And love is the keeping of her laws; and the
giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of incorruption." But who
can doubt that he read with a bitter exultation, and applied to
himself passages like these which follow? "When the righteous _fled
from his brothers wrath, she guided him in right paths showed him the
kingdom of God, and gave him knowledge of holy things_. She defended
him from his enemies and kept him safe from those that lay in wait,
... that he might know that godliness is stronger than all.... She
forsook him not, but delivered him from sin; _she went down with him
into the pit_, and left him not in bonds till she brought him the
sceptre of the kingdom, ... and gave him perpetual glory." It was,
perhaps, from this book that Dante got the hint of making his
punishments and penances typical of the sins that earned them.
"Wherefore, whereas men lived dissolutely and unrighteously, thou
hast tormented them with their own abominations." Dante was intimate
with the Scriptures. They do even a scholar no harm. M. Victor Le
Clerc, in his "Histoire Litteraire de la France au quatorzieme
siecle" (Tom. II. p. 72), thinks it "not impossible" that a passage
in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, paraphrased by Dante, may have been
suggested to him by Rutebeuf or Tristan, rather than by the prophet
himself! Dante would hardly have found himself so much at home in the
company of _jongleurs_ as in that of prophets.
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