and now to be only, now to be common in clothing and now to be in singular habit, ever when thee list, and when thou seest[254] that any of them should be speedful and helply to thee in nourishing of the heavenly grace working within in thy soul; but if it be so (which God forbid), that thou or any other be so lewd and so blinded in the sorrowful temptations of the midday devil, that ye bind you by any crooked avow to any such singularities, as it were under colour of holiness feigned under such an holy thraldom,[255] in full and final destroying of the freedom of Christ, the which is the ghostly habit of the sovereign holiness that may be in this life, or in the other, by the witness of saint Paul saying thus:  Ubi spiritus Domini, ibi libertas:  “There where the spirit of God is, there is freedom."[256] And thereto when thou seest that all such works in their use may be both good and evil; I pray thee leave them both, for that is the most ease for thee for to do, if thou wilt be meek, and leave the curious beholding and seeking in thy wits to look whether is better.  But do thou thus:  set the one on the one hand, and the other on the other, and choose thee a thing the which is hid between them; the which thing, when it is had, giveth thee leave in freedom of spirit to begin and to cease in holding any of the others at thine own full list, without any blame.

But now thou askest me, what is that thing.  I shall tell thee what I mean that it is:  It is God; for whom thou shouldest be still, if thou shouldest be still; and for whom thou shouldest speak if thou shouldest speak; and for whom thou shouldest fast, if thou shouldest fast; and for whom thou shouldest eat, if thou shouldest eat; and for whom thou shouldest be only, if thou shouldest be only; and for whom thou shouldest be in company, if thou shouldest be in company.  And so forth of all the remenant, what so they be.  For silence is not God, nor speaking is not God; fasting is not God, nor eating is not God; onliness is not God, nor company is not God; nor yet any of all the other such two contraries.  He is hid between them, and may not be found by any work of thy soul, but all only by love of thine heart.  He may not be known by reason, He may not be gotten by thought, nor concluded by understanding; but He may be loved and chosen with the true lovely will of thine heart.[257] Choose thee Him, and thou art silently speaking, and speakingly silent, fastingly eating, and eatingly fasting, and so forth of all the remenant.  Such a lovely choosing of God, thus wisely lesinge[258] and seeking Him out with the true will of a clean heart, between all such two leaving them both, when they come and proffer them to be the point and the prick of our ghostly beholding, is the worthiest tracing and seeking of God that may be gotten or learned in this life.  I mean for a soul that will be contemplative; yea, though all that a soul that thus seeketh see nothing that may be conceived with the ghostly eye