A Devout Treatise compiled by Master Walter Hylton of the Song of Angels

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Title: The Cell of Self-Knowledge
Seven Early English Mystical Treaties
Author: Various
Translator: Edmund G. Gardner
Posting Date: August 8, 2009 [EBook #4544]
Release Date: October, 2003
First Posted: February 6, 2002
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELL OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, with thanks to the CCEL
(www.ccel.org) collection. HTML version by Al Haines.
The Cell of Self-Knowledge:
Seven Early English Mystical Treatises
Printed by Henry Pepwell
MDXXI
Edited with an introduction and notes by
Edmund G. Gardner M.A.
1910
The Frontispiece is taken from B.M. MS. Faustina, B. VI.
"Stiamo nella cella del cognoscimento di noi; cognoscendo, noi per
noi non essere, e la bonta di Dio in noi; ricognoscendo l'essere, e
ogni grazia che e posta sopra l'essere, da lui."--St. Catherine of
Siena.
"Tergat ergo speculum suum, mundet spiritum suum, quisquis sitit
videre Deum suum. Exterso autem speculo et diu diligenter inspecto,
incipit ei quaedam divini luminis claritas interlucere, et immensus
quidam insolitae visionis radius oculis ejus apparere. Hoc lumen
oculos ejus irradiaverat, qui dicebat: Signatum est super nos lumen
vultus tui, Domine; dedisti laetitiam in corde meo. Ex hujus igitur
luminis visione quam admiratur in se, mirum in modum accenditur
animus, et animatur ad videndum lumen, quod est supra se."--Richard
of St. Victor.
CONTENTS
I. A very Devout Treatise, named Benjamin, of the Mights and Virtues
of Man's Soul, and of the Way to True Contemplation, compiled by a
Noble and Famous Doctor, a man of great holiness and devotion, named
Richard of Saint Victor
The Prologue
Cap. I. How the Virtue of Dread riseth in the Affection
Cap. II. How Sorrow riseth in the Affection
Cap. III. How Hope riseth in the Affection
Cap. IV. How Love riseth in the Affection
Cap. V. How the Double Sight of Pain and Joy riseth in the Imagination
Cap. VI. How the Virtues of Abstinence and Patience rise in the
Sensuality
Cap. VII. How Joy of Inward Sweetness riseth in the Affection
Cap. VIII. How Perfect Hatred of Sin riseth in the Affection
Cap. IX. How Ordained Shame riseth and groweth in the Affection
Cap. X. How Discretion and Contemplation rise in the Reason
II. Divers Doctrines Devout and Fruitful, taken out of the Life of
that Glorious Virgin and Spouse of Our Lord, Saint Katherin of
Seenes
III. A Short Treatise of Contemplation taught by Our Lord Jesu
Christ, or taken out of the Book of Margery Kempe, Ancress of Lynn
IV. A Devout Treatise compiled by Master Walter Hylton of the Song
of Angels
V. A Devout Treatise called the Epistle of Prayer
VI. A very necessary Epistle of Discretion in Stirrings of the Soul
VII. A Devout Treatise of Discerning of Spirits, very necessary for
Ghostly Livers
INTRODUCTION
FROM the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth
century may be called the golden age of mystical literature in the
vernacular. In Germany, we find Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. 1277),
Meister Eckhart (d. 1327), Johannes Tauler (d. 1361), and Heinrich
Suso (d. 1365); in Flanders, Jan Ruysbroek (d. 1381); in Italy,
Dante Alighieri himself (d. 1321), Jacopone da Todi (d. 1306), St.
Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), and many lesser writers who strove, in
prose or in poetry, to express the hidden things of the spirit, the
secret intercourse of the human soul with the Divine, no longer in
the official Latin of the Church, but in the language of their own
people, "a man's own vernacular," which "is nearest to him, inasmuch
as it is most closely united to him."[1] In England, the great names
of Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole (d. 1349), of Walter Hilton
(d. 1396), and of Mother Juliana of Norwich, whose Revelation of
Divine Love professedly date from 1373, speak for themselves.
The seven tracts or treatises before us were published in 1521 in a
little quarto volume: "Imprynted at London in Poules chyrchyarde at
the sygne of the Trynyte, by Henry Pepwell. In the yere of our lorde
God, M.CCCCC.XXI., the xvi. daye of Nouembre." They may, somewhat
loosely speaking, be regarded as belonging to the fourteenth
century, though the first and longest of them professes to be but a
translation of the work of the great Augustinian mystic of an
earlier age.
St. Bernard, Richard of St. Victor, and St. Bonaventura--all three
very familiar figures to students of Dante's Paradiso--are the chief
influences in the story of English mysticism. And, through the
writings of his latter-day followers, Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton,
and the anonymous author of the Divine Cloud of Unknowing, Richard
of St. Victor is, perhaps, the most important of the three.
Himself either a Scot or an Irishman by birth, Richard entered the
famous abbey of St. Victor, a house of Augustinian canons near
Paris, some time before 1140, where he became the chief pupil of the
great mystical doctor and theologian whom the later Middle Ages
regarded as a second Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor. After Hugh's
death (1141), Richard succeeded to his influence as a teacher, and
completed his work in creating the mystical theology of the Church.
His masterpiece, De Gratia Contemplationis, known also as Benjamin
Major, in five books, is a work of marvellous spiritual insight,
unction, and eloquence, upon which Dante afterwards based the whole
mystical psychology of the Paradiso.2 In it Richard shows how the
soul passes upward through the six steps of contemplation--in
imagination, in reason, in understanding--gradually discarding all
sensible objects of thought; until, in the sixth stage, it
contemplates what is above reason, and seems to be beside reason, or
even contrary to reason. He teaches that there are three qualities
of contemplation, according to its intensity: mentis dilatatio, an
enlargement of the soul's vision without exceeding the bounds of
human activity; mentis sublevatio, elevation of mind, in which the
intellect, divinely illumined, transcends the measure of humanity,
and beholds the things above itself, but does not entirely lose
self-consciousness; and mentis alienatio, or ecstasy, in which all
memory of the present leaves the mind, and it passes into a state of
divine transfiguration, in which the soul gazes upon truth without
any veils of creatures, not in a mirror darkly, but in its pure
simplicity. This master of the spiritual life died in 1173. Amongst
the glowing souls of the great doctors and theologians in the fourth
heaven, St. Thomas Aquinas bids Dante mark the ardent spirit of
"Richard who in contemplation was more than man."[3]
Benjamin, for Richard, is the type of contemplation, in accordance
with the Vulgate version of Psalm lxvii.: Ibi Benjamin
adolescentulus in mentis excessu: "There is Benjamin, a youth, in
ecstasy of mind"--where the English Bible reads: "Little Benjamin
their ruler."[4] At the birth of Benjamin, his mother Rachel dies:
"For, when the mind of man is rapt above itself, it surpasseth all
the limits of human reasoning. Elevated above itself and rapt in
ecstasy, it beholdeth things in the divine light at which all human
reason succumbs. What, then, is the death of Rachel, save the
failing of reason?"[5]
The treatise here printed under the title Benjamin is based upon a
smaller work of Richard's, a kind of introduction to the Benjamin
Major, entitled: Benjamin Minor; or: De Praeparatione animi ad
Contemplationem. It is a paraphrase of certain portions of this
work, with a few additions, and large omissions. Among the portions
omitted are the two passages that, almost alone among Richard's
writings, are known to the general reader--or, at least, to people
who do not claim to be specialists in mediaeval theology. In the
one, he speaks of knowledge of self as the Holy Hill, the Mountain
of the Lord:--
"If the mind would fain ascend to the height of science, let its
first and principal study be to know itself. Full knowledge of the
rational spirit is a great and high mountain. This mountain
transcends all the peaks of all mundane sciences, and looks down
upon all the philosophy and all the science of the world from on
high. Could Aristotle, could Plato, could the great band of
philosophers ever attain to it?"[6]
In the other, still adhering to his image of the mountain of
self-knowledge, he makes his famous appeal to the Bible, as the
supreme test of truth, the only sure guard that the mystic has
against being deluded in his lofty speculations:--
"Even if you think that you have been taken up into that high
mountain apart, even if you think that you see Christ transfigured,
do not be too ready to believe anything you see in Him or hear from
Him, unless Moses and Elias run to meet Him. I hold all truth in
suspicion which the authority of the Scriptures does not confirm,
nor do I receive Christ in His clarification unless Moses and Elias
are talking with Him."[7]
On the other hand, the beautiful passage with which the version
closes, so typical of the burning love of Christ, shown in devotion
to the name of Jesus, which glows through all the writings of the
school of the Hermit of Hampole, is an addition of the translator:--
"And therefore, what so thou be that covetest to come to
contemplation of God, that is to say, to bring forth such a child
that men clepen in the story Benjamin (that is to say, sight of
God), then shalt thou use thee in this manner. Thou shalt call
together thy thoughts and thy desires, and make thee of them a
church, and learn thee therein for to love only this good word Jesu,
so that all thy desires and all thy thoughts are only set for to
love Jesu, and that unceasingly as it may be here; so that thou
fulfil that is said in the psalm: 'Lord, I shall bless Thee in
churches'; that is, in thoughts and desires of the love of Jesu. And
then, in this church of thoughts and desires, and in this onehead of
studies and of wills, look that all thy thoughts, and all thy
desires, and all thy studies, and all thy wills be only set in the
love and the praising of this Lord Jesu, without forgetting, as far
forth as thou mayst by grace, and as thy frailty will suffer;
evermore meeking thee to prayer and to counsel, patiently abiding
the will of our Lord, unto the time that thy mind be ravished above
itself, to be fed with the fair food of angels in the beholding of
God and ghostly things; so that it be fulfilled in thee that is
written in the psalm: Ibi Benjamin adolescentulus in mentis excessu;
that is: 'There is Benjamin, the young child, in ravishing of
mind."'[8]
The text printed by Pepwell differs slightly from that of the
manuscripts, of which a large number have been preserved. Among
others, it is found in the Arundel MS. 286, and the Harleian MSS.
674, 1022, and 2373. It has been published from the Harl. MS. 1022
by Professor C. Horstman, who observes that "it is very old, and
certainly prior to Walter Hilton."[9] It is evidently by one of the
followers of Richard Rolle, dating from about the middle of the
fourteenth century. External and internal evidence seems to point to
its being the work of the anonymous author of the Divine Cloud of
Unknowing.
This is not the place to tell again the wonderful story of St.
Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), one of the noblest and most truly
heroic women that the world has ever seen. Her life and manifold
activities only touched England indirectly. The famous English
captain of mercenaries, Sir John Hawkwood, was among the men of the
world who, at least for a while, were won to nobler ideals by her
letters and exhortations. Two of her principal disciples, Giovanni
Tantucci and William Flete, both Augustinian hermits, were graduates
of Cambridge; the latter, an Englishman by birth, was appointed by
her on her deathbed to preside over the continuance of her work in
her native city, and a vision of his, concerning the legitimacy of
the claims of Urban the Sixth to the papal throne, was brought
forward as one of the arguments that induced England, on the
outbreak of the Great Schism in the Church (1378), to adhere to the
Roman obedience for which Catherine was battling to the death. A
letter which she herself addressed on the same subject to King
Richard the Second has not been preserved.
About 1493, Wynkyn de Worde printed The Lyf of saint Katherin of
Senis the blessid virgin, edited by Caxton; which is a free
translation, by an anonymous Dominican, with many omissions and the
addition of certain reflections, of the Legenda, the great Latin
biography of St. Catherine by her third confessor, Friar Raymond of
Capua, the famous master-general and reformer of the order of St.
Dominic (d. 1399). He followed this up, in 1519, by an English
rendering by Brother Dane James of the Saint's mystical treatise the
Dialogo: "Here begynneth the Orcharde of Syon; in the whiche is
conteyned the reuelacyons of seynt Katheryne of Sene, with ghostly
fruytes and precyous plantes for the helthe of mannes soule."[10]
This was not translated from St. Catherine's own vernacular, but
from Friar Raymond's Latin version of the latter, first printed at
Brescia in 1496. From the first of these two works, the Lyf, are
selected the passages--the Divers Doctrines devout and
fruitful--which Pepwell here presents to us; but it seems probable
that he was not borrowing directly from Caxton, as an almost
verbally identical selection, with an identical title, is found in
the British Museum, MS. Reg. 17 D.V., where it follows the Divine
Cloud of Unknowing.
Margery Kempe is a much more mysterious personage. She has come down
to us only in a tiny quarto of eight pages printed by Wynkyn de
Worde:--
"Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by our
lorde Jhesu cryste, or taken out of the boke of Margerie kempe of
Lynn."
And at the end:--
"Here endeth a shorte treatyse called Margerie kempe de Lynn.
Enprynted in Fletestrete by Wynkyn de worde."
The only known copy is preserved in the University of Cambridge. It
is undated, but appears to have been printed in 1501.[11] With a few
insignificant variations, it is the same as was printed twenty years
later by Pepwell, who merely inserts a few words like "Our Lord
Jesus said unto her," or "she said," and adds that she was a devout
ancress. Tanner, not very accurately, writes: "This book contains
various discourses of Christ (as it is pretended) to certain holy
women; and, written in the style of modern Quietists and Quakers,
speaks of the inner love of God, of perfection, et cetera."[12] No
manuscript of the work is known to exist, and absolutely no traces
can be discovered of the "Book of Margery Kempe," out of which it is
implied by the Printer that these beautiful thoughts and sayings are
taken.
There is nothing in the treatise itself to enable us to fix its
date. It is, perhaps, possible that the writer or recipient of these
revelations is the "Margeria filia Johannis Kempe," who, between
1284 and 1298, gave up to the prior and convent of Christ Church,
Canterbury, all her rights in a piece of land with buildings and
appurtenances, "which falls to me after the decease of my brother
John, and lies in the parish of Blessed Mary of Northgate outside
the walls of the city of Canterbury."[13] The revelations show that
she was (or had been) a woman of some wealth and social position,
who had abandoned the world to become an ancress, following the life
prescribed in that gem of early English devotional literature, the
Ancren Riwle.14 It is clearly only a fragment of her complete book
(whatever that may have been); but it is enough to show that she was
a worthy precursor of that other great woman mystic of East Anglia:
Juliana of Norwich. For Margery, as for Juliana, Love is the
interpretation of revelation, and the key to the universal
mystery:[15]--
"Daughter, thou mayst no better please God, than to think
continually in His love."
"If thou wear the habergeon or the hair, fasting bread and water,
and if thou saidest every day a thousand Pater Nosters, thou shalt
not please Me so well as thou dost when thou art in silence, and
suffrest Me to speak in thy soul."
"Daughter, if thou knew how sweet thy love is to Me, thou wouldest
never do other thing but love Me with all thine heart."
"In nothing that thou dost or sayest, daughter, thou mayst no better
please God than believe that He loveth thee. For, if it were
possible that I might weep with thee, I would weep with thee for the
compassion that I have of thee."
And, from the midst of her celestial contemplations, rises up the
simple, poignant cry of human suffering: "Lord, for Thy great pain
have mercy on my little pain."
We are on surer ground with the treatise that follows, the Song of
Angels.[16] Walter Hilton--who died on March 24, 1396--holds a
position in the religious life and spiritual literature of England
in the latter part of the fourteenth century somewhat similar to
that occupied by Richard Rolle in its earlier years. Like the Hermit
of Hampole, he was the founder of a school, and the works of his
followers cannot always be distinguished with certainty from his
own. Like his great master in the mystical way, Richard of St.
Victor, Hilton was an Augustinian, the head of a house of canons at
Thurgarton, near Newark. His great work, the Scala Perfectionis, or
Ladder of Perfection, "which expoundeth many notable doctrines in
Contemplation," was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494, and is
still widely used for devotional reading. A shorter treatise, the
Epistle to a Devout Man in Temporal Estate, first printed by Pynson
in 1506, gives practical guidance to a religious layman of wealth
and social position, for the fulfilling of the duties of his state
without hindrance to his making profit in the spiritual life. These,
with the Song of Angels, are the only printed works that can be
assigned to him with certainty, though many others, undoubtedly from
his pen, are to be found in manuscripts, and a complete and critical
edition of Walter Hilton seems still in the far future.[17] The Song
of Angels has been twice printed since the edition of Pepwell.[18]
In profoundly mystical language, tinged with the philosophy of that
mysterious Neo-Platonist whom we call the pseudo-Dionysius, it tells
of the wonderful "onehead," the union of the soul with God in
perfect charity:--
"This onehead is verily made when the mights of the soul are
reformed by grace to the dignity and the state of the first
condition; that is, when the mind is firmly established, without
changing and wandering, in God and ghostly things, and when the
reason is cleared from all worldly and fleshly beholdings, and from
all bodily imaginations, figures, and fantasies of creatures, and is
illumined by grace to behold God and ghostly things, and when the
will and the affection is purified and cleansed from all fleshly,
kindly, and worldly love, and is inflamed with burning love of the
Holy Ghost."
But to this blessed condition none may attain perfectly here on
earth. The writer goes on to speak of the mystical consolations and
visitations granted to the loving soul in this life, distinguishing
the feelings and sensations that are mere delusions, from those that
truly proceed from the fire of love in the affection and the light
of knowing in the reason, and are a very anticipation of that
ineffable "onehead" in heaven.
The three remaining treatises--the Epistle of Prayer, the Epistle of
Discretion in Stirrings of the Soul, and the Treatise of Discerning
of Spirits[19]--are associated in the manuscripts with four other
works: the Divine Cloud of Unknowing, the Epistle of Privy Counsel,
a paraphrase of the Mystical Theology of Dionysius entitled Dionise
Hid Divinity, and the similar translation or paraphrase of the
Benjamin Minor of Richard of St. Victor already considered.[20]
These seven treatises are all apparently by the same hand. The
Divine Cloud of Unknowing has been credited to Walter Hilton, as
likewise to William Exmew, or to Maurice Chauncy, Carthusians of the
sixteenth century, whereas the manuscripts are at least a hundred
years earlier than their time; but it seems safer to attribute the
whole series to an unknown writer of the second part of the
fourteenth century, who "marks a middle point between Rolle and
Hilton."[21] The spiritual beauty of the three here reprinted--and,
more particularly, of the Epistle of Prayer, with its glowing
exposition of the doctrine of Pure Love--speaks for itself. They
show us mysticism brought down, if I may say so, from the clouds for
the practical guidance of the beginner along this difficult way.
And, in the Epistle of Discretion, we find even a rare touch of
humour; where the counsellor "conceives suspiciously" of his
correspondent's spiritual stirrings, lest "they should be conceived
on the ape's manner." Like St. Catherine of Siena, though in a less
degree, he has the gift of vision and the faculty of intuition
combined with a homely common sense, and can illustrate his "simple
meaning" with a smile.
I have borrowed a phrase from St. Catherine, "The Cell of
Self-Knowledge," la cella del cognoscimento di noi, as the title of
this little volume. Knowledge of self and purity of heart, the
mystics teach, are the indispensable conditions for the highest
mystical elevation. Knowledge of self, for Richard of St. Victor, is
the high mountain apart upon which Christ is transfigured; for
Catherine of Siena, it is the stable in which the pilgrim through
time to eternity must be born again. "Wouldest thou behold Christ
transfigured?" asks Richard; "ascend this mountain; learn to know
thyself."[22] "Thou dost see," writes Catherine, speaking in the
person of the eternal Father, "this sweet and loving Word born in a
stable, while Mary was journeying; to show to you, who are
travellers, that you must ever be born again in the stable of
knowledge of yourselves, where you will find Him born by grace
within your souls."[23] The soul is a mirror that reflects the
invisible things of God, and it is by purity of heart alone that
this mirror is made clear. "Therefore," writes Richard of St.
Victor, "let whoso thirsts to see his God, wipe his mirror, purify
his spirit. After he hath thus cleared his mirror and long
diligently gazed into it, a certain clarity of divine light begins
to shine through upon him, and a certain immense ray of unwonted
vision to appear before his eyes. This light irradiated the eyes of
him who said: Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon
us; Thou hast put gladness in my heart. From the vision of this
light which it sees with wonder in itself, the mind is wondrously
inflamed and inspired to behold the light which is above
itself."[24]
Pepwell's volume has been made the basis of the present edition of
these seven treatises; but, in each case, the text has been
completely revised. The text of the Benjamin, the Epistle of Prayer,
the Epistle of Discretion, and the Treatise of Discerning of
Spirits, has been collated with that given by the Harleian MSS. 674
and 2373; and, in most cases, the readings of the manuscripts have
been adopted in preference to those of the printed version. The
Katherin has been collated with Caxton's Lyf; the Margery Kempe with
Wynkyn de Worde's precious little volume in the University Library
of Cambridge; and the Song of Angels with the text published by
Professor Horstman from the Camb. MS Dd. v. 55. As the object of
this book is not to offer a Middle English text to students, but a
small contribution to mystical literature, the orthography has been
completely modernised, while I have attempted to retain enough of
the original language to preserve the flavour of mediaeval devotion.
EDMUND G. GARDNER.
I.
