Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/427

109* may glance, full of mischiefs, worldly clever, habitually inventing new costumes (uniforms) and preoccupied by superficial matters, empty-headed, avaricious by habit, of vulgar speech, shameless in their bearing, of a choleric, cocky and impudent character, holding in derision and despising all people. When we speak about honesty as pertaining to Christians and to the Christian rulers and their servants – what a farce! They are really a dead corpse brought by Constantine into the midst of the Christians from the pagans. It is a corpse which can torture to sickness with its stench, and those who smell it will become contaminated with the scandalous inflictions and hurtful woes, which have already brought about a great deterioration of morals among the Christians.

And every place is full of these courtly companies which contaminate faith with unreasoning anger far more dangerously than any other evil ensnaring Christians. The courtly companies excell all others by their temptations and evils. And all this has been smuggled into faith with the pagan rule, like an evil smelling corpse, to the great defilement of faith. And yet, the priests and masters exonerate them for all these things saying, "This is as it should be, in order; the courtiers have to be that way: gay, free and courteous – but not pious." It must be so as their