WARNIERS. Hé, las! jou avoie en couvent De li temprement espouser. GUIOS. Tu te puès bien trop dolouser, Biaus très dous amis; ne te caille, Car ja ne meteras maaille, Que bien sai, à l’enfant warder.[884] Those who were heretically disposed were keen to take advantage of a weakness so general and so universally understood. The author of the “Creed of Piers Ploughman” does not hesitate to assert with Gregory X. that the clergy were the corruption of the world— For falshed of freres Hath fullich encombred Manye of this maner men, And made hem to leven Her charité and chastité, And shosen hem to lustes, And waxen to werly, And wayven the trewethe, And leven the love of her God.[885] The widely received feeling on this subject, perhaps, finds its fittest expression in a satire on the mendicant friars, written by a Franciscan novice who became disgusted with the order and turned Wickliffite. The exaggerated purity and mortification of the early followers of the blessed St. Francis had long since yielded to the temptations which attended on the magnificent success of the institution, and the asceticism which had been powerful enough to cause visions of the holy Stigmata degenerated into sloth and crime which took advantage of the opportunities afforded by the privilege to hear confessions. The grosser accusations of the writer are, perhaps, unfit for quotation, but the spirit in which the Franciscan friars were regarded is sufficiently indicated by the following lines: For when the gode man is fro hame And the frere comes to oure dame, He spares, nauther for synne ne shame, That he ne dos his will. * * * * * Ich man that here shal lede his life That has a faire doghter or a wyfe Be war that no frer ham shryfe Nauther loude ne still.[886]