How many Orders are there? Which is the most perfect Order? Is there any Order more perfect than that of Christ? Since there is but one religion, how is a man an apostate who leaves his Order? Does the habit mean religion? Why do you stick out for your colours? Why do you eat flesh in one house and not in another? Why are you silent in one house and not in another? Why at initiation and profession do you pretend to be dead? Why do you build such splendid houses? Why are you not made Bishops? Can your prayers make any man better than his own prayers can do? Why do you preach that a man buried in your habit shall never go to hell? Why do you steal children for your sect? Why do you hear confessions of rich men? Why do you hate the preaching of the gospel? When you take a penny for a mass, what is it you sell? God’s body? Prayer? or your trouble? Since God knows everything, why write name of donor on your tablets? Why beg for yourself instead of poor men? Why do you not keep the Rule of St. Francis? In the restoration of the City life of the fourteenth century, remember that in every street we find the mendicant friar; at dinner-time he walks into any house he chooses: “Peace be unto this house,” he says, after which, by the Franciscan rule, it is lawful for him to eat of all meats that are set before him; at the corner of the street there is a wandering preacher denouncing the luxury and sloth of the rich; his audience is composed of craftsmen in leather jerkins listening with eager ears and intelligent faces. He is fat and well nourished; he has a full, rich voice and a certain rude oratory that lays hold of the people and constrains them to listen. There passes along the street, in a ragged gown, a lean and hungry chantry priest; he looks at the crowd round the preacher; he hears him talk the rough, strong East Saxon dialect which has always been the language of the London craftsman. He sighs, it is his own native patois, but he cannot talk as this man talks; he is a poor scholar, once a licensed beggar, and now a ragged, half-starved priest, having nothing but his little chantry endowment. Yet, being a scholar, he could prove that this man is all wrong. So he sighs and passes on his way. There comes next a Pardoner with his box hung round his neck; that precious box in which he has a finger-nail of St. Luke, the feather with which St. Matthew’s Gospel was written, a piece of a stone thrown at St. Stephen, the last footstep of the Prophet Elijah embedded in the rock, a piece of St. Peter’s fishing-net—you can see for yourself that it is a fishing-net, and other very precious relics. The box also contains pardons and indulgences which this good man sells to the faithful. At sight of the preacher, however, the Pardoner says nothing. In vain would he open his box of relics and offer his parchment indulgences in the presence of