He continued to complain of his comrades in the fight. ‘Instead of aiding me,’ he said, ‘the priests have begged me to begone. There are six score of us, they added, who will be compelled, if the disputation is to last much longer, to sell our gowns and hoods to pay our hosts.’ Then, after this trifling, returning to his grand theses, the fantastical doctor said, ‘The holy Trinity represents three monarchies. The father represents the emperor; the Son represents the pope; and the third monarchy, which is only now beginning, is that of the Holy Spirit, and _belongs to physicians_.’ Thus he claimed a great part for himself. This recalled him to his duty, and he applied himself to matters within his grasp. ‘The time of Lent, in which people fast,’ he said, ‘has been well regulated, because in the spring nature is awakening, the blood is warm and impels to pleasure, and, moreover, people have eaten a good deal during the winter.’ The energetic Farel, who knew as well as the doctor how to be popular and sarcastic, met him on his own ground, and replied in his medical language, ‘that, on the contrary, the least fitting season had been fixed for Lent; for in the spring the poor people work in the fields and the vineyards, and after having crammed themselves with flesh in the winter, they give them well-salted, fish, hot spices, etc. This method gives origin to legions of maladies, so that the priests make their harvest of them and the doctors their vintage. The sicknesses put money into the purses of these two classes of men, especially into those of the Romish priests, according to the anagram of _Roma_. If each letter of that word be taken as the initial of another word, we get the sentence, _Radix Omnium Malorum Avaritia_: Rome is avarice, the root of all evil. She shows this in all kinds of ways, but above all in granting for a money payment the liberty to eat flesh, which otherwise she prohibits and declares to be a sin.’[407] It is clear that Farel knew how to profit by that precept, _Answer a fool according to his folly_.