active 1279 d'Orléans Laurent

“ The seventh bough of avarice is wickedness. I call wickedness, when the man is so wicked and such a devil, that he dreads not to do a great sin, deadly and horrible, or great harm to others, for a little gain or for advantage to himself. ”

“ For as much more foul and more horrible the sin is, the more shrift avails. For the shame that one has in the telling is a great part of the penance. This sin is so hateful to God that He did rain burning fire and stinking brimstone upon the city of Sodom, and of Gomorrah, and caused five cities to sink into hell. The devil himself, who brings it about, has shame when man does it, and the air is envenomed with the deed. ”

“ The great sin may be the lust. The third step is the consenting of heart, and of the reason, and of the will. And such consentings are always deadly sin. After the consenting comes the desire and the great heat that they have to sin, and do more than twenty sins in the day, in sight of ladies and of maidens, who show themselves fairly adorned, who often show and adorn themselves the more quaintly and the more beautifully in order to make fools wonder at them, and think not to sin greatly because they have no will to do the deed. ”

“ Pride is the devil’s own daughter, who has a great share in his nature. Pride wars against God because of His goodness, and God throws down pride and wars against it. Pride is king of wicked habits. It (she) is the lion that devours all. Pride destroys all the goodness and all the graces and all the good works that are in man. For pride makes of alms sin, and of virtues vices, and by good works, whereby one should buy heaven, it makes us win hell. ”

“ And although he be by his saying a Christian, he denies by deed and shows that he is not. But especially in three ways, is a man called an apostate and false Christian, either because he believes not what he should, as does the Bulgar, and the heretic, and the apostate, who deny their belief; or because he sins against the belief that he believes, as do the perjured and the liars of the belief; or believes more than he should, as do the diviners and the witches and the sorceresses, who work by the devil’s power. And all those that in such things believe and put their trust, sin deadly. ”

“ The third bough of pride is arrogance, which one calls overweening or presumption, when the man thinks more of himself than he should; that is to say, that thinks he is worth more than he is, or that he can do more than he can, or that he knows more than he does, or thinks that he is worth more, or more able, or more knowing than any other. This sin is the strength of the devil, for it protects and nourishes all the great spiritual sins. This sin shows itself in many ways, either by deed or by speech, but especially in six ways ”

“ And so there are some that have a good beginning, in order to live well and to profit, and are as in grass; the same the envious takes pains to quench if he can. Others are as in the ear, which flowers well in goodness and by it is profitable to God or to the world ”

“ The seven heads of the beast of hell are the seven capital sins by which the devil draws to himself also all the world. For scarcely it befalls that one falls not into the throat of some of the seven heads, and therefore St. John says well that it had power against the saints. For on earth is no man so holy that he can perfectly escape all the kinds of sin that come of these seven heads without special privilege of grace, as it was in the maid Mary, or in some others by special grace, which they had of God. ”

“ Now, think right well in thy heart how often thou hast done the same sin that thou hast in thy heart, despisest those that are more worthy than thou because of some external graces that God hath given thee, either because of nobility, or prowess, or riches, or wisdom, or fairness, or other gifts, whatever they may be; wherefore thou praisest thyself more than thou shouldst, and others less. ”

“ The fifth bough of pride is idle bliss; that is, foolish liking of foolish praise, when he feels in his heart knowingly that he is, or weens to be, praised for something that he has in him, or weens to have, and will be praised therefore, for which he should praise God. And therefore idle bliss robs God, and steals what is His. For of all our goods He shall have the honour and the praise, and we the gain. ”

“ The great are the sinful and dishonest reeves, provosts, beadles and constables, that steal the fines and withhold the revenue of their lords, and reckon more in deeds and in expenditure, and less in receipts and in revenue. Such are the great officials that are in the house of rich men, that make great outlays, and give liberally the goods of their lords without their knowledge and without their will.
To this sin belong the sins of the wife, that does so much by her sin that the children, that she knows well that she has by adultery, bear away the legitimacy. ”

“ One thing I shall not forget, that he that wins cannot well withhold what he wins, but shall give it for God’s love, except it be in such a way that he had it by fraud or by force, like him that by force causes others to play. ”

“ The sixth bough of pride is hypocrisy, which is a sin that makes one show the good without that is not within. 21 Those, then, are hypocrites who pretend to be good men and are not, who pretend to have more strength than name of good man, than truth and holiness. ”

“ In this sin are those that have dread for naught, that dare not begin to do well because they have dread that God will fail them, which is the dread of the dreamers who have dread of their dreams. They are like him that dare not go in the path because of the snail which shows him his horns, and like the child that dare not go his way because of the goose that blows. ”

“ For there is no sin so great that God does not forgive in this world, if man repents and prays for mercy for the sin, that wars by its might against the grace of the Holy Ghost, in that it wars against other men’s spiritual good, as the Jews opposed Jesu Christ for the good things that He did. ”

“ For there is an hypocrisy foul, and another foolish, and the third subtle. Those are foul hypocrites who do their foul deeds in corners and show themselves good before the people. Such our Lord calls painted and gilded sepulchres. Those are foolish hypocrites who keep themselves cleanly enough as regards the body, and do many and good penances principally for the fame of the world, because one holds them to be good men. Those are indeed fools, for of good metal they make false money. ”

