THIS is a Revelation of Love that Jesus Christ, our endless bliss, made in Sixteen Showings, or Revelations particular.

THE which the First is of His precious crowning with thorns; and therewith was comprehended and specified the Trinity, with the Incarnation, and unity between God and man's soul; with many fair showings of endless wisdom and teachings of love: in which all the Showings that follow be grounded and united.

The Second is the changing of colour of His fair face in token of His dearworthy Passion.

The Third is that our Lord God, Allmighty Wisdom, All-Love, right as truly as He has made everything that is, all-so truly He does and works all-thing that is done.

The Fourth is the scourging of His tender body, with plenteous shedding of His blood.

The Fifth is that the Fiend is overcome by the precious Passion of Christ.

The Sixth is the worshipful thanking by our Lord God in which He rewards His blessed servants in Heaven.

The Seventh is [our] often feeling of weal and woe; (the feeling of weal is gracious touching and lightening, with true assuredness of endless joy; the feeling of woe is temptation by heaviness and irksomeness of our fleshly living ;) with spiritual understanding that we are kept all as securely in Love in woe as in weal, by the Goodness of God.

The Eighth is of the last pains of Christ, and His cruel dying.

The Ninth is of the pleasing which is in the Blissful Trinity by the hard Passion of Christ and His rueful dying: in which joy and pleasing He wills that we be solaced and mirthed with Him, till when we come to the fulness in Heaven.

The Tenth is, our Lord Jesus shows in love His blissful heart even cloven in two, rejoicing.

The Eleventh is an high spiritual Showing of His dearworthy Mother.

The Twelfth is that our Lord is most worthy Being.

The Thirteenth is that our Lord God wills we have great regard to all the deeds that He has done: in the great nobleness of the making of all things; and the excellency of man's making, which is above all his works; and the precious Amends that He has made for man's sin, turning all our blame into endless worship. In which Showing also our Lord says: Behold and see! For by the same Might, Wisdom, and Goodness that I have done all this, by the same Might, Wisdom, and Goodness I shall make well all that is not well; and you shall see it. And in this He wills that we keep us in the Faith and truth of Holy Church, not desiring to see into His secret things now, save as it belongs to us in this life.

The Fourteenth is that our Lord is the Ground of our Prayer. Herein were seen two properties: the one is rightful prayer, the other is steadfast trust; which He wills should both be alike large; and thus our prayer pleases Him and He of His Goodness fulfills it.

The Fifteenth is that we shall suddenly be taken from all our pain and from all our woe, and of His Goodness we shall come up above, where we shall have our Lord Jesus for our meed and be fulfilled with joy and bliss in Heaven.

The Sixteenth is that the Blissful Trinity, our Maker, in Christ Jesus our Saviour, endlessly dwells in our soul, worshipfully ruling and protecting all things, us mightily and wisely saving and keeping, for love; and we shall not be overcome of our Enemy.

THESE Revelations were showed to a simple creature unlettered, the year of our Lord 1373, the Thirteenth day of May. Which creature [had] afore desired three gifts of God. The First was mind of His Passion; the Second was bodily sickness in youth, at thirty years of age; the Third was to have of God's gift three wounds.

As to the First, I thought I had some feeling in the Passion of Christ, but yet I desired more by the grace of God. I thought I would have been that time with Mary Magdalene, and with other that were Christ's lovers, and therefore I desired a bodily sight wherein I might have more knowledge of the bodily pains of our Saviour and of the compassion of our Lady and of all His true lovers that saw, that time, His pains. For I would be one of them and suffer with Him. Other sight nor showing of God desired I never none, till the soul were disparted from the body. The cause of this petition was that after the showing I should have the more true mind in the Passion of Christ.

The Second came to my mind with contrition; [I] freely desiring that sickness [to be] so hard as to death, that I might in that sickness receive all my rites of Holy Church, myself thinking that I should die, and that all creatures might suppose the same that saw me: for I would have no manner of comfort of earthly life. In this sickness I desired to have all manner of pains bodily and ghostly that I should have if I should die, (with all the dreads and tempests of the fiends) except the outpassing of the soul. And this I meant for [that] I would be purged, by the mercy of God, and afterward live more to the worship of God because of that sickness. And that for the more furthering in my death: for I desired to be soon with my God.

These two desires of the Passion and the sickness I desired with a condition, saying thus: Lord, You know what I would, if it be Your will that I have it ; and if it be not Your will, good Lord, be not displeased: for I will nought but as You will.

For the Third [petition], by the grace of God and teaching of Holy Church I conceived a mighty desire to receive three wounds in my life: that is to say, the wound of very contrition, the wound of kind compassion, and the wound of steadfast longing toward God. And all this last petition I asked without any condition.

These two desires aforesaid passed from my mind, but the third dwelled with me continually.

AND when I was thirty years old and a half, God sent me a bodily sickness, in which I lay three days and three nights; and on the fourth night I took all my rites of Holy Church, and thought not to have lived till day. And after this I languored forth two days and two nights, and on the third night I thought oftentimes to have passed; and so thought they that were with me.

And being in youth as yet, I thought it great sorrow to die; but for nothing that was in earth that meliked to live for, nor for no pain that I had fear of: for I trusted in God of His mercy. But it was to have lived that I might have loved God better, and longer time, that I might have the more knowing and loving of God in bliss of Heaven. For I thought all the time that I had lived here so little and so short in regard of that endless bliss, I thought [it was as] nothing. Wherefore I thought: Good Lord, may my living no longer be to Your worship! And I understood by my reason and by my feeling of my pains that I should die; and I assented fully with all the will of my heart to be at God's will.

Thus I dured till day, and by then my body was dead from the middle downwards, as to my feeling. Then was I minded to be set upright, backward leaning, with help, for to have more freedom of my heart to be at God's will, and thinking on God while my life would last.

My Curate was sent for to be at my ending, and by that time when he came I had set my eyes, and might not speak. He set the Cross before my face and said: I have brought you the Image of your Master and Saviour: look thereupon and comfort you therewith.

I thought I was well [as it was], for my eyes were set uprightward to Heaven, where I trusted to come by the mercy of God; but nevertheless I assented to set my eyes on the face of the Crucifix, if I might; and so I did. For I thought I might longer dure to look evenforth than right up.

After this my sight began to fail, and it was all dark about me in the chamber, as if it had been night, save in the Image of the Cross whereon I beheld a common light; and I knew not how. All that was away from the Cross was of horror to me, as if it had been greatly occupied by the fiends.

After this the upper part of my body began to die, so far forth that scarcely I had any feeling; with shortness of breath. And then I thought in sooth to have passed.

And in this [moment] suddenly all my pain was taken from me, and I was as whole (and specially in the upper part of my body) as ever I was before.

I marvelled at this sudden change; for I thought it was a privy working of God, and not of nature. And yet by the feeling of this ease I trusted never the more to live; nor was the feeling of this ease any full ease to me: for I thought I had liefer have been delivered from this world.

Then came suddenly to my mind that I should desire the second wound of our Lord's gracious gift: that my body might be fulfilled with mind and feeling of His blessed Passion. For I would that His pains were my pains, with compassion and afterward longing to God. But in this I desired never bodily sight nor showing of God, but compassion such as a kind soul might have with our Lord Jesus, that for love would be a mortal man: and therefore I desired to suffer with Him.

IN this [moment] suddenly I saw the red blood trickle down from under the Garland hot and freshly and right plenteously, as it were in the time of His Passion when the Garland of thorns was pressed on His blessed head who was both God and Man, the same that suffered thus for me. I conceived truly and mightily that it was Himself showed it me, without any mean.

And in the same Showing suddenly the Trinity fulfilled my heart most of joy. And so I understood it shall be in heaven without end to all that shall come there. For the Trinity is God: God is the Trinity; the Trinity is our Maker and Keeper, the Trinity is our everlasting love and everlasting joy and bliss, by our Lord Jesus Christ. And this was shown in the First [Showing] and in all: for where Jesus appears, the blessed Trinity is understood, as to my sight.

And I said: Benedicite Domine! This I said for reverence in my meaning, with mighty voice; and full greatly was astonied for wonder and marvel that I had, that He that is so reverend and dreadful will be so homely with a sinful creature living in wretched flesh.

This [Showing] I took for the time of my temptation, for I thought by the sufferance of God I should be tempted by fiends before I died. Through this sight of the blessed Passion, with the Godhead that I saw in my understanding, I knew well that It was strength enough for me, yea, and for all creatures living, against all the fiends of hell and ghostly temptation.

In this [Showing] He brought our blessed Lady to my understanding. I saw her ghostly, in bodily likeness: a simple maid and a meek, young of age and little waxen above a child, in the stature that she was when she conceived. Also God showed in part the wisdom and the truth of her soul: wherein I understood the reverent beholding in which she beheld her God and Maker, marvelling with great reverence that He would be born of her that was a simple creature of His making. And this wisdom and truth: knowing the greatness of her Maker and the littleness of herself that was made, caused her to say full meekly to Gabriel: Lo me, God's handmaid! In this sight I understood in truth that she is more than all that God made beneath her in worthiness and grace; for above her is nothing that is made but the blessed [Manhood ] of Christ, as to my sight.

IN this same time our Lord showed me a spiritual sight of His homely loving.

I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us: He is our clothing that for love wrapps us, clasps us, and all encloses us for tender love, that He may never leave us; being to us all-thing that is good, as to my understanding.

Also in this He showed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts, and ever shall [last] for that God loves it. And so All-thing has the Being by the love of God.

In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third, that God keeps it. But what is to me truly the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover, I cannot tell; for till I am Substantially united to Him, I may never have full rest nor very bliss: that is to say, till I be so fastened to Him, that there is truly nothing that is made between my God and me.

It needs us to have knowing of the littleness of creatures and to hold as nought all-thing that is made, for to love and have God that is unmade. For this is the cause why we be not all in ease of heart and soul: that we seek here rest in those things that are so little, wherein is no rest, and know not our God that is All-mighty, All-wise, All-good. For He is the Very Rest. God wills to be known, and it pleases Him that we rest in Him; for all that is beneath Him suffices not us. And this is the cause why that no soul is rested till it is made nought as to all things that are made. When it is willingly made nought, for love, to have Him that is all, then is it able to receive spiritual rest.

Also our Lord God showed that it is full great pleasance to Him that a helpless soul come to Him simply and plainly and homely. For this is the natural yearnings of the soul, by the touching of the Holy Ghost (as by the understanding that I have in this Showing): God, of Your Goodness, give me Yourself: for You are enough to me, and I may nothing ask that is less that may be full worship to You; and if I ask anything that is less, ever me wants, but only in You I have all.

And these words are full lovely to the soul, and full near touch they the will of God and His Goodness. For His Goodness comprehends all His creatures and all His blessed works, and overpasses without end. For He is the endlessness, and He has made us only to Himself, and restored us by His blessed Passion, and keeps us in His blessed love; and all this of His Goodness.

THIS Showing was made to learn our soul wisely to cleave to the Goodness of God.

And in that time the custom of our praying was brought to mind: how we use for lack of understanding and knowing of Love, to take many means [whereby to beseech Him].

Then saw I truly that it is more worship to God, and more very delight, that we faithfully pray to Himself of His Goodness and cleave thereunto by His Grace, with true understanding, and steadfast by love, than if we took all the means that heart can think. For if we took all these means, it is too little, and not full worship to God: but in His Goodness is all the whole, and there fails truly nothing.

For this, as I shall tell, came to my mind in the same time: We pray to God for [the sake of ] His holy flesh and His precious blood, His holy Passion, His dearworthy death and wounds: and all the blessed kindness, the endless life that we have of all this, is His Goodness. And we pray Him for [the sake of ] His sweet Mother's love that Him bare; and all the help we have of her is of His Goodness. And we pray by His holy Cross that he died on, and all the virtue and the help that we have of the Cross, it is of His Goodness. And on the same wise, all the help that we have of special saints and all the blessed Company of Heaven, the dearworthy love and endless friendship that we have of them, it is of His Goodness. For God of His Goodness has ordained means to help us, full fair and many: of which the chief and principal mean is the blessed nature that He took of the Maid, with all the means that go before and come after which belong to our redemption and to endless salvation. Wherefore it pleass Him that we seek Him and worship through means, understanding that He is the Goodness of all.

