HERE BEGINNETH THE SIX AND SIXTIETH CHAPTER
SENSUALITY is a power of our soul, recking and reigning in the bodily wits,
through the which we have bodily knowing and feeling of all bodily creatures,
whether they be pleasing or unpleasing. And it hath two parts: one through the
which it beholdeth to the needfulness of our body, another through the which it
serveth to the lusts of the bodily wits. For this same power is it, that
grumbleth when the body lacketh the needful things unto it, and that in the
taking of the need stirreth us to take more than needeth in feeding
and furthering of our lusts: that grumbleth in lacking of pleasing creatures,
and lustily is delighted in their presence: that grumbleth in presence of
misliking creatures, and is lustily pleased in their absence. Both this power
and the thing that it worketh in be contained in the Memory.
Before ere man sinned was the Sensuality so obedient unto the Will, unto the
which it is as it were servant, that it ministered never unto it any unordained
liking or grumbling in any bodily creature, or any ghostly feigning of liking or
misliking made by any ghostly enemy in the bodily wits. But now it is not so:
for unless it be ruled by grace in the Will, for to suffer meekly and in measure
the pain of the original sin, the which it feeleth in absence of needful
comforts and in presence of speedful discomforts, and thereto also for to
restrain it from lust in presence of needful comforts, and from lusty plesaunce
in the absence of speedful discomforts: else will it wretchedly and
wantonly welter, as a swine in the mire, in the wealths of this world and the
foul flesh so much that all our living shall be more beastly and fleshly, than
either manly or ghostly.
our kind sponsors.
