To these men we were as a refuge in every case of need, and never refused to them the shelter of our favour, wherefore we deserved to find them most special furtherers of our wishes and promoters thereof in act and deed, who compassing land and sea, traversing the circuit of the world, and ransacking the universities and high schools of various provinces, were zealous in combatting for our desires, in the sure and certain hope of reward.
What leveret could escape amidst so many keen-sighted hunters?
What little fish could evade in turn their hooks and nets and snares?
From the body of the Sacred Law down to the booklet containing the fallacies of yesterday, nothing could escape these searchers.

Was some devout discourse uttered at the fountain-head of Christian faith, the holy Roman Curia, or was some strange question ventilated with novel arguments; did the solidity of Paris, which is now more zealous in the study of antiquity than in the subtle investigation of truth, did English subtlety, which illumined by the lights of former times is always sending forth fresh rays of truth, produce anything to the advancement of science or the declaration of the faith, this was instantly poured still fresh into our ears, ungarbled by any babbler, unmutilated by any trifler, but passing straight from the purest of wine-presses into the vats of our memory to be clarified.
But whenever it happened that we turned aside to the cities and places where the mendicants we have mentioned had their convents, we did not disdain to visit their libraries and any other repositories of books; nay, there we found heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom.

We discovered in their fardels and baskets not only crumbs falling from the masters' table for the dogs, but the shewbread without leaven and the bread of angels having in it all that is delicious; and indeed the garners of Joseph full of corn, and all the spoil of the Egyptians, and the very precious gifts which Queen Sheba brought to Solomon.
These men are as ants ever preparing their meat in the summer, and ingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey.

They are successors of Bezaleel in devising all manner of workmanship in silver and gold and precious stones for decorating the temple of the Church.
They are cunning embroiderers, who fashion the breastplate and ephod of the high priest and all the various vestments of the priests.

They fashion the curtains of linen and hair and coverings of ram's skins dyed red with which to adorn the tabernacle of the Church militant.
They are husbandmen that sow, oxen treading out corn, sounding trumpets, shining Pleiades and stars remaining in their courses, which cease not to fight against Sisera.