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THE FORM OF PERFECT LIVING
AND
OTHER PROSE TREATISES.
by
RICHARD ROLLE,
OF HAMPOLE,
A.D. 1300-1349.
Rendered into Modern English by Geraldine E. Hodgson, D.Litt.,
Lecturer in Education in the University of Bristol.
London:
Thomas Baker, 72, Newman Street, W.
1910.
Printed By W. C. Hemmons,
St. Stephen Street,
Bristol.
"Love is a life, joining together the loving and the loved."
"Truth may be without love, but it cannot help without it."
RICHARD ROLLE
(_The Form of Perfect Living_, ch. x.).
Preface.
This book is not intended for those who are acquainted with Anglo-Saxon
and Middle English; but for those who care for the thought, specially
the religious and devotional thought, of our forefathers. My one aim has
been to make a portion of that thought accurately intelligible to modern
readers, with the greatest possible saving of trouble to them. When I
could use the old word or phrase, with certainty of its being
understood, I have done so. When I could not, I have replaced it with
the best modern equivalent I could find or invent. In extenuation of the
occasional use of Rolle's expression, "by their lone," I may urge its
expressiveness, the absence of an equivalent, and the fact that it may
still be heard in remote places. Where possible, I have retained the
archaic order of the original Text. Such irregular constructions, as
_e.g._, the use of a singular pronoun in the first half of a sentence,
and of a plural in the second half, I have left unaltered; for the
meaning was perfectly clear. In short, I have endeavoured to make
Richard Rolle as he was as significant as possible to English men and
women of to-day as they are, when they are not professed students of
English language. In such an undertaking, it is obvious that I must have
presented endless vulnerable places to the learned. I can only repeat
that the book was never meant for them, but for those who will perhaps
forgive me if I describe them as specialists in religious thought
rather than in English Language.
The rendering is made from the texts printed by Professor Horstman in
his _Library of Early English Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole an
English Father of the Church_.
GERALDINE E. HODGSON.
_The University, Bristol,
S. Mary Magdalene, 1910._
Contents.
PAGE.
Preface vii.
Introduction xi.
The Form of Perfect Living 1
Our Daily Work (a Mirror of Discipline).
(_From the Arundel MS._) 83
On Grace. (_From the Arundel MS._) 169
An Epistle on Charity 185
Contrition 190
Scraps from the Arundel MS. 192
Introduction.
Richard Rolle of Hampole is the earliest in time of our famous English
Mystics. Born in or about 1300, he died in 1349, seven years after
Mother Julian of Norwich was born. Walter Hilton died in 1392.
An exhaustive account of Rolle's life is given in Vol. ii. of Professor
Horstman's Edition of his works, a book unfortunately out of print. The
main facts are recorded in a brief "Life" appended to Fr. R. Hugh
Benson's _A Book of the Love of_ JESUS. Therefore, it will suffice to
say here that Richard Rolle seems to have been born at Thornton, near
Pickering, in Yorkshire, in or about 1300; that, finding the atmosphere
of Oxford University uncongenial, he left it, and for some four years
was supported, as a hermit, by the Dalton Family. By the end of that
time, through prayer, contemplation and self-denial, he had attained the
three stages of mystical life which he describes as _calor_, _dulcor_,
_canor_; (heat, sweetness, melody.) The next period of his life was less
easy. Having left the protection of the Daltons, and being without those
means of subsistence which are within the reach of priest or monk, this
hermit depended for his daily bread on other men's kindness. Not that he
was a useless person: apart from the utility of a life of Prayer, he
could point to counsel and exhortation given; to the existence of
converts consequent upon his ministrations. To add to his difficulties,
he preached a doctrine of high pure selflessness with which, the average
man, in all times, seems to have no abundant sympathy: and to crown all
he was endowed by nature with a sensitive temper. His remarkable gifts
forced him into public notice; his cast of thought and his temperament
were not calculated to win him ease or popularity. Professor Horstman is
peculiarly severe to those among his enemies and detractors "who called
themselves followers and disciples of Christ." The insertion here of
this painful passage would introduce a jarring note; moreover, the raked
embers of past controversy seldom tend to the spiritual improvement of
the present. An interesting judgment by Professor Horstman on Rolle's
place in mysticism is too long for quotation; but the following sentence
may be taken as the pith of it:--"His position as a mystic was mainly
the result of the development of scholasticism. The exuberant luxuriant
growth of the brain in the system of Scotus called forth the reaction
of the heart, and this reaction is embodied in Richard Rolle, who as
exclusively represents the side of feeling as Scotus that of reason and
logical consequence; either lacking the corrective of the other
element."
