in him; for, by such nice
charging of conscience, might he lightly run in to error of
conscience, and so be led in to despair all his life time. And the
cause of all this is lacking of knowing of discretion of spirits,
the which knowing may be gotten by very experience; who so redely
will look soon after that a soul have been truly cleansed by
confession as it is said before. For fast after confession a soul
is, as it were, a clean paper leaf, for ableness that it hath to
receive what that men will write thereupon. Both they do press[312]
for to write on the soul, when it is clean in itself made by
confession: God and His angel on the one party, and the fiend and
his angel on the other party; but it is in the free choice of the
soul to receive which that it will. The receipt of the soul is the
consent of the same soul. A new thought and a stirring to any sin,
the which thou hast forsaken before in thy shrift, what is it else
but the speech of one of the three spirits the which are thine
enemies (touched before), proffering to write on thy soul the same
sin again? The speech of thyself, is it not; for why, there is no
such thing written in thy soul, for all it is wasted away before in
thy shrift, and thy soul left naked and bare; nothing left
thereupon, but a frail and a free consent, more inclining to the
evil, for custom therein, than it is to the good, but more able to
the good than to the evil, for cleanness of the soul and virtue of
the sacrament of shrift; but, of itself, it hath nought then, where
through it may think or stir itself to good or to evil; and,
therefore, it followeth that what thought that cometh then in it,
whether that it be good or evil, it is not of itself, but the
consent to the good or to the evil, whether that it be, that is ever
more the work of the same soul.

And all after the worthiness and the wretchedness of this consent,
thereafter it deserveth pain or bliss. If this consent be to evil,
then as fast it hath, by cumbrance of sin, the office of that same
spirit that first made him suggestion of that same sin; and if it be
to the good, then as fast it hath, by grace, the office of that same
spirit that first made him stirring[313] to that same good. For as
oft as any healful thought cometh in our mind, as of chastity, of
soberness, of despising of the world, of wilful poverty, of
patience, of meekness, and of charity, without doubt it is the
spirit of God that speaketh, either by Himsel