The Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience): A Translation of Parts into Modern EnglishMichel, Dan, active 14th century
Religion
The Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience): A Translation of Parts into Modern English
Michel, Dan, active 14th century
Christian life -- Early works to 1800; Devotional literature
The tenth article is this: ‘I believe (in) the holy Catholic Church and
the communion of saints;’ that is to say, the fellowship of all the
saints, and of all the good men that are, and shall be unto the end of
the world, and were since the beginning, together in the faith of Jesus
Christ. And in this article are understood the seven sacraments that are
in holy Church, to wit, christening, confirming, the sacrament of the
altar, orders, marriage, the holy shrift, and the last anointing. This
article St. Simon ordained.
The eleventh is, to believe the forgiveness of sins, that God gives by
the virtue of His holy sacraments that are in holy Church. This article
St. Jude ordained.
The twelfth article is, to believe the general resurrection of the body,
and the life without end, that is the bliss of Paradise, which God shall
give to them that have deserved it by good faith and by good works. This
article gives (us) to understand its contrary, that is, the torment
without end that God hath prepared for the lost. This article shall be
understood in such a manner, that each, be he good, be he bad, shall be
at the day of judgment raised from death to life in his own body,
wherein he shall have [lived], and receive his reward in body and in
soul, according as he has deserved in this life. And therefore shall the
good at that day in body and in soul be in life without end, and the
wicked lost evermore in body and in soul. This article St. Matthew
ordained.
OF THE REVELATION THAT ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST SAW.
My lord, St. John, in the book of his visions, which is called the
Apocalypse, so says that he saw a beast that came out of the sea
wonderfully adorned and exceedingly dreadful. For the body of the beast
was as a leopard, the feet were of a bear, the throat of a lion, and it
had seven heads and ten horns, and upon the ten horns ten crowns; and
St. John saw that the same evil beast had power of himself to fight with
the saints, and to overcome and to overmaster them. This same beast, so
wonderful and so counterfeited and dreadful, betokens the devil, who
came out of the sea of hell, which is full of all sorrow and of all
bitterness. The body of the beast, as St. John says, was so like the
leopard because, as the leopard hath divers colours, so hath the devil
divers modes of watching and of dispute, in order to beguile and to
tempt folk. The feet were like the feet of a bear, for as the bear,
which hath its strength in its feet and in its arms, holds strongly and
binds what it hath under its feet, what it embraces, just so does the
devil them that he hath embraced and overthrown by sin. The throat was
of a lion, because of his great cruelty, that will devour all.
THE TOKENS OF THE HEADS OF THE BEASTS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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