For the Goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it comes down to the lowest part of our need. It quickens our soul and brings it on life, and makes it for to waxen in grace and virtue. It is nearest in nature; and readiest in grace: for it is the same grace that the soul seeks, and ever shall seek till we know truly that He has us all in Himself enclosed.

For He has no despite of that He has made, nor has He any disdain to serve us at the simplest office that to our body belongs in nature, for love of the soul that He has made to His own likeness.

For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed. Yea, and more homely: for all these may waste and wear away, but the Goodness of God is ever whole; and more near to us, without any likeness; for truly our Lover desires that our soul cleave to Him with all its might, and that we be evermore cleaving to His Goodness. For of all things that heart may think, this pleases most God, and soonest speeds [the soul].

For our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it overpasses the knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may [fully] know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loves us. And therefore we may with grace and His help stand in spiritual beholding, with everlasting marvel of this high, overpassing, inestimable Love that Almighty God has to us of His Goodness. And therefore we may ask of our Lover with reverence all that we will.

For our natural Will is to have God, and the Good Will of God is to have us; and we may never cease from willing nor from longing till we have Him in fullness of joy: and then may we no more desire.

For He wills that we be occupied in knowing and loving till the time that we shall be fulfilled in Heaven; and therefore was this lesson of Love showed, with all that follows, as ye shall see. For the strength and the Ground of all was shown in the First Sight. For of all things the beholding and the loving of the Maker makes the soul to seem less in his own sight, and most fills him with reverent dread and true meekness; with plenty of charity to his fellow-Christians.

AND [it was] to learn us this, as to my understanding, [that] our Lord God showed our Lady Saint Mary in the same time: that is to say, the high Wisdom and Truth she had in beholding of her Maker so great, so holy, so mighty, and so good. This greatness and this nobleness of the beholding of God fulfilled her with reverent dread, and withal she saw herself so little and so low, so simple and so poor, in regard of her Lord God, that this reverent dread fulfilled her with meekness. And thus, by this ground [of meekness] she was fulfilled with grace and with all manner of virtues, and overpasses all creatures.

In all the time that He showed this that I have told now in spiritual sight, I saw the bodily sight lasting of the plenteous bleeding of the Head. The great drops of blood fell down from under the Garland like pellots, seeming as it had come out of the veins; and in the coming out they were brown-red, for the blood was full thick; and in the spreading-abroad they were bright-red; and when they came to the brows, then they vanished; notwithstanding, the bleeding continued till many things were seen and understood. The fairness and the lifelikeness is like nothing but the same; the plenteousness is like to the drops of water that fall off the eaves after a great shower of rain, that fall so thick that no man may number them with bodily wit; and for the roundness, they were like to the scale of herring, in the spreading on the forehead. These three came to my mind in the time: pellots, for roundness, in the coming out of the blood; the scale of herring, in the spreading in the forehead, for roundness; the drops off eaves, for the plenteousness innumerable.

This Showing was quick and life-like, and horrifying and dreadful, sweet and lovely. And of all the sight it was most comfort to me that our God and Lord that is so reverend and dreadful, is so homely and courteous: and this most fulfilled me with comfort and assuredness of soul.

And to the understanding of this He showed this open example.

It is the most worship that a solemn King or a great Lord may do a poor servant if he will be homely with him, and specially if he shows it himself, of a full true meaning, and with a glad cheer, both privately and in company. Then thinks this poor creature thus: And what might this noble Lord do of more worship and joy to me than to show me that am so simple this marvellous homeliness? In truth it is more joy and pleasance to me than [if] he gave me great gifts and were himself strange in manner. This bodily example was showed so highly that man's heart might be ravished and almost forgetting itself for joy of the great homeliness. Thus it fars with our Lord Jesus and with us. For truly it is the most joy that may be, as to my sight, that He that is highest and mightiest, noblest and worthiest, is lowest and meekest, homeliest and most courteous: and truly and truly this marvellous joy shall be shown us all when we see Him.

And this wills our Lord that we seek for and trust to, joy and delight in, comforting us and solacing us, as we may with His grace and with His help, to the time that we see it truly. For the most fulness of joy that we shall have, as to my sight, is the marvellous courtesy and homeliness of our Father, that is our Maker, in our Lord Jesus Christ that is our Brother and our Saviour.

But this marvellous homeliness may no man fully see in this time of life, save he have it of special showing of our Lord, or of great plenty of grace inwardly given of the Holy Ghost. But faith and belief with charity deserves the meed: and so it is had, by grace; for in faith, with hope and charity, our life is grounded. The Showing, made to whom that God will, plainly teaches the same, opened and declared, with many privy points belonging to our Faith which be worshipful to know. And when the Showing which is given in a time is passed and hid, then the faith keeps [it] by grace of the Holy Ghost to our life's end. And thus through the Showing it is not other than of faith, nor less nor more; as it may be seen in our Lord's teaching in the same matter, by that time that it shall come to the end.

AND as long as I saw this sight of the plenteous bleeding of the Head I might never cease from these words: Benedicite Domine!

In which Showing I understood six things: The first is, the tokens of the blessed Passion and the plenteous shedding of His precious blood. The second is, the Maiden that is His dearworthy Mother. The third is, the blissful Godhead that ever was, is, and ever shall be: Almighty, All-Wisdom, All-Love. The fourth is, all-thing that He has made. For well I wish that heaven and earth and all that is made is great and large, fair and good; but the cause why it showed so little to my sight was for that I saw it in the presence of Him that is the Maker of all things: for to a soul that sees the Maker of all, all that is made seems full little. The fifth is: He that made all things for love, by the same love keeps them, and shall keep them without end. The sixth is, that God is all that is good, as to my sight, and the goodness that each thing has, it is He.

And all these our Lord showed me in the first Sight, with time and space to behold it. And the bodily sight stinted, but the spiritual sight dwelled in my understanding, and I abode with reverent dread, joying in that I saw. And I desired, as I durst, to see more, if it were His will, or else [to see for] longer time the same.

In all this I was greatly stirred in charity to my fellow-Christians, that they might see and know the same that I saw: for I would it were comfort to them. For all this Sight was showed [with] general [regard]. Then said I to them that were about me: It is to-day Doomsday with me. And this I said for that I thought to have died. (For that day that a man dies, he is judged as shall be without end, as to my understanding.) This I said for that I would they might love God the better, for to make them to have in mind that this life is short, as they might see in example. For in all this time I thought to have died; and that was marvel to me, and troublous partly: for I thought this Vision was showed for them that should live. And that which l say of me, I say in the person of all my fellow-Christians: for I am taught in the Spiritual Showing of our Lord God that He means so. And therefore I pray you all for God's sake, and counsel you for your own profit, that ye leave the beholding of a poor creature that it was showed to, and mightily, wisely, and meekly behold God that of His courteous love and endless goodness would show it generally, in comfort of us all. For it is God's will that ye take it with great joy and pleasance, as if Jesus had showed it to you all.

BECAUSE of the Showing I am not good but if I love God the better: and in as much as ye love God the better, it is more to you than to me. I say not this to them that be wise, for they wish it well; but I say it to you that be simple, for ease and comfort: for we are all one in comfort. For truly it was not showed me that God loved me better than the least soul that is in grace; for I am certain that there are many that never had Showing nor sight but of the common teaching of Holy Church, that love God better than I. For if I look singularly to myself, I am truly nothing; but in [the] general [Body] I am, I hope, in oneness of charity with all my fellow-Christians.

For in this oneness stands the life of all mankind that shall be saved. For God is all that is good, as to my sight, and God has made all that is made, and God loves all that He has made: and he that loves generally all his fellow-Christians for God, he loves all that is. For in mankind that shall be saved is comprehended all: that is to say, all that is made and the Maker of all. For in man is God, and God is in all. And I hope by the grace of God he that beholds it thus shall be truly taught and mightily comforted, if he needs comfort.

I speak of them that shall be saved, for in this time God showed me none other. But in all things I believe as Holy Church believes, preaches, and teaches. For the Faith of Holy Church, the which I had beforehand understood and, as I hope, by the grace of God earnestly kept in use and custom, stood continually in my sight: [I] willing and meaning never to receive anything that might be contrary thereunto. And with this intent I beheld the Showing with all my diligence: for in all this blessed Showing I beheld it as one in God's meaning.

All this was showed by three [ways]: that is to say, by bodily sight, and by word formed in my understanding, and by spiritual sight. But the spiritual sight I cannot nor may not show it as openly nor as fully as I would. But I trust in our Lord God Almighty that He shall of His goodness, and for your love, make you to take it more spiritually and more sweetly than I can or may tell it.

AND after this I saw with bodily sight in the face of the crucifix that hung before me, on the which I gazed continually, a part of His Passion: despite, spitting and sullying, and buffetting, and many languoring pains, more than I can tell, and often changing of colour. And one time I saw half the face, beginning at the ear, over-gone with dry blood till it covered to the mid-face. And after that the other half [was] covered on the same wise, the whiles in this [first] part [it vanished] even as it came.

This saw I bodily, troublously and darkly; and I desired more bodily sight, to have seen more clearly. And I was answered in my reason: If God will show you more, He shall be your light: you need none but Him. For I saw Him sought.

For we are now so blind and unwise that we never seek God till He of His goodness show Himself to us. And when we aught see of Him graciously, then are we stirred by the same grace to seek with great desire to see Him more blissfully.

And thus I saw Him, and sought Him; and I had Him, I wanted Him. And this is, and should be, our common working in this [life], as to my sight.

One time my understanding was led down into the sea-ground, and there I saw hills and dales green, seeming as it were moss-be-grown, with wrack and gravel. Then I understood thus: that if a man or woman were under the broad water, if he might have sight of God so as God is with a man continually, he should be safe in body and soul, and take no harm: and overpassing, he should have more solace and comfort than all this world can tell. For He wills we should believe that we see Him continually though that to us it seems but little [of sight]; and in this belief He makes us evermore to gain grace. For He will be seen and He will be sought: He will be abided and he will be trusted.

This Second Showing was so low and so little and so simple, that my spirits were in great travail in the beholding, mourning, full of dread, and longing: for I was some time in doubt whether it was a Showing. And then diverse times our good Lord gave me more sight, whereby I understood truly that it was a Showing. It was a figure and likeness of our foul deeds' shame that our fair, bright, blessed Lord bare for our sins: it made me to think of the Holy Vernacle at Rome, which He has portrayed with His own blessed face when He was in His hard Passion, with steadfast will going to His death, and often changing of colour. Of the brownness and blackness, the ruefulness and wastedness of this Image many marvel how it might be, since that He portrayed it with His blessed Face who is the fairness of heaven, flower of earth, and the fruit of the Maiden's womb. Then how might this Image be so darkening in colour and so far from fair? I desire to tell like as I have understood by the grace of God:

We know in our Faith, and believe by the teaching and preaching of Holy Church, that the blessed Trinity made Mankind to His image and to His likeness. In the same manner-wise we know that when man fell so deep and so wretchedly by sin, there was none other help to restore man but through Him that made man. And He that made man for love, by the same love He would restore man to the same bliss, and overpassing; and like as we were like-made to the Trinity in our first making, our Maker would that we should be like Jesus Christ, Our Saviour, in heaven without end, by the virtue of our again-making.

Then between these two, He would for love and worship of man make Himself as like to man in this deadly life, in our foulness and our wretchedness, as man might be without guilt. This is that which is meant where it is said before: it was the image and likeness of our foul black deeds' shame wherein our fair, bright, blessed Lord God was hid. But full certainly I dare say, and we ought to trow it, that so fair a man was never none but He, till what time His fair colour was changed with travail and sorrow and Passion and dying. Of this it is spoken in the Eighth Revelation, where it treats more of the same likeness. And where it speaks of the Vernacle of Rome, it means by [reason of] diverse changing of colour and countenance, sometime more comfortably and life-like, sometime more ruefully and death-like, as it may be seen in the Eighth Revelation.

