Chaucerian and Other Pieces: Being a Supplement to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
General
Chaucerian and Other Pieces: Being a Supplement to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
Chaucer, Geoffrey, -1400
'I wol,' quod she, 'answere thee blyvely. Right as men wil
not thorow necessitè, right so is not love of wil thorow necessitè; 20
ne thorow necessitè wrought thilke same wil. For if he wolde
it not with good wil, it shulde nat have been wrought; although
that he doth, it is nedeful to be doon. But if a man do sinne, it
is nothing els but to +wilne that he shulde nat; right so sinne
of wil is not to be [in] maner necessary don, no more than wil is 25
necessarye. Never-the-later, this is sothe; if a man wol sinne,
it is necessarye him to sinne, but th[r]ough thilke necessitè nothing
is constrayned ne defended in the wil; right so thilke thing that
free-wil wol and may, and not may not wilne; and nedeful is
that to wilne he may not wilne. But thilke to wilne nedeful is; for 30
impossible to him it is oon thing and the same to wilne and not to
wilne. The werke, forsothe, of wil, to whom it is yeve that it be that
he hath in wil, and that he wol not, voluntarie +or spontanye it is;
for by spontanye wil it is do, that is to saye, with good wil not
constrayned: than by wil not constrayned it is constrayned to 35
be; and that is it may not +togider be. If this necessitè maketh
libertè of wil, whiche that, aforn they weren, they might have ben
eschewed and shonned: god than, whiche that knoweth al
tr[o]uthe, and nothing but tr[o]uthe, al these thinges, as they
arn spontanye or necessarie, +seeth; and as he seeth, so they 40
ben. And so with these thinges wel considred, it is open at the
ful, that without al maner repugnaunce god beforn wot al maner
thinges [that] ben don by free wil, whiche, aforn they weren,
[it] might have ben [that] never they shulde be. And yet ben
they thorow a maner necessitè from free wil +discended. 45
Hereby may (quod she) lightly ben knowe that not al thinges to
be, is of necessitè, though god have hem in his prescience. For
som thinges to be, is of libertè of wil. And to make thee to have
ful knowinge of goddes beforn-weting, here me (quod she) what
I shal say.' 50
'Blythly, lady,' quod I, 'me list this mater entyrely to
understande.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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