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Article: Grace abounding: justification in Passau 16 of 'Piers Plowman.' (William, Langland)
- Article from:
- Papers on Language & Literature
- Article date:
- March 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Southern Illinois University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Love, personified in Piers Plowman, presents the reader with a contradiction. On the one hand, love never appears as a beggar (B.15: 227), never pretends, for example, to be disabled, when he might actually go to work (B.7: 90-93).(1) On the other, such beggars are no doubt scarcely literate--preliterate perhaps. They are lewed, "ignorant." It is exactly the lewed, however, who are justified before God, not by anything like their best attempts to support themselves, but by their faith: "sola fides sufficit to save with lewed peple." Moreover, in the view of Langland's personified love, this sufficiency is true not only for the unlettered, but for scribes themselves: