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I SHOULD say then that the saints who keep a firm hold of the
recollection of God and are borne along, as it were, with their steps
suspended on a line stretched out on high, may be rightly compared to rope
dancers, commonly called funambuli, who risk all their safety and life on
the path of that very narrow rope, with no doubt that they will immediately
meet with a most dreadful death if their foot swerves or trips in the very
slightest degree, or goes over the line of the course in which alone is
safety. And while with marvellous skill they ply their airy steps through
space, if they keep not their steps to that all too narrow path with
careful and anxious regulation, the earth which is the natural base and the
most solid and safest foundation for all, becomes to them an immediate and
clear danger, not because its nature is changed, but because they fall
headlong upon it by the weight of their bodies. So also that un-wearied
goodness of God and His unchanging nature hurts no one indeed, but we
ourselves by falling from on high and tending to the depths are the authors
of our own death, or rather the very fall becomes death to the fuller. For
it says: "Woe to them for they have departed from Me: they shall be wasted
because they have transgressed against Me;" and again: "Woe to them when I
shall depart from them." For "thine own wickedness shall reprove thee, and
thy apostasy shall rebuke thee. Know thou and see that it is an evil and a
bitter thing for thee to have left the Lord thy God;" for "every man is
bound by the cords of his sins." To whom this rebuke is aptly directed
by the Lord: "Behold," He says, "all you that kindle a fire, encompassed
with flames, walk ye in the light of your fire and in the flames which you
have kindled;" and again: "He that kindleth iniquity, shall perish by
it."
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