r and yon, prays St. Bridget's prayer and the rest,
fasts on this day and on that, makes confession here, and makes
confession there, questions this man and that, and yet finds no peace.
He does all this with great effort, despair and disrelish of heart, so
that the Scriptures rightly call such works in Hebrew Avenama, that is,
labor and travail. And even then they are not good works, and are all
lost. Many have been crazed thereby; their fear has brought them into
all manner of misery. Of these it is written, Wisdom of Solomon v: "We
have wearied ourselves in the wrong way; and have gone through deserts,
where there lay no way; but as for the way of the Lord, we have not
known it, and the sun of righteousness rose not upon us."

VII. In these works faith is still slight and weak; let us ask further,
whether they believe that they are well-pleasing to God when they
suffer in body, property, honor, friends, or whatever they have, and
believe that God of His mercy appoints their sufferings and
difficulties for them, whether they be small or great. This is real
strength, to trust in God when to all our senses and reason He appears
to be angry; and to have greater confidence in Him than we feel. Here
He is hidden, as the bride says in the Song of Songs: "Behold he
standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows"; that is, He
stands hidden among the sufferings, which would separate us from Him
like a wall, yea, like a wall of stone, and yet He looks upon me and
does not leave me, for He is standing and is ready graciously to help,
and through the window of dim faith He permits Himself to be seen. And
Jeremiah says in Lamentations, "He casts off men, but He does it not
willingly."

This faith they do not know at all, and give up, thinking that God has
forsaken them and is become their enemy; they even lay the blame of
their ills on men and devils, and have no confidence at all in God. For
this reason, too, their suffering is always an offence and harmful to
them, and yet they go and do some good works, as they think, and are
not aware of their unbelief. But they who in such suffering trust God
and retain a good, firm confidence in Him, and believe that He is
pleased with them, these see in their sufferings and afflictions
nothing but precious merits and the rarest possessions, the value of
which no one can estimate. For faith and confidence make precious
before God all that which others think most shameful, so tha