And this [dim] vision was a learning, to my understanding, that the continual seeking of the soul pleases God full greatly: for it may do no more than seek, suffer and trust. And this is wrought in the soul that has it, by the Holy Ghost; and the clearness of finding, it is of His special grace, when it is His will. The seeking, with faith, hope, and charity, pleases our Lord, and the finding pleases the soul and fulfills it with joy. And thus was I learned, to my understanding, that seeking is as good as beholding, for the time that He will suffer the soul to be in travail. It is God's will that we seek Him, to the beholding of Him, for by that He shall show us Himself of His special grace when He will. And how a soul shall have Him in its beholding, He shall teach Himself: and that is most worship to Him and profit to yourself, and [the soul thus] most receives of meekness and virtues with the grace and leading of the Holy Ghost. For a soul that only fastens it[self] on to God with very trust, either by seeking or in beholding, it is the most worship that it may do to Him, as to my sight.

These are two workings that may be seen in this Vision: the one is seeking, the other is beholding. The seeking is common, that every soul may have with His grace, and ought to have that discretion and teaching of the Holy Church. It is God's will that we have three things in our seeking: The first is that we seek earnestly and diligently, without sloth, and, as it may be through His grace, without unreasonable heaviness and vain sorrow. The second is, that we abide Him steadfastly for His love, without murmuring and striving against Him, to our life's end: for it shall last but awhile. The third is that we trust in Him mightily of full assured faith. For it is His will that we know that He shall appear suddenly and blissfully to all that love Him.

For His working is privy, and He wills to be perceived; and His appearing shall be swiftly sudden; and He wills to be trusted. For He is full gracious and homely: Blessed may He be!

AND after this I saw God in a Point, that is to say, in my understanding, by which sight I saw that He is in all things.

I beheld and considered, seeing and knowing in sight, with a soft dread, and thought: What is sin?

For I saw truly that God does all-thing, be it never so little. And I saw truly that nothing is done by hap nor by adventure, but all things by the foreseeing wisdom of God: if it be hap or adventure in the sight of man, our blindness and our unforesight is the cause. For the things that are in the foreseeing wisdom of God from without beginning, (which rightfully and worshipfully and continually He leads to the best end,) as they come about fall to us suddenly, ourselves unwitting; and thus by our blindness and our unforesight we say: these be haps and adventures. But to our Lord God they be not so.

Wherefore me behoves needs to grant that all-thing that is done, it is well-done: for our Lord God does all. For in this time the working of creatures was not showed, but [the working] of our Lord God in the creature: for He is in the Mid-point of all thing, and all He does. And I was certain He does no sin.

And here I saw truly that sin is no deed: for in all this was not sin showed. And I would no longer marvel in this, but beheld our Lord, what He would show.

And thus, as much as it might be for the time, the rightfulness of God's working was shown to the soul.

Rightfulness has two fair properties: it is right and it is full. And so are all the works of our Lord God: thereto needs neither the working of mercy nor grace: for they be all rightful: wherein fails nought.

But in another time He gave a Showing for the beholding of sin nakedly, as I shall tell: where He uses working of mercy and grace.

And this vision was shown, to my understanding, for that our Lord would have the soul turned truly to the beholding of Him, and generally of all His works. For they are full good; and all His doings are easy and sweet, and to great ease bringing the soul that is turned from the beholding of the blind Deeming of man to the fair sweet Deeming of our Lord God. For a man beholds some deeds well done and some deeds evil, but our Lord beholds them not so: for as all that has being in nature is of Godly making, so is all that is done, in property of God's doing. For it is easy to understand that the best deed is well done: and so well as the best deed is done the highest so well is the least deed done; and all thing in its property and in the order that our Lord has ordained it to from without beginning. For there is no doer but He.

I saw most surely that he changes never His purpose in no manner of thing, nor never shall, without end. For there was no thing unknown to Him in His rightful ordinance from without beginning. And therefore all-thing was set in order before anything was made, as it should stand without end; and no manner of thing shall fail of that point. For He made all things in fulness of goodness, and therefore the blessed Trinity is ever full pleased in all His works.

And all this showed He full blissfully, signifying thus: See! I am God: see! I am in all thing: see! I do all thing: see! I lift never my hands off my works, nor ever shall, without end: see! I lead all thing to the end I ordained it to from without beginning, by the same Might, Wisdom and Love whereby I made it. How should any thing be amiss?

Thus mightily, wisely, and lovingly was the soul examined in this Vision. Then saw I in truth that me behoved, of need, to assent, with great reverence enjoying in God.

AND after this I saw, beholding, the body plenteously bleeding in seeming of the Scourging, as thus: The fair skin was broken full deep into the tender flesh with sharp smiting all about the sweet body. So plenteously the hot blood ran out that there was neither seen skin nor wound, but as it were all blood. And when it came where it should have fallen down, then it vanished. Notwithstanding, the bleeding continued awhile: till it might be seen and considered. And this was so plenteous, to my sight, that I thought if it had been so in kind and in substance at that time, it should have made the bed all one blood, and have passed over about.

And then came to my mind that God has made waters plenteous in earth to our service and to our bodily ease for tender love that He has to us, but yet likes Him better that we take full homely His blessed blood to wash us of sin: for there is no water that is made that He likes so well to give us. For it is most plenteous as it is most precious: and that by the virtue of His blessed Godhead; and it is [of] our Kind, and all-blissfully belongs to us by the virtue of His precious love.

The dearworthy blood of our Lord Jesus Christ as truly as it is most precious, so truly it is most plenteous. Behold and see! The precious plenty of His dearworthy blood descended down into Hell and burst her bands and delivered all that were there which belonged to the Court of Heaven. The precious plenty of His dearworthy blood overflows all Earth, and is ready to wash all creatures of sin, which be of goodwill, have been, and shall be. The precious plenty of His dearworthy blood ascended up into Heaven to the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there is in Him, bleeding and praying for us to the Father, and is, and shall be as long as it needs; and ever shall be as long as it needs. And evermore it flows in all Heavens enjoying the salvation of all mankind, that are there, and shall be fulfilling the number that fails.

AND after this, before God showed any words, He suffered me for a convenient time to give heed to Him and all that I had seen, and all intellect that was therein, as the simplicity of the soul might take it. Then He, without voice and opening of lips, formed in my soul these words: Herewith is the Fiend overcome. These words said our Lord, meaning His blessed Passion as He showed it before.

On this showed our Lord that the Passion of Him is the overcoming of the Fiend. God showed that the Fiend has now the same malice that he had before the Incarnation. And as sore he travails, and as continually he sees that all souls of salvation escape him, worshipfully, by the virtue of Christ's precious Passion. And that is his sorrow, and full evil is he ashamed: for all that God suffers him to do turns [for] us to joy and [for] him to shame and woe. And he has as much sorrow when God gives him leave to work, as when he works not: and that is for that he may never do as ill as he would: for his might is all taken into God's hand.

But in God there may be no wrath, as to my sight: for our good Lord endlessly has regard to His own worship and to the profit of all that shall be saved. With might and right He withstands the Reproved, the which of malice and wickedness busy them to contrive and to do against God's will. Also I saw our Lord scorn his malice and set at nought his unmight; and He wills that we do so. For this sight I laughed mightily, and that made them to laugh that were about me, and their laughing was a pleasure to me. I thought that I would that all my fellow-Christians had seen as I saw, and then would they all laugh with me. But I saw not Christ laugh. For I understood that we may laugh in comforting of ourselves and joying in God for that the devil is overcome. And when I saw Him scorn his malice, it was by leading of my understanding into our Lord: that is to say, it was an inward showing of verity, without changing of look. For, as to my sight, it is a worshipful property of God's that [He] is ever the same.

And after this I fell into a graveness, and said: I see three things: I see game, scorn, and earnest. I see [a] game, in that the Fiend is overcome; I see scorn, in that God scorns him, and he shall be scorned; and I see earnest, in that he is overcome by the blissful Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ that was done in full earnest and with sober travail.

When I said, he is scorned,�I meant that God scorns him, that is to say, because He sees him now as he shall do without end. For in this [word] God showed that the Fiend is condemned. And this meant I when I said: he shall be scorned: [he shall be scorned] at Doomsday, generally of all that shall be saved, to whose consolation he has great ill-will. For then he shall see that all the woe and tribulation that he has done to them shall be turned to increase of their joy, without end; and all the pain and tribulation that he would have brought them to shall endlessly go with him to hell.

AFTER this our good Lord said: I thank you for your travail, and especially for your youth.

And in this [Showing] my understanding was lifted up into Heaven where I saw our Lord as a lord in his own house, which has called all his dearworthy servants and friends to a stately feast. Then I saw the Lord take no place in His own house, but I saw Him royally reign in His house, fulfilling it with joy and mirth, Himself endlessly to gladden and to solace His dearworthy friends, full homely and full courteously, with marvellous melody of endless love, in His own fair blessed Countenance. Which glorious Countenance of the Godhead fulfills the Heavens with joy and bliss.

God showed three degrees of bliss that every soul shall have in Heaven that willingly has served God in any degree in earth. The first is the worshipful thanks of our Lord God that he shall receive when he is delivered of pain. This thanking is so high and so worshipful that the soul thinks it fills him though there were no more. For I thought that all the pain and travail that might be suffered by all living men might not deserve the worshipful thanks that one man shall have that willingly has served God. The second is that all the blessed creatures that are in Heaven shall see that worshipful thanking, and He makes his service known to all that are in Heaven. And here this example was shown. A king, if he thank his servants, it is a great worship to them, and if he makes it known to all the realm, then is the worship greatly increased. The third is, that as new and as gladdening as it is received in that time, right so shall it last without end.

And I saw that homely and sweetly was this showed, and that the age of every man shall be [made] known in Heaven, and [he] shall be rewarded for his willing service and for his time. And specially the age of them that willingly and freely offer their youth to God, passingly is rewarded and wonderfully is thanked.

For I saw that whene'er what time a man or woman is truly turned to God, for one day's service and for his endless will he shall have all these three decrees of bliss. And the more the loving soul sees this courtesy of God, the liefer he is to serve him all the days of his life.

AND after this He showed a sovereign ghostly pleasance in my soul. I was fulfilled with the everlasting sureness, mightily sustained without any painful dread. This feeling was so glad and so ghostly that I was in all peace and in rest, that there was nothing in earth that should have grieved me.

This lasted but a while, and I was turned and left to myself in heaviness, and weariness of my life, and irksomeness of myself, that scarcely I could have patience to live. There was no comfort nor none ease to me but faith, hope, and charity; and these I had in truth, but little in feeling.

And anon after this our blessed Lord gave me again the comfort and the rest in soul, in satisfying and sureness so blissful and so mighty that no dread, no sorrow, no pain bodily that might be suffered should have distressed me. And then the pain showed again to my feeling, and then the joy and the pleasing, and now that one, and now that other, divers times I suppose about twenty times. And in the time of joy I might have said with Saint Paul: Nothing shall dispart me from the charity of Christ; and in the pain I might have said with Peter: Lord, save me: I perish!

This Vision was shown me, according to my understanding, [for] that it is speedful to some souls to feel on this wise: sometime to be in comfort, and sometime to fail and to be left to themselves. God wills that we know that He keeps us even alike secure in woe and in weal. And for profit of man's soul, a man is sometime left to himself; although sin is not always the cause: for in this time I sinned not wherefore I should be left to myself for it was so sudden. Also I deserved not to have this blessed feeling. But freely our Lord gives when He will; and suffers us [to be] in woe sometime. And both is one love.

For it is God's will that we hold us in comfort with all our might: for bliss is lasting without end, and pain is passing and shall be brought to nought for them that shall be saved. And therefore it is not God's will that we follow the feelings of pain in sorrow and mourning for them, but that we suddenly pass over, and hold us in endless enjoyment.

