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And thou sayest thou art in great were what thou shalt do; for, as thou sayest, on the one party thou art greatly tarried with speaking, with common eating, as other folk do, and with common woning in company.
The enemies of Gad are fleshly delights; but truly, from the time that a man have patience in the pain of his abstinence, false delights find no woning stead in him. THUS when the enemy fleeth and the city is peased, then beginneth a man to prove what the high peace of God is that passeth man's wit.
Or if thou give thee to speaking always when thee list, to common eating, or to companious woning, then peradventure thou shouldest sometime speak when time were to be still, sometime eat when time were to fast, sometime be in company when time were to be only; and thus mightest thou lightly fall in to error, in great confusion, not only of thine own soul but also of others.
For it might befall that, if thou followed thy singular stirring, straitly straining thee to silence, to singular fasting, or to only woning, that thou shouldest oft times be still when time were to speak, oft times fast when time were to eat, oft times be only when time were to be in company.
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 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.
GHOSTLY friend in God, that same grace and joy that I will to myself, will I to thee at God's will. Thou askest me counsel of silence and of speaking, of common dieting and of singular fasting, of dwelling in company and only woning by thyself.
And, on the other party, thou dreadest to be straitly still, singular in fasting, and only in woning, for deeming of more holiness in thee than thou hast, and for many other perils; for oft times now these days they are deemed for most holy, and fall in to many perils, that most are in silence, in singular fasting, and in only woning.
And sooth it is that they are most holy, if grace only be the cause of that silence, of that singular fasting, and of that only woning, the kind but suffering and only consenting; and if it be otherwise, then that is but peril on all sides, for it is full perilous to strain the kind to any such work of devotion, as is silence or speaking, common dieting or singular fasting, woning in company or in onliness.
Him wouldest thou have, Him seekest thou, Him list thee to love, Him list thee to feel, Him list thee hold thee by, and neither by silence nor by speaking, by singular fasting nor by common eating, by onliness nor by companious woning, by hard wearing nor by easy; for sometime silence is good, but that same time speaking were better; and againward sometime speaking is good, but that same time silence were better; and so forth of all the remenant, as is fasting, eating, onliness, and company; for sometime the one is good, but the other is better, but neither of them is at any time the best.
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