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,