HERE FOLLOWETH A VERY DEVOUT TREATISE, NAMED BENJAMIN, OF THE MIGHTS
AND VIRTUES OF MAN'S SOUL, AND OF THE WAY TO TRUE CONTEMPLATION,
COMPILED BY A NOBLE AND FAMOUS DOCTOR, A MAN OF GREAT HOLINESS AND
DEVOTION, NAMED RICHARD OF SAINT VICTOR
A TREATISE NAMED BENJAMIN
THE PROLOGUE
A GREAT clerk that men call [25] Richard of Saint Victor, in a book
that he maketh of the study of wisdom, witnesseth and saith that two
mights are in a man's soul, given of the Father of Heaven of whom
all good cometh. The one is reason, the other is affection; through
reason we know, and through affection we feel or love.
Of reason springeth right counsel and ghostly wits; and of affection
springeth holy desires and ordained[26] feelings. And right as
Rachel and Leah were both wives unto Jacob, right so man's soul
through light of knowing in the reason, and sweetness of love in the
affection, is spoused unto God. By Jacob is understanden God, by
Rachel is understanden reason, by Leah is understanden affection.
Each of these wives, Rachel and Leah, took to them a maiden; Rachel
took Bilhah, and Leah took Zilpah. Bilhah was a great jangler, and
Zilpah was ever drunken and thirsty. By Bilhah is understanden
imagination, the which is servant unto reason, as Bilhah was to
Rachel; by Zilpah is understanden sensuality, the which is servant
unto affection, as Zilpah was to Leah. And so much are these maidens
needful to their ladies, that without them all this world might
serve them of nought. For why, without imagination reason may not
know, and without sensuality affection may not feel. And yet
imagination cryeth so inconveniently[27] in the ears of our heart
that, for ought that reason her lady may do, yet she may not still
her. And therefore it is that oft times when we should pray, so many
divers fantasies of idle and evil thoughts cry in our hearts, that
on no wise we may by our own mights drive them away. And thus it is
well proved that Bilhah is a foul jangler. And also the sensuality
is evermore so thirsty, that all that affection her lady may
feel,[28] may not yet slake her thirst. The drink that she desireth
is the lust of fleshly, kindly, and worldly delights,[29] of the
which the more that she drinketh the more she thirsteth; for why,
for to fill the appetite of the sensuality, all this world may not
suffice; and therefore it is that oft times when we pray or think on
God and ghostly things, we would fain feel sweetness of love in our
affection,[30] and yet we may not, for are we so busy to feed the
concupiscence of our sensuality; for evermore it is greedily asking,
and we have a fleshly compassion thereof. And thus it is well proved
that Zilpah is evermore drunken and thirsty. And right as Leah
conceived of Jacob and brought forth seven children, and Rachel
conceived of Jacob and brought forth two children, and Bilhah
conceived of Jacob and brought forth two children, and Zilpah
conceived of Jacob and brought forth two children; right so the
affection conceiveth through the grace of God, and bringeth forth
seven virtues; and also the sensuality conceiveth through the grace
of God, and bringeth forth two virtues; and also the reason
conceiveth through the grace of God, and bringeth forth two virtues;
and also the imagination conceiveth through the grace of God, and
bringeth forth two virtues, or two beholdings. And the names of
their children and of their virtues shall be known by this figure
that followeth:
Husband: Jacob temporally, God spiritually. Wives to Jacob: Leah,
that is to say, Affection; Rachel, that is to say, Reason. Maid to
Leah is Zilpah, that is to understand, Sensuality; and Bilhah maiden
to Rachel, that is to understand, Imagination.
The sons of Jacob and Leah are these seven that followeth: Reuben
signifieth dread of pain; Simeon, sorrow of sins; Levi, hope of
forgiveness; Judah, love of righteousness; Issachar, joy in inward
sweetness; Zebulun, hatred of sin; Dinah, ordained shame.
The sons of Jacob and Zilpah, servant of Leah, are these: Gad,
abstinence; Asher, patience.
The sons of Jacob and of Rachel are these: Joseph, discretion;
Benjamin, contemplation.
The sons of Jacob and Bilhah, servant to Rachel, are these: Dan,
sight of pain to come; and Naphtali, sight of joy to come.
In this figure it is shewed apertly of Jacob and of his wives, and
their maidens, and all their children. Here it is to shew on what
manner they were gotten, and in what order:--
First, it is to say of the children of Leah; for why, it is read
that she first conceived. The children of Leah are nought else to
understand but ordained affections or feelings in a man's soul; for
why, if they were unordained, then were they not the sons of Jacob.
Also the seven children of Leah are seven virtues, for virtue is
nought else but an ordained and a measured feeling in a man's soul.
For then is man's feeling in soul ordained when it is of that thing
that it should be; then it is measured when it is so much as it
should be. These feelings in a man's soul may be now ordained and
measured, and now unordained and unmeasured; but when they are
ordained and measured, then are they accounted among the sons of
Jacob.[31]
CAPITULUM I
HOW THE VIRTUE OF DREAD RISETH IN THE AFFECTION
THE first child that Leah conceived of Jacob was Reuben, that is,
dread; and therefore it is written in the psalm: "The beginning of
wisdom is the dread of our Lord God."[32] This is the first felt
virtue in a man's affection, without the which none other may be
had. And, therefore, whoso desireth to have such a son, him behoveth
busily and oft also behold the evil that he hath done. And he shall,
on the one party, think on the greatness of his trespass, and, on
another party, the power of the Doomsman.[33] Of such a
consideration springeth dread, that is to say Reuben, that through
right is cleped "the son of sight."[34] For utterly is he blind that
seeth not the pains that are to come, and dreadeth not to sin. And
well is Reuben cleped the son of sight; for when he was born, his
mother cried and said: "God hath seen my meekness."[35] And man's
soul, in such a consideration of his old sins and of the power of
the Doomsman, beginneth then truly to see God by feeling of dread,
and also to be seen of God by rewarding of pity.
CAPITULUM II
HOW SORROW RISETH IN THE AFFECTION
WHILE Reuben waxeth, Simeon is born; for after dread it needeth
greatly that sorrow come soon. For ever the more that a man dreadeth
the pain that he hath deserved, the bitterlier he sorroweth the sins
that he hath done. Leah in the birth of Simeon cried and said: "Our
Lord hath heard me be had in despite."[36] And therefore is Simeon
cleped "hearing";[37] for when a man bitterly sorroweth and
despiseth his old sins, then beginneth he to be heard of God, and
also for to hear the blessed sentence of God's own mouth: "Blessed
be they that sorrow, for they shall be comforted."[38] For in what
hour the sinner sorroweth and turneth from his sin, he shall be
safe.[39] Thus witnesseth holy Scripture. And also by Reuben he is
meeked,[40] and by Simeon he is contrite and hath compunction of
tears; but, as witnesseth David in the psalm: "Heart contrite and
meeked God shall not despise";[41] and without doubt such sorrow
bringeth in true comfort of heart.
CAPITULUM III
HOW HOPE RISETH IN THE AFFECTION
BUT, I pray thee, what comfort may be to them that truly dread and
bitterly sorrow for their old sins, ought but a true hope of
forgiveness? the which is the third son of Jacob, that is Levi, the
which is cleped in the story "a doing to."[42] For when the other
two children, dread and sorrow, are given of God to a man's soul,
without doubt he this third, that is hope, shall not be delayed, but
he shall be lone to;[43] as the story witnesseth of Levi, that, when
his two brethren, Reuben and Simeon, were given to their mother
Leah, he, this Levi, was done to. Take heed of this word, that he
was "done to" and not given. And therefore it is said that a man
shall not presume of hope of forgiveness before the time that his
heart be peeked in dread and contrite in sorrow; without these two,
hope is presumption, and where these two are, hope is done to; and
thus after sorrow cometh soon comfort, as David telleth in the psalm
that "after the muchness of my sorrow in my heart," he saith to our
Lord, "Thy comforts have gladded my soul."[44] And therefore it is
that the Holy Ghost is called Paracletus, that is, comforter, for
oft times he vouchethsafe to comfort a sorrowful soul.
CAPITULUM IV
HOW LOVE RISETH IN THE AFFECTION
FROM now forth beginneth a manner of homeliness for to grow between
God and a man's soul; and also on a manner a kindling of love, in so
much that oft times he feeleth him not only be visited of God and
comforted in His coming, but oft times also he feeleth him filled
with an unspeakable joy. This homeliness and this kindling of love
first felt Leah, when, after that Levi was born, she cried with a
great voice and said: "Now shall my husband be coupled to me."[45]
The true spouse of our soul is God, and then are we truly coupled
unto Him, when we draw near Him by hope and soothfast love. And
right as after hope cometh love, so after Levi was Judah born, the
fourth son of Leah. Leah in his birth cried and said: "Now shall I
shrive to our Lord."[46] And therefore in the story is Judah cleped
"Shrift."[47] Also man's soul in this degree of love offereth it
clearly to God, and saith thus: "Now shall I shrive to our Lord."
For before this feeling of love in a man's soul, all that he doth is
done more for dread than for love; but in this state a man's soul
feeleth God so sweet, so merciful, so good, so courteous, so true,
and so kind, so faithful, so lovely and so homely, that he leaveth
nothing in him--might, wit, conning,[48] or will--that he offereth
not it clearly, freely, and homely unto Him. This shrift is not only
of sin, but of the goodness of God. Great token of love it is when a
man telleth to God that He is good. Of this shrift speaketh David
full oft times in the psalter, when he saith: "Make it known to God,
for He is good."[49]
Lo, now have we said of four sons of Leah. And after this she left
bearing of children till another time; and so man's soul weeneth
that it sufficeth to it when it feeleth that it loveth the true
goods.[50] And so it is enough to salvation, but not to perfection.
For it falleth to a perfect soul both to be inflamed with the fire
of love in the affection, and also to be illumined with the light of
knowing in the reason.
CAPITULUM V
HOW THE DOUBLE SIGHT OF PAIN AND JOY RISETH IN THE IMAGINATION
THEN when Judah waxeth, that is to say, when love and desire of
unseen true goods is rising and waxing in a man's affection; then
coveteth Rachel for to bear some children; that is to say, then
coveteth reason to know these things that affection feeleth; for as
it falleth to the affection for to love, so it falleth to the reason
for to know. Of affection springeth ordained and measured feelings;
and of reason springeth right knowings[51] and clear understandings.
And ever the more that Judah waxeth, that is to say love, so much
the more desireth Rachel bearing of children, that is to say, reason
studieth after knowing. But who is he that woteth not how hard it
is, and nearhand impossible to a fleshly soul the which is yet rude
in ghostly studies, for to rise in knowing of unseeable[52] things,
and for to set the eye of contemplation in ghostly things? For why,
a soul that is yet rude and fleshly, knoweth nought but bodily
things, and nothing cometh yet to the mind but only seeable[53]
things. And, nevertheless, yet it looketh inward as it may; and that
that it may not see yet clearly by ghostly knowing, it thinketh by
imagination.
And this is the cause why Rachel had first children of her maiden
than of herself. And so it is that, though all a man's soul may not
yet get the light of ghostly knowing in the reason, yet it thinketh
it sweet to hold the mind on God and ghostly things in the
imagination. As by Rachel we understand reason, so by her maiden
Bilhah we understand imagination. And, therefore, reason sheweth
that it is more profitable for to think on ghostly things, in what
manner so it be; yea, if it be in kindling of our desire with some
fair imagination; than it is for to think on vanities and deceivable
things of this world. And, therefore, of Bilhah were born these two:
Dan and Naphtali. Dan is to say sight of pains to come; and
Naphtali, sight of joys to come. These two children are full needful
and full speedful unto a working soul; the one for to put down evil
suggestions of sins; and the other for to raise up our wills in
working of good and in kindling of our desires. For as it falleth to
Dan to put down evil suggestions of sin by sight of pains to come,
so it falleth to the other brother Naphtali to raise up our wills in
working of good, and in kindling of holy desires by sight of joys to
come. And therefore holy men, when they are stirred to any unlawful
thing, by inrising of any foul thought, as oft they set before their
mind the pains that are to come; and so they slaken their temptation
in the beginning, ere it rise to any foul delight in their soul. And
as oft as their devotion and their liking in God and ghostly things
cease and wax cold (as oft times it befalleth in this life, for
corruption of the flesh and many other skills),[54] so oft they set
before their mind the joy that is to come. And so they kindle their
will with holy desires, and destroy their temptation in the
beginning, ere it come to any weariness or heaviness of sloth. And
for that[55] with Dan we damn unlawful thoughts, therefore he is
well cleped in the story "Doom."[56] And also his father Jacob said
of him thus: "Dan shall deem his folk."[57] And also it is said in
the story that, when Bilhah brought forth Dan, Rachel said thus:
"Our Lord hath deemed me";[58] that is to say: "Our Lord hath evened
me unto my sister Leah." And thus saith reason, when the imagination
hath gotten the sight of pains to come, that our Lord hath evened
her with her sister affection; and she saith thus, for she hath the
sight of pains to come in her imagination, of the which she had
dread and sorrow in her feeling. And then after came Naphtali, that
is to say, the sight of joys to come. And in his birth spake Rachel
and said: "I am made like to my sister Leah";[59] and therefore is
Naphtali cleped in the story "Likeness."[60] And thus saith reason
that she is made like to her sister affection. For there as she had
gotten hope and love of joy to come in her feeling, she hath now
gotten sight of joy to come in her imagination. Jacob said of
Naphtali that he was "a hart sent out, giving speeches of
fairhead."[61] So it is that, when we imagine of the joys of heaven,
we say that it is fair in heaven. For[62] wonderfully kindleth
Naphtali our souls with holy desires, as oft as we imagine of the
worthiness and the fairhead of the joys of heaven.
CAPITULUM VI
HOW THE VIRTUES OF ABSTINENCE AND PATIENCE RISE IN THE SENSUALITY
WHEN Leah saw that Rachel her sister made great joy of these two
bastards born of Bilhah her maiden, she called forth her maiden
Zilpah, to put to her husband Jacob; that she might make joy with
her sister, having other two bastards gotten of her maiden Zilpah.
And thus it is seemly in man's soul for to be, that from the time
that reason hath refrained the great jangling of imagination, and
hath put her to be underlout[63] to God, and maketh her to bear some
fruit in helping of her knowing, that right so the affection refrain
the lust and the thirst of the sensuality, and make her to be
underlout to God, and so to bear some fruit in helping of her
feeling. But what fruit may she bear, ought but that she learn to
live temperately in easy things, and patiently in uneasy things?
These are they, the children of Zilpah, Gad and Asher: Gad is
abstinence, and Asher is patience. Gad is the sooner born child, and
Asher the latter; for first it needeth that we be attempered in
ourself with discreet abstinence, and after that we bear outward
disease[64] in strength of patience. These are the children that
Zilpah brought forth in sorrow; for in abstinence and patience the
sensuality is punished in the flesh; but that that is sorrow to the
sensuality turneth to much comfort and bliss to the affection. And
therefore it is that, when Gad was born, Leah cried and said:
"Happily"[65]; and therefore Gad is cleped in the story "Happiness,"
or "Seeliness."[66] And so it is well said that abstinence in the
sensuality is happiness[67] in the affection. For why, ever the less
that the sensuality is delighted in her lust, the more sweetness
feeleth the affection in her love. Also after when Asher was born,
Leah said: "This shall be for my bliss";[68] and therefore was Asher
called in the story "Blessed."[69] And so it is well said that
patience in the sensuality is bliss in the affection. For why, ever
the more disease that the sensuality suffereth, the more blessed is
the soul in the affection. And thus by abstinence and patience we
shall not only understand a temperance in meat and drink, and
suffering of outward tribulation, but also [in] all manner of
fleshly, kindly,[70] and worldly delights, and all manner of
disease, bodily and ghostly, within or without, reasonable or
unreasonable, that by any of our five wits torment or delight the
sensuality. On this wise beareth the sensuality fruit in help of
affection, her lady. Much peace and rest is in that soul that
neither is drunken in the lust of the sensuality, nor grutcheth[71]
in the pain thereof. The first of these is gotten by Gad and the
latter by Asher. Here it is to wete that first was Rachel's maiden
put to the husband or the maiden of Leah; and this is the skill why.
For truly, but if the jangling of the imagination, that is to say,
the in-running of vain thoughts, be first refrained, without doubt
the lust of the sensuality may not be attempered. And therefore who
so will abstain him from fleshly and worldly lusts, him behoveth
first seldom or never think any vain thoughts.[72] And also never in
this life may a man perfectly despise the ease of the flesh, and not
dread the disease, but if he have before busily beholden the meeds
and the torments that are to come. But here it is to wete how that,
with these four sons of these two maidens, the city of our
conscience is kept wonderfully from all temptations. For all
temptation either it riseth within by thought, or else without by
some of our five wits. But within shall Dan deem and damn evil
thoughts by sight of pain; and without shall Gad put against[73]
false delights by use of abstinence. Dan waketh[74] within, and Gad
without; and also their other two brethren helpen them full much:
Naphtali maketh peace within with Dan, and Asher biddeth Gad have no
dread of his enemies. Dan feareth the heart with ugsomeness of hell,
and Naphtali cherisheth it with behighting[75] of heavenly bliss.
Also Asher helpeth his brother without, so that, through them both,
the wall of the city is not broken. Gad holdeth out ease, and Asher
pursueth disease. Asher soon deceiveth his enemy, when he bringeth
to mind the patience of his father[76] and the behighting of
Naphtali, and thus oft times ever the more enemies he hath, the more
matter he hath of overcoming. And therefore it is that, when he hath
overcome his enemies (that is to say, the adversities of this
world), soon he turneth him to his brother Gad to help to destroy
his enemies. And without fail, from that he be come, soon they turn
the back, and flee. The enemies of Gad are fleshly delights; but
truly, from the time that a man have patience in the pain of his
abstinence, false delights find no woning stead[77] in him.
CAPITULUM VII
HOW JOY OF INWARD SWEETNESS RISETH IN THE AFFECTION
THUS when the enemy fleeth and the city is peased,[78] then
beginneth a man to prove what the high peace of God is that passeth
man's wit. And therefore it is that Leah left bearing of children
unto this time that Gad and Asher were born of Zilpah, her maiden.
For truly, but if it be so that a man have refrained the lust and
the pain of his five wits in his sensuality by abstinence and
patience, he shall never feel inward sweetness and true joy in God
and ghostly things in the affection. This is that Issachar, the
fifth son of Leah, the which in the story is cleped "Meed."[79] [And
well is this joy of inward sweetness cleped "meed"];[80] for this
joy is the taste of heavenly bliss, the which is the endless meed of
a devout soul, beginning here. Leah, in the birth of this child,
said: "God hath given me meed, for that I have given my maiden to my
husband in bearing of children."[81] And so it is good that we make
our sensuality bear fruit in abstaining it from all manner of
fleshly, kindly, and worldly delight, and in fruitful suffering of
all fleshly and worldly disease; therefore our Lord of His great
mercy giveth us joy unspeakable and inward sweetness in our
affection, in earnest[82] of the sovereign joy and meed of the
kingdom of heaven. Jacob said of Issachar that he was "a strong ass
dwelling between the terms."[83] And so it is that a man in this
state, and that feeleth the earnest of everlasting joy in his
affection, is as "an ass, strong and dwelling between the terms";
because that, be he never so filled in soul of ghostly gladness and
joy in God, yet, for corruption of the flesh in this deadly life,
him behoveth bear the charge of the deadly body, as hunger, thirst,
and cold, sleep, and many other diseases; for the which he is
likened to an ass as in body; but as in soul he is strong for to
destroy all the passions and the lusts of the flesh by patience and
abstinence in the sensuality, and by abundance of ghostly joy and
sweetness in the affection. And also a soul in this state is
dwelling between the terms of deadly life and undeadly life. He that
dwelleth between the terms hath nearhand forsaken deadliness, but
not fully, and hath nearhand gotten undeadliness, but not fully; for
whiles that him needeth the goods of this world, as meat and drink
and clothing, as it falleth to each man that liveth, yet his one
foot is in this deadly life; and for great abundance of ghostly joy
and sweetness that he feeleth in God, not seldom but oft, he hath
his other foot in the undeadly life. Thus I trow that saint Paul
felt, when he said this word of great desire: "Who shall deliver me
from this deadly body?"[84] And when he said thus: "I covet to be
loosed and to be with Christ."[85] And thus doth the soul that
feeleth Issachar in his affection, that is to say, the joy of inward
sweetness, the which is understanden by Issachar. It enforceth it to
forsake this wretched life, but it may not; it coveteth to enter the
blessed life, but it may not; it doth that it may, and yet it
dwelleth between the terms.
