1339. _March._—Much encouraged on hearing Dr. Tauler’s sermon on ‘Whose is the image and superscription?‘[111] It was the last part that gladdened me more especially, when he was enforcing watchfulness and self-examination, and yet showed that the command might be obeyed by men such as I am, in the midst of a worldly calling. Many, said he, complain that they are so busied with outward things as to have no time to look inward. But let such, for every six steps they have to take outward in their daily duty, take one step inward, and observe their hearts, and their business will be to them no stumbling-block. Many are cloistered in body while thought and desire wander to and fro over the earth. But many others do, even amid the noise and stir of the market-place and the shop, keep such watch over their hearts, and set such ward on their senses, that they go unharmed, and their inner peace abides unbroken. Such men are much more truly to be called monks than those who, within a convent wall, have thought and senses so distraught that they can scarce say a single Paternoster with true devotion. He said that God impressed his image and superscription on our souls when he created us in his image. All true Christians should constantly retire into themselves, and examine throughout their souls wherein this image of the Holy Trinity lieth, and clear away therefrom such images and thoughts as are not of God’s impressing,—all that is merely earthly in love and care, all that hath not God purely for its object. It must be in separateness from the world, withdrawal from all trust and satisfaction in what is creaturely, that we present God the image he hath engraven, clear and free from rust. This image and superscription lies in the inmost inmost of the soul, whither God only cometh, and neither men nor angels, and where he delights to dwell. He will share it with no other. He hath said, ‘My delight is in the sons of men.’ Thus is the inmost of our soul united to the inmost of the very Godhead, where the eternal Father doth ever speak and bring forth his eternal essential Word, his only-begotten Son, equal in honour, power, and worthiness, as saith the Apostle—‘He is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person.’ By him hath the Father made all things. As all things have their beginning and source from the Godhead, by the birth of the eternal Word out of the Father, so do all creatures in their essence subsist by the same birth of the Son out of the Father, and therefore shall they all return in the same way to their source, to wit, through the Son to the Father. From this eternal birth of the Son ariseth the love of God the Father to his divine Son, and that of the Son to his divine Father, which love