It is consoling to know that Rolle's last years were passed in peace, in
a cell, near a monastery of Cistercian nuns at Hampole, where the nuns
supported him, while he acted as their spiritual adviser.
In the book mentioned above, Fr. Hugh Benson has translated some of
Richard Rolle's Poems, and certain devotional Meditations. In this
Volume, four of his Prose Treatises have been selected from the rest of
his works, in the belief that they may supplement those parts of Rolle's
writings with which, those who are interested in these phases of
thought, are already familiar.
The first, _The Form of Perfect Living_, is a Rule of Life which he
wrote for a nun of Anderby, Margaret Kirkby, of whom Professor Horstman
writes: "She seems to have been his good angel, and perhaps helped to
smooth down his ruffled spirits. This friendship was lasting--it lasted
to their lives' ends."
This treatise was written of course to meet the requirements of the
"religious" life. It has seemed expedient, because supplementary, then,
to put next to it his work on _Our Daily Life_, which was meant for
those who are "in the world"; and which may give pause to some who might
otherwise criticise the first hastily, perhaps condemning it as
unpractical, or even objectionable in a world where, after all, men must
eat and drink and live, and where some, therefore must provide the
necessary means. Most intensely practical is this second treatise, and
perhaps nowhere more so than when it meets the needs of those who are
inclined to split straws over the definition of the word "good." What
_is_ a good action?--such people love to inquire, and like "jesting
Pilate," sometimes do not "stay for an answer." Richard Rolle has no
manner of doubt about his reply. An action must be good in itself,
_i.e._, so he would tell us, pleasing to God in its own nature. But the
matter by no means ends there for him. This good action must be
performed,--and it is this which is, now palpably, now subtly,
hard--_entirely_ for the sake of goodness, without the slightest taint
of self-seeking, of vanity, of secret satisfaction that we are not as
other men are, not even as this Pharisee or this Publican.
Such a motive, inspiring each person's whole work, would surely go far
to remove what is known as the Social Problem. It would make many a
house the dwelling of peace, many a business-place an abode of honour.
If we could get back to Richard Rolle's simplicity and to his unmovable
faith, then, his goal, even the acquisition of perfect love, might seem
to all of us less distressingly remote.
The present rendering has been taken from the longer and more elaborate
of the two MSS. containing the Treatise. The shorter form of his work
_On Grace_ and _the Epistle_ have been added in the hope that they may
meet the need of all, contemplative or active as they may chance to be.
There is, among his voluminous writings, a curious and interesting
_Revelation concerning Purgatory_, purporting to be a woman's dream
about one, Margaret, a soul in Purgatory. Amidst much natural horror,
not however exceeding that described by Dante, there are many quaint
side-lights thrown upon our forefathers' ways of thought; as _e.g._,
when Margaret's soul is weighed in one scale, against the fiend, "and a
great long worm with him," in the other; the worm of conscience, in
fact. But the work has not been included in this volume, lest it should
prove wholly unprofitable to a generation which if it be not readily
disturbed by sin, is easily and quickly shocked by crude suggestions
concerning its possible consequences and reward. They will find enough,
perhaps, in the treatise _on Daily Work_.
If any one should think that there, and in one portion of the treatise
_on Grace_, Rolle has dwelt harshly on considerations of fear, rather
than on those of love, he must not make the mistake of concluding that
these admonitions represent the whole of Catholic teaching on the point.
Men's temperaments differ, and teachers, meeting these various tempers,
differ in their modes of helping them. Side by side with Richard Rolle
may be put the words of S. Francis Xavier, in what is perhaps the most
beautiful of Christian hymns:--
My GOD, I love Thee; not because
I hope for heaven thereby,
Nor yet because who love Thee not
Are lost eternally.
. . . . . .
Not for the hope of gaining aught,
Not seeking a reward;
But as Thyself hast loved me,
O ever-loving Lord!
Moreover, no reader of the Epistle _on Charity_ can entertain any doubt
as to whether our English Mystic understood the mystery of limitless
love.
It is no doubt, easy to complain, as we read certain passages, that
Richard Rolle's recommendations are neither new nor original: but if
instead of dismissing them as familiar, we tried to put them into
practice, we should perhaps have less leisure for idle criticism of
others, and ourselves be less evil and tiresome people.
