body to make her middle small (both twain to her
great pain) for the pride of a little foolish praise, he said unto
her, "Forsooth, madam, if God give you not hell, he shall do you a
great wrong. For it must needs be your own very right, for you buy
it very dear and take very great pain therefore!"

Those who now lie in hell for their wretched living here do now
perceive their folly in the more pain that they took here for the
less pleasure. There confess they now their folly, and cry out,
"We have been wearied in the way of wickedness." And yet, while
they were walking in that way, they would not rest themselves, but
ran on still in their weariness, and put themselves still unto
more pain and more, for a little childish pleasure, short and soon
gone. For that they took all that labour and pain, beside the
everlasting pain that followed it for their further advantage
afterward. So help me God, but I verily think many a man buyeth
hell here with so much pain that he might have bought heaven with
less than half!

But yet, as I say, while these fleshly and worldly busy folk are
walking about in this round busy maze of the devil called Business
who walketh about in these two times of darkness, their wits are
so bewitched by the secret enchantment of the devil that they mark
not the great long miserable weariness and pain that the devil
maketh them take and endure about naught. And therefore they take
it for no tribulation, so that they need no comfort. And therefore
it is not for their sakes that I speak of all this, saving that it
may serve them for counsel toward the perceiving of their own
foolish misery, through the help of God's grace, beginning to
shine upon them again. But there are very good folk and virtuous
who are in the daylight of grace, and yet the devil tempteth them
busily to such fleshly delight. And since they see plenty of
worldly substance fall unto them, and feel the devil in like wise
busily tempt them to set their hearts upon it, they are sore
troubled therewith. And they begin to fear thereby that they are
not with God in the light but with this devil that the prophet
calleth _Negotium_--that is to say, Business--walking about in the
two times of darknesses.

Howbeit, as I said before of those good folk and gracious who are
in the worldly wealth of great power and authority and thereby
fear the devil's arrow of pride, so say I now here again of these
who stand in dread of fleshly foul sin and co