Them that write of this matter,
As though I know their places there."

Moreover, as he says (probably without implying any special allegorical
meaning), they seem so bright that it would destroy my eyes to look upon
them. Personal inspection, in his opinion, was not necessary for a faith
which at some times may, and at others must, take the place of knowledge;
for we find him, at the opening of the "Prologue" to the "Legend of Good
Women," in a passage the tone of which should not be taken to imply less
than its words express, writing, as follows:--

A thousand times I have heard men tell,
That there is joy in Heaven, and pain in hell;
And I accorde well that it is so
But natheless, yet wot I well also,
That there is none doth in this country dwell
That either hath in heaven been or hell,
Or any other way could of it know,
But that he heard, or found it written so,
For by assay may no man proof receive.
But God forbid that men should not believe
More things than they have ever seen with eye!
Men shall not fancy everything a lie
Unless themselves it see, or else it do;
For, God wot, not the less a thing is true,
Though every wight may not it chance to see.

The central thought of these lines, though it afterwards receives a
narrower and more commonplace application, is no other than that which has
been so splendidly expressed by Spenser in the couplet:--