(Chapters 1 and 4; extracts)

The Chastising was popular throughout the fifteenth century, and is thought to have been composed in the 1380s or 1390s. The author's prologue presents him as writing for a woman religious to whom he acts as spiritual adviser. The title is the author's, referring to his theme – the profit to the soul of spiritual and physical afflictions – on which he has skilfully anthologized, edited and woven together teaching compiled from a range of texts. Chapter 1 includes borrowings from the Ancrene Riwle and from Suso's Horologium Sapientiae chapter 4 draws on a Latin version of Ruusbroec's The Spiritual Espousals.

(1)…Whanne oure Lord suffrith us to be tempted in oure bigynnynge, he pleieth with us as the modir with hir child, whiche sumtyme fleeth awei and hideth hir, and suffreth the child to wepe and crie and besili to seke hir with sobbynge and wepynge. But thanne cometh the modir sodeinli with mery chier and laughhynge, biclippynge hir child and kissynge, and wipeth awei the teeris. Thus farith oure Lord with us, as for a tyme he withdraweth his grace and his comfort from us, in so moche that in his absence we bien al cold and drie, swetnesse have we noon ne savour in devocion, slough we bien to preie or to travaile, [the wrecchid soule sodeynli chaunged]a and made ful hevy and ful of sorwe and care. Thanne is the bodi sluggi and the hert ful hard, and al oure spirites so dulle that the lif of oure bodi is to us noyous.