CAPITULUM VIII
HOW PERFECT HATRED OF SIN RISETH IN THE AFFECTION
AND therefore it is that after Issachar Zebulun is born, that is to
say, hatred of sin. And here it is to wete why that hatred of sin is
never perfectly felt in a man's affection, ere the time that ghostly
joy of inward sweetness be felt in the affection, and this is the
skill: for ere this time was never the true cause of hatred felt in
the affection. For the feeling of ghostly joy teacheth a man what
sin harmeth the soul. And all after that the harm in the soul is
felt much or little, thereafter is the hatred measured, more or
less, unto the harming. But when a soul, by the grace of God and
long travail, is come to feeling of ghostly joy in God, then it
feeleth that sin hath been the cause of the delaying thereof. And
also when he feeleth that he may not alway last in the feeling of
that ghostly joy, for the corruption of the flesh, of the which
corruption sin is the cause; then he riseth with a strong feeling of
hatred against all sin and all kind of sin. This feeling taught
David us to have, where he saith in the psalm: "Be ye wroth and will
ye not sin";[86] that is thus to mean: Be ye wroth with the sin, but
not with the kind.[87] For kind stirreth to the deed, but not to
sin. And here it is to wete that this wrath and this hatred is not
contrary to charity, but charity teacheth how it shall be had both
in a man's self and in his even Christian;[88] for a man should
[not] hate sin [so that he destroy his kind, but so that he destroy
the sin and the appetite of sin] in his kind. And, as against our
even Christian, we ought to hate sin in him, and to love him; and of
this hatred speaketh David in the psalm, where he saith thus: "With
perfect hatred I hated them."[89] And in another psalm he saith that
"he had in hatred all wicked ways."[90] Thus it is well proved that,
ere Zebulun was born, Judah and Issachar were both born. For but if
a man have had charity and ghostly joy in his feeling first, he may
in no wise feel this perfect hatred of sin in his affection. For
Judah, that is to say, charity, teacheth us how we shall hate sin in
ourself and in our brethren; and Issachar, that is to say, ghostly
feeling of joy in God, teacheth us why we shall hate sin in ourself
and in our brethren. Judah biddeth us hate sin and love the kind;
and Issachar biddeth us destroy the sin and save the kind; and thus
it falleth for to be that the kind may be made strong in God and in
ghostly things by perfect hatred and destroying of sin. And
therefore is Zebulun cleped in the story "a dwelling stead of
strength."[91] And Leah said in his birth: "My husband shall now
dwell with me";[92] and so it is that God, that is the true husband
of our soul, is dwelling in that soul, strengthening it in the
affection with ghostly joy and sweetness in His love, that
travaileth busily to destroy sin in himself and in others by perfect
hatred of the sin and all the kind of sin. And thus it is said how
Zebulun is born.
CAPITULUM IX
HOW ORDAINED SHAME RISETH AND GROWETH IN THE AFFECTION
BUT though all that a soul through grace feel in it perfect hatred
of sin, whether it may yet live without sin? Nay, sikerly;[93] and
therefore let no man presume of himself, when the Apostle saith
thus: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourself, and
soothfastness is not in us."[94] And also saint Austin saith that he
dare well say that there is no man living without sin.[95] And I
pray thee, who is he that sinneth not in ignorance? Yea, and oft
times it falleth that God suffereth those men to fall full
grievously by the which He hath ordained other men's errors to be
righted, that they may learn by their own falling how merciful they
shall be in amending of others. And for that oft times men fall
grievously in those same sins that they most hate, therefore, after
hatred of sin, springeth ordained shame in a man's soul; and so it
is that after Zebulun was Dinah born. As by Zebulun hatred of sin,
so by Dinah is understanden ordained shame of sin. But wete thou
well: he that felt never Zebulun, felt never yet Dinah. Evil men
have a manner of shame, but it is not this ordained shame. For why,
if they had perfect shame of sin, they should not so customably do
it with will and advisement;[96] but they shame more with a foul
cloth on their body, than with a foul thought in their soul. But
what so thou be that weenest that thou hast gotten Dinah, think
whether thee would shame as much if a foul thought were in thine
heart, as thee would if thou were made to stand naked before the
king and all his royalme; and sikerly else wete it thou right well
that thou hast not yet gotten ordained shame in thy feeling, if so
be that thou have less shame with thy foul heart than with thy foul
body, and if thou think more shame with thy foul body in the sight
of men than with thy foul heart in the sight of the King of heaven
and of all His angels and holy saints in heaven.
Lo, it is now said of the seven children of Leah, by the which are
understanden seven manner of affections in a man's soul, the which
may be now ordained and now unordained, now measured and now
unmeasured; but when they are ordained and measured, then are they
virtues; and when they are unordained and unmeasured, then are they
vices. Thus behoveth a man have children[97] that they be not only
ordained, but also measured. Then are they ordained when they are of
that thing that they should be, and then are they unordained when
they are of that thing that they should not be; and then are they
measured when they are as much as they should be, and then are they
unmeasured when they are more than they should be. For why, overmuch
dread bringeth in despair, and overmuch sorrow casteth a man in to
bitterness and heaviness of kind,[98] for the which he is unable to
receive ghostly comfort. And overmuch hope is presumption, and
outrageous love is but flattering and faging,[99] and outrageous
gladness is dissolution and wantonness, and untempered hatred of sin
is woodness.[100] And on this manner, they are unordained and
unmeasured, and thus are they turned in to vices, and then lose they
the name of virtues, and may not be accounted amongst the sons of
Jacob, that is to say, God: for by Jacob is understanden God, as it
is shewed in the figure before.
CAPITULUM X
HOW DISCRETION AND CONTEMPLATION RISE IN THE REASON
Thus it seemeth that the virtue of discretion needeth to be had,
with the which all others may be governed; for without it all
virtues are turned in to vices. This is Joseph, that is the late
born child, but yet his father loveth him more than them all. For
why, without discretion may neither goodness be gotten nor kept, and
therefore no wonder though that virtue be singularly loved, without
which no virtue may be had nor governed. But what wonder though this
virtue be late gotten, when we may not win to the perfection of
discretion without much custom and many travails of these other
affections coming before? For first behoveth us to be used in each
virtue by itself, and get the proof of them all serely,[101] ere we
may have full knowing of them all, or else can deem sufficiently of
them all. And when we use us busily in these feelings and beholdings
before said, oft times we fall and oft times we rise. Then, by our
oft falling, may we learn how much wariness us behoveth have in the
getting and keeping of these virtues. And thus sometime, by long
use, a soul is led into full discretion, and then it may joy in the
birth of Joseph. And before this virtue be conceived in a man's
soul, all that these other virtues do, it is without discretion. And
therefore, in as much as a man presumeth and enforceth him in any of
these feelings beforesaid, over his might and out of measure, in so
much the fouler he falleth and faileth of his purpose. And therefore
it is that, after them all and last, is Dinah born; for often, after
a foul fall and a failing, cometh soon shame. And thus after many
failings and failings, and shames following, a man learneth by the
proof that there is nothing better than to be ruled after counsel,
the which is the readiest getting of discretion. For why, he that
doth all things with counsel, he shall never forthink[102] it; for
better is a sly man than a strong man; yea, and better is list than
lither strength,[103] and a sly man speaketh of victories. And here
is the open skill why that neither Leah nor Zilpah nor Bilhah might
bear such a child, but only Rachel; for, as it is said before, that
of reason springeth right counsel, the which is very discretion,
understanden by Joseph, the first son of Rachel; and then at the
first bring we forth Joseph in our reason when all that we are
stirred to do, we do it with counsel. This Joseph shall not only
know what sins we are most stirred unto, but also he shall know the
weakness of our kind, and after that either asketh, so shall he do
remedy, and seek counsel at wiser than he, and do after them, or
else he is not Joseph, Jacob's son born of Rachel. And also by this
foresaid[104] Joseph a man is not only learned to eschew the deceits
of his enemies, but also oft a man is led by him to the perfect
knowing of himself; and all after that a man knoweth himself,
thereafter he profiteth in the knowing of God, of whom he is the
image and the likeness. And therefore it is that after Joseph is
Benjamin born. For as by Joseph discretion, so by Benjamin we
understand contemplation. And both are they born of one mother, and
gotten of one father. For through the grace of God lightening our
reason, come we to the perfect knowing of ourself and of God, that
is to say, after that it may be in this life. But long after Joseph
is Benjamin born. For why, truly but if it so be that we use us
busily and long in ghostly travails, with the which we are learned
to know ourself, we may not be raised in to the knowing and
contemplation of God. He doth for nought that lifteth up his eye to
the sight of God, that is not yet able to see himself. For first I
would that a man learned him to know the unseeable[105] things of
his own spirit, ere he presume to know the unseeable things of the
spirit of God; and he that knoweth not yet himself and weeneth that
he hath gotten somedeal knowing of the unseeable things of God, I
doubt it not but that he is deceived; and therefore I rede that a
man seek first busily for to know himself, the which is made to the
image and the likeness of God as in soul. And wete thou well that he
that desireth for to see God, him behoveth to cleanse his soul, the
which is as a mirror in the which all things are clearly seen, when
it is clean; and when the mirror is foul, then mayst thou see
nothing clearly therein; and right so it is of thy soul, when it is
foul, neither thou knowest thyself nor God. As when the candle
brenneth, thou mayst then see the self candle[106] by the light
thereof, and other things also; right so, when thy soul brenneth in
the love of God, that is, when thou feelest continually thine heart
desire after the love of God, then, by the light of His grace that
He sendeth in thy reason, thou mayst see both thine own unworthiness
and His great goodness. And therefore cleanse thy mirror and proffer
thy candle to the fire; and then, when thy mirror is cleansed and
thy candle brenning, and it so be that thou wittily behold thereto,
then beginneth there a manner of clarity of the light of God for to
shine in thy soul, and a manner of sunbeam that is ghostly to appear
before thy ghostly sight, through the which the eye of thy soul is
opened to behold God and godly things, heaven and heavenly things,
and all manner of ghostly things. But this sight is but by times,
when God will vouchsafe for to give it to a working[107] soul, the
whiles it is in the battle of this deadly life; but after this life
it shall be everlasting. This light shone in the soul of David, when
he said thus in the psalm: "Lord, the light of Thy face is marked
upon us; Thou hast given gladness within mine heart."[108] The light
of God's face is the shining of His grace, that reformeth in us His
image that hath been disfigured with the darkness of sin; and
therefore a soul that brenneth in desire of His sight,[109] if it
hope for to have that that it desireth, wete it well it hath
conceived Benjamin. And, therefore, what is more healfull[110] than
the sweetness of this sight, or what softer thing may be felt?
Sikerly, none; and that woteth Rachel full well. For why, reason
saith that, in comparison of this sweetness, all other sweetness is
sorrow, and bitter as gall before honey. Nevertheless, yet may a man
never come to such a grace by his own slight.[111] For why, it is
the gift of God without desert of man. But without doubt, though it
be not the desert of man, yet no man may take such grace without
great study and brenning desires coming before; and that woteth
Rachel full well, and therefore she multiplieth her study, and
whetteth her desires, seeking desire upon desire;[112] so that at
the last, in great abundance of brenning desires and sorrow of the
delaying of her desire, Benjamin is born, and his mother Rachel
dieth;[113] for why, in what time that a soul is ravished above
itself by abundance of desires and a great multitude of love, so
that it is inflamed with the light of the Godhead, sikerly then
dieth all man's reason.
And therefore, what so thou be that covetest to come to
contemplation of God, that is to say, to bring forth such a child
that men clepen in the story Benjamin (that is to say, sight of
God), then shalt thou use thee in this manner. Thou shalt call
together thy thoughts and thy desires, and make thee of them a
church, and learn thee therein for to love only this good word Jesu,
so that all thy desires and all thy thoughts are only set for to
love Jesu, and that unceasingly as it may be here; so that thou
fulfill that is said in the psalm: "Lord, I shall bless Thee in
churches";[114] that is, in thoughts and desires of the love of
Jesu. And then, in this church of thoughts and desires, and in this
onehead of studies and of wills, look that all thy thoughts, and all
thy desires, and all thy studies, and all thy wills be only set in
the love and the praising of this Lord Jesu, without forgetting, as
far forth as thou mayst by grace, and as thy frailty will suffer;
evermore meeking thee to prayer and to counsel, patiently abiding
the will of our Lord, unto the time that thy mind be ravished above
itself, to be fed with the fair food of angels in the beholding of
God and ghostly things:[115] so that it be fulfilled in thee that is
written in the psalm: Ibi Benjamin adolesentulus in mentis
excessu;[116] that is: "There is Benjamin, the young child, in
ravishing of mind." The grace of Jesu keep thee evermore.[117] Amen
DEO GRATIAS
II.
HERE FOLLOWETH DIVERS DOCTRINES DEVOUT AND FRUITFUL, TAKEN OUT OF
THE LIFE OF THAT GLORIOUS VIRGIN AND SPOUSE OF OUR LORD, SAINT
KATHERIN OF SEENES. AND FIRST THOSE WHICH OUR LORD TAUGHT AND SHEWED
TO HERSELF, AND SITH THOSE WHICH SHE TAUGHT AND SHEWED UNTO OTHERS
THE first doctrine of our Lord is this:
"Knowest thou not, daughter, who thou art and who I am? If thou know
well these two words, thou art and shalt be blessed. Thou art she
that art nought; and I am He that am ought.[118] If thou have the
very knowledge of these two things in thy soul, thy ghostly enemy
shall never deceive thee, but thou shalt eschew graciously all his
malice;[119] and thou shalt never consent to any thing that is
against My commandments and precepts, but all grace, all truth, and
all charity thou shalt win without any hardness."
The second doctrine of our Lord is this:
"Think on Me, and I shall think on thee."
In declaring of which doctrine she was wont to say that:
"A soul which is verily united to God perceiveth not, seeth not, nor
loveth not herself, nor none other soul, nor hath no mind of no
creature but only on God."
And these words she expoundeth more expressly, and saith thus:
"Such a soul seeth herself, that she is very nought of herself, and
knoweth perfectly that all the goodness, with all the mights of the
soul, is her Maker's. She forsaketh utterly herself and all
creatures, and hideth herself fully in her Maker, our Lord Jesu; in
so much that she sendeth fully and principally all her ghostly and
bodily workings in to Him; in whom she perceiveth that she may find
all goodness, and all perfection of blessedness. And, therefore, she
shall have no will to go out from such inward knowledge of Him for
nothing.[120] And of this unity of love, that is increased every day
in such a soul, she is transformed in a manner in to our Lord, that
she may neither think, nor understand, nor love, nor have no mind
but God, or else in God. For she may not see herself, nor none other
creature, but only in God; nor she may not love herself, nor none
other, but only in God; nor she may have no mind of herself nor of
none other, but only in God, nor she may have no mind but only of
her Maker. And therefore," she said, "we shall have none other
business but only to think how we may please Him, unto whom we have
committed all our governance both in body and soul."
The third doctrine of our Lord is this; in obtaining of virtue and
ghostly strength:
"Daughter, if thou wilt get unto thee virtue and also ghostly
strength,[121] thou must follow Me. Albeit that I might by My godly
virtue have overcome all the power of the fiends by many manner ways
of overcoming, yet, for to give you ensample by My manhood, I would
not overcome him but only by taking of death upon the Cross, that ye
might be taught thereby, if ye will overcome your ghostly enemies,
for to take the Cross as I did; the which Cross shall be to you a
great refreshing in all your temptations, if ye have mind of the
pains that I suffered thereon.[122] And certainly the pains of the
Cross may well be called refreshing of temptations, for the more
pain ye suffer for My love, the more like ye be to Me. And if ye be
so like to Me in passion, needs ye must be like to Me in joy.[123]
Therefore for My love, daughter, suffer patiently bitter things, and
not sweet things; and doubt in no wise, for thou shalt be strong
enough for to suffer all things patiently."
The first doctrine of this glorious virgin is this:
"A soul which is verily mete[124] to God, as much as it hath of the
love of God, so much it hath of the hate of her own sensuality. For
of the love of God naturally cometh hate of sin, the which is done
against God. The soul, therefore, considering that the root and
beginning of sin reigneth in the sensuality, and there principally
is rooted, she is moved and stirred highly and holily with all her
mights against her own sensuality; not utterly to destroy the root,
for that may not be, as long as the soul dwelleth in the body living
in this life, but ever there shall be left a root, namely of small
venial sins. And because she may not utterly destroy the root of sin
thus in her sensuality, she conceiveth a great displeasaunce against
her sensuality, of the which displeasaunce springeth an holy hate
and a despising of the sensuality, by the which the soul is ever
well kept from her ghostly enemies. There is nothing that keepeth
the soul so strong and so sure as doth such an holy hate. And that
felt well the Apostle, when he said: Cum infirmor, tonc fortior sum
et potens;[125] that is: When I am sick and feeble in my sensuality
by hate of sin, then am I stronger and mightier in my soul. Lo, of
such hate cometh virtue, of such feebleness cometh strength, and of
such displeasaunce cometh pleasaunce. This holy hate maketh a man
meek, and to feel meek things of himself. It maketh him patient in
adversity, temperate in prosperity, and setteth him in all honesty
of virtue, and maketh him to be loved both of God and man. And where
this holy hate is not, there is inordinate love, which is the
stinking canal of all sin, and root[126] of all evil concupiscence.
Do therefore," she saith, "your business to put away such inordinate
love of your own self, out of your hearts, and plant therein holy
hate of sin. For certain that is the right way to perfection, and
amendment of all sin."
Here is a common answer which she used to say to the fiends:
"I trust in my Lord Jesu Christ, and not in myself."
Here is a rule how we shall behave us in time of temptation:
"When temptation," she saith, "ariseth in us, we should never
dispute nor make questions; for that is," she saith, "that the fiend
most seeketh of us for to fall in questions with him. He trusteth so
highly in the great subtlety of his malice, that he should overcome
us with his sophistical reasons. Therefore a soul should never make
questions, nor answer to the questions of the fiend, but rather turn
her to devout prayer, and commend her to our Lord that she consent
not to his subtle demands; for by virtue of devout prayer, and
steadfast faith, we may overcome all the subtle temptations of the
fiend."
Here is a good conceit of this holy maid to eschew the temptations
of the fiend:
"It happeneth," she said, "that otherwhile[127] the devout fervour
of a soul loving our Lord Jesu, either by some certain sin, or else
by some new subtle temptations of the fiend, waxeth dull and slow,
and otherwhile it is brought to very coldness;[128] in so much that
some unwitty folks, considering that they be destitute from the
ghostly comfort the which they were wont to have, leave[129]
therefore the ghostly exercise that they were wont to use of prayer,
of meditations, of reading, of holy communications, and of penance
doing; whereby they be made more ready to be overcome of the fiend.
For he desireth nothing else of Christ's knights, but that they
should put away their armour by the which they were wont to overcome
their enemies. A wise knight of our Lord Jesu should not do so. But
thus, the more he feeleth[130] himself dull and slow, or cold in
devotion, the rather he should continue in his ghostly exercise, and
not for to make them less, but rather increase them."
Here is another doctrine of this holy maid, the which she used to
say to herself in edifying of others:
"Thou vile and wretched creature, art thou worthy any manner of
comfort in this life? Why hast thou not mind of thy sins? What
supposest thou of thyself, wretched sinner? Is it not enough to
thee, trowest thou not, that thou art escaped by the mercy of our
Lord from everlasting damnation? Therefore thou shouldest be well
apaid,[131] wretch, though thou suffer all the pains and darkness of
thy soul all the days of thy life. Why art thou, then, heavy and
sorrowful to suffer such pains, sith by God's grace thou shalt
escape endless pains with Christ Jesu without any doubt, and be
comforted endlessly, if thou bear these pains patiently. Whether
hast thou chosen to serve our Lord only for the comfort that thou
mayst have of Him in this life? Nay, but for the comfort that thou
shalt have of Him in the bliss of heaven. Therefore arise up now,
and cease never of thy ghostly exercise that thou hast used, but
rather increase to them more."
Here is an answer by the which she had a final victory of the fiend,
after long threats of intolerable pains:
"I have chosen pain for my refreshing, and therefore it is not hard
to me to suffer them, but rather delectable for the love of my
Saviour, as long as it pleaseth His Majesty that I shall suffer
them."
Here is a doctrine of the said virgin, how we should use the grace
of our Lord:
"Who so could use the grace of our Lord, he should ever have the
victory of all things that falleth to him. For as often," she said,
"as any new thing falleth to a man, be it of prosperity or
adversity, he should think in himself thus: Of this will I win
somewhat. For he that can do so, shall soon be rich in virtue."
