overmuch occupation, and business outward about temporal things; that is their wives, their children, their carnal friends, and their worldly riches, and other things that they have loved inordinately before. For he that will die well and surely must utterly and fully put away out of his mind all temporal and outward things, and plenerly[1] commit himself all to God. And therefore the great clerk Dons [Scotus] saith thus, in the fourth book of sentences: What man that is sick, when he seeth that he shall die, if he put his will thereto to die wilfully, and consenteth fully unto death, as though he hath chose himself the pain of death voluntarily, and so suffereth death patiently, he satisfieth to God for all venial sins; and therefore he taketh away a parcel of satisfaction that he ought to do for deadly sins. And therefore it is right profitable, and full necessary in such a point of need, that a man conform his will to God's will in all things, as every man ought, both sick and whole. But it is seldom seen that any secular or carnal man — or religious either — will dispose himself to death; or furthermore, that is worse, will hear anything of the matter of death; [though indeed he be labouring fast to his endward, hoping that he shall escape the death and] that is the most perilous thing, and most inconvenient that may be in Christian man, as saith the worthy clerk Cantor Pariensis: [2]
But it is to be noted well that the devil in all these temptations above said may compel no man, nor in no
