It is clear to the writer that only certain persons are capable of this complete freedom in love: and it is to them—the natural mystics, the people with a genius for reality—that his book is addressed. They are “of that lineage that be folks royal,” “called without fail of the Divine goodness,” and it is on their spiritual intuition, their transcendent knowledge, that “all Holy Church is founded”; a suspicious statement in the eyes of orthodox theology. They possess, or are able to possess, the incommunicable gift of spiritual vision. “This gift is given,” says Love, “sometimes in a moment of time. Who that has it, keep it: for it is the most perfect gift that God gives to creature.” So removed is the resulting perception of reality from human wisdom that no one can teach the illuminated soul anything. “Now for God,” says Reason, “Lady Love, say what is this to say? This is to say,” says Love, “that this soul is of so great knowing that though she had all the knowing of all creatures that ever were, be or shall be, she would think it naught in regard of that that she loves.” Yet, true to Neoplatonic principles, she is aware that her highest perceptions are nothing, and her “right great and high words” but “gabbynge” or idle talk, compared with the ineffable reality. She “wots all and wots naught,” and is content it should be so. “He only is my God that none can one word of say, nor all they of Paradise one only point attain nor understand, for all the knowing that they have of Him.” But though the Transcendent God is unknowable, the free soul, in singular contradiction to contemporary asceticism, finds Him everywhere immanent in the world. “And for this, that He is all in all, this soul, says Love, finds Him over all. So that for this all things are to this soul covetable, for she nor finds anything but she finds God.” So Meister Eckhart: “To it all creatures are pure to enjoy; for it enjoyeth all creatures in God and God in all creatures.” The preliminary discipline of the mystic, the hard acquirement of that “very charity” which is “the perfection of virtues” and “dwelleth always in God’s sight ... obeying to nothing that is made but to love” is little dwelt on by the author of the _Mirror_; who did not write for beginners in the contemplative life, but for the mature soul whose love has made him free, and who therefore needs “nor masses nor sermons nor fasting nor orisons, and gives to nature all that he asks, without grudging of conscience”—a practical application of St. Augustine’s dangerous saying, “Love, and do what you like.” M.N., however, interpolates a prudent reminder that “by this way and by sharp contricion souls must go, or than they come to these divine usages.”