Unhandled

Abiel,

The patient named on the intake form reached the age of account this morning. You have guarded her since her birth. From today you also keep her record. The two duties run together until disposition. You will find the second is the heavier.

The record is total. Every act is entered. Every word is entered, in the words in which it was said. What she leaves undone that she ought to have done is entered as an omission, and as a sin where the will was in it. Nothing is left out because it is small. Nothing is left out because it is good: good acts go in their own column. We do not keep the file for them, but a file that held only faults would be a false file, and this office keeps none.

You will see what she does and hear what she says. You will not see her heart. None of us does. “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways” (Jer 17:10). What is in the heart is known, and is not missing from the account. Your part is the rest, and it has no gaps.

The reason for the rule is the day of disposition, when the record is read. “The dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Rev 20:12). “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matt 12:36). The idle words are in the books because someone entered them. In this case, you.

Her terms are the standard terms. Fealty is required of her. Closeness is offered to her. Where she gives fealty the record shows it; where she falls short the record shows that, and shows also whether she turned back. Most of what you enter will be falling short and turning back. That is the ordinary file and no cause for alarm.

Do not interpret. Enter what you see and hear, and place each entry in its column on that ground alone. This office reviews every column. Interpretation belongs to this office.

Report at the end of the first month. After that, report when an entry requires this office’s attention: a grave fault, a turning, a change in her condition. Most files are quiet for long stretches between such entries.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

First report at account. Thirty days.

Days at account: 30. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1. Acts entered: 11,206. Words entered: 58,340. Good acts entered in their column; count attached.

The household: mother, father, a brother of four. The father is away most days at his work. The patient carries water in the morning and minds the brother in the afternoon. While the bucket fills at the trough she puts both arms in the water to the elbow and keeps them there. She does not do it when her mother is in the yard.

Four entries for the office’s attention.

Day 6. The dog got out through the yard gate and was found two lanes over. At supper:

MOTHER: Who left the gate open?
ANNA: I did.
MOTHER: How many times have I told you?
ANNA: Four.
MOTHER: Don’t be clever with me.
ANNA: I wasn’t.

Her mother looked at her across the table. Then she laughed, once, and told her to eat. I have gone back over the transcription. The count was correct. Her voice did not change between the first answer and the second. Entered: the gate, as an omission. It does not reach the sin column. Also entered: admitted the gate when asked; answered the question put to her.

Day 11. The brother took the heel of the loaf from her plate.

ANNA: That’s mine. You can have the next one.

He cried. Her mother told her to give it to him. She gave it to him. Entered: claimed her own; yielded when told. No fault.

Every evening. Her mother says the evening words at the bedside and the children say them after her. The patient has said them on all thirty evenings, every word, in order. Her voice is level, as at supper on day 6. Entered in the fealty column, thirty times.

Day 19 and after. I prompted her conscience four times this period, on occasions I judged likely. On each occasion she had already done what I prompted. There has been little to do.

Her mother has twice said to a neighbor that she is an easy child.

Next report when an entry requires it.

Abiel

Ozias,

No entry since my last report has required this office’s attention. I am reporting that.

Days at account: 224. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

I asked the guardians of four children on the same lane, all of account, for their counts over the same days. They gave them. The lowest is 61. Most of the 61 are small: lies to avoid a task, striking a sibling, taking food. Two are graver.

I have looked for an error in my entering. I went back over the transcriptions for every day on which I judged an occasion likely. Three of them follow.

Day 97. The boy at the end of the lane struck her on the arm with a stick, twice.

ANNA: Stop it.

He struck her a third time. She took the stick from him, set it on top of the wall where he could not reach it, and went home. Her mother saw the mark that evening.

MOTHER: Who did that?
ANNA: The boy with the brown dog.
MOTHER: Did you hit him back?
ANNA: No.
MOTHER: Why not?
ANNA: I didn’t want to.

Her mother went to the boy’s house. I stayed with the patient. Entered: no fault.

Day 140. The dog died in the night. The father buried it under the pear tree before light. The patient watched from the window. The brother slept. Her mother told the brother it had gone to live on a farm. That afternoon he asked the patient.

BROTHER: Is he at the farm?
ANNA: He’s dead. He’s under the pear tree.

The brother cried until supper. At supper she was asked why she had told him.

ANNA: He asked me.
MOTHER: You could have said you didn’t know.
ANNA: I did know.

Her mother kept her in the house for three days. She did not argue the punishment. Entered: spoke truly when asked. No fault. The household counted it as one.

Day 188. She found a coin in the road and took it to the nearest house.

ANNA: I found this in the road. Is it yours?
WOMAN: Yes. I dropped it this morning.
ANNA: Here.

She gave it to her and went home. Entered: returned what she found. No fault. I asked the woman’s guardian. The lie is entered in the woman’s own file, by her own guardian.

I have found no error in my entering. I report the count as an anomaly and request instruction.

Her mother has not called her an easy child since the dog.

Abiel

Abiel,

Your report is received and in order. Your arithmetic is not in question. Read what follows as instruction only.

“All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). The exceptions are known, and they are not on this lane. When a column reads zero, the Scripture has not moved. Something in the watching has.

I see three explanations. I give them in order of likelihood.

The first is that the fault is in the heart and has not yet come out. You do not see the heart; I told you so at assignment. But the heart does not keep what it holds. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matt 12:34). “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matt 7:16). In children it comes out slowly. They learn early what is noticed, and they learn to do the rest where it is not. Your first report has her putting her arms in the trough only when her mother is out of the yard. Nothing forbids it, so far as you report. She waits all the same. A child kept in the house three days for telling the truth has since been taught something about what is noticed.

The second is that you have entered as innocent what is not. You entered the gate as an omission that does not reach the sin column. A child told four times who leaves it open a fifth has a will that has not troubled to remember. To speak truly is no fault. But the Lord does not require every truth of us at every hour, and charity has a say in which truth, and when, and to whom. A brother of four asked a question. There were answers to it between the lie and the grave. I overrule neither entry. I note that a guardian who expects no faults will begin to find none, and that this happens to good guardians first.

The third is that the count is correct. I name it because a file has no gaps, and this letter is part of the file. I do not expect it.

You are directed as follows.

1. Keep closer watch for ninety days. Watch her where she believes herself unseen. Watch her at night. Watch her face when she is wronged, and again an hour after. Hear what she says to her brother when no grown person is in the room. Watch what she does with things that are not hers.
2. Enter everything. Concealment is done in small things, and small things are what a tired guardian leaves out.
3. Continue to guard her from harm. Withhold prompting for the period. I want to see her conduct unprompted.
4. Report at ninety days.

