Page:King Alfred's Old English version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies - Hargrove - 1902.djvu/57

ALFRED'S VERSION OF THE SOLILOQUIES LI kindred and their friends. And the good help the good, and each of them the other, to the extent that they can. But the good will not have mercy on their evil friends, because they will not give up their evil, any more than Abraham would pity the rich man, though he was of his own kin, because he perceived that he was not so humble before God as he rightly should be. The evil, then, can neither do their friends nor themselves any good, for they were formerly of no help, neither to their friends nor to themselves who had passed away before them when they were in this world. But it shall then be with them as with those men who are here brought into some king's prison, and may see their friends every day and ask about them that which they will, and yet they may not be of any good to them; they neither wish, nor are able, to go to them any more. Therefore have the evil more punishment in the world to come, because they know the honors and dignities of the good, and also therefore the more, that they remember all the honors which they had in this world; and also they know those torments which they have who shall then be left behind them in this world.

'The good, then, who have full freedom, shall see both their friends and their foes just as here men in power often see together both their friends and their foes. They see them alike and know them alike, although they do not love them alike. And again the righteous, after they are out of this world, remember very often both the good and the evil which they had in this world, and they rejoice exceedingly that they forsook not their Lord's will, neither in easy things nor in mysterious, while they were in this world. Just so some man of power in this world may have driven one of his darlings from him, or he may be forced from him against both of their wills, and then have many torments and many mischances in his exile so that he yet returns to that same master with whom he formerly was. Then he remembers the mishaps which he had in