The Minor Works of Walter Hilton

Walter Hilton

Translated by Dorothy Jones

66 chapters · about 2 h

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The opening

CHAPTER I TO WHAT MANNER OF MEN BELONGETH MIXED LIFE, AND HOW THEY SHALL FORSAKE THEIR SINS AND ABLE THEMSELVES TO THE SERVICE OF GOD AND TO GHOSTLY WORKING

HERE BEGINNETH THE BOOK THAT IS CALLED MIXED LIFE, WHICH IS DRAWN OUT BETWEEN ACTIVE LIFE AND LIFE CONTEMPLATIVE

TO WHAT MANNER OF MEN BELONGETH MIXED LIFE, AND HOW THEY SHALL FORSAKE THEIR SINS AND ABLE THEMSELVES TO THE SERVICE OF GOD AND TO GHOSTLY WORKING

[BROTHER and sister, bodily and ghostly,] two manner of states there be in Holy Church, by the which Christian souls please God and get them the bliss of heaven: the one is bodily and the other is ghostly.

Bodily working belongeth principally to worldly men or women, the which have lawfully worldly goods and wilfully use worldly businesses. Also it belongeth to all young beginning men, which come newly out of worldly sins to the service of God; for to make them able to ghostly working, and for to break down the unbuxomness of the body by reason and by such bodily working, that it.might be supple and ready, and not much contrarious to the spirit in ghostly working. For, as St Paul saith, as woman was made for man and not man for woman, right so bodily working was made for ghostly and not ghostly for bodily.

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About this edition

The words
Dorothy Jones's English translation, copied word for word.
Left out
  • Page numbers and running heads from the printed pages, in 37 places
  • Scan noise from the library binding and endpapers (the OCR reads the cover as letters) (37 blocks)
  • Notes and pages added by translators, editors or publishers, in 2 places
  • The title page and opening pages before chapter 1
  • A preface, foreword or afterword
  • The Internet Archive's notice (“Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2025”) (2 blocks)
  • Other material that isn't the author's
  • Printed ornaments and dividers
  • The closing line “Explicit.” after the Eight Chapters on Perfection (a closing line, as “THE END”)