AFTER this Christ showed a part of His Passion near His dying.

I saw His sweet face as it were dry and bloodless with pale dying. And later, more pale, dead, languoring; and then turned more dead to blue; and then more brown-blue, as the flesh turned more deeply dead. For His Passion showed to me most specially in His blessed face (and chiefly in His lips): there I saw these four colours, though it were before fresh, ruddy, and pleasing, to my sight. This was a pitiful change to see, this deep dying. And also the [inward] moisture clotted and dried, to my sight, and the sweet body was brown and black, all turned out of fair, life-like colour of itself, to dry dying. For that same time that our Lord and blessed Saviour died upon the Rood, it was a dry, hard wind, and wondrous cold, as to my sight, and what time [all] the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that might pass therefrom, yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ, as it was shown.

Bloodlessness and pain dried within; and blowing of wind and cold coming from without met together in the sweet body of Christ. And these four, twain without, and twain within dried the flesh of Christ by process of time. And though this pain was bitter and sharp, it was full long lasting, as to my sight, and painfully dried up all the lively spirits of Christ's flesh. Thus I saw the sweet flesh dry in seeming by part after part, with marvellous pains. And as long as any spirit had life in Christ's flesh, so long suffered He pain.

This long pining seemed to me as if He had been seven nights dead, dying, at the point of outpassing away, suffering the last pain. And when I said it seemed to me as if He had been seven night dead, it means that the sweet body was so discoloured, so dry, so shrunken, so deathly, and so piteous, as if He had been seven night dead, continually dying. And I thought the drying of Christ's flesh was the most pain, and the last, of His Passion.

AND in this dying was brought to my mind the words of Christ: I thirst.

For I saw in Christ a double thirst: one bodily; another spiritual, the which I shall speak of in the Thirty-first Chapter.

For this word was shown for the bodily thirst: the which I understood was caused by failing of moisture. For the blessed flesh and bones was left all alone without blood and moisture. The blessed body dried alone long time with wringing of the nails and weight of the body. For I understood that for tenderness of the sweet hands and of the sweet feet, by the greatness, hardness, and grievousness of the nails the wounds waxed wide and the body sagged, for weight by long time hanging. And [therewith was] piercing and pressing of the head, and binding of the Crown all baked with dry blood, with the sweet hair clinging, and the dry flesh, to the thorns, and the thorns to the flesh drying; and in the beginning while the flesh was fresh and bleeding, the continual sitting of the thorns made the wounds wide. And furthermore I saw that the sweet skin and the tender flesh, with the hair and the blood, was all raised and loosed about from the bone, with the thorns wherethrough it were rent in many pieces, as a cloth that were sagging, as if it would hastily have fallen off, for heaviness and looseness, while it had natural moisture. And that was great sorrow and dread to me: for I thought I would not for my life have seen it fall. How it was done I saw not; but understood it was with the sharp thorns and the violent and grievous setting on of the Garland of Thorns, unsparingly and without pity. This continued awhile, and soon it began to change, and I beheld and marvelled how it might be. And then I saw it was because it began to dry, and stint a part of the weight, and set about the Garland. And thus it encircled all about, as it were garland upon garland. The Garland of the Thorns was dyed with the blood, and that other garland [of Blood] and the head, all was one colour, as clotted blood when it is dry. The skin of the flesh that showed (of the face and of the body), was small-rimpled with a tanned colour, like a dry board when it is aged; and the face more brown than the body.

I saw four manner of dryings: the first was bloodlessness; the second was pain following after; the third, hanging up in the air, as men hang a cloth to dry; the fourth, that the bodily Kind asked liquid and there was no manner of comfort ministered to Him in all His woe and distress. Ah! hard and grievous was his pain, but much more hard and grievous it was when the moisture failed and began to dry thus, shrivelling.

These were the pains that showed in the blessed head: the first wrought to the dying, while it had moisture; and that other, slow, with shrinking drying, [and] with blowing of the wind from without, that dried and pained Him with cold more than my heart can think.

And other pains for which pains I saw that all is too little that I can say: for it may not be told.

The which Showing of Christ's pains filled me full of pain. For I knew well He suffered but once, but [this was as if] He would show it me and fill me with mind as I had before desired. And in all this time of Christ's pains I felt no pain but for Christ's pains. Then thought-me: I knew but little what pain it was that I asked; and, as a wretch, repented me, thinking: If I had known what it had been, loth me had been to have prayed it. For I thought it passed bodily death, my pains.

I thought: Is any pain like this? And I was answered in my reason: Hell is another pain: for there is despair. But of all pains that lead to salvation this is the most pain, to see your Love suffer. How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy, suffer? Here felt I soothfastly that I loved Christ so much above myself that there was no pain that might be suffered like to that sorrow that I had to [see] Him in pain.

HERE I saw a part of the compassion of our Lady, Saint Mary: for Christ and she were so united in love that the greatness of her loving was cause of the greatness of her pain. For in this [Showing] I saw a Substance of Nature's Love, continued by Grace, that creatures have to Him: which Kind Love was most fully showed in His sweet Mother, and overpassing; for so much as she loved Him more than all other, her pains passed all other. For ever the higher, the mightier, the sweeter that the love be, the more sorrow it is to the lover to see that body in pain that is loved.

And all His disciples and all His true lovers suffered pains more than their own bodily dying. For I am sure by my own feeling that the least of them loved Him so far above himself that it passes all that I can say.

Here saw I a great oneing between Christ and us, to my understanding: for when He was in pain, we were in pain.

And all creatures that might suffer pain, suffered with Him: that is to say, all creatures that God has made to our service. The firmament, the earth, failed for sorrow in their Nature in the time of Christ's dying. For it belongs naturally to their property to know Him for their God, in whom all their virtue standeth: when He failed, then behoved it needs to them, because of kindness [between them], to fail with Him, as much as they might, for sorrow of His pains.

And thus they that were His friends suffered pain for love. And, generally, all: that is to say, they that knew Him not suffered for failing of all manner of comfort save the mighty, privy keeping of God. I speak of two manner of folk, as they may be understood by two persons: the one was Pilate, the other was Saint Dionyse of France, which was [at] that time a Paynim. For when he saw wondrous and marvellous sorrows and dreads that befell in that time, he said: Either the world is now at an end, or He that is Maker of Kind suffers. Wherefore he did write on an altar: THIS IS THE ALTAR OF UNKNOWN GOD. God that of His goodness makes the planets and the elements to work of Kind to the blessed man and the cursed, in that time made withdrawing of it from both; wherefore it was that they that knew Him not were in sorrow that time.

Thus was our Lord Jesus made-naught for us; and all we stand in this manner made-naught with Him, and shall do till we come to His bliss: as I shall tell after.

IN this [time] I would have looked up from the Cross, but I durst not. For I knew well that while I beheld in the Cross I was surely-safe; therefore I would not assent to put my soul in peril: for away from the Cross was no sureness, for frighting of fiends.

Then had I a proffer in my reason, as if it had been friendly said to me: Look up to Heaven to His Father. And then saw I well, with the faith that I felt, that there was nothing between the Cross and Heaven that might have harmed me. Either me behoved to look up or else to answer. I answered inwardly with all the might of my soul, and said: Nay; I may not: for You are my Heaven. This I said for that I would not. For I would liever have been in that pain till Doomsday than to come to Heaven otherwise than by Him. For I knew well that He that bound me so sore, He should unbind me when that He would. Thus was I learned to choose Jesus to my Heaven, whom I saw only in pain at that time: meliked no other Heaven than Jesus, which shall be my bliss when I come there.

And this has ever been a comfort to me, that I chose Jesus to my Heaven, by His grace, in all this time of Passion and sorrow; and that has been a learning to me that I should evermore do so: choose only Jesus to my Heaven in weal and woe.

And though I as a wretched creature had repented me (I said before if I had knew what pain it would be, I had been loth to have prayed), here saw I truly that it was reluctance and frailty of the flesh without assent of the soul: to which God assigns no blame. Repenting and willing choice be two contraries which I felt both in one at that time. And these be [of our] two parts: the one outward, the other inward. The outward part is our deadly flesh-hood, which is now in pain and woe, and shall be, in this life: whereof I felt much in this time; and that part it was that repented. The inward part is an high, blissful life, which is all in peace and in love: and this was more inwardly felt; and this part is [that] in which mightily, wisely and with steadfast will I chose Jesus to my Heaven.

And in this I saw truly that the inward part is master and sovereign to the outward, and does not charge itself with, nor take heed to, the will of that: but all the intent and will is set to be united to our Lord Jesus. That the outward part should draw the inward to assent was not showed to me; but that the inward draws the outward by grace, and both shall be united in bliss without end, by the virtue of Christ, this was shown.

AND thus I saw our Lord Jesus languoring long time. For the oneing with the Godhead gave strength to the manhood for love to suffer more than all men might suffer: I mean not only more pain than all men might suffer, but also that He suffered more pain than all men of salvation that ever were from the first beginning to the last day might tell or fully think, having regard to the worthiness of the highest worshipful King and the shameful, despised, painful death. For He that is highest and worthiest was most fully made-nought and most utterly despised.

For the highest point that may be seen in the Passion is to think and know what He is that suffered. And in this [Showing] He brought in part to mind the height and nobleness of the glorious Godhead, and therewith the preciousness and the tenderness of the blessed Body, which be together united; and also the lothness that is in our Kind to suffer pain. For as much as He was most tender and pure, right so He was most strong and mighty to suffer.

And for every man's sin that shall be saved He suffered: and every man's sorrow and desolation He saw, and sorrowed for Kindness and love. (For in as much as our Lady sorrowed for His pains, in so much He suffered sorrow for her sorrow; and more, in as greatly as the sweet manhood of Him was worthier in Kind.) For as long as He was passible He suffered for us and sorrowed for us; and now He is uprisen and no more passible, yet He suffers with us.

And I, beholding all this by His grace, saw that the Love of Him was so strong which He has to our soul that willingly He chose it with great desire, and mildly He suffered it with well-pleasing.

For the soul that beholds it thus, when it is touched by grace, it shall truly see that the pains of Christ's Passion pass all pains: [all pains] that is to say, which shall be turned into everlasting, o'erpassing joys by the virtue of Christ's Passion.

IT is God's will, as to my understanding, that we have Three Manners of Beholding His blessed Passion. The First is: The hard Pain that He suffered, [beholding it] with contrition and compassion. And that showed our Lord in this time, and gave me strength and grace to see it.

And I looked for the departing with all my might, and thought to have seen the body all dead; but I saw Him not so. And right in the same time that I thought, by the seeming, the life might no longer last and the Showing of the end behoved needs to be, suddenly (I beholding in the same Cross), He changed [the look of] His blessed Countenance. The changing of His blessed Countenance changed my , and I was as glad and merry as it was possible. Then brought our Lord merrily to my mind: Where is now any point of the pain, or of your grief? And I was full merry.

I understood that we be now, in our Lord's meaning, in His Cross with Him in His pains and His Passion, dying; and we, willingly abiding in the same Cross with His help and His grace to the last point, suddenly He shall change His Cheer to us, and we shall be with Him in Heaven. Between that one and that other shall be no time, and then shall all be brought to joy. And thus said He in this Showing: Where is now any point of your pain, or your grief? And we shall be full blessed.

And here saw I truly that if He showed now [to] us His Blissful Cheer, there is no pain in earth or in other place that should aggrieve us; but all things should be to us joy and bliss. But because He shows to us time of His Passion, as He bare it in this life, and His Cross, therefore we are in distress and travail, with Him, as our frailty asks. And the cause why He suffers [it to be so,] is for [that] He will of His goodness make us the higher with Him in His bliss; and for this little pain that we suffer here, we shall have an high endless knowing in God which we could never have without that. And the harder our pains have been with Him in His Cross, the more shall our worship be with Him in His Kingdom.

THEN said our good Lord Jesus Christ: Are you well pleased that I suffered for you? I said: Yea, good Lord, I thank You; Yea, good Lord, blessed mayst You be.

