De arte praedicatoria

If the preacher intends to invite his hearers to contempt for themselves, let him bring forward this authority: Remember, my son, your last things, and you will never sin.¹ Or this one: I am a worm, and not a man.² Or certainly this one: Man born of woman is full of many miseries,³ etc., or something similar, in which human misery is expressed.

He should proceed thus: remember your own last things, remember the last things of the world, remember the last things of the day. Remember your own last things, considering that your conception is guilt, your birth a kind of punishment, your life a state of penalty, your dying a necessity: for whatever life you have is either destined to leave you, or threatens its departure, while death is either imminent, or threatens its imminence. So then, why should man be proud, whose conception is guilt, whose birth is punishment, whose life is toil, whose death is necessary?

O man, remember that you were once flowing seed, how you are now a vessel of filth, how you will become food for worms. After death a worm will be born from the tongue, to mark the sin of the tongue; roundworms from the stomach, to signify the sin of gluttony; a scorpion from the spine, to signify the sin of lust; a toad from the brain, to signify the sin of pride. You are then a worm, man born of earth; a worm while you live, because intent on earthly things; a worm when you die, because given as food to worms. Remember, o man, that you are earth, and to earth you will go, for you are ash and will return to ashes; for you are dust, and will be reduced to dust. In your own person Job said: I have said to rottenness, You are my father; to worms, my mother and my sister.⁴

O man, remember the last state of your beauty, how all flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flower of the field,⁵ for:

Beauty is a fragile good, and the more the years advance, the smaller it becomes, worn away by its own passing time.

Remember how death destroys it, how the scratch of a single needle ends it, how sickness wears it down, how old age plunders it.

If you boast of strength, remember the last state of your strength, how old age weakens it, sickness saps it, death utterly roots it out. If you boast of wisdom, hear what the Lord says through Isaiah: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will reject the prudence of the prudent.⁶ And elsewhere: The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.⁷ Consider how knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.⁸ Consider how the philosophers, through the things that were made, understood the invisible things of God, but because they became vain in their thoughts, they were given up to a reprobate mind.⁹ If you boast of your lineage, remember the last state of every lineage, how:

Every kind of man rises up from a like origin.

Since there is one condition for all in being born, and one conclusion in dying; since nobility that is achieved is better than nobility that is merely born, because the latter is more general, the former more truly noble.

From the rule of death not even the purple of the king is exempted, since death strikes equally at the heights of kings and the huts of the poor. If you boast of riches and earthly pleasures, consider that they are more like snares than friendships, toward which you ought rather to be watchful and fearful than secure. Consider that you came out naked from your mother's womb, and naked you will return there.¹⁰

Learn to open the house of your mother to poverty, to hold pleasures under the yoke of reason; the fruit of earthly goods is only on the surface, and the shine of base metals stands out on the surface; but the richest things are those whose vein lies hidden in the depths, ready to respond ever more fully to one who keeps digging. Direct your mind to these heavenly treasures, so that where your treasure is, there your heart may also be: Do not, then, store up treasures on earth, where thieves dig through and steal, but store up treasures in heaven, which neither rust nor moth destroys.¹¹ For as Seneca says: "These things in which the common crowd delights have only a thin and superficial pleasure; and whatever joy the living have lacks any foundation." Learn then, and trample underfoot those things that shine outwardly, which are permitted to you by another or from another. Strive toward the true good, and rejoice in what is your own.

Do not boast of a fine garment; for what glory is there in the fleece of sheep, and the dung of worms? What use is there in preparing the mud of the body, in gilding the dung-heap of the flesh? Remember, then, your own last things, in the book of knowledge, so that you may read yourself in the book of experience, so that you may find yourself in the book of conscience: so that the book of knowledge written in a codex may reprove you, and the book of experience written in the heart. In the book of knowledge you read: "Know yourself"; in the book of experience you read: "The flesh fights against the spirit";¹² in the book of conscience you read:

With unresting wings there flies about, the harsh day of the soul.

O man! see yourself in a threefold mirror, and you will be displeased with yourself. There is a threefold mirror in which you must see yourself. The mirror of Scripture, the mirror of nature, the mirror of the creature. In the mirror of Scripture you read your true condition; in the mirror of the creature you will see yourself as wretched; in the mirror of your own nature you will consider yourself guilty. Now in your own nature a threefold mirror appears: the mirror of reason, of sensuality, and of the flesh. As the philosopher says, there is one kind of mirror in which the left appears as left, and the right appears as right. In this mirror the right is reason, which dictates that the right things are to be sought, that is, the things of heaven; the left things are to be fled, that is, earthly things. But there is another mirror, in which the right-hand things appear to be left, and the left-hand things appear to be right; this is sensuality, which dictates that earthly things are to be sought, and heavenly things put aside.

There is another mirror, in which the face appears inverted; this is the flesh, which turns the whole of human nature upside down. See yourself, then, in the mirror of reason, so that you may obey it; see yourself in the mirror of sensuality, so that you may subject it to reason; see yourself in the mirror of the flesh, so that by chastising it you may cast it down, and so that you may be able to conquer carnal things, set yourself in a threefold watchtower: first in the watchtower of foresight, so that you may guard against threatening dangers. Second, in the watchtower of circumspection, so that you may guard against opposite vices; hold to the middle course, and by the middle path you will go most safely, for nature too is a friend of moderation. Third, in the watchtower of caution, lest vice shade itself under the cloak of virtue, for often cruelty pretends to be justice, and slackness pretends to be mercy; and so through this threefold watchtower you will arrive at a threefold vision: of a pure conscience, of divine contemplation, and of eternal life.