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Rh his dwelling alike in the cloister and in the world. He appears sometimes in religious, sometimes in secular habit, but it is not by his habit that he may be known. He proclaims himself capable of any wickedness that may suit his purpose. The God of Love interrupts his discourse by asking; Who is this impudent and unblushing devil? Is religion to be looked for among the laity? Most assuredly, replies False-Seeming. Because a man does not wear a religious habit that is no reason that he leads an evil life. He then begins a denunciation of the brethren of the mendicant orders, of whom the secular clergy were jealous to a degree, on account of the special privileges they enjoyed. False-Seeming declares, moreover, that he has as many different shapes as Proteus himself.

He knows well how to change his disguise. Now is he a knight, now a monk, now a prelate, now a canon, or whatever other character pleases him. He now holds forth as a preaching friar, and describes how the powers accorded to him by the Pope in that capacity enable him to gain the confidence of the people, and set at nought the secular clergy. He makes a general attack on the mendicants, following the arguments of William of S. Amour, who wrote in the twelfth century in defence of the University of Paris, when it denounced the Begging Friars. At the request of the God of Love he undertakes to specify what people may reasonably gain a livelihood by mendicancy.