"Then I have heard another, an octogenarian and such a theologian that you would think Scotus had been born again in him. He set out to explain the mystery of the name of Jesus and showed with marvellous subtilty that in those letters lay concealed whatever could be predicated of him. For a word that is inflected with but three cases is evidently the image of the divine Trinity. Then because the first case, _Jesus_, ends in _s_, the second, _Jesum_, in _m_, the third, _Jesu_, in _u_, beneath this fact there lies an unspeakable mystery, the three letters indicating, of course, that he is the beginning, middle, and end. Still there remained a mystery more obscure than all this, according to the principles of mathematics: he so divided the word Jesus into two equal parts that the third letter was left alone in the middle; then he showed that this was called by the Hebrews _syn_ and that _syn_ in the language, I believe, of the Scots [_Scotorum_], means _sin_, and hence it was plainly demonstrated that Jesus was he who should take away the sin of the world." The assault on the friars ends with some amusing criticism of their manner of public speaking, which they seem to have acquired by misapplying and exaggerating the good principles of rhetoric they have somehow picked up here and there. As to secular princes and courtiers, Folly borrows from the oration of "her friend Erasmus" to Duke Philip, and adds little to the commonplaces of criticism upon their wild and reckless living and their disregard of the good of their subjects. She carries her argument along from secular to clerical princes and finally reaches the pope, to whom she pays her respects in this monumental passage: "Those supreme pontiffs, who stand in the place of Christ, if they should try to imitate his life, that is his poverty, his toil, his teaching, his cross, and his scorn of this world, or if they should think of the meaning of 'pope,' that is 'father,' or even of 'most holy,' what position in the world could be more dreadful? Who would buy it with all his resources, or, when he had bought it, would defend it by sword and poison and every violence? What joys they would lose, if once wisdom should get hold of them! Wisdom, say I? nay, even a grain of that salt Christ tells us of. What wealth, what honours, riches, conquests, dispensations, taxes, indulgences, horses, mules, guards, pleasures, they would lose!... and in their place they would have vigils, prayers, fasts, tears, sermons, study, groans and a thousand other painful toils of the same sort.