On the other hand, the accusation may be brought that he proposes an
impossibly high aim. No doubt, in such a pitch of devotion as is
suggested, _e.g._, in ch. viii. of _The Form of Perfect Living_, some
may think they find extravagance: but no doubt it was this same spirit
which inspired SS. Peter and Paul, and the other Apostles; which built
up the Early Church; which made Saints, Martyrs and Confessors; which
suggested such apparently forlorn hopes as that of S. Augustine of
Canterbury, when, to bring them the Gospel of JESUS Christ, he bearded
the rough Men of Kent, and (according to Robert of Brunne) reaped, as
his immediate reward, a string of fishtails hung on his habit, though
later, the conversion of these sturdy pagans. It was doubtless, too, the
spirit which inspired the best men and women in the English Church,
before they began to confuse the spheres of Faith and Reason, and to
disregard S. Hilary's warning about the difficulty of expressing in
human language that which is truly "incomprehensible,"--incomprehensible
in the old sense, as in the Athanasian Symbol, "Immensus Pater, immensus
Filius, immensus Spiritus sanctus"; till, indeed, men forgot, for all
practical purposes that infinity transcends the grasp of finite minds
(in fact, as well as in placidly accepted and then immediately neglected
theory); and can be apprehended only, and that imperfectly, by the best
aspirations of a heart, set of fixed purpose on that high goal.
To the modern Englishman, immersed in business anxieties, imperial
interests and domestic cares, the invitation repeated so often by
Richard Rolle, to love GOD supremely, may seem incalculably unreal and
remote, even though he might hesitate to confess it baldly. But what if
the Englishman who so loved GOD, were also the greater Englishman? And
what answer does history return to that plain question?
"Richard Rolle," Professor Horstman does not hesitate to write "was one
of the most remarkable men of his time, yea, of history. It is a strange
and not very creditable fact that one of the greatest of Englishmen has
hitherto been doomed to oblivion. In other cases, the human beast first
crucifies, and then glorifies or deifies the nobler minds, who swayed by
the Spirit, do not live as others live, in quest of higher ideals by
which to benefit the race; he, one of the noblest champions of humanity,
a hero, a saint, a martyr in this cause has never had his resurrection
yet--a forgotten brave. And yet, he has rendered greater service to his
country, and to the world at large, than all the great names of his
time. He rediscovered Love, the principle of Christ. He reinstalled
feeling, the spring of life which had been obliterated in the reign of
scholasticism. He re-opened the inner eye of man, teaching contemplation
in solitude, an unworldly life in abnegation, in chastity, in
charity.... He broke the hard crust that had gathered round the heart of
Christianity, by formalism and exteriority, and restored the free flow
of spiritual life."
This passage, to those who feel that there has been no age since the
Birth of Christ when the great principles of religious life have been
wholly lost, and who remember that Richard Rolle lived in the age of
Dante, may seem overstated. But it shews sufficiently at least, and for
that reason is quoted here, what a great Englishman he was, and what a
debt his unaware countrymen owe him; a debt which they could pay in the
way most grateful to him, by listening to his words.
It may be remarked, by the way, that Rolle is not inclined to substitute
individualism for the authority of the Church; a change which has been
brought against some mystics. There is immense emphasis laid, all
through his writings, on the importance of conduct. The penetrating
analysis, in ch. vi, of _The Form of Perfect Living_, of the possible
sins humanity can commit on its journey through the wilderness of this
world, hardly leaves a corner of the heart unlighted; lets not one
possible shift, twist or excuse of the human conscience go free. But it
all has the Church as its immediate background; the Mystical _Body_, not
the individual soul in isolation, is everywhere taken for granted. Man
lives not to himself nor dies to himself, even though he be Richard
Rolle the hermit, or Margaret Kirkby the recluse, that is the plain
teaching of these plain-speaking pages. And all through them too is a
tough common sense, and an unusually alert power of observation; and
there is perhaps an element of that business capacity, which some of the
Saints and Mystics have shewn, in his inclusion among "sins of deed" of
"beginning a thing that is above our might"; for in that there is not
only pride, but a kind of stupid incapacity surely.
It is quite possible that Rolle's tendency to repetition may tire any
one who reads him "straight on," as the phrase is. But it is doubtful
whether that be the best means of approach. If he be read in bits, he
will prove far more effective: and his ability to hit the right nail on
the head, and to hit it wonderfully hard, may occasionally bring his
words home to our immediate circumstances with an appositeness that may
be more than a coincidence.
