works! I am the injustice that you were guilty of on that occasion, in that usury, and have not yet made restitution for! I am that bitter hate, that revenge, that you have cherished against your neighbor. I am that impurity, that adultery, that shameful pleasure that you so often committed in act, thought, and desire! I am that sinful amusement that you so often indulged in in company. I am the sins that you caused others to commit by your bad example. I am the hidden filth that you were ashamed to disclose in confession! We are your works! Ah, wretched conscience, will the sinner then say, leave me in peace! No; never will the sound of my voice be absent from your ears; I have already often enough exhorted you and given you salutary admonitions; but you have never hearkened to me; now it is my turn; you must die; but I shall never die. “Their worm dieth not.”[1] I will follow you even to hell, and there you will find in me an eternal enemy, who will torture you worse than the flames of that prison even! See, O wicked man! the treasure you now heap up for yourself by your sins, and lay aside for your dying hour, as the Apostle says: “According to thy hardness and impenitent heart, thou treasurest up to thyself wrath against the day of wrath.”[2] But I will no longer interrupt my description of the consolation of the just. Place your conscience in good order at once; go back to that Heart whose yoke is sweet and whose burden is light, if you wish to share in the joy of the just at the end and to be able to say to yourself: I have collected treasures of repentance and good works for heaven, and what is the best of all, the treasures I have amassed I now possess in full security without any fear or danger of ever losing them. Such is briefly the
Second Part.
He rejoices who possesses his gains in security. The greater a treasure the more intense the pain and sorrow caused by its loss. Ah, cries many a one who has been attacked by robbers and plundered; ah, they have taken away the most valuable thing I had! If they had only left me that! And the greater a treasure is the more uneasiness does one experience who is always in danger of losing it; thus he who carries a large Bum of money on a road beset by thieves hardly dares to put one