Then said Jesus, our kind Lord: If you are pleased, I am pleased: it is a joy, a bliss, an endless satisfying to me that ever suffered I Passion for you; and if I might suffer more, I would suffer more.

In this feeling my understanding was lifted up into Heaven, and there I saw three heavens: of which sight I marvelled greatly. And though I see three heavens and all in the blessed manhood of Christ none is more, none is less, none is higher, none is lower, but [they are] fellow-like in bliss.

For the First Heaven, Christ showed me His Father; in no bodily likeness, but in His property and in His working. That is to say, I saw in Christ that the Father is. The working of the Father is this, that He gives meed to His Son Jesus Christ. This gift and this meed is so blissful to Jesus that His Father might have given Him no meed that might have pleased Him better. The first heaven, that is the pleasing of the Father, showed to me as one heaven; and it was full blissful: for He is full pleased with all the deeds that Jesus has done about our salvation. Wherefore we be not only His by His buying, but also by the courteous gift of His Father we be His bliss, we be His meed, we be His worship, we be His crown. (And this was a singular marvel and a full delectable beholding, that we be His crown!) This that I say is so great bliss to Jesus that He setts at nought all His travail, and His hard Passion, and His cruel and shameful death.

And in these words: If that I might suffer more, I would suffer more, I saw in truth that as often as He might die, so often He would, and love should never let Him have rest till He had done it. And I beheld with great diligence for to learn how often He would die if He might. And truly the number passed my understanding and my wits so far that my reason might not, nor could, comprehend it. And when He had thus oft died, or should, yet He would set it at nought, for love: for all seems Him but little in regard of His love.

For though the sweet manhood of Christ might suffer but once, the goodness in Him may never cease of proffer: every day He is ready to the same, if it might be. For if He said He would for my love make new Heavens and new Earth, it were but little in comparison; for this might be done every day if He would, without any travail. But to die for my love so often that the number passes creature's reason, it is the highest proffer that our Lord God might make to man's soul, as to my sight. Then means He thus: How should it not be that I should not do for your love all that I might of deeds which grieve me not, sith I would, for your love, die so often, having no regard to my hard pains?

And here saw I, for the Second Beholding in this blessed Passion the love that made Him to suffer passes as far all His pains as Heaven is above Earth. For the pains was a noble, worshipful deed done in a time by the working of love: but Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending. For which love He said full sweetly these words: If I might suffer more, I would suffer more. He said not, If it were needful

to suffer more: for though it were not needful, if He might suffer more, He would.

This deed, and this work about our salvation, was ordained as well as God might ordain it. And here I saw a Full Bliss in Christ: for His bliss should not have been full, if it might any better have been done.

"All the Trinity wrought in the Passion of Jesus Christ"

AND in these three words: It is a Joy, a bliss, an endless satisfying to me, were showed three heavens, as thus: For the joy, I understood the pleasure of the Father; and for the bliss, the worship of the Son; and for the endless satisfying, the Holy Ghost. The Father is pleased, the Son is worshipped, the Holy Ghost is satisfied.

And here saw I, for the Third Beholding in His blissful Passion: that is to say, the Joy and the Bliss that make Him to be well-satisfied in it. For our Courteous Lord showed His Passion to me in five manners: of which the first is the bleeding of the head; the second is, discolouring of His face; the third is, the plenteous bleeding of the body, in seeming [as] from the scourging; the fourth is, the deep dying: these four are beforetold for the pains of the Passion. And the fifth is [this] that was shown for the joy and the bliss of the Passion.

For it is God's will that we have true enjoying with Him in our salvation, and therein He wills [that] we be mightily comforted and strengthened; and thus wills He that merrily with His grace our soul be occupied. For we are His bliss: for in us He enjoys without end; and so shall we in Him, with His grace.

And all that He has done for us, and does, and ever shall, was never cost nor charge to Him, nor might be, but only that [which] He did in our manhood, beginning at the sweet Incarnation and lasting to the Blessed Uprise on Easter-morrow: so long dured the cost and the charge about our redemption in deed: of [the] which deed He enjoys endlessly, as it is beforesaid.

Jesus wills that we take heed to the bliss that is in the blessed Trinity [because] of our salvation and that we desire to have as much spiritual enjoying, with His grace, (as it is beforesaid): that is to say, that the enjoying of our salvation be [as] like to the joy that Christ has of our salvation as it may be while we are here.

All the Trinity wrought in the Passion of Christ, ministering abundance of virtues and plenty of grace to us by Him: but only the Maiden's Son suffered: whereof all the blessed Trinity endlessly enjoys. All this was shown in these words: Are you well pleased? and by that other word that Christ said: If you are pleased, then am I pleased; as if He said: It is joy and satisfying enough to me, and I ask nought else of you for my travail but that I might well please you.

And in this He brought to mind the property of a glad giver. A glad giver takes but little heed of the thing that he gives, but all his desire and all his intent is to please him and solace him to whom he gives it. And if the receiver take the gift highly and thankfully, then the courteous giver setts at nought all his cost and all his travail, for joy and delight that he has pleased and solaced him that he loves. Plenteously and fully was this showed.

Think also wisely of the greatness of this word "ever." For in it was shown an high knowing of love that He has in our salvation, with manifold joys that follow of the Passion of Christ. One is that He rejoices that He has done it in deed, and He shall no more suffer; another, that He bought us from endless pains of hell.

THEN with a glad cheer our Lord looked to His Side and beheld, rejoicing. With His sweet looking He led forth the understanding of His creature by the same wound into His Side within. And then he showed a fair, delectable place, and large enough for all mankind that shall be saved to rest in peace and in love. And therewith He brought to mind His dearworthy blood and precious water which he let pour all out for love. And with the sweet beholding He showed His blessed heart even cloven in two.

And with this sweet enjoying, He showed to my understanding, in part, the blessed Godhead, stirring then the poor soul to understand, as it may be said, that is, to think on, the endless Love that was without beginning, and is, and shall be ever. And with this our good Lord said full blissfully: Lo, how that I loved you, as if He had said: My darling, behold and see your Lord, your God that is your Maker and your endless joy, see what satisfying and bliss I have in your salvation; and for my love rejoice [you] with me.

And also, for more understanding, this blessed word was said: Lo, how I loved you! Behold and see that I loved you so much before I died for you that I would die for you; and now I have died for you and suffered willingly that which I may. And now is all my bitter pain and all my hard travail turned to endless joy and bliss to me and to you. How should it now be that you should anything pray that pleases me but that I should full gladly grant it you? For my pleasing is your holiness and your endless joy and bliss with me.

This is the understanding, simply as I can say it, of this blessed word: Lo, how I loved you. This showed our good Lord for to make us glad and merry.

"Will you see in her how you are loved?"

AND with this same cheer of mirth and joy our good Lord looked down on the right side and brought to my mind where our Lady stood in the time of His

Passion; and said: Will you see her? And in this sweet word [it was] as if He had said: I wish well that you would see my blessed Mother: for, after myself, she is the highest joy that I might show you, and most pleasance and worship to me; and most she is desired to be seen of my blessed creatures. And for the high, marvellous, singular love that He has to this sweet Maiden, His blessed Mother, our Lady Saint Mary, He showed her highly rejoicing, as by the meaning of these sweet words; as if He said: Will you see how I love her, that you mightest joy with me in the love that I have in her and she in me?

And also (to more understanding this sweet word) our Lord speaks to all mankind that shall be saved, as it were all to one person, as if He said: Will you see in her how you are loved? For your love I made her so high, so noble and so worthy; and this pleases me, and so will I that it does you.

For after Himself she is the most blissful sight.

But hereof am I not learned to long to see her bodily presence while I am here, but the virtues of her blessed soul: her truth, her wisdom, her charity; whereby I may learn to know myself and reverently dread my God. And when our good Lord had showed this and said this word: Will you see her? I answered and said: Yea, good Lord, I thank You; yea, good Lord, if it be Your will. Oftentimes I prayed this, and I thought to have seen her in bodily presence, but I saw her not so. And Jesus in that word showed me ghostly sight of her: right as I had seen her before little and simple, so He showed her then high and noble and glorious, and pleasing to Him above all creatures.

And He wills that it be known; that [so] all those that please them in Him should please them in her, and in the pleasance that He has in her and she in Him. And, to more understanding, He showed this example: As if a man love a creature singularly, above all creatures, he wills to make all creatures to love and to have pleasance in that creature that he loves so greatly. And in this word that Jesus said: Will you see her? I thought it was the most pleasing word that He might have given me of her, with that ghostly Showing that He gave me of her. For our Lord showed me nothing in special but our Lady Saint Mary; and her He showed three times. The first was as she was with Child; the second was as she was in her sorrows under the Cross; the third is as she is now in pleasing, worship, and joy.

AND after this our Lord showed Himself more glorified, as to my sight, than I saw Him before [in the Showing] wherein I was learned that our soul shall never have rest till it comes to Him, knowing that He is fulness of joy, homely and courteous, blissful and very life.

Our Lord Jesus oftentimes said: I it am, I it am: I it am that is highest, I it am that you love, I it am that you enjoyest, I it am that you servest, I it am that you longest for, I it am that you desirest, I it am that you mean, I it am that is all. I it am that Holy Church preaches and teaches you, I it am that showed me here to you. The number of the words passes my wit and all my understanding and all my powers. And they are the highest, as to my sight: for therein is comprehended I cannot tell, but the joy that I saw in the Showing of them passes all that heart may wish for and soul may desire. Therefore the words be not declared here; but every man after the grace that God gives him in understanding and loving, receive them in our Lord's meaning.

AFTER this the Lord brought to my mind the longing that I had to Him before. And I saw that nothing letted me but sin. And so I looked, generally, upon us all, and I thought: If sin had not been, we should all have been clean and like to our Lord, as He made us.

And thus, in my folly, before this time often I wondered why by the great foreseeing wisdom of God the beginning of sin was not letted: for then, I thought, all should have been well. This stirring [of mind] was much to be forsaken, but nevertheless mourning and sorrow I made therefor, without reason and discretion.

But Jesus, who in this Vision informed me of all that is needful to me, answered by this word and said: It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

In this naked word sin, our Lord brought to my mind, generally, all that is not good, and the shameful despite and the utter noughting that He bare for us in this life, and His dying; and all the pains and passions of all His creatures, ghostly and bodily; (for we be all partly noughted, and we shall be noughted following our Master, Jesus, till we be full purged, that is to say, till we be fully noughted of our deadly flesh and of all our inward affections which are not very good;) and the beholding of this, with all pains that ever were or ever shall be, and with all these I understand the Passion of Christ for most pain, and overpassing. All this was shown in a touch and quickly passed over into comfort: for our good Lord would not that the soul were affeared of this terrible sight.

But I saw not sin: for I believe it has no manner of substance nor no part of being, nor could it be known but by the pain it is cause of.

And thus pain, it is something, as to my sight, for a time; for it purges, and makes us to know ourselves and to ask mercy. For the Passion of our Lord is comfort to us against all this, and so is His blessed will.

And for the tender love that our good Lord has to all that shall be saved, He comforts readily and sweetly, signifying thus: It is sooth that sin is cause of all this pain; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner [of ] thing shall be well.

These words were said full tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any that shall be saved. Then were it a great unkindness to blame or wonder on God for my sin, since He blames not me for sin.

And in these words I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in Heaven: in which knowing we shall truly see the cause why He suffered sin to come. In which sight we shall endlessly joy in our Lord God.

THUS I saw how Christ has compassion on us for the cause of sin. And right as I was before in the [Showing of the] Passion of Christ fulfilled with pain and compassion, like so in this [sight] I was fulfilled, in part, with compassion of all my fellow-Christians for that well, well beloved people that shall be saved. For God's servants, Holy Church, shall be shaken in sorrow and anguish, tribulation in this world, as men shake a cloth in the wind.

And as to this our Lord answered in this manner: A great thing shall I make hereof in Heaven of endless worship and everlasting joys.

