Then he perceived that the thing—­negotium perambulans in tenebris ["the Business that walketh about in the dark” (Ps. xc. 6.)]—­was formless, without hands to strike or mouth to bite him with, and that it was all about him now, closing upon him.  If there had been aught to touch his body, wet lips to kiss his face, or fiery eyes to look into his own, he would not have feared it with a thousandth part of the fear that he had.  It was that there was no shape or face, and that it sought not his body but his soul.  And when he understood that he gave a loud cry and awoke, and knew, as in a mystery, that it was no dream, but that he was indeed come to the place that he had seen, and that this negotium was at his soul’s heart. [There is either an omission here in the translation of Sir John’s original MS., or else the transcriber has dashed his pen down in horror, or sought to produce an impression of it.]....

I find it impossible, my children, to make you understand in what state he was; he could not make even me understand.  I can only set down a little of what he said.

First, he knew that he had lost God.  It was not that there was no God, but that he had lost Him of his own fault and sin.  He was aware that in all other places there was God and that the blessed reigned with Him, but not in the place where he was, nor in his heart.  In all men that ever I have met there was a certain presence of God.  As the apostle told the men of Athens, Ipsius enim et genus suum; ["For we are also His offspring” (Acts xvii. 28.)] and, again, Non longe est ab unoquoque nostrum; ["He is not far from every one of us” (Acts xvii. 27.)] and again, In ipso vivimus, et movemur, et sumus. ["In Him we live, and we move, and we are” (Acts xvii. 28.)] I have not seen a man who had not this knowledge, though maybe some, such as Turks and pagans, may call it by another name.  But until death, I think, all men, whatever their sins or ignorance, live and move in God’s Majesty.  Hell, Master Richard told me, is nothing less than the withdrawal of that presence, with other torments superadded, but this is chief.  Master Richard told me that that black fire of hell rages wherever God is not; and that the worm gnaws in all hearts that have lost Him, and know it to be by their own fault—­maxima culpa. ["the very great fault.”]

There be a few men in this world—­the Son of God derelict is their prince—­who are called to this supreme torment while they yet live—­if indeed that man may be said to live who is without God—­and of this company Master Richard was now made one.

It was with him now as he had dreamed.  Where God is not, there can be no communion with man, for the only reason by which one perceives another’s soul, or understands that it is the soul of a man and has a likeness to his own, is that both are, in some measure, in God.  If we were more holy and wise we should understand for ourselves that this is so, and see, too, why it is so, for He is eyes to the blind and ears to the deaf. [I do not understand this at all.  I wonder whether Sir John did as he wrote it; I am quite sure that his flock did not.]