second consists of those whom misfortunes have driven to despair. Both classes are to be pitied and bewailed. But for that very reason, and that none of us may belong to either class, I say now that it is not only right but most necessary often to think of heaven and to raise our desires thither, as I shall now show in the
Second Part.
Most men value temporal things too highly; hence they care little for heaven. He whose weight drags him downwards requires a support to be able to keep upright. The afflicted man who cannot help himself is in need of consolation to encourage him not to give way to despair or to become too down-hearted in his trouble. This twofold help we must seek, and we shall find it in the frequent recollection of the promised joys of heaven. For in the first place, how comes it that we make so much of the goods, honors, and pleasures of the world, and snap at them greedily, like a hungry beast at its food? Is it not because we attend only to what we see before us with our bodily eyes, what we feel and know by experience to be pleasing and agreeable to the senses? Because nothing better or more agreeable than those worldly goods and pleasures presents itself to us, we set our whole and only happiness in them, and imagine we are wonderfully well off if we can have a share of them. In this respect we are like children who, when they get some butter and milk, or bread and honey, think they are in heaven and imagine there is nothing better to be had in the whole world, because they have never tasted anything better, and know nothing of more delicate or savory food. If sometimes a thought of heaven occurs to us, oh, it hardly lasts a moment, and it is so dim and cloudy that it makes no impression, leaves no desire in the heart, and so is unable to muster the idea we have of the goods and joys of this world.
The devil represents to them temporal goods as greater than heavenly. Explained by a simile.
Besides, the devil, who cannot bear to see us lifting up our minds to the serious meditation of heavenly things, paints in our imaginations the pleasures and riches of this life in such lively and agreeable colors, and the joys of heaven on the other hand as so uncertain and trivial, that we have no taste for the latter, and fix our affections exclusively on the former. There are geographers who can describe the whole earth and its different countries on maps and globes. There are also astronomers who can map out the courses of the heavenly bodies and the whole firmament on a wooden or metal plate. Now suppose some