Here followeth notable doctrines of this holy maid, taken of her
sermon which she made to her disciples before her passing, and the
first was this:
"What so ever he be that cometh to the service of God, if he will
have God truly, it is needful to him that he make his heart naked
from all sensible love, not only of certain persons but of every
creature what that ever he be, and then he should stretch up his
soul to our Lord and our Maker, simply, with all the desire of his
heart. For an heart may not wholly be given to God, but if it be
free from all other love, open and simple without doubleness." And
so she affirmed of herself, that it was her principal labour and
business from her young age unto that time, ever for to come to that
perfection. Also she said that she knew well that to such a state of
perfection, in the which all the heart is given to God, a soul may
not come perfectly without meditation of devout prayer, and that the
prayer be grounded in meekness, and that it come not forth and
proceed by any trust of any manner of virtue of him that prayeth,
but alway he should know himself to be right nought. For she said
that that was ever her business, to give herself to the exercise of
prayer, so for to win the continual habit of prayer; for she did see
well that by prayer all virtues are increased, and made mighty and
strong; and, without prayer, they wax feeble and defail.[132]
Wherefore she induced her disciples that they should busy them to
prayer perseverauntly; and therefore she told them of two manner of
prayers:[133] Vocal and Mental. Vocal prayers, she said, should be
kept certain hours in the night and in the day ordained by holy
Church; but mental prayer should ever be had, in act or in habit of
the soul. Also she said that, by the light of quick faith, she saw
clearly and conceived in her soul that what that ever befell to her,
or to any others, all cometh from God, not for hate but for great
love that He hath to His creatures; and by[134] this quick faith she
conceived in herself a love and a readiness to obey as well to the
precepts of her sovereigns,[135] as to the commandments of God, ever
thinking that their precepts should come from God, either for need
of herself, or else for increase of virtue in her soul. Also she
said, for to get and purchase purity of soul, it were right
necessary that a man kept himself from all manner of judgments of
his [neighbour, and from all idle speaking of his][136] neighbour's
deeds; for in every creature we should behold only the will of God.
And therefore she said that in no wise men should deem[137]
creatures; that is, neither despise them by their doom[138] nor
condemn them, all be it that they see them do open sin before them;
but rather they should have compassion on them and pray for them,
and despise them not, nor condemn them. Also she said that she had
great hope and trust in God's providence; for, she said, she knew
well[139] by experience that the Divine providence was and is a
passing great thing, for it wanteth never to them that hopeth in it.
DEO GRATIS
III.
HERE BEGINNETH A SHORT TREATISE OF CONTEMPLATION TAUGHT BY OUR LORD
JESU CHRIST, OR TAKEN OUT OF THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE, ANCRESS OF
LYNN
SHE desired many times that her head might be smitten off with an
axe upon a block for the love of our Lord Jesu. Then said our Lord
Jesu in her mind: "I thank thee, daughter, that thou wouldest die
for My love; for as often as thou thinkest so, thou shalt have the
same meed in heaven, as if thou suffredest the same death, and yet
there shall no man slay thee.
"I assure thee in thy mind, if it were possible for Me to suffer
pain again, as I have done before, Me were lever to suffer as much
pain as ever I did for thy soul alone, rather than thou shouldest
depart from Me everlastingly.
"Daughter, thou mayst no better please God, than to think
continually in His love."
Then she asked our Lord Jesu Christ, how she should best love Him.
And our Lord said: "Have mind of thy wickedness, and think on My
goodness.
"Daughter, if thou wear the habergeon or the hair,[140] fasting
bread and water, and if thou saidest every day a thousand Pater
Nosters, thou shalt[141] not please Me so well as thou dost when
thou art in silence, and suffrest Me to speak in thy soul.
"Daughter, for to bid many beads, it is good to them that can not
better do, and yet it is not perfect.[142] But it is a good way
toward perfection. For I tell thee, daughter, they that be great
fasters, and great doers of penance, they would that it should be
holden the best life.[143] And they that give them unto many
devotions, they would have that the best life. And those that give
much almesse, they would that it were holden the best life. And I
have often told thee, daughter, that thinking, weeping, and high
contemplation is the best life in earth, and thou shalt have more
merit in heaven for one year thinking in thy mind than for an
hundred year of praying with thy mouth; and yet thou wilt not
believe Me, for thou wilt bid many beads.[144]
"Daughter, if thou knew how sweet thy love is to Me, thou wouldest
never do other thing but love Me with all thine heart.
"Daughter, if thou wilt be high with Me in heaven, keep Me alway in
thy mind as much as thou mayst, and forget not Me at thy meat; but
think alway that I sit in thine heart and know every thought that is
therein, both good and bad.
"Daughter, I have suffered many pains for thy love; therefore thou
hast great cause to love Me right well, for I have bought thy love
full dear."
"Dear Lord," she said, "I pray Thee, let me never have other joy in
earth, but mourning and weeping for Thy love; for me thinketh, Lord,
though I were in hell, if I might weep there and mourn for Thy love
as I do here, hell should not noye[145] me, but it should be a
manner of heaven. For Thy love putteth away all manner of dread of
our ghostly enemy; for I had lever be there, as long as Thou
wouldest, and please Thee, than to be in this world and displease
Thee; therefore, good Lord, as Thou wilt, so may[146] it be."
She had great wonder that our Lord would become man, and suffer so
grievous pains, for her that was so unkind a creature to Him. And
then, with great weeping, she asked our Lord Jesu how she might best
please Him; and He answered to her soul, saying: "Daughter, have
mind of thy wickedness, and think on My goodness." Then she prayed
many times and often these words: "Lord, for Thy great goodness,
have mercy on my great wickedness, as certainly as I was never so
wicked as Thou art good, nor never may be though I would; for Thou
art so good, that Thou mayst no better be; and, therefore, it is
great wonder that ever any man should be departed from Thee without
end."
When she saw the Crucifix, or if she saw a man had a wound, or a
beast, or if a man beat a child before her, or smote a horse or
another beast with a whip, if she might see it or hear it, she
thought she saw our Lord beaten or wounded, like as she saw in the
man or in the beast.
The more she increased in love and in devotion, the more she
increased in sorrow and contrition, in lowliness[147] and meekness,
and in holy dread of our Lord Jesu, and in knowledge of her own
frailty. So that if she saw any creature be punished or sharply
chastised, she would think that she had been more worthy to be
chastised than that creature was, for her unkindness against God.
Then would she weep for her own sin, and for compassion of that
creature.
Our Lord said to her: "In nothing that thou dost or sayest,
daughter, thou mayst no better please God than believe that He
loveth thee. For, if it were possible that I might weep with thee, I
would weep with thee for the compassion that I have of thee."
Our merciful Lord Jesu Christ drew this creature unto His love, and
to the mind of His passion, that she might not endure to behold a
leper, or another sick man, specially if he had any wounds appearing
on him. So she wept as if she had seen our Lord Jesu with His wounds
bleeding; and so she did, in the sight of the soul; for, through the
beholding of the sick man, her mind was all ravished in to our Lord
Jesu, that she had great mourning and sorrowing that she might not
kiss the leper when she met them in the way, for the love of our
Lord: which was all contrary to her disposition in the years of her
youth and prosperity, for then she abhorred them most.
Our Lord said: "Daughter, thou hast desired in thy mind to have many
priests in the town of Lynn, that might sing and read night and day
for to serve Me, worship Me, and praise Me, and thank Me for the
goodness that I have done to thee in earth; and therefore, daughter,
I promise thee that thou shalt have meed and reward in heaven for
the good wills and good desires, as if thou haddest done them in
deed.
"Daughter, thou shalt have as great meed and as great reward with Me
in heaven, for thy good service and thy good deeds that thou hast
done in thy mind, as if thou haddest done the same with thy bodily
wits withoutforth.[148]
"And, daughter, I thank thee for the charity that thou hast to all
lecherous men and women; for thou prayest for them and weepest for
them many a tear, desiring that I should deliver them out of sin,
and be as gracious to them as I was to Mary Magdalene, that they
might have as much grace to love Me as Mary Magdalene had; and with
this condition thou wouldest that everich[149] of them should have
twenty pounds a year to love and praise Me; and, daughter, this
great charity which thou hast to them in thy prayer pleaseth Me
right well. And, daughter, also I thank thee for the charity which
thou hast in thy prayer, when thou prayest for all Jews and
Saracens, and all heathen people that they should come to Christian
faith, that My name might be magnified in them. Furthermore,
daughter, I thank thee for the general charity that thou hast to all
people that be now in this world, and to all those that are to come
unto the world's end; that thou wouldest be hacked as small as flesh
to the pot for their love, so that I would by thy death save them
all from damnation, if it pleased Me. And, therefore, daughter, for
all these good wills and desires, thou shalt have full meed and
reward in heaven, believe it right well and doubt never a deal."
She said: "Good Lord, I would be laid naked upon an hurdle for Thy
love, all men to wonder on me and to cast filth and dirt on me, and
be drawen from town to town every day my life time, if Thou were
pleased thereby, and no man's soul hindered. Thy will be fulfilled
and not mine."
"Daughter," He said, "as oftentimes as thou sayest or thinkest:
Worshipped be all the holy places in Jerusalem, where Christ
suffered bitter pain and passion in: thou shalt have the same pardon
as if thou were there with thy bodily presence, both to thyself and
to all those that thou wilt give to.[150]
"The same pardon that was granted thee aforetime, it was confirmed
on Saint Nicholas day, that is to say, playne[151] remission; and it
is not only granted to thee, but also to all those that believe, and
to all those that shall believe unto the world's end, that God
loveth thee, and shall thank God for thee. If they will forsake
their sin, and be in full will no more to turn again thereto, but be
sorry and heavy for that they have done, and will do due penance
therefore, they shall have the same pardon that is granted to
thyself; and that is all the pardon that is in Jerusalem,[152] as
was granted thee when thou were at Rafnys."[153]
That day that she suffered no tribulation for our Lord's sake, she
was not merry nor glad, as that day when she suffered tribulation.
Our Lord Jesus said unto her: "Patience is more worth than miracles
doing. Daughter, it is more pleasure to Me that thou suffer
despites, scorns, shames, reproofs, wrongs, and diseases, than if
thine head were stricken off three times a day every day in seven
year."
"Lord," she said, "for Thy great pain have mercy on my little pain."
When she was in great trouble, our Lord said: "Daughter, I must
needs comfort thee, for now thou hast the right way to heaven. By
this way came I and all My disciples; for now thou shalt know the
better what sorrow and shame I suffered for thy love, and thou shalt
have the more compassion when thou thinkest on My passion."
"O my dear worthy Lord," said she, "these graces Thou shouldest shew
to religious men and to priests."
Our Lord said to her again: "Nay, nay, daughter, for that I love
best that they love not, and that is shames, reproofs, scorns, and
despites of the people; and therefore they shall not have this
grace; for, daughter, he that dreadeth the shames of this world may
not perfectly love God."
Here endeth a short treatise of a devout ancress called Margery
Kempe of Lynn
IV.
HERE FOLLOWETH A DEVOUT TREATISE COMPILED BY MASTER WALTER HYLTON OF
THE SONG OF ANGELS
DEAR brother in Christ, I have understanding by thine own speech,
and also by telling of another man, that thou yearnest and desirest
greatly for to have more knowledge and understanding than thou hast
of angel's song and heavenly sound; what it is, and on what wise it
is perceived and felt in a man's soul, and how a man may be siker
that it is true and not feigned; and how it is made by the presence
of the good angel, and not by the inputting of the evil angel. These
things thou wouldest wete of me; but, soothly, I cannot tell thee
for a surety the soothfastness of this matter; nevertheless
somewhat, as me thinketh, I shall shew thee in a short word.
Wete thou well that the end and the sovereignty of perfection
standeth in very onehead[154] of God and of a man's soul by perfect
charity. This onehead, then, is verily made when the mights of the
soul are reformed by grace to the dignity and the state of the first
condition; that is, when the mind is stabled sadly,[155] without
changing and vagation,[156] in God and ghostly things, and when the
reason is cleared from all worldly and fleshly beholdings, and from
all bodily imaginations, figures, and fantasies of creatures, and is
illumined by grace to behold God and ghostly things, and when the
will and the affection is purified and cleansed from all fleshly,
kindly, and worldly love, and is inflamed with brenning love of the
Holy Ghost. This wonderful onehead may not be fulfilled[157]
perfectly, continually, and wholly in this life, for the corruption
of the flesh, but only in the bliss of heaven. Nevertheless, the
nearer that a soul in this present life may come to this onehead,
the more perfect it is. For the more that it is reformed by grace to
the image and the likeness of its Creator here on this wise; the
more joy and bliss shall it have in heaven. Our Lord God is an
endless being without changing, almighty without failing, sovereign
wisdom, light, soothness without error or darkness; sovereign
goodness, love, peace, and sweetness. Then the more that a soul is
united, fastened, conformed, and joined to our Lord, the more stable
and mighty it is, the more wise and clear, good and peaceable,
loving and more virtuous it is, and so it is more perfect. For a
soul that hath by the grace of Jesu, and long travail of bodily and
ghostly exercise, overcome and destroyed concupiscences, and
passions, and unskilful stirrings[158] within itself, and without in
the sensuality, and is clothed all in virtues, as in meekness and
mildness, in patience and softness, in ghostly strength and
righteousness, in continence, in wisdom, in truth, hope and charity;
then it is made perfect, as it may be in this life. Much comfort it
receiveth of our Lord, not only inwardly in its own privy
substance,[159] by virtue of the onehead to our Lord that lieth in
knowing and loving of God, in light and ghostly brenning of Him, in
transforming of the soul in to the Godhead; but also many other
comforts, savours, sweetnesses, and wonderful feelings on sere[160]
or sundry manners, after that our Lord vouchethsafe to visit His
creatures here in earth, and after that the soul profiteth and
waxeth in charity. Some soul, by virtue of charity that God giveth
it, is so cleansed, that all creatures, and all that he heareth, or
seeth, or feeleth by any of his wits, turneth him to comfort and
gladness; and the sensuality receiveth new savour and sweetness in
all creatures.[161] And right as beforetime the likings in the
sensuality were fleshly, vain, and vicious, for the pain of the
original sin; right so now they are made ghostly and clean, without
bitterness and biting of conscience. And this is the goodness of our
Lord, that sith the soul is punished in the sensuality, and the
flesh is partner of the pain, that afterward the soul be comforted
in the sensuality, and the flesh be fellow of joy and comfort with
the soul, not fleshly, but ghostly, as he was fellow in tribulation
and pain. This is the freedom and the lordship, the dignity, and the
worship that a man[162] hath over all creatures, the which dignity
he may so recover by grace here, that every creature savour to him
as it is. And that is, when by grace he seeth, he heareth, he
feeleth only God in all creatures. On this manner of wise a soul is
made ghostly in the sensuality by abundance of charity, that is, in
the substance of the soul. Also, our Lord comforteth a soul by
angel's song. What that song is, it may not be described by no
bodily likeness, for it is ghostly, and above all manner of
imagination and reason. It may be felt and perceived in a soul, but
it may not be shewed. Nevertheless, I shall speak thereof to thee as
me thinketh. When a soul is purified by the love of God, illumined
by wisdom, stabled by the might of God, then is the eye of the soul
opened to behold ghostly things, as virtues and angels and holy
souls, and heavenly things.[163] Then is the soul able because of
cleanness to feel the touching, the speaking of good angels. This
touching and speaking, it is ghostly and not bodily.[164] For when
the soul is lifted and ravished out of the sensuality, and out of
mind of any earthly things, then in great fervour of love and light
(if our Lord vouchsafe) the soul may hear and feel heavenly sound,
made by the presence of angels in loving of God. Not that this song
of angels is the sovereign joy of the soul; but for the difference
that is between a man's soul in flesh and an angel, because of
uncleanness, a soul may not hear it, but by ravishing in love, and
needeth for to be purified well clean, and fulfilled of much
charity, or[165] it were able for to hear heavenly sound. For the
sovereign and the essential joy is in the love of God by Himself and
for Himself, and the secondary is in communing and beholding of
angels and ghostly creatures. For right as a soul, in understanding
of ghostly things, is often times touched and moved through bodily
imagination by working of angels; as Ezekiel the prophet did see in
bodily imagination the soothfastness of God's privities;[166] right
so, in the love of God, a soul by the presence of angels is ravished
out of mind of all earthly and fleshly things in to an heavenly joy,
to hear angel's song and heavenly sound, after that the charity is
more or less.[167] Now, then, me thinketh that there may no soul
feel verily angel's song nor heavenly sound, but he be in perfect
charity; though all that are in perfect charity have not felt it,
but only that soul that is so purified in the fire of love that all
earthly savour is brent out of it, and all mean letting[168] between
the soul and the cleanness of angels is broken and put away from it.
Then soothly may he sing a new song, and soothly he may hear a
blessed heavenly sound, and angel's song without deceit or feigning.
Our Lord woteth there that soul is that, for abundance of brenning
love, is worthy to hear angel's song. Who so then will hear angel's
song, and not be deceived by feigning of himself, nor by
imagination, nor by the illusion of the enemy, him behoveth for to
have perfect charity; and that is when all vain love and dread, vain
joy and sorrow, is cast out of the heart, so that it love nothing
but God, nor dread nothing but God, nor joyeth, nor sorroweth
nothing but in God, or for God. Who so might by the grace of God go
this way, he should not err. Nevertheless, some men are deceived by
their own imagination, or by the illusion of the enemy in this
manner.[169] Some man, when he hath long travailed bodily and
ghostily in destroying of sins and getting of virtues, and
peradventure hath gotten by grace a somedeal[170] rest, and a
clarity in conscience, anon he leaveth prayers, readings of holy
scriptures, and meditations of the passion of Christ, and the mind
of his wretchedness; and, or[171] he be called of God, he gathereth
his own visits by violence to seek and to behold heavenly things, or
his eye be made ghostly by grace, and overtravaileth by imaginations
his wits, and by indiscreet travailing turneth the brains in his
head, and forbreaketh[172] the mights and the wits of the soul and
of the body. And then, for feebleness of the brain, him thinketh
that he heareth wonderful sounds and songs; and that is nothing else
but a fantasy, caused of troubling of the brain; as a man that is in
a frenzy him thinketh that he heareth and seeth that none other man
doth; and all is but vanity and fantasies of the head, or else it is
by working of the wicked enemy that feigneth such sounds in his
hearing.
For if a man have any presumption in his fantasies and in his
workings, and thereby falleth in to indiscreet imagination, as it
were in a frenzy, and is not ordered nor ruled of grace, nor
comforted by ghostly strength, the devil entereth in, and by his
false illuminations, and by his false sounds, and by his false
sweetnesses, he deceiveth a man's soul.
And of this false ground springeth errors, and heresies, false
prophecies, presumptions, and false reasonings, blasphemings, and
slanderings, and many other mischiefs. And, therefore, if thou see
any man ghostly occupied fall in any of these sins and these
deceits, or in frenzies, wete thou well that he never heard nor felt
angel's song nor heavenly sound. For, soothly, he that heareth
verily angel's song, he is made so wise that he shall never err by
fantasy, nor by indiscretion, nor by no slight[173] of working of
the devil.
Also, some men feel in their hearts as it were a ghostly sound, and
sweet songs in divers manners; and this is commonly good, and
sometime it may turn to deceit. This sound is felt on this wise.
Some man setteth the thought of his heart only in the name of Jesu,
and steadfastly holdeth it thereto, and in short time him thinketh
that that name turneth him to great comfort and sweetness, and him
thinketh that the name soundeth in his heart delectably, as it were
a song; and the virtue of this liking is so mighty, that it draweth
in all the wits of the soul thereto. Who so may feel this sound and
this sweetness verily in his heart, wete thou well that it is of
God,[174] and, as long as he is meek, he shall not be deceived. But
this is not angel's song; but it is a song of the soul by virtue of
the name and by touching of the good angel.[175] For when a soul
offereth him to Jesu truly and meekly, putting all his trust and his
desire in Him, and busily keepeth Him in his mind, our Lord Jesu,
when He will, pureth[176] the affection of the soul, and filleth it,
and feedeth it with sweetness of Himself, and maketh His name in the
feeling of the soul[177] as honey, and as song, and as any thing
that is delectable; so that it liketh the soul evermore for to cry
Jesu, Jesu. And not only he hath comfort in this, but also in psalms
and hymns, and anthems of holy Church, that the heart singeth them
sweetly, devoutly, and freely, without any travail of the soul, or
bitterness in the same time,[178] and notes that holy Church useth.
This is good, and of the gift of God, for the substance of this
feeling lies in the love of Jesu, which is fed and lightened[179] by
such manner of songs. Nevertheless, in this manner of feeling, a
soul may be deceived by vain glory; not in that time that the
affection singeth to Jesu, and loveth Jesu in sweetness of Him, but
afterward, when it ceaseth and the heart keeleth[180] of the love of
Jesu, then entereth in vain glory. Also some man is deceived on this
wise: he heareth well say that it is good to have Jesu in his mind,
or any other good word of God; then he straineth his heart mightily
to that name, and by a custom he hath it nearhand alway in his mind;
and, nevertheless, he feeleth not thereby in his affection
sweetness, nor light of knowing in his reason, but only a naked mind
of God,[181] or of Jesu, or of Mary, or of any other good word. Here
may be deceit, not for it is evil for to have Jesu in mind on this
wish but if he this feeling and this mind, that is only his own
working by custom, hold it a special visitation of our Lord,[182]
and think it more than it is. For wete thou well that a naked mind
or a naked imagination of Jesu, or of any ghostly thing, without
sweetness of love in the affection, or without light of knowing in
reason, it is but a blindness, and a way to deceit, if a man hold it
in his own sight more than it is. Therefore I hold it siker[183]
that he be meek in his own feeling, and hold this mind in regard
nought, till he may, by custom and using of this mind, feel the fire
of love in his affection, and the light of knowing in his reason.