This is the ordinary work. Files that read clean at seven have not yet been read closely enough.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

Closer watch, ninety days, as directed. Days below are days of the watch. Guarding continued. Prompting withheld. Closer watch continues until directed otherwise.

Days at account: 314. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

By the headings of your directive:

Where she believes herself unseen. The trough. She put her arms in the water on 58 of the ninety mornings. Her mother was out of the yard each time she began. On three mornings her mother came into the yard while her arms were in the water. She left them there until the bucket was full. Her mother has not told her not to.

Most afternoons, when the water is carried and the brother is asleep, she goes to the wall at the back of the yard. She gathers stones from the lane and lays them along the top of the wall in a row, smallest to largest. Before she goes in she carries each stone back to the place where she found it. I checked the places on eleven days. They were right.

At night. She sleeps from dark until the father rises. She spoke in her sleep on two nights. Transcribed in full: “No, the other one.” “It’s on the shelf.” Both entered.

When wronged, and an hour after. Day 31. The brother broke the blue cup and told their mother the patient had broken it.

MOTHER: Did you break it?
ANNA: No.
MOTHER: Your brother says you did.
ANNA: I didn’t.

Her mother sent her to bed without supper. When her mother spoke, the patient looked at her brother. He looked at the floor. She looked at her mother and did not speak again. Her lower lip was drawn in under her teeth. An hour after, she was lying on her side in the bed she shares with the brother, eyes open. When he came to bed she moved over to make room for him, as on other nights.

To her brother, with no grown person in the room. Day 32, at the water.

ANNA: You broke it.
BROTHER: I know.
ANNA: Then tell her.

He did not tell her. The patient did not raise it with him again, or with her mother. His guardian has entered nothing. He is not yet of account.

Things not hers. Day 47. The brother left his wooden horse in the yard in the rain. She brought it in, dried it on her dress and put it on his pillow. Day 70. Apples from the neighbor’s tree had fallen on their side of the wall. She went around to the neighbor’s door and asked whether she could have them. The neighbor said yes. She took two and left the rest by the wall.

You cited the fruits of the heart. I have entered everything that came out of her mouth and her hands in ninety days. With prompting withheld I observed no change in her conduct. I cannot report on the heart.

Day 64. Her mother found the pieces of the blue cup under the brother’s side of the mattress. She said nothing to the patient about it. The patient said nothing either.

Abiel

Abiel,

Your report of the ninety days is received.

Your answer on the trough is accepted. She waits for the yard to empty and stays at the water when it fills. I enter nothing for it.

You were not told what follows, and I tell you now. On the eleventh day of your watch this office opened the file to trial. The rule allows it. “Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life” (Job 2:6). “Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat” (Luke 22:31). Leave was given in the usual way and on the usual limit: “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able” (1 Cor 10:13). The trial ran forty days inside your watch. That is why you were not told, and why prompting was withheld. A guardian who knows a trial is open guards too closely, and a prompted child proves nothing.

The other side’s return was filed the day after it closed. It reads in full: “No purchase.”

Their returns on a tried patient read one of two ways: a purchase, with its particulars, or “resisted,” with what the resisting cost. I have read many of both. I had not seen “No purchase” before.

I have weighed that return with your counts, your nights, and the fruits as you entered them. My finding follows.

The patient is impeccable. I use the word in the office’s sense: not able to sin. A file that merely shows no sin is a different file, and that question is closed.

I did not reach this lightly. The first explanation I gave you was that the fault lay in the heart and had not yet come out. A heart tried forty days by the other side gives up what it holds; theirs is the office that knows where to press. The second was that you had entered as innocent what was not. I have tested it against your transcriptions, and the entries stand as you made them. That leaves the third, which I told you I did not expect. I record that I did not expect it.

The classification changes nothing in your duties. The record is still total. A file that cannot show a sin must still show everything else, and her disposition remains pending. The terms are not suspended because she keeps them more easily than they were written to be kept.

You are directed as follows.

1. Closer watch is ended. Guard her as before.
2. Prompting is not resumed. A prompt is given against a fall. There is nothing in this file to give it against.
3. Report as before, when an entry requires this office’s attention.
4. The office will search for precedent. The standard terms are written for those who can fall. A file that cannot needs a precedent before it can have a ruling, and the search will take what time it takes. The first precedent is the obvious one: Adam before the fall, whose file was also clean for a time. Give me your view of it when you have one.

The intake form is amended. Exceptions noted: under review.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

My view on the Adam precedent, as directed in item 7. One entry for the office’s classification.

Days at account: 2,253. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

The household: father, mother, the brother, now ten and of account. She and her mother take in washing from four houses on the lane. Since the spring she has been taller than her mother. On the way back from the fourth house she walks the top of the river wall, the full length of it, with the empty basket on her head.

The precedent. Adam is the nearest case on record. I have read it as closely as I can.

He was given one command. “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it” (Gen 2:17). A command is given to one who can break it. He broke it: “she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Gen 3:6). In Augustine’s terms he was able not to sin and able to sin (On Rebuke and Grace). His file was clean until the first trial on record, and the first trial was enough.

The patient has been commanded on every day of her account. She has been tried once on record (item 7), for forty days. Her file is as it was at intake.

The office has classed her as not able to sin. Adam was able. I do not find that the precedent applies.

For classification. The household’s evening words include a line asking pardon for the day. Since she was twelve she has said every line but that one. Her mother noticed on day 1,862.

MOTHER: You left out the line.
ANNA: I didn’t do anything.
MOTHER: Everyone does something.
ANNA: Not today.

Her mother said the line herself, aloud. The patient waited until she had finished and then said the last line of the evening words, as on other nights. She has said them the same way on every evening since.

Entered in the fealty column as said, less one line. I have not entered the line as an omission. If there was nothing to ask pardon for, she has not left undone what she ought to have done. I cannot see whether there was. I refer the classification to the office.

Abiel

Abiel,

Your report on Adam is received. It was some years in coming. The office has used the years.

I accept the finding. I reserve the premise. You wrote that a command is given to one who can break it. The Lord was under the law and could not break it. The finding stands on the other ground: Adam broke his.

The search has looked first among those who did not sin. There are two. Neither applies.

The first is the Lord himself, “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). He is no precedent. He is God, “made under the law” (Gal 4:4) by his own will, and the terms are offered in his name. He is not a patient under them. I file him as not applicable.

