"I was delivered from the Enemy by the virtue of Christ's Passion"
After this the Fiend came again with his heat and with his stench,
and gave me much ado,[1] the stench was so vile and so painful, and
also dreadful and travailous. Also I heard a bodily jangling,[2] as if
it had been of two persons; and both, to my thinking, jangled at one
time as if they had holden a parliament with a great busy-ness; and
all was soft muttering, so that I understood nought that they said.
And all this was to stir me to despair, as methought,--seeming to
me as [though] they mocked at praying of prayers[3] which are said
boisterously with [the] mouth, failing [of] devout attending and wise
diligence: the which we owe to God in our prayers.
And our Lord God gave me grace mightily for to trust in Him, and to
comfort my soul with bodily speech as I should have done to another
person that had been travailed. Methought _that_ busy-ness[4] might
not be likened to no bodily busy-ness. My bodily eye I set in the same
Cross where I had been in comfort afore that time; my tongue with
speech of Christ's Passion and rehearsing the Faith of Holy Church;
and my heart to fasten on God with all the trust and the might. And I
thought to myself, saying: _Thou hast now great busy-ness to keep thee
in the Faith for that thou shouldst not be taken of the Enemy: wouldst
thou now from this time evermore be so busy to keep thee from sin, this
were a good and a sovereign occupation!_ For I thought in sooth were I
safe from sin, I were full safe from all the fiends of hell and enemies
of my soul.
And thus he occupied me all that night, and on the morn till it was
about prime day. And anon they were all gone, and all passed; and they
left nothing but stench, and that lasted still awhile; and I scorned
him.
And thus was I delivered from him by the virtue of Christ's Passion:
for _therewith is the Fiend overcome_, as our Lord Jesus Christ said
afore.
[1] "made me full besy."
[2] _i.e._ gabbling.
[3] "bidding of bedes."
[4] see above, "made me full busy."