The Preachers' Garden of the Triumphant City of Jerusalem

...things in themselves, though perhaps I have written much. For if (as the Lord himself bears witness,
Job 38. 39.

speaking with blessed Job) we are not able to conceive without any error those things which are around us, which we touch with our hands and see with our eyes, how shall we be able to express without any error those things which we neither see nor hear, and which are most distant from us? Indeed, it is no great thing to err greatly concerning those things which are furthest removed from our senses, are naturally unknown to us, and are but little revealed by God, in considering what and of what kind are the things of that supernal city treated in this book. Therefore, concerning that heavenly fatherland, we have thought it necessary to treat only of those things which, with God as our guide, we are able to conceive under the figure of the city of Jerusalem.

We have taken care to divide this entire work into twelve Considerations, and these indeed into discourses and chapters. In the first, namely, concerning the fourfold city of Jerusalem, and especially the anagogical one, as Saint John reveals in his Apocalypse. In the second, concerning its building, as the Prophet attests. In the third, concerning its place, site, division, and its parts, and the mansions of the blessed. In the fourth, the subject is its inhabitants, their exercises, and those performed for the Church Militant. The fifth expresses the glorious leading of souls in its building. The sixth contains the perfect reformation of both the sensitive and intellectual part through the power of glorification. Which reformation is followed in the seventh by a very similar one of the higher affective power, through the same virtue of glorification. The eighth contains the exercises of those citizens which take place there. But the ninth unfolds the fifteen perpetual beatitudes of the blessed body. The tenth also expresses six perennial beatitudes, both of the Angels and of souls. The eleventh, indeed, concerns the state of the souls in purgatory, their punishments and torments, and the various suffrages for helping them. And finally, in the last, the subject is the state of the damned, the place, site, parts, and evil conditions of hell, as well as the individual punishments of the body, the senses, and of the soul and mind itself.

Moreover, we thought it very fruitful to add these two, because opposites placed next to one another shine forth more clearly, for the flight from sins and for the stirring up of penance. Furthermore, so that preachers may more easily and conveniently accommodate the matters contained in these to individual sermons throughout the year, we have [provided] a ta-