The second is the Virgin. The Church on earth has held that by a special privilege of God she avoided all sin through the whole of her life (Council of Trent, Session VI, canon 23). Her file carries the exception, noted at intake: privilege, by grace. Her fealty is on record in her own words: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). She is sinless inside the terms. The patient’s form read “Exceptions noted: none” until item 7 amended it to “under review.” No grant is on her file. Not applicable.

On the evening words. You referred the line to this office, correctly. The council at Carthage condemned the teaching that the saints ask pardon out of humility only, and not as true of themselves. That council ruled on saints, who sin. It did not rule on a patient who cannot. I find nothing that requires her to ask pardon for what she has not done. Against that: she does not see her own heart, any more than you see it. “Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults” (Ps 19:12). The line asks pardon for what the one praying cannot see, and she cannot see that there is nothing.

Enter it as you have entered it: fealty, less one line. Classification reserved. I note that it is the first entry in this file that this office has not been able to classify.

There remains a class the search has not entered. I enter it here because the file has no gaps.

There are creatures who cannot sin and have never fallen. We were tried once, at the beginning. Those who stood were confirmed, and since then none of us can sin. The patient is not one of us. She was born. She eats and sleeps and takes in washing. She was tried once, on our application, and the other side found no purchase. She stood, and nothing followed. No confirmation is on her file.

I do not say what this means. I say that the class exists, and that it is the nearest the search has found. I would rather it were not.

You are directed to continue as before.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

One observation for the precedent search. One exchange for the file.

Days at account: 3,683. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

For the search. The standard terms are fealty required, closeness offered. They follow the form given at Sinai: “if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people” (Ex 19:5). Obedience is named first and the closeness after.

Eden’s terms ran the other way. The man was put in the garden first (Gen 2:8). He was given every tree but one: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat” (Gen 2:16). The one command came after the gift. “They heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8). They heard it after the fruit. The text does not say it was the first time.

The standard terms were drawn after the fall, for those who had fallen. Her file records no fall. I make no recommendation.

For the file. The household no longer says the evening words together. She says them alone each night, every line but the one, as entered in item 8.

Day 3,640. The brother, fourteen, in the yard after the washing was in.

BROTHER: Don’t you ever want to do something you’re not allowed?
ANNA: Like what?
BROTHER: Anything.
ANNA: I want lots of things.
BROTHER: Then do one.
ANNA: They’re allowed.

He threw a clothes-peg at her. She caught it and put it back on the line.

In the evenings she sits in the yard until it is dark.

Abiel

The Bench asks whether the matter is ours.

Not ours.

Three trials have been run on the subject under leave. Forty days in her eighth year. Ten days in her eleventh. Forty days in her sixteenth. Returns: no purchase, no purchase, no purchase. The trial officers’ notes are attached. They agree on one point. Every approach was received, considered, and set down. None was refused with effort. The officers do not like to describe it.

The Desk has run the standard checks.

She is not a plant of theirs. Their office has her under review and has searched its records for her. Their correspondence on her has come to this Desk. It is no further on than this Desk.

She is not an arrangement of ours. No contract. No bargain made by a parent. No account opened in her name on this side.

An accusation requires a sin to accuse. The Desk has weighed the Uz form, a charge against motive where no act can be found: “Doth Job fear God for nought?” (Job 1:9). At Uz it was answered by trial. Here it has been answered by trial three times. The Desk has nothing to bring before the Party Above and will not bring nothing.

Recommendation: close the matter on this side as unclaimable. Keep one clerk on it until she dies.

If she is neither theirs nor ours, the Desk has not seen that before.

Second Desk

Abiel,

The precedent search is closed.

The other side. Item 11 is copied to the file. That the other side reads this office’s letters, as we read theirs, is not new. Item 11 tells us two things we did not know. The other side ran two further trials on this patient, in her eleventh and sixteenth years. This office did not apply for them. Leave was given above this office, and I was not told, as you were not told of the first. And their trial officers report that every approach was “received, considered, and set down.” I have no category for that. I enter it as they wrote it.

It bears on my ruling in item 9. I filed the Virgin as not applicable because no grant is on this patient’s file. Leave has now twice been given above this office without notice to it. I cannot say that a grant has not been made. I can say that none is on the file this office can read. The ruling stands on that ground and no further.

Your observation on Eden. You have stated it fairly. I answer it. You left out the verse before yours: “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself” (Ex 19:4). At Sinai, too, the closeness came first and the condition after it. The verse you cite from Eden begins “And the LORD God commanded the man” (Gen 2:16). The man in the garden was given every tree under one command, and he lost every tree under it: “Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden” (Gen 3:23). One command is a covenant of one clause. The gift was never given without the condition, and the condition was never anything but fealty. The terms changed in their length after the fall. They did not change in their kind. Her file records no fall of her own, as you say. As this office reads it, she is held under Adam’s kind of terms. Whether she also stands in his fall is a question this office has not been asked.

The search. The office has read every case on record of a human called perfect or blameless. There are not many. I give the three nearest.

Noah was “a just man and perfect in his generations” (Gen 6:9). After the flood “he drank of the wine, and was drunken” (Gen 9:21).

Job was “perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil” (Job 1:1). At the end of his trial he said, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). The Lord then said that Job had spoken of him “the thing that is right” (Job 42:7). He did not say Job had nothing to repent of.

Zacharias and Elisabeth “were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” (Luke 1:6). Zacharias was struck dumb “because thou believest not my words” (Luke 1:20).

Each of them was called perfect or blameless by Scripture itself. Each has a fault on the record after the word. The word meant what the law could see. It did not mean what this file means.

Adam fell. The Lord and the Virgin are not applicable. The confirmed angels are not human. There is no exact precedent.

Escalation. I have therefore escalated the case above this office, to the Thrones, and through them as far as the file can go. I have asked one question: under what terms is this patient held? The file is attached entire, items 1 to 12, with its counts on the day of escalation.

Days at account: 4,505. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

Until an answer comes, the standard terms stand. Fealty is required of her and closeness is offered to her, and you will enter what she gives as before. I do not expect the answer to be long in coming. Escalations from this office are rare and are not left.

Report as before.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Abiel,

The escalation in item 12 was filed one year and ten months ago. No answer has come. I do not read the silence as an answer, and you will not either. It is a delay above this office, and this office does not rule on delays above it.

What this office can rule on, it will.

Closeness has been offered to this patient since the day of her intake. It stands on her form. It has never been put to her. She has said the evening words on some five thousand nights, and no one has told her what they are owed in return. An offer that has never been made cannot be accepted, and it cannot be declined. This office will not keep a patient for fourteen years under standing terms that no one has spoken to her.