Yea, so far forth I saw, that our Lord joys of the tribulations of His servants, with ruth and compassion. On each person that He loves, to His bliss for to bring [them], He lays something that is no blame in His sight, whereby they are blamed and despised in this world, scorned, mocked, and outcasted. And this He does for to hinder the harm that they should take from the pomp and the vain-glory of this wretched life, and make their way ready to come to Heaven, and up-raise them in His bliss everlasting. For He says: I shall wholly break you of your vain affections and your vicious pride; and after that I shall together gather you, and make you mild and meek, clean and holy, by oneing to me.

And then I saw that each kind compassion that man has on his fellow-Christians with charity, it is Christ in him.

That same noughting that was shown in His Passion, it was shown again here in this Compassion. Wherein were two manner of understandings in our Lord's meaning. The one was the bliss that we are brought to, wherein He wills that we rejoice. The other is for comfort in our pain: for He wills that we perceive that it shall all be turned to worship and profit by virtue of His passion, that we perceive that we suffer not alone but with Him, and see Him to be our Ground, and that we see His pains and His noughting passes so far all that we may suffer, that it may not be fully thought.

The beholding of this will save us from murmuring and despair in the feeling of our pains. And if we see in truth that our sin deserves it, yet His love excuses us, and of His great courtesy He does away all our blame, and beholds us with ruth and pity as children innocent and unloathful.

BUT in this I stood beholding things general, troublously and mourning, saying thus to our Lord in my meaning, with full great dread: Ah! good Lord, how might all be well, for the great hurt that is come, by sin, to the creature? And here I desired, as far as I durst, to have some more open declaring wherewith I might be eased in this matter.

And to this our blessed Lord answered full meekly and with full lovely cheer, and showed that Adam's sin was the most harm that ever was done, or ever shall be, to the world's end; and also He showed that this [sin] is openly known in all Holy Church on earth. Furthermore He taught that I should behold the glorious Satisfaction : for this Amends-making is more pleasing to God and more worshipful, without comparison, than ever was the sin of Adam harmful. Then signifies our blessed Lord thus in this teaching, that we should take heed to this: For since I have made well the most harm, then it is my will that you know thereby that I shall make well all that is less.

HE gave me understanding of two parts [of truth]. The one part is our Saviour and our salvation. This blessed part is open and clear and fair and light, and plenteous, for all mankind that is of good will, and shall be, is comprehended in this part. Hereto are we bounden of God, and drawn and counselled and taught inwardly by the Holy Ghost and outwardly by Holy Church in the same grace. In this wills our Lord that we be occupied, joying in Him; for He enjoys in us. The more plenteously that we take of this, with reverence and meekness, the more thanks we earn of Him and the more speed to ourselves, thus may we say enjoying our part of our Lord. The other [part] is hid and shut up from us: that is to say, all that is beside our salvation. For it is our Lord's privy counsel, and it belongs to the royal lordship of God to have His privy counsel in peace, and it belongs to His servant, for obedience and reverence, not to learn wholly His counsel. Our Lord has pity and compassion on us for that some creatures make themselves so busy therein; and I am sure if we knew how much we should please Him and ease ourselves by leaving it, we would. The saints that be in Heaven, they will to know nothing but that which our Lord wills to show them: and also their charity and their desire is ruled after the will of our Lord: and thus ought we to will, like to them. Then shall we nothing will nor desire but the will of our Lord, as they do: for we are all one in God's seeing.

And here was I learned that we shall trust and rejoice only in our Saviour, blessed Jesus, for all thing.

AND thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well, and I shall make all thing well; and you shall see yourself that all manner of thing shall be well.

In that He says, I may, I understand [it] for the Father; and in that He says, I can, I understand [it] for the Son; and where He says, I will, I understand [it] for the Holy Ghost; and where He says, I shall, I understand [it] for the unity of the blessed Trinity: three Persons and one Truth; and where He says, You shall see yourself, I understand the oneing of all mankind that shall be saved to the blessed Trinity. And in these five words God wills we be enclosed in rest and in peace.

Thus shall the Spiritual Thirst of Christ have an end. For this is the Spiritual Thirst of Christ: the love-longing that lasts, and ever shall, till we see that sight on Doomsday. For we that shall be saved and shall be Christ's joy and His bliss, some be yet here and some be to come, and so shall some be, to that day. Therefore this is His thirst and love-longing, to have us altogether whole in Him, to His bliss, as to my sight. For we be not now as fully whole in Him as we shall be then.

For we know in our Faith, and also it was shown in all [the Revelations] that Christ Jesus is both God and man. And alongside the Godhead, He is Himself highest bliss, and was, from without beginning, and shall be, without end: which endless bliss may never be heightened nor lowered in itself. For this was plenteously seen in every Showing, and specially in the Twelfth, where He says: I am that [which] is highest. And alongside Christ's Manhood, it is known in our Faith, and also [it was] showed, that He, with the virtue of Godhead, for love, to bring us to His bliss suffered pains and passions, and died. And these be the works of Christ's Manhood wherein He rejoices; and that showed He in the Ninth Revelation, where He says: It is a joy and bliss and endless pleasing to me that ever I suffered Passion for you. And this is the bliss of Christ's works, and thus he signifies where He says in that same Showing: we be His bliss, we be His meed, we be His worship, we be His crown.

For along with that Christ is our Head, He is glorified and impassible; and along with His Body in which all His members are knit, He is not yet fully glorified nor all impassible. Therefore the same desire and thirst that He had upon the Cross (which desire, longing, and thirst, as to my sight, was in Him from without beginning) the same has He yet, and shall [have] to the time that the last soul that shall be saved is come up to His bliss.

For as truly as there is a property in God of ruth and pity, so truly there is a property in God of thirst and longing. (And of the virtue of this longing in Christ, we have to long again to Him: without which no soul comes to Heaven.) And this property of longing and thirst comes of the endless Goodness of God, even as the property of pity comes of His endless Goodness. And though longing and pity are two sundry properties, as to my sight, in this stands the point of the Spiritual Thirst: which is desire in Him as long as we be in need, drawing us up to His bliss. And all this was seen in the Showing of Compassion: for that shall cease on Doomsday.

Thus He has ruth and compassion on us, and He has longing to have us; but His wisdom and His love suffers not the end to come till the best time.

ONE time our good Lord said: All thing shall be well; and another time he said: You shall see yourself that all MANNER [of ] thing shall be well; and in these two [sayings] the soul took sundry understandings.

One was that He wills we know that not only He takes heed to noble things and to great, but also to little and to small, to low and to simple, to one and to other. And so means He in that He says: ALL MANNER OF THINGS shall be well. For He wills we know that the least thing shall not be forgotten.

Another understanding is this, that there are deeds evil done in our sight, and so great harms taken, that it seems to us that it were impossible that ever it should come to good end. And upon this we look, sorrowing and mourning therefor, so that we cannot resign us to the blissful beholding of God as we should do. And the cause of this is that the use of our reason is now so blind, so low, and so simple, that we cannot know that high marvellous Wisdom, the Might and the Goodness of the blissful Trinity. And thus signifies He when He says: You shall see yourself if all manner of things shall be well. As if He said: Take now heed faithfully and trustingly, and at the last end you shall truly see it in fulness of joy.

And thus in these same five words beforesaid: I may make all things well, etc., I understand a mighty comfort of all the works of our Lord God that are yet to come. There is a Deed the which the blessed Trinity shall do in the last Day, as to my sight, and when the Deed shall be, and how it shall be done, is unknown of all creatures that are beneath Christ, and shall be till when it is done.

[ The Goodness and the Love of our Lord God "will that we wit [know] that it shall be; And the "Might and the Wisdom of him by the same Love will hill [conceal] it, and hide it from us what it shall be, "and how it shall be done."]

And the cause why He wills that we know [this Deed shall be], is for that He would have us the more eased in our soul and [the more] set at peace in love leaving the beholding of all troublous things that might keep us back from true enjoying of Him. This is that Great Deed ordained of our Lord God from without beginning, treasured and hid in His blessed breast, only known to Himself: by which He shall make all things well.

For like as the blissful Trinity made all things of nought, right so the same blessed Trinity shall make well all that is not well.

And in this sight I marvelled greatly and beheld our Faith, marvelling thus: Our Faith is grounded in God's word, and it belongs to our Faith that we believe that God's word shall be saved in all things; and one point of our Faith is that many creatures shall be condemned: as angels that fell out of Heaven for pride, which be now fiends; and man in earth that dies out of the Faith of Holy Church: that is to say, they that be heathen men; and also man that has received christendom and lives unchristian life and so dies out of charity: all these shall be condemned to hell without end, as Holy Church teaches me to believe. And all this [so] standing, I thought it was impossible that all manner of things should be well, as our Lord showed in the same time.

And as to this I had no other answer in Showing of our Lord God but this: That which is impossible to you is not impossible to me: I shall save my word in all things and I shall make all things well. Thus I was taught, by the grace of God, that I should steadfastly hold me in the Faith as I had beforehand understood, [and] therewith that I should firmly believe that all things shall be well, as our Lord showed in the same time.

For this is the Great Deed that our Lord shall do, in which Deed He shall save His word and He shall make all well that is not well. How it shall be done there is no creature beneath Christ that knows it, nor shall know it till it is done; according to the understanding that I took of our Lord's meaning in this time.

AND yet in this I desired, as [far] as I durst, that I might have full sight of Hell and Purgatory. But it was not my meaning to make proof of anything that belongs to the Faith: for I believed soothfastly that Hell and Purgatory is for the same end that Holy Church teaches, but my meaning was that I might have seen, for learning in all things that belong to my Faith: whereby I might live the more to God's worship and to my profit.

But for [all] my desire, I could [see] of this truly nothing, save as it is beforesaid in the First Showing, where I saw that the devil is reproved of God and endlessly condemned. In which sight I understood as to all creatures that are of the devil's condition in this life, and therein end, that there is no more mention made of them before God and all His Holy than of the devil, notwithstanding that they be of mankind whether they be christened or not.

For though the Revelation was made of goodness in which was made little mention of evil, yet I was not drawn thereby from any point of the Faith that Holy Church teaches me to believe. For I had sight of the Passion of Christ in diverse Showings, the First, the Second, the Fifth, and the Eighth, wherein I had in part a feeling of the sorrow of our Lady, and of His true friends that saw Him in pain; but I saw not so properly specified the Jews that did Him to death. Notwithstanding I knew in my Faith that they were accursed and condemned without end, saving those that converted, by grace. And I was strengthened and taught generally to keep me in the Faith in every point, and in all as I had before understood: hoping that I was therein with the mercy and the grace of God; desiring and praying in my purpose that I might continue therein to my life's end.

And it is God's will that we have great regard to all His deeds that He has done, but evermore it needs us to leave the beholding what the Deed shall be. And let us desire to be like our brethren which be saints in Heaven, that will truly nothing but God's will and are well pleased both with hiding and with showing. For I saw in truth in our Lord's teaching, the more we busy us to know His secret counsels in this or any other thing, the farther shall we be from the knowing thereof.

OUR Lord God showed two manner of secret things. One is this great Secret [Counsel] with all the privy points that belong thereto: and these secret things He wills we should know [as being, but as] hid until the time that He will clearly show them to us. The other are the secret things that He wills to make open and known to us; for He would have us understand that it is His will that we should know them. They are secrets to us not only for that He wills that they be secrets to us, but they are secrets to us for our blindness and our ignorance; and thereof He has great ruth, and therefore He will Himself make them more open to us, whereby we may know Him and love Him and cleave to Him. For all that is speedful for us to learn and to know, full courteously will our Lord show us: and [of] that is this [Showing], with all the preaching and teaching of Holy Church.

God showed full great pleasance that He has in all men and women that mightily and meekly and with all their will take the preaching and teaching of Holy Church. For it is His Holy Church: He is the Ground, He is the Substance, He is the Teaching, He is the Teacher, He is the End, He is the Meed for which every kind soul travails.

