But you worshipful religious Canons, do not deem that I slander your order, although my tale may be of a Canon. In every order there is some miscreant, pardon me, and God forbid that all a company should rue a single man’s folly.
A great fool is any counselor, serving a Lord of high honor, who dares presume, or even think, that his counsel should surpass his Lord’s wit.
Now let us touch on the vice of Flattery, which comes not gladly from the heart, but from fear or greed. Flattery is generally insincere praise. Flatterers be the Devil’s nurses, who nourish his children with the milk of adulation.
He who covets is a poor wretch, because he longs for what he can not have. But he who has naught, and covets naught, is rich, although you may think him but a lowly knave.
Now that I have told you by whom you should be counseled, now will I teach you which counsel you ought to eschew. First, you must avoid the counseling of fools. For Solomon says, ‘Take no counsel from a fool, because he can offer no advice but that which follows from his own desires and his own interests.’ The Book says that, ‘The condition of a fool is this: he easily believes evil of every person, and easily believes all goodness is in himself.
In the meanwhile this Yeoman began to smile. “Brother,” said he, “do you wish me to tell you? I am a Fiend. My dwelling is in Hell. And here on Earth I ride about looking for gain, to learn where men will give me any thing. My acquisitions are the sum of all my income. Look how you ride for the same intent. To gain money, you care not how. And so do I, for I would ride to the end of the World to catch my prey.
For the proverb says, ‘He who embraces too much, retains too little.’ And Cato says, ‘Assay to do only such a thing as you have the power to do, lest the burdensome charge oppress you so sorely that it behooves you to abandon the task you have begun.
As Petrus Alphonsus says, ‘If you have the ability to do a thing of which you must later repent, “Nay” is better than “Yea.
Why,” said this Summoner, “ride you then in sundry shapes, and not always in the same one?” “Because we will assume whatever form,” said the Fiend, “is most suitable to catch our prey.” “And what causes you to undertake all this labor?” asked the Summoner.
Lo, what says Saint Augustine: “There is nothing so like the Devil’s child as he who oft chides others.” Saint Paul also says, “It behooves the servant of God not to chide.
And take this for a general rule: Every counsel which is affirmed so strongly that it may not be changed for any condition that may befall, I say this counsel is wicked.
Speak we now of wicked counsel, for he who gives wicked counsel is a traitor. He deceives the one who trusted in him, as Achitophel did unto Absalom. But, nevertheless, his wicked counsel is first against himself. For, as says the Wise Man, “Every deceitful liar has this property in himself: that he who would harm another man, he harms himself first.
The remedy against the Sin of Pride. Now since it is so that you have understood what is Pride, and which are the kinds of it, and from whence Pride arises and springs, you shall understand what is the remedy against the Sin of Pride, and that is humility, or meekness. That is a virtue through which a man has true knowledge of himself, and holds himself to be of no import or esteem, considering always his frailty.
Now malice is of two kinds; that is to say, hardness of heart in wickedness, or else the flesh of a man is so blind that he does not see that he is in Sin, or he cares not that he is in Sin, which is the hardness of the Devil. The other kind of malice is when a man wars against truth, when he knows that it is the truth.
Nor have you well taken heed of the words of Ovid, who says, ‘Under the honeyed enticements of the flesh is hidden the venom that slays the soul.
These folk have little regard for how the Son of God rode upon an ass when He came down from Heaven. And He had no other harness but the clothing of His disciples. Nor do we read that He ever rode upon any other beast.
Things that have been foolishly done, in the hope of favorable Fortune, will never come to a good end.’ And, as the same Seneca says, ‘The more clear and the more shining that Fortune is, the more brittle and the sooner broken is she.
For Seneca says, ‘That man who is nourished by Fortune, she makes of him a great fool.
This you may see that neither wisdom nor riches, beauty nor trickery, strength nor boldness may share power equally with Venus, for as she wishes she may guide the world.
The fiery heat of love by now had cooled, for from the time he kissed her hinder parts, he didn’t give a tinker’s curse for tarts, his malady was cured by his endeavor, and he defied all paramours whatever.