Already, the Voice told
him, the wayward light of the heart was shining out upon the world to
keep it alive, with a less clear lustre, and that, as it paled, a
strange infection was touching the stars and the hills and the grass
and the trees with corruption, and that none of those who had seen
clearly the truth and the ancient way could enter into the Kingdom of
God, which is in the Heart of the Rose, if they stayed on willingly
in the corrupted world; and so they must prove their anger against
the Powers of Corruption by dying in the service of the Rose of God.
While the Knight of Palestine was telling us these things we seemed
to see in a vision a crimson Rose spreading itself about him, so that
he seemed to speak out of its heart, and the air was filled with
fragrance. By this we knew that it was the very Voice of God which
spoke to us by the knight, and we gathered about him and bade him
direct us in all things, and teach us how to obey the Voice. So he
bound us with an oath, and gave us signs and words whereby we might
know each other even after many years, and he appointed places of
meeting, and he sent us out in troops into the world to seek good
causes, and die in doing battle for them. At first we thought to die
more readily by fasting to death in honour of some saint; but this he
told us was evil, for we did it for the sake of death, and thus took
out of the hands of God the choice of the time and manner of our
death, and by so doing made His power the less.
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