Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 2.djvu/270

258 by a double hedge—to wit, the teeth and the lips—for no other cause than that we may place a guard upon the mouth, and speak nothing but what is in praise of God. The thorn in the garden, is the tongue itself, so called from its likeness; because, as the material thorn pricks (St. Matth. xxviii. "Twining a crown of thorns, they placed it upon his head, and the blood flowed down his blessed body in consequence of the puncture of the thorns,") thus the thorn, that is, the tongue, pierces a man, one while by taking way his good sense; at another, by falsehood, and then again by discovering the evil that there is in any person; all which ought carefully to be shunned. But the birds resting upon the thorn are the devils, who incline man to vice, so that he becomes their servant. Therefore they will exclaim, in the last day, "Cast this man to us, O righteous judge! for since he would not be thine in all virtue, he is our's in all malice." Let every one of us keep in his tongue, which Cato declares to be the first virtue.