him kill me.”[1] We may get an idea of it from Syllanus, the son of Manlius Torquatus, of whom Valerius Maximus writes that his father pronounced this sentence on him on account of a crime he had committed: “I declare my son unworthy to be in my house, and I command him to go far away at once out of my sight.”[2] The son was so afflicted at this that the next night he laid violent hands on himself, and hanged himself. We may get some idea of it from those soldiers of Alexander who, on account of a tumult they had made in camp, had to hear these words from their king: “Away with you at once out of the sight of Alexander.”[3] This sentence smote them like a thunderbolt, so that they laid aside their arms and tried to hide themselves for fear in caverns. We may get some idea of it from Turannius, the minister of Cæsar, who, as Seneca writes, being deposed from his office, threw himself on his bed and ordered his family to mourn him as dead. Now if these men were so oppressed with sorrow at a sentence that banished them from the sight of an earthly father, general, and emperor, that they preferred death to banishment, what must it be to be separated and excluded forever from the house of God, from the inheritance of God, from the sight of God, from that God who said to Moses: “I will show thee all good;”[4] from that God in whose possession we shall find everything that is desirable, everything that can rejoice and make us happy, and who is moreover in Himself the only true, supreme, most beautiful, and infinite Good, to be separated from whom is nothing less than to be separated from all that is good?
We do not now understand this, but shall in the next life. O poor, blind mortals that we are, who so little understand this while here on earth! Our mind is now bewildered and darkened by all sorts of evil inclinations; our appetites are excited by worldly goods and the outward beauty that we behold with the senses; we have never seen God except by the faith darkly; hence what wonder is it that we long so little for the possession of Him, that we feel so little regret at losing Him! What wonder is it that we are so little affected by the threat of being deprived of Him, that we are so callous and undisturbed at the thought of the judgment that awaits us! But, unhappy sinner, how will it
- ↑ Obsecro ergo ut videam faciem regis; quod si memor est iniquitatis meæ, interficiat me.—II. Kings xiv. 32.
- ↑ Filium meum domo mea indignum judico, protinusque a conspectu meo abire judec.—Val. Max. l. 5, c. viii.
- ↑ Abite hinc ex Alexandri conspectu.—Majol. t. 3.
- ↑ Ego ostendam omne bonum tibi.—Exod. xxxiii. 19.
