30. Therefore, beloved brethren, although this is altogether of the Lord’s promise and gift, and although it is given from on high, and is not received except by His will, and moreover, can neither be expressed in words nor described by speech, nor can be satisfied by any kind of powers of eloquence, still such will be your benevolence, such will be your charity and love, as to be mindful of me when the Lord shall begin to glorify martyrdom in your experience. That holy altar32    [Rev. vi. 9; also vol. i. p. 486, note 10, this series.] encloses you within itself, that great dwelling-place of the venerable Name encloses you within itself, as if in the folds of a heart’s embrace: the powers of the everlasting age sustain you, and that by which you shall ever reign and shall ever conquer. O blessed ones! and such as truly have your sins remitted, if, however, you who are Christ’s peers ever have sinned!33    [“Si tamen qui Christi compares estis aliquando peccastis;” not very happily translated, but extravagant at best.] O blessed ones! whom the blood of the Lord has dyed from the beginning of the world, and whom such a brightness of snowy clothing has deservedly invested, and the whiteness of the enfolding robe has adorned!  Finally, I myself seem to myself to behold already, and, as far as is possible to the mind of man, that divine and illustrious thing occurs to my eyes and view. I seem, I say to myself, already to behold, that that truly noble army accompanies the glory and the path of their Christ. The blessed band of victors will go before His face; and as the crowds become denser, the whole army, illuminated as it were by the rising of the sun, will ascribe to Him the power. And would that it might be the lot of such a poor creature as myself to see that sight! But the Lord can do what He is believed not to deny to your petitions.34    [Think, I say again, of three hundred years of such “fiery trial,” so marvellously sustained, and we shall gain new views of Christ’s power to perfect His own strength in human weakness. The life of these Christians was a conscious daily warfare against “the world, the flesh, and the devil;” and we must recognise this in all judgments of their discipline and their modes of thought.]

XXX. Itaque, charissimi fratres, licet sit hoc totum Dominicae promissionis et muneris, licetque tribuatur ex alto, nec capiatur nisi ejus imperio, sed nec aut mente concipi aut exprimi verbis aut oratione percurri aut quibuslibet eloquentiae viribus possit impleri, tamen erit hoc benevolentiae vestrae, erit charitatis et amoris, si volueritis nostri memores esse 0802D cum in vobis Dominus martyrium coeperit honorare. Vos intra se sanctum illud altare, vos intra se magna illa venerandi nominis sedes, veluti sinu quodam gremii amplectentis includit, vos imperia perennis temporis sustinent, et illud quo regnaturi semper estis semperque victuri. O beati et quibus vere dimissa sunt peccata; si tamen qui Christi compares estis, aliquando peccastis. O beati quos a primordio 0803A mundi Domini sanguis infecit, et quos merito splendor iste nivei amictus induerit, et candor stolae ambientis ornarit. Videor denique ipse mihi jam cernere proque arbitrio mentis humanae ante oculos et aspectum divinum illud mihi et insigne concurrit, videor, inquam, mihi jam cernere ut ille vere nobilis numerus Christi sui gloriam interque comitetur. Ibit ante ora ejus felix caterva victorum , et se densantibus 0804A turmis, velut solis exortu totum illuminatum agmen inferet potestatem, Et utinam perabjecto mihi istud videre contingat! Sed hoc Dominus poterit efficere quod vobis petentibus creditur non negare.