Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 2.djvu/355

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My beloved, man is that sinner; and the unicorn is death. The pit is the world; the tree is life, on either side of which stands a wall. The post which the vipers occupied is the human frame; the dragon is the devil, and the lower pit is hell. The honied bough is the pleasures of sin; the friend, any Christian preacher; and the ladder is penitence.

(98) relates of Ligurius, a noble knight, that he induced the inhabitants of the state to make oath, that they would faithfully preserve certain just and wholesome,