XVII. "A tavern is the fountain of sin,[59] the school of the devil; it works wonders fitting the place. It is the custom of God to show his power in his church, and to work miracles; that is to say, to give sight to the spiritually blind, to make the lame to leap, the dumb to sing, the deaf to hear: but the devil doth quite contrary to all these in taverns, and the like places of pleasure. For when the drunkard goes to the tavern, he goes upright: but when he comes forth, he cannot go at all; he has lost his sight, speech, and hearing too." "The lectures that are read in this school of the devil," say these poor Waldenses, and first reformers, "are gluttonies, oaths, perjuries, lyings, blasphemies, flatteries, and divers other wicked villanies and pernicious effects, by which the heart is withdrawn further and further from God." And, as the book of Ecclesiasticus saith, the taverner shall not be freed from sin. [59] La taverna de maisons de pleisirs es fontana de pecca e schola del diavolo, &c. But above other recreations, do but seriously observe, of what danger and ill consequence these first reformers thought dancing, music, and the like pastimes to be, which are the greatest divertisements of the times, viz.: XVIII. "Dancing is the devil's procession,[60] and he that entereth into a dance entereth into his procession, the devil is the guide, the middle, and the end of the dance; as many paces as man maketh in dancing, so many paces doth he make to go to hell.[61] A man sinneth in dancing divers ways, for all his steps are numbered, in his touch, in his ornaments, in his hearing, sight, speech, and other vanities. And therefore we will prove, first by the Scripture, and afterwards by divers other reasons, how wicked a thing it is to dance. The first testimony that we will produce is that which we read in the gospel, where it is said, it pleased Herod so well, that it cost John Baptist his life. (Mark, vi. 22-28; Exodus, xxxii. 4-7, 19.) The second is in Exodus, when Moses, coming near to the congregation, saw the calf, he cast the tables from him, and broke them at the foot of the mountain; and afterwards it cost three thousand of their lives. Besides, the ornaments which women wear in their dances, are as crowns for many victories which the devil hath got against the children of God: for the devil hath not only one sword in the dance, but as many as there are beautiful and well-adorned persons in the dance; for the words of a woman are a glittering sword. And therefore that place is much to be feared wherein the enemy hath so many swords, since that only one sword of his may be justly feared. Again, the devil in this place strikes with a sharpened sword; for women, who make it acceptable, come not willingly to the dance, if they be not painted and adorned; which painting and ornament is as a whetstone on which the devil sharpeneth his sword.--They that deck and adorn their daughters,