In the past, the learned and ignorant alike have been guilty of the
operation which may be described as cutting man up into parts: _i.e._,
they have been inclined to treat him now as if he were all intellect,
then as if he were all feeling; while to the will a kind of intermediate
part has generally been allotted, as if it were the handmaid instead of
the master of the other two. And there is still, in some quarters, a
tendency to relegate the will and the feelings to an inferior plane, if
indeed they be allowed any place at all. In other quarters, the
onslaught is made on intellect. Men are bidden to be humble, to become
as little children; as if there were any humility in thinking
incorrectly or not at all; as if the odd, though suppressed, assumption
that children have no intellects had any ground in fact. It is surely a
true apostrophe--
"GOD! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind,
Mind should be precious."
The Angelic Doctor himself paid a tribute to the importance and special
difficulties of intellect, and also to the necessity of uniting it with
will:--"the martyrs had greater merit in faith, not receding from the
faith for persecutions; and likewise men of learning have greater merit
of faith, not[1] receding from the faith for the reasons of philosophers
or heretics alleged against it." Richard Rolle, following on the same
lines as S. Thomas Aquinas, has nothing of this spirit of division: the
whole being is what he would fain see offered to GOD, whether it be so
by Margaret Kirkby, or by those who are "in the world," for whom _Our
Daily Work_ was written. In the image of GOD was man made, and therefore
GOD suffices for all the needs of man's nature: that, at least seems to
be the underlying idea when Rolle writes:--"GOD is light and burning.
Light clarifies our reason, burning kindles our will." May we not say
here too?--"What GOD has joined together, that let not man put asunder."
Above all things, Rolle aims at a perfect balance, culminating in a
harmony ruled by one power, and that the greatest in the world, Love.
Real love, he asks; not the degraded things to which men give that great
name, as to every passing gust of feeling, to every unworthy untamed
emotion: but the divine quality, when to the "lastingness," which he
requires, is also joined that which is the inner essence of Love, viz.,
sacrifice. "Love is a life," he writes, "joining together the loving and
the loved." And then he remembers the other great gift to men,
intellectual sincerity, which has inspired all "who follow Truth along
her star-paved way"; and he gives to that its place and due: "Truth may
be without love: but it cannot help without it." Even then, the whole
tale is not complete; the way of the Saints is not "Primrosed and hung
with shade." Love, with Rolle, is no easy sentimentality: it involves
definite sacrifice in more directions than one; it demands thought,
perseverance, supernatural strength, natural strenuousness; it is not a
selfish enjoyment of a circumambient atmosphere wrapping humanity,
without responsibility or effort of its own: "Love is a _Life_."
"Love," he writes, "is a perfection of learning; virtue of prophecy;
fruit of truth; help of sacraments; establishing of wit and knowledge;
riches of pure men: life of dying men. So, how good love is. If we
suffer to be slain; if we give all that we have (down) to a beggar's
staff: if we know as much as men may know on earth, all this is naught
but ordained sorrow and torment." Then, with that sound sense, which is
not the least element in the sum of his attractiveness, he utters a
subtle warning against that all too common sin, judging one another: "If
thou wilt ask how good is he or she, ask how much he or she loves: and
that no man can tell. For I hold it folly to judge a man's heart, that
none knows save GOD."
After this it cannot be necessary to say that Rolle is a true mystic.
"Many," so he tells us in this same chapter x., "Many speak and do good,
and love not GOD." But that will not suffice his exacting demands. A man
is not "good" until his interior disposition be all filled and taken up
with pure love of GOD. And as he analyses the Christian Character, there
is a pleasant blunt directness about this holy man:--"he that says he
loves GOD and will not do what is in him to shew love, tell him that he
lies."
It is possible that the alarming list of sins of the heart, in chapter
vi., may give the heedless and even the heedful matter for grave
thought, as each one finds himself ejaculating with spontaneous
fear--"Who can tell how oft he offendeth? Cleanse thou me from my secret
faults."
Surely no one need fear that the outcome of a study of Richard Rolle
will be effeminacy. Not that that indeed is the special temptation of
the English: a chill commonplace acquiescence in a convenient, if
baseless, hope that somehow "things will come all right," is far more
likely to lead them astray than any "burning yearning to GOD with a
wonderful delight and certainty." Is not George Herbert's cry apposite
still?
"O England, full of sin, but most of sloth!"
