A pleasant new nosegay full of many godly and sweet flowers, lately gatheredA pleasaunt newe nosegaye full of many godly and swete floures, lately gathered

Phil. It is not without a cause, that I have given you this flour. For the savour of all your aforesaid flowers profiteth without this but little.¹ This flour is the very same to your Nosegay that a precious stone a costly pearl, a goodly ouch, is to a ring or any other Jewel. With out this flour all the other will soon wither away, & come to nought. But so long as the beauty of this your flour lasteth, so long can not your Nosegay decay & perish. Can ⟨image 93⟩any thing be good & godly, where love & Charity wanteth? And because ye should know, that I mean none unfeigned love, I have named your flour, Christen Charity. For our Charity & love ought not to be carnal, fleshly, beastlike, worldly,² feigned, unclean & flitting, but spiritual, ghostly, christen, heavenly, true, pure, & abiding for evermore. And this is that Christen Charity, whereof your flour speaketh,³ Let us not love in word nor tongue, but in Work & trueth. Without this Charity S. Paul affirmeth in his Epistle to the Corinthians, that no work,⁴ seem it never so good & godly, profiteth any thing at all.⁵ Read y• Chapter wham ye come home. Certes this Charity & christen love must needs be an excellent thing, seeing it is the end of the Commandment, & the fulfilling of all the law, seeing also that Christ in his last sermon, which he ⟨image 94⟩made to his Disciples a little before his passion exhorteth us with so many words unto it. S. John feareth not so greatly to advance and commend Charity,⁶ that he affirmeth God to be Charity, saying, God is Charity, & he that abideth in Charity, abideth in God, & God in him. Unto this true and Christen Charity. S. Peter also moveth us on this manner: