bitterness and biting of conscience. And this is the goodness of our Lord, that sith the soul is punished in the sensuality, and the flesh is partner of the pain, that afterward the soul be comforted in the sensuality, and the flesh be fellow of joy and comfort with the soul, not fleshly, but ghostly, as he was fellow in tribulation and pain. This is the freedom and the lordship, the dignity, and the worship that a man[162] hath over all creatures, the which dignity he may so recover by grace here, that every creature savour to him as it is. And that is, when by grace he seeth, he heareth, he feeleth only God in all creatures. On this manner of wise a soul is made ghostly in the sensuality by abundance of charity, that is, in the substance of the soul. Also, our Lord comforteth a soul by angel's song. What that song is, it may not be described by no bodily likeness, for it is ghostly, and above all manner of imagination and reason. It may be felt and perceived in a soul, but it may not be shewed. Nevertheless, I shall speak thereof to thee as me thinketh. When a soul is purified by the love of God, illumined by wisdom, stabled by the might of God, then is the eye of the soul opened to behold ghostly things, as virtues and angels and holy souls, and heavenly things.[163] Then is the soul able because of cleanness to feel the touching, the speaking of good angels. This touching and speaking, it is ghostly and not bodily.[164] For when the soul is lifted and ravished out of the sensuality, and out of mind of any earthly things, then in great fervour of love and light (if our Lord vouchsafe) the soul may hear and feel heavenly sound, made by the presence of angels in loving of God. Not that this song of angels is the sovereign joy of the soul; but for the difference that is between a man's soul in flesh and an angel, because of uncleanness, a soul may not hear it, but by ravishing in love, and needeth for to be purified well clean, and fulfilled of much charity, or[165] it were able for to hear heavenly sound. For the sovereign and the essential joy is in the love of God by Himself and for Himself, and the secondary is in communing and beholding of angels and ghostly creatures. For right as a soul, in understanding of ghostly things, is often times touched and moved through bodily imagination by working of angels; as Ezekiel the prophet did see in bodily imagination the soothfastness of God's privities;[166] right so, in the love of God, a soul by the presence of angels is ravished out of mind of all earthly and fleshly things in to an heavenly joy, to hear angel's song and heavenly sound, after that the charity is more or less.[167] Now, then, me thinketh that there may no soul feel verily angel's song nor heavenly sound, but he be in perfect charity; though all that are in perfect charity have not felt it, but only that soul that is so purified in the fire of love that all earthly savour is brent out of it, and all mean letting[168] between