LV. Homines qui proximos in angustia ponunl, Deus misere deponit.

LV. Homines qui proximos in angustia ponunl, Deus misere deponit.

But God also punishes certain people with His judgment, inflicting retribution on them so that those who have sinned in body may be punished in body; yet why this happens, only He knows, for He does not reveal His secrets to everyone. For when certain people put their neighbors in distress, take away their possessions, and subject them to tyranny and servitude, it often happens that God's vengeance strikes them in such a way that both they and their children fall short of all happiness in this life, and they end up consuming the bread of sorrow rather than the bread of relief. And because wickedness has been fully accomplished in them, God also fulfills His judgments upon them with just judgment and right examination, consuming their trust with fire and overturning their strength, where He shakes and destroys those defenses in which they trust more than in God. And God, acting justly, judges all things and imposes upon each person the judgments that correspond to their deeds. For God knows all things, and His knowledge does not allow for anyone's destruction; otherwise, He would not be a just judge. But the Devil tries to destroy as much as he can, seeing and knowing what he does. God understands all things, because He has made all things, and whatever He willed, He did. No human being has ever existed in whom the knowledge of good and evil was not present. Was there ever a person in the world who did not have knowledge of good and evil? No. For a person knows the good and the evil, and thus has love and fear of God, so that he may cultivate his field and produce fruit, and to uproot useless weeds. Let him not avoid work, nor let him feel weariness in this labor; for it is a great testimony and a great matter, because heaven and earth cannot change this, since heaven and earth do not tend to anything else but to that for which they were created. But whoever has a desire for life should take these words to heart and store them in the inner chamber of their heart. And behold, I saw other evil spirits from that multitude, who were shouting loudly and saying, "Why should Lucifer be a servant of subjection, when it is fitting for him to be Lord?" For these people propose gluttony to others and lead them to the belly's excesses through their own persuasions. I saw a great punishment of the wicked, which was terrifying to behold. And I saw a great fire burning fiercely, which also had a certain darkness within it, in which it was burning very intensely. In this fire and in its darkness, the souls that loved the gluttony of the belly in their bodies were punished. But some of those spirits cast out certain sparks from the same fire, through which they tormented those souls, saying, "Wach!" These bodies have led their souls more than anything else." For because of their great appetite for food and drink, which their bodies had labored for while they were in those very bodies, they felt the heat of this fire; and because of the many evils they had committed through that same gluttony, they endured the darkness of it; and since they had done all these things through vain excess, they were subjected to the sparks of that fire and the vision of those spirits. And through the living Spirit, I saw and understood these things. Those who place their neighbors in distress, God will have mercy on them. And again, from that living light, I heard a voice speaking to me: "What you see is true. However, those who love the belly's indulgence, if they wish to escape these infestations of demons and the miseries of punishment, should pursue abstinence from food and drink, in accordance with the quality and excess of their own thoughtlessness, and in line with the permission of their teacher."