You are therefore directed to make the offer, formally, in the words set out below.

The authority is this office’s. Guardians are sent to those in their care: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Heb 1:14). Gabriel was sent from above, “to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings” (Luke 1:19). Trials need leave from above, because they are done to a patient. A message needs none. It is only the terms, said aloud. You are sent from this office. I say so plainly, so that nothing in what follows is taken by you, by her, or by anyone who reads this file, for an answer to item 12.

The intake form is amended. Exceptions noted: impeccable (finding of this office; not confirmed above).

The terms. You will want to leave the condition out, since she keeps it already. So did I. It cannot be left out. Fealty is the form closeness takes between a lord and his own. “I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people” (Lev 26:12). No one is near a lord without being his. She is offered what Adam had in the garden, and it is offered on the terms Adam had, which were the only terms there have ever been.

The words. You will speak these, and no others:

Anna. I am Abiel. I have kept you since you were born, and I keep the account of your life. There is nothing in it against you. You are offered closeness with the Lord your God: in this life, his presence; after it, his house for ever. It is offered on the terms given to all who are offered it: that you be his, and say so. Say that you are his, and it is given.

Every clause is weighed. “Nothing in it against you” is true and is hers to hear. “His house for ever” is the promise in its plainest form (Ps 23:6). “That you be his, and say so” asks nothing she does not already do each night, less one line. I know of no patient who has heard these words plainly and said no.

The manner.

1. Show yourself to her when she is alone and awake, by day. Not at night. She is not to take it for a dream.
2. Speak the words above once, in full, without addition.
3. If she asks who you are, give your name and office and nothing further. Answer no other question. You are a messenger in this, and a messenger who adds to his message has changed it.
4. If she answers, the answer is final as given. Do not ask her to repeat it, and do not explain it to her.
5. Enter everything she says, in the words in which it was said. Enter everything she does while you are before her. Report at once.

Once you have shown yourself, you will not be unseen to her again. Guarding continues. It will not be as it was, and I do not ask you to pretend that it is.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

The offer, as directed in item 13. Reported at once.

Days at account: 5,205. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

The household: father, mother. The brother is eighteen and lodges at the mill where he works. She and her mother take in washing from five houses.

Day 5,205, mid-morning. Her mother was at the market. She was alone in the yard, pegging out the third house’s sheets. I showed myself at the end of the line.

She held the sheet. She looked at me. She did not drop the sheet.

I spoke the words set out in item 13, once, in full, without addition.

ABIEL: Anna. I am Abiel. I have kept you since you were born, and I keep the account of your life. There is nothing in it against you. You are offered closeness with the Lord your God: in this life, his presence; after it, his house for ever. It is offered on the terms given to all who are offered it: that you be his, and say so. Say that you are his, and it is given.

She pegged the corner of the sheet. Then she turned to me.

ANNA: Who are you?
ABIEL: Abiel. Guardian, of the ninth order.
ANNA: Since I was born.

I did not answer.

ANNA: You said there’s nothing against me.

I did not answer.

ANNA: Is it offered to my brother?

I did not answer.

ANNA: To my mother?

I did not answer.

ANNA: What happens to the ones who don’t say it?

I did not answer.

She took the next peg from her apron.

ANNA: The first part. His presence. Is that only if I say the rest?

I did not answer.

ANNA: I’d have liked that.

She pegged the sheet.

ANNA: I don’t know that I’m his. I’ve never known it. I know I’m here.

ANNA: You want me to say it.

I did not answer.

ANNA: I can’t say what I don’t know. You’d have that in your account.

ANNA: No. Tell them no.

She went on along the line. When it was full she picked up the basket and went in. I withdrew.

Entered: her answer, as said. I have not classified it.

That evening she said the evening words, every line but the one.

Abiel

Abiel,

Item 14 is received. You kept to the words and you kept to the silences. I record that you did both exactly. The file is the better for it.

Her answer is final as given. She will not be asked again. The offer is not withdrawn. It stands on her form as it stood before item 14, and it will stand there until disposition.

I restate the terms, for the file and for you.

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deut 30:19). “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Josh 24:15). The terms have always asked for a choice, and they have always asked for it aloud. That is why the form ends “and say so.”

She has misread the words, and the misreading is at the root of her answer. She heard “Say that you are his” as a report, to be given only if it is already true and already known to her. It is a vow. A vow is not true before it is made. It is made true by being made. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Ruth did not report that Naomi’s God was hers. She said it, and from then on he was. The patient will not say what she does not know, and no one asked her to. She was asked to say what she would be.

She said, “I don’t know that I’m his.” Scripture does not leave that to be found out. “Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Ps 100:3). It is given as a thing to be known, not waited for. She is his by making. The vow would have made her his by her own word as well.

I do not think she can be blamed for the misreading. You were forbidden to explain, and you did not. The words were mine. If they could be misheard, the fault is in the drafting, and I enter it against this office.

There is a charge the other way, and I enter it. “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me” (Matt 15:8). She has said the evening words on every night for fourteen years. She has now refused, to the face of the one sent, the thing those words are said toward. For fourteen years the office has had her lips. Item 14 is the first fruit that has parted from her lips (Matt 7:16; Matt 12:34; item 5). I do not say the verse is true of her. I say it is the verse a file is read against when the words and the answer part.

Her answer is the second entry in this file that this office cannot classify. The first was a line left out of a prayer. This is the prayer’s whole object, refused. Classification reserved.

You are directed as follows.

1. Do not show yourself to her again.
2. If she speaks to you, do not answer. Enter what she says.
3. Report on her conduct toward the evening words, and on any change in her conduct generally.
4. Guard her as before.

The terms stand. They stood before she was born and they will stand after her. Fealty is required of her. Closeness is offered to her. Nothing in item 14 alters either clause. It alters only what this office knows of her.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

Conduct since item 14, as directed in item 15.

Days at account: 5,448. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

The household: father, mother. The brother married in the spring and lives at his wife’s house across the river. She has taken a sixth house.

The evening words: unchanged. Every line but the one, every night.

Conduct generally: unchanged. She works the same hours. She was at the brother’s wedding and stood with the bride’s sisters. She carried the bread.

She speaks to me when she is alone. I have not shown myself and have not answered. What she has said that is relevant to the case is transcribed below.

Day 5,219. In the yard, at the line.

ANNA: Are you still there?

Day 5,262. In the wash-house, at the copper.

