Now canst thou see, from what we have said here, that the devil has many gins to take people by the throat; for first he shows them wines and meats that are fair and pleasant, as he did the apple to Eve. And if that avails not, he says to him: ‘Eat and drink like so and so and so and so; it behoves thee to keep fellowship, if thou wilt that one should not starve thee, nor esteem thee a hypocrite;’ or he says to him: ‘The health of thy body thou shalt look after, for whoever hath not health hath naught. Be not thine own manslayer; thou owest to thy body sustenance.’ Or he says to him: ‘Take heed to the good things that thou dost or mayest do; thou eatest not for the lust of thy body, but to serve God; thou shalt keep thy strength for God, as David says.’ These reasons are so convincing that the wisest and holiest man is sometimes beguiled. The third bough of this sin is to run hastily after meat, as does the hound after the hare; and the greater the haste is, the greater is the sin. For as it is no sin to have riches, but to love them too much; just so it is no sin to eat good meats, but to eat them too hastily or immoderately. To eat meats is good for the good, and for them that use them in reason and in measure, and take them with the sauce of the dread of our Lord. For one shall evermore have dread lest one mistake through excess, and one shall praise God and yield Him thanks for His gifts. And by the sweetness of the meat, which otherwise cannot be, one shall think of God’s sweetness and of that meat which fills the heart. Therefore one reads in a religious house at meat, in order that when the body takes its meat on the one hand the heart should take its on the other hand. The fourth bough of this sin is of those that will live too nobly, who spend and waste, in order to fill (up the measure of) their gluttony, (that) whereby a hundred poor might live and sufficiently be filled. Such folk sin in many ways. First, in the great spendings that they make; afterwards in that they use it in too great heat and in too great lust; and afterwards in the idle bliss that they have. For it is not only lechery of taste, but it is very often for boasting that they seek such rich meats and make so many messes, whereof come often many evils.