17. To these rewards that you also may come who had been possessed with jealousy and rancour, cast away all that malice wherewith you were before held fast, and be reformed to the way of eternal life in the footsteps of salvation. Tear out from your breast thorns and thistles, that the Lord’s seed may enrich you with a fertile produce, that the divine and spiritual cornfield may abound to the plentifulness of a fruitful harvest. Cast out the poison of gall, cast out the virus of discords. Let the mind which the malice44    The Oxford translator gives “blackness;” the original is “livor.” of the serpent had infected be purged; let all bitterness which had settled within be softened by the sweetness of Christ. If you take both meat and drink from the sacrament of the cross, let the wood which at Mara45    Or “myrrh,” variously given in originals as “myrrham” or “merrham.” availed in a figure for sweetening the taste, avail to you in reality for soothing your softened breast; and you shall not strive for a medicine for your increasing health. Be cured by that whereby you had been wounded.46    [“Unde vulneratus fueras, inde curare.”  Lear, act ii. sc. 4.] Love those whom you previously had hated; favour those whom you envied with unjust disparagements. Imitate good men, if you are able to follow them; but if you are not able to follow them, at least rejoice with them, and congratulate those who are better than you. Make yourself a sharer47    “A fellow-heir,” according to Baluzius and Routh. with them in united love; make yourself their associate in the alliance of charity and the bond of brotherhood. Your debts shall be remitted to you when you yourself shall have forgiven. Your sacrifices shall be received when you shall come in peace to God. Your thoughts and deeds shall be directed from above, when you consider those things which are divine and righteous, as it is written:  “Let the heart of a man consider righteous things, that his steps may be directed by the Lord.”48    Prov. xv. 1, LXX.

XVII. Ad quas ut pervenire tu etiam possis, qui fueras zelo et livore possessus, omnem illam malitiam qua prius tenebaris abjice , ad viam vitae aeternae vestigiis salutaribus reformare. Evelle de pectore tuo spinas et tribulos, ut te Dominicum semen fertili fruge locupletet, ut divina et spiritalis seges in copiam foecundae messis exuberet. Venena fellis evome, discordiarum virus exclude, purgetur mens quam serpentinus livor infecerat, amaritudo omnis quae intus insederat Christi dulcedine leniatur. Si de sacramento crucis et cibum sumis et potum, lignum quod 0650B apud merrham profecit in imagine, ad saporis dulcedinem tibi in veritate proficiat ad mulcendi pectoris lenitatem, nec ad medelam prosperandae valitudinis laborabis. Unde vulneratus fueras, inde curare. Ama eos quos ante oderas, dilige illos quibus injustis obtrectationibus invidebas. Bonos imitare, si sectari potes . Si autem eos sectari non potes, collaetare certe et congratulare melioribus. Fac te illis adunata dilectione participem, fac te consortio charitatis et fraternitatis vinculo cohaerentem. Dimittentur tibi 0651A debita quando et ipse dimiseris; accipientur sacrificia tua cum pacificus ad Deum veneris: sensus atque actus tui divinitus dirigentur quando ea quae divina et justa sunt cogitaveris, sicut scriptum est: Cor viri cogitet justa, ut a Domino dirigantur gressus ejus (Prov. XVI, 9).