VIII. Responsum veritatis.

VIII. Responsum veritatis.

And again, from that troubled cloud, I heard a voice responding to this image: "O serpent-like and hellish tongue, you are devoid of all the greenness of God's grace, which always brings forth flames of injury and deception." For bad desires are enough for you, since you come from them, and you are also a daughter of the Devil, from whom all your unjust actions arise, and you don't know where you're going. Murmuring and the deception of diabolical suggestions are the roots of your vices, because they spring from the depths of your desires, from which you will also receive the wages of sin, casting away all honor, happiness, and integrity from yourself. But I am a column in all the ways of the Lord, and I am a well-sounding trumpet of God's justice, and I enumerate all His works, whatever they may be and however great they are, and I show them in truth; therefore, I am an advocate in the palace of the king and in all his honor. I wear earrings and rings, and I am the brilliance of all God's adornment, because I speak the truth through God's justice. But both heaven and earth, along with the other creatures that are their innermost parts, are true; and the waters that are subjected to heaven and earth, because they are their moisture, exist in truth. But you, O wicked part, are the worst worm, and like foul mud, you will be trampled underfoot. > 44. But the fifth image appeared in the form of a man, and he had curly black hair and a fiery face. But she was wearing a cloak of various colors, which had openings at the shoulders through which she had extended her arms, so that with her left arm she was holding an axe that she had bound to herself, and with its edge she had often wounded her own hands in this way, when she had thrust them into it in a fit of rage, so that even her blood stained the garment.