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]