XXX. De vagatione.

XXX. De vagatione.

The second image signifies wandering and is accompanied here by frivolity, because through that instability, each thing that is rightly ordered leads into excess, and God is approached as if having a certain fear. It has a childish form, since it neither considers heaven with joy nor the earth with concern, but gazes at the empty instability in the circle of the elements, providing no clear insight into anything, dividing nothing rightly, but directing all its actions toward childish behaviors, except that it lacks hair on its head and has a face and beard like an old man, because it is weighed down by boredom, turning away from the honor of wisdom; yet it still desires to appear venerable and virtuous in the eyes of others, as is fitting for religious people. However, in the aforementioned darkness, there hangs a certain cloth, as if in a cradle, which sways this way and that like a leaf in the wind; this is because people, sweating under this vice, are bound in infidelity and the fabric of their own will, foolishly constrained, as if they were resting softly, while they scatter themselves in various and diverse vanities of many things and unknown jests through diabolical temptations, beginning nothing rightly, finishing nothing properly, but in vicissitude, like restless clouds racing about, always wandering everywhere, choosing what is unknown to themselves, and always seeking foreign abodes. But you don't see other garments in it, because such people don't put on any stable quality of goodness; instead, they always walk in instability, wavering back and forth. Sometimes they lift themselves up from the same cloth, and sometimes they hide themselves in that same cloth, because these same people now show a desire to abandon their own wills and to ascend to a greater reverence; yet now they conceal themselves in the same will, not revealing to anyone what they intend to do. Instigated by the same fault, they do what seeks no healing rest, no true stability, but rather they wander everywhere, seeking to manifest themselves playfully, just as they also demonstrate in their earlier words. However, quiet stability rebukes that, urging that each faithful person should diligently seek an honest stability, and should also speak to Christ, as it is written: