Page:MeditationsOnTheMysteriesOfOurHolyV1.djvu/194

 like " stubble" with this leaping for pleasure like a young "calf;" and choose such a form of life as may free thee from so great evils, and purchase for thee so great good! O eternal God, from whose presence shall flow this "stream of fire" for the punishment of the wicked, and another "river" of living " water" for the refuge of the good, wash me and purify me with the " water" of this second, that I may be free from the fire of the first! Amen.

1. Fourthly, I am to consider what Christ our Lord says of the day that He has assigned for this judgment: that " no one knoweih, but the Father alone" ; and that it shall come on a sudden, for which He brings two similitudes. " As," says He, " in the days of Noe " men 4 were eating and drinking,' ' buying and selling, "marrying and giving in marriage," and carrying on their businesses, " until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the Flood came and destroyed them all; likewise as it came to pass in the days of Lot," the Sodomites being very careless, " in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all, even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man shall be revealed," and shall come to judgment. For men being occupied in marriages and pastimes, the flood of tribulations shall begin, and there shall rise a fire that shall consume them, and innumerable shall they be that shall be condemned, except some few that, like Noe and Lot, shall be saved.

And seeing that the same happens in many "tribulations," plagues and deaths which suddenly assail us, I