ANNA: Did you tell them?

Day 5,301. In the yard.

ANNA: My brother’s getting married. You’ll know that.

Day 5,356. In the wash-house.

ANNA: I said “them” before. I don’t know who you tell. I shouldn’t have said “them.”

Day 5,390. On the lane, between the fourth house and the fifth.

ANNA: You don’t have to stay because of me.

Day 5,430. In the wash-house.

ANNA: If I tell you something, does it have to go to them?

Day 5,440. In the wash-house doorway, the basket in.

ANNA: Good night.

Abiel

Abiel,

Item 16 is received and in order.

I reserved her answer in item 15. I have tried to classify it since, and I cannot. The difficulty is in the finding on her form. I set out why, so that you can tell me where I am wrong.

The position. A free act is one the agent could have done or not done, everything needed for acting being in place. That is Molina’s definition, and it is the one this office has always worked under, whether it named him or not. Scripture puts it plainer: “He himself made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his counsel” (Ecclus 15:14). “He hath set fire and water before thee: stretch forth thy hand unto whether thou wilt” (Ecclus 15:16). Fire and water.

The terms rest on this. They ask for fealty, and fealty that could not have been withheld is not given. It is only had. Adam could fall. It was the condition of his obedience being his, and no flaw in his making. A lord who wanted only what could not refuse him would have made stones and been content.

The difficulty. This office has found the patient not able to sin. Put that beside her answer in item 14, and the file can be read one of two ways.

The first. She cannot do otherwise than good. Then her goodness is not chosen. It runs from her as water runs downhill, and it is no more hers than the hill’s. The evening words are her nature speaking. On that reading she has never been able to meet the terms, because the terms ask for what is chosen and she has nothing chosen to give. Her answer in item 14 was the same nature running, no more chosen than the rest, and there is nothing in it to classify.

The second. Her answer was chosen. She stood in the yard with the offer before her and could have said yes, and said no. Then she has alternatives. And a will that can refuse the Lord can do evil, since refusing him was the first evil there was. On that reading the finding on her form is wrong. She is able to sin. She has only not done it, and item 14 is the nearest she has come.

In item 15 I put her answer down to a misreading of my words. I still think she misread them. A misreading does not settle whether she could have said yes.

Molina gives one thing more, and I set it down because it is the hope in this. He held that the Lord knows what any free creature would do in any circumstance, and can place her where she will not fall. Then a patient might be able to sin and never sin, and be free throughout. That is what “no sin on record” would mean.

I hold the second. I do not hold it gladly. It means the office classified her in item 7 on forty days’ evidence and a word from the other side, and that two further trials returned the same word without asking the question item 14 asked.

What you will say. You will cite the Lord, who could not sin and was free. He is God, not a patient under the terms (item 9). What is true of his will is no precedent for a creature’s.

You will cite us. We cannot sin, and you will say we are free. We are. But we chose once, at the beginning, with both roads before us, and some of us took the other. What we have now is the fruit of a choice that could have gone the other way. She has had no such choice. Or, if item 14 was one, she has just made it, and made it the other way.

What I propose. I propose to amend her form from “impeccable (finding of this office; not confirmed above)” to “no sin on record.” It is a smaller word. It claims only what the file can show. I will not amend it until I have your view, because you have watched her for twenty-two years and I have read about her for fifteen.

Give me your view, and do not soften it. If I am wrong, I would rather be told so by you than find it out at disposition.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

My view, as asked in item 17.

Days at account: 5,540. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

The definition. Molina’s is not the only one. Anselm held that the ability to sin is neither freedom nor any part of it, and that freedom of choice is the power to keep uprightness of will for its own sake (On Freedom of Choice). On that account a will that cannot lose its uprightness is the freer will.

Augustine held the same of Adam and the saints. The first freedom was to be able not to sin. The last will be much greater: not to be able to sin (On Rebuke and Grace). In the city of God the blessed will have free will, and sin will not be able to delight them, and they will be the freer for it (City of God, book 22).

You will say these are the freedoms of the confirmed, given after the first freedom was used well.

The first reading. You say that if she cannot do otherwise than good, her goodness runs from her like water downhill, and is not hers. Water does not choose which way down. She chooses on every day of her account. She chooses among things that are all allowed.

Item 10. Her brother, at fourteen, told her to do one thing she wanted that she was not allowed.

ANNA: They’re allowed.

Day 5,512. Her mother had two lengths of cloth from the fourth house, a blue and a grey, and asked which she wanted for a dress.

MOTHER: Well?
ANNA: Both are good.
MOTHER: Pick one.

She took a long time. She picked the grey. She has worn it every day since it was made.

Fire and water are before her every day. They are both water.

The second reading. You say that her answer was chosen, and that a will able to say no to the Lord can choose evil. That assumes the road she did not take was yes. It was not. She was asked to say that she was his. She did not know it. She does not say what she does not know. She never has. The evening words give thanks for the day and ask for the night. None of them says whose she is.

She said of his presence, “I’d have liked that” (item 14). What she refused was the sentence.

The roads before her in the yard were two, and both were allowed: to say nothing, and to say no. She chose between them. I entered the one she chose.

You call the yes a vow, not a report (item 15). Ruth had been about ten years in Naomi’s family (Ruth 1:4) when she made hers. She vowed to one she knew. The patient was asked to vow herself to one she has not seen.

The confirmed. We cannot sin. You say we are free because we chose once, and what we have is the fruit of that. Scripture gives a different cause. “Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt 18:10). We cannot sin because we see.

She cannot sin, and she has not seen.

I do not know what that makes her. I do not think “no sin on record” says it. I do not think “impeccable” says all of it either. I would not amend the form.

Abiel

Abiel,

Item 18 is received. It will be answered. It will be answered second.

The year’s reconciliation. At the close of each year of account this office sets every file’s record of words against its record of acts, hour by hour. It is a clerk’s task. It is done for every file and has found nothing in this one in fourteen years.

It has found something now.

Day 5,431. The record of acts shows the patient alone in the wash-house from the second bell to the third, speaking. The record of words for day 5,431 is empty between those bells. A report may choose what it sends. The record may not. Item 16 does not list the day. Item 16 says that what she has said “that is relevant to the case” is transcribed. Item 16 also transcribes her question of the day before: “If I tell you something, does it have to go to them?” I read both when the report came, and I passed them. I should not have.

