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To thee dear brother in Christ our Lord send the spirit of counsel and of ghostly strength. Thou writest to me that thou art troubled and tarried of thy might and married in thy conscience for thy shrift, for thou would shrive thee plainly of ail thy sins and thou cannot, and therefore thy grace is withdrawn from thee. And thou makest this skill thereto. Since shrift is the gate of all the sacraments and of grace also, and thou mayst not come to clear and plenary confession, how shalt thou then come to any other grace? And therefore I wot well thy soul is tormented and thy mind is in great bitterness. Forsooth nevertheless our Lord Jesus shall soften thy sorrow by his mercy when him likes. The sorrow that thou sufferest is great, nevertheless it is wholesome. Look that thou be strong of grace neither mistrust nor despair. Thou feelest thyself full of pride, thou canst not void nor tell it. Thou shrivest thy sins as they come to mind in time of confession, and nevertheless thou trowest not that thou art verily shriven.
MS. Brit. Mus. Add 33971, fol. 72 sqq.
* I am indebted to Mr A. I. Doyle for the loan of the photostat of this MS., and to Miss J. Russell-Smith, who has pointed out that it bears some relation to an unedited MS. of a later epistle attributed to Hilton. Our MS. appears to be a translation and adaptation of the middle section of this epistle which was addressed to a lawyer friend. In it Hilton discusses his vocation. He was recovering from a time of sickness and imprisonment and Hilton suggests he should abandon his legal profession, not enter a monastery, but follow his vocation in the world. The part about confession occurs in the middle of the argument. Miss Russell-Smith Points out that Bale said it was addressed to one John Thorpe, whom she identifies several times in document between 1391 and 1461. But he may also have been a relation of the Carmelite of Norwich known to have lived between 1428-1440.—C.K.
1 married: hindered,
2 distinction, reason.
3 Possibly 'that a man's heart turning from God, etc.'
4 horror.
5 smart=promptly.
6 The text has ‘convcrsacioun’ which may be an error or correct in view of the next clause.
7 The thing is the ‘res'. ‘Self' is used for ‘same'.
8 text ‘forgiven’ probably an error.
9 Possibly ‘the taking of the sacrament'.
10 Obscure, perhaps ‘yet thou art not fully sure except in the case of mortal sin'.
11 'by the command of heaven' or,
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