But to this blessed condition none may attain perfectly here on
earth. The writer goes on to speak of the mystical consolations and
visitations granted to the loving soul in this life, distinguishing
the feelings and sensations that are mere delusions, from those that
truly proceed from the fire of love in the affection and the light
of knowing in the reason, and are a very anticipation of that
ineffable "onehead" in heaven.

The three remaining treatises--the Epistle of Prayer, the Epistle of
Discretion in Stirrings of the Soul, and the Treatise of Discerning
of Spirits[19]--are associated in the manuscripts with four other
works: the Divine Cloud of Unknowing, the Epistle of Privy Counsel,
a paraphrase of the Mystical Theology of Dionysius entitled Dionise
Hid Divinity, and the similar translation or paraphrase of the
Benjamin Minor of Richard of St. Victor already considered.[20]
These seven treatises are all apparently by the same hand. The
Divine Cloud of Unknowing has been credited to Walter Hilton, as
likewise to William Exmew, or to Maurice Chauncy, Carthusians of the
sixteenth century, whereas the manuscripts are at least a hundred
years earlier than their time; but it seems safer to attribute the
whole series to an unknown writer of the second part of the
fourteenth century, who "marks a middle point between Rolle and
Hilton."[21] The spiritual beauty of the three here reprinted--and,
more particularly, of the Epistle of Prayer, with its glowing
exposition of the doctrine of Pure Love--speaks for itself. They
show us mysticism brought down, if I may say so, from the clouds for
the practical guidance of the beginner along this difficult way.
And, in the Epistle of Discretion, we find even a rare touch of
humour; where the counsellor "conceives suspiciously" of his
correspondent's spiritual stirrings, lest "they should be conceived