And as touching these stirrings of the which thou askest my conceit and my counsel, I say to thee that I conceive of them suspiciously, that is, that[247] they should be conceived on the ape's manner. Men say commonly that the ape doth as he seeth others do; forgive me if I err in my suspicion, I pray thee. Nevertheless, the love that I have to thy soul stirreth me by evidence that I have of a ghostly brother of thine and of mine, touched with those same stirrings of full great[248] silence, of full singular fasting, and of full only woning, on ape's manner, as he granted unto me after long communing with me, and when he had proved himself and his stirrings. For, as he said, he had seen a man in your country, the which man, as it is well known, is evermore in great silence, in singular fasting, and in only dwelling; and certes, as I suppose fully, they are full true stirrings those that that man hath, caused all only of grace, that he feeleth by experience within, and not of any sight or heard say that he hath of any other man's silence without-the which cause if it were, it should be cleped apely, as I say in my simple meaning. And therefore beware, and prove well thy stirrings, and whence they come; for how so thou art stirred, whether from within by grace, or from without on ape's manner, God wote, and I not. Nevertheless this may I say thee in eschewing of perils like unto this: look that thou be no ape, that is to say, look that thy stirrings to silence or to speaking, to fasting or to eating, to onliness or to company, whether they be come from within of abundance of love and of devotion in the spirit and not from without by the windows of thy bodily wits, as thine ears, and thine eyes. For, as Jeremiah saith plainly, by such windows cometh in death: Mors intrat per fenestras.249 And this sufficeth, as little as it is, for answer to the first, where thou askest of me, what is my conceit of thee, and of these stirrings that thou speakest of to me in thy letter.