by the light of faith, and prepare themselves for death before death seize upon them. Therefore, O my soul! to perceive thy own errors, take for thy teacher this divine light, if thou wilt not have the experience of eternal misery to be thy teacher, and beware by other men's dangers before this loss light upon thee with thy own.
2. "This night" — The second loss is to die in the night, that is, by a sudden and hasty death in the midst of their crimes; for oftentimes when men are healthful and contented, as this rich man was, Almighty God intimates to them the sentence of death, and moreover executes it, so that they pass from a temporal night to an eternal, and from the interior " darkness" of the heart to the " exterior" of hell. [1] With this fear, I will ask very earnestly of our Lord, that He would in such manner forewarn me of the peril of my death, that I may have time to dispose myself to it, as He forewarned King Ezechias by means of the prophet Isaias, saying to him, "Take order with thy house, for thou shalt die." [2] But to this end I am not to expect revelations from heaven; but my prophet Isaias must be the light of faith and of reason, the inspiration of God, the grievous sickness that assails me, and the warning of the physician when he tells me I am in danger. And generally, seeing I have no certain day of life, and every day I may expect death, it is wisdom to imagine that Almighty God says this day to me, " Take order to-day with thy soul, for to-morrow thou shall die and so do it immediately.
3. "Do they require." — The third loss is, to die by force and with violence, because their souls are required and forced out in despite of them. In this I will consider the difference between the just unbeguiled and sinners beguiled; for the just offer themselves voluntarily to death, when God's will is that they should die, and they say to