Lo, I have told thee in this matter a little, as me thinketh; not
affirming that this sufficeth, nor that this is the soothfastness in
this matter. But if thou think it otherwise, or else any other man
savour by grace the contrary hereto, I leave this saying, and give
stead to him; it sufficeth to me for to live in truth[184]
principally, and not in feeling.
EXPLICIT
V.
HERE AFTER FOLLOWETH A DEVOUT TREATISE CALLED THE EPISTLE OF PRAYER
GHOSTLY friend in God, as touching thine asking of me, how thou
shalt rule thine heart in the time of thy prayer, I answer unto thee
thus feebly as I can. And I say that me thinketh that it should be
full speedful unto thee at the first beginning of thy prayer, what
prayer so ever it be, long or short, for to make it full known unto
thine heart, without any feigning, that thou shalt die at the end of
thy prayer.[185] And wete thou well that this is no feigned thought
that I tell thee, and see why; for truly there is no man living in
this life that dare take upon him to say the contrary: that is to
say, that thou shalt live longer than thy prayer is in doing. And,
therefore, thou mayst think it safely, and I counsel thee to do it.
For, if thou do it, thou shalt see that, what for the general sight
that thou hast of thy wretchedness, and this special sight of the
shortness of time of amendment, it shall bring in to thine heart a
very working of dread.
And this working shalt thou feel[186] verily folden in thine heart,
but if it so be (the which God forbid) that thou flatter and
fage[187] thy false fleshly blind heart with leasings[188] and
feigned behightings, that thou shalt longer live.[189] For though it
may be sooth in thee in deed that thou shalt live longer, yet it is
ever in thee a false leasing for to think it before, and for to
behight[190] it to thine heart. For why, the soothfastness of this
thing is only in God, and in thee is but a blind abiding of His
will, without certainty of one moment, the which is as little or
less than a twinkling of an eye. And, therefore, if thou wilt pray
wisely as the prophet biddeth when he saith in the psalm: Psallite
sapienter;191 look that thou get thee in the beginning this very
working of dread. For, as the same prophet saith in another psalm:
Initium sapientiae timor Domini;192 that is: "The beginning of
wisdom is the dread of our Lord God." But for that there is no full
sikerness standing[193] upon dread only, for fear of sinking in to
over much heaviness, therefore shalt thou knit to thy first thought
this other thought that followeth. Thou shalt think steadfastly that
if thou may, through the grace of God, distinctly pronounce the
words of that prayer, and win to the end thereof, or if thou die
before thou come to the end, so that thou do that in thee is, that
then it shall be accepted of thee unto God, as a full aseeth[194] of
all thy recklessness from the beginning of thy life unto that
moment. I mean thus: standing that thou hast before time, after thy
conning and thy conscience, lawfully amended thee after the common
ordinance of holy Church in confession; this short prayer, so little
as it is, shall be accepted of thee unto God for thy full salvation,
if thou then didst die, and to the great increase of thy perfection,
if thou didst live longer. This is the goodness of God, the which,
as the prophet saith, forsaketh none that truly trusteth in Him with
will of amendment;[195] and sith that all amendment standeth in
two--that is, in leaving of evil and doing of good--means to get
these two are none readier than the ghostly working of these two
thoughts touched before. For what reaveth from a soul[196] more
readily the affection of sinning, than doth a true working of dread
of death? And what moveth a soul[197] more fervently to working of
good, than doth a certain hope in the mercy and the goodness of God,
the which is brought in by this second thought? For why, the ghostly
feeling of this second thought, when it is thus truly joined to the
first, shall be to thee a sure staff of hope to hold thee by in all
thy good doings. And by this staff thou mayst sikerly climb in to
the high mount of perfection, that is to say, to the perfect love of
God; though all this beginning be imperfect, as thou shalt hear
after. For, what for the general sight that thou hast of the mercy
and of the goodness of God, and this special experience that thou
feelest of His mercy and His goodness in this acceptation of this
little short service for so long recklessness, as it were in a full
aseeth of so much recklessness (as it is said before), it may not be
but that thou shalt feel a great stirring of love unto Him that is
so good and so merciful unto thee--as the steps of thy staff, hope,
plainly sheweth unto thee in the time of thy prayer, if thou do it
duly as I have told thee before.[198] The ghostly experience of the
proof of this working standeth all in a reverent affection that a
man hath to God in the time of his prayer, caused of this dread in
the ground of this work, and of this stirring of love, the which is
brought in by the ghostly steps of this staff hope, touched before.
For why, reverence is nought else but dread and love medled together
with a staff of certain hope,
Me thinketh that the proof of this working is devotion; for devotion
is nought else, as saint Thomas the doctor saith, but a readiness of
man's will to do those things that longeth to the service of
God.[199] Each man prove in himself, for he that doth God's service
in this manner, he feeleth how ready that his will is thereto. Me
thinketh that saint Bernard accordeth to this working, where he
saith that all things should be done swiftly and gladly. And see
why: swiftly for dread, and gladly for hope, and lovely trust in His
mercy. [And what more? Sikerly, I had lever have his meed that
lasteth in such doing, though all he never did bodily penance in
this life, but only that that is enjoined to him of holy Church,
than of all the penance-doers that have been in this life from the
beginning of the world unto this day without this manner of doing. I
say not that the naked thinking of these two thoughts is so meedful;
but that reverent affection, to the which bringing in these two
thoughts are sovereign means on man's party, that is it that is so
meedful as I say.[200]] And this is only it by itself, without any
other manner of doing (as is fasting, waking, sharp wearing, and all
these other), the which only by itself pleaseth almighty God, and
deserveth to have meed of Him. And it were impossible any soul to
have meed of God without this, and all after the quantity of this
shall stand the quantity of meed; for whoso hath much of this, much
meed shall he have, and whoso hath less of this, less meed shall he
have. And all these other things, as is fasting, waking, sharp
wearing, and all these other, they are needful[201] in as much as
they are helply to get this, so that without this they are nought.
And this without them is sometime sufficient at the full by itself,
and it is often times full worthily had and come to of full many
without any of the others. All this I say for that I would by this
knowing that thou charged and commended each thing after that it is:
the more, "the more," and the less, "the less"; for oft times
unknowing is cause of much error. And oft times unknowing maketh men
to charge more and commend more bodily exercise (as is fasting,
waking, sharp wearing, and all these others) than they do ghostly
exercise in virtues or in this reverent affection touched before.
And, therefore, in more declaration of the meed and the worthiness
of this reverent affection, I shall say a little more than I yet
have said, so that, by such declaring, thou mayst be better learned
in this working than thou yet art.
All this manner of working beforesaid of this reverent affection,
when it is brought in by these two thoughts of dread and of hope
coming before, may well be likened to a tree that were full of
fruit; of the which tree, dread is that party that is within in the
earth, that is, the root. And hope is that party that is above the
earth, that is, the body[202] with the boughs. In that that hope is
certain and stable, it is the body; in that it stirreth men to works
of love, it is the boughs; but this reverent affection is evermore
the fruit, and then, evermore as long as the fruit is fastened to
the tree,[203] it hath in party a green smell of the tree; but when
it hath been a certain time departed from the tree and is full ripe,
then it hath lost all the taste of the tree, and is king's meat
[that was before but knave's meat].[204] In this time it is that
this reverent affection is so meedful as I said. And, therefore,
shape thee for to depart this fruit from the tree, and for to offer
it up by itself to the high King of heaven; and then shalt thou be
cleped God's own child, loving Him with a chaste love for Himself,
and not for His goods.[205] I mean thus: though all that the
innumerable good deeds, the which almighty God of His gracious
goodness hath shewed to each soul in this life, be sufficient causes
at the full and more, to each soul to love Him for, with all his
mind, with all his wit, and with all his will; yet if it might be,
that may no wise be, that a soul were as mighty, as worthy, and as
witty as all the saints and angels that are in heaven gathered in
one, and had never taken this worthiness of God,[206] or to whom
that God had never shewed kindness in this life; yet this soul,
seeing the loveliness of God in Himself, and the abundance thereof,
should be ravished over his might for to love God, till the heart
brast; so lovely and so liking, so good and so glorious He is in
Himself.
O how wonderful a thing and how high a thing is the love of God for
to speak of, of the which no man may speak perfectly to the
understanding of the least party thereof, but by impossible
ensamples, and passing the understanding of man! And thus it is that
I mean when I say loving Him with a chaste love for Himself, and not
for His goods;[207] not as if I said (though all I well said) much
for His goods, but without comparison more for Himself. For, if I
shall more highly speak in declaring of my meaning of the perfection
and of the meed of this reverent affection, I say that a soul
touched in affection by the sensible presence of Gods as He is in
Himself, and in a perfect soul illumined in the reason, by the clear
beam of everlasting light, the which is God, for to see and for to
feel the loveliness[208] of God in Himself, hath for that time and
for that moment lost all the mind of any good deed or of any
kindness that ever God did to him in this life--so that cause for to
love God for feeleth he or seeth he none in that time, other than is
God Himself. So that though all it may be said in speaking of the
common perfection, that the great goodness and the great kindness
that God hath shewed to us in this life are high and worthy causes
for to love God for; yet having beholding to the point and the prick
of perfection (to the which I purpose to draw thee in my meaning,
and in the manner of this writing), a perfect lover of God, for
dread of letting[209] of his perfection, seeketh now, that is to
say, in the point of perfection, none other cause for to love God
for, but God Himself; so that by this meaning I say, that chaste
love is to love God for Himself and not for His goods. And
therefore, following the rule of mine ensample, shape thee to depart
the fruit from the tree, and for to offer it up by itself unto the
King of heaven, that thy love be chaste; for evermore as long as
thou offrest Him this fruit green and hanging on the tree, thou
mayst well be likened to a woman that is not chaste, for she loveth
a man more for his goods than for himself. And see why that I liken
thee thus; for it seemeth that dread of thy death and shortness of
time, with hope of forgiveness of all thy recklessness, maketh thee
to be in God's service so reverent as thou art. And if it so be,
soothly then hath thy fruit a green smell of the tree; and though
all it pleaseth God in party, nevertheless, yet it pleaseth Him not
perfectly, and that is for thy love is not yet chaste.
Chaste love is that when thou askest of God neither releasing of
pain, nor increasing of meed, nor yet sweetness in His love in this
life; but if it be any certain time that thou covetest sweetness as
for a refreshing of thy ghostly mights, that they fail not in the
way; but thou askest of God nought but Himself, and neither thou
reckest nor lookest after whether thou shalt be in pain or in bliss,
so that thou have Him that thou lovest--this is chaste love, this is
perfect love.[210] And therefore shape thee for to depart the fruit
from the tree; that is to say, this reverent affection from the
thoughts of dread and of hope coming before; so that thou mayst
offer it ripe and chaste unto God by itself, not caused of any thing
beneath Him, or medled with Him[211] (yea, though all it be the
chief),[212] but only of Him, by Himself; and then it is so meedful
as I say that it is. For it is plainly known without any doubt unto
all those that are expert in the science of divinity and of God's
love, that as often as a man's affection is stirred unto God without
mean (that is, without messenger of any thought in special causing
that stirring), as oft it deserveth everlasting life. And for that
that a soul that is thus disposed (that is to say, that offreth the
fruit ripe, and departed from the tree) may innumerable times in one
hour be raised in to God suddenly without mean, therefore more than
I can say it deserveth, through the grace of God, the which is the
chief worker, to be raised in to joy. And therefore shape thee for
to offer the fruit ripe and departed from the tree. Nevertheless,
the fruit upon the tree, continually offered as man's frailty will
suffer, deserveth salvation; but the fruit ripe and departed from
the tree, suddenly offered unto God without mean, that is
perfection. And here mayst thou see that the tree is good, though
all that I bid thee depart the fruit therefrom, for more perfection;
and therefore I set it in thy garden; for I would that thou should
gather the fruit thereof, and keep it to thy Lord. And for that that
I would that thou knew what manner of working it is that knitteth
man's soul to God, and that maketh it one with Him in love and
accordance of will,[213] after the word of saint Paul saying thus:
Qui adhaeret Duo unus spiritus est cum illo;214 that is to say: "Who
so draweth near to God," as it is by such a reverent affection
touched before, "he is one spirit with God." That is, though all
that God and he be two and sere[215] in kind, nevertheless yet in
grace they are so knit together that they are but one in
spirit;[216] and all this is for onehead of love and accordance of
will; and in this onehead is the marriage made between God and the
soul, the which shall never be broken, though all that the heat and
the fervour of this work cease for a time, but by a deadly sin.
In the ghostly feeling of this onehead may a loving soul both say
and sing (if it list) this holy word that is written in the book of
songs in the Bible: Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi;217 that is: "My
loved unto me and I unto Him"; understanden that God shall be
knitted with the ghostly glue of grace on His party, and the lovely
consent in gladness of spirit on thy party.
And therefore climb up by this tree, as I said in the beginning; and
when thou comest to the fruit (that is, to the reverent affection,
the which ever will be in thee if thou think heartily the other two
thoughts before, and fage[218] not thyself with no lie, as I said),
then shalt thou take good keep[219] of that working that is made in
thy soul that time, and shape thee, in as much as thou mayst through
grace, for to meek thee under the height of thy God, so that thou
mayst use thee in that working other times by itself, without any
climbing thereto by any thought. And, sikerly, this is it the which
is so meedful as I said, and ever the longer that it is kept from
the tree (that is to say, from any thought), and ever the ofter that
it is done suddenly, lustily, and likingly, without mean, the
sweeter it smelleth, and the better it pleaseth the high King of
heaven. And ever when thou feelest sweetness and comfort in thy
doing, then He breaketh this fruit and giveth thee part of thine own
present. And that that thou feelest is so hard, and so straitly
stressing thine heart without comfort in the first beginning, that
bemeaneth[220] that the greenness of the fruit hanging on the tree,
or else newly pulled, setteth thy teeth on edge. Nevertheless yet it
is speedful to thee. For it is no reason that thou eat the sweet
kernel, but if thou crack first the hard shell and bite of the
bitter bark.
Nevertheless, if it so be that thy teeth be weak (that is to say,
thy ghostly mights), then it is my counsel that thou seek slights,
for better is list than lither strength.[221]
Another skill there is why that I set this tree in thy garden, for
to climb up thereby. For though all it be so that God may do what He
will, yet, to mine understanding, it is impossible any man to attain
to the perfection of this working without these two means, or else
other two that are according to them coming before. And yet is the
perfection of this work sudden, without any mean. And, therefore, I
rede[222] thee that these be thine, not thine in propriety, for that
is nought but sin,[223] but thine given graciously of God, and sent
by me as a messenger though I be unworthy; for wete thou right well
that every thought that stirreth thee to the good,[224] whether it
come from within by thine angel messenger, or from without by any
man messenger, it is but an instrument of grace given, sent and
chosen of God Himself for to work within in thy soul. And this is
the skill why that I counsel thee to take these two thoughts before
all others. For as man is a mingled thing of two substances, a
bodily and a ghostly, so it needeth for to have two sere[225] means
to come by to perfection;[226] sith it so is that both these
substances shall be oned in undeadliness at the uprising in the last
day; so that either substance be raised to perfection in this life,
by a mean accordant thereto. And that is dread to bodily substance,
and hope to the ghostly. And thus it is full seemly and according to
be, as me thinketh; for as there is nothing that so soon will ravish
the body from all affection of earthly things, as will a sensible
dread of the death; so there is nothing that so soon nor so
fervently will raise the affection of a sinner's soul, unto the love
of God, as will a certain hope of forgiveness of all his
recklessness. And therefore have I ordained thy climbing by these
two thoughts; but if it so be that thy good angel teach thee within
thy ghostly conceit, or any other man, any other two that are more
according to thy disposition than thee thinketh these two be, thou
mayst take them, and leave these safely without any blame.
Nevertheless to my conceit (till I wete more) me thinketh that these
should be full helply unto thee, and not much unaccording to thy
disposition, after that I feel in thee. And therefore, if thou think
that they do thee good, then thank God heartily, and for God's love
pray for me. Do then so, for I am a wretch, and thou wotest not how
it standeth with me.
No more at this time, but God's blessing have thou and mine.
Read often, and forget it not; set thee sharply to the proof; and
flee all letting and occasion of letting, in the name of our Lord
Jesu Christ. AMEN.
FINIS
VI.
HERE FOLLOWETH ALSO A VERY NECESSARY EPISTLE OF DISCRETION IN
STIRRINGS OF THE SOUL
GHOSTLY friend in God, that same grace and joy that I will to
myself, will I to thee at God's will. Thou askest me counsel of
silence and of speaking, of common dieting and of singular fasting,
of dwelling in company and only woning[227] by thyself. And thou
sayest thou art in great were[228] what thou shalt do; for, as thou
sayest, on the one party thou art greatly tarried with speaking,
with common eating, as other folk do, and with common woning in
company. And, on the other party, thou dreadest to be straitly
still,[229] singular in fasting, and only in woning, for deeming of
more holiness in thee than thou hast,[230] and for many other
perils; for oft times now these days they are deemed for most holy,
and fall in to many perils, that most are in silence, in singular
fasting, and in only woning. And sooth it is that they are most
holy, if grace only be the cause of that silence, of that singular
fasting, and of that only woning, the kind[231] but suffering and
only consenting; and if it be otherwise, then that is but peril on
all sides, for it is full perilous to strain the kind to any such
work of devotion, as is silence or speaking, common dieting or
singular fasting, woning in company or in onliness.[232] I mean,
passing the course and the common custom of kind and degree, but if
it be led thereto by grace; and, namely, to such works the which in
themself are indifferent, that is to say, now good, and now evil,
now with thee, now against thee, now helping, and now letting. For
it might befall that, if thou followed thy singular stirring,
straitly straining thee to silence, to singular fasting, or to only
woning, that thou shouldest oft times be still when time were to
speak, oft times fast when time were to eat, oft times be only when
time were to be in company. Or if thou give thee to speaking always
when thee list, to common eating, or to companious woning,[233] then
peradventure thou shouldest sometime speak when time[234] were to be
still, sometime eat when time were to fast, sometime be in company
when time were to be only; and thus mightest thou lightly fall in to
error, in great confusion, not only of thine own soul but also of
others. And, therefore, in eschewing of such errors, thou askest of
me (as I have perceived by thy letters) two things: the first is my
conceit of thee, and thy stirring; and the other is my counsel in
this case, and in all such others when they come.
As to the first, I answer and I say that I dread full much in this
matter and such others to put forth my rude conceit, such as it is,
for two skills.[235] And one is this: I dare not lean to my conceit,
affirming it for fast and true. The other is thine inward
disposition, and thine ableness that thou hast unto all these things
that thou speakest of in thy letter, which be not yet so fully known
unto me, as it were speedful that they were, if I should give full
counsel in this case. For it is said of the Apostle: Nemo novit quae
sunt hominis, nisi spiritus hominis qui in ipso est; "No man knoweth
which are the privy dispositions of man, but the spirit of the same
man, the which is in himself";[236] and, peradventure, thou knowest
not yet thine own inward disposition thyself, so fully as thou shalt
do hereafter, when God will let thee feel it by the proof, among
many failings and risings. For I knew never yet no sinner that might
come to the perfect knowing of himself and of his inward
disposition, but if he were learned of it before in the school of
God, by experience of many temptations, and by many failings and
risings; for right as among the waves and the floods and the storms
of the sea, on the one party, and the peaceable wind and the calms
and the soft weathers of the air on the other party, the sely[237]
ship at the last attains to the land and the haven; right so, among
the diversity of temptations and tribulations that falleth to a soul
in this ebbing and flowing life (the which are ensampled by the
storms and the floods of the sea) on the one party, and among the
grace and the goodness of the Holy Ghost, the manyfold visitation,
sweetness and comfort of spirit (the which are ensampled by the
peaceable wind and the soft weathers of the air) on the other party,
the sely soul, at the likeness of a ship, attaineth at the last to
the land of stableness, and to the haven of health; the which is the
clear and the soothfast knowing of himself, and of all his inward
dispositions, through the which knowing he sitteth quietly in
himself, as a king crowned in his royalme, mightily, wisely, and
goodly governing himself and all his thoughts and stirrings, both in
body and in soul. Of such a man it is that the wise man saith thus:
Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem, quoniam cum probatus fuerit,
accipiet coronam vitae, quam repromisit Deus diligentibus se: "He is
a blissful man that sufferingly beareth temptation; for, from he
have been proved, he shall take the crown of life, the which God
hath hight to all those that love Him."[238] The crown of life may
be said on two manners. One for ghostly wisdom, for full discretion,
and for perfection of virtue: these three knitted together may be
cleped[239] a crown of life, the which by grace may be come to here
in this life. On another manner the crown of life may be said, that
it is the endless joy that each true soul shall have, after this
life, in the bliss of heaven, and, sikerly, neither of these two
crowns may a man take, but if he before have been well proved in
suffering of noye[240] and of temptation, as this text saith:
Quoniam cum probatus fuerit, accipiet coronam vitae; that is: "From
that he have been proved, then shall he take the crown of
life";[241] as who saith (according to mine understanding touched
before): But if a sinner have been proved before in divers
temptations, now rising, now falling, falling by frailty, rising by
grace, he shall never else take of God in this life ghostly wisdom
in clear knowing of himself and of his inward dispositions, nor full
discretion in counselling and teaching of others, nor yet the third,
the which is the perfection of virtue in loving of his God and of
his brethren. All these three--wisdom, discretion, and perfection of
virtue-are but one, and they may be cleped the crown of life.
