Seven gifts of the Holy Ghost are in men and women who are ordained to the joy of heaven and lead their life in this world righteously. These they are: Wisdom: Understanding: Counsel: Strength: Knowledge: Pity and the Fear of GOD. Begin we at Counsel, for thereof is most need at the beginning of our works, which we dislike not afterwards. With these seven gifts, the Holy Ghost touches separate men separately. Counsel is doing away with the world's riches, delights, and all things with which men may be ensnared in thought or deed: and therewith (i.e. Counsel) be drawn inwardly to contemplation of GOD. Understanding is, to know what is for to do, and what to leave (undone): and that which shall be given, to give it to them that have need, not to others that have no need. Wisdom is forgetting of earthly things, and thinking of heaven, with discretion in all men's deeds. In this gift, shines contemplation, that is, as S. Austen says "A ghostly death of fleshly affection through the joy of a raised thought." Strength is; enduring to fulfil good purpose, that it be not left, neither for weal nor for woe. Pity is: that a man be mild: and gainsay no holy Writ when it smites his sins, whether he understand it or not; but with all his might that he purge the vileness of sin, in himself and in others. Knowledge is that (which) makes a man in good hope, not making him quake for his righteousness, but sorrowing for his sin; and that a man gather earthly good only to the honour of GOD, and to other men's advantage more than to his own. The Fear of God is: that we turn not again to our sin for any egging on: and then is fear perfect in us and holy, when we dread to anger GOD in the least sin that we can know, and flee it as poison.