Nor can any one argue fairly that this absorption of the mystic is just
selfish idleness. It is, so it seems, as we read Rolle's injunctions, of
the nature of hard exacting toil. No doubt, there must be those who do
the material work of the world; who gain, among other things, those
"goods" which go to support the Mystics. But there will be no lack of
such workers, through the inroads of religion; the broad ways of daily
life are in no danger of contracting suddenly in to the path to the
strait gate. Moreover, natural life itself is a poor thing unsupported
by an unseen stream of spiritual refection. Here, as elsewhere in the
ordered economy of things, two forms of life are found to be
complementary. It is true, as Dr. Bigg once wrote:--"If Society is to be
permeated by religion, there must be reservoirs of religion like those
great storage places up among the hills which feed the pipes by which
water is carried to every home in the city. We shall need a special
class of students of GOD, men and women whose primary and absorbing
interest it is to work out the spiritual life in all its purity and
integrity."[2] It is indeed the idlest of criticism that condemns such
people as slothful or selfish.
There is one charm in our own Mystics which we may miss in S. John of
the Cross or S. Teresa for example; viz., that with all their zeal,
there is also an amazing reality and simplicity down at the bottom of
it, which may seem to us not present in the rhapsodies of more southern
lovers; though in all probability such seeming is purely racial.
Nevertheless, we may be thankful if we find the antidote to our national
prosaic ways in the sane zeal of others of our nation.
Lastly, as men read, they may be overcome perhaps by despair. This pure
untainted selflessness of which Richard Rolle writes almost glibly, how
can it be possible here and now? How can men and women, fixed in and
condemned to the dusty ways of common life, unable as they are to leave
the world even if they would, how can they so much as dream of such
unattainable heights? Is there no help for them in the often quoted
lines of a later English Mystic?--
"Who aimeth at the sky
Shoots higher much than he who means a tree."
For plain men and women, the key to the problem may lie in the question
put by Robert Browning into the mouth of Innocent XII.:--
"Is this our ultimate stage, or starting place
To try man's foot, if it will creep or climb,
'Mid obstacles in seeming, points that prove
Advantage for who vaults from low to high,
And makes the stumbling-block a stepping-stone?"
Even though the goal be not reached, to have willed deliberately here
the first step may prove to have been not wholly unavailing.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Quoted by Fr. Joseph Rickaby, S.J., in _Scholasticism_, p. 121.
[2] _Wayside Sketches_, p. 135.
The Form of Perfect Living.
The Form of Perfect Living
by
Richard Rolle.
CHAPTER I.
In every sinful man and woman that is bound in deadly sin, are three
wretchednesses, the which bring them to the death of hell. The first is:
_Default of ghostly strength_. That they are so weak within their heart,
that they can neither stand against the temptations of the fiend, nor
can they lift their will to yearn for the love of GOD and follow
thereto. The second is: _Use of fleshly desires_:--for they have no will
nor might to stand, they fall into lusts and likings of this world; and
because they think them sweet, they dwell in them still, many till
their lives' end, and so they come to the third wretchedness. The third
is, _Exchanging a lasting good for a passing delight_: as who say they
give endless joy for a little joy of this life. If they will turn them
and rise to penance, GOD will ordain their dwelling with angels and with
holy men. But because they choose the vile sin of this world, and have
more delight in the filth of their flesh than in the fairness of heaven,
they lose both the world and heaven. For he that hath not JESUS Christ
loses all that he hath, and all that he is, and all that he might get.
For he is not worthy of life, nor to be fed with swine's-meat. All
creatures shall be stirred in His vengeance in the day of Doom. These
wretchednesses that I have told you of are not only in worldly men and
women, who use gluttony, lust, and other open sins: but they are also in
others who seem in penance and godly life. For the devil that is enemy
to all mankind, when he sees a man or a woman among a thousand, turn
wholly to GOD, and forsake all the vanities and riches that men who love
this world covet, and seek lasting joy, a thousand wiles he has in what
manner he may destroy them. And when he can not bring them into such
sins which might make all men wonder at them who knew them, he beguiles
many so privily that they cannot oftentimes feel the trap that has taken
them.