And this [of the Showing] is [made] known, and shall be known to every soul to which the Holy Ghost declares it. And I hope truly that all those that seek this, He shall speed: for they seek God.

All this that I have now told, and more that I shall tell after, is comforting against sin. For in the Third Showing when I saw that God does all that is done, I saw no sin: and then I saw that all is well. But when God showed me for sin, then said He: All SHALL be well.

AND when God Almighty had showed so plenteously and joyfully of His Goodness, I desired to learn assuredly as to a certain creature that I loved, if it should continue in good living, which I hoped by the grace of God was begun. And in this desire for a singular Showing, it seemed that I hindered myself: for I was not taught in this time. And then was I answered in my reason, as it were by a friendly intervenor : Take it GENERALLY, and behold the graciousness of the Lord God as He shows to you: for it is more worship to God to behold Him

in all than in any special thing. And therewith I learned that it is more worship to God to know all-thing in general, than to take pleasure in any special thing. And if I should do wisely according to this teaching, I should not only be glad for nothing in special, but I should not be greatly distressed for no manner of thing : for ALL shall be well. For the fulness of joy is to behold God in all: for by the same blessed Might, Wisdom, and Love, that He made all-thing, to the same end our good Lord leads it continually, and thereto Himself shall bring it; and when it is time we shall see it. And the ground of this was shown in the First [Revelation], and more openly in the Third, where it says: I saw God in a point.

All that our Lord does is rightful, and that which He suffers is worshipful: and in these two is comprehended good and ill: for all that is good our Lord does, and that which is evil our Lord suffers. I say not that any evil is worshipful, but I say the sufferance of our Lord God is worshipful: whereby His Goodness shall be known, without end, in His marvellous meekness and mildness, by the working of mercy and grace.

Rightfulness is that thing that is so good that [it] may not be better than it is. For God Himself is very Rightfulness, and all His works are done rightfully as they are ordained from without beginning by His high Might, His high Wisdom, His high Goodness. And right as He ordained to the best, right so He works continually, and leads it to the same end; and He is ever full-pleased with Himself and with all His works.

And the beholding of this blissful accord is full sweet to the soul that sees by grace. All the souls that shall be saved in Heaven without end be made rightful in the sight of God, and by His own goodness: in which rightfulness we are endlessly kept, and marvellously, above all creatures.

And Mercy is a working that comes of the goodness of God, and it shall last in working all along, as sin is suffered to pursue rightful souls. And when sin has no longer leave to pursue, then shall the working of mercy cease, and then shall all be brought to rightfulness and therein stand without end.

And by His sufferance we fall; and in His blissful Love with His Might and His Wisdom we are kept; and by mercy and grace we are raised to manifold more joys.

Thus in Rightfulness and Mercy He wills to be known and loved, now and without end. And the soul that wisely beholds it in grace, it is well pleased with both, and endlessly enjoys.

OUR Lord God showed that a deed shall be done, and Himself shall do it, and I shall do nothing but sin, and my sin shall not hinder His Goodness working.

And I saw that the beholding of this is a heavenly joy in a fearing soul which evermore kindly by grace desires God's will. This deed shall be begun here, and it shall be worshipful to God and plenteously profitable to His lovers in earth; and ever as we come to Heaven we shall see it in marvellous joy, and it shall last thus in working to the last Day; and the worship and the bliss of it shall last in Heaven before God and all His Holy [ones] for ever.

Thus was this deed seen and understood in our Lord's signifying: and the cause why He showed it is to make us rejoice in Him and in all His works. When I saw His Showing continued, I understood that it was shown for a great thing that was for to come, which thing God showed that He Himself should do it: which deed has these properties beforesaid. And this showed He well blissfully, signifying that I should take it myself faithfully and trustingly. But what this deed should be was kept secret from me.

And in this I saw that He wills not that we dread to know the things that He showeth: He shows them because He would have us know them; by which knowing He would have us love Him and have pleasure and endlessly enjoy in Him. For the great love that He has to us He shows us all that is worshipful and profitable for the time. And the things that He will now have privy, yet of His great goodness He shows them close: in which showing He wills that we believe and understand that we shall see the same truly in His endless bliss. Then ought we to rejoice in Him for all that He shows and all that He hides; and if we steadily and meekly do thus, we shall find therein great ease; and endless thanks we shall have of Him therefor.

And this is the understanding of this word: That it shall be done for me, means that it shall be done for the general Man: that is to say, all that shall be saved. It shall be worshipful and marvellous and plenteous, and God Himself shall do it; and this shall be the highest joy that may be, to behold the deed that God Himself shall do, and man shall do truly nothing but sin. Then signifies our Lord God thus, as if He said: Behold and see! Here have you matter of meekness, here have you matter of love, here have you matter to make nought of yourself, here have you matter to enjoy in me; and, for my love, enjoy [you] in me: for of all things, therewith mightest you please me most.

And as long as we are in this life, what time that we by our folly turn us to the beholding of the reproved, tenderly our Lord God touches us and blissfully calls us, saying in our soul: Let be all your love, my dearworthy child: turn you to me I am enough to you and enjoy in your Saviour and in your salvation. And that this is our Lord's working in us, I am sure the soul that has understanding therein by grace shall see it and feel it.

And though it be so that this deed be truly taken for the general Man, yet it excludes not the special. For what our good Lord will do by His poor creatures, it is now unknown to me.

But this deed and that other beforesaid, they are not both one but two sundry. This deed shall be done sooner (and that [time] shall be as we come to Heaven), and to whom our Lord gives it, it may be known here in part. But that Great Deed beforesaid shall neither be known in Heaven nor earth till it is done.

And moreover He gave special understanding and teaching of working of miracles, as thus: It is known that I have done miracles here before, many and diverse, high and marvellous, worshipful and great. And so as I have done, I do now continually, and shall do in coming of time.

It is known that before miracles come sorrow and anguish and tribulation ; and that is for that we should know our own feebleness and our mischiefs that we are fallen in by sin, to meeken us and make us to dread God and cry for help and grace. Miracles come after that, and they come of the high Might, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, showing His virtue and the joys of Heaven so far at it may be in this passing life: and that to strengthen our faith and to increase our hope, in charity. Wherefore it pleases Him to be known and worshipped in miracles. Then signifies He thus: He wills that we be not borne over low for sorrow and tempests that fall to us: for it has ever so been before miracle-coming.

GOD brought to my mind that I should sin. And for pleasance that I had in beholding of Him, I attended not readily to that showing; and our Lord full mercifully abode, and gave me grace to attend. And this showing I took singularly to myself; but by all the gracious comfort that follows, as ye shall see, I was learned to take it for all my fellow-Christians: all in general and nothing in special: though our Lord showed me that I should sin, by me alone is understood all.

And therein I conceived a soft dread. And to this our Lord answered: I keep you most surely. This word was said with more love and secureness and spiritual keeping than I can or may tell. For as it was shown that [I] should sin, right so was the comfort showed: secureness and keeping for all my fellow-Christians.

What may make me more to love my fellow-Christians than to see in God that He loves all that shall be saved as it were all one soul?

For in every soul that shall be saved is a Godly Will that never assented to sin, nor ever shall. Right as there is a beastly will in the lower part that may will no good, right so there is a Godly Will in the higher part, which will is so good that it may never will evil, but ever good. And therefore we are that which He loves and endlessly we do that which Him pleases.

This showed our Lord in [showing] the wholeness of love that we stand in, in His sight: yea, that He loves us now as well while we are here, as He shall do while we are there before His blessed face. But for failing love on our part, therefore is all our travail.

ALSO God showed that sin shall be no shame to man, but worship. For right as to every sin is answering a pain by truth, right so for every sin, to the same soul is given a bliss by love: right as diverse sins are punished with diverse pains according as they be grievous, right so shall they be rewarded with diverse joys in Heaven according as they have been painful and sorrowful to the soul in earth. For the soul that shall come to Heaven is precious to God, and the place so worshipful that the goodness of God suffers never that soul to sin that shall come there without that the which sin shall be rewarded; and it is made known without end, and blissfully restored by overpassing worship.

For in this Sight my understanding was lifted up into Heaven, and then God brought merrily to my mind David, and others in the Old Law without number; and in the New Law He brought to my mind fist Mary Magdalene, Peter and Paul, and those of Inde; and Saint John of Beverley ; and others also without number: how they are known in the Church in earth with their sins, and it is to them no shame, but all is turned for them to worship. And therefore our courteous Lord shows [it thus] for them here in part like as it is there in fulness: for there the token of sin is turned to worship.

And Saint John of Beverley, our Lord showed him full highly, in comfort to us for homeliness; and brought to my mind how he is a dear neighbour, and of our knowing. And God called him Saint John of Beverley plainly as we do, and that with a most glad sweet cheer, showing that he is a full high saint in Heaven in His sight, and a blissful. And with this he made mention that in his youth and in his tender age he was a dearworthy servant to God, greatly God loving and dreading, and yet God suffered him to fall, mercifully keeping him that he perished not, nor lost no time. And afterward God raised him to manifold more grace, and by the contrition and meekness that he had in his living, God has given him in Heaven manifold joys, overpassing that [which] he should have had if he had not fallen. And that this is sooth, God shows in earth with plenteous miracles doing about his body continually.

And all this was to make us glad and merry in love.

SIN is the sharpest scourge that any chosen soul may be smitten with: which scourge thoroughly beats man and woman, and makes him hateful in his own sight, so far forth that afterwhile he thinks himself he is not worthy but as to sink in hell, till [that time] when contrition takes him by touching of the Holy Ghost, and turns the bitterness into hopes of God's mercy. And then He beginns his wounds to heal, and the soul to quicken [as it is] turned to the life of Holy Church. The Holy Ghost leads him to confession, with all his will to show his sins nakedly and truly, with great sorrow and great shame that he has defouled the fair image of God. Then receives he penance for every sin [as] enjoined by his doomsman that is grounded in Holy Church by the teaching of the Holy Ghost. And this is one meekness that greatly pleases God; and also bodily sickness of God's sending, and also sorrow and shame from without, and reproof, and despite of this world, with all manner of grievance and temptations that we be cast in, bodily and ghostly.

Full preciously our Lord keeps us when it seems to us that we are near forsaken and cast away for our sin and because we have deserved it. And because of meekness that we get hereby, we are raised well-high in God's sight by His grace, with so great contrition, and also compassion, and true longing to God. Then they be suddenly delivered from sin and from pain, and taken up to bliss, and made even high saints.

By contrition we are made clean, by compassion we are made ready, and by true longing toward God we are made worthy. These are three means, as I understand, whereby that all souls come to heaven: that is to say, that have been sinners in earth and shall be saved: for by these three medicines it behoves that every soul be healed. Though the soul be healed, his wounds are seen before God, not as wounds but as worships. And so on the contrary-wise, as we be punished here with sorrow and penance, we shall be rewarded in heaven by the courteous love of our Lord God Almighty, who wills that none that come there lose his travail in any degree. For He [be]holds sin as sorrow and pain to His lovers, to whom He assigns no blame, for love. The meed that we shall receive shall not be little, but it shall be high, glorious, and worshipful. And so shall shame be turned to worship and more joy.

But our courteous Lord wills not that His servants despair, for often nor for grievous falling: for our falling hinders not Him to love us. Peace and love are ever in us, being and working; but we be not alway in peace and in love. But He wills that we take heed thus that He is Ground of all our whole life in love; and furthermore that He is our everlasting Keeper and mightily defends us against our enemies, that be full fell and fierce upon us; and so much our need is the more for [that] we give them occasion by our falling.

THIS is a sovereign friendship of our courteous Lord that He keeps us so tenderly while we are in sin; and furthermore He touches us full privily and shows us our sin by the sweet light of mercy and grace. But when we see our self so foul, then think we that God were angry with us for our sin, and then are we stirred of the Holy Ghost by contrition to prayer and desire for the amending of our life with all our mights, to slacken the wrath of God, to the time we find a rest in soul and a softness in conscience. Then hope we that God has forgiven us our sins: and it is truth. And then shows our courteous Lord Himself to the soul well-merrily and with glad cheer with friendly welcoming as if it had been in pain and in prison, saying sweetly thus: My darling I am glad you are come to me: in all your woe I have ever been with you; and now see you my loving and we be united in bliss. Thus are sins forgiven by mercy and grace, and our soul is worshipfully received in joy like as it shall be when it comes to Heaven, as oftentimes as it comes by the gracious working of the Holy Ghost and the virtue of Christ's Passion.

