The mote in the eyes of all manner of others.
“The Bible reports the price that was paid
280 By the folk of Israel for Ophni and Phinees,
Two impious priests whose avarice ended
In the forfeit of the Ark and the fall of their father.23
So before you reproach other folk, reflect
And study the psalms, so that you can say:
Thou thoughtest unjustly that I should be like to thee: but I will reprove thee.24
285 Then the hedgerow hecklers will be humbled and silenced,
No longer accusing and calling you curs:
Dumb dogs not able to bark.25
They will fear to refute your faith and your works,
And will come for a blessing even quicker than cash.
“So if you’d be holy keep that in your hearts.
290 For in holy orders you should hold to the Rule
Of the good Pope Gregory, Gregory the Great,
Who proclaims the right course in his commentary on Morals,
Offering this image of how to behave:
‘When fresh water fails and the flood recedes,
295 The fish are left dry and die of drought,
Like monks and friars who fancy their freedom
And wander away from the cloister walls.’26
“For if there is a heaven on earth
And ease for the soul, it is surely in school
300 And cloister, where no one comes to quarrel
But to be obedient and to learn from books.
In school there is scorn if a scholar is idle,
But failing that love and affection are found.
Yet you ride about now, roaming the roads,
305 Presiding at settlements and buying estates,
Trotting your mounts from manor to manor
With hounds at your heels like high-born lords,
And frowning at fellows who fail to kneel:
‘What tramp can have taught them to tender a cup?’
310 Landlords should leave their land to their heirs,
Not to callous clergy who claim the roof leaks.
For frequently priests treat their parishes like playthings
Displaying no charity or pity for the poor,
And enlarging their lands and behaving like lords.
315 “But a king shall come and require their confession
And beat them with the Bible for breaking their Rule,
And shall mend the manners of monks and nuns
And impose a penance till they reinstate the Rule.
And barons and earls will take back their birthright
320 For their sons and daughters, and will cite the psalm:
Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: They are bound, and have fallen.27
Then friars will find in their friaries a key
To Constantine’s coffers enclosing the wealth
That Gregory’s god-sons vaingloriously wasted,
And the king will cause an incurable wound
325 To the Abbot of Abingdon and all his issue.28
Those who study the Bible will see this is so:
How is the oppressor come to nothing, the tribute hath ceased; The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, the rod of the rulers.29
But the king will not come until Cain has woken
And Do-well destroys him and strikes down his strength.”
“Then Do-well and Do-better are nobles?” I deduced.
330 “I see no reason to be scornful,” said Scripture,
“But unless scribes are liars, it looks to me
That money and monarchy and knighthood are millstones,
Not helping by a hair’s breadth admission to heaven.
As Saint Paul asserts, they seriously obstruct it,
335 And Solomon says much the same about wealth:
There is not a more wicked thing than to love money.30
Even Cato cautions that money needs care:
Value money but don’t value its form.31
And patriarchs and prophets and poets as well
Have written to warn against wishing for wealth,
340 And in praise of poverty that is borne with patience;
The apostles say the poor may pass into heaven
By right, but the moneyed by remission and mercy.”
“By Christ,” I cried, “I can contradict that,
For the baptized are saved, as is said by the Saints,
345 Both Peter and Paul, be they rich or poor!”
“That is so,” Scripture said. “Even Saracens and Jews
May themselves, we are sure, be baptized in extremis.
In agony a heathen may christen a heathen,
And like a Christian, for his loyal belief
350 He’ll go to heaven when his own life ends.
But for Christians christening cannot suffice
Since Christ died for Christians and proclaimed the condition
That those craving resurrection with Christ must be kind:
If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above.32
They must give and must love, and must live by this law:
355 ‘Thou shalt loyally love the Lord thy God,
And secondly all Christian creatures in common.’33
If you seek to be saved, the sole route is love;
If we do not have that, at the day of our doom
Our money and mountain of moth-eaten clothes
360 And our wine and our wild fowl will weigh against us
If we know of need and let beggars go naked,
For every Christian should be kind to others
And should help the heathen in the hope they’ll convert.
