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Chapter XIV. The Pope warned against accepting the person of any

I need not trouble you to look at avarice, for you are said to value money no more than chaff.1 There is, assuredly, no reason to dread your judgements on that account. But there is a lurking danger which no less frequently, and no less banefully, besets the judgement seat ; and as regards this, I should be very sorry if any mischief were latent in your conscience, and you were unaware of it. Do you ask to what I refer ? The acceptance of men's persons. Consider y yourself guilty of no small sin if you welcome sinners, and do not rather decide the causes of the deserving. There is also another vice ; if you feel yourself to be free from it you will in my opinion sit in solitary state among all those whom 1 have known to occupy the chair, because you have really, in a singular measure, raised yourself above yourself as the prophet says.2 I mean an easy credulity, a very crafty little

Footnotes

  1. This was very rare, the property of the Church being claimed entirely by the Popes of the Middle Ages. Innocent II asserted the ' feudal right ' of the Roman Pontiff with much emphasis at the second Lateran Council (A.D. 1139). The Proctors of the Peers and Commons of England bitterly complained at the first Council of Lyons (A. D. 1245). See Hussey, Rise of the Papal Power, p. 189, &c. ↩

  2. Lament, iii. 28. Vulg. Booh 11, Chapter xi 6<> fox, against whose tricks, so far as I have ascertained, not one of our great men has taken adequate precaution. That was why they were so often angry, all for nothing ; that was why they frequently abandoned the innocent, and delivered premature judgements against men who were not in court. But I congratulate you (and I am not afraid that you will brand me as a flatterer), I congratulate you, I say, on having hitherto presided without much complaint about any of these things ; whether you are also free from fault, see for your self. Now your consideration must be directed to those things which are below you. But here we start afresh ; for, bearing in mind your many occupations, the shorter the discourse the better. ST. BERNARD ↩

Chapter 26 of 52