2. But particularly, if I am a religious man, or desire to be perfect, I may draw from hence great motives to be so in excellence, striving to make my life a continual meditation and imitation of death, in three things proper to this state. —
i. In being stripped of all these things to which perfect poverty obliges me: so that as a dead man loses the dominion of all his riches, which pass to his heirs or to the poor, he not feeling that they leave, him the worst clothing, or inter him in some contemptible place; so I will not content myself with leaving all that I possessed, and giving to the poor, to follow Jesus naked; but I will also bear willingly the want of things necessary, and will rather choose that they give me the worst, either of apparel, bedding, lodging or house, without murmuring at it any more than a man that is dead; for if " naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall return thither," [1] it is no great matter to live naked in this manner, conforming the middle of the life to its entrance and egress.
ii. Secondly, I will imitate death in the renunciation of all those sensual pleasures to which perfect chastity obliges me; so that as in death matrimonies are dissolved, the care of wife, children, and family ceases, and there is made a general divorce of all earthly things, and of the delights of the flesh; so I with the vow of chastity delight to be as it were dead to all these things, and to their cares, as if there were none in the world for me, or I were not alive for them.
iii. Thirdly, I will imitate the dead in perfect obedience; for as the dead body suffers itself to be tossed and carried wherever they will, and to be handled as they list, without resistance, repugnance or complaint, neither having will to choose the winding-sheet, nor the grave, nor anything else,
- ↑ Job i. 21.