“God also commands that the mighty and modest
365 Not harm or kill any creature that carries
His likeness unless he allows it expressly.
‘Thou shalt not kill’ means to suffer in silence:
Vengeance belongeth to me, and I will repay.34
‘I shall punish in Purgatory or the pit of hell
Each man’s misdeeds not remitted by mercy.’”
370 “Your lecture was long but I’m little the wiser,
And I’m still in the dark about Do-better and Do-well.
You’ve recited theology instead,” I insisted,
“And affirmed I was found before I was born
On a list of the blessed in the Book of Life,
375 Or else left out on account of some evil:
No man hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended from heaven.35
I believe it all loyally, I swear by our Lo
rd,
But what of Solomon, that well of wisdom,
Whose gifts were given by God’s good grace,
With which to rule and enrich his realm,
380 And who judged with such sense, as Scripture says?
He and Aristotle are hailed as great teachers,
And the godly savants who instruct us in sermons
Tell us those two were the wisest of their time.
Yet the Church disdains them and deems them both damned!
385 I would surely be stupid, whatever you say,
To hope for heaven by imitating them,
For they pine in the pit for their wisdom and pains.”
“I’m scarcely astonished,” said Scripture. “Some folk36
Have souls that incense and dissatisfy God,
390 For many on this earth are much more moved
By wealth than God and want God’s grace,
Which will not be granted when they give up the ghost.
Even sages,” she said, “such as Solomon himself
Behaved most hatefully, as Holy Writ says,
395 For the learned and lettered with wit and wisdom
Seldom do as they say themselves:
The Scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say and do not.37
And we’ve heard what happened in the age of Noah,
When he built his ship out of beams and boards.
Not a single craftsman who constructed it was saved,
400 Nor any other worker at all,
Only birds and beasts and the blessed Noah,
And his wife with his sons and with their wives.
God grant such a fate does not fall on the folk
Who teach faith in the Church, which should cherish and defend us
405 And shield us from shame as the ship did the beasts
While the folk that fashioned it drowned in the flood!
The purpose of this point is to warn that priests
Should be carving a church for the creatures of Christ:
Men and beasts thou wilt preserve.38
So I’d counsel the carpenters, the craftsmen of the Church,
410 To act as they’re urged lest they are not aboard
When at Doomsday a deluge of fire and death falls.”
“But we find on Good Friday,” I said, “that a felon
Who had lived all his life by lying and theft
Was saved because he cried out to Christ.
415 He was sooner saved than a saint, John the Baptist,
Or Adam or Isaiah or any of the prophets
Who had languished with Lucifer for long, long years.
A robber was ransomed rather than they
And by-passed Purgatory to perpetual bliss.
420 And what of Mary Magdalene, what woman did worse?
And David who did Uriah to death?
Or Paul the Apostle who had no pity
In condemning dozens of Christians to death?
And we see them sitting as sovereigns in heaven
425 Although their behavior on earth was evil,
While writers of rows of works of wisdom
Suffer instead with souls that are damned.”
“What Solomon said must be true,” Scripture said:
“There are just men and wise men, and their works are in the hand of God.39
Only God knows whether the works of the wise
430 And of those who seem loving and lead faithful lives
Will merit his mercy and admittance to heaven,
Or their malice and envy will mean they’re dismissed
As examples of sin that will set off the good.
If the world were all black, how would we know white,
435 Or a good man save for the scoundrels and sinners?
We must live with the villains and the few who are fair
For Patience is all when we have no option,40
And may he who mends all have mercy upon us!
‘None is good’ is the greatest of truths said by God.41
440 “Christ prized learning poorly when speaking to Saint Peter,
And he clearly declared to his closest disciples,
‘Though you come before kings and clerks of the law,
You should take no thought for the things you shall speak;
In time I shall will you the wit and the wisdom
445 To discomfit those claiming Christian understanding.’42
“David too says that no sovereign succeeded
In defeating his assertions by subtlety of speech,
For wisdom and wit will not win a dispute
Except when they’re stiffened and strengthened by grace.
