Liber Secundus, Caput XIII. Ab otio et nugis vanisque sermonibus Pontificem dehortatur.

Liber Secundus, Caput XIII. Ab otio et nugis vanisque sermonibus Pontificem dehortatur.

Even though the Wise Man rightly urges that wisdom should be written in leisure, you must also beware of idleness in your leisure. Idleness must therefore be fled—it's the mother of trifles and the stepmother of virtues. Among secular people, trifles are just trifles; but in a priest's mouth, they're blasphemies. Sometimes, then, if they happen, they must perhaps be endured; but they must never be repeated. Rather, you must intervene against frivolity cautiously and prudently. You should indeed break in with something serious, which they'll not only find useful but gladly hear, and so refrain from idle matters. You have consecrated your mouth to the Gospel: opening it for such things is now forbidden, and getting used to them is sacrilege. The lips of a priest, he says, guard knowledge, and people seek the law from his mouth—not trifles, surely, or fables.^✦ A coarse word that people dress up under the name of wit or urbanity isn't just to be kept from the lips—it must be banished far from the ear as well. It's a wretched thing to be moved to crude laughter, but more wretched still to provoke it. Indeed, whether tearing someone down or listening to someone being torn down is more damnable — I wouldn't easily say.