In a crown are three things: gold is the first; precious stones are
the second; and the turrets of the flower-de-luce, raised up above
the head, those are the third. By gold, wisdom; by the precious
stones, discretion; and by the turrets of the flower-de-luce I
understand the perfection of virtue. Gold environeth the head, and
by wisdom we govern our ghostly work on every side; precious stones
giveth light in beholding of men, and by discretion we teach and
counsel our brethren; the turrets of the flower-de-luce giveth two
side branches spreading one to the right side and another to the
left, and one even up above the head, and by perfection of virtues
(the which is charity) we give two side branches of love, the which
are spreading, one to the right side to our friends, and one to the
left side to our enemies, and one even up unto God, above man's
understanding, the which is the head of the soul. This is the crown
of life the which by grace may be gotten here in this life; and,
therefore, bear thee low in thy battle, and suffer meekly thy
temptations till thou have been proved. For then shalt thou take
either the one crown, or the other, or both, this here, and the
other there; for who so hath this here, he may be full siker of the
other there; and full many there are that are full graciously proved
here, and yet come never to this that may be had here in this life.
The which (if they meekly continue and patiently abide the will of
our Lord) shall full worthily and abundantly receive the other
there, in the high bliss of heaven. Thee thinketh this crown fair
that may be had here; yea, bear thee as meekly as thou mayst by
grace, for in comparison of the other there, it is but as one noble
to a world full of gold. All this I say to give thee comfort and
evidence of strength in thy ghostly battle, the which thou hast
taken on hand in the trust of our Lord, and all this I say to let
thee see how far thou art yet from the true knowing of thine inward
disposition, and thereafter to give thee warning, not over soon to
give stead[242] nor to follow the singular stirrings of thy young
heart, for dread of deceit.
All this I say for to show unto thee my conceit that I have of thee
and of thy stirrings, as thou hast asked of me; for I conceive of
thee that thou art full able and full greatly disposed to such
sudden stirrings of singular doings,[243] and full fast to cleave
unto them when they be received; and that is full perilous. I say
not that this ableness and this greedy disposition in thee, or in
any other that is disposed as thou art, though all it be perilous,
that it is therefore evil in itself; nay, so say I not, God forbid
that thou take it so; but I say that it is full good in itself, and
a full great ableness to full great perfection, yea, and to the
greatest perfection that may be in this life; I mean, if that a soul
that is so disposed will busily, night and day, meek it[244] to God
and to good counsel, and strongly rise and martyr itself, with
casting down of the own wit and the own will in all such sudden and
singular stirrings, and say sharply that it will not follow such
stirrings, seem they never so liking,[245] so high nor so holy, but
if it have thereto the witness[246] and the consents of some ghostly
teachers--I mean such as have been of long time expert in singular
living. Such a soul, for ghostly continuance thus in this meekness,
may deserve, through grace and the experience of this ghostly battle
thus with itself, for to take the crown of life touched before. And
as great an ableness to good as is this manner of disposition in a
soul that is thus meeked as I say, as perilous it is in another
soul, such one that will suddenly, without advisement of counsel,
follow the stirrings of the greedy heart, by the own wit and the own
will; and therefore, for God's love, beware with this ableness and
with this manner of disposition (that I speak of), if it be in thee
as I say. And meek thee continually to prayer and to counsel. Break
down thine own wit and thy will in all such sudden and singular
stirrings, and follow them not over lightly, till thou wete whence
they come, and whether they be according for thee or not.
And as touching these stirrings of the which thou askest my conceit
and my counsel, I say to thee that I conceive of them suspiciously,
that is, that[247] they should be conceived on the ape's manner. Men
say commonly that the ape doth as he seeth others do; forgive me if
I err in my suspicion, I pray thee. Nevertheless, the love that I
have to thy soul stirreth me by evidence that I have of a ghostly
brother of thine and of mine, touched with those same stirrings of
full great[248] silence, of full singular fasting, and of full only
woning, on ape's manner, as he granted unto me after long communing
with me, and when he had proved himself and his stirrings. For, as
he said, he had seen a man in your country, the which man, as it is
well known, is evermore in great silence, in singular fasting, and
in only dwelling; and certes, as I suppose fully, they are full true
stirrings those that that man hath, caused all only of grace, that
he feeleth by experience within, and not of any sight or heard say
that he hath of any other man's silence without-the which cause if
it were, it should be cleped apely, as I say in my simple meaning.
And therefore beware, and prove well thy stirrings, and whence they
come; for how so thou art stirred, whether from within by grace, or
from without on ape's manner, God wote, and I not. Nevertheless this
may I say thee in eschewing of perils like unto this: look that thou
be no ape, that is to say, look that thy stirrings to silence or to
speaking, to fasting or to eating, to onliness or to company,
whether they be come from within of abundance of love and of
devotion in the spirit and not from without by the windows of thy
bodily wits, as thine ears, and thine eyes. For, as Jeremiah saith
plainly, by such windows cometh in death: Mors intrat per
fenestras.249 And this sufficeth, as little as it is, for answer to
the first, where thou askest of me, what is my conceit of thee, and
of these stirrings that thou speakest of to me in thy letter.
And touching the second thing, where thou askest of me my counsel in
this case, and in such other when they fall, I beseech almighty Jesu
(as He is cleped the angel of great counsel) that He of His mercy be
thy counsellor and thy comforter in all thy noye and thy nede, and
order me with His wisdom to fulfil in party by my teaching, so
simple as it is, the trust of thine heart, the which thou hast unto
me before many others--a simple lewd[250] wretch as I am, unworthy
to teach thee or any other, for littleness of grace and for lacking
of conning. Nevertheless, though I be lewd, yet shall I somewhat
say, answering to thy desire at my simple conning, with a trust in
God that His grace shall be learner and leader when conning of kind
and of clergy defaileth.[251] Thou wotest right well thyself that
silence in itself nor speaking, also singular fasting nor common
dieting, onliness nor company, all these nor yet any of them be not
the true end of our desire; but to some men (and not to all) they
are means helping to the end, if they be done lawfully and with
discretion, and else are they more letting than furthering. And
therefore plainly[252] to speak, nor plainly to be still, plainly to
eat, nor plainly to fast, plainly to be in company, or plainly to be
only, think I not to counsel thee at this time; for why, perfection
standeth not in them. But this counsel may I give thee generally, to
hold thee by in these stirrings, and in all other like unto these;
evermore where thou findest two contraries, as are these--silence
and speaking, fasting and eating, onliness and company, common
clothing of Christian religion and singular habits of divers and
devised brotherhoods, with all such other what so they be, the which
in themself are but works of kind[253] and of men. For thou hast it
by kind and by statute of thine outer man now for to speak and now
for to be still, now for to eat and now for to fast, now for to be
in company and now to be only, now to be common in clothing and now
to be in singular habit, ever when thee list, and when thou
seest[254] that any of them should be speedful and helply to thee in
nourishing of the heavenly grace working within in thy soul; but if
it be so (which God forbid), that thou or any other be so lewd and
so blinded in the sorrowful temptations of the midday devil, that ye
bind you by any crooked avow to any such singularities, as it were
under colour of holiness feigned under such an holy thraldom,[255]
in full and final destroying of the freedom of Christ, the which is
the ghostly habit of the sovereign holiness that may be in this
life, or in the other, by the witness of saint Paul saying thus: Ubi
spiritus Domini, ibi libertas: "There where the spirit of God is,
there is freedom."[256] And thereto when thou seest that all such
works in their use may be both good and evil; I pray thee leave them
both, for that is the most ease for thee for to do, if thou wilt be
meek, and leave the curious beholding and seeking in thy wits to
look whether is better. But do thou thus: set the one on the one
hand, and the other on the other, and choose thee a thing the which
is hid between them; the which thing, when it is had, giveth thee
leave in freedom of spirit to begin and to cease in holding any of
the others at thine own full list, without any blame.
But now thou askest me, what is that thing. I shall tell thee what I
mean that it is: It is God; for whom thou shouldest be still, if
thou shouldest be still; and for whom thou shouldest speak if thou
shouldest speak; and for whom thou shouldest fast, if thou shouldest
fast; and for whom thou shouldest eat, if thou shouldest eat; and
for whom thou shouldest be only, if thou shouldest be only; and for
whom thou shouldest be in company, if thou shouldest be in company.
And so forth of all the remenant, what so they be. For silence is
not God, nor speaking is not God; fasting is not God, nor eating is
not God; onliness is not God, nor company is not God; nor yet any of
all the other such two contraries. He is hid between them, and may
not be found by any work of thy soul, but all only by love of thine
heart. He may not be known by reason, He may not be gotten by
thought, nor concluded by understanding; but He may be loved and
chosen with the true lovely will of thine heart.[257] Choose thee
Him, and thou art silently speaking, and speakingly silent,
fastingly eating, and eatingly fasting, and so forth of all the
remenant. Such a lovely choosing of God, thus wisely lesinge[258]
and seeking Him out with the true will of a clean heart, between all
such two leaving them both, when they come and proffer them to be
the point and the prick of our ghostly beholding, is the worthiest
tracing and seeking of God that may be gotten or learned in this
life. I mean for a soul that will be contemplative; yea, though all
that a soul that thus seeketh see nothing that may be conceived with
the ghostly eye of reason; for if God be thy love and thy meaning,
the choice and the point of thine heart, it sufficeth to thee in
this life (though all thou see never more of Him with the eyes of
thy reason all thy life time). Such a blind shot with the sharp dart
of longing love may never fail of the prick, the which is God, as
Himself saith in the book of love, where He speaketh to a
languishing soul and a loving, saying thus: Vulnerasti cor meum,
soror mea, amica mea, et sponsa mea, vulnerasti cor meum, in uno
oculorum tuorum: "Thou hast wounded mine heart, my sister, my leman,
and my spouse, thou hast wounded mine heart in one of thine
eyes."[259] Eyes of the soul they are two: Reason and Love. By
reason we may trace how mighty, how wise, and how good He is in His
creatures, but not in Himself; but ever when reason defaileth, then
list, love, live and learn, to play,[260] for by love we may feel
Him, find Him, and hit Him, even in Himself. It is a wonderful eye,
this love, for of a loving soul it is only said of our Lord: "Thou
hast wounded mine heart in one of thine eyes"; that is to say, in
love that is blind to many things, and seeth but that one thing that
it seeketh, and therefore it findeth and feeleth, hitteth and
woundeth the point and the prick that it shooteth at, well sooner
than it should if the sight were sundry in beholding of many things,
as it is when the reason ransacketh and seeketh among all such
sere[261] things as are these: silence and speaking, singular
fasting and common eating, onliness or company, and all such other;
to look whether is better.
Let be this manner of doing, I pray thee, and let as thou wist not
that there were any such means (I mean ordained for to get God by);
for truly no more there is, if thou wilt be very contemplative and
soon sped of thy purpose. And, therefore, I pray thee and other like
unto thee, with the Apostle saying thus: Videte vocationem vestram,
et in ea vocatione qua vocati estis state:262 "See your calling,
and, in that calling that ye be called, stand stiffly and abide in
the name of Jesu." Thy calling is to be very contemplative,
ensampled by Mary Magdalene. Do then as Mary did, set the point of
thine heart upon one thing: Porro unum est necessarium: "For one
thing is necessary,"[263] the which is God. Him wouldest thou have,
Him seekest thou, Him list thee to love, Him list thee to feel,[264]
Him list thee hold thee by, and neither by silence nor by speaking,
by singular fasting nor by common eating, by onliness nor by
companious woning, by hard wearing nor by easy; for sometime silence
is good, but that same time speaking were better; and againward
sometime speaking is good, but that same time silence were better;
and so forth of all the remenant, as is fasting, eating, onliness,
and company; for sometime the one is good, but the other is better,
but neither of them is at any time the best. And, therefore, let be
good all that is good, and better all that is better,[265] for both
they will defail and have an end; and choose thee the best with
Mary, thy mirror, that never will defail: Maria (inquit optimam)
optimam partem elegit, quae non auferetur ab ea.266 The best is
almighty Jesu, and He said that Mary, in ensample of all
contemplatives, had chosen the best, the which should never be taken
from her; and therefore, I pray thee, with Mary leave the good and
the better, and choose thee the best.
Let them be, all such things as are these: silence and speaking,
fasting and eating, onliness and company, and all such other, and
take no keep to them; thou wotest not what they mean, and, I pray
thee, covet not to wit; and if thou shall at any time think or speak
of them, think then and say that they are so high and so worthy
things of perfection, for to conne[267] speak, or for to conne be
still, for to conne fast, and for to conne eat, for to conne be
only, and to conne be in company, that it were but a folly and a
foul presumption to such a frail wretch as thou art, for to meddle
thee of so great perfection. For why, for to speak, and for to be
still, for to eat, and for to fast, for to be only, and for to be in
company, ever when we will, may we have by kind; but for to conne do
all these, we may not but by grace. And, without doubt, such grace
is never gotten by any mean of such strait silence, of such singular
fasting, or of such only dwelling that thou speakest of, the which
is caused from without by occasion of hearing and of seeing of any
other man's such singular doings. But if ever this grace shall be
gotten, it behoveth to be learned of God from within, unto whom thou
hast listily leaned many a day before with all the love of thine
heart, utterly voiding from thy ghostly beholding[268] all manner of
sight of any thing beneath Him; though all that some of those things
that I bid thee thus void, should seem in the sight of some men a
full worthy mean to get God by. Yea, say what men say will, but do
thou as I say thee, and let the proof witness. For to him that will
be soon sped of his purpose ghostly, it sufficeth to him for a mean,
and him needeth no more, but the actual mind of good God only, with
a reverent stirring of lasting love; so that mean unto God gettest
thou none but God. If thou keep whole thy stirring of love that thou
mayst feel by grace in thine heart, and scatter not thy ghostly
beholding therefrom then that same that thou feelest shall well
conne[269] tell thee when thou shalt speak and when thou shalt be
still, and it shall govern thee discreetly in all thy living without
any error, and teach thee mistily[270] how thou shalt begin and
cease in all such doing of kind with a great and sovereign
discretion. For if thou mayst by grace keep it in custom and in
continual working, then, if it be needful or speedful to thee for to
speak, for to commonly eat, or for to bide in company, or for to do
any such other thing that longeth to the common true custom of
Christian men, and of kind, it shall first stir thee full softly to
speak or to do that other common thing of kind, what so it be. And
then, if thou do it not, it shall strike as sore as a prick on thine
heart and pain thee full sore, and let thee have no peace[271] but
if thou do it. And, on the same manner, if thou be in speaking, or
in any such other work that is common to the course of kind, if it
be needful and speedful to thee to be still, and for to set thee to
the contrary, as is onliness to company, fasting to eating, and all
such other the which are works of singular holiness, it will stir
thee to them; so that thus, by experience of such a blind stirring
of love unto God, a contemplative soul cometh sooner to that grace
of discretion for to conne speak, and for to conne be still, for to
conne eat, and for to conne fast, for to conne be in company, and
for to conne be only,[272] and all such other, than by any such
singularities as thou speakest of, taken by the stirrings of man's
own wit and his will within in himself, or yet by the ensample of
any other man's doing without, what so it be. For why, such strained
doings under the stirrings of kind, without touching[273] of grace,
is a passing pain without any profit; but if it be to them that are
religious, or that have them by enjoining of penance, where profit
riseth only because of obedience, and not by any such straitness of
doing without; the which is painful to all that it proveth. But
lovely and listily to will to love[274] God is great and passing
ease, true ghostly peace, and earnest of the endless rest. And,
therefore, speak when thee list, and leave when thee list, eat when
thee list, and fast when thee list, be in company when thee list,
and be by thyself when thee list, so that[275] God and grace be thy
leader. Let fast who fast will, and be only who will, and let hold
silence who so will, but hold thee by God that doth beguile no man;
for silence and speaking, onliness and company, fasting and eating,
all may beguile thee. And if thou hear of any man that speaketh, or
of any that is still, of any that eateth or of any that fasteth, or
of any that is in company or else by himself, think thou, and say,
if thee list, that they conne do as they should do, but if the
contrary shew in apert.[276] But look that thou do not as they do (I
mean for that they do so) on ape's manner; for neither thou canst,
nor peradventure thou art not disposed as they are. And, therefore,
leave to work after other men's dispositions and work after thine
own, if thou mayst know what it is. And unto the time that thou
mayst know what it is, work after those men's counsel that know
their own disposition, but not after their disposition;[277] for
such men should give counsel in such cases, and else none. And this
sufficeth for an answer to all thy letter, as me thinketh; the grace
of God be ever more with thee, in the name of Jesu. AMEN.
FINIT EPISTOLA
VII.
HERE FOLLOWETH A DEVOUT TREATISE OF DISCERNING OF SPIRITS, VERY
NECESSARY FOR GHOSTLY LIVERS
FOR because that there be divers kinds of spirits, therefore it is
needful to us discreet knowing of them; sith it so is that we be
taught of the apostle saint John not to believe to all spirits.[278]
For it might seem to some that are but little in conning, and namely
of ghostly things, that each thought that soundeth in man's heart
should be the speech of none other spirit but only of man's own
spirit. And that it is not so, both belief and witness of holy
scripture proveth apertly; for "I shall hear," saith the prophet
David, "not what I speak myself, but what my Lord God speaketh in
me";[279] and another prophet saith, that an angel spake in
him.[280] And also we be taught in the psalm that the wicked spirits
sendeth evil thoughts in to men; and over this, that there is a
spirit of the flesh not good, the apostle Paul sheweth apertly,
where he saith, that some men are full blown or inflate with the
spirit of their flesh.[281] And also that there is the spirit of the
world, he declareth plainly, where he maketh joy in God, not only
for himself, but also for his disciples, that they had not taken
that spirit of the world, but that that is sent of God, the which is
the Holy Ghost.[282] And these two spirits of the flesh and also of
the world are, as it were, servants or sergeants of that cursed
spirit, the foul fiend of hell; so that the spirit of wickedness is
lord of the spirit of the flesh, and also of the spirit of the
world. And which of these three spirits that speaketh to our spirit,
we should not believe them. For why, they speak never but that anon,
by their speaking, they lead to the loss both of body and of soul.
And which spirit it is that speaketh to our spirit, the speech of
that same spirit that speaketh shall fully declare; for ever more
the spirit of the flesh speaketh soft things and easy to the body;
the spirit of the world vain things and covetise[283] of worship;
and the spirit of malice of the fiend speaketh fell things and
bitter.
Wherefore, as oft times as any thought smiteth on our hearts of
meat, of drink, and of sleep, of soft clothing, of lechery, and of
all other such things the which longeth to the business of the
flesh, and maketh our heart for to brenne[284] as it were in a
longing desire after all such things; be we full siker that it is
the spirit of the flesh that speaketh it. And therefore put we him
away, in as much as we goodly may by grace, for he is our adversary.
As oft times as any thought smiteth on our hearts of vain joy of
this world, kindling in us a desire to be holden fair, and to be
favoured, to be holden of great kin and of great conning, to be
holden wise and worthy, or else to have great degree and high office
in this life--such thoughts and all other the which would make a man
to seem high and worshipful, not only in the sight of others, but
also in the sight of himself--no doubt but it is the spirit of the
world that speaketh all these, a far more perilous enemy than is the
spirit of the flesh, and with much more business he should be put
off. And oft times it befalleth that these two servants and
sergeants of the foul fiend, the spirit and prince of wrath[285] and
of wickedness, are either by grace and by ghostly slight of a soul
stiffly put down and trodden down under foot; or else, by
quaintise[286] of their malicious master, the foul fiend of hell,
they are quaintly withdrawn, for he thinketh himself for to rise
with great malice and wrath, as a lion running felly to assail the
sickness of our sely souls; and this befalleth as oft as the thought
of our heart stirreth us, not to the lust of our flesh, nor yet to
the vain joy of this world, but it stirreth us to murmuring, to
grutching,[287] to grievance, and to bitterness of soul, to pain and
to impatience, to wrath, to melancholy, and to evil will, to hate,
to envy, and to all such sorrows. It maketh us to bear us heavily,
if ought be done or said unto us, not so lovely, nor so wisely[288]
as we would it were; it raiseth in us all evil suspicion, if ought
be shewed in sign, in countenance, in word, or in work, that might
by any manner be turned to malice or to heaviness of heart; it
maketh us as fast[289] to take it to us.
To these thoughts, and to all such that would put us out of peace
and restfulness of heart, we should none otherwise againstand,[290]
but as we would the self fiend of hell, and as much we should flee
therefrom as from the loss of our soul. No doubt but both the other
two thoughts, of the spirit of the flesh and also of the spirit of
the world, work and travail in all that they can to the loss of our
soul, but most perilously the spirit of malice; for why, he is by
himself, but they not without him. For if a man's soul be never so
clean of fleshly lust, and of vain joy of this world, and if it be
defouled with this spirit of malice, of wrath, and of wickedness,
not againstanding all the other cleanness before, yet it is losable.
