wners on rich men for the hurt
of the poor (and that is the worst of all)--Ah, my poor brethren who
have gone astray, I say not to you, go home and repent lest you mar our
great deeds, but rather come afield and there repent. Many a day have
ye been fools, but hearken unto me and I shall make you wise above the
wisdom of the earth; and if ye die in your wisdom, as God wot ye well
may, since the fields ye wend to bear swords for daisies, and spears
for bents, then shall ye be, though men call you dead, a part and
parcel of the living wisdom of all things, very stones of the pillars
that uphold the joyful earth.

"Forsooth, ye have heard it said that ye shall do well in this world
that in the world to come ye may live happily for ever; do ye well
then, and have your reward both on earth and in heaven; for I say to
you that earth and heaven are not two but one; and this one is that
which ye know, and are each one of you a part of, to wit, the Holy
Church, and in each one of you dwelleth the life of the Church, unless
ye slay it. Forsooth, brethren, will ye murder the Church any one of
you, and go forth a wandering man and lonely, even as Cain did who slew
his brother? Ah, my brothers, what an evil doom is this, to be an
outcast from the Church, to have none to love you and to speak with
you, to be without fellowship! Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is
heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell: fellowship is life, and lack of
fellowship is death: and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for
fellowship's sake that ye do them, and the life that is in it, that
shall live on and on for ever, and each one of you part of it, while
many a man's life upon the earth from the earth shall wane.

"Therefore, I bid you not dwell in hell but in heaven, or while ye
must, upon earth, which is a part of heaven, and forsooth no foul part.

"Forsooth, he that waketh in hell and feeleth his heart fail him, shall
have memory of the merry days of earth, and how that when his heart
failed him there, he cried on his fellow, were it his wife or his son
or his brother or his gossip or his brother sworn in arms, and how that
his fellow heard him and came and they mourned together under the sun,
till again they laughed together and were but half sorry between them.
This shall he think on in hell, and cry on his fellow to help him, and
shall find that therein is no help because there is no fellowship, but
every man for himself. Therefore, I te