He then that thinks well, and often considers the gifts which God hath given him, and gives always, and that he has no good thing which God has not given him, neither gifts of nature, as fairness and health and strength of body, and sleight and natural wit as regards the soul; nor gifts of chance, as riches, honour, and nobility; nor gifts of grace, as are virtues and good works, well should he thank God for all His good things; for one goodness demands another. The second untruth that comes of pride is madness. One holds a man mad who is out of his wits, in whom reason is gone astray. Then the same grows right foolish and gone astray and well called mad, that wittingly and boldly the goods, that are not his but his Lord’s goods—whereof it behoves him strictly to yield reckoning and account, to wit, the goods of such great price and the temporal goods that he hath in custody, the virtues of the body, and the thoughts, and the consents, and the wills of the souls—wastes and spends in follies and in excesses before the eyes of his Lord, and provides not for his reckoning and knows well that it behoves him to reckon, and knows not when, neither the day nor the hour. Such folly is well called witlessness. Of such vices the great proud men are full, that use wickedly the great goods that God has lent them. The third untruth that comes of pride is apostasy. He is indeed an apostate that puts the land that he holds of his Lord into the hand of the enemy, and does him homage. Such sin makes him who sins mortal, for then, as much as in him lies, he does homage to the devil, and becomes his thrall, and yields him all that he holds of God, both body and soul and other good things, which he places at the service of the devil. And although he be by his saying a Christian, he denies by deed and shows that he is not. But especially in three ways, is a man called an apostate and false Christian, either because he believes not what he should, as does the Bulgar, and the heretic, and the apostate, who deny their belief; or because he sins against the belief that he believes, as do the perjured and the liars of the belief; or believes more than he should, as do the diviners and the witches and the sorceresses, who work by the devil’s power. And all those that in such things believe and put their trust, sin deadly. For all such things are against the belief, and therefore holy Church forbids them. These are the kinds of untruth, which is the first bough of pride. THE SECOND BOUGH OF PRIDE.