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There is accordingly much probability in the conjecture which ascribes to this season of peril and pressure the composition of the following justly famous stanzas entitled "Good Counsel of Chaucer": Flee from the press, and dwell with soothfastness; Suffice thee thy good, though it be small; For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness: Press hath envy, and wealth is blinded all.
Although his life be quenched, the resemblance Of him hath in me so fresh liveliness, That to put other men in remembrance Of his person I have here his likeness Made, to this end in very soothfastness, That they that have of him lost thought and mind May by the painting here again him find.
It were a wonderful thing if the man who gives himself to business of the world more than he need, had no hindrance in prayer, in rest of heart, in soothfastness of words, in perfection of good works, in love to GOD and all Christian men.
Therefore says S. Gregory: "The more our lips are defiled with foolish talking, so much the less are they heard by GOD in prayer." The sixth, what might and virtue prayer is of. Men who were before this age, who kept themselves in soothfastness, and spoke nothing idle, won from GOD what they prayed for: and that was shewn to a holy hermit Florentius, who dwelt in a wilderness unknown of men.
And quoth another: 'In mildness stability lies and clemency wins us respect, And safety in soothfastness is for him who is soothfast and frank; And he who would get himself praise and renown for his wealth from the folk, In the racecourse of glory must be, for munificence, first in the rank."
Therefore I hold it siker that he be meek in his own feeling, and hold this mind in regard nought, till he may, by custom and using of this mind, feel the fire of love in his affection, and the light of knowing in his reason. Lo, I have told thee in this matter a little, as me thinketh; not affirming that this sufficeth, nor that this is the soothfastness in this matter.
For right as a soul, in understanding of ghostly things, is often times touched and moved through bodily imagination by working of angels; as Ezekiel the prophet did see in bodily imagination the soothfastness of God's privities; right so, in the love of God, a soul by the presence of angels is ravished out of mind of all earthly and fleshly things in to an heavenly joy, to hear angel's song and heavenly sound, after that the charity is more or less.
BUT though all that a soul through grace feel in it perfect hatred of sin, whether it may yet live without sin? Nay, sikerly; and therefore let no man presume of himself, when the Apostle saith thus: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourself, and soothfastness is not in us." And also saint Austin saith that he dare well say that there is no man living without sin.
But S. Bernard says: "The heart that is loaded with covetousness of the world, it can have neither devotion nor liking in GOD; for soothfastness and vanity, a lasting and a failing thing, a ghostly thing and a bodily cannot be brought together at any time." So worthy a thing is the comfort of GOD that it will not rest in a breast where other comfort is.
For why, the soothfastness of this thing is only in God, and in thee is but a blind abiding of His will, without certainty of one moment, the which is as little or less than a twinkling of an eye. And, therefore, if thou wilt pray wisely as the prophet biddeth when he saith in the psalm: Psallite sapienter;191 look that thou get thee in the beginning this very working of dread.
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