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| Chapter IX. Of their Shoes.
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Chapter IX.
Of their Shoes.
But refusing shoes, as
forbidden by the command of the gospel, if bodily weakness or the
morning cold in winter or the scorching heat of midday compels them,
they merely protect their feet with sandals, explaining that by the use
of them and the Lord’s permission it is implied that if, while we
are still in this world we cannot be completely set free from care and
anxiety about the flesh, nor can we be altogether released from it, we
should at least provide for the wants of the body with as little fuss
and as slight an entanglement as possible: and as for the feet of our
soul which ought to be ready for our spiritual race and always prepared
for preaching the peace of the gospel (with which feet we run after the
odour of the ointments of Christ, and of which David says: “I ran
in thirst,” and Jeremiah: “But I am not troubled, following
Thee”),662
| 662 Ps.
lxi. (lxii.) 5; Jer. xvii. 16
(lxx.). | we ought not to
suffer them to be entangled in the deadly cares of this world, filling
our thoughts with those things which concern not the supply of the
wants of nature, but unnecessary and harmful pleasures. And this we
shall thus fulfil if, as the Apostle advises, we “make not
provision for the flesh with its lusts.”663
But though lawfully enough they make use of these sandals, as permitted
by the Lord’s command, yet they never suffer them to remain on
their feet when they approach to celebrate or to receive the holy
mysteries, as they think that they ought to observe in the letter that
which was said to Moses and to Joshua, the son of Nun: “Loose the
latchet of thy shoe: for the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground.”664
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