words: “As often as I thought of the day of judgment I feared even my very cell, as a witness of my thoughts.”[1] It seemed as if the stones and rocks were crying out tome: this and that thought you have had in your imagination! Alas! such a holy hermit, living among the wild beasts, was afraid to look at his poor cell, which could give testimony only of the austere life he led, which saw how he fasted daily, tore his flesh with scourges, and beat his breast with a stone; and he feared his cell as a future witness of thoughts that were suggested to him only in the form of temptations and altogether against his will! Alas, wicked Christians! how then should we not tremble when we see the houses, rooms, gardens which have served for nothing else but sin, intemperance, vanity, impurity, uncharity! What will those things be able to say to us? “I have labored in my groaning; every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears,”[2] such are the sighs that I hear from the penitent David. But, O David, what distresses thee so much? or why shouldst thou make thy bed the scene of so much grief? Ah, he would answer, it was a witness of my adultery, and will one day cry out against me on that account; therefore it must also be a witness of the tears of repentance I shed every night! My tables, if you were ever forced to behold intemperance on my part during the time that I had forgotten my God, now you will be able to point to the ashes that I mixed with my bread, and to the tears that I mingled with my drink: “I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.”[3] Ah, unlucky houses, rooms, and beds, if you will be able to point to our sins, but not to our repentance, what shall become of us? Thus all creatures shall appear as witnesses against us on that great day to give testimony of our crimes. “The whole world shall stand against us to accuse us of our sins.”
The sinner’s own conscience shall convict him of the sins he committed in thought. But why should I fear such witnesses? There is not the least need of them; my case is lost already without them if I leave this world in the state of mortal sin. I myself shall be my own accuser; I shall convict myself of my sins and vices, not only of those that I have committed with others, not only of those that I have committed in act and secretly, but also of those that no
