;⁴⁴ from what? from a lofty, universal, general rout. Let me run to the feet of this Christ, and here pour out my heart.

XIII. My dear Jesus, from where comes so great an audacity in human hearts? Who has made them so ill-advised? Is the delight they take in offending You perhaps so great that no loss of their own weighs with them at all, so they may but displease You? Oh, if I but knew what means I should at least employ here, this Lent, to humble them, to soften them, to render them all Yours! Would You that I entreat them in all patience⁴⁵? I will entreat them. Would You that I admonish them? I will admonish them. Would You that I terrify them? I will terrify them. Would You that I, stern, even rebuke them, and rebuke them sharply⁴⁶? I will rebuke them. I am here for You. Command, and I will do all: “All things, whatsoever thou shalt command me, I will speak”— everything, everything.⁴⁷ I ask no acclamations, I ask no applause; I ask only to please You. Who knows whether this may be, for me, the last Lent of my life? Behold, then, that with the ashes upon my head I would go crying aloud: Penance, O my people, penance! No more let there be delay in scouring away so many obscenities. No more let there be delay in tearing out so many hatreds. No more let there be delay in weeping bitterly over every wicked habit. Will you not do it? Then to those ashes—to those ashes I appeal, which we bear upon our heads. Here they are: let us uncover them, let us show them forth. Do I not see them, this morning, scattered alike upon the hoary locks and upon the golden? To them, then, I refer me: let them speak, let them pronounce sentence, whether there can be a rashness to equal this—to confess oneself mortal at every moment, and yet dare to trust to live some moment in mortal sin.

Synopsis

An editorial aid to the reader — not part of Segneri’s sermon.

Theme — “Remember, man, that you are dust” (Ash Wednesday): the senseless audacity of living even one moment in mortal sin, when death is certain and its hour wholly unknown.

• §I — a sorrowful first message: every one of us must die; yet the carnival crowd, who know it, revel on — closing with the invocation to the Virgin.
• §II — man dreads temporal perils but not the eternal one — Jonas alone asleep in the foundering ship; over the sinner hangs the fire, held by a single thread.
• §III — no cordial can promise one moment of life (bezoars, powdered pearls, drinkable gold).
• §IV — God has reserved time to Himself alone; you cannot promise yourself the next instant.
• §V — how frequent among the wicked are sudden, untimely deaths.
• §VI — for most of you it is more probable to perish in sin than to escape — struck in sleep, at the game, unlooked-for.
• §VII — the one escape left: you may still hope to live longer, as many do.
• §VIII — yet men take vast precaution in trifles and none in this — the Emperor Hadrian and the Euphrates oracle.
• §IX — the rashness would be bearable if run for gain; Appian — “the height of madness to undergo a huge peril for nothing.”
• §X — “Deceive not your own souls”: re-enter your heart; what fruit have you drawn from sin?
• §XI — the summit of rashness: dust-man, scattered at a breath, living one moment in mortal sin.
• §XII — the common curiosity — are more saved or damned? — turned home upon yourself.
• §XIII — the closing cry to Jesus: from which such audacity in human hearts?