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254 unless health requires it. In their dress let them wear nothing which savours of vanity or expense; let them abstain from loud laughing, and from every gesture of body which savours of levity; knowing of a certainty, as Ecclesiasticus says, that the clothing of the body, and the laughter of the teeth, and the gait of a man tell what he is.

'Let them avoid idleness as the surest root of temptations to evil; and for that cause let them have with them at least the sacred Scriptures, on which let them perpetually meditate.

'Let them not contend with any priest, above all with their elders, to whom let them show all reverence and honour, that by their example they may show the laity how they should bear themselves towards priests.

'Let them beware of the habit of objecting or of opposing themselves to what others say, as they used in the schools by way of exercise, because in the familiar intercourse among men it is highly odious.

'Let them not easily believe any ill of their fellow priests and brethren, nor by any means publish it, or lend an ear to those who do so.

On all this wise and weighty teaching, so high in aspiration and so minute in direction, only one