450 The greatest of the four most famous divines,
That untiring interpreter of the Trinity, Augustine,
Once said in a sermon which I have seen:
The ignorant can force an entry to heaven,
While we, with our wisdom, fall headlong to hell,43
455 Which must surely mean, no more and no less:
None are sooner led astray from their strict belief
Than cultured clerics who are learned and clever;
None are sooner saved nor sterner of belief
Than plowmen, herdsmen and people who are poor,
460 Shepherds and shoemakers, simple good folk,
Who enter heaven with a humble Our Father
And need do no penance in Purgatory at their parting
But pass on to Paradise for their pureness of faith,
Though their lives are little and their knowledge still less.
465 “You have come across clergy who have cursed the time
They studied more subjects than the simple Creed
Or have wished their faith went no further than Our Father.
I have seen for myself, and so have others,
That servants seldom descend into debt
470 Unlike the more senior stewards of estates.
And likewise the men of little learning
Seldom descend so far into sin
As clergy whose task is to care for Christ’s treasure
By saving men’s souls. As God says in the Gospel:
Go you also into my vineyard.”44
1Cf. Matthew vii 6.
2The first sentence is from Job xxi 7, the second from Jeremiah xii 1.
3Psalm lxxiii 12.
4Psalm x 4 (KJV Psalm xi 3: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”)
5Psalm cxxxi 6 (KJV Psalm cxxxii 6).
6In Skeat, this and the preceding line are only in the C version.
7Isaiah lviii 7.
<
br /> 8Tobias iv 9 (KJV Apocrypha Tobit iv 8). Two lines are then condensed into one to avoid repetition.
9Ezechiel (KJV Ezekiel) xviii 20.
10Galatians vi 5.
11Cf. Saint Augustine, De Baptismo, contra Donatistas Book 2 Chapter 5.
12Learning is called “Clergy” in the original, which means both the clerical profession and book-learning.
13The seven arts are the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geography, astronomy).
14Dionysius Cato, Distich i 26. Two lines are then omitted to avoid repetition.
15Galatians vi 10.
16Hebrews x 30.
17John xiv 10 and xiv 9.
18From the Homilies of Saint Gregory.
19From the Homilies of Saint Gregory.
20A Latin couplet of unknown origin.
21Matthew vii 3 and 5.
22Luke vi 39.
231 Kings (KJV 1 Samuel iv). The death of the promiscuous Ophni and Phinees (KJV Hophni and Phinehas) is predicted in an earlier chapter, but Heli (KJV Eli) still stumbles when he is told of his sons’ demise, and his neck is broken.
24Psalm il (=49) 21 (KJV Psalm l 21).
25Isaiah lvi 10.
26This cannot be found in the writings of Pope Gregory I.
27Psalm xix 8–9 (KJV Psalm xx 7–8: “They are brought down and fallen”).
28i.e., all monastic houses since Abingdon was thought to be the first established in England.
29Isaiah xiv 4–5.
30Ecclesiasticus x 10. (Ecclesiasticus is regarded as Apocryphal in KJV.)
31Dionysius Cato, Distich iv 4.
32Colossians iii 1.
33Cf. Luke x 27.
34Hebrews x 30.
35John iii 13.
36In the original, lines 388–474 seem to be spoken by the narrator, but in the C version some of them are given to the character called Recklessness. Since the next Step refers to Scripture’s “long speech” and the lines contain frequent quotations from the Bible, lines 388–411 and 428–474 are here given, perhaps controversially, to Scripture.
37Matthew xxiii 2–3.
38Psalm xxxv 7 (KJV Psalm xxxvi 6).
39Ecclesiastes ix 1.
40A popular French saying: “Quant Oportet vient en place, il ny ad que Pati.”
41Cf. Matthew xix 17.
42Cf. Mark xiii 9–11. The Latin original is omitted to avoid repetition.
43Saint Augustine, Confessions Book viii Chapter 8.
44Matthew xx 4.
Step XI
Piers Plowman Page 17