The Scale of Perfection

The Scale of Perfection is a religious book written by Walter Hilton, English mystic from fourteenth century and it presents his major work. The first book of The Scale of Perfection is addressed to a woman recently enclosed as an anchoress, offering her appropriate spiritual exercises. Most of it deal with extirpation of the 'foul image of sin' in the soul - perversion of the image of the Trinity in the three spiritual powers of Mind, Reason and Will - through a series of meditations on the seven deadly sins. The second book, which addresses itself to Hilton's former reader, who he says has further questions, seems from its style and content rather to address a larger, perhaps more sophisticated audience. Its main theme is reformation of the soul, in faith alone and in both faith and feeling. The latter is presented in an extended metaphor as a spiritual journey to Jerusalem

Walter Hilton (c.1340/1345-1396) was an English Augustinian mystic, whose works gained influence in 15th-century England and Wales. He has been canonized by the Church of England and by the Episcopal Church in the United States.