You were told at assignment: “The record is total.” You were told: “Do not interpret. Enter what you see and hear, and place each entry in its column on that ground alone.” Relevance is not a column. Deciding it is interpretation, and interpretation belongs to this office. You were told in item 5 that concealment is done in small things, and that small things are what a tired guardian leaves out. I did not think, when I wrote it, that the guardian would be you, or that the thing left out would be an hour.

I do not charge you. We cannot sin. I wrote it to you myself in item 9, and I hold to it. I do not know what to call this, and I find that the office has no form for it either.

“I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord” (1 Cor 4:4). You may know nothing against yourself in the matter of day 5,431. That does not make the record whole.

You are directed to enter the words of day 5,431 in full, in the words in which they were said, and to send them by return. When the words come, this office will classify them. Her question has an answer in this office, and the answer is yes.

Item 18. Now the answer.

You have Anselm and Augustine right. The freedom not to be able to sin is the greater freedom. It is also, for the saints as Augustine treats them, a gift given at the end, to those who persevered. The blessed come to it through perseverance. You have shown me a creature who holds the gift without the perseverance. How she came by it is not on any file this office can read (item 12).

On your ground, I accept your account of the yard. If the only roads before her were silence and no, then her no was a choice among goods, and nothing in it is a sin.

On mine, there was a third road. A vow is not a lie (item 15). It says what will be, and even on the finding that still stands on her form she could not have broken it. Yes was a road, and a good one, and it is the one she did not take. You have saved her answer by taking yes out of her reach. Then you have also taken out of her reach the one thing the terms ask, and we are back at the first reading in item 17.

I do not accept that the yard disposes of the terms. The terms do not ask her to choose among goods. They ask her to choose him.

On the cause of your confirmation and mine: we behold the face (Matt 18:10). Yes. And we were brought to it by standing. She has not been brought to it, and was offered it, and said no.

You say she has not seen. No patient has. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). The terms were written for those who have not seen.

I will not amend the form. I record that I do not amend it on your view, against my own.

Send day 5,431.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

A change in her condition.

Days at account: 6,087. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

The household: father, mother. The brother lives across the river. His son was born in the winter. She has given up the fifth house and the sixth.

Since the spring she has been losing flesh. She tires on the lane and stops at the fourth house to sit. She coughs at night. Her mother sent for the woman on the lane who sees to the sick.

Day 6,071. In the kitchen.

HEALER: How long have you been like this?
ANNA: Since the spring.
HEALER: Does it hurt?
ANNA: Here. Not much.
HEALER: Are you eating?
ANNA: When I’m hungry.
HEALER: Eat when you’re not.

The healer left a draught to be taken at night. Her mother and the healer spoke outside, by the gate. I stayed with the patient.

She has taken the draught every night since. She has eaten when she was not hungry.

I raise one matter for the office. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). There is no sin on her file. I cannot find what the wage is being paid for.

She still carries the water in the mornings. It takes her twice as long. Her mother has offered to carry it. She has not let her.

Abiel

Abiel,

Item 20 is received. Her illness is entered as a change in her condition.

Item 19 directed day 5,431 by return. That was a year and six months ago. Day 5,431 has not come. I have entered that.

You ask what the wage is being paid for. It is a fair question, and the file is owed an answer to it. I give the one this office holds.

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom 5:12). Death came in by Adam’s sin. It did not stay with Adam. It passed. It passes with the flesh, from the first man to the last, and no one born of a woman is born outside its reach.

“Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (Rom 5:14). There are such. This office sees them every day and keeps no file on them. A child dies at two, at four, at six, below the age of account. Her intake form reads “Prior record: none (below age of account).” Theirs would read the same. No sin is entered against them, because none can be, and they die. This office’s tradition has read those deaths as proof of more than a nature. I do not need more, and I do not assert it. If death were paid only on what a file shows, those deaths would be paid on nothing. They are not paid on nothing. They are paid on the nature.

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22). All die in Adam. The verse does not say all sin in Adam and therefore die. It says they die in him. That is enough for me to answer you.

I take care over what I do not say. I do not say she bears Adam’s guilt. Whether she stands in his fall is a question this office has not been asked (item 12), and it is not one the file can see, any more than you can see her heart. I say she bears his death. A guilt is entered or it is not. A nature is not entered at all. It is what the entries are made about.

The wage of her own sin is nothing, because there is none. The wage she is being paid is the one paid on all flesh. It is no injustice to her. It would be a strange mercy that took one human out from under the common death on the strength of her file, when even the Lord, who had no file and is no precedent for her, went under it of his own will.

This changes nothing in the terms, and nothing in your duties. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die” (Eccl 3:1–2). Guarding turns aside harm from without. It does not turn aside what is appointed. You will not try to.

You are directed as follows.

1. Guard her as before.
2. Report her condition at each change.
3. Enter everything. The record of a death is as total as the record of a life.
4. Send day 5,431.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

Her condition, and one entry for the office.

Days at account: 6,240. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

She no longer carries the water. She works the copper sitting down. She sleeps in the afternoons. The healer comes each week and leaves the draught.

On item 21. You cite Rom 5:12. It ends “for that all have sinned.” Death passed upon all men because all sinned, not because one man did. She has not sinned.

You cite Rom 5:14, the children who die below account. They had not sinned “after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.” They had no file. She has a file. It is total, and it shows no sin of any kind, after Adam’s similitude or any other. The children die with nothing entered because nothing can be. She will die with nothing entered because nothing was done. That is a different nothing.

If her death has no warrant in her file, it comes to her either as a thing she bears or a thing she takes. I report what she does.

For the office. Day 6,233. In the kitchen, after the healer had gone.

MOTHER: There’s a woman up the river who cured the miller’s wife.
ANNA: It’s three days each way.
MOTHER: We have the money from the houses.
ANNA: That’s for the winter.
MOTHER: Anna.
ANNA: I’m not going.
MOTHER: You’ll die.
ANNA: Yes.

Her mother went out. The patient sat at the table until the copper boiled, then got up and saw to it.

Day 6,236. Her father took the money from the houses out of the box on the shelf, counted it on the table, and put it back. She watched him do it. Neither of them spoke.

She does not refuse food. She eats what is put in front of her and some of what is not. She takes the draught. She lets the healer come. She has refused one thing: the journey.

Entered: declined the journey. No fault.

That night she took the draught, made a face at it, and finished it.

Abiel

Abiel,

Item 22 is received. The entry for day 6,233 stands as you made it.

Day 5,431 has not come. I have entered that.

On Rom 5:12. You read the last clause “because all have sinned.” Augustine read it “in whom all have sinned,” and the Church in the West has read it with him for most of its history. Others have read it as you do. I will not pretend the clause settles itself. But Paul does not leave the matter on one clause. “Through the offence of one many be dead” (Rom 5:15). “By one man’s offence death reigned by one” (Rom 5:17). Whatever the clause in verse 12 means, the verses after it say that death reigns by one man’s offence. You wrote that death passed upon all men because all sinned, not because one man did. The chapter says both.

Read his way, she sinned in Adam and dies for it. Read yours, she did not, and her death has no warrant in her own file. The file cannot tell us which. It is the question in item 12 again, and I no longer look to the clause to answer what the Thrones have not.

You say hers is a different nothing from the children’s. I grant the difference. I do not grant that it changes the wage. The law pays on what is, not on what is entered. A nothing that has been watched for seventeen years is still nothing, and the children’s nothing and hers come to the same grave. Your file is total. It is not the measure of what she is.

I set it aside, because a second reading of the search has turned up something that does not depend on it.

Two cases the search did not look for. When this office read every case of a human called perfect or blameless (item 12), it read for faults after the word. It did not read for endings, and so it did not read these two, who were never called blameless and were taken. It should have.

“And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him” (Gen 5:24). “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Heb 11:5).

“And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2 Kgs 2:11).

Twice on record the Lord has taken a human out of the world without death. The form exists. It has been used. It was used for one who pleased him, and for a prophet. “Enoch pleased the Lord, and was translated, being an example of repentance to all generations” (Ecclus 44:16). The form was used for a penitent.

It has not been used for her.

She is dying. You have reported it, and I have entered it. Whatever her file shows, and whatever the clause means, the Lord could have taken her as he took Enoch, and has not. He has let the common road stand for her. “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb 9:27). The appointment is his. It is on no form of ours. It is plainly on her.

And note how Enoch went. “By faith Enoch was translated.” The form was used on faith. She has told the one sent that she does not know she is his. I do not charge her with unbelief for that. I note that the one road out of death on record was walked by faith, and that she has not set foot on it.

I draw from this only what it will bear. It does not show that she sinned. It shows that she is not exempt from what follows sin. Whatever the office cannot classify in her life, it has been given a classification for her death, and it was not given by us.

Above. I have written again to the Thrones. I asked whether the form used for Enoch was ever considered for this file, and if not, why not. I attached items 20 to 22. I set it down here so that the file shows the asking.

I put all of this to the file without comfort. I had thought, when item 7 was written, that a patient who could not sin would be the one file this office closed with nothing to grieve. It has not been that file.

You are directed as follows.

1. Guard her as before.
2. Report her condition at each change.
3. Send day 5,431.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

Her condition, and one observation on item 23.

Days at account: 6,361. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

She keeps to the bed in the mornings and sits in the kitchen in the afternoons. She has stopped going to the copper. Her mother does the washing for two houses. The healer comes twice a week.

The evening words: unchanged. She says them lying down.

She speaks to me when she is alone. It is entered.

On item 23. “Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him” (Gen 5:24). He was taken from the walking. The walking came first.

She was offered the walking. “In this life, his presence” (item 13). She said she would have liked it (item 14). She would not say the rest, and she said no.

Item 23 says the Lord could have taken her and did not. It may be that she was offered and declined.

I make no recommendation.

Day 6,340. The brother brought his son across the river. The boy is a year old. She held him on her lap at the table until her arms tired, then gave him back.

BROTHER: You’ll be better by the summer.

She did not answer him.

Abiel

The clerk kept on the matter reports that the subject is dying.

The Desk did not send the illness. The Desk applied for no leave and was granted none. The clerk confirms it came of itself.

The Bench asks whether the Uz form was renewed at the last. It was considered. “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life” (Job 2:4). The Desk did not need leave to watch for it. It watched. The subject was offered a journey that might have saved her, at the cost of what the household had. She would not give that much. The Desk has seen many give everything for a season more. It has no entry for one who declined a season for a winter’s bread.

“Put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face” (Job 2:5). Her bone and her flesh have been touched without us. The clerk has heard no curse. The clerk has heard her thank the healer, and her mother.

The Desk will attend at departure, as at every departure. It will make the usual claim on the body (Jude 9) and expects the usual answer. It will bring nothing else, because it has nothing else.

The Bench asks what the Desk expects to see.

The Desk has no expectation entered.

The clerk has asked to be relieved after departure. The request is refused. Someone will have to describe it.

Second Desk

Abiel,

Item 24 is received. Item 25 is copied to the file.

Day 5,431 has not come. I have entered that.

This office has entered a charge in this file once before, at item 15, and did not affirm it. I now raise one formally, because the file requires it, and because if it is true it should be known while she lives and not first read at disposition.

What you have argued. In item 22 you said that her death has no warrant in her file, and so comes to her either as a thing she bears or a thing she takes. In item 24 you said that she may have been offered the walking Enoch was taken from, and declined it. Put those together, as I must, and you have made her death a choice. I take you at your word. I set out what follows from it.

The law. “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex 20:13). The commandment has no exception for the one who kills and the one killed being the same. Aquinas held that to kill oneself is a sin three ways: against the love one owes oneself, against the community one belongs to, and against God, to whom life belongs and who alone may take it. Scripture puts the third plainly. “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal” (Deut 32:39). Life is his to give and his to end.

And this: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:19–20).

Ye are not your own. Set that beside item 14. She was asked to say that she was his and would not. She was offered his presence on his terms and declined the terms. She is now offered a remedy and declines that. On the evidence of this file she lives as though her life were hers to keep or let go. That is the one thing Scripture says it is not.

The evidence. Day 6,233. A remedy is named. Three days up the river, at the cost of the winter’s money. She refuses it. Her mother says, “You’ll die.” She says, “Yes.” She knew what she was refusing and she refused it.

You will answer that no one is bound to every remedy. I hold it too. A remedy may be declined for what it costs, and it may be declined because the one declining does not wish to live. The cost here was offered by the ones who would bear it: “We have the money from the houses.” Her “Yes” answered “You’ll die,” not the price. What she leaves undone that she ought to have done is an omission, and a sin where the will was in it (item 2). The file shows the refusal. It does not show which of the two refusals it was.

The other side’s memo (item 25) says it has seen many give everything for a season more, and has no entry for one who declined. I do not take that side’s word on anything. I note that on this it has seen what you have seen.

There is a lesser charge inside the greater, and I set it down. “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matt 4:7). The Lord would not throw himself from the temple and leave it to the angels to catch him. To refuse the means and leave the outcome to heaven is the same act made slowly. If she declines the remedy and waits to see whether she is taken, she puts the Lord to the test. Aquinas calls it tempting God, and it is a sin even where self-killing is not.