Some he takes with _error_ that he puts them in. Some with _singular
wit_, when he makes them suppose that the thing that they say or do is
best; and therefore they will have no counsel of another who is better
and abler than they; and this is a foul stinking pride; for such man
would set his wit before all other. Some, the devil deceives through
_Vain-glory_, that is idle joy; when any have pride and delight in
themselves, of the penance that they suffer, of good deeds that they
do, of any virtue that they have; are glad when men praise them, sorry
when men blame them, have envy of them who are spoken better of than
they. They consider themselves so glorious, and so far surpassing the
life that other men lead, that they think that none should reprehend
them in anything that they do or say; and despise sinful men, and others
who will not do as they bid them. How mayst thou find a sinfuller wretch
than such a one? And so much the worse is he because he knows not that
he is evil, and is considered and honoured of men as wise and holy. Some
are deceived by _over-great lust and liking in meat and drink_, when
they pass measure and come into excess, and have delight therein; and
they know not that they sin, and therefore they amend them not, and so
they destroy virtues of soul. Some are destroyed with _over-great
abstinence_ of meat and drink and sleep. That is often temptation of
the devil, for to make them fall in the midst of their work, so that
they bring it to no ending as they should have done, had they known
reason and had discretion; and so they lose their merit for their
frowardness. This snare our enemy lays to take us with when we begin to
hate wickedness, and turn us to GOD. Then many begin a thing that they
can never more bring to an end: then they suppose that they can do
whatsoever their heart is set on. But oftentimes they fall or ever they
come midway; and that thing which they supposed was for them is
hindering to them. For we have a long way to heaven, and as many good
deeds as we do, as many prayers as we make, and as many good thoughts as
we think in truth and hope and charity, so many paces go we heavenwards.
Then, if we make us so weak and so feeble that we can neither work nor
pray as we should do, nor think, are we not greatly to blame that fail
when we had most need to be stalwart? And well I wot that it is not
GOD'S will that we so do. For the prophet says: "Lord, I shall keep my
strength to Thee," so that he might sustain GOD'S service till his
death-day, and not in a little and a short time waste it, and then lie
wailing and groaning by the wall. And it is much more peril than men
suppose. For S. Jerome says that he makes an offering of robbery who
outrageously torments his body by over-little meat or sleep. And S.
Bernard says: "Fasting and waking hinder not spiritual goods, but help,
if they be done with _discretion_; without that, they are vices."
Wherefore, it is not good to torture ourselves so much, and afterwards
to have displeasure at our deed. There have been many, and are who
suppose it is naught all that they do unless they be in so great
abstinence and fasting that all men speak of them who know them. But
oftentimes it befalls that the more outward joy or wondering they have
(on account) of the praising of men, the less joy they have within of
the love of GOD. By my judgment, they should please JESUS Christ much
more if they accepted for His sake--in thanking and praising Him, to
sustain their body in His service and to withhold themselves from great
speech of men--whatsoever GOD sent them in time and place, and gave
themselves since entirely to the love and the praising of that Lord
JESUS Christ: Who will stalwartly be loved, and lastingly be served, so
that their holiness were more seen in GOD'S eye than in man's. For all
the better thou art, and the less speech thou hast of men, the more is
thy joy before GOD. Ah! how great it is to be worthy of love, and to be
not loved. And what wretchedness it is, to have the name and the habit
of holiness, and be not so; but to cover pride, ire or envy under the
clothes of Christ's childhood. A foul thing it is to have liking and
delight in the words of men who can no more deem what we are in our soul
than they wot what we think. For ofttimes they say that he or she is in
the higher degree that is in the lower; and whom they say is in the
lower, is in the higher. Therefore I hold it to be but madness to be
gladder or sorrier whether they say good or ill. If we be trying to hide
us from speech and praise of this world, GOD will shew to us His praise,
and our joy. For that is His joy when we are strength-full to stand
against the privy and open temptation of the devil, and to seek nothing
but the honour and praise of Him, and that we might entirely praise Him.
And that ought to be our desire, our prayer and our intent, night and
day, that the fire of His love kindle our hearts, and the sweetness of
His grace be our comfort and our solace in weal and woe. Thou hast now
heard a part how the fiend deceives, with his subtle craft, unknowing
men and women. And if thou wilt do by good counsel and follow holy
teaching, as I hope that thou wilt, thou shall destroy his traps, and
burn in love's fire all the bands that he would bind thee with; and all
his malice shall turn thee to joy, and him to more sorrow. GOD suffers
him to tempt good men for their profit, that they may be the higher
crowned, when they, through His help, have overcome so cruel an enemy,
that oftentimes, both in body and soul, confounds many men.
In three manners, the devil has power to be in a man. In one manner,
hurting the good they have by _nature_, as in dumb men, and in others,
staining their thoughts. In another manner, snatching away the good
that they have of _grace_: and so he is in sinful men whom he has
deceived through delight of the world and of their flesh, and leads them
with him to hell. In the third manner, he torments a man's body, as we
read that he has done (to) Job. But wit thee well, if he beguile thee
not within, thou needst not dread what he may do to thee without, for he
may do no more than GOD gives him leave to do.