Chapter LXII
“God is Very Father and Very Mother of Nature: and all natures that He hath made to flow out of Him to work His will shall be restored and brought again into Him by the salvation of Mankind through the working of Grace”
FOR in that time He shewed our frailty and our fallings, our afflictings and our settings at nought,[1] our despites and our outcastings, and all our woe so far forth as methought it might befall in this life. And therewith He shewed His blessed Might, His blessed Wisdom, His blessed Love: that He keepeth us in this time as tenderly and as sweetly to His worship, and as surely to our salvation, as He doeth when we are in most solace and comfort. And thereto He raiseth us spiritually and highly in heaven, and turneth it all to His worship and to our joy, without end. For His love suffereth us never to lose time.
And all this is of the Nature-Goodness of God, by the working of Grace. God is Nature[2] in His being: that is to say, that Goodness that is Nature, it is God. He is the ground, He is the substance, He is the same thing that is Nature-hood.[3] And He is very Father and very Mother of Nature: and all natures that He hath made to flow out of Him to work His will shall be restored and brought again into Him by the salvation of man through the working of Grace.
For of all natures[4] that He hath set in diverse creatures by part, in man is all the whole; in fulness and in virtue, in fairness and in goodness, in royalty and nobleness, in all manner of majesty, of preciousness and worship. Here may we see that we are all beholden to God for nature, and we are all beholden to God for grace. Here may we see us needeth not greatly to seek far out to know sundry natures, but to Holy Church, unto our Mother’s breast: that is to say, unto our own soul where our Lord dwelleth; and there shall we find all now in faith and in understanding. And afterward verily in Himself clearly, in bliss.
But let no man nor woman take this singularly to himself: for it is not so, it is general: for it is [of] our precious Christ, and to Him was this fair nature adight[5] for the worship and nobility of man’s making, and for the joy and the bliss of man’s salvation; even as He saw, wist, and knew from without beginning.