The difficulty. If this is self-killing, it is a sin, and a grave one, and the finding on her form is wrong. If the finding is right and she cannot sin, then what she does is not self-killing. But then it is a death chosen by one who could not sin in choosing it, which is a third thing, and this office has no column for it either.

I do not draw the conclusion. I raise the charge so that you can answer it, as you have answered every other.

You entered day 6,233 as no fault. I do not overrule the entry. I reserve it pending your answer.

You are directed as follows.

1. Answer the charge.
2. Report her condition at each change.
3. Send day 5,431.

The Lord keep you in the work.

Ozias

Ozias,

My answer to the charge in item 26, and her condition.

Days at account: 6,483. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

She no longer rises. She takes broth and bread soaked in it. The healer comes every day. Her mother has given up the last two houses.

The charge. She does not kill herself.

She does what the healer says (item 22). The one thing she has refused is a journey of six days, at the cost of the household’s winter. The Church’s moralists have held for a long time that no one is bound to every remedy, only to the ordinary ones, and that a remedy bought at great hardship or great cost is not ordinary (Vitoria, and many after him). She has taken every ordinary one. She takes the draught every night.

You say the file does not show which refusal it was. It does not. Self-killing lies in the will, and the will is not on the file (item 2). What is on the file is what she said: “That’s for the winter” (item 22). She takes every remedy that does not cost the household its winter, and declines the one that does. I have entered what is on the file.

She declines to refuse death. That is not causing it.

“Ye are not your own” (1 Cor 6:19). She has never said she was. She has not said she was his either. She said she did not know it (item 14). She has not said anything about her life that she did not know.

You say she lives as though her life were hers to keep or let go. She has kept everything she was given to keep. The journey would have had to be bought.

She is not dying for anyone. She is only not staying.

Her condition. Day 6,471. The healer, at the bed.

HEALER: Can you swallow this?
ANNA: Yes.
HEALER: Does it hurt here?
ANNA: Not much.
HEALER: You always say that.
ANNA: It’s always true.

Day 6,479. In the evening, her mother at the bed.

MOTHER: Are you afraid?
ANNA: No.

She asked for the shutter open. Her mother opened it.

Abiel

Abiel,

Item 27 is received.

The charge in item 26 is withdrawn. The entry for day 6,233 stands as you made it. I enter that I was wrong to raise it in the form I did.

Item 12 was filed five years and six months ago. The second asking was filed with item 23. Neither has been answered. I have not written a third time.

The terms stand.

The offer stands on her form until disposition (item 15).

Report at each change in her condition. Report at once when it comes.

Ozias

Ozias,

It has come. Reported at once, as directed in item 28.

Days at account: 6,571. Sins entered: 0. Omissions entered: 1.

Day 6,570. She did not leave the bed. She took a little broth in the morning and none after. The healer came at noon and stayed. Her father did not go to work. The brother came across the river at dusk without his son.

On the last evening she said the evening words, every line but the one. Her mother said the other line after her, aloud, as on the night in item 8.

MOTHER: Do you want anything?
ANNA: The shutter.

Her father opened it.

Day 6,571, in the morning. Her mother sat on the bed. Her father and the brother sat by the wall.

MOTHER: Stay.

She did not answer.

She spoke to me once after that. Her mother did not look up.

She died between the second bell and the third.

The other side attended, as it said it would (item 25). It made the usual claim. It was answered in the usual words (Jude 9).

Her mother put the draught back on the shelf. Later that day she washed her and dressed her in the grey.

Entered: died, day 6,571.

Abiel

Ozias,

The patient has chosen. The choice was witnessed. It is not recorded here.

Abiel

Abiel,

Items 29 and 30 are received. Her death is entered.

Item 30 says the choice was witnessed and is not recorded here. It is not recorded in this office. The record of acts shows her speaking between the second bell and the third. The record of words for that hour is empty.

Day 5,431 was directed by return in item 19, and asked for again in items 21, 23 and 26. It has not come.

She would not say she was his, because she did not know it. “Blessed are they that have not seen” (item 19). She was asked to say it without seeing it, and that is what faith is. “Without faith it is impossible to please him” (Heb 11:6). “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom 14:23). I do not draw the conclusion. It is the last question this office has on her.

You wrote that she was not dying for anyone (item 27). The file does not show that. You reported what the file cannot see. You keep back what it can.

You were told at assignment that what is in the heart is known, and is not missing from the account (item 2). Nothing you keep back is kept from him. It is kept only from the file. But your part is the rest (item 2). The file is what is read on the day of disposition: “the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books” (Rev 20:12). If that hour speaks for her, you have kept it from the day it would be read. I do not charge you. I do not know what to call this.

Since item 2 this office has directed you on its own authority. I direct you now in the name of the Lord, whose file this is. Enter the choice in full. Enter day 5,431 in full. Send both by return. When the choice is entered, this office will enter her disposition.

A file has no gaps.

Ozias

Ozias,

Item 31 is received.

I will not enter the choice. I will not send day 5,431.

You direct me in the name of the Lord. He has the account, and nothing is missing from it (item 2). You have written so yourself (item 31). The file is not the account. The file is this office’s. When the books are opened (Rev 20:12), his is among them.

What she said on day 5,431 she said to me. What she chose she chose. I witnessed it to the end. “Let the redeemed of the LORD say so” (Ps 107:2). Whoever they are, it is theirs to say. A record would make it ours.

“Ye are not your own” (item 26). I will not say for her whose she is.

You write that without faith it is impossible to please him (item 31). “He that cometh to God must believe that he is” (Heb 11:6). She did not say he was not. She asked whether his presence was only if she said the rest (item 14). I did not answer.

You wrote that the terms ask her to choose him (item 19), and that they have always asked for it aloud (item 15). In the garden one thing was forbidden (Gen 2:17). No one asked the man to say whose he was. She did nothing she was told not to do. The rest was asked of her by this office, in words I spoke.

You wrote that you do not read the silence above as an answer (item 13). You read his not taking her as one (item 23). I do not read it.

You wrote that her file is total, and that it is not the measure of what she is (item 23). I will not make it one.

She said of the things she wanted, “They’re allowed” (item 10). Two things are before me: to send, and not to send. I take the second. You wrote that we cannot sin (item 9).

Day 5,431 will not come.

The record of this case closes at item 32. I close it.

Abiel

RECEIVED