all, if they will on Dooms-Day
have the benison that JESUS shall give to all who do them. Or else they
may dread the malison that all men have who will not do them, when they
had goods to do them with.

_Contemplative life_ has two parts: a lower and a higher. The lower part
is meditation of holy writing, that is GOD'S word, and in other good
thoughts and sweet that men have of the grace of GOD, about the love of
JESUS Christ, and also in praising GOD in psalms and hymns and in
prayers. The higher part of contemplation is beholding and yearning
after the things of heaven, and joy in the Holy Ghost: that men have
oft, although it be so that they be not praying with the mouth, but only
thinking of GOD, and of the beauty of angels, and of holy souls. Then
may I say that contemplation is a wonderful joy of GOD'S love; the which
joy is praising GOD, that cannot be told; and that wonderful praising is
in the soul: and for abundance of joy and sweetness, it ascends into
the mouth; so that the heart and the tongue agree in one, and body and
soul joy, living in GOD. A man or woman that is appointed to
contemplative life, first GOD inspires them to forsake this world, and
all the vanity and covetousness and vile lust thereof. Afterwards He
leads them by their lone and speaks to their heart, and as the prophet
says "He gives them to suck of the sweetness of the beginning of love":
and then He sets them in the will to give themselves wholly to prayers
and meditations and tears. Afterwards, when they have suffered many
temptations, and when the foul annoyances of thoughts that are idle, and
of vanities which will encumber those who cannot destroy them, are
passing away, He makes them gather up their heart to them and fasten it
only in Him, and opens to the eye of their souls the gates of heaven:
and then the fire of love verily lies in their heart, and burns therein,
and makes it clean from all earthly filth, and afterwards they are
contemplative men, and ravished in love. For contemplation is a sight;
and they see into Heaven with their ghostly eye. But thou shalt wit that
no man has perfect sight of heaven, whilst they are living bodily here.
But as soon as they die, they are brought before GOD, and see Him face
to face, and eye to eye, and dwell with Him without end. For Him they
sought, and Him they coveted, and Him they loved, with all their might.

Lo, Margaret, I have told thee shortly the Form of Living, and how thou
mayst