THE tiresome series of antitheses between Christ and the fiend with which this tract begins are in Wyclif's worst manner, if indeed they are his.
The characteristic point of this tract is its insistence on the hardships of imprisonment for debt, on the cruelty of those who inflict it unjustly, (pp. 211 and 214), and on the folly of those who fall into it through drunkenness (p. 217). I do not remember any other tract in which this point is pressed so much.
Whoever the author was, he knew the poor and felt for them; notice, among other things, his description of the bed-rid poor as couching on muck or dust (p. 211), and his complaint that the aged poor had to drink water and fell into fevers. (Did he look upon wine as a febrifuge?)
Copied from the Corpus MS. X. and collated with the Dublin MS. AA., where the first chapter and part of the second are wanting.
| CHAP. I. | The works of bodily mercy are enumerated, and the perversions of them prevalent among bad priests, etc. | p. 210 |
| II. | Contains a similar list of contrasts as to the works of spiritual mercy | 212 |
| III. | The temptations offered us by the five senses are enumerated and contrasted with the right use of the senses. | 216 |
