VISIO DECIMA, cap. VII
The Apostles' Forged Discipline and Its Decline
The apostles forged their teaching like steel through fasting, prayer, and the fear of God, yet the Church has since declined from that strength under the ancient serpent's deception.
And afterward, through the teaching of the apostles and the virtues of the rest of the saints, they were made pure and bright right up to the present day—yet they have declined from their former strength as though sinking into a woman's weakness, because at that time every good custom that had been planted in human beings through the grace of the Holy Spirit from the days of the apostles was being led into the darkness of the arrows by which the ancient serpent had deceived the world.✦ For the apostles had forged their teaching like steel, and together with the closing of heaven they had shut it in, and in the fear of God they had placed restraints on it themselves, so that it wouldn't be led into ridicule, but rather be held in daily vigorous practice; and because they established their teaching according to the course of the sun, they sanctified it through fasting from food and through praise and prayer.
The Serpent's Counterattack and the Lord's Judgment
The ancient serpent sought to destroy the apostolic law, inflaming a royal judge with lust until the Lord struck him down as He did Nero and other tyrants.
But the ancient serpent, searching within itself, was carefully investigating how it might destroy and extinguish this law, because it saw that it had been completely deceived, and because it also knew through this that it now had a time for waging war against the sons of men, in that it had turned the conception of man toward sin.✦ And so it also inflamed a certain judge of royal name, burning with the lust of transgression, so that it drew to itself many shameful vanities, as though to worship them; and it kept at this for so long that the hand of the Lord struck it down, just as it trampled Nero and other tyrants alike in all their honor.✦
Cosmic Withering and Signs of the Last Days
Virtue and justice withered, the earth's fertility failed, and the seasons reversed, fulfilling the signs Christ foretold before the day of judgment.
Then the greenness of the virtues withered, and all justice declined into failure; and so too the greenness of the earth in all its seed sank down, because the upper air was changed into a different state than it had been constituted before, so that summer afterward often brought the opposite of cold, and winter the opposite of heat, and there was such great drought and such great moisture, along with certain other preceding signs, which the Son of God had foretold would come upon the earth before the day of judgment, when his disciples asked him about things to come, so that many were saying the day of judgment was at hand.✦
Christ's Hidden Prayer for His Distressed Body
The Son pleads with the Father over the distress His body the Church endures from members falling away, the completion of the elect, and how these words are understood across the ages.
Certain hidden words of the Son to the Father, pleading with him on account of the distress he endures in his body, which is the Church, because certain members of it are abandoning righteousness, and on account of the completion of the number of the elect arranged from eternity, and how those same words are to be understood according to the varying character of the times from the beginning of the world right up to the present.
Read the original Latin
Et postmodum per doctrinam apostolorum, et per virtutes caeterorum sanctorum puri et lucidi facti sunt usque ad dies istos, qui quasi in muliebri debilitate a fortitudine sua descenderunt, quia tunc in eis omnis bona consuetudo, quae per gratiam Spiritus sancti a temporibus apostolorum in hominibus plantata primitus erat, in caliginem jaculorum, quibus antiquus serpens mundum deceperat ducebatur. Apostoli enim doctrinam suam quasi chalybe firmaverant, atque cum clausura coeli illam clauserant, et in timore Dei frena ipsi imposuerant, ne in irrisionem duceretur; sed ut in quotidiana strenuitate haberetur, et quia doctrinam suam secundum cursum solis constituebant, ipsam per abstinentiam ciborum, et per laudem et orationem sanctificabant. Antiquus autem serpens in semetipso scrutando sciscitabatur quomodo legem istam destrueret et exstingueret, quoniam se ex toto deceptum videbat, et quia etiam se bellandi tempus contra filios hominum per hoc cognovit habere, quod conceptionem hominis in peccatum verterat. Unde et quemdam regalis nominis judicem aestuanti libidine praevaricationis inflammavit, ita ut plurimas nefandas vanitates sibi advocaret, quasi eas coleret, qui etiam hoc tandiu fecit, quousque manus Domini eum percussit, sicut Neronem necnon et alios tyrannos in omni honore ipsorum conculcavit. Tunc viriditas virtutum aruit, atque omnis justitia in defectum declinavit, et ideo etiam viriditas terrae in omni germine suo descendit, quoniam superior aer in alium modum quam prius constitutus fuisset mutatus est, ita ut aestas contrarium frigus, et hiems contrarium calorem postmodum multoties habuerit, et tanta ariditas, ac tanta humiditas cum aliis quibusdam praecurrentibus signis, quae Filius Dei ante diem judicii discipulis suis perquirentibus ventura praedixerat in terra multoties fuerint, ut multi dicerent diem judicii imminere.
Verba quaedam arcana Filii ad Patrem interpellantis eum pro vexatione quam in corpore suo, quod est Ecclesia, a quibusdam membris suis deserentibus justitiam sustinet, et pro completione numeri electorum ab aeterno dispositi, et quomodo eadem verba intelligenda sint secundum diversas qualitates temporum ab exordio mundi usque in praesens.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Rev.12.9 — And the great dragon was thrown down—the ancient serpent, the one called the Devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
- ↩Rev.12.9 — And the great dragon was thrown down—the ancient serpent, the one called the Devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
- ↩Isa.10.4 — Nothing remains but to crouch among prisoners or fall among the slain. For all this, his anger has not turned back, and his hand is still stretched out.
- ↩Matt.24.3;Mark.13.3-Mark.13.4;Luke.21.7 — As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" Mark.13.3 — And as he sat on the Mount of Olives, opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, Mark.13.4 — Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished? Luke.21.7 — And they asked him, 'Teacher, when will these things be? And what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?'
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