Here understand I in truth that all manner of things are made ready for us by the great goodness of God, so far forth that what time we be ourselves in peace and charity, we be truly saved. But because we may not have this in fulness while we are here, therefore it falls to us evermore to live in sweet prayer and lovely longing with our Lord Jesus. For He longs ever to bring us to the fulness of joy; as it is beforesaid, where He shows the Spiritual Thirst.

But now if any man or woman because of all this spiritual comfort that is beforesaid, be stirred by folly to say or to think: If this be true, then were it good to sin [so as] to have the more meed, or else to charge the less [guilt] to sin, beware of this stirring: for truly if it come it is untrue, and of the enemy of the same true love that teaches us that we should hate sin only for love. I am sure by my own feeling, the more that any kind soul sees this in the courteous love of our Lord God, the lother he is to sin and the more he is ashamed. For if before us were laid [together] all the pains in Hell and in Purgatory and in Earth death and other , and [by itself] sin, we should rather choose all that pain than sin. For sin is so vile and so greatly to be hated that it may be likened to no pain which is not sin. And to me was shown no harder hell than sin. For a kind soul has no hell but sin.

And [when] we give our intent to love and meekness, by the working of mercy and grace we are made all fair and clean. As mighty and as wise as God is to save men, so willing He is. For Christ Himself is [the] ground of all the laws of Christian men, and He taught us to do good against ill: here may we see that He is Himself this charity, and does to us as He teaches us to do. For He wills that we be like Him in wholeness of endless love to ourself and to our fellow-Christians: no more than His love is broken to us for our sin, no more wills He that our love be broken to ourself and to our fellow-Christians: but [that we] endlessly hate the sin and endlessly love the soul, as God loves it. Then shall we hate sin like as God hates it, and love the soul as God loves it. And this word that He said is an endless comfort: I keep you securely.

AFTER this our Lord showed concerning Prayer. In which Showing I see two conditions in our Lord's signifying: one is rightfulness, another is sure trust.

But yet oftentimes our trust is not full: for we are not sure that God hears us, as we think because of our unworthiness, and because we feel truly nothing, (for we are as barren and dry oftentimes after our prayers as we were before); and this, in our feeling our folly, is cause of our weakness. For thus have I felt in myself.

And all this brought our Lord suddenly to my mind, and showed these words, and said: I am Ground of your beseeching: first it is my will that you have it; and after, I make you to will it; and after, I make you to beseech it and you beseechest it. How should it then be that you should not have your beseeching?

And thus in the first reason, with the three that follow, our good Lord shows a mighty comfort, as it may be seen in the same words. And in the first reason, where He says: And you beseechest it, there He shows [His] full great pleasance, and endless meed that He will give us for our beseeching. And in the second reason, where He says: How should it then be? etc., this was said for an impossible [thing]. For it is most impossible that we should beseech mercy and grace, and not have it. For everything that our good Lord makes us to beseech, Himself has ordained it to us from without beginning. Here may we see that our beseeching is not cause of God's goodness; and that showed He soothfastly in all these sweet words when He says: I am [the] Ground. And our good Lord wills that this be known of His lovers in earth; and the more that we know [it] the more should we beseech, if it be wisely taken; and so is our Lord's meaning.

Beseeching is a true, gracious, lasting will of the soul, united and fastened into the will of our Lord by the sweet inward work of the Holy Ghost. Our Lord Himself, He is the first receiver of our prayer, as to my sight, and takes it full thankfully and highly enjoying; and He sends it up above and setts it in the Treasure, where it shall never perish. It is there before God with all His Holy continually received, ever speeding [the help of] our needs; and when we shall receive our bliss it shall be given us for a degree of joy, with endless worshipful thanking from Him.

Full glad and merry is our Lord of our prayer; and He looks thereafter and He wills to have it because with His grace He makes us like to Himself in condition as we are in kind: and so is His blissful will. Therefore He says thus: Pray inwardly, though you thinks it savour you not: for it is profitable, though you feel not, though you see nought; yea, though you think you can not. For in dryness and in barrenness, in sickness and in

feebleness, then is your prayer well-pleasant to me, though you thinks it savour you nought but little. And so is all your believing prayer in my sight. For the meed and the endless thanks that He will give us, therefor He is covetous to have us pray continually in His sight. God accepts the goodwill and the travail of His servant, howsoever we feel: wherefore it pleases Him that we work both in our prayers and in good living, by His help and His grace, reasonably with discretion keeping our powers [turned] to Him, till when that we have Him that we seek, in fulness of joy: that is, Jesus. And that showed He in the Fifteenth [Revelation], farther on, in this word: You shall have me to your meed.

And also to prayer belongs thanking. Thanking is a true inward knowing, with great reverence and lovely dread turning ourselves with all our mights to the working that our good Lord stirrs us to, enjoying and thanking inwardly. And sometimes, for plenteousness it breaks out with voice, and says: Good Lord, I thank You! Blessed mayst You be! And sometime when the heart is dry and feels not, or else by temptation of our enemy, then it is driven by reason and by grace to cry upon our Lord with voice, rehearing His blessed Passion and His great Goodness; and the virtue of our Lord's word turns into the soul and quickens the heart and enters it by His grace into true working, and makes it pray right blissfully. And truly to enjoy our Lord, it is a full blissful thanking in His sight.

OUR Lord God wills that we have true understanding, and specially in three things that belong to our prayer. The first is: by whom and how that our prayer springs. By whom, He shows when He says: I am [the] Ground; and how, by His Goodness: for He says first: It is my will. The second is: in what manner and how we should use our prayer; and that is that our will be turned to the will of our Lord, enjoying: and so means He when He says: I make you to will it. The third is that we should know the fruit and the end of our prayers: that is, that we be united and like to our Lord in all things; and to this intent and for this end was all this lovely lesson showed. And He will help us, and we shall make it so as He says Himself; Blessed may He be!

For this is our Lord's will, that our prayer and our trust be both alike large. For if we trust not as much as we pray, we do not full worship to our Lord in our prayer, and also we tarry and pain our self. The cause is, as I believe, that we know not truly that our Lord is [the] Ground on whom our prayer springs; and also that we know not that it is given us by the grace of His love. For if we knew this, it would make us to trust to have, of our Lord's gift, all that we desire. For I am sure that no man asks mercy and grace with true meaning, but if mercy and grace be first given to him.

But sometimes it comes to our mind that we have prayed long time, and yet we think to ourselves that we have not our asking. But herefor should we not be in heaviness. For I am sure, by our Lord's signifying, that either we abide a better time, or more grace, or a better gift. He wills that we have true knowing in Himself that He is Being; and in this knowing He wills that our understanding be grounded, with all our mights and all our intent and all our meaning; and in this ground He wills that we take our place and our dwelling, and by the gracious light of Himself He wills that we have understanding of the things that follow. The first is our noble and excellent making; the second, our precious and dearworthy again-buying; the third, all-thing that He has made beneath us, [He has made] to serve us, and for our love keeps it. Then signifies He thus, as if He said: Behold and see that I have done all this before your prayers; and now you are, and pray me. And thus He signifies that it belongs to us to learn that the greatest deeds be [already] done, as Holy Church teaches; and in the beholding of this, with thanking, we ought to pray for the deed that is now in doing: and that is, that He rule and guide us, to His worship, in this life, and bring us to His bliss. And therefor He has done all.

Then signifies He thus: that we [should] see that He does it, and that we [should] pray therefor. For the one is not enough. For if we pray and see not that He does it, it makes us heavy and doubtful; and that is not His worship. And if we see that He does, and we pray not, we do not our debt, and so may it not be: that is to say, so is it not [the thing that is] in His beholding.

But to see that He does it, and to pray forthwithal, so is He worshiped and we sped. All-thing that our Lord has ordained to do, it is His will that we pray therefor, either in special or in general. And the joy and the bliss that it is to Him, and the thanks and the worship that we shall have therefor, it passes the understanding of creatures, as to my sight.

For prayer is a right understanding of that fulness of joy that is to come, with well-longing and sure trust. Failing of our bliss that we be kindly ordained to, makes us to long; true understanding and love, with sweet mind in our Saviour, graciously makes us to trust. And in these two workings our Lord beholds us continually : for it is our due part, and His Goodness may no less assign to us.

Thus it belongs to us to do our diligence; and when we have done it, then shall us yet think that [it] is nought, and sooth it is. But if we do as we can, and ask, in truth, for mercy and grace, all that fails us we shall find in Him. And thus signifies He where He says: I am Ground of your beseeching. And thus in this blessed word, with the Showing, I saw a full overcoming against all our weakness and all our doubtful dreads.

PRAYER unites the soul to God. For though the soul be ever like to God in kind and substance, restored by grace, it is often unlike in condition, by sin on man's part. Then is prayer a witness that the soul wills as God wills; and it comforts the conscience and enables man to grace. And thus He teaches us to pray, and mightily to trust that we shall have it. For He beholds us in love and would make us partners of His good deed, and therefore He stirs us to pray for that which it pleases him to do. For which prayer and good will, that we have of His gift, He will reward us and give us endless meed.

And this was shown in this word: And you beseechest it. In this word God showed so great pleasance and so great content, as though He were much beholden to us for every good deed that we do (and yet it is He that does it) because that we beseech Him mightily to do all things that seem to Him good: as if He said: What might then please me more than to beseech me, mightily, wisely, and earnestly, to do that thing that I shall do?

And thus the soul by prayer accords to God.

But when our courteous Lord of His grace shows Himself to our soul, we have that [which] we desire. And then we see not, for the time, what we should more pray, but all our intent with all our might is set wholly to the beholding of Him. And this is an high unperceivable prayer, as to my sight: for all the cause wherefor we pray it, it is united into the sight and beholding of Him to whom we pray; marvellously enjoying with reverent dread, and with so great sweetness and delight in Him that we can pray truly nothing but as He stirs us, for the time. And well I wish, the more the soul sees of God, the more it desires Him by His grace.

But when we see Him not so, then feel we need and cause to pray, because of failing, for enabling of our self, to Jesus. For when the soul is tempested, troubled, and left to itself by unrest, then it is time to pray, for to make itself pliable and obedient to God. (But the soul by no manner of prayer makes God pliant to it: for He is ever alike in love.)

And this I saw: that what time we see needs wherefor we pray, then our good Lord follows us, helping our desire; and when we of His special grace plainly behold Him, seeing none other needs, then we follow Him and He draws us to Him by love. For I saw and felt that His marvellous and plentiful Goodness fulfills all our powers; and therewith I saw that His continuant working in all manner of things is done so goodly, so wisely, and so mightily, that it overpasses all our imagining, and all that we can magineand think; and then we can do no more but behold Him, enjoying, with an high, mighty desire to be all united to Him, centred to His dwelling, and enjoy in His loving and delight in His goodness.

And then shall we, with His sweet grace, in our own meek continuant prayer come to Him now in this life by many privy touchings of sweet spiritual sights and feeling, measured to us as our simpleness may bear it. And this is wrought, and shall be, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, so long till we shall die in longing, for love. And then shall we all come into our Lord, our Self clearly knowing, and God fully having; and we shall endlessly be all had in God: Him truly seeing and fully feeling, Him spiritually hearing, and Him delectably in-breathing, and [of] Him sweetly drinking.

And then shall we see God face to face, homely and fully. The creature that is made shall see and endlessly behold God which is the Maker. For thus may no man see God and live after, that is to say, in this deadly life. But when He of His special grace will show Himself here, He strengthens the creature above its self, and He measures the Showing, after His own will, as it is profitable for the time.