And if a soul be never so much defouled with the lust of the flesh,
and vain joy of the world, and it may by grace keep it in peace and
in restfulness of heart unto the even Christian,[291] though all it
be full hard for to do (lasting the custom of the other two),[292]
yet it is less losable, not againstanding all the other filth of the
flesh and of the world touched before. And, therefore, though all
that our lusty[293] thoughts of our flesh be evil, for they reave
from the soul the life of devotion, and though all that the vain joy
of the world be worse, for it reaveth us from the true joy that we
should have in contemplation of heavenly things, ministered and
taught to us by the angels of heaven. For who so lustily desireth to
be worshipped, favoured, and served of men here in earth, they
deserve to forego the worship, the favour, and service of angel in
ghostly contemplation of heaven and of heavenly things, all their
lifetime; the which contemplation is better and more worthy in
itself than is the lust and the liking of devotion. And for this
bitterness I clepe the spirit of malice, of wrath, and of wickedness
the worst spirit of them all; and why? Certes, for it reaveth us the
best thing of all, and that is charity, the which is God. For who so
lacketh peace and restfulness of heart, him lacketh the lively
presence of the lovely sight of the high peace of heaven, good
gracious God His own dear self. This witnesseth David in the psalm,
where he saith, that the place of God is made in peace, and His
dwelling place in Sion.[294] Sion is as much to say as the sight of
peace; the sight of the soul is the thought of that same soul; and,
certes, in that soul that most is occupied in thoughts of peace hath
God made His dwelling place.[295] And thus saith Himself by the
prophet, when he saith: "Upon whom shall my spirit rest, but upon
the meek and the restful."[296] And, therefore, who so will have God
continually dwelling in him, and live in love and in sight of the
high peace of the Godhead, the which is the highest and the best
party of contemplation that may be had in this life, be he busy
night and day to put down, when they come, the spirit of the flesh
and the spirit of the world, but most busily the spirit of malice,
of wrath, and of wickedness, for he is the foulest and the worst
filth[297] of all. And it is full needful and speedful to know his
quaintise, and not for to unknow his doleful deceits. For sometime
he will, that wicked cursed wight, change his likeness in to an
angel of light, that he may under colour of virtue do more
dere;[298] but yet then, if we look more redely,[299] it is but seed
of bitterness and of discord that that he sheweth, seem it never so
holy nor never so fair at the first shewing. Full many he stirreth
unto singular holiness passing the common statute and custom of
their degree, as is fasting, sharp wearing, and many other devout
observances and outward doings, in open reproving of other men's
defaults, the which they have not of office for to do. All such and
many other he stirreth them for to do, and all under colour of
devotion and of charity; not for he is delighted in any deed of
devotion and of charity, but for he loveth dissension and slander,
the which is evermore caused by such unseemly singularities; for
where so ever that any one or two are in any devout congregation,
the which any one or two useth any such outward singularities, then
in the sight of fools all the remenant are slandered by them; but,
in the sight of the wise man, they slander themselves. But for
because that fools are more than wise men, therefore for favour of
fools such singular doers ween that they be wise, when (if it were
wisely determined) they and all their fautors[300] should be seen
apert fools, and darts shot of the devil, to slay true simple souls
under colour of holiness and charity. And thus many deceits can the
fiend bring in on this manner.
Who so will not consent, but meeketh him truly to prayer and to
counsel, shall graciously be delivered of all these deceits.[301]
But it is sorrow for to say, and more for to feel, that
sometime[302] our own spirit is so overcome peradventure with each
of these three spirits, of the flesh, of the world, and of the
fiend, and so brought into danger, bounden in bondage, in thraldom
and in service of them all, that sorrow it is to wit. In great
confusion and loss of itself, it doth now the office of each one of
them itself in itself. And this befalleth when, after long use, and
customable consenting unto them when they come, at the last it is
made so fleshly, so worldly, and so malicious, so wicked, and so
froward, that now plainly of itself, without suggestion of any other
spirit, it gendereth and bringeth forth in itself, not only lusty
thoughts of the flesh, and vain thoughts of the world, but that
worst of all these, as are bitter thoughts and wicked, in backbiting
and deeming, and evil suspicion of others. And when it is thus with
our spirit, then, I trow, it may not lightly be known when it is our
own spirit that speaketh, or when it heareth any of the other three
spirits speaking in it as it is touched before. But what maketh it
matter[303] who speaketh, when it is all one and the same thing that
is spoken? What helpeth to know the person of him that speaketh,
when it is siker and certain that all is evil and perilous that is
spoken? If it be thine enemy, consent not to him, but meek thee to
prayer and to counsel, and so mayst thou mightily withstand thine
enemy. If it be thine own spirit, reprove him bitterly, and
sighingly sorrow that ever thou fell in[304] so great wretchedness,
bondage, and thraldom of the devil. Shrive thee of thy customed
consents, and of thine old sins, and so mayst thou come (by grace)
to recover thy freedom again; and by the gracious freedom mayst thou
soon come to, wisely for to know, and soothfastly for to feel by the
proof, when it is thine own spirit that speaketh these evils, or it
be these other evil spirits that speaketh them in thee. And so may
this knowing be a sovereign mean and help of againstanding, for
often times unknowing is cause of much error, and, againward,
knowing is cause of much truth; and to this manner of knowing mayst
thou win thus as I say to thee.
If thou be in doubt or in were[305] of these evil thoughts when they
come, whether that they be the speech of thine own spirit, or of any
of the others of thine enemies; look then busily by the witness of
thy counsel and thy conscience, if thou have been shriven and
lawfully amended after the doom[306] of thy confessor, of all the
consents that ever thou consented to that kind of sin, that thy
thought is aware of. And if thou have not been shriven shrive thee
then, as truly as thou mayst, by grace and by counsel; and then wete
thou right well that all the thoughts that come to thee after thy
shrift, stirring thee oft times to the same sins, they are the words
of other spirits than thine own (I mean some of the three touched
before). And thou for none such thoughts, be they never so thick, so
foul, nor so many (I mean for their first coming in), but if it be
for recklessness of againstanding,[307] art no blame worthy. And not
only releasing of purgatory that thou hast deserved for the same
sins done before, what so they be, thou mayst deserve, if thou
stiffly againstand them, but also much grace in this life, and much
meed in the bliss of heaven. But all those evil thoughts coming in
to thee, stirring thee to any sin, after that thou hast consented to
that same sin, and before that thou hast sorrow for that consent,
and art in will to be shriven thereof, it is no peril to thee to
take them to thyself,[308] and for to shrive thee of them, as of
thoughts of thine own spirit; but for to take to thyself all other
thoughts, the which thou hast by very proof, as it is shewed before,
by the speeches of other spirits than of thyself, therein lieth
great peril, for so mightest thou lightly misrule thy conscience,
charging a thing for sin the which is none; and this were great
error, and a mean to the greatest peril. For if it were so that each
evil thought and stirring to sin were the work and the speech of
none other spirit, but only of man's own spirit; then it would
follow by that that a man's own spirit were a very fiend, the which
is apertly false and a damnable woodness;[309] for though all it be
so that a soul may, by frailty and custom of sinning, fall in to so
much wretchedness, that it taketh on itself by bondage of sin the
office of the devil, stirring itself to sin ever more and more,
without any suggestion of any other spirit (as it is said before),
yet it is not therefore a devil in kind, but it is a devil in
office, and may be cleped devilish, for it is in the doing like to
the devil, [that is to say, a stirrer of itself unto sin, the which
is the office of the devil].[310] Nevertheless yet, for all this
thraldom to sin and devilishness in office, it may by grace of
contrition, of shrift, and of amending, recover the freedom again,
and be made saveable--yea, and a full special God's saint in this
life, that before was full damnable and full cursed in the
living.[311] And, therefore, as great a peril as it is a soul that
is fallen in sin, not for to charge his conscience therewith, nor
for to amend him thereof, as great a peril it is, and, if it may be
said, a greater, a man for to charge his conscience with each
thought and stirring of sin that will come in him; for, by such nice
charging of conscience, might he lightly run in to error of
conscience, and so be led in to despair all his life time. And the
cause of all this is lacking of knowing of discretion of spirits,
the which knowing may be gotten by very experience; who so redely
will look soon after that a soul have been truly cleansed by
confession as it is said before. For fast after confession a soul
is, as it were, a clean paper leaf, for ableness that it hath to
receive what that men will write thereupon. Both they do press[312]
for to write on the soul, when it is clean in itself made by
confession: God and His angel on the one party, and the fiend and
his angel on the other party; but it is in the free choice of the
soul to receive which that it will. The receipt of the soul is the
consent of the same soul. A new thought and a stirring to any sin,
the which thou hast forsaken before in thy shrift, what is it else
but the speech of one of the three spirits the which are thine
enemies (touched before), proffering to write on thy soul the same
sin again? The speech of thyself, is it not; for why, there is no
such thing written in thy soul, for all it is wasted away before in
thy shrift, and thy soul left naked and bare; nothing left
thereupon, but a frail and a free consent, more inclining to the
evil, for custom therein, than it is to the good, but more able to
the good than to the evil, for cleanness of the soul and virtue of
the sacrament of shrift; but, of itself, it hath nought then, where
through it may think or stir itself to good or to evil; and,
therefore, it followeth that what thought that cometh then in it,
whether that it be good or evil, it is not of itself, but the
consent to the good or to the evil, whether that it be, that is ever
more the work of the same soul.
And all after the worthiness and the wretchedness of this consent,
thereafter it deserveth pain or bliss. If this consent be to evil,
then as fast it hath, by cumbrance of sin, the office of that same
spirit that first made him suggestion of that same sin; and if it be
to the good, then as fast it hath, by grace, the office of that same
spirit that first made him stirring[313] to that same good. For as
oft as any healful thought cometh in our mind, as of chastity, of
soberness, of despising of the world, of wilful poverty, of
patience, of meekness, and of charity, without doubt it is the
spirit of God that speaketh, either by Himself or else by some of
His angels--that is to say, either His angels of this life, the
which are true teachers, or else His angels of His bliss, the which
are true stirrers and inspirers of good. And as it is said of the
other three evil spirits, that a soul, for long use and customable
consenting unto them, may be made so fleshly, so worldly, and so
malicious, that it taketh upon it the office of them all; right so
it is againward[314] that a soul, for long use and custom in
goodness, may be made so ghostly by cleanness of living and devotion
of spirit against the spirit of the flesh, and so heavenly against
the spirit of the world, and so godly by peace and by charity, and
by restfulness of heart, against the spirit of malice, of wrath, and
of wickedness, that it hath them now of office all such good
thoughts to think when him list, without forgetting, in as great
perfection as the frailty of this life will suffer. And thus it may
be seen how that each thought that smiteth on our hearts, whether
that it be good or evil, it is not evermore the speech of our own
spirit, but the consent to the thought, what so ever it be, that is
ever of our own spirit. Jesu grant us His grace, to consent to the
good and againstand the evil. Amen.
FINIS. DEO GRATIAS
INDEX OF NAMES & SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES
Ancren Riwle, The, xx, 28 n
Aquinas, St. Thomas, xiii, 81, 84 n, 86 n
Asher, symbolism of, 6, 16-19
Augustine, St., xii, 25
Benjamin, symbolism of, xvi, xvii, 6, 29-33
Bernard, St., xii, 81
Bilhah, symbolism of, 4-6, 13-16
Bonaventura, St., xii
Catherine of Siena, St., xi, xvii-xix, xxv-xxvii, 35-47, 52 n, 107 n
Caxton, xviii, xix
Chaucer, 17 n, 52 n, 56 n, 95 n, 120 n
Chauncy, Maurice, xxiv
Dan, symbolism of, 6, 13, 14, 18
Dante, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, 38 n, 88 n, 91 n
Dinah, symbolism of, 6, 25
Dionysius, xxiii, xxiv
Divine Cloud of Unknowing, The, Author of, xii, xvii, xxiv, xxv,
xxvii, 3, 32, 33, 77-132
Eckhart, Meister, xi
Exmew, William, xxiv
Flete, William, xvii, xviii, 52 n
Gad, symbolism of, 6, 16-19
Genesis, 8-11, 14-17, 20, 24, 32
Hawkwood, John, xvii
Hilton (Hylton), Walter, xi, xii, xxii-xxv, 61-73, 104 n, 124 n
Hugel, F. von, 84 n, 86 n
Hugh of St. Victor, xii
Imitatione Christi, De, xxiii n, 65 n
Isaiah, 124
Issachar, symbolism of, 6, 20-24
Jacob, symbolism of, 3-7, 10, 27, 29
Jacopone da Todi, xi
James, Dane, xviii
James, Epistle of, 98, 99
Jeremiah, 103, 104
John, St., Epistles of, 25, 119
Joseph, symbolism of, 6, 27-30
Judah, symbolism of, 6, 10-12
Juliana of Norwich, xi, xxi, 65 n, 123 n
Kempe, Margery, xix-xxi, 49-59
Langland, Piers the Plowman, 79 n, 89 n
Layamons Brut, 28 n
Leah, symbolism of, 3-11, 14, 15-20, 24, 26, 29
Levi, symbolism of, 6, 9, 10
Luke, St., 110
Margery, see Kempe
Matthew, St., 8
Mechthild of Magdeburg, xi
Naphtali, symbolism of, 6, 13-15, 18, 19
Paul, St., Epistles, 21, 40, 41, 88, 97, 106, 109, 119, 120
Pepwell, xiv, xix
Proverbs, 28 n
Psalms, The, xiv, xvi, xxvi, 9, 10, 11, 23, 31, 33, 78, 79, 119, 124
Pynson, xxii
Rachel, symbolism of, 3-6, 12-15, 18, 27, 32
Raymund of Capua, xviii, xix
Reuben, symbolism of, 6, 7-9
Richard of St. Victor, xii-xv, xxii, xxv, xxvi, 3, 4 n, 19 n
Richard Rolle of Hampole, xi, xii, xvi, xvii, xxiii n, xxv, 71 n
Robert of Brunne, Chronicle of, 124 n
Ruysbroeck, Jan, xi
Shelley, xv n
Simeon, symbolism of, 6, 8, 9
Song of Solomon, 88, 108
Suso, Heinrich, xi
Tantucci, Giovanni, xvii
Tyrrell, George, xxi n
Wyclif, 16 n, 79 n, 112 n
Wynkyn de Worde, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxvii
Zebulun, symbolism of, 6, 22-25
Zechariah, 119
Zilpah, symbolism of, 4-6, 15-17, 20
Footnotes:
[1] Dante, convivio, i. 12.
[2] Cf. the Letter to Can Grande (Epist. x. 28), where Dante, like
St. Thomas Aquinas before him, refers to the Benjamin Major as
"Richardus de Sancto Victore in libro De Contemplatione."
[3]Par. x. 131, 132.
[4] Ps. lxviii. 27.
[5] Benjamin Minor, cap. 73.
[6] Benjamin Minor, cap. 75. Cf. Shelley, The Triumph of Life: "Their
lore taught them not this: to know themselves." This passage of
Richard is curiously misquoted and its meaning perverted in Haureau,
Histoire de la Philosophie Scolastique, i. pp. 513, 514, in the
Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xvi., and elsewhere.
[7] Benjamin Minor, cap. 81.
[8] Cf. below, pp. 32, 33.
[9] Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers, edited by C.
Horstman, vol. i. pp. 162-172.
[10] Sene, Senis, or Seenes, "Siena," from the Latin Senae
(Catharina de Senis).
[11] Cf. E. Gordon Duff, Hand-Lists of English Printers, 1501-1556,
i. p. 24.
[12] Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica p. 452.
[13] Quietaclacmium Margerie filie Johannis Kempe de domibus in
parochia de Northgate. Brit. Mus., Add MS. 25,109.
[14] She was, however, apparently less strictly enclosed than was
usual for an ancress.
[15] Cf. G. Tyrrell, Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love shewed to
Mother Juliana of Norwich, Preface, p. v.
[16] In the British Museum copy of Pepwell's volume, ff. 1-2 of the
Epistle of Prayer and f. 1 of the Song of Angels are transposed.
[17] Cf. C. T. Martin, in Dictionary of National Biography, vol. ix.
For Hilton's alleged authorship of the De Imitatione Christi, see J.
E. G. de Montmorency, Thomas a Kempis, his Age and Book, pp.
141-169.
[18] Edited by G. G. Perry, under the title The Anehede of Godd with
mannis saule, as the work of Richard Rolle, in English Prose
Treatises of Richard Rolle de Hampole (Early English Text Society,
1866), pp. 14-19; and, in two texts, by C. Horstman, op. cit., vol.
i. pp. 175-182.
[19] In the MSS. this is called: A pystyll of discrecion in knowenge
of spirites; or: A tretis of discrescyon of spirites.
[20] All in Harl. MS. 674, and other MSS. The Divine Cloud of
Unknowing, and portions of the Epistle, Book, or Treatise, of Privy
Counsel have been printed, in a very unsatisfactory manner, in The
Divine Cloud with notes and a Preface by Father Augustine Baker,
O.S.B. Edited by Henry Collins. London, 1871.
[21] D. M. M'Intyre, The Cloud of Unknowing, in the Expositor,
series vii. vol. 4 (1907). Dr. Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical
Religion, p. 336, regards these treatises as the work of "a school
of mystics gathered about the writer of the Hid Divinity." Neither
of these authors includes the translation of the Benjamin Minor,
which, however, appears to me undoubtedly from the same hand as that
of the Divine Cloud.
[22] Benjamin Minor, cap. 78.
[23] Dialogo cap. 151.
[24] Benjamin Minor, cap. 72.
[25] The MSS. have: "men clepen."
[26] So the MSS., which agrees with the Latin, ordinati affectus
(Benjamin Minor, cap. 3); Pepwell has "ardent feelings."
[27] So Pepwell, which accords with the Latin: cum tante
importunitate. The MSS. read: "unconningly," i.e. ignorantly.
[28] So Harl. MS. 674 and Pepwell; Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman,
reads: "forthe," i.e. offer. The Latin is: "Et Zelphae quidem sitim
dominae suae copia tanta omnino extinguere non potest" (Benjamin
Minor, cap. 6).
[29] The Latin has simply: "vinum quod Zelpha sitit, gaudium est
voluptatis" (ibid.).
[30] Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, reads: "in our soul."
[31] Pepwell gives the modern equivalent, "ordinate" and
"inordinate," for "ordained" and "unordained," throughout.
[32] Ps. cxi. 10 (Vulgate cx.).
[33] Pepwell adds: "and high Judge."
[34] Filius visionis.
[35] Gen. xxix. 32 (Vidit Dominus humilitatem meam, Vulgate).
[36] Gen. xxix. 33.
[37] Exauditio.
[38] Matt. v. 4.
[39] Ezek. xxxiii. 14.
[40] Made humble.
[41] Ps. li. 17 (Vulgate l.).
[42] Additus, vel Additio.
[43] Added. Cf. Gen. xxix. 34.
[44] Ps. xciv. 19 (Vulgate xciii.).
[45] Gen. xxix. 34.
[46] Gen. xxix. 35 (Vulgate): Modo confitebor Domino.
[47] Confitens.
[48] Learning.
[49] Ps. cvi. 1, cvii. 1 (cv., cvi., Vulgate).
[50] Pepwell reads: "the true goodness of God."
[51] Pepwell reads: "conning."
[52] Latin Invisibilium: Pepwell has "unseasable."
[53] Pepwell has "feble."
[54] Reasons.
[55] Because.
[56] Judicium (Pepwell adds: "or judgment").
[57] Gen. xlix. 16: "Dan shall judge his people."
[58] Gen. xxx. 6.
[59] Gen. xxx. 8: "Comparavit me Deus cum sorore mea, et invalui"
(Vulgate).
[60] In the Latin, "Comparalio vel conversio."
[61] Gen. xlix. 21: "Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly
words" (Nephthali cervus emissus at dams eloquia pulchritudinis,
Vulgate).
[62] Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, reads: "full."
[63] Underloute, participle of Underluten (O.E. Underlutan), "to
stoop beneath," or "submit to." Cf. Wycliffe's Bible, Gen. xxxvii.
8: "Whether thow shalt be oure kyng, oither we shal be undirloute to
thi bidding?"
[64] Discomfort.
[65] Dixit: Feliciter. Gen. xxx. 11 (Vulgate).
[66] Felicitas. Harl. MS. 674 adds: "whether thou wilt."
[67] The MSS. have: "selyness."
[68] Gen. xxx. 13 (Vulgate): Hoc pro beatitudine mea.
[69] Beatus.
[70] Natural.
[71] Murmurs, complains. Cf. Chaucer, The Persones Tale, ed. Skeat
SS 30: "After bakbyting cometh grucching or murmuracion; and somtyme
it springeth of impacience agayns God, and somtyme agayns man.
