[Donatus moralisatus]

Your soul is made to the likeness of God and marked by His image, having within itself the virtue of understanding, willing, and remembering. This soul was infused by God into your most vile, fetid, and fragile body, so that, like a most wise mistress and a prudent guest, it may rule your house. As far as it is concerned, it is always able to do what is pleasing to its Lord, and to this end, it directs the exterior senses toward external duties that do not lead to anything harmful, toward reading the scriptures, gazing upon the cross of the Lord, or toward other wholesome things that seem useful to it. Therefore, if you follow the will of the flesh, you oppress the guest and kill the mistress. This lodging, in which so noble a guest is endangered, is therefore evil and vile. If, therefore, you wish to live according to the soul and not according to the flesh, consider that your flesh is earth. Therefore, its conditions are those of earth. For earth is low and hard, you carry all things with the virtue of patience, and the more you are vexed by someone, the more you