A hive of sacred honie-combes containing most sweet and heauenly counsel: taken out of the workes of the mellifluous doctor S. Bernard, Abbot of Clareval, tr. Anthony Batt, (Douay, 1633) :
“The perfection of humility consisteth in three things: to wit, that a man consider what he was before his birth, what he is from the day of his birth till the day of his death, what he shall be after this life. For how can a man grow proud, remembering that he hath been a vile seed, and blood curded in his mothers womb : after this in the wilderness of this world exposed to miseries and sin: and lastly shall be ashes, and worms-meat lying in his tomb? Whence doth a man grow proud, whose conception is sin, whose birth is pain, whose life is labor and misery, and death of necessity: not knowing when, or how, or where it shall be?”
Hieronymopolis 