Agayns God it is, whan a man gruccheth agayn the peynes of helle, or
agayns poverte, or los of catel or agayn reyn or tempest; or elles
gruccheth that shrewes han prosperitee, or elles for that goode men
han adversitee."
[72] Pepwell adds: at the least willingly.
[73] Pepwell reads: "put down."
[74] Watches.
[75] Promises. Latin: fovet promissis.
[76] A curious mistranslation: "Sed Aser hosti suo facile illudit
dum partem quam tuetur, alta patientiae rupe munitam conspicit"
(Benjamin Minor, cap. 33).
[77] Dwelling-place.
[78] Pacified. Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, reads: "the cite of
conscience is made pesebule."
[79] Merces.
[80] So Harl. MS. 674; omitted in Harl, MS. 1022 and by Pepwell.
[81] Gen. xxx. 18.
[82] The MSS. read: "erles."
[83] Gen. xlix, 14: "Issachar asinus fortis accubans interterminos"
(Vulgate).
[84] Rom. vii. 24.
[85] Phil. i. 23.
[86] Ps iv. 5. Harl. MS. 674 has: "Wraththes and willeth not synne,
or thus: Beeth wrothe and synnith not."
[87] Human nature in our fellow-man.
[88] Fellow-Christian. The words in square brackets are omitted in
Harl. MS. 674.
[89] Ps. cxxxix. (Vulgate cxxxviii. ) 21.
[90] Ps. cxix. (Vulgate cxviii.) 104.
[91] Habitaculum fortitudinis.
[92] Gen. xxx. 20.
[93] Assuredly. Pepwell sometimes modernises this word, but not
invariably.
[94] 1 John i. 8.
[95] Cf. St. Augustine's various writings against the Pelagians,
e.g. Epist. clvii. (Opera, ed. Migne, tom. ii. coll. 374 et seq.),
Ad Hilarium.
[96] Deliberate intention.
[97] Warnes in the MSS.
[98] Disposition.
[99] Coaxing, beguiling. Harl. MS. 674 reads: "glosing."
[100] Madness.
[101] In particular. Pepwell has: "surely."
[102] Regret.
[103] Better is art than evil strength. A proverbial expression. Cf.
Layamons Brut, 17210 (ed Madden, ii. p. 297); Ancren Riwle (ed.
Morton), p. 268 (where it is rendered: "Skilful prudence is better
than rude force"). Cf. Prov. xxi. 22.
[104] The MSS. have: "ilke."
[105] Invisibilia.
[106] So Pepwell and Harl. MS. 674. Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman,
reads: "see thiself and the candell."
[107] Pepwell reads: "waking."
[108] Ps. iv. 6-7.
[109] Harl. MS. 674 reads: "light."
[110] Salutary.
[111] Skill.
[112] So Pepwell. Harl. MS. 674 reads: "each desire on desire."
Harl. MS. 1022, ed. Horstman, has: "hekand desire unto desire."
[113] Gen. xxxv. 18.
[114] Ps. xxvi. (Vulgate xxv.) 12.
[115] So Harl. MSS. 1022 and 2373; Pepwell and harl. MS. 674 read:
"godly."
[116] Ps. lxviii. 27 (Vulgate lxvii. 28).
[117] So Harl. MS. 2373; omitted in Harl. MS. 674. Pepwell has
instead: "To the which us bring our blessed Benjamin, Christ Jesu,
Amen." Harl. MS. 1022 ends: "Jesus Jesu, Mercy, Jesu, grant Mercy,
Jesu." The whole of this concluding paragraph, which is an addition
of the translator, differs considerably in Pepwell.
[118]So Pepwell and MS. Reg. 17 D.V.; Caxton has: "Thou art she that
art not, and I am he that am"; which is nearer to the Latin.
[119]Caxton reads: "I escape gracyously all his snares."
[120]Cf. Dante, Par. xxxiii. 100-105:--
"A quella luce cotal si diventa,
Che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto,
E impossibil che mai si consenta;
Pero che il ben, ch'e del volere obbietto,
Tutto s'accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella
E difettivo cio che li e perfetto."
"Such at that light does one become, that it were impossible ever
to consent to turn from it for sight of ought else, For the good,
that is the object of the will, is wholly gathered therein, and
outside it that is defective which there is perfect."
[121]So Pepwell: Caxton has: "yf thou wilt gete the vertu of
ghostely strength."
[122]Pepwell and the MS. add: "and temptations" (Caxton: "of
temptacyons"); which is clearly out of place. Cf. Legenda, SS 104
(Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis, tom. iii.).
[123]2 Cor. i. 7.
[124]Mated. Caxton has: "vertuously y-mette." Cf. Legenda, SS 101:
"Talis anima sic Deo conjuncta."
[125]2 Cor. xii. 10.
[126] "And the cause and the rote" (Caxton).
[127]Sometimes.
[128]Caxton has: "It happed she sayde that other whyle deuoute
feruour of a sowle leuyng oure lorde Jhesu other by somme certeyne
synne, or ellys by newe sotyll temptacyons of the fende wexyth dull
and slowe, and other whyle it is y-brought to veray coldenesse."
Pepwell and the MS. are entirely corrupt: "It happeneth (she sayth)
that otherwhyle a synner whiche is leuynge our Lord Jhesu by some
certeyn synne, or ellys by some certeyn temptacyons of the fende,"
&c. The original of the passage runs thus: "Frequenter enim (ut
inquiebat) contingit animae Deum amanti quod fervor mentalis, vel ex
divina providentia, vel ex aliquali culpa, vel ex haustis
adinventionibus inimici, tepescit, et quandoque quasi ad
frigiditatem usque deducitur" (Legenda SS 107).
[129]So Caxton; Pepwell has: "leaving."
[130]Caxton has: "seeth"; the Latin text: quantumcumque videat seu
sentiat.
[131]Requited.
[132]So the MS.; Pepwell reads: "were feble and fayle"; and Caxton:
"wexed feble and defayled."
[133]Caxton reads: "prayng" (praying).
[134]So Caxton: Pepwell and MS. have: "in."
[135]Latin, Praelatorum suorum (i.e. of her ecclesiastical
superiors), Legenda, SS 361.
[136]Omitted in Pepwell and in MS.
[137]Judge. Cf. above, p. 14.
[138]Judgment.
[139] "Also she sayd that she hadde alwaye grete hope and truste in
Goddes prouydence, and to this same truste she endured her dysciples
seyng unto theym that she founde and knewe" (Caxton).
[140]The habergeon or the hair-shirt, the former term being applied
to an instrument of penance as well as to a piece of armour. Cf.
Chaucer, The Persones Tale (ed. Skeat, SS 97): "Thanne shaltow
understonde, that bodily peyne stant in disciplyne or techinge, by
word or by wrytinge, or in ensample. Also in weringe of heyres or of
stamin, or of haubergeons on hir naked flesh, for Cristes sake, and
swiche manere penances. But war thee wel that swiche manere penances
on thy flesh ne make nat thyn herte bitter or angry or anoyed of
thy-self; for bettre is to caste awey thyn heyre, than for to caste
away the sikernesse of Jesu Crist. And therfore seith seint Paul:
'Clothe yow, as they that been chosen of God, in herte of
misericorde, debonairetee, suffraunce, and swich manere of
clothinge'; of whiche Jesu Crist is more apayed than of heyres, or
haubergeons, or hauberkes."
[141]Wynkyn de Worde has: "sholde."
[142]Wynkyn de Worde has: "profyte."
[143]Cf. St. Catherine of Siena, Letter to William Flete (ed. Gigli,
124): "There are some who give themselves perfectly to chastising
their body, doing very great and bitter penance, in order that the
sensuality may not rebel against the reason. They have set all their
desire more in mortifying the body than in slaying their own will.
These are fed at the table of penance, and are good and perfect, but
unless they have great humility, and compel themselves to consider
the will of God and not that of men, they oft times mar their
perfection by making themselves judges of those who are not going by
the same way that they are going."
[144]Perhaps, simply, "say many prayers"--without any special
reference to the rosary.
[145]Annoy.
[146]Wynkyn de Worde has: "mote."
[147]Wynkyn de Worde has: "lownesse."
[148]With-out-forth=outwardly. Cf. Chaucer, The Persones Tale, (ed.
Skeat, SS 10): "And with-inne the hertes of folk shal be the bytinge
conscience, and with-oute-forth shal be the world al brenninge."
[149]Everyche=each one.
[150]According to the legend, certain "indulgences," to be gained by
all who visited the Holy Places at Jerusalem, were first granted by
Pope St. Sylvester at the petition of Constantine and St. Helena.
There seems no evidence as to the real date at which these special
indulgences were instituted. Cf. Amort, De origine, progressu,
valore, ac frauctu Indulgentiarum, Augsburg, 1735, pars i. pp. 217
et seq.
[151]Plenary.
[152]All the indulgences attached to the Holy Places.
[153]Probably Racheness in the parish of South Acre, where "there
was a leper hospital, with church or chapel dedicated to St.
Bartholomew, of early foundation" (Victoria History of the County of
Norfolk, ii. p. 450).
[154]In true union.
[155]Established firmly.
[156]Wandering.
[157]So Horstman. Pepwell reads: "With this wonderful onehede ne may
none be fuifilled."
[158]Unreasonable impulses.
[159]Secret nature. Cf. Mother Juliana, Revelations of Divine Love,
xiv. cap. 46: "And our kindly substance is now blessedfully in God."
[160]Divers.
[161]Cf. De Imitatione Christi, ii. 4: "If thine heart were right,
then every creature would be a mirror of life, and a book of holy
doctrine. There is no creature so small and vile, as not to
represent the goodness of God."
[162]Horstman reads: "a mans saule."
[163]So Horstman: Pepwell reads: "as virtues in angels and in holy
souls and in heavenly things."
[164]Pepwell omits the "not."
[165]Before.
[166]The truth of God's hidden mysteries.
[167]According to the measure of its love.
[168]All intervening hindrance.
[169]Horstman reads: "matter."
[170]A little.
[171]Before.
[172]Overtaxes.
[173]Craft.
[174]Horstman reads: "wete he wele."
[175]This passage is defective in Pepwell.
[176]MS. Dd. v. 55, ed. Horstman, has: "purges."
[177]Pepwell has: "in feeling of the sound."
[178]MS. Dd. v. 55, ed. Horstman, reads: "toune" (i.e. tone).
[179]Illumined.
[180]Cools down grows cold. Also construed with "from." Cf. Richard
Rolle Psalter (ed. H. R. Bramley, p. 156): "He gars sa many kele fra
godis luf."
[181]A mere abstract thought of God.
[182]Construe: "But if he hold this feeling and this mind (that is
only his own working by custom) to be a special visitation."
[183]Surer, safer.
[184]Pepwell adds "and in faith."
[185]The MSS. add: "And bot if thou spede thee the rather or thou
come to the ende of thy prayer."
[186]Pepwell reads: "find."
[187]Coax, beguile.
[188]Falsehoods.
[189]The MSS. read: "behetynges of lenger leuyng."
[190]Promise.
191Ps. xlvi. 8 (Vulgate), xlvii. 7 (A.V.): "Sing ye praises with
understanding."
192Ps. cxi. 10 (cx. 10 Vulgate).
[193]So Pepwell; Harl. MS. 674 reads: "Bot forthi that there is no
sekir stonding."
[194]Pepwell adds in explanation: "or amends"; i.e. satisfaction.
Cf. Langland, Piers the Plowman, B. xvii. 237: "And if it suffice
noughte for assetz"; and Wyclif, Pistil on Cristemasse Day (Select
English Works, ed. T. Arnold, ii. p. 237): "And thus, sith aseeth
muste be maad for Adams synne."
[195]Ps. xxxiv. 22 (Vulgate xxxiii. 23).
[196]The MSS. read: "fro a lyf."
[197]The MSS. read: "a lyf."
[198]So Harl. MS. 674. Pepwell reads: "Also the steps of thy staff
Hope plainly will shew unto thee if thou do it duly, as I have told
thee before, or not."
[199]Summa Theologica, II.-ii. Q. 82, A. I: "Devotio nihil aliud
esse videtur, quam voluntas quaedam prompte tradendi se ad ea, quae
pertinent ad Dei famulatum."
[200]The whole passage included in square brackets is omitted in
Pepwell, but is identical in the two MSS.
[201]So Harl. MS. 2373; Harl. MS. 674 reads: "medeful."
[202]The trunk.
[203]Pepwell inserts: "it is but churl's meat, for."
[204]Not in Pepwell.
[205]Pepwell reads: "and for nothing else."
[206]Had never received it from Him.
[207]Pure Love, or Charity, which "attains to God Himself, that it
may abide in Him, not that any advantage may accrue to us from Him"
(St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.-ii. Q. 23, A. 6). For the
whole doctrine of "Pure Love or Disinterested Religion," cf. F. von
Hugel, The Mystical Element of Religion, ii. pp. 152-181.
[208]So both MSS.; Pepwell reads: "blessedness."
[209]Hindering or marring.
[210]Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.-ii. Q. 27, A. 3;
and F. von Hugel, op. cit., ii. p. 167.
[211]In the Divine Essence.
[212]So Harl. MS. 674, I take "it" as the beatitude of man which is
God Himself.
[213]Cf. Dante, Par. xxxiii, 143-145:--
"Ma gia volgeva il mio disiro e il velle,
Si come rota ch' egualmente e mossa,
L'Amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle."
"But already my desire and will, even as a wheel that is equally
moved, were being turned by the Love that moves the sun and the
other stars."
[214]1 Cor. vi. 17.
[215]Pepwell adds: "or sundry."
[216]So Pepwell and Harl. MS. 2373; Harl. MS, 674 reads: "they ben
one spirit."
[217]Cant. ii. 16.
[218]Harl. MS. 674 reads: "glose." Pepwell adds: "or flatter."
[219]Heed.
[220]Pepwell adds: "or betokeneth." Cf. Langland, Piers the Plowman,
A. i. 1: "What this mountein bemeneth."
[221]Cf. above, p. 28 note.
[222]Pepwell adds: "or counsel."
[223]Of thyself thou hast nought but sin.
[224]So the MSS.: Pepwell has: "to God."
[225]Pepwell changes to "divers."
[226]Cf. Dante, De Monarchia, iii. 16: "Man alone of beings holds a
mid-place between corruptible and incorruptible; wherefore he is
rightly likened by the philosophers to the horizon which is between
two hemispheres. For man, if considered after either essential part,
to wit soul and body is corruptible if considered only after the
one, to wit the body, but if after the other, to wit the soul, he is
incorruptible. . . . If man then, is a kind of mean between
corruptible and incorruptible things, since every mean savours of
the nature of the extremes, it is necessary that man should savour
of either nature. And since every nature is ordained to a certain
end, it follows that there must be a twofold end of man, so that
like as he alone amongst all beings partakes of corruptibility and
incorruptibilty, so he alone amongst all beings should be ordained
for two final goals of which the one should be his goal as a
corruptible being, and the other as an incorruptible" (P. H.
Wicksteed's translation).
[227]Pepwell modernises this throughout to "dwelling alone."
[228]Pepwell substitutes "doubt." Cf. Chaucer, Legend of Good Women,
2686: "Thryes doun she fil in swiche a were."
[229]Pepwell adds: "in keeping of silence."
[230]Harl. MS. 674 reads: "more holiness than thou art worthy."
[231]Nature.
[232]Solitude.
[233]Pepwell has: "company."
[234]Pepwell reads: "better."
[235]Causes.
[236]1 Cor. ii. 11.
[237]Simple.
[238]Jas. i. 12.
[239]The MSS. usually read "cleped" for "called."
[240]Pepwell modernizes to "trouble."
[241]Jas. i. 12.
[242]To give place to.
[243]Such impulses to exceptional practices.
[244]Humble itself.
[245]Pleasant.
[246]Pepwell reads: "wits."
[247]Lest.
[248]Pepwell reads: "strait."
[249]Jer. ix. 21: "Quia ascendit mors per fenestras nostras"
(Vulgate). Pepwell reads: "as saint Jerome saith"! Cf. Walter
Hilton, The Ladder of Perfection, I. pt. iii. cap 9: "Lift up thy
lanthorn, and thou shalt see in this image five windows, by which
sin cometh into thy soul, as the Prophet saith: Death cometh in by
our windows. These are the five senses by which thy soul goeth out
of herself, and fetcheth her delight and seeketh her feeding in
earthly things, contrary to the nobility of her own nature. As by
the eye to see curious and fair things and so of the other senses.
By the unskilful using of these senses willingly to vanities, thy
soul is much letted from the sweetness of the spiritual senses
within; and therefore it behoveth thee to stop these windows, and
shut them, but only when need requireth to open them" (ed.
Dalgairns, p. 115).
[250]Ignorant.
[251]Where natural and acquired knowledge alike fall shorts.
[252]Fully.
[253]Nature.
[254]Pepwell has: "when thou dost feel."
[255]Pepwell inserts: "I mean except the solemn vows of holy
religion."
[256]2 Cor. iii. 17.
[257]Cf. St. Catherine of Siena, Letter 308 (ed. Gigli): "Love
harmonises the three powers of our soul, and binds them together.
The will moves the understanding to see, when it wishes to love;
when the understanding perceives that the will would fain love, if
it is a rational will, it places before it as object the ineffable
love of the eternal Father, who has given us the Word, His own son,
and the obedience and humility of the son, who endured torments,
inuries, mockeries, and insults with meekness and with such great
love. And thus the will, with ineffable love, follows what the eye
of the understanding has beheld; and with its strong hand, it stores
up in the memory the treasure that it draws from this love."
[258]Losing.
[259]Cant. iv. 9.
[260]To exercise love.
[261]Divers.
[262]1 Cor. i. 26, vii. 20; Eph. iv. 1.
[263]Luke x. 42.
[264]Pepwell inserts "Him list thee to see, and."
[265]Pepwell reads: "Let be good and all that is good, and better
with all that is better."
[266]Luke x. 42.
[267]To know how to speak, etc.
[268]Banishing from thy soul's vision.
[269]Be able to.
[270]Pepwell reads: "privily." Cf. Wyclif (Select English Works, ed.
cit., i. p. 149): "And after seith Crist to his apostles, that thes
thingis he seide bifore to hem in proverbis and mystily."
[271]Pepwell reads: "rest."
[272]Pepwell modernises "conne" to "learn to" throughout this
passage.
[273]Harl. MS. 674 reads: "stirring"; the other MS, as Pepwell.
[274]Harl. MS. 674 reads: "have."
[275]Pepwell reads: "else."
[276]Manifestly, i.e. unless they clearly show that they do not know
how to act as they should. Pepwell has: "in a part."
[277]i.e. take their advice, but do not simply imitate them. I
follow the MSS. in preference to Pepwell, who reads: "Work after no
men's counsel, but sith that know well their own disposition; for
such men should," etc.
[278]1 John iv. 1-6.
[279]Ps. lxxxv. 8 (Vulgate lxxxiv. 9).
[280]Zech. i. 9-19.
[281]Col. ii. 18.
[282]1 Thess. i. 2-9.
[283]Pepwell adds: "or ambition." Cf. Chaucer, The Persones Tale,
ed. Skeat, SS 18: "and coveitise of hynesse by pryde of herte."
[284]Burns.
[285]So Harl. MS. 674; Pepwell has: "war."
[286]Crafty device.
[287]Cf. above, p. 17 note.
[288]Pepwell has: "gladly."
[289]Pepwell reads "ever ready."
[290]Withstand, resist.
[291]Cf. Mother Juliana, Revelations of Divine Love, i. cap. 9: "In
general I am, I hope, in onehead of charity with all my even
Christian, for in this onehead standeth the life of all mankind that
shall be saved."
[292]If it is still guilty of the other two.
[293]Pepwell adds: "and voluptuous."
[294]Ps. cxxxii. (Vulgate cxxxi. ) 13.
[295]Cf. Walter Hilton, The Ladder of Perfection, II. pt. ii. cap.
3: "Jerusalem is, as much as to say, a sight of peace, and
betokeneth contemplation in perfect love of God; for contemplation
is nothing else but a sight of God, which is very peace."
[296]Probably Isa. lvii. 15.
[297]Pepwell reads: "most folly."
[298]Pepwell adds: "or harm." Cf. The Chronicle of Robert of Brunne,
8905-6: "Now may ye lyghtly bere the stones to schip wythouten
dere."
[299]Advisedly.
[300]Partisans, abettors.
[301]The MSS. read: "doles."
[302]Pepwell reads: "But it is more sorrow to feel of our own
spirit's deceits. For sometime our own spirit."
[303]The MSS. read: "Bot what thar reche"; what need to care.
[304]Pepwell reads: "didst feel in there."
[305]Cf. above, p. 95, note.
[306]Pepwell adds: "and judgment."
[307]Unless because of carelessness in resisting them when they
first come.
[308]To regard thyself as responsible.
[309]Madness.
[310]Not in Harl. MS. 674.
[311]Pepwell reads: "a full damnable and a full cursed fiend in his
living."
[312]Pepwell adds: "and desire much."
[313]Pepwell reads: "suggestion."
[314]On the other hand.
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