HERE BEGINNETH THE SIX AND SIXTIETH CHAPTER
Of the other secondary power, Sensuality by name; and of the
works and of the obedience of it unto Will, before sin and
after.
SENSUALITY is a power of our soul, recking and reigning in the bodily wits,
through the which we have bodily knowing and feeling of all bodily creatures,
whether they be pleasing or unpleasing. And it hath two parts: one through the
which it beholdeth to the needfulness of our body, another through the which it
serveth to the lusts of the bodily wits. For this same power is it, that
grumbleth when the body lacketh the needful things unto it, and that in the
taking of the need stirreth us to take more than needeth in feeding
and furthering of our lusts: that grumbleth in lacking of pleasing creatures,
and lustily is delighted in their presence: that grumbleth in presence of
misliking creatures, and is lustily pleased in their absence. Both this power
and the thing that it worketh in be contained in the Memory.
Before ere man sinned was the Sensuality so
obedient unto the Will, unto the which it is as it were servant, that it
ministered never unto it any unordained liking or grumbling in any bodily
creature, or any ghostly feigning of liking or misliking made by any ghostly
enemy in the bodily wits. But now it is not so: for unless it be ruled by grace
in the Will, for to suffer meekly and in measure the pain of the original sin,
the which it feeleth in absence of needful comforts and in presence of speedful
discomforts, and thereto also for to restrain it from lust in presence of
needful comforts, and from lusty plesaunce in the absence of
speedful discomforts: else will it wretchedly and wantonly welter, as a swine
in the mire, in the wealths of this world and the foul flesh so much that all
our living shall be more beastly and fleshly, than either manly or ghostly.