for a soul that was fallen from
heaven to hell, from grace into sin: it was reasonable, because by tears
she might yet be recovered; and he protests that he would never
interrupt them, till he should learn that she was risen again. To
fortify his unhappy friend against the temptation of despair, he shows
by the promises, examples, and parables of the Old and New Testaments,
that no one can doubt of the power or goodness of God, who is most ready
to pardon every sinner that sues for mercy. Observing that hell was not
created for man, but heaven, he conjures him not to defeat the design of
God in his creation, and destroy the work of his mercy by persevering in
sin. The difficulties which seemed to stand in his way, and dispirited
him, the saint shows would be all removed, and would even vanish of
themselves, if he undertook the work with courage and resolution: this
makes the conversion of a soul easy. He terrifies him by moving
reflections on death, and the divine judgments, by a dreadful
portraiture which he draws of the fire of hell, which resembles not our
fire, but burns souls, and is eternal; lastly, by the loss of heaven, on
the joys of which kingdom he speaks at large; on its immortality, the
company of the angels, the joy, liberty, beauty, and glory of the
blessed, adding, that such is this felicity, that in its loss consists
the most dreadful of all the torments of the damned. Penance averts
these evils, and restores to a soul all the titles and advantages which
she had forfeited by her fall: and its main difficulty and labor are
vanquished by a firm resolution, and serious beginning of the work. This
weakens and throws down the enemy: if he be thoroughly vanquished in
that part where he was the strongest, the soul will pursue, with ease
and cheerfulness, the delightful and beautiful course of virtue upon
which she has entered. He conjures Theodorus, by all that is dear, to
have compassion on himself; also to have pity on his mourning friends,
and not by grief send them to their graves: he exhorts him resolutely to
break his bonds at once, not to temporize only with his enemy, or
pretend to rise by degrees; and he entreats him to exert his whole
strength in laboring to {253} be of the happy number of those who, from
being the last, are raised by their fervor to the first rank in the
kingdom of God. To encourage him by examples, he mentions a young
nobleman of Phoenicia, the son of one Urbanus, who, having embrace