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