Car ja ne meteras maaille,
Que bien sai, à l’enfant warder.[884]
Those who were heretically disposed were keen to take advantage of a weakness so general and so universally understood. The author of the “Creed of Piers Ploughman” does not hesitate to assert with Gregory X. that the clergy were the corruption of the world—
For falshed of freres
Hath fullich encombred
Manye of this maner men,
And made hem to leven
Her charité and chastité,
And shosen hem to lustes,
And waxen to werly,