“ The third head of the beast is hate. But thou shalt know that there is one hate, which is virtue, which the good man hath against evil; another, which is very great sin, that is fierceness of heart, wherefrom come many boughs, and chiefly four, (which) are the four wars that the felon hath. The first is with himself, for when man bears (him) hate to the torment (read of) soul and body, so that man cannot sleep nor have any rest, sometimes it deprives him of meat and drink and makes him fall into a fever, or into such sorrow that he receives death. ”

“ That is the devil’s penny, wherewith he buys all the fair pennyworths in the market of this world, which are the good works. And because there are three kinds of goods that man hath of God, and that the devil wall buy with his pence, therefore this bough divides into three kinds of small boughs, whereof grows every kind of sin, which no clerk can tell. The same three kinds of goods that one has of God are the gifts of nature, the gifts of hap, the gifts of grace. The natural gifts are those that one calls ‘by nature,’ either as to the body or as to the soul ”

“ Idle bliss is the great wind that throws down the great towers and the high steeples, and throws to the ground the great beeches in woods, and makes the great hills to quake, which are the high men and (those) that are most worthy. ”

“ There is great sense in observing moderation in meat and in drink, and great health, for many people die, and often there come great sicknesses. But whoever will learn this moderation, he shall know and understand that there are many ways of living in the world. The first lives by the flesh, the second by his jollity, the third by his physic, the fourth by his honesty, the fifth by what his (their) sins require, the sixth by the spirit and by the love of God. ”

“ The thief common and open are those that by such craft live, on whom one does judgment when one takes them. Of such there are many kinds on land and on sea. The hidden thief is he that steals in corners and secretly, great things or little by (their) fighting, or by treason, or by cunning. ”

“ When the champion has felled his man and holds him by the throat, with great difficulty he arises. And so it is with those that the devil holds through sin, and therefore blithely he runs at the throat, like the wolf to the sheep, in order to strangle him, as he did to Eve and to Adam in the terrestrial paradise. That is the fisherman of hell, who takes the fish by the throat and by the chin. This sin much displeases God. For the glutton works too great a shame when he makes his god of a sack full of dung, that is, of his belly, which he loves more than God, and in it remains, and serves it. ”

“ Afterwards, when the envious hears or sees other men’s ill, whatever it be, either ill of body, as death or sickness, or ill of chance (hap) , as poverty or adversity, or spiritual ill, as when he hears that some, that one held good men, are blamed for some vice. At such things he rejoices in his heart. Afterwards, when he sees or hears the good of others, be it good of nature, or good of hap, or good of grace, whereof we have spoken above, then there comes a sorrow to his heart, so that he cannot be at rest, nor make gladness, nor fair pretence. ”

“ Those that live by the Spirit are those that dwell in the love of God, whom the Holy Ghost teaches to observe order and reason and measure; those that have control over their bodies, who is so taught that he asks for no extraordinary thing, and does what the Spirit commands without murmuring and without contradiction. ”

“ The second behest is as follows: ‘Thou shalt not take God’s name in vain;’ that is to say, ‘Thou shalt not swear for naught and without good reason,’ which our Lord Himself forbids us in His Gospel, that one should not swear, neither by the heaven, nor by the earth, nor by other creature. Yet from good cause one may swear without sin, as in judgment, where one demands oath of truth, or out of judgment from other good cause, and with purity and reason. In no other manner is it right to swear. ”

“ After sloth is forgetting. For whoever is slothful often forgets. Because of these two sins of forgetting it often befalls that he cannot be shriven; he forgets his shortcomings and his sins, which is great peril. For none can have forgiveness without true shrift, which produces repentance of heart, confession of mouth, obedience in deed; that is, amending and reparation. There is no man so good 27 that, if he saw well his own shortcomings, would not find enough to say each day in his shrift. But sloth and forgetting make the sinners blind, so that they see not in the book of their conscience. ”

“ And the same sorrow overcomes him so much that all that one says to him, all that one does to him, all that he hears, all that he sees, it all annoys him, and so he falls into sorrow 28 and into disinclination to live, so that he himself hastens and desires his death; and this is the fifth vice. After all these sorrowful points of sloth the devil gives him the deadly stroke, and brings him to despair. Therefore, he compasses his death and slays himself, as desperate and gives himself to all evils, and dreads not to do sin, whatever it be. ”

“ THE FOURTH HEAD OF THE EVIL BEAST OF HELL.
The fourth head of the wicked beast is sloth, that is, idleness and disinclination to do well. This sin is too evil a root, that casts many evil boughs. This idleness, which is sloth, makes a man have evil beginning, and more evil amending, and worse ending. Evil beginning has the slothful through six sins. The first is thinness, when the man loves our Lord little and lukewarmly, whom he should love ardently, and therefrom it comes that he is feeble and lukewarm to do all good things. ”

“ For pride first broke fellowship and order, when Lightbearer (Lucifer) the angel, because of his great beauty and his great wit, would 13 be above the other angels, and would make himself equal to God, who had made him so fair and so good, and therefore he fell from heaven and became a devil, both he and all his fellowship. All the proud, who fellowship and order of men destroy and break, are like him, when they will be above others, and be more famed and praised than any other that are more worthy. ”

“ The twelfth article is, to believe the general resurrection of the body, and the life without end, that is the bliss of Paradise, which God shall give to them that have deserved it by good faith and by good works. ”